Chapter 2

The fight, Cloud reflected, was not going well. He wasn't exactly sure how it had happened, but somehow, he had become engaged in a one-on-one battle opposite Benny the Loser-Shinra, who, it seemed, had odd, gravity-defying powers. Benny's fighting skills were legendary...and not for their impressiveness, but more for their comedic value than anything else.

"You guys bored? You should watch Benny fight! It's HIGH-larious!" the other Shinra would often say. In fact, they were saying it right now, calling to various civilians, who were running in terror from the explosion of the reactor. As the crowds gathered, Benny's burning resentment finally became too much to keep suppressed any longer, and he leapt high into the air, striking a dramatic, menacing pose, and freezing there. This was ample opportunity for Cloud to strike him several times with his sword, and then to deliver a mighty power-flick right between the fabled Loser-Shinra's eyes.

"Poor Benny," Aeris sighed, looking on from afar.

"HAHAHAHAHA!" said one of the other Shinra, who we shall call Li'l Timmy, from much closer. The name was ironic, as Li'l Timmy stood seven feet and three inches high, and weighed in at 500 pounds of solid muscle. "Aright, guys, show's over. Let's get 'im!"

Taking him at his word, the other six Shinra soldiers leapt at Benny, pummelling him ruthlessly. Li'l Timmy shook his head in dismay at the stupidity of his friends. Not only was he incredibly muscular, he was also a brilliant tactician, and his intuition within the field of tactics told him that beating up one of their own men, while their real enemy was left to get away, would not help much in the long run, no matter how much Benny may have deserved it, nor how much fun it was.

"You guys are all the Loser-Shinra," he sighed. "Get the spiky guy!" When this yielded no result, aside from one of the other Shinra trying to style Benny's hair into spikes, he rolled his eyes and drew his own weapon. "Fine, fine, I'll do it myself."

He charged forward, howling a battle cry.

Five seconds later, 500 pounds of Shinra soldier flew over the heads of the on-looking crowd, landing squarely on his cleft chin.

"Nope, definitely the wrong way to get promoted," he reflected.

"Alright," Cloud announced with a smirk, "I've had enough of this. See yuh!"

With that, he leapt from the bridge onto a coincidentally passing train. And it's a good thing, too, for if our young hero had opted to jump a second sooner, he would have been a pancake. Mmmm...pancake... Okay, must not write when hungry. Bezo would like everyone to know that he had waffles the other day, by the way. We like waffles. Waffles! Yaay!

Anyway, back to Cloud and his adventures on the train.

"Wow!" Cloud reflected happily. "I'm on a train!" Then, after a moment of thought, he glared up at the sky. "Hey! I would not say that! And just so you know, there are no adventures on this train! It's gotta be the most boring train I've ever seen!"

"Who the hell you talkin' to, boy? I swear, you crackin' up...boy!"

"You said 'boy' twice," Wedge noted, giggling.

"Shu'up, fool! Awright; here's how the alarms work..."

[One comprehensive and inclusive account of how the alarms work later...]

"Uh...I don't get it," Biggs announced sheepishly.

[One MORE comprehensive and inclusive account of how the alarms work later...]

"Oh! Okay; that part was unclear the first time," Biggs said with a nod.

"I DIDN'T CHANGE A DAMN WORD!!!" Barret howled.

"Eh, I just wasn't listening."

"Yeah, me neither," Jessie agreed.

"DAMMIT!!! I'm not explaining it again!"

At this point, the alarms decided that these people were no longer entertaining, and went off.

"Finally," Barret sighed.

"Okay; now WHAT do we do with the weasel again?" Biggs asked.

"Ain't no damn weasel! Jus' move!"

And so they moved with no damn weasel, but with great speed, almost as if there was an invisible timer beckoning them. Which, of course, there wasn't. And it certainly was neither pink nor purple. Heh-heh-heh...ugh.

At any rate, off they ran. And after a greatly confusing and severely painful series of events, they finally made it to another train-station.

"Guys!" Tifa called, waving. "Come over here! I brought Christmas cookies!"

"Uh...what's a 'Christmas?'" Cloud asked, scratching his head.

"I...don't know," Tifa admitted. "But I have cookies! And look! They're shaped like little trees!"

"Uh...that's great, Teef," Barret sighed. "By th'way, this here's Cloud...again."

"Oh! Well, it's nice to meet you, Cloud...again," Tifa said with a smile.

Cloud blinked.

"Uh...but...you know me. We live in the same town, remember?"

"Oh...of course," Tifa said, then stopped. "Wait a minute. Did you go into my room?"

