Emerald Crisis--Final Fantasy VII--Disc One, Mission 6

Midgar Region: W.R.O. Hunter’s Lodge\

            Yuffie returned late in the evening, squinting as she approached.  The airfield surrounding the Lodge glowed in the twilight, pale ghostly bulbs that illuminated the stirring dust.  The rain had soaked her through and she shivered in her approach, feeling more sick and fatigued than she had been before she left.  More than that, she felt despondent, disconnected from the world and from herself.  Aside from the storm, she was accompanied only by silence.

            At her approach, she noticed something wrong.  There were black helicopters settled on the field and soldiers moving about.  In the distance, she saw them moving, precisely and strategically, in small squadrons.  She paused and kneeled down, watching their movements.  The rain had covered their approach.

            The lights dimmed and flickered before going out entirely.  In the distance, she heard an explosion and felt it rumble in the ground.  Yuffie cursed to herself and ducked down further, approaching carefully in the fading light.

            The Emerald Lotus had been quiet since the attacks.  The interrogation of Hollis hadn’t turned up much, from what she knew.  Files on him told of a North Corel survivor turned mercenary.  He had as much reason to hate Shinra as anyone else in the world, and he told them that the W.R.O. was nothing but history repeating itself.

            Lotus himself was a complete mystery.  Theories in the mess hall had said that his trail went cold in the old Midgar sewer system.  The attack itself had been planned for months before.  The threat wasn’t as new in the making as they thought.  It had been a wound festering for years.

            This new attack led Yuffie to know something else: the parade was a feint.  Edge was terrified, and the W.R.O. was just as shaken.  It all proved to Yuffie that the Emerald Lotus was on no one’s side, but they still seemed to be gaining support.  New people disappeared each day.

            She stopped behind a steel crate outside of the building and ducked beneath it.  She took the time to check her phone but found no signal.  The Emerald Lotus was being careful here, but this sort of interference wouldn’t be permanent.  They were moving quickly and striking quickly, and then they would be moving back out.  Inside, she spied the emergency lights coming on, their red glow appearing in flashes in through open doorways.

            She took a deep breath, and she charged the front door.

            Smoke filled the halls.  Gunfire echoed around her.  Yuffie could see only by the flashing of the emergency lights, which blurred everything into a haze.  She sprinted first toward the infirmary, to check on Daisy, but she found no one there.  The room was as empty as the halls were.

            She left the infirmary, going deeper into the facility.  The Lodge held only one thing of worth—the materia vault.  If the Emerald Lotus were attacking for any reason, it would be for that, she was sure.  She found the stairs and took them down.

            The first floor of the Hunter’s Lodge—basement 1—was the entrance.  It was a web-work of offices.  The second floor, deeper below, held the more secured parts of the base.  The prison was down there, and so was the vault.  Buried beneath concrete and steel, it was the safest place within miles of Edge or Midgar.

            She came to a stop, kneeling beside a stairway wall and peeked out.  The holding cells were one way and the vault the other.  Smoke and flames rolled away from the vault and poured down the hall, and she could see flashes of green uniforms moving among the chaos.

            Another deep breath.  Yuffie doubted Lotus would be there himself, but she knew Hollis would already be free.  The vault was under attack, too, which also meant he wouldn’t be alone.  It occurred to her for the first time in her life that she might want to wait, leave the trouble for someone else, but she didn’t like the thought.  She pushed it away, focused on the task at hand, and fingered the throwing knife in her belt as she turned the corner.

            Entering the vault, she stepped over two broken bodies of W.R.O. soldiers.  The smoke helped to hide her approach, made it easy for her to move.  The first Lotus soldier she struck didn’t have time to react.  Yuffie had their arm behind her back and their head against the wall in a matter of seconds.

            A second soldier nearby reacted to the subtle noise their partner made.  They had their rifle up as she approached, but Yuffie seized them, hands on the soldier’s shoulders, feet planted into the soldier’s chest, and flipped them overhead and into a nearby wall.  They landed heavily, unconscious.

