Chapter Text
The world lay in ruin.
Midgar was the last bastion of true civilization after the razing. Some called it the Floating City, some the City of Endless Night. The black metropolis did not float – it was a city on stilts. The endless night was just a shadow of the pollution clouds. It wasn’t even one city, but eight, congealed together in a solid ball of corruption and vice. It was feared at the worst of times, worshipped at the best. Midgar was a lie.
The city had a din all its own – it was palpable. Comforting. Sticky tires dragging over blackbrick roads. Boots clumping. It was the distant thrumming from the bellies of the eight reactors. Surrounding the city. Points of a black octagon. Green smoke like bile hurled from their tops into Midgar’s smoky dome.
The Sector 1 train station was awash with gaslight and deafened by the permanent hum of the city. The station itself was lower than street level, cutting through Sector 1 like a trench. The two Shinra guards stood patiently on the platform. It would not be long now. They looked at each other – crimson coats, a lazy hand on their respective holsters. The air was thick, and moist. It might be raining outside the city – winters were wet before Midgar was born. Nothing penetrated Midgar’s smoke anymore. The guards were thankful for that.
In the distance, they heard the familiar whistling of the 12:15 train. Their heads swivelled to watch its ascent onto the plate. As it neared the platform, its large headlight blinded them both for the split second that it shone directly at them. The station was now filled with the real, close noise of the mako ‘Big-One’ cylinder inside the engine. The brakes engaged, and orange sparks flew onto the platform, scattering about their feet. The huge locomotive slowed to a stop.
This was a cargo train. Winding exhaust pipes snaked around its exterior, hissing steam. The crew was usually small, eight men who – every Thursday – would unload crates, wheel them down the platform to the lift, rise to Sector 1 and disappear inside the Shinra-only area, where the station guards had never been. To the transporters, their weekly ritual seemed like nothing less than dreary. To the rail guards, their life seemed adventurous. The Shinra-only areas of each sector were amazing enough, but the cargo came from down there.
If it weren’t for the slumlings who rode the trains up every day to work in the factories, it would have been assumed that survival outside Midgar’s upper plate was impossible. The proof that the rest of the world was habitable did not bring comfort. Rather, it validated the horror stories about down below – how it was filled with thieves, knaves and nightmare-creatures, all of whom were a simple train-ride away. It was a blessing to them that the Sector 1 station was used primarily for cargo transportation, and rarely did the guards deal with anyone other than Shinra officials. The screeching of the train died out in the heavy air. The body of the locomotive was now in front of the clock on the far wall, and it sent tiny shivers up the spines of the guards. They had been looking at the clock every few minutes, a habit everyone had started at a young age. It had been 12:11 the last time they checked, the hands pointing to XII and II.
On this particular Thursday, the metal doors of the train slid open, and the guards looked into the train. It was a surprise to see a woman standing in the doorway. She was average height, clad in army green with her hair tied back in a ponytail. It was more of a surprise to the guards when she ran up to one of them and grabbed his head.
With a slight jerk, she snapped his neck. He collapsed in a heap on the ground. Dead.
The other guard stood in absolute shock. The woman turned to him, and then seemed to look past him. He began to turn but was grabbed from behind. The next sensation he felt was a slight tingling in his stomach as he was thrown through the air. His attacker quickly continued as he collided with the steel of the train. As his vision faded to black he felt the warm ooze of blood fill his eye cavity. He passed out.
The second attacker, a fat man in a red bandana, waved at the woman. She heeled, accompanied by a third member of their party. They bolted to the stairs at the north end of the station, disappearing off the platform. Their monstrous, dark-skinned leader – older than the rest – finally emerged from the train car. He looked around for the mercenary.
It wasn’t long before the mercenary came leaping off the roof of the train, flipping in the air. He landed theatrically in front of the team leader, in a squat position with his gloved hand lightly keeping balance. He whipped his head up, shaking his spiked mess of yellow hair. When he stood, he smirked at the team leader – blonde eyebrows raised.
“C’mon, newcomer,” the leader huffed, unfazed. “Follow me!”
The mercenary didn’t follow him to the staircase. He dusted off his blue sleeveless turtleneck casually. It was thick, to ward off the stale Midgar cold, and to support the lone iron pauldron on his left shoulder, just above a single vambrace. His leather boots looked worn, as if he had travelled the world on foot. He walked past the dead guard, and approached the one who had been thrown against the train. He was clinging onto life, but too much blood had escaped his forehead, his face was barely visible under the bright red mask. The mercenary knelt down, and with a gentle hand, plucked the flask of potion out of the guards hand and clipped it to his own plackart.
When he stood again, he turned towards the staircase. His attack squad was nowhere to be seen. In their stead there stood two Shinra Military Police officers, dressed in blue, each pointing their guns at him.
“Hey you!” one of them shouted.
