Disclaimer: Final Fantasy belongs to Squaresoft and various other interested parties, not me. I'm not making any money from this, and no infringement of copyright is intended. This is a work of fandom, intended as appreciation of the original work.

Chapter 18

No matter where he looked, all Cloud could see was blowing snow. The wind had continued to pick up, rather than dropping again, and it didn't take him long to realize that not all the snow in the air was being kicked up from the ground. There was a storm moving in, and it looked like it was going to be a bad one.

Shivering, Cloud stood in the knee-deep drifts and tried to decide what to do. He'd shouted himself hoarse, but if there had been an answer he hadn't heard it over the rising noise of the wind. He was well and truly lost.

Wracking his brain, he tried to remember any advice he'd ever heard of for a situation like this. You were supposed to stay in one place if you were lost, he was pretty sure. Otherwise, if someone came looking for you they could miss you entirely as you wandered around in circles.

There were two problems with that, though. One, he wasn't sure anybody would be coming to look for him. Oh, he had no doubts that Zack would want to, was in fact probably on the verge of going ballistic as he realized Cloud was missing. But Zack was a good enough SOLDIER and a responsible enough officer to realize that his first priority was to the thirty or so people in the platoon he was in charge of who were still where they were supposed to be. With a storm blowing in, he and the 1st Class would be pushing everyone hard to get off the open plains and find shelter somewhere. That took precedence over a likely futile search for one lost trooper, even if the trooper was his best friend.

Two, the wind was literally cold enough to freeze a man where he stood. He was shivering badly, which was a good sign and he knew better than to try to stop. Shivering was his body's way of trying to generate heat; if he stopped, it meant his body had given up and was just trying to conserve what little he had left in his torso, and he would be in severe risk of frostbite.

It wouldn't take long to reach that point at these temperatures. Looking around again, Cloud bit his lip. He could dig a shelter in the snow and settle himself in to wait out the storm, it was more than deep enough in the larger drifts. The problem was, even when the storm was over the winds would still be blowing enough to keep him from finding his way back. Without any way to mark his trail he would wander in circles forever. And if anyone was looking for him, or if another patrol happened to come this way, they'd never see him.

The only thing for it was to keep moving, he decided. He was in a contained valley; if he could use his footprints as markers to keep him going straight, eventually he would fetch up against either the cliff or the forest.

Briefly he debated using his skis, but he needed the depth of his footprints to leave a trail the wind wouldn't erase in moments. Plus, if the monsters attacked from out of the snow again he didn't want to be hampered by the skis.

Hunching in on himself to try to present as little surface to the wind as possible, Cloud started slogging his way through the snow. He checked behind him frequently to try to make sure his trail was staying straight, though as the storm worsened he quickly became unable to see more than a few inches behind him.

Still, at least moving was keeping him relatively warm. He made an effort to make his motions as big as possible, trying to keep the blood flowing to his extremities. It wouldn't take long before he started to get tired, and then he wasn't sure what he was going to do, but he did his best not to think of it.

He was attacked twice; once by more of the little stinging insects, which he managed to dispatch with his sword this time, and once by an odd sort of flying snake. Cloud would have expected a snake to be the last sort of creature to make its home out here, but apparently this one took the idea of being 'cold-blooded' to an extreme.

It was too fast and agile for him, and in the end he had to resort to using his Fire materia again. Unfortunately that used up the last of his magical energy, and he didn't have any ethers with him. He had his bedroll, but if he once lay down to sleep he knew he'd never get up again.

Panting, trying not to breathe in more of the frigid air than he had to, Cloud sheathed his sword and tried to summon enough energy to start moving again. One foot at a time, that was the key; don't think beyond the next step.

Something made him pause before he'd gotten more than a few feet away. He knew he shouldn't stand still, but he circled slowly in place as he tried to figure out what had caught his attention. There was a lull in the wind although the snow was still falling thickly; it was possible he'd heard another monster trying to creep up on him.

Distantly he heard it again, or thought he did. A shout, barely audible over the wind, but that sound hadn't come from any animal's throat. Heart pounding, Cloud started struggling through the snow in the direction of the shout. If there was another patrol somewhere nearby, they could march right past him and never know he was there if he didn't move fast. "Hey!" he called as loudly as he could. "Is someone there? Hey!"

