Case of Yuffie |2| (FF7 [PG-13])
Title: Case of Yuffie
Chapter: 2--Meeting at Seventh Heaven: Happy Chitchat
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Yuffie/Rude, Tifa, Cloud, Barret, Marlene, Cast
Summary: Picking up the pieces of life on the fringe of Midgar--and gawd, if Rude would just stop breathing her air!
The next morning was bright-it made Yuffie’s headache worse. She drank a potion and tried to make the best of the situation without letting Tifa know she’d been at another bar until the wee hours of the morning-drinking alcohol no less. Tifa was a firm believer in the “no underage drinking” policy.
Thudding down the steps of the very raw looking Seventh Heaven that Cloud and Barret had thrown together in a few weeks for Tifa, she covered a yawn that threatened to break her jaw. She was so tired. She was always tired anymore. Even when she didn’t stay out doing bitching ninja things-like getting drunk off her ass behind peoples backs-she was tired.
Walking out the door with bed head and lazily, poorly, pulled on clothing, Yuffie came up short. Cloud, Barret and Tifa had beaten her outside, as usual, but there was something different today. Rude was standing outside across from the trio. It was an extremely awkward, pathetic looking face off with everyone looking more like they were about to collapse from malnutrition than throw down in the street.
She honestly hadn’t thought he’d take her up on her offer at the bar. She didn’t even know why she’d offered. But there he was. And everyone was looking at him. Barret was looking pissed. Tifa was looking tired. Cloud was looking deadpan JENOVA-stole-my-personality. Rude was looking like a block of wood.
“You want to help?” Cloud said, apparently repeating what Rude had probably said. Rude nodded. Barret looked like he might explode-literally explode, as in guts everywhere, one big giant mess to add to the other giant mess of destroyed Midgar-and Tifa laid a placating hand on his arm. “Alright,” Cloud said. “Let’s get started.”
It was at that moment Yuffie realized she had a deep-seated loathing for Cloud Strife, the man who could simply not tell anyone to go off and fuck themselves when they offered to help. Example: He’d let her come along after she stole all his materia and left Cid and Vincent trapped in a steel cage. The man could simply not say no to the important things. Like people who were ShinRa to the core. She wanted a re-vote on who was the leader here.
Cloud started dishing out orders in usual leader style-a monotone voice and lackluster pointing. Rude nodded, apparently not troubled at taking commands from his former enemy. Yuffie stood in an angry daze at Rude’s wordless inclusion in their small group and it wasn’t until Barret demanded-loudly-what was damn wrong with her today that she realized Cloud had been speaking to her. “Yeah, I heard you, Sector 2,” she lied. Cloud stared at her and she knew she’d guessed wrong.
“Sector 6 Yuffie,” he said shaking his head ever so slightly. “Are you alright?” He stared at her like he was going to suck out her soul. That was the annoying thing about mako eyes; everything they did seemed intense. Incredibly intense. “I’m going to eat you alive” intense. It was so dumb-she was completely jealous.
Yuffie blushed ever so slightly. Now she looked stupid in front of Rude. She looked weak in front of the enemy. “Sorry, standing around waiting for you old farts to move was putting me back to sleep,” she said to cover her lapse and ran off in the direction of Sector 6.
She spent the rest of her day sifting rubble for survivors and killing the few monsters she encountered, part of a wave that had begun to encroach on the ruined city. She hadn’t liked Midgar before the disaster, but it definitely wasn’t any better now. It was awful. Walking the empty, shattered streets and playing peek-a-boo with corpses awful. She helped the people she found alive to the poor quality medical facilities in what was becoming known as Edge on the border of dead Midgar. When the sun had set she called it a night. She knew there were more. There were always more. And tomorrow they might be merely bodies. It was a race against time and she hated it.
“Yuffie, why aren’t you eating? I know Barret made it, but it’s not that bad,” Tifa said during dinner over one of the rickety bar tables in Seventh Heaven. “Hey! My cooking ain’t dat fucking bad, ya hear!” Barret yelled, banging his gun arm on the table for emphasis. All the plates jumped and the table buckled. They all waited for a moment to see if it would remain standing; it did.
“Gawd Barret, why don’t you just chuck the table out the window?” Yuffie muttered, setting her plate back down now that the table wasn’t in danger of becoming collateral. Her remark was lost as Barret let loose a string of curses complaining that things weren’t built like they used to be. Silence followed his comment.
