Aerith was eating breakfast in the cafeteria the next morning when Tifa dropped into the seat across from her, grinning widely. "So, how was your first day? Knowing you, I bet you bonded with your SOLDIER immediately. I want to hear all about it."
Biting her lip, Aerith struggled her hardest to not burst into tears, her appetite suddenly gone. She was only marginally successful, a few leaking out from the corners of her eyes as the memory of yesterday came crashing back to her.
"Wait, what? Aerith?" Tifa's hand shot across the table, resting lightly on her arm. "What's going on, talk to me."
"He's horrible," she sobbed. "I was just trying to get to know him better and he said . . . he said . . ." She was unable to finish as all the pain and frustration from yesterday's encounter flowed out of her.
"What did he say?" Tifa asked, cracking her knuckles ominously, a glint in her eyes.
It was enough to bring a faint smile to Aerith's lips, her sorrow somewhat fading away as a rush of fondness for her friend replaced it. Tifa would always be there for her, no matter what. They'd met three years prior when Aerith had first begun her training to become a Handler and she'd run into the woman at her bar one night after a long, exhausting day of training. The two of them had hit it off immediately and become fast friends by the week's end.
"That I was a useless fool, completely unprepared to help him at all. And that, somehow, everything was my fault on top of living a life full of luxury." She finished with a tremor in her voice, the words from yesterday still fresh as she summarized the essence of what he'd said.
"Well, he certainly sounds like a stuck-up jerk," Tifa snapped, lightly squeezing her arm in comfort. "You said he was supposed to be the rank one SOLDIER? I guess he's let that get to his head, thinks he's better than everyone else, and wants to make others feel inferior to boost his own pathetic ego. I can't believe he'd go off on you like that."
"He did only really blow up after I told him he had no manners," Aerith admitted.
"Clearly he doesn't! Who attacks someone they've only just met?"
Although . . . thinking back on it, he hadn't seemed to care so much about the manners comment as he had about her comment around his training. "Maybe . . . maybe it was actually the assumptions I made about the training he'd had," Aerith said, thinking out loud.
Tifa frowned. "It almost sounds like you're coming up with excuses for him. Why would you try and defend this asshole?"
"I'm not, I'm really not," she hurried to clarify. "It's just . . . I realized I don't know anything at all about what kind of preparation SOLDIERs receive for everything they have to deal with. It's such a massive responsibility I assumed they were well trained."
Leaning back into her seat with a sigh, Tifa looked thoughtful for a moment, tucking a stray piece of hair back behind her ear. "I could try and dig around a bit for you, see what I can find?"
Aerith smiled weakly. "Thanks, Tif, but it's all highly classified, I don't think you'll be able to learn much. It never even came up once in any of my classes, and we work with them directly."
"Yeah, well, you'd be surprised how easy it is to get confidential information out of someone after they've had a few too many drinks."
She giggled. The idea of Tifa extracting top secret information from Shinra executives like some kind of spy seemed to fit a character from her book better than her friend. "Just be careful, okay? I don't want you getting in trouble and it's really not a big deal."
"You're not going to dump this guy though, are you?"
"Tifa! It's not like we're dating or anything! But no, I'm going to give him another chance. Don't want to give up that easy, ya know?"
Shaking her head softly, Tifa smiled back at her. "I knew you'd say that. And I have a feeling, knowing you, you'll manage to get him to come around in the end. If I can help you with that, even a tiny bit, then it's worth me poking around. Safely."
"You're the best friend ever." Aerith already felt so much better, except for one, nagging worry.
"Something's still bugging you, isn't it?"
"It's just . . ." She looked down at her lap. "What if I'm not ready?"
"Hey, you're gonna do great, okay?"
"Yeah, thanks, Tif." Aerith hoped she was right.
Cloud had gotten exactly what he wanted—an entire day uninterrupted by nosy Handlers. Of course, there was a scheduled mission today, which likely meant that wouldn't be the case for much longer. Although . . . maybe he'd managed to upset her enough that she'd requested a transfer. It would be a new record for him if so—he'd never quite managed to drive a Handler away on first contact before. They always seemed to think that they were different, that they were special, that they could be the one to finally tame him.
