The STRONGER part 3
By Yuffie Valentine
Tifa sat on the edge of Nick's bed. He reminded her of Cloud. But then again every boy seemed to do that now a day.
"You lied Cloud." Tifa whispered. "You said you would come back to help me when I needed you." She looked at her bandaged ribs. With a large scream she ripped the bandages off. She buried the pain in her heart. She walked out of Nick's room.
"Tifa? What happen to you, your ribs are bleeding again!" Jesse said. She put down the mop she was using to clean up the bar.
"I'll be back later." Tifa said and put her jacket on and walked out the front door. She looked around the slum. She saw a weapon shop.
The man in the weapon shop looked up from his magazine to see a young bleeding girl in front of him. "OH MY GOD! Do you need medical help miss, I can get the doctor again."
"No, I need a weapon. Why else would I be at a weapon shop?" Tifa said in a flat cold voice.
"Ummm, sure......what kind?" the man asked. He was surprised the girl was still standing with a wound like that.
"Fighting gloves, the best you got." Tifa said. The man brought out some leather gloves with metal plates sewed in them.
"That'll be 100 gil." He said slowly. Tifa tossed a wallet at him and grabbed the gloves. She put them on as she left the store. The man opened the wallet, it was filled with gil. The ID card read "Reno: TURK".
"Oh shit, she got this off a TURK?" The man said. There was at least 500 gil in there.
Tifa walked along the path to the next sector. According to a boy that's where the next closet bar was. She had a feeling that's where she would find the TURKS. As she entered the town, the guards that shot Nick were hanging out just at the corner.
"Hey, ain't that the girl who messed up Reno?" The first guard asked. The rest looked and nodded. The walked over to Tifa and surrounded her.
"Well, well, well. Lil' Miss Kung Fu queen here wants another fight. Want us to shot you just like your little bar buddy?" One of the guards said with a chuckle.
"No, I wanted to give you guys a little something to pay you back for that stunt." Tifa said. Her hand whipped out and grabbed the first guard's neck. "And the name is Tifa."
With a flip of her wrist the guard's neck snapped like a twig. She let go and he fell to the floor.
"Crap! Get the TURKS FROM THE BAR!" The guard yelled to another one. But Tifa caught him in the back with her leg. With one hard kick his back cracked apart. He fell dead on top of the other guard's body.
"None of you are going to make it out of this alive." Tifa yelled. "2 down, three to go!"
"No way bitch!" A guard whipped out gun. Tifa glared back at him.
"BEAT RUSH!" she launched a series of blows on him. He fell neatly on to the pile. The last to rushed at Tifa. She dodged both of their punches and grabbed them by the back of their heads. She then slammed their heads together. They cracked and went limp. They dropped onto the pile.
Reno and Rude came out of the bar with the noise of all the fighting. They looked to see their guards dead in a heap. The girl from Nick's place standing there. Her shirt soaked in her own blood. The rest of her splattered in Shinra blood.
"Rude, I think we better leave and report this while we still can." Reno said. Rude and Reno ran off. Tifa began sprint but fell. She felt sleepy. She lost a lot of blood. She watched in a haze as the TURKS turned into dots on the horizon. Her closed again.
Tifa awoke to the sound of Jesse and Barret talking. She listened but didn't open her eyes.
" She is too much of a risk, Barret. She went out wounded without anybody and could have been captured by the TURKS! She is a nice girl and we can help her till she recovers, but then she has to leave." Jesse said. "She doesn't listen to orders."
"As I recall, when we were saving her, someone shot and killed the sailors that got us in all this trouble in the first place. If anyone were getting kicked off the team, Jesse, it would be you. But we don't kick people off this team, we need all the help we can get." Barret said. "Now go check on Nick."
"Yes, Barret." Jesse said in a low voice. She walked from the room.
"Now Tifa, you can stop pretending to be asleep." Barret said, turning to Tifa in the bed.
Tifa sat up, "How could you tell?"
"I have a baby girl to watch over, I have learned how to tell when they are faking sleep." Barret said. "Now, why did you go out and kill them Shinra boys."
"I'm sorry, I just got mad about Nic........" Tifa started to say before Barret stopped her.
