A/N I wanted to do something with Tifa that gave her a darker side - an envious, borderline evil side that appreciates another fighter in all the wrong ways...I'm rambling. I mightwrite a few with Tifa, to check all the facets of her personality.
"Do you know what ends most fights, student?" The girl shakes her head, her wine red eyes wide with curiosity, dark hair flopping. The thick leather gloves on her small hands creak as she grips, ready to make a guess.
The young woman shakes her head and ends the memory, concentrating on the task at hand. The lesson was on overconfidence - her father's voice repeating, over and over, that arrogance ended the fight before it began. There is never a sure win, never an easy fight, he said, giving that soft smile of his; but he was wrong, she noted, wrong to say so. There was an easy fight, and she'd seen it.
It was the General, slicing his way through town, cutting a bloody swathe through Nibelheim as silver hair swayed behind him. It was the casually tossed match that destroyed decades of construction. An easy fight was the one fought swiftly and ruthlessly - the blade going through the Cetra's stomach before the girl could give another thought.
She was caught between a smile and a frown, between envy and horror - jealous of his skill, the lack of thought involved, the absolute conviction with which he ended life. He never looked back and questioned himself, never felt guilt over his means or ends, never glanced at dead men and women and envisioned orphaned children or widowed lovers. She couldn't tell the angel from the demon, and it scared her.
So when she gazed upon his form, wings sprouting from his back, and saw the one with pitch black feathers, she knew that it wasn't a mistake. She knew it was the only wing that mattered. The one winged angel was just as much devil as saint.
And he, above all, was guilty of arrogance.