Unstable Trajectories
Cloud Strife was not a happy eight-year-old. In the spring the mayor of Nibelhien's wife had died and their daughter, Tifa, had decided that her mother was on the other side of the Nibel mountains. The seven-year-old village princess insisted on going to get her mother back regardless of how dangerous the mountains were -Cloud knew there were dragons up there- even if her friends were too scared to follow her.
Cloud knew that he should have stopped Tifa or told an adult what she wanted to do; dead meant 'not coming back ever' not just 'gone far away'. He knew that because his father was dead, had died even before Cloud could get to know him. Still, he couldn't just persuade the girl since he was terribly shy and a bit of an outsider in the village and the unwritten rule of childhood was 'do not rat out other children to adults', so instead he just followed behind her at a distance so he could help if she got into trouble.
At least, that was the plan. Except he couldn't do anything when the bridge over the chasm leading to the Mako reactor broke while Tifa was on it, dropping her onto the rocks below. Cloud managed to climb down and make sure she hadn't broken anything, but she'd hit her head on something and wouldn't wake up. Then mayor Lockhart and some men from the village came looking for Tifa and when they saw what had happened they blamed Cloud for getting her hurt.
Tifa didn't wake up for a week, and by the time she did nobody in Nibelhein except his mother would so much as give Cloud the time of day. He'd been an outsider before; now he was a pariah.
About a week later the thumps and screams started up again in the ShinRa mansion just outside the village and Cloud decided that he was going to find the ghost and see why it only woke up every six months or so and why it was always so angry. His mother wouldn't miss him until dinner time and if the ghost killed him the only person who would be sad was Ma, and even then the villagers might be nicer to her if he wasn't around any more.
So, feeling unhappy, confused and vaguely guilty for his part in Tifa's accident, Cloud Strife slipped through the half-open gate to the ShinRa mansion grounds and scampered up to the front door.
It was unlocked. Pausing on the threshold to listen for danger, the short, blue-eyed boy determined that the ghost was under the floor; probably in a cellar or basement. He couldn't hear anything else, suggesting that the ghost had scared off any animals or monsters lurking in the abandoned building. Encouraged by the lack of flying furniture the old man telling ghost stories had said was normal for angry ghosts, not to mention the bright morning sunlight streaming in through the dusty windowpanes, Cloud went looking for the cellar steps. The ghost was clearly limited to a very small part of the mansion, so he could just run away if he had to. Plus, none of the stories indicated that ghosts could go outside during the day.
The ringing sounds of someone hammering on metal got louder as he went further down past several store rooms and the loud roaring noise gradually became clear, coherent and very imaginative swearing. Cloud blushed scarlet as he paused outside the door the noise was coming from; the ghost was shouting for someone to let them out. As he listened to the thumps and shouts the eight-year-old started to wonder if there could be a real live person in there. Memories of accidentally locking himself in his mother's storage room aged seven sprang to mind: Cloud had almost screamed himself sick and not stopped hitting the door and crying until a good while after his Ma had heard the commotion and let him out.
The untidy-haired blond cleared his throat self-consciously as there was a pause in the hammering and the shouting stopped for a bit. "Hello?" he quavered nervously, still not quite sure if it really was a ghost or not.
"Someone there?" came back a muffled reply, followed by a quick double-thump on something hard and metallic.
"Yeah!" Cloud replied, encouraged by the relatively normal-sounding voice. "Are you stuck? I didn't know anybody lived in here!"
"I was locked in a while back," came the answer. "Care to let me out, whoever you are?"
"I'm Cloud!" Cloud said, trying the door. It didn't open. "It's locked. Sorry." The blond drooped. He was still useless and no-one would follow him if he asked them to come help him rescue someone after the Bridge Incident.
"Kid? Cloud? You still there?"
"Yes?"
"Good. The basement keys should be in the safe on the second floor, in the left wing. Combination should be right-36, left-10, right-59, right-97. Got that Cloud?"
"Keys in the safe upstairs on the left, right-30, left-10, right-59, right-97," Cloud parroted back, excitement bubbling in his stomach. He was rescuing someone all by himself! An adult someone!
"Good. Come back even if they aren't there so we can plan something else;" the voice said. "You've no idea how long I've been waiting to be rescued."
Cloud bounded up the basement steps to the first floor, through the house to the main lobby then up the staircase and left into the second floor wing. The safe was easy to find -there were only three rooms- and the combination worked perfectly. Once he swung the heavy door open he grabbed the ring of keys off the second shelf and ran back of the room, eager to rescue the person locked in the cellar who wasn't treating him like something nasty on the bottom of their shoe.
Now that the person locked in the cellar wasn't banging and yelling loud enough to wake the dead the mansion was eerily silent and Cloud was uneasily reminded that the villagers said that monsters lived in here. Looking around nervously as he crossed the main floor, the short blond slipped back down the basement steps without meeting anything at all.
"I'm back and I found the keys!" he said brightly on reaching the door again, reaching up to try each key to see which one fit the lock.
"Good kid," came the reply. "Gaia alone knows how much I've missed stuck down here."
The fourth key Cloud tried turned out to be the right one and the eight-year-old pushed the door open carefully, peeking into the gloom inside.
The room beyond was lit by a single, dim electric light and full of coffins. There was nobody there. Had it been a ghost after all? "Hello?" he whispered again, doing his best not to squeak.
A thump to his right made him jump. "In here Cloud," said the voice. Now there wasn't a door in the way Cloud could tell the person was hoarse from all the shouting. The short blond hurried over to the coffin at the right-hand end of the room. Unlike the others in the room it had a locked metal harness of some kind holding it closed and the lid was badly dented from the inside.
"Er, I'll try some of the other keys," Cloud babbled nervously, privately outraged that someone had locked this poor person in a coffin. He remembered very well all his mother's lectures on how dangerous it was to lock people inside small spaces. "Can you breathe in there?"
There was a soft chuckle. "Yeah, kid, I can breathe just fine," came the unexpectedly warm reply. "You're a smart one, aren't you? I bashed up the lid so the air could get in but I can't reach the locks."
"Well, I'm not sure if any of these keys will- hey! This one works!" Cloud said jubilantly, turning the key in the lock. With a series of clicks the harness unlocked and fell apart on either side of the coffin. The eight-year-old barely had a moment to savour his success before the coffin lid was tossed across the room like so much paper and a black-clad, red-cloaked blur erupted from the coffin itself to perch on the nearest end. Cloud took a wary step back towards the door as red eyes under black hair pierced him like winter wind, making him wonder if perhaps he should have checked why this guy was locked in a coffin before letting them out. After all, he had been in there for a very long time if the stories were anything to go by and normal people can't even survive a month without food, let alone several years. Hell, he'd probably been in there longer than Cloud had been alive!
"Are, are you a vampire?" he squeaked, eyes wide as he stared at the tall, pale stranger he'd just let out of a coffin.
Enter Cloud Strife, intrepid rescuer! I shifted Tifa's accident forward a few months for plot purposes; Cloud's inferiority complex has had hardly any time to settle in at this point and he hasn't become totally introverted just yet.
