Hello everyone! Thanks for the comments, they're truly invaluble! I know it's been a long time since the last update, but I can explain!! This 4th part is actually only half of what I'd intended to post--this chapter would've been much longer. But when I saw that I'd already reached 10 pages, I deemed that enough of an eyeful for one installment before making another big leap in the storyline. (hint hint)
So, I'm posting this half now, so you all won't forget this story is here! Needless to say, I really enjoyed writing this chapter and I hope you enjoy reading as much as I did writing it. Have fun and remember to comment to your heart's delight!
Part Four: Fitting In
“Not a damn thing has changed from home,” Cloud muttered darkly as he selected yet another plate and began scrubbing. Behind him, piled on couches and chairs, the other eight mercs were enjoying a relaxing beer together, laughing loudly and often while Cloud labored away at the slowly shrinking pile of dinnerware in dire need of cleansing.
“Yo, Spike! ‘Nother beer over yonder!” called a voice from the living room.
With an irritated sigh, Cloud flung the sponge into the murky sink water, wiped his hands dry on a already soaked towel and went to the fridge. There, on the second shelf specifically reserved for alcohol alone, lie the beer in need. Grabbing it, he negligently tossed it in the Tolm’s direction, who caught it deftly and continued his conversation.
Cloud returned to the sink, surreptitiously glancing at the raucous group from the corner of his eye as he labored on.
They were a curious group, no question. He only knew two names of the whole group; the rest were only identified via nickname.
There was Lieutenant Razana of course, informally called “Raz” by her troops, and her solemn, dark-skinned second-in-command, Tolm. While everyone else enjoyed a cheap beer, Raz happily indulged in a mix of Kahluah and cream.
There was Dice, as he was known, a scar marking an ugly path across his face. From what Cloud understood his nickname was acquired on the account that gambling had been a crippling weakness in his past until the military straightened him out. Still, that scar served a constant reminder. Not surprisingly, he beat everyone on poker night.
Sitting next to Dice, his feet propped on the battered coffee table, sat Sparky, his bleach-blond hair sticking out in every direction as though he’d been electrocuted. Guess how he got his name.
Across from him, engaged in a fierce thumb war, sat Jazz. As Cloud understood it, Jazz proved a wonderful tenor, and his skill with the guitar just as good. His choice in swing and ragtime music produced the inevitable nickname. The man was a born musician with a nasty right hook.
Even as he battled fiercely to keep his thumb on top of Jazz’s, Rice knew he was losing. The slight man hailing from far Wutai gained his nickname on the account that rice composed the main diet of his native country. Cloud understood that despite Rice’s short stature and mild manner, he had a fierce temper and sliced into his foes with a dangerous glee bordering on bloodlust.
Cloud scrubbed a particularly difficult part of some stubborn food best left unidentified. After a bout of scrubbing that left his arm aching, Cloud still hadn’t managed to remove all of it, little green flecks obstinately sticking to the ceramic. Sighing in surrender, Cloud rinsed the plate and put it on the rack to dry, figuring no one would notice.
A loud bout of laughter drew Cloud’s attention back to the group. Sitting between the conquering Jazz and flailing Rice, a man with only three fingers on his left hand struggled to see the game of his handheld as the other two waged war. Finally, he hunched forward under the two undulating arms, his chin almost touching his knees as he jabbed at the game. That one’s name was Magic, as Cloud heard him called. Not a clue as to why though.
Sitting in a chair across from Razana, a man with tattoo of a battle-ready angel on one bulging bicep quietly sipped his drink and smiled good-naturedly at the fun but participated little. That one’s Preacher. From the rough introduction that afternoon, Cloud deduced that Preacher was a devout believer in some new religion just beginning to rise. Unlike his brothers, however, Preacher believed that world peace could only be achieved by protecting the ‘righteous’ and ‘all that’s just’ from the servants of some evil guy. In short, Preacher was a holy warrior. Cloud had heard of the strength of religion, but this was the first time he’d ever seen its full power.
And, last of all, there’s the nickname they’d given Cloud. He frowned as his thoughts once more returned to this irritating subject. He supposed he should’ve seen it coming. It was, after all, the most identifiable thing about him. Even so, the name brought to mind the image of a mean, chewed muscle of a dog that ripped the pants off kids that wandered into the junkyard. He briefly wondered if they’d start whistling to get his attention instead of calling him--
“Spike!”
That.
He looked over his shoulder at the merry group and saw Razana craning her neck similarly to see him. She waved a friendly hand indicating for him to join them. “You’ve worked long enough. Come and have drink.”
All too happy to accept, Cloud tossed the damp hand towel on a rack to air dry and joined the group, selecting a seat between Dice and Sparky, the only available seat left.
He’d just settled himself down, feeling slightly uncomfortable by the large grins Sparky and Dice were wearing, when Razana asked, “So, what kinds of creatures have you faced in your time, Spike?”
He snorted humorously. “You name it, I’ve killed it.”
“That so?” said Dice. “Personally, I hate those dang cactus things.”
“Are you kidding?” Cloud said. “It’s those damn frogs that’re the worst.”
Sparky laughed. “Don’t like being a frog too much, eh?”
“You’ve no idea,” Cloud said in a tone that spoke volumes. Everyone laughed at his dark expression.
The conversation continued this way for a while, everyone sharing a short, humorous story of their fighting past. Once they all laughed simply at Razana’s reaction to one story Cloud related, her hilarity proving hilarious in itself. When she could breath again and confessed she’d nearly wet her pants, the laughter didn’t stop for five full minutes.
Eventually, the inevitable question arose.
Magic looked up from his game and asked, a sly smile on his face, “So Spike, you got a girl at home?”
Jazz snorted. “Course he does. Didn’t you see the bag he dragged upstairs? I never seen a man pack like that. Dumbass.” He cuffed Magic playfully on the back of the head for asking such a stupid question, and Magic retaliated by punching him in the arm.
“To answer your question,” Cloud cut in before the fight escalated, “Yeah, I do.”
“What’s her name?” asked Tolm. He’d spoken little during the past hour or so, but he laughed freely at the jokes and stories that’d bounced around.
“Tifa.”
“No shit? That other chick from the whole Remnant thingamajig?” asked Dice. “Dude nice score! She’s hot!”
Cloud merely leveled an expressionless gaze at Dice from the corner of his eye. It suddenly dawned on the past gambler exactly what he’d said. He raised his hands in truce saying, “Whoa, whoa, man, no offense meant. Just an observation, man, didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”
Cloud merely raised one eyebrow slightly and almost imperceptibly nodded, before turning his gaze away.
Razana chuckled. “Thank you Dice, for the personal display of markedly lacking subtlety.” This brought a small laugh from the group. “So how long have you known her, Spike?”
“Um…” he rubbed the back of his neck knowing how this would sound. “We’ve actually known each other since we were kids. She used to be my neighbor, actually.”
A low whistle came from Jazz, the only sound as the rest digested this. It was Dice that broke the silence again.
