Cloud walked dead and delirious through the Ancient Ruins, dragging his boots in the dirt like he dragged his dead soul on an imaginary rope behind him.

Red saw Cloud sad, and knew he could make it all better. Dogs always make everything better!

But as Red rushed up, Cloud was seized by a flash of rage. He KICKED Red square in the ribs with a steel toe. The dog let out a phenomenal yelp and toppled away.

"I never wanted you! I never wanted any of this!"

Red shook himself and stood up shocked and bewildered. His master whom he loved more than himself now picked up rocks and hurled them at him.

"GO AWAY! GO ON! GO!"

Cloud pitched stones with all his might, nailing Red square in the face. He cried out one last time, then hung his head, and turned away. He tucked his tail low as he slunk into the forest, crying the way only dogs cry.

Cloud snarled, clenching and unclenching his fists. But then something snapped in him, a huge pang in his heart like a lightning bolt to his senses, a steel toed kick to the groin. His expression switched to shock, and he reached his hands out delicately.

"Red?" he whimpered like Red had whimpered, childlike and infantile. The shakes came on in waves.

"Oh god, Red, I'm sorry. Red! I'm sorry!"

Cloud ran into the woods after Red, dashing with all the speed his legs could muster until they made him realize something terrible. Dash Materia. Red was nowhere to be found.

Cloud toppled to the ground in agonized despair. Tears and snot dribbled down his chin into the dirt to grind mud against his face. He punched himself in the ribs over and over again, crumpled into a ball, crying like a little bitch.

Hey.

He shot up.

The Voice. The voice he'd always heard in his head. A young man's voice.

I can still beat you at Tekken.

"Hullo?"

Cloud stumbled to his feet fumbling blindly into the woods. He looked around, doubled back, turned about in a circle.

"Please don't stop talking to me. Not now. Please don't leave me alone now."

He followed his feelings into the brush where no path existed and thorns cut his arms, until he came to a clearing and a monumental structure that loomed like old machinery.

The Reactor. This was it.

He crumpled under the weight of his grief, but his legs moved on their own. He trudged possessed up the steps in a zombified haze to shove the door aside and find…

An empty chamber. Jenova was gone.

The evidence of a struggle was everywhere like the last Reactor. Bits of slashed debris littered the floor. Cloud stumbled up to the empty pulpit and fell upon it, clasping the snapped bits of wire and fiber-optic cable that had held Jenova's Heart. They didn't even have to come there, and she might still be alive!

Desperation building up inside him to overwhelm his being, he gazed with dead eyes down into the Mako Chamber far below, and made a decision. He moved out onto the catwalk and climbed over the railing, with nothing but empty space between him and the long fall into oblivion. His grip on the bar eased, a gentle finality that everything in his body consented to in gilded submission. With all he had left in life, he spoke down into the fulminating darkness to make a last arrangement.

"Angeal…It's Cloud. But I guess it doesn't matter. You never knew me. And I only thought I knew you. I've talked to you whenever I felt lost in life, but now I don't know who to talk to, and I've never felt so sad. I'm a broken man. I've lost everything. I've hurt people beyond measure and there's no way to atone for it. No way…except one. It's fitting, and I deserve this, as the weakest, most despicable form of life that exists. I'm a monster."

"If you think you're the monster," a strong, gladiatorial voice spoke behind him, "well, you're not as smart as I thought."

Cloud whipped around to see a light shine from nowhere, growing brighter by the second. It came from a rift in reality, a glowing gateway into this world from some ethereal plane, and from that light emerged a monumental man with two flowing white wings emanating from his back. His oil black hair was slicked back over his head, and his ocean eyes gleaned with a strength born of compassion. On top of it all, he dawned garb Cloud would recognize half-dead, a SOLDIER First Class uniform.

Cloud gasped, climbing back over the railing onto the walkway. He trembled as he moved around the platform, taking delicate steps to stand before the revenant being. His mouth was dry, and his mind was white fog, but after a few awe-filled moments, he mustered every bit of courage he had and spoke to the angel with all he was in life. He knew who this was, and was well aware he probably also knew who Cloud wasn't.

"Hello, Sir. I am nobody. I've done nothing to earn your respect. I've lived my life falsely claiming to be your student for a long time, and I've called you here to own up to it. I'm an imposter and a fake. I took the identity of a man who was everything I aspired to be, and turned him into a common thug. I'm no hero. I can't be a hero to any of my friends. For this, I think I'm better off dead. I'm sorry."

