"Hi, is Tifa Lockheart there?" Cloud asked a little surprised to hear such small voice pick up the line.
"Hang on one second," the little girl said and he could hear her put down the phone. Questions of who the little girl on the other line could be ate at his mind, and he prayed that it wasn't her child. It couldn't be her child…could it? No, if it were hers it would be barely two months old. But wait…what if she adopted?
"Aunty Tifa!" the words quickly cleared up his confusion. Marlene, he thought with a sigh of relief. He didn't love Tifa, not in the way either had once thought, but he still feared that she might of settled down, for it would completely ruin his new plans. He waited patiently on the phone tapping his foot eagerly on the sidewalk that was hot enough that you could easily fry an egg under the scalding sun.
"What's taking so long?" Chrissie asked impatiently as she felt a sweat drop roll down her forehead. She had never been in this smothering heat, at least not this long. A name that she was once called was a night crawler, but she thought that was related to vampires or something along those lines. True, she did only show her face at night, but that was only because she was extremely sensitive to the sun's ultraviolet rays and she would easily burn in the heat.
"I don't have ESP with the girl," Cloud answered as he continued to wait for a response on the other line. Finally, he could hear the muffled sounds of two women talking until finally he heard a faint hello on the opposite line.
"Tifa!" he said a little too excitedly into the bottom of the phone, which shot to Tifa in a blast of noise. She screamed at his exclamation and abruptly took the phone away from her ear.
"W-Who is this?" she stuttered once she finally managed to rally up enough courage to speak to the stranger.
"It's your beloved Cloud," he said rather sarcastically, but he really did want her to take him seriously.
"Wha…I…no…it…uh…" the words stumbled from her mouth to his end of the phone. She was left speechless as her bewildered mind tried to filter the information.
"It's okay Tiffers, it's a business matter anyway," he concluded and began to ramble on with his history lesson. He explained how he had hooked up with a band and was now a singer and how he would greatly enjoy seeing her in the audience. He also explained on how he would greatly appreciate seeing Barret, or Cid, and if possible the entire group showing up to his gig.
After his explanation, he soon found that Tifa had regained her speech, and was showing it well. He had to hold the phone away to save his ear from her squawking, which to him made absolutely no sense. Every once and a while he could understand an obscenity, but that was about as much his mind could make out.
"Yeah…Okay…see you there!" he said out of his turn through her rampart and he quickly hung up the phone. "Wasn't expecting that," he commented to his friend that had a dumbfounded look on her face.
"Is she the one that said 'you'll know when you're in love?" she asked while watching Cloud try to regain sensation in his right ear.
"Heh," was the only answer he could say as they made their way back to their sanctuary.
The next few days were stressful, especially when they had to transport all of their instruments from Costa del Sol to the Gold Saucer. The airliner was clumsy and obviously had no respect for their life work for he casually threw everything into the cargo load, and then expected the five gang members to find comfortable seats among their piles of luggage.
The flight was long and agonizing for there was not a single drop of light, with the exception of where screws had fallen from the frame of the airplane. Bags of miscellaneous items were constantly flying from side to side from the rough ride, and the five were being bruised from heavy objects hitting them in the heads and other bodily parts. The most painful was when Cloud was pushed into Chrissie along with the lead guitarist and the other two members.
"Get off of me!" she yelled as she felt a rib crack under the immense weight. "God, I hate men."
Finally, after four hours of perilous and agonizing pain, they finally reached their destination in Corel where they would then drag their belongings up to the Haunted Inn in the Gold Saucer. Even there, havoc seemed to follow them as Cloud recognized a stuffed cat with his giant mog dancing around at the station. He had thought that Reeve would have disposed of the thing by now, but for some reason it still lived to pester him.
Cloud rubbed his temple as he walked through the entrance of the Gold Saucer with his new gang at his heels. Chrissie slung her bag across her shoulder as she looked at the mechanical cat that was attempting to read a child's fortune.
"Bad luck and misfortune will infest your pathetic soul for all eternity," the cat read the little tab of paper that was emitted by the mog. The child was hesitant with the remark, but quickly broke down in tears, even though he didn't truly understand the meaning of his fortune. In a second, he was picked up by his mother but not after a rude word to the outspoken cat.
Cloud crept across the floor behind the cat and into the portal that would take him to the Haunted Inn. With the pain that his body was enduring at the moment, he was definitely not in the mood to deal with a talking cat. Chrissie lingered behind him as her body began to weaken beneath her.
They reached the other end of the portal, and that was when Cloud noticed the sickly look on his friend's face. He motioned the rest to go on but he walked behind with Chrissie at her pathetically slow pace. Observing her hunched over walk he figured that she must have been damaged of some sort, or perhaps a little upset in the stomach.
"You all right?" he questioned while putting a helpful arm around her. He realized that was a mistake when she coupled down over herself on the ground. She wasn't about to scream in pain, so she gritted her teeth tightly together to muffle any sound that would try to escape.
"Oh my God!" Cloud exclaimed and quickly knelt down to her side. He put his hands on her shoulders to show a little comfort, but it seemed to not help the least bit.
"I'm fine," she spoke through her teeth. "Just, let me be."
