Standard disclaimers apply. This chapter is chaos. x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x
WHEN YOU WISH UPON A MATERIA
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CHAPTER TEN
"You know," Cloud was saying, "I thought this was supposed to be a crack fic."
"Hmm, hmm," Vincent replied in a noncommittal manner.
"I mean, really! Where's the crack? Where are the inane jokes? The laughable plotholes?? The astoundingly embarrassing plot devices???"
"Oh, you're just not looking hard enough," Vincent commented offhandedly. "Don't worry, they'll come."
Cloud narrowed his eyes at the image of his friend on the toilet wall. "What are you so distracted with?"
"Statistics and readings, Cloud, nothing you'll be interested in," Vincent replied, again in a nonchalant tone. He was not even looking at Cloud, but at something else on the table in front of him. "You said you were pulled into the sea of the summons, but the camera caught nothing of that sort. All we saw was you activating a materia, then the box in front of you bursting into flames. At the same time there were some abnormal readings in the air around you, and if we can decipher it, we may be able to find a way to create a portal back to the sea of the summons and somehow toss Leviathan inside..."
Cloud blinked. At the moment, Leviathan was fast asleep, coiled up around Cloud's neck. "Okay," Cloud said, "I sort of get what you mean." He frowned. "And what were we talking about before that again?"
This time, Vincent looked up, and tilted his head to a side. He appeared to be thinking about it, but eventually, he shrugged and returned to the readings.
"Vincent," Cloud spoke to his friend again, slightly irritated that he did not appear to be concerned. Vincent lifted an eyebrow to indicate that Cloud had his attention, but his eyes remained on the sheaves of paper in his hand. "I think Sephiroth suspects something."
The man being spoken to actually laughed lightly. "Given the circumstances, I'm hardly surprised."
"It's not funny!" Cloud complained, his manner glum. "What if he finds out? What am I going to say?" A pause. "What if I /really/ changed history?"
This time, Vincent stopped poring over the notes and lifted his eyes. "I seem to recall having this conversation with you just a day ago. I asked you if you wanted to change history, and you replied that you did not know." He put all his notes to a side, narrowing his eyes slightly as he continued, "However it looks like that question has kept hounding you since our last discussion. Have you perhaps found an answer?"
"I... I don't know!" Cloud's usually cool facade was near its limits, his exasperation and frustration starting to show. "But what I think doesn't matter, because it's already /happening/ isn't it? Sephiroth never knew me when I was a cadet. And he most definitely did not think I was a SOLDIER! What's going to happen when Leviathan goes back and I have to trade places with myself again?"
Vincent said nothing in reply to the question. He gazed at Cloud for a long time, until the silence became somewhat unbearable. "But you are still there, aren't you?"
After a long pause, Cloud found himself staring at Vincent, confident that the baffled look on his face would prompt him to explain further. The edges of Vincent's lips twitched slightly as he tried to suppress the amusement he was feeling. As jaded as Cloud could be towards the people around him sometimes, right now he was nothing more than a confused teenager struggling with problems that were a little too big for his breeches.
Cloud was still staring, so Vincent straightened himself slightly and said, "I have told you before, Cloud, that there is only one you. What happens to the you in the past will have a direct influence on the you in the future. For example, if someone were to kill your younger self right now, what do you suppose will happen to you, the older person?"
Cloud took a few seconds to consider it. "I wouldn't even be here, since I'm already dead?"
"Yes," Vincent nodded. "Now let us extend the timeframe. Suppose you've finished your mission, and you trade places with your younger self. Now he's back in his proper time, and then someone kills him or otherwise does something to influence the course of his life. What will happen to future you?"
"I... just wouldn't be around anymore," Cloud replied. "If anything major changes in my life, I won't be able to live for so long..."
