Hey indestinedx All you did was restate everything i said. Apparently i made the mistake of thinking that Cloud was a member of soldier, but probably on the lower end of the totem pole in soldier, but that was it. Everything else i said was spot on, and you just said it again in different words.

So here's what happens. Cloud and Zach are good friends while they are in Soldier (Cloud is indeed in Soldier, but is not first class like Zach). When Sephiroth goes nuts, lights Nibelheim on fire, etc, both Cloud and Zach sustain serious injuries, and are taken away as experiments and put in mako tanks. Zach comes to during this and makes a break for it with Cloud. However, Cloud has suffered mako poisoning (just like toward the end of the game), and is completely incoherent, all while Zach is dragging him along with him on his journey toward a new life. Throughout this journey, Zach talks to Cloud as if he can understand a single word he was says (even though he subconsiously does), and tells him many tales of his battles, his life, etc. The Shinra end up tracking the two down and kill Zach, while they leave Cloud assumed to be dead seeing as how he was is messed up anyway. However, Cloud comes to, but his memory is nothing like it was before. The mako messes him up so bad that he takes the stories he heard from Zach and basically makes them his own. He does keep a few of his own memories, and obviously remembers his own name, but the rest is replaced by Zach's stories in which he makes into his own. This explains Sephiroth telling Cloud he was created five years ago, because he essentially is, seeing how he transforms into a different person as a result of those events back in Nibelheim. Lucrecia is Sephiroths mother. Hojo screwed her and out came little Sephiroth. He only refers to Jenova as his mother because his real mother (Lucrecia) disappeared right after his birth, and it would be too painful and devastating to Sephiroth to find out the reason she dissapeared, so they tell him Jenova is his mother to cover up the truth. Really, Jenova is as much Sephiroths mother as she is Clouds mother, seeing as how both were injected with her cells, just Sephiroth became much more powerful than Cloud did. There you have it.