[Profile]
Name: Cloud Strife
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII Compilation
Age: 23
Point in Canon: Post Advent Children
History: Cloud grew up in Nibelheim, a very small, backwoods village at the very edge of the West Continent’s Nibel Mountains. His father died when he was very young, so he was only raised by his mother. By all accounts, Cloud had a very lonely childhood. Somewhat isolated from the village’s other children to begin with, he wasn’t particularly well liked, a situation that was only made worse by his own belief that he was better than the other kids. Though he did like the mayor’s daughter, Tifa, and even had a crush on her, he hated her friends, so the two weren’t ver close at all.
When Cloud was nine, Tifa’s mother died. Insisting she could meet her again if she crossed Mt. Nibel, Tifa ventured up the mountainside. Cloud followed her, hoping to help, but Tifa was injured. The townsfolk blamed Cloud for the expedition, believing that it was his idea, and Tifa’s father - Nibelheim’s mayor - forbade Cloud from approaching her. Cloud blamed himself for Tifa’s injuries as well, thinking that he’d failed her due to his own weakness. The combination of events gave Cloud a few anger issues, and he became prone to picking fights, though he was still primarily a quiet, shy boy and usually steered clear of the other village children.
SOLDIER didn’t become Cloud’s dream until he was thirteen. That’s when he learned of Sephiroth and Sephiroth’s exploits, and decided that he was going to become a SOLDIER, too, and be a hero just like the General was. After promising Tifa, on her request, to come save her if she was ever in trouble, Cloud left his village for Midgar.
Despite his best efforts, Cloud failed to achieve SOLDIER status and instead entered ShinRa’s army as a regular infantryman. It was during a mission to Modeoheim that Cloud met SOLDIER First-Class Zack Fair, and the two became fast friends upon the realization that they were both what they termed as “backwater experts.” During the ensuing infiltration of a Mako Excavation Facility, Cloud was able to lend a hand when he and Zack ran into the rouge SOLDIER Genesis Rhapsados and Dr. Hollander by briefly capturing him, though was unable to hold onto the man and was knocked out by Angeal when he tried to give chase. That was far from the last mission Cloud accompanied Zack on, however. The young blond very much admired the SOLDIER First-Class, and looked up to him as a hero, a role model, and a friend.
When Cloud was sent back to Nibelhiem with Zack and Sephiroth as part of a mission to inspect a Mako reactor, Cloud enlisted Zack’s assistance in hiding his identity. He was ashamed of his failure to join SOLDIER, and didn’t want anyone to know, especially not their guide to the reactor - his old crush, Tifa. The only person he revealed himself to was his mother, whom Sephiroth gave him leave to visit. After the expedition to the reactor and Sephiroth’s subsequent discoveries and descent into madness, Cloud witnessed his mother’s death in the fire, as well as the destruction of the rest of Nibelheim.
Rushing back to the reactor to confront Sephiroth for his actions, Cloud found that Tifa and Zack were already there - Tifa was severely wounded, however, while Zack was only barely conscious. Distraught with grief and worry, Cloud took Zack’s Buster Sword and went into the reactor, where he caught Sephiroth off-guard in the core and stabbed him before returning to care for Tifa. Though he was badly wounded, Sephiroth reemerged from the core, stabbing Cloud with the Masamune when he attacked Sephiroth again. Cloud somehow managed to find a hidden strength, though, and used the sword as a lever to throw Sephiroth into the Mako pit below before collapsing.
The following four years were spent as one of Dr. Hojo’s experiments alongside Zack. Exposed to large quantities of Mako and injected with Jenova Cells as Hojo attempted to test out his Jenova Reunion Theory, Cloud was pretty much comatose by the time Zack managed to break them out of Hojo’s lab. After their escape, Zack carried the weak and unresponsive Cloud around, changing him out of his Mako-soaked clothes into a SOLDIER uniform and talking to him continuously, telling Cloud all about his life and his plans for them to become mercenaries in Midgar. But after a year of running, ShinRa finally catches up to the pair just as they finally reach Midgar. Though Zack put up one hell of a fight to defend himself and Cloud, killing the majority of the thousands of soldiers sent after them, he was finally gunned down by the last few remaining. Knowing Zack’s wounds were fatal, and after seeing the vegetative state Cloud was in, the soldiers went back to Migar, leaving them both for dead.
Having witnessed the battle, however, Cloud managed to wake enough to crawl to Zack’s side, where Zack entrusted him with his sword - and legacy. Cloud’s last words to the man who had been his dearest friend and savior were, “Good night, Zack.”
