Tifa Lockhart

Tifa Lockhart Age: 20 Gender: Female Height: 5 feet 6 inches Occupation: Bar hostess, Avalanche member Tifa Lockhart Tifa grew up with Cloud in Nibelheim, but lost contact with him years ago. When she meets him again, she convinces him to join Avalanche to fight the Shinra Electric Power Company, whom she bears hatred for due to the destruction of their hometown. She supports Cloud as his comrade and helps him and his allies fight Sephiroth. Tifa is reserved, moral, and empathic, acting as a motherly figure towards her allies when providing encouragement and emotional support. She also serves as the voice of reason, grounding them to think things through and do the right thing. In contrast to her shy personality, Tifa has a vigorous combat style, typically fighting at close range with her fists. Trained by Rashard Zangan, she uses martial arts skills to fight opponents and equips knuckles as her weapons.

Personality Tifa is empathic, motherly, intuitive, and reserved, both out of being observant and for being emotionally shy. Tifa identifies the feelings of others, offering sanctuary and protection for her teammates. While looking out for others, she rarely discusses her own feelings: when asked, she will usually express surprise or quickly change the subject. Tifa considers all options and takes in all information before acting (best seen when she does not speak up about Cloud's confused past until she is certain of her own recollection of events) and encourages others to practice this same restraint and think things through first. Tifa can and does fight to defend herself, often preferring to do so as not to get others involved. While normally reserved, Tifa still shows aggression at times, seen when beating up Rakesh, interrogating Don Corneo, and standing up to Scarlet after being provoked. Tifa has a stubborn pride that comes from her Nibelheim upbringing, but has low self-confidence and is overly self-critical of her faults.

Tifa is defined by her grief and loss throughout her life, manifesting in her conflicted nature, low self-esteem, and her reserved tendencies. As a child, she was more outgoing, chipper, and extroverted, but the trauma of losing her mother at eight years old made her withdrawn at the time and introverted later in life. As a teenager, she lost her father and hometown in the Nibelheim incident and, as an adult, experienced the fall of the Sector 7 plate. As a result, Tifa feels grief and anger towards both Shinra and Sephiroth, driving her desire for revenge. This, as well as her coping mechanism for pain being to withstand it rather than run from it, leads her to join Avalanche to get back at Shinra. While she acknowledges that they have to be bold to make a change, she is ill at ease about the use of methods, such as the reactor bombings, and feels trapped, expressing guilt at many of their actions. Her conflicted nature allows her to resolve a tense argument between Cait Sith and Barret, able to understand both sides. Ultimately, when alone with Cloud to talk about her feelings of loss, she is overwhelmed and simply bursts into tears, showing her fragile emotional state, which she tries to conceal.

Appearance Tifa has very dark hair, varying from black, which typically falls below her waist and is tied at the tips to form a dolphin-tail split. Tifa has red eyes, though they have been depicted as brown in some appearances. She has an athletic build, with a slender but toned physique and visible abdominals. Her bust-waist-hip measures are 92-60-88 cm (37-24-35 inches) and her bust size is 32 DDD.

Tifa's typical attire is a sleeveless top that exposes her midriff, a miniskirt, and a white teardrop earring on her left ear. Tifa wears a white tank top and black miniskirt with a belt and suspenders. She dons red and black gloves that extend to her elbows, red boots, black socks, and a metal guard on her left elbow. Her skirt has pleated segments (similar to a tennis skirt) to make it easier for her to perform her martial arts. She wears black shorts underneath and a black sports bra under her white tank top. She wears black leather gloves with metal plates on the back and knuckles, while the elbow pad on her left arm has been supplemented by a red-and-black leather vambrace that has Norse runes on the edging. She wears a pair of black and red boots with black leg protectors (similar to a gymnast's outfit). She also has a scar across her lower chest from when Sephiroth attacked her, though this is never shown on-screen.

History Tifa was born on May 3, 1987, in Nibelheim to Brian Lockhart and his wife, Thea Lockhart. As a child, she was outgoing and played with friends named the "Four Fiends": Emilio, Tyler, and Lester, each around the same age as her. Though Cloud was separated by only a year in age, the two used to hang out together. However, after Thea’s death, the two had drifted apart and were not close.

Thea died when Tifa was eight years old in 1995, leaving Tifa upset and confused and causing her to grow apart from her friends. Coping with her trauma, Tifa came to believe that her mother had gone to Mt. Nibel and that she could meet her again if she crossed the mountain. Tifa headed off to Mt. Nibel with the Four Fiends and Cloud followed to protect her. Instead, her friends turned back and Tifa took a misstep on a rickety bridge; Cloud tried to catch her, but they both fell. Her father found her severely injured, in a coma for seven days, and blamed Cloud for what happened. Tifa's memory of the event is hazy.

