Final Fantasy VII and all related names and characters are property of Square.
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Chapter Four
Apparently the new government was not nearly as powerful or rich as Shinra had been -- Junon was still much the same, though life in the lower half seemed to have improved quite a bit. The old lift was still there, with the same computer security system, simply modified for a different power source. Surprisingly, a plaque was affixed to the side indicating that it was an historical landmark.
"So, are we going to break in?" said Yuffie excitedly.
"No, we are not going to break in. We have a perfectly legitimate pass." Rufus held up the identification card. "This used to work in Junon as well, and if they haven't completely replaced the computers, it should still get us in."
"Ooh, can I try it?" She grabbed the card, earning a glare from its owner, and inserted it into the slot. After a short wait and some whirring noises, it popped back out and the doors opened smoothly. "That's so cool! Are you sure we won't get arrested or something, though? For going in without permission?"
"As far as I'm concerned, I still have a perfectly good right to be here. Besides, we can always pass ourselves off as ghosts. If they're so protective of historical landmarks, they may well have kept all those awful portraits of me, so you can hide somewhere and I'll frighten people off by pretending to have come out of one of the paintings."
"One question: Why were all the paintings so awful?"
"Apparently we killed off all the good portrait painters in Junon before I got here."
"Oh. I should have known. I thought for a moment you were actually showing some kind of humility."
"Who, me? I'm surprised at you."
They boarded the lift going upwards.
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At about the same time, the bored girl who monitored the entrance and exit records happened to glance up from her manicure at the screen for the first time in an hour. She scanned the list of entrances, and her eye lit on a strange one -- "President? What the heck?" She called over her supervisor, saying, "Look, it's doing weird things again -- there's no card that would say that. Plus, it says the last time the owner of the card came in was two hundred years ago!"
"I keep saying their computers are obsolete," said one of her co-workers. "But do they listen?"
The error seemed harmless, but just in case it had been a forged card that had caused it, they set the alarms to go off if it happened again. With that, they all went back to their work and completely forgot about it.
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"So what now?" Yuffie wondered, looking around the corner of the hall before dashing to the other side stealthily.
"We'll have to hide somewhere till night and then try to use the card to gain access to any files that might help. Will you stop that?"
"What?"
"Darting back and forth, walking along the walls, and looking around all the corners. You're extremely conspicuous -- even the thickest janitor would suspect something, seeing you run around like that."
"But it's fun! Like being in a spy movie!"
"Have it your own way, then, but if you get locked up I won't bother stopping to get you out."
"Hmph. Not like I would be stupid enough to expect someone like you to do that." She spotted a large pair of double doors. "What's in there? Looks like some kinda big ballroom --" She opened the door a bit wider. "Cool! Can we hide in here? There's this big table with a long tablecloth and all these curtains... ooh, there's a piano too! I wonder if I could hide in a piano?"
"A supply closet was more what I had in mind," said Rufus flatly.
"A closet? You think I'm going to spend the entire day sitting in a closet? No way. I bet nobody ever comes in here anyway, what would they do in this place? I'm hiding in here."
"You do that. I'll be in the nearest closet, and don't complain to me when you get caught." He left, closing the doors behind him, and Yuffie snorted and went over to have a look at the table. Within thirty seconds, though, he came back in hastily.
"Changed your mind, eh? I knew you'd agree with me after seeing the closets round here --" she began, but he cut her off.
"Hide, quickly! There's someone coming down the hall!" There ensued a brief scramble for hiding places, at the end of which they both found themselves under the large table.
"What--" Yuffie whispered, but she stopped abruptly as the doors opened and several maids came in. Peeking under the edge of the cloth, she saw that they were opening the curtains and dusting off various things.
"So you say there's a big party tonight?" came a voice from near one of the windows.
"That's right -- with music, dinner, the whole thing. They're going to close off this hall for the rest of the day because of all the preparations. Oh, Janey, be a love and dust those paintings for me -- you know how my back is."
"You can do it just fine, there's nothing wrong with you." This was presumably Janey. "You're just scared of a silly superstition."
