Hoo boy. Crazy week. Apologies to everyone who's reviewed; I haven't been able to get around to replying. I normally make it a policy to invest my time in thanking you for investing yours, but you can't invest what you don't have. Fortunately the start-of-school crush seems to be fading now, so the situation will change. Chapter XIX.


Reno had learned, very quickly, that there was nothing good on Wutainese television.

It was like a heinous pattern as he flipped through channels. Period drama, soap, sitcom, soap, detective movie, repeat. He wasn't looking for Markedly Poor Behavior In People Of The Female Persuasion, but he didn't want to watch some dry drama about Kishi Ouranosuke and the Seventy-Four Ronin.

"Go back," Yuffie said abruptly. "That's Noda Obunaga!"

"Who?"

The ninja-girl grabbed the remote – a feat, depriving him of the holy implement – and flipped back to a stern-looking man in a kamishimo outfit, talking with retainers. "He was one of the greatest Wutainese warlords ever."

"Lemme guess: this is a biographical 'based-on-a-kinda-butchered-true-story' feel-good or thought-provoking film."

"Yeah. It's called 'The Incident At Gonnoji.'"

"Gimme my remote back."

Pouting, Yuffie handed him the precious device, and Makoto entered with three glasses and a crystal decanter of something that was a rich, dark gold.

"Wutainese honey-bourbon," the gang leader announced proudly.

"Sounds about as ingestible as syrup of ipecac," Reno drawled.

Makoto sighed dramatically, accompanied by a drooping of the shoulders. "No taste." He turned to Yuffie. "A glass, White Rose?"

"Thought you'd realized that you don't love her," Reno observed automatically.

"That's actually my title," Yuffie explained, somewhat sheepishly. "I'm Princess Kisaragi Yuffie, The Single White Rose of Wutai."

Reno whistled. "An' it's Kisaragi Yuffie because…?"

"In standard Wutainese, last name precedes first. I have a title because I'm royalty."

"What about Grandpa Souta?"

"Souta the Cunning used to be a genius tactician before the war," Makoto said darkly as he poured the honey-bourbon. The sloshing of the drink in the glasses began to sound uncomfortably loud. "He resigned his commission when Lord Godo asked him to formulate strategies for use against the Shin-Ra. He'd gotten the title for translating some old military texts and flawlessly adapting their strategies and tactics to the modern Wutainese military. Ever hear of 'L'art de Guerre?'"

"Yeah," Reno affirmed. "I remember that Rufus was learning Gongagan so he could read it. Why didn't Grandpa Souta put it out in tradespeak?"

"He would have, except that Lord Godo didn't want the Shin-Ra reading it." Abruptly, Makoto realized that he was about to overflow the last glass and stopped pouring. "Here you are."

Accepting the proffered glass, Reno tipped some back. It had a sweet burn and went down like melted honey – he revised his opinion of Wutainese brewers from "kooks" to "kooks who bring those blue sparks." No idea what it meant, but he liked the sound of it. "So in other words, it's Grandpa Souta's fault that Rufus was strutting around going 'juh ne say quah' and 'may non' for a month. And one time he said 'juh veuh coochey ahvek voos' to some random chick in a bar and got slapped."

Yuffie nearly shot alcohol out her nose.


Grandpa Souta called Rei's name as he ascended the stairs to the second floor of his compound. "Wake up! I've finished Reno's and Rude's bikes early and I'm going to deliver them! Do you want to come?"

Silence.

"Rei! Are you there?"

Normally, Grandpa Souta the Cunning would never enter a young lady's room. Investigation asserted itself before propriety, however, and he carefully slid open the door to her room.

Her deserted floor mat, stripped of its blanket, was the first thing he saw. Alarmed, Grandpa Souta slammed the door all the way open and knelt by the mat, examining it for signs of a struggle. None. Then… Looking closely, he could discern miniscule specks of a powdery substance on the pillow. Probably some sort of sleeping agent.

"Damn," he growled aloud. "She's been taken."


Entering Karsk's room for a second time was something of a revelation, because it became very evident to Rude that the Sub-General didn't just have cameras up in his condominium.

He had them up everywhere. Screens were displaying views of streets, alleyways, government buildings, the Pagoda, even the interior of the Leviathan shrine. "How long did it take you to put all this together?" the Turk asked.

