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Final Fantasy 7. Tifa Lockhart: Journey to Midgar.	By : Nickamano Category: Final Fantasy VII > General Views: 7306 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: Final Fantasy 7 is created and owned by Squaresoft, now Square-Enix. Nothing here is owned by me. It was created for entertainment purposes, and I am not profiting financially from the creation and online presentation of this story.

Chapter List
- 23
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- 25
20. A Tell-tale Heart.
Nine-year-old Cloud Strife saw eight-year-old Tifa Lockhart slip on the edge of one of Mount Nibel’s many clifftops, and with an abject scream go right over the lip, dropping out of sight in an instant of sheer terror. Screaming in horror and panicked despair the boy ran over, throwing himself to the ground at the very edge of the cliff and leaning over the precipice.

She was there, clutching onto the rock edge with one bloody hand. About as far down as her bedroom window was to the ground. Fifteen-year-old Tifa Lockhart, heartbreakingly beautiful and in heartrendingly mortal peril.

Desperate to jump down after her, Fourteen-year-old Cloud forced himself to look first. He saw the rocky edge she was holding onto was actually a little outcropping, maybe about the size of a door. However, the was another one, barely a lip really, the width of his shoe but it was about halfway down. If he lowered himself and stretched down to it…

He shouted to her to hold on, that he was coming down and would pull her up. He shouted to her to try and get her other hand onto the rock too, if she could.

Shaking uncontrollably with unadulterated terror, though desperate in his need to save her, the teenage boy swung himself around feet first and ignoring the sharp scrape of the rocks against his rucked-up T-shirt, Cloud lowered himself over the edge of the sheer cliff. He had to extended himself fully and then reach down with his toes, grimacing as he felt the already toned muscles in his arms and shoulders straining as he tried and tried to overextend his body, to find the lip with the toes of his boots.

He knew he was nowhere near tall enough to be able to touch the little shelf of rock but he had no other choice and grimacing, fighting back tears as the rough-edges scraped the skin from his palms, he dropped. As he fell, Cloud tried his best to keep himself hard against the sheer cliff wall so he wouldn’t go tumbling straight past Tifa into the abyss. Or worse still catch her on the way down and take her with him. His feet found the shelf and there was just enough depth in it to allow him to maintain his balance and not topple backward to his death. Fighting the heavy pounding palpitations of fear and panic, Cloud glanced down beneath him, trying to focus on the foreground and not the misty black horror that lay beyond it.

He saw Tifa still hanging there in her torn and now blood-spattered turquoise dress, still holding on, though her face was a mask of tears and gritted teeth and wild terror-filled despair. Her long brown hair was whipping around her face wildly, snatched at by the winds, as if they themselves were trying to grab her and pull her off the cliff. Keeping his raw palms firmly on the cliffside, her lowered himself into a crouch and then once again slipped off the narrow ledge until he was hanging from his fingertips, feeling nothing beneath his feet except the void.

Tifa shouted up, begging for him to hurry. That she couldn’t hold on for much longer. So, Cloud, telling himself that the door-size outcropping was directly underneath him, let go.

He landed on the unforgiving rock with a thud, his knees going out from under him but he was safe, and the outcropping felt secure enough. He whirled himself around, seeing turquoise and reaching for it even before his eyes focussed on Tifa. Leaning over, he grabbed her by the wrist in both his hands, she was strong but lightweight. Bracing his boots under him he leaned back, and with a slow careful motion he started to lift her as he levered his torso backwards while pushing down against the rock with his boots.

Tifa trusted in Cloud’s grip on her wrist, even though the strength of his grip made the bones there, grind against each other painfully. She put her own boots into the face of the rock and walked herself upwards, then got her other hand, which she had banged and was completely numb, onto the surface of the outcrop and between the two of them, they hauled her upwards onto the relative safety of the rock platform.

They immediately came together in a tight, fear-fuelled embrace. Both of them crying desperately as the sudden relief of being alive and momentarily safe, unleashed backed-up emotions that demanded some form of release. They knelt there for a long moment in each other’s arms, their necks and shoulders growing sodden with the tears of the other. Slowly Cloud calmed, his tears drying up and he gently drew back to look Tifa over.

Her huge brown eyes were glistening wetly but she was smiling at him. She had a smudge of dirt across the tip of her nose that somehow made her look even prettier, if that was even possible. Her dress was hardly damaged at all, one shoulder strap slightly frayed. And neither her dress or her hand were bloodied any more. There wasn’t even any dirt on her dress, it was immaculate, untouched. And her unrestrained hair, billowing around her made her seem somehow divine, like it was a soft halo, Garuda - the elemental goddess of the wind.

