Ghosted

by TyrantChimera

What happens when you get one messed up mission, throw in a bunch of comrades who kinda of suck, and add one very bored deity of distortion? You get a very big headache, that's what. Cloud Strife really regrets his life as an infantryman. Giratina doesn't.

1.

"Investigate the odd caves" they'd told them. Cloud Strife and his squad, and a few other squads to boot. They'd all been sent on a mission to check out, and hopefully muck out, an old cavern system that had been giving the locals trouble for years. Centuries even, if you trusted their folk tales. Shinra didn't of course, because locals were locals, and there was always some crackpot spinning a few tales. So in they'd sent the infantrymen, with their guns and helmets and even a growlithe or rattata here and there, because Shinra grunts were rarely paid enough to purchase a piece of toast, much less a pokeball.

If they had been able to, it might have saved them all a lot of trouble.

Cloud watched the latest group stumble out, one of them grinning and spinning and sticking his tongue out in a way no normal human would want to, and sighed. He checked over his gear for the last time, and headed in, short straw tossed to the side from where his buddies had 'volunteered' him to go first. Oh, joy. First into the cave filled with all sorts of mischievous ghost pokemon that liked to possess you for fun, pathways that doubled back on themselves and made no sense, and a pervading, thick fog that really wasn't helping matters anyway.

Oh, joy. Oh absolute joy.

So in Cloud goes, sighs, and prepares to run for it. He'd gotten more than enough info from his superiors for how to handle it. Run in, get to the center of the cave if you can, and if you can't, or if you come across a pokemon that's a little too tough for you (aka, all of them), run right back the way you came before it could posses you and make you make a fool of yourself. For some reason, retracing your steps was the only foolproof way they'd discovered of getting in or out of the place reliably. Well, not in or out. Just 'out'.

Guess there was a reason the locals called it "Turnback Cave". Because with all the tough ghost types and screwy physics, you were going to be turning back on yourself sooner or later.

Cloud, as well as some other infantrymen, all tried to make a foray into the stony, foggy depths. In less than five minutes, they were back out. Some of the others sighed, groaned, or even took a break for a snack (because they had all been at this for literal days at this point). Cloud, who had just arrived with the newest lot of soldiers, had a bit more spunk left in him though. He went right back in.

The first time back in, a haunter chased him out.

The next time, he made sure to put arrows on the wall to follow for when he inevitably got lost.

The time after that he'd put an arrow into the wall of the same room, looked over, and saw two more going completely opposite directions to each other from earlier, and gave up on that strategy.

The fourth time didn't end up much better either. He strolled out from one tunnel and watched one of his fellows jittering and stumbling about on the grass as some of this fellows hollered for their higher ups to help. A second class SOLDIER came over with their mightyena. A battle ensued, the ghost pokemon ran off, and the poor trooper was taken aside for a breather and some comforting hot chocolate. It was all very routine at this point.

The fifth time Cloud goes in, it goes very, very different. He's in, and he's lost, which isn't unusual at all, but when he smacks into a pillar, things start going all sorts of Wrong.

The pokemon get stronger. He runs. Finds another pillar. It's not the first time anyone has seen one of these pillars, but he thinks it's the first time someone's seen two of them one after another before having to stumble out. He almost feels accomplished, especially since there was an inscription somewhere saying something about a third pillar? So he thinks he's done good finding two.

Then things get really, really sucky. There's a dusclops that has it out for him, and it chases him through three rooms before there's a sudden, terrifying shift in the air and he's ran face-first into a third pillar.

Three pillars. YES. He looks behind himself, doesn't see that damn dusclops, and thinks that maybe he's gonna get some recognition from his peers after all, because HAH! I got here first! That pillar says three on it, suck on that you losers! He walks into the next room, and...

Cloud Strife isn't smart. He knows this, because people keep telling him so, and because he's always getting into fights, and because he straight up didn't get that much schooling compared to some of them. He knows this. But he also knows that smart or not, there is something VERY wrong with this room. He wanders in, cautiously glancing about the sharp stone walls as he awaits whatever is going to jump out at him next. He gets all the way to the center before he notices two things.

