Author's Note: The following story is an AU fic set in our world and dealing with the hobby of Live-Action Role-Playing, also known as LARP. I've been involved in LARP since 2010 and it is a lot of fun. I've mostly been involved in theatrical LARP such as Mind's Eye Theatre (based on White Wolf's World of Darkness setting) and the Strange Aeons multiverse LARP in Staunton, Virginia, but I have also dabbled in the more traditional battle LARP as well.
Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy are property of Square Enix, not me. I own nothing and make no money off of this whatsoever.
Cloud Strife was not a soldier, but he played one on the weekends. To him, few things were more fun than dressing up in costume, getting into character, and staying out way too late while role-playing as the persona he created for himself on a Saturday night along with his two younger brothers Sora and Roxas.
The three brothers were involved in a hobby called Live-Action Role-Playing, or LARP for short. Despite the mockery their hobby may have gotten from idiots on the internet, Cloud Strife and his brothers found LARP to be a very fun and rewarding way to spend time on a Saturday night. It was sort of like playing Dungeons & Dragons or other tabletop role-playing games, but instead of sitting around a table and rolling dice, you were playing the game in real time and walking around. It was also encouraged to cosplay as your character if applicable, and Cloud did just exactly that.
Cloud looked in the mirror as he groomed his hair and put on a blue Civil War soldier hat he bought at a Halloween store the previous year, along with a dark blue dress shirt, dark blue jeans, a pair of black Reebok sneakers with neon blue laces, a black leather belt with a round metal buckle, and black aviator sunglasses. After making a few adjustments, he knew he was ready to get into character.
Cloud's character was a time-traveling Union soldier from the American Civil War who went by the name of John Redfield. He was a sergeant in the Army of the Potomac and had fought at the battles of Bull Run, Antietam, and Chancellorsville and now he found himself in a strange and modern world full of mystery.
Sora and Roxas were playing entirely different characters altogether, Sora was a vampire of the passionate and decadent Toreador Clan while Roxas was a cyberpunk street mage. All three of them were part of a multiverse-based LARP called "World Stage", named for the famous William Shakespeare quote about "All the world's a stage" and the like.
World Stage was originally a LARP set in the Classic World of Darkness, a role-playing game setting originally published by a company called White Wolf. While the LARP still used a lot of elements from the World of Darkness setting and even used a variant of the official LARP rules for the game, they invoked Rule Zero and made changes to the parts they did not like, namely removing the awful metaplot that later editions of the World of Darkness games were infamous for.
They also included crossover elements by making their LARP setting a multiverse, which allowed for all sorts of other characters such as Sailor Senshi, Civil War soldiers, Super Saiyans, Marvel superheroes, Imperial Guard troops, Roman legionaries, Hidden Leaf Village ninja, and any other concept you could think of.
The three Strife brothers were really excited to play another session of the World Stage LARP and all of them were decked out in full costume. Walking out the door all excited, Cloud, Sora, and Roxas all got into Cloud's car, a jet black 1989 Chevrolet Camaro IROC-Z, Sora bringing with them a cooler full of Mountain Dew.
It was going to be a long night.