..Sometime later, I remember purposefully walking three doors down from my hotel. Now, I can't actually remember leaving the hotel itself, but I do remember the walk. It wasn't an ordinary beach walk. It was filled with hate and rage, and the knowledge that I was going to kill Yuffie Kisaragi.

..Now, it never bothered to occur to me that Yuffie was a trained warrior, and I was not. Nor did it occur to me that she was well armed, possibly with magic, and I was not. (However, I have a good trick or three up my sleeve.) Not once did it occur to me that, should I actually try to attack Yuffie, I'd almost certainly end up like the poor fellows that I was supposed to be investigating that week. I was mad, damn it, and I thought that killing Yuffie Kisaragi could do something to make that go away.

..A couple of steps to her house, I finally realized that it might not be the best course of action, so I figured I'd instead see what she had to say. I wasn't exactly sure what she could have said that'd change my frame of mind any, but somewhere in the back, I knew I should give her the benefit of the doubt. I strode up to her door, and banged on it.

.. "Just a second," came her voice.

.. Within moments Yuffie was standing in her doorway, staring at me in a faux baffled sort of way, her eyes big and innocent like some sort of storybook doe. "What's the problem, Face?"

.. I didn't immediately tell her that the problem was her running off with all of my money and unmentionables, in part because she took me off guard with how she looked.

.. She looked, for lack of a better description, completely ridiculous. On top of her head (which I looked at first; I wanted to look her in the eye but forgot how short she was) was a sleeping cap. It had the tackiest little face of a moogle embroidered on the front, and the little ball that dangled off was supposed to match. I assumed that she didn't sleep in the cap, and had worn it strictly to annoy me, and it was working. She wore a nightshirt that was somewhat small for her, and it depicted a moogle riding a chocobo, which I thought was weird and annoying, too. Below that she wore...

.. Oh, that bitch.

.. She had also sported a familiar pair of shorts, which, I'll admit had little pink hearts on them in silly patterns. That girl had taken aggravation to new leaps and bounds. Perhaps out of bounds. I didn't really know what to say to all of this, so instead I just made a sound that was something in between a snarl and a defeated whimper.

.. "Is something wrong, Face?"

.. Eventually, I said, "You know damn well what's wrong."

.. She said, "Oh, that. Come on in, and I'll tell you about it."

.. She led me into her flat. It was considerably better than my hotel, and noticeably better than my apartment, too. The girl had money, and not just mine. It looked fairly simple, but the furniture and fabrics were all made with fine material. It also looked fairly strange, but I knew Yuffie wasn't from around here, so maybe furniture looked different, where she came from. The bed and what must have been the dining table looked particularly weird. She excused herself to another room, and left me twiddling my thumbs in the lion's den.

.. Some moments later she reemerged wearing her standard sweater and shorts. In her arms were the sleeping cap and nightshirt, and only the cap and nightshirt. I whimpered a little. She put these in a basket I hadn't noticed, and sat down on the floor.

.. She said, "I guess you want to know why I took all of your money, huh?"

.. Charming girl, that Yuffie. I gave her a dirty look. Then I said, "Among other things, it'd be nice." I snarled a little, for emphasis.

.. She laughed out loud. When she was done making a mockery of my general manliness, she said, "I guess I'll start at the beginning." When I didn't make a move to interrupt her, she started again. "Actually, you really aren't the first P. I. we hired to work on this case. In fact, when I said that Costa del Sol didn't have any Private Investigators, it's just because they all ran away with our money after a few days. I guess investigating a godlike sorcerer is more than they're willing to take on. Go figure."

.. "And you took all of my money, to make sure I wouldn't do the same thing."

.. "Right! You're stuck here, pretty much."

.. Damn. She had me, there. Originally, I had planned to leave home by other means, so I couldn't just contact Setzer and go. He couldn't know I was staying here, and it wasn't likely to be on his travel agenda again anytime soon. I either had to work on her terms to get my money back, or I'd have to get a real job for the time being.

