#streamer cloud

“You’re awful,” Cloud snorted, a fond, amused smile brightening his features as he spoke. He turned his attention to the webcam Sephiroth used and greeted the other’s audience cheerfully, “Hi guys, I’m Cloud, aka The Nibel Wolf, and Seph’s invited me to join you guys while he plays the Dark Souls.”

“Don’t forget to plug yourself,” Sephiroth reminded him, picking up the controller and continuing past the menu’s peaceful music. The screen changed to a character selection screen filled with profiles at different levels of game time, Cloud guessed that the 120-hour profile was a finished one but you really couldn’t tell with most RPGs.

“You can find my stream of which has Mr Eye-Candy here as a guest every second Wednesday for stupid or scary games and Saturday nights’ where we get together with two other friends to fail at fighting games. Come join me if you want.”

“You sound so enthused,” Sephiroth noted, loading up one of his characters in front of a bonfire in a stone room. “We’re heading into the Darkroot Garden today for the ring we need, then into the Abyss for the rest of the stream.”

“… That sounds ominous,” Cloud pointed out, turning his attention back to the chat as it scrolled up, noting the familiar names from his own streams. “We’re gonna be in for a great time, aren’t we?”

“It will be fun,” Sephiroth promised, sprinting past a giant, faceless monster with a catchpole in the middle of an empty stone room. The game opened to a beautiful area, under a night sky and full of lush, green forestry.

This game certainly was pretty, if nothing else.

He turned his attention back to the chat just in time to catch something that worried him just the slightest bit, “why is Chetchi telling me that I’m going to rage at you in a few minutes? What do they know?”

“That you’re definitely going to rage in a few minutes,” Sephiroth said, focused on not dying to the weird, tree-men that had emerged from the ground to ambush him. They couldn’t seem to do much to Sephiroth’s character though, as he had a large shield in his hand and was using a long spear to poke at them from behind it.

“I don’t like the way you say that,” Cloud said, narrowing his gaze at the man next to him before turning back to the chat and answering the questions Sephiroth’s chat shot at him as the other continued to make his way through the area.

“That’s a nice door,” Cloud commented a few minutes later when the character came to a stop in front of a pair of giant, ornate stone door. “There’s a boss behind there, isn’t there?”

“Yes,” Sephiroth answered, setting down his controller to take a drink from a glass of water. “One of the best in the series.”

“Is it hard?”

“No more than the Executioner and the Dragonslayer.”

“Well,” Cloud said, leaning back in his seat. “They sound like fun.”

“They’re the ones I showed you last week.”

“Oh, them!” He said, remembering the clips Sephiroth had sent to him. “The giant golden man with the lightning spear!”

“I have his spear now,” Sephiroth stated proudly, picking up his controller and stabbing said spear into the door in front of him. “It’s very effective.”

“Cool,” the chat was racing, eagerly awaiting his reaction to whatever the boss was. “You ready for this?”

Sephiroth rolled his shoulder and spun his character in place before opening the large doors, “I’m ready for you to get up and leave.”

Cloud ignored Sephiroth’s comment, focusing on the boss fight room that was revealed to them. It was a large open area with numerous swords buried in the ground around it, in the middle of the area was a large, stone slab behind a huge sword nearly as tall as it was. It was a very impressive area.

“This looks nice,” Cloud noted as Sephiroth strode into the room, moving steadily towards the giant sword. “So, where’s the boss?”

His question was answered by the cut scene that started playing a few paces from the large sword, he completely froze when the boss appeared on the screen and knocked back Sephiroth’s character before picking up the giant sword and starting the boss fight.

“That’s a dog.” He said blankly, starting at the beautiful grey coat of the canine on the screen. “You’re fighting a dog.”

“A wolf, but yes.” Sephiroth responded, expertly dodging the wolf’s sword swings. “Sif’s a very good boss fight.”

“I want to punch you so much right now.” Cloud stated, dragging his attention from the boss fight to the scrolling chat. “And you Chetchi, how could you betray me by not warning me about this?”

Sephiroth may have been laughing at him between stabbing the giant wolf on the screen, but Cloud was more focused on the response he got from Chetchi.

“No, that would not be cute! That’d be awful!”

Sephiroth was definitely laughing at him now, as was his chat now.

“Don’t send it to Gen! He won’t let me live it down!”

“You should turn away now,” Sephiroth warned him, rolling through Sif’s sweeping, glowing sword swing. “Before you decide to retract our friendship.”

