It felt good to be on the Highwind again, with the wind blowing through your hair. She sighed. What was wrong with cloud? Aeris was dead, and everyone knew this. Who was Kai? Why was Cloud all of a sudden screaming for him now that Kai showed up? Did it hurt so much that he couldn't even spend a few minutes trying to get over it.. more or less give her some attention? She looked up the sky, she may not have the highest rank in his heart against a dead girl, but she loved him a hell of a lot more.

"You love him a lot, don't you?" Tifa jumped and looked around to see Kai.

"Oh, Kai.. I didn't see you standing there. How are you?" She dropped in silence. "How's Cloud?"

"He's doing just fine, up and standing as usual. Hopefully he can stay that way." Kai smiled, Tifa was pretty but inside she knew that Aeris and Tifa fought for Cloud indirectly.

"That's good.. what was that you said earlier?" Tifa looked at Kai again.

"Nothing, just hope that you're going ok." Kai smiled and walked up. Hopefully she doesn't think that I'm trying to take him away, maybe this wasn't the right time to be talking to Tifa about those matters anyways.

Tifa looked down. How did she know? Why was Cloud screaming for Aeris in his sleep? She had too many unanswered question and had asked them too many times to not take the invitation from Vincent for a little chat.

He sat in a dark corner on the dark as he watched Kai walk away from Tifa, then as to catch Tifa's attention he cracked his metal knuckles to receive a nod in response. If there was one person who knew everything with being logical about it, it was Vincent, this was someone she needed.. no this was someone she wanted on her side. She smiled.

+++

"What do you mean, she knows Aeris?" Tifa looked up at Vincent. They had been walking around the Highwind for sometime, she wouldn't be surprised if anyone noticed.

"She seems to know her from someone and I'm pretty sure Aeris knew her too." Vincent looked into the clouds. "Closely."

Tifa sighed. Why did these kind of things have to get complicated? Now she made it seem like it was some kind of war she had to win. "Vincent, lets just drop this. Kai, she's young, maybe she remembers things. But I don't want those memories to get in the way of a mission." She walked towards the Chocobo Den to see Yuffie and Cid fixing something towards the bottom of all the machinery, even though she knew Vincent was following her.

"Come on Ms Ninja, we haven't got all day. All ya gotta do is jump down there, tight'n that screw, pull a few levers and you're done." Cid looked at Yuffie.

"Why me?!" She looked wide-eyed at Cid.

"'Cause you're the one more capable of these things. Now jump." Cid pointed down at the machinery.

"You must be out of your fucking mind if you think I'm jumping that far down!" Yuffie shoved her index finger at her temple.

"Fine then. I'm crazy. Just get over the fact and jump." Cid looked at her with a grin on his face.

Yuffie's mouth hung open with disgust. "How dare you yell at a ninja!"

"Look, Barret's yelled at you millions of times and you've never said that. Just jump and maybe I won't call him over to push you down there." Cid looked at her tiredly.

Yuffie sighed, rolled her eyes, took the screwdriver from Cid's hands and jumped with a scream. She looked up to see Cid laughing at him.

"Whew!" Cid wiped the tears from his eyes, he had to admit she was a pain in the ass, but she did bring some humor into their adventures.

+++

"Why the hell are we here?" Elena groaned. She was practically in the middle of nowhere with a group of people she hated and the person she had liked for ages didn't even notice her. To make matters worse, she used to be in denial about liking Vincent and now she didn't even give a damn. "Stupid Kai."

"If you really wanna know, were here because we need the help and because you opened up your big mouth," Reno replied in a long-suffering voice. Last night seemed to still be creeping up on him. Worse as it was, Tifa hadn't even looked at him since and he knew she hated him as it was.

"I don't think she's that bad." Rude looked around at his fellow Turks, God.. we look bad.

"Yeah, I don't either. Tifa is excellent." Reno smiled.

"Not Tifa. I meant Kai, and I was talking to Elena anyways."

