Authors note: I saw a picture on DeviantArt called 'Types of Cloud' by meru-chan (go check her out) and immediately my devious mind set to plotting this story. Honestly, I'm pulling my hair out since I'm working on two ongoing stories already and SERIOUSLY don't need another, but the idea won't leave me alone! Ah well, I just hope I'll manage.

Beta's note: 3/6/2016 I finally found the time to go back and fix the earliest chapters. Hope this would make them easier to read.

In every universe, there is a word, or a sentence that will raise hairs on the neck of even the hardest and the toughest of warriors, something so terrifying that will even send Gods screaming and running for cover. Thankfully, those times were rare (but not rare enough if you ask Kuja). Now this is a story of one such event. It was a terrifying sound to whoever heard it… One boy with a monkey tail curiously said…

"Hey, what does this button do?"

And later, they would be able to pinpoint this as the exact moment everything went to hell.

Nibelheim was a small town, not even worthy of a small dot on the world map. It was rarely visited by any travelers, only sometimes a lost merchant on their way to Rocket town would step foot in the little mountain range village. Therefore, it was a very closed community, one where a bastard child of a single mother had no chance of an easy life.

It was one of the reasons why Skye Strife, when she looked at her seven year old son standing in the doorway covered in bruises, gashes and scratches, only offered him a sympathetic smile and called him in to properly bandage him up. The little boy with eyes as blue as the clear sky and hair as yellow and untamed as a wild chocobo just nodded and followed her into the house. As if they did it every day the mother sat her child on a stool and pulled out a med kit. The boy didn't even flinch anymore when the disinfect was sprayed on his wounds.

"Who was it this time Cloud?" Skye asked as she put gauze on a particularly deep gash on her son's leg.

"Rodrick's big brother." Cloud said sullenly. "He beat me up because I got into a fight with Rodric yesterday." It was a rough fight, Rodric was bigger than Cloud and older by almost a year. It wasn't really fair, and Cloud got beaten up pretty badly. Still, he gave as good as he got. While he walked away with bruised ribs, ringing ears and black bruises, Rodrick was full of deep scratches, a few bite marks, most of which were bleeding and a twisted ankle when Cloud managed to knock him down by hitting the back of his knees. So while Rodrick was down he bolted away before his friends decided to join him. And today on his way home, Rodrick's brother, Richard, pulled him aside and gave him a sound beating.

"Why can't I have a big brother?" Cloud asked his mother poutily as she applied a band aid on his bruised nose.

"Because I didn't have any children before you. And even if I had any after, you would be their big brother." Skye explained with all the patience of a loving mother.

"But I don't want a little brother, I want a big one, so he can beat up Rod and his dumbass brother!" Cloud clenched his little fists and shouted angrily.

"Cloud, language!" Skye admonished her son sternly. "Where did you even hear that word? Certainly not from me!"

"Rodrick's brother called me that. And you said it 'takes one to know one', so that makes him a dumbass!" Cloud hopped from the stool and followed his mother as she put the med kit away. They went to the kitchen where a pot of cooling stew sat on the cooker.

"Dinner!" Skye called her son, filled two bowls with stew and added a slice of bread to each. Cloud jumped onto the kitchen chair and dug in as the mouth watering dish was placed before him. Nobody made the traditional Nibel stew quite the way his mother did. After dinner Skye sent her son to bed, tucked him in and went to her own room to fix Cloud's torn clothes. She wished her son didn't get into so many fights. Winter was coming rapidly and she couldn't afford another set of clothes for him.

Cloud lay awake in his bed, the pain from his wounds not allowing his peace even during the night. Unable to sleep, he sat up in his bed and looked up at the stars. Tifa, the only girl in the entire town who was even remotely nice to him once said that stars fell from somewhere far away, and whoever saw a falling star and made a wish upon it, the star stopped to fulfill their wish, and stayed there as a testimony that she already granted a wish. Cloud sighed. If only it were true. He crossed his arms and held his head on them on the windowsill.

In another part of the universe, another spiky haired blonde's hair became as stiff as needles at the sound of the most dangerous sentence Zidane ever uttered.

