Chapter 8. April εуλ0001- June εуλ0001

MIDGAR.

Cloud had made it here, but not much further.

As the train chugged down mountainous terrain into flatlands where Cloud had never been, he gazed out the window but his thoughts were already far, far ahead. A whole new life – no longer the friendless loser, in the city he would be able to do anything, be anything he wanted. He'd show them back home. But it was the afterimage of Tifa's face that truly filled his mind's eye.

He'd thought it would be so easy – walk in, declare himself for SOLDIER, get on track, and soon enough, he'd be en route to heroism and fame. But… it hadn't worked out quite like that.

At home, he had the luxury of seeing himself as something special. Something apart, at least, but something different, even if only in his own head. Here… he was one among many. Thousands. And he hardly the only one aiming high.

He'd hoped to catch a glimpse of Sephiroth; hell, he'd entertained the idea of meeting the man, maybe even being buddies. But the closest he saw were posters, newspapers, merchandise, all of it carrying the General's ubiquitous image. (He even found coffee mugs. And very nearly bought one.) The war in Wutai was still in full swing, and Sephiroth, it seemed, was not to be seen in Midgar at all. Nor was he expected back any time soon.

Cloud was no longer the weakling he once had been, but he was far still from the physical strength expected for SOLDIER; and he was still smarting from his flop on the mental exam. Instead, he was steered towards the army, to "toughen him up" as he was told; and he accepted it with reluctant grace, hoping at least this was the first step, miffed as his dreams receded further into the distance. Sure enough, the diet and training regimen, plus the rapid growth spurt that had started right before he left, were filling him out. His were now the proportions of a young, athletic man, boy no longer.

At the same time, though, he found himself temperamentally unsuited for the realities of army life. He didn't even have the OPTION of lone-wolf status here, obliged to obey superiors Taking orders did not come naturally to him, but that was who he was now. A nobody. Just another grunt in Shinra's machine.

He'd see OTHER Firsts though, and it occurred to him that perhaps that was something to aspire too as well. They were… impressive… to his eyes, and he was grateful to the helmet sometimes that would let him stare. Even so, he thought maybe he should be more circumspect, after, on an errand into the Shinra building, he nearly crashed into one – a tall, blue-eyed man only a bare handful of years older than he himself. Maybe that was more of the role model he should take for himself.

His attitude meant he wasn't particularly making friends in the barracks. Truthfully, he didn't even try,. The guys were the same old shit he knew from back home, idiots all. Few in his squad had much ambition beyond – earn some pay, go smoke some loco weed, drink some beer. Didn't talk about anything but music, girls, and all the girls they were going to get when they got into SOLDIER. And presumably the music they would listen to while getting those girls. Cloud had already stopped listening by that point.

What was most pathetic is most of these guys had girls faithfully waiting for them back at home, yet that didn't stop them from taking whatever piece of ass they came across. Cloud wasn't blind. He knew there were pretty girls, many more than there had ever been in Nibelheim. A time or two, one of the other guys had tried to push him towards one or the other of those, but the only real difference between these and the girls back home, was the guys told him he'd have half a chance.

Besides - he still only wanted one girl. And if she was ever his… he would respect her, cherish her. He'd never treat her like that, not in a hundred years.

Devoid of the outdoors adventures available to him back in Nibelheim, when he wasn't training, he was reading instead. Adventure stories, mostly. Escapism. One way or the other, he immersed himself in the possibilities he hoped would soon be opening up to him.

And then there were the stories he made up for himself.

He wondered what Tifa looked like now. The curves that had been drawing the boys' attention had been getting more pronounced before he left, and (he was slightly abashed to admit) filling his eyes as well. He wondered if he was crass for thinking about her that way, the way he'd always hated in other guys. Did that mean he didn't love her?

But at night, when the day's activities were done, that was what his thoughts kept drifting back to.

He always started out the same. Somewhere on Mt. Nibel, he'd come across Tifa, being threatened by a dragon. (Every once in a while, he made it something smaller, but dragons always seemed best.) She'd be calling out for help, and lo and behold, there he would be, sword in hand (it was so much cooler to kill a dragon with a sword, anyhow he wasn't sure if a gun could do any real damage, not on NIBEL dragons at least, which everyone knew were like the toughest in the world), and he'd kill the dragon while an admiring Tifa looked on.