From behind an uncaring façade Yuffie watched her companions. Tifa had taken to staring at the table while Barret ran his large, beefy fingers over the spot where the metal of his gun joined the flesh of his arm. Cloud said nothing, but his eyes had become lost, vacant. There was no one home in those eyes.
It was some sort of unspoken taboo to talk about how things were before. None of them liked it, but none of them could stand to touch those scars yet. Even Yuffie didn’t want to probe those wounds. It was too soon.
They all cried at night.
“Gawd, when can we get some decent food?” Yuffie demanded in the silence, spearing an old, wizened carrot and holding it up for everyone to inspect. It wilted in the light of the building as if all the life had been sucked from it. It looked like a dead worm and while Yuffie was acquainted with the finer points of eating insects, she did not endorse it. She shook her fork and the carrot began to do a little dance.
“Stop playin’ wit your damn food!” Barret yelled like a true father figure while Tifa smiled. Cloud just shook his head because he had a stick up his ass a mile long and a brain like mush-or so Yuffie reasoned. The ninja popped the carrot into her mouth and, with superhuman effort, managed to swallow the thing.
“I want meat! Meat!” She complained and poked the noodles on her plate that Barret had overcooked. “I’ll see what I can do next time I go for supplies,” Cloud said and picked up his plate. Yuffie groaned. Cloud had gone for supplies-potions, bandages, food, whatever neighboring towns could spare to help the effort in Midgar-just two days ago. She wasn’t getting any meat anytime soon.
As Cloud and Barret began to clear the table off, Tifa returned her attention to Yuffie. “Yuffie, what’s bothering you? You usually complain more than that when Barret cooks,” the fighter said and trust Tifa to notice when Yuffie wasn’t on her usual, awesome ninja game. Yuffie made an annoyed sound and gave her plate to Cloud. No way was she going to eat those noodles. They looked more like mako poisoned sludge than something edible.
“…How can you stand it Tifa? Doesn’t it make you mad having him help out?” She demanded quietly. There was no need to specify who she meant by “him”; they both knew she was referring to Rude. Tifa frowned slightly and tugged absently at the cuffs of her gloves. “Yeah, it does,” the fighter admitted slowly, “but…he’s trying to do the right thing I think. We can’t really tell him no.”
Tifa grinned suddenly and put her hand on Yuffie’s shoulder. “Besides, I’d rather have Rude than Reno,” she laughed and Yuffie groaned. “Gawd, don’t even joke about that! It might just happen!” The ninja grumbled and Tifa laughed harder.
Yuffie paused and observed the older woman. Tifa didn’t laugh a lot lately. Almost as if she sensed Yuffie’s thoughts, Tifa quieted down again, her natural frown of late resuming. She even looked a little guilty about laughing, as if she had no right to after all that had happened-was still happening.
Yuffie hated this. This oppressive despair they were all living under. They’d saved the world! It didn’t feel like it.
“Damn fucking pot!” Barret yelled; he had a small, dirty pot in one hand and a soaked rag covered in suds perched precariously on his gun. The gun-being large and bulky-wasn’t interacting well with the pot and Barret’s complexion wasn’t looking passive either. Seeing his aggressive motions Tifa stood up and quickly ran over. “Don’t you shoot my pot Barret Wallace! I’m not finding another one!”
“Well den get a bigger pot!”
“You get a bigger pot! I’ve been looking and I haven’t seen one!”
Yuffie walked up the stairs and flopped onto the battered, dingy bed in the room she shared with Tifa. She could still hear arguing and wasn’t surprised when gunfire broke out. Barret was firing into the sky again. Sometimes he was such a nutter.
She fell asleep to the sound of gunfire and curses.
“I think I’m going to stay here today,” Tifa said the next morning and Yuffie gawped at her. Cloud nodded in some sort of secret understanding and Barret made a vague comment about business picking up that meant nothing. Tifa stay at home, like some sort of mommy? What the hell?
“If we’re going to open this bar, someone’s got to be here and fix things up right,” Tifa continued with a small smile that looked like it’d been drawn on with broken crayons. “With Rude here you won’t even notice.”
“Like hell I wouldn’t. Unless Rude decides to grow monster boobs and some hair,” Yuffie muttered under her breath, but didn’t protest. It was Tifa’s decision. The ninja was kind of pissed at Cloud for not saying anything-as the leader wasn’t it his job to say they should stick together?-but that was Cloud. Biggest pain in the ass on the whole damn planet.
