Scene 10

. Flowers Blooming in the Church .

(The screen is black. Cloud, obviously, has fallen unconscious. Yet, somehow, he is still able to talk to himself in his head. Don't ask me, for again, I do not know.)

Voice: You all right?

Cloud: Sure, I only friggin' fell like 500 thousand feet and broke every single bone in my body-

Voice: Well whatever, your HP is maxed out anyway. And you're also somehow talking.

Cloud: I swear the laws of physics in this world are just fucked up-

Voice: Cloud... Cloud... can you hear me...?

Cloud: I just answered your friggin' question!

Voice: Shut up, it's part of the script. So can you hear me or not?

Cloud: Yeah, yeah, whatever.

Voice: Remember... back then? You could get by with just skinned knees...

Cloud: What the hell do you mean by 'back then'?

Voice: You know.

Cloud: Hmm... skinned knees... The only time my knees ever got skinned was when I went sledding with Billy in the Nibelheim mountains and there was this huge avalanche and we both fell 500 thousand feet down the mountain and smashed into some pretty huge rocks on the way down and he died a violent, bloody, needless death and I only had skinned-

Cloud: Oooh.

Voice: Yeah.

Cloud: Now I get it.

Voice: Good work, Einstein.

Cloud: So does this mean I'm some kind of superhero or something?

Voice: Well you ARE the main character.

Cloud: So I'm like immortal and stuff?

Voice: We're getting way off topic here-

Cloud: Come on!! I just wanna know if I'm immortal or not so I can just go skipping off somewhere to have fun for the rest of eternity instead of finishing this game in fear of my life...

Voice: Shit.

Cloud: I am, aren't I?

Voice: Uh... no...?

Cloud: Well damn. There go all my plans.

Voice: Anyway, what about now? Can you get up?

Cloud: You just TOLD me that my HP's are maxed out!

Voice: Don't worry about me. Just worry about yourself now.

Cloud: But I'm fine! You just SAID so-

Voice: Trust me, there's reason to worry.

(Cloud fidgets.)

Female Voice: Oh! It moved!

Voice: See?

Cloud: Sounds familiar...

Female Voice: Hello? Hello?

Cloud: What the-

(Cloud opens his eyes.)

(The scene fades in to show Cloud lying in the middle of a flower patch in the floor of an old church. The Flower Girl from Midgar kneels next to him. She stands. Cloud manages to sit up.)

Church in the Sector 5 Slums

Aeris: Hello, hello!

(Cloud shrieks!)

Cloud: NO! IT'S YOU! NO! LET ME BACK INTO THAT DARK UNCONSCIOUS THINGY!!

(Cloud scrabbles at the floor, tearing up some flowers.)

Cloud: TAKE ME BACK!!! TAKE ME BACK!!! DON'T LEAVE ME HERE-

Aeris: Uh... you okay?

(Cloud sits up and grumbles.)

Cloud: Damn you, bastard Voice, damn you!

(Cloud smashes a few more flowers into the ground.)

Aeris: This is a church in the Sector 5 Slums.

(Cloud looks up nervously.)

Cloud: That's... uh... great.

Aeris: You suddenly fell on top of me. You really gave me quite a scare.

Cloud: How come you're not dead if I landed on you?

(Aeris ignores Cloud.)

Aeris: The roof and flower bed must have broken your fall.

Cloud: Roofs by definition don't break falls, they're the things you fall THROUGH and then your back BREAKS and then you DIE-

Aeris: You're lucky.

Cloud: I am?!

(Cloud beams.)

Cloud: What do I win?

Aeris: You're rather strange, aren't you?

(Cloud stands up and brushes himself off.)

Cloud: Flower bed... is this yours?

(Cloud glances down at the torn, smashed, and generally destroyed flower bed.)

Aeris: That's all right. The flowers here are quite resilient because this is a sacred place. 'Course... it also be because all the neighborhood dogs like to take shits here and it fertilizes them, but I choose to believe in the nicer theory, because I'm sure someday I'll run into some huge life threatening problem and all the practice of looking on the bright side will do me good. What about you?

(Cloud shrieks and frantically runs his hands through his hair.)

Cloud: Dog shit! Dog shit!

Aeris: Anyway, I love this place. It helps me to keep my spirits up about my mother's terminal cancer. And my dad's drug addiction. And my cousin's gambling problem. And the weird dead people I keep seeing everywhere. And-

(Aeris randomly wanders off and begins to tend her flowers.)

(Cloud stands around for a while, until he realizes he's supposed to go talk to her again.)