One. There is a very shiny...,. Something, in front of a big wall with an inscription.

Two, there is a hole in the floor in front of said shiny.

Cloud is instantly suspicious, but it's his job to find out what's in this cave after all, so he goes forwards slowly, gun out, eyes scanning everything he can see though the fog. He avoids the obvious hole in the floor, which is dark and misty and all sorts of NOPE. A very obvious trap? Well... maybe not obvious, with all that fog about. He edges around the hole, then pokes at the object. It's some sort of crystal, or orb, he's not sure. He slowly picks it up. Nothing jumps out. He sighs, looks around one more time, and then turns to read the inscription on the wall.

This is... That where life sparkles... That where life has faded... A place where two worlds overlap...

Well. If that isn't ominous as hell, then he's a flying feebas. Right. He's got the crystal, time to-

BISHAAAAAAAAAANN!

Well shit.

2.

"Ey! There he is, there's Strife!"

Cloud is walking out of the cave, wobbling side to side, and not making eye contact. Well. It's not Cloud actually, he thinks to himself with regret. It's the damn eldritch monstrosity that's decided to wear him like he's a five-sizes-too-small swimsuit. Cloud himself is actually shoved to the side in his own mind and can only watch, and groan, at the miserable job this pokemon is making of driving his body about. It's certainly not him behind the wheel, that's for sure. He's pretty sure he wouldn't have just tripped over the same duffle pack three times in a row if it was him. Not that his friends know that.

Two other troopers from his squad run over, Connally and Jenson if he recalls. They look at him, each other, and then back at him. "Hey Cloud, dude, you okay?"

The pokemon controlling him (Giratina it tells him, it's called Giratina) just looks back up at them, blinks, and tries to stand up again. And fails. Connally and Jenson look over at each other one more time, then begin laughing. "You noob! You got yourself possessed, didn't you."

"Oh you poor idiot. They told us to run at the first sign of a ghost pokemon..."

"Yo! Connally! Got get the camera, this is hilarious! Hey guys, come over here, Strife got ghosted!"

Cloud is affronted and appalled, and the pokemon puppeteering him is also affronted on his behalf. Were these people really his friends? Wow. They sucked. A few more troopers start coming over to watch the antics, Connally gets the camera and also a nearby SOLDIER to help out (thank you, Connally!), and someone jeers that they wonder if getting possessed by a ghost pokemon is gonna be what it takes to finally get the stick out of Cloud's ass. They talk about Cloud, rudely, right in front of him. They don't bother acknowledging the pokemon possessing him. And that audacity turns out to be a mistake.

A deep, murderous, violent anger suddenly fill's Clouds mind, and it takes him a bit to realize that it isn't his. Giratina is a tiptoe away from utterly shredding all these foolish mortals to bits, and Cloud can feel some sort of power emanating from it. And he's the first to notice that things are warping around him. It's utterly shocking and terrifying. And it's just enough to get Giratina to notice what it's doing.

It's frustrated. It can't let the others know its power, not just yet. But it's not about to take this insult lying down at either, at least not until it's got better control of Cloud's body. It gets up, and leaps. There's a few shouts, calls of surprise from his fellow troopers as he's falling towards the surface of a nearby pond. Perfectly still and mirror-like, it's nonetheless not the best place for an uncoordinated, vulnerable human to fall into. Drowning is a very real concern in Cloud's mind.

He falls into the water.

Except he doesn't.

Cloud is still falling, but not into water. He's falling down into a world that's up, down, upside down, and all around in the all the wrong ways all at once. He looks behind himself as a reflection shimmers over reality like a mirror or a door, and can barely hear the baffled responses from one of his fellow infantry.

"Whoa, what the fu-?"

And then the shimmer is gone, and reality has changed entirely.

3.

He later learns that he had been taken to the distortion world. A world on the other side of this one, a world Giratina can move in and out of freely as long as there is a reflective surface nearby. A mirror world, reachable by mirrors. It's honestly a little poetic.

It's also a pain in the ass.

