Disclaimer: Hugh Jackman won a Tony last night! –glee- He also did a nifty dance in tight yellow pants. He should wear tight yellow pants all the time, although I do like his white tank top in X-Men. He made a joke regarding X-Men because Marie/Rogue was presenting. He said: "And here to present is the only other mutant in the theatre, ---." I don't know her real name, but the joke was something to that effect, and I started laughing 'cause I knew what he meant.

3:50 in the morning. Yuffie couldn't seem to understand that. Why would anyone in their right mind knock on her door at 3:50 in the morning? She knew very well that it was always dark outside, so it really didn't seem to look like a different part of the day, but she just wanted to sleep, and whoever was tapping on her door at this hour was going to get a dose of exactly what she could do. She didn't have that stupid certificate that she'd graduated for nothing.

Groaning and rubbing her bare arm over her indigo eyes, Yuffie tottered out of bed and managed to get to the door without falling over, which was something she really wanted to do. It's too early for this, she kept telling herself as she grabbed a grey bandana from a hook on the wall and used it to keep her messy black hair away from her face as she opened the door, squinting at the light from the hallway. She blinked a few times and saw a girl even shorter than her standing in front of her and looking really nervous about something.

"Yeah?" Yuffie asked without any enthusiasm whatsoever. The only thought on her mind at that minute was bed and that this little brat was stealing it from her.

The girl was hopping from foot to purple-slippered foot, wringing her hands and making her chin-length red hair shake. "Do you have any lavender soap?" she asked in a rush, looking around anxiously.

Yuffie blinked. She blinked again, for that matter. And then, without any thought to the girl standing in front of her, she threw back her head and laughed.

Bursting into the Green Room through the connecting door, Yuffie found Leon sitting on the bed with his weapon laying flat over his legs. He looked both impatient and angry, and the Greatest Female Ninja Ever sudden felt like the Smallest Female Ninja Ever. Shaking her head to get rid of stupid thoughts, she clapped her gloved hands loudly and gave him the brightest smile she could find.

"Okay! Let's get started," she began, keeping her voice uplifted. "I figured we could start in the arena in the Third District, since they're not holding any tournaments or fights there today. Nice and spacious, lots of room to –" She was cut off abruptly with his resounding monotone.

"No."

Groaning, she threw up her arms and turned halfway around. "This is never gonna work if you keep contradicting me!" she told him angrily, but when he simply returned her glares levelly, she sighed and folded her arms. "Okay. Why?"

"Do I need a reason?" he spat, standing suddenly and starting towards the balcony door, shouldering the gunblade as he went.

"Yes!" she insisted, following him stubbornly. He turned around sharply, swinging the bared point of his weapon dangerously close to her face. She jumped back reflexively, her training kicking in (Took it long enough, she grumbled inwardly) just in the nick of time.

He gnawed on his lower lip for a minute before pushing open the green door that led onto the balcony and muttering, "You frustrate me." Yuffie could have sworn her eyes popped out of her head.

"I frustrate you?" she bellowed, following him out onto the small stone overhang. He carefully put his bad leg over the cement railing and followed it with his good one before lowering the gunblade beside him and jumping down lightly onto the pavement, his bad knee pinned upward. Yuffie leapt lightly over the edge of the balcony and landed in front of him, hands on her hips. "I'm trying to help you, and you automatically don't give me a chance! Just...get over yourself!" she finished disgustedly, turning around.

Leon stood there, thunderstruck. That...cretin ...had just told him to get over himself? What about her, and her I'm-so-much-better-than-you attitude? He could have screamed right about then, but that would mean losing his only chance at ever (Possibly, his conscious reminded him nastily) fighting again. He visibly forced himself to calm down, breathing hard and with his eyes closed.

"...Fine. I'll answer you," he said in his most non-threatening voice, and Yuffie, stunned, turned back around to look at him. They were standing in front of the ugly sewer drain she'd noticed when she first came to Traverse Town, and she realized that there was a square archway with metal bars covering it at the far end, leading off into a wall.

"I'm listening," she said in the best imitation of 'diffident' as she could manage, and tried a lofty look. At his sharp glare, though, she let the mask fall.

"I don't want to...excite people. The people that live here used to get really pumped to see me out here beating up Heartless, and to let them see me again, with my weapon and gear and everything, would just make them think things that aren't exactly true," he said emotionlessly, starting towards the arch. Yuffie followed, curious.

"Yet," she persisted, a smile on her face. When he gave her a questioning look, she said, "They aren't exactly true yet." He rolled his eyes and waded into the sewer water and up to the bars. Grimacing, Yuffie hopped into the dirty water and walked beside him, watching for a minute as he slid through the spaced-out bars before following herself.

