Hello friends. Today I head back to our country's lovely public education system – its motto? "Ruining one, burgeoning mind at a time." I'll be fine though, no worries.
That cannot be said, however, of BTILW. The classes I'm taking this year don't give me much spare time. Is this the end of BTILW? Pfft, that's what the communists would want. (We're real big on hating them here. Just a thing.) What this does mean is that I'm renovating the update schedule to twice a week: Monday and Friday. That way I have the week to write for Friday and the weekend to write for Monday. If I kept the current schedule I think there would be a loss of quality, which I don't want. Now, without further ado, Chapter XVI.
"Well, that day went by fast," Reno said, blowing out a semi-labored breath.
He, Yuffie, Rude, Makoto, Rei, and Grandpa Souta were sitting at a table in a restaurant near the square that had been attacked by the Orochimaru, waiting for their orders to be filled. The sun was beginning to sink beneath the horizon, sending yellow-orange rays streaming through the windows of the place.
The cleanup of the square after the Orochimaru attack had taken all afternoon, and to Reno's surprise the Shinsengumi helped the police get wounded to hospitals and clear away the rubble – they hadn't just been in it for the fight. "I don't run the Shinsengumi to cater to warmongers and murderers," Makoto had explained darkly to Reno as they'd shoveled rubble into a wheelbarrow. "We're here to help Wutai. We just can't do it officially yet."
Reno snapped back to the present as Yuffie said, "Not over yet. Our adorable little biker has to go to his meeting, remember?"
Rude, looking very dangerous and biker-ish, was dressed in a denim vest, spiked wrist cuffs, frayed jeans, and black boots. The fact that he still had the umbrella made the outfit look even more bizarre on him. People in the restaurant took quick looks when they thought they wouldn't be seen, probably wondering what a redheaded foreigner, the Princess of Wutai, the leader of the Shinsengumi, a beautiful geisha, and an old mechanic were doing seated with a man who was obviously a dangerous threat to society.
"Remember, don't blow this," Reno instructed Rude. "I got all confidence in you, partner, but Tseng isn't here to give us a pep talk, so I'm taking over for him. If you fail, Yuffie gets married to someone who doesn't want to be with her – and if she gets married to Rufus, he's going to have our asses so literally they'll be hanging above his fireplace."
"There's still something we need to discuss," Rude replied, changing the subject like Reno changed lanes – abruptly and without a signal. "The you-know-what."
"The valuable you-know-what that we recently acquired?" Reno asked.
"What are you talking about?" Makoto asked. "You didn't steal anything, did you?"
"Naw. We just borrowed the Leviathan materia."
Grandpa Souta, Makoto, and Rei all got halfway through standing up in their seats before they realized they were in a public setting and forced themselves to sit back down. "You what?" the old mechanic asked, looking dumbstruck.
"Don't havta go apeshit on us," Reno said defensively. "Seiryū gave us his permission, after all."
That provoked an even more dumbstruck reaction from the three seated across the table from him. "Seiryū actually appeared to you?" Rei gasped.
"Yup. Tried to kill us at first, but then I managed to get him to understand that we were doing this for a good reason."
"'We' being…?"
"Yuffie 'n me. Rude was apparently out drinking with Karsk that same night."
"We were going to use the materia to bump Karsk out of the race for me," Yuffie explained. "But he and Rude booked a room at the Kanbe-ya, the same inn that me, Reno, Makoto, and Rei were staying at for the night, and when Reno and I were getting back inside we accidentally walked into the wrong room."
"And Karsk saw you." Grandpa Souta shook his head. "I thought you were a professional, Mr. Reno… but then again, the police are baffled by this case. Apparently you weren't the only ones who tried to steal it."
"The police here aren't really that hard to baffle," Reno snorted. "But yeah, there was a squad of guys trying to grab the materia when Yuffie and I went in. We took them out and then when we tried the same thing Seiryū got pissed until we explained ourselves. These guys were well-trained professionals, too – not from around here, either. Mercenaries, I'd say."
"Do you know why they wanted the materia?"
"Nope. What I do know is that they were going to pretty extreme lengths to get it. I figure whoever hired them wanted it for ransom or something – to recoup his investment in the team."
"Makes sense," Makoto agreed. "What I don't understand is why they picked the materia – it would make more sense to take, say, Yuffie for ransom instead."
"'Cause I'm a lot harder to hold onto than materia," Yuffie gloated.