"Why would I do that?" Cloud wondered. "To steal your gigantic bras?"

"Not unless you were goin' parachuting!" Wedge grinned.

Tifa glared at him, and a scene of gratuitous violence followed.

"Oh, I forgot!" Wedge groaned from where he lay mangled and bloodied on the ground. "She can punch!"

"And kick," Tifa added, smirking.

"And kick," Wedge agreed before promptly losing consciousness.

"Hey, guys," said Cloud. "I'm bored. Let's blow up another reactor!"

"Yaay!" said everyone.



It was at this point that some plot decided to happen, which we shall summarize briefly, as we want to get out of Midgar as soon as possible. If we skipped or missed anything, it was because we have deemed it unimportant. Or maybe it was just because Yezo was whining that she hated Midgar, and Bezo got tired of listening to it.



"BOOM!" said the reactor as they blew it up.

"Damn!" howled Barret. "This was a damn trap!"

"Hahaha!" said President Shinra. "I have you now! Now it's time for you to face the wrath of my evil robot! Oh, evil robot!" he sang.

One dead evil robot later, Cloud found himself separated from the group, as the robot had most inconsiderately blown up the part of the bridge that he was standing on.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" Cloud said as he plummeted to the ground below.

"He's done for. Let's get outta here!" everyone else said.

"The marines never leave a man behind!" Barret reminded everyone else, scowling fiercely about the circle.

"Uh...but we're Avalanche," Wedge reminded him.

"Oh, right," Barret agreed with a frown. "Let's git outta here!"



"Hey, Flower-Girl!" Cloud called, sauntering into the church through a newly made gaping hole in the ceiling. "Let's go fight the Shinra together!"

"Um...who are you?" the lovely young pink-clad woman inquired, head tilted to the side adorably.

"I'm Cloud. I have a tragic past."

"I'm Aeris. NOT Aerith, Aeris."

"Great! Let's go!"

"O-kay!" Aeris agreed happily.

"You're not going anywhere!" a ridiculously over-emphasized 'Hey, guys, I'm evil!' voice proclaimed from the door. "Give us the Ancient!"

"What's an Ancient?" Cloud called back.

"I'm an Ancient!" Aeris announced.

"Oh, cool," the fair-haired young man commented before turning to glare at Reno. "No! I must protect her, 'cause I squished her flowers and...I feel kinda bad."

"I have a rod!" Aeris announced proudly.

"Uh...that's great," Reno assured her.

"Check out my sword!" Cloud chirped happily. "It's so big!"

"That's...great," Aeris assured him. "Now, go push some barrels on these guys, or I'll have to fight them with my rod, and extra strength from hauling around that bag of money or not, that would be bad!"

"Oh, no!" Benny the Loser-Shinra exclaimed, bolting into the church. "I'll save you, pretty lady!"

With that, Benny once again proved himself to be Benny, tripping immediately over his shoe-laces - quite some feat, considering he was wearing loafers - and face-planted directly into the flower bed.

"You jerk!" Aeris shrieked. "You broke my flowers! I kill you!"

"Ping!" said Aeris' rod as it collided with Benny's skull.

"Wow...she was nice enough to not hit me very hard," Benny sighed, eyes wide and starry.

"No," Aeris pouted, kneeling beside him as her conscience commanded that she help him up. "I hit you as hard as I could! I just can't hit any harder than this!"

"Me, neither," Benny said.

She took his hand to pull him from the ground. A spark of electricity passed between them.

"Ramuh!" a voice shouted. "Knock it off!"

"What?!" Ramuh returned, aggrieved. "I'm bored!"

Aeris' eyes met Benny's as both decided to ignore this little exchange between Summon Monster and Narrator. Aeris blushed. Benny got a nosebleed. Reno yelled at him to quit bleeding on his uniform. Cloud scratched his head in confusion.

It must have been love.

"Uh...kay," Cloud spoke up. "I'm really glad you two are having this nice moment, but Aeris, can you come with me so we can get away from those two, who are trying to GET you?"

"He can get me any time he wants," Aeris sighed, gazing dreamily over her shoulder as Cloud dragged her from the church.



"Great job, idiot," Reno barked, smacking Benny upside the head with his little electrified weapon thingie. "Way to let her get away!"

"Oh, that reminds me of the sparks we shared when we first held hands," Benny sighed as he was jolted repeatedly by the little rod.

"Look, Benny, if you don't get it in gear, you're gonna be busted down to...wait a second - what rank are you?"

