Another chapter is here!
Kazeshuriken: Yuffie is here and she is about to do what is best for Wutai.
patrick the almighty observer: Barret and his daughter is alive. And Yuffie will learn her lesson when she steal on a certain individual.
Beloved Daughter: Thank you.
Enjoy!
Yuffie sat nestled within the darkness of the canopy, downwind of the night breeze even though she covered her scent up as a precaution. Wutai had to deal with guard hounds during the war, which had a nasty habit of ferreting out their ninjas in disguise when it came to infiltration. They had been successful in developing countermeasures, though the war had ended poorly overall.
The strange party of travelers she had been stalking made their way deep enough into the woods that no stray party would see the orange glow of the fire as it crackled softly in a small clearing. The way the fire had been built, inside of a pit, ensured that it could be easily snuff and the smoke kept low. They were experienced in traveling stealthily then, a contrast to Shinra's standard dogs of war.
They had set up three tents as well, but no one was in them. The busty girl sat next to the staff-user on one side of the fire, while the talking creature was on the other. It was lying down with its paws crossed beneath its head, breathing softly as though in a light sleep.
The chocobo-haired guy was polishing his two swords closer to the tent, now on the larger of the two after he finished the mythril one. He seemed to be deep in thought as he ran his fingers across the surface of the blade and lowered his eyes. He was unaware that the red-haired woman was looking at him every now and again, lips pressed thin like she wanted to say something before she shook her head and turned her attention back to a map.
They were all exhausted from the look of it. That was good for Yuffie, who rolled a pair of materia in her right palm. One was the Seal Materia, which had access to the Sleep and Silence spells. The other was called the All Materia, which allowed her spell to encompass a wide area of effect.
These two materia made her thefts so much easier. While she knew for a fact that she was strong, Yuffie didn't want to fight any of them if she could help it. The Wutai way was to be sneaky, subtle, and take every advantage you could get to go for your enemy's throat. Ideally, they should never see you, a belief she subscribed to whole-heartedly.
She cast Sleep and watched as the group, already exhausted as they were, slumped down and collapsed. The red-haired one seemed to tense, as though fighting the effects, but fell down as well while reaching for her shuriken. Yuffie waited for a minute to ensure they were asleep deep enough before she hopped down and approached.
Her eyes fell over the large selection of materia she had to choose from, every single one of them carrying at least one. She decided to go for the ones of the lion-creature's headdress since they seemed the most interesting. The kunoichi walked over and reached down when she heard a footfall on the ground and turned in time to see the red-head thrusting a kick.
The armguard she wore soaked the hit as she brought into a guard position, sending her skirting back a few feet and buying her time to see that lighting was starting to form in the other woman's hands. The bolt jumped towards her and met her armguard again, making the metal hot as the current entered her body and then seeped into the ground with only mild discomfort because she guarded.
Yuffie cast Silence before she could get another shot off, banking on whatever resistance she had to the Sleep spell didn't transfer over. It worked. The woman clinched her head, shaking it to try and rid the effect fogging over her ability to connect to the materias she owned. The kunoichi stuck out her tongue and then fled into the woods, considering this a lost cause.
The red-head gave chase.
[-oOo-]
Reeve watched from his window as the newest recruits, plucked from the slums at the promise of money to support their families, continued to run laps around the building. It had been six hours since they started, and Heidegger had no intention of letting the stop anytime soon. The man loitered, yelling at them with a megaphone about how worthless they were and could quit anytime they wanted if they wanted their families to starve.
Families he had put into those circumstances to begin with. It was clear he wanted to break them down, crushing whatever semblance of what they were into something malleable that would unfailingly do as told. Talk about a having your cake and eating it.
Reeve closed his blinds, having seen enough, and turned his attention the source of the glow in his room. He was going over some rudimentary computer files that had been salvaged from the attack, thinking about his next play. Midgar was a city that was dying in its own hubris, and that of the company he served. He couldn't trust Rufus to reform it, nor could he expect the same from whoever his successor was.
The entire company had to be uprooted, but that was far easier thought than done. He didn't say it out-loud when the chances of being overheard meant it would likely end up with him in a prison cell and at the mercy of 'Kyahaha' and 'Gyahaha'. He needed resources, manpower, and an army if he was being honest.
His thoughts went back to the new recruits and the idea that they could be the means of doing so. But they were being told they worthless enough that they'd think it was true soon enough. Who else was there… the ones who broke into the building ahead of time?
He checked the files. If he recalled right, that one girl that the previous President had been obsessed about, the Ancient they called her, was Aerith… Gainsborough. The same last name as the woman he'd met in the Wall Market. They had her listed as the girl's adoptive mother.
