Yes I've updated… Only because my teachers didn't know I was coming to school to teach today so they didn't have any lessons planned out so I had all the time in the world to write…

Disclaimer: I don't own FFVII nor its characters. I also don't own the ideas taken from Love Monster.

It felt like months when Reno finally found the time to track down Cloud, even though he knew that it had only been weeks. Rude had taken him all the way to Junon to check on the new canon and do background checks on all the new cadets. Once he had gotten back home he immediately looked up where Zack's room was and pretty much stormed into the wolf's apartment as soon as the door had been opened for him.

"Where is he?" He questioned as soon as he got into the room. He sniffed around the air a bit and could vaguely pick up the younger cadet's scent in the room. If Cloud wasn't in the room then the fact that his scent still lingered in the air meant that it wasn't really that long ago since he had left.

"Spike's in the shower. We just finished training. What do you want?"

Reno zeroed in on the wolf with the sharpest glare that he could manage. The first class SOLDIER didn't even looked fazed. "What exactly do you want from him? I already know that it was you behind the whole getting me into the Turks thing. Cloud is nothing special unless you count his looks and how well he handles materia and don't think I don't know that you've been stalking him from the beginning."

Zack backed off slightly with his hands out in front of him. "Whoa, whoa, hold it there red. I haven't done anything to Cloud. I won't lie, I might have followed him a little bit, but I have nothing but pure motives for wanting to train him. Besides you should already know about my relationships right?"

"It's your relationships that are the problem. I don't want you playing around with him and if you harm a single hair on his head, I swear I'll…"

"Reno, what do you think you're doing?"

Reno stopped lecturing Zack at the sound of a familiar voice and immediately rushed over to examine Cloud, who's hair was still dripping wet from his shower. Cloud just watched as Reno circled him, sniffing him every so often just to make sure that there wasn't anything wrong with him.

"Why do you have that lingering scent of all the generals? That mutt over there I'd understand, but the generals?"

Cloud rolled his eyes a little at the way that Reno was acting. "Zack hangs around them all the time. Did you forget that it would kind of be a given that they'd come to the apartment?" Cloud questioned.

"Just because they come here, doesn't mean that their scent should be all over you." Reno pointed out.

Cloud just rolled his eyes again. "Zack was on a mission in Junon a little while ago. They all offered to help me on different aspects of my training while he was gone. How is your sense of smell so good anyway? Last time I checked you weren't some kind of dog."

"Just because I'm not a canine, doesn't mean that my sense of smell isn't as good as the general's pet dog over there."

"Reno." Cloud scolded, while Zack seemed surprisingly unperturbed about being insulted by the weasel. "I know you don't really like the Lieutenant, but that's no way to treat a superior."

"I'm already a full-fledged Turk. Not that it took that much to get to this point. That mutt and I are pretty much on the same level."

"That doesn't change the fact that you shouldn't be so rude to him. What did he do to make you so angry with him in the first place?"

"Well, he's been stalking you for one thing. Don't you think it's weird that he knew your name when he first came to our lessons?"

"Hey, I already said I don't have any weird intentions towards Cloud." Zack finally spoke in his own defence. "I may have seen him in the training rooms in the morning a few times and aren't you happy that I took him out of the barracks when you left? He might have ended up being cat food at this point if he had stayed there on his own."

"That wouldn't have happened if you didn't trick Cloud into telling me how I could get into the Turks." Reno pointed out.

"How do you even know about that?" Zack didn't even bother trying to hide the fact.

"Shuriken and I had a nice chat a few days ago and the topic came up."

It took Zack a minute to realise that Reno was talking about Cissnei.

"Aren't you glad that I gave you a hand? Otherwise you'd still be in the barrack's wondering how to get into the Turks." Zack pointed out.

"You know that you were just speeding up the inevitable. If I had stayed with Cloud longer, he could have defended himself perfectly well on his own by the time I got into the Turks."

"Can we stop talking like I'm not standing here in the room with both of you?" Cloud cut into the conversation and they both stopped to look at him. "First of all, I can take care of myself. I've been dealing with Johnny since before coming to Shinra, also I'm sure you both know about that incident in the hallway with me and my summon materia."

