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| - | [[Image:Cloud.gif|frame|Cloud Strife is a quiet young man with untamable hair that tends to have whole conversations with himself before he realizes that the rest of the room is waiting for him to answer the teacher's question.]]
| + | SB4u7i This is one awesome blog article. |
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| - | Cloud Strife is one of the main characters from Square-Enix's popular video game [[Final Fantasy VII]] and also the main character in the movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. He also has a minor appearance in the Vincent Valentine-centered game Dirge of Cerberus. For this game, Cloud comes from Post Advent Children with some background coming from the game Dirge of Cerberus. He is a more stable, confident person because of it, but Cloud still has a lot of issues due to his past and his emotional baggage caused by that past.<br>
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| - | Cloud's typist is Alec.<br><br>
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| - | =Basics=
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| - | ==Stats==
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| - | <B>Name:</B>Cloud Strife<br>
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| - | <B>Nicknames:</B>Spike; Spiky; Chocobo-head; Gloomy; Cloudster<br>
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| - | <B>Age:</B> 23<br>
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| - | <B>Race:</B> Altered human<br>
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| - | <B>Hair</B> Pale blond<br>
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| - | <B>Eyes:</B> Vivid blue<br>
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| - | <B>Height:</B> 5'8"<br>
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| - | <B>Weight:</B> 183 lbs<br>
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| - | <B>Styling:</B> The former environmental terrorist, and current delivery boy has a style all his own. Sleeveless shirts, sweaters and vests, heavy jeans and slacks, all of them in various dark shades make up the majority of his wardrobe. He has a couple of suits for work, but he always looks uncomfortable and out of place when he wears them. He always wears gloves on his hands, even in classes.<br>
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| - | <B>Oddities:</B> Cloud's eyes are a blue so intense that they look like they glow, the blue lightening to green close to his slightly elongated pupils. His hair remains spiked in defiance to all known forms of gravity, styling products and forces of nature, but despite it's apparent stiffness is actually rather soft and fine to the touch. He has a number '2' on the back of his left hand with a barcode underneath it that he keeps covered.<br>
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| - | <B>Sex:</B> When asked what his sexual orientation is, he would answer it as being 'undecided' - if he answers the questioner that is. When he was in the SOLDIER program and later during his time as a common grunt in Shin-Ra's army, he had a few fumbling encounters with both men and women, just trying out everything to find what he really liked. Yes, he is attracted to both sexes; he just never came to a definite conclusion as to how far the attraction goes. He is still trying to find answers to that question.<br>
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| - | He is certainly close to Tifa, to the point of dating her off and on since Kadja's attack on Edge. He is also extremely careful when it comes to intimate relationships with anyone because of the changes made to his body.<br>
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| - | ==Voices?==
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| - | Despite everything, he still has unwanted visitors talking to him, especially those two people he felt he had let down the most and his great enemy. While it usually doesn’t bother him – he would be more bothered if he didn't hear them at all – he can hold entire conversations in his head that drowns out everything that is happening around him. Sometimes he may say or do something out loud in response to those voices, which can be odd if seen for the first time or even the fifth time.<br>
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| - | These voices - either actual spirits or a manifestation of the Jenova cells inside of him - include Zack, Aerith and Sephiroth. Zack was the 1st Class SOLDIER that helped get Cloud out of the hands of Hojo and died during their bid for freedom. Aerith was the last of the Ancients killed by Sephiroth in front of Cloud. Sephiroth is the enemy he had defeated twice now, and as a result has the unwanted presence inside his head. Fortunately for Cloud, the three only rarely talk to Cloud, usually at times of stress or when doctors are heavily drugging him for pain.<br>
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| - | =Motives=
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| - | Cloud had always been cocky about himself and his skills. He had no qualms of telling others of what he could do or how he was going to do it. It has gotten him into trouble in the past – after all, he wouldn’t have been so determined to be around Sephiroth in the first place if it wasn’t for his childhood bragging. His arrogance has grown less of the bragging sort as he grown up and grown older. With his skills proven to a majority of the world, he has found that he need not talk about what he is going to do, he just does it with a single-minded purpose that can be scary to witness, let alone be the focus of.