Giratina walks him down the halls of Shinra HQ, and a few fellow infantrymen snicker nearby as they watch him go. Three weeks, he thinks angrily. Three weeks of being possessed, and few if any of them are trying to help him. A small part of him doesn't blame them; every time someone gets too close, Giratina ducks them out of sight, finds a reflective surface, and disappears for a few hours. He's heard through the grapevine that people are finding it simultaneously vexing, and extremely hilarious, that's he's mastered this disappearing act like he has.

Fell into a pond one, day, only to surface in the barracks, half a continent away, the next day? Funny.

Chased around the corner by one squad, and another finds him under the plate and stuck in a pipe two hours later? Classic.

Watching him kick a Turk, run into a bathroom stall, and then watch the Turk walk out scratching their head and making utterly confused noises? Hilarious.

Three damn weeks, and Giratina has had control of him so long that there's not a single stumble or jitter to indicate that there's something wrong anymore. If he didn't hear the occasional, "Hey Not-Cloud, still goofing off?" then he'd have begun to wonder if people even knew if he was possessed or not. Giratina had even figured out language and speaking. Not that it liked talking much to the wretched foolish mortals as he'd gathered from it.

So everyone knew he was still possessed... and did nothing about it. It was very depressing.

Giratina gives him a mental squeeze-hug-purr, and there's the other weird thing about all this. Despite the anger and vengeance Giratina gives off every other breath, the pokemon seems to adore him. It likes him, his cute little body that's shockingly resilient to having an ancient deity stuffed into it, his quiet nature and even his tendency to retreat into his own little world when he's got too much thinking to do and too much guilt or too little self esteem.

Giratina likes him, for some greatly unknown reason, and he's just too sad and tired to figure it out. There's quite a lot he can't figure out, actually. Why Giratina is here for one.

Giratina apparently hears this mental question, and gives a little hum (a human gesture, but one that's been picked up fast). Giratina is here because Giratina was bored. And Giratina just wants to see the outside world after having been banished for so long. And maybe destroy it too, if it felt like it. 'Cause this world was FULL of jerks (and even Cloud couldn't really deny that one). But first, it wanted to see what the world was like. Pretend to be a human, gather information until it's the right time to strike! You know, that sort of thing? Just normal eldritch stuff. Poffins were awesome, by the way. Giratina really liked poffins.

Cloud just sighs internally, reminds Giratina that his mother's monthly shipment is due in a few days, and lets the now-happy ghost keep on possessing him. There's not exactly much else he can do.

4.

Near the end of the fourth week, Giratina rounds a corner and nearly runs into a SOLDIER second class.

The poffin it was eating falls from its mouth and it glares up at the young man, his spiky black hair and amiable grin grating against its nerves all the wrong ways.

"Sooooo, let me guess, you're that trooper everyone's saying got possessed, right?" he begins, and Cloud wants to groan. Yes. Yes that is obviously him, how many other people go about stuffing their faces with pokemon food and phasing through reality? Really now. The SOLDIER continues babbling, "So yeah, judging by that I'm-gonna-gut-you glare, I'm bang on the money, yeah? So I was totally tasked with investigating this whole thing and I gotta say, you showing up really makes things easy." He blinks, eyes going wide and watery, "So mister or missus ghost pokemon, apparently you've been possessing that kid for some time, huh? He's probably really scared, why don't you let him go?"

This SOLDIER, this boy, is giving him puppy dog eyes. What.

"I'm Zack, by the way," he says, and grins widely and thrusts his hand out like he wants to shake on it.

Giratina huffs, decides that it's apparently been holding up this charade for long enough if people are actually getting tasked to investigate, and starts walking away. It turns right back the way it came, leaving the poor SOLDIER standing awkwardly int the middle of the hallway.

"Oof, rejected~!" someone laughs from the side. Zack just laughs. And then he follows, determined to do his duty just as Cloud was doing some month ago before he got into this whole mess.

He turns the corner, just in time to see Cloud disappear into the reflection of a one-way window of an office cubicle. One of the really fancy ones. Zack just stares, and this time Giratina has stayed in the reflection long enough to give the poor SOLDIER a monstrous smile, all teeth and glowing red eyes, and only THEN does it disappear into shadows.

Zack gawks, "You can go through mirrors!? That is so not fair!"