In the years after Thea passed, other women in the village helped teach Tifa skills that Brian could not, such as how to cook and sew. In Tifa's adolescence, her male friends began to see her as a future romantic partner, although she would respond with vague silence to their invitations, pretending not to catch them to avoid hurting their feelings. Tifa instead grew a connection to a white cat she owned named Fluffy, gifted to her by Zander on her twelfth birthday. After spraining her ankle when Fluffy leapt from her arms, the village chased after her cat to no avail. Later, Claudia Strife brought the cat to Tifa's house, as Cloud had found it in the mountains, but was too embarrassed to bring it back to Tifa himself.

Emilio, Lester, and Tyler had tea parties with Tifa at a pool by the town's waterfall, where they mentioned their desire to leave for Midgar for a better life, leading her to feel like she was competing with the city for their attention. In 2000, five years after Thea's death, Cloud decided to join SOLDIER like his idol, Sephiroth, in part to impress Tifa. He called Tifa out to the water tower to tell her of his plans, which Tifa found reminiscent of the others' desire to leave. Tifa made Cloud promise to protect her if she was ever trapped or in trouble. After that night, Tifa's admiration for Cloud evolved into a "like that ties up your heart, making you yearn to be with that person for the rest of your days".

When Cloud left to join SOLDIER the following spring (becoming a Shinra Public Security Division infantryman), Tifa kept checking the newspaper looking for some mention of him and asking Shinra personnel if they knew him when they came to Nibelheim. Sometime after, Zangan arrived to Nibelheim and met Tifa by the Gunnthra River. Impressed by how she came to help him (believing he was stuck) and by her physique, Zangan believed that she possessed the aptitude and the quality of mind to be a great martial artist. As Zangan was sent away by the village elder, believing that he was a Shinra spy, before he left, he offered to train Tifa as his disciple, giving her exercise booklets.

Tifa eventually took on Zangan's training and, in his absence, taught exercise classes to Nibelheim villagers for six gil an hour, in what they knew as the Calisthenics Club. As she progressed up to Book Five, Zangan requested that Brian be Tifa's sparring partner, which Brian reluctantly agreed to, making combat gear for her. Three days before her fifteenth birthday, Tifa sparred with Zangan to demonstrate her moves, but failed to land a single blow. Zangan later gave Tifa a leather left arm bracelet as a gift, telling her that it had multiple uses and its limit was "her imagination", before expressing confidence that, in six months' time, she could be initiate and share full host of secrets, with the two of them working to develop a unique combat style for her. Tifa ultimately became Zangan's most prized student.[28]

Nibelheim Incident On September 21, 0002, in "The Awakening of the Dark Harbinger" in Before Crisis -Final Fantasy VII-, Tifa was attacked by a monster in the mountain while looking for Fluffy. A female Turk rescued her and hired her to lead a Shinra expedition to investigate a faulty mako reactor that occurred the next day. The expedition included Sephiroth and a SOLDIER named Zack Fair. During their stay, she dropped hints to Zack of dreaming of a blond-haired SOLDIER protecting her.

Unbeknown to her, Cloud was one of the two Shinra guards accompanying Zack and Sephiroth, but concealed his identity due to his shame of failing to enter SOLDIER. He prevented her entry to the reactor and unsuccessfully attempted to protect her from a monster attack shortly after (trying to anonymously keep his promise). She protected him instead and helped him down the mountain. Afterwards, Tifa messaged Zack, expressing her worry for the soldier who helped her.

Later, Sephiroth went berserk when he learned of his origins and who "his mother" is. On October 1st, he set Nibelheim ablaze before setting off to the reactor. Brian Lockhart and others followed, but Sephiroth slew them. Tifa found her father dead at the Nibel Reactor with Sephiroth's Masamune. Declaring her hatred of Sephiroth and Shinra, she attacked him, but Sephiroth disarmed her and cut her down. Tifa fell down the steps and slumped to the ground. She suffered severe laceration from Sephiroth's sword, leaving a wound stretching from her left upper chest to below her right breast. The wound reached bone and shattered a portion of her sternum, but did not harm her organs or puncture any lungs.

