Cloud Strife (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
weakerprey) wrote2020-07-06 09:53 am
weakerprey) wrote2020-07-06 09:53 am
TLV Permissions
I'm the wordiest person in the universe and I apologize for my entire life.
OOC PREFERENCES:
•CONTACT METHOD: Plurk (![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
madeofseaglass) or discord (Marvelous#1389) are easiest for me but honestly I'm pretty flexible. DMing me on this journal is also fine.
•THREAD-JACKING: Do it, I love it. I'll stalk like a creep even if it has nothing to do with me.
•FOURTH WALLING / CANON PUNCTURE: Fourth-walling = I'd rather not. If any eventual canonmates wanna drop Dirge of Cerberus spoilers on him that's fine; none of it would really surprise him anyway.
•BACKTAGGING: Totally fine. I'm happy to revisit and resolve things even if they're months old tbh.
•AVOIDED TOPICS: Nothing specific comes to mind! If something does come up, I'll communicate it then
.
•PREFERRED GENDER PRONOUN: He/him or they/them, for me; Cloud probably doesn't know exactly what a pronoun is but you can assume he/him
IC CHARACTERISTICS:
•CURRENT CANON POINT: Post-Advent Children Complete, probably by a couple of months? Long enough for the dust to settle.
•PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
IMPORTANT DETAILS NOT IMMEDIATELY OBVIOUS FROM ICONS:
FFVII: Remake appearance / FFVII: Advent Children appearance
Cloud is on the short and slender side with a muscular, compact build. He has pale skin and light blond hair that sweeps around his head in soft spikes. His eyes are an unnaturally bright blue-green--brighter than a normal human's eyes should be. They glow faintly, which is easy to miss in bright light but very noticeable in low light. In bright, natural light his eyes look more blue because the ambient light overpowers the mako glow, but in low light conditions they shift more green.
If your character ever sees him without his shirt on (unlikely), he's got a nasty stab wound scar through his chest, just under and to the left of his sternum.
When in work-mode he typically dresses in all black, favoring sleeveless shirts, loose pants, and sturdy boots. He wears a single shoulder pauldron on his left shoulder, which assists him in safely unsheathing and resheathing the ridiculous giant swords he favors without accidentally lopping off a pound of flesh in the process. It has a silver wolf motif that is mirrored in the earring on his left ear. He also has a bunch of straps and fancy back holsters to hold the pieces of his fusion sword, some of which probably employ magnets to keep things in place.
On the Barge, he'll mostly consider himself in work-mode. Without outside encouragement to relax, he'll wear the same thing he always wears and won't make any effort to dress more casually. If someone nags him into relaxing a bit, he'd probably wear simple t-shirts and pants in subdued colors... or black. Lots of black. He does have an actual aesthetic sense--you don't end up in that outfit riding a gold-plated motorcyle named Fenrir without one--but it's usually pretty understated, at least when it comes to clothes. Also, he prefers to blend form with function; trying to get him into anything fussy or impractical is a doomed mission. Unless your name is Aerith. ...Don't ask.
Movement and Physicality
Cloud is relatively slow and deliberate in his movements when not in combat; you might get an extraneous hand gesture here and there, but he doesn't waste much energy on physical expressiveness. He habitually scans his surroundings and is generally either very aware or completely spaced out with absolutely no in between. When in the former mode he's difficult to startle, although when it happens his startle response is noticeably severe and he will reflexively reach over his shoulder in an attempt to grab the hilt of his sword even if he doesn't have it on him at the time. He carries his tension in the neck and shoulders, and often holds his body in a subconsciously defensive way, arms crossed and feet firmly planted.
In large groups or crowds, Cloud will linger on the fringes where he can keep an eye on everything, and is typically most comfortable holding up a wall. He does not like being the center of attention. If he can avoid drawing attention at all, that's his preference.
He's unused to physical touch and will usually freeze when it's initiated, but that doesn't mean he finds it unpleasant--he just doesn't know how to react. If it's someone he likes and he's given time to adjust, he can usually let himself be touched without being a big weirdo about it, though he may not reciprocate right away if at all. In truth, he's chronically affection-starved, so touchiness from people he likes is both reassuring and a little frightening. If it's excessive or teasing, he'll shrug it off and tell you where to stick it, but in a fond sort of way.
Cloud usually doesn't maintain eye contact unless he's specifically trying to emotionally connect to someone, and even then it's only for brief periods. He'll look down, away, or at something else if they're just talking.
