Twilight in Midgar
by TacomaSquall
Jourmand was pretty good, as
street artists went. He made enough
money to be able to afford the little flat he shared with his wife and two
children. He was able to afford to ride
the trains that ShinRa had set up to run from the various Sectors, rather than
having to rely on his feet to get to wherever business was good.
His home was in Sector 1,
near the Mako Reactor that provided cheap and reliable power to his home. Jourmand was glad that he had found it –
even though they were still in the slums, it was a step up from where he had
found Hilda, two years before, living in a church in the Sector 6 Slums. If they had stayed there long, Jourmand
would probably be dead, and Hilda would have been forced into the employ of the
despicable Don Corneo. Instead, he was
able to do portraits, and she watched a number of the neighborhood children at
a nearby park, giving them a safe place to play and be children in the
nigh-oppressive city.
This evening, his business
was special, as he had been fortunate enough to gain the interest of a ShinRa
employee. Today, he was riding the
train for his first trip above the plate, to her apartment near the ShinRa
Tower. She wanted him to draw a special
portrait of herself for a friend. She
offered him ten times his usual fee, which would be enough for his family to
live well on for a whole month.
His customer was no normal
employee of ShinRa. Her name was Elena,
and she was the newest addition to the notorious Turks.
Jourmand gulped as he
checked his pad and satchel. Within the
satchel, he carried his pencils and charcoal sticks, along with chamois cloth
to blur and soften lines, and a gum eraser from far-off Wutai to correct
mistakes.
This evening, he could not
afford any mistakes.
* * * * * *
Elena felt giddy and
girlish. Her request to join the Turks
had been accepted! She felt like
jumping up and down in her excitement.
Three years before, she had
entered into ShinRa Security's ranks, a young woman right out of Midgar University,
with a Law Enforcement degree. Even
then, she knew that she wanted to make a name for herself. Visions of becoming the first female head of
corporate security had been in dreams, and she knew she had the intelligence
and the physical skills to make it work.
Three years of hard work had
showed her that the world of corporate security was nowhere as simple as she
had once thought it was, in her naiveté.
Those three years had led the blonde woman to the realization that she
actually preferred the myriad shades of morality that she found in security
work to the simplistic black-and-white view she once held of the world.
She still desired to be the
head of security for all of ShinRa Corporation. And that required a successful stint in the Turks – the
black-ops/intelligence/security arm of the megacorporation.
And now, she had that
opportunity!
She had returned home three
days before to a phone call from a mellifluously voiced man who introduced
himself as Tseng. Tseng informed her
that she would need to report to the high-security sixty-fifth floor of the
ShinRa Tower for an interview the next morning. In the two days that followed, she interviewed with Tseng, and
was run through a rigorous series of tests of skill and intelligence.
Last night, she had went out
with Tseng and two other Turks (a scruffy, bitter redhead, named Reno, and a
cool bald man, named Rude). They went
to the exclusive club, Purgatory, for some drinks. While there, they had caught a game of blitzball being broadcast
on the ShinRa Network.
Over the course of the
evening, she discovered herself relaxing around the three hard-bitten
Turks. While Rude smoked and watched
the blitzball game, saying little, Reno went around the club trying to hit on
chicks. Tseng and Elena sat, laughing
at the redhead's failures and talking.
They left the bar at shortly after midnight, and Tseng had walked her
home.
It was during that walk that
Elena sensed the growing attraction she felt towards the dark-haired Turk. He was coolly polite, never crossing the
lines of propriety as they walked, continuing to talk.
Elena had been shocked when
she realize that she wanted him to forget about propriety when they arrived
back her apartment. Sadly, however, he
took his leave of her as politely as he had been all night.
Then, she was awakened to a
phone call from her job this morning.
They informed her that she was needed down in Wall Market to track down
a thief. The hunt for the man, who had
stolen into HoJo's labs and lifted a vial of genetic material from his
experiments, took most of the morning, and ended at the infamous Wall Market
brothel, The Honeybee Inn. The thief
had been subdued by one of the male employees of the brothel, and was taken
into custody, with the vial intact.
