Standard disclaimers apply.

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WHEN YOU WISH UPON A MATERIA
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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Cloud Strife had always considered himself a rather ordinary boy.

Country boy background, check.

Embarrassingly short stature, check.

Trouble magnet character and hairdo to boot, check.

Hopeless crush on prettiest girl in town, check.

Grand delusions of becoming a hero and proving everyone wrong (whatever 'wrong' was), check.

Scratch that. He considered himself The textbook example of an ordinary boy.

Which was why when he woke up that day in the midst of crumbling debris, being stared down by two unfamiliar strangers who were just as confused about what to do with him as he was with them, the logical side of his brain blanched and shut down without much fuss.

When he took action against that huge machine as told by the professor who called himself Odine, he liked to think that he did it for the heroics, the chance to be involved in something big - finally. The fact was, though, now that he thought about it, he was simply doing it because he really wanted to be of some help. And of course, because the logical side of his brain kind of wasn't working at that time.

Such an ordinary reason, that.

Then he was asleep again, dreaming about becoming the hero of the world by defeating the evil Sephiroth who threatened the equilibrum of the planet time and again.

Like, seriously? Now Cloud was fully convinced he was really delusional.

Dreaming was sometimes like watching a movie you already knew the story of, except you didn't. At least, that was what it was like for Cloud, for this particular dream. He wasn't sure if dreams were supposed to be so vivid, so personal, or just... so real. He was developing relationships with people he knew he didn't know in the conscious world. People who were all too multifarious to be merely a figment of his young and underdeveloped subconsciousness. He was hearing of places he had never heard of before, and doing things he never knew he could do.

That meant it had to be a dream, right?

The dream didn't end or switch focus after he saved the planet. It simply went slightly further, about his life after that, where he travelled the planet as a deliveryman, meeting even more people and having even more adventures.

Cloud was starting to feel like he was living vicariously through his dream persona.

And he was a little disturbed by the idea.

So when his subconscious mind started questioning about whether he would live his life like this again if he had the chance to, his answer came as a surprise even to himself.

The dreams were affecting his viewpoints and ideals far more than he thought it possible. Where he would have simply said a cheery yes to a hypothetical question that had absolutely no chance of coming true anyway, he now rejected the idea and contritely decided to simply be himself, come what may.

Why would he want to live through the pain of so many regrets again, anyway?

As he grew older in his dreams, he began to wonder if he was really dreaming or really the dream. Unknown feelings and opinions became settled in his mind; lodged so comfortably there, it was almost as if they had been there since the very beginning.

'It's the merging,' older Cloud turned around in one of the dream frames to reassure him, whatever that meant.

Then as suddenly as the dream started, it ground to a halt. The dream began to rewind. At a certain point of time in this rewinding, Cloud noticed that the earth was quaking. Light suddenly flooded the room he was in. He was jolted awake rather unceremoniously.

Trying to open his eyes was a chore, but something in Cloud told him it had to be done. So he did.

He was lying in a box of sorts. The cover had been thrown off, which was causing the sudden influx of light. Blinking, he grasped the edges of the box and hauled himself into a sitting position.

Okay, so there were technically no lights in this room. The scintillating light source was that curious golden dragon looming over the box he was in.

He looked at the box again and decided it looked funnily like a coffin, funnily enough. Why would he be sleeping in a coffin? Something inside told him he knew the answer to that, but that section of his mind was currently behind rows of barbed wires and electronic locks.

Shaking his head, Cloud pulled himself onto his feet and surveyed the room he was in.

It had to be a burial chamber of sorts, considering the bones he could see scattered all around. There were other boxes - okay, coffins - placed around the chamber. The only other living thing in the chamber besides himself seemed to be the golden dragon, who was looking at him very intently.

"You're the dragon hatchling we saved from the rebels," Cloud said, then was taken aback. How did he know that? And who were 'we'? Or the 'rebels', for that matter? He took a closer look at the room again. "Ying and Yang aren't around today." He snapped his mouth shut after saying that and frowned at himself.

