Ok now I'm thinking - side fic entirely comprised of Sephiroth's reactions to some of the wild shit Cloud and Zack have been caught up in, that hears about only second-hand. Even better if the tales have been embellished while he was away.
Oh god.
Like, look, okay…. Sephiroth has a see-sawing opinion of Cloud as it is. One moment he fucking hates him, at the next he’s weirdly impressed by him. And honestly, it’s probably happening. I can guarantee that at the very least Kunsel gets him the legit version eventually but….
Sephiroth listens. He’s got so many ways to make people think he’s busy so that he can just eavesdrop or avoid them. The fact that he’s intimidating helps immensely of course.
But like– “Yeah, so I heard that Fair and Strife had an all out brawl with one’a those things that infests the abandoned houses in the slums.”
“A Hell House?” The second voice is, of course, muted through food. Gossipy SOLDIERs still need a high caloric intake.
“Yeah sure–Anyway, word is that Strife wound up clinging to the eaves and ripping the thrusters off it while Fair ran around yelling at it to keep it distracted.”
“Sounds like’em, yeah.”
And they walk off ( “So what’s your theory on those things?” “Prob’ly escaped from the Science Department. The robots that the engineers send us after are too shit for how much they hurt.” “Yeah, or they’re the discarded scraps of the ‘bots we took out.” “HA!”)and Sephiroth just narrows his eyes at the sheaf of papers he’s been pretending to read for the last half an hour and dies a little more inside because why. He does everything he can to keep this little shitlord from getting noticed and they’re not making it easy on him at fucking all.
I laughed for like, a solid minute at this. Thank you!!
