Author's note: The play in this chapter was actually based off of a real play that stared my friend in a school theater production about the dead telling stories before their afterlife. That and Dream Theater's Scenes from a Memory were the two things that inspired the piece in this chapter.

Well, it could've been worse.

Cloud shivered with his pain on the icy floor. Yeah, like hell it could.

Despite how his keepers had gone through the trouble to keep him alive by removing the bullets that had ensnared him something awful, their job had been nothing short of sloppy and filled with slacked interest, and therefore his bleeding chest remained unwrapped and bled cold into his hands, dripping to the floor with the rest. They had mentioned something about… "not bothering with the problematic 'situation'", and it hadn't taken long for Cloud to realize that this indeed was his own case and that his death would be nothing of a worry to them. If he rotted skinny to a skeleton in this cage, then so be it. Eventually someone would come along to journey with his bones. That he knew.

But to be frank, it was true that Cloud was clueless on what had happened. The closest to his current situation that he could recall were the men dressed in white surrounding him on the cot, their equipment in hand all shaped like wickedly hooked claws as they ripped into his flesh like butter. Of course they all had been gaudy blurs of color and black, mixed with their tiny voices and usual unrealism. Unreal like machines… human machines. Sick and twisted they were, holding those machines like king. It was true that machines were the most manipulative beings on the planet; a living soul trapped within scraps of metal and gadget that hid away their potential. It all came from the inside, where their power pulsed unbelievably. Those machines controlled things, a moving body controlled by the heart of the human hand. Meaningless. Deceptive.

Cloud was going in circles.

Bits of words from an old play found themselves ensnaring his mind, buzzing about like tiny insects and nipping through his thoughts. "Seeing through different sheets of glass" or something, the words from a deceased doctor revealing futures through the terms of human "glasses" or whatever. He didn't really take in any of those artsy metaphors or symbolisms, but he oddly found the words appealing at the moment even under their sudden influx.

He could recall although that the theater had been quite empty that day, all stacked with empty lawn chairs and metal stands and garbage lids surrounding a long waxy stage. The stage, glossy and rare with actors, took upon characters as they strutted across in their cheapass costumes, all barefoot for the few members who had decided to attend their insistence upon the world. Dimly lit beams blew white bubbles of light unto the figures, and classical music poured from hidden speakers and gushed into the audience like ghosts.

Cloud had come alone that day, his hands tautly buried into the kangaroo pouch of his jacket as he clasped them together into a full fist, his eyes dark and soulless under the weak white shadows of the performance center. He had come late as he usually did, busy with the work and what not and ruddy with oil and dust. Yet with the few others studying the live display, took his seat in one of the lawn chairs, slouching over the cheap plastic and sighing with relief. The chill music flew in and out of his ears like a ghost's breath, and one actor, sluiced in black and buttons and patches, paused to the surveying eyes and roused his voice.

"They said that she died last night under the dims of the streetlights,

Opposed to the knife, left to sulk in her darkness…

I never knew her outside of the newspaper headlines

I've never heard her name spoken to me, her voice chill through my ears

Whistle like the tune it should possess...

Yet I still know the lies of her grave, of which bares no conscious of herself.

Liars and deceit make the words

Blur them all in stone."

A woman stepped away from the shadows of the stage and crept to the actor's knees.

"You need forget about her, embrace the truth.

She's dead. Buried by death and eaten by God, there's no saving her now.

"You can't be her savior,

You can't be her hero."

The man's lips peeled into a wolfish smile, and to the burning lights burned a golden brown.

"I don't wish to be her savior, only the keeper of the truth behind her words.

I fear not to be a hero, but I never wish to be

For through her eyes I've seen it all

"Learned about myself, soiled myself with death

educated not by her voice, but her scream.

I am her killer. I am her murderer.

I was erudite by her blood.

The both of us sleep now with the eyes of the dead.

No longer in need of our glasses."