"Oh, what does this button do?" The young monkey boy curiously inquired and went to press the big shiny button. A big shiny button that had a giant red warning sign above it 'DO NO TOUCH'.

"Nooooooo!" Cloud ran with all the speed of terrified desperate panic to try and stop Zidane from pushing the button that he just KNEW was going to do something terrible. But he came too late. Zidane had pushed what turned out to be an activation switch of the force field Cloud was above that moment. As a pillar of light that rose from it engulfed Cloud, an ear splitting screech was heard. Zidane had to cover his eyes from the blinding flash that erupted and covered everything. At that precise moment, Zidane was pretty sure he wasn't going to make it. And the last though that ever crossed his mind?

'At least Kuja won't be able to laugh in my face.'

Little Cloud's head shot up when he saw a flash in the sky out of his peripheral vision. He couldn't believe it! There, in the middle of the starry sky, was a falling star! Quickly, Cloud pressed his palms together and closed his eyes tightly, just like Tifa had told him to.

'I wish I had a big brother!' He wished with all his might.

Not a second after he thought that, what he thought was a shooting star exploded in the middle of the night sky into stardust, disappearing, and leaving only a faint glow behind. Amazed, Cloud took it as a sign that his wish was heard. Smiling happily, his pains completely forgotten, Cloud laid his little spiky head on his pillow and was out like a light. When he woke up the next day, he had forgotten all about the shooting star and his wish. But the star didn't.

Far, far away, in the biggest city in the world that bore the name of the city of the Gods, a blonde haired youth woke up and jumped out of the cheap hotel bed into his clothes. He would be applying for the SOLDIER today! It had been his dream ever since he had seen the picture of the great General Sephiroth in the newspapers. And today, he was getting one step closer to completing it!

With that thought in mind, Cloud picked up his duffel bag and headed to the ShinRa complex, where the registration booth was.

Not far out of the great city of Midgar, on the small cliff of the Midgar wastes, another blonde spiky haired man awoke, this one older by than the last by a few years. His head was muddled. Who was he? What was he doing here? As he sat up, something banged lightly against his hip. He looked down and saw a sword almost as long as he was tall and weighted two times more. Then everything came to him with the force of a crashing airplane. He was Cloud Strife, ex 1st class SOLDIER! Yes, he remembered, he had been going back to Midgar to become a mercenary! Wait, what was he doing here then?

Cloud just shrugged picked up his sword, figuring he would remember sooner or later. So for now, he set his sword on his back with practiced ease and set pace to his original destination: Midgar city.

In the slums of the same city he was going to, yet another spiky haired person awoke. At the Honey Bee inn to be exact. It was a young blonde woman who the girls working at the inn found in a purple dress near Don Corneo's mansion and of course, assumed the worst. As she woke, she tried to sit up from the bed with a groan, but a hand on her shoulder stopped her from rising completely.

"Shh, you need to rest, it looks like you've been through some rough times." A gentle female voice soothed her. When the girl opened her eyes she saw a blurry figure that slowly sharpened into a form of a young woman with middle length black hair tied into two high ponytails.

"Where am I?" The blonde ground out. Her head was spinning like crazy, and she didn't even know why!

"You're at the Honey Bee inn. My name is Darla, and I… Uh, work here." The woman now identified as Darla smiled at her, but she noticed the pause. Her every instinct told her she was hiding something. But before she could question her about it Darla quickly stood up from the chair she had been sitting on and picked up a couple of pills and a glass of water which she offered to the stranger girl.

"Your head must hurt, right? Do you want some aspirin?" She offered the blonde woman the pills and the glass which she took gratefully.

"May I ask for your name?" Darla asked politely as the girl drank her pills.

When she lowered the glass the girl uttered "I'm Cloud."

And far, far away, in the city that the Ancients once resided in, but now was simply called the Forgotten city, a blonde man clad in leather clothes awoke next to the sparkly surface of the lake. However, once he assessed where he was, he just groaned and let his head fall back on the ground.

"Not again!"

AN: We all know what that 'Not again!' means, don't we?