…And the French guy says, "Deodorant? What's that?" Laughter ensues. There's also a Chapter XIV somewhere in the mix.
"You're reading too much into Yuffie's marriage," Tseng replied to Rude, shaking his head and unconsciously tapping a finger on the back of his cell. The other Turk probably couldn't hear it, but it had become a tic of Tseng's that he wanted to expunge. "Who's to say that the guy who ordered the group in didn't just want the materia to ransom?"
"It had to be to set up Karsk," Rude argued from many thousands of miles away. "All the bike gangs here would murder anyone who touched the Leviathan materia, foreigner or not."
"You asked for my opinion," the leader of the Turks said mildly as he watched Cloud slowly lose at Go to Denzel. "I never said it would concur with yours."
On the Western Continent, Rude fingered the handle of his umbrella and frowned slightly. "That much's obvious – but everything right now is about Yuffie's marriage." He waited a moment, then tapped his phone. "Tseng? You there?"
Tseng, meanwhile, was standing dumbstruck, jaw dropped, not hearing the voice in his ear. Elena had appeared wearing a flowing, strapless gown of pure, silken black – but this was black version two, glittering and making the light skitter over her body, setting off her pale skin and going nicely with her ebony heels. She smiled coyly at Tseng and closed his jaw with a touch. "You'll drool all over your suit, Tseng."
"I'll call you back some other time," Rude sighed.
Reno came to slowly, dragging himself out of what had been by all accounts a mediocre dream, on both the scales of intensity and subject matter. Rufus did not make a particularly enthralling conversationalist in dreamland, apparently, and the fact that Reno's dream-self had apparently been trying to get a raise did not make the process any more bearable.
"Morning," Yuffie murmured. "What timesit?"
Squinting at the watch he hadn't bothered to remove before the two of them had collapsed onto the floor mat, Reno replied, "'Bout seven fifty-five. I guess Rude'll wake us up in five minutes."
"Let's beat 'im to it," Yuffie grunted, sitting up and rubbing at her shoulder. "I think you were nibbling on me in your sleep, sugar."
"That would be just a tiny bit too fun to sleep through. You probably slept on it wrong – oh, hell."
In the light provided by the morning sun, it was easy enough to see the almost invisible jade fragments buried in Yuffie's shoulder. She blew out a long sigh and said, "We're gonna need tweezers."
Reno snorted. "Oh, sure, let me just pull out the pair of tweezers I keep on me at all times for no particular reason."
The door opened and Rude – and his umbrella – stepped inside. "You're up already. Good."
"Yuffie's got some microshrapnel in her shoulder. You got a pair of tweezers, partner?"
"Better." Rude removed one of the earrings from his right ear and waved it meaningfully. When one looked close enough, it was possible to discern that the earring clamped into the ear piercing through a pair of tongs very much like those of tweezers'. "I keep it around in case of splinters, that kind of thing."
"Wash it first," Yuffie yawned. "And while you're at it, see if Makoto and Rei are up. Knock first."
That got Rude's attention. "Makoto and Rei as in…"
"Room next to yours," Reno replied, inspecting Yuffie's shoulder. "Yuffie's a good matchmaker, apparently. I bet she could even hook you up – if your umbrella would permit it."
Rude gave him a stony, level look for a moment before stepping out of the room.
"What're we doing today, partying?" the redhead asked.
Wincing, Yuffie moved her shoulder around a bit and then decided to leave it be until Rude returned with the sterilized – earring… thing. "If you're gonna figure out a way to cheat at it, Reno, you'd better get someone who knows it to teach you Hancho."
"Hancho," Makoto explained, "is a portmanteau of the two words 'han' and 'cho' – odd and even, respectively. A more common variant of this game is Cho-han bakuchi, but in Wutai, Hancho is traditionally used in business and other extrapersonal affairs, while Cho-han bakuchi is a gambling game."
The five of them sat in the room Rude and Karsk had used, seated on the floor. Reno sat across from Makoto, while Yuffie sat next to Reno, shoulder bared to let Rude remove the microshrapnel. Rei leaned sleepily against Makoto's side, a look of happy contentment on her otherwise placid features.
