Cloud had done fairly well on the run, even though his body was obviously not as developed as he was used to. He had tripped and scraped his knee, but he hadn't been the only one. He wasn't used to being around so many people. It was a little odd to be jogging along then have someone randomly fall on him.

And they did fall on him. He wasn't surprised to find out he was still shorter than most of his peers, but there were a few even smaller than him. Not that being short was all bad, you don't get directly yelled at as much while in a group because your instructor can't see you, for example; however, being an all powerful super-soldier who has to get a stool to reach the top shelf of his cupboard was amazingly humiliating. If Sephiroth had been little he probably wouldn't have thought he was a god, no matter how much Jenova whispered sweet nothings into his mind. Then again, there was that one tiny conqueror, what was his name again, Appoleelin?

Anyway, after the run it had been time for Marksmanship, in which he had mostly spaced out as he could probably do a better job teaching side arms than whoever was. Living with Vincent, you can't not learn about them.

Now they were doing repetitive hand-to-hand drills. Cloud paired himself with Ian for this despite a glowering Reno. It was safer that way. Ian didn't push him, so he was less likely to show skills that he shouldn't have.

Even with an easier partner it was hard. He had never suppressed his skills to this extent before. Some of his mistakes weren't accidental, with his new body and all, but if he sees something speeding towards him he'll block it with reflexes only achieved through a lot experience in fighting or extreme ping pong.

A hand descended on his shoulder and he flinched away, raising his arms halfway before he could stop himself. Cloud looked up and around to see a teen with medium length brown hair and eyes colored by Mako. He seemed vaguely familiar, like someone you meet at the grocery store one day and see again a month later.

"You have good instincts," the SOLDIER commented, pulling his hand away. "Don't try and fight them. Try again, this time relax a little."

Cloud stared at him. Who was this guy? The person in charge of this class was bald and in his forties, Cloud was sure. Asking 'who are you' was rude, so instead he went with the slightly less blunt, "Do I know you?"

The man appeared confused for a moment before his expression cleared. "I'm Kunsel, and I help around here sometimes. This is my first year as a SOLDIER Third, so you'll get someone more experienced later in the year. You must be the recruit with amnesia Zack was telling me about. What's your name again? Lour?"

Cloud scowled. That was probably why the guy felt familiar, he was Zack's friend. Still, Zack shouldn't go spreading around other people's personal information. "Cadet Cloud Strife, sir."

Kunsel smiled. "Cadet's a funny name. Do you mind if I call you by your middle one?" Cloud just stared at him. "Don't worry about Zack, Cloud," Kunsel continued, correctly guessing what he was upset about, "Zack wouldn't be able to keep his mouth shut if he was paid for it. Angeal's fan club has been sending him bucket loads of letters and gifts since Zack accidentally leaked what floor he lives on. Anyway, remember what I said about keeping relaxed. Oh, and Ian," Ian glanced up, eyes wide. "Try putting more force behind your blocks. Having your arms in the right place won't make any difference if your opponent can just brush them aside."

And with that Kunsel strode off to leave Ian staring at Cloud blankly. "That was… odd," The slightly timid cadet mused. "Why was this Zack guy telling him about your condition?"

"That's what I want to know too, yo." That was Reno, agreeing with Ian for once while Cloud frowned inwardly. People were doing an awful lot of coming up behind him without him noticing lately.

"You know Zack, Reno. He can't help himself." To Ian, Cloud explained, "Zack's the SOLDIER who found me after I had hit my head or whatever. I guess he kind of adopted me, and you heard that he can't keep quiet about anything. Kunsel's his friend."

"What Cloudy-boy here isn't saying," Reno cut in, "is that Zack is Angeal Hewley's protégé, you know who Angeal is, yo, don't ya? Anyways, that gives Cloudy connections."

Cloud frowned. The problem with Reno, he thought, was that it was hard to tell his motivation. He hadn't said that for Ian's benefit for the obvious reasons, plus the fact that Reno had been looking at him the whole time he was talking, so why had he said it?