Cloud killed a lot of dragons in those months.

In any case, he always rushed through that first part to get to the part he really wanted to think about. That was the part where Tifa said she wanted to give him a reward, and started taking off her clothes. Sometimes, just to mix it up, she would ask him what he wanted for a reward, and he would ask her to take off her clothes.

In their health seminar, he'd heard it called "sexual relations". He definitely wanted to have sexual relations with Tifa Lockhart.

At first, he had trouble figuring out what happened after the clothes came off. What did she look like, for one? He'd seen some pictures, but they weren't all the same. What size were her breasts now? Shape? The color of her nipples? He tried various combinations in his head, revisiting the ones he liked the best. What did she look like between her legs? Just the very THOUGHT that Tifa might have those parts was enough to get him hard…

Then, what to do with those parts? He had only the basic idea down. That's when he finally started listening to those other assholes.

He'd hear them talking about playing with boobs. A lot. That seemed to be the first part of the process. (In his fantasies, he usually remembered to kiss her first, though often not until she had already taken off her clothes.) Right. Then, he'd hear how the other guys "gave it to her good", "she took it really hard", "pounded the shit out of her", and a hundred other variants. So… that was what he was supposed to do? Squeeze her breasts a bunch and then ram himself in really hard? Yeah, that sounded pretty good. And then she would, as one meathead put it, "come like the Midgar Express Train"?

And what did THAT mean? He could understand the pleasure part well enough, release, but how did that work for a girl? After all, they didn't have the same parts to do the same things. Then he got very worried hearing one guy bitching about how "some girls just fake it". It hadn't occurred to him there was a way it could be faked. How could he tell for sure? Well, one thing he was going to make sure of, if he ever got the chance, Tifa would never have to "fake it". He would pound her as hard as he needed to make sure that didn't happen.

The motion seemed pretty straightforward. Not like there were a lot of directions to go in, other than in and out. But… what would it FEEL like? Warm, probably just like his hands. He heard descriptions like "smooth as silk". He couldn't find a silk handkerchief, so he scrounged up a cotton one. That didn't feel good at all – he ended up just feeling chafed. Then he heard another doofus talk about how good it was "because she was just slippery wet." So he soaked the cotton handkerchief. It just chafed more, plus it got cold besides.

Then, he noticed next to one guy's bed, a jar of some gooey substance. He waited until no one was in that part of the barracks, then on a hunch, scooped a globule of it out and…

WHOA. That was MUCH better. He really hoped that was what it felt like.

It was a few months before he became at least chummy enough with the other troops to find out they had… pictures. Of women. Though he found himself always placing Tifa's sweet face above the woman's body, and taking that image with him to fight the dragons that night.

And even more importantly, pictures of women DOING things. Some of those things hadn't occurred to him before. Women would actually put their mouth THERE? he thought in surprise. His body instantly registered that it very much liked that idea, but… did that really HAPPEN? Did women LIKE doing it?

Nevertheless, that night, over yet another bloodied imaginary dragon corpse (had he really killed this many dragons, the mountain would have long been cleaned out), the hero asked for a different reward from the damsel.

Training paid off in the end. He must have distinguished himself somehow, when he found himself assigned to be part of a guard squad for a very important scientist. A woman scientist, he learned, and all the chivalry his mother had ever instilled in him rose to the surface.

If there was one thing Claudia Strauss ever taught her son, it was how to treat women, Cloud thought with pride. He looked forward to eventually telling his mother about this day.

It wasn't until the last minute that he learned the true value of the doctor they were escorting. She was transporting a very valuable data disk, sought after by a group of rebels (their name on everyone's breath) trying to topple Shinra, which carried all the information about the SOLDIER program. Cloud's mouth practically salivated with the excitement, the intrigue. It was like one of his adventure stories come to life. Now THIS was more of what he had hoped to do by coming to Shinra. He had hopes. Perhaps this was his chance to shine, to rise above being just another nameless soldier.

