Chapter 5

Hotel Detective

"Jinkies, Red! You say the Resurrection materia was stolen by a ghost?" Truth to tell, Yuffie was not as surprised as she sounded.

"Correct," said Red XIII. "It disappeared from its display case in the hotel gift shop two nights ago."

Yuffie wasn't about to waste a trip all the way to a godforsaken hole in the wall like Cosmo Canyon, so she figured her options at the moment were limited. Limited to finding the thief, robbing it blind, then pretending to have lost the treasure, that is. As that was generally her modus operandi anyway, she couldn't quite put a finger on why she was annoyed.

Perhaps it was the dreary scenery. Some itinerant interior design expert (Yuffie actually knew one) desperately needed to introduce the locals to a couple of colors other than red and black. A few more lights here and there would make finding one's footing on the steps outside the main hill a tad bit easier. A few signs clearly marking entrances and exits would save tourists some time, and they might help confused visitors actually find the materia shop. The town could also use a few strategically placed fire extinguishers for use on the lelss self-aware residents when they just plain forget to stop babbling on and on about subjects no one but their graduate thesis advisors could possibly find at all stimulating.

Another possible source of Yuffie's bad mood was the trip over. Taking that horrid boat from Costa del Sol to Junon was bad enough. Being greeted by the incessant strains of that wretched marching music when she landed made things worse. The darned fanfare never shut off. It was like that stupid "Who Wants To Be A Gil-lionaire?" show back during Shinra Network's game show fad period. It tore at her eardrums from the moment she stepped on dry land to the moment she skipped town, and she made certain the intervening interval was as absolutely brief as possible. She had, of course, spent about the first fifteen minutes outside town throwing up in the bushes, probably made nauseous by a combination of sea travel and a migraine.

Speaking of migraines, Yuffie hated Red XIII. The dumb dog had every right to be proud of his ability to speak, sure, but did it have to keep practicing all the time? It was as if he'd forget how if he ever went more than five minutes without saying anything. The only way Yuffie could ever shut him up was with Ruby Snacks, the doggie treats named after his species' red fur. Unbeknownst to Yuffie, courts were still trying to hammer out whether Ruby Snacks constituted a trademark violation, but Ruby Weapon v. Nabisco's resolution pending, Yuffie still had access to enough of the precious dog food to buy herself some peace and quiet now and then.

Peace and quiet were at a premium on the road from Junon to Cosmo Canyon. The old buggy Yuffie had used while saving the world from Sephiroth had since gone to the Great Garage in the Sky, so she and Cloud rode back with Red XIII in anoisy, rusty, dilapidated hunk of junk called the "Mystery Van." Yuffie guessed the eponymous mystery was whether or not the van could reach its destination without breaking down.

"Okay, Red," said Yuffie. "We're stuck helping you retrieve the materia." She thought twice. "I mean, we'd be happy to help. For the good of humanity. Rah, rah!" Yuffie thrust her right arm in the air while tossing Red XIII another Ruby Snack with her left.

"Rmmf," said Red XIII with his mouth full. "R'I'm rery grad ro rear rit."

"So," said Cloud, "we have to tarck down the thief before we can even ask if we can borrow the materia."

"Dummy!" Yuffie smacked her lover upside the head before whispering something in his ear.

"Oh! Clever girl!"

"Rhat?" can Red XIII's reaction through yet another Ruby Snack stuffed in his mouth.

"We're, uh, going to, uh, find some way to, uh, trick the thief by, uh, Yuffie, would you mind explaining your plan?"

Yuffie flashed Cloud and evil eye and improvised: "We've got a plan for catching the ghost. See, we'll wait until it's nighttime and he's asleep, then we'll steal the treasure out from under his nose."

"Rhosts sreep rat right?"

"I believe so," said Cloud. "If they didn't', they'd be tired all the time."

"Rokay."

Yuffie wanted the last world. "It's settled. We'll go ask Bugenhagen what he knows about the situation, and then we'll spend tonight searching for the thief. Better rest up. And Cloud, let's buy plenty of Ruby Snacks when we get to town.

XXX

Cosmo Canyon was drearier than either Cloud or Yuffie remembered it, but that was probably because an impolite thunderstorm had put out the friendly bonfire that normally brightened the stone step in the middle of what passed for a main drag in this town. The goon out front whose job it was to turn away visitors was enjoyin ghte bonus cantankerousness afforded him by the weather.

"You guys again?" he said. "Meh, whatever. Get indoors and don't bother me."

"You do realize I used to be a bodyguard, right?" Cloud didn't like taking orders or being quiet individually. Taken together, those two items were as good as an executive order to talk.