"Okay, which is more complicated?" Reno asked. "If they're alike, learning Cho-han whatsis might make Hancho easier."
"Hancho is by far more complicated than Cho-han bakuchi, so I am going to teach you the latter first." The door opened behind Makoto and a maid came in, carrying three bamboo cups, six dice, three pads of notepaper, and three pens on a tray. She placed it on the floor and nodded to Makoto, who grinned at her and said something in Wutainese.
"Friend of yours?" Rude asked, not looking up from Yuffie's shoulder, after the girl had left.
"I got her the job she holds at this place," Makoto replied offhandedly. "We'd attended the same place for basic education, and when she was having trouble getting employed I put in a good word for her here."
"You're still not the sharpest tool in the shed, but at least you're not a jackass any more," Reno commented dryly.
"That's a Reno compliment," Yuffie interjected quickly. "Means he approves."
With a sharp grin, Makoto replied, "I gathered that, and appreciate it." He scooped up a bamboo cup and a pair of dice. "Now, Cho-han bakuchi is quite simple, Reno. The dealer, who is normally shirtless and sitting in a formal position so as to show he is not cheating, places the dice in the cup –" he did so – "and sends the cup to the floor, like so."
Quickly, Makoto flipped the cup and slammed it to the floor so the dice were hidden inside it.
"Now, Reno – han or cho?"
A small smile lighting his eyes, Reno said, "So you want me to tell you whether the dice in that cup total up to an even number or an odd one."
"Precisely. Not the number, simply han or cho."
Reno shrugged. "Han."
Removing the cup from the dice, Makoto revealed that they'd come up one and four. "Han it is. You win."
"That simple, eh?"
"Obviously there would be more people involved in an actual game for money, but that's the gist of the practice. Now I'll teach you Hancho. Rei, could you…?"
"Mmm-hmm," Rei replied, blinking the muzziness out of her eyes. She scooted slightly away from Makoto, taking with her a cup and a pair of dice. Taking the hint, Reno also scooped up a cup and its dice.
"Tanka o kiru!" Makoto immediately bellowed.
Both he and Rei slammed their cups to the floor, hiding their dice, and Reno followed suit a moment later. "That mean anything in particular?"
"It's an expression roughly equivalent to 'preparing to begin or speak,' especially aggressively. Now, in Hancho, things get rather more complicated." A tight smile began to grow on Makoto's face; this was obviously a favorite game of his. "Not only do you have to try to determine whether your own dice are han or cho, you also have to guess what ours are."
"Okay, but that can't be all."
By way of reply, Makoto placed a pad of notepaper and a pen in front of Reno, taking one for himself and one for Rei as well. "It's not. You don't vocalize your guesses; you write them here, on this paper. You can't be expected to know the characters for han or cho, so we'll go ahead and write them out in your alphabet for now – I'll teach you them so you know them for the day after tomorrow."
Yuffie, between winces as Rude picked jade bits out of her shoulder, eyed Reno's pad. He quickly wrote han, han, and cho, and then –
"Don't label them," Makoto said quickly. "The point is that you can claim any one of those pertains to any one of us, including yourself. Now tear that sheet off of the pad and place it in the center between us."
Reno did so, and Makoto and Rei did as well a moment later. "Obviously, we can tell whose paper is whose from the handwriting," Makoto explained, "which is why real Hancho games use premade, identical stamps to show han or cho. At this point, the moderator, who will probably be Lord Godo in the real game, takes the papers, crumples them, and lets them fall back down to the center. They will obviously bounce and roll, so the three of us all take the paper closest to us." Makoto scooped up the papers, crumpled them into balls, exchanged them in his hands a couple times, then stood up, extended his hands over the center of the floor, and let the papers drop.
Two of them landed near Reno, though one was closer to him than the other, and one landed at Makoto's feet. He added, "In this case, Reno, you take the paper closest to you and Rei will take the other. In an actual Hancho game there are boundaries put down on the floor for this."
Reno took the closer wad of paper and unballed it. It was clearly Rei's handwriting – his own was scraggly and hard to read, while hers was flowing and beautiful in any alphabet; a true mark of a geisha. She had guessed two cho, one han.
