When I'm not in Wutai where I can practice and exercise with other martial-arts-type-people, I go to the gym. I mean, with the amount of junk food that I eat, I gotta work out to stay in tip top shape. You could say that I could learn some self-restraint and lay off the sugary stuff, but first of all, if there is one thing that is not my middle name, it's "self-restraint," and second of all, resisting Tifa's homemade apple pie is, frankly, a sin, and if you can resist that, then you are obviously going to a special type of hell for people with no taste buds.
So you thought this flat tummy and these awesome legs came to me naturally and with no effort, eh? Well, too bad, so sad, you're wrong, you are the weakest link, good-bye. I'll have you know that I am always in tip-top shape, if only from working out at least an hour a day for the past ten years of my life. Yeah, you know I'm hot.
Anyway, Edge is, conveniently enough, home to one of the central offices of the WRO, like I mentioned before. Because of the WRO's rising popularity and influence, funds were plentiful, and because of those funds, the WRO's building in Edge was large, with lots of stories. One of those stories just so happened to be a gym, and surprise, surprise! I work out at that gym, being an employee of the WRO and all. It gets me privileges (and by this I mean…er…the gym, a salary, and access to the company coffee-room—woohoo).
And guess who I met at the gym? I'll give some hints for the slower of you out there. He's tall, he's muscular, he looks really good in casual clothes (or so I had newly discovered), he's bald, he doesn't talk much, and he used to work for Shin-Ra.
That's right! You guessed it! My old friend Mr. Keeps-Randomly-Appearing-In-My-Life-Man!
So as I was heading over to the butterfly machine, I saw someone bench-pressing a massive amount of weight, like, whoa. I probably could only lift one of the discs on there, using two hands. When I came around the side, craning my neck to see who it was as I traveled over to the few free machines, I realized it was Rude, steadily and almost with ease, hefting the weights up and down.
He was clad in a thin, tightly-stretched muscle shirt, wearing regular old black gym shorts with some nice white tennis shoes. Stopping in my tracks, I once again took the opportunity to admire his rippling muscles. There was a light sheen of sweat dusting his body, making his head shine and giving him a sort of wet, enticing look.
I shook my head and dropped my gym bag by the butterfly machine, determined to get on with what I was here to do and not pester Rude again. He had had enough of me, I was sure, and the last thing I wanted to do was bother him while he was exercising. Besides, I had things to do. I couldn't bother to grace him with my amazing and lovely presence that day.
While I pumped my arms, working up a good, healthy sweat, I mused about the Turks and the WRO. Despite Reeve's and Rufus's combined evasiveness when asked about the circumstances behind the WRO's mysterious supply of funding, it was obvious that Rufus was using his oodles of money to help the WRO out a little bit. Okay, more than a little bit, if the WRO Tower in Edge was any indication. It made sense that Rufus would have some sort of office in this building—in fact, I had seen him around a couple of times, on the way to talk to Reeve or on the way back from talking to Reeve.
And where Rufus went, the Turks went. Even though they weren't really called that anymore. As far as the public knew, when Shin-Ra had been disbanded, the Turks had gone with them. After all, if there was no evil mako-hoarding organization ruling over the world with a corrupted iron fist, then why would they need a sneaky organization of bodyguards to protect them? But I knew better than that, just like anyone with a brain did. Shin-Ra was still around, but under Rufus's hand, they were trying to make amends for their wrongdoings, and if the not-Turks had to do a little headbusting and knuckle-cracking to help with that, then they would.
So I guess technically, if they aren't employees of the Shin-Ra Electric Power Company, the not-Turks are now employees of WRO. As far as I know, though, they're doing the same things they always did, except this time, they're doing it for the WRO, a company which has nicer, different-er aims than Shin-Ra did. Like…y'know, helping the poor and aiding the weak and not sucking the Planet dry like a leech.
Even though I told myself to not pay any attention at all to Rude, nope, not gonna do it, not gonna look, no he is not that attractive—I still found myself tracking his progress across the gym as I pretended not to notice him.
You know, I'm a ninja extraordinaire, great at what I do. Great at subterfuge and subtlety, amazing at blending in with my surroundings and being extra sneaky. I mean, how else could I have snatched Cloud's mastered Knights of the Round materia and given it back to him for his birthday? An amateur does not just steal things from Cloud Strife, nono. It takes skills and brains, babeh, and I have plenty of those.
