Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy or any of the characters in this story. This disclaimer goes for all future chapters as well. If you read about it just assume I don't own it unless I tell you other wise!
Chapter 1
A New Reality
The coldness of the office stung you to the bone. Cloud brushed one boot clad leg against the other, hoping to generate some sort of warmth.
What bonehead messed up the heat? Cloud thought, not even paying attention to the paperwork scattered around on his desk.
The ocean of documents included numerous reports of monster sightings, specifically the mutated humans. Cloud was getting frustrated as the research department had still yet to develop a way to revert the mutants back to humans; even worse, they were proving near-impossible to capture. Cloud sighed, looking over some of the pictures people had taken. Recently, they had encountered one mutant that was actually two people fused together and, of course, horribly disfigured. It took an attack helicopter to take it out.
Sighing, Cloud pressed a button on his desk's intercom.
"Yes General Strife?" Cloud's secretary responded quickly.
"Sofie, I'm going home for the day. Hold all my calls."
"Yes sir; have a good night."
"You do the same."
Cloud still hadn't gotten used to everyone referring to him as 'General Strife'. True, he had taken the job as Head of Security for Neo-ShinRa, but every time someone called him 'General', it reminded him of Sephiroth, and that was not a pleasant memory.
Walking over to the executive elevator, he rode it down to the garage, where his motorcycle was parked. Out of the entire work day, this was the part he enjoyed most. Cranking the bike up, the motor roared to life, and Cloud could feel the raw power under him as he slowly coasted out of the parking garage. Once outside, he pushed the bike to its limits. As 'The General', Cloud enjoyed the privilege of living outside the law, including breaking the speed limit.
Cloud only lived a quick five minute drive away from the headquarters, but he took the long way home, preferring to go around the city via the major highway and looping all the way around to his house. The wind pulled at his skin and hair, tears fell from his eyes and almost froze to his face. The adrenalin pumped through his body and pushed him to go faster. Tifa had begged him to buy a helmet, which he had: it lay strapped to the bike's side.
Cloud gracefully slowed the bike down as he approached his exit. Leaning into the turn as he came off the off-ramp he quickly grabbed the helmet and strapped it on, keeping the bike balanced with his legs. It wasn't two minutes later he pulled into his driveway, Tifa sitting on the porch waiting on him.
Cloud took off the helmet, shut down the bike, and walked towards the house. He smiled when he saw Tifa sipping a drink in her hand; a beer sat next to her on ice, waiting for her husband.
"I know you weren't wearing the helmet."
Cloud wordlessly grabbed the beer and gently lifted Tifa off her seat. He sat down and pulled her on top of him, wrapping his arms around her waist. "And what makes you say that?"
"Your hair silly, it's all pulled back from the wind."
Cloud cursed himself for not thinking about that. Sheepishly, he replied, "Guess I'm caught."
"That's right. You can do the dishes for a week. Now let's- yeep!" Tifa nearly jumped out of her chair when Cloud tickled her sides. He grabbed her before she got away and continued to tease her, her laughter never stopping.
"What are you going to make me do for a week?"
"Di…haha…dishes!"
"I'm not stopping 'till that changes."
"Then haha…you…don't…hahaha…get any fun time!"
Cloud knew what that meant. Just to make sure, Tifa lifted herself and passionately kissed Cloud. The tickling ceased and Tifa quickly removed herself from Cloud's grasp. Walking towards the door, she looked at him seductively and shook her hips as she slowly walked into the house and up the stairs to the 2nd floor.
Cloud, still standing in the doorway, was caught, speechless. I wonder how long it'll take to do the dishes…
After a brief mental debate, Cloud rushed up the stairs to join his fiancé in the bedroom for 'fun time', knowing it was worth it to just throw some dishes into a machine for a week.
---
The loving couple lay in the nude, Cloud holding Tifa in his arms, gently stroking her hair. Her breathing soothed him as he felt her chest rise and fall, lulling him to sleep. However, as he drifted close to falling into dream-land, Tifa stirred.
"Cloud?"
"Um hum?"
"Have they found a way to help those people yet?"
"You mean the mutants?"
"Yes."
