Emerald Crisis--Final Fantasy VII--Disc One, Mission 5

Midgar Region: W.R.O. Hunter’s Lodge\

            Yuffie woke again in the Lodge’s hospital.  A splash of pain followed her into reality, starting in her stomach and spreading out like a wave.  It hurt to open her eyes, and it hurt more to realize that she was back in the same bed as a week ago.  She hadn’t felt this low since the fight with Nero and Deepground.

            She stared at the ceiling, counting the tiles.  The light hurt still, but she kept her eyes open and breathed through the pain.  Each intake made her want to vomit.  Each exhale brought her a fit of coughs.  She took some comfort in knowing that it could be worse—she could have not woken up at all.

            A few minutes passed before Tifa entered the room.  She had been waiting there.  Knitted fabric was left in the seat where she had been.  She yawned as she approached, and she smiled when she saw Yuffie.  “Oh, you’re awake.  That’s good.”

            Yuffie turned to see Tifa.  Denzel and Marlene were trailing after, both looking tired, but they smiled at her, and Denzel ran over to see her while Marlene waited patiently.  Yuffie smiled back.  “I am awake,” she said, pushing herself to sitting with extreme effort.  Her entire body felt like pudding.  “Mind telling me exactly what happened?”

            “Of course not.”  Tifa pulled her chair over and folded the knitting on her lap.  “What do you remember?”

            “Cid’s airship exploding and a big guy with sideburns.”  She looked Tifa in the eyes.  “He hit me, didn’t he?”

            “He did,” Tifa said.  “Shelke called me after giving you the info, and I decided to go in as back-up.”

            “That little—still, I guess I owe her.”

            Tifa smiled.  “You do,” she said.  “I found you and Hollis.  Shortly after, Reeve showed up and searched the tunnels.”

            “Did he hit you?”

            “No,” Tifa said, sweeping her hair back.  Yuffie rolled her eyes.

            “Of course not,” she said, sighing.  “I mean, good job, I guess.  Was there anything in the tunnels?”

            “Nothing.”

            “Damn.”

            “That’s not all.  Apparently, the floats around town were rigged to blow, so as we were trying to figure it all out, the city was blowing to bits.  Right now, we’re trying to figure out where the floats came from, but no one is talking.  It seems like everyone is either too afraid or too loyal to say anything.”

            “Loyal?  To those guys?”  Yuffie shook her head.  “If that’s the case, then the world has gone nuts.”

            “Whatever it is, it’s working.  Reeve is getting nothing.”

            “Something will come up,” Yuffie said.  “They’re terrorists, after all.”

            “Regardless,” Tifa said, packing away her things.  She pointed at Yuffie, “For now, you need to worry about you and rest.  Everything else can be taken care of later.”

            “No.  No time for rest.”  Yuffie, groaning, forced herself to standing through sheer force of will.  It hurt, initially, but it was nothing she hadn’t dealt with before.  She braced against the bed until the pain eased.

            Tifa closed in.  “Yuffie.”

            “Anything else I need to know?”

            Tifa, rolling her eyes, shook her head.  “Well, apparently the Emerald Lotus has officially declared war on the W.R.O.  There will be more attacks, and they’ll be bigger next time.  He said that he wanted to show people how powerless the W.R.O. really is.”

            Yuffie scoffed and crossed her arms.  “The guy’s a lunatic.”

            “Maybe but we should be careful.”

            Disbelief turned to anger, and Yuffie scowled.  “Oh, trust me, I know.  I’ve had first-hand experience with him.”  Yuffie sat on the edge of the bed and held her side.  For the first time in her life, she felt tired.  Rest was the last thing she wanted but, with her mind so foggy and her head so hot, it felt like the only thing she needed.  She looked sternly into Tifa’s eyes.  “And Hollis? Who the hell is he?”

            Tifa shrugged.  “I don’t know much.  They’ve brought him in for questioning, and that’s all I’m allowed to know.”

            “Brought him here?”

            “Apparently,” Tifa said.  “I remember there being some heated arguments about it, but Reed insisted.”

            “Why?  Edge has its own holding cells, and its own security.  It’d be the best place to trust.”

            “I think Reed just wanted him out of town,” Tifa said.  “The city is tense right now, after everything happened.”

            “His good intentions don’t make it any less stupid.  This facility is too small to put up a proper defense and too localized to survive bombardment, and clearly the Emerald Lotus isn’t shy about collateral damage.”

            “Calm down,” Tifa said, squeezing Yuffie’s shoulder.  “Everyone is doing the best they can, and Reed is as scared as everyone else.  The peace we’ve all fought for is crumbling around our feet.”

