In a Quiet Town
Chapter 5: My Ingenious Plan for World Domination
Yuffie crept down the wide staircase, watching for any guards that might have been lingering on the ground floor, but it seemed that whoever was in charge was overconfident in the abilities of the guards outside the house. The only person she saw as she crept along the hallway was the tall man she’d eavesdropped on the night before… and he was still in possession of Reno’s electro-rod. Yuffie watched him enter a room at the end of the hall. Once he was out of sight, she decided to get a little closer and see what he was up to.
“I don’t like it. The owner of that hotel said he had a girl with him,” said a deep, rich voice, “I don’t want anyone getting in my way. Not when I’m so close…”
Yuffie peeked around the door, careful not to be seen. Three men stood, gathered around the hearth of the parlor. One was the man she’d followed to the room. The second was a shorter, stockier man, with a build that clearly betrayed several years of fighting experience of one kind or another.
“She’s probably off looking for that red-haired friend of hers. She doesn’t know Garris sank him to the bottom of the river last night. Whoever she is, she’ll never find him and eventually give up, right bro?” the taller of the two said, slapping the other on the back. The third man in the room shook his head. He was older than the other two, though not by much, and dressed in a deep purple suit. Short-cropped brown hair, neatly combed and styled, framed his pale face. His dark eyes held a look of superiority and contempt as he sneered at the two men before him.
“I would rather not take that chance, Riley,” he snapped. The man who’d been addressed shrugged and twirled Reno’s electro-rod casually in one hand.
“We’ll find her and get rid of her, Curtis,” Garris said, elbowing the one addressed as Riley in the ribs.
“Yeah,” Riley agreed, “After all, if ya can’t count on family, who can ya count on?”
Yuffie backed away quietly from the door as Garris and Riley turned to leave the room. She hurried down the hall, ducking into another room before she could be seen, and found herself in a fairly good-sized library.
“Wish that stupid Turk had told me where exactly the secret passage was,” she muttered in annoyance as she experimentally tugged on several random books on the shelf in the hopes that one of them would open a hidden door. Yuffie suddenly froze, and then darted behind one of the plush, velvet curtains that framed the large window, as the sound of the turning doorknob alerted her to the arrival of a possible threat. From her hiding place, she caught a quick glimpse of a purple suit as it approached the bookshelves to her left for a moment, and then settled in a chair. From where the man sat, he’d be able to see the entire room.
‘Oh great! Now I’m stuck here until this guy leaves!’ she thought, knowing that being seen now would mean she’d never have a chance to find that materia.
———-
‘Where the hell are you Yuffie?’ Reno wondered as he cautiously explored the ground floor of the house. As tempting as the idea was to leave the young ninja behind to fend for herself, he knew he’d never be able to do it. Yuffie was an irritating, whiny, thieving little pain in the ass… but he did owe her his life after all. And besides that, he was getting used to having the little urchin around.
Suddenly the loud report of a gunshot echoed through the hallway, and he spun around, expecting to see someone shooting at him. He found no one there, but the first shot was followed by a second and a third, and he quickly pinpointed their source as being a room in the direction he’d just come from.
“Yuffie…” he hissed, as he realized there was only one other person in the house besides himself they’d be shooting at. He sprinted in the direction of the shots.
———-
Yuffie dove behind a chair as the second shot shattered the window behind her. She briefly wondered how one person could have such lousy luck. As the third shot embedded itself in the plushly upholstered chair, she instead began to wonder why she’d picked such a stupid place to hide. Mere moments ago, the man she heard referred to as Curtis had apparently decided that the library was not lit well enough. His solution? Open the curtains, of course… at which point he’d discovered the young ninja, and with a calm expression on his face, had drawn a gun and opened fire. Her agility had saved her from the first shot, as she’d used the thick material of the curtains to partially conceal herself and dart away before the man could properly take aim. Even so, the bullet had grazed her shoulder. She’d barely had time to avoid the second shot, but now, crouched behind the chair, she was about to take the opportunity to retaliate.