Cloud sighed. "No; it doesn't seem like their getting any closer, either. Right now we're concentrating on finding the source of them. Reeve's department is still looking into a cure, though."
"But if you find where they're coming from before you find a cure…won't you have to kill them all?"
Cloud tensed; Tifa had seen straight to the heart of the problem. "If we can't capture them, we won't have much choice. They're killing people, Tifa."
Tifa stood out of the bed, the moonlight casting a heavenly glow over her body. She grabbed her robe and tied it around her. "It's not their fault, though, Cloud. Those mutants are just as much victims as the people getting killed by them."
"I know."
Tifa sat at the edge of the bed; Cloud sat up in bed and stared at her. "What do you want me to do?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"You know, Cloud, things have been pretty boring around here for me. I don't have a bar to run anymore. Barrett took Denzel and Marlene with him when he got engaged to Aerith's mom, and Yuffie and the gang hardly come around anymore."
"What are you getting at Tifa?"
"I want to get a job, at Neo-ShinRa, so I can help those people."
"But Tifa…"
Tifa crawled over to Cloud and silenced him putting her mouth over his. After she broke the kiss, she pulled her lips less than an inch away from Cloud's. "No 'but's, Mr. Strife, you just let President ShinRa know that Tifa Lockhart is coming."
"If you say so."
---
The next morning, Tifa sat next to Cloud in an elegant waiting room. The walls were painted a bright red; the furniture looked antique. On the coffee table in front of them sat two cups of tea, one finished, one full: Cloud didn't like tea.
"This is a beautiful room."
"He's making me wait way too long."
"Cloud, hush, he could be listening."
At that moment, the doors on the opposite side of the room opened, and Rufus walked in.
"Cloud, Tifa, nice to see you both."
Rufus took a seat in a chair opposite the couple. "Cloud tells me you'd like to work for us?"
"Yes; I'd like to help work towards a cure for the mutants."
"Ah, yes, I actually have some news on that." Rufus noticed Cloud hadn't touched his drink. "What's wrong, Cloud, not a fan of tea?"
"Not really."
Rufus pushed a button on an intercom near him. "Reno."
"Yes boss?"
"Bring the General some…" Rufus paused and looked to Cloud for an answer.
"Apple juice."
Rufus smiled. "Bring the General a glass of Apple juice."
"...You kidding, boss?"
"Reno, who signs your paycheck?"
"You do, boss."
"Good; if you'd like me to sign the next one, you'll get the General his apple juice."
There was a pause on the other end. "Yes, boss."
Rufus cut the line and smiled at the couple. "I love pushing his buttons sometimes."
Reaching over to a briefcase on the floor, Rufus removed a folder and laid it out in front of Cloud.
"Early this morning, some patrols around old Midgar came across this young boy who had been turned into a mutant. He put up a fight, but we managed to capture him alive."
Cloud was surprised. "This is a large improvement."
"Indeed; up until now we haven't had a live subject to develop a cure with."
Tifa was horrified. "You're running experiments on a young boy?"
"I assure you, Tifa, the tests are not painful: Simple blood tests and biopsies. We've been keeping him sedated the entire time. We need him alive if we're going to test a cure. Besides, the alternative is to leave him like he is, and we can't do that, can we?"
"I suppose you're right..."
Cloud opened the folder and looked over the documents. He was shocked at some of the results the lab had gotten already. "Holy crap; their blood contains over 75 mako?"
Rufus nodded. "Yes; even in SOLDIER, mako blood content was kept under 3. It's amazing these beings can still function. Other tests have noted that the brain is still human, as well as most major organs. It also seems they're in constant pain from the high levels of mako, which explains their violent nature."
Cloud and Tifa both suppressed their laughs as Reno walked in holding a cup of apple juice and placed it in front of Cloud. "Your apple juice…sir."
"Thanks." Cloud took the cup and started sipping on it. Looking over the files some more, he noticed one marked top secret. "So what's the current method to remove the mako?"
Rufus sighed. "That's the difficult part. Without a steady supply of mako, their organs begin to disintegrate. We're trying to slowly remove it by processing it through a heart bypass machine, exposing the blood to small amounts of fusion power at a time and slowly reducing the mako concentration."