But the man paid him no heed. He strolled right up to Cloud and clapped his shoulder with a big cupped paw, as if inspecting.

"Look at you. Couple years with me and you'd have been the finest SOLDIER I'd ever trained."

"I'm no SOLDIER. I'm just a loser. And a murderer."

"Hahah!" The big man spun around.

"What's so funny?"

"Someone got dramatic with their bullshit."

"What do you mean?"

"It's hilarious! You'll laugh too. See for yourself."

And he showed him a vision from the past, only this time, it was the real thing. Cloud knew because his head felt like it had been shot a couple hundred times.

The world slowed to a crawl as armor piercing rounds ripped through Zack Fair's chest, leaving him floating in that space between breaths where air leaves the body. He hit the ground like a drum underwater, too slow to be real.

Amid all the chaos, the crunch of infantry boots still echoed in doomed steps drawing nearer. Gauging, choking back bits of lung, Zack felt a heavy sole fall on his chest, pinning him down. He looked up to see his friend, an infantry guard with piercing blue eyes and blonde spikes that shot up to the sky, standing over him with a rifle aimed in his face. Struggling, trying to talk, fighting to say just one thing to his brother in arms, Zack saw him in monochrome as the trigger squeezed.

And then...

Cloud skidded over top of Zack and shot that copycat infantry-kid right in the face, along with everything left of his former life in the service.

SIKE!

Cloud was no infantry boy, no lackey Shinra guard after all he and Zack had been through together. He slung his rifle over-shoulder, grabbed Zack's sword-harness, and hoisted him up with all his strength. Zack had carried Cloud through mountains and deserts on the ass end of Hell. Cloud was going to carry him now.

He picked him up, dragging him, stumbling with him as bullets pelted the ground all around them. They ran for all that was dear in life up the steps of Reactor One, toppling down inside. Cloud shot the scanner out which slid the blast doors shut.

"We'll be safe now, Zack!"

Cloud knelt down excited next to his friend, but his smile faded fast.

"Zack?"

Cloud spoke softer now as Zack's breaths came shallow and labored. A realization piqued that all of his healing potions and medkits would be useless now. With what little breath he had, Zack whispered up at Cloud.

"Both of us…" A trembling hand reached up, grabbing the back of Cloud's head. "You're going to live…for both of us."

And his other hand held out the Buster Sword to him.

Cloud gaped in awe at the sword in the struggling hand of his friend. He didn't move for it at first, but hurried to take it as Zack's hand fell, blurry-eyed and bewildered. It wasn't heavy for him, as if the sword had chosen him.

"One thing in return," Zack asked as his eyes gazed listless up at the sky. "My wife…tell her hi for me."

As blasts were hurtled at the reactor doors and metal cutting saws went to work on the hinges, Zack shoved Cloud off with orders to cut the pipeline on North Hill, starting a chain-reaction that would destroy the reactor. But that would mean…

"Go!" he pushed Cloud on, who wouldn't leave his side. "GO!" Zack screamed at him, and Cloud ran out the back passage blinking away tears. Zack wouldn't allow him to see him fall.

A stolen Ducati took him to the foot of North Hill, where he clamored up the slope on all fours. When he reached the pipelines, Zack's Buster Sword flew to Cloud's hand like it had always belonged there, and with a monumental single-slash, he sliced through all ten lines.

The blast traveled down the Mako pipes, blowing the Reactor and three whole quarters of the entire Shinra Army sky high. The explosion sent Cloud hurtling through the air, toppling down the slope while being pommeled by boulders and scrap metal. His head hit everything a head could possibly hit on its way down a mountain. The moment when Cloud passed out was the last moment he would remember his own name until a raven-haired girl would tell it to him some time later. And that was that.

Cloud stood frozen, tears streaming down his face with a blank look of awe in his eyes.

"I…I didn't kill him?"

Angeal shook his head.

"You saved his life."

Cloud didn't breathe for who knew how long, standing stunned in front of the man who'd set in motion events that would define Cloud's entire life. Blank blots of ink in his mind became vividly clear, entire blocks of memory flowing back like water, and he couldn't help but let out a chuckle of glee.

"Told you you'd laugh," joked Angeal.

And Cloud chuckled more at that, then looked himself up and down. What a mess he was! He dried his eyes on the back of his hand and took some whirling deep breaths.

"Sephiroth is still at large though, picking us off one by one. I don't know what happened to him in Nibelheim to make him so demonic, but he's not the great man I remember."

