#squall.

For the good of the pack. 

This thought is the fire in his heart as a war wages on over his head. The grass beneath him is overgrown and sticky with his own blood. Cloud’s jaw clenches tightly and he exhales slowly through his nose as a cross bolt burrows deep into the ground a couple feet away from him. The impact throws up dirt and threatens his instinct to change and charge into the fray along with his pack mates. 

Not yet.

Grimacing, Cloud rolls over onto his other side and presses a hand tightly against the deep gouge marks running along his side. Blood seeps between his fingers, glistening in little ruby droplets and catching under his nails. He shudders from the pain that wracks fine tremors throughout his body. These injuries were not made by a human, much less a hunter. His own pack had done this.

As the youngest member of the pack, Cloud was the most likely to be accepted into the company of the Guild. So he volunteered. Take on the guise of a villager who lost their home and family to werewolves, beseech the Guild to let him join their cause. Exploit their weaknesses. 

They chose a small, nameless village on the outskirts of Radiant Garden. Every last villager would be slaughtered, assuring that there would be no one left alive to blow Cloud’s cover. By the time the hunters got there, it would be too late. 

“We’re pulling back. Good luck, Cloud.”

@angelocannons and any other Rinoa/Squall/Seifer who hasn’t seen this already--

Flowing from form to form, he dances through a mantra. Each slice through the air with his sword is punctuated with overlapping patterns of inhale, exhale. Sweat drips down his brow and his arms feel heavy with the glare of an unforgiving sun.

The scales have long since fallen from his eyes. His encounter with Sora nearly a year ago made it painfully obvious to him that finding Sephiroth did not equate to defeating Sephiroth. His darkness is still greater than himself. Strength is Cloud's solution; to accumulate it through constant struggle and self-learning. Even if curiosities and false starts lead him elsewhere in his quest, the Coliseum has become something of a second home for him. No other world draws in so many fighters, all with their own quirks and specialties. A continuous feed of opponents through whom he could improve his own abilities.

Trumpets blare in the distance and colorful banners unfurl over the high, travertine walls of the coliseum. The morning reveille, calling fighters to the day's first set of matches. Cloud would be amongst them later, one of many competitors in this venue of spectacles.

For now, training time is over.

With sore fingers, Cloud clips his sword against his back. Shouldering past other grumbling warriors and their aches and pains, he doesn't bother talking to anyone else. He has to tuck his nose behind the cloak curled around his neck in order to breathe in without gagging as people begin pressing in against him for lack of space. Sweat and sun-stale bodies.

An adjoining hallway at one end of the arena leads to a small lobby and a series of private residences used by longtime fighters. In his single-minded journey to make it as quickly as possible to his room for a quick shower and rest, one person glimpsed out of the corner of his eye gives him pause.

A lone man, clad in leather, leaning against the wall by the archway that precedes a hallway of closed doors. Familiar faces of his past flicker through his mind's eye, buildings and people melting into shadows, and a world now lost to them all.

“Nope,” Cloud answers with a wholly unconvincing promptness. A thin plume of smoke rises behind him and, to his credit, the blond hardly blinks when a fizzling sound starts and ends with a firecracker’s gunshot POP ! The previously meager stream of smoke curling over his head fattens at once like a sated beast. At the bottom edge of his pant leg, a stray spark smolders.

"You might think about stopping." His words bleed with irreverence as he drops a load of scavenged electrical parts onto the worktable. Loose screws and bolts wildly spin away from the landing site as though fleeing calamity. The blond pauses, his eyes lingering at the edges of the table long enough to satisfy his suspicion that nothing will roll off. Sorely lacking with his own engineering skills, Cloud trusts that Cid can find a use for most of the deposited gear.

The room is lit with a bleak halogen light hanging precariously over their heads by a naked copper cord. Stacked crates, overflowing with salvage and metal pipes line the walls of the safe house. A small iron kettle sits politely in one corner on top of a makeshift stove. Embers flicker like dying fireflies underneath, waiting only to be stoked back to life again in time for an evening meal. Two doorways on the south side extend their cramped living space with a basic bathroom and additional bedrooms. A single computer, hooked up to a series of cracked displays, casts a ghostly blue light against the otherwise contrasting yellows of the bulb hanging from the center of the room.

These are early days, precarious times; refugees no longer but grappling desperately for a foothold of security. Radiant Garden is not what it once was. The streets still teem with heartless and countless buildings in the town center are in severe disrepair.

Cloud’s mako-blue eyes take on a patently playful glint as he walks on ahead of his companion. “Dead serious,” he responds dryly as they pick their way through the Midgar slums. As all opportunists in the slums tend to, the two of them are followed with a great many sets of curious eyes. The mask certainly doesn’t do the Midgar Lion any favors– no doubt many a fence has already attempted to account for the sterling silver material’s weight in gil. “Didn’t even know what the ocean looked like until I was fifteen.” 

The information is volunteered freely, as though he’s talking about a stranger. “Even when I first came here…I spent most of it in the ship’s hold trying not to puke my guts out,” Cloud continues, evidently having overgrown any urge to stifle embarrassing teenage memories.

Only half-paying attention to what the other man is doing behind him, the blond kneels down by a chain link fence. An old Shinra facility, long shutdown after a successful AVALANCHE attack. All that remains are shattered windows and brittle concrete walls. The padlock latching the gate is old, rusted along the edges and well into the locking mechanism. Cloud takes a cursory glance of his surroundings before snapping the lock with a sharp tug.

-- Shipping Interest Check

Have we discussed shipping before?: yes || no

My interest level overall: I’ve wanted this for so long || can’t wait || I think it’ll be fun || kinda feeling it || maybe with a lot of plotting || I need to think about it || not interested, sorry

How we should do this: jump right in || slow burn || pre-established || build up to it in a thread || anything goes