Rousing, Cloud pulled his back against the brick of the wall, straining his neck with the pain as his hands came to press amongst the bandages that crept up his chest, all bordered with faint paintings of blood and "finger-paints". It was clear to him now that the plank he had been sleeping on was no other than the floor, and the splotches of his and other men's blood spattered against him as they webbed up the ground. The markings were old, he could tell. He had been here a while. Faint thoughts and memories of Aerith probed his thoughts arbitrarily as he shifted, but for some reason remained effortless on his overall emotion. He somehow knew that she wasn't hurt, was far away from here. He wasn't sure exactly what gave him this assumption, but something pulled at the back of his chest, grew in his mind that everything was going to be all right for her—that the Shin-ra didn't need her in the way that they needed him. She was oblivious to most, after all.

But lordy did his head hurt.

"Aha, blondie here is awake." Cloud winced with his headache at the sudden intake and turned towards the suddenly noticeable bars of the cell, draping his fingers around the chill metal as he peered out into the open air. The figures were blurry and coated in shadow from where he was standing, and with squinty eyes his head provoked additional pain— stitch by stitch, it seemed.

The blonde curled his fingers as they dug into the flesh of his palms. "Hell…"

"Been sleep for days, have you?" The voice mocked. "Scrawny, lazy bastard—you need flesh on your muscles if you're gonna call yourself a man."

"Never did." Cloud sputtered through his gritted teeth and weakness, struggling to allow his voice to take on its usual form. His tone limp and shaky, it was tired and flowed slowly off his lips. "Show yourself if you're gonna insult me. It should be no buggersworth to you, I'm caged."

It was now that the man showed himself, a crazy looker if anything. Eaten white eyes brimmed in a grinning malevolence as they overlaid the blonde man, dark finger-combed locks of hair spiraling down his ears in a cascading greasy mane. On his skin he wore a uniform of the Shin-ra police squad, labeled in buttons and badges and what not and covered head to toe with metal armor and weaponry. Insanity was none-the-less his apprentice as his right hand tautly bled around the metal coating in his knuckles, grinning widely as he watched the blonde struggle the bars and spit at his boots in spite.

"That's why we need to work ya, get you back to your roots."

"Heh." Cloud bit his tongue in his laughter and rinsed the salty blood. "You speak of roots yet you've appeared to have never planted your own. People like you are hypocritical, filthy—"

Snarling in clutched teeth and a grinding roar the policeman reached his hands through the bars and grasped Cloud's collar tight, with brutal strength slapping his jaw and gorge against the metal shafts. Headache pulsing, blistering through his head, Cloud's pain remained motionless in time. Instead of screaming he coughed, let loose the burning that drooled like acid inside. Drips of blood oozed down his lip and the bruises upon his throat. Ceasing to let go of his clutch, the man grinned his seemingly notorious way and dragged Cloud's scruff across the bars to the outlet. Releasing his keys as they sung and clicked the blonde's body was slung up forcefully as his fists pounded wildly into the air. It was now evident to him that this guy had not come alone. Shouldn't it have been obvious? Of all the…

"Seems blondie here needs taught a lesson, boys." Even though blinded underneath the soles of the officer's boot Cloud could feel the men's smiles upon him, their grins tarnished and beaming and setting their eyes in that merciless way of theirs. Resisting his body to endeavor an escape, he found it useless. More boots stomped onto his back and erupted with a loud snap. Cloud shouted and received a boot to the head, comfort in a thin film of blood and spit. "He needs to learn a 'ittle thing called…" The man grisly spat the last word into Cloud's face, enjoying the grimace he took in as retort. "Respect."

Cloud's face metamorphosed into a twisted mix of anger and furious reprisal, his eyes a gleam of lustrous blue and consumed in pure red rage. "I gots no room in my bones for you Shin-ra mongrels!"

"You only think that 'cause you think like a slumdog. You've been left off your leash for too long in the eyes of God-all-mighty." One of them barked and waved his head, latching metal across Cloud's wrists as he was slung up like a spring, left to hang his head with rushing vein as they all howled like animals. Twisting his body and howling curses and all words imaginable Cloud slung his arms behind his back with failure as the men continued their laughter and kicks. On and on it continued like a dance.

Hung by his ankles upon the stage, Cloud preformed steps with the music regardless of his handicap. One step, two step, three step, four. He would dangle his face into the provinces of Hell, looking up into the eyes of the Gods above him. And one by one they would strike. And one by one the cuts would bleed.