“So, you expecting any kids yet?” he asked casually.
This time Cloud glared at him as the others laughed and Dice grinned evilly. “Can I hit him?” Cloud suddenly asked, turning to Razana who was in the middle of a sip from her drink. She hastily swallowed and motioned an affirmative with her glass.
“Absolutely!” she said.
Dice squawked in shock from this betrayal and he curled up defensively putting his hands over his head, bringing his legs to his chest and leaning away from the blond in an attempt to reduce all surface area for a blow to land on.
Cloud tapped the back of Dice’s neck and the hands covering his head shot to protect the area. Cloud placed an audible slap on the man’s exposed dome before Dice even realized he’d been tricked.
“Hey, who’s side are you on, Raz?” he retorted in mock anger as everyone laughed at the antics between the two.
“What!? I’m not responsible for whatever comes out of your mouth. You deserved it.”
Dice settled back in the couch, rubbing his head where the slap had landed. “But he’s the new guy,” he grumbled petulantly.
Everyone laughed at that.
“Hey, Spike,” said Rice, he voice unexpectedly soft and carrying only a slight accent. “You have a picture?”
“What?”
“Of Tifa. A picture?”
Tolm shot him a quizzical look. “Shit, man, don’t you watch the news?”
Rice nodded, unfazed by the barb. “But I want to see an actual picture, not a news shot. News stuff isn’t the same as real stuff.”
No one could deny that.
Cloud shrugged. “Yeah, I have a picture. One sec…” He leaned dramatically to his left as he reached into his back pocket to retrieve his wallet. As such, he was very close to Sparky, his chin almost touching the other man’s shoulder.
Sparky grinned and gave Cloud a sidelong look. “Hey,” he said simply.
“Hey,” Cloud returned.
Somehow, this exchange prodded a swelling bubble of laughter that’d been silently growing and a few chuckles escaped some of those watching this scene. Cloud continued to dig for the wallet--it kept getting caught on some seam in his pocket.
The awkwardness of the situation put grins on more than a few faces. Finally Sparky said “What’s up?”
“Not much.” A pause. “You?”
“Same.” Sparky took a loud sip from his beer.
After a few more moments, Jazz finally burst out, “What the hell man!?” just as Cloud freed the wallet.
A burst of laughter and few “Finally!” came from the group as Cloud flipped to the picture and handed to Rice across the coffee table. Rice studied it and handed it to Jazz, and the picture proceeded to be shown to everyone else.
When it came to Razana, she glanced at the picture ensconced in the plastic sleeve next to the one of Tifa. “Whoa,” she said, leaning forward and extending the wallet toward Cloud. “Who’s mister doom and gloom back there?” She pointed to the person in question.
Cloud leaned over to see the picture she indicated. It was a reduced version of the picture the photographer had taken that first day after the Remnants had been destroyed, all the heroic companions strategically positioned to fit in a small space. The person Razana pointed to had his arms folded over his chest and glowered at the camera, a crimson cloak setting him apart from the others.
“Oh, that’s Vincent. He always looks like that,” Cloud said, leaning back in the couch.
Razana looked at the picture again, clearly bewildered. “No shit. I knew he was still alive but damn, has he changed.” She shook her head and handed back his wallet.
“You knew him?” Cloud asked, surprised.
She nodded. “Yeah, when I was in SOLDIER. He seemed like a good guy, for a Turk. Pretty charismatic, too.”
Cloud’s eyebrows shot up. “No shit!”
“Yeah. Optimistic all the way. The only other guy I’ve ever met with a sense of right and wrong like that is Preacher here.” She grinned and Preacher smiled dutifully.
Cloud looked down at the tiny features of the photograph in the wallet he still held as the others traded banter.
Vincent? Charismatic, optimistic Vincent? He shook his head in silent disbelief. He couldn’t wrap his mind around such a bizarre concept.
“All right gang, cocktail hour is over,” Razana said, interrupting Cloud’s train of thought. She stood up and stretched, one shoulder making a meaty crack as she did. “Dark in fifteen minutes!” The men groaned as she left and headed toward her room.
Tolm stood, his broad shoulders expanding as he resumed his role of sergeant. “All right men!” he boomed. “You heard the LT. Lights out in fifteen minutes! Move!”
They scrambled for their rooms and Cloud surprised himself for still having a hearty fear of a shouting black man after knowing Barret for so long. He’d thought he’d be accustomed to it by now.
***
Lost in the dark oceanic depths of sleep, Cloud felt a small piece of consciousness float to the surface. Breaking like a bubble when it reached the top, it brought the faint sensation of something brushing his face.
Instinctively, Cloud’s fingers twitched to remove the irritant and the sensation vanished. Satisfied, Cloud slept on, sinking deeper into sleep…
Another bubble broke the surface, accompanied by two more this time, each one lifting him further from his sleep he’d sunken into. Still not quite awake to finish the full task of brushing whatever it was away, Cloud’s hand moved a little then stopped.
He has begun the serene descent back to deep sleep when, again, the wisp of feeling brushed his face. Another bubble pushed him further towards the surface.
Cloud’s hand rose and landed on his face with a wet squish, the cold feeling of a whipped substance shocking him to wakefulness.
Cloud sat bolt upright in bed, one eye obscured with the shaving cream that had been generously lavished upon his open hand while he slept. The first thing his fuzzy mind registered were shrieks of laughter surrounding him.
Through his one good eye, Cloud saw Dice and Jazz leaning against each other for support, helpless in their throws of laughter.
Still not quite registering exactly what was happening, Cloud pawed away the cream from his face as best he could and stared at the substance in his hand, puzzled.
His slow reaction only brought more hearty peals of hilarity. Everyone had come to his room to witness this traditional initiation event except Razana and Tolm.
Cloud looked at the mercenaries; Magic looked about ready to wet his pants. Cloud looked at the white fluff covering his hand.
Then Cloud exploded from his bed with a roar of rage so fierce that all laughter cut short in shock.
Springing to one knee on the bed and one foot on the floor, Cloud reached out, nabbed the first person his hand met--Sparky--and planted his fluff covered hand into the man’s shocked face. Pushing him aside, Cloud reached for his next victim, who received similar treatment.
By now everyone was trying to push through the door in a simultaneous attempt to escape. As a result, someone tripped someone else who knocked the door shut and another person fell in the mad scramble conveniently providing a living barricade, preventing the door from opening. Panic ensued.
Cloud caught sight of the can of shaving cream dangling from a hand and snatched it, jumped on the bed, and liberally sprayed everyone with cream just as Dice wrenched the door open and dashed out. A line of cream adorned his shoulders and a pile of it had begun to form on his head, which now left puffs of white in the air behind him as he raced down the hallway, cursing with scatological inventiveness, Cloud in hot pursuit.
The two passed Razana in the hallway, who found it necessary to flatten herself against the wall to avoid impact. She stayed that way long after they had past, blinking, her brain still trying to comprehend exactly what she had seen.
