a/n - alright boys let's GOOO
the original was an unfinished embarrassing mess and now that i actually know what i'm doing this time, not only am i going to finish this, but this will be better than what i was spewing previously.
this fic is basically my own take on ac. there will be plenty of j-cell mayhem here...
the first few chapters will be a little short (and slower paced), but i promise the later ones will be...meaty...(and things will pick up after chapter 5!)
i will update weekly, usually on monday or tuesday.
ANYWAY, enjoy
...
It sounded awful, but Cloud was tired of helping people.
Every day she had to deal with the same type of nonsense, completing mindless tasks that could and should be done easily by adults, yet every person she had to assist was somehow incapable of doing them themselves. A lot of them, she had discovered a while ago, were also the ones that made her delivery service that much more painful, constantly messing up their addresses or what they asked for, even sometimes messing up their names.
Absolutely baffling how stupid humans are, she often found herself thinking. To think that they're supposed to be advanced lifeforms…
She never caught herself considering everyone else separate from her. She always struggled with that, even when she first returned to Midgar. And despite Tifa's constant reassurances that she was just like everyone else—gods bless her soul—Cloud felt it deep within herself that what she says was simply not true. She was something else. Her black, retractable claws and her fangs made sure of that. There was also the fact that as of recently, her eyes had assumed the likeness of his own, but she didn't like thinking about the implications.
She also didn't like the fact that only he could possibly understand how she felt.
…
One second he was her reflection, and the next second there were shards of mirror glass piercing her knuckles. She didn't even register them until they fell out of their cuts and clattered against the vinyl floor. The pain wasn't burning sharp like it used to be whenever she cut herself as a child. It was dull, more like the constant sore ache spread all over her body, perhaps a tad more painful. Hardly any blood, too. She watched the cuts vanish under new flesh fusing them shut, then grunted and looked away, into the only window in her "bedroom". She hated regeneration, she hated seeing it in action. It only cemented her inhumanity and reminded her of why she chose to live alone in the first place.
Flashes of Tifa's fearful face flickered in her mind before she morphed into Aerith, the fear never disappearing, staring her down as her arms felt heavy and she raised her sword high above her head to kill—
She moved away from the window, toward her closet. That same ratty black outfit she had worn since forever was waiting for her. She struggled to remember when she got it, or if she even got it all—
No, it was ten years ago. She forgot where or why, but that wasn't relevant information anymore. As she slipped into it, chills wormed their way down her spine. She was thinking about him being her reflection, even though she had told herself to actively ignore it, even though thinking about it was likely going to further ruin everything.
It doesn't mean anything, Cloud thought, though a twist in her gut suggested otherwise. She ignored that, too. It's probably just a side effect of the J-cells finally reaching my brain.
She couldn't help but laugh. That might've been worse. And at this rate, if the cells kept on multiplying and dividing, there might come a point in the future where her former friends were obliged to kill her. She would end up the next Calamity, hideously transformed into Jenova's image, rendered a mindless monstrosity hellbent on destruction.
Before she shuffled out for another painful round of deliveries, a strange smile rose up on her face. Somehow, that sounded like a better existence, one where she was incapable of complex thought. Just another monster to kill. The wonderful release of death…
…
"You know, when I first saw you, I thought you were a guy."
She didn't bother to look at him. She set his packages on his doorstep, and was about to turn around when he grabbed her shoulder. She immediately tensed up.
"You…you're not…you're not one of those girls, are you? The ones with short hair and a hatred of men?"
Even though she wore sunglasses, she still shot him a glare and brushed him off. "The hell are you talking about?"
He blinked, his fat stupid face looking more punchable by the minute. He looked to his left and right before saying, "Nevermind."
He smiled, and it took all of her remaining willpower to not just reach in and pull him apart. But she didn't give in and left for Fenrir, started her up, and departed without saying another word. It was better that way, to ignore people instead of humoring their stupidity.
His only redeeming quality was that he wasn't too far away from the highway, and sure enough, Fenrir's wheels were soon rolling alongst smoothened asphalt instead of gravelly, uneven pavement.
