Final Fantasy VII: Chapter 1

Chapter 1


     "Midgar is so cold on nights like this," she observed, kneeling beside a Mako furnace in the alley beside Goblin's Bar, in the entertainment block of Sector 8's plate.  She was chilly, in her short-sleeved demi-jacket, but despite the cool air she was smiling.  It was already spring, and her flowers were blooming again down in the church in Sector 5.  Her flowers were the only plants that flourished in Midgar.  Even in the homes of the wealthy, real live plants did not last long.  Midgar was a place of people and machines.  The rats in the slums could not outnumber the human populace of this megalopolis.
     She stood, her hands still clasped together for warmth, the basket hanging from the crook of her arm bouncing gently against her hip.  Midgar was full of people, and if she was lucky tonight, a few of them might see the value in the rare beauty of her flowers.  "Someday," she thought, as she walked smiling to the street, "it would be nice to leave this place."  True, she realized with regret, that would mean leaving her mother, Elmira.  "But sometimes I just feel so . . ."

     "Restless," he thought, finally pinning down that crawling irritation that twisted in the back of his mind.  "I'm getting restless again.  Like it's time to just pack up and leave.  No regrets, no attachments."  He looked up to the sky, but saw only the dark steel of the plate reflecting the lights of the slum below.  He frowned, running his hand back through his spiked blond hair.  "Once Barret pays me for this mission, I'll have nothing standing between me and the open road."
     The train ran swiftly and smoothly, spiraling up around the central column of the city.  The plate, though singular in name, was actually made of eight separate pieces, one for each Sector.  They were attached to a framework of radial spokes, and a perimeter ring, which connected the eight Mako reactors of Midgar.  Another pillar, 50 meters tall, supported each of the plate sections from below, with its roots in each of the eight villages that had existed even before the rise of Midgar.  These villages were now the slums.  They had once had their own names, but those names had been replaced by numbers, with Sector 1 being the northern-most village, and the others assigned clockwise from there.  In the center, like a bloated spider atop its web, sat the Shinra Electric Power Company, Incorporated main branch headquarters, the Shinra Building, 70 stories of glass and steel rising up from the surface of the plate.
     He crouched low against the roof of the car as the train entered a tunnel, going up through the thickness of the plate now.  The steel rafters skimmed by, mere inches from his head, but he remained perfectly calm.  As they went through the security checkpoint, on its way to the top, the concrete walls strobed red from the lights inside the train car.  It was a moment of held breath, but Jessie's counterfeit I.D. cards worked perfectly, and the train kept running.  The girl might be a bit nerdy, but she didn't mess around when it came to her job, and she was quite a skilled hacker.  She had also made the bomb they would be using, so he sincerely hoped she was as competent a demolitions expert.
     Suddenly, the train shot out of the tunnel and the sky opened up overhead.  Spot lights at the base of the Shinra Building cut white arches through the dense purple smog, which obscured the stars from view even up here, reflecting the light and heat of the city back down on itself.  The train slowed with a screeching of brakes as it pulled into the station between two of the eight radial plate sections.  Directly ahead of them was one of the eight towering Mako reactors which provided the city with power, a huge iron cylinder of pipes, scaffolding, and compression chambers reaching all the way down into the planet's crust.
     "Show time!" he though with a grin, sliding to the edge of the 's roof.  He watched Jessie, a short mousy woman in cargos and half armor, and Biggs, a taller Wutaian man, jump down from further up the train.  The pair dispatched the two guards that ran at them with well-placed kicks and a shoulder throw.  "Too easy," he though.  "There has to be tougher security further in, or they wouldn't have hired me."  Barret and Wedge jumped out of the cars the others had ridden on top of, and Wedge ran off after Biggs and Jessie with surprising speed for a man of his girth.
     He still waited on top of the train, until Barret looked up and gestured for him to come down.  He stood and leaped into a flying somersault, landing with a flourish and grinning up at Barret.  The large grizzled man just glowered at him.  "We ain't got time for that crap, Cloud!" Barret snapped.  "Jus getcher spiky ass in gear and MOVE IT!"
     Cloud shook his head with an insolent smirk, his blond hair falling back into the same disarrayed spikes as always, and followed the huge black man into the reactor.  The way in wasn't nearly as heavily guarded as he would have thought.  There were few enough human guards, and the security robots and bio-guards were hardly anything to worry about.  Still, disabling them was a decent work out.