"Exactly," Vincent cut in, attempting to drive home the point. "The fact that you - older you, are still 'around' shows that nothing has happened or will happen to your younger self to alter the course of history so drastically that you no longer exist in the future." He paused to give Cloud some time to absorb the information. "So as long as you don't start suddenly disappearing into nothingness, I'd say there is a high chance nothing is going to happen to your younger self that will cause an irreparable rift to your lifetime. Even if your meetings with Sephiroth may cause you to think otherwise." A short silence. "This is all purely conjecture, of course," Vincent disclaimed his authority on the matter. "The laws of time are not easily understood."
Cloud was still staring at Vincent. His confusion, however, had dissolved into consideration. "Is it a good or bad thing for younger me that I'm still around, then?" He asked with a self-deprecating chuckle.
"I do not know how you feel about it," Vincent said, his voice quiet, "but I do know I have always been, and will always be, grateful for your company."
"...thank you," was Cloud's simple reply.
A soft knock on the toilet door interrupted the duo's conversation, and Cloud switched the communication materia to the second level out of pure reflex. Vincent's visage vanished from the wall, and Cloud turned around just in time to see Bunkmate1 cracking open the door cautiously.
"Hey Cloud," Bunkmate1 whispered, "you all right or something? Making an awful lot of noise in there, so I thought..."
"I'm fine," Cloud blurted out before he could think. He was still clutching onto the materia pendant tightly, so he let go of it and went to pull open the door. "Sorry, you need to use this, right? I'm done. Go ahead."
Bunkmate1 continued to stand at the threshold of the toilet, not stepping in and not moving away. "Hey, err..." he put a hand through his hair and looked at the ground. "So like... we're mates, right? If you're... err... having any problems or anything... talk to us, okay?" Bunkmate1 looked up and caught Cloud's eyes. "It's not healthy talking all day long to someone who doesn't exist, mama always told me. Don't worry, we won't laugh!" He punched the wide-eyed Cloud on the shoulder in a joking manner. "You can treat us all as your imaginary friend 'Vincent' if you want, okay? Don't worry!" He repeated while punching Cloud's shoulder again, this time shoving it harder.
The blond stumbled backwards slighty, eyes still as wide as saucers. His bunkmates had been overhearing his conversations with Vincent; that much he could deduce (no thanks to Shinra's substandard walls). And then they had gone ahead and concluded that there was nothing out of the ordinary with the situation (for which he was thankful), but that there was something wrong with him himself?
That certainly would not do.
"It's not what you think..." Cloud stepped forward just as Bunkmate1 turned around and walked back into the bunk. Bunkmate1 did not appear to have heard him, as he continued walking, so Cloud followed as quickly as he could. "Vincent's not an imaginary friend... not really... but let's just leave it as that. What I meant was, this isn't a mental thing, so there's no need to inform the infirmary about it..." A chill crept up his spine at the possibility of the infirmary eventually referring him to the Science Department. "And..."
"Oh, shut it, Cloud," Bunkmate1 was saying as he threw himself onto his bunk bed. Cloud's other bunkmates were already lounging around on their beds, reading magazines and snacking on junk food. "I already said it's nothing. We won't spill. Right, guys?" Bunkmate1 lifted his head and asked the other two, who grunted something akin to assent and then promptly went back to their gluttonous ways.
Cloud hovered by the bunk bed, still feeling uncertain. 'You have to trust them for now. Push for more information at a better time later. They seem off guard, so ask them about this morning,' Vincent's suggestion was a relief to Cloud, who had forgotten for a while that he still had someone on his side. He straightened himself and nodded.
"Where did you guys go this morning?" He asked without any introduction. This caused all three of his bunkmates to stop doing whatever they were doing and look up at him. "Why didn't anybody tell me about the day off?" He tried to sound as angry as he could, but realised that he could barely manage to go past his usual monotone.
After that question, the bunkmates turned to look at each other, then back at Cloud. "Consider it payback, buddy," Bunkmate3 said with a grin.
"Payback?" Cloud was naturally confused. "For?"