They came into a dark, dingy cavern that was all water, Yuffie realized a little too late. She sank like lead until she realized she had to swim, so she kicked off from the dirt floor and propelled herself through the surface, gasping. Leon was swimming easily towards a rocky island at the back of the cavern, the gunblade grasped in one hand.

"You coulda warned me!" she shouted, swimming after him with an indignant look on her face. She scrambled up onto the island while he was wringing his white shirt out, and she immediately latched onto one of the lamps that were lighted at a weird doorway. Leon wrung out his hair over the stones as well, and Yuffie giggled; he had more hair than she did, she realized, and was overcome by laughter for a few minutes.

She realized that he was staring at her oddly, so she stopped laughing and realized that she was almost all dry because of how close she was to the lamp. Clearing her throat and stepping back from the heat, Yuffie pulled a few shurikens of different sizes out of the rawhide pouch at her belt and motioned for him to stand a few yards opposite her, horizontal across the rocks.

"Okay," she started, and flung the shurikens out in a neat line in front of her – horizontal, again. She motioned for him to do the same, and, with a brief look of annoyance, he gingerly laid his precious gunblade out on the rocks in front of him. "No weapons just yet. First you need to warm up a little bit. Nothing stupid like jumping jacks or anything, but just do a couple ten-second six inches and windmills and you should be fine."

He raised an eyebrow. "Six inches? Windmills? You think I kept cutesy names for my exercises?" Yuffie blushed furiously at the comment. "Just tell me what they are – normally." Balling her fists at her sides, the ninja lowered herself without care onto the rocks, laying flat out on her back, and lifted her two legs at the same time about six inches off of the ground.

"It's really not that hard, hot stuff," she said to the ceiling, and she could almost feel his anger. She grinned inwardly. Triumph! "Just what it sounds like. Unless you've been laying around so long that you forget how to warm up?" She knew she hit a chord with that – she heard shuffling, and when she turned her head to the side, he had mimicked her position, although his bad leg was about three inches less than his good. She sighed. "I'm trying to get you back into shape, and that includes your leg." Bounding up, Yuffie leaped over the line of shurikens and his gunblade and kneeled in front of his feet so that she could see into his face. She grasped a hold of both of his ankles and lifted them both the same distance off of the ground.

"That hurts," he said bluntly.

Yuffie shrugged dismissively. "Yeah, I know. It's supposed to. That's what's called training, Leon. If you wanna get back to what you used to be – or at least close to what you used to be – you have to deal with it."

He didn't say anything for about two minutes, but she noticed that he was growing considerably paler, and it wasn't because of the stress of holding up his legs at so short a distance. Sighing, Yuffie lowered his ankles back onto the rocks and stood up. She leaned over him, offering a hand, which he eyed suspiciously for a minute before accepting.

"Pretty good," she remarked honestly, dusting her hands off on her shorts. She had to remember to thank Aerith tonight when they went out for dinner with Cloud; everybody did lay off of her, while when she saw someone wearing the kind of clothes she had when she'd first come, they were usually attacked either by people or Heartless. "Two minutes is a lot for someone who's never done it before."

"What do you mean, never done it before?" he snapped, his eyes blazing. "It was just never called that where I trained – in a real military, in a real army, with real..." He broke off, turning around so that his back faced her.

Running a hand through her hair, Yuffie took a deep breath before offering something again. "Okay, enough warming up. Grab your weapon," she instructed, going back to where she'd lain out her shurikens and gathering them up before tucking them back into her pouch. Leon grabbed his gunblade and turned to face her, obviously wanting to start the real fighting. Pulling out a medium-sized star, the ninja closed her eyes and willed it to elongate – which it did, pulsing with purple-and-pink energy. Running one finger over the sharp edge, Yuffie nodded to herself before turning to him. "Let's see what you can still do."

Without warning, she charged at him, shuriken shining brightly in the flickering lights of the lamps. Leon took up a simple sword stance and ran back at her, his eyes narrowed in an almost animal-like way. She'd considered him a bear and a tiger before, but now she knew what he really was – a lion. A lion that had had its leg hacked at and was more busy worrying about his wounded pride than his wounded leg.

Despite everything he'd said, he was still a pretty good fighter, even with his shattered kneecap. He tended to favor it by not putting as much weight on it and jumping more often than not, but altogether he risked a lot by running heavily on it and ignoring the sickening grating of bones when he moved in a position his leg didn't like. Yuffie had broken a sweat in no time and was spinning and dodging a lot more than she'd expected to, but she nicked him occasionally with the tip of her shuriken, just to show him that she was still in the game.

Finally he growled something and dropped to his right knee while he clutched the left one protectively. The gunblade clattered onto the rocks, forgotten for the moment, as he tried to soothe the throbbing bones and muscles.

Yuffie wiped the sweat off of her forehead with the back of one hand and let the shuriken shrink back to its normal size before putting it back in her pouch and going over to him. "You did a lot better than I thought you would," she told him with a smile, but he didn't return it. Of all things, he shook his head angrily.

