Chapter 25: Obligatory Shopping Episode
Cloud finally gets a peek into the life as a SOLDIER. It's not as exciting as he thought it would be. He makes the best of it.
(I think my D&D gaming experience is bleeding into my fic writing.)
Cloud had spent a lot of time thinking about what the SOLDIER supplies store would look like. In fact, when he'd still wanted to join SOLDIER, he'd spent an embarrassing amount of time daydreaming about the moment he would step into it to choose his SOLDIER weapon.
The room would be brightly lit, (he'd decided) like a jewelry store. Swords would be carefully displayed on the walls, polished to shine, each one unique. His for the taking.
There would be a clerk, knowledgeable and experienced, who would help him choose from all the options after watching Cloud's katas. (Flawlessly performed, of course.)
"With your frame and form" (the imaginary clerk would've said) "you need a slender blade – a katana or rapier." Dream Cloud always picked a katana since it most closely resembled Sephiroth's famous Masamune.
In reality, SOLDIER stores was just a room in an office building with bad lighting and cheap carpet.
There was a clerk, sitting disinterested at a counter outside, clicking on a computer – although her disinterest might've had more to do with their Turk escort than with her being bored.
Inside the storeroom, the bad lighting and cheap carpet continued.
There were swords displayed on peg boards. There was one of each type on steel hooks with a printed page below it stating the style: one‑handed or two, double‑bladed or single, straight-edged or curved. Under each blade were three crates: one labelled "short", and one labelled "long". The last one was unlabelled, but Cloud figured it would be blades of "average" length. They were cheap blades, too. Shinra's mass produced junk.
This wasn't swordsmanship. This was industry.
"Not what you'd expected, huh." Zack said with a smile.
"They're awful," Cloud replied.
The dark-haired former First nodded. "Oh yeah, and SOLDIERs go through them like candy during training, let alone a real fight."
"But…" Cloud stopped, unsure how to express the disconnect he was feeling.
"Unless you were a poster SOLDIER–"
"Like me!" Genesis piped in. He was looking at the SOLDIER First uniforms.
Zack ignored him. "–or rich, this is what you used until you could afford to buy your own."
"Or, if you were lucky, you could recover one on a mission," Genesis said measuring a top against his frame.
This time Zack nodded. "Yeah, that's true."
"So rich or lucky," Tifa said. "Is that how you got your sword?"
Cloud saw Zack flinch and hoped Tifa would drop it.
"Galatine was Angeal's sword," Genesis said when Zack stayed silent.
"Galatine!?" Tifa repeated, surprised out of her normal empathy. "Your sword isn't called Buster?"
"No, no! Buster's good," Zack reassured hastily. "Easier to say and all."
"Oh, 'pride is lost!'" Genesis flung up a dramatic hand, before dropping it and giving them a smirk. "Not that I actually object to the name change," he said. "Gillian Hewley wanted to name it gallantine for all the virtues she wanted her son to have but that she lacked herself."
"Genesis!" Zack turned on the redhead with a frown.
The former first shrugged a shoulder, eyes still angry. "Project-G was her idea as much as Hollander's." He turned to the rest of them. "Doctor Hewley made sure she was saturated with inert Jenova cells before they implanted a fertilized egg in her womb. It was an experiment, you see, to discover how the inert J-cells affected a fetus." He tipped his head. "Perhaps that explains why Angeal was size huge."
Tseng didn't even sigh this time – possibly he was getting used to them spilling all of Shinra's secrets. Tifa and Aerith looked distressed as any decent person would be to hear of a mother experimenting on their unborn child.
Zack, however….
His jaw and fists were clenched, and it looked like he wanted to smash something – preferably Rhapsodos. But he wasn't arguing so that meant there was some truth to what Genesis had said.
Truth hurt, sometimes. Sometimes badly.
Cloud gave his friend a bump. "So where's the good stuff?"
Zack forced his jaw down, unclenching it and giving it a shake. "Weapons that've been turned over are kept in the back room."
Genesis breezed by them to a small door slotted between shelves of uniforms and boxes of healing potions. He put a finger to his chin and posed. "How smart is Shinra's bureaucracy?" he wondered. "Do you think, perchance, that my codes still work in the system."