Glancing at the Contain materia on her armor, which she had conveniently “borrowed” from Cloud before she’d left on this Leviathan-forsaken trip, she quickly cast Freeze, watching as the translucent stone glowed with a cold, grayish light. A soft shimmer, like snowflakes reflecting the sunlight, danced around her adversary as the ice crystals that would soon encase him began to form in the air. Yuffie stood, preparing to make a run for it before any of the house’s security showed up, but then something she wasn’t expecting happened…
Curtis laughed as the magical glow moved away from him, as though loath to touch him. And then, without any farther warning, Yuffie found herself surrounded by the power of her own spell, feeling the air turn icy all around her, and she suddenly couldn’t move. The ice seemed to flow over her body, solidifying as it wrapped around her in a thick layer, colder, even, than the barren snowfields of the Great Glacier. There was no air inside the ice, and no room to take a breath had there been, so tightly was she entombed. Yuffie could feel the heat being leeched from her body, unable to move even enough to shiver. Through the crystalline wall, clear as cut glass, the room was a kaleidoscope of images, reflections mirrored at odd angles to create a tapestry of confusion. It took her stunned mind a moment to sort it all out, but she eventually caught sight of a ring on the man’s right hand that seemed to glow with the same color as Yuffie’s materia had… a reflect ring. The ice prison shattered and she dropped to the ground, shaking uncontrollably. Her opponent stood over her, gun pointed at her head, with an expression that clearly said “Don’t even think about moving”.
———-
“Hold it right there!” an all-too-familiar voice called. Reno muttered a curse under his breath and halted in his run for the room the shots had come from, turning to see a gun aimed at him.
“Why couldn’t you have just stayed dead?” Garris asked him in a mockingly annoyed tone, “I’m a busy man… I don’t have time to go around killing you over and over again.”
“Yeah, well, I have this thing about dying… It’s not something I like to do,” Reno replied. Garris motioned for him to turn around, and then nudged him in the direction of the room he’d been heading for in the first place. A second man stood beside the now-open door, and though Reno didn’t recognize the face, he had a pretty good idea who he was as he watched the man idly tapping a long, slender weapon against his thigh.
“It’s not nice to take things that don’t belong to you,” Reno growled at the man as he was escorted into the room. The response came in the form of a painful shock from the weapon delivered to Reno’s ribcage. He staggered and fell to one knee, but quickly recovered, glad at least that the guy hadn’t figured out how the settings on his electro-rod worked… and somewhat grateful that he hadn’t left it set any higher…
“Cut it out Riley,” said Garris, “Plenty of time for that later.” He shoved Reno forward, closer to where a third man stood, gun pointed at something behind a chair.
“I’m disappointed Garris… You told me he was dead,” he said, stepping back a bit, but his aim never wavering, “Take the girl’s weapons… And her materia… She’s got quite a lot.”
Riley complied, collecting the small stones from Yuffie’s armor and relieving her of her Conformer.
“Take them both downstairs,” Curtis ordered, before leaving the room.
“Pretty lousy taste in partners,” Garris remarked, glancing at Yuffie’s shivering form, and shoving Reno forward again, “Carry her.”
Reno bit back the nasty reply he was about to make, instead grudgingly doing as he was told and scooping Yuffie into his arms.
“C-cold…” she whispered against his chest, teeth chattering as her body tried to warm up, the plaintive word tugging at Reno’s heart… a fact which he was none too thrilled by, and he wondered when he’d started to care what befell his one-time enemy. He quickly shook the thought from his head, deciding that he just felt sorry for the brat. But still, he held her a little closer, offering what warmth he could as Garris motioned for him to follow Riley out of the room.
———-
“Well, now that we’re all here,” said the man in the purple suit, “Allow me to introduce myself… Curtis Torran. I believe you two have already met my younger brothers…”
He gestured to Garris and Riley. Where the man had seemed contemptuous and irritated by the presence of two intruders before, he now acted almost as though he were making some sort of show out of the whole situation. To say the least, the idea bothered Reno.
Yuffie had recovered a bit from her failed attack. The occasional chill still ran down her spine, but she had all but forced Reno to set her down, and now stood, glaring at the three men who had captured them.
