Work Text:
The name’s Cloud Strife. Just an ordinary guy with an ordinary life in an ordinary city. At least, I used to be. Everything changed so suddenly on that day—the day I became a MAGICAL GIRL, 1st class. Now I spend my days trying to figure out how to save the planet, and what I’ll eat for dinner. That’s right, the planet is in peril, and the only one who can save it is me: the wielder of the Chocobuster Sword.
But let’s back it up. How did I get here?
It all started like this…
—
“Hey, Cloud!”
Hunched over a desk, a young man with strikingly spiky, blonde hair stares at his keyboard vacantly. If he heard his name being called, his glossed-over blue eyes don’t show it.
“Uhhh, Cloud, buddy, you there?” The coworker tries again.
Cloud finally sits up straight, and glances behind him at the man who woke him from his stupor. He’s a tall, average-looking man with mid-length brown hair. Cloud finds himself checking for his nametag for the second time today; he just can’t remember this guy’s name.
“Yeah, what is it…?” Cloud says, eking out a voice equal parts dismissive and despondent.
“Kunsel and the guys are going out for drinks. You’re coming, right? It’s Friday night.”
“No, I… I’ve got something to do still. Go without me,” Cloud looks back to his computer absentmindedly, pretending to work.
“Damn, you never come with us, Kunsel’ll be disappointed. Well, have fun,” he says, with a slight wave as he walks away.
Cloud sighs, left alone in an office; specifically, in the office of a security firm: Peace Consultants, or PeaceCo for short. Although they have some independence, they’re really just a subsidiary of Shinra Electric Company. They’re like the Public Security, but privatized and in charge of a few key off-site locations for Shinra. He shakes his head, and places it in his palms. How did he end up here? He wanted to make a difference, but all he does is check cameras and keycards and the like.
Enough moping. He shuts his Shinra-provided laptop and puts his Shinra-provided PHS in his, thanfully, personally-provided satchel bag. He isn’t the last one in the building; night shift is huddled in the control room, so there’s never a need to lock up at this job. Grabbing his coat from the hanger and tying it around his waist, he makes for the parking garage where his beloved bike awaits him.
There she is: sitting all alone with nothing in the parking spaces near it is a sleek black motorbike. An import, not Shinra-make, and custom-tuned. The first day he rode up in it, he was the talk of the office! He puts on a pair of black riding gloves, gets on her, backs up, and starts slowly descending the spiraling labyrinth of the garage. It’s quiet as a mouse, since only nightshift is here. But right as he makes the final bend-
Skrrrrrrrr!
An unmarked, armored car skirts around the corner at too-high a speed for a parking garage. It sweeves drastically to avoid crashing into Cloud’s bike, and then zips down into the basement of the garage without even a honk or a yell or a slight-slow down at all.
Cloud, of course, pulled the breaks as quickly as he could. He stops, right where he was, dumbfounded. What was that AV? He works in security, but knows nothing about that. And, more importantly-
Clink, clank…
A strange red orb with a glassy exterior bounces on the concrete. It fell from the back of the AV when it swerves, and it rolls along the garage floor towards Cloud. He stops it, with his food, and picks it up. Weird, it’s a little reflective, so he can see his own pretty face in it, but it’s teally just a giant marble, as far as he can tell. The gate to the basement of the garage closed behind the vehicle, so…he sticks it in his bag, vowing to ask about it tomorrow (he’s working this weekend).
Without much further thought after his nerves calm, he races past the exit gate as soon as it lifts for him. He needs to hurry straight home; strange rumors have been going around the city of Midgar lately. He isn’t the sort to put stock in rumors, normally, but apparently things have been happening out in the slums, where he lives…
Lately in the mornings, people have been found collapsed on the ground, sick as can be. That wouldn’t be too strange, but any plant life around them suffers the same fate; grass withers away and flowers shrivel up. Trees, in one night, drop their leaves all over these unconscious people. When no plants are around, even the dirt itself turns arid.
He isn’t scared. No, the opposite. If the rumors are true, maybe he can finally be a hero like he thought he’d be, going into security. …Just kidding, as if. He figures it’s some new sort of drug, maybe the smoke kills off plants or something. Racing through the dilapidated slums, the streets are alive as ever, and nothing seems amiss tonight anyway.
He parks his beloved, his bike, just outside a little two-story flat. The place used to be a motel, but it got renovated in a failed effort to gentrify this part of the slums. After that was quickly abandoned, some spinster bought it up and renamed it ‘Stargazer Heights’. It isn’t too high and it can’t see the stars, so his landlady, Marle, has quite a sense of humor. She doesn’t seem to care for him much, but he’s got room and board for cheap here anyway thanks to a friend of his.
