Cloud's Story
Part 1 : A Glitch in His Memories
It all began five years ago.
Back then, Cloud was enthusiastic, jumpy even as he fidgeted endlessly in the back of a Shinra military truck. A tarp draped high over the truck bed to keep the rain out, though particles of it snuck inside through the small gaps.
It was raining so hard that afternoon, an orchestra of tapping commenced all through the truck, with gusts of wind trying to sneak in through the zipped up exit.
With Cloud, sat three Shinra Infantrymen, basic guards, the lowest of rank, and about his age. They were all nervous, huddled together on one bench, blue uniforms still pressed and new. And sitting on the other bench across from them, by himself, was Sephiroth, his eyes shut. He may have been asleep, or at least tried to, but Cloud kept moving around, unable to sit still, which only aggravated the older SOLDIER.
Sephiroth opened his eyes, bright aqua orbs up at Cloud, annoyed but calm.
"Hey, settle down," he muttered, arms crossed in his black leather amor.
Cloud turned his bright blue eyes to him, fists pumped in the air.
"I can't relax. They gave me this new Materia, and I can't wait to try it," Cloud exclaimed, smiling widely back when he did use to smile, supposedly.
Sephiroth shook his head to himself.
"You're just like a kid," he replied.
The truck rocked back and forth against the strong winds outside, its large tires thumping over rough road. One of the marines groaned, his gloved hands to his stomach as he was flung side to side until his face turned pale and dove his head between his legs.
Cloud stared at the poor and sick guy.
"What's wrong? Car sick?"
The marine nodded without lifting his helmet, groaning.
"Sucks to be you. I can't say I've ever been nauseous," Cloud boasted, and easily disregarded the boy, his attention back to Sephiroth.
"So, when do we get the briefing? What's the mission?" he asked, and be broke into a dance of mini squats.
Sephiroth got tired just looking at him, and dragged a long sigh.
"It's not a normal mission," he started, and was ready to explain, but Cloud interrupted, "good," too excited to contain himself.
Sephiroth blinked up, caught surprised from the simple remark, and asked, "why is that?"
"I've always wanted to be SOLDIER, like you! But by the time I made it to First Class, the war was already over, and my dreams of ever becoming a hero like you seemed unlikely. So, whenever there's a big mission, I sign up. Kind of a way to prove myself," Cloud explained.
Sephiroth didn't say anything, probably regretting why he even asked. He just stared at the enthusiastic boy like he grew another head, and then smirked, looking away as he kept his thoughts to himself. He then examined the other three boys, the car sick one vomiting into a paper bag rather audibly.
"Soooo…..," Cloud chimed in, ignoring the loud vomiting, and pulled Sephiroth's attention back to him. "How do you feel MISTER Sephiroth?"
Sephiroth put a black leather gloved hand to his irritable face, and sighed.
"Don't say MISTER again unless you want to do nothing but stay in this truck the whole time," he threatened, though his silvery voice made any threat sound appealing.
Cloud sank his rear on a crate of ammo immediately, and trembled, "Yes sir!"
At that time, Sephiroth decided to rise, his height almost bringing his head to the ceiling of the tarp, and eyed his four weaker men. The car sick one had finally relaxed as he awkwardly shoved a paper bag of vomit under his seat.
"Okay, listen up," Sephiroth began. Everyone carefully paid attention to the beautiful man as he spoke in a grave tone.
"We should arrive in town in about an hour. Our mission is to investigate an old Mako Reactor. There's been reports of it malfunctioning, and apparently it's producing dangerous creatures too close to civilization to ignore it. We will first destroy these creatures, and then we'll locate the problem inside the reactor and put a stop to it."
Silence filled as they all processed this.
"Where is it, exactly?" Cloud had to ask, curious.
"Nibelheim," Sephiroth replied quickly, unfazed with where they were headed. But Cloud gasped, the town name hitting a soft place in him.
"That's where I'm from," he muttered, eyes cast off to nothing as he tried to remember what his hometown looked like two years earlier. Was Tifa still there? How was his mother? Monsters were lurking there? Was everyone safe? His mother never mentioned it in her letters, so he was in a bit of shock.
Sephiroth sat back down and looked at Cloud carefully.
"Hmmm…. Hometown then?" he asked the younger SOLDIER. He watched Cloud's fingers fiddle nervously with his military buckle, a thick leather strap with a shiny mythril piece of armor slapped around his gut for protection. His two mythril bracers reflected a flash of lightning that entered into the car through the front windows. The whole car lit up for a second, and then thunder bellowed over their heads.
"Yeah…" Cloud replied nervously.
Sephiroth feared the young man wouldn't be able to handle a mission in his own town, what with too many distractions. There were too many ways to alter a military personnel's decision into a wrong one based on the many influences he may encounter. Being the one in charge, Sephiroth considered making Cloud sit this one out, or to be sent back to headquarters in Midgar. He ran a leather gloved finger to his narrow chin, and thought about it.
The truck suddenly screeched to a halt so abruptly, Cloud tumbled over the crate backwards with a yelp. The other three marines squeaked and grunted, falling over one another. Sephiroth was the only one to remain still, but he tossed troubled eyes to their driver.
"What happened?" he fired.
The car sick one jumped to his feet, startled at what he saw across the car, through its front windshield. Their driver nervously flashed his eyes up his rearview mirror to eye Sephiroth, and mentioned shakily, "a large monster almost ram itself into our truck."
Sephiroth turned on his heel and aimed for the flap, unzipping it already.
"Nice for a warm-up," he muttered.
Cloud jumped to his feet and rushed to follow.
"I want to come too!"
"Fine, if you must. Use that new Materia of yours," Sephiroth mentioned. He spread open the flap, and the storm tried to force its way into the truck, rain and wind tossing violently, flinging seat belts and rattling guns against the walls.
Sephiroth eyed the three marines with glowing light eyes and commanded, "wait here."
The marines didn't object, happily letting Sephiroth and Cloud work as the cleanup crew.
The two SOLDIERs jumped out of the truck and sealed it shut behind them, entering into a strong storm. Rain charged in sideways, almost sharply like tiny needles.
Cloud and Sephiroth's faces had already been drenched, Cloud's young blond spikes dripping as he pulled his Buster sword out. Sephiroth reached for his samurai style sword, a seven-foot long Masamune that stayed clipped to his hip. The rough winds tossed at his long silver hair and black cloak, though he didn't seem bothered by it as he trekked around the truck, Cloud right behind him.
They appeared to have been on a mountain road, nothing but pine and hemlock trees for miles. The sky had been covered by thick clouds, viciously dark with a threat of unending amount of rain.
The truck's headlights easily illuminated a large creature in the storm, a dragon, when Cloud got to examine it. It was a large green scaled dragon, wingless, but with a long tail and sharp claws. The dragon was just as large as the truck itself, the lights bouncing off its large yellow belly. It flashed its yellow glowing eyes at the two men, Cloud being a bit shaken.
The creature growled from its throat, aware of the threat when it glanced at the two swords.
Sephiroth held his sword high with two hands, its long blade hovered over his left silver pauldron. Cloud used both hands to carry his in front of him, its blade up to the sky. He was ready to prove himself, to show the Great Sephiroth what he could really do.
But it was already too late.
