Target Practice

“Yuffie, please listen to what you’re trying to say here, ” Tifa said, less patiently than she’d wanted but this was getting ridiculous. “Three big – ”

“Nonononono, they were frickin’ enormous!”

“Okay, ” Tifa acknowledged, “three enormous birds sweeping in over the city, homing in on your location, and stealing the Materia we graciously let you borrow despite our misgivings – right from your hands?” Tifa had a very uncharacteristic stern look on her face as she scolded the younger woman.

Yuffie simply nodded, and took another bite of her apple. Crispy and sour and 100% yummy. There was apparently more to Rocket Town than she’d expected.

“You couldn’t come up with a better excuse than that?”

Yuffie shook her head. “‘fff thrww, ” she said and continued chewing. Noisily. Then, with a loud painful-sounding ‘gulp’ she swallowed, and wiped her mouth and fingers on a handkerchief that she pulled out from nowhere.

“Damn thunderbirds! I would’ve kicked their asses from here to Nibelheim if you hadn’t confiscated my weapons. And why the hell did you do *that* anyway? ” she whined, and added a tiny little pout for good measure. “I promised I’d be a good girl!”

“That’s what you said in Cosmo Canyon too, ” Tifa grumbled, “but then you violated our trust by using that clothesline as a target practice.”

Yuffie giggled. “Yeah, right, forgot about that, ” she lied. In fact, she recalled in perfect detail the sight of 18 pairs of bloomers slowly descending to the red soil – slashed and torned into thousands of pieces by just one well-aimed throw. Panty confetti! Heeh! “But ya hafta admit it proved useful when we ran into that dragony monster thingie later? Couldn’t have done that without the extra training.”

“That’s not the point! The point is that you should listen to what we say, and.. damn it, just behave!” Tifa stomped off, waving her hands in the air and muttering something about irresponsible kids.

Yuffie grinned, waved the apple core in Tifa’s general direction, and waited until the older woman had completely disappeared from her sight. Then she put a hand down one of her innumerable secret caches and picked up the four supposedly lost Materia. “Sucker!” she crowed and added the two she’d just snatched from Tifa to the collection before pocketing them again. Man, had she perfected the art of distraction or what?