.. Prudently, I chose the lesser of two evils. I said, "When do you want me to get started?"

.. "Now would be good," she said. "Since we hired the first guy, there've been two more murders. I want to hurry."

.. I sighed, but I had no real choice. "I'd like to see one of the bodies, if I could," I told her.

.. She nodded, and led the way to the door. I noticed that she didn't bother to lock it behind her. We began strolling along the beach again, this time heading toward the morgue. It was my dream vacation, much like my dream girl is Medusa. Yuffie started talking about the scenery. "Over there, you'll see the beautiful entrance of Costa del Sol. Built in Seventeen..." She stopped and looked embarrassed, for a change. "Uh... sorry. I just get used to having to talk about it."

.. We walked in silence, after that. Yuffie kept her eyes in front of her, almost as if she had to keep them off the scenery or tell me about it. I got the idea that maybe even living in Costa del Sol could get boring, after awhile. I shrugged it off and thought of bikinis, instead.

.. Because she was looking ahead, I felt somewhat obligated to look around us now and then, to take stock of our surroundings. The city was very different at night, almost completely dead. Some buildings had lights, but most didn't. There weren't very many people outside, but there was this one guy that was dressed in all black, who stood down by the shore. It was probably just my imagination, but I could have sworn that he looked at me, and didn't much like what he saw. I don't know why, but I could almost feel just how much he hated me, just by how malevolent his stare was. I shook myself of this, and kept walking.

.. When we arrived, I finally realized that Yuffie was a travel guide, and not affiliated with the police in any way. It was the tourism industry that was upset by the deaths enough to hire a private investigator, and I really doubted that they'd just up and let Yuffie into a morgue. I got out my kit and went to work on the door. After a few minutes of this, I hadn't made much progress.

.. When I looked up at Yuffie and saw how annoyed she was, it hit me that I was doing her job. I moved to the side without comment, and she had the door open about as fast as I'd have done it if I had had the key. She was impressive. She motioned for me to go in first, so I did. We went down a short hallway, and ended up in another room. There were various receptacles for the deceased, and all were labeled, most with names. I assume that Yuffie knew what the names where, because she had no trouble at all finding one of the bodies. She gave a little tug and slid the victim, a woman, out.

.. I don't much looking at dead people, and I make jokes when I'm uncomfortable, so I said, "You look cold there, miss. Care to borrow my jacket?"

.. Yuffie wrinkled her nose at me, and asked, "Well? What do you think happened to her?"

.. I started to say "She died," but Yuffie gave me a look that told me not to, so I made a serious examination of the body. There were no signs of a struggle, or any real wear and tear to the skin. The body did, however, posses a slightly wasted quality, almost as though it had some form of a disease, albeit not a very strong one. I couldn't figure what had happened.

.. "Are they all like this?" I eventually asked.

.. "Yeah. Pretty much." I got the opinion that Yuffie liked being here even less than I did. She added, "The coroners can't figure it out, either. It does look a lot like what happens to people hit with Ghaleon's signature attack."

.. I looked at the body again. Ghaleon was reported to have a killing blow so reliable, that all he had to do was strike you with his magic, and you died. Just like that. It hit me right then just how serious of a situation I had gotten myself into, and I also noted with some shame that I really would have ran away with the money, if I could. I shuddered a bit.

.. When I worked up the energy I said "Seeing how comfy she looks, I think I'm gonna go back to the hotel and lie down for about nine hours. Tomorrow, I'm going to do some real investigating."

.. "What are you going to investigate?" She asked.

.. "Ghaleon."

.. "Oh."

.. I looked at the body again, and I pulled away from it, finally. Yuffie pushed it back, and closed its box, thankfully. It took just about everything I had in me not to just run off into the night, and not look back. I recalled the wasted look on the body that had been lying in front of me, only seconds before.