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| - | A loner even as a child, he held himself apart from others, first as a way to protect others from bullies and later on because he did not feel adequate enough to be friends with anyone. After suffering at the hands of Hojo and the loss of Zack and Aerith, Cloud distanced himself from everyone, not wanting to loose any more friendships or giving anyone a chance to use his insecurities against him. Even with Tifa, he could not make himself open up to others. He did not wish to cause them any grief let alone suffer any himself. He is only partly successful at the last bit, having grown to care for all the people he worked with during the Meteor Crisis.
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| - | If one thing is true about him now, after everything he has lived through and facing his demons twice, he has grown to understand that he is not alone any more. That keeping himself away from others only hurts him worse than accepting that they care and in return that he cares as well. In that end, he has started to show how he cares by becoming more of a friend towards others. He will help them out if he notices that they need help or even if they don’t but he can give a hand anyways. He can smile, although his smiles are short and fade quickly. But at long last, he feels accepted by everyone around him. And he is finally happy.
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| - | =Interactions=
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| - | ==Friends and Family==
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| - | Cloud has no family, his father missing since before he was born and his mother having died during the incident with Sephiroth nearly eight years ago. However, Cloud has a lot of friends, enough to surprise him whenever they spring a surprise party on him or drag him off to do something. The most notable of them is [[Tifa]] who has been a close friend since his early childhood. Others in this ever widening circle include the other members of AVALANCHE - Barret, Vincent, Reeve (and Cath Sith), Yuffie, and Cid. Since coming to Desia, he has also become friends with [[Yamada Hanatarou]], [[Kuchiki Byakuya]], [[Rikku]] and [[Axel]] while he talks with [[Lady]] and [[Rufus Sinra]] through the internet, as well as the twins [[Dante]] and [[Vergil]] although he tries to avoid them because he does not get them. [[L]] is his erst-while roommate before the destruction of his rooms and he is now currently sharing a dorm room with [[Greed]], the two haven't met face-to-face yet. Cloud also has a pet cat he named Zack while [[Rikku]] calls her Zackmonkey.<br>
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| - | ==Enemies==
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| - | In canon, Cloud lists Sephiroth, Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo as his main enemies. They are the ones he fights the most, especially Sephiroth, who had managed to split his consciousness into the three brothers - Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo - in the search for Jenova. Jenova is an enemy, though Sephiroth had manipulated the Calamity in the game. She is the mother the three brothers were searching for. Hojo is an enemy due to the experimentation done on Cloud. Shin-Ra is an enemy because the company allowed the experimentation and the destruction of his whole village without once apologizing for it.<br>
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| - | He hasn't made very many enemies in game, although he is hostile towards [[Rufus Shinra]] due to the past history they share.
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| - | =Weapons/Skills/Items=
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| - | ==Weapons==
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| - | [[Image:FirstTsurugi.jpg|thumb|100px|Tsurugi in all it's parts]] Cloud only has one weapon - First Tsurugi or commonly referred to as Tsurugi. While it is just one very large sword, it is made up of six blades, each one serving a specific part in making the whole sword. Fully assembled, Tsurugi is a heavy blade from the Buster-class swords, the same class that Zack's own sword came from, custom designed for Cloud following Meteor. A huge weapon, it is made more for smashing through things than fine point-work. However the edge is sharp enough to make clean slices into steel and concrete and flesh.<br>
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| - | When not fully assembled, Cloud often will fight using the Main Blade that has two positions – a closed, Zweihänder-styled form and an open hollowed centered form. The second blade - often times used with his off-hand in battle - is the Hollow Blade, which does not have an inner core like most blades. The next two blades are mirroring Serrated blades that balance each other when slid into place. The last two blades are small Switchblades that have folding hilts, hence the name.
