A/N: Well, here we are again - after a slightly shorter delay than the seven years promised. As far as Final Fantasy VII stories go, I'm going to make this more or less my top priority, since it's the one that brought me back, and I would eventually like to add it to my (very short) list of finished stories. I'm also going to start trying to reply to reviews again when possible. This is a shorter chapter, because I'm still trying to get back into the swing of Yuffie and Vincent, but I hope it's still enjoyable.

Black

Yuffie Kisaragi, contrary to her image of being a happy-go-lucky natural disaster – an image I choose to believe she has deliberately cultivated, because to believe otherwise would be to admit that my choice of acquaintances is in need of some very serious improvement – is not a woman without troubles. It would be very easy to forget this, given that she has an easy and habitual smile, were it not for the fact that she immediately pays that trouble forward to whoever happens to be in her way.

There are a few symptoms that indicate that Yuffie has something on her mind. The first is that she is even more forthright than usual in seeking the comforts of the world. A troubled Yuffie is akin to a missile that seeks candy and explodes into noisy raptures upon the discovery of a bag of sherbert lemons. She will spend upwards of an hour with her face pressed against the cage of an office fan, chattering endlessly and giggling at her own distorted voice. She may even be found napping in odd and perilous places, or staking a claim on Reeve's extremely comfortable spinning chair. In short, she spends her time in the pursuit of simple, momentary pleasures.

The second symptom is that, in what I have to say is a marked turnaround from her usual demeanour, she actually works. Paperwork is filed, monsters are killed, military transport vehicles are driven to places that are not off of cliffs. For a brief period, she becomes a highly productive member of society, an effect that has led Reeve to consider manufacturing troubles with which to provoke it.

The third and final symptom is that, when her stomache aches from too much candy and all her work is done, she seeks out my company. Her reasons for doing this are mysterious. Perhaps she simply seeks to take advantage of the fact that I am easy to tease, although nobody in the office can escape Yuffie's playful side. Perhaps it is simply because I am tall, and, like lightning, Yuffie is attracted to the highest point available. Nobody truly knows.

I had recently finished putting my desk in order for the day. Reeve is adamant that an orderly desk begets an orderly mind; I know this from long experience to be a falsehood. Many an office clerk with a meticulously laid out desk uses it as a facade to disguise a bizarrely contorted psychology. However, since I am Reeve's friend as well as his employee, it was my policy to show at least some nominal respect to his workplace philosophies. As I was putting the finishing touches on things, Yuffie sidled up and nonchalantly disturbed the arrangement of my desk by putting her bottom on it.

"Vincent, Vinnie, Vinny-Vins. Have I ever told you that you are my favourite fashion disaster?" she asked, picking up my ruler and putting it in my cup of coffee.

This was, of course, a rhetorical question, to which silence is the most expedient and correct answer. (It often is, although sadly it would appear that few people share conviction on this matter). I, however, decided to gratify her with a sigh.

"You gotta realise, this is high praise. There's a lot of competition. Take Reeve, for example. Nice guy. Have you seen his goatee, though? I have. I have waking nightmares about it. I can't imagine what it's going to be like when you finally hit vampire puberty and have to start shaving."

"...Is there a point to this, Yuffie?"

This was another rhetorical question. Of course there was a point. Yuffie is erratic, not chaotic; there is a vast difference between the two. Chaos is vast, churning, elemental, a roiling mess of everything and nothing. It is the conglomeration of all things into one, so that nothing discernible still remains. The Chaos that was me – the planet's Chaos – was named because its mission was to bring about just that. A conglomeration of all things, inside the lifestream; a sacrifice of every individual being for the purpose of one great, surging life.

Yuffie, then, is erratic; her actions do not always appear to make sense, but they still have cause and effect. She must seek pleasure, or else relief from pain; only the form or the method changes. With enough time, one could learn to predict even her. This is what I have chosen to believe.

"The point is that you're my favourite, Vinnie. You know why you're my favourite? Because you're a big doof, but you're at least smart enough to realise it and keep your yap shut a lot of the time. You don't...gossip."

She said the last word as though it had burnt her tongue. Yuffie had a strange relationship with gossip. Of course, she was always happy to participate in it, but only when it was worthless and minor. Anything important was blackmail, which seemed to occupy an entirely different part of her brain, in which a great many things were stored for nefarious purposes. But, as a public figure and the unwilling ambassador of Wutai to the world at large, she was also subject to it.

Baseless rumours. False conjecture. Outright lies, leavened with half-truths. These things had formed a strange kind of currency in the media of our new world, where no ready antagonist could be found and the people had begun to turn inward for their enemies. As they changed hands, they grew in value; the more people heard it, the truer it was considered to be. Yuffie was well aware of it. Her position – her birth, a trivial and accidental detail from her point of view – meant she could not escape it. When Cloud, Tifa, Cid or I spoke of her exploits and capers, she was our Yuffie. But when the outside world spoke of them, she was the Princess of Wutai. I believe I know which she prefers to be.

"I see," I said, although that may have been an overstatement. I took my ruler out of my coffee, frowned as the warm, soft plastic began to flex. "Are you requesting my assistance in resolving the dispute?"

Yuffie spread her palms wide, shook them; a grand motion for a simple rejection. "Geez, Vince. Keep your trigger finger off the button. We're not talking about an international incident, here. It's just Gloria."