This time, the shout was barely recognizable as a word. "Cloud!" At the sound of his name, Cloud's heart beat faster and his eyes went wide. Had someone come looking for him after all? They'd have to be suicidal.

"Zack? Zack!" he shouted back. It couldn't possibly be anyone else.

"Cloud! I hear you, keep shouting!" Zack called, a little closer this time. "Don't move, or we'll miss each other!"

"I'm here, over here!" Cloud said, his voice cracking with cold and exhaustion. "Zack!"

A snow covered figure stumbled out of the wall of white that was the blizzard, nearly trampling Cloud. "Zack!" Cloud exclaimed as his friend pushed his helmet up to reveal familiar grey-violet eyes that glowed dimly with the power of mako. "How did you find me?"

"Sheer dumb luck," Zack replied, catching Cloud in a tight hug. "I've been wandering around looking for you, and I was about to start panicking when I saw the energy from the fire spell you cast back there. Dumbass, didn't you hear me tell everyone to stay together no matter what?"

"I think I got hit by a confuse spell," Cloud admitted, hugging back as best he could with limbs that felt like they'd turned to wood. He'd stopped shivering at some point, he realized. Not a good sign. "The next thing I knew I was in the middle of the snow and had no idea how to get back."

Looking around and not seeing any sign of markers that Zack had been leaving, he added, "So how were you planning on getting back? Now we're both just lost out here."

"Markers wouldn't have done me any good while I was looking for you," Zack said with a shrug. "Now we'll start leaving them, and if we keep going straight eventually we'll make it to shelter. Get your skis out, we'll make better time on them."

They scrambled onto their skis, and Zack produced four of the collapsible poles that they'd been using for markers. As they moved forward they leap-frogged past each other, each one taking the lead to plant two new poles, then staying still while the other uprooted the last two and moved past. It was slow, but it was progress, and Cloud was pretty sure they were moving in at least a relatively straight line.

It wasn't long before Cloud started falling behind, though. He was still more than half frozen, and his movements became more and more sluggish. When Zack noticed he skied back to Cloud, pulling up alongside him. "You okay?"

"I can't... I can't go much further," Cloud gasped, leaning heavily on his poles in the snow. "I'm so tired, Zack. I just need to rest..."

"Don't you dare!" Zack sounded shrill, and if Cloud hadn't known better he'd have described the older boy's tone as 'panicked'. "Don't you dare fall asleep on me, Cloud. Come on, we've gotta be getting close to something. The glacier's not that big. Just keep moving, one ski in front of the other, that's it..."

He coaxed Cloud along, and the blonde did his best, but it was clear to both of them that he wasn't going to last much longer. Almost Cloud wished the monsters would attack them; the adrenalin would have helped wake him up, and the movement would have warmed him a little. Of course, the one time they actually wanted to run into monsters was when the beasts decided to leave them alone.

"Wait. There!" Zack suddenly exclaimed, skiing up beside Cloud and pointing into the snow. "See? I told you we'd make it if we just kept going!"

Cloud squinted in the indicated direction, but he couldn't see anything beyond the blank white flakes. "What are you talking about? There's nothing there but snow." He wondered if Zack was seeing things; it could happen to people left out too long in the odd sort of sensory deprivation created by a blizzard.

"You don't see it?" Zack glanced at him, then back to where he was pointing, and shrugged. "It's a Fire 3 spell, somebody shot it straight into the air. I guess I must be seeing the heat or something. Same way I found you. Come on, we're close!"

Nudging Cloud forward, Zack took a moment to send up a spell of his own to let the other trooper know the signal had been seen. Cloud could only follow the path of the spell up a few feet before it was hidden by the snow, but Zack seemed to be able to see it all the way up. Maybe the older boy really could see some sort of energy out there.

Even with the signal they almost missed it. Something made Cloud look twice at the oddly shaped drift just barely visible to their right, and after a moment he realized the reason it looked strange was because of the dark patch that had to be some kind of opening. "Zack! There!" he croaked, gesturing. His hands were too frozen for something like pointing.