As he was bent crippled to the floor all that could be heard were the screams fading out into the darkness.

---

Stage Two

Blowing down the Stylus

The wind was harsh and rabid that morning, scorching through the wasteland like knives. Dust sprawled and flamed like dragon fire in swarms of flies and bees, and Cloud, equipped with broad, metal chains slung over his back, gaped out into the wide world with his wonder. For miles stretched on black sand cowered into the horizon, gleaming with rays of weak sun and brimming silver sky. Nothing living emerged, only neglected machinery that lipped with ash and fire scars. None of them were recognizable to Cloud (even being a mechanic), but by their functions and shapes he could see that they had been nothing more than some kind of military equipment— types of guns, none the less. But if this was what the Shin-ra had been hiding well, then hot damn diggety. What was there to hide? There weren't any cities, there weren't any people. All there was outside of Midgar's gates were sand and ruins, which, while the soldiers bickered and cursed its presence, Cloud found quite fascinating. The ground in this state gobbled up things like teeth. Drop a stone and the earth would swallow it whole. Intriguing.

"Move it ya slum!"

Grasping the chains in his fists, Cloud could already feel the heat overwhelming his body, trickling down his neck and inside of his veins. He among many other prisoners of the Shin-ra incorporate had become a soldier's ticket to escapism, as humans having stronger resistance than that of a Chocobo (though they were tougher in the spine and build), were found to become much more convenient in the passage of labor, especially in that of moving supplies to where and whatever. Now this machine he and the others were moving he didn't know. It was a rather bizarre contraption, outfitted in multicolored buttons and wires all spread like worms and flickering fireflies. It beeped every few moments or so, a rather irritating trait, and was placed on an extensive board lined with wheels and cargo holds. Chains snatched the cart into motion as Cloud and the other men pulled with their strength in rows, doused in sweat and grime. A few minutes seemed unbearable. Their time was undiscovered.

"Damn this… damn frickin' hell…" Cloud heaved and panted under the eyes of the sun, his clothes wearing rashes into his skin as they became irritated with sweat. His body had become depressed and nearly insupportable, but by worse had to be the disgusting stench that reeked from the prisoners and the thick air that lingered in the atmosphere. It was difficult to breathe, hard to struggle a heave of air through the depth of it all. And the chains, buckled and strapped at his knees and shoulders, groaned and wrenched at his body as they forced him onward. Every pause, every linger in space, caught him off guard into a sudden struggle. Every hour or so a new man would fall, face collapsed into the hungry sand as his exhausted corpse would fling along with the ragtag.

"Ya kid, you've gots it easy… been here a mere days, have you. You're complain' fire on water to ye men." A couple chaps chuckled to themselves through their raspy voices, and one, outfitted in his mockery kicked up dirt with his ankles. "Amen to hell and hallelujah to that, I've heard of there blondie. He's that violent chap—killed off two Shin-ra soldiers, I reckon. Heard on the Sunday lordy."

So he had made the news, how about that. Cloud's mind shifted to the face of Vincent as he would pick up his annual paper at the market, scanning through the headlines as he usually did until he came across the face of his own taken in bastard child. Oh how his expression would become, another one of the losses in his there life. A "Shin-ra terrorist" he was now, eh. In the words of the papers he was now a proclaimed deceased.

Cloud knew better now. Those who were said dead were really alive. Those walking, talking ghosts from the obituaries were right besides him pulling the haul, a fucked up paranormal.

"A youngin', feh! They might of well have poured mako into the hearth."

Cloud was finished with their talking; it was only exhaustion not worth having. Even as the other men panted through their teeth of the kid that had suddenly taken board of his toll he continued on, heaving and sweating and praying to the evil sun and cursing all that jift. But it wasn't before long that an abrupt whistle caught fire through the ears of the prisoners, and at once the rows fell to their stomachs into the blazing sands in silence.

"Heads up, ya fools!" Shin-ra guards circled around the groups with vulture stance as another man Cloud had never seen before appeared from within the mass. Equipped in lengthy raven hair and crystal blue eyes, he was built structurally and stood tall on his boots, baring a large pale skull that appeared rusted with its age and fissures mounted on his head. It appeared to be the skull of some sort of dragon, a rather medium sized creature that had probably stood about the man's height. His name was Zack as introduced soon after by the military, and Cloud, watching as the man stalked the lines like a vulture, buried his head down upon notice.

