Fire Rescue

The entire hotel was burning, almost every inch of it was laced with flame, so much so that the night sky above was red instead of black. How and when the fire started was a question long since dropped in the mad dash to save everyone within it… a feat easier said than done, given that the majority of the port town was asleep… and suffering power-outages at the time… including the hotel itself. But of course, an actively on fire building filled with people which they had to save no matter what was not entirely a new, or even excessively intimidating sounding task… not for Cloud and the gang.

Being the consummate military man of the gang, Cloud was the first into the burning hotel, followed not a second later by both Tifa and Aerith, then by Berret and Red, then Yuffie, Cid, Vincent and Cait Sith. Naturally, being the daring devil dog he was whenever in action mode, Cloud went straight for the most dangerous place anyone ever could in an actively on fire building… the basement. Luckily for him there actually were two someone's there to save, namely the janitor, a sixty five year old man, and his five year old granddaughter, whose parents had been visiting him as part of a yearly tradition trip.

And where were said parents then, in the main ground floor corridor, trapped underneath a piece of roofing that had collapsed upon them and breathing in way too much smoke for anyone's health. Well anyone who didn't work out as much as Tifa anyway. The young woman was gripping the under edge of the fallen piece of stone roof within an instant of seeing the couple beneath it. Of course Cloud had moved to help her, but the couple's cries for him to save their child had rendered it a non-argument, even for Cloud.

And so, Tifa lifted the stone…

she kept lifting even as her muscles screamed with the effort…

She kept lifting even as a hundred other shouts and pleas for help filled the ash-choked air around her…

and she kept lifting even as the fires blazed around her, fires that conjured up every painful feeling she had felt that day.

She kept lifting… because she knew she had it physically within herself to lift the damn thing.

She kept lifting… because she knew her friends had the rest of the building covered.

She kept lifting… because behind all the painful, agonising memories filling her soul at that moment, she still had one last piece of what she had lost that night to hold on to… "Cloud…."

Speaking of our super ex-SOLDIER, he was being what his younger self had once wanted to be… a hero. He had successfully made it down to the basement of the hotel, sliced a wreckage barred door to pieces, and reached the grandfather and granddaughter. As you can probably guess the gramps pressed him to just take his grandchild and go… to which Cloud responded… "not a chance. Now shut up and get on my back." With said old man on his back, the gen-enhanced ex-SOLDIER took the five year old girl in his arms, noticed how like Tifa she looked and made to leave. But as we all know, nothing is ever easy… and like we all also know, things can always get worse.

"Cloud…." oh yes, he, is here. At least he is here in his ass hole ghost form that no one else can see save Cloud. Drop that girl before she lets you die here." And under some totally warped and guilt/rage/fear filled circumstances that was something Cloud might actually have done. For those three things were what filled his body, mind and luckily on a regular basis, guilt for everything he had done wrong/failed to do right, rage at living a life in which everything his childhood-self had longed to be had been betrayed, by the SOLDIER program, by Shinra and by 'him' and fear, Oh god, the fear of anything else he might screw up.

BUT NOT THEN. Then, in the basement of that hotel, as his eyes turned from the softly smiling face of his once hero and towards the child in his arms… all Cloud Strife could see through his ash-filled eyes… was the face of a childhood friend, one he had promised, to save, at least once… one had years later looked him in the eye and said… "you stayed when I needed you most… if that's not a hero, then I don't know what is."

And in this moment, because of that childhood friend, who he knew was being a hero in that very same moment … Cloud Strife had only six words to say to Sephiroth….

"out of my way… mama's boy."

Cloud doesn't even look back up to see the expression on his once hero's face. All he does is grip the little girl in his arms tighter, checks that her gramps his still holding on to him… and runs through the smoke, through the fire, even through the dumb-struck ghost… and out into the clear light of a warm sunrise.

So, yeah mission accomplished: Berret and Red emerge with a pair of kids and a grandmother, plus a baby kitten held gently by the collar in Red's teeth. Yuffie, Cid, and Cait Sith emerge with a couple of holiday-going couples, Aerith is carrying a pair of infant boys, while Vincent is cradling no less than four puppies. But wait! Where's Tifa! Already bolting back inside looking for Cloud, her own charges safe and sound. The two childhood friends almost collide within the crumbling doors of the hotel… and walk back out together. Not five minutes later the whole gang are prized by the whole town as its heroes… and the cause of the fire is pinned on a pair of Shinra grunts getting too boisterous.