Dice entered a bathroom with a slide that would’ve made the best baseball players envious, somehow shutting the door behind him in time. A small click announced it had locked.
Cloud, thwarted, heard a creak to his left. Whipping around, can at the ready, he caught Jazz trying to creep past.
The black man pivoted on heel and ran, with Cloud hot on his heels. By the time Jazz found refuge behind a door, he’d gained several new strands of white fluff.
Magic was the next victim of Cloud’s retribution, who’d gotten the worst of any of them. He slipped as he tried to take a corner too fast and Cloud walked away, leaving Magic curled up on the floor adorned with a new blanket of white.
Preacher, who’d been casually walking around hoping Cloud would overlook him while chasing others, found himself standing face to face with the avenging blond. A moment later, Cloud dashed off to give Rice his due. Preacher looked down, puzzled, at the neat stripes of white down each arm and removed the cap of foam from his head, also regarding that quizzically.
Razana stood in the kitchen, patiently sipping her coffee, leaning against the counter as she read the morning paper folded in one hand. The sound of feet pounding and someone cursing in exhilarated panic sounded about her. “When you’re through having fun,” she shouted, “You got ten minutes to get ready and get outside.”
More pounding of feet and someone slammed a door loudly.
“DID YOU HEAR ME!?” she bellowed.
A chorus of “Yes sir!” answered her from the various regions of the lodge where the mercenaries sought sanctuary from Cloud.
Razana nodded once, satisfied. Suddenly, Rice shot out of a hallway and dashed behind Tolm, the slight man easily concealed behind the sergeants’ broad shoulders. A moment later Cloud zipped out of the hallway and paused, glancing around warily. Seeing only Tolm and Razana, quietly sipping their coffee, Cloud turned around and dashed off after another victim. He fully intended to empty that can.
Razana glanced at Rice, still crouching behind Tolm. He’d been thoroughly covered with shaving cream, some of it even mashed in his short cropped hair, his clothes clinging to his skin with the stuff. He looked like an absurd Oriental marshmallow mascot.
“Make that forty minutes!” Razana shouted. After a moment’s thought, she added, “And Spike! Rice is down here in the kitchen!”
Rice gasped at this betrayal and scampered away. From the second floor, Razana could hear someone leaping down the stairs.
The redhead emptied her mug and turned to Tolm, grinning. “I’m starting to like this new guy.”
***
Thirty minutes later, cleansed of all shaving cream and in various stages of dampness, the mercenaries assembled outside as ordered. There, Razana was already waiting for them, running a whetstone over one blade. A second blade rested in its sheath on her back.
Razana glanced up as Cloud approached, following the others, and she smiled. “Lovely morning, isn’t it?” she greeted him.
He nodded. “Yep.”
The whetstone rasped on the blades’ edge. Finally, Razana stood and sheathed the weapon over one shoulder. “Between you and me, Spike, that was the most enjoyable morning I’ve had in a very long time.”
Then she left to harass someone lagging to the line-up on the account he was trying to dry his hair with one hand and don his boots with the other while he stumbled out the door. Cloud grinned, fully satisfied with his revenge.
Once everyone had appropriately lined up in very little time, Razana stood before them, hands on her hips.
“As you all know, we are here to kill the local wildlife for a company called Coltun. They need do-gooder points with the public it seems and they’re paying us to do it for them. Now that our welcome replacement is here, we can start earning our pay.
“Now Preacher here,” she nodded in his direction, “Has found some likely tracks to the northwest of here, about fifteen minutes out. No fancy stuff here, folks: Spread out, keep in sight of each other, and kill whatever you come across. The wind talks.”
The last three words were accompanied by a slight disturbance in the ranks, the men muttering either curses or prayers under their breath .
“What does that mean?” whispered Cloud to Jazz, standing to his left.
“It means,” he hissed back, “That Razzy here thinks we’re not getting the full story from that company. There’s something else going on. ‘The wind talks’ is our code for red alert.”
“If there’s something else going on, why did we take this job?” Cloud had just met Razana, but he already had the impression she looked out for her comrades.
Jazz shrugged. “Could just be nothing. But we need the job. If nothing goes wrong all the better. But if Razzy thinks something’s up, you can believe it.”
Cloud nodded, feeling a chill crawl up his spine, accompanied by a rush of adrenaline. This was what he loved doing: Fighting, living on the edge, never sure what may happen next. Tifa was right: He was meant for this.
“Rice, Magic, and Sparky, you’re on the left edge,” Razana barked. “Jazz, Dice, and Tolm, you’re on the right. Spike, Preacher--you’re with me. Let’s move!”
Cloud automatically fell in line as ordered, the distant training from Shinra coming back to him. Razana took point, leading the group into the woods. Cloud stayed on her left while Preacher, holding a vicious-looking hammer heavy enough to crush souls, covered her right.
They walked quietly and swiftly through the sun-dappled forest, weapons as the ready. Birds chirped in the trees and rodents chirred in the brush. The mercenaries quietly slipped by, waiting patiently for their first opponent to find them.
They didn’t wait long.
By some stroke of luck, it was Cloud who encountered them first, and any doubts about his fighting prowess vanished within the space of seconds.
Razana had stepped right past them, never seeing the hulking creatures. Cloud, however, nearly passed right between them. He sensed, rather than saw, the tree to his left begin moving.
Whipping around to face it, he managed to bring the flat of his broad blade to deflect the sudden attack, though it drove him back nearly three feet, his boots making furrows in the layer of dead leaves on the forest floor.
He saw what he’d previously mistaken for a tree take a step toward him, raising one blunt branch of an arm above the knot of wood that served as its head. The strange creature had mastered the art of camouflage: The bark-like hide sported small twigs and a few larger ‘branches’ had grown near the thing’s head and shoulders. Towering at least nine feet high, it looked like nothing more than a stunted tree, provided it stood still.
As Cloud took this all in, he detected a slight rustle behind him, accompanied by the creak of wood bending and twisting. His decision took only an instant.
Taking a step to the side, the tree-creatures’ arm crashed in the place where he’d stood a second ago. In one smooth slice, that arm was severed from the creatures’ body. It let out a high-pitched keening, an eerie sound that raised hairs on the back of his neck.
Calculating what the enemy behind him would be doing, he stepped back to his initial position, and the arm from the second tree-thing smashed the ground next to him before the vibrations in the ground from the first attack had faded. That arm, too, parted from its owner.
What happened next Sparky would later swear had been a blur. Cloud spun around and, in one powerful slash, neatly sliced the creature behind him in two. Quickly reversing his grip on the blade, he jabbed the point into the first foes’ torso, while looking over his shoulder to be sure of his aim. A small twist on the hilt and the blade snapped open, splitting right down the middle as it was made to do.
Then Cloud extracted his weapon, unconcerned of any attack, as the vanquished enemy slowly tumbled to the forest floor in two pieces.
Cloud reached down, grabbed a handful of leaves, and proceeded to wipe the green blood off the sword.