"How long would it take?"
"A week; we're starting tomorrow if all the tests point in the right direction."
Tifa frowned, concerned. "How risky is it?"
"Since we're removing the mako slowly, there's minimal risk. If we detect a problem, we can reverse the process pretty easily." Rufus noticed Tifa still didn't seem comfortable with the idea. "If it makes you feel any better, we have him on pain management meds along with the sedation, so he's in heaven compared to what his life has been like."
Cloud continued to scan through the papers, and wasn't very convinced. "Even if this does work, there's no way we can do this for every one of them if we were to catch a large group at once. Just this one kid is taking up a whole floor of the research division."
"True; but we're hoping the results will help us develop a faster and more portable solution. Until then, we can only remain optimistic about the tests results. There is another matter I wish to discuss with you two, however."
Cloud noticed there weren't any more files, so he'd have to listen to Rufus talk; he wasn't fond of that. "Yes?"
"I need you and Tifa to get your ragtag mercenary group together and go off in search of the source of all these mutants. If you can manage to snatch up the ringleader, alive, and bring him here, perhaps we can persuade him to help us find a cure."
Truth be told, this was the break Cloud had been looking for. He hated sitting behind a desk in a cold office all day dressed in full uniform and hearing people constantly call him General Strife. Cloud looked to Tifa for approval, and she must have seen the excitement in Cloud's eyes. "Yes, Cloud, we can go."
Cloud suppressed pumping his arms in celebration in front of his boss. "General Strife, ready to start mission sir!"
Rufus grew amused as he leaned over to gaze past Cloud's standing form to meet Tifa's eyes. "He's excited about this, isn't he?"
Tifa giggled. "He's been waiting for something like this since he started this job."
"Good. I've already got Cid lined up with the Neo-Highwind and stationed a crew on her for your travel. I'm sure you all still have your weapons from your past adventures ready?"
Tifa pulled pair of leather gloves with metal knuckles over her hands. "I always keep them with me in case Cloud gets out of line." Tifa smiled as she finished her sentence.
Rufus smirked at Tifa's sassy comment. "Seems I should assign Tifa as your commanding officer, General."
"I don't think it'd matter what you appoint her, she'd still be my superior."
Tifa blushed. "Aww, that's so romantic Cloud."
Rufus coughed to break up the moment. "You're learning, Cloud. Anyway, take this PHS and contact your friends. Cid and the crew are preparing the ship for takeoff. Your first stop is North Corel to pick up Barrett; from there you'll pick up friends as you can contact them. Bring them back here to brainstorm over the evidence we have."
"Yes, sir," Tifa and Cloud said in unison. They turned and smiled at each other. Lost for a second, a gruff cough from Rufus brought them back to attention.
"Now, you two, leave before you jump on each other in my office."
Cloud blushed and Tifa laughed, grabbing the 'General's' hand and leading him out of the office.
Slowly walking down the hallway, Cloud noticed Tifa looked a little worried. Concerned, he walked closer to her to talk.
"You're sure you're alright with this?"
Tifa smiled. "Of course."
A brief, awkward bit of silence filled the empty corridor before Cloud spoke up. "I know you're worried about something."
"Oh, nothing big; I'm just thinking about the wedding."
Cloud shrugged it off. If it was something important, it would come up again, and if it did then he'd push the issue.
They got in the car and started to drive home. Cloud hated driving the car. Tifa had bought it with part of the extravagant bonus Rufus had given him. It was small, cheap, great on gas…but really, really slow. Tifa had put her foot down when Cloud wanted to drive his motorcycle.
"Aren't you excited, Cloud?"
"Of course I am. I just want to make sure this is fine with you before I go celebrating my first trip out of the office."
Tifa giggled. "Stop being so silly; I'm just as excited as you are to go off on another adventure."
Cloud smiled. Relaxed, thinking he had simply overreacted, he allowed the excitement of the upcoming adventure to settle in. "I wonder what we're going to see this time."
End Chapter 1
Yes I know this was supposed to be out WAYYY earlier, but school and life always seem to get in the way. Please review! I hope to carry over all the fans from Advent Hearts into this story. As always thanks to Calistar Heir for looking over this!