Giratina thinks having god powers to mock people with is PERFECTLY fair. Cloud just laughs.

5.

At this point in the game, both Cloud and Giratina agree that there really isn't a point to pretending that he isn't being possessed. Teasing the hell out of Zack got boring after the first day or two. So they leave the Shinra compound and start wreaking merry havoc in the rest of Midgar. It's nothing very big at first, of course. Giratina is trying to see just how much it can get away with before any of the other big bad pokemon like Palkia or Arceus start to notice. It starts with stealing, clothes specifically, because giratina apparently has a fashion sense and a penchant for dress-up. Cloud's now got a brand spanking new outfit; faded grey denim jeans and a vest, a black and red striped shirt, and leather belts and hip bags to shove the bunches of other random shiny things Giratina decides it's gonna take. Pale gold bands and bangles decorate his arms, and Cloud does feel kind of bad for all those jewellery stores they've robbed. Giratina just thinks "ooh, rubies!" and grabs a pair of earrings to match the outfit. Because accessorizing properly is important.

When no one really tries hard enough to stop them, Giratina turns it up a notch. Cloud is quietly freaking out as Giratina casually distorts reality, twisting and ruining the fake trees along a street near LOVELESS avenue. The ghost type is casually leaning on a bench, admiring their handiwork, when he hears a disgruntled grumble.

"That is NOT how trees work," says a man with auburn hair and a red jacket. He's looking up from a book and glaring daggers at the nearest fake plant, twisted and contorted until it's almost painful to look at.

"I like it better this way," Giratina states, with Cloud's soft voice full of snark. The man starts glaring at him, instead.

"Is this your fault, punk?" He growls. And punk is right, the edges of their sleeveless vest and the bottom of their pant legs are frayed, on purpose. Giratina looks at their reflection in a nearby storefront and preens. Cloud preens a little as well. It IS a good fashion sense, after all. He's looking pretty fine!

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe. What do you think? Betcha I twisted these all by hand, I'm super buff and all," Giratina teases and grins with Cloud's face, and flexes his muscles insultingly.

The redhead scoffs, and Cloud does a little too. He knows his muscles aren't exactly much to look at. He watches the man dismiss him and begin walking down the lane. Giratina's gut is telling it to scoot though, and by the time the man does a double take and looks around , the possessed trooper is already gone.

6.

"A MONTH," Angeal roars, "A MONTH before anyone thought to help him?"

He'd heard about the trooper from Zack, his protege, and then later from his friend Genesis, the redheaded thespian whose could only be distracted from his obsession with the book LOVELESS by an oddly dressed punk with a penchant for sudden disappearances.

Angeal pieces two and two together, and promptly starts a verbal and physical shakedown of every one of Cloud's superior officers and fellow infantry that he can find. This turns into a department-wide upheavel, the honourable man aghast at the negligence displayed towards their coworker. Not even the enhanced men in SOLDIER are spared, because there's more of a few of them that knew this was going on and didn't help, either.

"Because it was funny," Angeal bellows, "BECAUSE IT WAS FUNNY!"

The unfortunate sod who'd offered that up as his reason for not helping was then subjected to a two hour rant on being a decent human being, and way more than two hours of extra duties as punishment.

In the end Angeal ends up teaming up with Zack and helping, the pair trying to track down the elusive Cloud Strife, possessed boy wonder. More than once they spot him, only to round a corner chasing him and have him be completely gone from view.

They persist, however, Giratina even starts to have fun with the chase, disappearing and reappearing randomly like a twisted children's cartoon, taunting them and running before they can get near.

But Angeal and Zack are smart, and suddenly Giratina finds itself backed into an alley, not a reflective surface in sight, even though it was very very sure there had always been a big mirror under that pile of junk for weeks now. It had used it multiple times, after all. Now, there was nothing more than glass and silver dust.

The SOLDIERs had smartened up. But Giratina didn't really care.

"Oooh, look at you two. Chasing poor little old me into a corner. Gonna beat up a little kid now, huh? That gonna make you feel better?" Giratina taunts with Cloud's voice, and smirks cruelly.

