Shake murmured something that sounded like "Yuffie" and turned over in his sleep. Tseng sighed; the younger man was easier to read than a children's book.

"Shake," Tseng called, then reached his foot out and shoved his companion in the shoulder.

He stirred, turning his creased face to the light. "Time to go?" His voice was thick with sleep.

Tseng wished he had the ability to sleep that way. It had gone away with years of balancing on a knife-edge of stress. He woke at the slightest sound. Even mornings when Yuffie thought she had snuck out soundlessly, he could hear her slipping from the bed, her smallest rustles and noises as she moved around the room.

He'd been so angry with her. For breaking into his office—no one had ever intruded on his privacy without shortly after finding themselves maimed, dead, or fully on the road to expiration. The last intruder Tseng caught in his personal items had lost an arm and an eye.

How he had wanted to hurt her. To just reach out and squeeze her until she turned purple. But over the years, urges like those had been tempered by guilt and self-loathing for his kneejerk violent tendencies. Even then, at his angriest with her, he knew he'd never actually lay a hand on her. A tiny voice would whisper this is your wife, and all the energy would leave him.

He thoroughly hated himself, some days, and the weeks following her discovery of his deception had been the most intense he'd felt it in years. He hadn't had much to feel guilty about recently, what with helping the president in his planet-saving adventures, but something about looking into her furious eyes had, at once, incensed him and delivered a wave of shame so strong he almost apologized then and there for hurting her. His pride wouldn't allow it, though, and now she was gone. If she were dead, he would never atone for his wrongs.

They found, to their great and second fortune (the bird being the first, though that was debatable since having Shake ride bitch was not Tseng's idea of a good time), the first small neighborhood they encountered had two clotheslines for them to raid. Unfortunately, the first one they encountered was filled with babies' onesies and women's underthings.

"Jackpot," his companion whispered, as they came across some men's shirts fluttering in the breeze. The half-moon cast a spectral glow over the fabric.

Tseng signaled for Shake to stay quiet and still, a finger to his lips, and began to creep over the grassy lawn on his knees and elbows. Progress was slow in his heavy formal robes, but he managed to keep mostly to the shadows. He had just pulled the first shirt from the line when he heard a click and a light glared into his eyes.

"I wouldn't move if I were you." The old, cracked voice belonged to a woman. "Stealing from a granny? Stand still."

He sensed the hitch in the tone and rolled out of the way, trying to avoid kunai or whatever other weapons an old Wuteng woman living in a country village might be wielding. You never could tell with Wuteng woman. They were a formidable bunch.

"I mean you no harm," he said in what he hoped were confident, nonthreatening tones.

"A thief means no harm. That's a laugh."

He could see a shadowy figure behind the dinky, pathetic flashlight illuminating him. Deciding perhaps talking was better than running, he stood still. They'd already seen him. There was no helping it now.

"Now you just put down that..." The woman trailed off in what sounded like confusion. Tseng tried to stare back without squinting or blinking too much. Shake remained silent, somewhere in the foliage behind the tiny backyard.

The light bobbed and swung away from his eyes as the figure approached, and Tseng could see in the glow of the moon that she was older than he thought. Tseng did not react as she reached out as quick as a river-fish and grabbed him by the chin, tilting his head for a better angle in the moonlight. She gasped and released him. Before he could wonder what was going on, she fell to one knee with surprising agility.

"My emperor."

Tseng was struck dumb. He hadn't been afforded tons of respect in his short stint as the counterpart-ruler of Wutai. It came with that whole dog-of-the-Shinra territory. But here was this country woman, bowing to him as if she was born to do it.

"Please, don't," he said, feeling suddenly ashamed of himself, his arms overflowing with patched peasant clothes, stolen in the deceptive night. Shifting the bundle to one arm, he held out his hand and grabbed her gently by the elbow, guiding her to her feet.

She did not meet his eyes. The flashlight had been deadened by the wet grass, its glow reduced to a tiny circle of light below them, but the moon cast her face in the light. She stared at a point on his shoulder. "Honored emperor." She scanned his face but avoided eye contact. It was something he recognized as a highly traditional facet of Wuteng deference. "You're hurt."