It seemed, though, that I was just not doing well around Rude. I wasn't very good at showing my good points around him. I say this because of, well, the whole "starting a bar fight" incident and that whole "being recognized and almost blowing my cover" thing. And this time it was because as I was trying to catch darting glances of him, he looked up at several points, and I was sure, just dead sure, that he was looking me in the eye from behind those freakin' sunglasses of his. Stupid glasses.
Whatever, I was not going to acknowledge him. It wasn't like we were friends or anything. A couple of random meetings and walking me to safety does not friends make, nope nope not really. Saving my life did not make him my friend, or at least I didn't think it did, oh, crap were we friends? Should I have been acknowledging his presence? Whatever, I'm thinking way too hard about this. Gawd.
But when he made his way toward the men's showers, my eyes widened at the thought of Rude…in the showers…without any clothes. And when someone is without any clothes, that must mean that they are…n…
Naked.
Holy crap, Yuffie, stop thinking about this! It's not important. I mean, you don't care about Rude being naked! It's not like you want to see him without clothing, with hot, steamy water dripping down his rock hard abs and—
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?
Okay, okay, treadmills, going to clear my mind, going to do some running, going to stop thinking about Rude naked, even though he is really muscular and hot. Fuck, I've gone insane. I've lost it. Cuckoo, crazy, looney, wacko.
That's okay, though. They have help for people like you, Yuffie. There are places you can go, people you can talk to. "Hello, my name is Yuffie Kisaragi, and I am randomly attracted to men who are huge ex-assassins."
As I continued this internal monologue, time flew by. I realized I wasn't getting a real workout from the treadmill setting I was on, so I upped the speed, not really paying attention to what I was doing. As I had set my finger on the "increase speed" button, Rude walked out of the shower in more casual clothing—a dark green button-down shirt over a white t-shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes, and my jaw dropped. Before he could see me, I snapped my teeth together with a click, watching him walk by my row of treadmills, headed to the door.
Somehow, in my distraction, I had forgotten that my finger was still on the "increase speed" button, and the treadmill was going so fast that I could no longer keep up with it. Or, well, I could have, if Rude hadn't been distracting me! Stupid Rude with his stupid muscles.
Because the treadmill was going so fast and just going faster (seriously, do those treadmills have a speed limit on them? I gotta talk to Reeve about getting safety regulations for that stuff), I tripped over my own feet and started to fall just as Rude was talking by me. With a loud yelp, I watched as, almost in slow motion, the moving belt of the treadmill got closer and closer to my face. Or was it that my face was getting closer and close to the belt of the treadmill?
Hello there, treadmill belt-y thing. I don't believe we've met. Let me introduce you to a close friend of mine—my face.
Right before I met with extreme pain and friction burns to the face, I came to a sudden, heart-pounding halt, suspended a few inches above pain and doom. Slowly, carefully, I was pulled to a standing position as I heard the beep of the treadmill being turned off. Eyes wide, breath coming way too short and quick, I looked up to see that it was Rude who had stepped around the side of the treadmill and caught me by the back of my shirt.
He frowned at me and said, "Pay more attention."
You have no idea how much attention I was paying. "Uh, yeah, duly noted and all, Rude-Man. Thanks for saving my skin for, like, the third time in two weeks, buddy old pal."
He nodded, releasing the back of my shirt and giving me a little wave as he walked away and out the door. I stared after him, mind racing.
That was the third time Rude had saved my sorry ass from getting hurt. I was going to have to think of some way to really thank him, and I was also going to have to stop making myself look stupid in front of him. For someone who helped save the world, I sure did know how to look like a tremendous, flailing pile of failure.
-
This isn't to say that I looked like a melty pile of uber-lame all the time, however. There were some occasions—like the time I mentioned before—where Rude saw me and must have known that I was always cool—well, as long as he wasn't there. My theory was that Rude had some sort of Awesome Negation Field, and whenever I set eyes on him, all my Awesomeness was sapped away, and he used it to enforce his aura of coolness and stoic-osity.
What I am getting at is that there were a few times I actually impressed (at least, I think I did) Rude. One of those times occurred a little while after that whole almost-rearranging-my-face-on-the-treadmill incident. Unfortunately, I didn't really make a good impression on Rude consciously. It just sort of…happened.
You know me, defender of the weak, crusader of justice (unless it has to do with stealing—I'm all for some well-placed thievery), just generally a good Samaritan. Heck, I'm not even a good Samaritan. I'm so good, I'm a great Samaritan.