"I see it!" Zack agreed, abandoning the poles and heading for the structure. It turned out to be a sort of rocky outcropping, so covered in snow it was almost indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape. They kicked off their skis and staggered up to the opening, where they had to crawl on all fours to get inside.

Inside it was markedly warmer, not just because they were out of the wind. From the looks of it a Fire spell had been cast on a pile of rocks in the centre of the floor, and now they were radiating a gentle heat as they slowly cooled. Cloud pushed off his helmet and quickly started stripping out of the outer layer of his clothes. It was more important to be dry than to have lots of layers, at least for the moment.

"So you found him after all." Some part of Cloud had known that somebody else had to be in here with them, because somebody had been here to send up the signal and heat the rocks. Even so, the deep voice startled his cold-muddled brain, and he jumped. A moment later he froze, recognizing the long-haired figure in black crouched on the other side of the cave.

"Yes, sir," Zack said, and his voice was cheerful despite being hoarse from the cold. "You doubted me? I told you I'd bring him back."

"Given that you were more than half hysterical and insisting on going back out into the storm after bringing your unit to safety, forgive me for not putting much faith in your words, lieutenant," Sephiroth said dryly. "Judging by the state you're both in, I daresay neither of you would have made it back if I hadn't come out here to provide a signal for you to follow." Glancing at Cloud where he was still motionless to one side, the general lifted an eyebrow. "You had the right idea, corporal. You need to get out of the wet clothes, quickly."

"Y-yes sir," Cloud stammered, the stutter caused as much by embarrassment and awe as chattering teeth. He returned to fumbling himself out of his gear with fingers made clumsy by the cold.

"Thank you, sir," Zack added, more subdued as he also stripped his outer gear. "You shouldn't have had to come out here after us. I'm sorry I ran off like that. Is everyone else okay?"

"At last count there were still about a dozen people unaccounted for, including the two of you," Sephiroth informed them as they moved further into the cave. "The rest of the SOLDIERs are sweeping the area, using fire spells to stay in contact, but frankly I doubt we'll find anyone alive at this point."

The mildly curious look he gave Cloud made the blonde flush and stammer, unable to get the words out. How horribly embarrassing, to get drawn away from his platoon and force his best friend and the general himself to come out after him.

"I told you he'd still be alive, sir," Zack said over Cloud's sputtering. "He's from the mountains, I knew he'd know what to do. Besides," he grinned and reached over to ruffle Cloud's hair with an ungloved hand, "the little bastard's too damn stubborn to just lie down and die. He was still moving and fighting when I found him."

"Zack!" Cloud snapped, shoving his hand away and blushing even harder. Did Zack have to treat him like a little kid in front of the general of all people? The word was hardly out of his mouth before he remembered just where he was and who he was with. "Uh. I mean, lieutenant. Sir."

To his shock, Sephiroth chuckled softly. "At ease, corporal. We're going to be trapped in here for quite some time, until the worst of the storm passes. Even I don't want to attempt to navigate in these conditions. I hardly expect you to refer to a close friend by his rank when you're not on duty."

"Technically we are on duty, sir," Zack pointed out with another grin. "But I'm not going to complain. I still look around to see where the officer is lurking every time he calls me that."

Zack had stripped down to his sleeveless uniform top and pants, and to Cloud's amazement Sephiroth was still wearing the same shirtless uniform he always did. Both of them seemed perfectly at ease in the warmth radiating from the rocks, but even in a heavy sweater and two layers of clothing Cloud was still freezing. He inched closer to the heat, holding his hands towards it and hoping he hadn't suffered too badly from frostbite.

"You're shivering, corporal," Sephiroth noted quietly. "Are you warming up or still cooling down?"

"Warming up, sir," Cloud assured him, clenching his teeth so they wouldn't chatter. "The shivering is a good sign. I'll be fine, sir."

"Since when is shivering a good sign?" Zack asked, blinking. "If you're not shivering then that's better, isn't it?"

"You've been here weeks already and you haven't learned the signs of danger from cold?" Cloud asked his friend incredulously. "When you stop shivering, that's bad. The fact that I've started again means I'm warming up."

