Welcome to Adventu, your final fantasy rp haven. adventu focuses on both canon and original characters from different worlds and timelines that have all been pulled to the world of zephon: a familiar final fantasy-styled land where all adventurers will fight, explore, and make new personal connections.
at adventu, we believe that colorful story and plots far outweigh the need for a battle system. rp should be about the writing, the fun, and the creativity. you will see that the only system on our site is the encouragement to create amazing adventures with other members. welcome to adventu... how will you arrive?
year 5, quarter 3
Welcome one and all to our beautiful new skin! This marks the visual era of Adventu 4.0, our 4th and by far best design we've had. 3.0 suited our needs for a very long time, but as things are evolving around the site (and all for the better thanks to all of you), it was time for a new, sleek change. The Resource Site celebrity Pharaoh Leep was the amazing mastermind behind this with minor collaborations from your resident moogle. It's one-of-a-kind and suited specifically for Adventu. Click the image for a super easy new skin guide for a visual tour!
Final Fantasy Adventu is a roleplaying forum inspired by the Final Fantasy series. Images on the site are edited by KUPO of FF:A with all source material belonging to their respective artists (i.e. Square Enix, Pixiv Fantasia, etc). The board lyrics are from the Final Fantasy song "Otherworld" composed by Nobuo Uematsu and arranged by The Black Mages II.
The current skin was made by Pharaoh Leap of Pixel Perfect. Outside of that, individual posts and characters belong to their creators, and we claim no ownership to what which is not ours. Thank you for stopping by.
Post by Cloud Strife on May 9, 2021 11:03:13 GMT -6
Cloud lifted his arm and wiped away the thin trickle of water from his chin in a clumsy motion. His arm immediately fell to the couch cushion with a dull thud and lay there motionless like the strings puppeting it had suddenly been cut. He only had so much energy in him and he had to ration it. I should be dead, he reminded himself, the thought periodically drifting through his mind like a leaf on the wind, and the only reason he wasn't was because of Yuna.
She was very good at her job.
When she asked if there was anything she could do for him he wanted to tell her to knock him out for a couple of days. It was a stupid thought. A weak one. This was the price he had to pay for his choices. Though his mind was still sluggish with exhaustion it was never far from thoughts of Tifa, of Aerith. They were still in Sonora. In a dim little bar in the slums, listening to a droning newscaster talk about the destruction in Provo... How fast did news travel in this place? A vague sick feeling drifted over him like a slow wave. He needed to tell them he was okay--
Yeah. You're really okay, huh?
Cloud closed his eyes for a moment and took in a slow breath, feeling the air move through his windpipe, his lungs expand until they hit the threshold where cool air became a sudden sharp burn. He let the breath out.
Was there anything he might want the Provo authorities to know... Any explanation for what he did, for the destruction left behind, right? Justification. What was he supposed to say? Pre-emptive self defense? Just trust me, officer, that guy was going to destroy the planet? It needed to be done. Whatever the consequences, Sephiroth had to be stopped. He had to--
Cloud inhaled another breath, pressing it just past the point where the pain started, letting it linger there. He opened his eyes.
"Don't think the Provo authorities are gonna care about stuff that happened on another planet," he said, fixing Yuna with another tired stare. "I've got... I've got some friends in Sonora." He paused, stifling a weak cough. "I should tell 'em I'm okay."
It sounds stupider when you say it out loud.
"I just... don't want them caught up in whatever I have coming to me." He paused a beat and looked away. There was something sharp and painful constricting his throat. "I wasn't just picking a fight. Sephiroth, he tried to destroy the world-- He slaughtered so many innocent people-- I couldn't let him do it again. I couldn't give him the chance."
There was something pleading in his voice and in his eyes. I'm not crazy, it said. Please don't think I'm crazy.