            Yuffie adjusted her grip on her dagger before she rose.  Stopping beside the vault, she looked in and found Hollis inside, flanked by three Lotus soldiers.  Materia was scattered around them, glittering in the dim light.  Six more soldiers inside were, busy loading materia into large trunks they had brought with them..

            Hollis snorted a laugh and turned.  He had his big arms crossed over his chest.  There was a wild look in his eyes.  “Well, well, look who’s here.  Hey there, girly.  Thought you’d still be in intensive care.”

            Yuffie winced.  Seeing him made her body ache, her stomach tense, but she forced herself to stand straight.  “I was getting a good rest, but I heard all the fun down here and thought I’d join in,” she said, flashing her dagger as she entered the vault.  “Things are getting out of hand though, big man.  Get back in your cell.”

            “Ms. Kisaragi, I thought I told you to leave.”

            Yuffie went stiff, her throat tight.  Reed entered behind her, his suit jacket open, revealing a black vest beneath.  His neat hair was a mess, and there was blood splashed across his face.  An electric rod sparked in one hand.  A bracer of materia gleamed on his wrist.  “We’ve been compromised,” Reed said, looking past her.  “The W.R.O. will be here soon, and we’re not equipped for a full battle.  Take what we have and go.”

            “Wait,” Yuffie said, looking between them.  Her eyes fell on Oliver, waiting in the hall way, who stared fixedly back at her.  “Wait...”

            “I’ve waited so long for this,” Reed said.  Lotus soldiers filed past the two of them.  Hollis lingered in the hall, beside Oliver, staring back at her.  The two of them left then, while Reed undid the cuffs of his jacket and tossed it to the floor.  “I’ve always hated you.  Hated your impulsivity, your insubordination, and your insistence on getting mixed up in everything around you.”

            “Traitors.”  Yuffie breathed the word.

            “Pick yourself up, Kisaragi.  Now isn’t the time to cry,” he said.  “I want to break you—kill you at your best!”

            Yuffie’s disbelief turned to anger.  She glared.  “The only thing you’re going to break is your hip, old man.  Now, get out of my way.  Oliver has some answers to give.”

            Reed gave a sour smile.  The materia on his wrist glowed brightly.  “You always did have a smart mouth.”  The rod in his hand sparked again as he gripped it tight.  “Time to teach you some respect.”

            He struck first, swinging his rod swiftly, stabbing it forward.  Flashing arcs of light danced along the shaft.  Yuffie ducked under the rod and then rolled across the floor, evading a spreading tide of flame that followed her.  Heat washed over her back.

            She jabbed at Reed and swiped with her knife, hitting only the air.  He sidestepped and brought his rod around in return.  They danced together, stepping through flame and debris, narrowly missing with each strike.  He landed a punch on her cheek, and she kicked him hard in return.  They parted, smiling

            Yuffie felt her tender cheek and grinned.  Reed growled in response, hitting the floor and sending a sheet of white ice spreading across its surface.  Yuffie leapt over it, landing steadily as the flames were swallowed.  Steam and smoke choked the air.

            They met again.  Reed blocked two jabs and caught Yuffie in the stomach with his rod, sending a shock through just after she escaped. Before she could retreat completely, however, he caught her again in the stomach with a sharp kick that knocked her into the wall.

            She grabbed his ankle as he tried to retreat and pulled him back toward her, forcing her knife into his shin.  He screamed and as he was tipped back, falling flat on the ice with her landing on him, her knee in his stomach.

            Wheezing, he rolled away, leaving his shock rod and clutching his gut.

            “I’ve fought worse than you as a kid.”

            Another growl, and he pushed off the ice, swinging with a wide haymaker, his bracer sparking.  Yuffie pulled back, watching his fist glide by, and punched him again, this time in the nose.  She felt the cartilage give.  Warm blood spread across her knuckles.  Yuffie shook the blood from her fingers as he retreated to the wall.

            “You bitch,” Reed shouted.  “I will kill you!”  He reached for his bracer only to find it gone.  Yuffie smiled back at him, holding the bracer up for him to see.