"For not telling us that you KNOW General Sephiroth!" Bunkmate2 sat up on his bed suddenly, making the rusty springs beneath whine in disapproval. The magazine he had been reading fell to the ground as he leaned forward to scrutinise the still confused Cloud. "He told us all about last night," Bunkmate2 pointed at Bunkmate3, who nodded vigorously. "The General came out of the party and whisked you off somewhere, didn't he?! That must've been so cool!" He slammed his hands against the bed, making the springs creak again. "How did you get to know the General?! What did you guys talk about??"
Memories of last night came rushing back to Cloud at the mention of Sephiroth whisking him off, and he groaned inwardly. 'You have two choices here, Cloud. Either tell them the truth, or deny that you know the man with every fibre of your being,' Vincent helpfully proposed.
'Of course I'm going to deny their allegations. Does it look like they're going to believe Sephiroth and I are planning to secretly hide a dragon from the Science Department in a Midgar plate room above the reactor's boiler?' He sighed when he heard Vincent chuckling. Out loud he said stiffly, "I don't know General Sephiroth. He just mistook me for someone else."
There was a short silence as his bunkmates made what they would out from Cloud's answer. "Huh..." Bunkmate3 eventually said, all the ruliness in his demeanour lost. "That's all?"
Cloud nodded. "That's all."
The bunkmates looked at each other again. "Gee, that was so anticlimatic I don't even know if I should laugh or not..." Bunkmate1 spoke up first, his face blank at the revelation.
"Sorry," Cloud shrugged.
"Yeah, you should be!" Bunkmate2 clamoured, but his voice was laughing. "You got us all worked up for nothing! We thought you'd be able to sneak us into the SOLDIER floor to watch them train or something!" He threw a magazine at Cloud, who thwacked it away with relative ease.
The magazine sailed towards the door to the bunk, which slid open silently and suddenly. A gloved hand deftly caught the book before it landed on his face. All the laughter in the bunk came to a halt when the newcomer lowered his hand with the magazine that was covering his face.
"I apologise for the sudden interruption," General Sephiroth said as he calmly placed the magazine on a nearby table, "but I need to borrow Cloud for a while."
There was silence. That is, if Cloud's internal shrieks were to be ignored. The shrieking, however, was loud enough to wake Leviathan up. The summon looked up with a start, launching itself into the air and twirling circles around its master, trying to see where the danger was.
Sephiroth waited expectantly at the door, and Cloud felt the need to facepalm - which he did. 'Why must you complicate my life so?' He purposely broadcasted his thoughts out, knowing that Sephiroth was close enough to hear it.
'Oh, did I come at a bad time?' Was the amused comeback.
When Cloud found himself at a loss of what to say in reply, Vincent cut in. 'You arrived just as Cloud was trying to convince his bunkmates that he has nothing to do with you,' Vincent's tone was tentative for some reason. 'Remember that Cloud is supposed to be incognito?'
'I see,' Sephiroth stated. 'I will explain the situation to them. Right now, I need you to head up to Lazard's office. Quickly, before the situation gets out of hand. Zax will tell you what to do once you get there.'
At that, Cloud removed his face from his palm and stared at Sephiroth, who was still at the door. Sephiroth then turned to a side to allow space for Cloud to step out of the door He tilted his head towards the outside while looking at Cloud. 'Go,' Sephiroth repeated.
The blond wondered how Sephiroth could still manage to sound so authoritative even as a mere voice in his head. 'Go on, Cloud, let Sephiroth handle this. He's more than able to, I should think,' Vincent gave Cloud a mental nudge, and that was enough to jolt Cloud away from his thoughts. He walked towards the door, passing by Sephiroth without a second glance. Once outside the bunk, he broke into a sprint, heading straight for the elevator. The passing air and the shimmering of Leviathan's scales as it floated along beside him calmed him down slightly, but the entire episode had been moving so fast it still felt like a dream.
