Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VII, nor do I hold ownership of any of its related intellectual properties. If I did, I would be filthy stinking rich and wouldn't be writing this disclaimer.

Greetings and salutations, hypocrites lecteurs, mes sembables, mes frères! (Modified reference to T.S. Elliot there for you. He didn't write anything about ses soeurs, so I beg pardon of my readers who are of the more female persuasion.) My moniker, astonishingly enough, is Mengde, and I have a few words for all of you.

First, this is a spinoff of my recently finished work, Schism. You may have seen it floating around; it's got 30 chapters, 111k words including my author notes and such, etc. It was a crossover of the Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X worlds. Many people read it, liked it, and I got the general impression that some people were sad that it was over. (If you want to go read it, be my guest.)

That said, you don't need to know anything about Schism to read this. While I do like a good spinoff here and there, the best ones, in my eye, are always the ones where you can read through it without ever having read the original story it's based on and appreciate it as a stand-alone work. I may make references to events in Schism here and there, maybe a self-referential joke (one of my few pleasures in life), but beyond that this is just another story.

Turning to the matter of the rating, it's T because our heroes have a sad tendency to curse. I make it a policy to not drop the dreaded "f-bomb" because some people find it disturbing on amazingly higher levels of magnitude than the occasional "shit" and so on. Also, I myself have a sad tendency of liking the occasional fight scene, and I'd rather not say something's K+ when there's brutal murders and such. (Not giving away any plot here at all, nosiree…)

On updates: I update as close to midnight US West Coast time as I can, give half an hour to an hour depending upon extenuating circumstances. (I never update before midnight my time, that's why there's no "take" involved.) When do I do this? For Schism, it was Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. I'm dropping the Saturday for this story, I think, just because I'm busier now than I was then (sort of). I make no absolute promises, readers, but I will try to adhere to this schedule.

One last thing: if you've read Schism and didn't know that this was coming, go reread Chapter XXX's author note. Very carefully.

Now, without further ado, I give you Big Trouble in Little Wutai. (A cookie to anyone who gets the reference.)

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It was a dark and stormy night.

However, it was only a dark and stormy night for the residents of Edge City. Cloud Strife's response to the weather was to shut all the windows in the bar before seeing Marlene and Denzel to bed, then joining Tifa in his room.

On the other side of the world – namely the western continent – it was mid-afternoon and sunny. A jet black, sleek convertible roared north along the highway, heading for Wutai.

Reno was driving. The young Turk's long, red hair flew about wildly in the wind. His eternally ruffled suit had been discarded in favor of a white tee-shirt and jeans – he was supposed to be on leave, after all, though he kept his goggles on his forehead out of habit. On the wheel was his left hand, making sure the car didn't go off of the road.

His right hand was on top of Yuffie Kisaragi's left, trying to give her some steadying assurance – her motion sickness, after a brief period of absence, was back in full force. She was seated next to him, doggedly staring straight ahead and trying not to look to either side too much. The ninja-girl wore her black top, tan shorts, and knee-high laced boots, as had become her fancy.

Stretched out in the back seat was Rude, dressed in his suit and wearing his sunglasses. He was napping, or at least trying to, and an umbrella had been fixed against the back of the seat with a safety belt and opened to give him some shade. It was a light sky blue, and Rude had picked it out in Costa De Sol because it was "a nice color."

The two Turks had been on leave for about a week now, having decided to vacation in Wutai for a time after Rude had expressed his particular brand of dissatisfaction with Costa De Sol and its beaches. They'd loaded the car onto a commercial cruiser and crossed to the western continent, then set out for Wutai.

Now they'd been driving for three hours, and Wutai seemed no closer.

"Are we there yet?"

Reno gritted his teeth and replied, "No, Yuffie, we're not there yet."

Risking a glance at Reno, Yuffie noticed his bunched jaw muscles. "What's wrong?"

"You asked that five minutes ago."