Post by Cloud Strife on Apr 14, 2021 19:34:36 GMT -6
The pain was static in his mind. Bursts of white if he moved the wrong way. Patterns of snow and pins and needles and itching and fire and the big one, the bolt of lightning through his chest, if he got any more bright ideas like trying to get up. Cloud mustered a blank stare at a vague point in space hovering a few feet in front of him. As far as blank stares went it was a C+ effort. He lacked the energy to withstand the slow gravitational pull on his eyelids and the world got dimmer from the top down, millimeter by millimeter. He inhaled acid and exhaled fire and regretted every second of sitting up. Of existing. He grasped at the unconsciousness he'd left behind but it was sand between his motionless fingers.
Somewhere in the back of his mind a drive that wasn't quite a conscious thought urged him to get up. Tifa and Aerith were still in Sonora. He had to get back to them, tell them what happened...
He wished Tifa was here.
Sounds drifted in from somewhere beyond his small sphere of awareness. What kind of sounds? He willed his brain to process the sensory input like he was trying to start a dying engine. Sweat chilled on his pale skin. Sounds. Think. Soft ones. Flat. Tentative, like... like quiet footsteps. He furrowed his brows. His skull ached. Another sound followed, longer, lighter, fuller--
Someone's talking.
Huh?
Snap out of it. Someone's talking to you.
His eyes moved first, tired mako eyes sweeping in slow motion across the room until they found a person. She was talking at him. Introducing herself. Yuna. Cloud hadn't heard the name before. Nothing in the sentence clicked until she said the name Caius, and even then he had to grope around in the fog of his mind. Caius, where did he know that name from?
Sonora. The house. Right.
Why wouldn't he want to take me to the hospital...?
Oh.
Rubble and screaming. Black char on crumbling stones. The smell of burning wood and the crunch of broken glass underfoot. A wave of sickness washed over him and Cloud buckled beneath it. He looked down at his hands. They rested palm up on the bloody couch cushion, fingers half curled, spotted with dry smears of crimson. His chest burned. He didn't have the energy to steel his expression into anything other than a broken reflection of shame and regret.
When Cloud lifted his head again she was offering him water. He ran his tongue reflexively over his bottom lip, dry and cracked like Corel hardpan. His throat felt lined with sandpaper. When he opened his mouth to speak a wordless, raspy sound escaped him like air leaking out of a tire. He tested his dominant hand, tried to curl his fingers into a loose fist, but the nerves in his forearm lit up with pain. The wound there was deep, down to the bone. It was a scratch compared to his other injuries.
With his other hand he reached out and took hold of the glass. A tremor settled in as he pulled it back towards himself. The water rippled but didn't spill over the edge of the glass, and he tipped it back and drank greedily. The effort of drinking, like everything he did, spiked the pain in his core but he was too thirsty to care. Water dribbled out of the corner of his mouth, down his chin. He grimaced as he lowered the glass.
"Thanks," he said after a moment. His voice was hoarse.
"I think..." he started, then a tickle in his lungs became a cough and the cough felt like it was ripping his chest apart from the inside out. He dropped the empty glass on the cushion beside him and grabbed at the bandaged wound for what little it did until the coughing subsided. His eyes stung. He measured his breathing until the worst of the agony ebbed away and let himself sink deeper into the couch cushions.
He looked at Yuna. She seemed tired. They had something in common.
"...I think I got blood on your couch," he muttered weakly. "Sorry."
Post by Cloud Strife on Apr 11, 2021 15:13:01 GMT -6
Cloud scratched the back of his head and hoped in the few seconds it took for Tifa to close the distance between them that he might think of some way to tell her about Aerith that didn't involve him stumbling awkwardly over every word. It was a good sign that he was still capable of hope. It didn't change the fact that he wasn't capable of answering her question like a normal human being. Who, she asked, and he suddenly felt very thirsty. When was the last time he had a drink?
Okay. Don't make it more complicated than it is. Just tell her. It's Aerith.
I can't just say it like that without--
What? Is this really the strangest thing that's happened to either of you? Let Aerith explain it.
...
In Midgar, long after the plate had fallen and the mourning voices went silent, two children played in the flowers blooming in a crumbling slum church. Between them Cloud watched Aerith tending the flowers beneath the shaft of warm yellow light shining down through a hole in the roof. He took a step towards her. The old floorboards creaked. She disappeared.