The young SOLDIER gasped, unable to trace the powerful man's steps when he watched him dash up to the dragon. It looked like an angled horizontal slice, Sephiroth's long sword too fast for Cloud to trace with his eyes. A second later, the dragon collapsed, a giant mass cut in half, blood spilling into the dirt road. Sephiroth's black leather boots stepped into it all carelessly, holding his sword up into the rain to get the blood rinsed off. The Planet's energy swirled out of the dragon's carcass, leaving a place where it was no longer served, and sent its spirit energy back to where it came from. Lightning fractured the dark sky into pieces, spilling light over Sephiroth's shoulders and head with his blade shimmering and eyes distant.
Cloud watched, unsure if he was afraid or fascinated by the display.
He should've been afraid….
"Sephiroth's strength is nothing like I've ever seen before. They say no one could ever reach his level. He was a legend. He took out that dragon with one hit," Cloud explained, his hair finally dry.
I sat and listened, the fire softening behind me and Red.
Aerith rested her hands on her cheeks, elbows over the table.
"So, you didn't even have a chance to fight?" she asked.
Cloud shook his head, his fingers playing with his own jug of beer he nursed slowly.
"No. I don't think he even needed any of us. It felt like we were just in the way," he replied.
The rest of us didn't say anything, eager to hear more.
Cloud lifted his eyes up to the wooden ceiling, and started again.
"We finally reached Nibelheim. The rain thankfully stopped…"
Cloud's hometown, Nibelheim, was a tiny dwelling, nestled at the base of Mt. Nibel. The mountain was an unfriendly place, surrounded by rugged terrain, with a whole cluster of tall pointed peaks like gigantic pikes.
Nibelheim itself appeared to be a quiet place, with hardly anyone outside when Cloud entered with his crew, Sephiroth leading through the small gated community. The whole place used to be made up of nothing more than a group of maybe eight or nine double story homes, with an inn, a few shops, and all of them surrounding an old water tower. Recent rain seemed to left everything in a glossy layer when a weak sun tried to poke through grey clouds. There was still a chill in the air, and Cloud inhaled all that pine and mountain smell rather nervously, taking him back to his childhood days with discomfort. Being back at Nibelhem almost made him feel like the last two years of his training never happened, that it was all just a dream, and he suddenly didn't want to be there. He stopped short and could only stare, disappointed in how isolated and empty his hometown laid out. No one was around to welcome him nor the Shinra men, either unaware of their mission, or was against it.
The locals stayed inside their homes, peering through their windows behind tucked curtains, their hateful eyes upon the SOLDIERs and Shinra Infantrymen.
Cloud thought to himself, were they afraid of the monsters? Or afraid of us?
Sephiroth stopped before gliding under the town's entry archway, and turned around, eying Cloud intently.
"How does it feel to be back in your hometown? I wouldn't know because I don't have one. So, how does it feel?" he asked politely, hopefully to gain the experience through his younger comrade's eyes.
Cloud was in shock from learning something new about the legendary war hero, a quiet man whom rarely shared anything about himself. So hearing this sudden leak was news to him. Uncomfortable with his true answer, he didn't feel like replying to the question, and decided to instead, aim back at his General, "What about your parents?"
Sephiroth put his finger to his chin, an arm wrapped around himself as he simmered in his thoughts. The other three Shinra men waited, curious over their leader as he lifted his eyes up to them, and then he shook his head like there was a hidden joke only he understood.
"My mother's name was Jenova. She died when she gave birth to me. My father…." Sephiroth stopped short, and suddenly raised his eyes up to the sky, the sun hiding from him as his mouth opened in a dry laugh. Everyone around him remained still, unsure of what was so funny. The laughing turned into chuckling, and then Sephiroth put his hand to his face, fingers up into his hair as he used his palm to hid his eyes. Under his hand, Cloud could still see him smiling.
It was a sad smile.
"What's it matter?" Sephiroth finished, and dropped his hand to his side, smiling at Cloud, cool and collected once more.
"Let's go."
The marines grumbled nervously as they walked with Cloud into town, not daring to speak of doubt about the Legendary War hero behind his back….
"Wait, wait, wait!" Barret interrupted, a hand up in the air to halt the story. Elbow relaxed on the table, he blinked at Cloud and asked, "Jenova? So, Sephiroth's mother..." he thought a moment.
When I glanced at Tifa, I noticed she glared at him, hard knuckles hidden under the table.
Barret finally could collect his words, and asked Cloud, "isn't Jenova that headless ugly thing we saw in the Shinra Building? The one creepy creature that broke out?"
I still wasn't sure what this Jenova thing was, but I remembered Tifa mentioning it in the Shinra building. Somehow, it escaped. Did the lab creature hold the same name as Sephiroth's mother? Or were they the same person? I thought it odd, but didn't say anything, too afraid Tifa would throw fireballs at me next.
Cloud laid his eyes on Barret, quiet for a moment. He, too, had his elbows up on the table, his fingers intertwined in front of him, calm.
"Yeah, that's right," he confirmed.
"Barret!" Tifa barked, "Don't interrupt!"
Barret lifted an eyebrow at her. "Tifa, I was only…-."
"Okay, Cloud. Continue. You were saying?" She disrupted, her strong gaze back to Cloud while leaving Barret quite offended. Cloud tossed a puzzled look at Tifa's strong desire to hear his story, like it was the most important thing to her in the world, but he didn't say anything about that. Instead, he went back to entering Nibelheim.
Cloud remembered the strong mako smell when he and his crew entered. That cold menthol smell, mixed with something burning, lingered in the damp air, and it was no wonder no one was outside. The thought of bumping into Tifa stayed in the back of his mind, hauntingly keeping him on edge as his eyes darted around the quiet town searching for her.
"You have time to see your family. But then be back to get some rest. We leave early tomorrow," Sephiroth warned when he noticed Cloud's nervous energy. Cloud kept his true intentions to himself, and watched the blue uniformed Shinra men hurry into the Inn. They've been inside a truck for almost a whole day. He could understand why they were anxious to get into a cozy place with a real bed, hot shower and food that wasn't stale.
But Cloud hesitated to go in, and instead, watched Sephiroth take notice to the rising of trail behind Nibelheim.
The older man lifted his thoughtful gaze up into the mountains, as though to search for the reactor, but there were too many pines and rock beyond the town to even notice its somewhat harmful presence.
"From here, it's so unfortunate to not even see the existence of what gives threat to this peaceful place," Sephiroth muttered, either to himself or to Cloud. Wind was gentle to his silver hair, pulling single strings of it across his narrow face, neck long like a fine dancer always searching the heavens. Ribbons of sun leaked through the thick clouds, giving shine to Sephiroth's pale face, his aqua eyes enhanced to forest green, and hair almost golden. His black cloak lifted behind him, shimmering like silver angel wings tired from flight, resting. It was the last beautiful image Cloud ever saw of The Great Sephiroth, and he kept a picture of that moment close to his heart, never to forget how angelic his General was before everything changed.
Suddenly, something flashed in their eyes, and the magnificent memory vanished when Sephiroth blinked with annoyance, a hand to his eyes to block another flash.
"Just trying to make a picture of the Great Sephiroth! For Nibelheim Time paper," a young chap bubbled, unnoticeable to either of the SOLDIERs until he started taking photos. Sephiroth narrowed his eyes, but he quickly collected himself, and calmly told the young boy with a vintage looking camera, "save it for tomorrow, if you will."
The boy didn't even object, and diligently hid the camera behind him.
"To have a chance to take pictures of you tomorrow? I wouldn't miss it for the world!" he gawked. Sephiroth rolled his eyes to himself, and made his way towards the cozy two-story inn.