How was it that he was not knowing things one moment and knowing them the next?

After a few rounds of cyclic ponderings, Cloud figured that whatever it was, the musty chamber wasn't being very conducive to his musings. He would have to get back out to the open first. Maybe the fresh air would clear things up a little.

He sat up, meaning to hop out of the coffin and head for the entrance, but was distracted by the sensation of something slipping down from his chest. He looked at his lap and saw a couple of shimmering, translucent items there. Upon closer examination, he saw that they were the scales of some sort of creature.

The hulking golden dragon chose this time to make an appearance in his line of sight. Slightly annoyed, Cloud pushed its head away slightly. He grabbed the scales, hopped out of the coffin and headed for the entrance, which was wide open and charred at its frames. Tendrils of smoke were still curling up from the blackened areas. It looked like it had just been scorched by an inferno.

Pondering the culprit behind the vandalism of the door was pointless, Cloud decided. He very much preferred to examine the scales that had apparently been laid into the coffin with him, for whatever reason. The scales shimmered with an otherworldly glow and was practically thrumming in his hands. Cloud was no expert on planet power, but even he could tell that these scales held a certain something that was beyond his current realm of knowledge.

At least, until a name suddenly popped up at the back of his mind.

"These are Leviathan Scales," Cloud concluded, after his long examination and sudden revelation. "What am I supposed to do with them?" he asked the next available living creature - the dragon, who haplessly tilted its head to a side. "You weren't this size the last time I saw you," Cloud remarked. The dragon was a full head taller than him on its four feet. "Which was like a day or two ago, wasn't it?"

Why did he see the dragon a day or two ago, though?

Cloud decided he really needed that fresh air.

Stuffing the Scales into his pockets (he was still in his trooper uniform, he realised), he walked out of the chamber into a depressing corridor flooded with dim, purple lights. For some reason, he knew that the path on the right would take him back out into the open. And the path on the left should be avoided at all costs. So he set about to turning right.

That was exactly when a bird on fire flew past him into the room he had avoided going into.

Inevitably, Cloud turned around to see what that creature was. It was an orange bird the size and likeness of a peacock with a beautiful amber glow about it, like it was on fire without the flames. It stood at the threshold of the door leading into what Cloud could now see was a laboratory cum library of sorts, and chirped at him.

"Phoenix," Cloud said, remembering the summon and the circumstances that led to it being summoned. "You haven't gone back yet..." Gone back where, exactly? He couldn't recall. "What are you doing here?" He was rather sure the bird should be somewhere else, or with someone else at the moment, but the more he tried to grasp at the memory, the more it escaped him.

The bird didn't answer, except to chirp once more and give a mighty flap of wings that made it take to flight and set the floor beneath it on fire.

Cloud quickly took a step back, horrified and intrigued at the same time. His memories were like outstretched arms at the back of his mind, clawing and digging into it for a place to haul the main body on to, but always slipping and regressing when it made progress. There was something very important about this room that he was forgetting (good riddance, went a little voice in his heart), but he grew increasingly aware that there was no time to dwell on that anymore.

The fire Phoenix had somehow summoned was growing and spreading quicker than the threads of memories could advance, and soon the door and the area immediately visible behind it was going up in flames. Phoenix was already nowhere to be seen. Whether it was hidden by the fire or it had already escaped the scene, Cloud could not tell. The only thought that now filled Cloud's mind was that he had to get out of this place, and he had to get out of this place fast.

So he took one last long look at the room, and, after trying but failing to place the feelings he was experiencing, turned and fled down the corridor, the golden dragon hot on his heels.

The narrow and depressing corridor opened up to a spiral stairwell, and Cloud leapt up the stairs by twos and threes. The dragon tried to follow, but it was far too heavy and destroyed every plank of rickety wood it stepped on. Eventually, as Cloud was still vaulting upwards, he saw a flash of gold shooting up from the space in the middle of the winding stairs, which he deduced after a split second of thought was the dragon flying up after growing frustrated from all the missteps it was taking. He chuckled to himself.

