I do not own FF7 or its characters and make no profit from writing these stories. I encourage you to check my bank balance for confirmation of this fact.
Roll 'em
Tifa looked at the picture of Cloud and herself, taken from when they were young and he was actually smiling while he had his strong arm around her. Ever since they were small, she knew she wanted to marry him, to be his wife, have his children and imagined what their little blonde children would look like. They would be beautiful. Cloud was so good looking and she knew she was no slouch in the looks department either.
She sighed and looked around at her cramped little apartment and wondered how she had ended up here; owning a bar when all she wanted to do was be his wife and spend her time taking care of him and their brood. She was now twenty-eight and felt her child bearing years slipping away. She had wanted to have children really young, but fate wouldn't have that.
She had always assumed that Cloud and herself would be together, but fate had thrown into their path; another girl to grab his attention, the sweet rival to his affections and Tifa's friend, Aerith and her death, the death of his best friend, Zach and the person behind it all, General Sephiroth, hero turned psycho, the would-be planet destroyer whose mind had snapped after years of abuse from Shinra and his own father. He had broken Cloud as well in his wake of destruction and that has caused him to seek solitude and the last she had heard from him, he was raising Chocobos on an isolated farm. Tifa had suggested selling the bar and going with him, imagining herself being in the fresh air helping him on the farm, having a vegetable garden and cooking their meals, but he had just said he needed to be alone, to have time to think.
That didn't help Tifa, she wanted his children and badly. She was already everyone's mother, she just needed a baby and Cloud's child at that. Her arms itched to hold a perfect little blonde baby with sparkling blue eyes. It was a hunger that wouldn't go away, it just seemed to grow stronger with each year. Why had she never slept with him as a teenager? If only there was a way for her to obtain a sperm sample of his and inseminate herself, having a family would certainly bring him out of his funk and of course he would marry her. It would be a perfect solution. She knew she was obsessed but didn't want to let it go.
She frowned when she found a memory kicking around her brain. It had something to do with SOLDIER...then it surfaced and she recalled that all members of SOLDIER had their sperm samples frozen upon entry into the core, that should anything happen to them, their families were allowed to request them, should they wish to use them for procreation purposes.
Cloud had told her on one of the many nights his memories, not Zachary's, came to the fore. Of course SOLDIER had long been disbanded, but the samples might still exist and should she be able to get her hands on Cloud's sample.
Tifa got excited as she spoke with her friend, who happened to work at WRO Headquarters. "Yes they do still exist and the same rules apply. They are labeled by the person's regimental number" Nancy explained.
"Do you think that you could get me Cloud's number?" she asked her.
"Those records are archived and I would need to literally dig through boxes to find out that information" she said.
"I'll give you free dinners for a year" Tifa suggested to her.
Nancy sighed as she opened the sixth box and pulled out yet more military records and finally found the one for Cloud Strife. Knowing her lunch was almost over, she hastily pulled out a pen and a piece of paper and jotted down the number, unaware that she had reversed the last two digits in her haste.
Tifa looked at the young lab assistant, Daniel. Her friend Nancy had recommended she approach him with her proposal as he wasn't averse to doing things not quite legal for quick cash.
"That's a lot of money" she said when he named the amount.
"It's a lot of risk, not only could I lose my job, but they are considered to be government property and if removed without going through proper channels, carries a ten year jail sentence if I'm caught. I'm willing to risk it only if you will pay me what I want" he insisted.
Tifa realized she would have to remortgage the bar, which she had just finished paying off and then said "Give me a few days and you'll get your money" she assured him.
Daniel sneakily tried to disable the cameras, but didn't quite succeed and stepped into the cryogenics lab and used a deceased doctor's badge to open up the main door to what was referred to as "the vault." Inside the huge freezers were hundreds of thousands of small dark grey metal containers that were identified only by the service number of each man on the front of them. Daniel quickly consulted the number that he had been given, took it out and slipped it into his briefcase to spirit it from the building.
