[fic] FFVII: Gunpowder & Firecrackers (chapter 12)
FINAL FANTASY VII
Gunpowder and Firecrackers
[Other header stuff: PG-13, Rude/Tifa, Rufus/Yuffie/Reno, AU to DoC, spoilers up to end of AC]

It is fifteen years after Meteor, thirteen years after Kadaj's defeat. Rufus Shinra, leader of the world philanthropic organization Green Earth, has been having odd dreams about Cloud Strife, about Sephiroth, about the mysterious town of Nibelheim. In a world where peace is as fragile and elusive as the voices of the lost Ancients, the old members of AVALANCHE and Shinra struggle to piece together the secrets of the Lifestream and Jenova's legacy in a race against time to save the ones they love.


XII. Yuffie

The only things Yuffie hated more than flying were flying on either an empty stomach or a full stomach. She'd grabbed a breakfast bar from the basket of goodies in her hotel room before she departed, but just the thought of food had made her nauseous, so she'd ended up throwing it away. And now, as her tiny biplane dipped through turbulent air of the clouded morning sky, traveling east from Gongaga toward Cosmo Canyon, she was paying the price.

They'd thought she had left for Wutai. At least, she hoped so; she'd made a great show of boarding the ship off to the new airship port on the northern coast, where she'd left her small boat parked in one of the coves. It was no fancy yacht, but it did the job, and it was a sight better than the Tiny Bronco. As far as she knew, the boat was still parked out there. The airship had docked and Yuffie had been down the ramp and up the stairs of the ship parked next to it, bound for Gongaga. By that time, the sun had set, and she was tired, restless, hungry, and worn out, but found she couldn't sleep.

It was not only the airsickness. Every time she tried to close her eyes, she felt Reno's lips close down on hers, almost bruisingly commanding in their possessiveness. It hadn't been her first kiss - there had been a few boys in Wutai behind her father's back during her early teenage years before AVALANCHE, some playing around that hadn't gotten much further than making out behind some of the old ruins on the outskirts of the city. But that had been years ago, and ever since the war, it was as if she'd given up any thought of romance. It was Wutai or love, she'd thought, and she'd chosen Wutai.

Besides, she had never even considered dating someone who could not understand what she'd been through, and that was limiting herself to a rather small selection. Cloud and Cid were taken, Barret was more like her father, and Vincent was too untouchable. That left the former members of Shinra, and Yuffie hadn't been too fond of that idea until she'd begun keeping in touch with Rufus Shinra. If that kiss last night had to be from one of them, she'd caught herself thinking, why couldn't it have been Rufus?

She'd liked Reno before the events in her hotel room. She had wished fervently that she could have shown him that Materia, could have begged him to take it from her. But she'd sworn to Vincent on that fear-filled flight back to Corel that among other things, she wouldn't give that Materia up to anyone, and keeping oaths was one thing she knew how to do well. If only Reno had understood that, things wouldn't be so complicated now, and she wouldn't be sitting here behind the controls of a tiny biplane circling Cosmo Canyon's outer rim, red-eyed and food-deprived, remembering the desperate fury of that kiss. Reno's body was long and lean with the physique of a long-distance runner, and when Yuffie unfocused, she remembered again the curve of his neck in her startled vision as he leaned forward to imprison her between his hands.

He'd smelled like salt and sweat and three-day old unwashed clothes, but in the mix of that there was a scent that was uniquely him, musky and lingering.

Stop, she thought to herself, struggling to keep her eyes open and feeling her cheeks burn as the memory surfaced again. Just stop. He's a casual friend. You were both tired. It's nothing.

The plane broke below the clouds then, and she could see Cosmo Canyon below, shrouded in fog and mist. The place had always struck her as lonely, but now it looked abandoned, ghostly in its isolation. For a moment, a shred of panic gripped her heart that it might have ended up like Nibelheim, but then she saw a thin spiral of hearth-smoke wisp up from one of the chimney peaks, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

She had a bit of trouble landing the plane, as she always did, but the biplane finally skidded to a halt on a thin scree of loose rocks and debris. Cid was going to kill her, she decided, climbing down from the cockpit and surveying the dust and scratches her rough landing had cost the plane's paint job. At least nothing was broken.

There was no sentry party, no surveillance system here. In Wutai, she'd installed posts around the perimeter with scanning equipment, checkpoints manned with twenty-four hour patrols. Even in Corel, she'd seen the signs of police stations on the outskirts of the city. It was as if Cosmo Canyon belonged to an earlier time, an era where the primitive notion of trust and honor still reigned.

It had been like that in Wutai once, her father had told her. Before Shinra. Before the war.

