Cloud opened his eyes. He couldn’t see anything, and that scared him until he realized he was staring at the ground. With an angry start, he shot to his feet, instantly regretting it. A sharp ache traveled up the right side of his body, and he doubled over.
“Cloud?” Tifa was there suddenly, helping Cloud to his feet, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he lied, fumbling for a healing Potion. He still had one, thankfully. That reminded him to check for his sword, which was in place, thank the maker. He quaffed the potion and looked Tifa over. She was half covered in soot, though she probably didn’t realize it, but other than that she appeared fine. Cloud cast a look around. They were, ironically, sprawled out in the playground at the fork in the road that led to Sector 7 or Wall Market. Sector 7 was no longer accessible, however. The entrance was now merely a wall of scrap that was still burning from the sector’s collapse. Cloud felt sick just looking at it.
Barret was staring around as if in a daze. He was the first one to really understand what had just happened, and he showed it by leaping to his feet. “Oh…my…god!” he whispered hoarsely, and then started bellowing. “NO! Bloody HELL, NO!” He ran past a helpless Cloud and Tifa to the wall of scrap and fell to his knees before it. “They’re all dead! Biggs, Wedge, Jessie…the people of the slums…Marlene! Marlene!” With an angry cry, Barret let loose a long stream of gunfire at the wall, accomplishing nothing except making himself feel better.
Tifa stared sadly at Barret. The man had lost it all, she realized. His team, his daughter, virtually his life. Wait…his daughter! Tifa’s mind returned to the pillar. Aeris had spoken to them. “Don’t worry! She’s safe!” Those were her words, weren’t they? Tifa had sent her to save Marlene and Aeris had reported that she was safe! It had to be Marlene! Marlene was at Aeris’s house! Probably, Tifa settled down substantially, probably she was there. If the Turks had intercepted Aeris, wouldn’t they have taken Marlene, too? Except, Marlene had not been in the chopper with Aeris and Tseng. Had they killed her…? There was only one way to find out.
“Barret?” Tifa walked up to him, “Marlene…I think Marlene may be alive.”
Barret sprang to his feet and looked Tifa dead in the eye. “What…do you mean?”
“When we got to the pillar, Aeris was with us,” she explained. “I asked her to go get Marlene from Seventh Heaven and take her somewhere safe. She agreed.”
Barret began to breathe excitedly. His daughter was alive! Maybe, he reminded himself, but he had to find out. “Where? Where would she have taken Marlene?”
“Her house,” Cloud piped up, sounding horrible.
“Cloud?” Tifa asked, worried. “Are you all right?”
He was not. Cloud turned to the entrance to Sector 6. He started off towards the house. There were many things he wanted to know, hell, needed to know. He had to learn more about Aeris, and then he had to save her. He blinked at the thought. Aeris was no doubt locked up in Shinra Headquarters, the most powerful building on the planet, and he was planning to go rescue her? Well, he thought, he really couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t. He was supposed to have been her bodyguard, and he’d let the Shinra get her. How stupid he had been! Not two seconds after Aeris had run off for Marlene, Cloud had commented on the Turks’ presence. And the Turks were the ones who’d wanted Aeris for years. How could he have let her run off alone?
“Yo, Cloud!” Barret thundered after him, “Stop!”
“Cloud, wait!” Tifa followed Barret, “You’re going after her, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “Aeris saved my life. I can’t bloody well leave her to the Shinra. Besides…” he trailed off.
“Keep goin’,” Barret prodded.
“The Turks called her an ‘Ancient’. I’ve had enough experience with Ancients to decide that they’re not very high on my likable people list.”
“What?” Tifa frowned, “You know what Tseng was talking about?”
Cloud would say no more on the matter. “Come on. Marlene may be waiting.”
Barret nodded enthusiastically and the team moved through the wreckage that was Sector 6, all the while with the glum knowledge that the place was now better looking than Sector 7.
“Hoo boy, nice crib!” Barret couldn’t resist. Tifa shot him a look. Cloud knocked solemnly on the door.
“Who is it?” asked a weak voice from inside. Elmyra.
“It’s me, Cloud.”
“Cloud…? Okay…” The door opened and what remained of AVALANCHE beheld Aeris’s mother. She was not hurt, but very drained. She knew, Cloud realized. “Come in, come in.”