Angeal frowns, "You're no child. But the boy you're possessing is. Leave him be. You've had more than enough fun at his expense!"

"And the expense of a few high end clothing stores. Like, seriously, do you even KNOW how much those digs you're wearing right now cost?" Zack adds on, shaking his head petulantly.

Giratina does know. And Cloud does too. Honestly, if he had known how much people would pay for someone to purposely damage their clothes, he'd have probably starting selling his old hand me downs ages ago! "Those dudes were ripping off their customers, by literally ripping their stuff before selling it. I just followed their example," says the blonde, shrugging nonchalantly. At this point Cloud isn't even sure where the line between him and Giratina is anymore; there's no doubt parts of him have started to take after the deity whether he wanted to or not. Giratina just grabs a poffin out of their bag and begins munching it, because what were two foolish humans going to do? Really?

They thought they had Giratina cornered. Pah.

That's when the poffin is knocked out of Giratina's mouth. "Way to go, Dora!" Zack cheers, his hawlucha returning to his side with a brandish of its wings. Confident. Overconfident. Angeal cocks an eyebrow watching the pair, calling out his own aggron. They were trying to force a confrontation. A Pokemon battle.

And they'd done it by knocking Giratina's poffin into the dirt.

Giratina liked poffins. Giratina was pissed.

Angeal catches the shifting in the shadows below Cloud with not a split second to spare, grabbing Zack and jumping out of reach as one of Giratina's claws lashes out. The red tinged talons miss their target, smashing into the side of the alley instead.

As the building explodes in a shower of rubble and brick, the pair of SOLDIERs and their pokemon find themselves battered aside as Giratina leaps outwards. The deity bulls past the two before they've even landed from their first dodge. Giratina's shadows stretch out again, a malicious pair of wings writhing out from behind Cloud and distorting into claws that slash at the hapless duo. Angeal brings up his sword and takes the brunt of the hit, but him and Zack both end up hitting the dirt harshly. The eldritch pokemon widens the stance of its borrowed body, growling, Cloud's eyes glowing red in anger. Power begins to leak out, and the tiles and concrete decorating the street begin to warp around them.

"Angeal!"

The redheaded man with the book is running down the lane, although this time he's holding a red sword, an arcanine at his side.

"Genesis! Watch out! He's a heavy hitter!" Angeal hollers, getting up.

Giratina gives all three humans a huff, its anger turned to annoyance. The stupid humans are running at Giratina as if they have a chance, surrounding it and its stolen shell of a form. The renegade pokemon's anger turns to disgust. How could it lose its temper in the face of such unworthy fools as this? Giratina reaches out with Cloud's hand, yells, and swipes upwards from the ground to the air. Power erupts from the false earth, shattering and bending Shinra's construction. The trio of SOLDIERs are forced to back away, the arcanine blasts a gout of flame. Giratina is already dodging. It leaps onto a flagpole, which bends and twists within moments of being close to the lord of distortion, and then leaps again, this time towards a window.

Giratina disappears into the reflection. The SOLDIERs can do nothing but stare.

"So," Zack begins, grimacing as he kicks at the ruined battleground, "I think it's safe to say this isn't just some strong ghost type illusion, huh."

Angeal hums, pokes at the lightpost. It's twisted, solid, as if it had always been designed that way, like some twisted, abstract sculpture. Not like it was mutated from the mere presence of an unknown ghost type pokemon. Angeal seems disturbed. "What could cause such a thing...?" he mumbles.

"Intriguing," Genesis smiles. But the smile is strained.

7.

"What is your purpose here."

Giratina looks over at the voice. It's a new one this time.

For the past few weeks, the trio of SOLDIERs had become fully invested in finding and capturing them. Trying to discover the secret of the ghost type that had stolen a trooper from them. A worthless endeavor. Giratina had been taunting them, further and further from safety. It had grown bored of its games, and had been preparing to kill its pursuers once and for all, if only it could get them alone...!

Cloud worries for them, but only a little. Giratina has been taking care of him. The SOLDIERs? Too little, too late.

But this SOLDIER that stands before them is not one Giratina had seen. Not personally. Cloud, still in the back of their shared mind, manages to utter a name, a meaning behind this person before them. Giratina snorts.