Voice
Cloud's voice is middling in range, neither high nor low, and his speech tends to be even and fairly monotone. He's usually softspoken, but his voice takes on a rawer, sharper edge when his emotions get involved. He's not the type to yell except in emergencies, but his vocal quality will get noticeably rougher when he gets angry and hoarse and throaty when he's upset. When talking to someone he doesn't know well, he hesitates a lot, and long pauses are likely while he sorts through his thoughts. Also, he's a self-identified country boy: the less self-conscious he feels, the more likely he is to get slangy, using words like "ain't," clipping his G's, and peppering in phrases like "ma'am" and "'scuse me."
In English, he has two different voice actors: Steven Burton, his CC/ACC VA, is a bit deeper and smoother while Cody Christian, his Remake VA, is both softer and sharper with rougher edges on some of his line deliveries. I personally prefer his Remake voice, which is practically identical to the one I heard in my head when I played the original game, but honestly they're similar enough that it doesn't really matter. This little sequence of traveling dialogue from FFVII: Remake Chapter 8 is a pretty decent sampling of what he sounds like just talking to someone in a casual way.
Miscellaneous
In my head Cloud smells like soap and leather.
•DEMEANOR: Softspoken but blunt. Seems standoffish; actually wants to connect with people but doesn't know how. Good at reading people, terrible at interacting with them. Very reactive, but mostly inside his own head. Little bit moody. Attitude depends entirely on who he's talking to; can be laidback or temperamental, mellow or prickly, all based on subtle shifts in vibe. Will have a lot of thoughts and not say most of them. Either total poker face or no poker face whatsoever depending on whether or not you manage to bring out his emotional vulnerability (it's not hard). Wry sense of humor. Little smiles that would be a laugh on anyone else. Will tell you the truth as he sees it. Accepts constructive criticism. Pretty good at helping other people with their problems; terrible at solving his own.
•ABILITIES: Cloud is basically a genetically modified and specially enhanced super soldier*. His body has been exposed to both high levels of mako (essentially refined life energy) and Jenova (alien) cells, giving him significantly enhanced speed, strength, agility, stamina, and senses, as well as accelerated healing. Cloud wields large broadswords that would probably be ridiculously unwieldy for someone not so enhanced, and he can take hits that would kill or severely injure a normal person. His sword at his current canon point is a customized "fusion sword" that splits into multiple separate swords or combines to form one big sword, like so.
He also uses materia, which are the FFVII universe's compromise between magic and technology. There are different types of materia, and they are primarily used to cast various spells and grant passive enhancements. Cloud can only equip so many at once (I'm limiting him to 12 based on the materia slots available on endgame weapons/accessories), but he has a pretty large inventory to draw from. WILL UPDATE THIS WITH A LIST OF MATERIA WHEN I'M IN
Other than this, well, Cloud's a Final Fantasy protagonist. He's kind of stupid overpowered. No sense beating around the bush on that. That said, he's no more stupid overpowered than any other JRPG/shonen/superhero protagonist, and those sorts of characters will be able to keep up with him just fine. Also, I tend to play down some of the more breaking-the-laws-of-physics stuff that the compilation added (looking at you, ACC), both because it's inconsistently applied and playing a gravity-defying, essentially untouchable character simply isn't fun for me. Also: he's very reliant on his sword and materia. Separate him from those, and his hand-to-hand combat skills leave a lot to be desired. A hand-to-hand specialist will kick his ass every time.
*He was never part of the Shinra organization SOLDIER that created and supervised such individuals, but he's physically identical, and he sometimes still says he's a SOLDIER if asked, simply because it's impractical to explain the details in most cases.
•MEDICAL INFORMATION: Does "don't touch me" count as medical information?
Cloud spent 4 years being imprisoned and experimented on in a vaguely clinical setting (though god knows it was not as sanitary as it probably should have been). This involved both exposing him to high amounts of mako (concentrated life energy) and injecting him with alien cells. Canon is extremely ambiguous as to exactly what happened to him for those four years he was kept in the lab; most of the details come from side materials, ominous throwaway lines, and bits of in-game text that are found by the party but never commented on by any of the characters. Still, these were people who kidnapped children for use in experiments, turned normal humans into twisted simian monsters, and stuck human brains into tanks for use as sentries. So, it probably wasn't pretty. We know Cloud was conscious for at least some of it, but eventually things got so severe that he went fully catatonic, and stayed that way for at least a year even after getting free of the lab environment.
