Disclaimer: I do not own Yuffie and Godo Kisaragi, Vincent Valentine, AVALANCHE, all characters and concepts related to AVALANCHE, or, in fact, anything that is from Final Fantasy VII (that honour goes to the wonderful bunch at Square-Enix).

Claimer: I DO, however, own the concept of this story and all non-canon concepts seen in this chapter and previous chapters. Feel free to use my ideas and original characters, but please give me credit. If you don't give me credit, Tsen Li will turn into a Gary Stu, ruin your story, and then eat your liver.

Note: the names Reikoku, Nenriki, Kenjin, and Yuraku all have specific meanings. Reikoku is written COLD SEVERE, meaning "relentless" or "cruel". Nenriki is written DESIRE EXERT, meaning "will-power (exertion of desire)". Kenjin is WISE PERSON. Yuraku is written PLEASURE COMFORT and means, essentially, "joy".

And When That Day Comes

Dig my head down deep so I can't hear the cars
Outside on the street, and the stars are laughing
They get a kick out of my misery.
I've tried everything short of Aristotle,
Dramamine, and the whiskey bottle,
I pray for the day when my ship comes in
And I can sleep the sleep of the just again

—Insomniac, Straight No Chaser

Chapter Eighteen

City of Wutai --- Exact location unknown.

Evening.

The man before him wore two swords and a topknot. Scars covered his face and arms the way bark covered a tree. Actually, he rather looked like a tree. There was something in the city's water supply that turned brown hair green, if you used soap containing certain oils. Gang Wu had never bothered to identify this mysterious chemical.

The not-a-stranger-(unfortunately) knelt on the wooden floors, the knuckles of his left hand brushing the floor and his right palm spread on his right knee.

This was not the appropriate gesture of submission. Not in the Heavenly City Da Cha O. This was a samurai gesture, not a ninja gesture.

Of course, the man wasn't a ninja. There was no mistaking that. Gang Wu thrust away idle wonderings at how the man could bear to kneel in all that armour.

Gang Wu sighed at the samurai before him.

"Our men are in position, sir."

The samurai was taller than he was. Gang Wu had gotten used to being the tallest man in the Pagoda. For some reason, the fact that this nonentity managed to physically dominate him irked him.

"How many have you placed near the wall?"

"A dozen, sir."

"And the Lord-to-Be's personal guard?"

"We've managed to retain the personal guard. We won't be using them."

"Good. It'd be a pity to throw a coup and have it fail because the potential leader dies in action."

"If at all possible, we are going to avoid allowing the Lord-to-Be into battle."

"That is unacceptable. If your Lord-to-Be wants to take over this city, then let him fight for it."

"We are not sacrificing—"

"You will put him in danger! I will not be made a complete traitor to this city."

The samurai regarded him with suspicion. "You aren't making any sense, Left Hand."

Gang Wu snorted. "You wouldn't understand, obviously."

He couldn't go back. There was nowhere to go but forward. He didn't want to go forward. He didn't see a way to go back.

He had to give Wutai a fighting chance. He couldn't just let some ignorant boy try and take the city by force. In eight hundred years, no-one, not even the Shinra, had managed what Tsen Li was determined to try.

The closest anyone had ever come had been when Sephiroth killed the Lady Cho. And Sephiroth hadn't managed to overthrow Godo with that.

This was a choice of lesser evils, really. How he could have been so stupid as to think that Tsen Li wouldn't be just as spoiled as Yuffie?

He issued the samurai his orders. Those orders would pass along to the other members of the samurai's unit. Eventually, the forces would need to move out.

He didn't want to do this.

But these actions were actions that, once taken, could not be undone.

There was nothing else for it. He would simply push forward.

City of Wutai --- Atop First Face's Hands
Night

The city knelt beneath them, a young woman arranging flowers and contemplating a koan or stirring tea in the tea ceremony. The paper lanterns lit the city like stars, like materia reflected in a lake. Beautiful white, red, yellow, green all winked merrily from hundreds of feet below.

"Father," Tsen Li sighed, "Why do we insist on doing this?"

"Because it would be a shame to destroy the city, son."

In the distance, the ocean gleamed. Shining and beautiful, the lights of the stars, of the moon, reflected in it. It was dark and vast and roiling. Even from his current height, Tsen Li thought the sea seethed with something. No, not seethed. It veritably boiled. Boiled with some dark, churning energy.

He looked upon a city that dwelt by an ocean of shadow. And it was beautiful.

It really would be a shame to destroy it. But they didn't have to destroy the city.

The Palace would suffice.

"We wouldn't have to destroy the city. Our quarters are in the Palace. It would be a small thing to—"

"—Don't talk like that. I don't care what you plan, son, but don't talk about it to me."

"Father, we're in the Palace. Why are we going through such trouble to unify Wutai like this if we can do it so much easier?"

"Do you not understand the concept of 'no unnecessary bloodshed'? Is it so hard to grasp? Stop talking like this. Be patient."

"But it is necessary! She's never going to marry me. She hates me. Why not just get rid of her and that doddering bag of senility and—"

"—I SAID NOT TO SPEAK LIKE THAT. And you will under no circumstances speak in such a manner of Lord Godo!"