Maybe he didn't know what to say because he still hadn't accepted it was real. Not really.
"It's, uh..." he started, and he fell gratefully silent when Aerith stepped out around him and saved him the further embarrassment.
Cloud's boots scuffed against the floor as shuffled back a step to give Aerith and Tifa some space. As if answering Tifa's question, finally, he made a halfhearted gesture with his low hanging hands. Ta-da.
Better not to say anything else, he decided. He studied Tifa's reaction instead.
Post by Cloud Strife on Mar 28, 2021 20:37:24 GMT -6
Over the ambient hum of the city came the cacophony of the fight. The clash of metal on metal, the slap of bootsoles on the pavement, a chorus of shouting. Two men split from the group as their comrade scrambled back to his feet. They moved to flank Cloud, shouting obscenities at him as if he gave half a shit what either of them thought.
If he'd learned anything about the Sonoran gangs so far it was that every single one of the halfwits who called themselves gangsters had an overinflated sense of their own importance.
From his right one of the men whipped a heavy steel chain at him and Cloud swung the main blade up to block it. The chain struck the blade and coiled around it in a silver blur and Cloud felt the last link of the chain cut across the spikes of his hair before it clanked against his sword. From his left the other man came charging in swinging a pair of trench knives with spiked knuckledusters. Cloud dropped to a knee and the blades sailed over his head. The man with the chain pulled hard but couldn't break Cloud's posture. At the same instant Cloud swiped low with the folding blade and sliced the back of the knife-man's knees open.
There was a loud, pathetic wailing as the man collapsed and his knives clattered on the broken pavement.
There was an instinct in Cloud to land that coup de grace. After all, it wasn't like a guy swinging knives at him had mercy on his mind, was it?
Would be easy enough to finish him off.
No, this doesn't have to be a slaughter.
Cloud stood. Almost as an afterthought he pulled his right arm inward and yanked the chain-wielder off balance. The man stumbled into range and Cloud slammed the point of his elbow into the top of the man's skull. He'd seen Tifa land that one before. Freed of his senses and motor control, the man's legs buckled and he hit the pavement face-first. Cloud shook the chain off his sword and let it fall in a heap on the man's back.
He slid his rear foot back and lowered into his fighting stance again, a sword in each hand. He saw the other swordsman in his peripheral vision and he took a scan of the remaining crowd with narrowed eyes. He shook his head.
"These idiots never listen," Cloud muttered.
He knew he could wrap this whole song and dance up with a single spell, but these guys weren't worth the property damage. His materia remained dormant and he shot a sidelong glance at the other swordsman.
Why the hell did he seem familiar? That was going to bother him for the rest of the fight.
"You take the half dozen on the left, I take the half dozen on the right?" he suggested, as casually as suggesting pizza delivery.
At least he was technically getting paid for this.
Post by Cloud Strife on Mar 27, 2021 14:44:27 GMT -6
In the dim depths of the Shinra mansion's basement all Cloud saw was the blinding white flare of pain. There was no space for his senses to perceive anything else. Needles in his nerves. An acid burn coursing through his veins. He thrashed against the restraints until his body failed him. He cried for his mother, and he slipped away into the dark.
A black void stretched out infinitely in all directions and he sunk through nothingness in a slow descent. Voices drifted in and out of the murk. He wanted to tell them to speak up but he couldn't form words. He willed his fingers to move but he couldn't feel them.
The voices stopped.
He found a strange comfort in nothing.
Laughter clawed the inside of his skull. A distant point in space, the only thing visible in the darkness, the glow of those cat's eyes. Monster's eyes.
...A puppet made up of vibrant Jenova cells, her knowledge, and the power of Mako. An incomplete Sephiroth-clone. Not even given a number. ...That is your reality. Ha, ha, ha...
