/reunion/ 

Scarlet pushed the word out of her mind for a second, just long enough
to speak four more.

"I look like shit!"

Vail turned and regarded her with her usual cool stare. "You're worried
about that now?"

"I can't go to the Gold Saucer looking like this," she stated plainly.
"Look at me. What's left of my clothes is filthy, I can't wear these
goddamned shoes, and my hair is a wreck." She threw said goddamned shoes
aside with a snarl; they landed in a small thicket nearby.

It did not escape Vail's notice that Scarlet had neglected to mention
the condition of her feet. They were out of the desert now, and had been
for some time, but Scarlet's feet still bore that elephantine
appearance, not just on the soles, but clear to the ankle. They had
shifted a few times, smoothing a bit here and rippling a bit there, but
she could not quite make them change back into something that passed for
human feet again. And here and there, Vail had been noticing a few other
unplanned changes. Like the vaguely reptilian tail she'd spied when the
wind blew just right, lifting the hem of Scarlet's dress more than
calf-high. Like the odd reverse-image coloration of her eyes; the pupils
were white, the irises bright orange, and the whites black. Like the
slight elongation of Scarlet's neck; it was not blatantly obvious at
first glance, but obvious enough to not look right. It seemed that the
closer they got to the Saucer, the more dramatic the changes became. And
Vail was fairly sure that even Scarlet herself was not aware of them.
"If it bothers you that much, we can buy you some clothes in Corel."
/Not that it'll make a hell of a lot of difference.../

"Oh, that'd be just peachy." Scarlet rolled her eyes (the effect was
unsettling in the least, as this expression revealed two expanses of
black cornea shot through with tiny red veins). "I could use a bath,
though."

Vail nodded; she could not argue that point. "We both could."

*			*			*

Elena stood by at the edge of the dance floor watching Reno bounce
around like an idiot. /I do not know this guy,/ she thought with a great
deal of embarrassment. 

Still, she had to admit, it took a lot of guts (or a lot of alcohol) to
go out there and have that much fun and look that silly and not give a
damn what anyone else thought about it.

But that didn't change the fact that he was making an ass of himself in
public. The man /could not dance./ And even as embarrassed as Elena was
to be within twenty feet of him at that point, she eventually found
herself smiling and then laughing over Reno's antics. Okay, so he
couldn't dance. He was doing a damn good job of faking it, at least.

Finally, the loud and rather obnoxious tune that had been blasting ended
and was replaced by something much slower and mushier, and Elena started
back toward the bar. The song was over, that would be that, and Reno
would come back for the rest of his cold beer and act like a human being
again.

But that wasn't what happened.

Elena had barely taken two steps back in the direction of the bar when
she felt a hand grasp hers. "What--" She turned around, and found
herself face-to-face with a disshevelled and grinning Reno.

"I thought chicks liked this mushy stuff," he said, pointing a thumb
back toward the dance floor where couples were beginning to pair up and
slow dance. 

/Good God,/ Elena thought crazily, /if I didn't know better I'd think he
was asking me to--he IS./ "Forget it," she replied. "You're sweating
like a pig."

Apparently, this didn't faze Reno in the slightest. "It washes off," he
said with a litle shrug, then he tugged at Elena's hand again,
playfully. "You know I'm gonna pester you till you scream if you don't
let me drag you back out there for one dance. I'll follow you around all
night making bunny ears behind your head. I'll stand outside the door to
your room and serenade you. I'll--"

"Okay, okay!" Elena huffed, rolling her eyes. "You're a pain in the ass,
you know that?"

Reno offered a little bow. "And damned proud of it. C'mon." 

As Reno dragged her out to the dance floor, Elena got a sudden burst of
insight. In that moment, she understood exactly must have been going
through Reeve's mind on the way to the gas chamber. /Okay...let's get
this over with.../ With a sigh, she flopped her arms loosely around
Reno's shoulders. Reno wrapped his around her waist, a little tighter
than she would have liked, but...well...okay, so it wasn't that bad. /If
that hand goes any lower, though,/ she thought, /I will slap the
bejeebers out of him./

And, as it turned out, Reno /could/ dance to this stuff.