            “Yeah, yeah.”  Yuffie sighed, breathing through her pain, her nausea, and her confusion.  Then, she laughed.  “Think this is how Shinra felt when everything was falling apart?”

            Tifa allowed a small laugh.  “Probably,” she said, “But this isn’t a permanent solution.  H.Q. will be in soon, and that will be the safest place for him.”

            Another deep breath, and the battle replayed in Yuffie’s head.  Hollis was a tank, an impenetrable shell housing explosive power.  With strength like his, she couldn’t imagine transporting him anywhere he didn’t want to go.  It reminded her of Deepground, of the attack on W.R.O. HQ, of Azul the Cerulean, and of all the carnage.

            Tifa was there with them, though, and Reeve would be there soon.  It felt good for Yuffie to have her friends around again.  With them there, she wouldn’t be kept on the sidelines anymore, and she could take the war to the Emerald Lotus without fear of being reprimanded.  They would remind everyone watching exactly how they beat Sephiroth and all of the fools who followed after him.

            Then, Yuffie thought, she would have the opportunity to personally rip the mask off of Lotus’ face and feed her fist to him in front of everyone.

-Disc One-

            Yuffie drifted off to sleep with Tifa watching.  When she woke, Tifa was gone and the children had left with her.  This left Yuffie alone in the hospital room, with only the gentle buzz and beep of machines to keep her company.  The lights were dimmed.  Shadows clung to the ceiling, staring back at Yuffie as she stared at them.

            She breathed and relived each punch as she exhaled.  Hollis was unstoppable, a force of nature in human flesh.  Her stomach ached.  Her chest rattled.  Her pride was hurt most of all.  She remembered her father saying once that her pride would get her into trouble.  Sometimes, she felt like trouble just followed her around, waiting to kick her down whenever she built herself up too high.

            Lotus followed her, too, in her dreams and in waking.  He hid behind his mask, even in her thoughts, stabbing at her with words that echoed endlessly inside of her.  Another lost battle, another night spent in a hospital room.  It was beginning to feel useless.  She was more than weak, being saved by everyone.  Tifa, Daisy, Vincent, Cloud, and everyone else, the only thing she consistently managed to do on her own was get in over her head.

            Her thoughts made her restless.  She stood, legs unsteady, stomach churning, and pulled the catheter from her arm.  Her clothes were in a nearby dresser.  They had been freshly washed and folded.  She removed her gown, felt at the tender bruises still lining her body, and then dressed.  On her way out, she checked the bed where Daisy had been.  It was empty.

            Outside, she found Reed waiting.  He had his head down, his hands folded neatly and put held up as if in prayer.  As she left the room, he opened his eyes and met her with a tired glare.  She returned it as best as she could.

            “Ms. Kisaragi,” he said, “Excuse me, but I don’t think you’ve been discharged yet.”

            “I have.”

            “By whom?”

            “By me,” she said.  “I gave myself a clean bill of health.”

            He had been leaning against the wall, but he pushed off to stand tall and block her path.  “Return to bed.  You need the rest.”

            “I know my body, Reed, and I’m fine.”

            “I wasn’t asking, Kisaragi.”  His glare sharpened and his body grew tense.  “I am telling you.  Get back to bed.  Now!”

            Yuffie, still shaken and still tired, had to lean against the door frame for support.  She swallowed a fit of coughs that were threatening to erupt.  Bracing against the doorway with one arm, she stretched herself to full height and stared up into his eyes.  “Make me.”

            “Always the petulant child, aren’t we? Rebelling against any authority you can find.”

            Reed approached her, seizing her tight by the arm and dragging her back into the room.  He threw her back down onto the bed and, when she tried to stand, struck her hard in the gut.  She curled up, coughing and holding herself, as he stood over her.

            “Well, if you insist on fighting me, then you had better be up to the challenge!”

            Writhing and wheezing against the bed frame, Yuffie said, “You’re a real bastard,” and then squealed as he lifted her and tossed her onto the bed proper.  Then, she watched him smooth back his hair before he dragged a chair over.  He sat calmly, folding his hands and sitting forward to stare her in the eyes.  Yuffie stared back, holding her gut, breathless.  “What do you want now?”

            “To talk,” he said, without humor.  “And, as always, you make it difficult for me.”

            “Stuff it,” she said, and she used the wall to push herself up.  It hurt to move as pain crawled up her spine and spread through her.  After the way he moved her, it hurt to even breathe.  “If you’re going to lecture me, then just stuff it, because I don’t care to listen.”