"What of it?"
"You're standing out here in the rain. You're tired. You're hungry. You're being rude to the customers. Your job guarding this place isn't much different from my old job guarding Aeris," (here Yuffie coughed to remind Cloud how well that had turned out) "but you're completely unhappy with it. You know why that is?"

"Why?"

"You probably have a bad union. I'll bet you don't even—"

Ding! An alarm cut Cloud off.

"I'd love to hear more of your yammering," said the security officer, "but my shift is over now. Tah tah, losers!"

Cloud was not prepared for this, but he remained lucid enough to guess that Red XIII would have something to say, so he stuffed two Ruby Snacks into Red's doggie mouth. He then started for the item shop.

XXX

"Nanaki," said Bugenhagen, as the party arrived at the observatory atop the city, "I'm so glad to see you again, but you must pay more attention to your hygiene. You're starting to look shaggy."

"Rorry," said Red XIII.

"But no matter. Please, make yourselves at home, all of you. Have you met my new lady friend, Velma?"

"Charmed," said Cloud, kissing her hand.

"Velma, dear, this lecherous young fellow is Cloud. That hairy quadrupedal mess over there is my grandson, Nanaki, and this is, uh…"

"I'm the great ninja Yuffie."

"Randrather, r'I ridn't rnow rou rad ra rirlfriend."

"Isn't she just my type, though? Smart, sweet, gigantic glasses."

"Rou rare rute rogether."

"By the way, why is it that you can't seem to speak properly today? Do you have a cold?"

Yuffie chimed in. "We've been feeding him Ruby Snacks, and he can't stop eating them."

"Oh, is that what that large bag tied to his mouth is? What did you call them?"

Red XIII answered. "Ruby Racks."

"Say what?"

"Ruby Racks."

"Scooby stacks?"

"Ruby Racks."

"Newbie snacks?"

"Ruby Racks."

"Scuba snacks?"
"Ruby."

"Loopy?"

"Ruby."

"Huh?"
"Ruby!"

"I'm not quite getting it."

"Ruby! Ruby! Ruby-ruby-ruuuuuu…!"

"Ruby," said Yuffie, "like the precious stone."

"Ah," said Bugenhagen. "Of course the thief would think of that illustration."

"Call me a treasure hunter or I'll rip your lungs out!"

"Okay, okay. Don't get snippy."

"Careful," said Cloud. "When she gets worked up, she can be pretty scrappy."

"If by scrappy you mean highly annoying, I see your point."

Yuffie closed her eyes and counted to ten.

XXX

"Cloud," said Yuffie, "did you notice that we didn't' actually get around to asking Bugenhagen about the ghost?"
"Zoinks! We didn't', did we?" For all he suspects, we're just here on vacation."

"Grossness. Vacationing here?"

"Not exactly where I'd want to spend a honeymoon."

"Speaknig of which, Cloud, dearie, when are you going to dump that tramp you're shackled to?"

"Tifa? Uh, I was thinking of possibly doing that when we finish our journey for the materia."

Yuffie must not have been expecting this reply; she was stuck somewhere in the no-man's land between the feeling you get when you win the lottery and the feeling you get when you find out your wife is cheating on you, and both her joy and her shock showed very clearly on her face.

Cloud just congratulated himself on his bluff.

"And speaking of our journey," he began again, "where should we begin our search? Where would we find a ghost?"

"I don't know," said Yuffie. "Are there any haunted caves around here?"

"R'I rnow!"

"Shut up, doggie."

"Rave rof ra Ri! Re rould ro rhere."

"I said shut up."

"Wait," said Cloud. "What about the Cave of the Gi? That place was pretty haunted last time we went there."

"It was, wasn't it?"

Red XIII would have slapped a paw to his forehead had it not been for the fact that he needed two free paws to eat Ruby Snacks as efficiently as possible.

"What are we waiting for?" said Yuffie.

"Me." Velma answered the rhetorical question as she entered the room very uninvited and very unexpected. "Jilickers! You guys look like you're going to see a ghost!"

"We are," said Yuffie, "but this is how we always look. You must have been…"

"Right. I was listening at the door."

"Clever girl." Yuffie was mildly impressed. "We could use someone like you. Care to come along?"

"Certainly. I take it we're starting with the Cave of the Gi?"
"Which you overheard."

"Yes. That, and it's blatantly obvious that we should look begin our search for a ghost in the nearby haunted cave."

"That too, I guess."

"Well. Shall we go?"

"Indeed."

XXX

The Cave of the Gi was dreary, desolate, dim, doleful, dispiriting, dismal, drab, dank, damp, dingy, depressing, and a bunch of other 'd' words that Roget knew but Yuffie didn't. That a haunted cave could be so dispiriting was both confusing and intriguing. That ruby-coated dogs would easily diappear against the red rocky background was both inevitable and annoying.