He smiled back at her and, in the moment that followed they came together again abruptly in another bracing hug. For Cloud it was warming and reassuring. Her supple, smooth, and blemishless skin with that hard, toned muscle beneath it. The softness of the thin fabric of her pretty dress. The caress of her long, soft hair as it danced around them, caressing his face, his bare arms. The inviting reassurance of her arms around him, pulling him tightly into the warmth of her embrace. Cloud had dreamed of this and now it was actually happening.

He drew his head back and sought her lips with his own and Tifa responded with enthusiasm. Her soft plump lips were warm, almost hot against his thinner, wider ones. She let out a long, low moan of pleasure. Cloud pressed harder, his rapidly increasing passion dictating the need to project his desire physically. And again, Tifa responded in kind, returning his hungry kiss with a warmth that actually surprised him. And then surprising and delighting him even more, her lips parted and her tongue pushed forward into his excited mouth. He groaned as she probed between his lips, pushing past his teeth to seek out his own organ, her tongue and her breath revealing themselves to be sweetly damp with a succulent heat.

Despite the delightfully wanton intimacy of Tifa’s increasingly sexual and assertive kiss, Cloud’s attention wavered. He found himself focussing on the heat and softness of her full breasts, so famous and admired throughout their village by every boy and man of every age, and not a few of the girls and women too. He was intimately aware of their heat and fullness pressing firmly against his chest. He was only wearing his T-shirt and the fabric of her dress wasn’t much more substantial. There were her supporting cups of course; part of the dress so the mail order catalogues had revealed to his young inquisitive mind, and yet even those didn’t create too much of a buffer between his flesh and hers.

Deciding to risk all, he slowly though with purpose, slid one hand from around the middle of her back to the curve of her ribs, under her arm and then around to the front. He delicately cupped one of the full, firm and very warm breasts through her dress. Tifa didn’t bat an eyelid. In fact, she let out a little moan of pleasure into his mouth and her kiss intensified, apparently reflecting her own building passion. Her reaction immediately encouraged Cloud to give the wonderful large, orb a firmer squeeze.

Cloud decided at that moment that he was just going to go for broke, see how far she would be willing to go with him. Of course, he’d be watchful of her reactions and when he saw disapproval or reticence he would stop, and at least seek some positive reassurance. However, he wanted to make the most of this opportunity.

He gently drew his mouth from hers and kissed a quick trail across the smooth side of her beautiful face to her throat. He nibbled the lobe of her ear, then kissed a slow path down the side of her neck, following the firm line of muscle that travelled down from behind her delicate little ear down to her collar bone. He was excited and gratified to hear her issuing little moans at the soft touch of his lips on her throat. And his hands, the left having come around to join the right on her immaculate bosom, were continuing to lightly grope, squeeze and stroke her breasts through the front of her dress.

Choosing to press his luck further, he slid the fingertips of his right hand up to the neck line of her dress and then slowly and lightly slid down the front of it. Again, the teenage girl didn’t make any move to limit the progression he was attempting, on the contrary she reached behind her and flicked at the hooks that held her dress closed, loosening the fabric to give his hand more freedom of movement. Cloud groaned in combined pleasure and gratitude as one hand gently closed on one of the unencumbered orbs of her teenage breasts. And he caressed the soft, warm perfection that filled his palm and then some. If the smooth skin of her breast was warm, the already erect nipple and lust-puckered areolae was downright hot. And keeping his caresses gentle, to the point they might belie the level of his excitement, he pinched a nipple between his forefinger and thumb, marvelling at the stiff, spongy texture and the pointed heat of the little bud. He also found himself marvelling at the lusty desire that the feel and texture of her succulent nipple brought about inside him. Images danced into his mind of him sucking a sweet nipple into his mouth, sucking, licking, nibbling.

Again, it was Tifa who took the initiative and pressed them both further forward in their mutual seduction.

Too enraptured by fondling her large soft breasts, Cloud didn’t know a thing about it until he felt her fingers and palm encircling the hard, aching ridge of his engorged cock. And she immediately started to stroke her hand up and down his tell-tale bulge, apparently greatly enjoying its dimensions, as well as its laudatory hardness.

Seemingly happy with the ‘tribute to Tifa’ tenting his trousers, its promising length and girth, the teenage girl shook her smooth muscular shoulders, in a little upper body quiver. The motion caused a delightful response in her manhandled bosom. The quiver was designed to force the already loose straps of her dress to fall from her shoulders. And then it was nothing to strip the fabric down to her waist, exposing her fabulously large and perfectly pert breasts to Cloud’s eyes and immediately afterwards, his lips.

The feel of her hand smoothly stroking and squeezing his hardness, created a lovely, almost heavenly sensation of pleasure. It felt warm and pulsing in response to her caresses, almost a glow of pleasure. And then, again, she took it a step further. Flicking open the button fastening of his trousers before, with sleight-of-hand subtly she opened up the gap, her hand dipped into his opened crotch and then his cock was gripped in her small, strong fist. Her skin felt cool and somehow soothing in comparison to the sultry, uncomfortable heat of his unyielding shaft.