“You said you needed groceries Tifa. I’ll pick those up today,” Cloud said and Tifa had no hesitation in putting a list into his hands. It was kind of funny to watch the great Strife read it with a look of pained puzzlement. “Parsley…” He muttered at one point, a “what the hell is this” stare on his face. “Honeydew melon…?”
“Try and find as many things as you can, alright Cloud?” Tifa asked and he nodded, swiftly hiding his obvious uncertainty at half the things on the list. “You put meat on that thing, right Tifa? Right?” Yuffie cut in smoothly-loudly-attempting to grab the paper from Cloud’s hands and missing as he pulled it away and stuffed it in his pocket. What a tightass.
“Where do we start today?” Rude interrupted as Yuffie surreptitiously snuck her hand towards Cloud’s pocket. “Barret signed on to guard a transport truck today,” their spiky haired leader said, deftly catching Yuffie’s hand and removing it from his pocket. “You and Yuffie can give the Sector Four Slums a look over.”
“Wait, whoa, what?” Yuffie yelped, yanking her hand from Cloud’s. “Sector Four Slums?” The ninja backed up a bit. She stopped when she noticed Rude looking at her. Not just looking, but Looking. She quickly attempted to put on an uncaring attitude.
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to Yuffie. You can stay here and help me set up the bar,” Tifa volunteered kindly and way to rub it in Tifs. Now it was blatantly obvious she disliked the idea of going to the Sector Four Slums. Time for a quick cover. “I’m just worried about Rude. Being old and hanging out all night at sleazy bars as he does,” were the words that ended up popping out of her mouth.
Tifa raised her eyebrows and glanced over at Rude. “Oh, that’s right, where are you staying Rude?” She asked and the Turk made a vague motion that could have meant anything from “in a classy hotel invisible to the naked eye” to “in that ditch right over there”. Tifa’s eyes narrowed slightly and her mouth pursed just a little bit. This was bad news in Yuffie’s opinion as she saw what was coming next. She hoped she was wrong in her assumption.
“You can stay at the Seventh Heaven while you’re here Rude. It’s the least we can do for you when you’re helping out,” Tifa said and Yuffie wanted to rage against the fighter’s innate goodness. There was no way Yuffie was sleeping under the same roof as Rude. Why did everyone like him so much? He’d tried to kill them! Repeatedly!
“Yuffie, Sector Four Slums,” Cloud reminded and she wanted to rip his spikes off. Instead she mentally pictured herself giving him the finger-she’d never do it when he was looking…well maybe she might-and set off towards the ruins of Midgar. “Come on Old Man!” She yelled back to Rude. She meant to piss him off, but he only shrugged and caught up with her easily. She hated his long legs.
“What’s in Sector Four?” The Turk asked idly and she gave a dark laugh, the thought of Sector Four making her skin crawl even as the surprise it held for Rude delighted her. “You’ll see,” she muttered and started walking faster. Rude kept up without even pausing to think her words over. She despised Turks.
The Sector Four Slums were just as they’d been last time Yuffie had come through-depressing. Everything was in ruins. The plate overhead was riddled with holes and largely unstable. Daylight came in weakly and the rank smell of rotting flesh hid among the wreckage. Rude only paused to adjust his sunglasses as the two surveyed their domain for the day. Yuffie hated him for his calmness. To him this was nothing more than looking over his former employer’s setbacks she supposed. Well he hadn’t seen the worst of it yet, she comforted herself.
“We’d better get started,” Yuffie snapped and slid down the steep decline into the sector. Rude followed silently and she hated him for that too. Together they made their way through the ragged streets. Yuffie knew she could have told Rude to split up, but she didn’t want to be down there alone, even if the alternative meant she had to spend the day with a Turk.
It wasn’t long before the fun she dreaded began. “We’re being watched,” Rude murmured to her after barely five minutes in the seemingly deserted hellhole. “I know,” Yuffie murmured back. “Don’t let them know you know. They’re not afraid to eat human flesh.”
Rude stared at her. She felt he might have been surprised and maybe a little disturbed, but-the shades blocked out all emotion. “You’re kidding, right?” He asked quietly, though his pace didn’t falter in the least. “Does this look like the face of a kidder to you?” Yuffie demanded. There was silence. “I’m not so sick I’d make a joke like that!” Yuffie hissed and again there was silence. “…Alright. What are we going to do then?” Rude finally said and the thought of a Turk asking her for directions nearly made Yuffie fall over in surprise. She managed to contain herself. “Just keep walking.”