No...actually, it wasn't so bad at all. 

With a soft sigh, Elena let her head rest on Reno's shoulder. One of his
hands left her waist and rose to gently stroke her hair. 

"You looked like you were pretty glad to see me back in Neomidgar," Reno
commented idly, and Elena nodded.

"Yeah," she replied simply. For a few moments more both of them were
silent, just standing there on the dance floor swaying in each other's
arms. For reasons not quite known to her, Elena suddenly had the urge to
cry. "I was," she said, and her voice cracked a little.

"Hey..." Reno backed off just a little, enough to get a look at Elena's
watering eyes. "You okay?"

Elena nodded and wiped a hand across her eyes...and then as soon as her
eyes met Reno's, she lost it and burst into tears.

"Okay..." Reno held her again, closer than she would have liked under
any other circumstances, and brushed stray bangs off her forehead with a
gentle hand. "It's okay..." He sighed and kissed the top of Elena's
head. 

"It's been seven years," she sobbed against his shoulder, her fingers
tightening their grip on his shirt. "I know it's stupid of me, but I
can't help it..."

It took a minute, but Reno finally realized what she was talking about.
"Tseng."

"Yeah..." Elena sniffled and wiped her eyes in vain. "I miss him,
Reno...I miss him so much..."

"I know." Reno shut his eyes and held Elena close, still stroking the
back of her head. "I do too."

"I just keep thinking about what Raven said, though--"

"Whoa. Stop right there." Reno abruptly stopped swaying and backed off a
bit again, once more locking eyes with Elena. "Listen to me. If you have
half a brain, you won't give a red fuck what that bitch says, okay?"

Elena stared at him, eyes wide and red. 

"She was lying." Reno sighed. "He'd told her to piss off the day before
we went to the Temple of the Ancients and she didn't take it very well.
I think Tseng and Reeve were the only two big dogs she /didn't/ screw."

With a sigh and sob of relief, Elena dropped her head back onto Reno's
shoulder. 

"Are you gonna spend the rest of your life in mourning?" Reno finally
asked, and Elena looked up at him as if he'd slapped her...which, in a
sense, he had. "I know you miss him, and I know it hurts...but you gotta
let him go sometime." He drew a heavy sigh, threw caution to the wind,
and added, "And you don't know how bad it hurts me to see you cry like
that...especially when there's not a goddamn thing I can do about it."
And with that, he bent his head down and brushed a single gentle kiss
against Elena's lips.

Elena jumped at the contact, and Reno fully expected her to haul off and
deck him right between the eyes...but she didn't. And, to Reno's further
surprise, she returned the kiss--timidly at first, and then with enough
force to startle Reno into staggering backwards a little.

*			*			*

Red XIII decided, once and for all, that four-leggers were not meant to
ride roller coasters. 

This revelation came after spending the better part of an hour strapped
into the back seat of the Speed Square coaster in a most uncomfortable
position--sitting up like a human with his tail tucked into a cramped
little knot under his rump. He was not having a tremendous amount of fun
there, considering it was impossible to work the coaster's gun with
either paws or teeth. 

So he sat there, offering halfhearted encouragement, as Barret and Rude
plinked away at balloons and cacti and flying saucers and racked up
points. He got the impression on more than one occasion that Barret was
seriously considering ripping the laser cannon off the car and simply
gunning down the targets with his usual hand-mounted artillery. His
first indication of this was the steady stream of profanity emanating
from the front seat of the coaster during one of the later rides, a
cascade of epithets so vile at some points that Red would not have been
surprised to see Cid pale at the sound of them.

