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Introduction

All right, so this is an in-the-makings piece of fanfiction that I've been writing as a commission. It's a choose your own adventure (CYOA), it's told from first person, and there is an end pairing of the reader's choice. It's a fanfiction piece of a combination all of the Final Fantasty VII games and the movie.

Please, no guys here saying that they didn't like it because the girl falls in love with a guy. I'll just say this is girl's only unless you lean that way. Okay? Okay.

Also, it's a possibility that you've read this story on a fanfiction site called Lunaescence. That's because I have it posted up there under the account Tokyo the Glaive.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Final Fantasy VII, any of its characters, or any of the original storyline.

CLAIMER: I do own all additional characters, descriptions, places, and events.

Please do not copy or link to this story in any shape or form. Thank you.

Prologue: Beginnings

The air smelled rotten.
Not like rotten food, or even like someone hadn’t bathed in too long of a time. It was a different kind, almost like old water. In fact, that’s what made the most sense: the smell of old, decaying water. It fell from the sky in Edge with rapid frenzy; it hadn’t rained in the recovering city for the upward amount of time of three months. While there were no crops to be harvested—at that point, all food was being imported from Junon—the people needed water reservoirs. With the drought, they had none.
Now, with the new, albeit late, rain came a new problem. Construction couldn’t continue in the rain. All of the dirt and land that had been moved to make way for new buildings, all of the timber and metal from the remains of Midgar—all was drenched in the sudden downpour. The dirt that was supposed to be mixed with other elements to create protective banks was washing away and coating the already-dirty streets with a new layer of thick, slimy gunk.
It was this mass of heavy, oozing, semi-liquid goop that I was standing in as I absently smelled the air. People were passing me in the streets, their garments pulled tightly around them, sometimes with one arm extracting from their seemingly bulbous persona to hold a tattered umbrella. The wind was having a field day with these people, blowing them and their attire around the streets.
I, for one, was standing in the middle of one of the empty roads, watching everyone pass me on the sidewalks. Though there was no through traffic, seeing as, without mako energy and ShinRa, there was no way to make them run, people seemed afraid of the streets. While they once had reason to be, that time was over. So I stood, rooted to one place, staring at the blackened sky.
As I did so, I could see families giving me the dirtiest looks. An old woman yelled profanities to me in practiced Wutain; I responded with a, “Thank you,” in the same language. Children were pointing at the strange woman standing in the middle of the roads: me. I didn’t care. I may have been drenched and freezing, but the umbrellas, scarves, hats, and sometimes coats blowing down the road amused me. Most people chased after those objects, attempting in vain to save them from the harsh winds and rain. Some, though, seemed forgotten and without owners. It was those I watched in particular. It was a melancholy picture, really. I laughed in spite of myself. How foolish it was.