"Don't worry, I was not mad at you cause you killed, I was mad cause I wanted my chance at them first. But I have to say, I think you gave them far more of a better beating then I could have." Barret said with a chuckle.
" I don't know where I got the strength for that." Tifa said, " I amazed myself."
"Yeah, I would say so. Now you get your rest. And don't worry about Nick, he's doing a whole lot better then since you left." Barret said. He walked out of the room, flipping of the light switch on his way out.
"Gee, I don't know what to do. I sort of just got a whole new life. Weird one day I am wondering if that creepy Shinra solider will ever come out of the mansion, the next I'm beating Shinra troops to death." Tifa said.
"Tifa......" a voice cried out in the dark. Tifa took a look around. She saw something in the doorway. As soon as it caught her looking, it dashed down the hall.
"Wait! Hold on!" Tifa got up and ran down it. As she got a good sight of it, it was a small boy. "Who are you?"
The little boy stopped and turned around. Tifa gasped.
"Cloud?" Tifa asked.
"I saved you Tifa, don't hate me, I tried my best. I was your knight." The child Cloud pleaded.
"Cloud....what are you talking about?" Tifa asked. She reached out to touch him, her hand went right through his shoulder. She let out a scream.
"I saved you in the reactor, I was your Knight." Cloud said.
"But....how did you know about the reactor, you weren't even there! You never came back! Unless,....this is all my imagination. You aren't really Cloud at all." Tifa said. She got up and began to turn to go back to bed.
"wait....Tifa." Cloud's image cried out. Tifa turned to take one last look at Cloud, but it was no longer Cloud in Child form, it was what he would look like if he were sixteen.
"Cloud?" Tifa asked the figure.
"Tifa please, I need your help now!" Cloud said. He appeared to be floating and have wires attached to him like he was some sort of lab experiment.
"Cloud? WHERE ARE YOU?" Tifa ran back to the figure.
"Home.............." Cloud's figure disappeared.
"Home? Niblehiem?" Tifa asked herself. "Impossible, I just need more sleep."
Tifa returned to her bed. Her eyes closed and she drifted slowly to sleep. Cloud's face stuck in her mind. Her sleep ended early that morning when she heard yelling from the bar. She removed the night gown she was wearing and but on her clothes.
"What's all the noise out here?" Tifa asked.
She saw Barret running around the bar chasing a child. He was cussing and throwing things at it.
"Get back here you little rat." Barret said and chucked a bottle at it's head. Tifa stepped in the child's path and grabbed it by the collar.
"What's going on here Barret?" Tifa asked. The child tried to wrestle itself free from Tifa's grip. It was about 10 or 11.
"That little boy there stole my materia! I was saving that for money to help feed Marlene." Barret yelled.
"I'm not a little boy, I'm a little girl!" the girl kicked Barret in the face.
"Why you little!" Barret held his nose.
"Hey, give it back or I'll take it back kid!" Tifa said, she put out her free hand to the girl. The girl looked sad. Her little headband fell over her eyes as her fell in shame. A few whimpers came from the girl's mouth. "Oh what's wrong honey? Why are you stealing?"
"I have to. My daddy needs the money, but is too proud to beg, so he has me steal materia. I never get any, I always get caught. I just wish I could do something right for him." The girl burst into tears.
"Oh that's horrible. But we need the money too, so I am still afraid you can't have this materia." Tifa said. "Can I please have it back, I won't hurt you and neither will Barret."
"Promise?" The girl looked up with her big brown eyes.
"Promise." Tifa said with a smile. The girl put her hand to Tifa's and dropped an orb into it. Tifa looked down not to see the green materia, but a small black orb. "What the hell is this?"
"Smoke bomb, GO!" The girl cried out and the orb exploded into a huge cloud of smoke. Tifa started to choke and covered her mouth with both hands. The girl ran out of the bar chuckling over yet another sucker fooled by her lies.
"Damn it!" Barret said. "That kid is going to get it if I ever see her again."
" I have a feeling this only the first time we'll have to deal with her." Tifa said.
Okay, first fic written in a LONG time. Review please! Next part come when it comes!