The coaster sailed through a series of vertical loops, and between
questioning the security of his jury-rigged harness and beginning to
understand how Yuffie felt about ships and planes, Red made a mental
note to himself to drop in a comment card suggesting accommodations in
some of the Saucer's attractions for patrons possessing more than two
legs. 

The coaster finally came to the end of the line and pulled back into its
station, and Red was more than a little relieved to hear Barret grumble
"Awright, screw a buncha this, there's a beer callin' my name
somewhere." It took a good five minutes for Barret, Rude, and the
coaster attendant to extricate the beast from the web of belts and
buckles that held him in the seat and help hoist him out of it. Red
stood on the platform stretching his legs and swishing his tail to snap
the kinks out of it while Barret claimed his prize.

"The fuck 'm I s'posed to do with a scale model of Sephiroth's goddamn
sword?" Barret spluttered, walking away from the prize kiosk holding a
two-foot plastic Masamune between two fingers like a cockroach. "That's
the LAST goddamn thing I wanna see right now."

Rude shrugged. "Backscratcher," he suggested. Barret snorted in reply.
Red snorted as well, although his snort was probably meant to be a
laugh. 

"Yeah, thanks a lot." Barret strode off the platform, followed by Red
and Rude, and headed for the transport tube that would take him to the
Land of the Cold Beer. "Lame-ass toy sword...thanks a whole goddamn
bunch..."

*			*			*

Reeve was impressed. 

In his college days, he had been known as the Man with the Asbestos
Stomach. He ate things so hot that most normal people couldn't come near
them without wearing a fireman's suit and full-face respirator, and he
loved them. He'd sent off for seeds of a dozen varieties of hot peppers
(including the very ones Annie Wright used in her nuclear waste wing
sauce) and grown them in the closet of his room at the frat house when
most of his frat brothers were cultivating--uh, certain other varieties
of plant life in their closets. There was one variety of pepper he'd
grown fond of, rumored to have been developed and grown by insane asylum
inmates in Costa del Sol, that had been known to cause week-long cases
of heartburn. Reeve didn't remember the name for them in the native
language, but he did know that it translated out to something like "hot
enough to raise the dead." He'd eaten them like popcorn, sitting in
front of the computer in the lab on long nights with a big bowl of the
demon peppers and a cold beer playing whatever first-person 3-D
deathmatch game was popular at the time. He had never met anyone who'd
shared his love of really hot stuff.

And now he sat on his barstool at the Starlight Square and watched C.J.
inhale half a platter of hot wings that were making every eye in a
ten-foot radius water. Yes, that was impressive.

He stole a quick glance at the dance floor, where Reno appeared to be
mortally embarrassing Elena. Bitchin' moves, indeed. What Reno lacked in
dancing ability he made up for in enthusiasm...and he was lacking quite
a bit in ability. It was obvious that he simply did not care, and he
went on jumping around more or less to the beat of the music like a
cross between a monkey and a rubber ball while Elena pretended not to
know him. 

Reeve laughed and shook his head, reaching out to snag a hot wing from
the platter before C.J. could devour them all. The first bite of
habanero-laden chicken assured him that he had indeed been hungry rather
than queasy, and he was determined to get a good hot meal--in at least
one sense of the word. Apparently, C.J. had been hungry as well. The
first bite had caught her a bit off-guard, but after that her palate
seemed to have adjusted just fine.

"Not bad once it burns the top layer of skin off your tongue," he'd told
her, and she had laughed.

And then she had proceeded to shovel half the platter into her mouth. A
pile of nude wing bones sat at the edge of the plate, looking a lot like
some sort of sacrificial altar in miniature.

Reeve picked his wing clean and added the bones to the pile. "You want
me to order some more?" he asked, and C.J. nodded. 

"Yeah," she agreed. "These are great. But you woulda liked Annie's
nuclear waste wings better, I think. They had more of a flavor to 'em.
These are /hot,/ but they don't--y'know." She reached out for a drink,
not really paying attention to where she was reaching, and found a
bottle. She raised it to her lips and drank.

