Chat Room
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The day after Cloud had made his short visit, Tifa had called the detectives. They had searched over her home, and had asked a few more questions. Had Cloud said anything about where he had been? Had Cloud ever mentioned people he was in constant contact with?
Tifa hadn't been involved with Clouds delivery business in a long time, she gave the detectives an old list of people he use to make constant deliveries for. One name must have caught their attention, because they started writing down hurriedly in their notebooks, and then they started making dozens of phone calls. Afterwords they thanked her for her time, and left without any explanation on what type of trouble Cloud was involved with.
Tifa had been mildly frustrated, but on the other hand, perhaps it was for her own safety. Safety from what exactly, she could only guess at.
That evening at The Seventh Heaven, Tifa had a group of men enter she had never seen around before. They all had on clothes that looked dirty and ratty, their eyes were bloodshot and cruel. Two of them had moved up to the counter while the rest sat at a table in the back, mumbling quietly to themselves as they watched their companions.
After ordering a few drinks, Tifa was taken off guard as one of the strange men asked about Cloud, if she had seen him lately.
Ignoring the question, she reached out to refill his glass instead, and the man grabbed her left forearm.
"I said, where the fuck is that little prick?" He barked at her, his grip tighten as he glared.
Tifa took her right hand and pulled out from underneath the counter, her baseball bat. "Get your fucking hands off me." She'd club him silly if the thug decided not to listen.
Hesitantly, the man let go. He pushed away from the counter and swaggered back over to his buddies at their table, his other pal following after. Tifa put away her bat, but the damage had already been done. She had a red hand mark on her arm, and the few other folks who'd been sitting at the bar had shuffled away in fear.
Goons like that were bad for business, she really didn't feel like calling cops to get those thugs out of her bar. She also didn't want to be left with them at the end of the night. Tifa was tough, but eight dudes was pushing even her limits.
While trying to decide on what to do, her eyes looking over the room, she noticed a muscle bound acquaintance. Since no one was currently drinking at the counter, she casually left her position and wandered over to the bald headed muscle machine.
"Hey Rude, how've you been?" She came up from behind him, patting his shoulder in a friendly manner as he looked up at her quizzically. It wasn't often that she chatted with the Shinra agent.
"Fine." He answered simply, wearily watching as she took a seat beside him.
"Listen, I need a little assistance with something. You do me this favor and you drink for free the rest of the night." She had his full attention at this. "See those guys over there? The ones glaring at me right now? They've been giving me bad vibes, I want them outta here. Think you can handle that?" She watched him smirk and begin to crack his knuckles in excitement.
"Piece of cake." He chuckled confidently, standing up and stomping over to the group of thugs.
"Hey, where'd Rude go?" Tifa turned her head to see Reno returning from the restroom. He looked Tifa up and down and began to wolf whistle at her playfully.
"Tifa, what brings you over to our small little table?" He was about to sit down next to her, when the sound of bones crunching caught both their attention.
Rude was in the middle of cracking two goon heads together while his right foot stomped aggressively on some guys elbow. Thugs were breaking chairs over the large, bald mans back, but he just kept on grabbing new goons to grind into dust.
"Save some for me!" Reno called, loping over to help his buddy finish off the rest. Within a few minutes, they had sent all eight men out of the bar; blacken, bruised, and broken. Tifa served up complimentary drinks for both Rude and Reno, thanking them for a job well done.
"What was all that for anyway? One of them get fresh with our fiery bartender?" Reno joked, sitting next to both Rude and Tifa.
"It's complicated. They were asking questions, and when I didn't answer, they got grabby." She showed them her red arm. "I didn't want them in here when I closed up shop, I have a hard time picturing them leaving without getting answers out of me."
"What did they want, Tifa?" Reno had asked. She hesitated, should she bring up what had been going on with Cloud?
"They were asking about Cloud, where he was." She took a sip of her own drink, feeling stressed and worn out.
"Oh." Both Rude and Reno said at the same time.
"What? You act like you know something..." She eyed them wearily, not sure if she really wanted to know.
"Word on the street is that he's been dealing." Rude informed her, while Reno remained aloof.
"He's been seen with a pretty fucked up crowd, someone said they saw him sharing needles with some meth heads too." Rude got jabbed in the side by Reno after that, the two shared a glance before looking at Tifa's expression.
The exhaustion about her face doubled, her eyes held both disbelief and sadness. She pushed away from their table and moved back to her spot behind the counter. Methodically she got out a cleaning rag and began to wipe down her counter.
"Tifa, it's just rumor. Maybe he's not involved with all that." Reno had moved over to the counter, he was trying to make her feel better.
"It doesn't matter, he's not welcome here anyway. He's not the same anymore, I've known that for a while, I just never thought it'd be because of drugs..." She sighed, and stopped wiping the counter.