“Wait, what?” Cloud said, turning back to the screen to see that Sif’s health bar was close to the final fourth of its bar. “What’s going to happen?”

“This,” Sephiroth said, stabbing the boss once again and forcing the health bar to one-hit of health. The boss’ reaction was instantaneous, starting to limp towards Sephiroth’s character and making weak attacks that made it obvious that Sif was using all they’re power just to get the sword off the ground and a few inches past it’s starting position before dragging it back to its starting place.

It was one of the most heart-wrenching series of animations Cloud had ever seen in a game and the chat seemed to believe so as well.

“I’m replacing you with one of your brothers,” he informed Sephiroth, voice quiet and deadly serious.

“You’re not going to replace me with one of my brothers, are you?”

“Good,” Cloud said after a moment of quiet, reading Vincent’s words before responding to them. “As long as I’m not fuzzy or out-of-focus, we should be good.”

‘I can see you without issue.’ Vincent typed, watching as a large grin spread across his friend’s features at his response. He always enjoyed seeing his friend happy, the younger had been through far too much in his life, he deserved everything good thing that came his way after everything. ‘I can also hear everything you are saying.’

“That’s great!” Cloud said with a soft, relieved sigh, slumping a bit where he sat on the couch. “The setup’s a bit of a mess at the moment but I’ll sort it out once I’m sure I’ve got everything right.” What was being displayed on his screen changed suddenly, the box showing Cloud shrunk and moved to the bottom of the screen and a larger black box took up the rest of the space above his friend’s form. Words appeared on the black screen with a distinctive noise, Vincent assumed that meant that something was starting up, confirmed a moment later when  a safety warning appeared on the black screen before being replaced by a title page displaying two cartoony dragons and a multitude of bubbles.

The theme music was bright, cheerful and uplifting. Vincent liked it.

‘I can see the new screen.’ He informed Cloud, watching as the other nodded in response, shifting to a more comfortable position in his chair.

The next half hour passed in a similar manner; Cloud would attempt something and Vincent would inform him if he’d been successful or not, repeating a few moments later when Cloud either attempted to fix the issue or moved onto a new topic. It was a surprisingly decent way to spend the afternoon, helping Cloud with his testings, he informed Cloud that he would be happy to help again in the future before the screen went dark and a line of text informed him that Cloud was offline.

He closed his PHS and turned his attention back to what he’d been doing before Cloud texted him; namely cleaning his guns. What an exciting life he lead, now that no one was trying to destroy the world.

He clicked on the link Cloud sent him by accident a few weeks later. He expected it to lead him to the dark screen he’d left off when he’d helped Cloud the first time, not to be brought to a screen showing Cloud playing a game and talking to the chat slowly scrolling up the side of the screen. Vincent blinked at the other people speaking over the chat before closing it, connecting the earbuds Marlene had forced him to buy along with his PHS and relaxed where he was sitting out in the sun for once, listening to his friend talk about whatever he was doing.

He was lucky enough to witness the Wyvern turn it’s attention to another part of their base, taking out one of the bastions that were positioned there. He thought that that was the fourth bastion the creature had destroyed since appearing on the screen less than two minutes ago.

“Goddamn, wanna-be-dragon!” Cloud yelled, glaring at the Wyvern from where his character was sheltered. He heard a few profanities from the other players as the Wyvern tore through their base’s defences.

“I assume you can’t call back your other friends?” He asked, not really expecting an answer from Cloud. The chat was still being flooded by tombstones and little salt emojis so he knew he wasn’t going to get much help from there.

Cloud heaved a heavy sigh, glancing at Genesis as he replied. “The Wyvern took out our communication tower when it first arrived, we’ve sent someone to escape the base and try to contact them from the transmission tower a few miles away.”

Genesis blinked, stunned for a moment, when had Cloud arranged all that?

Cloud’s attention turned back to the screen as the Wyvern released a loud roar, scorching the ground below it with poorly rendered flames. He really didn’t understand the appeal of these types of games; he’d much rather be curled up with a good Visual Novel then something like this.

But it was the annual monthly subscriber stream, where Cloud played a few hours with some of his subscribers on their server. He had missed the last few streams due to being away from the city but from what Cloud had told him, each one was a hit.

If the other’s had been anything like this, he could see why they had been a hit. It was amusing to see Cloud get so angry at the Wyvern that had shown up out of nowhere.