"You can declare one guess on the paper void, meaning it won't count against you if it's wrong or for you if it's right," Makoto said. "If you want to withhold a void, it's your right, but you can't save it for the next round." Immediately, he crossed out one han on his paper – he'd gotten his own back, two han and one cho. Reno eyed Rei's paper and crossed out a cho, while Rei left her hands sitting primly in her lap, obviously declining to void any of Reno's guesses.
"Now," the gang leader said, "we reveal our dice." The three of them picked their cups up off of the floor and moved them to the side, revealing that Reno had han, Makoto had cho, and Rei had cho.
"One han, two cho. Here is where the game gets confusing, so pay attention. It behooves you to keep track of who's got guesses that can't be applied to any of the dice. I've voided one han, and I have one han and one cho open to me. You are required to apply your first two non-void choices to the other players – if all three, in this case, of your choices are nonvoided, then it's basically an open field. If there were four of us, you would have to apply your first three non-void choices to the other three, and so on. Obviously, Hancho isn't played often with two players, because it gets very boring. Since Rei has cho and you have han, Reno, I can say that my han applies to you and my cho applies to her. For each of you I gain one point, and also a bonus point on both of you – but I'll explain that shortly."
"Got it," Reno affirmed.
"You also have one cho and one han, since Rei guessed two cho, one han. However, since you can only apply the cho to one of us, the non-voided han counts one point against you – so if you applied the cho to me, you would gain a point, but the han subtracts a point from you, equaling null gain. However, if you apply the cho to Rei, you gain a bonus point – because as you guessed two han, one cho, she can only apply the han and cho to myself and you. She gains two points for that, but loses one point for the unvoided han that she can't apply to herself. As she has an inapplicable guess, you gain a point for applying one of your guesses to her, just as I gain a point for applying one of my guesses to you and your inapplicable han."
"I like this game," Reno laughed. "So right now, the score is four for you, one for me, and two for Rei?"
"Yes. I gain one point from each of you, and a bonus from each of you for your inapplicable guesses. You gained one point for applying your cho to Rei, a bonus for her inapplicable han, and a penalty point for your inapplicable han. Rei gained one point from each of us, plus a bonus for your inapplicable han, and a penalty point for her inapplicable han. It really is a game of pure chance."
"Fixing the dice isn't going to work, here," Reno observed, sobering slightly. "It's got way too many variables."
"Hancho is designed to prevent cheating," Rei explained. "In older days, Cho-han bakuchi was exploited by gambling-houses all over Wutai to drain gamblers of their money. As cheating could not be tolerated in business arrangements where a chance arbitration was required, Hancho was developed."
"It's all in the paper."
All of them looked at Rude in surprise as he deposited the last of the microshrapnel into a small bowl and dropped his earring into a pan of water that he'd boil afterwards. "The paper," he repeated. "Who guesses what, which one goes to who. You could be right on with your guesses on who has what and someone could end up with your paper. In the end, if you're going to cheat, you need the moderator on your side, as well as at least one other player."
"And even then, all that you're able to do is coordinate your guesses to minimally step on one another's toes," Yuffie finished, testing her shoulder. "In short…"
"We have to play it fair and square," Reno growled, the words leaving a bad taste in his mouth.
As the five of them were getting ready to depart, Reno's cell rang.
"Reno here."
He felt an unpleasant feeling surface in his stomach when "It's Rufus" came from the other end. "What's the situation?"
"You couldn't have called at a worse time, really, boss. Our plan to take Karsk out of the running got blown to shit because a third party was also after the materia and Karsk ended up catching us with it. We also can't cheat when we play dice to figure out who exactly Yuffie's marrying, because the game we're going to use is basically cheatproof."
There was a silence that carried a significantly stunned connotation to it, and then, "Even you can't figure out a way to fix this game?"
"I'm hurt," Reno drawled. "Nope. To cheat proper you'd need to be coordinating with all the players and the moderator and have all the dice fixed. And if you were on such good terms with everyone, what would be the point?"
"That's the world of business for you," the Shin-Ra president sighed from his end. "I'm telling you again, Reno, I'm not marrying your girlfriend and I'm not putting any of my money to her city unless Godo makes a very, very persuasive offer – much more persuasive than a petulant eighteen-year-old that'll have a headache every night and probably won't do better than a halfassed job at housework."