Zack found Tifa injured, but she refused his help out of distrust. Zack then engaged Sephiroth, but was defeated. Cloud arrived and carried Tifa aside before confronting Sephiroth himself, believing that Tifa's wounds were fatal. Zangan arrived and found Tifa, managing to take only her safety with help from some Shinra members while Zack and Cloud were left behind. He cast Cure on her and was barely able to keep her alive. In Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it is revealed that Tifa's wounds were treated by Doctor Sheiran.

Arriving in Midgar Zangan took Tifa away to Midgar for medical treatment. He took her first to Dr. Sheiran in Corel, who performed surgery and recommended that she be transferred to a bigger facility in Junon or Midgar with better treatment access. Though a bed was offered to her in the Shinra Building's Research and Development Division, Zangan refused and instead took her to a doctor in the Sector 8 slums, Dr. Dhamini Oranye, due to him remembering his student, Rakesh Oranye. The surgery reinforced the damaged portion of Tifa's spine with artificial bone and a short piece of metal wire and, after the skin grafts healed, she was told that she would be able to recover and lead a normal, healthy life. However, Dr. Oranye took photos of Tifa's bare chest for case studies for the medical community, without consent, showing it to other prospective patients; though Tifa's face was out of frame, she found it unsettling.

After Tifa recovered successfully, she was discharged from the hospital, but greatly in debt due to Dr. Oranye overcharging by three times the actual cost of the treatment. Rakesh gave Tifa an apartment in Container Row of the Sector 8 slums and set her up with a job working for Mr. Manson, going by the name "Pops", for his business, the Sector 8 Steamed Buns. Manson hired Tifa because of her appearance, believing that her looks would bring in customers. Tifa was slow at first, but began to improve her performance with Manson's advice. Tifa managed her money carefully to pay rent, shower costs, and pay down debt, while leaving savings aside; though she at first calculated 66 years to pay back debt when assuming she would sell 100 buns a day, she sold considerably more than that and was encouraged to aim for 1000 buns a day to pay it off in 6.

Tifa met Marle when Marle needed a similar procedure at Dr. Oranye's clinic and befriended her, though Rakesh intentionally withheld Marle's address from Tifa, causing them to lose contact thereafter. While running the stall, Tifa also met Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie Rasberry and Jessie struck up a close friendship with Tifa, with the two bonding over their shared admiration for one another. This culminated in Jessie taking Tifa to a planetology screening; though she was slow to take it in at first, since she had long believed that there was nothing after death, she wanted to believe it if Jessie did.

Seventh Heaven and Avalanche Tifa lost contact with Jessie, but after asking Manson, Manson directed her to Stargazer Heights, where Marle was now the landlady. The two then caught up and Marle introduced Tifa to Seventh Heaven and to its owner, Monty, whose business was struggling at the time after a bartender quit. Tifa and Marle helped its business, with Tifa's arrival allowing the bar to reopen on evenings. Business turned around until Monty fell ill and two new regulars, Barret and Marlene Wallace, became regulars and Barret scared customers. After Tifa scolded Barret for rough sleeping with Marlene, Marle arranged for Monty to allow Barret to sleep in the basement and had him working for the bar. Following Monty's passing, a 200,000 gil payment was due on the property, with Monty's estate only covering 40,000; Tifa had the remaining 160,000 gil saved, making her the proprietor.

Tifa met up with Jessie at one of their hiding spots after Jessie got a message through to Marle and Barret introduced himself to her when he tagged along, protecting them from a Shinra attack. Tifa also settled her debt with Dr. Oranye when, while she and Barret recovered her purse to find the money for the Seventh Heaven payment, discovered that she had been overcharged, beating up Rakesh after the doctor promised to forgive the debt.

Jessie then introduced Barret to Biggs and Wedge and, with Tifa, the group collectively made Barret their leader due to their own indecisiveness. Seventh Heaven, which Tifa was now the proprietor of, was their headquarters. Tifa handled the group's finances and helped look after Marlene while Barret was away. The bar became famous around Sector 7 for Tifa's food and drinks. At some point, the cell also worked with an intel guy named Al, who stole codes and, at one point, hit on Tifa with a flower trick that he attempted on many women, though she rejected him. Eventually, Barret's group cut ties from the rest of Avalanche after an argument.

When Cloud returned to Midgar as a mercenary in late 0007, he met Tifa. Unaware that Cloud was in Nibelheim during its destruction, but suspecting something was off about his behavior, Tifa recruited him to work for Barret to examine him further. Realizing that Cloud knew several things he should not and had forgotten things he should know and also initially doubting her own recollections when faced with Cloud's, Tifa concealed this information while trying to figure out the reason behind Cloud's different character and inconsistent memories.