One day, while he was out in the oil fields, he'd seen something glinting. Brushing aside the gravel and dirt that covered it, he'd seen a round, golden stone. A materia. Barret never expected how that little stone would change his life. He'd reached down to pick it up, and at the first brush of his metal fingers, it had glowed brilliantly and activated.
"Good morning, sir. Is there any thing I can get you?" his secretary asked. She was an older woman with a gentle face, a long-time employee.
"Mornin'. The paper in yet?"
"Yes, sir, it's already on your desk."
"Hmm, jes' the usual pot of coffee then, Anna."
"Of course."
As he entered his office, the president of the most powerful company on the planet took a moment to look out his window and enjoy the view. The acacia trees were in bloom, creating a three story high field of yellow flowers right below his office window. At first, the building security hadn't been too happy about the trees being planted right there, but after they saw the tree's three inch thorns they had stopped complaining. No one was going to climb up those suckers. The main headquarters of Wallace Energy & Industries might not be the world's largest or most impressive building, but it caught the eye. It's cement terraces, covered in greenery, were practical and efficient. It was even comfortable, as far as office buildings went. A great big mural of a train going down a track surrounded by white and yellow flowers covered one side. In a way, it stood for everything the company represented: sustainable, affordable, reliable, beautiful living for everyone.
Even startin' out in the Corel desert, given a chance to do things over, Barret had been determined to get things to grow. Hell, he'd never be a green thumb or anything, but he was determined to make the planet a healthier place. And to be the exact opposite of Shinra. Course, he couldn't really tell anyone that last part. They wouldn't get it. Ask someone about Shin-Ra Inc., all you'd get was some story 'bout a weapons manufacturer that went belly up some years back. Ask someone about mako, they'd respond that it was the life force of the planet, a condensed form of the place where the dead went and where new life was born. Ask about mako energy, and all you'd get was a "huh?". Barret was proud of himself about all that. He'd managed to keep Shinra from getting an energy monopoly - in fact, he'd gotten here in time to get an energy monopoly himself. He'd come back knowing the location of 15 major fossil fuel deposits, and with that knowledge, he'd turned coal and oil into the world's main energy source. He hadn't interfered with the other fledgling entries into the energy market, but when Shinra and it's mako energy had tried to make its way in, he'd crushed them. He'd called in government favors, he'd bought out or threatened to buy out companies that would have lent Shinra a hand, he'd hired up all the best staff. He'd set up public schools, classes on the life stream included, so the public was educated about the risks of draining the planet's lifeblood.
Hojo had come out to Corel when Barret had been just starting to go big time, trying to get Barret to sponsor him. Even then, the fucker hadn't had many friends. There hadn't been many questions the next day when the scientist's body was discovered, apparently run over by one of the coal trains. Barret didn't like doing things that way, pulling dirty tricks like Shinra's Turks. He'd sworn to himself at the start, that however Shinra Electric had played it, he'd do it differently. Over time, his ideals had taken their hits. When you became a big business, corruption was everywhere, out and in. To fight it, he'd needed some of his own spies and dark suits. Instead of being a dedicated unit, his dark suits were scatterd throughout the work force, keeping tabs on his friends and enemies, old and new. Vincent moonlighted as one. Still, assassination really wasn't Barret's way of doing things. Hojo had been the exception. The fact was, Hojo had been asking for it, the research plans he'd presented. Shiva, the man must've thought of him as either stupid or power hungry. Freaking asking him for sponsorship on those things. Barret would've made an exception for Scarlet too, but she was a very successful real estate agent and serial widow here. Tough on her wealthy husbands, but not a threat to anyone else.