"It's not silly! I went out with Mike who works for that magazine last week and he said definitely that there were ghosts haunting that building in Midgar -- he told me that someone had seen the ghost of Rufus Shinra himself, all transparent and carrying lots of chains and uttering fearful prophecies. Who knows, maybe that painting over there'll come to life one night and haunt us all!"
Yuffie sat back from the edge of the cloth, shaking with barely suppressed laughter. With a terrific effort she recovered herself and turned to look at Rufus, who looked just as bored as ever. Oh well. She turned back to listening.
"-- and there'll be a hundred and fifty people! Imagine that! The biggest party there's been in my time!"
"A hundred and fifty... sounds like potluck night in the church hall," muttered Rufus scornfully.
"Look out, they're coming in to set up the security cameras for tonight," said one of the maids, and they left the room in a body. Noises of equipment being unloaded came from the hall, but from the cursing that accompanied them, it was evident that the cameras were going to be a while coming. Rufus took the opportunity to look out from under the tablecloth, then turned (as well as one could turn under the table) back to face Yuffie.
"Do you realize," he whispered angrily, "that now we'll have to stay under this table for the entire day? Once the cameras are in here, we won't be able to do anything, much less move to another room. I hope you're happy."
"Hey, it's not that bad under here. I've been under worse tables before."
"You may have, but hiding under tables has never been a hobby of mine, for some reason."
"Well, we'll just have to settle in and hope they don't take it into their heads to change the tablecloth. Besides, there may be a chance of swiping some food. I'm starving already."
Rufus was stopped from delivering a scathing reply by the advent of the crew with their cameras, which they set up around the huge room and then left to watch for anything suspicious. They were followed by decorators, more maids, nervous government officials who popped in every now and then to check on things; the parade seemed endless, and after five hours Yuffie felt tired, hungry and very bored. She amused herself for a while by popping a materia orb out of her bracelet and rolling it back and forth on the floor, till Rufus, whom she had thought was asleep, suddenly picked it up, pocketed it, and seemingly went back to sleep. After that, she made faces at him for a while longer, but even this amusement wore thin eventually.
Finally, at eight o' clock, she saw food being put out on the table, and shortly the guests began to arrive. She had counted forty when she became aware that Rufus, far from being asleep, had somehow come into possession of half-a-dozen hors d' oeuvres, which were laid out in a neat line on a napkin.
"Hey! How'd you get those? Can I have one?" she whispered, to which he replied, "I've found it a useful skill to cultivate, but if you want any, you'll get them yourself," and finished by eating them all himself.
Yuffie was incensed at this, and spent the next half-hour seething while waiting patiently for opportunities to grab food off the table; she succeeded in getting enough to satisfy her hunger, which calmed her down a bit. Watching feet walk back and forth and listening to random snippets of conversation paled after a bit, so she started rolling another materia around on the floor, making sure to keep it away from her companion.
Unfortunately, this meant that she rolled it a bit too close to the edge, and soon she was cursing under her breath as she watched her materia roll away across the dance floor, somehow avoiding being kicked or stepped on, and come to rest against the far wall under a curtain.
"How much longer is this damn party going to last?" she moaned.
"In my time," said Rufus in a tone which clearly said that his time had been far superior, "they always ended at eleven."
"Do you think it's eleven now? I'm sick of being under this table."
"If my watch isn't broken -- which it may very well be -- it should be ten-thirty just about now."
"Ohhh, I don't think I can take another half-hour of this. Couldn't you do a ghost act and frighten them all away?"
"By rising up with a tortured cry from behind the soup tureen? Hardly a terrifying spectacle."
"No? I guess food just isn't the right thing to create that spooky atmosphere." She sighed and leaned back against a table leg. "I hope nobody takes my materia from under that curtain..."
Finally people began to leave; when the last dish had been cleared and the room had been tidied and the cameras taken away, Yuffie rolled out from under the table.
"At last! Ow, my back..." She stretched, and went to scope out the hall.
"Aaugh! The door's locked!"
"What?"
"They've locked it! We'll be stuck in here the rest of the night! Nooooo! And just when I thought I was going to escape!" she wailed. "I'll die in here and never see the light of day again!"
"You'll just have to go out a window and open it from the outside. There's a very convenient ledge just outside and an open window next door."
"Why me? Go yourself."
