Final Fantasy VII and all related names and characters are property of Square.
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Chapter Four
Emmy's aunt's apartment was small, with nondescript furniture and seven cats, who had a monopoly on the seating when they came in. As Emmy went to put away her books, Yuffie faced down one of the felines for possession of a squashy armchair.
"Yuffie, just pick up the cat and put it on the floor. There is no earthly reason for you to be offering it a trade-off," said Rufus, who had already evicted three cats from the sofa.
"Shush," said Yuffie. "I do things my own way." She turned back to the cat, a black-and-white spotted specimen. "So, you're gonna play it rough, huh? Nothing doing with my brand-new shiny All materia? Right then, get yourself ready to battle for supremacy!" She launched herself at the chair with a ferocious growl. The cat, startled, leapt up and darted under the coffee table. "Ha!" she said, sitting down triumphantly. "Chicken, are you? Well, I'm here anytime you want to try it again, tough guy. Yeah, you heard me!"
"Congratulations, Yuffie, you've just conquered a ratty armchair. Did you pick it because of the unusual recliner?"
"What?" said Yuffie, leaning back. The back of the chair fell off, sending her tumbling head over heels into an umbrella stand. "Ouch," came an echo from inside the stand.
"I warned you."
"Since you're in a charitable mood, then, why don't you help me get this umbrella stand off my head?" She struggled to pull it off. "Wait, did I just hear you laugh? That would be a first... Hey! Can you hear me out there? I could suffocate in here, you know!" She banged the umbrella stand against the wall.
"Don't do that, you might dent the umbrella stand."
"HELP ME GET OUT OF THIS THING, STUPID!"
"Oh fine."
He pulled the umbrella stand off and set it carefully on the broken armchair.
"That took you long enough. All my work for nothing... Were you laughing at me?" she asked suspiciously.
"Not at all."
Emmy returned to find her guests sitting at opposite ends of the sofa; Yuffie was rubbing her head painfully.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I ought to have warned you about that chair. We never use it, but we keep it because it was one of the few things our family recovered from the Shinra headquarters in Midgar and it's a kind of heirloom..."
"Wonderful, Yuffie. That was probably my only remaining asset -- we might even have been able to get the price of a lunch out of it -- and you just broke it."
"Ah, it was probably worthless. Not even the most fanatical antiques collector would want that thing."
Emmy propped the back up with the umbrella stand. "It's always been broken. But we do have some other things that were salvaged; people come around and ask us to sell them, but my aunt isn't desperately in need of money." She sat down on another chair across from the sofa. "So would you mind explaining what you're doing here?"
The story was short, as it spanned all of a day and a half, and did not fluster Emmy nearly as much as the initial revelation.
"Well," she said, "I don't know that I can help you, since I have things to do... I have to go back to school in two days. You're trying to get back to that time period?"
"That's right!" said Yuffie.
"If it's really something supernatural, Cosmo Canyon might be the place to go, but they aren't letting anyone in these days. Besides, you won't be able to go there for another month or so -- there's been an epidemic of some disease in the neighboring villages and the whole area is off-limits for a while. Why don't you try going to Junon? That's where the government operates from and there's a lot of research facilities there; you might find out something."
"Wow, that sounds like a good plan. Thanks!" Yuffie said happily. Rufus looked skeptical, but said nothing.
There was an uncomfortable silence; nobody knew what to say next. Finally Yuffie remembered her list.
"So what happened to everyone? I guess you know, right?"
Emmy explained the fates of the people they had known: Cloud and Tifa had gotten married and had some descendants living in Icicle Village; Cid had become the first man in space and consequently gotten several public buildings named after him ("Now that's a weird thought," Yuffie mused); Barret and Marlene had returned to North Corel; Red/Nanaki and Vincent had disappeared from the public eye after Meteor; and Reeve had been instrumental in the forming of the new government. Cait Sith could now be seen in the Gold Saucer museum. The Turks had worked as hired hitmen for a while, then Reno had gotten on a boat sailing west and never come back ("Sounds just like him," said Rufus) and Rude and Elena had started a very successful weapons manufacturing company.
