Two Letters and a Number

“Reno called. Said Rufus has a job for you in Healin. Hope it’s nothing like the last time he called. Be careful.” Tifa’s message ended, and Cloud closed the phone before sliding it back into his pocket. Idly he wondered what the job Rufus had and if it had anything to do with Dr. Jackson and his friends.

‘Nah, Red just likes your company,’ remarked a voice that sounded suspiciously like Zack’s, and he shook his head before settling his goggles on his face. Even after getting his memories straightened out, there were still a few things that he was getting use to like the memories he was sure weren’t coming back any time soon or Zack’s voice in his head. Part of the blond wished he could have his friend back, even in the occasional way Aeris was willing to help him, but he had only seen Zack that one time at the church, after he had been sent back by the planet. Aeris had at least visited other times, mostly in his dreams, but each time, she had been alone, and a part of him ached each time he woke alone.

A flash of the dream he had the night before entered his mind, a detailed image of pale and tan limbs tangled together, and Cloud shook his head, trying to dispel the memory even as he thought he heard a light giggle on the breeze that played with his hair. Cloud let a small smile twitch at his mouth as he understood that he wasn’t going to have much of a chance to over think things for a while. It just meant that Aeris was going to be around in spirit a bit more than usual, and he only hoped that she wouldn’t pull that out of body trick again while he was driving. It was more than a bit disturbing.

Revving the engine, he steered the powerful motorcycle through the streets of Kalm and into the wilde open wilderness where it was nothing but him, Fenrir, and the occasional monster that was too stupid or desperate to leave him alone.

After four hours, Cloud pulled to a stop in front of the Healin Lodge that currently housed the Shinra president and his body guards and pulled off his goggles to hang around his neck. For a second, his hand hovered over the button that would open the sword compartments as he remembered the last time he had been here, but shook his head as he slid off Fenrir. If Reno wanted to attack him after summoning him for a proposed business deal, then the Turk would be reminded that just because Cloud preferred a sword when fighting did not mean he was helpless with his bare hands.

Striding up the stairs, Cloud paused outside the door, and keen mako-enhance ears picked up the quiet sounds of talking inside. A quick knock on the door and he entered the room, eyes scanning for any threat, but Reno was standing at Rufus’ back while the other blond sat behind an impressive desk.

“Thank you for your timely arrival, Cloud,” greeted Rufus, not looking up from what he was writing before finishing with a slight flourish. He quickly folded the papers and stuffed them in an envelope before sealing and addressing it.

“What do you want, Rufus?” Cloud asked, eyeing the stack of envelopes piled on the desk before his eyes flickered over to Dr. Jackson who was sitting in a nearby chair.

“I have a job for you,” the young president began, sitting back in his chair and waving a hand to the stack of about a dozen envelopes. “These need to be delivered to various locations and contain instructions for the Shinra offices located there. The box is for Miss Gainsborough at the Forgotten City.”

Cloud could just make out a small flower box behind the letters and realized that Rufus wanted him to take flowers to Aeris’ grave. “Why me?” he asked, a confused frown on his face. “Why not have one of your Turks do it since they’d probably be faster.”

Rufus waved a casual hand to Jackson. “I also want you to take Dr. Jackson with you so that he may get a better feel for our world,” he continued as if Cloud hadn’t spoken and placed a large, heavy bag on the desk. “That should cover your expenses as well as Dr. Jackson’s and includes both your normal fee for delivering letters and a small bonus for taking Dr. Jackson with you.”

“Hold on a minute,” growled the swordsman, holding up his hands. “You still haven’t answered my questions. Why me and not one of your Turks, especially since Reno can fly the helicopter.”

“Dr. Jackson and his friends have many questions about our world they need answered before they can open trade agreements with us,” stated Rufus. “What they need is an unbiased opinion of us all, and the only way to do that would be to go out and talk to the general population without the stigma of a Turk escorting them to sway public judgement.”

Snorting, Cloud gestured towards his glowing, mako-colored eyes. “And I won’t?” he inquired with a slight tilt of his head.

“People trust you, Cloud.” The quiet statement surprised Cloud, and a small smile touched Rufus’ face. “It’s one of the reasons why I want you as an ally so that you can convince people that Shinra is truly trying to change for the better of the planet.”