“I have to admit, I’m impressed,” Curtis continued, standing in front of the large door that Reno knew led into the materia vault, “You’ve breached my security not once, but twice… and apparently you have come back from the dead…”
He looked pointedly at Reno, the tone of his voice clearly relating his displeasure for the fact, though the Turk couldn’t be sure if it was directed at him or at the man’s brother who had failed to dispose of him.
“But I suppose that can be remedied easily enough,” he said, and he turned and unlocked the door to the vault. As the door swung open, revealing the rows of materia-laden shelves inside, Reno stole a glance at Yuffie. She was standing beside him, wide-eyed, mouth agape, staring into the room where the crystalline stones glittered and glowed.
“You… you weren’t exaggerating…” Yuffie said quietly, unable to take her eyes off of the treasure trove of materia that lay before her. She had only dreamt of seeing so much materia in one place. ‘Just think what I could do with all that,’ was the only thought that ran through her mind, eyes wandering over the shelves that stretched clear to the other end of the house. Garris prodded her with his gun.
“Move it, girly…”
Reno was similarly urged forward by Riley… except that his motivation came in the form of another shock from Riley’s ill-gotten electro-rod. Reno bit his lower lip to stifle the surprised, and moderately pained cry, not wanting to give the man the satisfaction of hearing it. The two prisoners followed Curtis into the vault as he meandered through the maze of shelves, their guards never more than a step or two behind.
“I suppose that the tradition here would be for the villain to divulge the secrets of his master plan to the… hmph… heroes… before inflicting upon them a gruesome death of some sort,” Curtis said, halting in front of a small wooden door inside the vault.
“You’ve been watching too many late night spy movies,” Reno snorted, and was rewarded with yet another shock from his electro-rod. He turned and glared at Riley, ignoring Curtis’ bemused laughter, “You’re getting way too fond of that thing, ya know that?”
“Well, if you’re not interested in hearing about my plan, I suppose we can skip straight to the gruesome death part…” Curtis said, drawing the Turk’s attention back to him.
“Wouldn’t want to break with tradition,” Reno replied, hoping to stall for time until he could figure out a way to get both Yuffie and himself out of the vault without being shot or electrocuted, and then past the security outside the house.
“Wonderful… Well, stated simply, I plan to rule the world,” said Curtis.
“Rule the world, huh? Yeah… That’s real original. Never heard that one before. So how are you going to do it? Use millions of Manipulate materias to control the minds of everyone on the planet? Oh wait… I know… You’re going to start a world-wide materia shortage, and then when everyone is desperate for the stuff they’ll do whatever you say… Or maybe you’re going to… OW!” Reno was cut off mid-sentence by Riley, who had figured out how to increase the setting on the electro-rod while the young Turk was mocking his captor. Reno turned to look at him again, “You know something? You’re really starting to tick me off…”
“Are you ready to die so soon, or shall I continue?” asked Curtis, patience wearing thin.
“Oh, continue, by all means…” Reno drawled. Yuffie looked at him, silently wondering if he was actually trying to get them killed. She got the feeling that Curtis was wondering the same thing. In reality, Reno was trying to keep him talking, suspecting that the more he proclaimed Curtis’ idea impossible, the more details the man would reveal to prove him wrong… and the more time he’d have to work out an escape plan.
“Very well… As you may know, materia is nothing more than crystallized mako energy. My father spent his entire life researching and studying materia, and he came to an interesting conclusion… That if there were a crystal large enough, its power would be unimaginable. His theory was that it may even be able to control the Lifestream itself… Of course he wanted to infuse the power of such a crystal back into the planet to restore the mako energy that Shin-Ra’s reactors have extracted. He wanted to revitalize the planet and make amends for the damage humans have done… He was a fool. I, on the other hand see the true potential of such power,” Curtis said, his eyes taking on a faraway, almost dreamlike quality, “Just think of it… A massive crystal of materia, with the power of every known type… A crystal that, according to popular belief, draws upon the knowledge of the Ancients infused in the Lifestream. Its reach would be worldwide. I could cast a spell here, and have it wreak havoc in Mideel, or Wutai, or even Midgar…”
Yuffie’s silence abruptly ended, “Yeah right… And just where is this incredibly powerful materia gonna come from?” Her tone mirrored Reno’s previous scornful disbelief at the feasibility of this so-called plan, and in fact, Reno had been about the ask that exact question, having not read that far in the file he’d found upstairs before Yuffie had run off. Curtis chuckled gleefully.