     "Wow!" Biggs exclaimed as he approached a massive iron gate.  Wedge glanced over, but returned to scanning the area for approaching security dispatches, his gun in constant motion.  "I guess you really were in SOLDIER," he addressed Cloud with a grudging admiration.  "Not often you find someone of your caliber throwing down with the likes of us."
     "SOLDIER?!"  Jessie looked up at the blond man in surprise from where she knelt, hacking into the electric control box.  "You mean, like, Shinra Elite Fighting Corps, SOLDIER?  The bad guys?"
     "I thought you'd been told," Biggs regarded her, adjusting his headband to keep his thick brown hair from falling into his slanted eyes.  "Anyway, he's one of us now," he smiled at the former SOLDIER, "Isn't that right, Cloud?"
     "No," Cloud told him bluntly, frowning.  He hated it when people tried to cling to him like that.  "I don't know what Barret told you, but I'm just a hired gun.  After this mission, I'm out of here."
     "Oh," Biggs looked crestfallen.  Jessie twisted two wires together with her gloved fingertips and the gate opened with an electronic beep.
     "The HELL you all doin'!" Barret shouted from behind them, making everyone jump.  "I though I told you to spread out!"  Biggs, Wedge and Jessie, all snapped to attention as soon as they heard his voice, and scattered into the darkness within as soon as he had finished.  Cloud just sighed in exasperation at how amateur this organization was.  "Yo, SOLDIER boy," Barret called, standing in the gateway.  "Don't think I trust you jus 'cause you got a good word from Tifa.  You're gonna stick by me like glue until this thing is over, and if you ain't the man she thinks you are, you're gonna end up with a smoking hole where that pretty face of yours use ta be."  As he spoke, Barret brought the muzzle of his machine gun up under Cloud's chin, forcing the younger man to look him in the face.  "You got me?"
     "I got you," Cloud replied impassively, not even flinching.
     "Awright, lets move it."  Barret turned, gesturing again with his gun.  Though this was hardly surprising, seeing as how the mechanical elements of the automatic machine gun fused with the organic remains of his right arm just below the elbow.  Cybernetic restructuring was no longer a new method of treating maimed or amputated limbs, but it was rare to see anyone with a prosthetic that did not at least mimic the body part it replaced in appearance and functionality.  The fact that Barret had chosen to replace his arm with a gun spoke volumes about his temperament.  Just as the fact that it had not gone off once since Cloud had met him spoke volumes for Barret's self-control, since the electronic firing mechanism was hardwired straight into the burly man's nervous system.
     "Yo!"  Barret interrupted Cloud's contemplation with a grizzled bark.  "This yo' first time in a reactor?"
     When Cloud didn't respond right away, Barret stopped to look back at him.  "No," the young man replied vaguely.  Then, placing one hand on his hip and running his hand through his hair in a defiant pose, he added more briskly, "After all, I did work for Shinra, ya know."
     "Then you know what Mako energy is," Barret said.  "It makes me sick when I think of the people here, usin' it every day to run their cars and their lights and their dishwashers.  Mako's the life blood of the planet, but we use it to make toast in the morning, because Shinra uses these blasted machines to suck it out and turn it into electricity."
     "I'm not here for a lecture," Cloud informed him, thoroughly bored.  "Lets just go in and get this job over with."
     "Don't get smart with me, ya damn jackass!" Barret demanded, brandishing his gun in the ex-SOLDIER's face again.  "That's how come we're here!  Were gonna stop them one reactor at a time if we have to."
     "You are," Cloud corrected him.  "It's not my problem."
     "How is it notcher problem if the planet's dyin'?" Barret demanded, dumbfounded by how blithely the young man dismissed the issue.
     Cloud calmly stepped around him in the hallway and kept walking.  "The only thing I care about is finishin' this job before any really big guns, like the Roboguards, show up."
     Barret shook with anger, contemplating his gun-arm for a moment before silently lowering it.  Cloud had enough skill to make his arrogance a sad necessity to put up with.
     "Barret!" Jessie called from further up the hallway.  She led them through a series of doors and short corridors to an elevator.  They followed her on, and she hit the bottom button.  "Biggs and I have deciphered the code locks for the other doors," she explained as they went. "It should be all clear from here on in.  Biggs is going to stay here to make sure our escape route stays clear.  I'm coming with you a little further to make sure there's nothing blocking the core that wasn't on our schematics."