Cloud approached the photographer, a little older judging by his mature face, and cooly invited, "you can take one of me."
The photographer scoffed. "I only take photos of heroes, not nobodies," he muttered, and then he pretended to busy himself by wiping the lens of his camera with the elbow of his tweed coat. Cloud frowned, and turned away, finding himself alone.
He wasn't ready to go to the inn and rest, despite how much he wanted to avoid seeing this mother. He couldn't remember why, but he was dreading to see her for some reason, like he was ashamed of himself.
But why?
As he thought this, Cloud twirled around till he could easily spot his one-story home just across the town square. The smallest of houses.
It didn't change an inch, not even that crooked window shutter that still flopped lazily in the wind, nor the faded and chipped dark blue paint on the front door.
Cloud swallowed, walking towards his old home. He left there as a boy, fourteen and determined to make a name for himself. Two years later, he was walking in feeling like a man, or at leas that's what he wanted. But instead, he still felt like a boy as soon as he opened the door, and announced, "Mother, it's me, Cloud."
'And for God's sake, lock the door', he thought.
As expected, around the evening, he spotted her rising from her favorite cushion, a book held in her hand in a way as though to hide the pages from him. A fire was going inside that little cobblestone chimney, bringing warmth into the home. Remnants of dinner simmered on a stove, and Cloud knew it was boiled potatoes judging by that familiar starchy smell. He easily imagined the nightly mashed potatoes his mother provided, often as leftovers from one big batch to keep them satisfied. Put a heaping spoon of butter, a dash of salt, and a cup of goat milk, and he would be transported back into being a child, eating beside his mother, just the two of them as they always have been.
"Wait!"
I interrupted the story, and disregarded Tifa's hard stare when I noticed her.
Cloud shifted his focus to me, quietly waiting as I struggled to ask, "what happened to your father?"
He blinked slowly and then turned away.
"He died a long time ago." He said it quietly and didn't add anything more, a place he felt would be better not to roam.
"So it's just been you and your mom the whole time?" I asked, a bit saddened.
I wondered how close they were. Usually small families were very close, to savor their bloodline ties and take hold of the fragility of their family trees. And other times, small families broke apart, the younger ones desperate to escape the codependency like it was toxic to them.
"Yeah," Cloud muttered, looking down at the table with the corners of his eyes.
"Aqua!" Tifa hushed, her finger to her lips.
"Sorry. I'm just curious," I mumbled, but I couldn't help it, and decided to throw in another question quickly.
"So, you're telling us that, even though it's been just you and your mother, you still decided to leave to join Shinra Military? That must've been really hard for the both of you."
A difficult silence fell.
Aerith bit her lower lip, eying Cloud with caution, while Tifa squirmed in her chair quietly, probably dreaming of knocking my lights out. Barret rubbed the back of his head, clearing his throat with his low scratchy voice. Red sighed, his head still across my lap while one of my hands settled along the ridge of his furry back.
I could practically see Cloud swallow, his long neck stretched with a bump like a ball was in his throat, and he tried to clear it.
"Yeah. It was." He didn't say anything more.
"Okay, Cloud, please go on. You were visiting your mother?" Tifa urged.
More questions were mulling in my brain, but I bit my lip, keeping quiet.
Claudia, was a spitting image of Cloud.
He got his hair from her, that golden white spiky nature, except she had hers up in a ponytail. Her eyes grew when she noticed Cloud emerged into her home, and he thought he was staring into his reflection.
"Cloud!" she screeched, dropping her book carelessly just so that she could run up to him and wrap her arms around his shoulders.
"My baby!" she sobbed. "You didn't tell me you would be here! I would've made you all your favorites! Oh my goodness!" she gripped his shoulders and pushed him back to give him a hard look.
"Mashed potatoes still one of your favorites?" she warned.
Cloud smirked at her as he dodged her joking eyes.
"Yes, mom, it' still is," he mumbled, embarrassed.
She held him close again, and he took in her familiar scent of cooking and rain. He wanted to hold her tight.
He should have.
But instead, he squirmed out of her embrace as he mumbled, "okay, mom, it's okay. I'm fine."
She scoffed, hands on her hips while wearing a simple orange housedress and long white apron.
"Trying to be like your father, as always. He wasn't much of a hug person himself. I was lucky enough to get you out of him."
Cloud groaned. 'Too much information', he wanted to say, but kept silent.
His mother continued, perky. "Well, boys are boys, I guess. Come, come! Make yourself at home. Are you staying long? What are you doing back here? How's the military life? Did you find a girlfriend?"
Cloud had been bombarded with questions, and he tried to answer them as good as he could. He was fed his childhood mashed potatoes, the same he's always dreamt about. When he was full, he let out a happy long sigh and collapsed onto his old full bed, facing the high vaulted veiling. The house was open loft style, so his mother could easily talk to him while she worked in the kitchen. He could hear her clanking pots and plates as she scrubbed them in the sink.
"So, that uniform," she began, eying him across the way. "Is that what a SOLDIER wears?"
Cloud's heart raced suddenly. It started to pound in his ears when something felt oddly misplaced, like a glitch had just occurred.
Conversation then shifted, and he saw Claudia walking up to the side of his bed to get a good look at her son, blue eyes warm and proud.
"How are the girls treating you? I bet they never leave you alone," she giggled.
Cloud blinked, unsure why he felt to have missed a minute or two of their conversation, but he disregarded it. Maybe he was just exhausted from the truck drive. He may have dozed off.
"There aren't any," he muttered, trying to recall if he had any lucky encounters with girls his age. Of course, he didn't. He was like the runt of the litter, unnoticed, easily overlapped by his other comrades. But that was odd. Why? He was in 1st class SOLDIER, the top of the military tier. It should've been simple enough to get attention.
It didn't really matter anyway. Cloud had always held a place for only one particular girl, and he wondered if she was home or not.
His mother went on, "well, in that case. Why not stay here? Give up the Shinra Military if it's not what you expected, and just come back home. Settle down, find a nice girl. And older girl. Someone to take good care of you."
Claudia looked up to the high ceiling, smiling to herself with a hint of dreams in her eyes.
Her voice dropped when she threw in, "that would make me happy."
Cloud slowly sat up, ready to leave.
"Not interested," he grumbled.
Disappointment washed across his mother's face, but it went away quickly, and she scoffed again, a wave of her hand to him along with an eye roll.
"You're so cool, now, aren't you," she put it sarcastically.
Cloud smirked. He's always favored his mother's sarcastic humor, and that alone almost made him wish to stay. But he swallowed down his inner child down, along with all the desires and disappointments, and put on a brave face.
"Mother, I should be heading back. We wake up very early tomorrow," he warned, ready to leave. He looked down at her, not believing how much he's grown in the last two years. She looked small, and even a bit more frail than he remembered.
"So soon? Why not just sleep in your own bed?"
Claudia's hands clasped to her apron, like she was pushing back from flinging herself into his arms again. Cloud got up and walked towards the door while explaining, "and possibly sleep in or miss my chance at the morning briefing? No thanks."
He opened the door, ready to leave, but Claudia's words stopped him.
"Come back soon? Before you go back to Midgar?"
Cloud thought for a minute, and when he finally replied, he didn't even turn to look at her.
"Sure. I think I can do that."
And then he stepped out, right into the village square.
He walked only to stop short at the foot of the water tower, and like some invisible force tugged him, he twirled around.