Just because Cloud had regained consciousness, though, didn’t mean he was all better, not by a long shot. He made his way towards Midgar, deeply distressed and grieving, where trauma of Hojo’s experimentation, Zack’s death, and Jenova caused his severely weakened psyche to more or less collapse into itself. Cloud impressed Zack’s memories, and from that moment forward fully believed he was a former SOLDER First Class who had once partnered alongside Sephiroth. To Cloud’s troubled mind, Zack no longer existed. Due to Hojo’s experiments, Cloud fully had the abilities and Mako eyes to back up this belief. Once in Midgar, Cloud followed up on Zack’s plans and presented himself as a mercenary, where he was hired by an environmental terrorist group called AVALANCHE, of which Tifa was also a member.
What merely began as a job turned into an adventure to save the Planet from Jenova and Sephiroth - who wasn’t quite as dead as Cloud and the rest of the world had believed. Though most of AVALANCHE was killed when ShinRa collapsed Sector Seven, Cloud continued to travel with Tifa, Barrett, Aerith, and Red XIII, who they rescued from ShinRa’s labs at the same time they freed the captured Aerith. Yuffie joined them not long after, followed by Cait Sith, Vincent Valentine, and Cid Highwind.
It wasn’t until after a fateful - and fatal - visit to the City of the Ancients that things really started to heat up, though. With Aerith’s death at Sephiroth’s hands, and Cloud, under his mind control, handing him the Black Materia, it was a race to the Northern Crater. It was race that Sephiroth won: by the end, he had been fully revived, the Planet’s Weapons had been awakened, Meteor was a looming threat in the sky, and Cloud was lost in the lifestream.
With Aerith and Tifa’s help, Cloud recovered, and lead AVALANCHE on a hunt for Sephiroth in earnest, recovering his true persona in the process. Guilt-ridden now over not just Aerith’s death, but Zack’s, as well as his taking on his friend’s memories, life after Sephiroth’s demise was far from easy. Cloud tried to begin a normal life, living with Tifa, Marlene, and boy who had lost his parents in the collapse of Sector Seven named Denzel at the newly built Seventh Heaven in Edge and beginning a delivery service. But his guilt and his mind were eating at him, and he soon quit his place at Seventh Heaven to begin living alone in Aerith’s church instead as he began to distance himself from his friends. When he contracted Geostigma, Cloud withdrew even further.
t took the arrival of three brothers - Sephiroth’s Remnants - to start pulling him back out of his shell. Though the situation was difficult for everyone, Cloud’s allies, friends, and makeshift family all stood strong in their efforts to support him - a stand which, when coupled with further reassurance from Aerith and Zack, was enough to get Cloud back on his feet again. When the time came to fight Sephiroth again came, Cloud was ready. With victory came peace, and a cure to Geostigma. Prepared to start learning to move on, Cloud moved back out of Aerith’s Church. He placed Zack’s Buster Sword there instead, freshly polished and sharpened, before returning to Edge.
Personality: With the cure of Geostigma, Cloud has learned to let go a little, but it’s something he’s still working on. He’s a little more sociable than he used to be, especially with close friends, but he’s still very quiet and, at times, rather shy. He’s not the most expressive person in the world, with most of his emotion being in his eyes rather than the whole of his face. He’s very kind and compassionate, and though he’s prone to being moody on occasion, he’s very loyal to those he cares about and is always driven to protect them, even to the point were he’ll hide his pain and emotions so as to not worry them.
Items/things:
-First Tsurugi: the main sword, one hollow blade that serves as the front edge, two identical but asymmetrically opposite blades that form the back, and two identical but also asymmetrically opposite smaller blades that attach to the sides
-Fenrir
-sunglasses
-sword harness
-his pack of travelling supplies, which includes several hi-potions, potions, elixirs, ethers, etc., a few materia of various levels (Comet, Destruct, Heal, Restore, Fire, Ice, Lightning, and Odin) - all of which are more or less useless while on the island - as well as supplies to take care of his gear, water, food (courtesy of Tifa), a carefully kept red ribbon, and a couple changes of clothes
-a second pack of things he was supposed to be delivering (three packages of smallish, varying sizes, and four letters)
-PHS (Cell phone), which has no reception
Abilities: Cloud has the usual abilities granted to SOLDIERs, including enhanced speed and strength. He’s very experienced in combat, and extremely adept with his sword(s), as well as magic - though he’s not able to actually use any magic while on the island.
First Person Sample: I moved back to Edge yesterday. Tifa seemed pretty happy about it. So did the kids. They’d left my room alone, even though I hadn’t lived with them for months, and hadn’t left anything behind. I think Tifa came in to clean, since there was no dust and the bedding was fresh, but everything was still exactly how I’d remembered it.