Elmyra ushered the three into the house.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry about…” Cloud started.
“Oh, it’s not any of your faults,” Elmyra interrupted.
Cloud nodded, and then remembered something. “I’m sorry, you don’t know these people. This is Tifa Lockhart and Barret Wallace, the leaders of AVALANCHE.”
“We ain’t nothin’ like those Shinra bastard make us out to be!” Barret spat instantly.
“I know,” Elmyra nodded, “I’ve grown to hate the Shinra just as much as you do. But…” She frowned. “What happened in Sector 7? Shinra claims AVALANCHE destroyed the pillar as a message to the Shinra Company.”
“NO!” Barret growled, “Not at all! Shinra destroyed that pillar to eliminate AVALANCHE! The Turks held their own little holocaust a half hour ago, killin’ thousands of people just to get us!”
“Excuse me,” Tifa interrupted, “But…how did you know about Aeris?”
“Well,” Elmyra smiled slightly, “It happened here.”
“What?” Cloud gasped, “Here?”
Elmyra nodded. “Aeris came into the house with a little girl. Tseng had apparently followed her here. He stormed inside with a team of soldiers and threatened the girl if Aeris didn’t turn out. In the end, she agreed to go with them as long as they left the girl here.”
Barret had been near dancing throughout the short story. “Excuse me, but…a little girl? What did she look like?”
“Bout this tall, brunette, red clothing.”
He let out a whoop. “She’s here! Oh thank god! Can I see her?”
“Yes,” said a somewhat startled Elmyra, “She’s right up the stairs in the first room.”
Barret thanked her heartily and followed her directions.
“Excuse me,” Cloud tried to start a different conversation, “But…the Turks keep calling Aeris an Ancient. What do they mean?”
Elmyra smiled. “Aeris is the survivor of a long forgotten race.”
It blew the two away. “Survivor?” Tifa asked, puzzled, “But…what about you? Aren’t you her mother?”
“Adoptive,” Elmyra conceded. “It was a very long time ago, when the war was still going on.”
“Would you please tell us?” Cloud asked.
“Sure. My husband had been drafted into Shinra’s army. He was sent off to some far away place called Wutai. About a year later, I received a notice saying he was coming home on leave. I went to the train station to meet him, but…my husband never came back. Day after day, I returned to the station, waiting for him. One day, though, I came across a woman.” She seemed uncomfortable all of a sudden. “She was in horrible shape. Something had made her so sick…she could barely talk. A little girl was running around, asking people for help. She dragged me over to the woman, who just looked at me, pleading with her eyes. ‘Please, take Aeris somewhere safe,’ was all she could say.
“I was lonely. I had no husband to take care of, and I’d never had a child. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was something else, but for some reason I took Aeris into my house. I tried to do the same with the mother, but quite frankly, she was dead in my arms by the time I got home. She’s buried in the garden out back…”
Cloud smiled sympathetically. “It must’ve been confusing for Aeris.”
“Actually?” Elmyra shook her head, “Aeris seemed to know her mother very well. She would rattle on and on about her mother. But strangely, she wasn’t very depressed when she died. She said she wasn’t sad because her mother had already returned to the Planet, whatever that meant. She was a strange child, in many ways.”
Cloud frowned involuntarily. He was matching these sentences to another’s. “It must have been strange living with her.”
“Heh, well,” Elmyra smiled weakly. “I pretended not to notice. She tried so hard to hide it, you see. I’d hear noises coming from her room and I’d ask her what she was doing and she’d reply that she was speaking with the planet. I really didn’t understand her, then.
“One day, a man came to our door. He said his name was Tseng, and he was from the Shinra. He told us that they had been looking for Aeris for quite some time. I remember there was nothing threatening about him. He knelt down on front of Aeris and told her that she was a very special child. She would lead the people of the planet to a land of supreme happiness, someplace called the Promised Land.
“Aeris vehemently replied that she wasn’t the Ancient they said she was. It was comical, a girl no more than 10 years old yelling at someone twice her age. Tseng asked her if she had any strange dreams, or if people talked to her when she was alone. She was scared then, and ran off. I kept quiet. I knew of her strange abilities, but I wasn’t about to let the Shinra take her. Aeris had told me she’d escaped from some kind of laboratory, and the story seemed to scream Shinra. I did get Tseng to tell me a little more. The Ancients were a race that lived nomadically. They traveled from place to place, living as one with the planet. When their long journey came to an end, they would find the ‘Promised Land’ of legend. Shinra wants to find that Promised Land, for their own reasons no doubt.”