After the successful
conclusion of the pursuit, Elena received a phone call from Tseng. She had been accepted into the Turks, in
large part due to the successful persecution of her most recent assignment. She was to report to the ShinRa Tower in two
days to go through her orientation.
On her way back to her
apartment, she encountered a familiar face from her days at Midgar University –
an artist by the name of Jourmand Arrowny.
The intervening years had not been kind to him - to her surprise, he had
become a street artist. With his
talent, she felt he could have gained a design job for ShinRa easily. On an impulse, she made the decision to hire
his service to do a portrait of her that would get Tseng's to see her as more
than just a new recruit for the Turks…
Elena stretched and
smiled. Jourmand should be here any
time.
* * * * * *
Jourmand felt his heart
begin to beat more rapidly as he disembarked from the train and started to walk
down the street towards the apartment Elena had told him to come to. He felt so out of place in this section of
Midgar. The streets were clean, the
pavement of sidewalks and streets was smooth, and the streetlamps worked.
Idly, he wondered how his
former classmate and friend could afford to live here. Rent for one month would probably take
everything that I could get in a full year's work.
He looked at a house and
grimaced. You could fit the entire
block of flats where we live into that house and still have room to spare! How can the people up here afford such
luxurious spaces?
He strode up to an apartment
complex that dwarfed the tenement block he lived in, back in the slums. Not only was the complex larger and more
spacious, but it seemed to be in near-pristine condition – no graffiti marred
its walls, no crumbling plaster showed, fresh paint nearly glowed on the outer
walls of the complex, and the metal outer fittings of the building shone in
reflective ecstasy. It was like he was
in a completely different city.
He craned his neck to look
upwards at the four-story apartment complex.
It stood straight and tall, unlike the leaning structures of the slums
below Midgar's plate. The roof of the
complex looked to be flat, unlike the angled roofs of the slums below, which
almost interlocked in a highway for those with the wit and courage to use them.
He walked slowly towards the
gate of the complex , where there was a panel with a list of names on it. Each name had a buzzer beside it, and a
speaker grille was set in the panel beside the list. Jourmand searched the list for his client, and found her name, E.
Joyce, at the top of the second column of names.
He pressed the button.
* * * * * *
Across town, the Midgar
train came to a stop in Sector 1. The
members of AVALANCHE disembarked, taking down two members of ShinRa Security as
they raced toward the goal of their mission.
As the terrorists moved out,
another man came out of the train, a massive sword strapped to his back. He followed after the members of
AVALANCHE. He still did not know why he
had taken the job with them. For some
reason, he just wasn't able to say no to Tifa…
He was jarred from his
musings by the arrival of two Security troopers. Using the fighting skills he had learned in the employ of ShinRa,
the warrior defeated them easily, taking only slight injuries from their
attempts to fight back. Before he could
continue after the rest of the team, he was assaulted by a pair of ShinRa
troopers, with one of their cybernetically enhanced dogs. He made quick work of the dogs, but was
stitched by machinegun fire from one the Security soldiers.
In rage, the warrior allowed
his anger to suffuse his counter strike with the glowing energies of a Limit
Break. He brought the Buster Sword
across and then down in the crushing attack that he called Braver. He laughed, for the name meant that his
enemy was brave, but he was braver.
Cloud Strife raced after
other members of AVALANCHE, as they moved forward. Tonight, they aimed to destroy the first of Midgar's eight Mako
Reactors.
* * * * * *
Elena reclined on a couch,
only a diaphanous veil draped over her form.
Jourmand blinked quickly, as he remembered all too well the sensations
of touching that body, now forbidden to him.
"Are you sure that you want a semi-nude portrait, Elena?"
Elena laughed. "I want to give this portrait to someone
very special." Perhaps Tseng will
then see me as something more than just the newest member of the Turks.
"Whoever he is, he sure is a
lucky guy." Jourmand fought down the
note of bitterness that was threatening to creep into his voice.