He met the dragon again upstairs, at the bedroom which led to the secret chamber. It was a strange thing, because the thing was tall enough that its head touched the ceiling of the room at first, but began to slowly shrink - literally - before Cloud's eyes.

As the dragon grew slightly smaller, Cloud's blurry memories about the Nibelheim mansion grew clearer. He found that odd, and vaguely familiar. Nevertheless, he broke off from observing the dragon to looking at his surroundings. It was the Nibelheim mansion, the very one and only. He could still remember the scary stories the other kids were spreading about it around that campfire as clearly as he had heard it yesterday. But it most certainly wasn't yesterday. So when?

He just couldn't remember.

As he moved out of the room and towards the staircase leading to the lobby, more dark sections of his mind began to be illuminated. Each footstep told of a story he had long forgotten in dreams. A story he had yet to live through. The paradox didn't escape him, when he was sure it previously would have. Previously in what sense? He didn't know either.

As he stood on the corridor with the double winding stairs, he decided that this place was important to him. In his memories, there were a lot more footsteps than the ones he was hearing now. He could see images in his mind he didn't recognise, but was sure he knew.

"I need to think about this some more," he mumbled to nobody in particular (the dragon didn't count). And then he sat down on the old, musky planks and began to act as his own expository fairy.

He was Cloud Strife, a fairly ordinary (as much as it pained him to admit this) boy from backwater Nibelheim who had signed up with the Shinra military in a bid for fame and fortune. Last he remembered, he was in Midgar, preparing for the day ahead in his bunk room. Then there was a lapse and he woke up in some war zone and was instructed by a certain Professor Odine to help against the enemy. Then he woke up again and he was in this mansion with an inflatable live golden dragon.

If these new memories were to be trusted, however, it would seem like he returned to Nibelheim on a mission while still an infantryman and for some reason there was a lot of hurrying up and down that spiral staircase he just came up from (and was currently being licked up by the flames, if the crackling and snapping sounds were anything to go by). Was he still in the middle of that mission?

An idea struck him, and he searched around his pockets for his standard issue phone. After getting it out, he looked through his messages. There was the usual mail from the Silver Elite, Zack, and a couple from mission command. The Nibelheim one was still there, and there was one more after that directing him to meet his commanding officer at the lobby at 0745 hours on the same day. He didn't remember seeing this one.

So it looked like the mission to Nibelheim didn't actually work out, even though he was fairly certain he went on the mission. The details about what had happened escaped him at the moment.

If that was the case, what was he doing in the Shinra mansion in Nibelheim?

The dragon had settled down beside him by this time, curling its body up around the pondering Cloud, who noticed it was now bigger again.

What was going on with this dragon, anyway? His mind helpfully supplied that it was a Shinryuu, which sat at the highest position in the species chain. These dragons were near mythical and as far as he knew, no one had actually ever seen one for a long, long time. Now that was a memory that didn't come flying out of nowhere all of a sudden. He had studied about dragons when he was younger, as there were many in the Nibel mountains and his mother had insisted he learnt something about them.

Oh, yes, and these dragons. Apparently, they subsisted on memories. Stuff of the legends.

Haha, thought Cloud to himself about that. Then he looked at the resting dragon again.

"I'm almost afraid to ask," said he. "Have you been eating my memories?"

The dragon actually lifted its head up to look at Cloud, a bright spark in its eye.

Cloud tried to decipher that. He gave up after a while. "I need more information about dragons," he mumbled to himself as he got up from the dusty floor. The dragon got up as well. "About you, specifically," he continued.

A loud explosion caught both of their attentions. The door to the room with the secret tunnel had been blown apart by what must have been pressurised hot air, as Cloud could see that the entire room was now on fire. Nevermind the physics of that happening wasn't even remotely probable. How could anybody argue about physics in a world where people threw fireballs at each other by holding giant marbles? Really now.