Cloud walks up the metal stairs with a soft clank for each step. It is a little late, so he’s careful as he passes the first door, so he doesn’t wake the tenant. The second room is his, and with a click-turn of his key, he’s in. It’s barebones. A bed, a sink, a shower…most of what he needs. Off come the shoes. He hangs up his gloves on a hook bu the door. He slinks his bag onto his bed, and, without even changing out of his work clothes, collapses right beside it.
This is no good.
Even if he doesn’t have energy to pour water on himself, he should at least water that poor little potted plant sitting in the corner of his room. Marle gifted it to him, and he doesn’t care what she thinks, but if his friend finds out he let it die…
Thud!
His bag fell over, and out came that red orb, yet again deigning to roll across the floor with a mind of its own.
Fine. He’ll get up. His brain fights off the bedrotting urges of his heart and he gets back on his feet. He leans down to grab that oversized bead, and that’s when it happens.
The second the skin of his slender fingers touches the orb…
It glows. A flash of light fills the room, and next thing he knows, he isn’t alone anymore.
A white fuzzball floats in front of Cloud’s stunned-silent face. It’s some sort of cat, with the face of a mole and the wings of a bat. Is it ugly, or is it cute?
“Kupoooooooo!!!” the creature cries out.
“What the…!?” Cloud finally falls back onto his butt, recoiling from the shriek moreso than the sudden appearance of a floating cat.
“I’m free, kupo! I thought I’d be stuck forever…”
Cloud blinks, refusing to yield any meaningful reaction as his brain works overtime to process.
“But finally, a beautiful maiden saved me!”
“Uh, that’s not…I’m not…?”
“Huh? Well, don’t sweat the details, kupopo!”
“What are you?”
“I’m Mog, kupo! I’m a Materia Sprite, here to save the planet!”
“...Okay, that’s great. Can you leave my room?” Cloud says, shaking his head and looking to the wall adjoining his room to the next, “You’re going to wake the whole neighborhood, ‘kupo’.”
“Kupo…what’s a neighborhood?” The cat-bat-mole flies upside-down, suspended in a manner that defies the laws of aviation.
“It’s- Look, I’m too tired for this, so…”
His half-hearted protests are interrupted by a shriek from downstairs. Really, it’s more of a scratchy-voiced yelp: “Yaaaaagh!”
Cloud hops to his feet, still gripping the red pearl.
“Marle.”
“C’mon, kupo! Sounds like trouble!”
Drained of defiance, Cloud runs out of his room with a yet-unseen eagerness. He runs down those metal stairs wearing only his socks in a rush to see what’s happening to his landlady. He wasn’t prepared for this, though.
A wrinkly, pale-colored creature on all fours is posturing against Marle’s dog, a muted off-white mutt. Although this creature has the muscular build of a stocky pug, that’s the last thing most people notice: it has two large, turqoise horns shaped like an antlion larvae’s pincers, or maybe a stag beetle’s. Where a dog’s tail might be is a segmented appendage not unlike an ant’s abdomen. Its face, however, is neither canine or insectoid, but something in between.
“A Cripshay!?” Mog chimes, shaking its body up and down in the air while it does.
“A what?”
“It’s a kind of Mako Sucker, kupo! Nasty creatures that leech the lifeforce of this planet!“
“Whatever, what’s important is helping Marle,” Cloud says, scanning for any tool or blunt object he could use for bludgeoning. Would that orb work…?
“Wait, kupo! You can’t fight it like that! Your waist is scrawny.”
“I’m not scrawny.”
“You’re all human and normal, it’s no good?”
“Then go hit it with your non-human muscles, kupo,” Cloud wryly retorts, with his irritation and urgency both on the rise.
“No, I’ve got a better idea! The materia—hold it up and shout ‘Wark It!’”
Cloud looks the orb over. Is this the ‘materia’?
“What? Wark it?”
As soon as the words are spoken, questioning tone notwithstanding, the red sphere glows once again, but this time, it shoots a ray of light at Cloud.
His skin turns opalescent, as his body almost seems to have morphed into a turqoise-colored, matterless canvas mimicking its old shape. He finds himself compelled to move, in odd ways.
Cloud clicks his pearlescent heels together, and yellow rings of light appear and cinch onto his feet, granting him cute canary yellow-and-white platform sneakers (granting him an extra 6 cm of height). An off brand logo adorns the outer side of the shoe, with a black logo that looks like a bird’s face. He runs his energy-hand up his energy-legs, returning the flesh to them as he goes; his left leg is granted a sheer white stocking with yellow stripes up to his mid-thigh. The left remains bare, save for a cute golden anklet with two charms dangling from it: a yellow feather and a vegetable that resembles a green daikon radish.
