Final Fantasy: Zack's second chance

by Freelancer


Chapter 1: What Friendship And Magic Can Do

Chapter 1: What Friendship And Magic Can Do


“You heard me,” Spitfire smirked with amusement, most likely at Zack’s expression of total and utter confusion. “I wished you here.”

“I… you… wish… you know what, just forget about it,” Zack growled at last, peering over the edge of their cloud. “I’ll think this whole thing over later… by the way, we should probably get down from here.”

“Awwww! Come on, you know you like being up here alone with me,” Spitfire teased, prompting Zack to once again groan and rub his temples in frustration; sure she was only drunk, but she was still starting to get really annoying.

In the last seven minutes or so she had done nothing but confuse him, and make his headache worse, but Zack knew it would be more than unwise to simply leave her high in the clouds in such a drunken state. The last thing he wanted to hear was that she’d rolled off during the night, and promptly plummeted to her death.

Hence, without saying another word, he briskly picked up the intoxicated pegasus and slung her over his shoulder, ignoring her hysterical laughs that were now ringing in his ears.

“I guess you’re a stallion who likes to take the lead then huh?”

Zack did nothing more than role his eyes and sigh at the statement.

“Just do me a favour,” he said firmly, casting a glance back at the grinning pony. “Be quiet, hold on, and try not to freak the hell out.”

“Do I look like a foal to you?” was the amused snort of a reply. “Nothing can scare me.”

“Yeah right,” Zack muttered with a shake of his head.

Then, taking a firm grip of Spitfire, and taking a final breath in, he sprinted forward and jumped from the cloud.

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Anyone who had ever seen a SOLDIER fight would have sworn they defied the laws of nature when they moved through the air. Zack, however, humoursly preferred to see it more of as an extreme bending of the law, rather than a breaking of it.

None the less, it was still a remarkable spectacle to behold as the black haired SOLDIER leapt between the clouds at extreme speed, making his way down toward the city below him... with a hysterical pegasus over his shoulder, no less. What amazed him the most, however, was that Spitfire wasn’t freaking out, but rather still laughing hysterically, which despite how annoying she was did eventually bring a small grin to his face.

He soon landed with a cushioned thud on the pavement, or what he guessed was supposed to be the pavement anyway; it was a little hard to tell what was street and what was someone’s front yard, given that everything in sight was made of the same white cloud.

Slowly, and as gently as possible, he removed Spitfire from his shoulder and set her down, the golden mare still in fits of drunken giggles from the ride down.

“Wow that was fun… we should do it again sometime.”

It was then Zack finally gave in and snapped, losing all control of himself as he broke down into uncontrollable laughter, right alongside the cider intoxicated pegasus.

“Spitfire… you… are… just… plain… crazy,” he somehow managed to get out before falling over onto his back beside her, sinking a few millimetres into the soft cloud as he laughed.

For a few moments he just lay there beneath the stars, trying to gather his thoughts; he had to admit it felt good to be happy after everything that had happened, his 'death' and all, and the fact he was laughing alone with someone else made it all the better, even if he barely knew what she was.

It felt like the day he'd befriended Cloud, laughing and mocking each other's hometowns like old friends.

Once he had fairly much regained himself, he sighed and looked up at the heavens, silently wondering how he had ended up in a place such as this one... although considering he should’ve been dead, he didn’t regret it in the slightest.

“Hey Zack, you coming or what?”

Zack looked over to see Spitfire was already standing a short distance away with her tail to him, smiling and indicating that although it had been fun, she was ready to go somewhere else.

“Um, where exactly is that you plan on taking me?” he asked as he got to his feet, shaking his mass of black hair to dislodge any cloud had become stuck in it.

“Well, considering you made me leave my cloud, I now need to find another place to sleep… so I guess my hotel room would be a good start.”

“Are you sure about th…”

“Oh come on you,” she laughed with a shake of her head, her elegant mane dancing from side to side like tongues of flame. “I brought you into this world didn’t I? What kind of friend would I be if I just left you out here?”

Zack bit his lip and stroked his chin for a moment; admittedly, the idea of sleeping outside wasn’t a good one, and his honour was telling him letting Spitfire walk back to her hotel room alone and drunk was a bad plan as well... still, he felt a little uneasy about the whole proposition.

But she had called him ‘friend’, which despite barley knowing her still meant he had a duty to look out for her all the same, lest he forsake one of Angeal's golden rules.

“Alright, wait up,” he said at last, leaping forward and clearing the ten meter gap between them in a single jump, landing softly right beside the awaiting golden pegasus mare. "Has this all even sunk in for her yet? Eh, probably not."