"If I were trying to subvert the government," Reno replied, ignoring Yuffie, "there are three things I'd do: first, establish a good financial base; second, get dissident forces – the biker gangs – armed and making havoc; third, screw heavily with anything the government's trying to do to fix the situation. Yuffie's right about materia being easier to hold onto than her, but what I'd use it for would be to force Godo to cancel the whole marriage thing. The marriage itself wouldn't be that important, but making him compromise his position and negotiate with terrorists would be – he'd probably be replaced at best, or at worst, lynched."
Even Yuffie, who out of everyone seated at the table had the least overt affection for her father, was slightly cowed by that.
The tension was broken timely by the arrival of their food. It was all fairly generic noodles and potstickers; this place wasn't as expensive or as good as the Scarlet Monastery. Still, Reno was hungry, and whatever filled him up worked. He'd had worse.
"You guys aren't worried about being seen with Rude before he shows at the meeting?" Makoto asked around his food after some minutes.
"You think bikers would come to a middle-class place like this?" Reno asked in return. "You noticed all the looks Rude's getting? Most of these people have only seen bikers roaring down the streets and shooting other bikers – the idea that they could actually be human beings with an appetite's just too goddamn much for them to wrap their heads around."
Suddenly, all noise in the restaurant began to die. Grandpa Souta motioned at the television in the corner of the room, and they all turned to look at it.
It was displaying a newscaster, apparently reporting on breaking news. Reno leaned forward slightly and was able to hear her in the silence.
"…emergency session of the Wutainese Council on new legislation – Proposition 209, which would impose numerous restrictions on foreigners, or those who are not citizens of Wutai. Among these proposed restrictions are an eleven o'clock curfew, requirement of worn, visible identification, and inability to apply for citizenship. Furthermore, all foreigners-turned-citizens will be required to resubmit their citizenship papers for confirmation, and will be required to carry proof of their citizenship with them at all times. In other news…"
Reno opened his mouth to speak, but Makoto beat him to it. "What the hell?" he snarled. "What do the sheep on the Council think this will accomplish?"
There was murmuring rippling through the restaurant, and at length one man stood up – a middle-aged man, who had been seated at a table with a wife and two children – and said, "I think it sounds like a good idea."
Immediately, Reno stood up and slammed his fists down on the table. "Just whyzat, mister?" he growled.
The man swallowed and then replied, "Everyone remembers what happened to us in the war. There's… there's no guarantee it won't happen again." He nearly choked on the last sentence, but managed to get it out.
"So you think discriminatin' against us is going to make us any friendlier?" Reno roared. "YOU THINK BY EMPHASIZING OUR DIFFERENCES WE'LL EVER OVERCOME THEM?"
Abjectly terrified, the man took an involuntary step backwards, but Yuffie grabbed Reno by the shoulder before he could continue. "That's enough, Reno."
He whirled to look at her, anger burning in his turquoise eyes, and Yuffie was staring again into the face of a man who looked at her and thought weak knees, go for those if she attacks.
And then he flickered and was back to normal. "Fine." Reno whirled back to Makoto. "Where's this Council of yours meet? I'm gonna go lodge a formal protest."
"We'll all go," Grandpa Souta said firmly. "This is unacceptable."
"You have to be a citizen of Wutai to lodge a formal protest, foreigner!" someone shouted angrily. "What say d'you have in how we run our city, anyway? You're just gonna leave after your vacation's up!"
All around them, people were standing and pointing angry fingers, eyes blazing.
"You don't care!"
"You're one of the ones that crushed us into the dirt!"
"Wutai's done being the foreign tourists' bitch!"
"ENOUGH!"
A new voice rose above the mob – a voice used to screaming command after command and seeing them instantly obeyed, a voice that carried power and authority even over an angry mob. The mob, of course, shut up.
"If he has no say in this matter, then I'll speak for him," Karsk barked into the silence.
"We keep running into each other, don't we?" Reno laughed.
"No accident this time," the Sub-General said. "I live near the Council hall, and word traveled even faster than the news could get their hands on the story – some of my men heard about the proposition and told me. I decided to find you in case anyone was emboldened by this news and decided that they needed some foreigners to pick on, and it was easy enough to track you here from where you were at the square."
The crowd continued to remain silent, but it was no longer a hush – it was an angry silence, and everyone could feel it.