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| - | <br>He has a sword harness made especially for Tsurugi with which he can carry the blade in its completed form or carry all six blades at once. Separated, he can use a majority of his limit breaks, only his ‘Ultimate War God Slash Version 5’ - aka Omnislash version 5 - requires a fully assembled Tsurugi to work. When not in his locker in the gym area, or being carried in his harness, his sword is placed inside his motorcycle Fenrir.<br>
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| - | ==Skills==
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| - | Cloud has shown to have mechanical skills with his motorcycle Fenrir and other small engines. He fights like a SOLDIER 1st Class even though he never had any formal training outside of being a cadet. He can use materia and is knowledgeable in their construction due to the information gained during his travels during Meteor. He has an extremely high tolerance for pain, is far tougher than his frame would let someone think, and has a high healing rate. He also has some skill with art, especially metal working and painting although his subjects seem to be focused on the tragedies in his past.<br>
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| - | ==Items==
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| - | Fenrir is his motorcycle designed for him by members of the WRO's engineering crew. He had several master materia but they are currently being held by the MDEA because of their potency. He has a cat he has named Zack - she's a longhaired black & white cat with a ruff of fur on the top of her head that reminds him of Zack, hence the name.
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| - | =Background=
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| - | ==Pre-Meteor==
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| - | Cloud Strife was a little guy in a small mountain town with big dreams. He wanted to become a SOLDIER and meet the Ultimate SOLDIER Sephiroth. He wanted to come back with tales of fighting with his hero to impress the other children, especially popular [[Tifa]], a nice girl that was really his only friend. Towards that end, he made a promise to come back and protect her before he left for Midgard.
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| - | Things didn’t work out the way he had hoped when he went into the cadets. He was – and always had been – a loner, never really able to fit in among other people. He was also the smallest person in his squad and thus ended up constantly behind the others in training and other physical activities. Even with help from the SOLDIER 1st Class Zack, Cloud could not get the hang of weapon use or working with others in a team. He barely passed the Mako screening, being the sickest the longest in his squad. Because of that reason, he did not make it into the SOLDIER Program.
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| - | Zack still kept on being his friend and tried to include Cloud in missions, some of which also involved Sephiroth. That was how he ended up returning to his hometown of Nibelheim, in the uniform of a regular army grunt assigned to the two SOLDIERs. He kept his face hidden around his old playmates – especially that of [[Tifa]] – not wanting to hear the ridicule for failing yet again. He watched as Sephiroth slowly went mad in the old mansion and tried to help Zack stop the ultimate SOLDIER from torching the town as Sephiroth made his way to the Mako reactor in search of the hidden object mentioned in Hojo’s notes. Unfortunately, Cloud, Zack and [[Tifa]] stood in his way.
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| - | [[Tifa]] survived and headed for Midgard and soon became part of AVALANCHE. Zack and Cloud also survived not only Sephiroth’s blade but a high concentration of Mako energy as well. Hojo found that out and had them brought to his labs for testing in hopes to create another ultimate SOLDIER like Sephiroth. One thing led to another and three years past them by. Somehow, Cloud and Zack managed to bust out of the labs only to have their bid for freedom and Midgard blocked by Shinra soldiers. Zack died to give Cloud time to get away, and Cloud – sick, tired and unbalanced – found all his memories of what had happened either changed or blocked completely. He took on the appearance of Zack, even down to wearing the same kind of clothing and using the same kind of weaponry, and put his skills to use as a mercenary.
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| - | ==Meteor==
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| - | He was soon hired by AVALANCHE as an extra hand in their plans to stop Shin-Ra from destroying the planet. He did not recognize [[Tifa]] when they finally met at the Seventh Heaven Bar, instead he asked for payment, accepted another job and then slept. The next mission did not turn out so easy, with Shin-Ra and the Turks showing up. It got even worse when Cloud ran into the Turks while talking with the flower girl again. Cloud brings Aerith to the bar for safety only to find that the Turks had followed them back to Seventh Heaven Bar, where Aerith got kidnapped and a lot of people got hurt.
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| - | This set off a whole bunch of traveling and fighting, that ended up proving that Sephiroth was not just insane and Cloud was not who he really thought he was. They fought Turks and Shin-Ra and several versions of a mad Sephiroth while facing the challenge of saving the earth and the Livestream against Hojo and Jenova. In the end, Cloud faced off against Sephiroth – mad with visions from Jenova and Hojo’s poisoned words – and defeated him, giving Aerith and the Lifestream the chance to stop Jenova and Meteor. Midgard and several other cities were laid to waste as a result but the planet had been saved.