Sephiroth tilts his head, cat slit eyes staring intensely at the youth before him. "Most of your kind have usually completed their fun by now. It's been nearly two months since you first possessed the boy. Do you have nothing better to do?"

What cutting words, to both of them. 'What a worthless man, so worthless that he's still a child in my eyes', thinks Cloud. 'You've got better things to do, or rather, Sephiroth had better things to do, and whatever this ghost type pokemon was, they were nothing more than a mild curiosity', is what Giratina takes from it.

Both are incensed by this flippance. This disregard. And they open their mouths to respond, to growl and utter insults back, but then they stop. They stare into Sephiroth's green eyes, and Giratina is taken by a twisted nostalgia and recognition. Green eyes, just like Arceus, who was so callous and uncaring long ago, so full of itself, so unbothered even as it flung Giratina into exile. Tossed away like trash, the easier solution to a problem... A problem Arceus didn't want to deal with.

Two can play at this game, Giratina thinks. And so Giratina snorts, turns their head, and ignores the stranger.

Sephiroth blinks, a little blindsided. Giratina is sat happily on a hunk of twisted metal near the edge of Midgar. It had been planning to shove the SOLDIERs off the edge of it and watch them go splat below. Somehow, pissing someone off by ignoring them is a lot more fun.

"Again. What is your purpose here."

Sephiroth demands again. The tone is almost as emotionless as the first time he'd asked. Almost. But now, he too is a little insulted, perhaps. Or even more curious. Giratina doesn't care.

"Well. I was having fun before," the renegade begins, "but now? Hmm. Now oooh... rampage, perhaps?"

Sephiroth blinks. "Rampage?" As he does, a new pokemon appears, slowly drifting towards them from where it had been doing reconnaissance below. Its glide is graceful, its purple fur smooth. Giratina isn't at all impressed.

"Yeah, rampage." Giratina scoffed, "I was curious what this world had become in my absence. But all I've found it that it's still as rotten as before. Hypocritical humans, pandering pokemon, and all the great beings up high just sitting back, scared of what they've made. So proud that they helped create the world, yet letting their powers grow weak because they're oh-so-sure of their superiority anyways. Well, except maybe you. What the heck happened to you, Mew? You look like you went through a million malformations, and it wasn't even my fault this time!"

The new pokemon gives him a strange look at Giratina's address. "I am Mewtwo. Created by humans. And you... I have never met you before."

Giratina leans back, surveying his opponents as they sized them up in turn. "Made by humans? Huh. Is Arceus getting so lazy that they're letting the humans do all the creating now? What a wretch."

"Arceus?"

"Sephiroth, I cannot read their mind. The human they've taken over is... unavailable as well," it says, lashing its tail. It's unsettled. As well it should be. The pair of them are totally in sync, way out of the league of the two mortals in front of them.

"Yeah, Arceus," Giratina smiles, hatred and rage and murder oozing out in a dark aura, "Arceus. The creator, the god you all adore, the one I'm gonna kill and rip to bits and shower their guts over all their believers. The fool who dared seal me away!"

Giratina lunges.

The battle is quick and vicious. Giratina is more than taken aback by just how quick Sephiroth actually is. Him and Mewtwo dodge and weave, psychic attacks and silver blades humming through the air and dogging Giratina's every move. They're missing, of course. Giratina can distort reality itself! The Masamune will never strike him, the psychic strikes will never come close! Giratina's powers hold advantage over the psychic Mewtwo, the human depending too much on a slim metal blade, reality itself! They cannot touch Giratina!

Except they do.

Sephiroth gets in a hit, a lucky hit, and Giratina reaches up to feel the blood pouring down Cloud's chest. Cloud. Giratina's Cloud! How dare he! How dare Sephiroth! Giratina finally gives up its ploy, finally stops shuttering all of its power in Cloud's small little body. Its massive shape appears, clad in shadows and eyes glowing red and bright. It roars. Darkness surges into being.

For Cloud, everything goes black.

8.

A voice swims to him out of oblivion.

"Spiky? Hey, Spikyyyy...!?"