So there I am a couple of days later, shopping, strolling around the marketplace in Edge. And if you know Edge, you know there's no place where the buildings aren't, like, a gazillion stories high (okay, so gazillion isn't a number—I'll go with "bajillion"). The marketplace is ringed with really high apartment buildings where lots of cramped little families live.
Ever since Midgar was destroyed by Meteor, people (and by people, I mean Reeve) realized that there needed to be better safety plans in the event of, oh, say, a silver-haired madman who is intent on turning the Planet into a smoking pile of ash through the use of a ginormous, flaming ball of rock.
After all that, when Edge got built, the WRO started adding fire escapes and stuff on buildings and organizing evacuation plans and installing emergency sirens and stuff. All of that has really helped with safety issues, so Reeve's done an awesome job, but, ironically enough, that particular day, the fire escapes were the source of the problem. That, or bad parenting.
Anyway, I was at this market, right, picking up groceries for Tifa. Poor girl needed some help once in a while, and between taking care of Marlene and Denzel and running a bar full-time, the woman had me doing all the running around. Which didn't bother me 'cause I love being a great Samaritan, y'know? There I was, shopping list in hand, minding my own business, when I hear this terrible scream.
Blood running cold, I dropped my basket full of food items and whipped my head around to the direction I thought the sound had come from. People were already pointing and gasping, and someone else started to scream, causing even more people to scream. My eyes darted to the spectacle.
"Somebody help!" a woman's voice shouted. "Please, somebody help my baby! Senna!"
I remember my breath stuck in my chest as I laid eyes on what the fuss was all about. About twenty feet away, and five stories above the ground, teetering precariously on a ledge on the side of a building, was a little girl, probably about three years old. She was screaming, and her mother, below her, was screaming as well. I saw immediately what the problem was. Slightly to the right of this girl was a fire escape ladder, and protruding from the side of the building was a ridge, just big enough for her to crawl on, but not big enough to balance on for someone with the motor skills of a three-year-old.
"Oh, shit," I breathed. I could tell the girl was scared, and I could tell that if someone didn't do something quickly, she was going to fall. And that would be really, really bad, and since I'm so freaking awesome, I just acted on instinct.
I sprang onto the nearest fruit stand, getting a leg up, then landing on the cloth top of it, and launched into a run over all the canvas roofs. It wasn't the best way to travel, and I almost lost my balance a couple of times, but it got me out of the crowd, and it was the fastest way I could think of.
With a flying jump, I landed six rungs up on the metal ladder, a clang signifying my contact with it. I winced as my knees banged on it—that was going to bruise later, I was sure. People gasped, and the noise surged as I felt eyes on me, and as quickly as I could, I scrambled up the ladder.
"Hey, Kid!" I yelled up to her. "Don't freakin' move—I'm coming to get ya!" She just cried harder. Crap, why can't all kids have a thick skin and serve beer like Marlene?
"Mommy!" she wailed.
"Stay there, Senna!" her mother called tearfully. "This lady's going to help you!"
I was at the top of the ladder at that point, five gut-wrenching stories above the ground. Luckily, I'm a ninja, and heights don't really phase me, but at the same time, I was thinking, Oh, Da Chao's Hundred Hats, that's just high enough to seriously break my legs if I try to land on my feet, and if I don't hit my head, I'll probably live to be maimed for life. YAY!
I was on the ledge, just a few feet away from the little girl, but definitely not close enough to grab her. She was at the corner of the building, where the bricks formed a ninety degree angle, and this really did not look good. She was wobbling, her little knees shaking.
"Just stay there," I said to her soothingly as I sidled along the edge. "I'm going to come and get you, and we're going to get down off this ledge so you can hug your mommy, and then I'll go get a stiff drink and call it a day, 'kay? Does that sound good? And we'll all have a good laugh about this, and everyone will be so freaking relieved."
By this time, her enormous, watery brown eyes were on me, and there was snot and tears all over her face, and I just felt so bad for her, I couldn't even bring myself to be mad at her for getting stuck on a five story-high ledge above the concrete street. Fuck.
"What's your name, chicky?" I asked gently as I crept towards her.
"S…Senna," she said.
"That's right, your mommy said it earlier," I replied conversationally. I needed to keep her calm, to make sure she didn't fall off the edge in her hysteria. I noticed that the crowd had gone exceptionally quiet, and besides a dull whispering, I knew everyone was watching.
"My name's Yuffie," I said. "I really like…er…candy. Do you like candy?"
