This is lovely, and if you ever decide you will be picking it up again, I certainly won't be complaining!
There's just so many interesting things in there. For a start, there's the whole implication that somewhere along the line, Cloud wound up in charge of something (not necessarily AVALANCHE, but something) and learned he is good at command. Which also necessarily implies he got separated from Zack somewhere / somehow, because if Zack was around, Cloud would have deferred to him most of the time. This would have been a problem, because of the two of them, Cloud is actually the better leader - Zack is good at the inspirational side of leadership, but it hurts him too much to make the hard decisions; Cloud can make the hard decisions and deal with the consequences of those without shattering the way Zack would. To be honest, I suspect when Zack reappeared, Cloud would have tried to hand the job over to him, and met with resistance, not only from the people he was commanding, but also from Zack himself! Zack is not a good commander, and he knows this about himself, accepts it, and is actually happy to hand command over to someone else who is better suited for it.
There's also the question of what the external context of the relationship between the three of them is. Is this a "Crisis Core" universe, where Zack and Sephiroth are the only SOLDIERs First Class still remaining in Shinra? Is it one of the ones which ignores Crisis Core, and posits a friendship between the three of them arising from Zack being one of those people who makes friends with everyone, but gravitates toward the people who don't have many friends to begin with?
My guess is, given the circumstances, they're going to pull the Nibelheim mission up as the best (and most seemingly-innocuous) way of firstly, getting the three of them out of the Shinra building at once; secondly, tackling the problem of Jenova; and thirdly, dealing with a lot of Hojo's dirty tricks. It also means they're able to pretty much start running from Shinra with a good solid head-start - they show up in Nibelheim, Cloud and Zack deal with Jenova, then Sephiroth "goes crazy", burns down the Shinra mansion and the three of them vanish into the Nibel Mountains... heading for Cosmo Canyon, or across to Wutai.
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There's just so many interesting things in there. For a start, there's the whole implication that somewhere along the line, Cloud wound up in charge of something (not necessarily AVALANCHE, but something) and learned he is good at command. Which also necessarily implies he got separated from Zack somewhere / somehow, because if Zack was around, Cloud would have deferred to him most of the time. This would have been a problem, because of the two of them, Cloud is actually the better leader - Zack is good at the inspirational side of leadership, but it hurts him too much to make the hard decisions; Cloud can make the hard decisions and deal with the consequences of those without shattering the way Zack would. To be honest, I suspect when Zack reappeared, Cloud would have tried to hand the job over to him, and met with resistance, not only from the people he was commanding, but also from Zack himself! Zack is not a good commander, and he knows this about himself, accepts it, and is actually happy to hand command over to someone else who is better suited for it.
There's also the question of what the external context of the relationship between the three of them is. Is this a "Crisis Core" universe, where Zack and Sephiroth are the only SOLDIERs First Class still remaining in Shinra? Is it one of the ones which ignores Crisis Core, and posits a friendship between the three of them arising from Zack being one of those people who makes friends with everyone, but gravitates toward the people who don't have many friends to begin with?
My guess is, given the circumstances, they're going to pull the Nibelheim mission up as the best (and most seemingly-innocuous) way of firstly, getting the three of them out of the Shinra building at once; secondly, tackling the problem of Jenova; and thirdly, dealing with a lot of Hojo's dirty tricks. It also means they're able to pretty much start running from Shinra with a good solid head-start - they show up in Nibelheim, Cloud and Zack deal with Jenova, then Sephiroth "goes crazy", burns down the Shinra mansion and the three of them vanish into the Nibel Mountains... heading for Cosmo Canyon, or across to Wutai.