Karsk shrugged. "One or two years. More often than not, it doesn't come in any particular use, but sometimes we catch robberies in progress, people being chased, et cetera, and we can notify the police or move out ourselves if the situation is drastic enough."

"What's going on now?"

Pointing at one of the screens, Karsk seated himself at the console and hit a few buttons. "I've been keeping an eye on the Shinsengumi headquarters, since you mentioned that the organization we're fighting apparently wants Reno dead. In the past half an hour, Mern, our surveillance expert, has reported a forty-three percent increase in motorcycle traffic through the area. It looks as though your friends are casing the joint before crashing in."

"Bikers aren't that smart," Rude disagreed. "Even if they're being led by that agent, they should be yelling insults at the building, not casing it. I think they're waiting for something."

On the other side of the room, Mern, a small, pale-looking man, made a surprised, excited noise and then said, "Sarge, we hit the jackpot. Check feed seventeen-bee-oh-two-ess."

"Roger." Karsk hit another array of buttons, tapped in 17B02S, and hit the CONFIRM key. Immediately the array of screens switched to a view outside Grandpa Souta's compound – the camera was obviously placed in the alleyway to the side of the building.

It was easy enough to spot the figure emerging from one of the second-story windows overlooking the alleyway, gently easing himself out onto the eave of the building. He pulled a limp bundle out of the window after him – something wrapped in a blanket.

Before Rude could ask if Mern could zoom in on whatever – that's the espionage agent – the man was taking, it tumbled slightly before he caught hold of it, and a view of its opposite side made it easy enough to see Rei's unconscious face, the only part of her left exposed to the air so she didn't smother.

"Dirty bastards," Karsk growled. He held down a key and barked, "Arcturus! How long until we're finished unloading the shipment from Mr. Tuesti and the WRO?"

"About five minutes," the man replied.

"You have three and a half. Afterwards, you, me, Ayaro, and Mr. Rude are departing for the Shinsengumi headquarters. Our enemy is about to make a move."


"So, why did Grandpa Souta resign his commission when Godo asked him to help out against the Shin-Ra?" Reno asked Makoto.

He was feeling very warm and content, no doubt due to the effects of the honey-bourbon. Yuffie was curled up against his side, napping, her tolerance obviously much lower than his or Makoto's. The gang leader was sunk into his chair, gaze resting wistfully on the contents of his glass – namely, two drops.

"What? Oh." Frowning, Makoto sat up slightly, changing his slouch into a mere slump. "It surprised everyone, I'll tell you that much. My parents were talking about it, too, when Grandpa Souta officially resigned. He was – is, really – so brilliant, and it's doubtful you'll find anyone more patriotic that's not insane."

"He loves Wutai?"

"It was his life. The reason he adopted Rei and I – to say nothing of the fact that our parents were killed – was because he'd never married. He was married to his work, as it were."

Reno frowned. "He keeps gettin' more and more interesting. First he's just a mechanic, then some sorta noble guardian, and now a genius tactician?"

"Being a mechanic obviously wasn't his first profession. At any rate, though, in his resignation speech, he said, 'Wutai cannot win this war. I will not have the blood of troops on my hands – I wash them of this war before they can be stained. I refuse to waste good, loyal soldiers in a fight against an enemy I cannot defeat.'"

"I bet a whole lot of people were calling bullshit on that," Reno said, peering through the bottom of his glass at Makoto, suppressing a grin as he used the distortion of the glass to make the gang leader's forehead swell to epic proportions. I'm gonna have to take a bottle or four of this honey-bourbon home with me. Good stuff.

"There was public consternation, yes, but the real shocker was when someone asked if he wanted Wutai to win or not – he said he didn't."

Reno sat up a little bit, too. "Really. Such a great patriot."

Quickly, Makoto shook his head, though it was more of a side-to-side lolling, with very little rotation of the head involved. "Not like that. He said, 'Even if we win, we will merely create an age where people only speak the language of death and honor with their blades.' He liked the capitalist system Shin-Ra was setting up, with fair transactions and no honor duels or anything like that. He wanted to see it happen here, any way necessary."