“Ahem.”
Cloud glanced over. Razana stared at him.
“Yeah?” he queried.
She raised one thin eyebrow. “You okay?”
Cloud nodded slowly, wondering what she was getting at. “Uh, yeah…”
She nodded as if this had been the answer she’d expected. “Forward!” she shouted, and the line of mercenaries continued on.
He wouldn’t find out until weeks later, but the entire group of mercs had watched in shock as Cloud easily dismembered his attackers. For the first time in the history of EndSky, every weapon hung loose in eight pairs of hands, their owners stunned by the fact that the battle had ended before it had hardly begun.
He slowly came to realize what regard the others held for him, and when he did, it left him in shock. As he would discover, he’d had shown them a glimpse of a far different and exceedingly rare kind of warrior, one that possessed capabilities beyond any average fighter, and whose feats were often believed as mere fantastical stories so impossible they were. Cloud belonged to that order of mankind that only a few ever truly achieved--he was a hero.
(Author's Note: I felt it was important to show that Cloud isn't an average joe with a big sword. If the feats he achieves seem impossible that's because they are--to average folk. Cloud--and the rest of the FF7 cast--aren't average. This reasonably explains why Cloud & Co. can leap huge distances, can move with blinding speed, are extraordinarily strong and so on and so forth. Too often this hero status becomes the norm in several fanfics; to me, that makes the characters simply average joes. Here, I wanted to show that hero status is anything but normal and I felt that lent a certain kind of uniqueness to the characters that would otherwise be lost.)
***
Cloud had just flipped his phone shut after talking with Tifa as he’d promised when there came a knock on his door. A head topped with wild blond hair poked into the room.
“Hey, Sparky. Need something?” Cloud asked.
Sparky shook his head. “Naw. We were just wondering where you went.”
“Um… where else would I be?”
“We’re having a bonfire if you wanna join.”
“Really?”
The ‘cocktail hour’, as Razana had told him, wasn’t typical of every day. Usually, after coming back from a day on the job, training and maintenance of weapons and armor took up the entire evening. Cloud had anticipated a strict schedule, and didn’t expect another period dedicated to absolutely nothing for a while.
“We got smores!” said Sparky, grinning, taking Cloud’s surprise for hesitancy.
Cloud stood. “Well, if you’d said that in the first place…”
As he followed the merc downstairs, Cloud heard the distinct yet faint sound of a guitar. Winding through the kitchen and to the back porch, Cloud came upon a perfect scene of camaraderie.
A fire merrily consumed several large logs while most of the mercenaries that sat around it held marshmallows on above the flames. The mouth-watering aromas of toasted marshmallows and melting chocolate filled the air. He watched as Razana put a marshmallow on the end of a stick and purposely held it in the fire, let it burn for a few seconds, then blew out the flames. She proceeded to eat it with every sign of enjoyment.
On the far side of the bonfire, sitting on a large log, Jazz strummed a few experimental notes from a beautiful guitar.
“Got him!” Sparky called as the two approached. They were met with a roar of happy greeting.
Before he knew it, a shaved stick topped with a marshmallow was thrust in his hands and he was guided to a seat next to Razana while Jazz strummed a few more chords and fiddled with the tuning keys.
“Need some graham crackers?” Razana asked, offering him some. He thanked her and took some.
“It tastes better when you burn the it,” she added after a few amused seconds of watching him endeavor to brown one marshmallow above the roaring bonfire. She reached for a piece of chocolate. “You should try it.”
He took her advice and thrust the puff into the heart of the flames as he’d seen her do. It surprised him that something so burnt could taste so good.
As Cloud bit into his first smore, Jazz began playing a song that was vaguely familiar. Magic sat down next to him and pulled a harmonica from his pocket. After waiting a few beats, he joined in the song, providing a pleasant harmony. All around the fire, feet were tapping in time to the music.
“What’s the special occasion?” Cloud asked, spearing another marshmallow.
Razana shrugged, smiling. “First week on the job with over thirty kills and not a single injury. That’s reason enough.”
Cloud nodded. He could understand that.
Jazz and Magic had finished the song and they slapped each other on the back, laughing. Then both started up a new song, Jazz singing the first verse alone, but quickly joined by others as they started singing along. While Jazz sang perfectly, Tolm was another story. The harmonica stuttered as Magic fought to contain his laughter as Tolm sang wildly off-key, and loudly. The others tried to drown him out, even though they weren’t much better.
It was a general mess of happiness and friendship.
Speaking so only Razana would hear, Cloud asked, “So, what position did you have in SOLDIER?”
She licked a smear of chocolate off her thumb before answering. “I was general of the Second Army.”
She said it so nonchalantly that it took a full minute for Cloud’s brain to process this information. When it finally clicked, he stared at her, oblivious to the flaming puff being burnt well past edibility on the end of the stick he held.
From the corner of her eye she caught him staring at her and she smiled. “Trust me, it was only for four years. I joined just as the war ended, so I did little more than handle dispatches and provide troops where they were needed. That’s all.”
Cloud shook his head in disbelief. “Somehow, I doubt that’s all there was to it.”
She shrugged. “It’s overrated.” She looked away from him, clearly indicating that the thread of topic was unwelcome. Cloud, understanding, took a different track.
“So, any family?” he asked conversationally, spearing another ‘mallow. Though he didn't show it, he was mentally bewilderd at why he had asked that, of all questions.
She grinned and nodded towards the carousing group around them. “You’re looking at ‘em.”
Rice and Sparky were happily crafting smore’s while trying to wage a thumb war simultaneously. Tolm, carving away at a small piece of wood with a sharp knife, sang happily and off-key to the song that the black-skinned Jazz and the pale Magic were making. Preacher had finally joined the gaiety and provided a solid rhythm with a thick stick he beat on the log beneath him, while adding his deep baritone as well. Sparks flew and wood cracked in the dancing flames.
Razana gave no further explanation and Cloud asked for none. He understood perfectly.
That night marked the Cloud’s entry into EndSky for good. From that time forward he was acknowledged as a permanent member of the elite mercenary group, which at times doubled as a second family of sorts. The others grew accustomed to Cloud’s quiet nature, and conveniently forgot that here was a man that could easily do any job for them without breaking a sweat. Cloud got used to (and even anticipated) Dice’s daily pranks and sometimes even got back at him a few times, though such instances never rivaled the Day of the Cream (as it was infamously known).
The weeks passed, the days grew cooler, leaving fiery days of summer behind. Each day the group advanced further and further into the wilderness, bringing down more and more twisted mistakes wrought by Shinra. Around this time, the members of EndSky pursued their quarry with a grim determination, each creature slain a step closer to relaxing at home with family. Except Razana, that is; she almost seemed saddened that the final week of this job had come.
But Cloud didn’t notice. He, too, was eager to be home, eager to see Tifa again and to see this new dog the Denzel and Marlene had gotten as a pet. He only hoped it wouldn’t drool on the furniture.
