Heart of the Warrior

Chapter 5 - The Reunion at Lake Bresha

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The headphones they had given Cloud couldn't stifle the aircrafts engine as it hummed at an earsplitting level. The "team" that he had been assigned to were simply nine wardens, each eager but extremely trigger-happy.

They saluted him respectfully. "Sir your stuff's inside and we're ready to depart" said one of them.

Cloud grunted and clambered into the aircraft: no sense getting chummy with PSICOM. Moving to the cargo hold, Cloud opened the metal cases that held his swords; each was as immaculate as he'd last seen them (he quickly fused the parents and slung them over his shoulder and holstered the dual long-swords and twin dagger-swords). As the aircraft lifted into the air with a stomach churning lurch, Cloud hurriedly took a seat and clutched his stomach gingerly, hoping beyond hope that he didn't lose his breakfast.

"Motion sickness, Captain?" asked one of the wardens who took a seat next to him.

"Only in the air" he wheezed, clapping a hand over his mouth, thinking it unwise to speak.

"Sir," came a third warden, this one gruffer than the others, "Lieutenant Colonel Nabaat wanted you to have this" he said holding out a small leather bag. Cloud snatched the bag out his hand with a nod; pulling the bag open and peering inside, Cloud found six tiny orbs: one yellow, four green and one opaque metallic silver. He stared disbelieving at it: why the hell did he have to have items that always came back to him? No matter what happened to them, they always came back! He grabbed the four green Materia and put each to his eye: gazing inside the swirling energies he saw two releasing nuclear force explosions (only one was fiery red and the other a sickly green). Inside the third was a feather emitting a pale orange light and inside the last was a violent shaking. A Flare, Ultima, Revive, and Quake Materia; gritting his teeth to hold back his queasy stomach, Cloud inserted the three black magic spheres into his right forearm and the white magic crystal into his shoulder, shuddering as they went in with a stomach turning squelch. Picking up the yellow orb inside the bag and putting it to his eye, Cloud found multiple monsters he slaughtered on Gaia and many abilities that he'd learned from them: an Enemy Skill Materia!

"Score!" thought Cloud amazingly, excitement causing him to ignore the nasty feeling of the entry and reveling at his good fortune and Nabaat's poor decision making.

"Sir?" came the voice of a fourth warden, causing Cloud to look up, "You left this in the cargo hold."

The warden held out his arm revealing the velvety handle of the Buster Sword. Cloud took the sword without a word, though he reverted back to his thoughts of boomerang-like items.

"Okay men, here is what we know..." said the gruff-voiced Warden who began a drone of the mission; Cloud didn't listen at all. He had no intention of going along with this, Nabaat maybe a controlling, manipulative witch but she had no power over him, which left him with only one option: escape. He'd have to get rid of his "team" once they reached their destination and from there he didn't have a clue what his next move was. He wished he still had The Fenrir and thought with a mixture of revulsion and hate that PSICOM had probably stripped it for parts and scrapped the frame for junk; but one thing was for sure: he'd have to flee Cocoon or die trying.

Cloud paused in his planning, maybe that wouldn't be such a bad plan: go out fighting and get what he'd come for in the first place. He sighed, it wasn't much of a plan but it was better than nothing.