PYLO New Year's Eve Bonus!

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PYLO (Put Your Lights On) is a fanfiction by kleptomaniac0, which therefore by definition mean that the FFVII characters do not belong to the author and ergo do not garner any profit for said person. If sued, the author will simultaneously freeze and combust. This will result in a local hailstorm of flaming comets. Therefore... Yeah, you get the picture.

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This bit takes place somewhere in the story. That's all I really know. It doesn't fit anywhere in the main plotline, hence the "bonus" in the title. Happy New Year's Eve! For all you legal people, don't get too drunk. Actually, that's directed at everyone, because we all know that underage people don't automatically upchuck booze if they drink it... That might make law enforcement's job a lot easier, but too bad. Besides, how do you know your limits if you don't start early?

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During the war, the Wutaiese population of Midgar had practically vanished from sight for safety reasons: it had been a long and ugly campaign, and angry patriots—vets, army and SOLDIER rejects—had roamed the streets at night, with misfortune falling heavily on whatever child of Da-Chao happened to be about. But the war was some five years done with now, and slowly but quietly the Wutaiese were coming back. First a restaurant here, then a market there: it was almost as if the Midgarian Wutaiese were like seedlings, certain to die if they came too soon after winter.

Tseng walked down the street, his hands in the pockets of his long wool coat. Snow dotted the ground, patchy for the week of warm weather that had ended the precious year: his shoes squished through the dirty slush, but like everything else in Tseng's life, the snow didn't stick. Hardship or hard weather, everything just rolled off Tseng's polished exterior. Yet as usual, his stomach was dancing with anxiety.

"Please forgive my impiety," Tseng prayed silently to Da-Chao. "The temples have been closed and hidden for the last five years, but even so..."

Tseng was only half Wutaiese, but his parents had been unified in their belief of the shamanistic Wutaiese religion. A great deal more informal than the Continental church—or at least the way Tseng's parents had practiced it—the Wutaiese religion requested his family's presence as often as they felt like going, which was five times a year: New Year's, Endyear, Midsummer, Boy's Day, and Children's Day. Tseng had fond memories of all those times, where he'd run around with the other half-and-half kids his age, speaking in a chaotic mishmash of Continental and Wutaiese that was arguably a language all its own: the mystery was largely due to speed, though, and not through any change in grammar or syntax. Tseng mouthed a tongue twister like a prayer as he walked down the Sector Four street.

As subtly and gradually as tulips emerging in spring, the Midgarian Wutaiese trickled into the streets. Elderly grandmothers tottered along with the determination of tortoises, followed or passed by parents with children. Tseng saw glimpses of cherry red silk and brocade under drab wool coats, and girls wore scarves tied loosely over their elaborately upswept hair. This ethnic pride, hidden though it was, made something in Tseng's chest swell painfully, and he suddenly felt ashamed of his neat suit and tie. On impulse, he reached up and pulled the elastic band from his short ponytail, letting his hair brush again his shoulders. It really should have been down to his hips, but Tseng wasn't that traditional.

He rounded the corner that preceded the Sector Four Temple and stopped, his breath catching in his throat. The charming red-tiled temple, a perfect little piece of Wutai on the Continent, was gone. The red torii that he'd played around in his youth was still standing, but it had gone dull with neglect, and the carved benedictions that had decorated the sides had been gouged out by crude, hate-filled implements. There was a charred stump in the corner of the temple's large courtyard, the pitiful remnant of what had been a magnificent cherry tree. Tseng shut his eyes, suddenly cold, and suppressed the urge to vomit.

"Those fucking paleface devils... How could they do this to a holy place? It was just a temple..."

Dimly he became aware of laughing. Temper flared in him and he opened his eyes, glaring at the source of the sound. To his shock, it came from a group of small children, perhaps five or six years old—certainly they were too young to remember what the temple used to have been. One of them tapped the scarred torii, calling, "Safe! Can't get me!"

"Cheater!" Another child yelled.