The walk back to her hotel was spent predominantly in peaceful silence as Zack observed his new surroundings; literally everything he laid his eyes on was made of white and light blue cloud, from houses, to benches, to the occasional street lamp they passed. Every so often the two would come across a random pegasus, who would stand and silently gawk at Zack, they usually, however, kept walking when he threw a dangerous smile at them, and reached up and grasped the hilt of Angeal’s Buster Sword.

It seemed that the fear of sharp metal things was universal.

The fact he still somehow had it was unrelentingly screwing with his mind; he clearly remembered Cloud lifting it from him, and yet it was still in his possession, which didn’t make any sense... but then again, the fact he was even alive didn’t make sense either.

Ugh, one headache was enough for now.

“Hey Zack,” Spitfire jutted in gently halfway through one his ponderings. “Can I ask you something?”

He glanced down and saw her eyes looking up into his own blue ones, a soft expression on her face. “Sure.”

“You’re not… angry… are you?” she asked quietly. “About me bringing you here and all. I never intended for anything bad to happen.”

Zack lowered a hand and placed it gently on the young mare's golden shoulder, a smile growing on his face as he spoke and pulled her in gently against his leg. He could see she was sorry for any harm done, if there was any, but in truth he couldn’t bring himself to disdain her in any way.

“Spitfire, this is going to sound absolutely insane, but... I'm pretty sure I basically died in my own world... if that makes any sense... so if anything I should be thanking you for bringing me... well, here… because realistically you’re the reason I’m alive. So no, I’m not angry. Am I confused? Yes, do I feel somewhat out of place? Yeah, a lot, am I angry about it? Hell no.”

She said no more but settled into a quiet happy mood, and since she seemed to enjoy the feeling of having his hand on her shoulder, Zack left it there as they walked. He had to admit she was no longer the annoying drunken pegasus he had woken up next to earlier, what exactly she was now, however, he wasn’t entirely sure, perhaps he did see her as a friend after all.

"I swear Angeal would be laughing his head off if he could see me now."

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“Well, welcome home Zack,” Spitfire said happily as she at last managed to release the lock and push the door open, taking a quick glance over her shoulder at her SOLDIER guest. “Well… home for a few days anyway.”

Zack was forced to duck through the doorway to get in. Once inside though, he was glad to find the ceiling was just high enough for him to stand upright, something which surprised him given he was just over six foot. Running his fingers over the walls, and eyes around the room, he noted literally everything was made of shaped cloud, even the dresser that sat in the room’s far corner, and even its own sliding draws, were made of the fluffy white substance.

The room itself was quite spacious given there were apparently only two occupants, plus it seemed all things basic luxury had been included as well. A walk-in wardrobe sat on the right side of the room, beside another door which presumably led to a bathroom of sorts, a four draw dresser sat in the far right corner along with a bookshelf, bar fridge, desk, and a balcony overlooking downtown Cloudsdale even splayed out on the opposite side of the room.

Two large beds lined the room’s left wall; both were as he had half expected made of cloud, including the blankets and pillows. The only things he noted that weren’t made of cloud was a mirror, and the occasional golden wall light, which for some reason seemed to run without any source of power.

“I take it you share the room,” he remarked with a curious glance at Spitfire, inclining his head to the room’s second bed, which had obviously been slept in.

Spitfire dimmed the lights in ready for sleep, and then snorted, sighed, and rubbed her face with her hoof before answering.

“Yeah… you’d think being as a professional athlete would get the managers here to at least let you have your own room,” She grunted distastefully with a shake of her head. “I’m sharing with Soarin, who you’ll probably hear come in later with a mare he picked up at the bar… and he’ll also be drunker then I am too, just so you know.”

“He doesn’t sound like the most honourable or trustable of friends,” Zack replied dryly, tearing his eyes from the window and the city beyond. “I’m surprised you’d get along.”

“We don’t get along!” she snapped, a surprising amount of anger in her voice. “Personally I can’t tolerate him in the slightest sometimes, but unfortunately we’re team mates, so I have no choice but to put up with his horseapples... ugh… look Zack... I’m sorry I’m cranky, but he really got on my nerves tonight, plus I need some sleep. I think I had too much to drink earlier.”

Zack silently rubbed the back of his neck and looked around the floor of the now dimly lit room, trying to avoid her gaze and potential wrath; it was predominately covered in empty bottles of alcohol, and the occasional food wrapper.

Then, however, his eyes fell on a striking blue piece of clothing, which he promptly bent down and picked up. Spreading the soft fabric out in his fingers he noted the striking golden lightning bolts that crossed it.

“You don’t seem very intoxicated anymore… by the way, this yours?” he asked curiously, holding it up.