And so it was that final week, with everyone thinking about home and their loved ones, when disaster struck.
So, I'm posting this half now, so you all won't forget this story is here! Needless to say, I really enjoyed writing this chapter and I hope you enjoy reading as much as I did writing it. Have fun and remember to comment to your heart's delight!
Part Four: Fitting In
“Not a damn thing has changed from home,” Cloud muttered darkly as he selected yet another plate and began scrubbing. Behind him, piled on couches and chairs, the other eight mercs were enjoying a relaxing beer together, laughing loudly and often while Cloud labored away at the slowly shrinking pile of dinnerware in dire need of cleansing.
“Yo, Spike! ‘Nother beer over yonder!” called a voice from the living room.
With an irritated sigh, Cloud flung the sponge into the murky sink water, wiped his hands dry on a already soaked towel and went to the fridge. There, on the second shelf specifically reserved for alcohol alone, lie the beer in need. Grabbing it, he negligently tossed it in the Tolm’s direction, who caught it deftly and continued his conversation.
Cloud returned to the sink, surreptitiously glancing at the raucous group from the corner of his eye as he labored on.
They were a curious group, no question. He only knew two names of the whole group; the rest were only identified via nickname.
There was Lieutenant Razana of course, informally called “Raz” by her troops, and her solemn, dark-skinned second-in-command, Tolm. While everyone else enjoyed a cheap beer, Raz happily indulged in a mix of Kahluah and cream.
There was Dice, as he was known, a scar marking an ugly path across his face. From what Cloud understood his nickname was acquired on the account that gambling had been a crippling weakness in his past until the military straightened him out. Still, that scar served a constant reminder. Not surprisingly, he beat everyone on poker night.
Sitting next to Dice, his feet propped on the battered coffee table, sat Sparky, his bleach-blond hair sticking out in every direction as though he’d been electrocuted. Guess how he got his name.
Across from him, engaged in a fierce thumb war, sat Jazz. As Cloud understood it, Jazz proved a wonderful tenor, and his skill with the guitar just as good. His choice in swing and ragtime music produced the inevitable nickname. The man was a born musician with a nasty right hook.
Even as he battled fiercely to keep his thumb on top of Jazz’s, Rice knew he was losing. The slight man hailing from far Wutai gained his nickname on the account that rice composed the main diet of his native country. Cloud understood that despite Rice’s short stature and mild manner, he had a fierce temper and sliced into his foes with a dangerous glee bordering on bloodlust.
Cloud scrubbed a particularly difficult part of some stubborn food best left unidentified. After a bout of scrubbing that left his arm aching, Cloud still hadn’t managed to remove all of it, little green flecks obstinately sticking to the ceramic. Sighing in surrender, Cloud rinsed the plate and put it on the rack to dry, figuring no one would notice.
A loud bout of laughter drew Cloud’s attention back to the group. Sitting between the conquering Jazz and flailing Rice, a man with only three fingers on his left hand struggled to see the game of his handheld as the other two waged war. Finally, he hunched forward under the two undulating arms, his chin almost touching his knees as he jabbed at the game. That one’s name was Magic, as Cloud heard him called. Not a clue as to why though.
Sitting in a chair across from Razana, a man with tattoo of a battle-ready angel on one bulging bicep quietly sipped his drink and smiled good-naturedly at the fun but participated little. That one’s Preacher. From the rough introduction that afternoon, Cloud deduced that Preacher was a devout believer in some new religion just beginning to rise. Unlike his brothers, however, Preacher believed that world peace could only be achieved by protecting the ‘righteous’ and ‘all that’s just’ from the servants of some evil guy. In short, Preacher was a holy warrior. Cloud had heard of the strength of religion, but this was the first time he’d ever seen its full power.
And, last of all, there’s the nickname they’d given Cloud. He frowned as his thoughts once more returned to this irritating subject. He supposed he should’ve seen it coming. It was, after all, the most identifiable thing about him. Even so, the name brought to mind the image of a mean, chewed muscle of a dog that ripped the pants off kids that wandered into the junkyard. He briefly wondered if they’d start whistling to get his attention instead of calling him--
“Spike!”
That.
He looked over his shoulder at the merry group and saw Razana craning her neck similarly to see him. She waved a friendly hand indicating for him to join them. “You’ve worked long enough. Come and have drink.”
All too happy to accept, Cloud tossed the damp hand towel on a rack to air dry and joined the group, selecting a seat between Dice and Sparky, the only available seat left.
He’d just settled himself down, feeling slightly uncomfortable by the large grins Sparky and Dice were wearing, when Razana asked, “So, what kinds of creatures have you faced in your time, Spike?”
He snorted humorously. “You name it, I’ve killed it.”
“That so?” said Dice. “Personally, I hate those dang cactus things.”
“Are you kidding?” Cloud said. “It’s those damn frogs that’re the worst.”
Sparky laughed. “Don’t like being a frog too much, eh?”
“You’ve no idea,” Cloud said in a tone that spoke volumes. Everyone laughed at his dark expression.
The conversation continued this way for a while, everyone sharing a short, humorous story of their fighting past. Once they all laughed simply at Razana’s reaction to one story Cloud related, her hilarity proving hilarious in itself. When she could breath again and confessed she’d nearly wet her pants, the laughter didn’t stop for five full minutes.
Eventually, the inevitable question arose.
Magic looked up from his game and asked, a sly smile on his face, “So Spike, you got a girl at home?”
Jazz snorted. “Course he does. Didn’t you see the bag he dragged upstairs? I never seen a man pack like that. Dumbass.” He cuffed Magic playfully on the back of the head for asking such a stupid question, and Magic retaliated by punching him in the arm.
“To answer your question,” Cloud cut in before the fight escalated, “Yeah, I do.”
“What’s her name?” asked Tolm. He’d spoken little during the past hour or so, but he laughed freely at the jokes and stories that’d bounced around.
“Tifa.”
“No shit? That other chick from the whole Remnant thingamajig?” asked Dice. “Dude nice score! She’s hot!”
Cloud merely leveled an expressionless gaze at Dice from the corner of his eye. It suddenly dawned on the past gambler exactly what he’d said. He raised his hands in truce saying, “Whoa, whoa, man, no offense meant. Just an observation, man, didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”
Cloud merely raised one eyebrow slightly and almost imperceptibly nodded, before turning his gaze away.
Razana chuckled. “Thank you Dice, for the personal display of markedly lacking subtlety.” This brought a small laugh from the group. “So how long have you known her, Spike?”
“Um…” he rubbed the back of his neck knowing how this would sound. “We’ve actually known each other since we were kids. She used to be my neighbor, actually.”
A low whistle came from Jazz, the only sound as the rest digested this. It was Dice that broke the silence again.
“So, you expecting any kids yet?” he asked casually.
This time Cloud glared at him as the others laughed and Dice grinned evilly. “Can I hit him?” Cloud suddenly asked, turning to Razana who was in the middle of a sip from her drink. She hastily swallowed and motioned an affirmative with her glass.