A snort. A breath of air out the nose. Annoyance.

"Hey! Hey! There he goes! I knew it, I knew I saw him moving!"

"Puppy, what are you going on abou-? Oh!"

Cloud feels large, gentle hands prod and move him, and he doesn't want to wake up. He's tired and wants to sleep. Go away. He thinks he maybe mumbles this, because he really wants to be left alone. Of course, heavens forbid anyone ever listens to him.

"Spiky! Hey! Aw man, c'mon kiddo wake up, will ya? We're all worried about'cha! You really went through the wringer there, huh." It's a friendly, yappy, noisy voice, and Cloud kinda of just wants it to go away. He feels something poke his nose, and he shoves at it. "Whoo! Yeah! See! We got 'im! He's back! Aww yeah Mewtwo, you the man!"

"I am not a man, I am a pokemon."

Cloud gives a little groan of despair, because there's way too much going on for him to sleep properly, and he opens his eyes.

He's immediately met with the alert faces of two men with darker hair. Zack and Angeal look at him with a mix of concern and curiosity, and a little glee from the younger of the two. Hah, concern! Who would ever care about him, except for Giratina? He crunches up his face and buries himself into the mattress of whatever he's been laid on, unwilling to face these intruders to his personal space. This earns him a gentle laugh and a pat on the shoulder from those same hands from earlier. "Not quite there yet, hmm?" comes a deep, amused rumble.

Seeing as there's nothing immediately dangerous going on, Cloud lets himself slip back to unconsciousness, a little bit Done with whatever is going on. Something bats at his hair though, and he gets the distinct impression of a mental prodding, like poking a sleeping kitten. It's not Giratina's familiar presence however, and that more than anything is what forces him to wakefulness.

'Rude', he thinks at them, and he can feel the huff of air from them as he grudgingly drags himself awake. He looks straight up into the eyes of a purplish, catlike pokemon who is actually rather large. Larger than Cloud, at any rate. It's Mewtwo, and oh, wasn't that general Sephiroth's pokemon? What's it doing here?

Mewtwo leans closer, as if trying to figure out just what makes Cloud Strife tick, and that's when a piercing, almost crystalline cry shatters the atmosphere.

"BishaaaaaaAAANN!"

Mewtwo is jumping back, fur on end, Angeal is leaping to his feet, and Zack, after being scared for his life for about one or two seconds, starts to laugh. "Giratina, ok, we get it! Cloud is your human, no touchie!"

Giratina, in all its monstrous glory, is sticking its head though a flimsy looking curtain on a rail around his bed and glaring away at Mewtwo. It looks a little different than what Cloud remembers it should look like. Does Cloud remember what it should look like? "Uhm... what's...? Er?"

"What's going on?" Cloud looks over at Zack, who is giving a devil-may-care grin even as Angeal tries to soothe a very hissy looking Mewtwo in the background. At Cloud's confused nod, he continues, "So, yeah! Long story short Spiky, it looks like you got possessed by a really strong ghost pokemon. Right? You remember that at all?"

Cloud nods again.

"Oh good!" Zack crows, "so yeah, you got possessed. And Giratina there, who is absolutely flippin' huge by the way, decided to have a little fun at your expense. Giratina, by the way I absolutely mean it, you are MASSIVE. How the HECK did you fit in him?!" he asks Giratina, pointing down at Cloud.

Giratina scowls, "Bishaan."

"Uhm, I remember being possessed... er. I forget the rest after, I think? There was a fight? With Sephiroth? At the edge of Midgar...?" Cloud interrupts, twisting his face in concentration as he tries very hard to remember. They were at the edge of Midgar, and then, and then...?

"That's where you remember to? Awesome! Okay, yeah, okay, so... ghostie-goo here got in a fight with Seph right on one of the incomplete highways, and up until then we really had no idea what we were dealing with in terms of ghost types, y'know? So Seph went and pissed Giratina off to see if he could get it to stop possessing you and fight, and er, it worked. It worked really well." Zack explained, his grin a little sheepish now. "So Giratina takes the bait, but it seems like after having it in your head so long, and having it's soul? Er? Having it kind of push you aside for so long, your, er, consciousness or whatever it was?"