“Yeah that’s mine,” she yawned with a flick of her tail as she walked past him, jumping up on her bed and once again getting ready for sleep. “I wear it when I’m performing or need to be in the public spotlig… hey, are your eyes glowing?”

Zack took a glance over at the mirror, and saw her statement was true. In the dim light of the room his blue eyes were just about acting like tiny blue glimmering torches.

“It’s just a side effect of mako exposure and being a SOLDIER,” he sighed, first replacing her uniform on the dresser before reaching over his back and removing the weight of his Buster Sword, turning the massive metal blade over in his hands a few times as he sat down on the end of her bed.

Looking down he saw his own reflection in the glistening silvery metal; his facial features other than his eyes looked completely like that of an ordinary everyday human... the same, ordinary human he once was before SOLDIER. For a sad moment he looked over everyone he had now left behind, and subsequently would never see again, their individual memories reflected in the blade that had known them just as well as he had; Cloud was now lost and on his own, Aerith would never be able to see him again, and his days of doing SOLDIER work with his comrades were over... in truth, he'd never before felt so alone.

It dawned on him that in a way he understood why perhaps Sephiroth had gone mad when he discovered what he truly was; he himself was after all now in a similar position, trapped in a world where he was the only one of his kind.

“But I am not like him,” Zack murmured, running a gloved finger along the edge of the mighty blade. “And I swear I never will be.”

Something soft came up and rested on Zack’s shoulder; with a look over his back he saw Spitfire sitting on the bed next to him, with a hoof now resting gently on his arm. Even with the darkness he could see an expression of what looked like sympathy on her golden face, a soft sigh escaping her lips as she looked between him and the sword.

“Sorry for asking… but from the way your looking at it... I take it that thing wasn’t always yours then huh? Belonged to someone who meant a lot to you?”

Zack shook his head and returned his eyes to the blade, pulling the sword slowly back so the cold metal lay flat against his forehead while he spoke.

“It belonged to my mentor and close friend, Angeal… before he died that is. This may sound strange, Spitfire, but I shouldn’t have this thing. I gave it to someone else before you brought me here, so I just can’t understand why it’s still in my possession. I’m not saying that I’m not happy about having it, in fact I’m glad, but I just don’t know how it’s even possible.”

Spitfire was silent for a few moments, trying her best to come up with a logical reasoning, which wasn’t exactly easy given her state of mind. She had never been one to pay any attention to magic, she wasn’t a unicorn after all, but she wanted to at least try and help her new friend.

“I think… I can give you a rough idea, Zack, now look at me,” she said gently, sliding back in the bed a little as he turned around and faced her directly, kneeling with his hands on his thighs in front of her and blade across his lap. “I don’t know about your world… but just about everything in our world is based around what we know as the magic of friendship. Again... I-I don’t know what your world was like, but friendship between ponies here is more than just an acknowledgement of our feelings for one another; friendship in Equestria is like the giving of a small piece of yourself to somepony else to love and cherish, like you become a part of them and they become a part of you. When your friend Angeal gave you that… sword… it was like he gave you a piece of himself Zack, something to remember him and his friendship by… which became part of you just like he was.”

“So when you called me into this world,” Zack put in, looking down and wrapping his fingers around the blade’s grip. “Because this sword was… part of me… in a sense, because of my friendship with Angeal… it got pulled into your world with me?”

She nodded to show her affirmation while Zack ran his eyes over the weapon.

“But Spitfire… I gave this to Cloud to remember me by,” Zack went on, his blue eyes rising from the blade to meet her gold ones again. “As a symbol of our friendship... I guess... so it wasn’t really mine anymore.”

“Zack, this probably isn’t the sword you gave your friend… look at it closely, this is sword Angeal gave you, and not the one you gave your friend Cloud,”

Now even more confused Zack looked down at the blade closely, running his fingers and eyes together over the blade as he tried to make sense of what she was saying. It was then his heart nearly stopped when he realized something, the blade literally was the same one Angeal had given him; Zack remembered exactly what the sword had looked like the day he had received it, memorizing every scratch it had bared when it came into his possession as Angeal passed into the Lifestream.

The sword that sat in his hands had every scratch the one Angeal had given him did, but this one had no more, none from his fights with Sephiroth, Genesis, the clones, or the Shinra soldiers. It was an exact version of the sword Angeal had given him right after Zack had fought and bested him.

It finally dawned on Zack that the sword he now possessed was not the one he had given to Cloud, but the one Angeal had gifted to him with his dying breaths.

“But... how?”

“The magic of friendship is something nopony truly understands, Zack,” Spitfire said gently, leaning forward and placing a soft hoof over his hand. “So it’s best not to question it… but I know it can do things beyond one’s wildest dreams, and bringing you here was a perfect example.”