This new information made Cloud’s thoughts whirl. Rufus wanted him as an ally because people trusted him? But why should strangers trust him? The didn’t even *know* him, and with all the indications that he was an ex-SOLDIER, strangers had no reason to trust him. Even AVALANCHE had taken some time to actually trust him and that was due more to the fact that they needed everyone that was willing to fight against Shinra than actual trust.

“Cloud, look, this is important for us all,” Rufus stated, his voice half pleading. “Dr. Jackson’s people have numerous ways of creating energy plus workers who are willing to help us. If you do this for me, then I will owe you a favor, no questions asked.”

Silent, the blond warrior studied the young president’s face looking for any sign of deception, something he was growing increasingly better at and one of the reasons he suspected Rufus had been concealed behind a blanket the last time they met, but was unable to detect anything other than honest intentions. “All right, but in return I want my footlocker and the footlocker of SOLDIER First Class Zack Fair. Consider that the favor and we’ll be even.”

It might seem foolish to his friends to waste the offered favor on something that trivial, but both were pieces of his past. This way he wouldn’t have to beg Rufus for the footlockers or promise a favor in return.

Instead of agreeing, the man waved the request aside. “If you wanted those, you could have asked,” he chided. “Consider them yours as well as the favor.”

Cloud was unable to mask his surprise at Rufus’ words, and he shook himself out of his thoughts as he approached the desk. “Any special requirements for the deliveries?” he asked, scooping up the envelopes and glancing through the to find out where Rufus was running him. Condor Fort. Kalm. Edge. Icicle Lodge. Junon. North Corel. Costa Del Sol. Gold Saucer. Wutai. Gongaga. Cosmo Canyon. Mideel.Nibelheim. He froze, staring at the destination for several seconds, but the address didn’t change.

Shinra Mansion. Nibelheim.

“The flowers will hold for a few days, but I’m afraid I must ask for your assistance in Nibelheim,” apologized Rufus, and Cloud managed to tear his eyes away from the envelope to focus on the other blond who did look sorry about asking the favor of Cloud. “I have had workers out there getting the mansion cleaned up and organized as a back up location for my company, but they have been unable to locate the entrance to Hojo’s lab. Since you were able to locate it the last time you were there, if you could open it for them? Elena has already been sent there to oversee the operation while she heals.”

Looking up, Cloud started thinking about how long he was going to be making this delivery run and decided to settle on a month. If it turned out to be longer, he could always call Tifa to let her pass the message on to his other customers. He glanced over at Jackson. “Do you have enough supplies for a month?”

Jackson nodded to the backpack that was at his feet, the drab olive color making it almost part of the natural shadows. “I have everything I need in here,” he stated, scooping up the bag. “I’m ready to leave whenever you are.”

“I need to get my stuff,” explained Cloud, reaching down to scoop up the small box. “I only have an overnight bag.” Jackson nodded and smiled at Cloud as he shouldered his bag. Grabbing the bag of Gil, Cloud nodded at Rufus and Reno before leading Jackson outside to his bike.

“Thanks.” The quiet voice had Cloud looking up from where he was packing the letters and the box into one of the compartments he had built into Fenrir for his business, and he tossed a curious look at Jackson who was standing a polite distance away. “For agreeing to let me come. My friends weren’t too keen on this idea either until I pointed out that we’d been manipulated in the past, and got them to agree to let me go alone as long as it was you I was going with.”

Now Cloud was even more confused. “Why me, Dr. Jackson?” he asked. “You didn’t even know me before yesterday, and now your friends are willing to let you ride all over the world with me?”

“You were willing to answer my questions when asked, you showed me how to use this Restore materia when you could have taken it for yourself, and you respect your friends enough to walk away when their mouths run away with them,” pointed out the bespeckled man with a small smile before holding out his hand. “And I’d prefer it if you call me Daniel, Mr. Strife.”

“Cloud,” requested the blond with a small smile as he shook Jackson - Daniel’s hand. “We’d better get going. There’s the possibility of a windstorm and I’d rather be back in Edge instead of in the Wasteland when that shows up.” Reaching into one of the smaller compartments, Cloud pulled out a second pair of goggles and handed them to Daniel who instantly slipped them on.

Swinging his leg over the bike, Cloud settled his own goggles on his face before holding out an arm to help Daniel on which was accepted. “Wrap your arms around my waist and hold tight. Try not to shift your weight too much.”

When warm arms crept around his waist, Cloud revved the engine on Fenrir and tore off down the dirt road, heading back to Edge.