            Reed snorted, laughed, and then turned a sharp glare on her.  His tone was harsh, acerbic, but he smiled.  “Always the same.  You’ll never change, will you?”  He stood.  “Fine.  If you want it that way, then this is how you do it.”  He slid the chair back against the wall.  “You’ll be discharged tomorrow,” he said.

            There was a pause, pregnant with meaning, and then Yuffie said, “And?”

            He stopped at the door, his hand on the knob, and feigned surprise.  “Oh, now you want to talk?”

            “What are you doing to me?”

            “What I should have done long ago,” he said.  “You’re suspended.  Effectively immediately.  You will not be in contact with anyone from the Hunters...”

            “You have no right!”

            “I have every right,” he shouted.  “What were you even doing there, chasing down Lotus? I took you off duty, put you into forced leave!”

            “And I was there off duty,” she said in return, shouting back at him.  It hurt her stomach to do it, but she felt it was important to match him word for word, shout for shout.  “Someone had to protect the people!”

            “Is that what you call running, blind, into danger and nearly getting yourself killed?”  He laughed as he said it.

            “It’s what I call doing your job for you,” she said in retort, and she felt smug afterward.  That smugness didn’t last long.  A bitter laugh ended it quickly as Reed threw his head back gave an empty bark.

            “And a fantastic job you did, injuring everyone around you.”  He looked her in the eyes. “There are people—an entire military worth of people—who are already hunting Lotus for us, but you think you are the only one equipped to do it.  Except you’re not.  Hell, you weren’t even fit for duty, and all you managed to do is get in the way.”

            “I got us that Hollis guy.”

            “Tifa got us Hollis, and she saved you in the process.”

            Yuffie, angry and hurt, stepped from the bed.  She wasn’t sure what she was doing or why, but she took a swing at him, and she missed.  He knocked her hand away and struck her in return, once in the chest, before grabbing her around the throat and dragging her back to the bed.  Then, he stared her in the eyes.  He was close, so close that she could smell his cologne, thick and pungent.

            “Which is what you do best—act recklessly and expect other people to come in and clean up your messes.  You claim to be a hero of the Jenvoa War, but you nearly cost your allies everything when you took their materia, didn’t you?  You’re no hero, Yuffie Kisaragi.  You are a selfish little girl who takes whatever she wants and expects to walk away with the stories.”

            “I...”

            “And the W.R.O. has so many other things to worry about than satisfying your personal fictions.  It has cities to watch, nations to run.  We, the Hunters, have more to do.  Our job is to find materia and to control its distribution.  To keep it out of the hands of those who would use it for negative ends.  That it is.  That is all.  And while the Emerald Lotus may have their hands in some materia, I assure you, they are so much more, which makes them someone else’s problem.”

            “But if we all work together...”

            “We won’t have time to do our jobs properly,” Reed snapped, releasing her onto the bed.  “Maybe, if we unify, we can solve one problem—the Emerald Lotus—but at the cost of other problems cropping up.”  He took a deep breath and adjusted his jacket.  “And then who will fix that?  Do we solve each problem as it comes, one at a time, or do we do our jobs as they are assigned and trust others to do their own jobs on their own?”

            Yuffie slumped into the bed, staring silently ahead.  It hurt to breathe and, increasingly, to think.  She hated Reed, hated every hair on his head and every word from his mouth, but she didn’t have the energy to argue anymore.  It wasn’t that she thought he was right.  The problem was that she didn’t immediately think he was wrong.

            She turned her gaze downward and stared—glared—at her feet, and she tried hard not to cry.  It reminded her of childhood and of being scolded by her father.  “Well, they’re not doing enough,” she whispered.

            “We’re doing what we can,” he said calmly and without his previous venom.  “And they’re doing more than you ever could on your own.  Running ahead into danger may look heroic, but all it does is get you hurt.”

            “Whatever,” Yuffie breathed, and she curled up on the bed and hugged her knees tightly.

            Reed tugged at his cuffs.  “I expected as much.  And, for the record, you ARE suspended from service, for your safety and for the safety of others.  Should you continue on this path, then I will take matters up with the Director myself.  This is your last warning, Yuffie.  No contact, no service, not unless we contact you ourselves.”

            Reed left the room, calm and collected, and that hurt worse than if he had screamed at her again.  Alone, Yuffie pulled the blanket over her and turned her back to the door.  Her body hurt, but her broken bones would mend.  She wasn’t so sure about her broken spirit, however.  Unable to hold back, she cried like a child for the first time in years, and she kept crying until she fell asleep.