"Broom boy," Benny announced proudly. "Fifth class!"

"Wow...if you get demoted any more, you're gonna be a paper-weight," Reno noted, shaking his head.

"First class?" Benny chirped, a hopeful gleam in his eye. "It was the dream of my boyhood to be a first class paperweight!"

"There IS only one class of paperweight, and it's eighth," the Turk informed him.

"You mean, I'll NEVER be a first-class paperweight?!" Benny exclaimed, eyes already beginning to tear up. "Oh, the crushing blow to my childhood dreams! Okay, I'm better now. You wanna go for ice cream?"

"Turks don't go for ice cream," Reno informed him indignantly. "We drink beer!"

"Then how come I saw you and Elena eating ice cream in the park together last week?"

"You didn't see that! And if you think you saw it...here's five gil that says you didn't!"

"See what?" Benny said, pocketing the five gil.



"You know," Cloud noted as he ran from the church with Aeris slung over his shoulder to stop her from running back to Benny, "it's a good thing those two are having that lengthy exchange, or else we may not have gotten away so easily."

"Let's go to my house!" Aeris suggested.

"Are you sure? I just met you!"

"I want you to meet my mom!"

"Okay, now I KNOW I'm not ready for that!"

"Oh, just come along, silly!"

"Well, you'll have to guide me. You're kinda being carried."

"You COULD just put me down..."

"And have you run back to that loser-Shinra? No way!"

"My, my, Cloud, do I detect a note of jealousy?"

"No!"

"You'd better not!" Tifa's voice shouted menacingly from somewhere else.

"Do you listen to everything, Tifa?" Cloud demanded.

"No," the shout drifted back sheepishly.

"Tell Barret I'm okay!"

"Will do," Tifa agreed.

"Who was that, Cloud?" Aeris inquired as the shout drifted away. "Your girlfriend?"

"My, my, Aeris, do I detect a note of jealousy?" Cloud smirked.

"You wish!" Aeris giggled.

"Actually, I don't."

"Well, you should!" she informed him, punctuating the statement with a rap from her rod across his backside.

"Wow...she was nice enough not to hit ME at full strength, too," Cloud remarked to a passing Mu.

"Shut up!" Aeris barked, smacking him several more times, this time in the head, producing no more of a result.

"Is it raining? "Cloud wondered.

"You just wait until I get big and strong! I'll hit you so hard, you hit your own shadow!"

"I could probably hit my own shadow a lot harder than you could hit me."

A pause. Then...

"Meanie!"





"I lost the spiky!" Barret sobbed, head cradled in his arms flung out before him on the table. "I lost the poor spiky!"

This, he punctuated by thumping the table several times. Unfortunately, this caused several shots to be inadvertently fired.

"You're going to lose the computer system!" Wedge informed him. "You're going to lose the poor computer system! Stop hitting the table!"

With that, Barret aimed his arm a little more to the left, directly at Wedge, and prepared to bring his arm down on the table once more.

"Hey, you don't wanna lose the Wedge, too, do ya?" Wedge pleaded nervously. "Okay, I'll shut up."

"I lost the poor Spiky! I'll never see him again! He's gone, an' it's all 'cause of me! Shit, I suck..." Barret moaned brokenly.

"Didn't we go through all of this on the train?" Jessie asked, scratching her head.

"Yeah, but this time, he fell down a hole!" the large gun-armed dude informed her. "He's wit' God now."

"Well, he did fall into a church," Biggs recalled with a shrug. "Only a small patch of flowers could have possibly broken that fall."

"Oh, he's gone! He's GONE!"

"Hey, guys," Tifa greeted the group, sauntering into the hideout thingie. "I just talked to Cloud, and he's a-okay! Although, he's hanging out with a girl, which I don't approve of..."

"Oh, he's go - what?" Barret demanded, sitting up abruptly. "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?"

"My name is Tifa, actually," the brunette corrected him. "And Cloud's fine.

"Oh, happy day! Cloud is alive and well! Soon as he gets his spiky ass back here, I kill him!"

"Uh..." Jessie began, then shook her head, deciding that it was safer NOT to ask.

"We need to decide what to do," Tifa announced.

"Alright," Barret began. "For some reason that was never revealed, we gotta go see Don Corneo."

"Who's Don Corneo?" everyone asked in unison.

"I dunno. But we gotta go see him. This here book says so," Barret replied, holding up a thin book, reading 'Strategy Guide.' "There's a catch, though. He only likes girls. So here's what we do: I dress up as a woman, and go over there, sneak in, wigglin' my hips, doin' anythin' I can to get in there, get inta his bedroom, and get the information that we need."

