"It appears that you have finally regaining conscious thought. Are you alright for the moment? Can you hear me yet?" asked a voice suddenly, the exact same strange voice that he had heard from the Mako Reactor N01 on the bridge before the main core, Cloud soon realized, and once again, it seemed to be coming from his mind, as if telepathically.
Cloud had regained consciousness a few hours after he had fallen off the bridge, but he didn't open his stinging eyes, not just yet anyway.
He was in a great deal of agonizing pain, since his back was broken from the fall, and both his arms and legs were broken, and he felt his own blood spread slowly around him, but somehow, miraculously, he was still alive, but he knew with grim terror that he wouldn't survive for much longer.
He was bleeding badly, and was badly wounded. He could feel his vision getting dimmer and his eyes heavier, and he was getting weaker and weaker, feeling his strength gradually fade away, and knew that he was dying.
Cloud knew that no type of potion or Restore Cure Materia could heal any mortal injury or wound, and could not heal so many broken bones either. He realized with overwhelming fear and despair that he was finished, but he wanted to face his fate bravely, if this moment really was his final fate...
"Yeah…" replied Cloud, numbly, finally answering the mysterious voice in his mind that he had no idea about, but as he was dying at the moment, he really couldn't care less about it. The mysterious voice quickly spoke up again, with absolutely no emotion or tone to it whatsoever.
"Back then, when you were just a kid...you could get by in this situation with just skinned knees," said the voice, which like the last time Cloud had heard it, sounded neither male nor female, and sounded neither threatening nor calming.
"(Just what the heck is going on here? Where's this voice coming from, and just who, or what, does it belong to? And what the hell does it mean...I could survive this kind of fall when I was a kid...? That sounds like complete bullshit. Besides, I never even suffered a fall like this back then...did I...?)" thought Cloud, thoroughly bewildered and perplexed.
Cloud winced with pain as his head, as well as the rest of his body ached badly, as he lay bloody, broken and gradually but surely dying, his strength and life force fading away. Just like the Planet itself. How very ironic indeed, Cloud thought bitterly, and then he finally spoke back.
"Just what do you mean by...getting by a fall like this, back then...?" asked Cloud, confused. The voice quickly spoke back up in answer.
"Forget about your past, it's not important right now, with your future at stake. So what about now, then? Do you think that you can get yourself back up onto your feet just yet?" asked the voice.
Cloud thought that saying something like that at this moment was just completely and utterly stupid, but as he was dying anyway, he didn't see why he shouldn't at least try to fight of his survival, even if his chances of it were pretty hopeless.
"I'll give it a try…" replied Cloud, and despite the fact that his back, arms and legs were broken, he tried to heave himself up, still not opening his eyes.
He only moved a few inches before he slammed back down on the floor, unable to keep himself up. Cloud gritted his teeth against the scream of intense agony that threatened to come rising from his mouth, as burning plan flared through his broken and bloody body. He was done for, alright.
"Oh my gosh! Hey, you really moved, you're alive after all! Boy am I glad, I feared I was looking at a dead corpse!" exclaimed a second voice suddenly, a mixture of intense relief and anxiety in its tone of voice.
This was a different voice that sounded female and gentle, and judging by the sound of it, it was coming from above him, and it sounded oddly familiar, like he had heard it from somewhere before, and he couldn't quite place it yet. But then the voice from his mind spoke up.
"Well, how about that then? Looks like your little attempt at movement was useful after all, someone else is here to help you out, it seems. But just make sure that you take your movement slow now, little by little. I'm done speaking to you here, but just remember this one fact...problems never go away by simply ignoring them. Do not even once believe otherwise," said the voice.
"I know that...but hey, just who the heck are you anyway!? How are you doing this!? What do you want from me!? Answer me, who are you!?" demanded Cloud, but he somehow sensed that the voice was no longer in his mind at all, gone without any trace.
"Hello, can you hear me? Hello, can you try to wake up?" asked the female voice, gently, from above him.
Cloud just managed to open his heavy-feeling eyes, and he saw that he was in the middle of a large stone church, having crashed through the wooden roof.
He was lying on a flowerbed with planks of wood on top of it that had fallen from the roof when he crashed right through it. Cloud saw his own blood around him, and felt intense agony and his strength draining. He wasn't going to last much longer now...
Having to use all of his little remaining strength, he slowly lifted his head, and saw (to his astonishment and surprise) Aeris, the same flower girl that he had met in the upper city of Sector 8 and had saved from those thugs on the train.
Aeris had to have been the one with the female voice that had been speaking above him, while he had lay dying on the church floor. The other voice, however, had mysteriously vanished from his mind without a trace.
"(Finally, he's awake, thank god for that, I was really afraid that he'd pass away before he could ever wake up. But he still doesn't have much time left, so I'd better hurry. Now that he's conscious, I can help him. It might mean revealing my unique abilities to him, but I don't have any other choice...)" thought Aeris, knowing it was simply the right thing to do, and there was no way she was going to change her mind about it.