She nodded. "Yes."
"Good, good, candy's awesome. And so are balloons and puppies," I said, trying to think of things that three-year-olds liked. Besides Marlene, I hadn't been around a lot of little kids, and Marlene liked to play Dinosaur Attack and pretend to eat me like a tyrannosaurus, so I wasn't sure she was exactly the norm.
At that point, all I needed to do was stretch to meet her. "Can you raise your arm up and meet me halfway, Senna?" I asked. "I think it'll make it easier on both of us."
She nodded and lifted her chubby little hand, leaning toward me. I grabbed her hand and held it firmly. "Okay, now I need you to help me out a little and come away from that corner. Can you take one small, slow step toward me, please?"
She raised her foot, wobbly and scared, and I watched with wide, panicked eyes as she tried to take the step, and that was when I saw that her goddamn shoe was untied. She put one foot down, then tried to raise the other and tipped off-balance, falling with a high-pitched shriek.
Suddenly, I was falling with her, open air rushing past me, my breath escaping in a whoosh as I fell one story but managed to clutch the fourth story ledge with my fingertips, yelping as my arm strained. I still had hold of Senna, and she was crying and screaming, swinging painfully by her wrist clutched in my right hand. My left arm was trembling, not used to the strain.
I wasn't sure if I could drop Senna down into someone's waiting arms or even if there was anyone competent enough to catch her before she hit the ground. I let out a grunt of pain as my arm shook harder, and I knew I was going to fall if I couldn't think of something fast.
"Senna," I said through gritted teeth. "You're going to have to trust me for a sec, 'kay? See if you can touch the ledge below you with your feet."
She called up to me, "I can do it!"
"All right," I said. "Get your feet on there as solidly as you can, and I'm going to let you go on three. One, two—" Just as my fingers slipped off their hold, I shouted, "—three!"
I released her hand as I lost my grip and my feet touched down next to her on the bricks. I hadn't caught my balance, and I hadn't really expected to, not with something as weird as the move I was planning, so, swiftly, I wrapped my arms around Senna, and, before I could fall off backward and kill myself, pushed off with my feet as hard as I could, sending us into a backward somersault toward the ground. We were falling a little too fast for my comfort, and I was sure my legs were going to be broken when I landed, but all I could think was, Thank Leviathan I kept this little girl safe—I hope I get a pretty wheelchair! Oh, I'll make Rude sign my casts!
But then I didn't hit the ground with the force I predicted—in fact, I didn't hit the ground at all, I fell into something solid that said, "Agh!" when I impacted with it.
After that, I briefly saw stars as all the wind was knocked out of me, and I vaguely realized as the little Chocobos danced in front of my vision that there were people crowded all around me, and there was something underneath my back, and it wasn't concrete…
"Augh," I groaned.
"Oh, thank you so much! You saved my Senna!" someone was exclaiming. I felt hands pull me to my feet, and I heard someone get up behind me.
"What happened?" I asked, rubbing my eyes. I turned around, evading all the hands patting me and the voices thanking me.
Rude was dusting himself off, staring at a pair of broken sunglasses in his hand.
"Rude? What—"
"Oy! Rude! What the hell do you think you're doin' running off like that!" a rather familiar and obnoxious voice called. Reno broke through the throng of people, his bright red hair a beacon.
"Okay, seriously, what just happened here?" I demanded of anyone who could answer.
Senna's mother, the woman who had been thanking me, said, "This man shoved everyone out of the way before you jumped off, and then he caught you."
"Yeah, more like let you land on him," Reno muttered. "That's what I saw, at least."
I stared at Rude, astonished. "Wow, thanks, Rude-Man. I couldn't have done it without you."
He shook his head. "You saved her, not me," and I could swear I saw something like respect in his eyes.
"Still—" I protested, but he shook his head again and put a hand on my shoulder.
"I don't know how I can ever thank you," said Senna's mother, and I swiveled to face her.
"Listen here, lady," I snapped. "I don't know what you were doing, but you obviously weren't keeping a good enough eye on her, or else she wouldn't have gotten all the way up that freakin' ladder."
Tears rolled down her cheeks. "I know."
I softened. "I guess we all make mistakes," I sighed.
"I will never forgive myself for this. But thank the Ancients that you and that man were here to help," she said, burying her face in Senna's brown hair.
"Man? Oh, yeah, Rude!" I said, turning around to find him, but he and Reno were already gone, lost in the crowd.