Final Fantasy VII The Runner

She is running again. Running as fast as her wiry legs can take her, as far away from her home, her over dressed tourist trap kingdom with isn't really hers, not anymore, not when he finds out. She runs, and trips, and stumbles in the most uncoordinated display of two leg mobility ever, that would make her old-goat father choke on his own spit in frustration, cause she doesn't look like a princess right now, and she doesn't look like a trained ninja, she looks like a five year old girl who is scared, terrified of her first day of school, and all she wants to do is escape the classroom filled with children who smell like glue, and bladder malfunction. She keeps running and running till every little muscle fiber in her legs are begging and pleading and bargaining with her, You stop running for a while and give us a break and we will stop growing gross, not-so-attractive leg hairs for a couple of months, how does that sound.

Eventually she takes the deal, and collapses like she had seen women do in Oscar winning movies, dramatically and gracefully. Except hers is a little more noisy and painful, but she thinks she did pretty damn good under the circumstance.

She lays there sprawled out for what seemed like hours, staring up into the sky as it slowly darkens, not daring to think about what she just did, and how she just royally screwed herself over. Instead she focuses all her energy into her lower back, and attempts to melt into the earth beneath her, so she could just start over as a tree or something, a sexy Yuffie ninja tree, with sexy Yuffie ninja flowers that are poisonous and bad ass, and she wouldn't have to run away from home because trees don't really run, and trees hardly ever marry, much less to sweaty, gross, abusive men with nasty, nasty facial hair. And she ponders on what a sweaty, gross, tree with facial hair would really look like, and gives up to easily.

She feels her check and she swears she could still feel the handprint, even though she is a ninja and she has been hit a hell of a lot harder, it's the concept of it she thinks, sweaty facial hair husbands should never, ever, ever even think about striking their amazing, princess soon to be wives.

But she knows her father will never understand that, and she knows she will never go back to Wutai.

She concludes that the earth is not cool enough to melt into, and being a tree wouldn't be all that great anyway, and she gets back up. And she presses all the dumb little thoughts of husbands, and fathers, and responsibility into a small ball of stupidness in her mind, and puts it away, cause she doesn't need to think about that anymore, she has already solved that problem, for the moment at least.

"Right, so uh, where do I go?" She curses herself for not planning out a little more, but she only half means it, because she never really plans anything out. "I haven't seen Vinnie in a while."

And that's all it takes, her mind is made up. It takes her a couple of days to reach that gawd forsaken haunted mansion thing he lives in. She is cold, and hungry, and so unbelievably bored, so she eats snow and plays I SPY with herself, until she is sure that her brain has completely frozen over and she is going to turn into some kind preserved ice sculpture that scientist will marvel over a thousand years from now, and she will be poked and prodded at with electrical sticks like those ones Reno carries.

She almost pees herself when she finally reaches the stupid place, and she would totally try to urinate a nice little welcome message in the front of his house, teaching it lesson for being so freaking far away, but she is scared that if she starts it will freeze to her, and that would be gross, and pretty awkward afterwards. So she just knocks on the door instead. She is surprised when he actually answers the door, she was kind of hoping he would still be having a little demon slumber party in his coffin so she could go through all his stuff, and spy on him and ninja things like that, but she didn't care to much because the door was open and she was freezing.

She practically runs him over, to get to the warmth inside, and he practically shoots her on the spot.

"Yuffie?" His voice is still deep, and pretty, and depressing, she can tell that much from one word.  
"Gawd Vinnie don't be rude, can't you see I'm practically half naked here! Where the hell is the fire place?" She isn't lying either, cause when she says she doesn't plan ahead that includes clothing also, so her outfit would be perfect if she was on a beach in the summer, with some kind of outrageously colorful alcoholic fruit drink, with umbrellas, and tan boys, and sun light, but she wasn't .

He sighs and points to the direction of the heat and disappears in the opposite direction, she scrambles quickly down the hallway until she sees it. The fireplace was already burning, glowing like a big beautiful furnish god, she would kiss it if she wasn't scared of getting third degree burns on her lips, cause that would make eating a bitch, and she liked food to much to sacrifice that. But she did get as close to the fire as she possible could, wishing she was cold blooded so she could get this warm on the inside too, plus then she could regenerate her limbs and stuff, which be awesome. She could leave her arms all over Cid's stupid ship and scare the shit out of him, but then again it would probably hurt to take her arms off and its probably illegal, so she decides against it.

"Yuffie, what are you doing here?" She jumps about twenty feet, which would be impressive if she wasn't dangerously close to a fire, when she hears him. She turns around and he is carrying a change of his clothes, and very large blanket and what she is assuming to be hot tea, and he looks like a beautiful angel of mercy and warmness and goodlookingness.

"Oh Gawd Vinnie I could kiss you, a big sloppy second base kiss" she says as she tackles the blanket in his clawed hand, and takes it down the floor with her, crawling in the middle and rolling so she looks like a giant, deformed, cushiony caterpillar. "However, if you want some Yuffie action you are going to have to come down here, cause I don't entirely know where my legs are at the moment." And she further proves this by wiggling her caterpillar-self around a little, and she gets a raised eyebrow in response. He sits down next to her, criss-cross applesauce style, which amuses Yuffie to know end, but she doesn't taunt him about it just yet cause he is still holding the hot tea, and that is her currently goal. He places the cup in front of her, and watches amused as she tries to figure out how to drink it without removing her hands from their current position deep within the caterpillar interior. She finally gives up and takes her hands out, with a loud defeated sigh.  
"Now, will you please explain to me why you are here?" he asks, as boring and emotionless as ever.