“Do you…think they’ll hurt Aeris?” Tifa asked.
“No,” Elmyra shook her head. “The Shinra needed Aeris. I doubt they’d harm her. But still…”
Cloud stood. “I’m going to check on Barret, then we’re going to make up a plan.”
“For what?” Elmyra asked.
“We’re going after Aeris.”
“What?! That’s Shinra’s Headquarters you’re talking about!”
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” Tifa reassured, “We have our reasons.”
Cloud left the two to talk and climbed the staircase. What he saw served to warm his heart a bit. Barret had scooped up Marlene in a huge bear hug and had been holding her ever since.
“Daddy!” Marlene protested, “Your whisker’s scratch!”
Barret just laughed, obviously near tears. Cloud smiled slightly. Barret finally released his daughter and turned to face Cloud.
“We gotta help her,” he said flatly. “She saved Marlene; there’s no way in hell I’ll let the Shinra keep her.”
“We’ll be going straight into the heart of Shinra,” Cloud warned.
“Good,” Barret growled. “I’m up for a holocaust of my own.” He turned to Marlene. “You stay here, all right? Daddy’s goin’ somewhere for a while, but I’ll be back! Okay?”
“Okay!” Marlene nodded enthusiastically, attention turning to one of Aeris’s dolls. She was so young, so blind to everything happening around her. Good, Cloud thought to himself, she was better off innocent. Barret thundered down the stairs, but Marlene stopped Cloud.
“Aeris was asking me all kinds of questions.”
“Like what?” Cloud humored her.
“Like about you,” she giggled, “I think she liiikes you!”
Cloud felt his face heating up, but cut it off with a laugh and decided to give Marlene something to chew on while they were gone. “Let’s hope.”
“Ooooh!” Marlene bounced on the bed and squealed, grinning at Cloud. “I won’t tell Tifa.”
Cloud just smirked and waved goodbye.
Barret was having a conversation with Elmyra.
“Thanks again for keeping her,” he said gratefully.
“It’s no problem, but you better come back alive!” she warned, “Don’t deprive that girl of a
father!”
“I’m sorry, I know what ya mean. But…I gotta keep fightin’. Don’t get me wrong! I love my daughter and I wanna be a good father, but…I gotta fight. For this planet, for Marlene, for everyone.”
Elmyra nodded. “I think I understand.” She turned to Cloud. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”
“Positive,” he replied, “We all owe Aeris a great deal.”
“Plus, I got a burnin’ desire to tangle with some Shinra troops!” Barret patted his gun arm.
“Do you need a place to stay?” Elmyra offered, “You’ve had a long day and you all look spent…”
“We have to hurry,” Cloud insisted.
“Cloud,” Tifa sighed a bit, “We’re no good to anyone now.”
“I could try to make room for the three of you,” Elmyra clarified her offer.
“Uh,” Barret grinned sheepishly, “I don’t really feel comfortable doin’ that to ya. Besides, I really doubt we could fit…”
“Well,” Elmyra thought, “There’s an inn a ways south. You really should rest up.”
“Thanks,” Tifa nodded, “We will.”
“Good luck,” Aeris’s stepmother smiled, “And thank you.”
They slept for five hours, roughly. Barret slept the longest, being the most exhausted out of them. But once one woke up it was too difficult to go back to sleep. Cloud paid the innkeeper and turned to the others.
“I got some new bangles for us last night,” he started, handing each one a Titan Bangle. “Put it on. Each has two linked Materia slots.”
“You’re the Materia expert,” Barret stated.
Cloud nodded, taking the cue. “Barret, I’m giving you the Fire and Ice Materias. Shinra likes machines, but who knows what freaks they’ll have patrolling their base? Tifa, you get Bolt and All. Link ‘em. If you see a machine, use ‘em. I’ll keep the Restore and Sense.”
“I thought Aeris had some of these,” Tifa frowned.
“She dropped her stuff off with Marlene,” Barret explained.
“Now,” Cloud led them outside. “First things first, we have to get to the Headquarters, which is real high up.”