Cloud's mind was blissfully blank until he stepped into the elevator, when Vincent spoke up again. 'Did you notice that, Cloud? Sephiroth was not only able to hear our thoughts, but broadcast his own thoughts to us as well.'
This new piece of information that Cloud had not previously considered gave him a literal jolt. He gripped the railings of the elevator and felt blood drain from his face. 'You're right...! But he doesn't have the materia... I'm the one... or does this have to do with our mental signatures again?'
'A very high possibility,' Vincent said. 'But I suppose it is a logical development. Since he is able to hear our conversation by interrupting the spell, it makes sense that he should also be able to communicate with us via the same spell loophole he has unconsciously tapped.'
'Wow,' Cloud sounded amazed even to himself. 'You weren't joking when you said we were linked somehow.'
The elevator chimed softly, just before the doors slid open in all its noisy grace. Cloud stepped out, his conversation with Vincent forgotten for a second. Leviathan followed, and began to hiss softly. It made Cloud stiffen subconsciously, for he could feel Leviathan was slightly unhappy about something.
The object of Leviathan's dismay came barrelling towards Cloud at breakneck speed before he had the chance to blink.
"Cloud!" Zax latched onto the blond like a lost boy. Without waiting for Cloud to reply, the SOLDIER started dragging him along the corridor, towards Lazard's office proper. "I don't know what Sephiroth meant, but apparently you have a way to deal with that thing, so deal with it! Quickly! Before it breaks out!"
"What? What's going on?" Cloud wished everybody would stop talking to him as if he could read minds. Before Zax could say anything else, however, he came within full view of Lazard's open office. Leviathan began to howl in great anger this time.
And Cloud's jaw just dropped.
In the middle of the office, a peacock-sized bird was trying to peck its way out of the barrier spell someone had placed around it. And it was making great progress, at that. The barrier was already cracked in several places.
"THIS is what's going on!" Zax held both hands out towards the bird. "That bird just came out of nowhere and started to set things on fire! It razed the bookshelf in Sephiroth's office to the ground, so we chased it down and finally managed to trap it here... I don't know for how long, though!"
As if on cue, more cracks started to appear on the barrier.
'Oh, I know who that is,' Vincent decided to add his cheerful opinion to the fray. Leviathan growled and hissed.
"Phoenix...?!" Cloud was oblivious to the pandemonium going on around and within him. "What the... who... how...?!"
Phoenix the summon stopped pecking at the sound of Cloud's voice. It looked up, meeting Cloud's eyes. Immediately, it began to warble and flap its wings. Leviathan hissed again, but stayed near Cloud, who was just about to collapse from sheer shock. An uncomfortable tug at the back of his mind jolted him back to reality. He could feel his MP being sapped away at an alarming speed.
And not by Leviathan, but by Phoenix.
As he watched in horror, Phoenix began to glow iridescent. It was a mere matter of seconds before it would break out of the barrier and... do whatever it had been trying to do prior to this. 'First things first Cloud, you need to stop Phoenix,' Vincent assessed the situation calmly. 'Leviathan seems more than happy to help.'
'Yes, but I can't do that in front of Zax...' Cloud snuck a glance at Zax, slightly relieved that his friend was apparently too enraptured by the glowing bird to notice that Cloud was currently oozing MP like a leaking tap. 'I need a distraction...' He looked around, the wheels in his head turning at top speed. Lazard's office was bereft of windows and enhanced with the strongest metal money could buy. Still, he was not without options. Glancing up, he saw what he expected to see - the sprinkler system. This was going to be his only chance, Cloud knew. 'Leviathan, make water spurt out from the sprinklers up there!'
The snake hissed once. Water burst out from the sprinklers immediately. A small shower at first, it slowly became a merciless torrent. The sprinklers broke away from their connections at the pressure, and the pipes holding the waters collapsed under the weight and speed of the gushing water. Documents drowned and furniture became displaced. It was mayhem of the highest order.
Just as Cloud had NOT planned. But hey, improvisation was his second name.
