I keep on remembering all of the other AU's I have. Argh.

Default:

Cloud is a magpie when it comes to things that interest him. This first manifested with newspaper clippings about Sephiroth. The messy box where the clippings piled up also show that he knows fuck-all about organization.

Cloud's ringtone is set to the defaults. Default tone, default volume.

He decided on the wolf, Fenrir's name, and the design of his AC clothes from stories that his mother used to tell him.

Mercverse:

Although he learned about the ley-line positioning of the Budehuc Building from Aeris, he had some sort of feeling about the place being special from the neighborhood's name, Lilyfield. It took a bit for him to remember that the place was called the Field of Miracles about five hundred years back.

Cloud is a patron of the Soledt Academy of Military Science because it's the only private school that isn't run by the Church. He doesn't like the Church because many of his friends and lovers have been on the Church's hit list on one time or another.

Cloud's foundations in firearms and covert operations came from Balthier. Given that the Howling Voice Guild was taken into the Crown's direct authority, this gives Cloud a basic grounding in Turk training.

We and the World:

Despite Zack's insistence to the contrary, Cloud first learned ES from his mother. Cloud helped her with her Wutanese. Sephiroth, however, knows more kanji than he ever did.

Whenever anyone says anything to the effect of "red headed barbarian", Cloud feels like everyone is staring at him. Usually, because they really are.

Cloud is immediately wary of any sort of speech that begins "We": "We Easterners", "We Soldiers", "We Wutanese".

I keep on remembering AU's. I don't have enough readers to ask for specifics, so I'll dump them all out.

Default:

Despite being the Village Bicycle of Soldier, Zack's first experience with a member of the opposite gender was with Aeris. He only agreed to go down on her as a form of recon. She had to tell him what to do, regardless.

Zack, like most of Soldier, has learned Loveless through osmosis. (Genesis quoting the thing all the damn time.) He only learned the stage show version--with all the songs--to piss off Genesis. It worked.

Zack started off in swordplay from getting a decent sized stick to hit things back in Gongaga. The Academy instructors and Angeal have had to deprogram him of it.

Tarquin learned Midgar word usage from listening to Sephiroth. Consequently, it took a while. After he reached First Class, he went back to Junonese usage, anyway. People think it's an affectation.

The mako injections are the reason why he normally doesn't have freckles. A few hours in the sun tend to cure him of that, as the Wutai campaigns have taught everyone.

He became an Academy instructor because he shut down for a while after Wutai, and was taken off active duty. (Then put back on again after the... events with Soldiers Rhapsodos and Hewley.) That job is the only reason why he defaults to "materia-supported energy emissions" rather than "magic."

Mercverse:

Zack can't think of a personal motto. He wants his to be at least as cool as Cloud's: "Loyalty unto death."

Zack doesn't want to understand the ins and outs of patronage, and he's unaware that he's doing it, too: Only sending his packages through Vaan and Penelo's courier service, slumming only at places that Aeris approves of, using this one guy in the Circle for the repairs/ricing out of his computers.

Zack tends to dismiss his own intelligence. The impressive aspects of his education are just "Things that Cloud taught me."

If it wasn't for Zack's mother, he and Ayame wouldn't have been born. Their parents worked where she had and were there during the accident. Zack's mother happened to get them out of the building at the same time. They hit it off, and were married.

He does not understand why some mages still use Dead Tree and Dead Thing Format for their Books of Shadow. Discs and computers can be warded, too. He's not dismissive of books entirely, however.

He learned calligraphy from brushing on wards and blessings. He's not familiar enough with formal written Wutaian to write anything else in the language.

We and the World:

Gongagans hid their knowledge of Wutanese empty hand forms in their festival dances. Zack only found this out when training for Soldier. The first form he learned was a turn-by-turn double of a harvest dance his grandmother tried to teach him.

The first thing that Zack learned in Wutanese was not, as many people think, all of the ruder ways of saying "you." The first thing Zack learned to say was "What time is it?"

Zack calls Sephiroth his boyfriend to annoy him, of course. He's also noticed that Sephiroth gets just a little red whenever he says it. Zack's flattered.

Not in it.

Default:

• Sephiroth's first kill was around the time he was twelve, and started being integrated into society. No one really knows the particulars, since the massive amounts of red-tape fu generated after the event have hushed things up.


• Sephiroth is not a war hawk. He hates wasting any sort of resource. However, he longs for battles and missions, because he can be away and alone.


• It started out as a joke, but he's decided to keep a mental tally about how many times people have asked about his choice in design for his First Class uniform. So far, it's twenty-seven. Zack has said that if he didn't look so scary, the number would be higher.

Mercverse:

• He's very sure that Dante made up the whole thing about being related, just because they sound alike over the phone.


• He thinks Shelke's technomancy is too precice and Aeris's Cetra abilities--ironically--too wild. Whatever demon is in him hates restrictions, but the rest of him is afraid of what will happen, should he lose control.


• He thinks that hiding the glow of his eyes is stupid. Yet he still has his sunglasses. People tended to bother him less when he had them on than when he had them off, for whatever reason.

We and the World:

• He wonders why Cloud was not named "Kumoko" or something similar. Would that have helped his assimilation, if he had been? Would it have made it worse?


• He didn't have much of a choice in learning Wutanese. It was something that started when he was four or so, and he was simply allowed to keep it up.


• He'd like to debate the accuracy of Zack's declaring him a "boyfriend." He would like to debate it, whenever Zack addresses him as such, but he can't come up with a good argument on the spot.