It didn't take long for Cloud to figure out that he should be getting out of the house. His plans kept being disrupted that day, however, for there was another crash, and all of a sudden, Cloud found himself basking in glorious moonlight and crumbling roof tiles.

The fiery Phoenix had somehow blown the roof of the house away and was descending gracefully upon the dusty floor of the long abandoned mansion hall.

Cloud actually rubbed his eyes while the bird gracefully fluttered downwards. To his dismay, he wasn't imagining things. The bird was multiple times bigger than it had been when he last saw it torching the basement. Speaking of the basement, hadn't it been in the basement? How did it end up breaking through the roof of the house? Was this another bird?

He didn't have time to contemplate further, however, for Phoenix gave a shrill cry that sent pulsating shockwaves through the house, forcing him to hold his hands over his ears. It flapped its wings again, and within the next second, the walls of the entire house were engulfed in flames. With another flap of its wings, it took to the air, flying purposefully towards Cloud and the dragon. As Cloud saw the gigantic talons of the bird coming closer to him, he couldn't help but wonder why things - THINGS - had been happening to him recently.

At this point of time, all he wanted was to be a normal mountain boy again, dreaming his dreams of becoming someone special to the world and knowing he would never realise them.

Well, the way he was sailing through the air courtesy of the fiery bird was kind of dreamy, if he really wanted to view it that way. And there was a golden dragon chasing after them, to boot.

The dream didn't last long, though. Phoenix deposited him on the grassy area in front of the mansion before long, and he quickly scrambled to his feet. The bird slowly became smaller, until it was back to the size Cloud first saw it in. It circled around Cloud for a few rounds before finally settling on his shoulder.

Cloud had forgotten about the bird once he had clambered to his feet. His attention was drawn to the roaring flames that were consuming the Shinra mansion before his eyes. Even the clumsy fat golden dragon was looking at the dancing flames with a sort of curious awe.

He didn't know how long he had been staring at the raging fire when soft footsteps could be heard approaching him.

"Cloud?" asked a voice that was familiar and yet not.

Deciding that his admiration of the fire could wait (it wasn't going away anytime soon, after all), Cloud turned around to see who had addressed him.

There was a long silence in which Cloud noticed the golden dragon suddenly shrinking to the height of his knees from the corner of his eye. "You," Cloud said, very slowly, ignoring the dragon for now. "I know you, I think. You're Vincent, right?"

And then he was out like a light.

Vincent surprised himself by not moving, simply watching as Cloud crumpled gracelessly onto the arid land beneath. He was, himself, in a bit of a shock. Few were the times in their long assocation together that he had heard Cloud sounding as unsure as he just did, and none of those times had been easy for either of them. The best solution, even if he was loathe to admit, was to leave Cloud alone until he figured things out by himself and started looking for Vincent again. In this particular situation, however, Vincent wasn't sure if he was supposed to be doing that.

The dragon, now obviously in the shape of a baby, ran in between Cloud and Vincent the moment Cloud had fallen. It crouched in a position of wariness. Phoenix stood right next to Cloud, watching Vincent as well, although it was more curious than wary.

It was to this scene that the SOLDIERs arrived.

The first thing Zack did was to point an accusing finger at Phoenix. "Hey, bird-brain!" he yelled. "That wasn't very nice of you, dumping us on the mountains just like that and blowing up the reactor while you were at it! That's company property! Not that it's any of our business anymore... but still!"

"Phoenix let us down on the Nibel Mountains and went off somewhere by itself," Sephiroth explained to Vincent. He blinked at the mansion that was on fire. "I suppose it must have done this too?"

Vincent could only shrug. "It was already on fire when I arrived."

Another pillar of fire shot through the group, although all of them dodged it easily. It was the dragon, apparently trying to warn an advancing Zack to back off.

"I'm not gonna hurt him," Zack held both hands up in surrender. When the dragon showed no signs of backing down, he turned to look at Vincent. "What's up with this guy?"