"Zax, I don't think we can handle this!" The blond cried out to his friend, who had been stunned speechless by the sudden turn of events. "Could you get someone to switch off the sprinklers before this entire floor is washed out? I'll go get Sephiroth to come back and take care of that bird!"
"Sounds like a plan!" Zax - always ready for action - snapped out of his reverie at Cloud's suggestion. He dashed towards the emergency stairwell. "The control room's just a few floors down, I'll go get the people there to shut the sprinklers up. Take the elevator, Cloud! The water hasn't reached it yet!" He yelled over the loud roar of falling water.
"Okay!!" Cloud shouted back. Zax flashed him a thumbs-up, which he returned. Then the SOLDIER was out of sight, the sound of the stairwell door slamming shut the last indication of his presence.
Cloud stood in the midst of the chaos for a few more seconds, until he could hear Zax's footsteps fade away into complete silence.
He sighed in relief, and turned around to face the office.
"Less water, Leviathan," Cloud commanded the summon, and the torrent quickly regressed into a shower. Turning around, he saw that the bird in the barrier was now a bright ball of light. It looked like a light bomb that was ready to go off anytime. Then Cloud figured it may not be a good idea to think about it that way, as it appeared to be taking his MP, and that would mean the bird could interpret his thoughts and possibly act on it.
Too late for that, though.
The Phoenix bomb blew up, shattering the barrier that had been holding it in and making a crater-like dent in the area that surrounded it. The summon itself was unscathed. It rose up majestically into the air like a, well, phoenix, and sang a song that sounded like a victory tune.
Leviathan started to hiss even more fiercely. Instead of staying with Cloud, the snake decided that this was war. It flew towards the bird with a series of angry spits. The bird returned them with a series of high-pitched screeches. The scales on Leviathan stood up, and Phoenix's feathers became ruffled. Energy began to gather at their mouths. It looked like they were ready to blast each other into the Lifestream if it was the last thing they did.
Cloud calmly walked in between the two squabbling summons and placed himself in the direct trajectory of their attacks should they indeed fire. This caused the two summons to immediately stop whatever they were going to do.
"That's enough," the icy tone Cloud's voice had taken on must have been unlike anything the summons had been expecting, for they cowed visibly. The blond, however, thought nothing of his tone, coolly turning to look at Phoenix. "Can you talk like Odin?" He asked.
Phoenix trilled beautifully.
"Didn't think so..." Cloud turned away and faced Leviathan instead. The floating snake looked somewhat contrite, but then again, Cloud was no expert on reading the facades of summon creatures, so he could not be sure. "Needless to say, you can't either, can you?"
Leviathan hissed and tilted its head.
Cloud sighed noisily. "I don't care what's going on between the two of you, but you are not to kill each other or cause any more trouble for me. Understand?"
A hiss and a chirp.
"Good," Cloud gave Leviathan a pat on the head, then turned back to Phoenix. He stared at the bird. "Um. You're my summon too, I assume? Since you're taking my MP and stuff... chirp once for yes."
Phoenix chirped once.
"I don't understand. How can I have two summons at once?" Cloud mumbled, his bemusement getting the better of him. "Do you know anything about this, Vincent?"
'I'm afraid not, Cloud. This is my first time seeing two summon creatures pledging allegiance to a single summoner at once, too.'
"Well, I know how I got Leviathan out, but what's with the bird?" Cloud scratched his head. "What are you doing here, Phoenix?" He decided to address the summon in question.
Phoenix chirped and took off into the air. It flew towards a shelf against the wall of the office and hovered in front of it. After singing a melodious song which Cloud could not make head or tail of, the bird gave its wings a mighty flap.
And the shelf burst into flames.
Cloud barely managed to suppress the gasp that was threatening to escape from his throat. He had to remain calm. It was going to be his only lifeline in this madness. He sprinted towards the burning shelf and shooed Phoenix away. Leviathan was close by, so he commanded, "Put out the fire!"