Cloud feasted on her nipples, gorging himself on the sweet natural taste and aroma of her luscious young body. Her full engorged buds, the textured areolae and all around them, the smooth creamy orbs of her breasts. Her bosom felt just so silky and soft under his gentle squeezing and caressing hands. He had Tifa panting and letting out little reverberating whimpers as her pleasure crested higher and higher with each new touch as well as - he liked to tell himself - how hard his erection was and the fact that it was utterly and exclusively because of her. It was physical evidence of the effect she was having on him, her beauty and the alluring sexuality of her amazing body.

She must realise how hot she was, he thought. Not only beautiful but sexually powerful and enticing as well. And yet as far as he knew, she was actually quite chaste at the same time. He’d heard boasts of some of the other village boys of course but he knew as well as anyone that the boasts of boys couldn’t be trusted. If they were to be believed Tifa would have fucked half the village, and given all three of her cherries away to at least three of her closest friends.

Reading between the lines she had tried things with a couple of them, let them feel her up a little, rubbed a few cocks, a little heavy petting. Though, surely that was normal adolescent experimentation. He was no stranger to it himself. Though the girl he had played those particular games with insisted they keep it a secret, after all she didn’t want to damage her credibility with her friends by saying she had sucked off and been fingered to orgasm by ‘the outcast’.

It would be easy to listen to the whispers of the girl’s their own age who called Tifa a slut behind her back and then were lovely to her face-to-face. Fucking hypocrites and liars the lot of them. Though they had never been close, he felt like he knew Tifa well enough to see the reality in between the exaggerations and lies. She was a normal inquisitive teenage girl, at the top of the pecking order when it came to popularity. And yet, probably due to that martial arts teacher keeping her down to earth, she didn’t take advantage of it. She had her head screwed on straight and saw through the pettiness and childish rivalry of her friends. If ‘friends’ was the right word… Hangers on… Entourage, maybe…

Tifa’s hand flipped over, from using palm and fingers to gently tease his throbbing, hot shaft. She took him firmly in her fist and started to work at his foreskin with a strength and vigour that had him leaning back and giving a long exultant groan. His hands blindly fumbled down from her breasts to her upper thighs, sliding gently under her rucked-up skirt, listening out for signs he was going too far. The only response she gave when he touched the heat of her wet underwear-gusset was to spread her legs wider to give him better access. He stroked at that wet heat, feeling the exquisite softness of her swollen lips through the thin, damp fabric.

However, he felt himself abruptly beginning to boil over all of a sudden. It was due to Tifa pushing his hands from her breasts, putting a bracing palm against his chest. And then, just as he was starting to think she was drawing this fun to a close, she tossed her long lush brown hair to one side with a practiced flick of the head, and then lowered her face down into his crotch. The succulent heaven of the feel of her hot, full lips sliding down the length of his pulsing on-the-brink erection, was enough to bring on Cloud’s climax. He tried his best to warn her of the upcoming premature eruption but it was bursting out from his hard, swollen crown, even as the first syllable was emerging from his orgasm-rictus lips.

Tifa blinked, confused. In an ether of blackness. She wasn’t sure if she should be enjoying her climax or tasting Cloud’s as it pumped over her tongue. She blinked again and then the slow realisation dawned. Not only had she been dreaming, but in the dream, she had been Cloud and not herself.

Suddenly wide awake, Tifa lay there wondering about the strange dream-experience and what it might mean. She blinked again, seeing little in the predawn darkness. Then she took a moment to cast out her other senses, in case she had been awoken by some imminent danger but there was nothing that she could detect.

The remnants of the dream were insistent, returning to her attention in hot waves. And she became suddenly aware of the hot pulsing wetness between her thighs and so she allowed the dream to overtake her again, replaying it in her mind.

In reality of course, she had fallen off the mountainside after going up along the path to try and find her recently deceased mother, not understanding the meaning of death at the time. She had landed on a lower path only a dozen feet below, however she had struck her head on a rock on the path or on the way down and had split her skull open. The only help Cloud had been able to administer had been to wrap his sleeveless jacket around her head, trying to stem the bleeding without applying pressure in fear of pushing fragments of bone into the wound, and to remain at her side with the hope that someone would come along. If he had even left her alone to raise the alarm, she would invariably have been discovered and attacked by some of the predatory wildlife on the mountain. As it stood, he had been forced to protect her from them anyway and on more than one occasion, before her father and a couple of others from the search party had discovered them together. And of course, she had only been eight at the time, and Cloud only nine or ten, she couldn’t quite recollect Cloud’s birthday in the moment.