"Cadet Reno!" the bald man in his forties barked, "Get back to your partner! Socializing is for meal times, not during classes!"

"Yeah, yeah," the redhead mumbled as he wandered back to practice with one of the many unremarkable cadets Cloud hadn't found out the names of yet, "I'll show you when I'm a Turk, yo."

A Turk! The corners of Cloud's mouth curled up slightly into the barest glimmer of a smile. Even now Reno knew what he was going to be, but surely there was a more efficient way of getting the attention of the Turks… It wasn't really any of his business anyway, Cloud supposed. Reno ended up as a Turk somehow, and that was all that really mattered.

.

.

It was after dinner, and Cloud was in his room, working on History of Shinra homework. Then again, it couldn't exactly be called homework, what with them not being at their homes. He also couldn't figure out whether the official name of the class was Shinra History of History of Shinra, as different people called them different things. Reno had already finished his work, probably because he didn't have to look up every single question, and was currently lying on his bunk, studying a notebook and occasionally adding small notes. Ian wasn't in their room, and so far the only other name he had was Patrick, who was an almost scarily tall blonde who was very quiet and kept to himself.

Everything was normal, for awhile, but then Cloud got the strangest sense of foreboding. He snapped shut his book and stuffed it in his locker, earning a curious glance from Reno and some of the other inhabitants, but he really didn't care. Something was going to happen, and he really didn't want to be sitting with his back to the door bent over his book if something opened the door and pounced on- And suddenly he rocketed forwards onto Reno's bunk, making the lanky boy squeak and pull up his legs. The corner of Cloud's textbook was digging into his cheek, and he was thrashing wildly, trying to dislodge whatever was heavy thing that was on top of him. What was going on? No one seemed to be panicking, so it wasn't fatal, but it was attacking him! Cloud turned his head towards decidedly amused Reno, put a slightly desperate look on his face, and mouthed 'help me'. Reno just smirked as he was turned over, only for Cloud to see a very familiar form grinning back at him.

"Hey there Spiky! I just wanted to see how you were doing, 'cause I kind of left in a hurry. It turns out Gen had already burned my boots, but Angeal got new ones for me because it wasn't my fault this time! Did you ever find out who that lonely boot belonged to? Oh, I met your mom yesterday. Or was it today? Reno, when did I call?" Zack turned his head towards the other occupant of the bed at the last question, releasing his grip on Cloud and allowing him to slink backwards before leaning over and throwing the textbook into his locker.

Reno scowled at Zack, but it seemed like he was also trying to warn him of something. "You didn't call me anytime, yo, 'cause I don't have a PHS. Cadets aren't allowed phones; you should know that, yo."

Zack opened his mouth, seeming about to say something before stopping and slowly shutting it again. "Yeah, I forgot," he finished lamely, sounding depressed.

So Reno wasn't following the rules? That was predictable. But there was what Zack said earlier, and he could have sworn Zack hadn't been to Nibelheim before, well Nibelheim. That's what he called it, in his head. Not even The Nibelheim Incident, just the name of the town. What was sad was that it was his biggest memory of the place, even though he had grown up there. But still, he had been sure Zack hadn't been there before. So the question was, "You met my mom?"

Zack looked back at him, staring at him blankly a moment or two before grinning gleefully. "Oh, yeah. She told me stories about you, and she makes great cookies. I told her about your amnesia, though, and she wasn't too happy, not that she should be. I said you remember her, and you do right? I didn't want to give her false hope, but she was just looking so sad and I couldn't help it." Zack stared at him pleadingly, and he couldn't exactly say no, even if he couldn't recall a lot.

"Yeah, I remember her some. Skye, right? She has the same hair."

The SOLDIER's grin could've overwhelmed the sun after that comment. "That's great! I was really scared that I had been wrong, because that would be horrible if my mom didn't remember me but then someone said she did but she actually didn't. Yeah, she was really great. Apparently she and the mayor hate each other, so she went on the rant about how he's a 'chauvinistic pig' and something about cranberry sauce. Then she started talking about the dragon and how it had eaten someone's kid, but it turned out she was talking about a baby goat. Did you know your dad was Wutaian? Not really Wutaian, but he had their religion or whatever, I didn't really get it."