"Lead the way," Reno growled softly. "Partner, you got that meeting in an hour – make sure you're not late. We'll take care of this."
Makoto handed Rude his keys. "Take my bike. Don't destroy it."
"Will do."
They moved.
"THE COUNCIL IS OUT OF ORDER!" Godo shouted, slamming his gavel. He stood on a raised dais at the center of the Council Hall, a large, circular building with a domed ceiling illustrated with a vista of Seiryū disappearing over the horizon. On the dais was a podium, and on it rested the most overtly threatening single piece of legislation he'd ever seen.
Slowly, the shouting quieted down, and the various members of the Council – all two hundred and fifty-five of them, each representing one section of Wutai – returned their gazes to Godo instead of shouting at one another.
Most of the house was in favor of Proposition 209, the rest violently against it, and things were not about to get any better if Godo didn't find some way to diffuse the situation and get the bill denied. As leader of Wutai, he could nullify up to a full one-third of all votes submitted to him on an issue – in this case, eighty-five votes – to swing things in whatever direction he thought best, but with the dispersal of opinions in the Council at this point, even if Godo used his power to alter the vote it wouldn't make any difference. Proposition 209 would pass by a landslide and Wutai's path down to a second war would begin.
I'm not letting this city be subjugated again.
"Council members, we will vote on Proposition 209, but I first urge those of you in favor of it to reconsider," Godo shouted into the silence. "This is precisely the sort of discrimination practiced by the old Shin-Ra and its allies against our people that precipitated the first war. We are doing nothing but repeating past mistakes – and the mistakes of our enemies, at that."
"They made the mistake and won the war!" one of the delegates disagreed. "I see no reason why we can't do the same!"
"That's nonsense!" Godo thundered. "You would have us declare war on the rest of the world?"
"What have they done for us?"
Before Godo could snap back a reply, the doors to the Council Hall slammed open, silencing the gathering and pulling all eyes inexorably towards the six who entered.
"I'm here to lodge a formal protest against Proposition 209," Karsk announced. "These people will back me."
"And who would this riffraff be, Sub-General?" another delegate sneered.
"Princess Yuffie Kisaragi, her consort Reno, Makoto of the Shinsengumi, Souta the Cunning, and his adopted daughter Rei."
"Souta the Cunning?" Reno murmured out of the corner of his mouth.
"My title as granted by Lord Godo," Grandpa Souta explained. "I wasn't always a mechanic, you know."
Angry murmurs, by now a familiar sound, swept through the Council Hall. "Princess Kisaragi, having a foreigner for a consort?"
"You got something to say to me?" Reno shouted, stepping forward. "Yeah, I wasn't born in Wutai. I was born in Midgar, and I work for Shin-Ra. You got a problem with that?"
"Of course you would come to plead your case!" the delegate who had called the group "riffraff" barked. "You and the Sub-General – both of you have the most to lose if this measure passes – which it should!"
"You stupid tool!" To everyone's surprise, it was Yuffie who stepped forward, eyes blazing. "Reno isn't in this for himself. If he wanted to leave, he'd leave – he's here to help me. He's saved my life tons of times, and he's a hell of a lot braver than you!"
"My courage is not on trial!"
Godo slammed his gavel down so hard that it snapped and nearly beaned a nearby delegate. The sound of the head clattering to the floor silenced the Council, and Godo discreetly took a new gavel from the podium. He'd had a compartment installed in it in the old days when every meeting was a trial to judicate. Sometimes he'd gone through five a day.
"Bickering accomplishes nothing! Sub-General Karsk, kindly submit your formal protest." Beneath his stern visage, Godo concealed his excitement. A formal protest from a citizen carries with it nullification of a full twenty-five votes in favor of whatever the citizen is protesting. This may break the proposition.
Karsk squared his stance, cleared his throat, and said, "I, Maximilian Karsk, citizen of Wutai for many years, hereby submit a formal protest against Proposition 209, on the grounds that I feel it threatens my rights and liberties as a citizen."
"Your citizenship means nothing to this Council!" another delegate half-screamed. "You're on the same side as that foreigner Lady Kisaragi's fallen in with! You hide behind citizenship and your friendship with Lord Godo while scheming to bring ruin down on us all!"
"ENOUGH!" Godo roared. "I WILL NOT HAVE THE COUNCIL ACTING LIKE PARANOID, FRIGHTENED CHILDREN! ORDER YOURSELVES OR I WILL REVOKE EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOUR POLITICAL LICENSES!"
