After reading the fic 'Finding my Wings' by The-Angel-With-Broken-Wings, I found myself inspired to write this. The basis is the same in that a princess from an isolated kingdom that is not under ShinRa's control, however she chooses to leave her home voluntarily after seeing visions of the world being in danger.

The only other similar thing this fic with the aforementioned one in the paragraph above is that the OC will be paired up with Cloud. Yeah, you read this right, Cloud. Now you can't say I didn't give you fair warning. So if you don't like the pairing or have CloudxTifa or CloudxAerith as your OTP, then I suggest clicking the back button and finding another fic that would suit your tastes better.

Okay, now that I've gotten that out of the way, all I'll tell those who decided to stick around is that I plan on making the pairing as realistic as possible. There will be no 'love at first sight'. Save that for the fairy tales.

There, I think that's everything. And so now I'll start the story.

Disclaimer: I don't own FFVII or anything else in the compilation. I do, however, own the naive princess who was lucky to have made it to Midgar in one piece.

Prologue

Erika wrinkled her nose for what had to be fiftieth time in the two days she had been in Midgar. Her sense of smell was beginning to adjust to what she realized was the everyday scent of the city's slums even, when she still found herself being nauseous every fifteen minutes or so. Judging by the restless shuffling in her messenger bag, she wasn't the only one who found the smell suffocating. He had taken one small sniff at the air before immediately diving inside and closing the flap as tightly as he could.

"Sorry, Scion." She apologized again. "I'll let you out when we find an inn."

Erika did not like making Scion stay in her bag, especially since he hated it but after a lot of thinking she decided that it was for the best. Scion seemed to draw attention as apparently he was unlike any of the other Mogs most people on Gaia had even seen. Something that seemed odd to them at first as the name of Scion's species was 'Moogle' not 'Mog' and that he looked like any other Moogle back home, so why did people gape at him everywhere they went?

Though Erika soon learned to stop asking questions about it when people started trying to buy her companion off of her.

Tucking a strand of strawberry blonde hair behind her ear, the nineteen year old girl took in her surroundings.

What she saw made her queasy. The building structures were in poor condition, either made of rotting wood or rusting metal all giving off the impression that one good shove with cause collapse. The roads were dirty, the ground strewn with trash... and stuff that Erika could only guess at but really did not want to try and figure out what it actually was.

If the state of the run down and poorly constructed buildings were depressing, then seeing the people who actually had to live with the poor conditions was heart breaking. Almost everyone she passed was wearing worn down clothing or rags and judging by their dirt smudged appearances and the smell of their body odor, they did not bathe often or at all. But it was not their hygiene that the blonde payed attention to, though she did wrinkle her nose slightly whenever someone got to close to her.

No, it was the looks of weariness and defeat on their faces. Tired, wary, hungry faces.

It was poverty at its worse and then some.

For being the supposed city of dreams, Erika was decidedly not impressed with Midgar.

The girl frowned. Even back home, people who were poor did not look this stricken. They may not have as much as everyone else, but they had a warm roof to stay underneath and neighbours kind enough to help them if they did not have enough food for the day.

But in Midgar... it looked as if it was every man for themselves.

Erika let out a startled shriek when she suddenly stumbled and fell flat on her face.

Had Erika been paying attention to what was in front of her instead of everything else, she would have noticed that she was about to trip over something. In her bag, Scion let out an indignant squeak at Erika falling on top of him and continued voicing his complaints until the girl moved the bag out from underneath her.

"Sorry!" She apologized, sitting up and quickly opening the flap of her bag and taking out her companion. She pulled the Moogle close to her and stroked its head until the white creature had calmed down from its temper tantrum.

With Scion no longer pitching a fit, she shifted to see what she had tripped over.

Erika blinked several times, using the back of her hand to rub her eyes to make sure she wasn't just seeing things.

She had tripped over a person. A man who didn't seem all that much older than her in fact.

Turning bright red, Erika quickly got off of him (she realized that she was sitting on his legs) and started stammering out several apologies. It wasn't until two minutes later that she stopped in her ramblings, realizing that the other party wasn't saying anything - at this point, they would have either told her to shut up or yelling at her to be more careful.

But the man she was apologizing to... didn't seem all that aware that she was even there. His head was bowed down, he was slumped against the wall of the train platform and his eyes were staring blankly straight ahead.

When he still didn't say a word, Erika raised one of her gloved hands tentatively and waved it in front of his face. "Um, excuse me Mister? Are you alright?"

Several seconds later he still wasn't responding.

Erika decided to take a more hands on approach as she placed the hand she had been waving in front of his face on his shoulder and began shaking him gently.

"Sir, are you alright? Do you need help? Should I find a doctor?"

"Guh..."

Erika quickly pulled back her hand back at the sound, blinking at him. He didn't actually say anything, but that was still something right?

But that was it. After that soft, barely legible grunt the man he didn't say any more or give any other sign that he was, well, conscious or aware.

The strawberry blonde quickly stood up, looking around to see if there was anyone who would help her carry the very out of it man to some place that was safe and warm -or at least as safe and warm as she could get in these conditions. However, there wasn't anyone around except for a uniformed guard and he was doing his best to ignore both her and the man.

Realizing that no help was going to be forth coming, she murmured to Scion to get back into the confines of her bag as she bent down and gently took the man's arm, wrapping it around her shoulder while wrapping her other arm around his waist as she hoisted him up on his feet.

"Come on." She said. "There has to be a better place for you to sleep. We'll just have to go find it first."

And I'm done. Sadly, yes, Zack is dead. Hence why Cloud is lying in Sector 7 in a complete daze while Jenova screws with his mind.