He walked towards them, not paying any attention. It was only when they fired upon him that he appeared to make note of them. He turned to the side, the bullets bouncing harmlessly off his pauldron.
It was then that he reached over his right shoulder, and drew his sword.
There was a split second where the firing stopped. The very introduction of a melee weapon in a gunfight filled the MPs with a myriad of reactions. What foolishness, what cockiness! What was the gain? A sword was a gentleman’s weapon, they knew. Members of SOLDIER could make do with a blade on the battlefield, but this scrawny gamin?
They unleashed another spray of bullets at the attacker. Faster than they could see, he lifted his blade and blocked every bullet.
This looked like no gentleman’s sword. The blade was as thick as the handle – a brutish looking thirty centimetres. Single-edged and straight like a rectangle. At the tip, it angled sharply like a kitchen knife. The mercenary swung the massive weapon around again with the ease of a twig. He glared into their eyes with his own – bright blue and glowing unnaturally. When he saw the recognition in their face, he came upon them.
By the time they knew for certain that they were facing an ex-SOLDIER, the blade had already sliced neatly through one of them and was descending upon the other. The pipes on the train’s exterior were splattered with blood as the MPs fell apart.
With an ease that was unnatural for a man of his size, the mercenary lifted the blade over his head and slammed its broad side against his back. The metal locked into place in its magnetic hold. He was the only thing alive in this area. He made for the staircase.
The top of the staircase saw the streets of Sector 1. He stood on blackbrick cobblestone and streetlights lined the sidewalk. There was no blaring of klaxons, no commotion. To his left were the rebel team AVALANCHE, huddled around the large iron doorway that led to their destination. He approached them, looking at each member, sizing them up.
The MPs who had assaulted him on the platform had rushed right past the rest of the group and had gone right for him. The mercenary had immediately assumed that they had been felled, and that his mission was over before it began. He saw that was not the case. Wedge – the portly one in the backwards red cap – smiled at him with vacant eyes. None of the grenades on the bandolier across his torso had been used. Either the mercenary had underestimated AVALANCHE’s stealth capabilities, or the MPs hadn’t seen him as a threat. He assumed the latter.
Biggs, the cocky looking, green-clad man with the mangy mop of brown hair looked more suitable for battle but his guns were still in their holsters. He still looked worn like Wedge – not battle worn, just rough. Impoverished. He smirked at the newcomer, “Wow, you used to be in SOLDIER all right.” Apparently, he had seen the display of power on the platform.
Jessie, the only woman in the group, had been busy standing with her back to the mercenary. She was fiddling with the entrance code to a gate in the wall. She suddenly stopped and turned towards him, her eyes filling with fear. “SOLDIER?” she asked. The name of Shinra’s elite shock troops was all too familiar with her. “What’s he—”
Biggs raised his hand to silence her. “He was in SOLDIER. But he quit and now he’s one of us.”
To the notion that he was on their side, on anybody’s side, the mercenary rolled his eyes and held his tongue. Biggs turned back to him and raised an eyebrow. When they had met in the bar, he had given a nod of acknowledgement, but they had never spoken before this moment. “Didn’t catch your name.”
“Cloud” the mercenary said coldly.
“Cloud, eh? I’m—”
“I don’t care what your names are.” Cloud interrupted, “Once this job’s over, I’m outta here.” It didn’t matter that Cloud already knew their names and several rudimentary facts about them. Anything less would be unbefitting of a SOLDIER – even an ex-SOLDIER. He wouldn’t bother telling them that. Amateurs wouldn’t understand.
What was important was that they knew who he was.
Lumbering towards them from down the street was the team leader. Barret’s enormous and near-bare chest framed a small, square head with a buzz-cut and heedless stubble. A leather jacket was ripped armless for his massive, tattooed arms. His right arm had been replaced with a mech contraption – a gatling gun, grafted to the dark skin below the elbow.
“The hell you doin?” Barret yelled as he ran toward them. “I thought I told you never to move in a group! Meet at the bridge in front of the reactor!” His crude, gruff voice implied commoner – knave. It was clear that he was foreign – his dimensions implied mountain folk – from the outside world. His skin tone implied plenty of scorching sun. Cloud threw this data into the back of his mind. When the time was right, he would let his instincts make the judgement call.
Jessie, who had returned to her work, had hacked the security code to the Shinra-only area of Sector 1. The gate slid open with an all-too-loud creak, and the three underlings ran inside and out of sight.
Barret looked Cloud up and down with his dark-rimmed, aging eyes. Thirty-five or so, Cloud surmised, but the years weren’t kind to him. “Ex-SOLDIER, huh?” Barret scoffed. “Still don’t trust ya.”
Barret turned his back on Cloud and clumped inside. The mercenary surveyed the territory before running in. The mako reactor was in the distance, the billowing green smoke rose to the skies in furious light.