Cloud x Tifa - The Comeback Kid (FFVII)

Chapter One - When You Grow Up, Your Heart Dies

The Comeback Kid

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Chapter One

When You Grow Up, Your Heart Dies

[ ν ] - εγλ - 2022 | September 21St

Tifa winced as she pulled the steering wheel of her dark silver sedan over the stripe of highways that stretched across the Eastern continent, pulling away from the wide open expanse of fields and plains that bordered Kalm, driving in the direction of home to Junon. She kept one hand balanced on the wheel while the other was dropped to her left side, pressing her palm against the wet fabric of her torn blouse and feeling a sharp stab of pain run through her, her hand coming back up sticky with blood.

The monster attack had come on without any warning. Tifa had been driving back from the Seventh Heaven franchise in Edge, where she had met with the manager she had hired a month prior, a young woman with a master's degree in marketing named Lucinda, to discuss the prior month's sales figures. On her way home, the drake had appeared without warning and landed on the trunk of the car while Tifa was driving along the highway, throttling the vehicle and sending it careening off the road into the dirt and grass that lined the expressway. Tifa had felt everything jerk violently to the side with the sudden assault, her seatbelt cutting painfully across her chest and the jolt of the vehicle causing her stomach to flip. Cursing, she'd heard the monster stomping across the back of the car towards the roof, and before she'd had a chance to orient herself, she saw the second appear in front of the car, flapping its wings as it screamed at her, its yellow and green spittle soiling her windshield.

Ambushed, Tifa could not put the car into drive and steer it away from the fray with the way the drakes were attacking the car, claws digging into the aluminum, their wings batting against the vehicle. She'd had no choice but to engage directly with the beasts to get rid of them, and she found herself pulling on her leather fighting gloves before she inhaled a deep breath and then pushed the driver side door open.

Since the production of mako had ceased in the last fifteen years, the freak sideshows its use produced had begun to dwindle and die off. More and more, the roads and wilderness became safer, far more likely to be inhabited by natural fauna such as mountain lions and bears and reptiles than by literal monsters, the twisted forms of life born from the depravity and corruption caused by processed Lifestream and the remnants of Jenova cells that pulsed within it. Still, it wasn't enough to completely halt the birth of new monsters, and they still could be found wandering the terrain in their desperate, brazen packs, forever on the defense as the world continued to shift and change around them. One who might find herself traveling alone in the countryside could never be too safe.

It was only Tifa's luck that she would be attacked by what was likely to be one of the few remaining packs of Cerulean drakes, one of the nastier brutes that still frequented the plains.

The fight had started out simple enough. Drakes were aerial beasts, but they stayed on the offensive, hovering close enough that close-range attacks could land with at least seventy percent accuracy, especially with Tifa's agility for somersaults and leaping strikes. She hadn't been carrying any materia that day, not really expecting to get into any battles, and so she had to rely solely on her physical onslaughts, deploying her most offensive strategy to drive them back.

In the end, she managed to defeat the pair of creatures, but not before taking a nasty side-swipe from one drake's claw to her rib cage that had sent her tumbling through the grass at the side of the road. It was a deep, pulsating gash that ran red with blood, knocking the wind out of her as she tumbled through the brush, landing square on her back and feeling every muscle in her body scream back in protest. She had already taken out the smaller of the pair, leaving the larger drake, who was wounded but still fighting, to contend with. Tifa had to roll in the dirt quickly, feeling every muscle in her body strain and complain, her bones creaking as she pushed herself to the limit to avoid the drake's next swooping attack. After kipping back up to her feet, feeling the gash at her side further tear, Tifa had finished the drake off with a swift, refocused twirling kick.