"If you say so." Zack looked doubtful, but was apparently willing to take his word for it. "General, sir, forgive me for asking, but what's the situation here? Do you think it's just a coincidence that the worst storm yet hit just as we were bringing in reinforcements?"

"I hesitate to assume our enemy has the ability to control the weather," Sephiroth replied quietly, "but I also can't deny the possibility. Certainly it seems beyond coincidence that the monsters in the area were intelligent enough to attack when the visibility was poorest. Someone is directing them."

"It's the same guy from Mideel, isn't it?" Zack asked shrewdly, leaning back against the wall of the cave and tapping one foot thoughtfully. "The one who got away, the scientist. This is the same pattern he had; attack in force and by surprise."

"All information from that mission is classified," Sephiroth reminded them mildly, but Cloud thought there was approval in his tone. "I can neither confirm nor deny the possibility of it relating to the current events. If it were the same man, however, we would do well to be on guard at all times. He was Hojo's primary assistant; he is brilliant, and that makes him both dangerous and unpredictable."

Listening to them, Cloud huddled in on himself and stared at the faint red glow of the heated rocks, marvelling that he would ever find himself in such a situation. Sitting here listening to his best friend casually discuss classified matters with Sephiroth, talking as if they were practically friends. That was Zack, though. It shouldn't have surprised Cloud that he would be able to make friends even with the general. He'd managed to make a friend out of Cloud, after all.

"This pretty much shoots down the theory that the monsters are related to the reactors, doesn't it sir?" Zack tried a different topic. "I mean, the ones in Mideel were the same type we'd seen in Hojo's labs, so the guy could have just brought them with him. But these are totally different, and obviously specifically adapted for this environment."

"The matter of the monsters' connection to the reactors is classified as well," Sephiroth said, and this time Cloud was sure there was a glint of amusement in his eyes. "As are the results of Professor Hojo's attempts to duplicate the effects on normal animals. The existence of which is also classified."

"Right, okay," Zack nodded, clearly stifling a grin. Cloud wondered idly if that meant the wolf-like monster really had been a Nibel wolf, altered by mako. Had it been captured in the wild, or was it something Hojo had created in his experiments? "So, is there anything we can talk about that isn't classified?"

"Certainly. We can discuss the weather," Sephiroth replied in a perfectly even tone, and Zack cracked up. Cloud remembered their awe and disbelief when the general had made a joke back in the boot camp exam, and a faint smile curved his lips. He wondered if there was anyone other than him outside the general's elite unit who knew that Sephiroth had a sense of humour. For that matter, he wondered how many people in the unit knew. Zack had a unique ability to draw people out of their shells.

"You're being awfully quiet over there, Cloud," Zack observed. "You've stopped shivering, at least. I could hear your teeth chattering from all the way over here. Warm enough?"

"Mmm. Tired," Cloud replied, somewhat indistinctly. With an effort, he roused himself to more coherency. "It was exhausting out there." At least he wasn't cold any more. He wasn't exactly warm, but he supposed he could only expect so much. Though he still had no idea how Zack and Sephiroth could be comfortable sitting around wearing so little.

The general gave him a sharp look, but Zack just laughed and reached over to ruffle his hair. Cloud didn't have the energy to dodge, or even try to bat him away. "Yeah, I bet. You're so little, those drifts must have been halfway up to your... Hades, Cloud, you're frozen solid!" he broke off with a yelp as his hand brushed over Cloud's cheek. "Why didn't you say you were cold?"

"Not cold," Cloud countered, his words sluggish and his mind refusing to process things at anything resembling normal speed. Vaguely he wondered when he'd been hit by the Slow spell, and why.

The word General Sephiroth bit off in the middle sounded suspiciously like a curse as he reached over and discovered for himself how cold Cloud's skin was. "I'm not used to working with non-SOLDIERs," he said, shaking his head. "I'd forgotten how vulnerable normal people are to temperature extremes. Look at me, corporal."

Slowly Cloud lifted his eyes to meet Sephiroth's, though it took a massive effort of will. "Do not fall asleep," the general ordered him sternly. Obeying him was an ingrained reflex, and Cloud struggled to wake up more in response. "Lieutenant, get him down to his last layer and get in behind him, curl up around him."

