"Perhaps that's an area where you can be of assistance." Cloud shook his head. "I never was base comm. Just a foot soldier. But I can see that the Resistance is hurting. I haven't seen as much history as you have, but I've seen enough. Gathering all the small voices together into a crowd against a machine like the First Order's isn't that easy when the war still seems far away, and the ones who've seen it firsthand are so beaten down they're not sure if they can ever get back up again." Cloud wondered if Selene had lived so long that she might have forgotten what it was like to only have a small handful of decades to count as your own, and how easy it was to use that as a reason to sit still when others were trying to get you to move.
"I don't doubt you're as old as you say you are," he went on. "One of my closest friends hasn't aged a day since he was twenty-seven. I'm not sure he ever will." I'm not sure I ever will, went unspoken. Cloud had no idea what Hojo's tinkering had done to him in the long term. He didn't know if Vincent's longevity had more to do with Chaos and the Protomateria, or with the physical modifications their shared tormentor had delighted in creating in the lab.
"As to plans to defend Naboo ... You'd be better off asking the generals about that. Like I said, I'm just a soldier." And there was Zack's voice again, protesting that Cloud was more than that, but since Cloud was no longer on his own planet, he was fairly certain the words were just an acho of Zack's borrowed personality, and not another unexpected visit from the Lifestream.