The line hummed to life in his ear, dashing his hopes.
"Good morning, SOLDIER."
He'd instinctively quieted his breathing. As amusing as it would be to play the same trick on her, it generally never worked more than once. "Handler."
"Whenever you feel like giving me an apology, I'll be ready for it."
Cloud blinked several times. She wanted an apology? While he knew he'd gone too far last time, everything he'd said had been true. "Right, I'll keep my eye out for one and let you know if I spot anything." He winced. That had come out far snarkier than he'd intended. Not that he was going to apologize for that either.
He thought he could hear her teeth grinding before she continued. "We have a mission in thirty minutes, I trust you're prepared?"
Who was she, his mother? Sighing internally, he grunted in affirmation.
"Charming. Please try and use your people words during the mission, it will help me keep you alive."
Refraining from pointing out he didn't need her help for that, Cloud threw on his pack and grabbed his sword from where it lay propped against the wall. He made his way outside the concrete bunker the SOLDIERs lived in, his fellow "companions"—not that he really thought of them like that—gathering in loose clusters around it. There were around thirty of them at this point, the numbers lower compared to what they used to be. Maybe Shinra was starting to have trouble with "recruitment" lately?
In any case, it wasn't his problem as he made his way over to the wall circling the building where a black-haired man was resting against it. From the green light on the device attached to Zack's ear, Cloud knew his friend's Handler was connected as well. Which meant no names, not that he minded—it was a treat to use the new nickname his friend hated.
"Morning, Fairest." The loud groan in response caused Cloud to smile widely.
"Seriously? You're still stuck on that one? Can't we go with anything else?"
Cloud tapped his chin, pretending to think about it seriously. "What about . . . Beautiful? How's that?"
"Better, then I can just call you Ugly."
He couldn't help but laugh at that. "Fair enough."
"You guys are weird," the voice in his ear said, but he continued to ignore her.
Zack groaned at his horrible pun. "I can't believe I haven't heard that one before. I'm outta here before you can come up with anything worse."
"Aww man, you're no fun."
"Oh, and Ugly?"
"Yeah?"
"Keep an eye out. They're getting more blatant."
Cloud's humor fell away completely at his friend's warning. "You too, we still have to talk about the book once I finish it."
Zack's lip quirked before he turned and moved towards the gate, speaking softly to his Handler.
"Oh, a book?" his own Handler asked, sounding somewhat excited. "What are you reading?"
"Nothing you'd be interested in. Now, let's focus on the mission, what are the details?"
Aerith frowned, feeling like the book she was reading would be something he might also enjoy, but if he wasn't willing to share then she wasn't either. Besides, he did have a point that they probably shouldn't be talking about something like that right now.
"You'll be flying out to Cosmo Canyon. Wutai forces were spotted in the area recently and HQ doesn't want to give them time to establish a foothold. I . . . don't have any numbers for you, sorry."
"It doesn't matter. There are as many as there are, it won't change anything."
She felt like it should matter, that they should know exactly what they were getting into, but SOLDIERs were used to being outnumbered and it wasn't like they could just ignore the threat. Even so, she couldn't help but wonder what would happen if one day the enemy's numbers proved to be too much for them to handle.
The flight from where the base was situated in central Corel was fairly short and surprisingly quiet—none of the SOLDIERs seemed very interested in chatting with each other. For her part, Aerith's nerves were taught and her tension grew by the minute. By the time the helicopter touched down, she felt like she was going to burst and she wasn't even there.
Forcing herself to take a deep breath, she turned on the monitor in front of her and quickly entered her credentials, waiting for a moment as the system authenticated her before pulling up the familiar tactical display she was used to from her many hours of training. The screen displayed a rough representation of the terrain with several green dots indicating the positions of all the SOLDIERs. Non-combatants—such as medics or the helicopter pilots—were marked in blue, while any enemy troops would be red.
The satellites were responsible for the majority of the hard work, recognizing friendly units from an identifying chip carried on their person and anyone without as an enemy. Because of this, Aerith didn't have to use the live feed which was usually far too blurry to make out anything useful, and could instead rely on the tactical overlay to give her SOLDIER relevant information.