She debates telling him the real reason, because she is certain he will tell her she is being dumb and stupid and non-princessish, and send her on her way, "Booty call?"

He glares at her, not an I-am-going-to-kill-you-seven-different-ways glare, but a your-a-complete-dumbass-and-I-will-take-away-your-tea-if-you-don't-tell-me glare, and she was very much enjoying her tea, so she takes a chance.

"Weeeelll, its actually an incredibly interesting story, I should probably publish it cause I would make millions, and I could use all that gil to fix up this dumb house, cause it is really is pretty boring and depressing. It needs atmosphere! I could buy one of those designers with a lisp to bring sssssome color and sssstyle here. They could probably help you with your clothes too, Vinnie, I'm surprised you don't have moth babies in your pockets. Don't you think it's kind of mean the word lisp has a 's' in it, Hey wait your old, you probably knew the person that created the word, maybe you did it! How could you be so cruel Vinnie?"

He stares at her for a moment with a very peculiar look on his face, "Yuffie, I will not ask again. Why are you here?"

"I was getting there; don't rush me Vinnie, geez. See, I was kind of supposed to marry this gross guy, cause he is loaded and my dad is a dickweed. But he is the most horrid example of a human male ever, and he makes a weird looking tree, and he hit me. So I left, but I can't really go back… ever again, cause well, I sort of broke some laws and stuff by leaving. And well, yeah. The end, so I'm allowed to stay here forever right?" She can't really see his face good, so she tries to scrunch her way closer, which is rather challenging to do when you are a caterpillar.

"You may stay here for a while, if you wish." He concludes, and stands up. "You can have my bed tonight, tomorrow we will set up your room."  
"By bed you do mean an actually bed bed, right? Cause I'm claustrophobic and I'll probably hurl everywhere, and break out into hysteria if you make me sleep in that coffin. Plus, I might get splinters or something, it looked pretty rickety when I was here last."

"No Yuffie, I sleep in a 'bed bed'." He replies with a sigh, and she notices he sighs a lot, and she wonders if he has asthma.

When they reach his bedroom she is not all that surprised, it's dark, and vampiric, and would be a perfect set for any sort of murder scene, with its huge canopy bed, with dramatic drapes and such. It was an impressive bed; He probably uses it to pick up chicks. He sets down his extra set of clothes on the bed, and walks to the door, leaning in its frame. "You are free to use those clothes, I'm sure yours are rather uncomfortable."

"You got that straight." She says loudly "Hey Vinnie…"  
"Yes, Yuffie."

She is nervous now, "um, thanks for doing all this." She can feel the blush rise through her body, and she is sure she looks like she ran into a newly painted stop sign, but she thinks he won't mind, cause he is Vinnie, and Vinnies are polite and quiet and lovely and they don't really make fun of people, like she does. She thinks they probably don't run either.  
"You're welcome, good night." He walks out of the room, and she starts to undress.

She doesn't bother to lock the door, just in case he forgot something, so he can walk in and fall in love with her awesome ninja body, then they can romantic slow motion sex, and turn his room into the perfect set for a different type of movie.  
But he doesn't come back, and she is left there with herself. Ninja Vampire sex would probably be weird anyway.

She flops down on the bed and lets the comforter envelops her. It smells like gun powder and vanilla and old people and depression. She just lays there for a moment, taking in her surroundings. Then she scrambles up and crawls to the top of the bed, and practically dives under the covers. And she wonders if she feels like some kind of gross bug to the bed, some nasty, cold, wet bug digging under its skin. She inches her way to the middle of the bed, completely surrounded by the sheets and vanilla and blankets and bed skin, and she allows herself to think of Wutai.

She wonders what her father is doing, probably cussing and remembering why he wanted a son, and she wonders if she had another choice but decides quickly after that she didn't. Because she doesn't have time to doubt herself, she has everyone else to do that for her.

She figures after a while she can go visit Wutai, sneak in with her awesome ninja skills, and make sure it's still there, that is hasn't fallen in the ocean or something. She knows though that's as far as she can go, and she feels a little homesick suddenly, more than a little homesick.

So she curls into a tighter ball, tighter then the ball of bad thoughts in her mind, under the covers and she weeps silently. She tells herself this is the last time she will let herself dwell on this, but she know tomorrow night she will probably cry as well, and most likely the night after too. She rubs her legs for comfort, and realizes that they went back on their deal cause she already feels tiny hairs growing after two days and she cries a little harder. And she almost feels bad for drenching Vinnie's horror-porn bed with her nasty bug tears but almost is not enough to make her stop.

She cries like she did when her mother died, because in a way Wutai died, and her father died. And she wants to run away again, from thoughts and she is lost cause there is nowhere else to go.

She can't see him enter from her little underground sorrow cave, but she can feel him. He doesn't say anything, and he doesn't move from his spot leaning against the wall, but she doesn't need him to the fact that he is here says enough. She feels a little comforted by his presence, and finds herself wondering what he would look like as a tree- polite, and quiet, and lovely.

She questions whether or not he would run, if he was a sexy Yuffie ninja engaged to a sweaty, abusive, facial haired ball of blubber, and maybe he took some sort of Turk class on that kind of situation, and would have just killed everyone.

She eventually is able to distract herself from the bad-thoughts ball and she falls asleep with thoughts of decorators with lisp, and bed bugs, and Vinne trees, and he stays there against the wall the entire night. In case she needs him, in case she can't run anymore.


End file.