"Shit, Cloud, you stupid idiot," Zack said, his voice shaking as badly as his hands as he fumbled to get the younger boy's tunic and the sweater beneath it off. That left Cloud in only his thin cotton undershirt and some part of him was aware that he should have felt cold, but he didn't. "You should have said you weren't warm enough when we first got here!"

"You an' th' general were fine," Cloud said, his voice a little slurred with the effort of speaking. Zack was working on his pants now, tugging Cloud's boots off so he could remove the pants and leaving behind only the thermal underpants beneath. " 'F a tropic-wimp like you c'n handle it, so c'n I."

"We're SOLDIERs, stupid," Zack scolded him, settling in behind him and tugging Cloud back against his chest, his legs on either side of the younger boy's hips. "We're resistant to extreme cold and heat. Didn't you notice that none of the SOLDIERs was wearing half as much gear as the troopers? Yeah, it's colder than Shiva's tits and I'm happy to bitch about it, but unlike you I'm not in any immediate danger of dying from it!"

"How w's I s'ppos'd to know?" Cloud demanded, sleepily indignant. Damn it, so much for his moment of superiority over Zack. "I... shit!" He gasped in pain, wriggling to try to escape the sudden stabbing needles of pain that washed over him. It took him a moment to realize that it wasn't a physical attack, just the backwash of heat from the Fire 3 Sephiroth had cast.

The general directed the flame over the outer walls of the shelter, heating the rocks there so they would give off warmth as well. He spent the last of the spell on the stones in the centre, bringing them back to red-hot temperatures. "There," he said, dropping the hand with his bracer. "I know it's painful, corporal, but you're going to have to endure it. You need to get warm quickly."

Then, before Cloud could even think to protest or object, the general swept off his long jacket and draped it sideways over Zack's shoulders like a blanket, tucking it in around Cloud. The leather was warm and smelled like spice and winter; Cloud wasn't sure if that was just from the environment, or whether it was Sephiroth's own scent. He was dizzy at the very thought that he was wearing the general's jacket.

"What about you, sir?" Zack asked, looking at the older man in concern as Sephiroth settled in near the rocks in the centre again. "I mean, I... I wouldn't mind having to warm you up like this, but it's not going to do us much good if the two of you are just taking turns being frozen." Cloud was slightly gratified to discover that not even Zack could say something like that to the general without blushing.

"Thank you for your concern, lieutenant, but I'm fine," Sephiroth shook his head. "I can withstand temperatures far more extreme than even the SOLDIERs 1st Class. The warmth from the rocks is more than enough for me."

"If... if you say so, sir," Zack said, sounding slightly awed. "Uh, thank you. Since he doesn't seem to be in any shape to say it for himself."

Cloud was huddled in against Zack's chest, no longer sleepy thanks to the pain of the warmth, but unable to say anything past the teeth he'd clenched on a scream of agony. He would not embarrass himself further in front of Sephiroth by shrieking like a little girl, damn it.

The general was watching them with an odd look on his face, an expression Cloud couldn't even begin to interpret. Belatedly it occurred to Cloud that they might seem just a little more familiar with each other in this position than two men should be, and he tried to pull away a bit.

"Don't," Zack whispered, barely loud enough for Cloud to hear him as he held the younger boy in place against him. "I don't think he cares, and it's more important for you to get warm, anyway. Stay put."

Settling back again, Cloud glanced at the general and discovered the man was looking away now; not deliberately, but simply as if he didn't want to twist his neck to look at them and so he'd turned his gaze to the heated rocks in front of them. There was an awkward silence for a moment, before Sephiroth cleared his throat softly.

"So," he said, in a perfectly bland tone. "I believe the traditional opening to discussions of non-classified weather is something along the lines of 'Cold out today, isn't it?' "

Zack started to laugh helplessly, and even Cloud gave a raspy chuckle. It was going to be a long couple of hours while they waited for the storm to abate, but at least they could still find the humour in the situation.

Return to Final Fantasy VII Page

Return to the Main Index

Email Miko no da