A jet of water burst forth from Leviathan's opened mouth. The fire was doused within seconds.
Cloud tried to wave away the thick smoke that was billowing out from the charred remains of the shelf. Leviathan and Phoenix leaned forward in curiosity as well, but Cloud smacked them both away unceremoniously. The smoke had thinned by then, and he could make out some books. Most of them were already burned black, but there were some documents that were still salvageable if they tried. He reached out and took out one such book, to the high-pitched protests of Phoenix.
The blond flipped through the book, and found his eyes getting wider and wider every second. Before he could even reach the last page, he slammed the book shut and stared at the smoking shelf in front of him.
'I don't believe this,' he mumbled in his mind, knowing that Vincent would hear him. 'Hojo planted another stack of his Project S notes here as well?!'
'You underestimate him, Cloud,' Vincent said. 'He is much more scheming and meticulous than you give him credit for.'
'What is the point of this?' Indignation began to creep into Cloud's tone, even as he flung the book violently back into the sooted shelf. 'Who does that man think he is? Is everything an experiment to him? Is he really so interested in seeing Sephiroth's reaction to the truth about his birth?!'
Vincent wisely chose silence as his reply.
"Burn that whole shelf up!" Cloud commanded angrily, and Phoenix was only all too happy to comply. The shelf was back in an inferno the next thing Cloud knew, and he watched the merry flames crackle away with cold indifference.
Heavy stomping caused Cloud to turn around. Zax was back, and he whistled at the destruction in the office, which was starting to resemble a mini flood aftermath. Up on the ceiling, the sprinklers were still spraying gentle streams of water, so the SOLDIER was slightly baffled. "Hey, I thought they turned off the water here!"
'Oops,' Cloud was thinking to himself. He looked sidelong at Leviathan. 'Stop the water.'
The sprinklers stopped abruptly.
"Oh," Zax was still staring at the sprinklers, "...looks like they did." A while more of staring later, he blinked and glanced in Cloud's direction. This led to him discovering the shelf that was on fire. The man's eyes widened as he gasped. He dashed forward and quickly pulled Cloud away. Cloud stumbled backwards, and he could feel the air around him cooling down. He had not realised he had been standing so close to the burning shelf. "What happened?!" Zax asked, concerned. "And where's the bird?!"
'Stay away from me, Phoenix. Stay far, far away,' Cloud silently commanded the bird, who was disappointed, but obeyed by flying out of the office and coming to a stop on the corridor outside. "It set the shelf on fire," Cloud said. "It's outside now," he pointed.
Phoenix started singing a song, flapping its wings at the same time. Leviathan hovered around Cloud and hissed at intervals. Collectively, the two of them were giving Cloud a massive headache. The fact that they were both drawing on his MP probably had something to do with that, too.
"Well it looks calm enough now," Zax scratched the back of his head, confusion still evident on his face. "What did you do to make it behave?" Zax looked at Cloud from the corner of his eyes. There was slight suspicion in his tone.
Cloud tried not to be too surprised by the question, which he knew was coming, but had hoped Zax would forget to ask. "It's a summon, Zax," Cloud explained, trying to sound like he had the situation under control. "Once it finishes what it was summoned to do, it will stop. I suppose you were probably holding it back from its motive, that's why it was trying so hard to get out of the barrier just now."
Zax frowned, but he appeared to be considering it. "So someone summoned the bird to burn down that shelf?" Zax jerked a thumb at the now smouldering fixture. "And it's well-behaved now because it has accomplished that?"
"Well," Cloud racked his brain for an answer that would not make him sound smarter than he was supposed to be, "I don't actually know what it was trying to do when it came here," 'although I did ask it to burn down that shelf...' "but, since that thing is calmed down now, it should be safe to assume that it had been aiming for that shelf all along, I guess."