“Absolutely!” she said.
Dice squawked in shock from this betrayal and he curled up defensively putting his hands over his head, bringing his legs to his chest and leaning away from the blond in an attempt to reduce all surface area for a blow to land on.
Cloud tapped the back of Dice’s neck and the hands covering his head shot to protect the area. Cloud placed an audible slap on the man’s exposed dome before Dice even realized he’d been tricked.
“Hey, who’s side are you on, Raz?” he retorted in mock anger as everyone laughed at the antics between the two.
“What!? I’m not responsible for whatever comes out of your mouth. You deserved it.”
Dice settled back in the couch, rubbing his head where the slap had landed. “But he’s the new guy,” he grumbled petulantly.
Everyone laughed at that.
“Hey, Spike,” said Rice, he voice unexpectedly soft and carrying only a slight accent. “You have a picture?”
“What?”
“Of Tifa. A picture?”
Tolm shot him a quizzical look. “Shit, man, don’t you watch the news?”
Rice nodded, unfazed by the barb. “But I want to see an actual picture, not a news shot. News stuff isn’t the same as real stuff.”
No one could deny that.
Cloud shrugged. “Yeah, I have a picture. One sec…” He leaned dramatically to his left as he reached into his back pocket to retrieve his wallet. As such, he was very close to Sparky, his chin almost touching the other man’s shoulder.
Sparky grinned and gave Cloud a sidelong look. “Hey,” he said simply.
“Hey,” Cloud returned.
Somehow, this exchange prodded a swelling bubble of laughter that’d been silently growing and a few chuckles escaped some of those watching this scene. Cloud continued to dig for the wallet--it kept getting caught on some seam in his pocket.
The awkwardness of the situation put grins on more than a few faces. Finally Sparky said “What’s up?”
“Not much.” A pause. “You?”
“Same.” Sparky took a loud sip from his beer.
After a few more moments, Jazz finally burst out, “What the hell man!?” just as Cloud freed the wallet.
A burst of laughter and few “Finally!” came from the group as Cloud flipped to the picture and handed to Rice across the coffee table. Rice studied it and handed it to Jazz, and the picture proceeded to be shown to everyone else.
When it came to Razana, she glanced at the picture ensconced in the plastic sleeve next to the one of Tifa. “Whoa,” she said, leaning forward and extending the wallet toward Cloud. “Who’s mister doom and gloom back there?” She pointed to the person in question.
Cloud leaned over to see the picture she indicated. It was a reduced version of the picture the photographer had taken that first day after the Remnants had been destroyed, all the heroic companions strategically positioned to fit in a small space. The person Razana pointed to had his arms folded over his chest and glowered at the camera, a crimson cloak setting him apart from the others.
“Oh, that’s Vincent. He always looks like that,” Cloud said, leaning back in the couch.
Razana looked at the picture again, clearly bewildered. “No shit. I knew he was still alive but damn, has he changed.” She shook her head and handed back his wallet.
“You knew him?” Cloud asked, surprised.
She nodded. “Yeah, when I was in SOLDIER. He seemed like a good guy, for a Turk. Pretty charismatic, too.”
Cloud’s eyebrows shot up. “No shit!”
“Yeah. Optimistic all the way. The only other guy I’ve ever met with a sense of right and wrong like that is Preacher here.” She grinned and Preacher smiled dutifully.
Cloud looked down at the tiny features of the photograph in the wallet he still held as the others traded banter.
Vincent? Charismatic, optimistic Vincent? He shook his head in silent disbelief. He couldn’t wrap his mind around such a bizarre concept.
“All right gang, cocktail hour is over,” Razana said, interrupting Cloud’s train of thought. She stood up and stretched, one shoulder making a meaty crack as she did. “Dark in fifteen minutes!” The men groaned as she left and headed toward her room.
Tolm stood, his broad shoulders expanding as he resumed his role of sergeant. “All right men!” he boomed. “You heard the LT. Lights out in fifteen minutes! Move!”
They scrambled for their rooms and Cloud surprised himself for still having a hearty fear of a shouting black man after knowing Barret for so long. He’d thought he’d be accustomed to it by now.
***
Lost in the dark oceanic depths of sleep, Cloud felt a small piece of consciousness float to the surface. Breaking like a bubble when it reached the top, it brought the faint sensation of something brushing his face.
Instinctively, Cloud’s fingers twitched to remove the irritant and the sensation vanished. Satisfied, Cloud slept on, sinking deeper into sleep…
Another bubble broke the surface, accompanied by two more this time, each one lifting him further from his sleep he’d sunken into. Still not quite awake to finish the full task of brushing whatever it was away, Cloud’s hand moved a little then stopped.
He has begun the serene descent back to deep sleep when, again, the wisp of feeling brushed his face. Another bubble pushed him further towards the surface.
Cloud’s hand rose and landed on his face with a wet squish, the cold feeling of a whipped substance shocking him to wakefulness.
Cloud sat bolt upright in bed, one eye obscured with the shaving cream that had been generously lavished upon his open hand while he slept. The first thing his fuzzy mind registered were shrieks of laughter surrounding him.
Through his one good eye, Cloud saw Dice and Jazz leaning against each other for support, helpless in their throws of laughter.
Still not quite registering exactly what was happening, Cloud pawed away the cream from his face as best he could and stared at the substance in his hand, puzzled.
His slow reaction only brought more hearty peals of hilarity. Everyone had come to his room to witness this traditional initiation event except Razana and Tolm.
Cloud looked at the mercenaries; Magic looked about ready to wet his pants. Cloud looked at the white fluff covering his hand.
Then Cloud exploded from his bed with a roar of rage so fierce that all laughter cut short in shock.
Springing to one knee on the bed and one foot on the floor, Cloud reached out, nabbed the first person his hand met--Sparky--and planted his fluff covered hand into the man’s shocked face. Pushing him aside, Cloud reached for his next victim, who received similar treatment.
By now everyone was trying to push through the door in a simultaneous attempt to escape. As a result, someone tripped someone else who knocked the door shut and another person fell in the mad scramble conveniently providing a living barricade, preventing the door from opening. Panic ensued.
Cloud caught sight of the can of shaving cream dangling from a hand and snatched it, jumped on the bed, and liberally sprayed everyone with cream just as Dice wrenched the door open and dashed out. A line of cream adorned his shoulders and a pile of it had begun to form on his head, which now left puffs of white in the air behind him as he raced down the hallway, cursing with scatological inventiveness, Cloud in hot pursuit.
The two passed Razana in the hallway, who found it necessary to flatten herself against the wall to avoid impact. She stayed that way long after they had past, blinking, her brain still trying to comprehend exactly what she had seen.
Dice entered a bathroom with a slide that would’ve made the best baseball players envious, somehow shutting the door behind him in time. A small click announced it had locked.
Cloud, thwarted, heard a creak to his left. Whipping around, can at the ready, he caught Jazz trying to creep past.
