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Final Fantasy 7. Tifa Lockhart: Journey to Midgar.	By : Nickamano Category: Final Fantasy VII > General Views: 7312 -:- 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
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2. Finding the Student.

Zangan’s feet finally found themselves on the wooden-slat bridge that led from the trail right up to almost the peak of Mount Nibel itself. It was a huge bridge, long and steep and perilous. Psychologically, this was always the most difficult part of the Nibel range journey. Seemingly for everyone who had ever crossed it. He stepped onto the bridge, grabbing a right hold of the rope supports on both sides of the narrow passageway, and then started across.

And as he hurried across the steep and rickety bridge, which was continuously swinging in every direction due to the winds that whipped up and down the peaks and troughs of the impressive and uniquely-gothic mountain range; he couldn’t stop thinking about his young and, in every way, impressive trainee. Perhaps his favourite of the one-hundred and twenty-eight students he had around Gaia. Certainly, the one student who had shown the most natural aptitude for his teachings.

The last time Zangan had seen Tifa had been five months earlier. He had made it to the village in time for her birthday, back in May, and had been shocked at the young woman who had literally thrown herself into his arms. He had been immediately taken aback by how much she had changed in the previous twelve months. She had blossomed miraculously since he had left her following their previous two-month training schedule. Even then she'd been an undeniably beautiful, though noticeably slender girl. Maybe a little too thin, still delicate and gentle and still very much a child.

But now... Wow.
She had always taken her martial arts lessons seriously and like the prodigy she so obviously was, had invariably perfected every single technique he had left her with by the time he returned to test her progress. All too often her technique proved flawless and textbook-perfect whenever he assessed her.

She had apparently been training herself to utter exhaustion and on a daily basis. Much to the concern and consternation of her father, the Mayor of Nibelheim.

When Zangan had enquired, needing to judge for himself whether or not she was pushing herself too hard, the girl had confessed that her self-motivated punishing regime was a deliberate and calculated one. She had explained that going to bed aching all over and tired to the core helped her sleep and more often than not, kept the nightmares at bay.

Zangan was well aware that losing her mother so young had been hard on Tifa, and every year more and more of her similarly aged friends were departing the village for bigger and better futures, a notion that both excited and terrified Tifa herself. Though Zangan somewhat instinctively recognised that it was the prospect of leaving her father on his own that scared her the most.

Apart from martial arts teacher to his young students, Zangan also found himself taking on the role of therapist and confidant, very much the big brother or father figure to well over two thirds of his students. It was a role that he relished as much as terrified him. He took it very seriously, keeping all their secrets and maintaining a total respect for their privacy. Anything that he recognised needed to be shared with parents or guardians, he always convinced the student themselves to share, rather than him breaking their confidence. He also used students as sounding-boards for the issues and problems of other students, gaining insights and improving his own understanding through the experiences of other children who might have been through similar circumstances themselves, all the while maintaining individual confidences throughout.

He had long known that Tifa’s own issues had both stemmed from being an only child with a certain degree of over-compensation by always-busy and hard-working parents, who, in his experience tended to spoil their children and often left with them a sense of entitlement. And in Tifa’s case that had been both compounded by and combined with the death of her mother when Tifa had just turned eight-years old.

From the start of the teacher-student relationship at age three, he had worked hard and with great patience in the early years to counter Tifa’s self-indulgence, self-importance and pomposity. He had educated her in compassion and thoughtfulness as well as in modesty. And he had been gratified to see his lessons sticking soon enough and he began to see a change in young Tifa, a calming kind of sweetness, counter balanced by a care and willingness to listen to other peoples’ opinions. And this was in turn tempered by a strong sense of right and wrong and a trust in her own judgement. Overall, she eventually developed a wisdom that belied her meagre years and afforded her a sense of maturity that made her seem older than she was.
And then her mother had suddenly died.
Of course, there was nothing he could do about Tifa’s grief other than to be there to listen to her when she needed to talk, and to give her time and space whenever she required it. He had only arrived a few months after the event, having learned of Tifa’s own near-death experience soon after. That had come about due to a suddenly developed belief that her deceased mother was somewhere up in the mountains. And she had therefore gone off on her own to search for her. There had followed some kind of incident with another boy who had either led her all the way to the peril of the wooden-slat bridge or followed her there, depending on who he spoke to. Apparently, the bridge had been their undoing.
Tifa herself had been comatose for a week, destroying her distraught father’s ability to grieve for his departed wife and driving him into a deep depression. Zangan had helped as best he could to take some of the weight from the grieving Mayor’s shoulders while doing his best not to take the man’s place. It had been a difficult time but he had managed to pave a careful path and helped the two remaining members of the Lockhart family to cope and eventually to reconnect.