"Uh--" Reeve identified the bottle in C.J.'s hand as his. "I don't think
you want to--"

"YUCK!" C.J. nearly dropped the bottle, and an almost comical expression
of disgust and revulsion twisted her features. She spluttered into her
napkin a bit, then grabbed /her/ bottle and chugged its contents in
their entirety to get the bitter taste out of her mouth. "What the hell
are you drinking?"

Reeve shrugged. "Garden-variety cold beer?"

"And you LIKE it!?" C.J. pulled a face as Reeve ordered another platter
of wings and another cream soda. "That tastes like--blaah, I don't know
WHAT it tastes like--"

"It's an acquired taste, I guess." Reeve claimed one of the three
remaining hot wings and went to work on it. "It sorta grows on you."
With a laugh, he added, "Besides, after about four of them, you cease to
care /what/ it tastes like."

C.J. wrinkled her nose a bit. "I'll take your word for it. Eww." As she
spoke those words, the music changed; the infectious beat of whatever
house mix du jour that had been playing was replaced by something a
little slower, a little more melodic. C.J.'s attention was drawn to the
dance floor by the shift, and she watched with some interest as folks on
the floor began to pair up and perform something that looked like less
of a dance than a sort of ambulatory hug. She noticed that Reno and
Elena were also among the pairs of huggers on the dance floor, and
something about the whole spectacle piqued her curiosity.

This did not escape Reeve's notice.

/Don't even think about it,/ his conscience threatened. /Cid will kill
you. If you value your life, your unbroken bones, and the possibility of
reproducing someday, get that thought out of your head./

Reeve listened, flinched, and attempted to drown the little son of a
bitch with a few gulps of his beer. 

/All I'm gonna do is dance with her,/ he thought as his conscience tried
to dogpaddle to safety. /No harm in that. And then after that, we'll go
somewhere and talk...and I'll tell her this just ain't right./

/Sure,/ Reeve's conscience burbled. /Get her hopes up and then break her
heart. Just leave it alone altogether. It's dangerous. It's dangerous
for you, it's dangerous for her, it's dangerous for everyone around you
right now if you screw up and stand there thinking about her when you
should be thinking about how the hell we're all supposed to put a stop
to all this shit./

/I can't leave it alone./ Reeve punctuated that thought with another
gulp of his beer. /I have to do something about it./ He listened for a
rebuttal from his conscience, and found it silent. Right. The song was
halfway over; it had to be now or never.

He also noticed that Reno and Elena had vanished from the dance floor,
but didn't really register that fact.

"Hey..." Reeve reached out and laid a cautious hand on C.J.'s shoulder.
"You, uh...want to give that a try?" He nodded toward the dance floor.

C.J. cleared her throat and turned an interesting shade of pink. "I...I
dunno," she stammered out. "I don't know how to dance."

Reeve laughed softly. "Neither do I, but this looks pretty easy." He
stood up and extended a hand to C.J. She took it and slid off her bar
stool as well, following Reeve to the tiled expanse of dance floor. Once
there, she looked at him with a bit of confusion--and more than a bit of
embarrassment. 

"Uh..." She giggled nervously. "What do I do?"

Reeve took her hands, guiding them to his shoulders, and then rested his
own hands on her waist. "Not much, really...I guess you just sort of
sway around a little..."

C.J. nodded a little, frowned, swayed, and stepped squarely on Reeve's
left foot. "Oh, crap! I'm sorry--"

"It's okay," Reeve laughed, steadying C.J. before a second attempt.
"It's just a foot. I've got another one." 

"Okay..." C.J. frowned again, and Reeve patted her back gently. 

"Hey, relax...that's pretty much the whole point of this." 