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| - | Cloud helped with the clean up and building of Edge near Midgard’s ruins along with the other members of his team. But with the coming of peaceful times, the people he sometimes called friends all went to pursue their own lives and interests. He and Barret stayed to help Tifa with her bar before Barret went off drilling for oil and he decided to get a real job, delivering packages across the planet. After all, he could whatever he wanted now that the world was saved. Besides, he had to live for himself as well as Zack. It didn’t keep the nightmares away all the time, but there was something satisfying about working.<br>
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| - | ==Advent Children & Beyond==
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| - | Then the nightmares came back stronger than ever and he started hearing and seeing people that had died for him. Shortly after that, he started developing the geostigma, the blackness creeping across his arm just like the apathy creeping across his soul. He cut himself off from everyone, not wanting them to see his fall into ruin and even though he kept up with his work, he found himself not caring more and more each day. He stopped answering his phone, he stopped seeing [[Tifa]] and the kids, and stopped even trying to live.
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| - | A chance run in with three men following a call from Reno started shaking him out of his private misery. Then there was the meeting with Rufus – not dead as he had thought – and then finding [[Tifa]] injured, Marlene and Denzel missing and his mastered materia missing. He passed out from the pain of his geostigma after that, and woke up to have Reno and Rude give him a very brief lecture before waiting for [[Tifa]] to regain consciousness. Then a much longer lecture, and a drive through the night to find the kids and bring them home.
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| - | Which did not happen. Kadaj and his brothers nearly killed him in the Forgotten City but Vincent has saved him and dragged him to safety. Marlene showed up shortly after that and Cloud faced one of the biggest choices he had to face – give in and let everyone die or fight and help everyone live. The choice wasn’t as hard as he had thought it would be. He went back to Edge with a desire to fight and live again.
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| - | There were a few more battles – Cloud regaining his strength once again, first with the help of his friends against the summon, then later by himself against Yazoo and Loz. He then fought Kadaj with everything he had, and then gave his all against Sephiroth after Kadaj’s absorption of Jenova’s cells. At the end, he won the battles and even came back from near death after Yazoo and Loz tried blowing him up. The children were saved and the geostigma was finally defeated and Cloud was finally rid of all the baggage in his life.
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| - | A year later, there were strange things happening in old Midgard and Edge City. The Deep-grounders came from out of the ruins of Shin-Ra to cleanse the planet of taint, taking with them those that they deemed worthy of surviving. Cloud and his friends gathered together again to lend support to Vincent, who was the focus of this new army. The ruins of Midgard proved to be excellent grounds to the people of Deep-ground and also home to some strange rifts of light. Cloud happened to be in mid-battle when he literally ran into a rift with a pack of Deep-grounders after him. After a short bloody battle, he ended up stuck in Desai for an undetermined amount of time.
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| - | =Desia Timeline=
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| - | Cloud meets with [[Hana]] after talking to the shinigami over the net. The two become friends with Cloud growing a big brother attitude concerning Hana's welfare.<br>
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| - | An encounter with [[Alucard]] over the <i>book</i> gained Cloud his first internet encounter with the twins [[Dante]] and [[Vergil]] that ended with Cloud deciding to leave those two well-enough alone.<br>
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| - | Cloud meets up with [[Byakuya]] in the Art rooms and gives the older shinigami the nickname of 'Bee' during a teasing moment.<br>
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| - | During the incident where the twins destroyed part of the dorms, Cloud ended up with a sever concussion and a sprained wrist. His cat survived unscratched.<br>
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| - | During a moment of drunkenness - five Blue Screens of Death are not to be taken lightly btw - he mentioned his voices and made a number of people - [[Greed]], [[Rufus Shinira]] and [[Lady]] - concerned as to what he was going to do next. [[Axel]] went to meet him at the bar and the two decided on a name calling game that lasted until the next day.<br>
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| - | ==Classes==
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| - | <b>Major:</b> History<br>
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| - | <b>Minor:</b> Art<br>
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| - | Currently taking:<br>
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| - | History 2301: Intro to Inter-World History<br>
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| - | English 2389: Literature of the Worlds<br>
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| - | Art 2341: Art Metals<br>
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| - | Mechanics and Engineering 1313: Automotive Repair<br>
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| - | Physical Education 2189: Melee Weapons<br>
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| - | Physical Education 2253: Heavy Blades<br>
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| - | <b>Dorm Room:</b> 202A but currently in 104C due to the twins' fight.
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| - | =Links=
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