In a cataclysm known as the Nightfall, the worlds were almost completely destroyed by a harrowing surge of darkness.
In the shadows of the ensuing chaos a new group has taken shape. Led by an Aegyl named Kalos, the 11th Hour touts an esoteric knowledge of how to combat the darkness and restore the worlds. They might be the worlds’ best chance at survival; but nobody really knows enough about them to confirm or deny their claims.
On the brink of collapse, the universe holds its breath in anticipation. Of restoration? Of destruction? It is up to individuals like yourself to decide.
A special thank you to ChasingArtwork of Deviantart, who allowed us to use this stellar banner image.
There aren't enough praises in the world I'd like to give to wonderful coders for the Proboards community. The following have contributed to World Destiny in some way: W3 Schools for countless how-tos and countless of other souls who have helped get WD up to where it is.
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All Canon Characters belong to the Kingdom Hearts franchise, Square Enix and Disney.
Tifa looked around the now-deserted bar. Nella and Quando had left a few hours ago, so she was alone in the building with just the mess to keep her company. Needless to say, the mess after the Frosted Flame's grand opening was significant.
The day had went off splendidly. Most of the town had shown up and no one, not a soul, had gone home unhappy. She had pulled it off. It was rather overwhelming. She took a tray, threw away the lining, and stacked it with the others.
Grabbing a broom, she started sweeping. It was late- everyone but Louis and whoever was taking watch would probably be asleep. The bar would open again the next morning, but Tifa was used to little sleep. Besides, now things should start to calm down. Nella could get back to his deliveries, and Quando could stick to foods, as opposed to misunderstanding the meaning of Firewater.
Back and forth the broom swept. Today marked the start of a new age for Tifa, and this age was going to be clean.
Following two gentle knocks at the door, it slowly opened and someone stepped into Tifa's bar. Someone she would immediately recognise; Cloud Strife. He stood at the doorway with his hand rested on the open door and looked over to Tifa sweeping. He remained silent, standing there for a few seconds before he said;
"I would have come earlier, but, you know how I am with crowds..."
Cloud said this with a serious voice even though it was partly meant in humor. Stepping forward, he let the door close behind him and approached Tifa forcing a smile.
How had she been? There was no easy answer to that. So much had happened, good and bad. She couldn't begin to answer.
It had been a year since she saw him last. He had gone into the light to fight Sephiroth. She had barely been able to contact him about the bar's opening, and she certainly at this point had not expected him to show up.
But here he was. If felt odd for him to find her, other than vice versa. He had sought her out, gone away from tracking Sephiroth, unless he had found out that he was here. That just added another layer to pile of emotions Tifa had been feeling.
Right now, she was shocked. She was bitter, suspicious, overjoyed, overworked, calm, frightened, satisfied, and a whole list of emotions that words could not do justice. He was here, and that meant the world to her. "You came." She said quietly. "It's good to see you, Cloud." She wanted to ask why he was here. Where he had been, why he had been chasing Sephiroth for so long. She'd get there eventually. Hopefully on his terms.
Cloud replied as he took a couple more steps to stand right in front of Tifa. It had been so long since they had seen each other, things just kept getting in the way of them from meeting. He slowly outstretched his arms holding them open hoping that she would dive into his arms and hug him.
"I'm sorry it's been so long, I was... Just..."
He continued, but the sentence trailled off and was left un-finished...
Tifa had been searching for Cloud for nine years. In that time, they had seen each other rarely- once every few months at the most, and usually only when Sephiroth was there to slow Cloud down. She didn't know what had happened in the last year, or most of what had gone through his head for the last decade. She had always clung to the ideal, though. What Cloud stood for, what he had promised, and the fact that he was the only other person alive from Nibelheim. Whatever he was before, now he was a brother to her, and to see him alive and well here made her happier than anything she could remember since her home's destruction.
Therefore she did not, in fact, dive into his arms. She walked up to him slowly, reached around him and hugged back gently (Though her definition of soft was not typical). Though it would disappear quickly, a tear rolled down her cheek. She wasn't one to cry- it wasn't a matter of acting tough, it just didn't come naturally to her after all that had happened.
"I missed you" She said over Cloud's right shoulder, "How have you been?" She hoped that his answer to that came easier than hers did. It probably wouldn't- Cloud had always been complicated, and there's no knowing what Sephiroth had done during their last fight. She only hoped it wasn't permanent.
Cloud repeated as Tifa hugged him. He wapped his arms around her resting them on her shoulders as she began to speak softly. With his eyes dropping closed, Cloud simply listened closely to each and every word she spoke.
Small amounts of water, his almost hidden tears, began to leak out of his closed eyes and slide down to rest at the top of his cheeks. Cloud has a tendancy to completely hide or even ignore his emotions but, with Tifa, he didn't feel he had to; they are, or at least were, very close and Cloud seemed surprisingly comfortable around her in comparison to anyone else... Though he still isn't the talkative type these days.
"I've been... okay."
He replied hesitantly. Though Cloud being okay wasn't strictly true, he was still alive at least, but it was plain to see that he had his fair share of problems.
((Not a big deal, but we tend to do everything past tense here. So he HAD a tendency and he still WASN'T the talkative type.))
Tifa just stood there for a minute in silence. For the first time since settling down, she didn't worry. She didn't fret, hope, or even think. She just stood in comfort, secure in the knowledge that her choice to reopen the Flame was a good one.
Eventually, she pulled away. Looking at him square in the eye, she smiled softy as she always did. "Can you sit for a while? Or do you need to go? Maybe a drink?" Though it didn't show, Tifa mentally scrolled through all her best wines and beers. Why did he have to come when it was so messy? She wanted to impress him, show him what she'd done.
