It's official. Yellow is the new black, and east is looking to take north's job. Very soon now our yellow compasses will be quite confused indeed.

Oh, and there's a Chapter V for you.


Reno and Rude watched the biker scurry away on his motorcycle, heading back to the base of Shattered Hand. He would report everything Rude had heard at the meeting, with the modification that the agent wanted the biker gangs to reconvene in a week, not two days.

Assuming he did this correctly, Reno would not roast the biker's fingers over a slow fire.

"Guy's pretty particular about his hands, eh?" Reno asked Rude. "Almost as particular as you are about that umbrella…"

Rude flashed Reno a don't-go-there look and replied, "We should be heading back to Yuffie's, now."

"You go ahead and take the car," Reno told him. "I want to take a walk, partner."

He didn't miss the eyebrow that Rude raised. "You sure you know the way?"

"As sure as the fact that you bringing in the umbrella was probably the luckiest thing to happen to us since… well, never mind." Turning away from Tseng's car, Reno began to stroll off. "I'll see you in about an hour. It's not that far."

Rude shrugged, got into the driver's seat, stuck the umbrella on the floor of the car, and took off.


Swaggering through the back streets of Wutai, Reno attracted more than a few stares from the locals – homeless, drifters, gang members, the occasional cop who looked like he had far more on his hands than he'd ever been trained to deal with. He didn't make eye contact with any of them and kept himself slouched, hands in his pockets.

Nobody that looked at him felt like trying to approach him.

As he came up on a deserted alleyway, Reno checked his wristwatch. Twelve-thirty. I'll be back at Yuffie's by one –

The sound of a motorcycle and the approaching glare of a headlight jerked Reno's head up to see someone coming straight at him. He swore violently, wondering who the hell was stupid – or good – enough to drive a motorcycle through the twisting back alleys of the city.

His question was answered when the man slewed his bike violently to the right by a perfect forty-five degrees, grinding all motion to a halt a bare foot from Reno.

Makoto.

The leader of the Shinsengumi dismounted and stood before Reno, arms crossed over his chest. "You, of all people. There are lots of guys I'd like nothing more than to run over, but you're not worth leaving my tire tracks on."

Reno bristled, but kept control of himself. "And to what do I owe the… pleasure of your company?"

"I was going to The Jade Dragon… for a drink or two."

In the dim light given off by Makoto's bike's headlight, which was pointed at the alley wall, Reno could make out that all of the man's limbs were tensed. His shoulders were bunched up close to his neck, and his hands were ground into fists.

"Looks like you're lookin' for a fight, not a drink," Reno observed quietly.

Makoto's head snapped down and to the right as though the remark stung him. His tensed shoulders trembled and the sound of his fingers grinding into his palms was faintly audible.

"Do you… do you know what I went to talk to Yuffie about tonight?"

"Nope," Reno replied with a shake of his head. "Got no idea. Maybe you went to apologize to her 'bout screwing up her vacation and then promised that you'd apologize to me too."

In retrospect, it irritated Reno that he didn't see the blow coming, but Makoto was fast. Without seeming to move his arm, he smashed the base of his stiffened right palm into Reno's mouth. The Turk reeled backwards, feeling blood oozing from his now very split lip.

"That was dirty," Reno snarled.

Makoto dropped into a fighting stance. "I went there, Reno, to tell Yuffie that I love her. I certainly didn't expect the feeling to be mutual – I expected confusion, denial, anxiety, even fear. I understand precisely what it must be like for her." Reno adopted a similar stance, leaving his prod in his sleeve where it could be drawn at a moment's notice.

"But never," Makoto growled, "did I expect her to simply, flatly tell me to leave. It was as though I'd said nothing. No reaction, no giving any reasons as to why this wasn't affecting her or why she wanted me to leave. Just an order for me to go." Venom laced his tone as he hissed the next sentence. "And it all must be because of YOU!"

Reno anticipated that he'd make a charge as soon as he finished speaking, and the Shinsengumi leader did not disappoint. With a cry, Makoto leapt into a flying kick with his right leg, the sole of his booted foot almost scraping against the sheer walls of the alleyway. Ducking, Reno grabbed the extremity in the same motion, twisted, and pulled. Makoto was dragged forward off of his left foot, pulled into Reno's zone.

Before the Turk could further exploit the vulnerability, however, Makoto leapt off of the ground in another flying kick, this time using Reno's hold on his right leg as a pivot for his movements. His foot slammed into the right side of Reno's head, throwing him against the left wall of the alley and breaking his grip on Makoto's right leg. The gang leader plastered his hands against the ground in the same instant, then kicked off of Reno's shoulder to bring himself fully upright, standing on his hands.