Or at least, that's how it was supposed to work.
"I can already see movement to the west, moving to engage."
His dot—marked with an identifying star to allow her to help pick him out—began running in the direction he'd indicated, another SOLDIER closely mirroring him but heading more to the south.
"Wait, we haven't received instructions to engage yet, you're charging in alone!"
"What do you want me to do, let Z—Beautiful pull ahead of me in the ranks? Not happening."
Aerith's mouth dropped open. This was about the leaderboard rankings?! Of all the stupid . . . did he not care about his life?
He was rapidly closing in on the nearest red dot, clearly showing he knew exactly where the enemy was, and before she could say anything, a gurgled scream came across the line before the dot vanished from the display.
Swallowing, she pushed down the feeling of nausea that filled her stomach. Someone had just died. Aerith knew that was what war entailed, that she'd signed up to defend her city, but . . . knowing that and then experiencing the reality were two completely separate things. For the first time, she felt like she understood why the turnover rate of Handlers was so high—this was an incredible amount of pressure for someone to deal with. And it had to be worse for the SOLDIERs.
"Why is it so loud?" Aerith had thought she'd been ready for this, but as another explosion came across the line, she jerked backward in her seat, startled at how close it seemed. Why hadn't any of the training replicated this, it should have been easy.
"Because it's a battlefield. Trust me, it's worse for me than it is for you. Now be quiet, I need to focus."
Wanting nothing more than to snap back at him, Aerith instead bit her lip. Fine, if he insisted on continuing to be a jerk then she wouldn't help support him, not until he begged her to. See how he liked that. Except . . . as the battle continued to carry on, the SOLDIER didn't seem to care that she wasn't giving him any information. She'd hoped that after a few minutes he'd give up and ask her where the enemy was or if he was getting surrounded, but that wasn't the case.
Gradually, Aerith began to wonder if he hadn't been correct. What was she doing? He was like a machine, moving from target to target without hesitation or slowing down. Each time a new red blip showed up on the monitor close to him he was already moving towards it, almost before she would have even been able to notify him. It was impressive and honestly a little intimidating.
The part that bothered her the most, though, was how little reaction he seemed to have each time he cut down an enemy soldier. Aerith knew she wasn't going to sleep well tonight, wasn't sure she'd ever be able to get the screams out of her head. But she forced herself to continue listening. This was war. This was reality. This was exactly what he'd told her.
She frowned as two red dots suddenly appeared a short distance behind him. Where had they come from? The satellites had a clear view of the entire battlefield, there shouldn't have been any way for enemies to circle around undetected. A brief moment later, they abruptly vanished. A glitch in the system? She chewed her lower lip nervously, a twisting worry snaking its way into her gut. Something was wrong.
While it was easy to assume it had only been a bug, that seemed unlikely. The ability for Handlers to accurately oversee the battlefield was crucial, and Shinra had spared no expense at making sure the technology was the top of the line. Aerith had never heard of enemy readings being wrong before. And yet, she couldn't deny what she'd just seen. What in Gaia's name was going on?
Leaning closer to the monitor, she flicked a switch, giving her manual control over one of the satellites and allowing her to see a direct visual of the battlefield instead of the usual tactical layout. The view was horribly pixilated, bad enough that she couldn't make out any details of the SOLDIER other than maybe a faint blondish blob, presumably his hair. Adjusting the camera, she scanned behind him, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
There. There was movement behind him, slowly inching closer as they presumably stayed behind cover. That was the only explanation she could come up with that explained why he wasn't reacting. From the heavy breathing coming through the CommLink, it sounded like he was still recovering from the pitched fighting seconds ago. The two unknown figures abruptly exploded into motion, rushing forward.
"Behind you!" Aerith screamed, completely forgetting that she wasn't supposed to be helping him.
A sharp intake of air over the line was all she heard before a shockingly loud metal crash followed, causing her to wince in pain and lower the volume. What followed was a series of horrible grunts and screams mixed with the sounds of blades clashing together before abrupt silence. Turning the audio back up, Aerith could hear labored breathing, but nothing else. The monitor showed no motion at all. Switching back over to the tactical display, she sighed in relief as the green dot came into view. He was still alive.