"Officer Zackary Knightblade requires one of you to attend his there meeting with the general. You, blondie! Stand up straight!" Cloud struggled to his weak knees and pulled his body up straight, his shackles keeping his back hutched to the ground as he tussled. The black haired man grinned and turned to face the guard. "So this is him, eh?"

"Do best to keep him on those there shackles, officer. He's a violent thug if any; he'll batter ya with his freedom."

"I'm sure that I can handle him fine. Release him."

Doing as he was told, the soldier unclasped the chains and set Cloud liberty. His wrists, though swollen and sweat beaten, embraced the freedom as did his buckled knees; and, limping slowly after the officer, patted his jean pockets. They remained empty of his knives, and with this he scowled something deep as he hesitantly ambled on. The guard looked after him with gritted teeth.

Zack grinned at Cloud's impulsive attitude. "You know, it's always best to attempt an attack after you're out of sight."

"I hope you realize that your sarcasm is making it much more tempting." The lack of interest in this soldier's attitude was what got Cloud's nerves churning hot blood. To the way he strutted to the cool interior of his voice, it was all irritating and uncommon. But yet there was still something different about this man, something about him that varied from the other soldiers. Cloud couldn't exactly put his hand on it but it swayed inside of him and screamed that there was definitely something unique in there somewhere.

"I'm sure that. Aerith told me that you were pretty reckless. Damn point to insanity round moments."

Cloud's attention jumped towards the black-haired man and his chest buckled twice. "Aerith! What do you know of Aerith?"

"Heh, know she's not far from here actually. She be the ticket for the both of us, if ya see my reasoning." He chuckled and ran a sweaty hand through his raven mane, leading the blonde across the thickets of dead brush that bristled through the wasteland. "How? Maybes we find that out together, a hand to the key as a key to the lock, eh?"

--

The arrival at the base was no more welcoming to Cloud than his entrance had been at the prison camps. Immediately upon his arrival soldiers consumed his wrists in their clap clap cuffs and equipped a leash around his neck, hanging it from the rafters as they left him without struggle. Though the furry raged inside of him and tortured him within, he remained obedient and impatiently waited inside his cell in silence. Zack rested outside of the cell for a while to mumble here and there randomosities and casually left every other minute or two, only to return not long after. Even though the blonde man didn't answer, and, was quite honestly ignoring every word, it seemed this Zack somehow took pride in talking to himself.

"Do you ever shut up…" Cloud's throat hurt and his frustration grew it dry. "You run like some sorta damn machine."

"Nuuuuh buddy." Zack gave one of his grins and crossed his arms across his chest, gazing as the blonde man weakly grasped at his bonding and cursed his failure as his feet slipped beneath him. "I have a more question of you, as to be perfect honest in this here situation, I know just as much as you do and I work in the high ranks. All corrupt it may be, dangle dangle like a topsy thread. All we need is the needle, you know?"

Cloud took back a laugh of disbelief and looked up with raspy eyes. "I'm not here to listen to your lectures, dammit. I already know all this. I took one wrong step and here I am, defending myself against merciless policemen!"

"Mmhmm."

"God DAMMIT are you even listening to me!"

"Look man I sympathize, I really do." Zack chewed on the cigarette on his lower lip and crushed it beneath his teeth, setting it ablaze in faint embers and bobbing them till the blazes drooled lifelessly to the floor at his feet. "But I'm not the law, I only enforce it. And you, my fair captee, would do best to be as obedient as the dog they think you are. The more you follow orders from the gods that 'round you the more freedoms you'll get in the world, you dig?"

"I'll never fall to your cowardice."

"Take life or take your pride in the grave, kiddo."

At this Cloud fell silent, relaxing his body against the chains and shutting his eyes tight. It was then that he realized that he was very tired.

"Heh, just hold on, man. You'll be out in no time if ya keep up the levels."

Levels… Cloud opened his mouth to speak. Levels…. His eyes closed instead. A God…? Impulsive.