He doesn't like medical settings, is basically what I'm saying here. In order to let a medical professional he doesn't know so much as touch him, he'd have to be browbeaten into it by someone he trusts and cares about more than he cares about himself. (This is thankfully not a high bar.) Forcing him to accept any kind of invasive medical care against his will would probably induce a full-blown psychotic break and potentially a relapse into catatonia, so that's... inadvisable. (He'd be fine if he was unconscious and someone brought him to the infirmary for treatment. But if he's conscious and rejecting medical care, please just give him a cure materia and go away, because he's not going to take well to being forced.)
That said, this is just his default state upon being apped in. If he gets to know and trust any of the medical personnel, things become much easier. He still doesn't like it and he won't stay in the infirmary willingly unless there are absolutely no other options, but he won't have a nervous breakdown at the possibility.
Anyway.
If you get that far, here are the things you'd need to know:
- He has accelerated healing abilities as a result of the mako enhancements and Jenova cells. Nothing flashy, but his recovery time for severely debilitating injuries is probably half a normal person's, maybe less.
- Due to the aforementioned, he can survive injuries that would probably kill a normal person. His cells are capable of healing and duplicating at abnormal rates.
- He has a nasty stab wound scar on his chest just below and slightly to the left of his sternum, and a matching exit wound on his back. A medical professional might be able to deduce that he has been stabbed in that same place by the same weapon multiple times, one of them relatively recent.
•CABIN INFORMATION: The door is wooden, weathered, and looks more like it belongs outside somewhere than in an interior hallway. Not dissimilar to this, complete with the little square window in the top part. The glass is worn and discolored, so much so that it's not possible to see through it. Leaning close and squinting will reveal that it's actually not a window at all: it's a mirror, so darkened and weathered as to be non-functional, similar in appearance to this.
The interior is a weird mishmash between his bedroom at 7th Heaven in Edge and the cells Shinra used to use to house important prisoners. Shabby utilitarian technopunk: windowless room, exposed pipes, tube lights installed in the walls, skylight to nowhere. Random photos of places he's been all over one of the walls. Pile of parts, supplies, and miscellaneous items in the corner. Old couch in a truly heinous shade of red-orange (actually pretty comfortable). Wood floor that creaks in places, dusty because Cloud's never heard of a broom. Couple of weird mismatched rugs.
There are stairs in the corner. If you go down and open the double doors at the bottom, turns out there's a whole ass church chapel down there. For some reason a big chunk of the floor is missing and there's a patch of yellow and white lilies growing up through the "earth" beneath. You'd never know anything was odd if not for the view of space that can be faintly seen through the stained glass windows.
•OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS: Some of these are not so much "things he finds offensive" as they are "actual triggers," but you know. You say tomato. So:
Human experimentation. Late-stage capitalism. The phrase "for their/your own good." Psychological manipulation and mind control. Treating humans as scientific curiosities, pawns for political machinations, or tools for one's personal gratification. Megalomania. Arson. Murder. Sadism. Referring to something as "mother" that is not your actual mother.
IC PERMISSIONS:
•MENTAL: Go to town. He'll probably hate it, but that's part of the fun. Just touch base with me first so I can hand you some stuff you can use.
•MIMICRY: Suuure but be careful. Cloud has a lot of experience with hallucinations and delusions, some benign and some very much not, and if he's not sure what's going on he's likely to think that he's having some sort of psychotic break and become immensely distressed. There's a chance he may attack you, and Cloud attacking you is not a joke. If you're cool with that then go for it, live your best life. (If he's aware of what's happening he'll just be annoyed and slightly disturbed, it's specifically surprising him with any kind of doppelganger effect that's a bad idea.)
•VIOLENCE: If you attack him, he'll defend himself. Otherwise, though, Cloud is not actually very easy to provoke, especially if you're weaker than he is. Feel free to try, though; conflict is fun. Characters who are on or above his level and know how to push his buttons? Oh yeah, it's on. Go for it and we can work out what's likely to happen. I'm fine with him getting into fights, being injured, etc.
•MAGIC: Sure, just touch base with me on the details. Warning: he can also use magic (well, materia; same thing) and will defend himself if attacked.
•DEBATE: Sure. Debate is not Cloud's strong suit because it involves talking to people intelligently and saying a lot of words in a brief period of time, but you're welcome to kick his ass and make him annoyed with you when he thinks of all the things he should have said 6 hours later.
•OTHER / NOTES: I am very flexible with most things and comfortable about setting boundaries, so please feel free to reach out to me at any time if there's something you wanna do. I'll probably be up for it, and if I'm not I'll tell you, but I never mind being asked!