     Once off the elevator, they were in a spidery maze of catwalks, scaffolding, pipes, and ladders, all suspending them delicately over a vast deep pit, the bottom of which contained an ever-changing mass of luminous greenish-whiteness.  It was Mako, a substance neither solid, liquid, nor gas, though possessing properties of all three.  Cloud was not quite sure he believed that it was the lifeblood of the planet, like Barret said, but from what he had heard, it was most definitely an incredible substance.  He had been exposed to a large dose of Mako energy, he remembered, after being accepted in SOLDIER.  It was part of what made him stronger than normal humans.  It was also what made his eyes glow with a greenish blue light.
     They scrambled quickly down the ladders and walkways, down into the pit.  Jessie left them part way down the scaffolding, once she could see that there was nothing else standing in their way, and Barret and Cloud continued the rest of the way down alone, carrying the bomb delicately with them.
     "Once we set this off, this place ain't gonna be nothing but scrap."  Barret stated, stepping out onto a wider platform surrounding a rusting machine with a valve sticking prominently out of its control panel.  "Here!  Jessie said we hafta attach it to this here, ah-" he faltered.
     "To the extraction pump and first stage compression chamber?"  Cloud offered.  "That makes sense," he added, more to himself that anything, "But. . ."  He hesitated, following the pipes down to where they entered the Mako pit below.  "That can't be right," he thought to himself.  "An explosion here has a possibility of setting up a chain reaction through the Mako itself, not just the reactor above.  Is that what they planned on?"
     "Cloud, you set the bomb," Barret said, handing it to him.
     "Me?!"  Cloud asked, slightly alarmed.  "Shouldn't you do it?"
     "Jus do it.  I'm keeping an eye on you, to make sure you don't try anything, remember?"
     "Fine.  If you don't want to set it up just say so,"  Cloud took the bomb with a shrug, kneeling before the control panel.  Suddenly, the world lurched and spun, the chugging of the machinery all around him was drowned out by the high-pitched whine that seemed to come from everywhere, even from inside him.  Only everywhere was now a blackness in which not even he seemed to exist.
     "Careful," a man's voice cautioned him.  It was a voice he knew from somewhere, but he couldn't quite place it.  "This isn't just a reactor!" the voice continued vaguely, though with no less urgency and determination.
     Suddenly, with a snap, the reactor fish bowled back into existence around him.
     "Yo!  What's wrong?"  Barret's voice growled from behind him.
     Cloud looked back at him blearily, shaking his head to clear it, "What?"
     "I said: What's wrong, Cloud?  Hurry it up!"  Barret shook his arms impatiently.  "We ain't got all night."
     "Yeah, sorry," Cloud replied, lacking much of the flippant energy he had displayed earlier.  He pulled the cover panel off of the bottom of the control unit and half crawled inside, quickly locating one of the small computers that monitored internal pressure on the chamber.  The bomb was designed to piggyback power off of the existing electrical system.  An alarm started blaring in his ear as soon as he touched the wiring.  An LED screen immediately lit up on the side of the bomb.  1000.  Whatever that meant.  As soon as he twisted the last wire into place, the numbers started moving.  0956.  Less than ten minutes then, for them to make their escape.
     "Cloud!" Barret called in alarm, "Heads up, here they come!"
     Cloud pulled himself out of the machine to see a huge spiderlike robot climbing quickly down the unsteady scaffolding towards them.  It narrowly missed crushing Jessie with one of its legs on the way.  Cloud drew his sword from his back.  The Buster Sword was the standard issue given all first class SOLDIERS.  It worked like a cross between a sword and a mace, the edge serving to channel the crushing force of a swing into a single line or point, rather than a cutting edge.   The weapon was as tall as he himself was, the blade solid steel.  Most human-sized opponents would go down with only one or two swings.  He handled it like it was weightless.
     "It's a Guard Scorpion," he warned Barret, wracking his brain for any information he could remember about how it fought.  "It can't attack you until it has a firm lock on you with its scope, and then it uses its pincers to crush and slash.  When its damaged, the auto-repair function runs, and it raises its tail to counterattack with a laser any time you try to further damage it."
     "So how do we beat it?"  Barret asked.
     "You keep hitting it until it can't repair itself," Cloud grinned at him.
     "What kind of*bleep*ing tactics is that?"  Barret demanded.  "We only got ten minutes!"
     "Nine.  Try shooting its head," Cloud suggested dryly.
     "Awright, that's more like it."  Barret nodded, leveling his gun at the giant mechanical scorpion.