"You're not fine. Obviously you're hurt. Now, we can do this my way, or we can do this my way," he left no options for her. He stood back up and he gave her a helping hand, which she took greedily. They pulled together that eventually led her back to her feet. Her right arm automatically took place around her chest where her wound was kept.
"It's probably just a bruised rib anyway. Nothing to fear," she spoke confidently. Cloud didn't believe a bruised rib would be able to put a girl to the ground, but he let her believe what she wanted to. He took her small duffle around his shoulder while continuing to carry his own. With everything set, they started their walk again up to the Haunted Inn that rest before them.
"There's only two rooms left," Tobias, the lead guitarist, explained as he watched Cloud and Chrissie walk through the front doors of the Haunted Inn.
"Only two?" Cloud rephrased and looked back down at Chrissie who was trying to suck up any pain and refrain her normal posture. He wanted to smack her for acting so foolishly, but obviously it wouldn't help the situation at the moment.
"Me and the guys are gonna go play around at the 'Wonder Square' for a bit," he grinned at the chance to go enjoy some time for himself. "You guys wanna come?"
"No, I'm probably going to go to bed here shortly," Chrissie explained as she gave them a weak smile. Cloud nodded in agreement and he also strongly urged against going. He stayed behind and he found it rather funny how they all could almost fit in with the ghostly figures around them. If visitors were to show, they probably would have thought as them as attractions rather than customers.
"Let's get you to a bed," Cloud advised as he swung his and her luggage over his shoulders. She gave him an awkward look as she noticed him trying to act manly in front of him. Showing off? She questioned herself but simply rubbed the matter away as she felt a jolt of pain rise from her chest to her brain.
It had taken an hour for them to finally comfort themselves in the room. They had decided to take a room to their selves, mostly for the other three boys would be too much excitement for her at the moment. She lay in bed with bandaging around her upper torso and an ice pack applied to the area of pain. Cloud, on the other hand, sat in a large chair in the corner of the room that overlooked the small place that consisted of one king sized black canopy bed with a bed stand at each side. The covers of the bed were also a silky black and the walls were painted a light gray, which made a strange contrast in the room. The floor was wood for there was no carpet except a small throw rug with intricate designs of a moon and the black silhouettes of trees.
"Cloud," Chrissie was finally the one to break the silence between the two.
"What?" he asked, being knocked out of a daydream.
"Why were you asking me about love," the thoughts from her head finally managed to escape her mouth. She had meant to ask him about the conversation later the day that it was held, but she never was able to obtain him alone, and away from the other boys.
"You're interested all of a sudden? Funny, then you sounded quite ticked at the conversation," Cloud mused and crossed his arms across his chest.
"Have you ever been in love?" the question was quick for she ignored his last remark.
"I thought I was…at once. But, she told me that I would know if I was, so that answered my question."
"So you've just ignored it ever since?" she continued to ask questions, deepening their conversation.
"Haven't you? From the way you were acting the other day, I knew you must have had a heart ache or two in your life," he said in a concerned tone.
"I don't really want to tell the story, but to put it bluntly, my love died with him, as did my beliefs," her voice almost broke down to a whisper, but Cloud could still hear her words.
"Sounds depressing," he made an attempt to sound concerned. Truth was, he was feeling the cold press of loneliness at the moment. His twenty-second birthday was nearing, and he was losing all hope of actually being able to experience the joyful emotions of love.
"I told you love was stupid," she slightly joked, for there was a hint of laughter at the end of her sentence. "Anyway, where are you planning to sleep? There's only one bed."
Cloud was too busy before to realize that there was no other bed for him to rest in. There was the chair, but that would lead to a stiff neck in the morning. He stayed quiet as his mind contemplated the situation.
"I'll just sleep on the floor," he said just as any other polite man would have. In reality, he really disliked sleeping on hard wooden floors, but he obviously didn't hold much of a choice.
"Why do all men say that? Is it wrong for two friends to sleep in the same bed?" she asked, a little offended by his solution.
"When they are of opposite sex, it is." He chuckled and stood up from the chair that had kept him confined for some time. His arms reached out above his head to let the muscles realize that they still worked. "I wonder when the guys are going to be back."
"Who-," she found her sentence to be cut off by the slamming of the door with two exhausted men running in. The two huffed and wheezed at the entrance, Tobias being one of them. He tried to talk, but he was too desperate for the sweet taste of oxygen at the moment.
"What's wrong?" Cloud asked and rushed over to their side.
"They…killed him," Tobias finally managed to mumble through his attempts of breathing.
Author's Note: Uh…I forgot to put an author's note on my other one. Not saying that it mattered considering that there is no real point to these. Yeah, this story is started to take weird and twisted turns…but that's always the best part. Oh, and the talk of love is in the air.
Oh, if you want to see this story in an interesting way with pictures, just go to my website. You can find the URL on my Author's page or it's http://www.geocities.com/ff7tifa_lockheart. Which ever you want to use.
Disclaimers: I don't own any characters of Final Fantasy VII, even though I do enjoy altering them severely. (Heh heh…) But, the deranged characters to belong to me so you must ask permission to use them.