"WHAT?! You think Kai is hott?" Reno looked at Rude gaping. "Hmm.. Good point. She is in shape, isn't she?"

"Ya think?" Elena groaned irritably.

"Gosh, what's grabbing your ass?" Reno said examining his nightstick.

"Nothing, but if I find out it's you again, I'll kick yours." Elena snapped back. God, these guys were clueless, and I'm stuck with them for the rest of my life. She noted, pointing that out too.

+++

"Do you think they run as fast as their parents?" Cait, Red and Barret sat down in the Chocobo Nursery to see if there was anything interesting to do.

"I don't think so, they're pretty cute though. Don't you agree?" Red looked at Barret then to Cait.

"Funny and fuzzy little things, aren't they Barret?" Cait looked at him questioningly.

"Cute as hell." Barret smiled. Damn, did he miss Marlene. Hopefully she's ok with Aeris' mother. Aeris. He sighed. They were never really close, but her lose hit the team with a strike of defeat. It was hard to pull on from there earlier meetings with Sephiroth, until they killed him that is. But either way it was hard on the whole team, he could tell, especially on Cloud.

"Have you guys seen Cloud lately?" Barret looked up at Cait and Red who were examining a miniature black one a few feet besides him.

"Nope."

"Afraid not."

Barret shrugged. "So what were you saying about these little things again, Red?"

+++

Why did she let go? She didn't have to leave us, or me to begin with. Cloud looked up to the sky where the sun shown brightly. He remembered a few months back when the sky was occupied by Meteor, when Aeris was still alive. He sighed, what the hell was he going to do?

"Cloud, I'm sorry about Aeris." Kai walked up to Cloud on the deck, leaning on the rails.

"How do you know about her anyways?" Cloud looked down at Kai, she was beautiful, he couldn't deny that. Yet, he felt like she was hiding something.

Kai felt a panic pulse throughout her bloodstream. How did she know about Aeris? Lifestream. Cetra. Switch. She looked down. It was a long story that she wasn't even sure to some point. She sighed, guess I'm going to have to change the story until I get the story myself.

"Well I lived in Gongaga and she used to drop by there, because of Zack." Who the hell was Zack, she thought, even still her lips kept moving. "When Zack left, I stopped seeing her and Zack stopped keeping in touch. I used to help around Zack's parents house to I used to hear about it a lot. They told me that you passed by and well.. I followed you guys through your journeys. You didn't expect to find all that Materia lying around on your path just by coincidence did you?" She smiled despite the fact that she had no idea what was coming out of her mouth. What the heck was that? Kai knew Aeris had something to do with it. She sighed.

"Kai, just play along. I won't hurt you, don't worry, I'm going to protect you." It was Aeris' voice. Kai smiled even bigger. It was good to know that Aeris was watching over her. The last and final Cetra.

"Hmm. I knew Zack, he was my best friend. I saw him die. Seems like I see a lot of people die who mean a lot to me." Cloud looked down, Kai just looked at him.

He was cute, very cute. She laughed at herself inside. He had yellow spiky hair and seemed to be the leader of the group, Avalanche, she heard Barret talking about it earlier. She looked at his back to see that he used a giant sword, she knew he was skilled with it because he was an ex SOLDIER, there was a certain glow in his Mako eyes.

"Don't worry, they're watching over you." Cloud smiled at her comment, she was a lot like Aeris, but she was Tifa in a lot of ways too. It was almost perfect. He laughed at himself inside. What was he thinking? She was probably many years younger than him, and he was probably way out of her league.

Cait stuck his head out onto the deck, "Early dinner anyone?"

"As long as you didn't make it." Kai smiled and Cloud laughed, she had a smart tongue too, even though it didn't hurt anybody (unlike Yuffie's, which convinced him even more than he was out of her league.) They walked inside arm in arm, but Cloud didn't even look behind him to see Tifa's tears and Tifa didn't even look behind her to see Vincent's dull eyes.