When Yuffie saw the foot fly out in front of her, two thoughts immediately went through her head. The first: I should just jump it and avoid the trouble. The second: What fun would that be?

So, she let her foot get caught on the ragged appendage, pretending to hurt her knee in the process (being a ninja, she'd known how to fall without getting hurt since she was six…which tended to help with her clumsiness).

"Hey, you!" The wannabe punk that had tripped her stood up with a condescending, smug air. Two other similarly dressed boys sniggered behind him. None of them could possibly be more than seventeen or eighteen. The first brat continued. "You hurt my foot! The least you could do is say 'sorry'!"

"Yeah," another boy wearing a hoodie and beanie jumped down from a nearby, dingy wall and sauntered up beside the first one. Two girls and a fifth (very large) guy appeared from behind said wall. Who put a wall like that in the middle of a street anyway? Yuffie wanted to roll her eyes, but it would have blown her act, so she played the part of a cowering girl, as even more people surrounded her. Each of them, she noted, wore a bright yellow color either on their head or arm.

"And maybe something to compensate for the damage," the second boy continued.

One of the girls stepped forward, brushing the long hair on the half of her head that hadn't been shaven to reveal dark make-up in spirals along one side of her face. "Actually," she sneered, "You have to compensate, or we'll make you."

Yuffie found it extremely difficult to hide an amused expression as she spoke. "W-what kind of compensation?" she asked softly. She knew she didn't look intimidating, as her rather short frame, and lack of visible weapons usually ether got her lost in a crowd very easily or slammed a large, blaring, neon sign over her head that said "pick on me" when crowds were absent. Of course, that's what she was going for at the moment.

"She is kind of cute," the tall guy who had a black t-shirt, and what looked like some sort of home-made armor covering various joints on his person commented in a very loud whisper. 'Kind of?' Yuffie couldn't help but bristle slightly at his statement.

No one noticed her offense. Instead, the first guy nodded, his light-colored dreadlocks bouncing around with the movement. "Well, you can either pay us back with gil…or your body."

For a moment she considered pushing it just a little further just to see what kind of reactions she would get, but dismissed the idea almost immediately. Maybe if she weren't in a tad bit of a hurry she would have. Truthfully, she really shouldn't have gotten into trouble in the first place, but she'd been jumpy.

She sighed inwardly, realizing that what little fun this had been would soon be over. In a flash, she'd bounded up and had practically vanished, only to reappear next to the first boy's side. "I'll take the second option," she whispered in his ear, right before she hit three pressure points in his neck in less than a second, dropping him like a rock.

For several seconds, the others in the little gang stared at her in shock, before they yelled out some sort of code word and rushed at her. Of course, by that time she'd already taken out four more and turned to face the next group, followed by a hoard of people who had started to pour out from the surrounding, drab buildings.

"Well," she said to herself as she knocked about her ump-teenth person unconscious and used their falling body as a pivot point to jam her foot into the knees of the person directly behind them, "I guess that's Edge for you."

Fifteen minutes later, she walked happily out of the alley-way, almost completely unscathed and wondering how in the world the new generation of thieves would ever be able to stand up for themselves. She'd only gotten a pouch and a half full of materia from the lot of them, although they'd had a fair amount of gil.

"What's the world coming to?" she asked herself, shaking her head and taking off in the direction of Tifa's bar.

There, revamped to a point where I don't cringe anymore. The next two are the ones that need serious help though. All of these will be revamped so I'm not embarrassed by them anymore.