But he snapped off that line of daydreaming. First, there was work to do.

Waiting at the train station with the squad, a small young woman in a black suit approached. Was this the doctor, then? He didn't think scientists wore black suits, but then again, this was Midgar, who knew.

Then again, he was pretty sure scientists did NOT carry weapons like the large shuriken she carried strapped to her back.

"Who's she?" he whispered to the grunt next to him.

"Her? She's one of the Turks," the other man replied, in a tone that suggested Cloud was an absolute idiot for not knowing that. He turned to the young woman – Turk, Cloud corrected. "Hey, Cissnei. Long time no see."

"Likewise," Cissnei answered. Golden- brown eyes sparkled under curled auburn hair, the only color to break up the monotony of her uniform.

They were waiting at the train station (Cloud had learned very quickly the army was about a lot of waiting) and…

"AVALANCHE!" he heard the shout, and everything was a blur after that.

He found himself side by side with Cissnei. "You, stay out of the way," she told him.

"No way," he replied grimly, pleasurable adrenaline flooding his system. "I was assigned to this, and I'll see it through. And my name is Cloud."

His fellow grunts, dropping, Cissnei shouting at him, save the disk, save the disk, and he was backed up against Dr. Rayleigh, fear now showing in the woman's eyes. He reached for his rifle, finding it gone – when had he even fired it? – and he grabbed a sword from a fallen comrade…

Something clicked within him, and he swung. It felt natural somehow in a way the rifle never had, like an extension of his own body, and the rebels were upon them and he was fighting, fighting -

He was breathing deeply, and he was startled to realize that all his opponents were defeated or escaped.

Without thinking twice, he grabbed Dr. Rayleigh by the wrist, and he ran, ran until he found a place he could defend –

"Cloud!" He heard Cissnei's voice, half-out of breath as she came running to join them. "The disk – "

"You're too late. It's already gone," he said curtly.

Cissnei only glared. "Didn't you hear me calling earlier? Our orders were to save the disk above anything!"

Cloud felt Dr. Rayleigh shrink behind him; he shifted slightly sideways, putting his body fully between the two women. Cissnei glared angrily. "Hell no. Those were your orders, not mine."

"So you lost the data disk? What were you doing, showing off?" Cissnei met him eye-to-eye.

Cloud blinked in surprise. Of all the responses he had expected… derision was the least. Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. This was the first test, not a test from Shinra, but a real test of character. He'd never been put in this position before. He'd been asked to take responsibility, gotten the job done, and been met with a less-than-enthusiastic response. How would he respond?

He was surprised to find how calm and proud his voice sounded. "No. I was being a soldier."

Cissnei flinched, but afterwards… could that be a bit of grudging respect in her eyes?

A crash in the distance broke the moment. "They're coming! Quick, I know a way out – "

- and they were running away again, top speed this time, until a train came into view. "This way!" Cissnei called, and they stumbled on, bare seconds before the train began to pull away from the station. Cloud wondered if it had started to move before they even jumped on, but no matter, they were safe.

Suddenly exhausted, he slumped against the wall of the carriage, half closing his eyes. Something heavy tumbled into his lap. He realized with a start he had forgotten the sword he'd picked up in the chaos. Lifting it to his eyes, he looked it over. Nothing fancy, just a serviceable, standard issue Shinra blade, but today it had been something so much more.

Exhausted, he was only too glad to sink back into anonymity as they arrived and Shinra executives arrived to take away and debrief Dr. Rayleigh. Meanwhile, Cissnei picked up a phone call, then turned to where a Wutaian man in a near-identical suit was approaching. But before she had made it more than a few steps away, she stopped as if remembering something, and turned to him.

"Farewell," she said. "Future SOLDIER Cloud."

The crowd melted away to leave Cloud on the platform with nothing but the sword for company, wondering if perhaps he was closer to his dreams than he had thought.

Author's Note: this chapter was fun to write.

And yes, I'm using Cissnei. I didn't want to create a whole new character, so she'll make appearances when I need various Turk-like things done. Other than that, there's no particular significance to the choice.