The world was on fire. Cloud squinted against the burning orange light to the charred buildings beneath. Too tall for Nibelheim. Windows shattered with the heat. There laid corpses strewn across the square, burned, mutilated. Tifa and Aerith motionless on the ground. Slick black pools beneath them reflecting the dancing flames. Terror choked him like hands around his throat and he couldn't will his feet to move. Not to run to them. Not to slip out of the way as Sephiroth appeared and skewered him and a lightning bolt of agony shot through his chest and his vision whited out.
He woke gasping for air and every breath burned so deeply his eyes watered with the pain. He sat up half an inch and collapsed back into the cushion, biting back the anguished cry until it was little more than a muffled exhale. He screwed his eyes shut and laid there measuring his breathing, how deeply he could inhale before it hurt too much.
Not very.
Slowly he opened his eyes, blinking until the world came into focus. He recognized nothing. Someone must have dragged him off the street.
I should be dead.
But few things were ever as they should be.
He tilted his head one way, then the other, taking in what little he could see without sitting up. Not a hospital. He lifted his hands, a bloody bandage wrapped tight around one forearm, dry crimson smears on his skin, blood under his fingernails. He pawed feebly at his chest, feeling the bandages. Even that hurt too much.
Cloud opened his mouth to speak but all he could muster was a hoarse, pathetic sound.
Get up.
A tall order without the adrenaline to back him, but he tried it anyway. He let one leg slide off the couch until his boot found the floor. He braced one elbow against the cushion and the opposite hand grabbed at the back of the couch. When he began to push and pull himself up he couldn't spare the effort to stifle his scream.
Somewhere in there everything went dim again. When his senses returned to him he was sitting up on the couch, sunk deeply into the cushions, arms limp at his sides. Sweat beaded on his skin. He sat there and took his shallow breaths and thought that maybe he should wait a while before trying to stand.
He thought that he'd have a lot to explain to Tifa and Aerith.
Post by Cloud Strife on Feb 13, 2021 19:43:48 GMT -6
Sonora's constant freeze-thaw cycle made short work of asphalt. The lot had been paved a year prior but the ground crunching beneath Cloud's boots now wasn't much more than a loose aggregate of road salt and crumbled pavement. His breath plumed white as he paced the chainlink perimeter of the warehouse property in part to keep moving and stay warm, in part because there wasn't a damn thing else to do.
Mercenary work wasn't always as exciting as it sounded, but the rent had to be paid all the same.
Cloud had been standing under Sonora's dull grey skies for hours now, watching trucks rumble past with engines that sputtered and growled like asthmatic wolves and spewed thick clouds of choking black exhaust. The air in the industrial sector of the city was heavy with the acrid tang of burnt fuel and metal and chemicals. Cloud was thirsty, but managed to work up enough saliva to try and spit the bitter taste of the air out of his mouth. It didn't work.
He was little more than a glorified security guard working for a man named Khamzat who owned the warehouse and the contents moving in and out of it on those same rumbling trucks. Auto parts and industrial equipment. He'd pitched Cloud a story of hijackings and bandits and robberies, the reality of which Cloud now realized was dubious. He huffed, shook his head. If Khamzat's gil was as imaginary as these bandits then Cloud was going to add 'debt collector' to his list of job skills and Khamzat wasn't going to appreciate the demonstration.
With his boot he toed a broken chunk of asphalt free and kicked it across the lot, watching pieces chip off and fly out in every direction as it rolled and skittered across the uneven ground. The road had gone quiet. There was an ebb and flow to the truck traffic that Cloud had gotten to know over the past few hours. This was the ebb.
The voices out on the road were new, though.
Cloud cocked his head to the side a degree and shot a look towards the main gate. On the other side of the chainlink a crowd of Sonoran thugs assembled like a growing puddle of sewer seepage. He scowled, but past the hatred learned from running gang patrols with Tifa a small part of him woke with a spark of excitement. Trouble enough to break the monotony. It was what he was hired for, wasn't it? As he ambled over to the gate he shrugged the strap of his multi-sheath higher up on his shoulder. The collection of swords on his back clattered quietly.
When he looked past the gangsters to their lone target, something struck him about the man but he wasn't sure what. It wasn't familiarity, but a nagging feeling in the back of his skull told him he knew something about this guy, somehow.