It had started out that way in the dream too, at their correct ages but then, when Cloud had pulled Tifa up from the cliff onto the outcrop, they had been older. The feelings of lust and desire resonated the most though, pushing at her through the factual inconsistencies. And she felt the inextricable need to stoke that residual fire. Masturbating was not something she did often, there was an ingrained embarrassment factor, partly due to the idea of her father hearing her or worse still walking in on her and that had instilled a degree of shame relating to the activity, however pleasurable and successful she found it in giving her orgasms. But she was halfway up a mountain and there was no one around her.

And then she remembered the wolf pup, its warm soft fur pressed up against her ribs, the two of them sharing their body heat against the cold of the night. The sense of embarrassment flared up again, but the desire to follow along from the dream and bring herself to climax was stronger still. And so, she hiked up her skirt, drew the skimpy gusset of her underwear to one side and stroked gentle fingertip-caresses over her swollen and already slick lips.

She could feel her sensitive nipples, already hardened, rasping against the thin fabric of her vest-top, shuddering with the rapid back and forth motion of her right arm. As her fingers teased and stroked at her succulent lips, roving the flowing juices all over her sensitive, neat little pussy, it took only a few seconds before her fingers delved underneath the gusset of her underwear and into her intimate spot. And she spread her labia and dipped a finger and then two into her hot, gripping wetness.

Of course, that in itself wasn’t enough and she put the fingers of her other hand onto her clitoris, stroking little circles around, over and then directly onto it. At some point she felt the wolf pup get up and move away from her. Tifa felt a moment of guilt that she had disturbed her young companions’ sleep but then she was also relieved to feel alone and unobserved, it gave her a sense of freedom and release from pressure and she attacked her intimate areas with a new driven passion.

The feeding eroticism of the dream was starting to fade and she didn’t want to just be lying there on the cold rock, masturbating for the sake of it. So, she hurried herself along, grabbing hold of the memories of the dream and trying to recapture the experiences the dream world had offered her. It did the job and as both hands worked their magic and her mind, half fantasising, half remembering, fuelled the inferno of lusty pleasure raging inside her until she hit the peak. And then leapt straight from it, sailing up on a wind of pure ecstasy.

Her whole body contracted as if struck by lightning. Her booted heels pummelled the granite beneath her. Her head rolled back against her cushioning backpack, mouth wide open and letting out great, loud, breathy and guttural exultations of orgasmic delight. The feeling of being free to vocally express her pleasure and not to be over-heard and suffer the potential embarrassment that might come after, was exhilarating and freeing. Almost spiritual.

Part of her wanted to slow down and control the orgasm, to draw it out and ride the crest into another and another. However, sensible Tifa told herself that she couldn’t waste time sitting on a mountain getting herself off all day. So, she settled for the single big one, riding high on sensual caressing currents of exquisite pleasure. The sensations zinged through her body in powerful waves, bolts of lightning-pleasure dancing through her hotly pulsating pussy and fiercely contracting anus. Then they travelled upward through her abdomen and palpitating stomach and into her full, shuddering breasts. Peaking in swollen nipples that felt so hard that they might turn into diamond. At the same time more heady quivers of unabridged pleasure danced up and down her arched spine and her craning neck. Tingles of physical joy played across her face, her maroon-flushed cheeks, forcing her open mouth into smiles of combined pleasure and personal gratitude.

And then another wave crested, bigger than the last and she completely lost herself in the pleasure of it; her mind overwhelmed, all but disconnected from her body, lost in a cocoon of lusty pleasure. It was a sensory deprivation of everything but her own perfect internal sensual joy.

The morning eventually presented itself anew with the silent passing of a vast shadow, though it was preceded by terrified little yelp of the somewhere near-by wolf-Cloud, who immediately scarpered just as a consuming darkness enveloped Tifa’s mountainside camp.

Pausing in her dawn breakfast, she gazed up into the sky in abrupt shock and caught sight of a bird flying overhead. At first, she thought it was so close that it was skimming her very scalp and it seemed scarily low but then she realised as it passed overhead that it was illusionary. The bird was vast. A great bird of prey, Eagle-like, though with wings that almost seemed to spread from horizon to horizon, it was silhouetted against the cloudy grey sky and swooped silently over the mountains, like some kind of avian god. Tifa leapt up onto a rock outcrop to get a higher vantage point. And she watched as it turned slowly, following the turn with an elegant whip of its wings and then arced away around toward the South swooping silently off into the distance. A second after the flapping of its wings, their span doubtless hundreds of feet across, there came a howling tornado of wind. It hit her like a backdraft that actually whipped Tifa up off her feet and threw her back off her vantage point. She landed on her ass and grimaced at the jarring impact but she couldn’t take her eyes off the enormous avian. She sat there on the unforgiving granite, her buttocks numbed, watching the giant bird departing until it had diminished to nothing but a faded grey speck against the clouds.