"So he was sorta planning for the future of Wutai, wasn't he?" It seemed absurd to Reno that any one man could have such clear foresight, but some things just weren't meant to be questioned. "If you guys hadn't gone capitalist and switched out of your limited monarchist socialism, you would've failed miserably as a tourist town and gone up the creek without a paddle. You probably wouldn't even exist today."

"That's another problem we were presented with that made people dislike foreigners even more," Makoto pointed out abruptly, switching gears. "After Karsk and his battalion surrendered, we were effectively freed – they were Shin-Ra's garrison here, after all. But we didn't have self-autonomy anymore, we couldn't sustain our own population or economy. We had to open up the ports to foreign traders for the first time in hundreds of years. And nobody was going to trade with a socialist state – we had to get in on the gil standard, had to get a democratic government running because a limited monarchist socialism doesn't work too well when it comes to not being an autonomous state. In effect, we had to become foreigners in at least one aspect of our lives, and people hated that."

"It's for the best, though, right? I mean, things run more smoothly now, don't they?"

"Every time someone who made it through the war goes to vote on whoever'll be featured on the Council for their section of the city, they're reminded that we never came up with voting. The daimyo told us what was going on, who was in charge, and we listened and everything went smoothly. Sure, we were used to having a benevolent or at least well-intentioned daimyo – things would have gotten hairy if someone bad had managed to come into power – but the bottom line is that we weren't used to the choice." Makoto began to wave his arms. "Oh look! I can vote for any number of people! I'm expected to bear responsibility for my own outlook! Suddenly life's got more complicated!"

Reno snorted. "You're kidding me. People in Edge hate the provisional government we have set up because everything takes forever to get done – nobody agrees on what bills need to get passed, et cetera, and we're still hung up on making sure nobody can start hoarding power or money. Having Cloud and company bust down the door on anyone who's being corrupt in office isn't really a solution to our troubles. But what you're saying is that you don't hate the waiting part of the process, but the process instead."

"Exactly. We're not used to being actual individuals – perhaps to our friends, family loved ones, et cetera, but under government we're used to being just a great biomass, a bunch of people ruled by a governing body that makes all our decisions for us. The idea that we have to elect people into this governing body, and even regulate what decisions they can and can't make, is absurd. Are you getting this?"

"Yeah," the redhead responded placidly. "I can sorta relate. When Rude and I go on a mission, we obviously got a goal. But more often 'n not, we got a way we need to accomplish that goal – if we're taking some guy out at a party, we need to drop the chandelier on his head and make it look like a support failure. We can't just knife him when he's by the punch bowl, you know."

"Yes."

"Probably won't be doing much more of that stuff when we work for the WRO," Reno added wistfully. "But anyway. 'Drop the chandelier on his head' is a lot easier than 'Make it look like an accident.' Even worse, you got 'Make sure nobody knows it was murder,' or 'Make sure nobody knows it was you.' As you get less and less definite, the amount of planning, detail, improvisation, and so on that Rude and I gotta handle increases exponentially. Eventually it gets impossible, and it's better to just let Tseng effectively do our thinking for us."

"Delegation of authority," Makoto laughed, sounding just a little bit tipsy. "You're delegating back the authority delegated to you in the first place."

"'Zactly. We don't wanna be creative, we just wanna keep the job done."

Yuffie chose that moment to stir. She stretched, yawning, and covered her mouth about a second after she'd closed it. "Wow, that stuff was… how long was I out?"

"About half an hour," Reno told her.

She blinked sleepily at him and kissed him on the cheek. "You didn't write anything on me, did you, sugar?"

"Nope."

"We were just talking," Makoto added.

"About what?"

"Sex," Reno said quickly. Better that Yuffie think he was discussing fornication than politics and authority and stuff – he wasn't supposed to be a deep thinker. "Yeah. Kinky stuff."

Clucking softly, Yuffie tapped him admonishingly on the nose. "You better hold your chocobos, kiddo. I think you're getting ahead of yourself."

Makoto started laughing, which prompted Reno to say, "Naw, not at all. We were actually talking about how Makoto'd like to tie Rei down to the bed in here and –"

Before Makoto could attempt to kill Reno with heretofore-undiscovered eye beams, a furious knocking sounded at the door. He snapped out of his semi-stupor and said, "Enter!"