"Red XIII, lik, where are you?" Yuffie pretended to care.

"Rover rere."

"Jinkies!" Velma disliked what she saw. "The path splits, like, in two."

Cloud instantly had an idea. "We'll split up. Velma and I will take the left fork, and Red and Yuffie will take the right. We'll meet back here in fifteen minutes to report our findings."

Yuffie felt like she'd been stung by a giant wasp, or Johnny Hooker, or something. Dumb dog.

"All right, everyone," said Cloud. "Let's mosey."

XXX

"Gawd, I hate this place." Yuffie hated most places that weren't well-lit with air conditioning, a hot tub, overstuffed chairs, floor pillows, a masseuse, a butler, a caterer, and servant boys with palm branch fans, but the Cave of the Gi rubbed her the especially wrong way, like a curious kid rubbing a cute, happy, fluffy porcupine. "See anything, Red?"

"Rot ret."
"Ugh, what's that?" Yuffie tripped over some loose bleached rocks.

"Bones! Grossness!"

Yuffie kicked at the offensive skeletal remains as hard as she could, missed, stubbed her toe on a rock, and cursed, using the new phrase she'd heard from Elena. "Slippin' rippin', dang fang, rotten zarg barg-a-ding-dong!" she added for good measure.

"How the heck can we see in here, anyway? I didn't bring a lantern."

"R'I ron't rnow."

"And how does talking with your mouth full make every word begin with an 'r'? That's not what happens when I talk with my mouth full! I mean, it wouldn't, if I ever did, which I wouldn't, because it's so impolite, and I'm a perfect lady. And, uh, this whole adventure doesn't make a lick of sense!"

Red XII was off sniffing some new rock, so he apparently didn't hear Yuffie.

"Stop ignoring me, you mutt!"

Too late.

"Hey, get back here!"

She then saw what had so captivated Red XIII's doggie attention: a ghost.

"R'uh roh."

"Run!" said Yuffie.

"A ronster!" said Red XIII.

"Roooooooaaaaar!" said the monster.

Yuff and Red XIII turned tail and dashed for the meeting area, shouting Cloud's name.

"What is it?" Cloud and Velma rushed out of their tunnel. Cloud's forehead, cheeks, neck, and lips were covered in lipstick, and his shirt was on backwards. Velma was fumbling with her glasses.

"The ghost! We…" Yuffie stopped. "What were you guys doing?"

"We were, uh, searching that dark corner over there. For the ghost."

"We found him!"

"Where is he?"
"Right rehind rus!" Red XIII turned pale, which on him was more like pink than white. How fur (which, as far as Yuffie knew, contained no blood vessels) could go pale was beyond her.

"Run!" Yuffie was a more traditional pale.

"Why run?" Cloud was not. "We've fought ghosts before. We've won against worse. Sephiroth was practically a god, and we wasted him. Why run from this twerp?"

"Because, uh, he's creepy?"

"So was Bob Newhart, but we didn't run from him, did we?"

"No, we didn't. I guess that was actually a pretty easy fight."

"And what did we learn then?"

"When fighting the undead, use cure spells and phoenix down."

"Cloud looked distraught. "That only works in video games. This is real life. What we learned was that if you hit something hard enough, its head will come off."

"Cloud, honey," said Yuffie, "if we cut off its head, then we'll have a headless ghost chasnig us, and headless ghosts are twice as scary."

"Then we'll put a carved pumpkin where its head used to be so it'll at least look lik it has a head. Then everyone who sees it will make fun of it. 'Look at the pumpkin head!' 'That man has a pumpkin head!' 'Mommy, can I get a pumpkin head, too?'"

Cloud looked around. "By the way, didn't' you say it was right behind you?"

"Come to think of it, we've been talking a while."

"R'oh no!"
The ghost had taken the philosophical discussion time as an opportunity to give itself a tactical advantage by climbing a rock. It had then wasted that advantage by falling off the very rock onto which it had taken such great pains to climb.

Crash.

The separate, arguing bodies became a single mass of tangled limbs, smearing lipstick, smelly dog, and complaining ninja. It remained in that phase for about a minute. Cloud then took the initiative to pull everyone apart. He glanced at the fifth body.

"This is no ghost!" he said. "This is just some guy wearing a bed sheet over his head."

"And look what he stole for Halloween." Yuffie lifted the materia orb from his pocket.

"I got a rock," said the ghost. "I mean, I'm a ghost! Rooooaaaar!"

"Let's see who our culprit really is," said Cloud. He tugged the sheet over the thief's head and cast it aside.

"Old man Bugenhagen?" Yuffie acted stunned. "You're the ghost? You stole the materia?"

"And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids and your stupid dog!"

Yuffie was never so happy to be done with a fetch quest.