Tseng stepped forward and flashed his keycard. "They don't."
The little light flashed green, and the Turk pushed the door open. A light clicked on in the room beyond him.
"You are welcome to anything in this room, but please write down what you take."
"Ah the sweet smell of bureaucracy," Genesis lifted a hand to his heart. "'Loath I was to leave you, for you were part of me'." Cloud gave him a push, both to stop the dramatics and so everyone could get into the room.
It was a little better than the other one, Cloud thought as he stepped through. Instead of crates, the swords were in special shelving units, each drawer individually labelled. Other weapons – wicked looking axes, oddly delicate hammers, staves, and guns – were in bins or on open shelves. Each one given space so that they could be accessed without having to dig them out. Past the weapons, Cloud could see bracelets and bracers, belly guards, and vests.
He'd look at those after. For now, Cloud joined Genesis at the swords. Zack went with Aerith to look at the quarterstaffs. There were pairs of fighting gloves in labelled boxes that Tifa bee-lined to.
Cloud pulled open a drawer that said "Yoshiyuki – dbl-hand/sgl-edge". The sword inside was dusty, but beautiful. The metal blade shone. The leather wrap was a rich brown. The details were exquisite.
He took it out. Wrapped his hands around it. A couple practice swings….
"You can't tell if a blade fits you by hitting nothing," Genesis said. He moved to stand opposite Cloud. In his hand he had a double-edged, two-hand weapon that gleamed faintly gold all along the blade.
There was barely enough room for them to do more than poke at each other, but it was enough. They both sniffed, unimpressed with their weapons, and put them back in the drawer.
They kept looking.
From the back corner, Cloud heard Aerith cooing over a staff she'd found, and Tseng trying to talk her out of leaving Midgar.
"But she has to come!" Tifa said. "She's our healer."
"It is hardly appropriate–"
"Excuse me?" Aerith glared, hands on hips.
"– or safe," Tseng argued. "It would be much better if you stayed with your mother."
"Better for who?" Zack asked.
"I'm not staying behind," Aerith declared. "So that means I need a better staff. I like this one!"
Cloud didn't have to see Tseng to know he'd given up. The Turk got on the phone to his minions. Whatever he was ordering them to do was drowned out by Genesis's huff of laughter. "This has your name on it, Strife."
He handed Cloud a wide-bladed sword. It was about the same size as Iron Blade, but much uglier. The blade was nearly white and oddly shaped. The handle was thick, with what Cloud thought might be real leather – just cheap and badly dyed. The guard was made of heavy metal rings – materia slots – that hung from the blade further ruining the esthetics of thing.
He looked up at Genesis, eyebrow raised in question.
The redhead smirked. "It's called 'Heaven's Cloud'."
Cloud rolled his eyes but took the weapon. He swished it. It was heavy, and the balance felt off.
"En garde." Genesis moved into a formal sword fighting stance. He was wielding a narrow-bladed rapier. The blade and hilt glowed faintly purple. It was etched and every inch screamed master bladesmith.
"Mithril?" Cloud asked.
Genesis hummed. "Perfect for casting while fighting."
"No casting in the storage room!" Tseng ordered.
Genesis's smile broadened.
He moved into an attack. Cloud lifted his blade to parry. The tip rotated and dropped, and he had to side-step to avoid being skewered. Genesis' eyebrows went up.
Cloud tried a different stance, but he still couldn't get the blade to move where it should be.
"Zack!" he called. "This is about the size of the buster." He held the white-bladed sword out to the ex-SOLDIER.
Zack took it in one hand where Cloud had had to use two. He swung it, twirled it, and then whipped it around his body before stopping. He held it out. "Balance is off."
Cloud handed it back to Genesis who handled it as easily as Zack had. "I'll keep looking," he said.
"Well, I've found mine," the redhead declared, swishing his mithril sabre through the air. "Need to add a couple materia slots, and it'll be perfect!"
Damn, Cloud thought. Mithril anything sold for tonnes, and the people outside of Shinra who could afford to buy it, knew not to let Shinra know they had it.