"Why not? Why speak anything other than the truth?"

"If you have to ask, there is no point in explaining. You are too eastern." The old man sighed and mumbled, "Your mother is right. I should never have sent you to Midgar."

Tsen Li sighed too. As he always did when he was angry with his father, he slipped back into formal speech.

"She really does hate me. We should follow my plan, and then I will marry Xu Lin."

"I have created a miracle. Still, dark rivers that don't run deep. You have no blood in your veins, only thin water."

"Do you call me shallow, Father?"

"Shallow is, by nature, not deep. So yes, I call my son shallow. She loathes him, and yet she is willing to set that aside for her country. He? He schemes and plots bloodshed that he might get his way. An overgrown, over-powerful spoiled child. I am ashamed to call you my son."

"To what do you refer, Father? What do you mean, 'she is willing to set aside her loathing'? She is too selfish."

But the thing was: she wasn't too selfish. She was self-centred, yes, but Tsen Li had no right to fault her for that, being selfish himself.

She had to love Wutai enough to set aside her loathing for him. She'd been willing to jump off a statue if it meant that she would become worthy to lead it. She had tried to kill him when he made her think he was a threat to Wutai. She had agreed to an arranged marriage, if that meant avoiding a civil war.

"She is still willing to marry you."

"But everything is in position. We're ready to move. I can't go back."

Mao Li merely shook his head and sighed. "Nothing I say will stop you, will it?"

"No."

It wasn't just that he couldn't go back. It was also that he didn't want to go back. He'd spent so much time planning this last-ditch effort. It was an effort of last resort, but he knew Yuffie wouldn't keep her promise. She had lied to his father.

Lied. To Mao Li. Lied. To a member of the House of Shu. Such actions were unacceptable! She and her city would pay dearly.

As he stood, fully ready to issue the order, he noted once again how beautiful the Lotus was. Oh, how dearly would the Lotus pay!

Consider my revenge taken, Kisaragi Yu Fi! How you ever thought you would get away with embarrassing me twice escapes my comprehension. But don't worry, we will rectify this mistake soon enough.

He fled from First Face's hand, his geta clicking against the stone as he moved. A river of darkness seemed to swirl around his feet as he moved.

City of Wutai --- Go no Dojo (Dojo of the Five)
Night

Yuffie snapped out her right arm, performed a flick with her wrist.

Before her, twenty children imitated her.

She performed the now-necessary weight shift and kicked out even as she brought her other foot to step around.

The students imitated that, as well.

It was her only real pastime. Teaching wasn't really her strong suit, but that didn't matter. As the Second, it was her duty to train the candidates for the underground academy. How many students passed or failed would reflect on her, she knew.

So, with her newly-recognized majority, she had thrown her heart into training the candidates. She needed to get them past Level One in jujutsu, plus teach them the proper way to fall. Not to mention basic gymnastics.

"All right, everybody," she said, clapping her hands. "Let's separate into groups of two and spar."

The children separated. She formed them up in lines according to age and skill. Each pair would have a turn to spar.

Eventually.

Her youngest, least skilled students went first. Mostly, they stayed to a typical form: three feet apart, kicking completely ineffectually.

Yuffie sighed. She'd progressed past this stage over a decade earlier.

"You two! Bow and rest." She waved her third-best students to the mat. "Bow and begin."

The two students bowed and launched into a vicious flurry of activity. The younger student, Tanaka Reikoku, immediately began to move.

The two students circled each other. Reikoku struck out with her right fist, but her opponent dodged.

Then the kicks began. Neither student landed a blow on the other. They continued to circle each other, hands lashing out but meeting only empty air.

At length, Reikoku performed an intricate series of manoeuvres that ended with her on her opponent's shoulders.

"The match is over. Reikoku, dismount. Bow and quit the mat."

It felt so odd, to say those words, when she could remember so clearly Chekhov all but screaming them at her.

Reikoku and her opponent bowed, then left the mat.

Yuffie turned to the first two students. "Feel free to move around. The entire point of defend the area not attacked is to move. Move, move, move. Capture the mind. Don't let your opponent predict you. Move, move, move. Ninjutsu is an ocean-like flow, a gift from Leviathan. So flow like the ocean and. . ."

"Flow like ocean, punch like mountain," her students chorused.

"Nenriki, Kenjin, bow and begin again."

The first two students moved back to the mat. They bowed, once, slightly, and began.

Just as Nenriki struck out at Kenjin, landing the first blow of the match, Yuffie heard footsteps sounding outside the dojo. The shoji door slid open.

"Second!" A voice gasped.

Yuffie turned. Standing in the doorway was Higashi Yuraku, one of the Chunin in Division Six.

Yuraku slumped, sweat dripping from her brow. Blood seeped from various wounds. "Lady Yuffie, the Palace! Tsen Li and his guard have moved on the Palace!"

Yuffie swore. "Damn that bastard! I'm going to kill him with my bare hands!"

One of the black-clad students moved.