Forgetting her politeness, she reached out a weathered hand and brushed it gently over his blood-stiffened shirtfront. "You need medical attention." And then she was patting him down, firmly, looking for wounds. Knowing there were none to be found, he stepped out of reach of her hands.

"I'm fine. It looks worse than it actually is."

"Nonsense," she scoffed, taking him by the arm. "Come inside. My name is Mayumi. What happened?" As they walked toward the house, she threw over her shoulder, "You can come out now."

Tseng almost smiled as Shake tumbled out of the shrubbery with a muffled shout.

He thought he might like this woman, and his thoughts solidified into surety as she fretted over him in the kitchen. She was undeterred as he batted her hands away from the front of his robes and insisted that nothing was wrong with him. A man Tseng assumed was Mayumi's husband stepped out of the shadows of the hallway, his eyes going wide at the sight of the three of them. He too attempted to bow, but Tseng stopped him with a raised hand.

"Never thought I'd have the emperor of the motherland in my kitchen," the man said, after some time had passed with Shake fidgeting on the other side of the kitchen table and Tseng insisting that yes, he had taken some potions, and no, he was not hurt, and, yes, he knew it was a lot of blood, but really, he was fine.

"This is my husband, Keiji." Mayumi filled a bowl with some sort of stew from a pot on the stove. A delicious aroma of spicy stewed meat and vegetables wafted over him. His mouth began to water. When was the last time I ate? He saw his appetite echoed in Shake's side glance to the bowl.

"Don't you pay attention to the papers?" Keiji growled, rising and serving himself some food.

"I told you I don't read that lie-peddling nonsense anymore," she said, scowling and filling another wooden bowl to hand to Shake. "Not since they started with those horrible rumors about Lord Godo and his daughter."

Grumbling, Keiji reseated himself at the chair in the corner, rolling his eyes. It was everything Tseng could do not to plunge his face into the stew. With effort, he restrained himself, eating in small, measured bites.

"What did the papers say?" Shake asked around a mouth full of food, and Tseng shot him a look. Shake glared right back, then swallowed loudly and took another bite. Chekhov would box his ears for that.

"Do not talk with your mouth full, Mighty One," Mayumi admonished in a stern but respectful voice. Tseng wondered how she accomplished that particular combination, but his thoughts were interrupted when she sat at the table with them, a few feet back so as to allow them proper space.

"The papers," said Keiji, "are a lying pile of chocobo dung."

"They say the most awful things about Lord Godo and Lady Yuffie." Tseng noted the fondness in Mayumi's voice when she spoke their names, curious. It seemed the Kisaragis did have their allies but, true to form, they could be found in strange places.

"So... you don't believe the lies? Everyone else does," Shake said, setting his bowl down with a bitter clunk. Mayumi rose and refilled it.

"We couldn't know for sure, but the entire story and the behavior seems suspicious. And wouldn't that Reeve Tuesti be visiting if you and Lady Kisaragi were sick? Where is AVALANCHE?"

Shake looked grave, setting down his utensils. "It's good to know there are some still loyal to the Kisaragi house."

Keiji harrumphed. "We wouldn't have survived the war without Lord Godo. Anyone who says otherwise can eat my geta."

"Those who slander the Kisaragi name have forgotten the good their house has done for this country. Just because the economy's not so great doesn't mean you can pin it on one person," Mayumi added. "People are always looking for a scapegoat."

"Besides, look at what Lady Yuffie's done in just a couple of months." With a look of smug satisfaction, Keiji took another bite. "All those schools. And my crops are doing much better with her slashing seed taxes."

Tseng was amazed. He'd known she'd been busy, even admired it, but here was concrete proof of Yuffie's work. And someone was actually grateful for it. If he'd been a lesser man, he might have fallen face first into his bowl of stew.

Come to think of it, he was feeling a bit tired.

"Grandmother, grandfather," he said, addressing the couple in the Wuteng mode of respect for familiar elders, "I hate to impose, but—"

"Nonsense, my lord," Keiji interrupted, waving his spoon. "You'll stay the night here and set off in the morning."

"In the meantime," Mayumi said, picking up the bowls in front of them, "you may use the shower. We have some clothes you might be able to wear in the spare bedroom."