Maybe there'd be another one, he thought with faint hope.
There wasn't.
However, he did find a decent twin-bladed thing that shouldn't have worked in either looks or movement, but somehow managed to do both. It wasn't mithril, and it probably wouldn't replace Iron Blade, but Cloud might not sell it when this mission was over.
By the time he'd settled on his blade (unimaginatively called "Twin Stinger") the others had moved through the bracers and armour and were going through the materia stored in more of the narrow drawers.
"We're taking all the HP and MP Ups we can find," Zack said to him. "Since we don't know where this job's going to take us or what we're going to face."
Decent advice, Cloud thought. Plus, boost materia was easy to sell if they need gil on the road.
The door behind him opened and a Turk with hair the colour of a neon-sign slouched it. "Yo, boss. I got your delivery."
Reno nodded at Cloud, stating his last name as a greeting. He did the same thing with Zack. With Tifa he used 'Mizz Lockhart' then Cloud heard, "Fucking hells! It is Rhapsodos. I thought Rude was talking out his ass."
"You have the items." It wasn't a question.
Reno handed over a complex bracelet and a couple materia. "Couldn't find another Final Attack so brought Warding and Subversion instead."
Cloud's eyebrows went up.
"Are those good?" Tifa asked as Tseng took Aerith's wrist and wrapped the bracelet around it.
"Linked they'll protect against attacks that are instantly lethal."
"Tonberrys," Zack groaned.
"That's a lot of protection," Genesis commented.
"There's also a mastered HP Up," Tseng continued before flicking a glance at the red-haired SOLDIER. "The old president might be dead, but he wasn't the only one who valued Aerith's possibilities."
"What possibilities?" Genesis asked. Tseng ignored that one, and nobody else filled the redheaded First in.
"Given the tower's recent instability, I can justify Ms Gainsborough's absence from Midgar, but…." The Turk's voice trailed off. It was the first time Cloud had ever seen one at a loss for words.
"She's a good fighter," Zack reassured Tseng. "She knows how to take care of herself."
"And she's got us," Tifa said lifting her chin. "We'll take care of her."
"I'll be fine, Tseng." Now Aerith had wrapped the Turk's wrist in her hands. "The science department is wrecked, right?"
"Yes, well," he said.
He looked down at Aerith. There was a faint frown between Tseng's brows, and a dusting of red on his cheeks. Embarrassment. And Cloud remembered that Tseng had been watching Aerith since she was a small girl. Whatever else he'd done, he'd kept her away from Hojo and Shinra. Protected her. He probably felt a bit like a parent whose kid was moving out.
"You will have fewer protections away from Midgar," Tseng told her. "I cannot afford to send one of my Turks with you, not permanently."
"Not that we'd want one," Tifa said firmly. Genesis hummed his agreement.
Tseng ignored them. "You have a PHS, and you have one of my numbers. Call. If ever you feel it's too dangerous, or if you're overwhelmed."
Aerith smiled gently at him. "I won't need it, but thank you, Tseng."
"Each of us should have Heal materia." Cloud broke into the heavy silence following the exchange. "And any Revives we can find."
It shook them all out of the drama and back to the business of picking materia.
Between him and Genesis, they managed to get everyone loaded up with the basics of heal, boost, and elemental damage materia. Tseng actually raised an eyebrow at the number they signed out, and sure, not everyone needed, or would use, a Fire materia, but better to have all the types than to not have the one you needed in the moment.
At least that's how Cloud justified it.
Then there were the specialty materias: First Strike and speed boosters for the melee fighters. Magnifys and Added Effects for the casters. There were only a few of those, and there were a lot of discussions about whose fighting style was best suited for which materia.
And then there were the weird ones.
"Hey Tifa!" Zack shouted from the near empty drawer he had opened. "I'll trade you my First Strike for your Added Affect."
"Why would you do that?" she asked. "Considering how hard you argued to get it for yourself." She sounded only a little bitter.
"I'll throw in my mastered Deadly Dodge."
Tifa's eyes brightened. "Deal."