Not that my memory is particularly trustworthy or anything. Still, it’s a nice thought, that they had still considered it mine. Marlene even baked me a cake to welcome me home. That’s what it said, too: Welcome Home Cloud. And it was messy enough to prove she’d written it on there by herself. It was good.
I think... I think I’ll like this. Having people to come back to all the time. Not that I don’t still miss Aerith or anything. I do. But maybe that place is just somewhere to visit now. Time to start moving on. Somehow, I don’t think she’ll mind. And with the Buster there now, too, I can visit Zack at the same time - that feels right.
Third Person Sample: The sun was warm and bright in a clear blue sky that stretched forever in every direction; the temperature just a shade too hot to be completely comfortable, even with the light breeze that rustled through the field. Cloud ripped apart the bread in his hand and bit into the smaller half, letting the other half drop with his hand. Fenrir was a solid support at his back as he lounged across the grassy plain, tilting his head back to watch the empty sky while he chewed. Junon was still a good four or five hours’ ride away, and after a straight shot from Kalm, Cloud thought he deserved the lunch break. The bread was still soft after three days in his pack. Sweet, even. Good.
Cloud tore off another piece and pushed it into his mouth, shifting to retrieve his PHS as the thought occurred to him. He scanned through his call history. Yuffie, Yuffie, Barret, Yuffie, Cid, Yuffie, Yuffie, Tifa, Tifa, Yuffie, Reeve, Unknown - most likely ShinRa - Yuffie, Tifa, Vincent, Yuffie.
He frowned a little. Barrett had left a message and Tifa wasn’t a big surprise, at least one of her calls was probably actually Marlene. He’d call back before they all went to bed, say good night the kids before finding out what Tifa wanted. Reeve was probably a job, Cid too. Rufus could wait a few more weeks just for the hell of it. Vincent, though, that was odd. He’d call back as soon as he got to Junon, Cloud decided. That would probably be better sooner rather than later.
Biting into the last piece of bread, Cloud pushed himself off the ground and mounted his bike. He pulled his sunglasses out and slid them on, touching the bridge of the nose piece to make sure they were properly settled. Then he fired up the engine and guided Fenrir from the side of the road onto the highway proper. Time to mosey.
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII Compilation
Age: 23
Point in Canon: Post Advent Children
History: Cloud grew up in Nibelheim, a very small, backwoods village at the very edge of the West Continent’s Nibel Mountains. His father died when he was very young, so he was only raised by his mother. By all accounts, Cloud had a very lonely childhood. Somewhat isolated from the village’s other children to begin with, he wasn’t particularly well liked, a situation that was only made worse by his own belief that he was better than the other kids. Though he did like the mayor’s daughter, Tifa, and even had a crush on her, he hated her friends, so the two weren’t ver close at all.
When Cloud was nine, Tifa’s mother died. Insisting she could meet her again if she crossed Mt. Nibel, Tifa ventured up the mountainside. Cloud followed her, hoping to help, but Tifa was injured. The townsfolk blamed Cloud for the expedition, believing that it was his idea, and Tifa’s father - Nibelheim’s mayor - forbade Cloud from approaching her. Cloud blamed himself for Tifa’s injuries as well, thinking that he’d failed her due to his own weakness. The combination of events gave Cloud a few anger issues, and he became prone to picking fights, though he was still primarily a quiet, shy boy and usually steered clear of the other village children.
SOLDIER didn’t become Cloud’s dream until he was thirteen. That’s when he learned of Sephiroth and Sephiroth’s exploits, and decided that he was going to become a SOLDIER, too, and be a hero just like the General was. After promising Tifa, on her request, to come save her if she was ever in trouble, Cloud left his village for Midgar.
Despite his best efforts, Cloud failed to achieve SOLDIER status and instead entered ShinRa’s army as a regular infantryman. It was during a mission to Modeoheim that Cloud met SOLDIER First-Class Zack Fair, and the two became fast friends upon the realization that they were both what they termed as “backwater experts.” During the ensuing infiltration of a Mako Excavation Facility, Cloud was able to lend a hand when he and Zack ran into the rouge SOLDIER Genesis Rhapsados and Dr. Hollander by briefly capturing him, though was unable to hold onto the man and was knocked out by Angeal when he tried to give chase. That was far from the last mission Cloud accompanied Zack on, however. The young blond very much admired the SOLDIER First-Class, and looked up to him as a hero, a role model, and a friend.