Then everybody drew weapons.
No time to think about it now.
He shoved the gate open with the piercing squeal of rusting metal hinges. The bottom corner scraped against the pavement and he stepped through the gap out onto the road with a casual stride and his chin up, defiant.
"Hey, assholes," Cloud called out to the gaggle of thugs. Heads turned and the group's attention split; half of them sized him up, the other half watching the black-haired swordsman on the opposite side of the crowd. The tension was thick in the chill Sonoran air.
"Get lost."
There was scattered laughter in response, a few curses spat in his direction. Cloud knew before he opened his mouth that none of them would listen to him. They never did.
Everything that happened next happened in the span of heartbeats. One of the thugs came sprinting at Cloud, swinging a pipe. Cloud looked over the thug's shoulder, past the rest of the gang, to the swordsman on the other side. He gave the man a look, the barest twitch of a shrug, as if to say Well, I tried. The pipe came down towards Cloud's skull. There was a flash of silver. His empty hand suddenly held the main blade of his Fusion Sword in a vertical block. Metal clashed in a burst of sparks and the pipe hit the ground in pieces. The thug gawked at his empty hand and when Cloud kicked him square in the sternum he stumbled backwards into the rest of the pack.
Cloud drew one of the smaller folding blades in his free hand and pushed forward.
Post by Cloud Strife on Feb 3, 2021 22:22:49 GMT -6
The adrenaline built a wall against the floodwaters of pain rising steadily on the other side. Cloud was only peripherally aware of the bone-deep laceration in the meat of his forearm when his grip slackened involuntarily and the warm wet flow of blood cascaded down his arm and soaked into his glove. His right leg buckled if he put weight on it. The tattered edges of his pantleg stuck fast to the open wound beneath. The dull-edged nonlethal strikes were a blessing, then. Dead nerves didn't hurt. He couldn't spare the mental effort in those moments to wonder why the other man was going out of his way not to kill him.
Cloud was ready to kill them both. Anyone defending Sephiroth had to be just as much a monster. It was the only way anything made sense.
Steel met steel again. The impact of the blocked strike shot up in a wave from his hand to his shoulder. Droplets of blood shook free and spattered in erratic patterns on the ground. It was everything he could do to keep his grip on the sword. He saw what was coming next, knew what he had to do to avoid it, knew where he needed to move, but his exhausted muscles would not heed the signals from his brain and the barrier he cast now seemed little more than a novelty.
The blunt edge of the buster sword cracked three of his ribs and the ground was no longer under his feet. He sailed through the air and in the collision with the building his body and the masonry challenged each other to see which would break first.
The structure collapsed on him and everything went dark.
A haze of dust hovered over the ruin. When he opened his eyes he found a ceiling beam across his chest. Tiles and plaster and brickwork blotting out the dull light of day. He strained for shallow gasping breaths and choked on the particles in the air. A trickle of blood ran down his forehead and into his eye.
Get up.
He scrambled for a grip on the beam, bloodslick hands slipping on the age-polished wood. His lungs burned for air. A jagged slab of plaster and wood dug into his spine. He had no leverage. The wall of adrenaline had cracked. Every exertion was a white-hot burst of flame in his chest. Like someone spilled acid into the marrow of his bones.
Get up.
The beam moved an inch and no further. The debris weighing it down rattled, shifted. Streams of dust and grit spilled through the cracks and coated him, adhering to the wet blood on his skin. He coughed and his eyes and throat were sandpaper. His arms felt hollow.
If you don't get up he's gonna kill everyone.
Blackness seeped into his vision at the edges, the image of the crushing beam narrowing to a blurry point, and in that blackness he saw everything.
His mother burning alive.
Tifa covered in her own blood on the steel floor of the mako reactor.
Aerith slumped over dead in the ethereal light at the altar of the Ancients.
Sephiroth. Laughing.
His voice like nails on the inside of Cloud's skull.
All of this will happen again.
GET UP.