If she had some way of contacting them, it was feasible that they could be useful in dealing with Shinra. The question was how could he meet with her without attracting attention or suspicion?
[-oOo-]
Crimson wanted nothing more than to sleep as she chased the Wutai-girl into the darkness. She was fairly sure that she was operating alone, having been the only one who came into the camp when the others succumbed to the Sleep spell. Her training kicked in and kept her awake, but she pretended to fall down to see who had been responsible.
The others would wake up in time, but for now she had to keep following whoever the girl who broke into their camp was. She doubted Shinra hired her, given they had been in war against her people not too many years ago. But they lacked personnel after everything up to this point, so it wasn't impossible to think they'd learned to outsource.
Limited to eyesight while the effects of the Seal spell lingered, Crimson had to work to keep the girl in view while it was dark out. Letting her out of her sight would mean that she could get the drop on her in this sort of environment. Of course, she seemed to realize the same thing and pulled out a materia from her pouch as she turned around. It spat out a stream of fire that flared in the darkness, stinging her eyes.
Crimson blinked away the pain to find that the Wutai-girl was gone at a glance. Her head spun at the sound of something moving to her left, then her right. A flicker of movement in the corner of her eye had her spin in that direction with her Rekka at the ready. Suddenly she was in pain, staggering forward as something hit her from behind.
She turned to see the girl there, an armguard clad fist extended after hitting her in the back. The mystery ninja held a large shuriken out, settled into a stance, and gestured for her to come with her armored hand. Crimson attached the wire to her Rekka just as the effect of Seal wore off, activated the Sense Materia, and leapt into the fray.
The two shuriken met with the sharp ends scraping against each other, sparking and briefly illuminating their wielder's faces. Crimson went wide with slash, leaving her opponent to lean back and then swing her own down. She pivoted on her front leg, allowing her to get off angle as the attack left the girl moving forward.
She was good though. She carried through with the motion into a front-flip that allowed her to nearly clip Crimson jaw with her foot on the way up and around, forcing her to dodge it. The materia came up again and a tongue of flames followed, forcing her to dodge-roll into a crouch.
Crimson threw her shuriken, only for the girl to cut the wire with her own and charge forward. Lightning then. She cast Bolt from her outstretched palm, aimed at the ground at the girl's feet. The spray of dirt from the impact halted her advance and took her sight from her, allowing Crimson to move in.
The mystery ninja swung the shuriken down, but Crimson brought her forearm up and blocked just under her wrist. The shuriken halted, and Crimson grabbed it to put her into a lock that would have broken her arm if she hadn't dropped her weapon and rolled with it. Now both of them were disarmed, so they took up one another's discarded weapon.
It'd be wrong to say that the next exchange between them was even. Crimson was older than her by a few years at least and stronger physically, but the girl was faster and skilled. More than that, Crimson was tired after everything they'd done that day and needed to rest.
She needed to settle this. Weapons wouldn't be enough. She needed to take the girl's materia. Crimson reached for them….
And pulled back when she noticed the input from her own materia had faded. She looked down to see that it was gone from her Mythril Bangle. The sound of laughter afterwards told her what happened and she glared at the source.
The little thief held up her Sense Materia, having stolen it in their last exchange. That was fine. Crimson held up the girl's pouch that had once been nestled behind her, having done the same. The flustered look on the girl's face brought a bit of a smile on her own. Angered, the girl activated the Sense Materia… and immediately regretted it.
"Ahhh! Make it stop!" There was a reason that you didn't use someone else's mastered materia. They grew alongside their users, and she had that one since she was in training. The mystery ninja dropped the materia and held her head, staggering on her feet.
Crimson was decisive. She grabbed her at the waist, lifted her up, and then dropped her in a slam behind her so that she landed on her stomach. Crimson ended things by hooking her neck in the crook of her arm, pulling her head back, and holding the girl's own shuriken at her throat.
"Surrender!"
"Ow!" the girl cried as the point of the cold steel bit into the thin flesh of her neck. "Okay, okay, I surrender! Just don't kill me!"
"Who do you work for?" Crimson ordered.
"No one!"
"Then why'd you attack our camp?"
"I just wanted your materia," she claimed. "There were so many. I couldn't help myself. I wasn't going to hurt anyone!"
Crimson didn't think she was lying, at least not on the first part. The fact that her back was killing her now from that hit said otherwise about the second. The question now then was what could Crimson do?
It wasn't like they could just march her up to the authorities with them being wanted as well. And killing the little thief wouldn't sit right with her for such a small crime. Crimson dismounted her back, grabbed her materia, and put the girl's wrist in a lock as she brought her to her feet.