“There used to be a train that went to the Headquarters,” Tifa observed. “It ran from Wall Market, but the track was recently destroyed with the rise of rebel groups. Like us.”
“Well,” Barret said, “Let’s head on down to Wall Market. Maybe we’ll find something.”
The hardest part of going to Wall Market was not going through Sector 6, but passing Sector 7. Barret had shivered involuntarily. Cloud could understand. Somewhere in there, Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie, Barret’s men, lay dead. Shinra would pay for that.
“Well now,” the tailor scratched his head, “That track was destroyed some time ago.”
“Where was it?” Tifa was doing the talking, since Cloud rightfully didn’t feel comfortable in the area and Barret was outside, still rolling with laughter from the tailor’s story about Cloud. At least he’d stopped howling, Cloud thought with a bit of anger.
“Back by Corneo’s place, hang a right before entering the mansion. You won’t run into any trouble; Corneo disappeared last night. Him and all his guards. I dunno what you and your friend there did, but it freaked the Don good.”
“Thanks,” Tifa nodded.
“By the way,” the tailor added, “If you’re thinking of going up to the Shinra place, you might wanna stop by the weapon shop here. The folks don’t think much of the owner, but he has some batteries ya may need. There’s a lot of electrical stuff by what remains of the track. You should be able to climb it if ya have a bit of extra power.”
“I’ll keep it in mind!” Tifa smiled, “Thanks!”
“Hoo boy, I can’t believe what you did!”
“Not another word!”
“Hah hah! I’m sorry, I jes’ can’t picture you in a dress!”
“Well I’m glad you find humor in my discomfort.”
“Bet yer’ white ass I do!”
“Hey! If it weren’t for me doing that, Tifa might be pregnant with Corneo’s child!” That one earned Cloud a punch in the shoulder.
“Shut up,” said a perturbed Tifa, “I don’t want to think about that.”
“Yo, we are here!” Barret looked around. They were facing a large concrete wall.
“Wow.” Cloud just frowned. “How hope inspiring.”
“Hey!” Tifa tapped a thick golden wire, “We can climb this!”
“What?” Cloud gasped, “That frail thing?”
“Yeah!” Tifa nodded, “We go one at a time to the top. There’s a few more rails we can climb, then there’s that fan.”
“No prob,” Barret patted the three large batteries he had placed in a backpack. “Look, Cloud, maybe it don’t look like much to you, but to me, that’s a golden, shiny wire of hope!”
Cloud recoiled. “God, that was bad! But get the message.” To accentuate the fact, he took hold of the wire and pulled himself up. “Come on.”
Tifa nodded and started up as Cloud neared the top of the wall. Then it was Barret’s turn. His grin faded as he looked up.
“God dammit….I forgot how much I hate heights…”
They climbed and they climbed, latching onto the remains of rails, precariously high, until they reached a large fan blade. Barret popped in a battery and the fan began to spin, lodging itself into a heap of scrap across a gap, providing a walking path. The team ran across the blade. Other such uses of intelligence and batteries took them up the road of trash, closer and closer to the Shinra Headquarters building.
The three stared at a pipe, part of a mechanism above, swinging like a pendulum.
“We can ride it to the other side,” Cloud declared. “We just have to jump at the right time.” He waited for the ‘right time’ and leaped off the platform the three were standing on, grabbed onto the pipe, and jumped off onto the other platform. “Like that.”
Tifa didn’t wait to ponder. She repeated Cloud’s motions, leaping over the pit of death and grabbing onto the pole. She dropped beside Cloud. Barret hesitated. He let the pole come back towards him, then jumped…a bit too late. He fell, arms flailing, luckily grabbing onto a protruding rail.
“HELP!”
Cloud jammed his sword into the ground for leverage and leaned on it. “Tifa, take my hand and hold on tight! Lower yourself down towards him!”
Tifa did so, reluctantly. Barret latched onto her leg, using his gun-arm as a claw to help him scale. Tifa felt like she was being ripped apart; Barret was not a small man. But Cloud was able to yank the both of them to the top and they collapsed, exhausted.
“You know…” Tifa gasped for breath, “Next time, I’m just gonna let you die.”
“Next time…?” Barret’s stomach rolled.
