Phoenix
Honestly, I don't know what made me want to return to Wutai. Our exit the last time had been spectacular enough that we were certainly not going to be forgotten.
But...well. I guess I didn't want to be an exile forever.
So I returned, but this time I walked in the lead. Vincent strode to my left, Cloud to my right, and Reno was waiting on Da Chao's peak to help with our exit. Red XIII was with him- I fully intended to utilize all of my transformations and this was before Red ever knew who Silence was.
So we walked, Cloud and Vincent and I, unchallenged into Wutai. There were a lot of villagers that stopped to stare as we walked by, but no one recognized us with my hair long and with the clothes we were wearing.
I had borrowed some of Vinnie's clothing again, this time a bandanna. The flash of red in my hair went with the cape I wore- not the black and green one I would be attached to in years to come, but one that flashed red and gold and all the colours of the dying sun and gave the impression of flight when the winter wind caught it. Vincent was dressed in his usual red cape and black garments, Cloud in Zack's old SOLDIER uniform once again but now with a cape that matched Vincent's.
We walked right into the Pagoda in a way that should not have been possible after the way he had last left it. Well, Godo isn't much of a warlord. Otherwise, Wutai might never have become the tourist trap it was, I might never have left on my journey and met Cloud and the others, and...
And what? I might still be mortal? Might never have had my home with Vincent and Cloud and Reno? Do I regret that?
...No. I don't.
Gorky greeted us, scowling, at the entrance to the Pagoda. "You have returned."
I smiled humorlessly, doing my best to imitate one of Vincent's favorite expressions. "Like Phoenix rising anew from the ashes. Yes, I have returned."
Gorky dropped into her battle stance with a low growl. "Then you will have to fight me for entrance."
I smiled and let my cape drop. Gorky's eyes bugged as I growled in response, the growl deepening as fur sprouted and bones shifted. It was Silence that sprung at her, not Rage or Night, because I was not yet enraged enough to reach Rage and not yet sorrowful enough to reach Night.
No...I felt only a fierce joy in my return to my homeland, even if it did not want me. I leapt at Gorky with a growl, tore at her with my nails, forced her into submission. It was only when I stood over her, growling with my teeth at her throat, that I came back enough to feel the hand at my ruff and Vincent's gentle words.
"Yuffie. That is enough."
I growled one more time, pressed just hard enough to draw blood, and withdrew from Gorky as Cloud removed his hand from my fur. I sat back on my haunches, licked the blood from my paws and returned to human. Still licking off blood.
Well, I think I had frightened her sufficiently. At any rate, she did not move as we passed to the next level of the Pagoda. Vincent paused to offer to help her up, but she recoiled from his claw. I stopped, grasped his claw to pull him after me, and glared at her as we continued up the Pagoda.
Shake was next. That was one of the briefest fights of my entire ages-long life.
Who knew Shake was afraid of wolves?
By the time I got to Chekhov, it was nothing to slip into the form of Rage. The anger generated from the Pagoda guardian's treatment of Vincent alone would have been enough to invoke her (Shake had decided to comment rather ungraciously on his unusual eyes. I was going to forever treasure the look on her face as Night leapt for her with a howl.) Chekhov, however, decided to up my rage by a bit.
"So, whore. You're back, I see. And you brought your freak pets with you. Were all the foreign women as disgusted by your tastes as we are here? Were the one-armed demon and the foreign freak the only ones who would sleep with you? Were they..."
Chekhov never finished that statement. Chekhov never finished any statement ever again.
Mind, I hadn't intended to kill her, just frighten her. Then she opened her mouth.
After that, even if I hadn't wanted to kill her, she would still be dead because Rage wanted her dead.
I didn't even transform back after that fight, just dashed up the stairs as a panther with my brothers behind me. Blood trailed from my fangs and claws as I burst snarling into Staniv's room. Like Shake, he never had a chance. Still in the thrall of Rage's killing, well, rage, he was dead five ways before he hit the floor. I vaulted from his body and continued up the stairs, transforming back even as I slammed into Godo's room, but still flooded with anger.