"Excuse me? A minute, if you please." Genesis held up his hand. "We spend a great deal of effort deciding on the materia combinations–"
Zack looked at them all, eyes bright with joyful mischief. "I found a fully leveled Transform materia." He held up a pale green orb. "I can turn things into frogs!"
"Really?" Aerith's giggle was as joyful as Zack's expression.
Genesis opened his mouth to argue, but Cloud bumped him. "Give up," he advised. "Zack used get turned into a frog when he was a kid. Happy memories can't be defeated by logic."
"How is that a happy memory?" Genesis hissed, before conceding. "I suppose it is Fair we're talking about."
Cloud just shrugged. It could be a Gongagan thing, or it could be just Zack. Either way, memories were what they were.
Hells, one of Cloud's happiest childhood memories was slipping out of his diaper and running around Mount Nibel half naked for what had seemed like hours but had probably been about twenty minutes. It was only luck that he hadn't run through poison oak.
It took another thirty minutes to finish going through the materia. They didn't find another one as silly as Zack's Transform, but Cloud found an Enemy Skill he decided to take, and a Deathblow (and a Luck Up to go with it). He also took an Enemy Away, because he knew several ranchers who'd pay a lot for a mastered one of those.
Tifa found a Speed Plus that nobody tried to talk her out of. Genesis linked a Magic Counter with an Earth materia and cackled happily.
Zack found an All that he gave to Aerith and an ATB Boost that he gave to Tifa. "You are going to kick so much ass so quickly. It'll be awesome to watch." The way Tifa blushed made Cloud wonder if she wouldn't start crushing on Zack soon. More because he honestly admired her rather than anything physical.
Cloud knew what that felt like. To be told "you're great just the way you are" instead of all the negative shit he'd always heard (often from within his own mind). It was powerful.
At the end of two hours, they had three dozen more materia going out than they'd had coming in, four weapons and a bunch of amour and accessories, and Tseng just nodded as if they hadn't basically robbed the company.
"Maybe they're wrapping up the SOLDIER program," Zack theorized as they waited for the train to Sector 5. "I mean, Rufus always preferred the Turks."
"Well, they hardly need SOLDIERs anymore," Tifa said, leaning around Cloud to join the discussion.
"Need has nothing to do with it," Genesis sneered from where he stood, avoiding the dirt on the benches. "It's power and ego." He'd changed into a SOLDIER First shirt and a caped raincoat that fell to his calves. It was regular army blue, but for how long?
"Big Stick Diplomacy. Shinra's speciality." Zack had his eyes closed; head tilted back to catch the sun.
"Control," Cloud added.
"Yup," Zack agreed. "Wutai may have surrendered, but they never gave up."
"Do we get to keep them when we're done?" Aerith asked.
"We can maybe get away with saying we lost or broke a couple," Genesis said with a wave. "But they'll want most of them back."
"I'm keeping the Transform," Zack declared without opening his eyes or shifting a muscle.
"'The skies did tremble, for they were matched in all things'."
"Is that that silly poem again?" Tifa asked innocently.
Genesis's passionate defense of the ancient tale lasted all the way onto the train, and halfway down the central pillar.
While he was busy lecturing Tifa (and the whole train car) on the importance, significance, and the magnificence of original Loveless, Cloud sat next to Zack. "So Junon."
Zack huffed out a breath. "That's a question, isn't it."
"It's closest. Shinra board's moving there. It's gotta fancy refinery." Cloud kept his voice soft because enhanced hearing didn't need him to shout over the literary debate happening around them.
"All of those are valid points," Zack acknowledged. "But it's Shinra's largest military base, and it'll be filled with Shinra bigwigs and people going to see whatever ceremony Rufus cooked up."
"Good targets." It was a repeat of what they'd discussed this morning at the Honeybee Inn. And just like this morning, Cloud could tell it didn't satisfy his friend. "What?"
Zack blew out his cheeks, gathered his thoughts.
"Why did he – or whatever – kill President Shinra first?" Zack finally asked. "Nearly a full half-day before he – it – whatever," he huffed. "It was twelve hours between that and the destruction of Deepground's reactor. Why?"
"Got lost?"
Zack snorted. "Yeah, maybe."