I found my way to a bar labeled Seventh Heaven after another half an hour of standing on the rain. The blonde, spiky-haired man at the door had no apparent desire to let me in, but I flashed an I.D. card, and he quickly hurried me up to the front counter, got be some towels, and informed me that my most expensive order, if I had any, would be on the house. I watched him as he left. His eyes were bright blue: undoubtedly mako enhanced. He appeared exceedingly strong, and wore black pants and shoes. His shirt was a very deep indigo, and he wore what I assumed to be a one-of-a-kind jacked that attached to his shirt and fit over his left arm. On it, there was a sterling silver wolf. It stared at it for a little while before turning back to the bar counter.
There were quite a few people inside, and even more out: I had butted in front of a very long line to get where I was. Many of them were making obscene gestures at me through the window. I merely smiled darkly in return. After that, none of them could meet my eyes. Few people in general could.
“Ah… Miss? Can I get anything for you?”
I was awakened from my silent stupor by the lone bartender. She was a voluptuously built woman, and it was clear as to why many of the more drunken men were sending catcalls her direction. The same man who let me in the door quickly threw any drunk enough to do that out. Her skin moved beautifully over very well toned muscles. Her hair was dark and long, hitting her mid back. Everything she wore was black: her form-fitting shirt, her shorts with a longer piece of black fabric over her bosom, and her dark sneakers. The only things differing in color was a bit of detail work and her eyes. Her eyes were a very intriguing shade of violet.
I stopped scrutinizing her when I recalled that she was asking if I wanted something. I opened my mouth once then closed it again, thinking. I cleared my throat, and when I spoke, my voice wasn’t scratchy, as I feared it would have been. “What is the most expensive red you have here?”
“Red wine?” she asked. I nodded once. She seemed flabbergasted. “Well… We did just get in a very small shipment of Torbreck RunRig, a Shiraz. It’s five years old, and we import it from the southern Wutai islands, in the Barossa Valley. It’s made from eight different Barossa vineyards, all of them aged. It is primarily Shiraz, although it was fermented with four percent Viognier. The wine itself was aged in French oak. It’s a sweet nose of blackberries, blueberries, litchi nuts, smoked meats, and a hint of apricots. It was grown in a cool climate, making it a bit spicier than the average Shiraz. It’s extremely rich in flavor.”
“I’ll take the whole bottle,” I replied. I wasn’t a huge fan of Torbreck. My voice had a chilled edge to it. Instead of listing the price, she turned away to get the bottle. “How much will it cost me?”
The woman turned back around to face me. I was slumped in my seat, slightly damp, and probably not the prettiest sight she had ever seen. Oh well. “…Excuse me?” she asked. I waited, blinking. “Oh, the price. Cloud,” she pointed to the spiky-haired one, “told me that your most expensive order would be on the house.” I looked to him. His name was Cloud. I had to remember that.
I shook my head. “What’s your name, girl?” I asked. My voice was losing its velvety quality already, so I coughed lightly into my arm to resurrect it.
She hesitated, slouching a bit from her upright stance. “My name is Tifa,” she responded slowly. I got the impression that being prompted for her name made her nervous.
“Thank you. Tifa, would you please give the price of the wine?” My words were more of a statement than a question. She paused again before answering, almost as if she were afraid of it.
“In gold… Right now, it’s worth about six thousand eight-hundred gold.”
She braced herself for something; I may never know what. She watched me intently as I reached into my pocket. Her eyes were wide, almost fearful as I did so, and I was aware of the man, Cloud’s, eyes upon my thin frame. However, all I did was remove a large sack of money from my pocket. “There,” I said, pushing it forward. “Take it. It has eight thousand gold, but I’m too lazy to count it out, and I won’t make you.”
Tifa shook her head, stepping back. I noticed that she had the bottle in her hand. “No, Miss, I couldn’t really. This one’s on the house—”
“Take the money, or I’m going to feel insulted,” I commented. Her face paled and she snatched the money from the table. I watched her, and her face flushed. She stuttered for words, but ended up saying nothing coherent. She left and returned with a large glass. We spoke no further words except for when I tasted the bit of wine she poured to see if that was truly what I wanted. All I said was, “Yes, this is perfect.”
The bartender named Tifa scurried away as fast as possible to wait on other customers. It seemed to me that she was keeping as far away from me as possible, but I didn’t blame her in the slightest. There was no reason to want to be near me.
I could feel the gazes of several people in the room as they mentally tore apart my image. I knew exactly what they saw. To them, I appeared to be a drunken woman with dull emotions and an even duller fashion sense. Though I supposed a third of it could be considered true, I honestly hoped it was completely false.
I was nowhere near drunk; I was still aware enough to notice that there were exactly two hundred and forty-three and a half floorboards. My emotions were as sharp as my wits, and nothing would change that. Though, I supposed, the one part of what the general public saw that could be considered true was about my fashion sense. Then again, they weren’t seeing me as I usually was, so it was easy for them to be mistaken.
I wore my blonde hair down to my chin. As it curved around my head, the golden locks grew progressively shorter. If one were to look closely at my face, they would find that I wore it in a side part, with the majority of my hair on the right side. They would also find that side of hair to be longer than the other.
My hair downplayed my pale skin so that it didn’t look quite so much like I should be rushed to the hospital as it did when I decided to dye my hair black. As I ordered a pack of cigarettes, I remembered with a smile how sick I’d looked. Someone had even mistaken me for being dead when I’d been sleeping.
My blue eyes were set well in that pale complexion, although, at that time, sitting in the bar, only one, my right, was visible. A large, black eye patch obscured my left eye. It covered a good deal of the skin around my eye, and attached around my head with a thick black strap. I’d chosen it because it looked very different from the usual vision of an eye patch: the pirate’s eye patch, with the string strap and the small, circular patch. As I said, mine was very different.
I wore a black, long-sleeved shirt that went down to my mid-thigh. There were high slits going from the bottom of the shirt to my waistline. Just visible underneath was a very pale blue shirt. I also sported black pants that hung long on my legs, ending past my ankles, and black stiletto boots. Over my outfit, I wore a long, black trench coat buttoned only at the top button with a crimson scarf tied around my neck. Around my left wrist, I’d tied a matching ribbon into a bow.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cloud and another, much darker, man talking rapidly in a corner. Occasionally they looked to me, but they quickly resumed their conversation. The man was quite the standout, and I decided that he stuck out more than I did. His hair was long, black, and appeared untamable. His skin was far paler than mine, and it let his razor-sharp red eyes stand out. He wore all black as well, as seemed to be the trend with the people in this room, except for a gold, glove-like claw on his left hand, a long, tattered, red cloak, a red bandanna of sorts, and golden shoes that seemed to match the claw. I raised an eyebrow. Both Cloud and this other man were very strange in their own separate ways.