The black man pivoted on heel and ran, with Cloud hot on his heels. By the time Jazz found refuge behind a door, he’d gained several new strands of white fluff.
Magic was the next victim of Cloud’s retribution, who’d gotten the worst of any of them. He slipped as he tried to take a corner too fast and Cloud walked away, leaving Magic curled up on the floor adorned with a new blanket of white.
Preacher, who’d been casually walking around hoping Cloud would overlook him while chasing others, found himself standing face to face with the avenging blond. A moment later, Cloud dashed off to give Rice his due. Preacher looked down, puzzled, at the neat stripes of white down each arm and removed the cap of foam from his head, also regarding that quizzically.
Razana stood in the kitchen, patiently sipping her coffee, leaning against the counter as she read the morning paper folded in one hand. The sound of feet pounding and someone cursing in exhilarated panic sounded about her. “When you’re through having fun,” she shouted, “You got ten minutes to get ready and get outside.”
More pounding of feet and someone slammed a door loudly.
“DID YOU HEAR ME!?” she bellowed.
A chorus of “Yes sir!” answered her from the various regions of the lodge where the mercenaries sought sanctuary from Cloud.
Razana nodded once, satisfied. Suddenly, Rice shot out of a hallway and dashed behind Tolm, the slight man easily concealed behind the sergeants’ broad shoulders. A moment later Cloud zipped out of the hallway and paused, glancing around warily. Seeing only Tolm and Razana, quietly sipping their coffee, Cloud turned around and dashed off after another victim. He fully intended to empty that can.
Razana glanced at Rice, still crouching behind Tolm. He’d been thoroughly covered with shaving cream, some of it even mashed in his short cropped hair, his clothes clinging to his skin with the stuff. He looked like an absurd Oriental marshmallow mascot.
“Make that forty minutes!” Razana shouted. After a moment’s thought, she added, “And Spike! Rice is down here in the kitchen!”
Rice gasped at this betrayal and scampered away. From the second floor, Razana could hear someone leaping down the stairs.
The redhead emptied her mug and turned to Tolm, grinning. “I’m starting to like this new guy.”
***
Thirty minutes later, cleansed of all shaving cream and in various stages of dampness, the mercenaries assembled outside as ordered. There, Razana was already waiting for them, running a whetstone over one blade. A second blade rested in its sheath on her back.
Razana glanced up as Cloud approached, following the others, and she smiled. “Lovely morning, isn’t it?” she greeted him.
He nodded. “Yep.”
The whetstone rasped on the blades’ edge. Finally, Razana stood and sheathed the weapon over one shoulder. “Between you and me, Spike, that was the most enjoyable morning I’ve had in a very long time.”
Then she left to harass someone lagging to the line-up on the account he was trying to dry his hair with one hand and don his boots with the other while he stumbled out the door. Cloud grinned, fully satisfied with his revenge.
Once everyone had appropriately lined up in very little time, Razana stood before them, hands on her hips.
“As you all know, we are here to kill the local wildlife for a company called Coltun. They need do-gooder points with the public it seems and they’re paying us to do it for them. Now that our welcome replacement is here, we can start earning our pay.
“Now Preacher here,” she nodded in his direction, “Has found some likely tracks to the northwest of here, about fifteen minutes out. No fancy stuff here, folks: Spread out, keep in sight of each other, and kill whatever you come across. The wind talks.”
The last three words were accompanied by a slight disturbance in the ranks, the men muttering either curses or prayers under their breath .
“What does that mean?” whispered Cloud to Jazz, standing to his left.
“It means,” he hissed back, “That Razzy here thinks we’re not getting the full story from that company. There’s something else going on. ‘The wind talks’ is our code for red alert.”
“If there’s something else going on, why did we take this job?” Cloud had just met Razana, but he already had the impression she looked out for her comrades.
Jazz shrugged. “Could just be nothing. But we need the job. If nothing goes wrong all the better. But if Razzy thinks something’s up, you can believe it.”
Cloud nodded, feeling a chill crawl up his spine, accompanied by a rush of adrenaline. This was what he loved doing: Fighting, living on the edge, never sure what may happen next. Tifa was right: He was meant for this.
“Rice, Magic, and Sparky, you’re on the left edge,” Razana barked. “Jazz, Dice, and Tolm, you’re on the right. Spike, Preacher--you’re with me. Let’s move!”
Cloud automatically fell in line as ordered, the distant training from Shinra coming back to him. Razana took point, leading the group into the woods. Cloud stayed on her left while Preacher, holding a vicious-looking hammer heavy enough to crush souls, covered her right.
They walked quietly and swiftly through the sun-dappled forest, weapons as the ready. Birds chirped in the trees and rodents chirred in the brush. The mercenaries quietly slipped by, waiting patiently for their first opponent to find them.
They didn’t wait long.
By some stroke of luck, it was Cloud who encountered them first, and any doubts about his fighting prowess vanished within the space of seconds.
Razana had stepped right past them, never seeing the hulking creatures. Cloud, however, nearly passed right between them. He sensed, rather than saw, the tree to his left begin moving.
Whipping around to face it, he managed to bring the flat of his broad blade to deflect the sudden attack, though it drove him back nearly three feet, his boots making furrows in the layer of dead leaves on the forest floor.
He saw what he’d previously mistaken for a tree take a step toward him, raising one blunt branch of an arm above the knot of wood that served as its head. The strange creature had mastered the art of camouflage: The bark-like hide sported small twigs and a few larger ‘branches’ had grown near the thing’s head and shoulders. Towering at least nine feet high, it looked like nothing more than a stunted tree, provided it stood still.
As Cloud took this all in, he detected a slight rustle behind him, accompanied by the creak of wood bending and twisting. His decision took only an instant.
Taking a step to the side, the tree-creatures’ arm crashed in the place where he’d stood a second ago. In one smooth slice, that arm was severed from the creatures’ body. It let out a high-pitched keening, an eerie sound that raised hairs on the back of his neck.
Calculating what the enemy behind him would be doing, he stepped back to his initial position, and the arm from the second tree-thing smashed the ground next to him before the vibrations in the ground from the first attack had faded. That arm, too, parted from its owner.
What happened next Sparky would later swear had been a blur. Cloud spun around and, in one powerful slash, neatly sliced the creature behind him in two. Quickly reversing his grip on the blade, he jabbed the point into the first foes’ torso, while looking over his shoulder to be sure of his aim. A small twist on the hilt and the blade snapped open, splitting right down the middle as it was made to do.
Then Cloud extracted his weapon, unconcerned of any attack, as the vanquished enemy slowly tumbled to the forest floor in two pieces.
Cloud reached down, grabbed a handful of leaves, and proceeded to wipe the green blood off the sword.
“Ahem.”
Cloud glanced over. Razana stared at him.
“Yeah?” he queried.
She raised one thin eyebrow. “You okay?”