His mother peered at him through a wide gap from the door, her pale face pressed against its faded paint and loose strands of her hair tossed from an evening breeze. Her eyes sparkled at him while she put on a small but warm smile. Cloud didn't want to see it, but he thought his whole world froze when he noticed a tiny glimmer of a tear down Claudia's cheek.
She closed the door, and then she was gone forever…
How he'd wish to have run back to her and give her one last long hold. He pictured himself charging into her arms, burying his face into her shoulder and suddenly breaking into pieces there. She would have rubbed his back, whispering how much she loved him, how proud she was to have a son like him, and have him stay as long as he wanted.
He had left her, all alone for two years, and she still loved him so much.
Cloud quickly turned his head away, gasping to himself for letting his thoughts almost put his body into motion.
He closed his eyes, fighting the possibility of tears, and took a long deep breath.
Footsteps tapped loudly nearby, and he opened his eyes to spot a familiar older gentleman walking to the other side of the water tower. Cloud turned himself around, and recognized the back of the man's head, short and dark brown, with familiar heavy boots caked with mud, and that familiar worn out suede leather vest. An old hunter's rifle strapped to the man's back, and that's when Cloud knew who it was.
"Tifa's dad," he muttered to himself. He quietly watched the older man walk up the steps that left the main square, and then decided to follow him.
Cloud took to the stairs, a slight climb towards the bare and uninteresting mountain climb, but not before it melted into a long path what swerved anyone towards the gates of Shinra Mansion.
He stopped when he spotted Tifa's father there, his attention to the large structure that sat weakly behind a tall iron gate. Weeds and vines had grown about the iron bars along the fence, with tall grass scattered around the property to make it obvious no one has done maintenance in a long time.
Shinra's Mansion.
The place was an oddity to the townspeople, an even older structure than the town itself. How or why Nibelheim was built around it, Cloud wasn't sure, but he knew Shinra used it for holding their research crew. Experiments had been held in that old Victorian style home. It was almost an ironic display, like an illusion to what was really happening inside.
Every kid in town has snuck into the place at least once, but only to be spooked to the point of never going back. Cloud remembered climbing over the fence himself, thanks to being hoisted by some other boys. But to his dismay, when he stumbled into the yard behind the fence, the rest of the kids ran off, snickering at the thought he was going to be trapped there for life. It took him only a couple of minutes to find a weak part of the fence to nudge his skinny frame through, all while begrudgingly thinking about the rest of the group. Tifa was part of that group. And even though she wasn't snickering with the rest of them, she went along with their idea anyway, carried by peer pressure, as any seven-year-old would do.
It wasn't her fault.
Cloud sighed, unhappy with where his memories went as he stared at the old mansion. He wondered what Tifa's father was thinking, standing there with his tanned arms crossed, head up like he was really analyzing it.
Should he bother to say hello? But being a hunter, Brian Lockheart had ears like a fox, and before Cloud could decide, he jumped when the older man grumbled, "how long are you going to stand there? Are you wanting to say something or are you enjoying the view?"
Cloud stuttered, almost stumbling back at the sharpness of Brian's words.
"Uh, well..."
He stepped forward, and Brian turned himself a bit to observe Cloud. His hard cognac eyes grew even darker at the young blond SOLDIER, and he breathed heavily through his nostrils till his brown mustache shivered like Cloud's bones did.
"It's you. That scrawny blond kid," Brian grumbled, instantly recognizing Cloud. The last time they really had an encounter was many years ago, way back to when Cloud was only nine, and he didn't much feel like going back there. He tried to present himself as grown, braver, and by any means, worthy of Brian's daughter, but when he spoke, it came off as a bit weak.
"Nice to see you, sir." He couldn't even look at him, an old guilt buried too deep to unearth.
Brian obviously didn't like small talk, and instantly replied, "don't give me that. I know why you are here. Now that you are part of Shinra, you guys think you can just come to my town and resolve our problem."
He pointed a finger at Cloud, as though to put all the blame to him and continued, "It was your company that put that reactor there in the first place. To hell with the lights and heat, when we were just fine with our wood stoves, the soft breeze through our windows, using candles, and water from our water tower. Now we got damn monsters prowling around the place, a few even in town at times."
Cloud tried to tell himself it was just Brian being upset, still resentful about what happened seven years earlier, and how he felt about Shinra. And so, he didn't say anything, knowing it wouldn't help anyway.
When Brian finished, he sighed tiredly, wrinkles under his eyes, his face sagging a little like a man who's worked too hard and with too short of time. He stared back at the mansion, lost in an old memory of his, and said quietly, "I wanted to break that place up so bad. But I know nothin about reactors. How do I know I won't go blowing up somethin? Anyway…."
Brian seemed embarrassed for venting in front of Cloud, still a kid in his eyes, and he crossed his arms, eyes down at the tall grass squished under his boots.
"So, you here long?" He asked, trying to make up with lighter conversation.
Cloud cleared his throat, and then he let himself get distracted by the mansion's chilling landscape as he replied, "we are staying until we get the reactor fixed and the monsters contained. I'm sure it won't take too long." He really wanted to ask about Tifa, but he didn't have to because what Brian said next, confirmed it wasn't going to happen.
"Good. Hopefully, it should be quick, and then you can get out. Oh and," he gave Cloud another dark look, his dark eyebrows narrowing, "stay away from my daughter."
It was the worst thing a boy could hear from the father of a girl he admired, and Cloud quickly felt ill. He turned around, having enough of Brian's sour company, and walked away, but not before tossing hateful eyes at him.
"You're nothing but an angry and pathetic old man," Cloud mumbled to himself, furious for not having enough balls to throw a threat of his own back at him.
"I heard that!" Brian's voice echoed just as Cloud was taking the stairs back into town. He scoffed, and continued on.
Of course, he would've heard that.
Cloud didn't even bother visiting Tifa's house, not with her father's threat hanging over his head. Instead, he was done going through memory lane, sick of its old intoxicating fumes, as it all left him dizzy and mentally worn out. He retreated towards the inn, and climbed the stairs to the rooms, anticipating a hot shower and fresh bed. But he froze at the top of the steps, and stared across the long wooden hallway only to find Sephiroth's long silver hair to him. The General appeared to be lost in a daze, his hands relaxed at his sides as he stared through a window with little view he was given from the second floor. The evening sun was fading fast, nothing but a faint orange ball that brought little light into the hallway. Hints of its color seeped through the window's panes, dripping across half the floor as though lit by embers.
Cloud walked closer till his boots glowed in that orange light, half enflamed, and left himself slightly behind Sephiroth when he asked, "what are you looking at?"
He tried to see what was so mesmerizing about the scenery, but he just saw an old sleepy town below, haunted by a small orange sun poking slightly behind the spikes of Mt. Nibel.
Sephiroth shook his head to himself, and when Cloud glanced at him, he saw his face complete submerged in orange.
"I feel like I've been here before. There's something familiar about this place," Sephiroth whispered. His eyes were stuck to that sun, drawn to its color like it was a calling to him, into a temptation he would soon not resist. A bit distressed seeing Sephiroth's face that way, Cloud looked back to the view, and found the orange sunset colors bleed into the town. Behind shadows of chimneys and tall walls, rivers of orange galloped over the pointed roofs and through the narrow alleyways.
The view didn't help Cloud feel any better, and he took a step back, still feeling queasy.