"Sorry." C.J. offered up a sheepish smile. "I told you I didn't know how
to dance." She looked around at some of the other pairs on the dance
floor and noticed that there was considerably less daylight passing
between the bodies of some of the other dancers than there was between
herself and Reeve...and she remedied this condition by wrapping her arms
around Reeve's neck and dropping her head onto his shoulder. "It might
be a little easier this way," she suggested.

"H--hey--" /Oh shit.../ Reeve started to put up a protest to this, and
his hands rose to push her back again...but in the end they betrayed
him, circling C.J.'s slim waist and holding her close. And, as much as
he hated to admit it, this /was/ a little easier. Feeling a bit
paranoid, he turned his head a bit to get a look at the door, and in
doing so his cheek brushed up against C.J.'s hair. He did not know what
exactly she had been washing her hair with lately, but he did know that
it smelled very nice. Something like fruit salad, with a little bit of
clove from the cigarettes she'd been sneaking.

/God,/ he thought, closing his eyes. /Oh God. How can I tell her
now...how can I pull her out of here now and tell her I can't do
this.../

*			*			*

Had Reeve taken his precautionary glance at the door twelve seconds
later than he had, he would have seen Barret and Rude come through it,
with Red XIII bringing up the rear (his hind legs were still rather
stiff, and he was trying not to think about the nasty cramp in his tail
which refused to go away).

A group of people near the door parted like the Red Sea to let the big
man through, and Barret promptly marched up to the bar and demanded a
cold beer. Rude did likewise. Red simply requested a bowl of water,
again mumbling under his breath about the accommodations for quadrupeds
as he tried to balance himself on a bar stool.

Rude and Barret got their beers; Red got his water (and noted with some
degree of amusement that the bartender had garnished it with a wedge of
lemon; Red ate the lemon, rind and all, made a most amusing face, and
gulped the rest of his water. Apparently, he was not well acquainted
with that member of the citrus family). Barret made one last face at the
plastic Masamune he'd won and dropped it on the floor. As he did so, he
spied two familiar faces on the dance floor and poked Rude in the ribs
with his elbow. "Wouldya lookit that," he said, almost to himself. 

Rude turned to lookit, and made a small snorting/chuckling noise.
"Cute," he observed, and went back to his beer. Red XIII finished his
water, requested another bowl sans lemon, and craned his head around to
look as well. 

"It's a good thing Cid isn't here," he commented.

"Yeah...huh, that reminds me..." Rude frowned and looked at his watch.
"Reno and Elena were supposed to be here..."

Barret took a quick look around the bar and shrugged. "Ain't here now.
They wouldn't be too hard to spot, y'know...Reno's hair sticks out like
a goddamn sore thumb..."

"Hmph." Rude slugged away the better part of his beer and set the bottle
down. "I'm gonna go see if Reeve knows where they went."

Red XIII made a soft snorting noise. "It would appear to me that Reeve
and Junior don't want to be bothered." But the suggestion came too late;
Rude was already making his way to the dance floor. He prodded Reeve's
shoulder. Reeve jumped like a scared rabbit, then relaxed (apparently
because the prodder was someone other than Cid), then exchanged some
words and shrugs with Rude. And then he and C.J. made their way back to
the bar. 

"Huh...they were here a minute ago," Reeve said with another shrug as he
entered Barret's earshot. "I didn't see them leave, though. Maybe they
went to get something to eat."

Rude frowned and extracted his cell phone from his pocket. He dialed a
number, hit "send," and put the phone to his ear. After about half a
minute, he frowned again.

"What's up?" Barret asked, and Rude sighed and stuffed the phone back
into his pocket.

"Reno's not picking up." Rude drummed his fingers on the bar. "That's
not like him. When the phone rings, he answers it."

"Huh," Barret observed. "Wonder if somethin' happened to him," he mused,
flicking a glance at C.J.

"Would you stop it already?" Reeve snapped back at him, and Barret shut
up. "Okay, he's got to be around here somewhere. Split up. They probably
got hungry and went to get some real food, or else they're off goofing
around somewhere...but with Zack floating around the place as bugged-out
as he's been, I'm not going to be reassured until I know they're safe
for sure." With that, Reeve left Starlight Square, and C.J. followed
him.