"That's not Sephiroth. Sephiroth is dead," said Angeal.

"Then who is it?"

"Think of him as our errant little brother."

Angeal winced at the thought, and showed him another incomplete fragment from Cloud's memory.

SOLDIER First Class Sephiroth, the shining hero of Shinra, now stood sweating and shaking in the Nibelheim reactor with blood and body bits all over his sword. The cryopods they'd found in rank and file had been lain waste in his mental breakdown, and now he trembled up at someone who wasn't there.

"Am I a demon?"

And an unfamiliar voice answered, one Cloud had never been able to place.

"YES…"

From the pulpit of the door to Jenova stood a man like an aged pop-idol, draped in a flowing Tiamat-red long coat and dawning the black uniform of a SOLDIER First Class. His rust hair was shorn with a razor, as was the venom in his eyes, and he spoke evil spells with his voice that foretold the fall of angels.

"You…are the greatest demon…"

A theatric flash of a gloved hand panned the vision forward, to an underground bunker where Sephiroth stood in front of someone, guarding against the predatory lash of this red cloaked demon. It was Zack.

Sephiroth drew his daikatana, rushing the red SOLDIER in a flourishing sweep. Zack cast every low-level healing spell he knew, until the enemy summoned a Barrier that encased the two foes in an impassable dome. Zack could do nothing for Sephiroth, who fought with all his legendary skill to the bitter end against this fulminating Red Mage.

A Paralyze effect stunned Sephiroth in place, frozen and helpless, and Zack screamed. The Red Mage flowed to him in a dashing sweep, brushed a manicured hand down the side of his smooth face, and brought his lips to his. He kissed him in deep and ravenous waves, letting a dark light glean from every pore to encase them both in a luminescent haze. The light flowed into Sephiroth's body, absorbing into his being, and the Red Mage disintegrated to black feathers on the floor.

The Barrier fell and Zack rushed to Sephiroth, shaking him, but the man didn't wake. Zack pleaded with all he was in life, until a soft, mercurial laugh licked the lips of the beautiful silver-haired man. Sephiroth's eyes shot open to orbs of pure black, and a powerful Thundaga crash sent Zack hurtling through the dungeon roof to topple out onto the ground above.

The man in the black cloak strode from the mansion, a portent of adamantine darkness trailed by plumes of Chaos. The billowing tentacles of death descended upon the sleepy town of Nibelheim, carrying with it an agent of malevolent horror. A silver daikatana swept like a conductor's wand to a sonnet of wailing cries and desperate final screams.

All that would remain is an abysmal terror with flowing silver hair, standing atop a mountain of bodies and ringed in a halo of flames.

"His name is Genesis. He killed Sephiroth, took his body, and has been existing in a state of undeath ever since. He is the final member of the Silver Elite, including Sephiroth and myself. We three were all cloned from Jenova in an attempt to bring her back. But Sephiroth was the only specimen that was stable. As Genesis and I began to degrade, Jenova sought to possess our bodies to remanifest in this world. Part of the reason why I'm not here anymore, to keep her sealed, and not allow her to cross over into this world. It can't be allowed to happen, Cloud. No matter what. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Then you know what you have to do. See it through."

At that, Cloud pulled the dogtags off over his head. He'd worn them for as long as he could remember, and now he was ready to do the right thing.

"I guess I should give you these back. They don't belong to me."

But Angeal waved them off.

"How do you think you ended up wearing them?"

Cloud stopped. Another realization took form in his mind, and he gasped gazing into the eyes of a man who already knew.

"You were given SOLDIER tags for a reason. Better live up to it."

A realization so profound gripped Cloud's soul, and he gasped before the enigmatic angel. With that, Angeal threw him a quick two-finger salute, turning to leave back through a lighted gateway to the other side.

"And take care of that sword better than you take care of your women!" he called back before stepping through and disappearing.

Cloud blinked and his stomach ached. Don't expect SOLDIER First Class Angeal to leave without a ball-tap.

He got his bearings and left the abandoned reactor in his past.

He found Tifa back at the Inn, but this time as a changed man.

She paused when she saw him, and he faced her for a long time, letting it soak in. Could it be true, at last? She stared at him with trembling eyes wanting to believe but afraid, and as the tears fell, Cloud's affirming nod made it final. He spoke the words she'd been waiting to hear for what seemed like forever and a day.

"Let's go home."

[Received Dogtags]