     Cloud shook his head and then plowed in with a grin.  Finally, here was something to challenge him.  Jumping into the air, he brought the wedged blade of his Buster Sword straight down on the top of the scorpion's head, leaving a dent the size of an oil barrel.  "Ha!" he exclaimed jubilantly, leaping back and ducking under a flailing pincer.
     "You're damned crazy, man!" Barret yelled at him from the other side of the platform, assailing the robot's joints with controlled bursts of bullets.
     "What, are you scared, Barret?" Cloud ribbed him, letting fly with another swing to the head, actually knocking it askew on its neck pivot.
     "The hell I am," Barret spat back, knocking out one of its targeting cameras.  "I jus' don't fancy getting that close to four tons of wrecking machine, personally."
     If Cloud had a response to that, it was lost when the outside of a claw rammed into his stomach, sending him bouncing across the metal platform, where he lay still.
     "Cloud!"  Barret shouted, still firing on the giant robot.  "Don't go dying on me, dumb ass, your contract's not finished yet.  And I don't wanna have to be the one to tell Tifa you didn't make it."  The scorpion turned its attention from Cloud to Barret, a thin red targeting laser tracing across the big man.
     Cloud pulled himself back to his feet with a cough.  "Don't count me out so soon," he laughed, though it sounded strained.  "I'm a professional."  He massaged his lower ribs with a wince.  "It takes a lot more than that to take me down!" he shouted at the robot itself, running back in as Barret continued to pepper it with ammunition, jumping back every time the scorpion lunged at him.  Cloud grabbed hold of a secondary leg, swinging himself up the jointed structure while the robot turned a full circle trying to reach a pincer back to swat him off.  Throwing himself up onto its back, Cloud barely dodged a blow from the monumental stinger at the end of its tail.  He grinned wider, changing his grip on the sword and plunging it tip first into the base of the neck.
     "Aw-right!!"  Barret exclaimed, as one of the pincers fell to the floor, still attached by a few cables.
     Suddenly, the Guard Scorpion changed stances, bringing its remaining claw up to shield its head, and raising its tail high over its back.  Cloud crouched low, trying not to loose his footing on the sleek carapace.  Barret noticed the change a moment too late, having already pumped another round into the robot's arm.  A white-hot laser shot across the platform, and Barret almost managed to dodge out of its way, but part of the metallic housing of his right arm was melted through.
     Cloud looked up at the tail, then stood, raising his sword again.
     "Wait, Cloud-!"  Barret reached out as though to stop the man, but Cloud plunged his sword once again into the neck of the Roboguard, then immediately leaped away as another laser beam slashed through the air where he had been standing a moment ago, severing the robotic head from its body.
     "Come on, Barret!" Cloud called, sounding elated, as the Roboguard collapsed to the floor.  "By the time the repair algorithms have the combat program back on line this place will have blown sky high."
     "You know something?"  Barret started as they ran along the scaffolding.
     "What?"  Cloud asked.
     "You sure are smart for a dumb ass.  Why'd you go and pull a stunt like that?  What if you hadn't dodged in time?"
     "Then I wouldn't have deserved my rank," Cloud shot back.  "I wasn't just a SOLDIER, I was a SOLDIER, 1st Class!"  They made their way carefully but quickly up the slightly damaged scaffolding, Barret running ahead.
     "Hey wait," Jessie's voice called after them.  Cloud skidded to a halt and looked back.  She was lying sprawled across one of the damaged sections of catwalk, quite blending in, her leg pinned beneath a fallen girder.  Rushing back, he lifted it enough for her to free her leg.  "Can you stand?"
     "I don't-" she started, prodding her leg gingerly, then exclaimed in surprise when Cloud lifted her up across his shoulder and continued running to where Barret waited with the elevator doors open.
     "You could have given us a bit longer than ten minutes, you know?" Cloud told her, not unkindly.
     She smiled, wiping tears out of her eyes.  "I'll remember that for next time," she promised.
"Come on guys, I've got the doors!" Biggs called as they piled out of the elevator on the main level.  "Jessie, what happened to you?"  he asked, falling in behind them.
     "Part of the catwalk fell on my ankle when the Roboguard showed up," she explained meekly, her cheeks red.
     "Ah, I see," Biggs grinned at her.  "That would explain the whole carrying thing."
     "Shut up!" she told him.