She finally rose, rubbing life into the small of her back and her ass, and then started to disassemble her camp. As she worked quickly, not wanting to waste any more of the daylight. Though she often found herself throwing concerned gazes around the rocks above and below for a sign of wolf-Cloud. And yet he was nowhere to be found. So, she left the camp behind and started her ascent once again.

Wolf-Cloud reappeared after a couple of hours and this time loped along in time with Tifa, though he maintained a respectable distance between them. She was gratified by the company all the same, and spent quite a lot of the time chatting with the adolescent wolf. She found it amusing how many attributes the wolf displayed that she could easily attribute to her memories of human-Cloud.

“You’re a lot like him you know, or he’s a lot like you… You’re both aloof, untrusting, and you like to keep a cautious distance from your friends. Namely me.” She laughed.

A small, four-legged reptilian-feline Nerosuferoth appeared at one point, screeching its threats at Tifa. Wolf-Cloud leapt forward at once, snarling and barking, its tail and hackles up. The greenish yellow cat-size creature tittered angrily at the wolf, who darted backwards as though scared but then once again launched itself forward and the two entertained their noisy back and forth stand-off for a good couple of minutes. All the while Tifa laughed and sipped water from her hip flask, enjoying the momentary distraction. Once the Nerosuferoth had finally given up and scuttled off into the rocks and wolf-Cloud bounded back into its parallel path with Tifa, she tossed it a lump of dried meat from her stores, which it caught out of the air and scoffed down in a second.

“And just like the other Cloud, you’re equally quick to get into fights!” She laughed.

Ascending along another steep though useable animal track, Tifa found herself noting the differences between these Midgar mountains and those that had surrounded Nibelheim, those sharp, spiny peaks that had filled the views of her youth. She had never really considered it before but having passed through the Corel mountains and now this Midgar range, she was taken aback by, both close up and from a distance, at how utterly unique mount Nibel’s range appeared to be. With its oppressive feeling, sharp, spiky rocks of flinty grey rhyolite and granite, with their pointed, sharp edged natural formations. It had always seemed to her to resemble flash-frozen flames, that had been reworked in stone. Maybe by some ancient creative god.

The thoughts of flames and Mount Nibel suddenly took her back to the razing of her home and the death of her father and her own close call at the business end of Sephiroth’s sword. And Tifa found herself weeping uncontrollably. To begin with as she allowed the feelings to come freely, she cried as she walked.

Meanwhile, above her the clouds started to develop, building from threatening grey to oppressive black, sucking the lightness out of Tifa’s already black surroundings.

And soon enough the building grief, like a tsunami, overcame her and she collapsed onto the hard rocks. Not recognising the first drops of heavy, cold rain striking her and the granite all around her. She felt herself curling in a ball on her side and cried out her raging, senseless loses. Her helplessness, her inability, even with all her skills, to stop the hated man who had cut down her father so needlessly and with such cowardice. And then the rest of it started to come out too. Her guilt for still being alive, her unassailable pain of having lost both of her parents and her village, and essentially everyone she had ever known, and of feeling utterly alone in the world.

The tears flowed until they were lost in the rain as, above her the deluge had upended itself onto the mountainside.

Finally, shivering in an empty, emotionless void, soaked to the skin and all but frozen with the icy downpour, Tifa dragged herself to her feet and went off in search of somewhere that could cover her from the infernal torrent.

It took another three days to reach the summit of the mountain, where Tifa was surprised and gratified to find a little hut, or at least a once-was hut. There were numerous missing planks from the structure’s roof and walls, which made it at least partially open to the elements. Although inside there was a lockable door, some shelves of intact survival supplies, a bunk with a mattress and some blankets, and also a fire pit. Outside there was a wind-churned water butt.

She hunted, collected some more roots and leaves and a couple of handfuls of small nuts. And she even managed snare and kill a Nerosuferoth, larger than the little one who had had the argument with wolf-Cloud. And she roasted the beast’s flesh nicely, with a little seasoning she found on the shelves, over the fire pit. The wolf pup wouldn’t join her inside the hut but she tossed some of the roasted meat out through the open door and it appeared at once to enjoy its share.

After the meal, she collected some of the water, boiled it over the fire pit and added a few filtering and sterilising tablets and then shared the cooled water with the wolf. She drank some, refilled her hip flask and then washed herself and her hair. Afterwards letting the dancing flames from the firepit dry it while she brushed it carefully.

As she brushed, Tifa found herself mulling over her intentions, starting to see holes. Things Miki Fort’s mother had snidely pointed out, half under-her-breath. Things that apparently had been ruminating in the back of Tifa’s mind for the days that followed.

