CHAPTER 6
"You
all right?" a soft, concerned voice whispered. "Can
you hear me?"
"Yeah," Cloud answered into the darkness,
his own voice eerily distorted almost beyond recognition into a soft echo
like that of the previous speaker.
"Back then, you could get
by with just skinned knees..." it said in a wistful tone.
"What do you mean by 'back then'?" asked Cloud.
"What about now?" the
voice continued, seemingly ignoring his question. "Can
you get up?"
"What do you mean 'back then', 'what about now'?"
Cloud repeated.
"Don't worry about me,"
it replied. "You just worry about yourself
now."
"...I'll give it a try," he agreed. He tried
to sit up, but it felt like his whole body was shackled to the ground.
"Oh, he moved!"
A crystal clear voice pierced the fog in Cloud's mind, and his head gradually
began to clear.
"How about that?" the
first voice said, becoming more distant.
"Whew, that's a relief!"
said the second voice, distinctly female.
"Take it slow now, little
by little."
"Hello,
hello?"
"I know," Cloud replied to the mysterious speaker's
fading voice. "Hey, who are you anyway?"
"Hello, hello!"
Suddenly, Cloud opened his eyes and found himself on the floor of a large,
old room. As everything started to focus, the female voice spoke
again.
"You okay?" it asked. "This is a church in
the Sector 5 slums. You almost fell on top of me! That really
gave me a scare." Somehow, the voice sounded very familiar.
Cloud slowly sat up after several tries and turned to see the face of a
young woman who seemed equally familiar.
"I--I came crashing down?" Then he remembered.
Airbuster, the explosion...
The girl nodded. "The roof and the flowers
must have broken your fall. You're very lucky."
"Flowers?" Cloud looked down and realized
that he had landed on a small flower bed, crushing several of the delicate
plants. "Oh, is this yours?" he said as he carefully got on his feet
and brushed himself off. "Sorry about that."
"That's all right," the girl assured. "The
flowers are quite resilient because this is a sacred place." She
waved her arm over the garden. "They say you can't grow flowers or
even grass in Midgar. But for some reason, the flowers have no trouble
blooming here." She looked up and let out a contented sigh.
"I love it here." After a moment, the girl bent down and started
to tend to the bruised flowers. "So we meet again," she said as she
worked. Again? Cloud furrowed his eyebrows and took
another look at her. Even kneeling, she was tall and had an aura
of maturity around her, but didn't look much older than Cloud. Trying
to concentrate, Cloud put his hand to his forehead and tried to remember
where he had seen her face before. The girl stood up and shook some
dirt off her hands. "Don't you remember me?" she asked.
Then it clicked. "Yeah, I remember you!
You were the girl selling flowers in the slums."
"That's right!" she said cheerfully. "I'm
so happy! Thanks for buying my flowers." She was silent for
a moment, trying to find something to talk about. "Say, do you have
any Materia?"
"Yeah, some," he replied, revealing several orbs.
"Nowadays, you can find Materia anywhere."
The girl giggled. "But mine is special; it's
good for absolutely nothing."
"Good for nothing? You probably just don't
know how to use it," Cloud reasoned.
"No, I do," she replied. "It just doesn't
do anything. I feel safe just having it. It was my mother's..."
Her voice trailed off, but after a second she piped up again. "Say,
I feel like talking. Do you feel up to it? After all, we are
meeting again, right?"
Cloud wasn't the talkative type, and they had already
said a lot, but there was much more he needed to know. "I
don't mind," he said.
"Wait here," she suddenly remembered. "I've
got to check my flowers. It'll just be a minute."
Still a little confused and having too many questions
to be answered, Cloud walked over to the girl's crouched figure.
Feeling his presence, she said, "Just a little longer." After a moment,
she got up and said, "Oh! Now that you mention it, we don't know
each other, do we?" She chuckled at her own absent-mindedness.
"I'm Aeris, the flower girl. Nice to meet you!"
"The name's Cloud. Me? I do a little
bit of everything."
"Oh, a jack of all trades," Aeris admired.
"Yeah, I do whatever's needed."
Suddenly, Aeris started giggling again.
"What's so funny? What are you laughing at?"
"Sorry, I just--" She stopped in mid-sentence
and muffled a small gasp as she looked toward the chapel entrance.
Cloud turned and saw a young man accompanied by three guards. "Sorry,
bad timing on my part," Aeris said. The man had piercing eyes and
long reddish-brown hair tied in a tight braid in the back. He was
dressed sloppily in a dark blue suit and his menacing staff added to his
dark impression. Cloud had no idea who he was, but he was going to
find out. "Don't let it get to you, Cloud!" Aeris called out as he
started toward the man.
"Don't worry about me," he replied, pausing.
"Say, Cloud," Aeris suddenly said. "Have you
ever been a bodyguard? You do do everything, right?"
"Yeah, I guess so..."
"Then get me out of here. Take me home."
Even though Cloud wanted to accept the offer instantly,
he decided to keep his mercenary image and asked in an uninterested voice,
"Okay, I'll do it...but it'll cost ya."
"Well then, let's see..." Aeris paused to think.
"How about if I go out with you once?"
This was too much for Cloud. He pretended
to think for a while and calmly said, "Yeah, sure." Now with an assignment
to complete, he went to confront the man.
"I don't know who you are..." Cloud began, but something
clicked in his mind. ...I know you. "Oh yeah, I know you.
That uniform..."
"Hey, bro, this one's a little weird."
"Shut up, you Shinra spy!" Cloud snarled.
"Reno!" the guards called. "Want him taken
out?"
"Hmmm, haven't decided yet," Reno replied.
"Don't fight here, you'll ruin the flowers!" cried
Aeris as she headed to the back of the room, waving for Cloud to follow.
He ran behind her, ready to repel their unwelcome guests. Aeris stopped
next to a broken doorway, where the door had fallen off its hinges.
"The exit is back there," she whispered, pointing to the room beyond.
"They were...Mako eyes," Reno said solemnly as Cloud
and Aeris disappeared through the door. Walking absent-mindedly across
the indoor flower garden, he waved to his guards, "Yeah, all right.
Back to work, back to work." He was almost at the doorway when
he remembered something and ran back. "Oh...and one more thing!"
he told them. "Don't step on the flowers."
"But you just stepped on them, Reno!" one soldier
protested.
"They're all ruined!" lamented another.
"You're gonna catch holy hey!!" warned the third.
Ignoring them, the man threw up his hands in disgust.
He had more important things to do.