Aeris knelt down at his side, looking rather worried about him, but she gave him a reassuring smile. She then closed her eyes and placed her hands on Cloud's chest, and she seemed to be chanting something in an odd language that Cloud couldn't make out. It then occurred to him, with some confusion, that she was praying.
Before he could comment on or ask about what she was doing though, Cloud suddenly felt a sudden wave of energy and life pass through his body.
After it had passed, he discovered to his astonishment and disbelief that his broken bones and injuries were fully healed, and he felt just as strong as ever, with the intense agony now completely gone without a trace. Cloud simply stared and gaped at Aeris, astounded and highly stunned, not believing what had just happened.
Not even any type of Potion or Cure Magic from a Restore Materia could heal anyone with too serious an injury with either many broken bones, or a mortal wound, and Cloud had certainly received many of those in the fall.
But Aeris had just fully healed all of his many broken bones and his mortal injuries with just her own unique abilities, nothing else, not a Potion or a Restore Materia, just her very own abilities.
And by doing so, she undoubtedly had just saved his life. So just who, or what, was she? Aeris stared back at Cloud, smiling broadly, and then she still knelt down beside Cloud, and quickly checked to see if he had any more injuries.
Aeris was wearing the exactly the same clothes as before, and she looked exactly the same as she did when Cloud first saw her and saved her life, with her beautiful emerald green eyes, and her shiny brown hair, the end of it wrapped up in a ponytail with a strange white Materia wrapped in it. She then spoke to him, smiling.
"Are you okay now? Can you get back up? You really took a pretty nasty fall, you know. Oh, and in case you're wondering where you are, this is a church in the Sector 5 Slums. I was here, tending for the flowers as usual, when the roof suddenly fell and you came crashing through it, and landed with a loud thud on the floor on the flowerbed here, just as I was tending to it. You really had me worried and scared. I was waiting here with you for the last few hours. I was afraid that you might never wake up," said Aeris, looking and soundly intensely relieved indeed.
Cloud smiled at her gratefully, with a gratitude he couldn't even express or put into words, and then he suddenly thought of Tifa, and how worried she must be about him, and if she and Barret had made it to safety. Cloud stared back at Aeris, as a thought suddenly just occurred to him.
"I came crashing down here?" asked Cloud, in disbelief, shocked by the fact that he could well have been killed, had it not been for Aeris somehow healing him and saving his life. Aeris nodded in response.
"The wooden church roof and the flowerbed must have broken your fall, you sure were lucky, or you would have been killed on impact. The flowers saved you from getting killed in the fall, and at least I was able to heal you just now, before you could die from your intense injuries," said Aeris. At her words, Cloud looked around, seeing what he was sitting on.
"A flowerbed? Is this yours then? I'm sorry about that, if I caused any damage to them..." said Cloud, awkwardly, quickly leaping off the flowers, and brushing them off his clothes to the flowerbed. Seeing this, Aeris smiled warmly at him, standing back up to her feet as well.
"That's quite alright, don't worry about it. The flowers here are quite resilient and they grow quite easily, because this is a sacred, holy place. No one comes here anymore, not for years, but I always like to hang around here, tending to the flowers. Lovely, aren't they? They say that you can't grow grass and flowers here in Midgar…but for some reason, the flowers in here have no trouble blooming and growing here at all. I really do love it here," said Aeris, softly.
Aeris turned around and stared up at the stained glass windows that adorned the walls. The sunlight streamed through the colored glass and splashed across her bright red jacket and pink dress, beautifully highlighting her every feature, her face, her eyes and her hair.
"(Just who is this girl? Why does she seem so different to me than anyone else around here? How the heck did she heal me and save my life? How can she grow flowers here with no sun or rain? And just why does she seem so very attractive to me, anyway?)" wondered Cloud, bewildered.
Cloud swallowed hard, a strange feeling in his chest as he stared at his mysterious saviour. Aeris then knelt back down on the floor by the flowerbed, and sorted out the flattened flowers as best she could at the moment.
"How on earth did you fall down to here anyway?" asked Aeris, curiously, no doubt intensely wondering what had just happened to cause such a situation.
"I fell from a bridge on the Reactor above, when it gave way right from under me," replied Cloud, shortly, not wanting to go into any detail about it, not liking the idea of thinking back to a moment he had believed he was really going to die in.
Seeing and understanding this, Aeris just accepted his vague answer, and she didn't press on the subject of it any further. So instead, she said something else, a wide smile spreading across her face.
"So then…we meet yet again, it seems I was right about us meeting again after all. Don't you remember me at all, from somewhere before?" asked Aeris, curiously, listening intently for an answer.
"(I really do wonder if he remembers me at all, I did owe him so much for saving my life last night, after all. But even though I've never seen him before that, he really does look a lot like...like my boyfriend used to look before he...there has to be something more to this, and I...I think I need to find out just what that is...)" thought Aeris, as Cloud thought back and finally spoke up and answered.
"Yeah, I do remember you. You were selling flowers back at the Sector 8 upper city, and I saved you back on the train on the way back to the Slums, too," replied Cloud, with absolute certainty. Aeris's smile widened in clear delight and her emerald green eyes sparkled.
