dude i have played ff7 and know more about it than all the people on this forum together, cloud thinking he is zack has nothing to do with sephiroth clones. And this is where you go wrong, even though jenova cells are infused in cloud, which i have just said, it does not make him a sephiroth clone at all. Not at all actually, because cloud was a normal person before he joined soldier, and as a soldier in SOLDIER, he was infused with lifestream energy, then after a while, the jenova project started. All the first times infusing jenova cells in creatures and people, it failed, mutated them and killed them. You see this in the monster that comes out and dies shortly after between the tubes. Sephiroth however was his own project, trying to infuse jenova cells in a baby in its womb it resulted in the powerful being sephiroth is. After succeeding with sephiroth, hojo wanted to clone him, he tried to do this, this resulted in the sephiroth clones that he controlls, that is the cloaked men, the silverhaired men, and the clones that are identical to sephiroth which he controlls from the northern crater.
Now, the time had come to try to infuse jenova cells in normal people, cloud and zack was a part of this project. All other soldiers that had been tested had died from being infused with jenova cells, but cloud and zack did however not. And this surprised hojo. thats why he says to cloud that it was strange how cloud were the only one to differ, the only one of the experiments with normal humans that survived jenova cells. The others had been too weak, the jenova cells had eaten their body up from the inside. Cloud's body was too strong, it didnt give in to the jenova cells. Neither did zack's, but zack was shot to death.
I hope this teaches you that cloud's story are totally independent from sephiroth. As he was a normal person in soldier, who was infected with cells, while sephiroth was the first successfull jenova creature a long time before cloud got his jenova cells. However, i am not denying that sephiroth can controll cloud because he absolutely can. It is because of the jenova cells yes, but i just wanted to enlight you with the knowledge of what sephiroth clones are and what cloud is.