'Well played, Cloud. You needed no interference from me this time.' Vincent marvelled proudly in Cloud's head. Cloud, however, was too focused on the situation to stick a mental tongue out at his friend.
"What happened here?" A voice made both Cloud and Zax turn around to locate the newcomer. It was, needless to say, Sephiroth, and he looked slightly harried. When nobody was able to give him an answer, the General strode wordlessly into the watery office, took stock of the damage, and turned to Zax. "I want a damage assessment report submitted to me by tonight," he commanded.
"What? Why me?!" Zax protested immediately. "Cloud was here all along! I was downstairs trying to shut the sprinklers up!"
Sephiroth had already walked to the front of the burning shelf by now. He used his sword to cut into the ankle deep water that had gathered, and flicked the blade upwards, causing a strong jet of water to attack the shelf. Most of the flames were put out with a soft, sizzling sound. Satisfied that the fire was no longer going to spread, Sephiroth turned around to address the other SOLDIER. "Cloud is a just a /cadet/ now, like you keep reminding me whenever you have the chance," he said, while keeping his sword, "so why would I want a cadet to write reports to me for? You're a SOLDIER 1st, Zax. You know better than that."
Zax gaped. But he could perceive that Sephiroth had spoken with reason, so he turned and threw his hands up into the air in an act of surrender. Soon after that, however, he twisted his neck around to glance at Sephiroth again. "Wait a minute... you still haven't told me what you went to get Cloud for. Shouldn't you have gone to the materia guys instead? That bird is a summon, you know!"
All three of them turned their attention to Phoenix, who was pacing restlessly up and down the corridor outside.
'Zax doesn't know about Leviathan,' Cloud explained, feeling apologetic.
'I can see that,' Sephiroth replied, his eyes still on the pacing bird. He appeared to be thinking about something. Then he said out loud to Zax, "Cloud is working with me on a classified mission about summon materia. That was why I considered him a better candidate than anyone in the Materia Department." He looked at Zax, and could see that the other SOLDIER was still doubtful. "Who do you trust more - Cloud, or the staff from the Materia Department?"
The SOLDIER was completely taken aback by Sephiroth's question. But he and Sephiroth both knew what his answer to that question was. "You're right..." Zax relaxed, and there was no longer suspicion in his demeanour. "I do trust Cloud," he said, "but more than that, I trust you too, Sephiroth. If this is what you believe is for the best, then I'll back you up on it," he finished with a wide grin and a punch on his chest.
"Thank you," Sephiroth said sincerely. "Right now, I need you to find Tseng and let him know that the problem has been solved. Do whatever you can to stop him from reporting to this to the President. This must never reach the ears of the Science Department," he warned, and Zax nodded. He understood the implications behind Sephiroth's words. "I'm counting on you, Zax."
"No problem," Zax grinned again, already turning to exit the office. "See you later, Cloud!" His shout made Cloud look up, just in time to see Zax disappearing towards the direction of the elevator with a hearty wave. "Don't think I'm not gonna squeeze every last drop of information I can out from you about this 'mission' of yours, and how come I never knew you were such a materia whiz!" Were Zax's last words before the sound of the elevator door clamping shut told Cloud that his friend was no longer within hearing range.
Cloud sighed. Whether it was a sigh of relief or anguish, he himself had no idea. He leaned against a nearby wall and stared at his feet, suddenly deflated and tired. It was not until he saw a pair of black boots in front of him that he forced himself to lift his head up again.
Up ahead, Sephiroth had opened his mouth to say something, but what Cloud heard was a series of buzzes and subdued gurgles - as if someone had covered his ears with thick glass cups. His vision started to turn fuzzy, his eyelids growing heavier and heavier by the second; until he could no longer see anything but darkness. He wanted to reply Sephiroth, but his body had other plans for him, so he did as he was told.
He fainted. x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x i don't know why i'm having so much fun with this fic. XD Genesis Awards are back, so please visit their new site and nominate all your favourite FFVII fics! nominate away!
25 jan 2009
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