     Cloud just smirked, not letting his pace slow.  Outside the reactor, down the pathway on the right, Wedge rejoined them, as the structure started to explode right behind them.
     Beyond the concrete containment wall that separated the reactor machinery from the plates, they all ducked down the secondary transit tunnel and dropped to the floor.  The very plate shook with the explosion, as one never expected a 15-foot thick, reinforced steel plate to shake, and continued to do so for almost a minute as the blast reverberated along the tunnel in which they crouched.  Then the debris started raining from the sky.  Shrapnel and piping, chunks of concrete, I-beams, rivets, half charred remains of sentinels, both robotic and human, and undiluted Mako in various stages of compression, all fell, heedless of any further damage they might cause.
     Once the aftershock passed, they all pushed themselves to their feet, brushing dust and shavings of metal from their clothes.  "Well," Biggs remarked, looking around.  "That should keep the planet going.  At least for a little longer, right?"
     "Yeah."  Wedge replied without much enthusiasm.  The tunnel was now littered with junk anywhere there had been an opening, and a few pipes had actually punched through the wall that faced the reactor.  They could all hear the sirens blaring outside, even through the concrete and debris that surrounded them.
     "Looks like the exit's blocked," Barret remarked.  He contemplated his gun arm, then looked back at the others.  "Jessie, you got your back-ups?" he asked casually.
     "Oh, right, sure thing,"  She pulled a packet of plastic explosives out of her back pocket, and a small electronic object that had to be a detonator out of her vest.
     "That's our girl," Biggs grinned as he took her arm across his shoulders, helping her over to the rubble, where she knelt.  "Always prepared."
     There was an awkward silence for a moment, as she worked.  "Ok!  Everyone get back," she commanded.  Biggs hauled her to her feet and back to where the others waited. "We'll be out of here in a jiffy."
     The explosion was small and contained, blasting a neat hole through the debris, unfortunately igniting the material on the other side.  Barret grabbed Jessie and leapt through to the wide cluttered alley on the other side, followed by Biggs and Cloud.  Wedge hesitated, and the fire burned stronger.
     "Come on, just jump," Biggs called to him.
     He nodded, but hesitated still.  Cloud took a step back toward the blasted opening, but Barret grabbed his shoulder, shaking his head.
     Wedge ran straight through, yelling "Ow ow ow ow!" and kept running back and forth once on the other side.  "That was hot!" he complained vaguely, fanning the seat of his pants.
     "Don't act so weak!" Barret chastised him, smacking him upside the head.  "If you'd just come through with the rest of us, you would have been fine.  Now lets all get out of here," he addressed everyone at large.  "We'll rendezvous at Sector 8 station and take the train back down.  Remember to split up!"
     Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie all nodded, and Biggs once again helped Jessie to walk as they headed up the stairs and down the street.
     "Hey!"  Cloud called as Barret started to leave, standing with his arms crossed impatiently.
     Barret stopped, but did not turn to face him.  "If it's about your fee, save it 'til we're back at headquarters," he stated, then ran off.
     Cloud shook his head, knowing full well that once they got back, they would start trying to include him in whatever their next mission was.  But he could turn them down after they had paid him for this job.  He pushed his hair back from his face with a resigned sigh, and with a look back at the glowing pillar of smoke that had once been the Sector 1 reactor, he made his way into the dark streets.

     They were mostly empty, at this hour of night, but the few people who were out so late were scrambling to get themselves as far away from the source of the explosion as possible.
     "What was that?" one of the men demanded of another.
     "It came from the direction of the reactor, and all the lights went out right afterwards!" the second man replied as he ran, knocking into a young woman and not even stopping to help her back to her feet.
     "You think it was Avalanche?" another, female, voice called from further away, as the woman got back to her feet, calmly brushing the dust from her faded pink dress, throwing her long, honey-brown hair back across her shoulder.  For good measure, she tugged and fluffed the pink bow that held her hair up in its twisted ponytail, and adjusted the worn collar of her short red jacket, before looking around for an explanation of what was happening.
     "Excuse me," she reached out and caught the arm of a young man who passed by her.  He was much less frantic than any of the other people in the square.  She looked over the armor at his shoulder, the wide belt and well-traveled sleeveless blue uniform, and the massive sword across his back, recognizing him as a member of SOLDIER.  He looked down at her hand on his bare arm, then up at her face, his glowing blue eyes meeting her large green ones, his spiky blond hair shifting when his head moved, but falling exactly back into place.  She hesitated, something in his manner strangely familiar, but continued, "What happened?"