As she sped along the highway without a particular thought as to where she was headed, she sensed the Shinra logo, freshened up with a new coat of red paint, leering at her. Thinking about them to any capacity was unproductive at best and enraging at worst, so to keep herself distracted she just gripped Fenrir's handles harder and crushed the gas pedal.
There was nothing that wrenched her heart more than seeing Shinra crawling back to Midgar as the years stretched on. Seeing people flood its reworked headquarters in search of order and stability, seeing how the city skyline slowly degraded into its original brooding greyness, seeing everything they had fought for so ruthlessly be reduced to nothing once more…
Like nothing mattered. Like they never existed at all.
The fighting between each other. The disagreements on what should be done to get rid of the new Shinra. The hopelessness, the uselessness, the utmost despair…
AVALANCHE couldn't keep itself together and broke down. In hindsight, she should've realized that such a hastily grouped mess of wildly different individuals would never last. In fact, she always suspected that her general apathy toward everyone they met after Midgar was mutual. For a select few members it was aversion—Yuffie, Cait Sith, and Cid.
Cid and his filthy mouth were so obnoxious all the time, it was like swearing was his only personality trait. Besides smoking. She wasn't sure which aspect was worse. Sometimes she couldn't take it anymore and told him off unless he learned how to mask that rotten stench of wasted cigarette butts. Other times she just walked off and hid until he was gone from the scene, and even then, there was always that lingering whiff of burnt death…And if it wasn't the smoking it was his swearing. Whenever he went off on a tangent the others would become visibly uncomfortable, and she always wondered if anyone actually listened to him during those moments. Without his swearing he was nothing to note. Not particularly useful, not emotionally intelligent, barely any hobbies or interests besides the dirtiest ones. Not even funny, though he thought he was hilarious.
Cait Sith—or more truthfully, Reeve—was marginally more tolerable. Mostly due to the fact that he chose to hide behind that awful cat-robot so she never had to see his aggravating face. Otherwise, his constant quips and shrieky voice were enough for her to shut him out of her mind. She only laughed whenever someone throttled or kicked his puppet.
Yuffie was someone she refused to be around—she'd rely on a Turk faster than her. At least whatever Turk she'd get stuck with wouldn't constantly loot her, they knew better than that to do it to her. Perhaps that was why Cloud never wanted Yuffie to be a part of the group; she only valued people in how much they had with them.
Though her aversion didn't explain the malaise she felt with everyone, even with Tifa and Aerith. When Sephiroth was still around she blamed it on either too much mako in her or the J-cells, but something deep within her told her that neither were true.
AVALANCHE…she hated AVALANCHE. That was the truth. She hated everything, after all. She hated herself, she hated the people around her, she hated the planet and all else that was on it. She'd destroy the planet if she could.
Fenrir slowed down as she started to laugh. She squeezed the handles so hard a distant part of herself worried they'd burst. That didn't matter, though, did it? Nothing mattered. It wouldn't matter if the planet died. It wouldn't matter if she was the one who killed it. It wouldn't matter if everyone died off with it.
Her laugh morphed into something more twisted, more inhuman. Less like her and more like him. She didn't notice it, of course, just kept cackling like a madwoman and relishing in her increasingly maddening fantasies of destruction.
Such sweet revenge for what the planet had done to her…
Perhaps Sephiroth was right, in a way. She was nothing more than an empty puppet.
But that didn't matter, either.
Nothing would matter when she'd finally summon Meteor—
She halted Fenrir, frowning, scared at herself.
Midgar was quiet, slow, a sleeping giant curled around her. The bleary atmosphere felt more oppressive than it did before. She stepped away from her ride and studied the restored sectors festering below her, then observed her hands like they were someone else's. That itchy, writhing sensation, as if her insides were infested, crawling with countless swarms of bugs, seared her viscera, indicating that her J-cells were agitated again. Her heart pounded in her ears as her rib cage closed in on her lungs.
Her J-cells were typically sent into a frenzy only if Sephiroth or Jenova tried to manipulate her in some shape or form.
Why were they acting up now?