They both grudgingly nodded their heads.

"Secondly, Zack told me about that thing with that Turk a while ago. I'm not going to pretend to understand why he did it, but I've learnt to accept it as just one of those things that Zack just does without thinking. You'll find that the Lieutenant does that a lot."

Zack made a slightly indignant sound, but didn't say anything.

"What does Zack do a lot?"

They all turned to the door as it opened and Genesis walked into the room. He looked around a little seemingly trying to assess the situation. "Am I interrupting some kind of lovers spat, or can I talk to the half breed about his materia?"

"Genesis, what did I say about calling Spikey horrible names like that?" Zack questioned with a slight warning growl in his tone.

"Well, that's what he is." Genesis defended. Zack just continued to give him his warning look and Genesis just threw his arms in the air in defeat after a few moments. "Fine… What was that name that you called him last time? Chocobo? Can I borrow your chocobo for a while cause I need to talk to him about his materia."

Zack sighed. He really couldn't be bothered fighting the name issue with Genesis at the moment, especially with the weasel there attacking him.

Reno's PHS seemed to choose that exact moment to start ringing and he pulled it out of his pocket. "Yeah, Rude?" The weasel seemed to frown at whatever was being said on the other line. "Yeah, I'll be down there in a minute." He hung up and glared at Zack. "Don't think that we're finished with this conversation, wolf." With that he walked out of the room.

Both Zack and Cloud seemed to sigh in relief as the door closed behind Reno.

"Sorry." Cloud immediately apologised. "I'll try to explain the situation to him later.

"I don't blame him for being paranoid, considering the lengths Zack went through to get you to become his student. He really did stalk you a little." Genesis pointed out and Cloud gave Zack an odd look while the wolf looked elsewhere, whistling to himself.

"Anyways puppy, entertain yourself for a little while. I'm borrowing your chocobo." Zack gave Genesis a slightly hurt look.

"What, you weren't saying that to help me with the scary weasel?" Genesis gave him an odd look.

"Why would I lie to get you out of a situation like that? If you can't work your way out of those kinds of situations, then you shouldn't put yourself in them in the first place." Genesis said as he grabbed Cloud by the arm and dragged him out of the room.

Once the two were safely in Genesis' apartment, the crow was quick to lock all the doors and close all the curtains in the lounge.

"You're lucky that I was monitoring your magic levels." Genesis said as he ruffled through Cloud's hair to make sure the small black feather he had planted there was still in place.

"How did you manage to get Rude to call Reno?" Cloud questioned as Genesis straightened out his hair to hide the feather again.

"Found him in the cafeteria looking for Reno on my way up. I figured you wanted me to get rid of the Turk, considering that your magic levels were going up with your stress level."

"When are you going to take these limiters off me anyway?" Cloud questioned, looking slightly uncomfortable.

"When you get into SOLDIER. They'll measure your magic levels initially, then we'll let it increase a little by little every few days. We don't want Hojo paying too much attention to you right from the beginning, or he's going to find out what you are. When you get into SOLDIER as a first class it'll be a lot harder for him to get his hands on you, especially with all of us around you."

"It's hard enough keeping my wings in, let alone keeping them small with these limiters on me." Cloud pointed out.

"Learn to deal with it. If you can't handle a little restraint, then you're going to end up in a whole different world of pain if Hojo finds out."

Cloud frowned but nodded his head in understanding anyway. "Just out of curiosity, if Zack's been stalking me this whole time, wouldn't he notice the huge drop in my magic power? I mean, I can barely even summon two summons anymore without my real wings threatening to come out."

"Despite how intelligent the puppy is and how talented he might be with materia, Zack doesn't quite understand how the whole MP, HP thing works. Just tell him that using this much magic every day is putting a strain on you and he won't even bat an eyelash."

Cloud gave Genesis a somewhat disbelieving look, but accepted the answer anyway, after all, Genesis knew Zack better than he did.

"Moving onto another much more important question though. Have you ever seen a play through of Loveless before?"