It was Sephiroth who answered. "That... is the dragon we rescued from some Wutai rebels," he said with a frown. "How did it get here?" He made eye contact with Phoenix, as if requesting an answer from the summon. What he heard surprised him so much, he actually took a small step back. "What? Are you sure?"

"What, what?" Zack caught on to Sephiroth's discomfort immediately. "What's it saying?"

Sephiroth had calmed down by now and had lowered his head, covering his mouth with a gloved hand to indicate that he was thinking deeply about something. Something highly unsatisfactory, if his expression was anything to go by. "Phoenix," he began, rather uncertainly, "is saying..." he paused. "I'm not sure I quite believe it, but it's saying that Cloud... is dead...?"

The sharp intake of breath that next followed was Zack's. "You have got to be kidding me," he protested. "Ask it again! Maybe you got it wrong!"

As the SOLDIERs carried on in the background, Vincent looked at the fallen Cloud again, who had just been figuring out Vincent's name when he first arrived. "He's dead all right," he mumbled, but knew that the SOLDIERs would pick it up. "Dead to the manipulations of this planet, I gather that's what it meant."

Now that Vincent realised, the beacon of light that indicated Cloud had been so bright that he failed to notice something quite unbelievable when it first reappeared. Cloud's energy indicator was of a completely different colour from the rest of the creatures roaming the planet. In fact, it was of a different colour from his original one, which was already rather unique to begin with, although the lifestream had always been a shade of it. Which meant he was no longer a lifestream-based entity. Which meant... what, exactly?

"What do you mean by that?" Sephiroth asked.

"I cannot explain," Vincent answered. He really didn't want them, or anyone else, for that matter, to know that he had an internal beacon map of everyone on the planet, "but you can rest assured that he is most certainly not 'dead' in the literal sense of the word. I suspect Phoenix may have meant quite something else altogether."

"Well," Sephiroth was back in his thinking pose, "it doesn't really speak directly with human words, after all," he reasoned. "I might have gotten something lost in translation."

Zack put a hand on his chest. "Don't scare me like that," he shook his head at his friend. "Still, it's not like we can get near to Cloud to take a look without harming the little lizard," he sighed. "And I have the feeling it's just trying to protect Cloud."

"From what, though?" Vincent had to ask.

"Phoenix," Sephiroth suddenly said, "Phoenix is telling us to move away."

"Are you sure that's accurate?" Zack joked.

"I think it is," Vincent was already starting to move away. It was not hard to see why, for the bird was gradually becoming a scintillating ball of light. He had a feeling he knew what it was trying to do, and he wasn't quite opposed to it, so he gladly moved out of the way. Being caught in a Phoenix blast when you weren't on the proper receiving end could be quite the nasty experience. And it wouldn't harm Cloud, as he was its summoner. He was glad to see that the SOLDIERs had complied with Phoenix' request and had moved away as well.

So when Phoenix exploded into feathers and fiery flames, all of them were far enough to avoid being hit by the blast, but near enough to see that the explosion had been centred on the fallen Cloud, giving his outline a light glow that didn't completely fade even after the blinding light of the explosion had. The baby dragon, however, was unfortunately swept away somewhere into the distance by the fierce winds the blast had conjured up.

Vincent had no time to check if it was still alive with his database, though, for once the glow around Cloud eventually receded, he began to stir. He quickly moved himself back to the scene, and noticed that the others had done so as well. Now that the dragon was not around, they could render some actual help to Cloud if it was necessary.

Not surprisingly, Cloud was holding his head as he pulled himself up into a sitting position. "Ow..." he groaned and squinted. When he opened his eyes and beheld the three others looking at him with expressions on their faces ranging from cautious astonishment to subtle ire, he sat up straighter.

Then he chuckled.

"I have a lot of explaining to do, don't I?"

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4sep2013

did that confuse you? yeah, it confused me too. did anyone catch the dissidia cameo? one more chapter to go, i think (hope)! :)