As part of Tifa’s healing process he had chosen to share a little tale or two from an acquaintance down in Cosmo Canyon, to fill her in a little about the Lifestream and the way Gaia recycled its lifeforces. He carefully interpreted the local Nibelheim beliefs about Human ‘souls’ and explained how, after death, people returned to the Lifestream and that every living thing, be it animal or plant, their essence came from the Lifestream at conception and then simply returned to it in death. It seemed to calm Tifa a little, and she professed to liking the idea of her mother’s essence now being a part of the planet again.

And from then onwards, he often witnessed her interacting with the local flora in a new way, running her fingers through the long grasses, just beyond the southern borders of her village. Or climbing a tree and sitting in its boughs to talk to her mother as though her mother was inside the tree somehow. It pleased Zangan. In his experience there was less and less respect for the natural world these days, and to see Tifa embracing the ideas he had passed on was heart-warming.

He had stayed with her for a full two years after the death of her mother, a second parental figure she could rely on while her father navigated his own intensely debilitating grieving process. Though Zangan was aware of how much he was neglecting his other students and that he wouldn’t be able to stay forever. So, he chose a date when he would leave and gave the Lockhart family plenty of time to prepare for his departure.

On their final day together, and with her father’s permission, Zangan had taken Tifa on a little daytrip, which took the form of a picnic, further training and a little exploration. He had taken her to a small cave southeast of her village. It had been an interesting trip and quite fun for both of them. First, they had to ‘request’ the services of a Chocobo. The amiable and surprisingly intelligent creatures often allowed a rider or two to be borne upon their back in exchange for fresh greens. The distance and duration of the ride was essentially decided by the large flightless avian, and always dependent on the quantity and quality of the greens donated.

Zangan had it covered, and the volunteer Chocobo happily took them Southeast, across one of the many narrow inlets of the Southern Ocean, which would have been too deep, and had certainly demonstrated too strong a current to wade or swim across without the assistance of the Chocobo. Afterwards, it took them on across the flat plains toward a Southern tip of uneven land. And it was at this point that it decided the humans had reached the end of their journey - by tipping them off its back. ‘Laughing’ with a flutter of feathers it then gave them a good-natured little incline of his huge-beaked head, before trotting off to munch on the succulent grasses not far away. Zangan and Tifa sat there in the grass and laughed themselves hoarse. Then they waved their amused thanks to the nearby Chocobo, who gave them another little good-natured bow, before they turned South and headed toward the tip of the land.

The cave entrance was a tiny thing, concealed by the long grass and a few interlocked rocks. Zangan led the way down the steep entrance with Tifa right on his heels. There was evidence of animals using the tunnel, tracks of rodents and maybe one or two wolves, and also watermarks of rainfall and flowing mud, times when the cave had been flooded. However, it had been a dry summer and so that day the cave proved to be bone-dry.

Tifa remarked about maybe needing a little illumination as they hit the bottom and started to advance into the shadows of rock and earth but Zangan knew better. And once they had followed the short tunnel twenty paces or so, the faint green-azure light made itself known. It had begun as a half-seen suggestion, catching on the surface of jutting rocks, barely noticeable. However soon it had grown more prevalent, highlighting high-points on the ground and walls as though the rocks and ground were wet. And Tifa had been aghast with the breath-taking beauty of the light.

And then the tunnel had taken a last abrupt turn, the ceiling dropping to half its height so they had both had to crouch low to continue. They had stood up on the far side and had found themselves inside a rare Mako cave. One of maybe a score throughout the whole of Gaia. Zangan knew of a number of them on all four continents but they were always rare and hard to access. He had initially considered taking her to the Mako cave near Mount Nibel’s reactor, though he was concerned about having her retrace the trip that had almost killed her, and after a little personal memory searching had reminded him of this little place, had made up his mind.

This particular cave was rarer still because, as well as the solid crystallised latices of naturally formed Materia, occupying the low ceiling and refracting the natural light, there was also a deep fissure in the centre of the cave, the source of the glimmering turquoise illumination.

Zangan had spent a little time clarifying to Tifa that in truth the Lifestream was what people referred to as ‘Mako energy’ and Materia was naturally crystalized Mako. It was the first hint of Tifa’s recognition of the evils of Shin-Ra’s Mako reactors, though she had been distracted at the time and never quite made a complete connection. He hadn’t forced it.