Tseng clenched his teeth, balling his hands into fists. There was no real reason for him to be so angry at mere kids, but it was as if they mocked the ruined temple by treating it so cavalierly: couldn't they see the signs of what had been?

Growling angrily under his breath, Tseng stalked past the children before he could snap at them and joined the slow stream of people who were waiting patiently to go into the temple proper. Inside there was a single gnarled monk Tseng had never seen before, who wore saffron robes and several long rosaries, and who spoke cheerful and somewhat toothless blessings. Tseng looked around as he entered and felt something in him ease a little: the inside of the temple was still dark with the caked incense smoke of ages, which lent the air a close, heavy fragrance that made Tseng sigh. At least this had remained the same.

At the front of the temple, there was a carved statue of Da-Chao as he appeared on the mountains above Wutai, his multiple visages presenting the virtues of austerity, serenity, and discipline. Alongside it was—or had been, Tseng saw with a wrench—a spectacular statue of Leviathan, carved from a massive block of moss green malachite. It had been the Sector Four Temple's treasure; Tseng remembered his parents donating gil to have it shipped over from Wutai. Now there was just a concrete sculpture. Tseng swallowed as the loss struck him like the sudden disappearance of an organ.

The line shuffled steadily up, and coats were shed as the pious approached the altar. Now Tseng saw the promise of Wutaiese finery fulfilled as dusters fell away to reveal New Year's kimonos in dazzling shades, with the young women claiming the most beautiful colors. Tseng was glad to see that he wasn't the only one wearing Continental clothes: most of the men were wearing suits, so his Turk uniform was unremarkable, and the married or matronly women wore stately hamboku that were kinder to their plumping figures. Everyone, Tseng included, was given a stick of incense by the gnarled monk at the altar, and Tseng kneeled alongside the rest of the faithful to light it at the provided row of candles.

Three bows, each from the waist with eyes closed: Tseng placed his stick of incense before the statue of Da-Chao and stepped back to let someone else do the same. The people around him put their hands together and bent their heads in prayer: Tseng could hear some of them whispering for things as prosaic as health and prosperity to slightly odder requests, like the ones voiced by children for certain toys and the returned affection of a crush. Tseng put his hands together and wondered what he should pray for.

"I've been self-sufficient ever since I left my parents' house and joined the Turks: I never asked for anything from Da-Chao or Leviathan because I knew I could get it myself. What do I pray for? Why am I even here?"

Tseng bowed his head, closing his eyes, and decided to take the easy, inoffensive route.

"Da-Chao and Leviathan, I'm not the most pious of people and I don't even know how to pray properly... I've never done it in my life, to be honest. But believe me when I say I'm faithful, so for the new year I pray for the safety of all my Turks, even though none of them are Wutaiese... I consider them my friends as well as my subordinates, and our job's dangerous enough that we'll take anything we can get..."

It had to be one of the shittiest prayers in existence, but Tseng couldn't think of anything better. Sticking his hands in his pockets, he turned and left the temple, threading his way through the coming pious. He couldn't decide what he felt. Tseng saw the children playing around the torii again and wondered if he should really be angry: was their innocent gamboling disrespect, or a peculiar kind of continuity between his past and now? Was it a cosmic lesson, 'the more things change, the more things stay the same'?

Tseng sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was starting to remember why he hadn't gone to the temple since his leaving his parents' house. Like the Continental church he'd attended a few times with Rude and Reno, he always seemed to leave with more questions than answers, more disquiet than calm, and always just slightly irritated.

But he still left a purse of money in the temple's offering box, maybe enough to make whoever was in charge start thinking about buying a malachite Leviathan again.

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Author's note:

I'm not sure what I was thinking when I typed this. The only thing I definitely remember was "Toriko and Sephiroth aren't the only ones in this story", so somehow we got Tseng visiting a temple on New Year's...

It's been a really long time since I've been to an Asian temple—in fact, the last time I went to one I was approximately three feet tall—so I made up a lot of details. I'm not really interested in being terribly accurate anyway, since religion is not a subject I'll be spending a lot of time on.

In any case, I hope you enjoyed the bonus. Happy New Year!

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