Barret watched them go and mumbled an almost inaudible suggestion that
Reeve watch his back with that goddamn Turk behind him. The he shook his
head. "Okay, Rude. What the hell do y'all do for fun, anyway?"

Rude shrugged. "Drink, mostly."

"Hmph." Barret snorted. "Hell of a lot of help there, Rude."

*			*			*

Reeve and C.J. did not find the missing ex-Turks at the restaurant, nor
did they find them in Wonder Square. They did, however find Yuffie
racking up an alarming number of catches on the UFO catcher, and they
did find Cid. Finding Cid wasn't too difficult. All Reeve had to do was
follow the trail of swears to the submarine game and knock.

"This better be life or death," Cid grumbled, poking his head out of the
machine to greet Reeve.

"Might be," Reeve replied. "Reno and Elena just turned up missing."

"What?" Cid attempted to exit the submarine game, conked his head on the
door of the thing, and grumbled something that sounded like
"motherfuckbucket" at it. "When's the last time you saw 'em?"

"At Starlight Square," C.J. piped up, and immediately regretted it.

Cid eyed her strangely. "What were you doin' there, anyway? No--never
mind, we'll talk about that later...y'bother to check their rooms?"

"Not yet," Reeve answered. "Rude already tried calling Reno's cell
phone, though. He didn't pick up."

"Okay." Cid nodded. "That's our first stop, then. Hey Yuf--" He looked
over in the general direction of the UFO catcher and saw Yuffie standing
in front of it, a gargantuan pile of small stuffed Mogs and chocobos at
her feet. "Yuffie, what th' hell are you gonna do with fifty stuffed
animals!?"

Yuffie shrugged. "I dunno. They're cute." She began to scoop them up
into her bag, and Cid groaned. 

"She's gonna have the goddamn things all over the Highwind," he sighed,
turning on his heel and stomping out of Wonder Square.

The four of them took a transport tube to the hotel, where they
proceeded to search the halls for Elena's room; hers was the first
number they'd gotten from the front desk. Upon finding the room, Cid
knocked on the door once...then again...then a third time before deeming
the room unoccupied. Fortunately, Reno's room was right across the
hall--

"What the hell was that?" Cid suddenly asked with a scowl, referring to
the odd sound that had just come from behind the closed door of Reno's
room. 

Reeve frowned...and then he heard it. They all did, actually. It was a
moan. A very female-sounding one. "That was Elena," he said flatly.

"That's Reno's room," Yuffie pointed out...and immediately began to
giggle as another moan wafted through the door. "Oh gawd, here we go
again..."

C.J. frowned. "What are they doing?" she wondered aloud, and Cid
sweatdropped.

"They're...uh...well, I think they're..." 

Yuffie opened her mouth to say something; Reeve quickly cut her off with
a reply of "They're, uh...rubbing each other's backs...y'know, like we
were doing."

C.J. seemed satisfied with that. "Oh. Okay."

/Thank you,/ Cid told Reeve silently. /Oh, thank you. And thank you for
shutting Yuffie the fuck up before she could--/

There was another female-voiced moan from behind the door, and a very
male-sounding one in unison with it. C.J. caught it and scowled, and
raised an eyebrow at Reeve. 

"At the SAME TIME?"

Now Reeve sweatdropped right along with Cid. "Well..."

"Oh, for crying out loud!" Yuffie rolled her eyes. "I mean, isn't it
obvious!?" She noticed Reeve grimacing and making the traditional
cutting-the-throat gesture for "stop it" but paid him no heed. "They're
having sex, you dorks!"

This drew identical reactions from Cid and Reeve; both dropped their
foreheads into their hands and groaned.