Cloud blinked slowly. His dad? From Wutai? He sure didn't get his dad's genes then. And just what did Zack mean, not really Wutaian? He supposed it didn't really matter, but he was slightly curious. Anyway, Zack didn't have the answers, so it wouldn't do any good wondering about it now. "Why were you in Nibelheim?" he asked, directing the topic away from him.

"Well," Reno groaned, probably not liking Zack's storytelling, and the Third Class stuck his tongue out at him. "There was this dragon, right? I was walking up the hill, then this eeeeevil squirrel with glowing red eyes that tried to bite my leg off, but as I lunged to chop it in half the snow moved and I fell on my face, allowing the squirrel to escape. Then your mom met me, and she made this delish meat-vegetable-rice-meat-some-type-of-sauce-that-kind-of-reminded-me-of-Wutaian-take-out-meat thing. Then I went to kill the dragon, 'cause that was what I was supposed to do, but as I was looking for it in the mountains I came upon this really suspicious hole that looked like it led to a cavern that would be exactly where a dragon would be. So then I bravely jumped down the hole and smashed the eggs open, accidentally telling the dragon I was there with all the slashing and slicing and stuff. Then it got really mad at me, but that's completely understandable because if some killed my kids I would be angry to. I mean, I don't actually have kids but… Anyways, it ran at me and after a vicious battle I chopped its head off, but by then it was night and they couldn't come pick me up yet so I called Angeal, but I forgot about the time difference so it was actually really late here where it had been, like, six there." When Zack finished he stared at Cloud happily, his breathing slightly elevated.

It was completely silent for a moment as the room processed the exuberant SOLDIER's tale. Finally Reno broke into laughter, making Zack pout at him. Eventually he had let up in his mirth enough to say, "Do you even know what a chauvinist is?" causing the brunette to blush and scratch the back of his neck.

"Zack," Cloud hesitated, not wanting to burst his friend's bubble of bliss even more. "You do realize that for there to be eggs there had to be more than one dragon, right?"

Zack sat there for around three minutes before sprinting out of the room shouting for Angeal.

Reno closed his eyes and laid back on his bunk, kicking Cloud off of it. Cloud fell to the ground with a thump. He glanced up to see the rest of the cadets in the room looking down at him. He got to his feet and brushed off his pants out of habit, even though they hadn't gotten anything on them. He opened his locker (luckily his younger self had written down the combination and kept in the locker, even if Cloud didn't know what good he had thought it would do in there) and took out his textbook again. When he turned back around, everyone was still staring at him. One pale eyebrow rose and he smirked. "I know I'm pretty, but this is getting ridiculous."

The cadets hurriedly went back to what they were doing, and Cloud continued his studies of Shinra, inwardly shaking his head at the strangeness of the past few days.

Scratch that, his whole life.

Dreams of the Morrow: Chapter 10, Zack's Blunders. 2,350 words. Updated August 16, 2011.

So... it's been awhile. 27 days if the counter of days untill an uploaded gets deleted is right. Yes, I did have that camp and vacation but still, that's pretty bad. There's a quote I've seen somewhere, it's something like, "Every runner has excuses, a champion never uses them." Well guess what, I'm no champion. Once I got back home I got Kingdom Hearts, and you know how things like that go. Unless you don't. You probably don't want to read my rambling, so to get to the point I'll try to update quicker. If not, you can yell at me, though I probably won't here you. Wouldn't it be crazy to find out your neighbor was reading your story by hearing them yell at this 'HippiestHop' person?

Side note: Thank you reviewers! Apparently my story is fun to read, which is good, because if you're not having fun, what's the point?

Next chapter the plot thickens from the equivilent of some flavored drink to a thin soup. And I like my oatmeal with the consistency of cookiedough. Let's hope the story gets there!