Yuffie swivelled to face them.

Reikoku moved through the crowd effortlessly. The way she swung her feet, her steps light as Godo's, and the way she held her head told Yuffie that this was a girl who held almost as much potential as Yuffie herself had held.

If only Reikoku hadn't come from the Tanaka family, a family long opposed to Yuffie's inheritance of the Pagoda. Reikoku would probably never be as loyal as the ninja of Division Six, and for that. . .

Reikoku's right hand held the Conformer. She extended it without a word.

Yuffie took the Conformer from the girl's small hand.

"Thank you," she said.

And with that, she turned and ran from the dojo, not bothering to pick up her shoes.

Yuffie skidded to a stop in front of the Palace.

About eight samurai— and oh Leviathan, who wore that kind of armour these days?— were dumping some sort of liquid all over the place. The wood of the palace, the entrance. . . Everything she could see.

The air smelled of that foul stuff Cid pumped into the Highwind.

Yuffie didn't think. She just moved. Her legs pumped against her will, carrying her across the distance separating her and the armour-clad men. Her body twisted, carrying her into a forward somersault.

Her foot connected with the helmet on one man's head. She thanked Leviathan she'd toughened up the soles of her feet.

The helm made a ding sound.

Had Yuffie not been immediately launched into a vicious struggle for her very life, she would have pitched herself to the ground, laughing.

Really.

Ding.

But there was no time for laughter. Even as the man she'd hit fell, another man turned around, his sword swinging out in a slice designed to take her head off.

Her spine curved downwards, her palms planting firmly in the ground. She kicked up, sending herself into a somersault, making sure her feet planted themselves in the gut of the man who'd attacked her.

After that, she threw herself into a forward roll just to the side of where his right knee had been, catching his leg at the top of his calf-armour and cradling it to her chest as she went down.

He tumbled after her, and she just barely managed to get out of his way. With all that armour, he would have crushed her if he'd fallen on top of her.

She sprang back up. Two down, six to go, Leviathan only knew how many more inside.

Her feet automatically carried her to the left. She went to her knees and rolled backwards in a back tumble.

When she came up, she reeled her arm back, shifting her grip on the Conformer. When she let it fly, it soared straight at another man's kneecap. It caught his knee in the gap between his armour and his skin. Blood spurted bright red, even in the darkness.

The Conformer kept going, passing right through the man's leg until it struck something (exactly what, Yuffie didn't see), bounced upwards, and sailed vertically, spinning downwards.

Yuffie raised her right hand. The unclassified materia she stored in her glove glowed brightly. The Conformer glowed in response. Its descent slowed, but it still headed straight for her.

She sidestepped neatly, her hand snapping out to catch it by the grip. She pulled back her arm and flung the Conformer horizontally. It caught another man in the ribs, slicing easily though the leather guards designed to protect the ties that held on his armour. It lodged in his ribcage.

Yuffie scowled and rolled to her right as a fifth man charged her, katana drawn. She kicked the back of his leg, causing him to stumble. She kicked again, and then a third time, shattering his kneecap. She lifted her right hand. The materia glowed again, and the Conformer disengaged itself from the fourth man's ribs.

It skittered across the ground towards her. A quick tap with her toe and a kick upwards had it back in her right hand and soaring out, neatly severing another man's wrist from his arm, passing straight through the wrist to strike the seventh warrior's throat guard.

She backflipped a few more times, easing herself into somersaults and sideways rolls to make sure her opponents kept their distance.

The first samurai, the one she'd hit in the head, stood up, reaching for his sword. The Conformer struck his shoulder on the return, easily slicing through the aged metal of his armour.

She caught it, performed a few forward rolls, backflips, handsprings. Anything to keep herself moving.

The shoulder strike had hit the man's left arm, she realized, sighing as he removed his wakizashi from its place in the bundle on his left side.

He could wield that damned wakizashi with one hand.

She peeled her lips into a snarl and let out the kiai that Gorky had once said would rouse Da Chao. The man paused, momentarily startled.

That single moment was all she needed. She charged forward, screaming again. The steel ring in her right hand clashed with the wakizashi.

He pushed down. Being about a foot taller than she and weighing a hundred pounds more, the man had superior strength.

Yuffie smirked, letting out another kiai right in his face, then dropped and rolled, causing him to lose balance. She came up almost instantly, even while he pitched forward.

The Conformer cracked down on the back of his neck once. Twice. Three times, slicing through his spinal column.

She slung the Conformer into a strap on her back, surveying the damage.

Eight men dead. Her? Not a scratch.

But what about inside the Palace?

And what about that smell? The smell of Airship fuel... If this stuff was airship fuel, she was beyond fucked.

Her hand slipped to the PHS. The lid flicked open; her thumb tapped a sequence of buttons.

"Yuffster?" Cid's voice crackled in her ear.

"Cid, you didn't leave any Airship fuel in Wutai, did you? Because I've got people pouring something that smells like that shit on my Pagoda."

The only sound on the other end was a soft, breathy, "Oh fuck."

Fuck, Yuffie decided as she inhaled that horrible scent, is motherfucking right.