            “Looking for this?  Geeze, seems like you’ve grown senile in your old age.”

            “You...”

            “Me,” she said.  “What, Reed, did you forget who you’re fighting?  Let me remind you.”  She dropped the bracer, stopped smiling, and stared him hard in the eyes.  “I am the single white rose of Wutai, the hero of the Jenvoa War, and I just kicked your ass.  I am the Great. Ninja. Yuffie.”

            Reed stared a moment, and then laughed.  He laughed so hard that his entire seized, and he held his stomach, laughing and laughing until he started to cry.  “You?  You’re nothing but a fool.  The biggest fool I’ve ever met!”  He scooped up a materia from the floor, smiling with blood in his teeth and dripping from his lips.

            The air went tense and smelled of tin.  Yuffie dipped down and sprinted across, her feet leaving prints in the melting ice.  Heat moved through her, as a tickle of energy moved up her arm in a flash of light.  She leapt through it, sailing through the air, and landing in his chest knee first.  Bone gave, and so did his body.

            The materia hit the floor and rolled to a stop at a far wall.  Yuffie held him, braced against the wall, wheezing and twitching as the electricity teased her nerves.  A deep breath, and she dropped him to the floor and kneeled down beside him.  He was unconscious, breathing shallowly, and he was broken, not her.

            He wheezed beside her, slow and steady, and she was glad for it.  She hated him, but she still wouldn’t have like to see him die. She stood, and grabbed his bracer on the way out, and she sprinted down the halls, to the stairs, and up toward the surface, where Oliver and Hollis were making their escape.

-Disc One-

            Towers of smoke suffused the air, the wind stirring them into a murky cocktail that darkened the sky.  Clouds parted to reveal a helicopter settled on the asphalt, Lotus soldiers hauling enormous trunks into the interior as well as bags from other soldiers that were working elsewhere.

            Yuffie ran as hard as she could, her lungs burning from the smoke.  She was halfway to the helicopter as it started to lift, smoke swirling around it, fire writhing and swelling.  The anti-air turrets burned like beacons in the darkness.  Two more helicopters, white in color, hummed in the distance, making their slow approach.

            Screaming, Yuffie touched one of the materia fixed to Reed’s bracer and drew power from it. She hurled a ball of flame high up and it broke harmlessly against the helicopter’s underbelly, causing it to sway in the air but doing little else.  She ran hard, bent her knees, and jumped, letting one of her own materia carry her through the air.

            The wind whipped at her hair and she landed in the open doorway of the helicopter.  Two soldiers drew guns on her, but she had her protection spell ready before landing.  She ducked around, kicking one out and disarming the other.  A safety cable caught the first, while the cold steel of the helicopter interior caught the other.

            The helicopter rocked as she fought, stirring her stomach.  The glow of her materia faded.  Hollis sat back, crouched in a seat, watching with a smile.  His big body took up more room than two people would, and when he did rise, she could feel the vibrations of each footfall passing through the steel.  “Knew we couldn’t trust Reed to finish you off.”

            Oliver caught Hollis by the shoulder and pulled him back.  “No.”

            Yuffie braced against the interior walls and tried not to vomit.  She watched the two of them, watched the joy drain from Hollis’ face, the anger and disappointment that took its place.  There was a brief disagreement, and Hollis backed down, letting Oliver step forward to meet her.

            He looked her in the eyes, appearing almost sorry, and then pushed her out with his foot.  His movements were gentle, tender, without hate or malice, but she didn’t have the strength to hold.  The movement of the helicopter had sapped everything from her.  She fell, limp, and watched the helicopter disappear into the darkness.

            Just before landing, she conjured her protection materia to soften the blow.  The pavement broke, but she held together.  Only the wind was knocked from her as she recovered.

            She laid there a moment, on the hot asphalt.  Fire and smoke rose and spiraled as she listened to the whipping of the Emerald Lotus’ helicopter disappear, replaced by the approach of the W.R.O.  Vaguely, Yuffie thought she could hear Daisy calling for her, but she didn’t have the strength to respond.