Now, thirty years after his arrival, thanks to his company's partnership with Cosmo Canyon, plans were underway to build some hydroelectric dams, solar farms, and wind farms, leading to even healthier energy than they had right now. One of the first things he'd done when he arrived was go talk to Bugenhagen. Turned up in the canyon just before the Gi first attacked. Now that had been a fight! Those Gi were a nasty bunch of creeps to deal with. Once all was said and done, he'd gained a good group of allies in the great cats. 'Nother thing he'd done was create a special monster hunting militia. Sure, without the mako pollution, monster attacks weren't such a problem, but they still happened. The people in the militia were well trained, well-paid, and when monster reports came in, were called on to drop what they were doing and go save lives. It was better than havin' to care for a damn army, or for towns to have to wait for some wandering mercenary to come through. Super soldiers were the stuff of cheesy science fiction now.
He grinned broadly. Self-satisfaction wasn't really something he'd had since his days as a simple, hard-working coal miner before Corel's destruction, but it was creeping up on him more an' more these days. He'd done good work.
Anna came in, putting his coffee and a carafe on his desk. He nodded his thanks before sitting down, rubbing his left knee. It had been giving him some trouble lately, and it felt good to get the weight off it. He picked up his morning paper and coffee. The cover story was about Emperor Godo's up-coming wedding ceremony to Kasumi. Barret couldn't help laughing. Couple more years, and Yuffie would be giving them hell. 'Course that was if she was born. His grin faded, becoming a scowl. Some things he'd set out to change, but those things seemed to have had a domino effect. Barret had hired Vincent as part of his security team, soon as Wallace Energy & Industries was big enough to afford a security team and not just a bunch of volunteer coal miners standing around the trial wells, scowling at strangers. He'd nabbed Lucrecia as she got out of university. She worked in one of the science labs, and Barret had set the two of them up together. They were married, had twin black haired boys. He'd managed to get Gast from the private think-tank the man had been at before Shinra, and the man now oversaw any archaeological sites they came across. Ifalna had been trickier. It had taken him forever to find her, living up in the frozen north, and even longer to introduce her to Gast. Matchmaking wasn't one of Barret's natural skills either, no more than gardening or assassination were. All the same, he'd seen to it that they ended up together a lot, and the result was Aerith's birth a couple years ago.
Tifa's parents had been childhood sweethearts, and things seemed to have happened pretty much the same between them as in Barret's native timeline, because they'd had a little black-haired girl a few weeks ago. He hadn't heard the name yet. He hoped it was Tifa. He'd fucked up his own birth. Corel had been at the center of the ripples Barret had caused, and timeline changes had affected it first. His parents had got married a couple of years late, and instead of a son named Barret, they had a daughter named Ursel. Cloud was another one who hadn't been born, and at this rate, probably wasn't gonna be. Barret didn't know who Spike's pop had been, and so had no way of manuevering him into meeting Cloud's mom. If it was gonna happen though, it shoulda happened by now.
While he was proud of what he'd done after finding himself in the past thirty years ago, he felt bad 'bout how not all his friends would get to live in this new world he'd helped shape. Dyne was dating Eleanor, but would Marlene be born? How 'bout that boy, Denzel? Thank Gaia that Reeve and Cid had been born even with, or in spite of, all his meddling. He hadn't known anything about their parents, but in the end it had all worked out. Reeve was a whiz of a kid. At fourteen, he was already coming in this summer as an intern. Barret didn't like hirin' kids, but he needed to keep the best and brightest out of the wrong hands. He'd already brought in Cid, as a pilot for the new public transportation department, another group Barret had set up. He remembered too well hikin' all over the damn planet, and the frustration of the buggy's constant breakdowns.
Air fields, train stations, ports and small towns centered around a gas station now connected humanity all across the globe. People were no longer cut off from each other. This was the age of communication and travel, where little towns didn't shrink and die, or fester into slummy shadows, but grew brighter. Where green things grew. While Wallace Energy & Industries, was the worlds largest company and employer, it also didn't step on the little guys. People had dreams, and they worked for 'em, and they got 'em. The world moved forward. Time was moving forward, too, and the papers on his desk weren't gonna do themselves.
The smile grew again, despite his best efforts at controllin' it.
"There ain't no gettin' offa this train we're on."