"I'm going to bed," he announced awkwardly. He turned away from Sephiroth, unaware of the long stare he was given as he trekked down the other hallway. All its windows along the wall threw in more orange until he thought he was trapped in a world of its horrifying color.
He tossed and turned in his sleep that night, unable to reach that REM effect.
When Cloud awoke early the next morning, he felt groggy, his mouth parched and head achy. He rubbed at his temples as he walked up the steps towards the meeting point, and observed everyone in the group was waiting just outside the gates of Shinra Mansion. A group loitered around Sephiroth and the Shinra guards: Brian having a quiet discussion with Sephiroth, that boy with the camera engaged in conversation with the three Shinra guards, and a few townspeople paying their respects.
Cloud straightened himself when he entered the group, Sephiroth giving him a look of warning.
"You're late, as always," muttered the car sick guard.
Cloud ignored him and turned his attention to Sephiroth, interrupting his private conversation boldly with, "are we ready?"
Sephiroth's aqua eyes glowed from that Mako, almost appearing dangerous when he replied sharply, "Lucky for you, it isn't you we are waiting on. We would've left already if our guide was here first. She's young, so let's hope she doesn't fail us."
"Now Sephiroth," Brian began, his hands up in the air as though to stop the strong man from possibly throwing fists into him, "I need you to promise me to make sure she stays safe."
Cloud could've sworn Sephiroth perform an eye roll, but he closed his eyes too quickly to tell. The need to make a SOLDIER promise safety as a bodyguard was as pointless as asking a dog to bark. It was standard.
Sephiroth sighed and forced a charismatic smile at Brian.
"Trust me. She will be safe with us," he replied sweetly.
"That's right, papa! I got two SOLDIER with me!" Chimed a girl's voice.
Cloud turned around, and his eyes grew, a gasp through his lips.
"Tifa?!"
She smiled at him, hands behind her back. She looked almost the same as he'd seen her two years earlier, only, well, she's grown in some places, one of them her height. Her hair was longer too, held loosely under a leather hide cowboy hat to block out the uncomfortable sun. She wore a suede leather vest like her father's over a simple white top that left her thin belly exposed, along with a matching suede leather skirt and grain leather boots. There was an advantage to having a father as a hunter, Cloud thought, with all the leather made from the animals. It's no wonder her family was the wealthiest in the town.
Tifa didn't seem all too surprised to see him. She looked at him as though they just hung out recently.
"Hi Cloud!" Shouldn't she be more excited to see him?
Cloud gaped at her. "You're our guide?"
Tifa beamed, eyes closed with excitement. "Yep! It turns out, I'm the best at navigating Mt. Nibel."
Brian cleared his throat, pulling Tifa away from her ego, and she shrunk a little.
"I meant, second best," she corrected uneasily, and threw in a forceful smile.
"I would go instead, but I gotta keep the monsters away from town. No one else here will do it," Brian complained.
Cloud's chest rattled a little, making him feel a little woozy, like everyone was all in a play without knowing it, following an act, and he was the only one who didn't know his lines. This encounter with his childhood felt off, but he couldn't shake why.
"I can't let you go up there with us," he began, ready to turn Tifa around and shove her back to town where it was safe.
"Then you will make sure to protect the girl," Sephiroth disrupted, having enough of waiting. "Let's go".
The guy with the camera came up to Sephiroth carefully, almost whimpering, "Uh, before you go. Could I please take a picture of you three?"
Sephiroth made a long exhale, his eyes closed, and without a word, stood still. Tifa came in next to him, the only one smiling, while Cloud came to her right, his arms crossed.
The photographer backed up, camera to his face as he twisted up one of its knobs.
"Okay, ready?"
Tifa gripped the edge of her hat as she chuckled, "ready!"
"Okay, cheese!" The photographer belled.
Sephiroth looked at the camera pissed off, like he was thinking, 'dear God, why the hell am I in this photo?' He didn't seem much for posing when someone really wanted him to.
Cloud didn't much like to smile either, so he put on a serious look, what he thought a SOLDIER should display, and held his breath.
Shinra's mansion stood behind them, with its old iron bars creaking a little to the wind, and then a flash came to their eyes.
The photographer smiled up at them when he was done, and mentioned, "thanks! I will make sure each of you get a copy when I get this printed!"
"Hey, thanks!" Cloud replied.
"I can't wait!" Tifa gasped excitedly.
Sephiroth just walked off, the three Shinra guards following behind him.
"I wanted to be the photo," whined the car sick guard.
"Stop," Sephiroth grumbled, not to make any room for such behavior on their expedition.
Tifa gladly lead the group: Cloud behind her, Sephiroth quietly in the rear, and three Shinra guards in the middle. They all made their ascend in silence, well, Tifa mostly humming to herself. Cloud wanted to find a way to make small talk with her but every inch of him was nervous. He worried about every threat that came in the way, quick to respond to any monster that leapt out from a corner or crawled from a cavern.
Mt. Nibel showed no mercy to those who traveled its peaks, a rocky barren place with nothing to offer, hence why a reactor was built so far away. It was a long climb, the morning sun hidden behind a blanket of grey across the expansion of the sky. The air felt stale, and it thinned as they went up ever further, almost fifteen hundred feet by the time Tifa lead them to that horrible half-ass made bridge.
Cloud stared at it and remembered how much he hated that bridge. It was a long stretch of nothing but wood and rope to hold someone from a hundred-foot fall, a gamble to him.
But before he could protest, Tifa scurried over its creaking wood panels and carried on.
"It gets pretty rough from here. Let's quickly cross," she advised. The winds blew heavily, cutting through the open areas between the peaks till the air howled with warning. Cloud followed close behind her, expecting the whole structure would collapse at any moment, just like in his earlier memories.
"This is safe," muttered one Shinra guard sarcastically, but he carried on, holding his gun with one hand while his other held on to the safe rope. The other two guards didn't seem to take as much caution, thought better to charge through like Tifa. Sephiroth didn't say a word until halfway through the bridge, when they all heard it.
Snap!
"Hold on to something!" He warned.
Maybe they should've crossed it one at a time, or tried a different route. But no matter, it was too late.
Cloud heard the snap of the rope on one side, only to pull harder at the other till it broke away. The wood fell away beneath Tifa's feet when the bridge split in two, and he saw her hair lift as she fell away, her hands up in the air.
She screamed.
Flashes of eight-year-old Tifa crashed into his retinas, her high-pitched wail breaking his ears and his heart when he watched her fall before he joined her in the darkness of his earlier memories.
Back to the moment, Mako pulsed in Cloud's veins, vibrating through his entire body till he moved in one quick heartbreak, and grabbed for Tifa's hand. His other hand grabbed for the rope that pulled them back to the cliff where they started, and then crashed against its rocky wall with loud grunts. The smashing into the mountain wall was enough to damage what was left of the rope. Like it dissolved, it tangled and fell to pieces, causing the party to fall ten feet into a protruding piece of rock.
Cloud quickly collected himself, barely damaged, and was relived to find Tifa getting up next to him. She laid her hands on her knees, catching her breath as well as calming her nerves. Her hat still stayed on her head due to its strap around her chin. Cloud easily saw the top of it as Tifa looked to her boots, breathing hard and fast.
"Thanks," she breathed.
"Are we all right?" It was Sephiroth, making his way around the bend, sword in his hand and rather peeved from the obstacle. Behind him trailed a solo Shinra guard, the one with the car sickness. He couldn't be more lucky, Cloud thought, eying the guard with a bit more respect. He should probably know his name. The guard was panting, a gloved hand to his chest, his helmet still in place to keep his youthful face hidden, but he probably looked terrified.