Shit, Reno thought. He's not all motorcycles and bluster.

As Reno rebounded from the alley wall, Makoto curled himself into a ball, bringing his knees up to his chin while still standing on his hands, and then hurled his entire body forward in a great spring leap. Both his feet connected solidly with Reno's chest, pitching the Turk off of his feet to a painful landing. Reno's head smacked against pavement and he saw stars for a moment before forcing himself to sit up. Makoto was already getting back on his feet, having landed on all fours after the attack.

Pushing himself to his own feet, Reno felt something twinge in his chest and he stifled the urge to curse. Bruised ribs. Guy's got a lot of power behind his movements. Guess I can't make fun of Wutainese martial arts any more.

Reno lurched forward, making his movements appear clumsy, and Makoto took the bait, springing in for a full-on right cross to Reno's jaw, left hand drawn back, formed into a knife edge for a follow-up blow to his throat. Taking advantage of the opening, Reno ducked beneath the right cross and introduced both his fists to Makoto's stomach. The air whooshing out of the gang leader was music to Reno's ears, but as the man stumbled backwards he brought up a foot to connect squarely with the right side of Reno's face.

A moment of black was followed immediately by Reno realizing he was lying on his side, face in a small puddle of water, and Makoto was above him, shooting through the air, ready to land heavily on him with both feet.

The redheaded Turk rolled and heard feet hit water, felt the spray of moisture against his back. Without looking he lashed out backwards with his left leg, connected hard with something that might have been a thigh, heard Makoto's strangled growl. He instinctively rolled again and narrowly avoided what would have been a kick square in the small of his back. As it was, Reno came to rest on his back and saw the booted sole swinging horizontally through the air. He delivered a hasty punch to it, which banged Makoto into the alleyway wall behind him, giving Reno time to get back on his feet and catalogue the faint ringing in his right ear.

However, the ringing was not so loud that it obscured the sound of police sirens. Both men glanced down the alleyway towards the street and saw several bike gangsters flash by. The sirens got louder, which meant the police would be in pursuit. Doubtless they were after the bikers on the road, but they might notice two men brawling in an alley – and take particular notice if one was the leader of a bike gang and the other was a foreigner who'd arrived in Wutai in the company of Lady Kisaragi.

Reno's gaze shifted back to Makoto, who stood leaning slightly against the alley wall, an arm over his stomach.

"Later," Makoto snarled. "I'll see to it that we won't have interruptions then."

Reno spat out bloody sputum and then wiped his mouth with his sleeve. "Maybe it hasn't occurred to you, Makoto, but Yuffie's more than just power. I don't care what your pals Rei and Grandpa Souta say – oh, and thanks for your very specific directions, too – but you're marrying Yuffie for power. I know it."

The look on Makoto's face when he heard that was terrible. He pushed himself off of the wall and nearly launched into another kick, and Reno got ready to bring up a forearm to block, but at the last possible moment he relented.

"Don't presume to judge me, foreigner," Makoto hissed. "You know nothing about me."

And before Reno could say anything further, the bike gang leader had mounted his motorcycle, wheeled it around, and shot past him into the darkness of the alleyways.


Yuffie woke with a start when she heard her door slide open. Rolling onto her back and sitting up, hand groping instinctively for her boomerang-shuriken, she relaxed when she saw, in the light cast by the moon through her window, that it was only Reno.

She tensed back up again when she saw how beat up he was.

His bottom lip was split, and the right side of his face was beginning to purple. One of his arms was also wrapped protectively around his chest.

"Reno! What the hell happened?"

"Your good buddy Makoto showed me a good time." Reno began to swagger into Yuffie's room, then winced and clutched a little more at his chest.

Yuffie's face contorted into an expression of barely restrained anger, and her teeth began to grind together. "I'll kill him. I swear I will."

"Less righteous anger, more finding your Cure materia."

The ninja-girl blinked several times, then shook her head and vaulted to her feet to begin rummaging through her room. Reno watched with no small amount of amusement as she ransacked her drawers and materia began to fly everywhere. Blue, purple, yellow… red? Reno thought. Right, AVALANCE let her keep Ramuh, since Leviathan was going to the city. Where the hell's the green?

With a small growl, Yuffie moved to a different dresser, opened a drawer, and was confronted with a wealth of glowing green magic materia.

"Lightning… Fire… Destruct… Barrier… Morph… Heal, so close… Earth… Poison… Cure!"

Yuffie turned away from the dresser and thrust the materia into the air triumphantly, then looked down at her feet and realized that there was now materia rolling all over her room.