She had started to recognise the maybe relying on Zangan to give her the happiness that she was pursuing exclusively, might not be the most-healthy of intentions. Her desire for him and for their love to be allowed to blossom, was still very much what she was focussed on. However, putting all her eggs in one basket might not be the smartest of choices. And she was recognising now that having a back-up plan - especially if Midgar and the lead she was expecting to find there, only led her to another long intercontinental journey - might be a mistake. Of course, in a sense there was a back-up plan already brewing away in the back of her mind and a self-sufficient one that didn’t rely on Zangan or anyone but herself. She could cook well, had a knack for it, for accuracy and flavour combinations. And her ability to think up complementary flavours of both food and drinks, cocktails especially, was not to be underappreciated.

At the very least, given her dwindling financial situation, getting work as a barmaid to fund a second journey, should the need for one arise, was a sensible and achievable goal. The guys and girls on the ocean ferry had assured her of that much. What was it the manager had said?

“It’s a business model. One of the oldest. Those in the business, they like beautiful people, they like to portray the environment to be a beautiful one - delicious food and drinks brought to you by beautiful young people.”

She might be modest and put more faith in her skills than her looks, which she knew would fade with time, but she also knew she was beautiful. She easily attracted admirers everywhere she went, however tiresome that could be. And she assumed that her looks and figure would stand her in good stead for bar or restaurant work at the very least. And once she had her foot in the door, the prospective opportunities would be hers for the taking. She hoped.

Plans solidified in her mind, Tifa felt ready for bed.

For safety’s sake, she tamped down the fire, so it was just hot coals rather than flames, and then made up her bed for the night. Slipping under the musty smelling and slightly itchy blankets and being physically exhausted as she was every night, she tried to relax and allow sleep to take her. However, her mind whirled and wandered over the events and thoughts of the last few days. Eventually though, her tiredness succeeded in drawing her down into sleep’s peaceful abyss.

The descent down the mountain was far quicker than the ascent. And Tifa accelerated it even further by testing out some Zangan-style controlled leaping. She managed it effectively enough, even though it was a hairy experience to drop fifteen-feet at a time through the air and then land accurately and carefully on small sturdy-looking rock or levelled sliver of animal track. She also reduced her leaping to over the course of a single day, as she didn’t want to hurt or damage her knees by overdoing it.

The decent took only three days in total and wolf-Cloud remained at her side throughout, sometimes locating easier tracks for her to follow, sometimes alerting her to impending attack by wild predators and always sharing in her meals. She really grew to appreciate and love the small adolescent and it broke her heart when they finally parted ways at the Northern base of the mountain range.

Just like on the way up, the mountain’s roots slipped back, disappearing under the earth and slowly flattened out beneath the limbs and roots of a small forest. Tifa was glad to be back inside the familiarity, warmth and relative comfort of the forest and she and the wolf hunted down a couple of Jumpings. These were small white Leporidae, that had somehow made their home in the forest. Tifa ate one, with some wild carrots and mushrooms, wolf-Cloud munched down the other as it was, raw, bones and all.

And then just after lunch, while Tifa was bathing in a stream she had found, there came a howling from deeper in the forest. She watched helpless as the little adolescent wolf she had come to love, perked up its ears, cocked its head, sniffing the air, then returned the howl. The distant response came back almost immediately in the form of a chorus and wolf-Cloud, looked back at Tifa for a long solemn minute before turning and bounding off into the woodland.

And that was the last she saw of it. Sad, and suddenly feeling more alone that she had ever felt before, Tifa hauled the last of her clean clothes out of her backpack, hurriedly tugged them on, this time leaving off the hold-ups and long gloves, and then continued on her journey North. She kept her eyes and ears open for the adolescent wolf, even while knowing it was long gone and hopefully being accepted into a new pack.

She was given the opportunity to exorcise some of her loneliness and frustration, at least for a little while, less than an hour later. A small gang of Bandits emerged from the trees in front of her. They were all dressed more or less the same, in red and blue with bandanas over their heads, Tifa wondered if it was something like a gang colour. Each of them also sported a makeshift wooden club in their hands.

She didn’t even give them a chance to accost her or shout “your money or your life” or whatever they were intending to say. She skipped forward into the personal space of the closest to her and lay a knuckle-punch into the cluster of nerves in his armpit. He immediately cried out, dropping to one knee while his numb hand let the club slip from his fingers. She immediately drop-kicked the club right out of the air and into the face of the second Bandit, flooring him. And then she darted over to the third, kicked off the nearest tree and laid him out with a jumping kick to the throat.

The first Bandit had one arm still numbed from the shoulder to the fingertips, and was growling through gritted teeth in pent-up pain and rage. However, he drew a knife with his other hand. And, yelling obscenities at her, many of them specifically and crudely sexual in nature, he came at her, slashing and stabbing.

Instead of backing up out of range and waiting for an opportunity, Tifa stepped in close, skipping forward until she was inside the blade’s arc and literally nose to nose with the Bandit. And then, before he could bring the knife anywhere near her, she butted him hard right in the nose with her furrowed brow. He immediately collapsed in a heap, leaving a great crimson arc in his wake, and lay there seeing stars and coughing up blood. Tifa took the knife from his other hand and tossed it, then stamped on his elbow, snapping it in two places before she left him there unconscious.