Tifa stood up straight and waved it off.
"Yeah, we are fine," she trembled, still recovering, but she tried to put on a brave show.
Sephiroth either didn't notice her attempt or he simply just didn't care, his eyes instead at the direction where they all needed to go.
"If we are all okay, then let's continue," he demanded, persistent. Tifa eyed the lonesome guard behind Sephiroth, and pointed her little finger at him.
"uh, I think we are short two people," she shuddered. Cloud didn't see the other guards around either, and instinctively looked over his shoulder to the long drop behind his feet. He couldn't see beyond the darkness far below, and wondered if there were more than two bodies in that trench.
"I know this may sound cold, but we must move on. They understood the dangers of this mission. We don't have time looking for them. We carry on," Sephiroth ordered. That startled Cloud, making him whirl around just to stare.
If Sephiroth was one of the two bodies, there would be a search party for sure. But for two low life Shinra guards? Not even a prayer. Cloud shuddered at the thought, tempted to lift a word about how they should at least track the bodies down for the families' sakes. But he clammed up, letting Tifa lead on once again. Sephiroth was right behind her, his sword out and ready for more monsters.
"Hey, don't fall behind," the guard urged Cloud, still holding his rifle. Cloud watched him scramble to catch up, scurrying like a little blue insect with the way his life was coldly judged from their General. Cloud didn't know why it was so strangely difficult to move on again. He wanted to just stand there until he was a part of the mountain, and let all his thoughts whirl around till something finally clicked into place. So far, everything seemed to move into motion, like clockwork, but Cloud could feel it, there was something off, like a crack in a gear or a loose coil along the mechanics of its structure.
Was it Sephiroth?
Yes, the man was goal set on getting into the reactor. Was he being insensitive? Or was he just goal driven? A true commanding SOLDIER with little regard for distraction, even if it meant not noticing the fallen?
"Cloud, what are you waiting for?" he heard Sephiroth's far away voice, a wake-up call from his dwelling thoughts. Cloud quickly unfroze, and he hurried to keep up as he dashed up the hill with little effort. The Mako made the muscles in his legs move swiftly, the elevation hardly noticeable when he found the now party of three, waiting for him just before a rock wall full of caverns.
"These caves are like an ant farm. Follow me closely, so you won't get lost," Tifa politely requested.
She led them into one particular cave, purposely marked with a smudge of faint red paint near its mouth. It was a short cave, barely large enough to go pitch black, with too many other exits bringing light inside. Cloud's eyesight adjusted easily, able to see well in darkness, his eyes aglow like Sephiroth's, while Tifa maneuvered by memory. Critters crawled along the walls, their stick like legs clicking with each movement. Dirt loudly crunched under the group's feet, its sound effect vibrating off the ceiling of slowly formed cones, leftovers of collected rain water.
TIfa gasped at the exit, like a far away ball of light. "This way!"
She ran ahead, excited to be out of the darkness. Cloud quickened his pace, pass Sephiroth and car-sick guard to keep up with her active fifteen-year-old legs.
"Hold on, stop going so far ahead," he begged and a bit irritated, as though the girl was trying to jump into trouble on purpose.
He ran out of the cavern, only to quickly stop himself from crashing into Tifa's back, his hands barely to her shoulders.
"Look at that," she whispered, too preoccupied to notice his clumsy stop.
Cloud scanned ahead, to search for what she was so awed about, when his eyes glued to the site.
They had stumbled into a bottom of a canyon, with nothing but smooth rock around them from all the carvings of wind slipping through. Little light fell into such a deep place, and yet, old trees had somehow grown, their massive roots buried deep beneath the rocky plate. Some roots coiled into a small glowing pool, intertwined to act as a natural altar for a particular stone. The stone was blue, and it glowed beautifully, sending an aura of aqua up into the high heavens while the tiny baby arms of roots wrapped around it, holding it up above the pool.
"What is that?" Tifa asked when Cloud got to observe it.
"That's a natural Mako fountain" Sephiroth answered for them, walking in slowly to stop next to Cloud to marvel at nature's miracle.
"It's a rare site, something that doesn't often happen these days anymore," he added.
"It's so beautiful," Tifa breathed, her eyes up at the glowing stone. She walked carefully over roots to get a better look, close to almost touching the shiny large rock. She could almost hear it, the workings of the planet spreading its valuable knowledge into the stone, all from the pool of glowing Mako seeping inside the roots that drilled the glowing substance into it.
She wanted to touch it but then again, too afraid to possibly damage the beautiful treasure.
"If the reactor continues to run, it's going to suck this fountain up," Tifa whispered, her eyes depressed at the stone because of its dark fate. She could picture the pool drying up, the roots in it withering away, and the stone crumbling into pieces like a dead rock, its glow and Ancient knowledge gone to the world forever.
"Yes, true," Sephiroth confirmed, walking in next to her to get a better glimpse for himself. The stone emitted a glow almost like Sephiroth's eyes when Cloud stared at him across the fountain.
"This is natural Materia. When Mako energy is condensed, Materia is produced. It's very rare to find it in its natural state like this," Sephiroth educated.
Cloud wasn't as impressed with the fountain, his arms crossed and wondering what difference did it make? Artificial, natural. It still gave them magic to use. He noticed the lonesome Shinra guard stayed a mute, just keeping watch of the area and not even engaged in their conversation, like he was horrified of socializing.
"What gives us the ability to really use magic when we harness Materia?" Cloud asked. Sephiroth gave him a hard look and replied sharply, "you're a SOLDIER and you don't even understand the fundamentals of Materia? Don't they still teach that in one of the courses?"
Cloud shrugged, used to being criticized, and suddenly remembered how much older Sephiroth really was.
"The Materia holds the knowledge of the Ancients. Anyone with this knowledge can freely use the powers of the Planet. It interacts between ourselves and the planet, calling up what we refer to as magic," Sephiroth explained.
Cloud stared back to the fountain, his hands to his hips while he smiled lightly to it, glad to witness such a site.
"Magic is pretty interesting," he muttered to himself.
Sephiroth must've heard him because he began to laugh. There it was again, like Cloud had missed a joke somewhere, lost in it all as he watched Sephiroth lift his lips to the grey sky, laughing loudly till his muscular chest shook under his belts. Cloud lifted an eyebrow at him. "What's so funny?"
"I'm sorry," Sephiroth quickly apologized, not even noticing Tifa's uneasy stare at him as he calmed himself enough to lightly chat, "it's just, there was this scientist who doesn't really like the term, 'magic'. He thought it was very unscientific. I remember how angry he was when we argued about it a while back. Such a bitter man with a personality of a spider. He always nicked picked at whatever he found useful, feeding on research like its blood from his prey, not a care for his live experiments."
Cloud cringed at the metaphor, curious over whom this scientist was and felt the need to ask. "Who was this man?"
Sephiroth frowned, eyes not looking at Cloud nor the fountain. Tifa was busy sitting on her heels, watching her reflection into the aqua pool while she remained passive in their conversation.
"That was Hojo, from Shinra's Research Division. He's an inexperienced scientist who took over the work of someone far greater than he'll ever achieve," Sephiroth grumbled. He seemed to really despise the one called Hojo with the way his face twisted with such displeasure even at the mention of that name.
