☆ ━━━ Cloud Strife was looking for his darkness.
Some might assume it festered in his heart, and he would agree with that. He was tinged in the dark matter, his entire inside coated in gray. The problem lay in the fact that he had too much darkness and that, over time, he lost track of it and it morphed into something monstrous.
He had to find that piece of himself that was lost among the stars somewhere, the figment that was tattered and reveled within madness.
Cloud hoped that if he vanquished it--once and for all--he could have peace again.
His journey lead him to Hollow Bastion. It was a still a bright world when he arrived. True darkness had yet to touch the place and people clamored among crowded markets, or basked in parks laden with sweet-smelling flowers, he even saw they splashed in glittering ponds. The world was alive and brimming... and it made him anxious. Still, he couldn’t turn away when he felt that burning rage so close by. In fact, it was the closest he’d been to his darkness in months.
He found himself locked within battle not long after. While the world was certainly pure in the town above, inside the ravines Cloud trekked he found shadows licking his heels, their glowing eyes peeking around the effervescent crystals that poked out from crags along the cliffs. Purple dust puffed up and around his boots with every step in his battle dance. His sword was cutting through the air as he went after a creature that was nearly perfectly round and at least eight feet tall. It had a tiny head with yellow dots for eyes and a face perfectly masked in shadow. While Cloud was utterly unaware what the creature could be, others more keen on the subject could tell you it was a Large Body and it was impenetrable on its front half of its body.
Cloud was certainly a strong soldier, but he wasn’t always... the brightest. He was lost in the heat of battle and was becoming frustrated with the fact that no matter how many times his ginormous sword thwacked away at the thing, it never backed down or even seemed phased in the slightest. Cloud kept hacking away until the Large Body became bored and thrust out its great girth the precise moment Cloud brought his Buster Sword crashing down--the impact resulted in a scraggly blonde man soaring through the air and landing onto the rough, flat earth with a thwack!
Cloud’s vision was hazy for a second too long and even though he was entirely breathless and his head spun as he began staggering to his feet, he seemed determined to press on against the fiend. He was stupid like that.
Until he noticed the shadowy giant charging at him belly-first and closing the gap between them at what was too quickly for something so huge.
