He was sinking.
It was a sea of sorts, but it wasn't composed of water. On the other hand, it was a green, viscous substance that had a bright glow to it. Despite this, it seemed to flow freely, but he was a prisoner to its current.
It washed over him, filling his lungs with the bright green fluid. He struggled to keep his head above, but something kept pulling him down into its depths. It reminded him of quicksand—the harder he struggled, the faster he sunk. But he still fought with all his strength.
He tried to swim, pulling his muscular arms through the material, attempting to reach shore. Yet there was no shore to speak of. The sea of green stretched on for as far as the eye could see. He was completely stranded.
A wave came over his head, pushing him beneath. He sunk quickly, and could see nothing but the bright green glow all around him. He felt strangely at peace in this place. There was a soothing nature to it that he couldn't quite explain. So he allowed it to pull him down.
Deeper and deeper he went.
He could no longer breathe, and yet he didn't feel like he was suffocating or choking. The deeper he sunk, the quicker he discovered he no longer needed his lungs in this strange place.
His eyelids felt heavy and he slowly lost the fight to hold them back. They slid over his bright, blue eyes and darkness enveloped him. He fell into a trance and drifted into a state of weightlessness.
Suddenly, his eyes snapped open. Before him was a bright light, one which pierced his retinas and blinded him. He wanted to turn away, but found he couldn't. Then he saw something—no, someone—coming towards him from the light. Slowly, he made out the form of a woman drifting down towards him.
She was beautiful. With a warm smile and stunning green eyes. There was a very motherly quality about her, and he felt that he would be safe with her. She reached her hand towards him and he smiled as he brought his own up to grasp it. She could bring him away from all this, back into a world where he didn't feel so lost.
"And just where do you think you're going?"
The voice was deep and it came from below. He felt something stop his ascent and he fell quickly. Further and further from the woman, with her warm smile. He could barely make her out and she soon vanished into the horizon and the light which was once blinding was now dim and far away at the end of a long tunnel of black.
He fell hard on his shoulder, landing upon a desolate rock. He grunted in pain as he pulled himself to his feet. Standing in front of him was the one who pulled him from the woman.
He was tall, easily over six feet. He wore leather pants and knee-high boots. He was shirtless and his body was the peak of male physicality. He had a face with angelic features and bright green eyes. However, the smile on his face made his appearance into something twisted. Long, silver bangs framed his cheekbones and his silver hair spilled all the way down his back like a waterfall. In his right hand, he gripped the hilt of a katana. The blade was extremely long, at least seven or eight feet. The fact that this man could hold it in one hand with no effort was a testament to his strength.
"Did you really think you'd be able to escape?" he asked, that smile still plastered on his face.
"No…" said the young man with blue eyes. "You're dead."
"Come now, Cloud, haven't we already played that game?" he asked. "I am a god, and gods never die."
It took only a moment for him to swing the blade up and thrust forward. Cloud didn't even have a chance to blink before he saw he was impaled on the Masamune, his blood dripping slowly down the steel. He gasped for breath and looked into the face of his killer.
The killer just smiled back at him and said, "You'll never be rid of me, Cloud."
Cloud Strife awoke with a scream, gasping for breath. His blond hair was plastered to his face with sweat and his bare chest glistened in the moonlight that streamed in from the open window.
He pulled the sheet from his body and stepped over to the window. He leaned against the frame and looked outside. From this window, he could see the town of Nibelheim. Years ago, it was filled with people, but now it was an abandoned ghost town.
Ten years ago, it was burnt to the ground by the madman named Sephiroth. In an attempt to cover it up, the Shin-Ra Corporation rebuilt it and hired actors to live in the town and deny any knowledge of that. Five years later, they abandoned the town with the downfall of Shin-Ra.
Now, Cloud lived here alone. Holed up in the largest house in the town, which was once known as the Shin-Ra Mansion. The wealth of information left behind in the library hidden in the basement provided him with hours worth of reading.
He wondered why he felt so compelled to continue studying the secrets of Shin-Ra and the Jenova Project. Both were nothing more than a memory. Shin-Ra had been dismantled and Sephiroth and Jenova both destroyed.
There were no answers. Cloud Strife had been given his life and memories back. Yet once Meteor was destroyed, there was a void. He thought it was a lack of adventure, yet even spending three years as a wandering mercenary couldn't fill the void.