It was huge. That was the only way to describe it. It was huge and it glowed with the light of a million bulbs and lamps, and the aura of power was choking.
“Damn…I feel all humble,” Barret breathed.
“You ever been here before, Cloud?”
“SOLDIER?” Barret punctuated, and there was no insult intended.
“No,” Cloud shook his head. He had never been to the Shinra Headquarters building, though he had always dreamed of it. For many reasons.
“Well,” Barret armed his gun, “Let’s get this show on the road!”
“Wait!” Tifa gasped, “You can’t mean to tell me you’re just gonna run in there and start
shooting!”
“Well you got a better idea?” Barret retorted.
“Yeah! There has to be some better way! A quieter way.”
“I don’t want to create a scene until Aeris is safe,” Cloud said quietly…
“Thank you!” Tifa shook her head, “Come on, maybe there’s a staircase somewhere!”
“A staircase!” Barret scoffed, “Hah! But all right…”
They did find a staircase. There was an alley to the right of the building and a back entrance. Barret blew away the lock and AVALANCHE started upstairs.
“Be ready,” Cloud warned, “Soon we’ll be facing all the Shinra have to offer.”
“Right,” Barret and Tifa said in unison. They started running mindlessly, moving their legs became involuntary, up and up and up.
“I wonder where they’re keeping Aeris,” Tifa mused.
“The first sixty floors of this place are open to all employees,” Cloud explained, “Everything higher is sealed.”
“So, you’ve been here before?” Barret asked.
“No, no I haven’t. That’s just common knowledge among SOLDIERS.”
“Wait,” Barret shook his head, “You said…how many floors?”
“Sixty plus,” Cloud replied.
“Sixty PLUS?” Barret almost froze, “And we gotta CLIMB?”
“Barret…” Tifa said, tired of him already.
“We cover two or three floors with each staircase,” Cloud tried to soften the blow. Barret nodded weakly.
They continued for another ten minutes or so when the complaining started.
“Damn,” Barret huffed, “These stairs don’t end, do they?”
“It can’t be that much longer,” Tifa reassured.
Barret nodded and kept quiet. Cloud had been doing the same, since he found it easier to be a robot and move mindlessly up the stairs when he concentrated on his objectives. What were they, really? Find Aeris, of course. But what first? How could they actually get into the area where Shinra was holding Aeris? There would be some combat, to be sure. Once they had a lock on Aeris, they would retrieve her and evacuate as soon as possible.
“Are we there yet?” Finally, someone had asked it, that dreadful, evil question.
“Barret!” Tifa snarled, “Don’t EVEN start!”
Two staircases up.
“Are we there yet?”
“NO!” Tifa growled this time, “We’re not even close to being there, so don’t ask again, all right?”
Five staircases up.
“Damn…Marlene, oh hell, I’ll never get outta here…glad I got to see ya one last time…”
“Stop being a jackass!” Tifa refrained from hitting him.
“Listen,” Cloud spoke at last, “Once we’re in there, we have to sneak into the private floors. We’ll need to collect keycards from various places on each floor.”
“Do we have to climb stairs to get to the floors?” Barret. Who else?
“No, they have elevators.” Cloud didn’t give Barret a chance to complain. “After we find Aeris, we get the hell out of this building as soon as possible. If we run into any Shinra
executives, we eliminate them in stride, but only after we save Aeris.”
“Gotcha,” Barret nodded, though both of his comrades knew how hard it would be for Barret to refrain from shooting the executives as soon as he saw them.
It was another two staircases before they came to a large steel door.
“We’re HERE!” Barret whooped.
“Keep it DOWN!” Cloud hissed, “Who knows what’s behind this door!”
“Are we ready?” Tifa asked.
“Catch your breath,” Cloud ordered.
“Yo,” the red clad guard radioed his ally in the security booth, “I’m pulling out for a bit. I got a report to write. Be back in a few!”
“Gotcha,” the security chief of the 61st floor replied, buzzing his friend out. He scanned the screens in his office, finding nothing unusual, and reclined in his chair. Another hour and he could bail back to Wall Market, maybe stop by the Honeybee Inn for a good time.
A crash resounded throughout the room. He heard the murmurs of the guards in the corridors, but he couldn’t take any action. A salvo of bullets ripped through the glass around him. He felt a little pressure from behind, and suddenly he couldn’t feel at all.