After releasing her, Cloud gazed back into her eyes and waited for her to say something. Normaly this situation would be an awkward silence but Cloud felt differently, perhaps he was relaxed for the first time in a long time.
"I can stay, and a drink would be good."
Cloud perlied sounding a little more cheerful than before. Taking hold of the handle of his sword, he took it from his back and placed it up against the wall gently. Cloud never went anywhere without it. He then slumped down in one of the chairs by a small table wth a small sigh of relief.
Grabbing two beers from behind the bar that had come from Pleasure Island (a nasty place, but with delightful spirits), she remembered his liking of solid droughts, she flipped off the bottle caps with her thumb and landed them neatly in the trash can. She put one down in front of Cloud and sat across from him. She had had a few beers already, but it was difficult to make her tipsy.
"I looked for you, after you went into the light." She said calmly, getting down to the matter, "Is everything ok? I knew you could handle him, but I was still a bit worried."
A bit worried was an understatement. She knew he could handle Sephiroth physically, but he was...well, things weren't easy for him emotionally, and there was the Z....a few problems with his identity that she knew Sephiroth would prey on. That was what always worried her- that Sephiroth's mind games would finally take their toll on him.
Shuffling a little, Cloud got more comfortable in his seat while Tifa was at the bar grabbing a couple of drinks for the two of them. He sat across his chair almost diagonally, resting his left arm over the back of his chair allowing his gloved hand to dangle freely. And with his other hand, Cloud lifted the beer off of the table giving Tifa a simple nod for a 'thank you' before taking a sip to check it's taste and then took a couple of gulps of his beer after deciding it was good. After doing so, he placed his beer back on the table, but not particularly carefully, and began to answer Tifa's question;
"I was a little preoccupied... I have to kill Sephiroth, I don't have a choice. Once I get rid of him, my darkness will go away."
He responded to the first bit. Cloud then took one more guzzle of his drink before he carried on...
"Physically, I'm fine. But my memory , it's still just so confusing. It's like trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together but finding out you havn't got enough pieces and half the ones you do have are from a different puzzle..."
Cloud didn't often use metaphors to describe things, that was probably why this one wasn't phrased very well. Though, it was unbelievably hard to describe to someone how things were working, or not working as the case may be, inside his head. In fact, he couldn't understand it himself. His feelings were always a hard topic for him, Cloud wasn't much of a 'sharing your emotions' kind of guy normally.
Tifa sat in silence for a bit, thinking. This was unexpected. His memory was finally coming back. She hadn't told him about Zack before, because he had too much on his plate. Sephiroth was all he could think about. But if it was really having this much effect on him, and he was talking about it this calmly, perhaps it was time all was said.
Sighing, Tifa put down her drink and studied Cloud. He was strong...and he was home. A previous meeting with Sephiroth came across her mind. He had said much about the evil of secrets. Maybe, this once, he was right. How Cloud would react to this...it wouldn't be violent. He would need time to think. Now he had a place where that could happen.
"Cloud," Tifa said slowly, "What do you remember about the last time you went to Nibelheim?" It was time. He had to be told. Knowledge was the way to protect him from Sephiroth.
Was all Cloud said at first. What did his, and Tifa's, hometown have to do with anything? It just seemed a little random and sudden change of topic to him. But in reality, it was connected in such a strong way, he just couldn't see it right now.
"Nibelheim..."
He repeated trying to work out its relevance, trying to think what happened and trying to remember it at all. A few flashes filled his head, but they weren't displayed as memories in his mind, it was like he was flicking through old photographs. Just a few images to represent a whole story. It was so hard to make sense of any of it, but with pain and struggling, he came up with something. One thing stuck out the most...
"Sephiroth... He was there. It was him. He destroyed it, didn't he? Burned to the ground..."
((Curse you both. If Tifa had not vanished from Reality I would have used this trump card long ago... and just never got the chance. Curse you all...))
Of course that would stand out the most. Sephiroth. What was not being said, though..."Yes. He burned down our home then opened the Door to Darkness. What else do you remember?"
She remembered. Sephiroth holed up in that mansion, Zack going around the town and reveling in its rustic feel (like a good tour guide, she managed to make some good gil off this). Cloud...well, she hadn't even known Cloud was there until the Reactor. When she had woken up in Radiant Garden after the darkness, he was there. She knew how his memories were altered, he had told her before. She just didn't want to bring up how wrong they were.
((Gods, what I wouldn't give for Namine's powers right now.))
It was so hard to think, memories were getting more blurred the more he tried to think about it. Thoughts, ideas and memories all twisted together, collaborated into a single image; it was so hard to work out what it meant.
"He burned it down..."
Cloud repeated, thinking aloud, trying to jog his memory. He brought both of his hands up and dropped his head into them as he leaned forward onto the table. His fingers flattened down parts of his spiked hair as he mumbled a few words; they didn't make a sentence, nor did they connect in any way, but he continued to rumage through his mind. Beginning to make a few strange sounds, perhaps grunts of frustration, you could see his fingers were now tensed up. In fact, his whole body was tense, it looked like he could explode at any second.
But suddenly he shot back in his seat. He found something in his messed up mind...
"The reactor. You were there and I... I couldn't stop him..."
Cloud's brain was uterly screwed. This was the best he could do, thinking back was tearing his mind in half. Getting information from this twisted mind was almost impossible and what it did spit out was mostly nonsense. He had said all he could remember, it would probably be much easier on him if Tifa were to do the majority of the talking.
"Tifa, please. Can you tell me really what happened?"