Aerith shifted forward, leaning over Zack. "Maybe it sensed something down there, and it just took it some time to find its way?" she said. "The robed man I saw didn't move very fast."
"Sure." Cloud shrugged. Zack waggled his head but didn't disagree.
The Loveless discussion had moved onto who had written the best ending, with some people arguing that "best" meant most logical, some saying best was the happiest, and another group arguing that the point was meaningless since all the endings were false. Cloud gladly tuned them out.
"Have the Turks spotted more robed men?" Cloud asked. He knew Zack had pulled Tseng aside when they'd been in the lobby picking out their vehicles.
Zack sighed. "Junon."
Aerith smiled. "Guess we're going to Junon, then."
Another sigh. "Just so's you know, if I see Hojo on the beach, I'm gonna kill him." It was practically Zack's mantra. Everyone else seemed to think it was a joke, but Cloud wasn't certain.
Cloud reminded him that it would be at least two more days for their weapons to be upgraded, and their vehicles to be delivered. "Might be gone before we get there."
Zack hummed neutrally. Cloud couldn't tell which Zack would prefer. It was possible Zack didn't know.
"What're you going to do with Deza while we're gone?" Aerith asked.
Cloud sighed. As much as he loved travelling by chocobo, he'd been outvoted. Red, he totally understood not wanted to ride on the back of a bird. But Genesis?
"You can leave him with Chocobo Sam," Zack suggested.
Cloud snorted a rejection. Sam was fine for short term boarding, but anything longer than a couple nights and the guy would be tempted to sell Deza as abandoned. "Send him to the ranch," he said.
"Maybe Wedge would take him."
That wasn't a bad option – if Barret would let him out of his sight.
"I would've liked to use chocobos," Aerith said wistfully.
"You'll love motorbikes," Zack assured her. "You throw your leg over, and then they rumble beneath you – a gentle, rhythmic thrum–"
Cloud rolled out and up and away from his friends. "I'm gone. Gonna argue nobody actually died in Act IV."
"Genesis will murder you," Zack laughed in warning.
"Don't get arrested." Cloud warned back.
Cloud didn't join the argument about Loveless. Instead, he closed his eyes and listened. It was interesting how many different interpretations there were of it. Every line dissected, every phrase analyzed, until the poetry of it was lost.
Why? The poem was hundreds of years old. A unfinished work of poetic fiction that could've been forgotten like so many sagas probably were. Why had this one survived?
Maybe because its meaning was so obscure that anybody – like the ten people currently arguing on a Midgar train to the slums – could project themselves into it.
Maybe people a hundred years ago, and two hundred years ago had done essentially the same thing?
Cloud felt the warm body sit next to him. He recognized the pine and beer smell that always surrounded Tifa.
"How can you sleep?" she asked.
He opened one eye to look at her. "Not really sleep, just dozing." He shut his eye. "Army thing, maybe. Went lots of places where we knew we wouldn't be able to." Also, weirdly, it helped with the motion sickness he still sometimes got in enclosed vehicles. If he didn't see it moving, then was it?
He could feel her fidget. "Nervous?"
"Well, yah." She laughed. "I mean, think about it."
Sephiroth. The most powerful SOLDIER Shinra ever produced. Taller than Barret, stronger too. Better swordsman than Genesis, and good with materia.
"He got killed by a grunt," Cloud reminded her (and himself). "Not infallible."
This time Tifa's laugh was less strained. "Think we're doing the right thing?"
Hunting after a crazy super warrior who'd burned their hometown and killed their families?
"Think we can do a lot of good with the reward money."
"Yah," Tifa said softly. "Yah." With every repetition her voice was smoother, calmer. "I guess this's goodbye, Midgar."
Not yet, but soon.
Cloud couldn't help but wonder if they'd all make it back.
End note: I don't recommend researching all the different materia available in OG and Remake. Not only are there a massive number of them, I wanted to try out all the nifty combos. I am not nearly as good as the YouTubers I watched. :(
Thanks to Brenda Joyeux for pointing out I'd used Galantine instead of Galatine as the name of Zack's sword. (As an additional side note, according to some sources, Galatine was Sir Gawain's sword - a sister sword to King Arthur's Excalibur.)