     He blinked at her, his face empty, and for a moment she though he was going to just walk away without answering her.  Then he shook his head and smiled a confident, reassuring smile.  "It's nothing you need to worry about," he told her calmly.  There was silence again for a moment, and she realized belatedly that she still clung to his arm, and let go hurriedly, tugging at her collars again, her bracelets chiming down her arms.  His eyes darted to the basket that hung from her elbow.  "Hey," interest rose in his voice.  "You don't see many flowers in the city," he stated.
     "Oh, these?"  She smiled, fishing a small golden blossom out and proffering it to him.  "Do you like them?  They're only a gil . . ." she hesitated, realizing he was looking at her rather than the flower.
     "Sure, I'll take one," he smiled again, reaching into his pocket, taking the flower from her fingers and pressing the coin into her palm with one motion.
     She giggled appreciatively.  "Thank you very much," she bowed slightly, then walked off, clutching the gil piece to her chest like a treasure.
     Cloud looked down at the flower and grinned, tucking the stem into his wide leather belt carefully, so it would not get crushed as he walked.  Then he continued to the train station, glancing at the graffiti on the wall as he passed.  It had been done by Avalanche, and recently enough that no one else had tagged over it yet.  He chuckled, and continued towards the station, trying not to draw too much attention to himself.
     Down a deserted street, however, he was unfortunate enough to come across two Shinra soldiers heading his way.
     "Hey!  You there!" they called to him.
     "What?" he demanded of them, standing his ground.
     "What are you doing out so late?" the first asked him, leveling his gun at the young man.  "And why do carry that sword?"
     "I'm just doing my job, and I suggest you continue with yours," he stated, and moved to walk around them.
     "Hold it, that's as far as you go, punk," the second soldier stated, shoving the barrel of his gun in Cloud's chest.  In the distance, a train whistle sounded.
     "I don't have time to be messin' around with you guys," Cloud informed them in a bored tone.  "So unless you think two standard issue grunts such as yourselves really stand a chance against someone with my combat expertise," he drew his sword fluidly, making sure his rank marking was visible just above the hilt, looking them each firmly in the eye, "I'd leave without causing a fuss.  Got it?"
     Both the soldiers eased back slightly, but did not flee.
     "He's a SOLDIER isn't he?" Cloud heard the second one whisper urgently to the first.  "What should we do?"
     The first took another step back, and pulled his radio off the back of his belt.  "Patrol one-one-seven-five, requesting back up," he barked quickly.  "We've got a potential suspect for the reactor bombing.  Again, I request immediate . . ."  his voice died in his throat as Cloud smacked the radio from his hand with the tip of his sword, wielding the heavy weapon with such speed and precision as to execute the move before the soldier could react, and avoid hitting any of the soldier's fingers in the process.
     The second soldier opened fire, almost without aiming, and Cloud deflected the bullets easily off the side of his sword.  A low rumble filled the air, issuing from the tunnel running under the road.
     "Well, guys, it's been fun," Cloud grinned, dashing to the side of the road and placing a foot up on the side railing.  "But I've already wasted more time than I had."  With that, he launched himself over the edge, avoiding another spray of bullets.  Both soldiers ran to the side of the road, their machine guns ready, hoping to get a shot off before he disappeared down the train tunnel.  Instead they saw the train issuing forth from the shadows like an iron snake, and on top of the second car, rapidly rushing out of sight, sat the spiky haired young man, waving cheerfully at them.
     "One-one-seven-five, come in," a crackling voice came over the second soldier's radio.  "One-one-seven-five, do you copy?"
     The first soldier grabbed the second's radio.  "I copy.  He got away from us.  And if he was one of the saboteurs, we may be in for some trouble."
     "Can you be more specific?"  The voice over the radio crackled again.
     "He was a SOLDIER, Karen, a flippin' First Class Elite Fighting Unit." The first soldier gestured for the second to follow him, and started back off down the dark street.  "Glowing eyes and everything.  Fearless sonovabitch.  If they try to strike again, we're not going to be able to take him down without some special equipment."
     The voice on the radio could no longer be clearly registered, but the first soldier was heard to continue, "Yeah, I've got a description . . ."

     Meanwhile, inside one of the baggage cars of the train currently speeding towards the central column, the mood was equally grim.
     "Cloud never came," Wedge observed dejectedly, slumped back against a crate at the front of the car.