"Well, maybe it's for the best. People involved with that stuff, wind up hurting the people they use to care about." A hand covered hers gently, Tifa looked up at Reno and put on a brave face.
"I'm okay, Reno, you should go back and keep Rude company." She smiled as he hesitantly left, the gesture had been kind. Tifa cleaned, feeling relief at having the two friends as her last customers. They sat back and enjoyed their last drink as she finished tidying up her bar. When everything had been wiped down and put back in place, she thanked Rude and Reno again for their assistance as she walked them to the front door.
Rude exited first, while Reno lingered a moment, gazing at Tifa with worry.
"Listen, don't take this the wrong way or anything, but if something happens, call me." He handed her a wrinkled piece of paper with his number on it.
"I'll be alright, but thanks for the offer." She had smiled at him, and he began to cough and scratch his head awkwardly.
"Kay, good night, Tifa." He shuffled away, a blush about his cheeks as he left her side.
Chuckling lightly to herself, she locked up her bar and went into her home.
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"I promise, I have a good reason for being late!" Tifa smiled at this as she began to type a response.
"No big deal, it's not like I was haunting the computer screen till you logged on..." Yeah, checking for him every two minutes wasn't weird or anything, at least she kept telling that to herself.
"Oh, DoubleDee's my new Internet stalker I see...Seriously though, you gotta hear what happened to my buddy MuscleMan007!"
"Alright, lets hear it." She sat comfortably on her bed as she waited to hear his tale, it would undoubtedly be so outrageous she'd start to cry from laughing so hard.
"So we were walking back to our apartments from this bar, and MuscleMan sees a vending machine. He walks up, enters his change and pushes a button. Nothing happens, so he starts shaking it, beating on it and kicking it. Then, he thinks he can shove his hand inside it and get the bag of pretzels he wanted.
So he gets on all fours, and shoved one arm into the machine. He pushes until his entire arm is in there, and he can barely reach the bag with his fingertips. So he's messing with it, trying to tug it out, and decides he's not gonna get it. He goes to pull back his arm, and he's stuck! He tugs and pulls, but his arm won't move, so he starts throwing a gigantic fit.
The guys thrashing against the ground, crying and whining like a big bald baby, when this chick walks up. Of course, he sees her and acts normal, like he meant to get his arm stuck. She asks him what he's doing, and he tells her he got ripped off by the vending machine, and was trying to get the pretzels he paid for.
The lady asks him if he can reach the skittles while he's down there. Since his left arm is stuck, he shoves his right arm in there and goes to grab her a bag of skittles. He can't see very well, and I'm not about to help him, I'm laughing my ass off at this point. He's struggling and grunting, and amazingly he pulls his right hand outta there!"
"You're such a nice friend, laughing at his expense." Tifa teased him.
"I know, right? So he's handing her this bag, and she's got this horrible frown on her face. He asks her what the problem was. She shows him the bag, and it's Milk Duds he's pulled outta there! She starts calling him a pervert, and a creep, and empties the bag on top of his head before leaving in a tizzy.
He thinks he can win her back by grabbing the right bag really quickly, and sticks his arm back in. He gets the right bag, but then both his arms get stuck! He starts flailing his legs and crying like a baby. It was hilarious!"
"Did you leave him trapped there? I have to wonder if you would." Tifa imagined some dope trapped by the iron jaws of a rogue vending machine, and started to laugh out loud at the image in her mind.
"Nah, I called the number on the machine, some dude came by and rubbed MuscleMan down with Crisco, that did the trick. He's gonna be sore for a while, though!" Tifa had to wonder if they made pocket packs of Crisco, just in case situations like that happened to the average citizen. Then again, from the sound of it, these guys were beyond average...
"It sounds like you two are always up to something hilarious!"
"Yeah, that was my night, how was yours?" Tifa had been unhappy about the thugs in her bar, but at the end of the night, things had worked out well. Overall, it wasn't a terrible evening.
"It was fine, nothing too exciting happened, though I guess that's better than what's been going on lately. Hey Flamer, I wanna ask ya something." Tifa had been toying with the idea, and now seemed as good a time as any to ask him about it.
"What's on your mind?"
"I've been thinking, and I know that you teased me about it before, and that I'd be eating my words, but I was wondering if you ever thought about really meeting face to face. It could be somewhere public, like a coffee shop or something. I'd really like to put a face to man behind the computer." Tifa felt her stomach knotting in nervousness as she sent her message, waiting anxiously for his response.
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Disclaimer: Final Fantasy 7 belongs to Square Enix.
A/N: I know the format for their chat is different, but I'm only doing it to follow the rules so that I can keep writing this story for everyone to enjoy. Please stick with me, even though I can't use chat/message format for dialog, I hope people can still enjoy where things are going.