Tifa lifted her gaze up at the two SOLDIER, lost in Sephiroth's explanation, and went back to reminding them about the fountain when she felt they went off-topic.
"So this is where Ancient knowledge lies," she whispered.
They all give it one last look before moving on, leaving its beauty alone.
It took about another hour of twists and turns to make the hike easier, until finally, edged along one side of a narrow mountain, sat the reactor. When Cloud got closer to it, he didn't realize how small it really was. Compared to the ones running Midgar, this one on Mt. Nibel was a miniature model. It looked lonesome and improper among the rocky terrain, a recent structure of nothing but a barrel of metal and arms of pipes wedged into the rock. It was sucking up the planet's life-force along with the natural Mako fountains with those pipes, bringing it all into the chimney shaped structure with Shinra Inc's fat red logo slapped onto it. The group stopped at the base of a long staircase leading up to the facility, when Sephiroth put a hand in front of Tifa to prevent her from stepping further.
"You have to stay here," he told her.
She made a twisting frown. "But I want to see what's inside!" she whined.
Cloud joined next to Sephiroth and agreed with her staying behind. Who knows what lurked inside.
"It's better you wait outside," he stated. Sephiroth passed an outraged Tifa and went up the steps.
"Only authorized personnel can get inside. Shinra carry industrial secrets in this reactor. We are responsible if it leaks out. It takes only the highly skilled class of Shinra to have authority inside," he confirmed over his shoulder. He then craned his head to the lonely Shinra guard, slightly disgusted as he noticed the man scratching at his rear with horrible stealth abilities. 'So much for highly skilled,' Sephiroth thought with irritation. He then pointed at the guard.
"You stay with her!" he ordered. The guard gasped from the sudden attention, hand away from his pants to salute.
"Yes sir!" he bellowed in an overly exaggerated low voice. Was he trying to impress them with that false manly voice?
Tifa put her hands on her hips as Cloud left her with the guard, and bolted up the metal steps.
"You better take REALLY good care of me," he heard her threaten to the guard.
He smiled to himself.
Sephiroth was ready to use his access card to open the double metal doors, but paused when he noticed a large gap in between them. Cloud came in closer to inspect the doors, like someone purposely wedged themselves in between them and pushed them apart, bending the metal outward with superb strength. Sephiroth slipped his important card back into one of his leather pockets with a tired sigh.
"Well, so much for personal access," he muttered.
"What do you suppose did that, and why would they want to get in?" Cloud asked, eying the man-sized hole. Sephiroth scanned the hole carefully and looked to where the metal bent, outwardly towards them as though someone dug their claws though the doors to escape.
"You mean to get out," he corrected Cloud. "It must be the monsters. Come on." He ducked and slipped in through the battered opening, stepping into a small metal gird platform. Cloud took one last breath of mountain air, and stepped inside, already tasting the Mako on his tongue.
Down a facility ladder, they went, Sephiroth marching on ahead across a metal bridge with mako swirling below them. Its smell was strong, something Cloud should get used to, but it bothered him as he tried to inhale as little as possible, afraid it would burn into his lungs even though it was a part of his blood. It reminded him of Midgar, how it always had that same potent smell, lingering in the air along with the exhaust of cars and dark plumes of decaying earth around the city.
Beyond the bridge, they entered into the reactor's core, a high-rise room, with row after row of ascending pods almost to the ceiling. Metal grid steps led Sephiroth up through the human sized pods, mako bubbling inside each of them, and he went to the very stop where a metal door laid shut, with a metal printed font stamped above it, "JENOVA".
Cloud slowly climbed the red painted metal steps, the sounds of hissing filling his ears from loose pipes. He laid careful eyes on the pods as he passed them, sitting in rows as the shape of eggs. Some of them hissed with glowing steam of Mako escaping, from loose screws and cracked windows to look inside, lifting his alertness. Each egg had a pipe to its head, with "LEVEL 5" stamped on each one, for whatever that meant.
"So, this is where Jenova is? Huh, the lock won't open," Sephiroth told himself aloud, Cloud overhearing him atop the room. He could see great disappointment on Sephiroth's face as he swooped down the steps and eyed a large pipe excessively spitting mako into a set of pods with its weblike smaller arms into them. The pipe hummed loudly with vibration, hissing from its loose cracks and screws from such high pressure.
"That must be where the problem is. Cloud, close the valve," he commanded.
Cloud quickly went to one of the main valves that was attached to the large pipe, and spun its rusty wheel till the pipe closed. No more Mako would slip into a number of the pods.
"That must be what was creating the monsters," Sephiroth wondered aloud. Cloud watched him peer into a window of one of the pods, his serious face unchanged when he saw what was inside.
"Interesting," he muttered, though didn't appear to be fazed by it.
"Have a look."
Cloud wasn't sure whether to look in that specific pod, or any of them. He put his hands along the inner edge of the wielded window panel and pushed his face into the frosted glass.
Inside the pod, a grotesque looking creature blinked its white eyes at him, teeth neatly sharp as it growled cold breath from its wide lips. Cloud gasped and fell back, falling onto his rear with his hands sprawled behind him, breathing hard at what he just saw. What the hell was that?
"What the!?" he gasped.
The egg shaped pod before him suddenly shook, liquid Mako seeping through its cracks as the creature pounded against its inner walls, agitated at seeing Cloud look inside its home.
Sephiroth and Cloud took a couple of steps back, and watched as the Pod broke in two, its anterior structure pushed away. A toxic strong smell of highly concentrated Mako filled the air as its liquid contents spilled in though the metal grills of the floor, and a monster uncoiled itself from its fetal position. It growled a foggy breath out its large jaws, head rising to land its white eyes onto the two men. It appeared half man, half beast, with arms and legs of man, but with claws and skin like grainy leather. Its head protruded curled spikes, more along its back like broken sharp wings.
Cloud quickly got up, prepared to fight the creature, but there was no need. Sephiroth was done with it before it was even communicated. He took one long vertical slice from his sword, and the newly made monster had already expired, split in two equally. Dark blue blood, more Mako and guts piled onto the grills, the skin of the creature bubbling up to foam.
Sephiroth put away his sword, his heart rate barely raised, and just looked at the pile of what was left of the monster with troubling eyes.
"Hojo thinks he can surpass Professor Fast with his foul experiments on Mako. What a fool," he grumbled.
Cloud put his sword away, sighing for having little to no fighting involvement since the mission began, but said nothing about it. Instead, he eyed Sephiroth carefully and asked, "this is where the monsters are coming from?"
"Yes. When Mako is condensed in high pressure, it turns into Materia, right? But look at what happens when someone mixes that kind of pressure into a tank with humans," he explained, his voice slowly quivering. Cloud easily heard it in Sephiroth's voice, the uneasiness that was never there before. Something inside Sephiroth's head was spinning into motion, landing fear into the older man's eyes so quickly, it was easily shown as his aqua eyes shifted from placid, to panic.
Cloud stepped closer to lay a calm hand on Sephiroth's shoulder, the silver armor massive under his grip as he tried to use a steady voice to bring the troubled General back to earth.
"Sephiroth. We should probably go back now and write a report about this."
But he was ignored, and to his horror, he watched Sephiroth's eyes widened, a man lost in his snowballing thoughts of troubling unknown until he was unrecognizable.
"Was I created like this?" Sephiroth asked in a tiny whisper, his lips quivering like he was crying invisible tears across his ghost-white face.