“Keep walking?”
“Yea. They’ll go away after a while as long as we don’t show any weakness.”
“…You’re sure?”
“Damn sure, so shut up and keep walking.”
Rude stopped walking. Yuffie was forced to stop too, not willing to continue on her own. “What are you doing?” She hissed. Rude shifted his hand ever so slightly at her in a shushing motion. She wanted to beat his bald head into mush. Only instinctive self-preservation kept her from it.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” Rude called out, staring straight at the shadows their stalkers were hiding in as he adjusted his gloves. The shadows flickered and a thin voice yelled, “Go away!”
Rude stared levelly at the spot where the voice had come from. “Make me,” he called back. Yuffie stared at him. “What the hell are you doing?”
He made that slight shushing motion again, hardly discernable, but there all the same. She was going to kill him. She was going to slit his throat with her pinwheel and leave him for the monsters to eat.
For a moment nothing happened. Then a rock sailed out of the shadows to land a pitiful distance away. A couple of kids fled from the shadows, disappearing among the ruins before Rude even had a chance to react to the pathetic attack. The Turk stared after them. “You said they ate human flesh. Those were just some kids,” He said after a fitful silence.
“Yea, well I lied,” Yuffie informed him. Honestly, he was so gullible. “I thought you weren’t that sick,” he grumbled. She gave him a playful punch to the shoulder, harder than she would have normally done with someone else. “I make a special exception for you,” she informed him and put her hands in her pockets. She started whistling and walked off down the broken road. By the time Rude moved he had to run to catch up.
They scoured the slum for the rest of the day. There was always the sense of being watched, but no one came straight out and attacked them. They met a few monsters and dispatched them easily. So far as people went they saw no one until the end of the day.
On their way back to Seventh Heaven they saw a kid. A man was standing over the boy, trying to get him to stand up, but as soon as the man spotted Yuffie and Rude he fled, leaving the boy behind. Rude walked over to the abandoned ten year-old. “You alright kid?” He asked, kneeling down next to the child and helping him sit up.
Yuffie bit her lip and held her distance. For a moment she looked away, though if Rude noticed he said nothing. “Are you sick?” The Turk asked and the boy stared up at him with dazed eyes. “Yuffie, do you have a potion?” The Turk called. Before he even finished his sentence the boy gave a breathless whimper and went limp.
Rude stared down at the blackness that dripped from the boy’s pale skin and began to soak into his sleeve until he felt the slickness of it against his skin. “Don’t let it touch you,” Yuffie snapped and quickly rolled up the stained part of the Turk’s jacket. She pulled out her water bottle and washed away the black bile from his skin. Rude stared at her from behind his shades as she met his gaze.
“It’s the stigma,” She explained quietly. “They call it Geostigma. It kills you from the inside out, slowly, painfully. No one’s sure how it’s spread.”
Rude gazed out over the Sector Four Slums and she supposed now he understood the invisible stares that had followed them all day. “There’s no treatment for it. So the infected have to hide here,” he said, his statement a slight question at the end. Yuffie looked down. “Everyone feels sorry for them, but no one wants to risk contamination.”
“You’re here,” Rude said. She gave a small shrug. “I’m everywhere. Where I’m not right now though is back at Seventh Heaven eating dinner. Cloud’s cooking tonight and don’t think I’m going to miss it for your sweet, baby blue eyes,” she quipped, not liking the insinuation that she was a good person for being there. It only made her feel guilty. She hadn’t wanted to come in the first place.
“Strife…cooks?” Rude choked out. Yuffie grinned. “Strife cooks like the devil. Sinfully delicious. If you want I can save you table scraps like a dog,” she offered-she thought kindly-but Rude declined, saying he already had somewhere to eat for the night.
They set off towards Edge. Back at Seventh Heaven Cloud had made meatloaf. Meatloaf. It was meat. In the shape of a loaf. It was meat. Yuffie cast aside her forced vegetarianism with more gusto than she cast aside Barret’s admonishments on table etiquette-reinforced of course with loud bangs of his gun arm on the table.
Rude ended up sitting at the bar, a glass of alcohol-on the house if she knew Tifa-in his hands. As Yuffie passed by later he said so softly she barely heard him, “My eyes aren’t baby blue.” She couldn’t help, but grin as she thumped up the stairs to her bed.