Once he reaches the top of his leg, a tight yellow pencil skirt cinches itself onto his form with a pop! The bottom hem has a plucky white lace trim peeking out from underneath, and around his waist is a beaded, white peplum overskirt with careful gold stitching inlaid. He brings his hands to his chest, bending his arms into a 30 degree angle as he ‘flaps’ them like wings, manifesting a yellow frontlacing bodice, cropped extra short to give just a small peek at his ‘scrawny waist’. A sleeveless, white underbodice with black buttons peeks out underneath, and a detached buttoned collar, yellow, sits on his neck, adorned with two thin stripes, red and black. Over it is a gold chain with a dangling pendant shaped like a five-point star.
Lastly, he claps his hands together, creating a pair of white fingerless gloves, emblazoned with the insignia of that radish-like vegetable. Detached cuffs that match his collar fasten themselves on his wrists with a flourish that sees them button themselves. He taps his earlobes with the back of his hand, granting himself matching golden-feather earrings, and then arcs over his head to create a black headband with multicolored plumage sprouting from the left side.Tapping each eyelid once, his face is made-up in an instant, his eyelashes growing on the spot and his lips staining themselves carrot orange.
He does a twirl, juts his read end out, and his overskirt grows longer in the back, creating a high-low look. The ‘tail’ it forms is ruffly, and long enough to trail the ground. Finally, he strikes a pose, kicking one leg back while he balances on the other. He forms a fake beak with his hands, which have lovely orange acrylics on, over his mouth.
“Kweh.”
He stands firmly with both feet and puts his hands akimbo, dissipating the last of the light.
“Beauty Braver. Let’s fly the coop, kweh kweh.”
Mog flies around him in a circle, admiring Cloud's fresh fit.
“Amazing, it’s Beauty Braver, kupo! I knew you were the one!”
“Shut up. What is this?”
“You’ve become a Hoshi Guardian, defender of the Lifestream!”
“The what?”
No answer comes, because the fancy light show successfully diverted that ‘Cripshay’ away from Marle’s pooch. It charges at Cloud’s legs, its antlers at calf-level. Without thinking, he drops his freshly manicured hand down on its head just in time, and, pushing down, vaults himself over it; he manages an impressive tuck-and-roll to land behind it.
“How did I…?”
The Cripshay, however, is unphased, and pivots to charge again. This time, it latches onto Cloud’s ankle, its horns clenching like a pair of scissors. Cloud tries to shake it off, but can't, so he brings his other leg up high (how flexible is he?) and performs an axe kick, dropping his platformed heel on its skull. Free, he does a back handspring to create some distance while the Cripshay recovers.
“That’s no good, Beauty Braver! Mako Suckers are more durable than animals or people!”
“You got anything helpful to add?”
“Call upon your weapon, kupopo! You know, that one!”
“What?” Cloud is befuddled; he does not know ‘thar one’. He barely dodges another charge from the Cripshay, sidestepping it and grazing its sharp left horn.
Finally, it looks ready to change tactics. It leaps towards Cloud with the jumping force of a hyperactive gerboa. It latches onto Cloud’s waist and constricts, digging into his skin and catching his left arm in the vice. Reflexively, as he struggles, he stretches his right arm up.
“Don’t count your Chocobos before they hatch!”
With another pop and a flash of light like a tiny fireworks, a weapon appears in the air and falls into Cloud’s hand. It’s a a long, oversized sword with a browd blade that tapers diagonally at the end. The hilt is wrapped in a yellow ribbon and, strangely, vegetable-like leaves sprout out of the end of said hilt.
“The Chocobuster Sword, kupooo!”
“Time to show you the real pecking order!“
Cloud, now armed properly, thrusts the giant blade downwards with one arm as though it was weightless. He pierces the Cripshay between its shoulderblades and drives it in until it releases its constriction on him.
“Return to the planet; become pure and reborn.”
As he recites a mantra he didn’t even know minutes ago, the Cripshay’s body starts to dissolve. It flakes off into green-blue dust, and scatters into the wind.
Marle and her dog are nowhere to be seen. Thankfully, a cursory glance reveals nobody else in sight, either.
“That was amazing, kupo! You fought so naturally as Beauty Braver!”
“...I’m not interested in this.”
Cloud playfully swats his hand at the moogle, but abruptly falls to his knees. His body turns iridescent once more, but quickly, the light scatters and he returns to his prior form. He clutches his head in his hands, eyes wide and pupils shaking.
“I…who am…I?“
“Cloud…?”
A woman’s voice calls down from the balcony of the Stargazer Heights.
—
“Seems we’ve got an interesting development in the slums, partner.”
A suited man, back against the dilapidated sheet metal of an old house, radios someone through a sleek, black handheld transceiver; a walkie-talkie.
“I think I might just come back here tomorrow night and see what happens, huh?”