When Cloud was sent back to Nibelhiem with Zack and Sephiroth as part of a mission to inspect a Mako reactor, Cloud enlisted Zack’s assistance in hiding his identity. He was ashamed of his failure to join SOLDIER, and didn’t want anyone to know, especially not their guide to the reactor - his old crush, Tifa. The only person he revealed himself to was his mother, whom Sephiroth gave him leave to visit. After the expedition to the reactor and Sephiroth’s subsequent discoveries and descent into madness, Cloud witnessed his mother’s death in the fire, as well as the destruction of the rest of Nibelheim.
Rushing back to the reactor to confront Sephiroth for his actions, Cloud found that Tifa and Zack were already there - Tifa was severely wounded, however, while Zack was only barely conscious. Distraught with grief and worry, Cloud took Zack’s Buster Sword and went into the reactor, where he caught Sephiroth off-guard in the core and stabbed him before returning to care for Tifa. Though he was badly wounded, Sephiroth reemerged from the core, stabbing Cloud with the Masamune when he attacked Sephiroth again. Cloud somehow managed to find a hidden strength, though, and used the sword as a lever to throw Sephiroth into the Mako pit below before collapsing.
The following four years were spent as one of Dr. Hojo’s experiments alongside Zack. Exposed to large quantities of Mako and injected with Jenova Cells as Hojo attempted to test out his Jenova Reunion Theory, Cloud was pretty much comatose by the time Zack managed to break them out of Hojo’s lab. After their escape, Zack carried the weak and unresponsive Cloud around, changing him out of his Mako-soaked clothes into a SOLDIER uniform and talking to him continuously, telling Cloud all about his life and his plans for them to become mercenaries in Midgar. But after a year of running, ShinRa finally catches up to the pair just as they finally reach Midgar. Though Zack put up one hell of a fight to defend himself and Cloud, killing the majority of the thousands of soldiers sent after them, he was finally gunned down by the last few remaining. Knowing Zack’s wounds were fatal, and after seeing the vegetative state Cloud was in, the soldiers went back to Migar, leaving them both for dead.
Having witnessed the battle, however, Cloud managed to wake enough to crawl to Zack’s side, where Zack entrusted him with his sword - and legacy. Cloud’s last words to the man who had been his dearest friend and savior were, “Good night, Zack.”
Just because Cloud had regained consciousness, though, didn’t mean he was all better, not by a long shot. He made his way towards Midgar, deeply distressed and grieving, where trauma of Hojo’s experimentation, Zack’s death, and Jenova caused his severely weakened psyche to more or less collapse into itself. Cloud impressed Zack’s memories, and from that moment forward fully believed he was a former SOLDER First Class who had once partnered alongside Sephiroth. To Cloud’s troubled mind, Zack no longer existed. Due to Hojo’s experiments, Cloud fully had the abilities and Mako eyes to back up this belief. Once in Midgar, Cloud followed up on Zack’s plans and presented himself as a mercenary, where he was hired by an environmental terrorist group called AVALANCHE, of which Tifa was also a member.
What merely began as a job turned into an adventure to save the Planet from Jenova and Sephiroth - who wasn’t quite as dead as Cloud and the rest of the world had believed. Though most of AVALANCHE was killed when ShinRa collapsed Sector Seven, Cloud continued to travel with Tifa, Barrett, Aerith, and Red XIII, who they rescued from ShinRa’s labs at the same time they freed the captured Aerith. Yuffie joined them not long after, followed by Cait Sith, Vincent Valentine, and Cid Highwind.
It wasn’t until after a fateful - and fatal - visit to the City of the Ancients that things really started to heat up, though. With Aerith’s death at Sephiroth’s hands, and Cloud, under his mind control, handing him the Black Materia, it was a race to the Northern Crater. It was race that Sephiroth won: by the end, he had been fully revived, the Planet’s Weapons had been awakened, Meteor was a looming threat in the sky, and Cloud was lost in the lifestream.
With Aerith and Tifa’s help, Cloud recovered, and lead AVALANCHE on a hunt for Sephiroth in earnest, recovering his true persona in the process. Guilt-ridden now over not just Aerith’s death, but Zack’s, as well as his taking on his friend’s memories, life after Sephiroth’s demise was far from easy. Cloud tried to begin a normal life, living with Tifa, Marlene, and boy who had lost his parents in the collapse of Sector Seven named Denzel at the newly built Seventh Heaven in Edge and beginning a delivery service. But his guilt and his mind were eating at him, and he soon quit his place at Seventh Heaven to begin living alone in Aerith’s church instead as he began to distance himself from his friends. When he contracted Geostigma, Cloud withdrew even further.
t took the arrival of three brothers - Sephiroth’s Remnants - to start pulling him back out of his shell. Though the situation was difficult for everyone, Cloud’s allies, friends, and makeshift family all stood strong in their efforts to support him - a stand which, when coupled with further reassurance from Aerith and Zack, was enough to get Cloud back on his feet again. When the time came to fight Sephiroth again came, Cloud was ready. With victory came peace, and a cure to Geostigma. Prepared to start learning to move on, Cloud moved back out of Aerith’s Church. He placed Zack’s Buster Sword there instead, freshly polished and sharpened, before returning to Edge.