Tifa looked what the test tube contained. There been enough for two attempts and the first one had failed, so this was her final chance. She picked up the stainless steel turkey baster, like the last time, first she had boiled it and then had left it soaking in alcohol overnight. Drawing the white liquid into it, she lifted up her t-shirt and pushed it as far into herself as possible and with silent prayer to the goddess, injected it into herself and put her legs up into the air and prayed again for a miracle.
The lowly lab assistants were very nervous when their inventory of the SOLDIER cryogenics samples kept on coming up one short.
"This is bad, this is so bad. The last one that left here was three years ago; all the rest should be present" the nervous blonde girl, Jennifer said her friend, Kate.
"It can't just have spouted legs and walked off, even most of the doctors don't have clearance to this section. We should check again" her Kate suggested.
"We checked twenty times, we checked the floor in case it fell down and we checked behind other samples and it isn't here. We have to report this to Dr. Morton" she said and both looked at each other with dread. Dr. Morton was a hardass who ate puppies for breakfast and washed them down with the blood of slaughtered baby harp seals.
"How could it not be there?" Dr. Morton demanded of them, looking from one barely competent employee to the other, he barely trusted them to count their own noses. "Most of those samples have been sitting there for years" he said.
"I don't know sir" Jennifer said nervously.
"Who's sample is it? Hopefully he's dead" Dr. Morton callously said.
"It 's regimental number 4947998 and that would be...Sephiroth Crescent" she read out, consulting her list.
Even Dr. Morton turned pale at this.
"Sephiroth, as in the newly reinstated General Sephiroth? That Sephiroth?" he questioned her with dread in his voice.
"This is really bad" Jennifer said.
"This is a nightmare, I want the names of each and every doctor who checked into the vault since the last inventory of it, match that with the dates and watch the security footage from that date. We have to try to contain this and General Sephiroth can never know. Any samples of him were supposed to have been disposed of a long time ago on his orders. Once we have the culprit, turn the matter over to the internal police and let them handle it, but quietly, someone is going to jail over this. Oh and prayer for a miracle that General Sephiroth never finds out" he cautioned them.
Sephiroth had been off on a recon mission with his men and now was on his way back the headquarters, when he sneezed so severely, several of his men first response was to ask if he was okay, then they thought better of it because of who he was.
Sephiroth squinted his eyes.
Someone was talking about him somewhere.
He marched forward at an unhurried pace, well aware of those behind him moving in synchronicity with himself and deliberately slowed, for his own amusement until they were moving as slowly as corseted women taking a stroll in a garden. Yes he had missed his old rank and felt happy to be back. Back he was and glad for it, he had overcome his own mental health issues and Lifestream, having Jenova silenced and his second in command back, one Zachary Fair, on the merits of the last Cetra, Aerith. She'd shown her mercy when he really didn't deserve it but she'd sacrificed her one love and strength to give him his "living, breathing conscious" back to make it through this life.
Sephiroth mused.
His own neutral expression hid even his smirk as his men almost daintily minced after him.
"General, please stop" one of his men almost pleaded.
"What?" He asked him.
"That cat is about to step into your path" he explained.
Sephiroth looked down at the black cat in front of him and back at his troops, everyone seemed to shiver as both his eyes and the cat's were the same color and both blinked at them in the same way, one in confusion and one well... it was just a cat looking at weird people it didn't know. "So what? It's just a cat. Are you afraid of pussy now, Private Jensen?" He asked him.
"It's bad luck for a black cat to cross your path" the blushing private stammered.
"I suggest that you keep your silly superstitions in the kitchen where they belong…while you prepare your husband's dinner in your frilly pink apron "Sephiroth said in a rare moment of whimsy that made everyone else laugh.
He hurried his pace, glad to almost be home. He was exhausted beyond belief but refused to show it and he was grateful to be on his way home where he could take a long bath, eat a quick dinner, so he could have nine hours of coma-like sleep and the next night he would be in the arms of his lover. He marveled that such simple things could complete his life, but he liked his life simple, regimented, if anything and uncomplicated.