He let both his gloved hands slip into his silver hair, fighting at whatever voices may be disturbing him.
"I knew I was different, ever since I was small…"
Sweat dripped across his wrinkled forehead, unaware Cloud was still there watching him a bit panicked himself.
"But not like this. I couldn't have been made like this, could I?" Sephiorth whispered.
Metal flashed across the air, and Cloud jumped back just in time, his feet landing him back to the entrance. He lifted his head up and felt even more insignificant just watching his friend collapse into himself than he's ever felt in their battles together. Cloud laid his petrified eyes up at Sephiroth, the mad man cutting his Masamune into the pods, slicing and breaking them without any hint of regret. There was pent-up anger in those swings, wide and without mercy, little to no care to how damaged the blade will become. Through clenched teeth, Sephiroth grunt with each blow, no holding back. One by one, a pod damaged, Mako spraying out at his boots, some specks of it onto his face.
He just didn't care.
"Am I human? Are they?! What difference do we make?!" He screamed.
"They all deserve to die!" And he shoved his blade straight into the glass of a pod, breaking through it and penetrating what cooked inside.
"Sephiroth!" Cloud cried, trying to bring him back.
Sephiroth pulled back his sword, blue blood along its tip, and finally stopped. He was breathing hard when he looked over his shoulder and down at Cloud, stunned like he thought he was alone the whole time.
Electric sparks buzzed behind him, some pods malfunctioned from his rampage, but he carelessly marched away from it all and met Cloud at the bottom of the steps, still distracted.
"I need to think," Sephiorth shuddered, a fist tight under his chin. He didn't acknowledge Cloud as he passed him, sword in tow and just left. Cloud twirled around, shaken up while he watched Sephiroth disappear up the ladder, the last of him being his boots before he was gone.
"Am I human?" Cloud echoed those words through the tavern, the atmosphere cozily quiet except for his voice.
"I didn't understand it then. It was even more shocking to discover that Shinra were making monsters."
"Were?!" I snapped. "And those monsters were from humans?" I gasped? "How? Did they kidnap them? Were they unlucky SOLDIER that failed the Mako trials or something? Prisoners of war or criminals?"
No one could answer.
Barret growled as he looked to his hand, watching his dark fingers curl into his large palm.
"Those fucking Shinra. The more I hear about them, the more I hate them," he cursed.
Tifa finished her beer, and with a long prickly sigh, slammed the bottom of her pint onto the table, rattling the candle sticks and silverware.
"Who would have thought, of all places, Shinra decided to run a secret like that. Who knows where else they have those monsters hidden. There's probably an underground lab somewhere with even more of them," she grumbled.
Red lifted his head from my lap, perking at the conversation.
"I find it strange you all seemed surprised," Red joined, his flaming tail happily almost touching the calm fire behind him.
"What was even the point of Hojo doing such a thing?" Aerith asked grimly.
Barret shook his head at her innocent question.
"Because the guy's crazy! Simple!" he answered for her. He was probably right. Did Hojo even need a motive? I found the scientist unstable, and wondered how someone like him got to run a research project, hell, even a job. How many scientists were in Midgar? Was it just him, and Shinra had no choice but to hire him when they found no other candidates in the hiring pool? It sure felt that way.
I collected myself off the floor and took a chair between Aerith and Tifa, happy to have the soles of my feet rest on the floor. Cold food had been left on the table, and yet I was still tempted to pick at it all, eying the half loaf of bread and butter.
Before I knew it, I cut myself a slice and slabbed a generous amount of butter on it, not a care if everyone watched.
I discreetly watched Tifa lay back in her chair, her cheeks flushed red with alcohol in her blood.
"You want to take a break?" I asked her.
She looked at me as though I was crazy to even mention the idea, her mouth open like I asked a stupid question.
"Hell no. I want to hear more," she groaned.
Cloud too, flashed worried eyes at her while he sat still.
"How about a water break then?" he suggested firmly, and before she could protest, he slid his chair back with a loud screech, and got up.
"I'll get a pitcher of water or two," he grumbled.
I watched him walk up to the counter until Aerith leaned her head in next to me.
"So, how did it go?" she whispered carefully, asking about my earlier encounter with Cloud.
I wanted to glance at Tifa in case she was honing in, but that would only make me even more suspicious.
My lips almost touched her delicate ear when I whispered, "I showed him how to do a pinky promise."
Aerith blinked, and looked at me to see if I was joking, silent.
"And then," I continued. "Before that, I showed him how to do thumb war."
Aerith pinched her lips together, her cheeks puffing up as she tried to hold in her laugh.
But she couldn't contain herself, and her giggle puffed out as she clapped her hands.
"Is that what you meant by hands stuff?!" she laughed, eyes closed to the ceiling and fingers to her lips. "I wasn't sure what you meant." And she continued to giggle. Aeith's laugh was contagious, making me cackle along with her until she gasped with stars in her eyes.
"Show me the thumb war thing!"
I showed her, our hands both small, but her fingers even thinner than mine, wrists tiny. They were warm, hardly any calluses nor scars. Such soft hands with little to no physical labor to them. She could've been a hand model.
I lifted my eyes up to her beautiful eyes, her braid over her small shoulder loosely.
Or even just a model, model.
I sighed, and let our thumbs clink together when I counted to five.
"Try to see if you can pin my thumb down before I do it to yours," I advised.
Barret, Tifa and Red watched intently, Red muttering, "I wish I had thumbs."
Aerith let her thumb wander, jerking back and forth with indecisiveness.
"Wait, where do I go?" she asked, smiling.
"Oh, the thumb war thing," Cloud muttered. He fell back into his seat and handed a whole pitcher of water to Tifa and another for the rest of us. Tifa took a small sip and let it settle beside her.
Cloud let his Mako eyes watched closely, my fingers gripped along with Aerith's on top of the table. I didn't want to beat her so easily, and I even let her have a few close calls. She would push down on mine, but did it so weakly, my thumb easily pushed hers back.
"Oh gosh, I get it now!" she gasped, and her eyes grew with amazement.
I let her try again, her thumb hard on mine and she actually tried this time. I counted to ten, and shouted, "Aerith wins!" I pushed a fist up in the air, enthusiastic, and Aerith raised her hands up. "Woo! Did you see that, Cloud?! I beat her!"
Tifa giggled at us. "You're a bunch of dorks," she garbled.
Cloud smirked at Aerith, nodding at her excitement like he needed it.
"You sure did," he stated, and then flashed me a knowing look. I intently looked away, pretending I didn't notice, but I knew he knew I let Aerith win on purpose. I almost whistled innocently.
Barret rolled his eyes and waved a hand at Aerith and I, getting to calm us down.
"Okay, okay! Let's settle down. I want to get back to the story!" the big man demanded, inpatient.
Cloud filled half his mug with water and took a long sip. We all took turns pouring ourselves water. Tifa looked over her shoulder to glance at the bar. Obviously, she wanted another alcohol drink, but she kept that to herself. I wondered why she was coming off as uneasy. Did my joke earlier really set her on edge? Or was it Cloud's story?
I wanted to ask her, but before I could, Cloud started with, "It was awkward coming back to Nibelheim. Sephiroth didn't say a word. He was obviously troubled from what he saw. Tifa, you felt something was off with him when we went back, didn't you?" he directed that last bit at her, the first time inviting her in on the story. Tifa didn't look at him, her hands enclosed around her pint of water.
"….Yeah," she seemed distant.
Cloud continued on.
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