But did this?
He wasn't sure. All he knew was that he felt a… compulsion to stay here. Amidst the painful memories of years past. Why was he so obsessed with the past? Why did he still cling to it, instead of looking ahead to the future?
He caught his reflection in the windowpane and noticed his eyes had suddenly turned green. At first, he didn't notice, but the moment he turned away, his brain registered what he had just seen. He looked again and saw that they were their normal blue.
Just a trick of the moonlight, he supposed.
Sunlight poured in through the window, bathing his body in its warmth. He crinkled his eyelids before opening them. He could hear the sound of birds chirping outside and glanced to the clock on his bedside table. It read six o'clock.
He sighed and climbed out of bed. After the nightmare, he found it nearly impossible to fall back to sleep. He tossed and turned the entire night and he felt exhausted. Still, he had a task for today. He was running low on food and needed to embark on a hunting trip.
He dressed in black pants, heavy black boots and a navy-blue sleeveless sweater. He pulled on a pair of leather gloves and hooked a harness over his chest. Hanging just below his back were leather straps meant to contain his sword. It sat in a corner of the room, resting against the wall. He hefted the massive weapon and examined it.
It wasn't all that dissimilar to the sword he once wielded five years ago. The weapon seller near Gongaga had improved on it. Instead of just one large blade, it was composed of several smaller swords interlocked into it. A useful weapon, to be sure.
His eye caught the picture held in a silver frame on the nightstand. It was taken five years ago, at the celebration party at Cosmo Canyon once Meteor was destroyed. Cloud was in it, standing among his allies in that final battle—Barret with his daughter Marlene, Cid, Vincent, Yuffie, Reeve with Cait Sith on his shoulders, Red XIII and… Tifa.
His thoughts went to Tifa. Not only her, but the entire team. None of them had seen him in at least two years. They didn't know where he was or what happened to him. Perhaps that was a bit cold on his part, but he did what he felt he had to do. Tifa wanted him to start a new life, move in with her. But Cloud wasn't ready.
So he left.
And he was still running. He had been running for so long that he didn't even know what it was he was trying to escape.
On the other side of the world, Tifa Lockheart was asking herself the same question. There was a twelve hour time difference between Nibelheim and Midgar. Which meant Happy Hour had just ended at the Final Heaven. Now the dinner rush would start coming in.
"Ugh, does it ever end?"
The complaint came from one of Tifa's waitresses. The twenty-one year-old girl slumped into a barstool and folded her arms on the counter, setting her head down on them. Tifa smiled at her employee and gave her a playful smack on the head.
"Hey!"
"No sleeping on the job, Yuffie," said Tifa.
Yuffie muttered a curse under her breath in her native Wutain language. Although Tifa wasn't familiar with the language, she heard Yuffie say the word enough times in anger that she was able to guess at its meaning.
"Y'know, I don't have to put up with this treatment," said Yuffie.
"You wanted to work here…"
"But only because I thought you'd be a pushover!" said Yuffie.
"Well I'm happy to disappoint you." Tifa grinned and tossed a damp rag at Yuffie. "Do me a favor and clean off some of the tables in the back. I've gotta check my messages."
"Yeah, yeah," muttered Yuffie. She went about her task, wiping down some of the tables, preparing for the dinner rush that would be coming in soon. She thought back to the days when she trotted over the globe, seeking out materia and stealing from travelers who didn't know well enough to keep an eye on their belongings. In fact, that was how she met Tifa and the others.
Yuffie heard the sound of a bell and looked up. A tall man with short black hair just stepped inside the bar. He caught sight of Yuffie and smiled at her. Yuffie muttered another Wutain expletive under her breath.
"Hi there, Yuffie," he said. "Is Tifa around?"
"She's in her office," said Yuffie. "Are you here to hit on her again?"
"I just want to say hi."
"Leto, give it a rest. You don't stand a snowball's chance in hell with her."
"Thanks for the tip," said Leto. He walked past Yuffie towards the back of the bar. There was a small corridor in the back that led to the restrooms and at a T-junction was another corridor leading to a door labeled 'OFFICE.' Leto stepped up and knocked on the door lightly.
"Come in."