C.J. sighed and nodded. "All right," she began, calmly and quietly.
"That does it. I want someone to explain this sex thing to me and I want
it explained to me NOW."

Cid turned white. "Uh, punkin...this really ain't a good time for--"

"NOW. Anyone?"

"Okay, Cid," Reeve whispered, obviously amused. "C'mon, you knew you
were gonna have to do this someday..."

"Like hell," Cid whispered back. "I was gonna make Shera do it."

C.J. tapped her foot impatiently as another series of moans drifted from
behind the closed door. "Well?"

Cid cleared his throat. "Well...uh...it's how...well, it's how your mama
and I made you," he replied, hoping to God that would satisfy the kid.

"Duh," C.J. replied flatly. "I kind of figured that part out."

/Shit./ Cid coughed nervously and lit up a cigarette.
"Okay...well...y'see...wh--when a--when a man and a woman love each
other very much, they...uh..." He looked up and saw Reeve turned away
from him, his entire body shaking with suppressed laughter; Yuffie
snickering and making no effort to hide it; and his daughter just
staring at him, waiting for him to finish. "They...uh..." 

C.J. sighed. "They /what?/"

"They..." Cid scratched the back of his head and tugged at his collar.
"They, uh..." Finally, he let out an exasperated sigh. "I can't do it."
Reeve burst out laughing, unable to squelch the urge any longer.
"Someone else wanna tell her?"

Reeve stopped laughing. "Forget it," he said quickly.

Yuffie rolled her eyes once more. "Oh, gawd. C'mon, Chibi-Cid. We gotta
get away from the men for a sec. First thing you gotta know is, women
GROW UP faster." With that, she took hold of C.J.'s sleeve and dragged
her down the hall, out of earshot of the menfolk.

Reeve and Cid traded a nervous glance.

"I got a bad feeling about this," Cid sighed, looking down the hall
where Yuffie was whispering something to an increasingly wide-eyed C.J.

"You and me both," Reeve confided, trying very hard not to notice that
the noise level behind the door of Reno's room was escalating rapidly.
Cid appeared to likewise be feigning ignorance of the noise, but wasn't
doing a very good job. Something told Reeve that as much as Cid hated
the idea of his kid learning the facts of life from Yuffie, he would
have hated even more for her to hear--/that./ And even over this din, a
single word in C.J.'s voice carried down the hall:

"GROSS!"

Reeve winced. Cid looked rather relieved.

Yuffie, smiling pleasantly, escorted C.J. back down the hall to rejoin
the men. "Piece of cake," she beamed.

C.J. pulled a face at her. "And people do that for FUN? Eww!"

The noise behind the door had ceased...well, almost. The four of them
could make out Reno grumbling "What the fuck..." followed by footsteps
toward the door. 

"Uh oh," Yuffie said. "We're busted."

They were indeed busted. The door flew open to reveal Reno wearing
nothing but his pants and not looking too happy. "Awright, show's over!
Piss off!" he snapped, and then promptly slammed the door again.

For a few moments, Cid, C.J., Yuffie, and Reeve stood in the hall in
shock. Then Cid shrugged and started back down the hall on his own,
whistling merrily. 

"O...kay." Yuffie smiled and patted C.J. on the shoulder. "Anything else
you wanna know, Chibi-Cid?"

C.J. shook her head. "Nu uh," she replied flatly. "I'm sorry I even
asked."

"Cool," Yuffie beamed, turning as well to head back to Wonder Square.
"See ya!"

That left Reeve and C.J. standing in the hall staring at each other.
"Okay," Reeve finally sighed. "We have got to get out of here."

C.J. nodded. "Yeah. I don't wanna go back to Starlight Square, though.
That was pretty lame."

"Yeah," Reeve agreed with a bit of a sigh. "Listen...C.J..." He rubbed a
hand over his eyes. /Okay...got to get this over with.../ "We need to go
find somewhere we won't be bothered and talk for a little while, okay?"

*			*			*
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