     "We had a hard time avoiding the patrols on our way to the station," Biggs stated, winding a bandage tightly around Jessie's injured ankle.  She sat quietly on top of a crate, not looking at anyone.  "You don't suppose they caught him do you?  He might even have been killed."
     "No way!!"  Barret exclaimed, as though by volume he could make himself right.  "No way a guy like him would snuff it that easy!  That guy's tough as nails!"
     "Cloud . . ." Jessie murmured to herself.  Biggs looked up at her, his expression one of worry.
     They all looked up when something hit the top of the car with a dull thud, but then returned to gazing at the cluttered floor, almost in unison.
     "Say, guys," Biggs spoke again, standing and pacing a little, the silence making him edgy, "do you think Cloud's gonna fight with us to the end, for Avalanche?  That would be great, wouldn't it?" He grinned from Jessie, to Wedge, to Barret, trying to get some kind of response out of them.
     "The hell would I know?" Barret exploded at him.  "Do I look like a mind reader?"  He brought his fist down heavily on a crate beside him.  "If y'all weren't such screw-ups in the first place, we wouldn't be needin' to hire outside help like him."
     "Hey Barret?" Wedge spoke up again, timidly.  "How can we really afford to hire-?"  His words were lost as Barret slammed his fist down on the crate again, the boards splintering under his hand, but not breaking through.  "Er-  I mean.  Ah, nothing," the plump man lowered his head, cowed.  "Sorry."
     After another moment of awkward gloomy silence, the door to the car rattled, then slid open, and Cloud swung in over the edge of the car roof, landing with his usual sense of flare.
     "Cloud!" Jessie exclaimed, her voice drowning out those of Biggs and Wedge, both of whom had also called his name out in surprise.
     "Hey," he grinned, falling into his customary pose and brushing his soot darkened hair back from his smudged face.  "Looks like I'm a bit late."
     "You damn right you're late," Barret berated him.  "What the hell d'you mean, waltzin' in here, makin' a big scene like that?"
     "I don't mean anything by it," Cloud shrugged dismissively.  "It's just the way I am."
     "You're just a damn selfish punk, ain'cha?  Lettin' everyone worry 'bout you like that."  Barret poked him in the chest with his gun.  "You don't give a damn 'bout no one but yourself!"
     Cloud crossed his arms behind his head and grinned right in the burly man's face.  "Don't tell me you were worried about me, too, Barret.  I'm touched."
     "Wha!?"  Barret pulled back in confusion.  "The hell you talkin' 'bout?  You think you're such hot shit," his tone turned indignantly mocking.  "Well that stunt o' yours is coming right outta your pay, hot stuff."  He poked Cloud in the chest with his gun again, pushing him back towards the still open doorway, and stepped forward.  "Wake up, everyone!" he shouted to his teammates.  "We're movin' out, so y'all jus' follow me!"
     With that he shoved Wedge, and the crate he had been leaning against, to the side and opened the door to the next car, stomping through it.
     Standing, Wedge shot the former SOLDIER a shy smile.  "Hey, Cloud.  I thought you were great back there at the reactor."
     "Yeah," Biggs agreed, walking over to stand beside his shorter compatriot.  "Whatever Barret might say, you definitely are something else.  And we're all going to try to do better next time."  With a wave, he ushered Wedge out in front of him, leaving Cloud and Jessie alone in the baggage car.
     She walked over towards him, limping noticably, not looking at him, and hesitated a moment before reaching past him and grabbing the handle of the still open freight door.  "It's dangerous to leave this open," she stated, sliding it closed.  Then she hesitated again, and finally looked up at him.  He looked surprised when she burst out laughing.  "Oh, Cloud!  You are covered in soot!  You face is nearly black," she giggled, fishing a handkerchief out of one of her pockets.  "Here," she offered, catching his chin, licking a corner of the kerchief and cleaning the smudges from his face.
     He didn't bother fighting her.  She reminded him a little too much of his mother at the moment.
     "There you go," she smiled fondly, then made her way over to the door at the front of the car.  "And, Cloud," she paused before leaving, not quite looking back at him.  "Thanks for helping me back there at the reactor."
     Cloud rubbed his cheek with a slightly troubled frown, then followed, closing the doors behind him.  The others had already scattered to different parts of the car.  Barret was sitting in the second section of seats from the front, taking up all three seats by himself.  Wedge sat a little closer to the back, on the other side, and Biggs stood a few feet away from the door, leaning against a support pole, casually eavesdropping on the couple who sat two seats down.