"Yeah, so?"

"And again five minutes before that."

A contemplative expression came over Yuffie's features, then she perked up and exclaimed, "You just want me to ask you that more often, don't you?"

"No, sugar, I really don't. As a matter of fact, I just want you not to ask that."

Rude remained silent.

Yuffie grinned at Reno, ignoring her stomach's protestations, and moved a bit closer to him along the bench seat. "Come on, you know you want me to."

"No, I really don't."

Inching closer, her grin widening, Yuffie finally brought her lips up to Reno's ear. He felt her breath and tried not to twist his head around to look at her.

"Reno," Yuffie whispered. "Are we there yet?"

Reno opened his mouth to snap something, then gave in to Yuffie's infectious good spirits and started to laugh in spite of himself. She fell back into her seat, giggling as well, and tried to look innocent when he turned to stare accusingly at her.

"You're going to make me run us off the road, you know," he finally got out between breaths.

"It'd be more exciting than this."

"True, true. We'll just have to find a way to make this trip bearable, then, eh?" His grin widening, Reno began to walk his right hand along the seat towards Yuffie, moving all of his fingers in an overtly spiderlike pattern. She gave a mock squeal and pretended to curl up into a ball, batting playfully at his hand.

"Eyes on the road," Rude finally said.

Reno started and glanced at his partner, who until now looked as though he'd been sleeping. Hell, he still looks like he's sleeping. "When did you wake up?"

"I didn't. Can't sleep."

Her spirits revived from the drudgery of the past three hours, Yuffie flipped herself around and leaned over the back of the front seat to bring her face nose-to-nose with Rude's. "It's these sunglasses that're the problem!" She poised a hand above Rude's head, fingers bent, looking ready to snatch the article right off of his face.

"Hold up," Reno said aloud, his tone quickly becoming serious. "There's a roadblock ahead."

It wasn't so much of a roadblock as a crude, makeshift fence thrown up across the highway, but it was in the way nonetheless. He braked slowly, not wanting to throw Rude off of his seat.

The car came to a halt two meters or so from the fence, and Reno saw a sign tacked to one end. It had something scrawled messily on it in black ink.

Foreigners turn around. Wutai is off-limits to you.

"What the hell is this?" Reno asked nobody in particular. "People in Wutai didn't have any bone to pick with 'foreigners' the last time I was there!"

"That was two-odd years ago, remember?" Yuffie reminded him. "Maybe Dad's up to his old tricks or something. He seemed pretty well-behaved when I left a few weeks ago, though…"

With a growl, Reno gave an indignant gesture. "Whatever. We're not going to let some isolationist prick ruin our vacation. Partner, need some reconstruction here."

Yuffie raised an eyebrow. "Reconstruction?"

"Rude specializes in it. He takes an intact thing and creatively reinterprets it into bits and pieces."

Rude fumbled in his pocket for a moment, then pulled out what looked like a miniature grenade. He pulled the pin and tossed without looking.

Two seconds later, the fence was burnt rubble, and the road had a new scorch mark on it.

Revving the engine, Reno sent the car shooting through what used to be a makeshift roadblock. He gave a contented sigh and leaned back in his seat. "Always nice of you to carry live ordnance around, partner."

"Anytime."

They passed another sign that told them they had thirty miles to go until they reached Wutai, which was good to know. His grin returning, Reno turned back to Yuffie. "Now, where were we?"

Yuffie's grin also returned, then faded when she looked at the road ahead. "We've got company."

"What?"

The ninja-girl pulled a pair of binoculars and peered through them. Reno spent a moment wondering where she could possibly secret binoculars on her person, then decided to stop exploring the matter, as it was leading him down a rather provocative line of thought. "What d'you see, Yuffie?"

"Six, seven bikers heading for us. They all look like they're from Wutai."

"Think they're friendly?"

"They've all got guns and swords."

"Never mind, then. Lemme see."