Reno bent down and scooped up one of the blue materia that bumped against his foot. "And Cloud always wondered where he'd stuck his Quadra Magic."

Quickly, Yuffie snatched that one and stuffed it back into a drawer. "And he'll never know. Just a second, Reno." Not bothering to bond the materia to herself, Yuffie simply focused her will through it and directed it at Reno.

A moment later Reno tested a grin and was relieved to feel that his lip was no longer split and the right side of his face no longer ached. There was the tiniest twinge of protest from his ribs, still, but the worst had been dealt with.

That done, he took the Cure materia from Yuffie, rolled it around in his fingers for a second, and then tossed it onto the floor with the rest of her stash. Enfolding her in an embrace, Reno felt her return the hug, wrapping her arms around his back and pressing her body against his, a sensation that was quite distinct even through the jacket he'd thrown on before he'd left. She drew back bare inches so she could tilt her head up at him and he kissed her fiercely, much preferring it to the taste of blood that had dominated his mouth for the past hour.

Reno finally tried to disengage from Yuffie, but she brought her teeth down on his tongue and held him there, her lips curling up into an impish smile. Feeling a smile begin to lift the corners of his own lips, Reno pulled his tongue back into his mouth with a quick tug. "Sorry. Gotta breathe sometime, sugar."

Yuffie's grin widened for a moment and she ran a hand down his face, then her expression turned somber and she pulled him into a tighter hug. "Makoto fought with you?"

"Apparently he didn't take being asked to leave too well. Figured it was my fault."

"As though I'll ever marry him now," Yuffie hissed, the edge of her tone taken off by the fact that her voice was muffled in Reno's jacket. "What an idiot."

Withdrawing from Yuffie, Reno shrugged as he strolled further into her room, being careful not to step on any materia. "He hits hard, though. Maybe that's all you need to do to be a winner in this town." Feeling his ribs twinge again – maybe one of them was broken, not just bruised – Reno shucked the jacket and tee-shirt, then began to locate the source of the pain with probing touches. He hit upon it just below his right pectoral, a quick, harsh bolt of unpleasantness that said was broken, still not entirely better yet.

Turning around, Reno asked, "Yuffie, where're your bandages? I think I need a wrap to stabilize this rib here."

"Another zap from the materia god won't do it?"

"Never trust Cure materia when you're talking about knitting bone. If you superaccelerate the process and the thing's out of alignment, you'll have to rebreak it just to set it back properly."

Yuffie frowned sympathetically and rummaged through several more drawers before retrieving a roll of bandage, which she tossed to Reno. He caught it out of midair and plopped himself down into a cross-legged position next to Yuffie's floor mat.

She crossed the room and took a moment to discreetly admire him. Reno sat straight-backed, squinting unconsciously with concentration as he wound the bandage around his lower chest. He was all whipcord muscle, not bulky but hard and compact with what might pass for steel cable if you tried to assault it.

"Yup, I know I'm built like some kinda flawless marble statue," Reno drawled, and Yuffie suppressed a snort and just smiled faintly. "Too bad your pal Makoto hits hard enough that marble just doesn't cut it." He finished the wrap, which encompassed both pectorals and extended halfway down his abdominals. "So, how do I look? Dangerous and roguish?"

"Very," Yuffie replied, not bothering to cover her sincerity with sarcasm. "Don't worry me like that again."

Reno cocked an eyebrow at her as he tossed her the roll of bandages, which she fumbled and nearly dropped before getting a firm hold on. "Worry you like what again?"

"How d'you think I felt when I saw Rude come in without you? And then when I ask where you are, he says you decided to walk here from downtown Wutai. It's lucky I got to sleep again at all."

"It was a busy night, Yuffie. I just needed a little time to think."

Placing the roll on a shelf, Yuffie walked over to Reno and sat down on the floor mat behind him, draping her arms over his bare shoulders and bringing her mouth up to his ear. "So," she murmured. "Did you and Rude have a good boy's night out?"

"Just awesome. I requisitioned us some rides, and Rude got invited by mistake into a meeting with an agent of the guy who's supplying the biker gangs with weapons. How'd he get in? Turns out the way's to walk into The Jade Dragon – where I found the guy who's making our bikes – at the right time carrying an umbrella."

Yuffie was silent for a moment as she absorbed this, and then Reno felt her tickle his ear with the air from a series of nyuk nyuk nyuks. "Guess that thing came in handy after all."

"It's going to keep coming in handy. We're sending Rude back in two nights from now to get info on something big they're planning. I figure it's something that's not going to go down well with Godo, the cops, or the city."