Cloud: Uh... So... We meet again...

Aeris: Again?

Cloud: Yeah, you were that weird freaky girl in front of the station selling flowers.

Aeris: Station... oh! That was my twin sister. You must excuse her, she's rather strange in the head...

(Aeris smiles happily at Cloud.)

Aeris: But that's okay, our family loves her anyway. It happened one day when there was a thunderstorm outside, and I went wandering into it for some random reason and lightning was hitting all around, and I slipped and fell into the river which happened to run next to my house and she happened to be there and she dove in to save me and as soon as she got me out lightning hit the water and fried her brain.

(Aeris smiles happily again.)

Aeris: After that we found out she's my long lost twin sister! And we both wear the exact same clothes, and we have the same voice and same love for flowers and are both members of the Not-So-Secret Society of Helpless Women That Need Rescuing From A Strong, Stoic Male! Isn't it amazing and yet somehow totally DONE before? And we've lived happily together ever since.

Cloud: Uh... okay.

(Aeris goes back to tending her flowers.)

(Cloud stands watching her for a while, until he realizes he's supposed to go talk to her AGAIN.)

Cloud: Hey-

(Aeris's head snaps up.)

Aeris: Say, do you have any materia?!

Cloud: AHHHH- Um. Yeah, some. You can, um, find materia anywhere these days. Yeah.

Aeris: But mine's special. It's good for absolutely nothing. Except you know, there's that really slight off-chance that it might be the thing that saves the world. You know. Maybe. Hint. Hint.

Cloud: You probably just too dumb to figure out to use it.

Aeris: No, I know how, it just doesn't do anything. I feel safe just having it, it was my great-grandmother's who took care of me when my parents lost me in the airport while they went on their summer vacation for three months, and I had to live for a week on breadcrumbs and weird paths in the forest and I fell into this random vat of hair bleach that made me totally blonde, so I covered it up with a red riding hood and then this wolf chased after me so I ran away into the forest and then found a cottage with porridge and three bears and-

Aeris: What was I talking about again?

Cloud: I have no idea.

(Aeris looks skyward.)

Aeris: Say, I feel like talking! Do you feel up to it?

Cloud: Can I leave now?

Aeris: ...oh, I see.

Aeris: Ahh, I wonder whose fault that is. It takes a lot to grow them, you know. Poor flowers.

Cloud: What the hell are you talking about?!

(Aeris wanders off to her flowers again.)

Cloud: ARGH!

Aeris: Just a little longer.

(Aeris babbles to the flowers.)

Aeris: Oh! Now that you mention it... we don't know each other's names, do we?

Cloud: When did I mention anything?!

Aeris: My name is Aeris! But my friends call me Klishay. You can too!

Cloud: Uh... yeah. Okay.

Aeris: It's very nice to meet you! I'm very glad you're here! Even though you had to fall 500 thousand feet and through a wooden roof to get here... uh, well, one must make sacrifices to enjoy my goddess-like presence, you know.

Cloud: Goddess-like presence?

Aeris: So you haven't told me your name yet! Or is this supposed to be one of those romances where you're all dark and mysterious and stoic and evil people are supposed to kidnap me and you have a change of heart and come rescue me and we dance off happily into the sunset?

(Aeris gazes at Cloud intently.)

Cloud: Uh... uh... Cloud.

Aeris: Cloud?

Cloud: ...What?

Aeris: Cloud.

Cloud: What?

Aeris: Cloud! Cloud what?

Cloud: What???

Aeris: ...Ohhhhh. Okay. So, um, Cloud. What is it you do for a living?

Cloud: Well first I was a bum for a while... and then I killed some people and took their stuff... and then I met one of my old friends and now I'm part of this ghetto and underpaid terrorist group that's been responsible for millions of deaths daily... but I think I might quit soon and go to this cabbage farm that my uncle has, you see-

(Aeris snickers.)

Cloud: What's so funny?!

Aeris: No, it's just your ID card says--

Cloud: I HATE YOU, JESSIE!!

(A mysterious figure appears in the church doorway.)

Aeris: Sorry, I just...

Cloud: I don't get it! Do I friggin' LOOK like a male stripper from Wall Market with crossdressing problems?!

Aeris: Er...

Reno: Uhh...

Cloud: SHUT UP! And I DO NOT MODEL WOMEN'S UNDERGARMENTS!

Aeris: ...

Reno: ...

Cloud: ...

Reno: Man... I hate my job.

. End Scene 10 .