Yuffie handed Reno the binoculars and he regarded the opposition through them. He counted seven bikers, all on what looked like pretty generic motorcycles with no armor, weapons, or special modifications. Comparing them to a work of art like Cloud's Fenrir was akin to comparing a pistol and a N17B full-auto assault rifle – Rude's "persuasive" weapon of choice.

Just a bunch of punks looking for a scrap.

Handing the binoculars back to Yuffie, Reno checked the speedometer of the car and put his foot down on the gas a tad harder, pushing two hundred kilometers an hour. Up ahead, he could see the bikers come to a stop and skid their bikes around, then start their engines up again. As Reno shot between them they continued to accelerate, quickly pulling even with the car.

The biggest one, who was riding a bike that looked slightly less stock than his mates', pulled up alongside the car, bringing himself to within a meter of Reno. "HEY!" he shouted. "TURN AROUND AND GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM! WUTAI DOESN'T NEED ANY FOREIGNER TRASH COMING IN RIGHT NOW!"

Reno immediately wanted to acquaint the rider's face with his riot prod, but it was in the trunk. All he had up his sleeve was his holdout Derringer, and it was only good for a single shot, after which he'd need to go through the process of reloading the archaic pistol. Which I can't do without more ammo, and even if I had more ammo I couldn't do it while driving.

So he did the only sensible thing: he bodily slammed the car into the man's bike and sent him flying.

"HAPPY LANDINGS!" Reno shouted.

In the rear-view mirror, he saw the other bikers reach for their weapons. Yuffie, who had turned around in her seat to watch them, immediately ducked down, and Rude, who hadn't stirred yet, continued to stay as he was.

Reno popped the trunk open. The lid flew up behind him, obscuring his view in the mirror, but it also took the first salvo of bullets the bikers tried without complaint. The car was Tseng's, and the man only invested in bulletproof vehicles.

"Are you crazy?" Yuffie shouted over the sound of bullets pinging off of bulletproof armor. "All of our stuff's in the back!"

"You got a better idea for stopping that barrage, sugar, now's the time!"

He heard one of the bikers rev his bike's engine and accelerate, pulling alongside. Reno expected to see the man carrying a gun, but he instead wielded a large, wicked-looking blade that he swung wildly at Reno's head. The Turk ducked and saw the blade crash into the bulletproof-glass windshield, rebounding.

Before the biker could get off a second swing, Rude closed up his umbrella, freed it from the seatbelt, and jabbed its pointed tip against the man's forehead. He and his bike went shooting off of the road.

"Hang on," Reno said. "Please keep all hands and feet inside the vehicle until it comes to a full and abrupt stop."

Yuffie stared at him as though he'd grown an extra head, then gave an involuntary yelp when she realized what he was going to do. She wedged herself into the front seat as well as possible, and Rude folded himself into a crouching position between the front seat and back, umbrella at the ready.

His grin returning, the redheaded Turk hauled the front end of the car sharply to the left and hit the brakes, hard. Tseng's convertible seesawed and drifted until it presented its entire side profile to the oncoming bikers, then came to a dead stop. Reno got down low, beneath the level of the open roof, and as an afterthought hit the parking brake.

The five remaining bikers had no way to stop in time. All of them slammed full-tilt into the car and were thrown from their bikes, which themselves flew in all directions after rebounding off of the double-armored side of the car. The car itself was thrown up off of its left-side wheels and teetered for a second in midair until Reno and Rude threw themselves against the movement and brought the car slamming back down.

It was deathly quiet in the aftermath. Reno poked his head up, surveyed the area, and got back into the driver's seat. "Well, that's that. The world has one less gang of punks to deal with."

Rude also got up, but he looked at the left side of the car. "Tseng will skin you alive," he observed dispassionately. "The finish is completely shot and the fiberglass needs replacement all along my door."

"We got rear-ended," Reno replied. "Not our fault."

