Disclaimer: I don't own Wutai, Lord Kisaragi, the Turks, SOLDIER, Midgar, the slums, ShinRa Electric Power Company or its executives. Those all belong to Square Enix. What does belong to me are my Original Characters, Camryn and Miyuki, and the story itself.

Pre-story A/N: Hey guys! Here, as asked for by reviewers, is Miyuki's back-story, what she did and who she was before ShinRa Company got her to work for them. This is going to be a much younger Miyuki than you're used to, nowhere near the tough-talking, Reno-bashing bitch we know now. And this was written fairly early, while I was beginning DCiS, so it might not be as good as what I'm writing now, so that's where the readers come in!

Enjoy! Read and Review, please!

Miyuki dropped the pot of miso soup she'd been moving to the table with a start. The sirens had started again. Her brother and sister came running into the room, eyes wide and scared. "O-nee san!" yelled Kyosuke, pulling his sister's sleeve "Where's Mother? Where's Father?"

Miyuki shushed him and held her sister, who'd begun to cry. The loud sirens scared Miyuki just as bad as they scared An-Mei and Kyosuke, but she could afford no weakness, with her parents gone and she responsible for the younger children. She nodded at her siblings, "Mother and Father are outside working. Remember what they told us. We have to get out of here."

Just as they were running out of the house, Ichiro and Chiyo ran in. Miyuki looked at her parents: they were pale and seemed to try to look everywhere at once. Ichiro sharply instructed his children, "What are you still doing here?! We have to get out, the ShinRa are coming!"

A few hours later, they were in the thick Wutai sub-tropical forest, slapping mosquitoes off their skin and waiting for news. They'd heard several loud booms far out in the distance. There was a small cave nearby, but it was already crowded. Ichiro had pled for the people to at least let An-Mei and Kyosuke in, since they were children.

They'd let the children in, but Miyuki had to stay outside with her parents. She flinched at the sound of several other booms, these ones actually sounding closer.

It was a hellish experience, but one Miyuki had grown accustomed to, as the ShinRa raids over Wutai increased as Lord Kisaragi refused to acquiesce to ShinRa's demands. The Company had weapons, airships, SOLDIER, Turks.

Lord Kisaragi had the Imperial Army, the Wu-Sheng, and countless unofficial guerrillas hidden in the mountains and forests, who lashed out at ShinRa's armies with very good results, as SOLDIERs were not accustomed to the damp, humid, lush tropical forests of Wutai.

After a few hours, the bomb-dropping airships went further away, and things seemed tranquil enough to venture the journey back into the village. Once Miyuki got her siblings back, they began to walk.

Suddenly, an airplane approached. Everyone looked up, scanning the dark, nighttime sky. Miyuki pulled her father's sleeve and pointed in a north-east direction, "O-Tosan . . ." The people began to panic, and Ichiro roared, "Quiet! How can we tell where it's coming from?"

Miyuki gasped: she heard the shrill whistle a bomb made as it dropped. Others heard it to, and it galvanized the thin edge of terror into a full-blown panic. People screamed and banged into one another as the bomb's high-pitched shriek got louder. Miyuki was separated from her parents, her siblings flung apart from her, and she couldn't find any of them.

The bomb smashed into the ground, splitting the night apart with roaring flames and endless, head splitting noise. Miyuki screamed, feeling hot debris raining on her. She felt rocks, clods of dirt, splinters of wood, pelting her on the back, on her legs and her head. She also felt softer things hitting her, and she turned around.

She couldn't even scream. There was a crater in the ground, a crater edged in blood. Random body parts scattered the ground, a child's body torn apart, a man's head separated from his body.

Miyuki gasped, unable to grasp the horror of what had just occurred. She felt numb.

She gathered her wits somewhat, and called for her parents, for her brother, for her sister. She could hear other people screaming, calling for loved ones, groaning in pain. No one answered back to Miyuki.

Miyuki's nose was full of the stench of blood, of entrails, of smoke, and she couldn't find anyone from her family. She began to scream when she recognized her brother's prized fishing pole, broken and splashed with blood and dirt. Suddenly, every dead child was her brother, her sister. Every pair of sightless eyes were her mother's, every splash of blood was her father's.

She didn't know how long she screamed, but suddenly Chiyo was there. She slapped her screaming daughter, and once Miyuki focused on her, she told Miyuki her siblings were fine, but it was Ichiro who needed help.

So many dead bodies. So many random pieces of people who'd been her friends, her neighbors. Miyuki stepped on something soft, and with a soft cry of despair and revulsion she looked down and saw she'd stepped on a woman's dismembered hand, the soft skin already cold.

The women arrived to where Ichiro held a bloody rag to his head. Shintaro's arm was being bandaged by An-Mei, who wept quietly. Chiyo's face was tight with worry as she scolded Miyuki, "Look at you! You're bleeding!" Miyuki wiped the blood trickling from her head, and she muttered, ". . . Not mine . . ."

She shuddered violently, but opted instead to focus on her father. Ichiro had been struck by a bigger piece of flying wood, and had a deep scratch on his arm from a piece of shrapnel.

After her family had been attended to, they made their way silently back to the village. As they approached, they saw a dim, orange glow. Ichiro swore under his breath and broke off from his family to run ahead.

Feeling she already knew what the glow was, Miyuki began to sob under her breath, squeezing her mother's hand. Chiyo squeezed back, her breath caught in her throat as they broke out of the forest and approached the edge of the village.