The girl whimpered, still nursing the mother of all headaches from the Sense Materia. It served her right for taking it in the first place. It would guarantee she didn't try to steal another mastered materia.
"Move," Crimson said, pushing her forward. "You're going to explain to everyone exactly why you tried to take their materia and let them decide your punishment."
[-oOo-]
"Come on!" the Wu—Yuffie, Crimson corrected—said as she pointed to the small town just ahead. Things… didn't go as planned. She expected anger, yelling, apologies, anything to make the girl repent for her thieving ways and punish her without hurting her permanently.
She never expected the girl would be able to convince the rest of them to let her join them.
"I still don't know how she did it," Crimson muttered beneath her breath, holding her head as she slowly shook it.
"She made a very convincing argument," Red XIII said as he walked by, hearing her with his inhumanly sharp ears. "You can't fault her points."
"I know, damn it, but that doesn't make it any easier to accept." The key point was that she had a way to infiltrate the Junon through the town below it. Apparently she had made friends with a little girl named Priscilla, who lived in the town beneath the base. It was through this friendship she had found a way to get into the base above without being detected.
Even at a distance she could see that the town was run-down, buried beneath tons of steel above that blotted out the sun and denied the sand its warming rays and comfort. The water was polluted from run-off from the base, the underwater reactor not helping things along. One could imagine that if the base hadn't been built it would have been as beautiful as Costa del Sol….
Just the thought of the beach made Crimson miss the time she spent there on break. Sure, she and Zack had been attacked by clones that had been misshapen and twisted. But at least she could relax and enjoy it all before then. And she liked that swimsuit too, but it got left behind when she had to take Cloud and leave the Turks the first time.
She shook her head, driving away the stray thoughts. There was no time to relax. She had to get to the other continent and head to the Shinra Mansion in search for something that could help Cloud. That was where he and Zack were, so it was their best bet unless they could find Hojo.
As for how they were supposed to get up there, the girl had supposedly managed to tame a dolphin. Yuffie used it to climb from below to get to the base higher up undetected. It honestly sounded absurd and she had doubts about how effective that was.
But the fact that Yuffie had several materia that should be on the base was proof that she had some way to get them. If she was lying then there were much better lies she could have told. And it was an out-of-context solution that it could render the safeguards they had been put into place against such an infiltration meaningless. If she had another way in she'd take it, but right now they were limited on options.
Her PHS rang before she could stew on it further. It was Kunsel, according to the screen ID. She answered. "Hello?"
"So a contact of mine in Kalm I called said something about an argument between the inn-guest and the keeper there several days ago," he started with. "Hearing that it was over a flaming-tailed exotic pet, I figured I'd call and see how things were going?"
Crimson frowned. Did he have people everywhere? "We really do stick out, don't we?"
"Big time," he said. "Seriously, how far did you make it? Are you okay?"
"Well, we left Kalm, went to get chocobos from the ranch but they were out. So we had to catch our own to get through the Marshes. Then we got attacked by… well, I'm assuming all the Midgar Zolom snakelets, and one of the adults that we managed to kill off. The other was, according to Cloud's investigation, killed by Sephiroth. Then we went through the Mythril Mines, ran into Reno and Rude, and now we're outside of Junon, with a plan to get on a ship and then get to Costa del Sol. With me so far?"
There was an audible pause over the other line. "… nice to see you've been taking it easy. Here I was worried you were going to tire yourself out while I was sitting a beach in Costa del Sol and enjoying the nice sun and sand."
She felt a note of aggravation building inside of her. "Was that sarcasm?"
"Nooooo," he said, sarcastically. "Seriously though, you should take it easy… Then again, telling you this next part won't help on that front now will it?"
She sighed. Whatever he had to tell her would likely just make her head hurt from more problems. "Okay, let me have it."
"Hojo is here," he said. "As in he's right on this very beach, lounging in the sun, with a gaggle of women hovering over him like he's the hottest thing under the sun."
That… sounded too good to be true. All it would take was one boat ride and they'd be there to snatch him up, grill him for information, and then be off. She'd take that as the good news and assume that the bad news was proportionate to it. "And what's the catch?"
"The movements around the base have changed," he said. "Some of those women flocking around him are military from what I can see in how they carry themselves, probably sent to keep an eye on him without him realizing it, and they've tightened restrictions on travel leaving and entering the area."
That could be a problem. If they restricted the way that they could enter and leave then that meant whatever boat they hid on would need to undergo a thorough investigation. That meant smuggling would be harder with the only exception being certain vessels, all of which that came to mind being military.
"One last thing," he added, as if he hadn't finished raising her stress-level for the moment. "Hushed word around the base is that Rufus and Heidegger are coming soon."
…. And there was the headache, right on cue.