She stooped over to the stewpot, and Tseng rose, bowed to the both of them. They bowed lower, keeping their heads from rising above his. "I am in your debt."

"Emperor Kisaragi is never in our debt," Mayumi said quietly. "Now go. Sleep. You look as though you need it."

"There's just one thing."

"Yes? If you mean the people chasing you, we're keeping an eye out," Keiji said. He set down his bowl and put his hand on the hilt of a rough but wicked-looking machete.

"You know about Wave?"

He nodded. "It's been all over the news. Mayumi here doesn't read the papers, but like I said: I do. We'll inform you of anything strange."

Mayumi finished rinsing the bowls in the sink and dried her hands on a nearby towel. "What is going on?"

Shake opened his mouth, but Keiji lifted a hand. "Go. Sleep. We will make sure to keep you safe."

After he and Shake had been directed down a small, cramped hallway, Tseng found his way to the guest bedroom, where a tiny trunk at the foot of a twin bed opened to reveal some plain shirts with faded patterns. They were almost his size, a little big for Shake, perhaps, so he took out some pants, an undershirt, an overshirt, and some solid-looking sandals.

A creak on the floorboards had him whirling, and his eyes met Mayumi's. Her hunched little figure seemed to fill the doorway, and her eyes were sad.

"You look very much like him."

"I'm sorry?" he said, confused.

"My son. You look like him. But your eyes... they're different."

"You have a son," he said, a feeling of foreboding overtaking him.

"Had."

Suspicions confirmed, he lowered his eyes to the clothes in his arms: the forest green shirt, the brown pants, the slightly-worn sandals. "I'm sorry for your loss."

She smiled, her wrinkled face pulling with the signs of long use. "It's all right. It was a long time ago."

"May I ask...?"

"The war," Keiji said, coming to stand behind her. Tseng heard water knocking in the pipes, then a slightly muffled yelp. "Sounds like the Mighty One found the shower. Water takes a minute to heat up. Pressure ain't great either."

For the second time that night, Tseng suppressed a smile. Keiji's eyes scanned his face. "Mayumi's right. You look a lot like Kenji did."

"You kept all this," he said, searching for anything adequate to say. He didn't know how to feel in the face of their scrutiny, their quiet, accepting sadness.

Mayumi shrugged. "At first, we didn't have the heart to get rid of it. Now we figure someone else might need it."

Before he could stop himself, study his own words, Tseng blurted, "How can you stay here, how can you respect the Kisaragis, when your son died in their war?"

"Oh, child," Mayumi said, "it wasn't their war. It was everybody's. Kenji died for a country he loved, and Lord Godo felt every loss just the same as he felt his own wife's. You could see it in his eyes."

"It's in your wife's eyes, too," Keiji said. "And that's all we can ask for."

"They've taken her." His mouth ran over despite his reservations. He couldn't seem to stop, some feeling bubbling up inside him like lava.

"I know," Keiji said. "You're going to get her back."

He was speechless in the face of such utter faith. Mayumi and Keiji looked to him as if there were no way in the world he could fail, their careworn faces free of worry or questions. How was it that these people had such belief in him when he had almost none for himself?

At that moment, Shake stumbled out into the tiny hallway and appeared next to Mayumi, wrapped awkwardly in a threadbare towel. "Uh... is that the bed...?"

"Take it," Tseng said.

The old couple moved aside as Tseng left the room, and he managed to keep himself together all the way through peeling off his bloodstained robes, through the long wait for the shower to heat, and through watching the rusty red water circle down the drain.

After that, his lips curled back in silent agony.

Yuffie.

…

Yuffie felt that she was missing something.

She knew for sure that Lin had not told her the whole story of her sister and how she had come to escape the brothel. There were pieces missing, and just like with Leviathan, Yuffie felt she was on the verge of tipping into the realm of realization. If she could just put it all together.

Wave. Who were they? Where had Lin amassed such a glut of people willing to mobilize against Wutai? Yuffie thought the members of Wave probably believed they were helping the country, but this sort of turmoil would set back progress. She understood Lin's desire for change—it was a mirror of her own passion to improve her country's situation, to put the people back on their feet. Wuteng people could be stubbornly independent, bordering on isolationist. Yuffie sometimes thought she'd only survived a wilderness teeming with ferocious, venomous beasts at the age of twelve because of sheer obstinacy.