OOC PREFERENCES:
•CONTACT METHOD: Plurk (
•THREAD-JACKING: Do it, I love it. I'll stalk like a creep even if it has nothing to do with me.
•FOURTH WALLING / CANON PUNCTURE: Fourth-walling = I'd rather not. If any eventual canonmates wanna drop Dirge of Cerberus spoilers on him that's fine; none of it would really surprise him anyway.
•BACKTAGGING: Totally fine. I'm happy to revisit and resolve things even if they're months old tbh.
•AVOIDED TOPICS: Nothing specific comes to mind! If something does come up, I'll communicate it then
.
•PREFERRED GENDER PRONOUN: He/him or they/them, for me; Cloud probably doesn't know exactly what a pronoun is but you can assume he/him
IC CHARACTERISTICS:
•CURRENT CANON POINT: Post-Advent Children Complete, probably by a couple of months? Long enough for the dust to settle.
•PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
IMPORTANT DETAILS NOT IMMEDIATELY OBVIOUS FROM ICONS:
- He's 5'7".
- His eyes are noticeably, unnaturally bright compared to a normal human's. They also glow faintly. The latter is easy to miss in bright light but is very noticeable in low light.
- Rarely makes eye contact. If the icon I use isn't looking directly at you and I didn't put it in prose, assume it's not happening.
FFVII: Remake appearance / FFVII: Advent Children appearance
Cloud is on the short and slender side with a muscular, compact build. He has pale skin and light blond hair that sweeps around his head in soft spikes. His eyes are an unnaturally bright blue-green--brighter than a normal human's eyes should be. They glow faintly, which is easy to miss in bright light but very noticeable in low light. In bright, natural light his eyes look more blue because the ambient light overpowers the mako glow, but in low light conditions they shift more green.
If your character ever sees him without his shirt on (unlikely), he's got a nasty stab wound scar through his chest, just under and to the left of his sternum.
When in work-mode he typically dresses in all black, favoring sleeveless shirts, loose pants, and sturdy boots. He wears a single shoulder pauldron on his left shoulder, which assists him in safely unsheathing and resheathing the ridiculous giant swords he favors without accidentally lopping off a pound of flesh in the process. It has a silver wolf motif that is mirrored in the earring on his left ear. He also has a bunch of straps and fancy back holsters to hold the pieces of his fusion sword, some of which probably employ magnets to keep things in place.
On the Barge, he'll mostly consider himself in work-mode. Without outside encouragement to relax, he'll wear the same thing he always wears and won't make any effort to dress more casually. If someone nags him into relaxing a bit, he'd probably wear simple t-shirts and pants in subdued colors... or black. Lots of black. He does have an actual aesthetic sense--you don't end up in that outfit riding a gold-plated motorcyle named Fenrir without one--but it's usually pretty understated, at least when it comes to clothes. Also, he prefers to blend form with function; trying to get him into anything fussy or impractical is a doomed mission. Unless your name is Aerith. ...Don't ask.
Movement and Physicality
Cloud is relatively slow and deliberate in his movements when not in combat; you might get an extraneous hand gesture here and there, but he doesn't waste much energy on physical expressiveness. He habitually scans his surroundings and is generally either very aware or completely spaced out with absolutely no in between. When in the former mode he's difficult to startle, although when it happens his startle response is noticeably severe and he will reflexively reach over his shoulder in an attempt to grab the hilt of his sword even if he doesn't have it on him at the time. He carries his tension in the neck and shoulders, and often holds his body in a subconsciously defensive way, arms crossed and feet firmly planted.
In large groups or crowds, Cloud will linger on the fringes where he can keep an eye on everything, and is typically most comfortable holding up a wall. He does not like being the center of attention. If he can avoid drawing attention at all, that's his preference.
He's unused to physical touch and will usually freeze when it's initiated, but that doesn't mean he finds it unpleasant--he just doesn't know how to react. If it's someone he likes and he's given time to adjust, he can usually let himself be touched without being a big weirdo about it, though he may not reciprocate right away if at all. In truth, he's chronically affection-starved, so touchiness from people he likes is both reassuring and a little frightening. If it's excessive or teasing, he'll shrug it off and tell you where to stick it, but in a fond sort of way.
Cloud usually doesn't maintain eye contact unless he's specifically trying to emotionally connect to someone, and even then it's only for brief periods. He'll look down, away, or at something else if they're just talking.