From deep in the rubble of the building Cloud let out a horrible, guttural yell, a primal sound of rage and anguish. A final, desperate rally. He shoved against the beam. His muscles screamed with the strain. Something popped. His throat was raw. He felt like he was tearing himself apart.
And then the beam moved.
The debris fell away in a cascade of plaster and brick. Dull light shone down through the haze of dust. With one final push he threw the beam aside and took a deep shuddering breath. Cloud crawled out of the rubble sticky with blood and caked in dirt, like a corpse clawing its way out of a shallow grave. Yet in his eyes the hatred burned just as bright as ever. The hatred that would keep him alive just long enough to see this through.
One of his swords jutted up from the ruin of the building. He gripped it like a lifeline and pulled himself upright on shaky legs. He stumbled sideways and collided drunkenly with a broken section of wall and left a bloody smear behind. He stared at the two SOLDIERs in the distance. He gauged how far he could run. Not far. He'd make it farther. It didn't matter. His breathing was ragged and he closed his eyes and inhaled as deeply as his lungs would allow.
He hoped Tifa and Aerith would understand.
He wrenched the sword out of the rubble and put one foot in front of the other. Again. Again. His legs shook until they didn't. Until the momentum carried him forward. One foot in front of the other, faster now, the soles of his boots slapping the stone in a limping staccato. The tip of the blade trailed sparks behind him until he lifted it, closing the gap on Sephiroth. A piece of materia glowed green. He raised his sword to parry the strike he knew was coming because they'd done this all before.
And he still wasn't fast enough.
The masamune stuck twelve inches out of Cloud's back. His sword clattered to the ground and he doubled over, hands reflexively grasping at the blade that pierced his lung. Any noise he could have made cut off in his throat. His legs buckled, but he didn't fall. He refused. He wasn't finished yet.
One foot in front of the other. A shuffling step. The slick whisper of a blade through flesh.
The masamune stuck three feet out of Cloud's back and he left a smeared trail of blood on its mirror surface. Blood bubbled up in his throat and spilled out of his mouth, splattering on the ground between his feet. He lifted his head and looked Sephiroth in the eyes. Jaw set. Defiant.
As he lifted his hand he choked out one toneless question, the words half-slurred by the blood in his throat.
"...s'that... all you got?"
He hardly got the last word out before he unleashed Ultima from four feet away. The world went green, then white.
Post by Cloud Strife on Feb 1, 2021 21:18:45 GMT -6
A few months. She said she'd been in this place a few months and Cloud tried as best he could to square it with his own experience. He didn't do well keeping track of time on the road where the days and nights ran one into the next without his notice. He thought about it in spans of weeks, but a few months? That didn't seem right. How could she have been here longer than him? They were all together in the depths of the Northern Crater when the earth trembled and everything began collapsing around them...
No use trying to figure it out now. Need to sleep on it.
Sleep on it... somewhere. He hadn't figured that part out. He hadn't figured anything out but that he was going to find his friends, find Tifa, and the rest would sort itself out somehow. Maybe the city had some kind of 24 hour diner and he could collapse into a cracked vinyl booth and lay his head down on scarred formica for a few hours. Probably not, when he didn't even have the gil for a coffee. But Tifa was a step ahead of him.
The offer of her apartment made him straighten up just slightly. His eyebrows lifting by degrees, his expression carefully wrangled into only mild surprise. No, surprise wasn't the right word for it. Of course he should have expected her to want to help him find his footing in the city, this Midgar-but-not. There was nothing surprising about that. Hadn't she done the same when she found him at the station in sector seven? So much had happened since then... Every thought in his head crashed into another before any of them were fully formed. He rubbed the back of his neck.
"Yeah, that's-- I, uh..." he stammered, catching himself and clearing his throat.
Come on, don't be stupid.
Like it's that simple.
He found his composure and nodded, the small smile on his face awkward and genuine.
"I won't complain about 'cozy'. Promise I won't make a mess." He paused a beat. "Thanks, Tifa."