I’m more interested in Cloud – Names
I’m more interested in the other guy – Thief

Thief

I sipped my Shiraz thoughtfully as I eyed the crimson-eyed man. Peoples’ gazes flickered to and from him, and the moment he appeared, seemingly from out of nowhere, people gravitated towards the other end of the room, almost as if he were some sort of monster. I had to admit, he didn’t seem to be anything near a saint. The presence he cast in the room was dark and deceitful, almost as if he’d rather kill everyone here than look at them.
I met his gaze just once. The look he gave me told me that he didn’t give a damn about what was going on around him, and if we all died, then so be it. His eyes were cold. It was almost as if they’d once been alive and cheery, then an ice storm came and froze them into emotionless orbs. I looked away, my one visible eye continually glancing over to him. He never looked up.
“That’s Vincent.”
My gaze drifted from the pair and up to the speaker. It was Tifa. She, too, was looking at them. “…Who?” I asked, sipping my wine once more. My gaze never left her form. She had been right; it was heavy, but it was just what I needed. I didn’t need to clear my throat any more in order to maintain a silky voice.
“You were looking at that man over there, right?” she asked, pointing to the crimson-eyed man. I didn’t tell her that it was rude to point, although I did nod. “Yes. That’s Vincent. Vincent Valentine.”
I chuckled softly at that. That someone would have the guts to name so dark as that Vincent Valentine was beyond me. Tifa laughed darkly as well. Seeing as she was lingering by me once more, I decided to pry for more information about this Valentine man. “So… He knows Cloud?” I asked experimentally, testing out the name.
Tifa nodded. “You remember, just a while ago? When Holy came close to falling?” she asked. I nodded, waiting. “Cloud, Vincent and I, we were some of the people who stopped Sephiroth and Holy.” I started recalling names. Yes, I knew them. There were others, too. I started listing the names I knew aloud.
“That’s right, I remember now. …Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockheart, Aeris Gainsborogh, Barret Wallace, Red XIII, Cait Sith, Yuffie Kisaragi, Cid Highwind, and…Vincent Valentine,” I murmured. My eyes flashed around the room. Amazingly, most of those people were present. I saw Cait Sith handing out fortunes in the middle of the room, grinning and laughing giddily. I hadn’t noticed the strange little mechanical cat atop the plushy toy when I walked in, and so I figured he had to have come in later. A little voice in the back of my mind reminded me that the person controlling Cait Sith was Reeve, an ex-ShinRa employee that turned traitor to the company just before the alleged death of its president, Rufus ShinRa.
“Who said my name?”
There was a man next to me. His voice wasn’t slurred, but he had definitely had more than a couple to drink already. I grimaced. Cid Highwind was still a drunk, through and through. Tifa only giggled. I wondered what she found so funny about it, but I said nothing. She went back to tending bar, and Cid continued to nurse his growing pile of drinks. He seemed aware of his environment, but whether or not he remembered that I had spoken his name was a mystery to me.
A hand came to the pocket of my jacket. My instincts came through and I spun off the stool, holding the perpetrator’s arm as I twisted the person around so that I was in an easy position to break their arm. My other hand was holding a revolver. Inscribed in elegant, loopy letters on both sides were the words Empty Silence. It was loaded, and the person I was holding knew it. The bar went silent as they watched me. I felt all of their eyes upon me, probably wondering why I was holding someone in an arm lock with a gun to their back.
A cold, metal object was pressed to the back of my head. A quick glance behind me showed that the Valentine man who had been speaking with Cloud was also armed. His weapon of choice seemed to be an unfamiliar revolver. His target: me. His gun was loaded. I doubted that he was the kind of man for empty threats. I paused before removing my gun from the thief’s back and releasing them. The perpetrator turned to reveal herself as a young woman. In her hand was my other, large sack of gold.
“…Yuffie!” Tifa’s voice came. The gun was removed from the back of my head as the bartender rushed to the girl’s side. She was shaking; her eyes were pinned on the revolver in my hand. Tifa looked from the gold and back to me. While her eyes were laced with confusion, she seemed to know that Yuffie had taken my money, and I wanted it back. Immediately. “Yuffie, give this woman her money back,” Tifa said. Her voice was soft, but it was easily heard. The Wutain girl complied. I took the sack gently from her hand so as not to cause further commotion, handed Tifa an extra handful of gold, and left. As I went, I could feel Valentine’s eyes boring into the back of my skull, almost like he could put a bullet through it by just glaring. I smirked and waved behind me as I left, closing the door with my foot.

It rained constantly every day after that.
I couldn’t get the smell out of my nostrils, either. My medicine cabinet was running low on Ibuprofen because of the headaches it gave me, and the shortage wasn’t helping my mood any. I watched the rain fall from the perpetually black sky with unfaltering interest. I knew it wouldn’t break any time soon, but the people on the streets occasionally thought otherwise. Why, in torrential rain, I saw one woman wearing a halter-top, mini skirt, and sandals. She looked miserable. I could sympathize, but whatever logic she’d used to decide on her wardrobe was malfunctioning.
About three days into the endless rain, I looked out my window and laughed. Sidewalk to road, road to sidewalk; they were indiscernible. It was one, long, wide, stretch of dark brown mud. None of it was dry, to say the least, and it all looked like a large river, constantly moving down whatever slopes it came to. I had already gotten sick from that dastardly mudslide earlier, and I was trapped in my apartment, sneezing and coughing my lungs out. Yet another need for Ibuprofen that I didn’t have, and it put me in a very bad state of mind.
To make things worse, I wasn’t getting any sleep at all. I kept dreaming about a certain, haunting pair of eyes.


I dreamt about blue, mako-enhanced eyes – Brothers
I dreamt about crimson, frozen eyes -- ShinRa