-Disc One-

            The next day, Yuffie wandered down to the cafeteria before she was dicharged.  Slumped down alone at one of the long, steel tables, she picked mindlessly at the mushy rice they had served her.  The damage done to her was primarily internal and the cure materia had done all it could for her.  Now, she would have to rely on her own faculties to recover.

            She hadn’t slept well.  The conversation with Reed was hurting her more than Hollis’ fists had.  She didn’t think of her betrayal of the team in Wutai often, keeping it in the same box she used for the battle with Nero and, more recently, Daisy and the Lotus rally.  Reed, however, had managed to pull it out and leave it open in her sight, and she wasn’t so sure that he was in the wrong anymore.  Half of what she did, she was realizing, was being saved by others.

            She closed her eyes and focused her breathing.  Her lungs felt bruised, but the pain was clarifying, and she used it to keep dark thoughts at bay.  When she was alone and on her back in the bed, sometimes, it felt like she was floating unsteadily on water, like she would drown in all of her reveries.

            “Yuffie?”

            A familiar voice pulled her back into reality, and she sat up and found Daisy wheeling toward her.  Daisy wasn’t in the gown anymore, instead wearing a black tee and a pair of green medical scrub pants.  Her long hair was back in a ponytail, and she greeted Yuffie with a tired smile.  Oliver walked beside Daisy, carrying two trays of mushy rice.  Once Daisy had pulled up, he set her tray on her lap.

            “Daisy?”

            “What’re you doing out?  I thought you were injured.”  Daisy knitted her brows.  “Actually, you okay?  You don’t look so well.”

            Yuffie scoffed.  “Like you have room to talk.”  She cast her gaze down and stabbed at her rice.

            “At least she’s taking the time to get better,” Oliver said, seating himself.  Yuffie blew him a raspberry.

            Daisy laughed.  “Honestly, just be careful, please.  Don’t push yourself too hard.”

            Yuffie waved them off and leaned back.  She stirred her food absently.  “So, Daze, how is your recovery coming along, anyway?”

            “The medics have done what they can,” Daisy said, and she raised her top enough to expose a large, clean bandage taped across her torso.  She gave a glowing smile as she lowered it.  “I should be fine and back to service in a few days, though.”

            Looking Daisy over, Yuffie frowned.  “Then what’s with the chair?”

            Daisy nodded toward Oliver, who gave his own frown in response.  “This one.  He also got me this.”  Daisy reached back into the satchel that hung over the back of the wheelchair and produced a box of chocolates.  Opening it, she let Yuffie pluck a few.

            “Well, isn’t that sweet of him.”  Yuffie smiled, toothily.  “And why, exactly, don’t I get chocolates, Oliver?”

            Oliver’s frown deepened.

            “So, you’ll be back on soon,” Yuffie asked, stealing a few more chocolates.

            Daisy leaned back in her chair, stretching.  “I. Can’t. Wait.  I’m going nuts hearing about everything that happened in Edge.”  She sat forward and looked Yuffie in the eyes.  “And what exactly DID happen there, anyway?  No one around here will tell me anything worth hearing.”

            “Just a lot of noise,” Yuffie said, slouching again.  She rested her head on her arms like an agitated child.  “Reed gave me a talking to, doesn’t want me involved.  So, he’ll probably put you on something else, I’m sure, while he sweeps everything else under the rug.  Or into someone else’s hands.”

            “He’s trying to keep us focused on our job,” Oliver said, and he earned a glare from Yuffie for it.  When he looked at Daisy and found her glaring, too, he sighed.  “I’m just saying, we’re here to deal with materia and materia smuggling, not counter-terrorism.  We’re not a military, and with two failed attempts to stop them, I feel like it’s pretty clear that we’re in over our heads.”

            “Maybe if we had more support, then we wouldn’t be,” Yuffie countered.

            Oliver rolled his eyes and looked to Daisy for support.  “Come on, you’re more level-headed than this.  You just got out of the infirmary.  Yuffie’s been there twice already.  They have numbers, and we’re just three people, fit for infiltration and subterfuge, not war.  Reed may come down on you hard, but he’s right this time.”

            Daisy frowned.  “Oliver.”

            He looked between them, stared at Daisy, and took a deep breath.  “I’m just worried about you two.”

            “We’re fine,” Daisy said, taking his hand and giving a squeeze.  She looked across the table at Yuffie and smiled imploringly.  “Right, Yuffie?”