Post by Cloud Strife on Jan 31, 2021 22:47:40 GMT -6
They walked the streets of Sonora, him and Aerith, following the city's wealth gradient from metropolis to urban decay to slum. He tried to force his mind off the unreality of the situation, the feeling of two images projected on top of each other and battling for his focus. Midgar and Sonora. Death and Life. Home and... here. Though they'd already tried to cobble together some measure of sense out of this world, it hadn't sunk in enough for Cloud to accept without the nagging feeling that he would wake up and she would be gone again.
In the long gap of silence Cloud's thoughts drifted. His feet walked an automatic path to Seventh Heaven, and his mind turned over the question of how to explain all this to Tifa. How to even approach the subject. He got nowhere, second guessing every thought before he even finished thinking it. Nothing new, then.
He returned to the present moment when Aerith broke into his line of sight, stepping in front of him to speak. Scratching the back of his head, he wished he had a good answer for her but the look on his face said he didn't. There was so much he and Tifa hadn't spoken about. Settling in to life in Sonora seemed like the more pressing matter than dredging up the past.
It was a fine strategy, at least until that past started showing up again.
"I don't know," he said. "I don't wanna try and predict anything. Let's just play it by ear."
Seventh Heaven sat in the midst of Sonora's gray slums, in the shadows of highrises under a dull slate sky. In Cloud's eyes the ramshackle bar had a subtle warmth to it, that where the life had been drained from the rest of the environment, that little bar held firm. Maybe he was just projecting, trying to conjure something tangible out of the things in his head. He had a knack for it.
Cloud motioned with his hand for Aerith to let him enter first. He shouldered open the door, sweeping his mako-eyes across the interior of the bar from his place in the doorway. It was still quiet but for a couple of regulars nursing their drinks in that way regulars do, silent and still like a piece of furniture. If it weren't for the fact that Tifa kept a neater bar than that, Cloud might check them for dust and cobwebs.
At least they wouldn't care if this whole thing turned into a scene.
He stepped forward, leaving space for Aerith to follow him inside.
"Tifa?" he said, tentatively, still debating on how to explain the situation up until the words fell out of his mouth. "I, uh, ran into somebody while I was out."
Post by Cloud Strife on Jan 16, 2021 20:56:44 GMT -6
The clash of blades rang in his skull like a tolling bell and he skidded backwards, his boots making two long tracks through the dirt and debris. The impact shockwave ran through him from his wrists to his feet, but hate and spite kept him upright. He bared gritted teeth in a feral grimace. A haze of dust drifted past.
Where Sephiroth should have been standing in his line of sight instead stood another SOLDIER. The uniform was a dead giveaway but that wasn't what held his eye. Nor was it the solitary wing with its stark white plumage bright against the dim brown wreck of a building.
It was the sword. It was that sword. The fractional second of wide-eyed shock gave way, like all things did in that moment, to anger without limit. That sword, that monument to grief and legacy and a shed identity, that sword in someone else's hands, raised in defense of Sephiroth.
Enough. Yeah, Cloud had more than enough of this.
He opened one hand and balled it into a tight fist. The materia in Cloud's Mystile glowed green and the translucent shimmer of a barrier flashed in front of him.
Two on one. This is a bad idea.
I don't care.
He thumbed the release on his Fusion sword, freeing the hollow blade at the front of the assembly. He took it up in his free hand.
They can kill you.
I don't CARE.
There was no reasoning with himself. His better sense lay buried under the wreckage in which they stood. He threw himself back across the gap the other SOLDIER created, a streak of blue and silver, a sword in each hand and no shred of fear to be found in him. He swung wildly. He fought like a man who expected to die.
All he had to do was take Sephiroth with him.
So the song of steel rang out again, the tempo too rapid, and when the first blow slipped his guard and hit his barrier it did not hurt Cloud but it broke his rhythm.
And that was all it took.
The strikes came down like an avalanche, and for every one desperately blocked there were two, three more that pierced his guard and buckled his knees. He never stopped trying to fight back, not to find an opening and escape, not to save himself, but to make the kill. No matter the cost.