So, they had settled down on the flat rock that formed a plateau covering most of the fissure and had their picnic. While they ate, Tifa had spent the time gazing down into the fissure, in silent awe of the smooth-flowing beauty of the Lifestream, breathing in the fresh almost oceanic-blossom aroma emanating from the not quite fluid or gaseous stream far beneath them.

She had talked then, long and with a deep emotional eloquence, about her mother and her father. About her new-found sense of responsibility for her father, for sustaining and maintaining his mental health. She had also spoken of a new determination to keep them secure, and for the both of them to find happiness again. She had shared her guilt-ridden feelings of recognition that, unlike her father, she was beginning to feel able to carry on finally without her mother’s stability, and her inner strength, which Zangan had recognised had always the corner-stone of their family. That Tifa had started to see those same things in herself, and in that sense, she was capable of taking her mothers’ place and becoming that same corner-stone, at least until her father was well enough to be a proper father again.

Zangan had listened in intent silence, though inside his heart had been breaking, marvelling at the maturity and fortitude of this ten-year old girl. And he had known then in the soothing glow of the Lifestream that, not only Tifa but her father too, would be okay. They would still struggle and grieve but as a family they were strong and resilient. It had reassured Zangan that his instincts had been correct and that it was the right time for him to be leaving.

The following morning, he had made a promise to return in a years’ time to advance her martial arts studies further, and had then bade her farewell. She had wept at his departure but for the first time in two years he was no longer concerned about her.

It was upon his return the following year that Tifa’s father’s concern for the girl’s self-inflicted, exhausting training-methods had come to light. And Zangan, though impressed with her dedication to his teachings and as-ever taken aback by her abilities, had performed a careful course-correction, helping her safely look into her fears and her nightmares and to accept them rather than trying to avoid them. They had soon dissipated over the next two months while he studied with her. And although her training regime was maintained and continued all the same, this time it was for more positive reasons.

And so, all in all the physical result of Tifa’s self-inflicted punishing and exhaustive training regimen, from the ages of ten to fifteen, combined with her apparent natural maturation over the prior twelve months, had given the girl a distinctly powerful and athletic physique, with toned and smoothly muscular limbs, defined shoulders and neck, as well as sculpted abdominals that were toned and yet still beautifully feminine. And all locked up tight into a compact five-foot four-inches.

It was equally undeniable that Tifa had also blossomed in a distinctly feminine way. That her body had changed from that skinny child into an eye-catchingly curvaceous and beautiful young adult. She now sported decidedly large breasts, that acutely defied her otherwise fat-devoid and highly toned musculature - very much the epitome of fitness and health.

Even so, Zangan found himself needing to remember that, even though she no longer appeared as such, she was still very much a child. And he immediately accepted the moral position not to look at or comment on her new and surprisingly grown-up curves. With this unexpected development, he felt the need to inwardly reinforce his own personal and professional ethics. So, unless it was something that she herself broached in either his roles as her tutor in martial arts, or as her trusted friend and confidant, he would not bring attention to her abruptly blossomed body shape at all.

She did broach the subject, however that very first day. Though it was only in the very practical manner of requesting advice on the use of adequately ‘supportive’ underclothing. Zangan never dictated or even offered advice or commentary on the attire choices of his students, feeling that their personal comfort and need to be able to defend themselves in their natural attire was paramount, even if he himself would not choose to fight in some of the skimpy and revealing attire many of his young students chose to wear, both male and female. It was simply not his place.

He hurriedly wrote to a couple of his older female students, who he knew already wore the kind of ‘supportive’ clothing Tifa was, openly and without embarrassment, enquiring about. He wrote to request information about the female student’s own choices and any pertinent advice they could offer and handed the replies over to Tifa. She accepted it gratefully, and made prompt postal-request orders for a number of the items suggested.

Zangan had to admit if only to himself, that once she was wearing the correct ‘supportive’ items beneath her usual vest-top, he felt greatly relieved. Not only had she looked physically uncomfortable with her newly developed breasts as unrestrained as they had been but he had been finding it distracting himself. So much so that he had been finding it hard to watch her training or even to fairly assess her performance and technique. His mind and attention so often distracted, and steered in directions he had long since given over to his ‘previous life’ and had decided to leave there. Even his body had sported its own guilt-causing reactions to her that he had found both ethically distasteful and embarrassing. As well as something he knew he must never allow Tifa, or in fact anyone, to become aware of.
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Final Fantasy 7. Tifa Lockhart: Journey to Midgar.