"I'm not alone."
It's a quiet day, but the sounds of early morning Nibelheim are disrupted. I, Zack Fair, am riding on an early recon to Cloud's hometown, and it just so happens to be Cloud puking over the side of the truck. Poor kid has really bad motion sickness, and it doesn't help that the driver's goin' awful fast. His face is green and he's holding his stomach and groaning every once in a while. He didn't know that it would be this bad, so he ended up eating a big breakfast. Y'know, like, preparing for the trip?
"Urghh..." Cloud moans as he crawls over to my edge of the truck bed, "Why..." He proceeds to hurk up some more of the ShinRa cafeteria food rather loudly. I wince.
"Maybe that stuff's making it worse," I point out to Cloud as he wipes his mouth and slumps against the wall of the truck bed. "ShinRa food may be edible, but it doesn't always agree with me either." Cloud grunted in reply solemnly; it seems that if he actually opened his mouth, he would puke everywhere. Poor kid, I think, for the second time.
The driver stops and it lurches us all; the kid turns even greener and almost doesn't make it to the side of the road. I wince again, hopping out of the truck, my boots crunching on gravel. One man nudges me.
"Poor kid." he says. "I used to be really bad sick too, but I got over it after eating at ShinRa." The guy seemed to like the food, cause he was fat as he waddled off to go lounge around at the local inn. I walk off away from my group of soldiers and come to rest at the doorstep of a nice looking house with a sign nailed on the door. "Strife" it says, in fancy curling letters. I feel like knocking, but I turn around and expect to see Cloud right behind me. He's not.
"Aww man!" I groan, walking around. "Where'd he go?" I stumble over several soldiers, and I ask one, "Where's Cloud?" It just so happens to be the fat one, patting his swelled stomach tenderly.
"Who?"
"Sick kid. Y'know, BLEH!" I imitated someone puking violently; Cloud would be seriously pissed off if he caught me doing that.
"...Dunno who you're talkin' about, chief!" the guy says. He must have a swelled head too, I mutter, walking off. I found him slouched at the entrance to a nearby shop, holding something in his hands. Cloud seems lost in thought, so I of course loudly plop down beside him and nearly make him pee his pants.
"AUGH!" he sort of yells, quickly stifling himself. "Zack! What are you doing?" I catch him checking his pants to make sure he didn't pee or something.
"Seein' whatchur doing." I say in a hillbilly type of voice jokingly. Cloud glares at me and I move on. "So, whatcha got there?" I motion to the thing in his gloved hands. He turns a funny shade of pink and starts cursing Gaia at his bad fortune.
"Nothing!" he proclaims. As he scoots away, he drops the thing and the cloth covering it up drops to the ground. He's holding a rather expensive looking video camera. "I-it's nothing!" Cloud quickly scoops up the wrappings and hurriedly covers up the camera again.
Something clicks. "Ohhh... I see now." I grin wickedly. "You're gonna send sexy stuff of yourself to some girl here!" I was aiming for a loud cuss-out session, or maybe a total confession of his plan.
"NO!" Cloud yells, covering the video camera up. "YOU HAVE A SWELLED HEAD!" Then he gets a malicious grin. "Zack the puppy!" he cries, jumping up and running off.
"OH HELL NO!" I yell, running after him. Man, that kid's FAST. I dash after him and fail keeping up as he dashes behind the house next to his, leaping through the window. All of a sudden there's a girlish scream and he jumps right back out.
"...the hell?" I mutter, looking at Cloud and the girl with long near-black hair glaring at him. Her burgundy eyes are full of loathing, yet she seems happy. OH! This must be that girl Tifa Cloud likes so much. I remember him talking about her, and she fits his description perfectly.
"CLOUD STRIFE!" she yells, leaping out the window after him. "Where the HELL have you been and why the HELL did you just leap through my window?"
"I-I-I've b-been looking for you and I found your house and the door was locked and I didn't wanna knock and I was blackmailing him, see it's all Zack's fault!" Cloud spits out, pointing at me with the camera clutched to his chest. Tifa looks from me to Cloud to the camera.
"What's that?" she asks in a much softer tone. "Is it for me?" Cloud turns that funny shade of pink again and hands her a brand new cellphone. She gasps and her eyes glitter.
"I'll make videos of my time in ShinRa and send them to you on your phone," he says, leaning over her shoulder. "See, if this pops up, that means you've got a video. And it'll always have me in it somehow, okay?"
"Oh Cloud~!" Tifa cries, throwing her arms around him. "This is the best day ever!" She kisses him on the lips and I grin happily. He's startled, but in the end, wraps his arms around her waist and continues their liplock session.
"All he needs is a little push, that's all."
Zack totally quoted Tifa on purpose there.
Anyways, short little cute little one-shot. Written during a random session of boredom and now I have a headache because of staring at the screen too long.