"Rear-ended by what? A semi?"

"A semi driven by a man so drunk he thought his name was Princess and that he was four years old."

Yuffie, who had just emerged from between the dashboard and the front seat, giggled slightly. "Wow. I can't believe that just happened."

Reno jerked a thumb at the road in front of them. "Believe it. We're going to have to drag them out of the road if we don't want to run them over."

Twenty minutes passed, and they were on their way again. They moved over a rise and Wutai was spread out before them, glistening in the late afternoon sun. Reno whistled; the city was many times larger than what he'd seen two years ago, almost the size of old Midgar. "It's amazing how much the place has grown."

"Yup!" Yuffie exclaimed cheerfully. "We've made a full recovery from the war, and then some. "Ever since Meteor, tourists have been a little thin, so we turned our attention inwards and rebuilt our economy. Things really are looking up."

Reno let his foot off of the gas and coasted down the long downwards incline to the city gates, which were manned by several local police officers. As the car idled to a stop in front of the gates, one of them detached himself from the guard post and walked up to the driver's side.

"Afternoon, officer," Reno said, flashing him an insouciant grin. "Nice weather, eh?"

"Beautiful," the man replied, his tone of voice suggesting that he would rather be sitting in a bar drowning his worries in a Morning Sunrise – an ironic name for a drink that put you down faster than Tseng on a bad day. "Purpose of your visit? And I need to see IDs."

Reno fished into his pocket and flashed his ID at the officer. Rude, who was again stretched out in the back, covered in the shade of his umbrella, retrieved his wallet from his breast pocket, opened it, and waved it about a bit. Yuffie pulled a card out of her left boot – fancy that, Reno thought – and also showed it.

At the sight of Yuffie's ID, the officer stiffened up and saluted. "Lady Kisaragi, welcome back."

For a moment, Reno stared uncomprehendingly at the officer, then turned and stared at Yuffie in the same fashion. "Lady Kisaragi?"

"Dad is the leader of the city," Yuffie replied, looking embarrassed. "Guess that means everyone has to be polite to me." Turning her attention to the officer, she said, "They're with me. Let us in, 'kay?"

"Immediately, milady."

Reno felt his grin begin to widen. "Oh, this is great."

"What?"

"I sense the best vacation ever coming up. Forget that gang of punks that trashed the car; we have what amounts to free rooms and free food! You're the daughter of the all-powerful Godo, right? I never even thought about the advantages of that!"

The city gate opened, an Yuffie gave him a light smack on the arm. "Dad's not 'all-powerful' or anything, and I don't get free stuff just because I'm his daughter. If I did, I'd be spoiled and awful and you wouldn't like me at all."

"You'd be more like me, in other words," Reno laughed, which earned him another smack. He drove in, noting that as the city had grown the roads had also been paved. Nice. "Where should we park?"

"We'll stay at my place, but we should visit Dad first. Drive to the pagoda; they'll let us in."

They moved down the main street of the town relatively quickly, and Reno managed to avoid hitting anyone, surprisingly enough. The pagoda loomed ahead of them in the distance, and they pulled up into a newly established lot in front of it. To the right was Godo's house, and to the left was the ancient shrine to Leviathan, which now held the materia for the great beast.

"Should we leave our stuff here?" Reno asked. "Not sure I like the idea of leaving everything in an open-top car."

"Well, at least nobody will want to steal the car now," Yuffie observed. "It's a wreck."

One of Reno's eyes twitched. "It's scratched. You make it sound like it was smashed to pieces."

"You make it sound like you didn't destroy five bikes with it."

"Technicality! And it was six, I broadsided that one guy who told us to turn around."

They stopped sniping at one another long enough to see that Rude had pulled up the roof, locked the car, shouldered his umbrella, and started walking towards the pagoda.

"Hey, partner! Wait up!" The redhead and the ninja-girl started after the bald Turk, running to catch up.