Chapter: 2--Meeting at Seventh Heaven: Happy Chitchat
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Yuffie/Rude, Tifa, Cloud, Barret, Marlene, Cast
Summary: Picking up the pieces of life on the fringe of Midgar--and gawd, if Rude would just stop breathing her air!
The next morning was bright-it made Yuffie’s headache worse. She drank a potion and tried to make the best of the situation without letting Tifa know she’d been at another bar until the wee hours of the morning-drinking alcohol no less. Tifa was a firm believer in the “no underage drinking” policy.
Thudding down the steps of the very raw looking Seventh Heaven that Cloud and Barret had thrown together in a few weeks for Tifa, she covered a yawn that threatened to break her jaw. She was so tired. She was always tired anymore. Even when she didn’t stay out doing bitching ninja things-like getting drunk off her ass behind peoples backs-she was tired.
Walking out the door with bed head and lazily, poorly, pulled on clothing, Yuffie came up short. Cloud, Barret and Tifa had beaten her outside, as usual, but there was something different today. Rude was standing outside across from the trio. It was an extremely awkward, pathetic looking face off with everyone looking more like they were about to collapse from malnutrition than throw down in the street.
She honestly hadn’t thought he’d take her up on her offer at the bar. She didn’t even know why she’d offered. But there he was. And everyone was looking at him. Barret was looking pissed. Tifa was looking tired. Cloud was looking deadpan JENOVA-stole-my-personality. Rude was looking like a block of wood.
“You want to help?” Cloud said, apparently repeating what Rude had probably said. Rude nodded. Barret looked like he might explode-literally explode, as in guts everywhere, one big giant mess to add to the other giant mess of destroyed Midgar-and Tifa laid a placating hand on his arm. “Alright,” Cloud said. “Let’s get started.”
It was at that moment Yuffie realized she had a deep-seated loathing for Cloud Strife, the man who could simply not tell anyone to go off and fuck themselves when they offered to help. Example: He’d let her come along after she stole all his materia and left Cid and Vincent trapped in a steel cage. The man could simply not say no to the important things. Like people who were ShinRa to the core. She wanted a re-vote on who was the leader here.
Cloud started dishing out orders in usual leader style-a monotone voice and lackluster pointing. Rude nodded, apparently not troubled at taking commands from his former enemy. Yuffie stood in an angry daze at Rude’s wordless inclusion in their small group and it wasn’t until Barret demanded-loudly-what was damn wrong with her today that she realized Cloud had been speaking to her. “Yeah, I heard you, Sector 2,” she lied. Cloud stared at her and she knew she’d guessed wrong.
“Sector 6 Yuffie,” he said shaking his head ever so slightly. “Are you alright?” He stared at her like he was going to suck out her soul. That was the annoying thing about mako eyes; everything they did seemed intense. Incredibly intense. “I’m going to eat you alive” intense. It was so dumb-she was completely jealous.
Yuffie blushed ever so slightly. Now she looked stupid in front of Rude. She looked weak in front of the enemy. “Sorry, standing around waiting for you old farts to move was putting me back to sleep,” she said to cover her lapse and ran off in the direction of Sector 6.
She spent the rest of her day sifting rubble for survivors and killing the few monsters she encountered, part of a wave that had begun to encroach on the ruined city. She hadn’t liked Midgar before the disaster, but it definitely wasn’t any better now. It was awful. Walking the empty, shattered streets and playing peek-a-boo with corpses awful. She helped the people she found alive to the poor quality medical facilities in what was becoming known as Edge on the border of dead Midgar. When the sun had set she called it a night. She knew there were more. There were always more. And tomorrow they might be merely bodies. It was a race against time and she hated it.
“Yuffie, why aren’t you eating? I know Barret made it, but it’s not that bad,” Tifa said during dinner over one of the rickety bar tables in Seventh Heaven. “Hey! My cooking ain’t dat fucking bad, ya hear!” Barret yelled, banging his gun arm on the table for emphasis. All the plates jumped and the table buckled. They all waited for a moment to see if it would remain standing; it did.
“Gawd Barret, why don’t you just chuck the table out the window?” Yuffie muttered, setting her plate back down now that the table wasn’t in danger of becoming collateral. Her remark was lost as Barret let loose a string of curses complaining that things weren’t built like they used to be. Silence followed his comment.