"I don't climb out windows. Besides, isn't it more in your line?"
"Well... what if I just run off and leave you in here? Then how will you get out?"
"I'll be in the exact same situation, except without you, which would be an improvement anyway. And since I have no intention of going over there, it'll be your fault if we both get caught."
"You #@$^* weasel!" yelled Yuffie, employing a bit of Cid's extensive vocabulary.
"Funny," said Rufus, wandering over to the other side of the room, "that's just what the Commissioner of Public Safety said when I told him the last free hospital in Sector Four was being sold to make way for the standard paying program of healh services... Quite shaken up about it, he was. And I believe your friend... Barret, was it? ...also used the same words on the occasion of his capture..."
Fuming, Yuffie climbed out of the window and onto the ledge outside. She started to edge along the outside, but the old stone facing was crumbling with the years, and with a crack, a crash, and a stifled scream, Yuffie was soon hanging by one hand off a particularly sharp architectural detail halfway between the windows. Below her, the sea washed up against a pier three hundred feet down.
As humiliating as it might be, Yuffie had just made up her mind to yell for help, when Rufus appeared at the window. "What are you doing out there--" He caught sight of her predicament and stopped short.
"Shut up and help me, idiot!" Yuffie gasped. "This is your fault anyway!"
"Well, if you hadn't insisted on looking in here, none of this would have happened..." He pulled down one of the curtains and knotted it into a makeshift rope, with the aid of which Yuffie was able to let go of the ledge. For a tense few seconds she hung on the rope, scrabbling for a foothold against the stone wall -- then she found one and pulled herself up and through the window. She sank down on the other side, breathing heavily.
After a brief apparent inner struggle with the mandates of coolness, Rufus brought himself to ask, "Are... you all right?" Yuffie observed that at close range he looked rather more worried than she had thought while hanging outside the window, but she was too angry to care.
"Oh sure I'm all right! I just almost died by falling seven stories into the rocks, but that's no matter! I'm just fine!" Yuffie coughed; she could feel a cold coming on. "How nice of you to ask!" she continued sarcastically. "Seeing as you were the one who nearly sent me to a cold sharp death, of course you have my best interests at heart!"
"And it had nothing to do with your idiotic curiosity that got us trapped in here, first under a table for twelve hours, and now overnight with no way of escape? Or the fact that you've done nothing but get us into trouble all day? Or your complete ineptness, which has now cut off our only way to get out?"
"Shut up," said Yuffie, and sneezed. "I think I'm getting sick."
"If you had listened to me in the first place, we'd be back in the inn by now."
"Do you think I have a fever? I feel really really cold but my face is all hot... maybe it's the flu. Could you hand me the tablecloth? I'm freezing."
"Leaving the tablecloth in a wrinkled heap on the floor would be too suspicious."
"I don't care, I just need to get warm!" She sneezed again as a cold breeze wafted through the windows. "It's not my fault that I don't have any warm clothes!"
Rufus scowled at her. "Why I'm doing this, I'll never know..." He took off his outermost jacket and tossed it to her, revealing... another one just like it underneath. "Don't wrinkle it."
"How many layers do you wear?" asked Yuffie incredulously, wrapping the jacket around herself.
"I get cold, all right?"
"No need to be touchy about it... Um, thanks."
"Just don't sneeze on it or anything. It's not like I can get another one now." He sat down against the wall a couple of feet away and closed his eyes.
"So, what are we going to do now? Just wait till next time there's a party?"
"No, of course not. There's..." He trailed off, apparently asleep.
"Hey! Don't go to sleep! What's the plan?" Yuffie said, but she received no reply. "Fine, then, just leave me in the dark about everything..." She gathered the borrowed jacket around herself a bit more tightly and tried to sleep in between fits of coughing.
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author's notes: Done! *dances in joy* I'll be starting school on the eleventh (*sobs*) so chapters may slow down after this one... but hopefully I'll still be able to do at least one a month. On the other hand, does anyone care? *crickets* I thought so. Good, now I can take my time... next chapter, say, in April 2004? What do you think? lol... Actually, I'd keep writing it even if nobody wanted it; the story kind of drags me around, making me do its will... don't complain to me, I'm just the author.
