Disclaimer: I do not own, nor claim credit for, any characters, events, the story of, or other materials of Final Fantasy VII. All rights are reserved to Square, save for the original concepts, events or dialogue weaved in for sake of realism, entertainment, or believability. Please offer critique and review, so that this work may be continually improved to both accurately match the stellar quality of its inspiring package, and to also allow me to improve as a writer. Thank you, and enjoy.
Prelude
Midgar.
The very utterance of the name provokes the emotions of all who hear it. From the prosperous to the destitute, few may earnestly claim apathy toward Gaia's capital.
A circular city of eight sectors, it stands as the world's technological precipice with its beating heart the towering Shin-ra building at its center. Each sector of the divided metropolis contains a combination of plates and consists of two levels: the upper, flourishing districts, and the humbling sections below referred to as the slums. Reactors line the rim like tambourine metal, one numbered facility for each sector that fume light, tourmaline green effulgence like slumbering volcanoes in the night. No star seems capable of piercing the veil of pollution looming overhead.
Yet, a lonely blossom blooms within the Sector Eight slums, in the neon-lit, grey-walled alley between the theater and Goblin's Bar. Before it crouched a brunette woman of twenty-two years, in a pink, button-up dress. A lovely lady of breathtaking beauty wearing a dwarfish red leather jacket. Brown boots cover her feet and trios of silver bracelets her wrists. Her fine face is framed and feathered by thick tresses of auburn, the locks tied into a braided tail with pink ribbon. Around her neck: black lace tied like shoestrings. She holds a wicker basket by her right elbow, filled with variegated, colorful blooms. Her moderate smile befits an air of gentleness; the last, but most gorgeous feature to be noted are her rich green eyes, cut from gemstones. As the vigilant floret sparkled with the emerald gleam of life, a tiny but brief grin graces her lips just before she rises.
Her hands conjoin at chin level for three seconds of closed-eyed prayer. Then she looks left, at the bustling street and takes a pair of moments before she turns toward it while letting her sinistral hand fall. She walks with profoundly straight gait. The steady, echoing clack of her step on the tarmac dots into street noise; halfway to the sidewalk, her head turns downwardly left in the glance at the fuming, flat storm drain against the wall. The ruckus becomes louder to recapture her attention quickly and returns her focus upon the forward. Just before she reaches the curb of the beige-bricked road, a black blur of a tractor-less semi cuts from her left. Opposite that comes a silver coupe which made a slender right leading out of the Y-shaped intersection several yards down the avenue.
So continues an ordinary day for the comely Aerith Gainsborough, perhaps oblivious to events soon to change her life forever.