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The powerful engine rumbled between Daniel’s legs as he crouched behind Cloud, and he had to wonder how strong the blond was to be able to control such a heavy and powerful machine easily. He had been surprised when Rufus had proposed the plan of one of SG1 going with Cloud when the young president hired him to deliver letters to various offices, and with a bit of persuasion on Daniel’s part, which included promising to not get distracted, put his life in danger, and carry the cell phone Rufus loaned him, he was able to grab his pack and wait for Cloud to show up.

Wind started whipping around them, carrying bits of sand and dirt, and Daniel crouched lower over Cloud’s back, trying to get out of the way of the stinging bits of earth. The bike swerved slightly, and he tightened his grip on the blond’s waist when suddenly, tension thrummed through Cloud.

“What’s wrong?” shouted Daniel, desperate to be heard over the roar of the wind.

“Minor problem,” shouted Cloud, and there was a loud ka-chunk as the side panels on the bike opened to offer a choice of six swords. Casually, he drew the largest of the swords and held it in one hand as if the huge blade was a dagger. “Hold tight and don’t worry.”

Before Daniel could ask again what was wrong, he hears an ear-shattering bellow and looked past Cloud’s shoulder to find a snake in the middle of the road. A twenty foot long sand brown snake with fangs easily as long as his legs and red beady eyes looking at them as if they were dinner.

And Cloud gunned the engine, heading right for that monestrous snake.

‘Jack’s gonna kill me,’ decided Daniel as the snake reared back to loom at least ten feet above their heads. ‘And then Teal’c’s gonna help and Sam’s gonna look all disappointed that I couldn’t keep myself out of trouble but no one mentioned that Cloud had suicidal tendencies.’

The snake bellowed again and struck, lightning fast, but its fangs sank into the hard ground instead of the bike which Cloud had somehow managed to twist out of the way, despite Daniel clinging to him like a leech. Then the bike stopped moving, and Daniel cautiously peered over Cloud’s shoulder to find the snake lying motionless on the ground, it’s head neatly severed from the rest of its body as its blood pooled around it on the ground.

“Can you let go for a few minutes?” inquired Cloud, and it took Daniel a few seconds to realize that the blond was talking to him. Uncurling his fingers from the lock they had around the slender waist, Daniel managed to remove his arms to allow Cloud to slip from the now silent bike. Daniel forced his shaky legs to move as he followed Cloud over to the now dead snake as the blond started searching the corpse.

“Why did you charge this thing?” asked Daniel, wrapping his arms around his waist to stop his shaking. He still couldn’t believe Cloud had done that. “Wasn’t there another way to get around it?”

Cloud looked up from where he was extracting a flame red down feather from between two brown scales the size of hubcaps. “If we had gone around it, then the snake would have been here for the next person that came this way, and they might not have been able to kill it as easily as I did.”

Standing up, the blond tucked the bit of down into a pocket before grabbing one of the scales and ripping it off the corpse with a sickening sound. “Come on. We still have deliveries to make, and the wind’s getting worse.”

Daniel followed Cloud back to the bike where the swordsman somehow managed to stow the huge scale on the bike along with his sword before settling back across the powerful machine. The wind was starting to moan like a lost soul through the rocks, and with small sigh, Daniel climbed back on the bike, his arms wrapping around the blond’s waist before they took off again.

They were silent for the rest of the trip to Edge, the increasing wind making it impossible for them to talk, and Daniel had to finally bury his face in the blond’s sweater to keep the worst of the sand and dirt being thrown at them away from his skin. Even when they reached Edge, the wind continued to howl through the buildings and streets, sending up a cacophony with the sand and dirt hammering at steel and glass. Driving through the mostly empty streets, Daniel caught the occasional glimpse of other vehicles, but they were enclosed vehicles such as cars or trucks. A few more turns in what Daniel thought was the neighborhood where the Seventh Heaven bar was located and then Cloud was pulling into what looked like a modified loading dock, killing the engine as the door slid shut behind them, blocking out the wind.

“Ancients, it’s getting bad out there,” muttered Cloud, sliding off the bike to shake some dust and dirt out of his hair, and Daniel was suddenly all too aware of the trickle of grains down the back of his collar. “Come on. We can get cleaned up and find out how long the storm’s gonna last.” He grabbed the scale and one of the letters before tromping out of the modified garage, leaving small clumps of dust and dirt in his wake, and Daniel grabbed his bag to follow the blond swordsman.