From behind an uncaring façade Yuffie watched her companions. Tifa had taken to staring at the table while Barret ran his large, beefy fingers over the spot where the metal of his gun joined the flesh of his arm. Cloud said nothing, but his eyes had become lost, vacant. There was no one home in those eyes.
It was some sort of unspoken taboo to talk about how things were before. None of them liked it, but none of them could stand to touch those scars yet. Even Yuffie didn’t want to probe those wounds. It was too soon.
They all cried at night.
“Gawd, when can we get some decent food?” Yuffie demanded in the silence, spearing an old, wizened carrot and holding it up for everyone to inspect. It wilted in the light of the building as if all the life had been sucked from it. It looked like a dead worm and while Yuffie was acquainted with the finer points of eating insects, she did not endorse it. She shook her fork and the carrot began to do a little dance.
“Stop playin’ wit your damn food!” Barret yelled like a true father figure while Tifa smiled. Cloud just shook his head because he had a stick up his ass a mile long and a brain like mush-or so Yuffie reasoned. The ninja popped the carrot into her mouth and, with superhuman effort, managed to swallow the thing.
“I want meat! Meat!” She complained and poked the noodles on her plate that Barret had overcooked. “I’ll see what I can do next time I go for supplies,” Cloud said and picked up his plate. Yuffie groaned. Cloud had gone for supplies-potions, bandages, food, whatever neighboring towns could spare to help the effort in Midgar-just two days ago. She wasn’t getting any meat anytime soon.
As Cloud and Barret began to clear the table off, Tifa returned her attention to Yuffie. “Yuffie, what’s bothering you? You usually complain more than that when Barret cooks,” the fighter said and trust Tifa to notice when Yuffie wasn’t on her usual, awesome ninja game. Yuffie made an annoyed sound and gave her plate to Cloud. No way was she going to eat those noodles. They looked more like mako poisoned sludge than something edible.
“…How can you stand it Tifa? Doesn’t it make you mad having him help out?” She demanded quietly. There was no need to specify who she meant by “him”; they both knew she was referring to Rude. Tifa frowned slightly and tugged absently at the cuffs of her gloves. “Yeah, it does,” the fighter admitted slowly, “but…he’s trying to do the right thing I think. We can’t really tell him no.”
Tifa grinned suddenly and put her hand on Yuffie’s shoulder. “Besides, I’d rather have Rude than Reno,” she laughed and Yuffie groaned. “Gawd, don’t even joke about that! It might just happen!” The ninja grumbled and Tifa laughed harder.
Yuffie paused and observed the older woman. Tifa didn’t laugh a lot lately. Almost as if she sensed Yuffie’s thoughts, Tifa quieted down again, her natural frown of late resuming. She even looked a little guilty about laughing, as if she had no right to after all that had happened-was still happening.
Yuffie hated this. This oppressive despair they were all living under. They’d saved the world! It didn’t feel like it.
“Damn fucking pot!” Barret yelled; he had a small, dirty pot in one hand and a soaked rag covered in suds perched precariously on his gun. The gun-being large and bulky-wasn’t interacting well with the pot and Barret’s complexion wasn’t looking passive either. Seeing his aggressive motions Tifa stood up and quickly ran over. “Don’t you shoot my pot Barret Wallace! I’m not finding another one!”
“Well den get a bigger pot!”
“You get a bigger pot! I’ve been looking and I haven’t seen one!”
Yuffie walked up the stairs and flopped onto the battered, dingy bed in the room she shared with Tifa. She could still hear arguing and wasn’t surprised when gunfire broke out. Barret was firing into the sky again. Sometimes he was such a nutter.
She fell asleep to the sound of gunfire and curses.
“I think I’m going to stay here today,” Tifa said the next morning and Yuffie gawped at her. Cloud nodded in some sort of secret understanding and Barret made a vague comment about business picking up that meant nothing. Tifa stay at home, like some sort of mommy? What the hell?
“If we’re going to open this bar, someone’s got to be here and fix things up right,” Tifa continued with a small smile that looked like it’d been drawn on with broken crayons. “With Rude here you won’t even notice.”
“Like hell I wouldn’t. Unless Rude decides to grow monster boobs and some hair,” Yuffie muttered under her breath, but didn’t protest. It was Tifa’s decision. The ninja was kind of pissed at Cloud for not saying anything-as the leader wasn’t it his job to say they should stick together?-but that was Cloud. Biggest pain in the ass on the whole damn planet.
