Mission 63: Marble Distress
Never before had Reno thought he would bring this upon himself. He had actually volunteered to help Cloud with one of his deliveries and he didn't regret it, at least not yet. Cloud had received a delivery request to take a block of marble to Vincent. Obviously such a delivery would be challenging at best, and a joke from Reno at worse. Cloud assumed the latter, told Tifa, which in retrospect did make him look wimpy as Reno foolishly pointed out, and the redhead was cornered in the Seventh Heaven and accused.
However, a lucky call revealed that Vincent did order the block of marble and it wasn't just Reno playing a joke on Cloud in his name. Thus the adventure of Reno and Cloud delivering marble to Vincent began.
"If we put the marble in a helicopter, the delivery will be much faster and easier." Cloud's line of thought was logical and convenient. The marble block was large enough to sculpt a life size statue of a person, and thus it would be uncomfortable to carry it on Fenrir. Cloud had carried large deliveries on his motorcycle before, such as a piano, but it was difficult to keep it balanced and it made people stare.
"No can do," Reno shook his head. "It's too heavy and the chopper won't take off."
"I think it will still be able to take off. I know Shinra helicopters are made to be able to carry heavy artillery, even heavier than this block of marble." Cloud tried to defend his point but deep down, he knew he wasn't getting any real help from Reno.
"Rufus would kill me?" Reno threw out another excuse.
Cloud pouted, "you're not being helpful at all!" In the end he tied the marble to Fenrir and prepared to be on his way.
"I'll follow you from the sky and... navigate... so you don't get lost... yeah." In truth, Reno just wanted a bird's eye view of the fun, because this was Cloud Strife he was watching, and things always went wrong for him. Reno wanted to catch a good video of the action.
"No, you're coming with me," without giving Reno any room to protest, literally, Cloud hopped on Fenrir and pulled Reno on to sit behind him, squished between Cloud's back and the block of marble that was tied to Fenrir. Thankfully Cloud had removed his sword and placed it on Fenrir's carrying space so that was one uncomfortable danger Reno avoided, but of course, he was still uncomfortable.
Cloud wisely decided to avoid the heavy traffic roads, which led him to take a little known unpaved shortcut through the wastelands with the sand annoyingly blowing in the air and sticking to everything.
"Do you know how long it will take to get this sand off my hair?" Reno complained, he had his goggles over his eyes now, as did Cloud for protection against the sand. "If my hair isn't shiny and cool the fangirls will be disappointed! I can't do that to them."
"If you don't keep quiet they'll be more disappointed because you'll be dead," Cloud warned.
A few minutes passed in silence. Though Reno couldn't see it from his position pressed against Cloud's back and with the marble block pressed against his back, the delivery boy's eyes had started glowing with intense mako. It was one of those times when Cloud's memories surfaced on their own and could not be pushed away. Thunder echoed and the skies turned dark, signaling the coming of rain. Zack Fair had joined the life stream in scenery like this one. All of this combined was too much for Cloud and he lost control of Fenrir, sliding down a hill of loose sand and into a natural sandy pitfall.
End of Mission 63
Disclaimer, I don't own Final Fantasy VII. Mission 63 is a sequel to Delivery 31, which was requested by Rei Mumei.