Personality: With the cure of Geostigma, Cloud has learned to let go a little, but it’s something he’s still working on. He’s a little more sociable than he used to be, especially with close friends, but he’s still very quiet and, at times, rather shy. He’s not the most expressive person in the world, with most of his emotion being in his eyes rather than the whole of his face. He’s very kind and compassionate, and though he’s prone to being moody on occasion, he’s very loyal to those he cares about and is always driven to protect them, even to the point were he’ll hide his pain and emotions so as to not worry them.
Items/things:
-First Tsurugi: the main sword, one hollow blade that serves as the front edge, two identical but asymmetrically opposite blades that form the back, and two identical but also asymmetrically opposite smaller blades that attach to the sides
-Fenrir
-sunglasses
-sword harness
-his pack of travelling supplies, which includes several hi-potions, potions, elixirs, ethers, etc., a few materia of various levels (Comet, Destruct, Heal, Restore, Fire, Ice, Lightning, and Odin) - all of which are more or less useless while on the island - as well as supplies to take care of his gear, water, food (courtesy of Tifa), a carefully kept red ribbon, and a couple changes of clothes
-a second pack of things he was supposed to be delivering (three packages of smallish, varying sizes, and four letters)
-PHS (Cell phone), which has no reception
Abilities: Cloud has the usual abilities granted to SOLDIERs, including enhanced speed and strength. He’s very experienced in combat, and extremely adept with his sword(s), as well as magic - though he’s not able to actually use any magic while on the island.
First Person Sample: I moved back to Edge yesterday. Tifa seemed pretty happy about it. So did the kids. They’d left my room alone, even though I hadn’t lived with them for months, and hadn’t left anything behind. I think Tifa came in to clean, since there was no dust and the bedding was fresh, but everything was still exactly how I’d remembered it.
Not that my memory is particularly trustworthy or anything. Still, it’s a nice thought, that they had still considered it mine. Marlene even baked me a cake to welcome me home. That’s what it said, too: Welcome Home Cloud. And it was messy enough to prove she’d written it on there by herself. It was good.
I think... I think I’ll like this. Having people to come back to all the time. Not that I don’t still miss Aerith or anything. I do. But maybe that place is just somewhere to visit now. Time to start moving on. Somehow, I don’t think she’ll mind. And with the Buster there now, too, I can visit Zack at the same time - that feels right.
Third Person Sample: The sun was warm and bright in a clear blue sky that stretched forever in every direction; the temperature just a shade too hot to be completely comfortable, even with the light breeze that rustled through the field. Cloud ripped apart the bread in his hand and bit into the smaller half, letting the other half drop with his hand. Fenrir was a solid support at his back as he lounged across the grassy plain, tilting his head back to watch the empty sky while he chewed. Junon was still a good four or five hours’ ride away, and after a straight shot from Kalm, Cloud thought he deserved the lunch break. The bread was still soft after three days in his pack. Sweet, even. Good.
Cloud tore off another piece and pushed it into his mouth, shifting to retrieve his PHS as the thought occurred to him. He scanned through his call history. Yuffie, Yuffie, Barret, Yuffie, Cid, Yuffie, Yuffie, Tifa, Tifa, Yuffie, Reeve, Unknown - most likely ShinRa - Yuffie, Tifa, Vincent, Yuffie.
He frowned a little. Barrett had left a message and Tifa wasn’t a big surprise, at least one of her calls was probably actually Marlene. He’d call back before they all went to bed, say good night the kids before finding out what Tifa wanted. Reeve was probably a job, Cid too. Rufus could wait a few more weeks just for the hell of it. Vincent, though, that was odd. He’d call back as soon as he got to Junon, Cloud decided. That would probably be better sooner rather than later.
Biting into the last piece of bread, Cloud pushed himself off the ground and mounted his bike. He pulled his sunglasses out and slid them on, touching the bridge of the nose piece to make sure they were properly settled. Then he fired up the engine and guided Fenrir from the side of the road onto the highway proper. Time to mosey.