Automatically, Yuffie kissed the nape of his neck before saying, "Be careful. I don't want you dying trying to stop me from marrying."

Chuckling, Reno pitched his legs out from under him so he could lie down, resting his head on Yuffie's thigh. "No worries, sugar. All I need right now is some sleep."

With a smile, Yuffie shifted her position so that she was lying on her floor mat, Reno's head still resting on her thigh. "Goodnight, Reno."

"'Night, Yuffie."


Rude found them that way at eight in the morning the next day, the both of them still snoring and oblivious to the world.

He was already in his suit and sunglasses, having risen at seven-thirty sharp. In his right gloved hand was his umbrella, its point tapping against the floor in time with his foot.

Finally, Rude walked into the room and poked Reno in the gut with the umbrella, being careful to avoid the wrap his partner now had on. He'll tell me about it later. The redheaded Turk started awake, grabbing the umbrella and tugging hard. When Rude didn't let go, Reno blinked and focused on him.

"Oh, hey, partner. Wussatime?"

"Eight-oh-two," Rude replied. "Not counting today, we've got two more days to get Yuffie out of this marriage thing."

At the sound of her name, Yuffie snorted, muttered something, and then began to wake up. Reno sat up, rubbing at his eyes, and looked down at her, smiling. "Morning."

Yuffie sat up, yawning and stretching, then winced. "Ow. My leg's asleep. That's what I get for being your pillow, Reno."

Grinning, Reno spun himself around. "Here, lemme massage it for you."

"Flirt later. We have things to do," Rude butted in.

Reno froze with his fingers outstretched, halfway to Yuffie's leg. "What?"

"Both of you need to throw on something decent. We're heading to the Wutai library of public records or its equivalent."

"What for?"

"We need to do research. First, we need to figure out if there's some legal precedent we can use to cancel this marriage. We also need to know more about Karsk. Unless you think we're going to get through this by just riding bikes around and kicking ass."

"That was the general plan, yeah," Reno replied. "But yours sounds much better."


An hour later, the three of them were at the Wutainese Office of Records, a large, imposing brick building that stuck out like a sore thumb in the middle of the colorful downtown atmosphere.

Their research was not as immediately successful as they'd hoped.

Reno sat back and closed the book that he'd been reading. It was a record of all arranged marriages in Wutai within the past fifty years, as well as a list of any annulments or divorces and stated reasons. None of them helped; unless Karsk or Makoto were both proven to be abusive or unable to support Yuffie financially, there was no grounds for disqualifying them as suitors, nor would there be any grounds for annulling the marriage.

"How's it coming?" Yuffie asked. She was going through another book detailing the grounds on which a marriage could be annulled, and it was just as thick as the one Reno had been consulting.

"Nothing. I'm drier than a squid washed up on the shore that was then chopped up and roasted over a slow fire." Reno paused. "So, yeah, not coming at all."

Rude came over to Reno's table and put down something that looked like a hardback cover sewed precariously onto a literal mountain of thin white pages. When it made contact with the table, Reno felt the wood shake and there was a loud thump.

"What the hell is that?"

"The official book of citizenships currently held, given at birth or applied," Rude replied. "This should give us some basic information on Karsk."

Eyeing the book, Yuffie thumped it several times and watched dust billow out of it. "You think this thing's been updated anytime within the past couple centuries?"

Rude opened it and checked the preface, written in both Wutainese and "foreign" speech. "Yup. Updated a year ago, at the last census. Just hasn't been touched since then." He began flipping through it, then stopped when unreadable Wutainese characters stared up at him from the majority of the pages. "Yuffie, maybe you could…?"

With a short sigh, Yuffie got in front of the book – the thing was large enough that she had to stand on the chair to be able to read it. She flipped through it until she reached the "K" section – or what Reno and Rude assumed to be the "K" section – and began running her finger down the massive amount of entries.

Finally, she stopped at one and said, "Here we go. Karsk, Maximilian."

Reno snorted. "Maximilian. Hah."

"Served in the Shin-Ra army against Wutai during the war, officially surrendered to Lord Godo after he was left in charge of the garrison, was granted citizenship along with his men. Nothing particularly interesting."

Snapping his fingers in disappointment, Reno leaned back in his chair. "Any previous wives, girlfriends, maybe? Well, won't mention girlfriends, but… yeah."

Yuffie squinted and her eyes flicked back and forth down the page. "No… but – holy shit."

Reno pitched himself forward again at her exclamation and asked, "What? What is it?" Rude also leaned forward, closer to the book.

"No wonder he hasn't taken any wives after being granted citizenship," Yuffie said. "Says here that he's gay."