Everyone sat for a moment in stunned silence. Finally, Tifa spoke up.

"You know, I could go. Or Jessie could go. Oh hell, even Biggs or Wedge would make a better woman!"

"Are you sayin' I ain't pretty?" Barret demanded, hurt.

"N-no, I'm just saying that the Don would probably prefer a WOMAN!"

"Hey!" Biggs and Wedge cried together, not sure if they liked the implications.

"Alright, alright, fine, Tifa, you can go," Barret conceded, with a wistful sigh that he really never would get to wear those ridiculously over-sized novelty high heels.

"I'm glad he's letting Tifa go," Wedge muttered to Jessie. "He would have made a really ugly woman."

"Cloud woulda made a cute girl, though," Jessie said thoughtfully. "I don't think I've ever seen a prettier man."

"You should meet my brother," a young blond man with a tail and a thief's dagger hanging from either side of his belt told her with a chuckle. "Now, Kuja's the prettiest guy you'll ever see!"

"Git outta the bar!" Barret bellowed. "Can't you see the damn sign? We close at nine! EVERYONE knows that!"

"Fine, whatever," Zidane Tribal said snippily, his tail swishing adorably as he turned to leave. "Yagh!" he shrieked in utter terror as he passed a young man and a young cat-eared woman.

"Wazzup, Tail-Guy?" Bezo greeted absently.

But he was already gone, leaving a little Zidane-shaped dust cloud in his wake.

"He fled," Yezo noted with a giggle.

"Whatever," Bezo sighed. "Let's just go get a drink at this random bar called the Final Heaven."

"That sounds familiar," his similarly named other half said.

"Final Heaven...yeah, didn't we go to that one on sixteenth?"

"Oh, right!" Yezo chirped. "I wonder if the Kamikazes are as good at this one..."

"Alcoholic," Bezo muttered. "And anyway, I don't have any gil."

"Some guy on the street gave me some to shake my tail. Then he got really mad when I started waving it around. I didn't MEAN to smack him upside the head with it!" she said mournfully, patting her little cat-tail.

"That guy is lucky to be alive. No one looks at my girlfriend's tail but ME!" Bezo said, a slight vein protruding from his forehead.

"Hey, look, Bezo! It's a guy with a gun for an arm!"

"It's Mr. T!" Bezo exclaimed, delighted. "Hey, Mr. T! Are there any fools that need any pitying?"

"Uh...what?" Barret asked, whirling about and training his arm on the young man.

"Whoa, hang on there, big gunner," Bezo said, stepping back nervously. "We just came in here for a drink."

"Well, as you can see by the sign on the door, we close at nine," Barret informed both coldly.

"But...it's eight," Yezo spoke up. "Everyone knows that!"

"Oh...so it is. Teef, why'd we kick that other guy out?" Barret asked. Then, looking at the little cat-girl...thing, he did a double take. "Did I miss a meetin' and tails are suddenly in fashion, or somethin'?"

"You've got a Mohawk," Wedge called from behind the counter. "What do you know about fashion?"

"Shu'up!"

"Foo'!" Bezo added, grinning, and earning himself one death-glare and four very confused looks. The glare, just so everyone knows, was from Barret. ^_^

"Um..." Yezo began hesitantly, wandering over to where Tifa stood behind the bar, "do you have Slurpees here?"

"What's a Slurpee?" Tifa asked. She got no answer, though, as Yezo was already curled up in a little ball on the floor, whimpering.

"No...Slurpee...? No...Slurpee...so cold...so cold...er, warm...so warm..."

"Yezo, snap out of it!" Bezo commanded, hauling her from the floor. "Man, are we ever going to find out why we keep going into these games?"

"Bezo...no Slurpee!"

"Hey, do you have any ice cubes?" Bezo asked Tifa wearily.

"Of course! What kind of a bar would we be without ice cubes?"

"Great. How about a blender?"

"Naturally!"

"And some Coke(tm)?"

"What's Coke?" Tifa inquired.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Bezo howled in anguish before joining Yezo on the floor, curling up into a similar little ball. "So...sleepy...need...caffeine..."

After another five minutes of whimpering. Bezo climbed from the floor and dusted himself off.

"Well, if we can't get the drinks we want, we have just one more thing to ask: Can we join AVALANCHE?"

Barret pondered this very carefully. What harm could it do? Were they not always searching for new allies to expand the group? Did strength not lie within numbers, and the hope of the very planet with them?

Then he turned back to the two.

"No."