And the dream that night was intense, a bubbling nightmare that thickened and roused to the surface like acid on the brain. Guns firing like madmen, blood spurting, coating the ground like red ash and oozing down a spider—all blending together and melding into a thick globby paste of a dream. Cloud was an actor on a stage clothed like a battlefield, equipped in the causality wear and footed in the midst of the desert all shrouded in green skies and yellow clouds and lions equipped with riffles and all the people erupting bam bam as sounds clicked the air. Actors dressed like soldiers ran all around him, all panicked like as one by one they exploded into gore or the lions ate them or they were suffocated by their lover's saliva and goodbye kisses as they were already dead anyway, and Aerith lied posed, sprawled across the bloody stage with wide eyes as Cloud held the opposing rifle. One by one the bullets struck her breast, and one by one each branch stricken would explode and blemish his boots, and he would laugh something awful and fire and fire and eventually there was nothing left but gore and his laugher. He was INVINSIBLE, and he KNEW IT. The AUDIENCE knew it.

The audience laughed along with him and applauded and threw flowers at his feet, and in retort he let loose the encore.

And so… ring, ring, ring the bullets, and all the while he swallowed the screams and poured more emotion upon the stage.

Who needed the PILLS when you had the DREAMS? Who need the ESCAPISM, when you ENJOYED it? Blood is thicker than water. Blood is cleaner than water. Blood feels BETTER than water.

Haha… leave it to the dreams, leave it to the dreams.

LEAVE IT TO THE FUCKING AUDIENCE, and dance like the puppet you are. Snipper snap snap… BREAK, YOU COWARDLY FUCK!

Cloud woke in a freezing sweat and realized where he was, equipped in chains like he had been the night before and just what a monster like him deserved. They didn't feel so taut anymore; power seeping through his nightmares and whatnot, and his vision was choppy and blurred like everything else that was supposed to make sense. But a sudden fear possessed him and nearly immediately he could feel invisible bullets seeping through his chest and up his neck and through his gullet out his mouth, and all the while he shivered under sweat and sulked down deep under the chains.

I can't escape these visions… they're lost and have captivated me…

He could barely feel the hands loosening his chains as his body crippled into a ball.

It's all catching up to me now…

What I must do…

Firm hands grasped into the flesh of her neck and squeezed, chapped nails seeping and a manic grin peeling as coughs erupted into the shape of blood and on and on the audience roared. She breathed her own blood and crippled to the floor, sputtering and withering like an animal as Cloud smiled down on her, now on his feet and hands free and wild.

"Now how is that, my ladies, my gentlemen!" He screamed through the cell. "Isn't this what ya'll wanted? You were so anxious before, why aren't ya applauding?" Kicking the lifeless doctor's body then prodding her mangled throat with his boot, Cloud frowned. "I see, then. It's the cries you like, that good 'ol action that follows into the climax!" Sighing, Cloud crossed his arms for a moment before spreading them out again like wings. "But ya see, I broke my only puppet! I can't perform the play anymore unless I find the perfect figure for the part. A beautiful yet experienced wisdom, that." Cloud once more chuckled at the silence and like a doll himself rolled to the ground. "The roar of the audience, the excitement of it all…" His arm fell across the corpse of the dead woman. "I love every moment…every moment…" His eyes barely closed before his words finished broken. "Being… an actor on—"

And the world became silent as he slept once more.

Author's Note: I know for sure some people are going to have questions about Cloud's dream… so I guess I'll answer them here.

Cloud's dream is the symbolisms of things that he can't explain. To him, theater is a mystery, and he likes it because he doesn't understand it. He isn't artistic like that. But yet he sees it as another world, so when he's standing there on the stage he's seeing what he doesn't want to see. He sees what would happen if he listened to Zack, abandoned his pride, and followed up the "levels" of the Shinra's order. He becomes nothing but a powerful, indestructible toy that ends up breaking itself. He chooses this path for the sake of the audience, a.k.a. the world around him and the Shin-ra that watches his every move. He chooses what the "audience" thinks he should do, not what he thinks is right. He becomes a coward.

Chapter Three coming soon (hopefully?). Please review. :)