She forced her tired legs up the gravel hillside path, hoping that the Canyon's gates were open and they were accepting visitors. She didn't know why they wouldn't be. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Geostigma and Sephiroth were things of the past. It seemed strange to realize that she was one of the few people on the Planet who feared otherwise. The image of Vincent's diseased arm flashed into her mind, temporarily displacing any stray thoughts of Reno, and she shivered.

"Welcome to Cosmo Canyon! Ma'am?"

Yuffie jumped at the voice. It was only then that she realized she'd reached the top of the hill and was standing before Cosmo Canyon's rough-hewn wooden gates, where the signal fire was still burning brightly, crackling and cheerful. The man standing there was about her age, with an easy smile on his face and long dark hair tied back. His eyes strayed to the shuriken strapped to her back, widening slightly, but he made no comment.

"I..." she said, and hesitated. "Is Cosmo Canyon accepting visitors?"

The man looked puzzled. "Of course. If you'll just fill out this form here, and sign-" He pushed an electronic touchscreen into her hands, and she took the attached pressure pen dazedly, filled in Name (Kisaragi), Town of Origin (Wutai), Age (31), Previous Schooling (grade school), and Contact Information (none of your business). She paused at Purpose of Visit. Materia study? Lifestream Research? The man seemed to be impatiently waiting, so she finally scrawled Visiting Friend into the blank, and handed it back to him.

"You have a friend here?" the man inquired politely, slipping the pad into a holder by the gate. "We'd be glad to look up a name for you in our directory. All our researchers are in-camp at the moment."

He hadn't recognized her name. Yuffie wasn't sure if she was insulted or relieved, but instead she said, "I'd like to be directed to the lord of Cosmo Canyon, please."

The man looked startled. "I'm afraid that's highly improbable, ma'am. The lord of the Canyon is not available."

"You said that all of your researchers were in-camp and available," Yuffie pointed out.

"Lord Nanaki isn't considered a researcher, ma'am. You'll have to make an appointment to see him."

She considered pulling rank, but even the thought of that was tiresome, so she said, "No, thank you. It's not urgent."

"Ma'am-"

"Thanks for your hospitality," she told him firmly, and moved past him through the wooden archway. To his credit, he didn't protest or try to offer her more help or information, as she was half afraid he was going to. If Nanaki was here, she'd find him herself.

Cosmo Canyon had changed little in the past fifteen years, and little prickles of nostalgia gave her goosebumps. There was the fire they'd all sat around that night after they were afraid Red XIII was going to leave them. There were the ladder-stars they'd climbed to reach Bugenhagen's observatory. There was the same morning star in the lightening sky over the dusty red cliffs. Suddenly, she missed Cloud so much she could cry.

It's all different now, she reminded herself fiercely, blinking back the tears and settling the Conformer's strap more comfortably over her shoulder. The red Summon Materia that Vincent had given her was the only Materia she had, nestled firmly in the rightmost slot. She reached behind to touch it, as if to reassure herself it was really there. It had been a strained flight back to Corel, with Vincent curled up beside her in the copilot's seat in a bleeding fetal position, talking to her about the Materia, about the cave, but only in the most general of terms.

"But Vince," she'd hissed, frustrated and angry and scared. "What is it?"

"I'm afraid that it has something to do with Cloud," he'd said, the only answer he'd give no matter how she pressed him. "Hopefully I'm wrong."

So she'd taken matters into her own hands. The most straightforward way to find out what that Materia was was to use it. But Yuffie was no fool - she'd heard her share of stories as a child about Materia that had blown up in people's faces, or Materia that had suddenly exploded into giant monstrosities that turned on their users and killed them. Given the dubious origins of this one, either of the above might be likely scenarios. No, Yuffie wanted to make it back to Corel and Vincent and Rufus in one piece. And Reno? her mind nagged, and she growled at it, he doesn't matter right now.

It looked like several of the researchers, white-bearded, professor types by the looks of them, were early risers. There were two sitting around the central campfire, and she supposed it would be all right if she walked over and joined them. She knew the way up to Bugenhagen's observatory, where Nanaki's quarters were, but she didn't feel like facing her old friend at the moment.

As she took a seat on one of the big logs around the fire, she saw that one of her fellow fire-sitters was actually a woman, though she was dressed in the same loose clothes and comfortable shoes as the white-haired man sitting next to her. He smiled at her.

"Morning."

"Good morning," she responded and barely stifled a yawn. The woman laughed.

"Long night?"

Yuffie nodded, unslinging her shuriken and placing it carefully next to her, leaning on her leg. "It was a long flight from Gongaga."

"Your first time here to Cosmo Canyon?" the woman asked. Yuffie shook her head.

"I haven't been back in years though. Nine years, maybe? Ten? I can't quite remember."