“You said you needed groceries Tifa. I’ll pick those up today,” Cloud said and Tifa had no hesitation in putting a list into his hands. It was kind of funny to watch the great Strife read it with a look of pained puzzlement. “Parsley…” He muttered at one point, a “what the hell is this” stare on his face. “Honeydew melon…?”
“Try and find as many things as you can, alright Cloud?” Tifa asked and he nodded, swiftly hiding his obvious uncertainty at half the things on the list. “You put meat on that thing, right Tifa? Right?” Yuffie cut in smoothly-loudly-attempting to grab the paper from Cloud’s hands and missing as he pulled it away and stuffed it in his pocket. What a tightass.
“Where do we start today?” Rude interrupted as Yuffie surreptitiously snuck her hand towards Cloud’s pocket. “Barret signed on to guard a transport truck today,” their spiky haired leader said, deftly catching Yuffie’s hand and removing it from his pocket. “You and Yuffie can give the Sector Four Slums a look over.”
“Wait, whoa, what?” Yuffie yelped, yanking her hand from Cloud’s. “Sector Four Slums?” The ninja backed up a bit. She stopped when she noticed Rude looking at her. Not just looking, but Looking. She quickly attempted to put on an uncaring attitude.
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to Yuffie. You can stay here and help me set up the bar,” Tifa volunteered kindly and way to rub it in Tifs. Now it was blatantly obvious she disliked the idea of going to the Sector Four Slums. Time for a quick cover. “I’m just worried about Rude. Being old and hanging out all night at sleazy bars as he does,” were the words that ended up popping out of her mouth.
Tifa raised her eyebrows and glanced over at Rude. “Oh, that’s right, where are you staying Rude?” She asked and the Turk made a vague motion that could have meant anything from “in a classy hotel invisible to the naked eye” to “in that ditch right over there”. Tifa’s eyes narrowed slightly and her mouth pursed just a little bit. This was bad news in Yuffie’s opinion as she saw what was coming next. She hoped she was wrong in her assumption.
“You can stay at the Seventh Heaven while you’re here Rude. It’s the least we can do for you when you’re helping out,” Tifa said and Yuffie wanted to rage against the fighter’s innate goodness. There was no way Yuffie was sleeping under the same roof as Rude. Why did everyone like him so much? He’d tried to kill them! Repeatedly!
“Yuffie, Sector Four Slums,” Cloud reminded and she wanted to rip his spikes off. Instead she mentally pictured herself giving him the finger-she’d never do it when he was looking…well maybe she might-and set off towards the ruins of Midgar. “Come on Old Man!” She yelled back to Rude. She meant to piss him off, but he only shrugged and caught up with her easily. She hated his long legs.
“What’s in Sector Four?” The Turk asked idly and she gave a dark laugh, the thought of Sector Four making her skin crawl even as the surprise it held for Rude delighted her. “You’ll see,” she muttered and started walking faster. Rude kept up without even pausing to think her words over. She despised Turks.
The Sector Four Slums were just as they’d been last time Yuffie had come through-depressing. Everything was in ruins. The plate overhead was riddled with holes and largely unstable. Daylight came in weakly and the rank smell of rotting flesh hid among the wreckage. Rude only paused to adjust his sunglasses as the two surveyed their domain for the day. Yuffie hated him for his calmness. To him this was nothing more than looking over his former employer’s setbacks she supposed. Well he hadn’t seen the worst of it yet, she comforted herself.
“We’d better get started,” Yuffie snapped and slid down the steep decline into the sector. Rude followed silently and she hated him for that too. Together they made their way through the ragged streets. Yuffie knew she could have told Rude to split up, but she didn’t want to be down there alone, even if the alternative meant she had to spend the day with a Turk.
It wasn’t long before the fun she dreaded began. “We’re being watched,” Rude murmured to her after barely five minutes in the seemingly deserted hellhole. “I know,” Yuffie murmured back. “Don’t let them know you know. They’re not afraid to eat human flesh.”
Rude stared at her. She felt he might have been surprised and maybe a little disturbed, but-the shades blocked out all emotion. “You’re kidding, right?” He asked quietly, though his pace didn’t falter in the least. “Does this look like the face of a kidder to you?” Yuffie demanded. There was silence. “I’m not so sick I’d make a joke like that!” Yuffie hissed and again there was silence. “…Alright. What are we going to do then?” Rude finally said and the thought of a Turk asking her for directions nearly made Yuffie fall over in surprise. She managed to contain herself. “Just keep walking.”