     A calm female voice came clearly over the intercom.  "Attention, passengers: Thank you for riding the last train out of Highpoint Station, Sector 8 village, heading to Train Graveyard, Sector 7 slums.  Expected time of arrival is 12:23 AM, Midgar standard time."
     Cloud glanced at Biggs, who murmured in a careful undertone, "They haven't switched to security mode yet, but things will be different tomorrow night."
     "You see the most recent update of the Shinra Times?" The male passenger nearby whispered loudly to his companion.
     "It said the terrorists that bombed the Sector 1 reactor are working out of the slums," she nodded.  "Not that that should surprise anybody."
     "But it had to have taken a lot of guts to blow up a reactor.  They had to have put some real thought into that one."
     "Not enough, if you ask me," the woman whispered back.  "Did you hear the body count so far?  And they aren't even sure they found everyone.  They've got to be a cold bunch, to willingly put so many people in harm's way.   What do you suppose they'll do next?"
     "Who knows," the man replied.  "Another reactor, maybe, but they could just as easily target the train lines, or even one of the pillars."
     Cloud glanced at Biggs again, but he had the determinedly vacant expression of someone trying hard not to think about how many people might have just died as a result of his actions.  Moving further up the car, he gave Wedge an encouraging smile, ignoring Barret, who ignored him right back.
     "Hey, Cloud," Jessie called to him with a smile.  "You wanna look at this with me?  It's an interactive map of the rail system, and most of Midgar."
     Cloud shrugged, and moved over to stand beside her.  A three-dimensional model of the city of Midgar spun slowly on the monitor, like a merry-go-round devoid of horses.
     "Okay, it's about to start," she spoke in a low conversational tone, so as not to disturb the other passengers, standing very close to him.
     "I like this kinda stuff," she told him with a smile.  "Bombs and monitors.  High tech flashy stuff like that.  I know it's not very girlie, but I just do."
     She touched the screen again, and a lighted path wound its way around the central pillar. "This is the route this train runs on.  The ID sensor at the checkpoint can verify the identities and backgrounds of each and every person on the train against the files in the central databank at Shinra headquarters."  She tapped the top of the pillar.  "I designed the fake IDs, so that we don't show up as having used the train before and after each job.  And I change who we're suppose to be, after each mission, to a random citizen who has a very low probability of actually being on the train at the same time.  I should have a card for you done before the next run," she assured him, tapping the map to zoom in on the Shinra Building.  "You know, Barret doesn't even exists in the Shinra database anymore.  I hacked it a while back; that's where I get all of our account data; and they think he died four years ago.  The surgery on his arm was done under the account of a Shinra employee, on company insurance, no less."  She chuckled.
     The lights on the train suddenly flashed red, the main lights going down.  Jessie moved even closer to him.  "We're going through another checkpoint now.  You never know what kind of creeps will come out when the lights go down," she sounded nervous, and Cloud had to bite back a laugh, remembering how she had kicked one guard of the Sector 1 reactor in the head.
     The lights came back up to normal, and Jessie shook her head.  "At least we're almost back.  That's a relief."
     But Cloud was already gone, moving back down the car.
     "Well, we can finally see the ground again," Barret said, sitting sideways across his seats to look out the window.  "But not the sky anymore," he frowned at the plate.
     Cloud leaned across him to look out as well.  "No matter how many times I see it," he admitted.  "I don't think I'll ever get used to it.  Every time I end up back here, and see the upper city floating there like that, it always gives me the chills."
     "Huh," Barret smirked.  "Never expected you'da said somethin' like that.  You're jus' full of surprises."  But as he stood, his face fell back into a scowl.  "It's because of that technological upper world the people of the slums have to live like they do, in a world without sunlight, full of polluted air."
     "Why doesn't everyone live on the plate?"  Cloud asked, looking out across the ramshackle buildings of the slums, thrown together from scrap in many cases.
     "I dunno," Barret admitted.  "It's too expensive for most of 'em.  But even if I had the money, I wouldn't wanna live up there.  Maybe they're kinda like me, and they love their land, no matter how polluted it gets.  Even if the reactors keep sucking all the life out of it."
     "But no one lives in the slums because they want to," Cloud gestured out the window emphatically. "I guess," he trailed off sadly, thinking.  "It's like this train," he continued, more to himself.  "It can't run anywhere but where its rails take it."