ShinRa had firebombed the Sumida River village.

Chiyo wept quietly, moaning, "Our home, Miyuki-chan, look, look what they did!" Miyuki put an arm around her mother and the two women wept for their lost home, comforting the children when they too realized the depth of what had happened and began to cry.

A short while later, Ichiro came back to them. "Everything's lost," he said, his face grim, "the fields are burnt, there are no houses left standing. The food reserves have been destroyed. All we have is the river."

Several other surviving villagers reached the village, their cries amplifying the noise. Shintaro, one of the village's more outspoken men, yelled over the noise, "We knew this might happen! I told you, I told all of you, that it didn't matter we're a small village in the Wutai mountains, ShinRa would try to destroy us as well, and look!"

Many people agreed, adding their consent to Shintaro's voice. Miyuki looked at Shintaro. She'd known him since her earliest childhood, a boy who often enjoyed picking on small children with his own small gang. The pranks were almost always quite harmless, just enough to make the younger child cry, then the teasing would stop.

He'd always yearned to be a warrior, to be able to travel to Northern Wutai, where the Imperial Palace was, and give himself to Lord Kisaragi's army. But family and village duty kept him in here, and he often made him disquiet known to others.

Rumor had it Shintaro was either joining a guerrilla, or making his own. If so, they just might figure a way to stop ShinRa from attacking the village, keep them somewhat safe in the greater frame that was the war.

Miyuki sighed, putting aside heroic notions of her joining the guerrilla. After all, what was she good for? All she knew was cooking, sewing, keeping a home beautiful and clean. All were useless efforts in a guerrilla, just as they were useless talents now. There was no food to cook, no home to keep.

Ichiro, however, thought slightly different from Shintaro, as he argued, "Yes, Shintaro, you told us this might happen, but what could we do? We don't have money to pay for a guerrilla to defend us, we don't have weapons or means to acquire them, we have no political ties to the central Empire.

What we need, more than your warnings and complaints, is action. We need to clean the village, make shelters, and find food. That is more pressing to our immediate needs," he finished, and much more people agreed with Ichiro than with Shintaro. The younger man nodded, "Ichiro-san's right. For now, we must focus on the village, but for all those interested, I am forming my own guerrilla. I acquired several weapons, and-"

One of the surviving village elders roared, "Shintaro, enough! There is much work to do, and we cannot waste time indulging in your war-mongering fantasies!"

Shintaro flushed, and turned away, a bitter expression of disappointment fixed on his face. Miyuki sympathized with both men. It was true, that Shintaro had warned them about ShinRa's ruthlessness, but it was also true the villagers couldn't afford the services of guerrillas. They protected villages for a price, which sometimes made them even worse than the ShinRa themselves.

And while it was true that Shintaro lately did seem to be talking more and more about open war with ShinRa, the fact that he'd come out in the open and suggest forming their own guerrilla was an enticing prospect to Miyuki, as well as several other young men who all looked at Shintaro with open admiration.

Miyuki started when she felt a small tug on her hand. It was An-Mei, who seemed to be asleep where she stood. "O-nee san . . ." she said weakly. Miyuki picked her sister up, ignoring the looks other people gave her, for comforting a girl old enough to be out looking for ways to help.

She didn't care. She loved An-Mei deeply, and was truly sorry her kid sister had had the experiences she'd had today. "Shhh, Mei-mei, just sleep for a while . . ." Miyuki crooned, swaying back and forth, rocking her sister to sleep.

Almost immediately after An-Mei's head lolled sleepily, snoring quietly, Kyosuke went to her. He looked pale, over-exerted, and Miyuki wished she could pick him up as she had An-Mei. "O-nee san . . . what do you think of Shintaro's idea?"

Miyuki frowned at her younger brother, "Kyo-kun, O-tosan is right, we should concern ourselves with building up shelters and finding food. Only then can we consider the guerrilla as an option."

Kyosuke nodded, "Yes, I know, but aren't you interested?" Miyuki asked, "Me? I guess so. Why?" Her younger brother shrugged, "Well, you know you're a good tracker. And in the target practice exercise we've always had, you've always come out on top. Maybe you could ask Shintaro later on."

Another advantage Miyuki had that Kyosuke hadn't mentioned was the fact that there had been such a long time gap between Miyuki and her siblings. Ichiro, having begun to lose hope of ever having a son, had taught Miyuki archery and several techniques more fit to a warrior or a hunter than to a farming village girl.

It was only when he'd fathered Kyosuke that Ichiro began to stop training Miyuki, though she always practiced whenever she could.

Miyuki smiled at her younger brother, "I know what you're saying, Kyo-kun. But for now, let's focus on what needs to be done. Is there a place I can put An-Mei to sleep in? I want to help."

A/N: Let me know what you think by dropping hints, comments, or reviews, please!! I like having people talk to me about the story, it helps me focus on what to write next.

About the chapter, though . . . I tried to give it the paranoid, claustrophobic feel an air raid gives, what with having an enemy far up in the air that you can't really run away from. And the air-raid sirens are a very simple way of alerting residents to incoming doom. I live in a tsunami-watch area, and we have those sirens. We've had a few safety drills on what to do if those sirens go off, and it is creepy! The first time I heard them I was sleeping, and then came this really loud waaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAaaaaahhhh sound.

Yeah.

Anyhoo, review, please!