“Keep walking?”
“Yea. They’ll go away after a while as long as we don’t show any weakness.”
“…You’re sure?”
“Damn sure, so shut up and keep walking.”
Rude stopped walking. Yuffie was forced to stop too, not willing to continue on her own. “What are you doing?” She hissed. Rude shifted his hand ever so slightly at her in a shushing motion. She wanted to beat his bald head into mush. Only instinctive self-preservation kept her from it.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” Rude called out, staring straight at the shadows their stalkers were hiding in as he adjusted his gloves. The shadows flickered and a thin voice yelled, “Go away!”
Rude stared levelly at the spot where the voice had come from. “Make me,” he called back. Yuffie stared at him. “What the hell are you doing?”
He made that slight shushing motion again, hardly discernable, but there all the same. She was going to kill him. She was going to slit his throat with her pinwheel and leave him for the monsters to eat.
For a moment nothing happened. Then a rock sailed out of the shadows to land a pitiful distance away. A couple of kids fled from the shadows, disappearing among the ruins before Rude even had a chance to react to the pathetic attack. The Turk stared after them. “You said they ate human flesh. Those were just some kids,” He said after a fitful silence.
“Yea, well I lied,” Yuffie informed him. Honestly, he was so gullible. “I thought you weren’t that sick,” he grumbled. She gave him a playful punch to the shoulder, harder than she would have normally done with someone else. “I make a special exception for you,” she informed him and put her hands in her pockets. She started whistling and walked off down the broken road. By the time Rude moved he had to run to catch up.
They scoured the slum for the rest of the day. There was always the sense of being watched, but no one came straight out and attacked them. They met a few monsters and dispatched them easily. So far as people went they saw no one until the end of the day.
On their way back to Seventh Heaven they saw a kid. A man was standing over the boy, trying to get him to stand up, but as soon as the man spotted Yuffie and Rude he fled, leaving the boy behind. Rude walked over to the abandoned ten year-old. “You alright kid?” He asked, kneeling down next to the child and helping him sit up.
Yuffie bit her lip and held her distance. For a moment she looked away, though if Rude noticed he said nothing. “Are you sick?” The Turk asked and the boy stared up at him with dazed eyes. “Yuffie, do you have a potion?” The Turk called. Before he even finished his sentence the boy gave a breathless whimper and went limp.
Rude stared down at the blackness that dripped from the boy’s pale skin and began to soak into his sleeve until he felt the slickness of it against his skin. “Don’t let it touch you,” Yuffie snapped and quickly rolled up the stained part of the Turk’s jacket. She pulled out her water bottle and washed away the black bile from his skin. Rude stared at her from behind his shades as she met his gaze.
“It’s the stigma,” She explained quietly. “They call it Geostigma. It kills you from the inside out, slowly, painfully. No one’s sure how it’s spread.”
Rude gazed out over the Sector Four Slums and she supposed now he understood the invisible stares that had followed them all day. “There’s no treatment for it. So the infected have to hide here,” he said, his statement a slight question at the end. Yuffie looked down. “Everyone feels sorry for them, but no one wants to risk contamination.”
“You’re here,” Rude said. She gave a small shrug. “I’m everywhere. Where I’m not right now though is back at Seventh Heaven eating dinner. Cloud’s cooking tonight and don’t think I’m going to miss it for your sweet, baby blue eyes,” she quipped, not liking the insinuation that she was a good person for being there. It only made her feel guilty. She hadn’t wanted to come in the first place.
“Strife…cooks?” Rude choked out. Yuffie grinned. “Strife cooks like the devil. Sinfully delicious. If you want I can save you table scraps like a dog,” she offered-she thought kindly-but Rude declined, saying he already had somewhere to eat for the night.
They set off towards Edge. Back at Seventh Heaven Cloud had made meatloaf. Meatloaf. It was meat. In the shape of a loaf. It was meat. Yuffie cast aside her forced vegetarianism with more gusto than she cast aside Barret’s admonishments on table etiquette-reinforced of course with loud bangs of his gun arm on the table.
Rude ended up sitting at the bar, a glass of alcohol-on the house if she knew Tifa-in his hands. As Yuffie passed by later he said so softly she barely heard him, “My eyes aren’t baby blue.” She couldn’t help, but grin as she thumped up the stairs to her bed.