"I never used to be this slow, this...weak." He spat the word like it was blasphemy to say it. "I hate what I've become."

Rolling her eyes, Yuffie laid a hand on his shoulder. He flinched at the contact, something she didn't fail to notice. "What you've become is just a less strong fighter who needs to pick up his attitude and get back into the game. You're not weak, believe me; that injury would have kept most people from ever taking up a stance like yours again. We'll do it again tomorrow, and each day you'll get better." When she didn't see the uplifting expression she'd been hoping for, she persisted. "I promise you that by the end of the month, you'll be able to take on Cloud in a fight at the arena. That's how good you can get with my help and if you just let go of your mule-headed attitude," she said sincerely.

He stood abruptly and didn't hide the grimace of pain as his mind registered that his leg did not like that kind of treatment. "Fine," he said in a hard voice. "I accept." With a toss of his head that reminded Yuffie of an over-proud blonde woman from the Academy[#], Leon left the cavern.

"I didn't mean it as a challenge," she said meekly, still trying to understand what was going on.

"He's impossible! Really impossible," Yuffie insisted before shoving another piece of sushi in her mouth and setting her chopsticks back on their rest. Aerith, sitting across from her in Cloud's lap, nodded understandingly around a mouthful of spaghetti from which Cloud was sharing. The blonde, however, seemed more concerned with wrapping his fingers in Aerith's hair than wrapping noodles around his fork.

"I know," Aerith said once she had swallowed, one hand coming out to fix Cloud's cowl so that his dinner wouldn't stain it. Since she did the laundry, she was always nitpicking about her boyfriend's – or whatever he was to her – eating habits. And fighting habits, and drinking habits, and gambling habits, and just about every other habit Cloud had caught over the years. "You just have to deal with him. He's a real sweetie once you get to know him," she promised, but Yuffie highly doubted it.

Just as she opened her mouth reply, a boy and a girl of roughly the same age (Yuffie guessed somewhere between fourteen and sixteen) came into The Café. Yuffie wouldn't have cared one way or the other who came and left the restaurant, but she recognized the girl as the one who had knocked on her door that morning asking about the soap. (Aerith had also burst out laughing when Yuffie had told her the story, along with a hearty round of "I told you so"'s.) She led the boy by the hand, her navy eyes eager, while the boy just looked embarrassed.

"Kairi, I really don't have a lot of money to spend on an expensive dinner," he was telling her, but Kairi waved it off with one hand. She was wearing the sultry outfit of a waitress at a casino, and the boy didn't seem to overlook that, although he was keeping his eyes modestly off her body and on her face most of the time.

"I told you that I'll pay, Sora," she insisted, leading him to a round table and poking at the wax on a candle that sat in the middle. "All I want is real food and not that crap you get from the quickymart – just for one night. Please?" She stuck out her lower lip and made her eyes impossibly huge, and Sora, after a couple minutes of careful decision-making, sighed resignedly and gave in.

"Sure, whatever," he mumbled, and Kairi yipped happily, clapping her hands and burying her face in the menu.

Shaking her head, Yuffie turned back to Aerith and Cloud, only to find them immersed in each other. Aerith was pulling off her sultry act again, and Cloud was falling victim, his blue eyes wide. The spaghetti was abandoned on the table. Suddenly feeling very alone in the huge world and with nobody besides herself, Yuffie pushed her chair back and left The Café without a word.

She slowly went the into the Second District and decided to take a walk around for a while before coming to the hotel the back way – namely, through the alley that led into the back, where the sewer canal flowed and the balconies stood. With her arms folded against the cold breezes that swept through the back alley, Yuffie turned her head up to look at the stars – and found herself instead looking at Leon, who was standing on his balcony with his arms crossed and his gaze skyward. Yuffie cracked the tiniest of smiles.

Even if she was alone, she wasn't alone in it.

Yay! I finished the chapter in a two-hour stint in front of the computer. –cheers- I just wanna let you all know that the time ratio on Leon's six inches was really sort of off, since I can't even hold one for more than twenty seconds, but I figured that since he's a warrior and everything, he's used to it. –g- So I get to beat up on him.

37 reviews for three chapters?! You guys freaking rock! -hugs all reviewers- It just really motivates me to see all of the reviews, and I giggle like a maniac and run around the house rambling about all of the nice people. It's what keeps me writing, so I just wanted to let you guys know that you rock. Skeledude 12 asked for an Ansem plushie, and I can't refuse – so here ya go! –presents Skeledude with Ansem plushie-

[#] – Can anyone guess who the blonde is? I'll give you a hint -- she's from a Final Fantasy game. Anyone who guesses the right answer gets a super- spiffy Riku plushie!