Reno snorted. "You're a man's man, boss."
"I'm just a realist. Yuffie's not a businesswoman, so what else would she be good for? I have you and your colleagues for any skulls I require cracked, so that rules her out. Find me a way out of this, Reno, or it's your ass." A pause. "Oh, and to motivate you, my satellites recently uncovered some… interesting modifications you've made to Tseng's car."
The blood drained from Reno's face. "Have a heart, Rufus."
"This won't amount to anything compared to what I'll have you facing if you get me married to Yuffie, Reno. Consider it a taste of the medicine I'll be feeding you if you screw this up." There was a clicking sound and the line went dead.
It was past midnight in Edge, and Cloud, Tifa, Tseng, and Elena were having what was possibly the best double date in their personal histories. Cloud hadn't spilled wine on himself or upended any tables, Tifa hadn't nearly taken apart random women for looking at Cloud, Tseng had managed not to lose all composure in front of Elena, and Elena had managed to make dancing in heels look natural – something that was easy enough in a suit, but nowhere near as easy in a restrictive dress.
They were in a high-end nightclub, having eaten dinner, and Cloud and Tifa had just sat down after dancing. Tseng and Elena were still going at it, whirling about on the dance floor, with fluid grace that clearly spoke of professional lives that were anything but cushy.
"They really are perfect for one another," Tifa commented idly, sipping at a glass of something that went down like fiery syrup. "I'm glad we could make this happen. They needed a little push."
Cloud raised an eyebrow. "They were living together already, right?"
"That's living together, not having a romantic relationship," Tifa replied. "I hear they were still sleeping in separate beds, too."
"Hear from who?"
She grinned impishly, swirling the liquid in her glass, and then coyly said "It's a see-cret" before downing the rest of the contents.
"In other words, you've been talking to Elena about Tseng behind his back."
Tifa choked and swallowed hard, coughing for several seconds before managing to get out, "Have not! …Well, just a little. You're not supposed to be this smart, Cloud."
He smiled at her. "I've had a good teacher when it comes to this sort of thing."
"Touché."
On the dance floor, the lighting shifted to a pale blue and the music slowed. Almost magically, the couples, who had been pinwheeling around one another at arm's length, merged into slow embraces and began to sway beneath the faux moonlight.
Tseng forced himself to breathe slowly and hoped that the rapid beating of his heart didn't go through his suit – Elena was pressed up tightly against him in his arms, head resting against his as they danced. She felt him stiffen slightly and pulled back just slightly to look at him, smiling.
Keep eye contact. Oh, she's closing her eyes – leaning her head forward – do it too, Tseng, you're overanalyzing, this is why you have trouble with this sort of thing –
And his cell beeped.
Elena started and then giggled nervously. "You'd better get that."
With a sigh and a wan smile for Elena's benefit, Tseng quickly reached into his pocket and flipped open his cell. Immediately he was presented with the fact that he had a new text message.
It was from Rufus. Reno, Yuffie, and Rude are having a good time in Wutai. See the attached picture and you'll be able to tell just how much fun they're having.
Tseng hit a button and stared.
Cloud and Tifa were leaning across the table they were seated at, matching coy expressions on their faces, when they heard someone exclaim, very loudly and heatedly, "MY CAR!"
Reno stared nervously at the building looming before them – them being himself, Yuffie, Rude, Makoto, and Rei. The building didn't really loom per se, but its sinister place in the world caused its one story of height to seem ten, and its unimposing walls to grow spiky protrusions that spoke of pain and death.
A clothing store.
"You're going to make an adorable biker," Rei said to Rude. "After all, you can't show up at the meeting tonight in a suit again."
"Makoto and I'll… uh… keep watch out here," Reno said quickly. "And not go in."
Yuffie clucked and sighed, "Boys. Come on, Rude. Rei and I'll find something to do with you."
She grabbed his right arm, Rei grabbed his left, and the both of them led Rude towards the gaping maw of hell itself.
"Godspeed, partner," Reno called after Rude. "I'm sure you'll make it out alive."
Rude flipped him the bird over his shoulder as he disappeared into the store.