She turned North again and stomped off, having enjoyed the second-long flash of momentary violence a little too much for her own liking.

Walking on she controlled her breathing and slowed her heart, pressing down the rise in adrenaline, and all the while focussed on the natural beauty surrounding her. However, again, on closer inspection it proved to be a subdued, slightly sickly beauty compared to the part of the Ancient Forest she had grown used to. The leaves were a yellowy, autumnal green, even though it was barely spring. The earth was a grey-brown, the undergrowth sickly brown. The water, especially the rain-filled pockmarks and puddles, all seemed to be covered by a thin layer of oily scum. Though, fortunately the stream she had bathed in earlier, had been fresh and clear.

When she emerged from the forest, the bright unfiltered sunlight dazzled her but her eyes soon adjusted and revealed a half mile of rolling mesa, dotted with more distant airy looking forests. However, plainly visible and bisecting the grassland ahead of her from right to left was a dark grey smear, like a horizontal sword slash. The Midgar Capital’s main Western Highway. She crossed onto the sickly grass and headed for it.

Five minutes later she was standing in front of the waist high, dull metal barrier that separated the grass verge from the tarmac blacktop beyond. Even better, there was a sign post, up high on a pillar arching over the road. It stated that the small town of Kalm was only six miles to the west. So, she turned to her left and started walking.

An hour later she saw the Northerly turn off for Kalm. There was no-one on the road, no traffic whatsoever. However, just beyond the turn off on the main highway was a large, full width construction that was designed to block passage along the road. It featured small tollbooth-like posts, the booths possessing a physical barrier across each of the lanes - both incoming and outgoing - on the road to Midgar itself. It was like a border crossing. Above each lane were ‘open’ signs for the lanes heading toward Midgar, and ‘no entry’ signs above the outgoing lanes.

On the far right of the highway was a small two-storey building, like two rounded-edged children’s building blocks in black, stacked one on top of the other. There were large windows on the ground floor and blacked out windows on the flat roofed upper floor. Through the ground floor windows Tifa could see the heads of two individuals moving around within. She swung her legs over the barrier and started to cross the highway. All the while she looked and listened out for approaching vehicles as she strolled across the wide stripe of dusty grey tarmac. She was about two thirds of the way across the eight lanes when she spotted the door to the building swing open and two men emerged, wearing full Shin-Ra infantry uniforms. The rear of the two was pulling on his triple sensor helmet, they were hefting short Personal Defence Weapons in their arms. And two-foot long ‘tonfa’ type truncheons were suspended through chrome rings on their utility belts.

“Hey!” The lead one of them shouted, a tone of belligerence already evident.
“What?” Tifa snapped.

She was aware that the sight of the blue Shin-Ra uniforms had already knocked her usually present pleasantness and patience.

“Where do you think you’re going, girly?!” He snapped back at her, his own belligerence building.
“Kalm!” She snapped back.
“What’s with the fucking attitude, bitch?!” The man shouted.
“I could ask you the same question!” Tifa replied, matching his manner, yet knowing she was playing with fire.

“That’s it! Get over here!”
“Get your ass over here, now!” His companion snapped.

Seems like she’d lit their fuse. She spun on her heal and made a bee-line straight for them, strolling along casually, taking the time to get a clearer look at the two men. They snapped at her impatiently to get a move on but she ignored them, maintaining her leisurely stroll.

She hated the Shin-Ra. She hated everything those uniforms represented.

They were both coming over to meet her part way, coming to a stop at the little muddy triangle where the main highway and the turn off to Kalm parted ways. The dull metal barrier between them and Tifa.

The mouthy one was small and wiry. Tifa could see only the lower half of his face because of the helmet’s triple sensor-light infantry visor, his lightly tanned skin was pockmarked and stubbly. Above the visor the rest of his skin was probably pasty white. His companion was a more that a head taller, beefy, broad as a door though the was an apparent softness to the flesh beneath the uniform, he was dark skinned. Behind them, the other two she’d spotted inside the building, probably a guardroom or something, had come to the open door to see what the commotion was.

The guns meant she would have to be a little more cautious. And quick.

“Name? ID?”
“Don’t have any ID, my name’s Tifa.”
“Tifa? What kind of name’s that?”
“The one my father gave me.”
“Where’d you come from anyway?”
“The mountains.” She replied pointing at the Southern horizon. “Before that, Junon.”
“Bullshit. How’d you get here from them mountains?”
“Walked.”
“Bullshit! You didn’t walk over them mountains all by your little self.”

Tifa sighed, bored with the dumb interrogation.