Voice
Cloud's voice is middling in range, neither high nor low, and his speech tends to be even and fairly monotone. He's usually softspoken, but his voice takes on a rawer, sharper edge when his emotions get involved. He's not the type to yell except in emergencies, but his vocal quality will get noticeably rougher when he gets angry and hoarse and throaty when he's upset. When talking to someone he doesn't know well, he hesitates a lot, and long pauses are likely while he sorts through his thoughts. Also, he's a self-identified country boy: the less self-conscious he feels, the more likely he is to get slangy, using words like "ain't," clipping his G's, and peppering in phrases like "ma'am" and "'scuse me."
In English, he has two different voice actors: Steven Burton, his CC/ACC VA, is a bit deeper and smoother while Cody Christian, his Remake VA, is both softer and sharper with rougher edges on some of his line deliveries. I personally prefer his Remake voice, which is practically identical to the one I heard in my head when I played the original game, but honestly they're similar enough that it doesn't really matter. This little sequence of traveling dialogue from FFVII: Remake Chapter 8 is a pretty decent sampling of what he sounds like just talking to someone in a casual way.
Miscellaneous
In my head Cloud smells like soap and leather.
•DEMEANOR: Softspoken but blunt. Seems standoffish; actually wants to connect with people but doesn't know how. Good at reading people, terrible at interacting with them. Very reactive, but mostly inside his own head. Little bit moody. Attitude depends entirely on who he's talking to; can be laidback or temperamental, mellow or prickly, all based on subtle shifts in vibe. Will have a lot of thoughts and not say most of them. Either total poker face or no poker face whatsoever depending on whether or not you manage to bring out his emotional vulnerability (it's not hard). Wry sense of humor. Little smiles that would be a laugh on anyone else. Will tell you the truth as he sees it. Accepts constructive criticism. Pretty good at helping other people with their problems; terrible at solving his own.
•ABILITIES: Cloud is basically a genetically modified and specially enhanced super soldier*. His body has been exposed to both high levels of mako (essentially refined life energy) and Jenova (alien) cells, giving him significantly enhanced speed, strength, agility, stamina, and senses, as well as accelerated healing. Cloud wields large broadswords that would probably be ridiculously unwieldy for someone not so enhanced, and he can take hits that would kill or severely injure a normal person. His sword at his current canon point is a customized "fusion sword" that splits into multiple separate swords or combines to form one big sword, like so.
He also uses materia, which are the FFVII universe's compromise between magic and technology. There are different types of materia, and they are primarily used to cast various spells and grant passive enhancements. Cloud can only equip so many at once (I'm limiting him to 12 based on the materia slots available on endgame weapons/accessories), but he has a pretty large inventory to draw from. WILL UPDATE THIS WITH A LIST OF MATERIA WHEN I'M IN
Other than this, well, Cloud's a Final Fantasy protagonist. He's kind of stupid overpowered. No sense beating around the bush on that. That said, he's no more stupid overpowered than any other JRPG/shonen/superhero protagonist, and those sorts of characters will be able to keep up with him just fine. Also, I tend to play down some of the more breaking-the-laws-of-physics stuff that the compilation added (looking at you, ACC), both because it's inconsistently applied and playing a gravity-defying, essentially untouchable character simply isn't fun for me. Also: he's very reliant on his sword and materia. Separate him from those, and his hand-to-hand combat skills leave a lot to be desired. A hand-to-hand specialist will kick his ass every time.
*He was never part of the Shinra organization SOLDIER that created and supervised such individuals, but he's physically identical, and he sometimes still says he's a SOLDIER if asked, simply because it's impractical to explain the details in most cases.
•MEDICAL INFORMATION: Does "don't touch me" count as medical information?
Cloud spent 4 years being imprisoned and experimented on in a vaguely clinical setting (though god knows it was not as sanitary as it probably should have been). This involved both exposing him to high amounts of mako (concentrated life energy) and injecting him with alien cells. Canon is extremely ambiguous as to exactly what happened to him for those four years he was kept in the lab; most of the details come from side materials, ominous throwaway lines, and bits of in-game text that are found by the party but never commented on by any of the characters. Still, these were people who kidnapped children for use in experiments, turned normal humans into twisted simian monsters, and stuck human brains into tanks for use as sentries. So, it probably wasn't pretty. We know Cloud was conscious for at least some of it, but eventually things got so severe that he went fully catatonic, and stayed that way for at least a year even after getting free of the lab environment.