Cloud nodded slowly, wondering what she was getting at. “Uh, yeah…”
She nodded as if this had been the answer she’d expected. “Forward!” she shouted, and the line of mercenaries continued on.
He wouldn’t find out until weeks later, but the entire group of mercs had watched in shock as Cloud easily dismembered his attackers. For the first time in the history of EndSky, every weapon hung loose in eight pairs of hands, their owners stunned by the fact that the battle had ended before it had hardly begun.
He slowly came to realize what regard the others held for him, and when he did, it left him in shock. As he would discover, he’d had shown them a glimpse of a far different and exceedingly rare kind of warrior, one that possessed capabilities beyond any average fighter, and whose feats were often believed as mere fantastical stories so impossible they were. Cloud belonged to that order of mankind that only a few ever truly achieved--he was a hero.
(Author's Note: I felt it was important to show that Cloud isn't an average joe with a big sword. If the feats he achieves seem impossible that's because they are--to average folk. Cloud--and the rest of the FF7 cast--aren't average. This reasonably explains why Cloud & Co. can leap huge distances, can move with blinding speed, are extraordinarily strong and so on and so forth. Too often this hero status becomes the norm in several fanfics; to me, that makes the characters simply average joes. Here, I wanted to show that hero status is anything but normal and I felt that lent a certain kind of uniqueness to the characters that would otherwise be lost.)
***
Cloud had just flipped his phone shut after talking with Tifa as he’d promised when there came a knock on his door. A head topped with wild blond hair poked into the room.
“Hey, Sparky. Need something?” Cloud asked.
Sparky shook his head. “Naw. We were just wondering where you went.”
“Um… where else would I be?”
“We’re having a bonfire if you wanna join.”
“Really?”
The ‘cocktail hour’, as Razana had told him, wasn’t typical of every day. Usually, after coming back from a day on the job, training and maintenance of weapons and armor took up the entire evening. Cloud had anticipated a strict schedule, and didn’t expect another period dedicated to absolutely nothing for a while.
“We got smores!” said Sparky, grinning, taking Cloud’s surprise for hesitancy.
Cloud stood. “Well, if you’d said that in the first place…”
As he followed the merc downstairs, Cloud heard the distinct yet faint sound of a guitar. Winding through the kitchen and to the back porch, Cloud came upon a perfect scene of camaraderie.
A fire merrily consumed several large logs while most of the mercenaries that sat around it held marshmallows on above the flames. The mouth-watering aromas of toasted marshmallows and melting chocolate filled the air. He watched as Razana put a marshmallow on the end of a stick and purposely held it in the fire, let it burn for a few seconds, then blew out the flames. She proceeded to eat it with every sign of enjoyment.
On the far side of the bonfire, sitting on a large log, Jazz strummed a few experimental notes from a beautiful guitar.
“Got him!” Sparky called as the two approached. They were met with a roar of happy greeting.
Before he knew it, a shaved stick topped with a marshmallow was thrust in his hands and he was guided to a seat next to Razana while Jazz strummed a few more chords and fiddled with the tuning keys.
“Need some graham crackers?” Razana asked, offering him some. He thanked her and took some.
“It tastes better when you burn the it,” she added after a few amused seconds of watching him endeavor to brown one marshmallow above the roaring bonfire. She reached for a piece of chocolate. “You should try it.”
He took her advice and thrust the puff into the heart of the flames as he’d seen her do. It surprised him that something so burnt could taste so good.
As Cloud bit into his first smore, Jazz began playing a song that was vaguely familiar. Magic sat down next to him and pulled a harmonica from his pocket. After waiting a few beats, he joined in the song, providing a pleasant harmony. All around the fire, feet were tapping in time to the music.
“What’s the special occasion?” Cloud asked, spearing another marshmallow.
Razana shrugged, smiling. “First week on the job with over thirty kills and not a single injury. That’s reason enough.”
Cloud nodded. He could understand that.
Jazz and Magic had finished the song and they slapped each other on the back, laughing. Then both started up a new song, Jazz singing the first verse alone, but quickly joined by others as they started singing along. While Jazz sang perfectly, Tolm was another story. The harmonica stuttered as Magic fought to contain his laughter as Tolm sang wildly off-key, and loudly. The others tried to drown him out, even though they weren’t much better.
It was a general mess of happiness and friendship.
Speaking so only Razana would hear, Cloud asked, “So, what position did you have in SOLDIER?”
She licked a smear of chocolate off her thumb before answering. “I was general of the Second Army.”
She said it so nonchalantly that it took a full minute for Cloud’s brain to process this information. When it finally clicked, he stared at her, oblivious to the flaming puff being burnt well past edibility on the end of the stick he held.
From the corner of her eye she caught him staring at her and she smiled. “Trust me, it was only for four years. I joined just as the war ended, so I did little more than handle dispatches and provide troops where they were needed. That’s all.”
Cloud shook his head in disbelief. “Somehow, I doubt that’s all there was to it.”
She shrugged. “It’s overrated.” She looked away from him, clearly indicating that the thread of topic was unwelcome. Cloud, understanding, took a different track.
“So, any family?” he asked conversationally, spearing another ‘mallow. Though he didn't show it, he was mentally bewilderd at why he had asked that, of all questions.
She grinned and nodded towards the carousing group around them. “You’re looking at ‘em.”
Rice and Sparky were happily crafting smore’s while trying to wage a thumb war simultaneously. Tolm, carving away at a small piece of wood with a sharp knife, sang happily and off-key to the song that the black-skinned Jazz and the pale Magic were making. Preacher had finally joined the gaiety and provided a solid rhythm with a thick stick he beat on the log beneath him, while adding his deep baritone as well. Sparks flew and wood cracked in the dancing flames.
Razana gave no further explanation and Cloud asked for none. He understood perfectly.
That night marked the Cloud’s entry into EndSky for good. From that time forward he was acknowledged as a permanent member of the elite mercenary group, which at times doubled as a second family of sorts. The others grew accustomed to Cloud’s quiet nature, and conveniently forgot that here was a man that could easily do any job for them without breaking a sweat. Cloud got used to (and even anticipated) Dice’s daily pranks and sometimes even got back at him a few times, though such instances never rivaled the Day of the Cream (as it was infamously known).
The weeks passed, the days grew cooler, leaving fiery days of summer behind. Each day the group advanced further and further into the wilderness, bringing down more and more twisted mistakes wrought by Shinra. Around this time, the members of EndSky pursued their quarry with a grim determination, each creature slain a step closer to relaxing at home with family. Except Razana, that is; she almost seemed saddened that the final week of this job had come.
But Cloud didn’t notice. He, too, was eager to be home, eager to see Tifa again and to see this new dog the Denzel and Marlene had gotten as a pet. He only hoped it wouldn’t drool on the furniture.
And so it was that final week, with everyone thinking about home and their loved ones, when disaster struck.
I loved the socks and Tifa part. 
And the sunglasses too. Cloud can be so daft sometimes. You really are a wonderful writer, my dear!
And you're right, it is mostly a plot thing too!