Leto opened the door and Tifa looked up at him with a smile, a phone against her ear. She held her index finger up to him, indicating that he should wait a minute. Leto stepped inside the office and closed the door behind him before leaning against it.
"Don't worry, Barret, she's fine," said Tifa into the receiver. "She's ten years old, she's not helpless. Look, get back to work and stop worrying so much about Marlene. She's perfectly okay, Elmyra's watching over her tonight. Okay, I'll leave early and ask Yuffie to close up for me. Will that make you feel better? Alright, I'll see you when you get back to Midgar."
She hung up the phone with an exasperated sigh, then turned her brown eyes up to Leto. The smile appeared back on her face. "Sorry about that."
"Don't worry about it," said Leto. "That was… Barret, right? Marlene's father? The… ahem big guy, right?"
"You mean the one who threatened to shove his gun-arm up your ass if you tried anything funny with me, right?" asked Tifa.
Leto scratched the back of his head in embarrassment and a light smile appeared on his face as his cheeks turned red. Tifa giggled.
"It's okay, Barret's a good man, just a little… overprotective," she said.
"That's one way of saying it," said Leto. "I was thinking more along the lines of 'insane.'"
"You're not the first person to suggest that," said Tifa. "So what's up, Leto?"
"Well, I was wondering what you were doing on Friday," said Leto. "You know they've got a new production of Loveless playing and I have two tickets, so I thought—"
Tifa lowered her head a little and tried to keep the smile on her face, but there was no doubting it faded slightly. "Leto, I'm flattered, really. But it's like I told you, I'm really not interested in dating anyone."
"Right, I get that, I just thought maybe you'd like to go as friends," said Leto.
"I… I can't. I promised Marlene I'd spend some time with her."
"Okay, sure," said Leto. "Well, I guess I'll see you around then."
"Are you eating here?" asked Tifa.
"Nah, I should really go home, I've got some leftovers that I need to eat before they sprout legs and run out of the refrigerator," said Leto, forcing a smile. "I'll stop in next week, though."
"Okay, I'll give you a drink on the house," said Tifa.
"You don't have to do that," said Leto. He walked out of the office and closed the door behind him. He smacked his forehead a few times and muttered "stupid, stupid, stupid!"
As he walked towards the exit, he saw Yuffie standing behind the bar. She had a knowing smile on her face.
"What'd I tell ya, stud?" she asked.
"Oh piss off," said Leto. He could hear Yuffie's laughter as he walked out the front door.
At the peak of the highest mountain in Cosmo Canyon sat the home of the town's chief elder. Although he is physically fifty-three years of age, he is much younger by the standards of his species, only in his early twenties. Five years ago, he played a key role in saving the planet from Sephiroth and Meteor. His adopted grandfather, the late Bugenhagen, was the former chieftain. With his experience, the other elders of the Canyon felt the creature called Red XIII was more than suited to follow in his grandfather's footsteps.
"Nanaki!"
He turned his head at the sound of his birth name, his eye fixing upon three of the Canyon's younger generation. He had a lion-like appearance, with bright red fur and an elaborate headdress over his mane. There were several tribal markings on his body, although one stood out—a "XIII" tattoo. Given to him when he was a prisoner of the mad geneticist called Hojo, also where he received the nickname Red XIII. The name his former friends in Avalanche knew him by. But here, in Cosmo Canyon, he had grown accustomed again to being called Nanaki.
"Yes?" he asked.
"We saw a bright light in the sky, do you know what it is?" asked one of the children.
"I haven't seen it," said Nanaki.
But he could feel something in his bones. There was a disturbance in the Lifestream. He lay upon the ground and closed his eye, sensing for the source of the disturbance. There was something there—that much he was certain of. But as for specifics, he was at a loss. He stood and turned to the children.
"Fetch the shamans, have them meet me at the Cosmo Candle," he said.
The three youngsters nodded and retreated down the steps leading up the mountain. Nanaki prepared to follow, but he paused for a moment and cast his eye out on the horizon. From his vantage point, he could see the peaks of Mount Nibel. He glanced further, in the direction of the Northern Crater.
"Sephiroth…?"
The very mention of that name made his fur stand on end. This was definitely something he needed to consult the shamans on. And, if necessary, his former teammates.