"Thank you."
Aerith was too shocked by his words to retort with the stinging response she'd been preparing ever since he told her to be quiet. Despite the fact they were communicating remotely, she could tell how much he'd meant what he'd said. "Just doing my job. You okay?"
"I've seen better days." He chuckled. "One of 'em got my side pretty bad, but I'm taking care of it with a Healing Materia right now."
"What happened? I've never heard of anything like that before. One moment they popped up on the display, the next they were gone. Does Wutai have some special trick to get around our detection?" If they did it would be a complete disaster. Aerith wasn't sure how they'd be able to keep fighting the war if they basically went blind all of a sudden.
"Nothing special about them, just two normal soldiers. They died like all the rest."
Shivering, she did her best to ignore how cold he sounded. "Normal soldiers don't disappear like that. They could have killed you."
"Hey, that's why you're here right?"
She couldn't tell if he was being serious or was still messing with her—most likely the latter. "I'm going to talk with my superiors about this, it seems like a major issue."
"Don't." His voice was strangely serious all of a sudden.
Aerith blinked in surprise. "Excuse me? Why not? This is crucial information for the war!"
"Just . . . trust me. It's not worth bringing this up. Let it go, for your sake."
For her sake? What in the name of the Planet did he mean by that? Before she could ask, he groaned in pain, sending a spike of worry through her. "Hang in there, I've already contacted the medics, support should be there soon."
"Great . . ."
Two blue dots were converging on him as she spoke and Aerith was relieved to know he'd be getting proper treatment shortly. A moment later she heard two new voices faintly come across the line.
"Can't believe he's alive, wasn't that—"
"He's still linked you idiot, shut up." The voice got much louder, presumably because they'd moved closer to his microphone. "Handler, please terminate your connection, we'll handle it from here, no need for you to have to listen to him whining about his treatment."
"I don't mind," Aerith said, confused by the instruction. "I'd like to know if he's okay. Is the wound that bad?" It was weird hearing what she said repeated back by the SOLDIER, but since she spoke directly into his ear, they wouldn't be able to hear her end of the conversation otherwise.
"It's nothing for you to worry about, he's going to be fine. I do need you to cut the link so we can start treating him though."
She didn't understand how those two things were related, but pressing the issue didn't seem like it was going to help either. Why wasn't he saying anything? Were they all lying about how badly he'd been injured? "Are you really okay?"
"I'm good. Just cut it."
Frowning, Aerith reached up and pressed the power button on her CommLink, the line immediately going dead. She sat and watched the monitor in silence, wondering what could possibly be going on, especially as the minutes dragged out longer and longer without any sign of motion from the three dots. Eventually, another blue dot appeared, racing towards the group with enough speed that it could only be a helicopter. Had he been injured badly enough he couldn't move?!
The medics appeared to load him onto the helicopter, but then for some reason, they came back out, returning to where he'd been fighting. After a short delay, they each returned to the helicopter, moving much slower this time. Once they'd re-boarded, the helicopter took off, rapidly moving out of sight and leaving Aerith hopelessly confused. She couldn't explain anything that had just happened.
Whatever it had been, it hadn't seemed like the SOLDIER was overly concerned, so maybe she was worried about nothing—even if it had been weird that they asked her to cut the CommLink. Getting to her feet, Aerith stretched out all the kinks she'd gotten from sitting for so long. For now, she'd call it a day, but tomorrow she was going to grill him about what that had been about.
Two chapters in, and I imagine your questions are only continuing to build. At least for the first part of this chapter, the relationship between them continues to be… not great, haha. But! Hopefully, the rays of hope are starting to shine towards the end as Cloud thanks her. They've still got a long way to go, but you can look forward to a very large conversation between them next time.
We also get our first appearance from our supporting cast of Tifa and Zack. I had a lot of fun with their scenes (especially Zack's) and showing how they interact with their friends. There are also a few more hints of things going on under the surface and I'd be really interested to hear what you think about what might be happening.
Thank you for reading!
Next Chapter: Partner