He doesn't like medical settings, is basically what I'm saying here. In order to let a medical professional he doesn't know so much as touch him, he'd have to be browbeaten into it by someone he trusts and cares about more than he cares about himself. (This is thankfully not a high bar.) Forcing him to accept any kind of invasive medical care against his will would probably induce a full-blown psychotic break and potentially a relapse into catatonia, so that's... inadvisable. (He'd be fine if he was unconscious and someone brought him to the infirmary for treatment. But if he's conscious and rejecting medical care, please just give him a cure materia and go away, because he's not going to take well to being forced.)
That said, this is just his default state upon being apped in. If he gets to know and trust any of the medical personnel, things become much easier. He still doesn't like it and he won't stay in the infirmary willingly unless there are absolutely no other options, but he won't have a nervous breakdown at the possibility.
Anyway.
If you get that far, here are the things you'd need to know:
- He has accelerated healing abilities as a result of the mako enhancements and Jenova cells. Nothing flashy, but his recovery time for severely debilitating injuries is probably half a normal person's, maybe less.
- Due to the aforementioned, he can survive injuries that would probably kill a normal person. His cells are capable of healing and duplicating at abnormal rates.
- He has a nasty stab wound scar on his chest just below and slightly to the left of his sternum, and a matching exit wound on his back. A medical professional might be able to deduce that he has been stabbed in that same place by the same weapon multiple times, one of them relatively recent.
•CABIN INFORMATION: The door is wooden, weathered, and looks more like it belongs outside somewhere than in an interior hallway. Not dissimilar to this, complete with the little square window in the top part. The glass is worn and discolored, so much so that it's not possible to see through it. Leaning close and squinting will reveal that it's actually not a window at all: it's a mirror, so darkened and weathered as to be non-functional, similar in appearance to this.
The interior is a weird mishmash between his bedroom at 7th Heaven in Edge and the cells Shinra used to use to house important prisoners. Shabby utilitarian technopunk: windowless room, exposed pipes, tube lights installed in the walls, skylight to nowhere. Random photos of places he's been all over one of the walls. Pile of parts, supplies, and miscellaneous items in the corner. Old couch in a truly heinous shade of red-orange (actually pretty comfortable). Wood floor that creaks in places, dusty because Cloud's never heard of a broom. Couple of weird mismatched rugs.
There are stairs in the corner. If you go down and open the double doors at the bottom, turns out there's a whole ass church chapel down there. For some reason a big chunk of the floor is missing and there's a patch of yellow and white lilies growing up through the "earth" beneath. You'd never know anything was odd if not for the view of space that can be faintly seen through the stained glass windows.
•OFFENSIVE SUBJECTS: Some of these are not so much "things he finds offensive" as they are "actual triggers," but you know. You say tomato. So:
Human experimentation. Late-stage capitalism. The phrase "for their/your own good." Psychological manipulation and mind control. Treating humans as scientific curiosities, pawns for political machinations, or tools for one's personal gratification. Megalomania. Arson. Murder. Sadism. Referring to something as "mother" that is not your actual mother.
IC PERMISSIONS:
•MENTAL: Go to town. He'll probably hate it, but that's part of the fun. Just touch base with me first so I can hand you some stuff you can use.
•MIMICRY: Suuure but be careful. Cloud has a lot of experience with hallucinations and delusions, some benign and some very much not, and if he's not sure what's going on he's likely to think that he's having some sort of psychotic break and become immensely distressed. There's a chance he may attack you, and Cloud attacking you is not a joke. If you're cool with that then go for it, live your best life. (If he's aware of what's happening he'll just be annoyed and slightly disturbed, it's specifically surprising him with any kind of doppelganger effect that's a bad idea.)
•VIOLENCE: If you attack him, he'll defend himself. Otherwise, though, Cloud is not actually very easy to provoke, especially if you're weaker than he is. Feel free to try, though; conflict is fun. Characters who are on or above his level and know how to push his buttons? Oh yeah, it's on. Go for it and we can work out what's likely to happen. I'm fine with him getting into fights, being injured, etc.
•MAGIC: Sure, just touch base with me on the details. Warning: he can also use magic (well, materia; same thing) and will defend himself if attacked.
•DEBATE: Sure. Debate is not Cloud's strong suit because it involves talking to people intelligently and saying a lot of words in a brief period of time, but you're welcome to kick his ass and make him annoyed with you when he thinks of all the things he should have said 6 hours later.
•OTHER / NOTES: I am very flexible with most things and comfortable about setting boundaries, so please feel free to reach out to me at any time if there's something you wanna do. I'll probably be up for it, and if I'm not I'll tell you, but I never mind being asked!