"What does it say in the book about us? I am in there, right?" asked Yuffie.
Emmy looked it up. "It says here that you disappeared at age eighteen during a scouting trip in the mountains and were mourned by all of Wutai for two years. Apparently there's a minor monument to you there. The present ruler of Wutai is descended from one of your cousins."
"Well, what do you know. Never thought they'd miss me." She spoke lightly, but Emmy could see that her former high spirits had been a bit damped. "So," she changed the subject, "can we stay here tonight before your aunt comes back tomorrow?"
"All right," said Emmy a bit reluctantly. "There's only one spare room, and it has a lot of stuff in it, so there's not much room -- one of you will have to sleep on the couch."
The inevitable argument resulted, and the upshot was that Yuffie ended up sleeping on top of boxes with a spare blanket in the storage room and Rufus got the couch.
"So that's the reason he gave in so easily -- how was I supposed to know there wasn't a bed in here?" she grumbled, shifting uncomfortably to alleviate the pain caused by the ornate lamp digging into her leg. "Note to self: never let your rival leave the room for a glass of water till the matter's settled." She rolled over, trying to find a more comfortable position on the lumpy boxes. Eventually she gave up and jumped off the boxes to roam around the apartment a bit.
"I think I saw some ice cream in the freezer..." Passing through the living room, she observed Rufus sleeping peacefully on the couch. Curse him. Then a wonderful idea came to her -- an idea so sublime she felt it would be inexcusable not to act on it.
As you may have guessed, Yuffie rarely suppressed her genius.
On with the plan, then -- but first she consumed the tub of ice cream she found in the freezer to supply much-needed energy. Then, finding a coil of rope, a cymbal, and a particularly ugly porcelain ornament in the storage room and a box of pepper in the kitchen, she set to work. When it was done, she stepped back to admire her work and grinned evilly.
"Revenge at last! Morning's going to be fun..."
Thus Emmy awoke to the sound of a crash, a clang, and fits of sneezing from the living room and hysterical peals of laughter from the spare bedroom. As she hurriedly dressed, she heard a yell of "YUFFIE! *achoo* Don't DO that!" and a responding fit of giggles before Yuffie replied, "Sorry -- heehee -- but -- BWAHAHAHAHA!! -- Ahem. Sorry, but you had it coming to you, tricking me like that!"
"Just get a broom, you miserable miscreant, and clean up all this pepper!"
"Okay, okay. You don't need to get all mad about it. Gosh, some people have no sense of humor. And --" she giggled -- "could you not use alliterative insults? It makes me laugh even more."
Emmy emerged to find Yuffie sweeping up the last of the pepper and Rufus trying to put the ugly porcelain ornament back together.
"Er, what's going on?"
"Oh, everything is just peachy," Yuffie assured her. "Don't worry."
"Oh... okay. You're sure everything is all right?"
"Fine. Just fine. Yuffie's natural... exuberance got out of hand," said Rufus in a tone which was not reassuring at all.
"You have to admit it was funny, though," said Yuffie. "At least a little bit funny."
"All right, so maybe it was a little bit funny. But not nearly funny enough to stop me from wringing your neck if you ever try it again."
"See, I knew you'd agree."
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Emmy's aunt was returning in the afternoon, so they set out that morning with a packed lunch from Emmy, who had told them how to get in touch with her and promised faithfully not to tell anyone. Since funds were limited, they had elected to travel on foot, despite Yuffie's pleadings for taking a train. Unfortunately, villages had disappeared or grown up in different places since they had been around last, and though Rufus had once known the route to Junon fairly well, come nighttime there was not a house in sight.
"That's strange..." he said thoughtfully. "There used to be a village somewhere around here."
"Well that doesn't help, does it?" grumbled Yuffie, who was geting tired, owing in part to having stayed up all night before. "What are we going to do now?"
