Author's Note:

Hey y'all! For NANOWRIMO 2016 I set out to write one short Final Fantasy VII fic a day for the month of November. I'll posting them a day or two after I write them. Most will be dumb AUs I thought of, expansion of headcanons I have or just simple, silly stuff. This will mostly be ship free, but there are a few sprinkled in here and there. They will be clearly marked as a ship fic and what ship it has in it. I have not played or experienced Dirge of Cerberus so if anything I write contradicts canon established in that, oops.

Hope you have a fun time reading these!

Note 12/3/16:

So I didn't write every day in November and I wanted to round off on an even 14 days, but I spent the last day of November puking my brains out, sadly. But 13 days of writing is a lot for me. This was a lot of fun to do, and a great experience over all for me!

Day 1: Zombie AU

Note: Something self-indulgent I thought of yesterday on Halloween. I'm one of three people on the planet not sick of zombies ha ha. Either way, it was fun developing my own type of infected and Geostigma proved to be the perfect starting point. Not an action packed zombie fic, my favorite parts of zombie apocalypses is how it affects the human condition.

Also, suicide content warning, it's a major part of the fic.

Hope you enjoy!

The planet was a lot angrier than we thought.

They call it Geostigma. People think it was caused when the Lifestream appeared. At first, they thought it was just a disease. People would get these gross black markings all over their bodies and it would hurt a lot and black goo would seek out of them. It was sad, but everyone moved on as they tried to rebuild.

But then the people started to change. The black stuff would spread all over their bodies until they were almost completely covered in it. After a few days, people with the sickness would go crazy and attack their friends and family. At first it wasn't bad but now more and more people are sick and more and more people are going crazy. There are a lot of them now. They move slowly, but some of them can run really fast for a little while. Those ones are the scariest.

A few days ago, one of them bit my arm. Papa cried a lot that day. At first only the place where I was bit hurt, but now I hurt all over my entire body. I told Papa and he said that the pain will be gone very soon, he'll make sure of it.

I hope he's right.

Nanaki had said that Cosmo Canyon would be safe. "Nobody there is infected." He had sounded so sure. The howl of despair he let out when the group arrived to the canyon engulfed in flames was gut wrenching.

They considered going to the Forgotten Capitol next, figuring that the power of the ancients may have repelled the evil that now consumed the world. As it turns out, everyone thought that as well. The city was overwhelmed. Bodies littered the ground and those with the stigma shambled through the water and long abandoned buildings.

Junon. Kalm. Rocket Town. Nibelheim. Everywhere they went, it was the same scene of death and destruction. Every now and then they would encounter a survivor only to find out they had been infected days later. Most of the members opted to abandon helpless cases like that, but Vincent was adamant about putting them out of their misery before they could hurt anyone.

The Highwind ran out of fuel pretty quickly, forcing them to travel on foot. If they were lucky, they would find a herd of Chocobos but catching a bird without any greens was more difficult than it was worth. And if they did manage to catch one, that was only one for a group of seven people.

The group stumbled upon a cottage near the ocean, a few miles from Costa del Sol. They all recognized it as the place they had gotten Great Gospel for Aerith. It housed an infected man and two bodies- a woman and a little boy, both with a gunshot wound to the head. The man was disposed of without much problem, and the family was cremated with a mastered Fire Materia without much fanfare.

Being only a few miles from the resort town, Cloud, Barret and Yuffie decided to do some recon to determine if anything was salvageable. They returned a few hours later with bloodied clothes and bags of food and bottled water.

Everyone was comfortable in that little house. There was only one bed, but no one really minded. They swapped who slept in it every night. It was relatively quiet, with very little interferences from the infected. Even Costa del Sol had been cleared within a matter of days.

All was good in their nightmare world until Cloud left the house one night.

He had excused himself so suddenly and left the cottage without a word. Assuming he had gone to relieve himself, nobody questioned it. Suspicions grew when he didn't return after twenty minutes or so.

Tifa volunteered to check on him. No one objected, she knew him better than any of them and if he was going through one of his moods, she would be the best person to bring him out of it.

"Cloud?" She called into the night. It was clear and the moon was full, giving her a good view of the surrounding area. "It's not safe to be out by yourself."

She walked around the back of the house, continuing her conversation with nobody. "Even with that huge sword-"

"Tifa…" A slow, coarse voice caught her off guard. Turning in the direction of the voice, she recognized the spiky silhouette of Cloud Strife standing with his back to her, dangerously close to the edge of the cliff. One false step and he would crash down into the ocean.

"Cloud!" She called out to him. "What have you been doing? Everyone's worried."

"I'm sorry." He still wasn't looking at her.

"Then come back in, knucklehead."

"I…can't." Tifa suddenly noticed how labored his breathing seemed to be. He took pauses between words. Concerned, she stepped forward but came to an abrupt halt when he half turned towards her, sticking out a hand to stop her. She still couldn't see his face. "Don't come any closer."

"What's going on?" She whimpered, feeling faintly scared. "You're scaring me."

"I didn't want you to see me like this. I didn't want anyone too. I was going to…"

"See you like what?" She demanded to know, although her voice wavered ever so slightly.

Cloud hesitated and slowly turned fully towards her. Her eyes widened in horror. His face was almost completely caked in black and the arm he didn't have a sleeve over was dripping with dark goo. The whites of his eyes were dark and black water dripped from them like tears. The only thing signifying he wasn't completely gone were his pupils- mindless infected have slits. His were still round. But for how long?

Stifling a scream, she covered her mouth in shock. "You have Geostigma." She finally managed to say.

"I killed an infected the other day. Some of the stigma got into my eye." He avoided her gaze. "I didn't want to tell anyone."

"You were just going to let us find you infected and mindless tomorrow morning?" Tifa asked weakly.

"Not exactly." He glanced down to his hand. Tifa followed his gaze and her already broken heart shattered even more.

"That's Vincent's." Terrified, she had to control the volume of her voice.

"Yeah, tell him I'm sorry for wasting a bullet." He chuckled. "Ol' Buster would have been too difficult. And painful. I was just sitting out here trying to work up the courage to do it." Nonchalantly, he raised the gun to his head and rested the muzzle against his temple. He smiled gently and closed his eyes in apparent contentment. "Seeing your reaction to how horrifying I am… thanks Tifa. And, tell everyone I'm sorry."

"Cloud, no!" She ran forward, determined to push the gun out of his hand. She realized too late there was no stopping him.

The shot rang through the night, drowning out Tifa's scream of anguish.