“Guys, why don’t you get yourselves proper jobs?” She asked, putting them on the back foot.
“What?”
“Well, like ‘pimp’, or ‘drug pusher’.” She said with a malicious smile that didn’t get anywhere near her eyes. “That’d be a step up for working for the damned Shin-Ra!”
“Hey fuck you, you little bitch!” The big black guy growled at her, seemingly taken aback by her insult.
“That’s it! We’re taking her in.” The white guy announced suddenly, though he didn’t make any move toward Tifa. “We can have a little fun with her in the back room.”
“Hell yeah, now you’re talkin’! Maybe sell her on over in Sector Five after we’re done with her…”
“…Way she’s dressed, she might have some skills!” The black infantryman laughed.

The two men took a moment to ogle Tifa in her cropped white vest top, mini skirt they took less notice of the combat style Leather Gloves and robust hiking boots. Their expressions falling halfway between lusty interest and derisive sneer.

“Why you dressed like that, anyway? You a whore?” The weaselly white guy sneered at her.
“What?!” Tifa was incredulous and raging.
“Course she ain’t mate, look at her. She’s like, what are you fourteen?”
“So why you dressed like that then?!” The white guy persisted.
“You want to know why I dress this way? I’ll show you.” She spat.

And then she whipped her legs up into a vertical-splits, only she carried it on, kicking up off the ground and wheeling her legs like spokes, her body the wheel boss. Her heel caught the white guy under the chin, whipping his head back violently. The distant back-up guys heard the dry snap of his spine from their twenty-foot distance.

As pure overkill, Tifa’s trailing leg whacked him in the crotch. Of course, he was already dead and didn’t feel a thing. She kicked off from his crotch using the added momentum and velocity to bring her back to the ground on her feet, perfectly balanced and in a martial stance, less than a foot away from the other infantry private. She was inside his weapon’s arc and, though he towered over her by close to eighteen inches, she launched a double palm-heel combination into the base of his jaw. It shattered noisily but his thick neck and burliness saved his spine from fracturing. Still, the pain was so severe that, screaming, his legs went out from under him and as he dropped like a sack of Gil.

Tifa finished it with another dual-technique combination - a rising elbow that slammed into his forward-falling head, smashing clearly into his cheekbone and eye socket, shattering both. The elbow was followed up with a driving knee into his sternum, smashing ribs into razor sharp shards. Hitting the deck would almost certainly finish him off for good.

Then she ran, dived, tucked and rolled until she was behind the ‘V’ of the road’s verge barrier, those dull grey planks of corrugated metal. She skirted along them for a while and then launched herself over the top, sprinted across the grass for a few feet, until she was behind the guardroom building. There Tifa stopped, crouched down around the rear of the guardroom, calming her speeding heart-rate and slowing her breathing, while she listened out for the other two infantrymen. One of them was inside, probably getting on a radio, the other was moving around the side of the building to her left.

Relying on her reinforced plates and knuckleduster half-orbs of her Leather Gloves, she stood up, protected her face with one hand and punched through the North facing window. In the second that followed, she leapt through the shattered glass, leaving a few stay hairs behind.

The guard was trying to dictate a report into a radio set on her immediate right, but she was equally aware of the man outside, parallel to his own East facing window and he was already bringing his weapon to bear. Tifa grabbed the radio man and spun him around in front of her using him as a Human shield. The outside man let rip with his automatic machine weapon, filling the room with high-velocity rounds. Tifa pulled herself inward and ducked low as the other Infantryman took the initial hail of bullets, while behind her the radio’s console crackled with sparks and smoke. Struck by wide sprayed bullets, it died a death of its own, the smell of burning electronics and grey-white smoke filling the room’s interior.

Tifa felt overwhelmed in that instant. Her fear and rage, the residual emotions of her grief and her frustration at Zangan having abandoned her, making her travel all the way to Midgar to find him. It all burst out of her. Her temper suddenly frayed beyond her control; she unleashed the Beat Rush.

In less than a second, she had erupted bullet-quick across the interior of the building and then burst out of the window, actually moving faster than the shattering of the glass. She pummelled the final infantryman, who had been trying to reload, up close. She struck him with a rage-fuelled superfast punch-combination that finished in a spine-crushing rising-upper cut. The final strike actually lifted the guy off the ground and deposited his broken corpse on the grass six or seven feet away. The harsh impact with the ground forced blood to burst from his nose and mouth, in a glistening crimson gout, but he was dead long before the impact.

Panting, Tifa used Zangan’s techniques to calm herself, slow her breathing and heartrate again, relax the adrenaline flow until she was calmed and in control.

And then, after dragging the four dead Shin-Ra infantrymen back into their guardroom, she put herself on the road to Kalm, instigating a fast walking pace. She didn’t think the radio-operator had managed to report any identifying details about her but even so, she didn’t want to hang around close to the guardroom.
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Final Fantasy 7. Tifa Lockhart: Journey to Midgar.