As the three of them walked up to the entrance of the pagoda, Yuffie instinctively took Reno's hand. He grinned roguishly at her, released her hand, and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, the fingers of his right hand splayed out on her right upper arm. "Don't worry, sugar. I'm sure your dad'll like me."

Yuffie smiled at Reno nervously. "It's not that. Wutai just seems so different, even though I've only been gone for a few weeks. Something's not right."

"How d'you mean, not right? This just some feeling you got, Yuffie?"

"The atmosphere's different. When I left everything seemed happy, but now… the town seems subdued. I don't know what to think of it."

"Like I said, don't worry. Maybe being home for the first time in so long is just getting to you."

Yuffie's smile broadened. "Thanks, Reno."

His own grin increasing, Reno affected a cavalier air and brushed an erstwhile strand of hair out of his face. "Not at all. Reno is always available to help a damsel in distress." With a sudden movement, he picked Yuffie's legs up out from under her, his right arm still supporting her by her shoulders. "Shall we kiss, milady?"

The ninja-girl pretended to think about it for a second or two, lips pursed, hand on her chin, then grinned and beckoned him forward.

It took Reno quite a while, by his standards, to realize that Rude was tapping his foot and clearing his throat. The redhead disengaged from Yuffie, thrills still going up and down his body, and looked up into the stern face of Lord Godo, leader of Wutai.

And he dropped Yuffie in surprise.

To be fair, half of her landed on his feet, but the other half of her still smacked into hard dirt. She gave a short yell, more of surprise than pain, and clambered back to her feet. "You dropped me!"

"Yuffie, turn around," Reno said, staring petrified at the craggy features his sometime-girlfriend's, sometime-lover's father. She thinks I just dropped her because. Oh, hell.

"Like I'm going to fall for that one," she huffed. "Honestly, who'd actually have some giant ugly moron standing right behind them and not notice?"

Rude coughed into his glove.

When Yuffie whirled to lay into him, she accidentally bumped into her father's barrel chest. She stumbled a step backwards into Reno, who stood his ground and plastered on a grin.

"So good to meet you, Mr. Godo," he said. "Yuffie's told me you're in politics."

The man gave a short, dark hmm before replying. "If that's all she's told you, I could educate you further."

"No need, really."

With a shrug, Godo motioned for them to follow him. "Come inside, Yuffie, and bring your luggage with you."

Reno's grin dripped off of his face like water on aluminum foil, but fortunately enough Godo had turned around by the time the redhead collected his wits enough to give the old man the one-finger salute. Yuffie, for her part, did her best to look innocent, taking a particular interest in a freckle on her forearm.

After a short while, they'd ascended the pagoda after Godo and followed him to the top story, which appeared to have recently been expanded, as there were a new set of sliding doors at what used to be the rear of the room. Godo seated himself in front of the doors, motioning for Reno, Rude, and Yuffie to do the same.

"It has been a while, Yuffie," he finally spoke. "I trust you did not do anything too… dangerous."

Reno eyed Yuffie, wondering if she was going to mention nearly getting raped by a Jenova simulacrum, having her emotions dissected and set out on a platter for study, or almost being crushed into a fine paste by an enraged, half-insane Sephiroth with a new body.

"Naw, it was fun," she replied brightly.

"I do hope you enjoyed yourself. As for you two," and Godo turned his formidable gaze on Reno and Rude, "I owe you thanks for having looked after her."

"No problem," Reno replied truthfully – a rarity, that. "My pleasure, really."

"And I also owe you an apology, Mr. Reno."

"You don't need to apologize for ambushing me outside like that, really."

One of the corners of Godo's mouth twitched. "I'm afraid that this concerns Yuffie and is not so trivial a matter."

Eyes widening, Yuffie sat up straighter. "What d'you need, Dad?"

Godo drew in a deep breath and appeared to mentally center himself before continuing.

"Yuffie, I require you to marry."