At the top of the stairs, he saw Cloud hesitate next to a pair of light switches before flipping one and turning away from the door that was in the wall. From what he could see, nothing happened on this side of the door so whatever was attached to those switches was on the *other* side of the door. The blond gestured towards a door farther down the hall. “That’s the bathroom, and there’s a spare bedroom across the way. Feel free to use both getting clean.”

Cloud had walked into a large open room that looked like a cross between a bedroom and a living room, a large sturdy wooden bed pushed against the concrete wall while overstuffed chairs were scattered with a couch and a large bookshelf. Yet there was a surprisingly bare feel to the room, as if Cloud had only recently moved in and was still trying to find things to fill his space with. The blond shrugged out of his leather bits of armor dropping them in a pile of tangled black straps before peeling off his sweater to reveal a pair of tattooed wings on his back, the golden yellow feathers outlined in black ink standing out against the tanned skin.

“Why did you get wings tattooed on your back?” Daniel asked, curious to know if it was a cultural thing or a personal thing.

Cloud glanced over shoulder at Daniel, a sad smile on his lips. “My best friend took me out drinking on my sixteenth birthday,” he began, peeling off his gloves and dropping them on the dusty sweater. “He always compared me to a chocobo ‘cause of my hair, and I remember telling him that night that I couldn’t be a chocobo because chocobos have wings and I didn’t.”

Unable to help himself, Daniel chuckled. “And like any friend, he decided therefor that you needed wings and dragged you into the nearest tattoo parlor,” he concluded, remembering all too many similar stories circulating around the SGC and Jack telling of his early days in the military.

Suddenly, there was a quick knock from the door in the hallway, and it opened to admit Denzel whose blue eyes widened in delight at the sight of the blond. “Hey Cloud,” he greeted only to stop at the sight of Daniel, his grin fading slightly to nod politely in greeting.

“I thought Mr. Walter was giving you a test period today,” stated the blond, turning to face the young boy. His tone wasn’t accusing, as if Denzel was skipping this test period on purpose, more curious as to why Denzel wasn’t with Mr. Walter.

Denzel shrugged a shoulder. “He called when word of the windstorm starting came in and postponed it until tomorrow,” he said, running a hand through his reddish brown hair. “He said he was going to shut his shop down early anyway, and it wouldn’t be polite for me to be out in this weather anyway.” Those blue eyes flickered over to Daniel again before returning to Cloud. “Tifa’s not going to be opening until after this storm dies down but the radio’s talking that it’s going to be around until after sunset.”

“Thanks Denzel. Tell Tifa we’ll be over once we get cleaned up.” At the blond’s words, Denzel nodded and turned to vanish back through the mysterious door in the hallway that Daniel just figured out led to the Seventh Heaven bar. Cloud looked up at Daniel. “Go ahead and get a shower. I’ll head next door and borrow Tifa’s.”

Before Daniel could argue, Cloud had scooped up a pair of towels and a change of clothes and vanished through the door after Denzel, except he left the door open in an invitation to join them when Daniel was done. Shaking his head in confusion, Daniel dug out a change of clothes before investigating the bathroom.

The bathroom was large with a shower stall big enough for two and a round bathtub that could fit five people easily with a toilet and sink against the opposite wall. While it looked rather decadent compared to the rest of the building, Daniel could see something more than an opulent bathroom. The shower, big enough for two people when one was injured just enough to make washing troublesome, and the tub for when more than one person was hurt bad enough to require medical assistance but not bad enough to require a hospital. He briefly had to wonder if Cloud and his friends were injured so badly that they needed this kind of medical assistance on a regular basis but one thought about the snake earlier was enough to answer that question.

‘If monsters like that snake are common place, then they’d need a set up like this should things get out of hand,’ he mused, placing his clothes on the counter next to the sink before starting the water. ‘But if resources are as stretched as they seem to be, then it would make sense that they’d doctor themselves to keep from what they might see as taking away resources from someone who would need it more.’

Which was something they had seen before, and even lived it. Whenever they came back through the Gate beat up by whatever decided to pounce them that time, it was only the serious injuries that ended up in Janet’s clutches while the rest of them doctored themselves. Or if Daniel happened to return with a scrape or a bandage, he’d find himself in the infirmary with Janet holding her Penlight O’Doom, ready to double check all his injuries and especially his head even if it *didn’t* get smacked around like it normally did.

‘Maybe this time, I’ll be able to get back without any injuries,’ he mused before turning his attention to getting clean.

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