For the first time since Zack had entered the room a smile crossed his face, his glowing blue eyes leaving the sword and meeting Spitfire’s soft gold ones. He still wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about this strange new world, but at least things were for the time being looking somewhat positive.


The peace between the two of them, however, was suddenly broken by a surprisingly loud slamming open of the door, and a moment later they both looked over to see two drunken pegasus ponies stumble inside to join them. Both were laughing hysterically between intimate kisses and wandering hooves, still one managed to kick the door shut behind them as they stumbled across the room together, oblivious to the fact they were being watched.

Spitfire gave out an annoyed groan at the sight to show her frustration, and that was enough for the SOLDIER to go on. In a mere instant, Zack was off the bed with his blade up, floating the silver edge out forward so the tumbling pair met the cold flat of the sword as they fell towards the bed.

“Hey! What the buck Spitfi…” snapped a blue pegasus as he felt the cold edge lay against his shoulder, his slurred male voice trailing off as he was met by a set of angry glowing blue eyes.

The grey mare was obviously drunk to say the least, but she still managed to go ridged and freeze on the spot as her own eyes fell on Zack, and then his rather massive sword. Neither said a thing for a few moments, but just traded looks with each other, and the strange creature that was for some reason in Soarin’s hotel room.

Eventually though, the blue stallion saw Spitfire sitting on her own bed and biting her lip.

“Spitfire… who’s this?” he snorted angrily, his eyes flashing between her, and then Zack, and finally back again.

“Name's Zack Fair, SOLDIER,” Zack replied coldly, slowly removing his sword from Soarin’s flesh before setting his glowing eyes on the frightened grey mare. “I suggest you go home now.”

The mare was out the door before anypony could even blink; Soarin, for his part, looked down right pissed off, and made it clear by glaring at Zack as he slowly replaced his sword over his back.

While the two males stared off Spitfire silently bit her hoof nervously, hoping to Celestia that bringing Zack back to her hotel room wouldn’t be the reason her vice-captain got brutally killed.

“You wanna t-tell me… why… y-you just ruined my n-night?” He slurred, taking a stumbling step toward Zack who just huffed in reply, looking down at the drunken blue pegasus with dislike.

“Because, while I’m around you will act with some level of honour, Soarin… which means not taking advantage of someone who’s drunk,” Zack replied firmly as he turned and returned to the end of Spitfire’s bed, his gaze then returning to Soarin who was yet to move as he sat down. “And I’m going to be around for a while, so you better get used to it if you want to stay in one piece.”

Soarin gave an amused drunken snort and looked over at Spitfire, who was at that point halfway through yawning and crawling into the comfort of her own cloud bed.

“You can’t be serious right. Spitfire, where the hay did you meet this… whatever he is?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow at training when you’re sober, Soarin,” Spitfire sighed as she rubbed her forehead and pulled up the blankets, heavy eyes telling her that she needed sleep, and fast. “It’s a long and complicated story to say the least... but yes, Zack will be around us for quite a while.”

Soarin gave another angry snort and glared at Zack again to show his hatred of the fact, but at last, much to Spitfire’s relief, he dropped the subject and retreated to his own bed; with the copious amounts of alcohol in his system the stallion was fast asleep in pretty much under a minute, the tension that had filled the room being replaced by his loud snoring.

Zack wasn’t exactly sure what to think of the blue stallion yet as he eyed him, but the prospect of sleep was beginning to nag at the veteran SOLDIER, and Soarin’s snores were only seconding that idea. Hence, with a little effort, he cleared the patch of floor beside Spitfire’s bed of any rubbish and quietly lay down next to her, the cloud floor just as comfortable as the mattress he had been on a moment earlier.

Gently, he laid Angeal’s sword at his side, peacefully knowing now that he was meant to have it after all.

“Thanks for taking care of that… I know he’s a pain” Spitfire sighed, at last as she looked down at Zack again, her head gently resting on her cloud pillow as she flicked her eyes at Soarin. “But you’ll get used to him, eventually,”

Zack cracked a small smile as he looked back up at her.

“Yeah… eventually… anyway, night.”

Even though there was only a tiny amount of light left in the room, Zack could clearly see the young mare’s face brighten with a toothy grin.

“Good night, Zack.”
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Notes:

For those of you who haven’t played Crisis Core, Zack’s mentor Angeal taught him a lot about the importance of one’s honour, and hence Zack sees it as a very important life trait. Soarin in just about all the fics I’ve read that include him is depicted as very dishonourable when it comes to mares, hence the reason for their current dislike of each other.