            “Yup.”  Yuffie stood from the table and felt unsteady on her feet for a moment.  Even after all of her rest, her head still wasn’t on straight, but she wouldn’t admit that in front of them.  Instead, she took up her tray and said.  “Listen, I want to stretch my legs before I’m shipped out.  I’ll talk to you later, Daisy.”

            “Okay.  We should meet up and compare notes soon.”

            Yuffie nodded, waved, and left.  Normally, in this sort of mood, she would pick a direction and walk.  She spent most of her life never really knowing where she was going, just that she was going, but lately it didn’t seem like enough.  Lately, she wanted a destination, but everywhere she landed felt unstable, unsafe.  It was like she has nowhere stable to plant her feet, nowhere that she could truly call home.

            As she left the cafeteria, she thought of Edge, and of Wutai, and of all the people she knew and loved, and she thought of what they all, truly, meant to her.

-Disc One-

            Yuffie walked the halls absently for a moment and then soon left the building entirely.  She went beyond the front gate, into the grasslands between Midgar and the sea, and she came to rest in the warm sands beside the ocean.  Dark grass grew in patches nearby.  The pale sky drifted by, cloudless, but she could feel a charge on the air.  A storm was coming.

            She shivered.  It was warm, but she could feel a cool breeze stirring and it left her hairs on end. Alone, she thought about the recent battles in her life.  She thought of Lotus and of Hollis, and she thought of Reed and of her cold, lonely nights in the infirmary.

            After the attack on Edge, she knew that Reeve would take interest in the Emerald Lotus problem, but she wasn’t so sure that he still supported her.  He would call on those he really trusted, on Cloud, Barrett, and Vincent.  He would rely on them, like he always did.

            Normally, it would leave her angry.  She was a soldier, a great ninja from Wutai, but after her recent battles—her recent failures—she wasn’t so sure anymore.  It hurt to admit it, but the others were reliable, and she wasn’t anymore.  There was a certain veracity to what Reed had said: she never saved the day; she was just there when the day was saved.  Her fame was earned only through proximity.

            The W.R.O. had Hollis, and that meant answers about the Emerald Lotus, and despite all of her effort, she wasn’t the one who did it.  Though she was first on the scene, it was Tifa who won the day, Tifa who had traded her leather gloves for a wet rag and an apron.  Tifa, the team mother who never had a taste for combat to begin with.  And all Yuffie did—all Yuffie ever did—was get in the way until someone else could come in and win the fight.

            Her phone rang and pulled her from those thoughts.  Yuffie sat up slowly, her body cold and racked with shivers.  The light had faded from the sky without her notice, and the wind was whipping up the sand.  The air was thicker now, and she could smell the storm mixing with the salt in the air.  Another ring and she answered.  “Yeah?”

            “Yuffie Kisaragi.”

            Yuffie curled up for warmth.  She hugged her legs with her free arm.  “Who else would it be, Shelke?”

            “I am just being careful,” Shelke said in her empty tones.  “You do not sound well.”

            “I’m...”  Yuffie wiped her eyes.  She couldn’t remember crying, but her cheeks felt warm.  She sniffed and hoped Shelke couldn’t tell anything was wrong.  “What do you need?”

            “I have information for you.”

            “I thought I was suspended.”

            “You are,” Shelke said absently.  “I will forward you the files for you to read in full later, but there is something which you should know right now: the Emerald Lotus is preparing to make another move soon.”

            “Then tell Reed,” Yuffie said.  It felt wrong in her mouth, but she couldn’t think of anyone else to help.  “Listen, I’m not on the case anymore.  I’m kicked out of the Hunters if I try.”

            “I have already informed him, as well as others,” Shelke said.  “Regardless, take care, Yuffie Kisaragi.”

            The line went dead.  Yuffie, alone on the beach, shouted into her phone before slamming it shut and tossing it a few feet away.  The sky was going dark, the colors of the sky—a bloody red and bruised purple—fading into the approaching slate of the storm clouds.  She hugged herself tight to keep the cold away but found it ineffective.

            Closing her eyes, she thought about home.  She remembered the warm sea waters of Wutai, the way the water glittered from the mountains in the evening, the cool mist that rose in the mornings.  She remembered the pagoda towering in the distance, almost touching the sky.  No matter where she went when she was a kid, she could always see it and always find her way home.  When she was really young, she used to visit her father at the very top of the pagoda, and she never told anyone, but she also used to think that he was the one who held up the sky.

            Her wounds throbbed, but her reveries eased the pain.  Old memories kept her warm, even as the clouds swallowed the sky.  She met the rain alone, shivering in the dark, a distant childhood memory the only thing she had to comfort her.