Heart of the Warrior

Chapter 12 - The One-Winged Angel

I do not own Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy XIII, the Final Fantasy series or any official characters featured within this project. The Final Fantasy series is owned by Square-Enix, Hiranobu Sakaguchi, and Tetsuya Nomura. Please support the official release.

Hope led the charge out of the tunnel; the bright afternoon sun shone so powerfully that Cloud had to temporarily shield his eyes behind his hand. After a moment to regain himself he set his hand down and allowed himself his first look at the continent of Gran Pulse.

Before them lay a massive expanse of grassland, the menacing mountains still encircling the plains but nowhere close to the ominousity as before; in the distance of an unforgettably blue sky, was Cocoon. Cloud found it strange for a continent to support trillions of people to look the size of a baseball from a distance.

"Vanille, look familiar?" asked Fang, with a playful and welcoming smile on her face; the red-haired girl smiled happily.

"Yep...Welcome to the Archylte Steppe everybody!" the girl announced to the group "The spine and body of Gran Pulse and the gateway to Oerba!"

Cloud chuckled at her enthusiasm but couldn't deny his thoughts on the massive expanse. After hearing Lightning's tale and all that they'd been through since he'd left, they only had two more days before Barthandelus intended for his master plan to unravel.

"That's a lot of open space" said Hope, reading the look on Cloud's face "It's gonna take time to cross this."

"Hey don't worry" laughed Snow "Heroes never give up! We'll just grit our teeth and cover what ground we can."

"No: the kid's got a point" said Fang pointedly, effectively wiping the smile off of Snow's face "Doesn't matter how fast we walk, it could take weeks to cross the Steppe on foot. Not to mention we still need to find the right path to Oerba."

"How do we get there?"

Fang pointed towards the distant sphere; "Oerba was very close to Cocoon, as long as we keep that in our sights we're heading in the right direction."

Lightning stepped forward with a serious look on her face "Right, let's go." She turned towards Cloud and he nodded encouragingly. It felt weird being the column of support for her, she was always so strong a person, and yet he found himself not minding one bit. The group moved forward, passing the endless sea of green grass and monsters (either serenely enjoying the day with a slow, steady walk or trying to kill each other in bloodthirsty duels) too busy to notice them.

After about twenty minutes, Sazh threw his arms up in surrender. "I give up!" he moaned, doubling over wheezing. Cloud paused next to him as he caught his breath, a thoughtful finger rose to his lips; the pilot was right. Despite how much ground they'd covered, the fact of the matter was they had very little headway, the distant sphere tantalizingly refusing to come nearer...they needed something fast (Cloud suddenly felt a surge of affection towards Cid's airship Highwind).

"If only we had some Chocobo's!!"

There is it was: the magic words that gave Cloud that welcome, euphoric moment of eureka: of course, how could he have been so stupid?!

"That's it!" He said it so loudly and so suddenly that it caused all six of his companions to jump.

Turning his gaze to the ground Cloud began looking, ignoring the outcries of surprise and irritation, straining his eyes as he searched. They had to be somewhere. It had been his mantra back on Gaia and he found himself repeating it over and over as he looked. Then he found it! Pressed into the ground were the impressions of triple-clawed feet; however, the earth that held their image was hot, solid and completely dry, the frustrating sign of old tracks.