Once, Jourmand and Elena had
been lovers, during their first year at the University. It had been a special time for Jourmand, as
he had never been so alive as when he was with the blonde woman. He found himself disturbed, however, by the
burning ambition he saw in Elena, and gradually began to pull away as he
realized that she was choosing a path that he would never wish to follow. Not for the auburn-haired painter were the
politics of ShinRa Corporation.
He still remembered the day,
at the end of their freshman year, when he took her aside to break up with
her. He sat down and explained to her
why he could not live with someone whose first drive was an ambition to gain
power. He stated that he wished they
would always be friends, and turned and walked away, before she could see the
tears that sprang in his eyes at the grief of leaving her.
It had been six long years
since then, and this was the first time that they had seen each other
since. For the first time since his
sophomore year, Jourmand asked himself if it had been worth it.
"Ahem."
Jourmand looked at
Elena. She sat on the tan couch, a look
of mock irritation on her face. "I
thought you were going to draw my portrait, not spend the entire evening ogling
me, Jourmand."
"It is just so weird to have
run into you after all these years."
Jourmand's reply seemed trite, even to his ears.
Elena giggled. "I know –"
Whatever else the newest
Turk had been about to say was drowned out by the thunder of a massive
explosion from the distance. Jourmand
looked out the window and a cloud of fire and debris rising up from the site of
the Sector 1 reactor.
"My God!" Jourmand dropped the stick of charcoal he
held in his hands. "Hilda…"
Elena crossed swiftly to her
former lover. "What happened?" Her eyes took in the sight of the massive
cloud that still rose upwards.
Jourmand turned towards the
exit from Elena's apartment, and started to walk away. He paused as Elena asked him, "Jour, what's
wrong?"
In a heartbroken voice, he
said, "My family. My wife and two
daughters live in the Sector 1 Slums, right by the Reactor. Hilda works from our home and from the park
that lies between Sectors 1 and 2."
Elena was unable to reply to
the desolation in his voice. Mutely,
she clasped him briefly to her.
"I've got to go," Jourmand
said, as he pushed away from her.
"Find your family,
Jour. I will follow as soon as I can,
and I will bring help."
* * * * * *
The Slums of the first
Sector of Midgar resembled nothing less than one of the besieged towns of Wutai
during the war that ended less than a decade ago. Fires burned in many areas of the Sector, and those areas that
were not on fire were damaged by debris from the explosion. Injured people lay on the ground, being
tended to by their neighbors in an attempt to save their lives.
Elena picked her way through
the rubble, searching for her friend. I
hope Jourmand and his family are okay.
The closer she drew to the
Reactor, the fewer buildings she found intact.
The Turk found herself, surprisingly, battling against tears, as she
looked at the devastation the explosion had created.
She turned a corner and saw
one of the Reactor's collapsed walls.
At its foot, sobbing in heartbreak, was Jourmand. She walked up to him. "Jour?"
Without looking up, he spoke
bitterly. "I don't care about Mako
depletion." Crumpled in his hand was a
flyer. Elena took it from him and
smoothed the crinkled and crumpled paper out.
It read:
People of Midgar
Unite against the madmen who are draining the life from
our Planet!
ShinRa's Mako Reactors are killing the world.
Soon, the Planet will be unable to sustain life.
Today, we have struck a blow for the Planet's freedom
–
Join us, so the Planet will live for our
grandchildren's grandchildren.
AVALANCHE
Elena shook her friend. "Maybe they were not here."
He shook his head
negatively. Beyond him, barely
protruding from the wall, she saw a slender hand, clutching a teddy bear. All that remained of Jourmand's two-year-old
daughter.
Elena looked towards the plate
above her. "Jour, I swear that the
bastards that did this will be stopped.
As a Turk, I'll make sure of it."
Her words did little to
console the grief of a man whose life had been rent from him. Everything he had had been lost, due to a
group of people's willingness to kill others in an attempt to save the Planet.
Fin