Godo was facing away from me. "Who is it!" he snapped as he turned. He stopped mid-turn as he caught sight of me, eyes widening.
I licked my lips, rolling the blood around in my mouth. I swallowed loudly and smirked, letting my slightly-too-sharp teeth graze my tongue. "Let me introduce myself..."
"Yuffie?" Godo whispered, transfixed, staring at the blood on my hands and feet and face. I had replaced my phoenix cape, accenting the red blood marring my expression. Vincent and Cloud stood still as statues on either side of me.
"I'm a social disease..."
Godo shrank back.
"I've come for your wealth, and leave you on your knees." I reached into my cape and threw the contents of his safe on the floor. The bag split, gold tumbling across the hardwood surface. He had not left it guarded well; sadly, it had taken no effort to take all of Wutai's royal treasury. No wonder the ShinRa had won the war. Godo sucked at this.
Godo focused on my face, saw the sharp canines, saw me idly raise my hand and lick at the blood on my knuckles. My eyes never left his. "No time for feeling sorry, I got here on my own. I left when I was sixteen...and I never really returned..."
"Yuffie," he whispered. "Yuffie, my daughter...You can...you can come back, ask to be forgiven, I can show you mercy...You can be a citizen of Wutai again, if you only change your ways..."
Cloud started forward. Vincent stopped him with an arm thrust in front of him and a look. I laughed, long and low, and was surprised myself at how dark it sounded. "I won't ask for mercy..." I swept my arm out to the side, sending my cape flying. "I got here on my own!"
"...Yuffie..."
"What's yours is mine," my voice hissed out through my teeth, in through my teeth, "what's mine is mine too." And it was, it was; I was born and raised a Princess of Wutai. I was Godo's only living family, Sephiroth and maybe even Zack had killed the rest in the war. Maybe even Cloud had killed one of my siblings or cousins, but if he had I did not want to know. "If you shake my hand better count your fingers." So I was raised as a thief and a princess and a savior of Wutai; I had failed at them all but I had saved the Planet.
"Yuffie," Godo said weakly, one last time. And I thought back to my childhood, of the few happy memories it held, and maybe I could have let it be if Godo had not continued. His voice was strong when he uttered his last words and it sickened me. "Turn on these two outlanders as proof you have changed and you may return as royalty."
Now, I had said earlier that I had found my final limit in the mountains near Nibelheim while grieving for AVALANCHE. This was when I first learned it, but not when I first used it.
Confused?
Me, too.
Rage at the treatment of my brothers. Fierce joy and pride in their defense of me. Sorrow that the home I had known as a child was gone forever. Love for Cloud and Vincent and Reno and Red. I felt as if my body was no longer large enough to hold my soul, as if the emotions storming in me were stronger than a mortal body could hold. And for the first time in my life, one of the very few times it would ever occur, I gave in entirely to that feeling and let it shape my body. I roared as I grew, and grew, and grew, until I dwarfed even the Grand Dragons in the crater. A new intelligence woke within me, a personality interested in my anger and my pride and joy and love and that agreed with me about my opinion of Godo and Wutai.
I am Tiamat, she said, and I am you and you are me, and we are one.
And we roared, and fire dredged from the depths of our being, and the Pagoda was set aflame as Cloud and Vincent ran to meet Reno and Red on the mountain and to ready to leave. Red had already managed, somehow, to evacuate most of the town. It had taken Vincent years to control Chaos; who knew what my first transformation would do?
We had brought dragons into the skies of Wutai once again.
It was, literally, ages before I could meld with Tiamat again, and I never did learn how I did it that first time. Tiamat has said she doesn't know either.
It was many, many years after that visit before we returned to Wutai...because for many, many years there was no Wutai to return to.
Only ashes, and the remains that the Phoenix had left behind.
GuardianSaiyoko: Pocky to anyone who can guess where Yuffie's little speech is from.