Gloria was a name I vaguely recognised. It was attached to one of the women who worked in the WRO office, whose faces had smudged together in my recollections until they were all one, homogeneous presence. They say that humans naturally seek and remember faces; I feel that this may be one of the many things I forsook when I became more than, or perhaps less than, human. One day, I had sworn, I would know the name and faces of all the people who I worked with. That day had not come, and seemed no closer to coming than when I had begun the job.

"Ever since you showed off your goth bod the other day, all she and Julie want to talk about is you. 'Oh, did you see his new sweater?' 'Ooh, I can't believe how tight his butt is!'" Yuffie says, raising her voice half an octave in her mission to unflatteringly mimic her co-workers. From what I can recall, Julie's voice is significantly deeper than Yuffie's. "And I'm sitting here like, whoa, lady. The guy's like 3,000 years old. I can do without graphic descriptions of how his new hipster jeans wrap his ass."

"Yes. I'm sure it's very troubling for you to see sexual harassment towards me without being the perpetrator of it."

"That's a four out of ten joke, even for you," she said, taking a swig of my coffee. "Ugh. Plasticky. You're a savage, Vince. Anyway, I figure nobody's gonna read their dissertations on your rump with you in the room, so you're the safest place to hide from the discussion."

I could immediately see problems with her philosophy. If gossip was already circulating about my person, any change would bring even more gossip. In particular, Yuffie immediately seeking me out upon hearing that other women had become attracted to me (on whatever shallow a level) would appear as though she were 'marking her territory', as it were. I had experienced such problems in my career as a Turk, long ago. It rarely resolved itself without blood being spilled. I voiced my concerns to Yuffie.

She looked at me over her shoulder, my coffee mug at her lips, and her mouth crinkled into a strange, relaxed kind of smile. "Hate to break it to you, Vince, but you are my territory. So's Reeve. So's Red, although I don't think his dating pool is gonna expand anytime soon. We travelled the world together, Vinnie. Saved it, too. So as far as I'm concerned, we're as good as family. All of you guys are."

"And that entitles you to control my love life?" I asked, and arched my eyebrow.

A look of confusion flitted across her face for a moment. "Huh? I didn't mean that. I just meant that I don't want you to get suckered in, you know? I'm just looking out for you."

"Should you not instead trust me to handle my own affairs? As I understand it, a friend is there to cheer you up after a misfortune, not to prevent them from occurring."

She began to gnaw her bottom lip. "I mean, I guess, but –"

I put my hands on the desk, gently, and pondered how to best proceed. We had fought recently, something that played on my mind; I could do quite well without another day of simmering hostility, or another late-night phone conversation. So, too, did the spectre of hypocrisy. It would be be unacceptable for me to lecture her on the nature of friendship one minute, then castigate her for a well-meaning attempt at it the next.

Somewhere perhaps further back in my mind was Yuffie, very cheerful and very drunk, declaring that she might fall in love with me. Yuffie, her voice crackling over the phone, saying that she was falling in love with me, a slip of the tongue she had not realised. Yuffie, a whole ball of complex emotions, who would not simply sit and wait for me to understand her at my leisure. The things she said were different from the things she felt. A straightforward woman she as she might be, things were never black and white.

"Yuffie. I am not… displeased. I understand your sentiments, and that they are well meaning. But I feel that, however well-intentioned you were, you have perhaps crossed a line without realising it," I said. It had none of the grace of Reeve's speeches. None of the flowing, persuasive elegance. But it would do. I had not treated her as a child, had not pushed away her concerns without due thought.

"Oh, shut up, Vince," she said, brushing her hand distractedly through her hair. I said nothing. "…wait. I didn't mean that. I'm not gonna tell you to talk less, or you'll be tall, dark and mute. Look, I… I get it, alright? Since I'm such a kind and charitable soul, I wanted to look out for you, but didn't think about the implications. You're not my 'territory'. I don't have to scare Gloria and her floozy army away, because you're more than capable of doing that yourself. If you want to, I mean! You can date who you want. Whoever you want."

I smiled. Or I tried to. I went for 'comforting', at the very least. I do not think the effect was quite what I had intended, as she continued to chew her bottom lip, but I like to think that the effort was appreciated.

"Seriously, though. Don't date Gloria. She's as mad as a bag of cats in a washing machine. Remember what Cid says – don't sleep with crazy. Then he went and married Shera, which kinda undermines his point, but details." She had begun babbling. Embarrassed, perhaps. Having meaningful talks was different face to face in the mid afternoon. I sympathised, as well as I am able.

"And get me some more coffee, alright? You told me off, so you owe me that much in emotional damages. Just be careful in the break room. They might steal your purity."

"I shall be careful," I said, taking my coffee cup – which I had taken but a single sip from before Yuffie's interruption – and standing up. "I expect to find my desk in the same order that I left it in when I return. In addition, this is not to be a repeated occurrence. I refuse to be your 'coffee goblin', as Reeve says."

"That's coffee gremlin, Vinny. Position's always open, by the way," she said. I did not reply, but instead kept walking. The mission to procure coffee was long and arduous, as the corridors of the WRO Headquarters were nothing less than serpentine. The sooner begun, the sooner done, and the sooner I could return and evaluate the chaos that Yuffie was no doubt going to visit upon my newly-ordered desk.

"Love ya, Vince!" she called as I left, before covering her mouth as if she wished she hadn't.

I sighed. Yuffie Kisaragi is not a woman without troubles. But she is most adept at spreading them around.

A/N: This story is good because Past Me was very kind and did a gimmick where every chapter pretty much ends with a hook for the next chapter to deal with. I will not squander this gift.