That threat hit them right where it counted. They shut up, and Godo continued, "Whether or not this Council recognizes Sub-General Karsk's protest, I am still Lord of Wutai, and I do. The protest is accepted. We will now vote on Proposition 209, gentlemen, and let fate take its course."
At their seats in the Hall, the Council members indicated their support of or opposition to the proposition, each one being transmitted to Godo's podium to display the tallies.
The poll was one hundred and eighty-one in favor of Proposition 209, seventy-four against.
"As Lord of Wutai, I am exercising my power of vote nullification to subtract eighty-five votes from the one hundred and eighty-one in favor of Proposition 209," Godo said, "and in addition, Sub-General Karsk's formal protest subtracts twenty-five additional votes." He keyed in the changes.
"Final results: seventy-one votes for Proposition 209, seventy-four against, and one hundred and ten votes nullified. Proposition 209 is blocked."
An angry roar rose up in the Council Hall, and Reno said quietly to Yuffie, "I like the way the process is carried out here. Fast, efficient. But the people need some straightening out."
"What are you planning to do?"
He grinned roguishly at her and made for the podium.
Godo looked at Reno, and there was no disguising the relief on the man's face. "We've barely managed to avoid what could be the catalyst for another war," he sighed, "but we're angry about it. I don't understand."
"Lemme make 'em understand," Reno said to him. "Lemme speak."
After a moment's hesitation, Godo nodded and stepped down from the podium, Reno taking his place. The angry roar, drowning out the cheers in their entirety, rose to new, unprecedented heights.
Reno found the compartment with three extra gavels in it quickly enough. He raised one and slammed it down, over and over, never stopping his steady rhythm, until the head snapped off the neck, and then he picked up the next one and continued.
After four minutes of continuous, repetitive slamming, the Council finally quieted enough that Reno could speak.
"What the hell's going on here? I'm not responsible for what happened to all of you. Hell, most 'foreigners' alive today don't even want to remember the war. The ones responsible are dead. Ol' President Shin-Ra got killed by his own general, and Sephiroth's given up the ghost, too. The only guy who was involved in the war at all is Karsk here, and you all made him a citizen, didn't you?
"So what if I wasn't born in Wutai? Yuffie and I, regardless of how this marriage deal turns out, love one another, and always will. We've been through thick and thin, and she could care less if I came from Midgar or wherever. Do I gotta remind you that she lost her mother to Sephiroth himself? She told me all about it one day – she watched the guy basically whoop Seiryū when he was summoned and then kill her mom. Does she hold me responsible for what happened? No! Does she hold Karsk responsible? No! It was war, and bad shit happens in war.
"Sure, that doesn't excuse a lot of things. But I say forgive and forget. You can't hold a new generation responsible for the crimes, real or not, of the old one! And let's not forget, however bad we were towards you, you were the ones who attacked us first." At this, Godo hung his head for a moment, a pained look flashing across his face. "Sure, like I said, that doesn't excuse a lot of things – but if you wanna repeat the past, just remember what happened last time. I'm not tellin' you this to try to intimidate you, or because I'm a foreigner, but because I'm human, same as all of you."
With a sudden motion, Reno pulled a switchblade from his pocket and flipped it open, and before anyone could say anything or move to take it from him he slashed himself across his left palm and returned the blade to his pocket, then held up his hand so all eyes in the Hall could see the crimson seeping down his hand. "I'm made of flesh and blood, same as all of you, and I bleed just like you, too. Remember this, guys, 'cause that's what all of us, Wutainese or not, are gonna do if this comes to war: bleed."
And he stepped down from the podium.
Remarkably, the Council was entirely silent, and the Hall remained that way until the sound of one person weeping.
Yuffie was swiping furiously at her eyes, sucking in breaths in short gasps. She looked around through her tears, saw everyone staring, and began to blush furiously until Reno pulled her into an embrace and held her head against his chest with his uninjured hand. "It's fine, sugar. It's okay."
Slowly, the Council filed out of the Hall, nobody saying a word. Godo briefly rested a comforting hand on Yuffie's shoulder before nodding to Reno and withdrawing. Grandpa Souta motioned for Makoto and Rei to follow him out, and Karsk gave Reno a formal bow, a gesture of respect from one equal to another, before quietly stepping outside.
And in the end, they left Reno alone in the Hall with Yuffie and her tears.