“That’s what all this is for,” he explained, “You see… I’m going to make one. Of course there’s still the small matter of raising a proper army to take care of anyone who might fight back… and I still need quite a few more of the smaller crystals to accomplish my goal… but the first can be easily obtained with the right amount of money, and the people of Duraman have graciously volunteered to help with the second of those problems. It was so very easy to obtain their cooperation, too… After all, undoing the damage Shin-Ra has caused is such a noble goal… and people have a tendency to believe in noble goals. They even go out of their way to keep it a secret in order to protect all their hard work from thieves like you two. In fact, you are the only people who have come snooping around since we started.”
“Wait a minute… back up,” Reno said skeptically, still looking for some route of escape, “What do you mean you’re gonna make your own materia?”
Even as he uttered the question, Reno was going over the possibilities of escape. There were no windows in the vault… Garris and Riley were sufficiently blocking the way they’d come in, and even if he and Yuffie got past them, they’d still have to contend with the guards outside. They could try making a run for the small wooden door that Curtis stood beside in the hopes that the two men behind them wouldn’t risk shooting their brother to stop them, but Reno had no idea what was on the other side of that door… perhaps an exit, or perhaps a dead end.
“Simple geochemistry. Materia is nothing more than a crystal… I propose to take all of these small crystals and recrystalize them into one big one,” Curtis said, his voice interrupting Reno’s thoughts, “First, I will crush them into a fine powder, and then dissolve that powder in a solvent. By letting that solvent evaporate, the solute will solidify into one massive crystal…”
Curtis opened the door beside him, a dangerous smile on his face.
“Well, now that you know my plan, I think it’s time for you two to die,” he said calmly. Reno was suddenly thrust into the room by Riley, accompanied by a gratuitous shock from the electro-rod. He landed on a cold metal floor after falling down a good four feet from the level of the door, rolling onto his back and looking up just in time to see Yuffie practically thrown through the door after him. Yuffie squeaked in surprise as she discovered that the floor wasn’t where she’d expected it to be. She landed with a quiet grunt on top of something relatively soft. Her landing was met by a loud crack and a groan from beneath her.
“And this,” Curtis called down to them, “is where the materia will eventually be crushed. I realize that you two aren’t exactly of the same chemical make-up as materia, but it should still have a similar effect… If a bit messy…” With that, he slammed the door shut, leaving them in darkness.
“Yuffie, you need to go on a diet,” Reno said, shoving her off of him, “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” she replied, “Your ribs broke my fall.”
Reno sat up in the darkness. He had the distinct feeling that the young ninja was smirking at him. He winced as a sharp pain shot through his side as he took a breath.
“I think your fall broke my ribs,” he groaned, tentatively pressing a hand to the injury.
“I… I think we have bigger problems to worry about than a few cracked ribs…” said Yuffie, as a loud mechanical hum filled the air and the room began to vibrate.
“Damn… Yuffie, come on… Help me look for a way out of here!” Reno replied, climbing to his feet and feeling his way along the smooth, seamless wall of the pit. He wasn’t sure if the floor was moving up, or if the ceiling was coming down, but either way, they were quickly running out of space in the little room. His fingertips grazed the bottom edge of the door they’d come through, finding that the ceiling had already blocked most of the entrance. He cursed softly and hit the door with his fist in frustration.
“Reno?” Yuffie’s voice called out to him from the opposite side of their prison, “There’s no way out of here… is there?”
Reno made his way back over to her, noting the disheartened tone in the young ninja’s words.
“Doesn’t look like it at the moment,” he replied truthfully, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her closer to him, choosing not to ignore the strange desire to comfort her.
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