"Freeze, that's what we're going to do."
"You are perhaps the most depressing travel companion I have EVER had. Can't you even once say something completely untrue yet comforting, like 'Everything will work out for the best'?"
"And what good would that do?"
"None," said Yuffie, "none at all. Is that a pile of rubble I see? Brings back memories."
"Those must be the ruins of the village that used to be here."
"Any un-ruined towns around here?"
"Not that we could reach tonight. We'll have to stop in here."
"Oh great. If you had just listened to me, Mister I-Know-Everything, we would be there already, in a nice warm inn having dinner. Instead we're out in the freezing cold in the middle of nowhere and I only have one sandwich left!"
The ruins were fairly old, and only one or two buildings were left standing. One of these actually had a roof, so this became lodging for the night. All the windows were broken and cold wind whistled through the room, save for one corner which had a shelf built in such a way that it blocked the wind.
"Right, I get behind the shelf," said Yuffie.
"And why would that be? I've already decided that I get the spot behind the shelf."
Ten minutes later, Yuffie was behind the shelf, triumphant, and Rufus was on the other side.
"Yuffie?"
"Mf... whatsit?" mumbled Yuffie, who had been about to doze off.
"Don't you get the feeling that there's some sort of pattern here?"
"No. What are you talking about?"
"Never mind. You wouldn't be perceptive enough to spot if there were one."
"Stop insulting me and go to sleep, you blockhead."
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Breakfast was the one remaining sandwich, which Yuffie grudgingly shared after agonizing about it for half the night. Within two hours, they had reached the edge of the marsh, where they managed to catch only one chocobo -- meaning Yuffie was left on foot.
"Just a few minutes longer and I'll spot one!" she pleaded, rubbing her Chocobo Lure materia in an effort to get some luck.
"A few minutes longer and we'll be here till nightfall. Either get on this one or run alongside."
"Fine, I'll run." She kept up well for a while, being a good runner, but then abruptly tripped over her own feet and fell to the ground. When she recovered enough so that her surroundings were no longer spinning round her head, she looked up to see Rufus looking back down at her with a very readable "what a pathetic idiot" expression.
"Just a few more minutes?" The expression shifted to a heavy emphasis on "idiot". "Oh fine, but we have to stop every once in a while. Unless I have my own chocobo and go really slow, I get motion sick and hurl all over the place."
"If we see a chocobo along the way, we'll stop, but we have to get going or we won't make it to Junon today. Oh, and you might want to stand up before trying to get on."
"Shush. I know perfectly well I'm lying on the ground. I was just... practicing."
She climbed up on the chocobo, and the journey proceeded, albeit with frequent stops so Yuffie could get off and stagger around clutching her stomach, moaning about how sick she was and how she didn't think she could stand another minute on the chocobo without hurling.
When Junon came in sight, it was twilight. Yuffie slid off the chocobo and lay down, moaning even louder.
"I'll never get on a chocobo again, I forgot how much I hate those things... never never never."
"Since you seem so comfortable, I'll just leave you here and go on ahead, shall I?" said Rufus.
"No wait! I'm coming!" She suddenly forgot how sick she was and remembered how hungry she was. "And I'm going to eat a ten-course dinner when I get there! Chicken and potatoes and soup and carrots and apples and steak and fish and..."
Coincidentally, the only inn in sight had one bed vacant. They were both too tired to argue, so Yuffie went back downstairs and yelled at the manager until he admitted that he had an extra bed.
"What were you talking about with a pattern?" she asked through the thin wall before going to sleep.
"Nothing, it was just an idea. Forget it."
And night fell for the third time in this chapter alone.
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author's notes: I'm a bit fuzzy on the geography of this area, so please forgive any mistakes. Can you see any pattern? I wonder what it is... The story is coming along nicely now; I've been writing quite a lot lately so the next chapter may even be coming soon! (Don't count on it, though.)