"Your conscious mind was so used to being suppressed that, when Giratina left you, it did not rebound as if should have. Without Giratina to help you control your own body, your mind... distorted? Dampened? For lack of a better term," Mewtwo clarified.

"Yeah! That!" Zack smiles, "so yeah. You kinda zonked out. And no one noticed for a bit because Sephiroth kind of just accidentally-on-purpose unleashed some reality ripping, multi-story monster on the edge of Midgar, And by the way Angeal I'm now realizing how lucky we are that we didn't piss it off on LOVELESS avenue," Zack says as an aside to Angeal, who blinks and grimaces in agreement.

"Yes. Very Lucky. Genesis would not have let us hear the end of it."

"Nope! That's a given!" laughs the second class. He turns back to Cloud, "so, er, yeah, big fight happened! The collateral damage was awesome, Giratina is an asshole by the way, but partway through the fight we kinda remembered to try and rescue you, and that's when we noticed your little problem. Yeah? And so did Giratina."

"Shaaaaaaaan!" Giratina shoves its head in further through the blinds (was this a hospital room? A very big hospital room? Who knows), the renegade pokemon grinding its jaws a bit and looking over Cloud. It stars to nibble on his hair, and he's already patting it on the side of its very large head instinctively.

"Giratina was distressed at your state. It seems the thing likes you, despite its declarations of destroying the world," Angeal offered.

"So yeah, Giratina was upset and grabbed you and ran to the... distortion world? Is that what we're calling it? Mirror world? Whatever. It took you, ran off, and kind of forgot to close the door behind it. Which was bad because reality didn't like that very much and started kinda going stupid. So we all had to run all the way into that turnback cave place to chase the pair of you down, had another big fight, and kind of offered to help bring you back so big ghost guy there doesn't go all murder happy again. And also, y'know, stop the 'the world's gonna die from distortion' thing. So yeah! Welcome back buddy!" Zack finished his explanation with a flourish, looking at his enraptured audience. Which basically amounted to Cloud...,.. who was currently stuck in a bed anyways, so there wasn't much else for him to be enraptured by. Cloud just blinks, nods, and waits for something to happen, because he's still a bit behind it all and just wants to have a nap. Angeal is watching him, and Mewtwo is as well. But Mewtwo is also watching Giratina, because apparently the two don't like each other. Speaking of which...

"Is... Is Sephiroth around? I'm back, so... there's really no need for his pokemon to have to stick around..." Cloud mumbles, looking away. Everyone looks at him again. Including Giratina, who is sporting an offended frown. Cloud wonders what that's about, and if it's about him.

"Shaann?"

"There's nothing wrong with him, except perhaps a low self esteem," Mewtwo replies bluntly, flicking his tail up at Giratina's inquiry. "Why? What do you intend-?"

"SHAAAAAN!"

"Whoah! Hey wait-!"

"Yipe!"

The next thing Cloud knows, he's being grabbed and carted off by a very big, very overprotective dragon-ghost-thing by the scruff of whatever the heck he's wearing right now. Which seems to be made of rather durable fabric, if nothing else. The others are hollering and chasing the pair, Mewtwo is as baffled as the rest of them, and some poor nurse just picked a very bad time to come check up on him and is yelping and diving out of the way of the large pokemon kidnapping him again.

"Dangit Giratina, do I have to go get Seph and Genesis again? They only JUST got out of medical themselves!" Zack complains. Angeal sighs and grabs his sword.

Really, Cloud's life was just... nuts. A mission in a screwy cave, to being possessed by a powerful ghost pokemon, to apparently being the only bargaining chip between all of reality going bonkers after an eldritch monstrosity from before time began decided to throw a tantrum. And now he's being kidnapped again.

Yet through all that, despite all the confusion, Cloud reaches an epiphany. "Hey, Giratina... does that make us partners now?"

"Shaan!" yes. That is a yes. Cloud frowns.

"You are going to be the WORST starter pokemon ever, aren't you?" he gripes without venom. The renegade pokemon stops, tilts its head as it considers the question, then laughs at him.

"Bishaahaahaaan!"

Well Shit.