And Lin—where was the rest of her tale? She was careful to leave out the details, so that Yuffie didn't have any information from which to infer further. She had only the facts which Lin had given her, and they were scant fare.

How had Wave managed to get the jump on them? Could they have had a mole planted, someone to inform them when the time was right for an invasion? Perhaps the guards had finally had a crucial moment of inattention at the exact time she and Tseng had been attacked. Perhaps someone had known they would be vulnerable after the auction and chose that time to take her.

Someone knocked at the door, and Yuffie jumped in surprise. "Uh, come in," she said, shaken from her complex thoughts.

"I brought you some fresh clothing," Lin said, entering and bowing shortly.

"Thanks. You can just leave it on the chair," Yuffie said, irritated. She would have a much easier time puzzling everything out if Lin would leave her in peace.

"Have you thought more about your options, your grace?" she asked.

Yuffie fought the urge to snap at her. She was thinking. She just needed more time. "I still have a day, right?"

"One day. Starting tomorrow, no one will disturb you for any reason other than delivering your meals and allowing you bathroom breaks. Think carefully."

Lin's hair was swept onto the top of her head today, and her kimono was loose-fitting and drapey, leaving some of her neck and the shoulders around it exposed. As she turned to go, the curtain of her dark hair swept to the side. In the spread of pale skin just where Lin's neck met the beginnings of her back, Yuffie saw a black semi-circle with a fleck of dark red inked there.

Before Yuffie could make out what it was entirely, she was gone.

…

"Thank you for your hospitality," Shake said, bowing to Mayumi and Keiji, who bowed lower than him. Tseng echoed the movement, feeling a flicker of amusement as they looked confounded at his respect.

He said, "We are in your debt."

In reply, Keiji plucked a lumpy brown bag from the counter. "Here, you can feed these greens to your chocobo."

Shake frowned. "How did you—"

"When you get to be as old as us, Mighty One, you become a little more aware of the world around you."

Mayumi waved a hand. "We heard him warking for you last night. Don't let him fool you."

"Goodbye, my friends," Tseng said, turning from them. His sandals made a solid thunk as he crossed their tiny porch and stepped onto the lawn, Shake trailing behind him.

"Be safe," Mayumi called. "We need you."

"Where to next, smart guy?" Shake asked, as he parted some branches to reveal their bird. Before Tseng could open the bag of greens, Fluffy snatched it and spilled them on the ground, pecking and warking.

He wasn't sure how to answer Shake's question. He didn't have any leads on where they were keeping Yuffie, and he was just opening his mouth to formulate a bullshit reply when his phone jangled.

"Tseng," he said as he flipped it open.

"Boss-man," said Reno. "Made any progress? Can't say we're sittin' pretty over here."

"How's Rude?"

"Doing a little better, I think. He was lucid long enough to ask for water." Reno paused, and then, "I'm gonna be straight with you, boss-man. You gotta find Queenie or we're done for."

"Any word from the President?"

"No, but Strife texted me."

Tseng's eyebrows lifted. "Go on."

"He said he's in some sort of warehouse. Didn't know how long he'd have the phone before they found him with it. Lockhart and the kids're with him."

"Did you get anything else?"

"No, they're on lockdown. According to Strife, he was lucky to pick the phone out of the guard's pockets."

"And he remembered your number?"

Reno laughed. "I've prank called him enough times, he recognizes my digits by now."

"This is bad," Tseng sighed. "I'll have to do some reconnaissance."

"You get on that, boss-man. Rude said to tell you hi."

"Send him my regards."

"Got it. Have fun with Shake."

Tseng sighed and hung up.

"Reconnaissance?" Shake said in his ear.

"We need to figure out where they're keeping Yuffie."

"Duh. How?"

"We're going to have to capture one of them," Tseng said, turning the chocobo around and leading him back the way they had come two nights before.

"And how do you propose we do that? You really think any of them are going to talk?"

"I have ways."