A/N: Don't hurt me! *hides* I know I shouldn't be writing ANOTHER story but it just came to me while I was trying to take a nap earlier and just had to write it. *sobs because she knows everyone hates her. Also, M for violence and possible gore, not really sure yet... We'll see...

I don't own anything that people have ever seen in FF VII~~~~~~

Creeping Shadows

Chapter 1: The Escapist.

Icy moonlight slipped in through the window, lighting up the large room with an eerie white glow. Yuffie's eyes slowly shifted from side to side as she laced up the strings on the front of her crop top, she was making sure no one around. The young girl had been trained to be a ninja and now was the time to test out her skills. She had to get out of her father's palace; danger lurked around every corner for the young princess as long as she stayed in that place. Her father had recently remarried to a younger woman, but that woman made Yuffie very uncomfortable. The woman would never let Yuffie go out anywhere; she had to stay in the palace, more specifically, in her room and only her room. She didn't like how the woman always referred to Yuffie as her little nightingale, most likely because of her surprisingly good singing voice, but the name and strange treatment made her feel like a bird in a gilded cage. Yuffie had begun to hear about strange things happening around Wutai from the servants all around the time that the woman had come around though no one seemed to notice. But Yuffie did… People going missing, shrines and churches defiled or stained with evidence of people trying to summon demons and monsters, and then there were the bloody sacrifices of both humans and animals. Just thinking about it made Yuffie sick; these were her people that were being tormented and she had the obligation to set them free. Though first, that meant she had to gain information on her new step-mother and that meant going out into the real world. Yuffie sighed; she had only been out of the palace grounds a few times and knew very little about what the world was like. This scared her a bit but she knew it had to be done, no other person was going to defy the new queen of Wutai, Yuffie was the only one. She was a highly trained ninja; she could do this she just had to put her mind to it! The eighteen-year-old shivered as a freezing zephyr blew in through the window, brushing against her bare legs. She looked down, remembering that all she was wearing down there was a tiny pair of underwear; she was going to have to fix that problem too… She walked over to her dresser and opened the drawer; much to her dismay, its contents consisted of only short-shorts and socks. Cursing this fact, she pulled out a pair of violet ones shorts and pulled them on, leaving the button above the zipper unclasped. She then reached for a pain of white socks; they were clean, silky and up to the middle of her thighs.

"Ok, girl, you can totally do this!" She whispered to herself, trying to force confidence into her brain, it didn't work, "Who am I kidding! I need a miracle if I'm gonna survive this!" She quickly covered her mouth as the words came out too loud, finally sighing where she heard that no one was coming to check on her. She gently reached down and grabbed the back pack at her feet; it was filled with food and bottles of water that she had been hoarding for the past couple days, lock-picks, a lighter, another change of clothes, a tiny Leviathan plushie than her mother had given to her when she was little. Yuffie silently walked over to the door and locked it before tying her favorite headband in her hair and pulling her knee-high sneakers on. She headed for the window; stepping one foot over the sill on to the ledge of the roof, she turned back to her room as icy wind brushed her skin. She grabbed her hoodie off the vanity next to window and now stood fully on the roof. Crisp snow crunched slightly beneath her feet as she tip-toed along the roof, she had to get out of the palace and soon. The midnight sun sent down rays of light that reflected off the snow as she continued to creep along.

'Don't worry, Wutai, I'll save you have the horrid lady…! I just need to get to the woods and then I'm home free to hunt her down!' She thought as she raced silently through the shadows towards her hideout in the deep forest that surrounded the palace ground; she had a weapons stash there just in case something like this ever happened.

~Y*Y~

After about fifteen minutes of shadow dodging, Yuffie was finally at the palace walls that stood between her and freedom. Shivering slightly from the cold; she reached a hand up to the wall and took hold of one jagged bricks then took to another with her other hand, her feet soon found their own holds and she began he assent to the top of the wall. For the most part it was rather easy, but she somewhat out of practice from being locked up for so long, so occasionally her fingers or the toe of shoe would slip and she would have to quickly catch herself before she fall.

"Great job, dad! Put a thirty foot wall around the palace! Why not just put in a lava moat while you're at it!" Her grumbles vented the frustration she had for currently aching and bleeding fingers but she trudged on anyways, this was something she HAD to do. Though, her bravado was quickly fading as a new sheet of pure white snow started to drift from the skies. Yuffie gulped as she finally got to the top and straddled the icy brinks.

"Dang it's cold!" She hugged herself and began to rub her arms as she looked down towards the forest; she had three options; jump and fall thirty feet, use her already achy body to climb down another thirty feet or walk along ice-slicked bricks to a tree somewhat down the path and use it to climb to the forest floor. A loud groan escaped her lips, she hated all those ideas but in the end she hated the tree one the least and she really had to get to her hideout for the snow got any higher. She didn't notice a white bird fly silently through the skies, watching her closely, in the end she would be very grateful that it had.

~~~~A/N: Well? Was it good? Was it bad...? ; ; R&R please...