The man stood up and it took her several seconds to realize that he was offering something to her - a mug grasped in one hand. She reached out to take it, realized it was coffee, and for a moment the kindly professor-like gentleman's visage wavered, transformed into Rufus Shinra, leaning heavily on his cane, blond hair glimmering in the dying light of day, with a cup of coffee in his hand.

The tears did spill over, then. She wiped them away angrily with the back of her hand and took the cup of coffee with trembling fingers. She heard the woman say, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Yuffie managed, reseating herself on the log bench and cradling the cup in her hands. "I just need to rest, I think." She took a cup of the coffee. It was pleasantly warm, settling in her stomach with just the right amount of heat, and suddenly she was ravenously hungry.

"Are the kitchens open yet?" she inquired politely, and the man shook his head.

"It's another hour, but I've got a sandwich, if you're hungry."

She tried not to sound too eager. "If you don't mind. I haven't eaten since breakfast yesterday."

The woman tsked, sounding quite motherly, as the man dug a slightly flattened sandwich out of a satchel at his feet. Yuffie didn't care. She accepted the packet and wolfed it down in three bites.

"I'm Sassan," the man said with some amusement as she cleaned the finishings of the bread and cheese from between her teeth. "Sassan Monk. This is my wife Harin."

Belatedly, Yuffie realized that she had been sitting here with these people for almost five minutes and hadn't introduced herself. Two days in Corel and she was already losing her mind. "I apologize," she said, standing up and sketching a quick bow. "Yuffie Kisaragi, from Wutai."

The woman's lips made a little "o" shape, and Yuffie felt slightly embarrassed. "The lady of Wutai?" Harin said, and Yuffie nodded self-consciously.

"The same. I'm usually not so..." she fumbled for a word. "Hungry?"

Both of them laughed. "It's an honor," Sassan said. "We're from Kalm, just here on holiday and to do a little research."

"What are you studying?" Yuffie said, hoping to make some small talk as she finished her coffee. Instead, Sassan said, "Oh, this and that, little things mostly," and his wife's expression went very guarded. Apparently, whatever they were here for was somehow secretive, but she supposed that was to be expected. Since the war ended, the study of anything to do with Mako or the Lifestream was frowned upon. Forget that Aeris' water had healed Geostigma - people now were more obsessed with moving on with their lives, building bigger and higher and faster. Privately, Yuffie had thought that it was more like Shinra without Shinra, and to her surprise, Rufus had agreed with her.

It just goes to show, he'd written a few years ago, that the world didn't need me after all. They can slowly poison themselves just fine without me.

Yuffie had shot back that Rufus had missed the point, that Shinra's methods had been more like bashing people with massive hammers than slow poisoning, but now sitting here in the clean air and brilliant sunrise of Cosmo Canyon, she wished that Rufus was here with her. He would understand.

She finished her coffee and stood, stretched slightly, and slung the Conformer back over her shoulder. Handing the cup to Sassan, she bowed to him again. "It was nice to meet you," she said. "I hope to see you again."

To her surprise, he stood and bowed back to her. "It was an honor, lady," he said, and she smiled at him as she left the fire's warm glow. Perhaps he was just saying that for the etiquette of it. She was sure her face was caked with dirt and grime and that she stunk - like Reno the other afternoon, when she'd offered to lend him her room.

"Oh stop it, Yuffie," she muttered, and stomped back across the expanse of red dirt and canyon grass to the door where the materia and weapons shops used to be. She was not surprised to find that they were gone now, and that the space had been converted to bunks for visitors. The room was vacant. The man at the gate hadn't said anything to her about reserving a bunk, so she shrugged, dumped her pack and gear down on the nearest bed, and headed to the attached bathroom to wash her face.

The cold water rinse combined with coffee seemed to clear her head a bit, and she grabbed the Conformer and headed up the stairs, to Bugenhagen's old place.

She was half afraid the doors would all be locked. Instead, as she stepped out onto the second landing, she saw that a new set of ladders had been built into the cliff walls, leading straight up to the old man's former offices. As she scaled the top of the ladder and raised her hand to knock, she fervently hoped that Nanaki was there.

He was. The door opened gently, and suddenly there was a familiar gravelly voice exclaiming from below - "Yuffie!"

Her knees buckled and she dropped to the ground, emotion washing over her. It was the lack of sleep, because usually she wasn't so teary-eyed. Nanaki hadn't changed much, though he'd filled out a little bit and his coat looked thicker and wilder. She wanted to hug him, but he had never liked anyone touching him, so she simply held out one hand and he dropped his nose into it and licked her palm. His large, expressive eyes, so much more intelligent than any animal's, looked pleased and then concerned.

"What's wrong, Yuffie? Why the sudden visit?"

"Nanaki," she said. "May I come in? I really need your help."