"Oh, I'm so happy! You DO remember after all. You were walking in a daze that night in the city, I was worried that you might have forgotten. Oh, and thanks again for buying my flowers…and for saving my life back there on the train. I was hoping that we might meet again, so I could repay you, but now I believe we're even, after I just saved your life a few moments ago. Say, now that I think about it...do you have any kind of Materia currently in your procession?" asked Aeris, curiously, smiling warmly.
Cloud nodded, noticing that Aeris certainly seemed to talk a lot and make a lot of conversation, and that usually annoyed him when other people did this, but for some reason he didn't mind her doing it at all. In fact, he kind of liked it, she seemed quite interesting…
"Yeah, I've got some green magic-type Materia equipped to my sword. Nowadays, you can find Materia almost anywhere around here in Midgar or in the rest of the world. You can use it for almost any purpose too," said Cloud.
"But my Materia is special and unique compared to the other ones. And that's because it's good for absolutely nothing," joked Aeris, chuckling, pointing up at the strange white Materia that was wrapped up in her pink ribbon in her chestnut brown hair. Cloud raised an eyebrow at her comment.
"A Materia that's good for nothing at all? You probably just don't know how to use it properly, to its real potential," replied Cloud. Aeris quickly shook her head.
"No, I do know how. Believe me, I do know how to use Materia, even better than anyone else does. Mine just doesn't do anything for some other reason. I just feel safe having it, that's all. It was my mother's, and she asked me to take good care of it...I don't know why she wanted me to, but I'd never let her down, so I still look after it. Say...you know, I do feel like talking more about various things, so do you feel up to it? It really gets lonely here in the Slums with no one but my mother to talk to. And after all, here we are, meeting here again, right?" asked Aeris, curiously, looking at him pleadingly. Cloud just shrugged, suddenly feeling a bit of pity for her, and he knew he didn't have it in his heart to say no to her.
"It sounds fine to me, I really don't mind if you do want to talk. You know, it's getting quite dark and late. How about I just walk you home, and we can talk more on the way there before you get back," suggested Cloud. Aeris nodded in agreement, beaming with clear happiness.
"(All of a sudden, I really am glad I could see this guy again…even if it certainly was in a most unexpected way. What an entrance it was, coming down through the roof like that. This guy's certainly full of surprises. Still though…there's definitely something rather intriguing about him,)" thought Aeris.
"Okay then, your offer's gladly accepted, but could you please wait here for a moment? I've just got to go check on my ruined flowers for a few minutes, see if I can sort them out a little. Oh, I wonder whose fault that is, hmm…? It's not that easy to grow these flowers, you know…poor flowers. Anyway, I'll be just a minute, so don't worry about it, you couldn't help it, I'm sure. Oh yeah, that reminds me! Gosh, we still haven't really introduced ourselves yet, have we? I'm Aeris Gainsborough, the flower girl, and the only one in all of Midgar. It's really nice to meet you. And what's your name?" asked Aeris, curiously, listening intently as Cloud answered.
"The name's Cloud Strife. And you're probably wondering what's my occupation, right? Well, it's not really one job, since I do a little bit of everything, you see. But only for the right price, of course," said Cloud, with a grin, introducing himself.
"Oh, so I guess that makes you a jack-of-all-trades then," said Aeris, suddenly starting to giggle to herself. Oblivious to this, Cloud nodded thoughtfully.
"Yeah, I guess you could say that. I just do whatever service is needed for my payment," said Cloud. He then saw that Aeris was suddenly laughing.
"Just what's so funny all of a sudden? What are you laughing at?" asked Cloud, thoroughly bewildered, but also rather bemused, and was not annoyed.
"Ha, ha…oh no, it's nothing, just nothing. Sorry if I seemed a little rude, I just…" began Aeris, but she then abruptly stopped talking, and looked behind Cloud, glancing over his shoulder, and a worried expression suddenly formed on her face. A very worried one indeed.
Cloud, noticing this with surprise and concern, quickly spun around to see what she was looking at, and what had just gotten her so anxious all of a sudden. His eyes flared wide with flabbergasted shock as he saw exactly what the reason was, and knew at once Aeris had good reason to be worried.
Reno the Turk was leaning casually against the side of the open church front door, taking out his deadly Nightstick weapon from his scruffy navy blue Turks suit, and he was looking back at them menacingly with his confident blue eyes, a dark sneer on his face, as he brushed a hand through his messy red hair, and holding his Nightstick tightly in the other.
"(So this is the girl Shinra are after, huh? Quite cute, but I don't show any mercy even to girls when I'm at work. Shinra will have her this time, I'll make sure of it. The President's promised a big reward for the success of this capture. Wait…just who the heck is that guy with her? He looks like one of those AVALANCHE guys that was on the bridge earlier…but that's impossible, they'll be dead by now, and there's no way they could make it down here so quickly if not. No matter…if I have to deal with him to get the girl, then so be it,)" thought Reno, as he slowly stepped forwards away from the door towards Cloud and Aeris, his Nightstick held menacingly in his hand, sparks of electricity flowing from it.