By Rayne. Yay, I get to write a fight scene! I don't like writing fight scenes...

((Hailey! OMG Ed, you know form full metal alchemist well... he's 2 inches taller that me! sob but I'm taller than Kenshin.. He's 4ft 11in Ed's 5ft 5in... WHAA!))

The streets were remarkably quiet as the three girls stepped into the 2nd District. Yuffie cautiously stepped out front leading Zephyr, who was pretending to be unafraid, and Rayne, who had no such pretenses about being afraid and clung to Zephyr's arm tight enough to cut off the circulation. As they progressed further into the 2nd District, Zephyr and Rayne grew bolder.

'So far so good' Zephyr thought as she tugged her arm from Rayne's death-grip. Feeling safer Rayne even relented.

"This isn't so bad." Zephyr whispered as Yuffie led them around a corner

"Then why are you whispering?" Rayne whispered just as softly back.

"Ssssshhhhhh" Yuffie hissed turning back to glare at the two girls. The looks on their faces surprised her "what?" The on ly response was from Rayne who pointed just over Yuffie's shoulder to something behind her.

A dark cloud of shifting hues hovered glimmering just past her. Lightening flashed in it's depths as a strange helmeted creature emerged from within. It was relatively small, but seemed to be made from darkness itself. A insignia stood out vividly against its black-blue chest, a red and black heart with an 'x' through it. Sharp red claws clicked as it looked around with glowing yellow eyes.

The three girls froze.

Sure there were three of them but only one had weapons.

"Run for the Hotel" Yuffie whispered. The Hotel wasn't far but the creature stood right in between it and them. "Just run on the count of three... one" she began but the creature heard her and tilted it's head in their direction.

"Three!"Zephyr yelled as she grabbed a paralyzed Rayne's wrist and ran like a bat-out-of-hell for the door. Yuffie unprepared, even though it was her plan, took off after them, throwing well aimed ninja stars for the creatures head.

Slightly disoriented the creature stopped its attack before it even began and tried, with no avail, to shake the stars from it's helmet allowing the girls to escape to the relative safety of the Hotel.

Once inside Yuffie rounded on them.

"What the Heck were you thinking taking off like that?" she yelled

"I was thinking that it heard you, so it was now or never!" Zephyr yelled back, her temper uncontrollable. "Besides," she added "we were only off by one second."

"Stop!" came two voices at once. One was Rayne, finally recovered from the whole incident. The other was Arieth who had just entered from the other end of the hall with Goofy and Donald in toe. ((twitch I just said something at the same time as the cloud stealer... twitch))

There was silence for a few moments as tempers cooled. Then out of nowhere((chibi pops up Chibi: Dead! Me and Chibi: you said dead! Ha hahahahhaha! Not really...)) Goofy suddenly realized something.

"You guys are from the Café!" He exclaimed as he pointed to Rayne and Zephyr. "You were the ones Donald said were listening to us! Hayuck, nice to meet you." The ice broken Zephyr and Yuffie (Me too.) laughed. Aerith sighed in relief, when those two fought it could get pretty violent.

"So that was a Heartless?" Rayne asked cautiously.

"Yeah," Yuffie answered. "That one was called a soldier."

"You name them?" Zephyr raised a eyebrow in amusement.

"Ooooo, I wanna name one!" Rayne exclaimed bouncing up and down. "I'll name it 'Not-Bob' in memory of the-thing-with-like-twenty-tenticles-that-lived-under-me-bed-and-is-going-to-eat-me-alive!"

"I knew that was coming." Zephyr sighed, as everyone else stared at Rayne like she deserved a free one-way ticket to the 'Happy Home'.