It was the guard that Reno had bribed the first night he'd been in Wutai. He panted for a moment, out of breath after apparently charging down all the stairs, and Reno took the opportunity to ask, "So, you get a pretty dress with that cash?"

"No time for jokes," the guard finally managed to wheeze. "There's a bunch of bikers lined up around headquarters – all of them armed. We're surrounded."

Makoto stood straight up, all traces of any impairment from the honey-bourbon gone from his face. "Alert all hands. Tell them to assume battle stations and get ready to ride if necessary."

"There's more bad news, Commander Makoto. It looks like the guy in charge – he's in a convertible – has a hostage."


Images and colors came to Rei first, in indistinct, blurry patterns. Sound followed, succeeded by taste – a bittersweet one, in her mouth – and touch, which revealed that she was seated on her mat's blanket in the backseat of a car. From the feeling of the wind passing through her hair, she guessed it was a convertible. An attempt to shift around and blink the gumminess out of her eyes informed her that her hands were secured behind her back with a length of cinched rope, but she was otherwise unfettered.

There was the unmistakable click of a gun being cocked from beside her, and Rei stared in the direction of the sound, willing her eyes to make sense of the wildly shifting colors. Eventually they settled into the image of a stern-looking man, who could be identified as a soldier or a mercenary with ease.

"Please don't be alarmed," he said calmly, coolly pointing a nine-millimeter handgun at her head. "You're here as a bargaining chip, not to be harmed – unless Makoto decides to get noble."

It all clicked into place, and Rei immediately lunged at the man in a sort of impromptu headbutt – the best she could manage with her hands tied. She felt herself jerk to a painful halt as his other hand opened like a blossoming flower and snapped out to bring its palm squarely against her incoming scalp.

"Keep driving," he said before returning his attention to Rei, whose head he now held in a grip like death itself. "Try that again and I will have to shoot you – not fatally, of course, but you'd be surprised how painful a bullet wound can be. Enough, certainly, to keep you sufficiently immobilized. I trust I make myself clear."

"Crystal," Rei growled reluctantly, and he released her. "Where are we going?"

"To your dear friend Makoto's gang headquarters, Miss Rei. My contractor apparently knows how to put two and two together in ways I've never previously thought of – he reasoned out that you were in a liaison with Makoto from merely watching the two of you on television, it seems. I saw what little there was to be seen of the both of you, and I never would have been able to figure it out myself."

"Or maybe he just figured that both of us are adopted children of Grandpa Souta and that we're not related," Rei countered. "Going from point A to point B isn't hard in that case if we've lived together practically all our lives."

"I prefer to think that I'm employed by a fearsome intellectual, but suit yourself. I can work for a mediocre anarchist just as well – both intellectuals and anarchists pay in cash."

"That's what you're in this for? Money?"

The espionage agent sighed. "Of course. Ex-professionals like myself don't do these jobs for any other reason. What interest do I have in what happens to a pathetic town like this? When I'm done, my employer gets his anarchy, I get my cash, we part ways and I never have to come back here again. I also owe a nasty injury to the man you're going to pull out into the open, and while I try to keep myself cool, a bit of sweet revenge never hurts."

Rei curled her lip in disgust. "You're a monster."

That provoked a chortle from him, and he sardonically extended his free hand to her, as though she would twist around and grasp it with her own tied extremities. "Deman Jobs, ex-Turk for hire. Pleased to make your acquaintance."


"Let's go, let's move!" Karsk bellowed. "Arcturus, Ayaro, are you ready to move out?"

"Yessir!" the two men shouted in unison, assembled outside Karsk's room.

"I've pulled up roadmaps and plotted the most likely escape routes for the man in the convertible and his hostage," Mern reported.

"Excellent," the Sub-General breathed. "Assign Doysdov to take up position along this route and blow the heads off of any enemies that happen to come through."

"Yessir, Sarge."

Nodding, satisfied, Karsk stood, checked his equipment, and turned to Rude. "Ready to move out?"

Rude tapped his shoulder with his umbrella several times. "Let's go."


Outside the Shinsengumi headquarters, a voice blasted out through a megaphone.

"Bring out Reno."