Chapter 2
The wind howled as it streamed over the many folds and creases in the metals that formed the edge of the buildings in the sector. The figure was terrified at the sound, and the coupling darkness felt crushing to him. But the fat man shook his head and focused, his sight trained down the scope of his rifle. Cloud almost burst out laughing as he saw the man, he could not have been any less convincing a sniper.
He saw that the sniper wore an ill fitting yellow armour that exposed flabs of flesh around his waistline. A thick leather belt had been strapped over one shoulder and looped through the other side, a trio of grenades hanging from one section. While numerous clips for the rifle were statue still on his main belt that doubled as the way of keeping the denim trousers from falling down. Even the western bandana looked ridiculous.
"What do you see?" He asked as he slipped beside the man.
Wedge yelped in surprise before pointing to the distant spire. "There's a guard watching from there, he's got full vision."
"Let me look." He commanded, staring through the scope towards the glass tower on the horizon. A solitary man was sat with his feet on a console that was wedged against the circular glass. Numerous dials, switches and buttons appeared to blip constantly. The figure's eyes were fixed on a wall of monitors that had been set just above the console.
"Knocking him off is not the problem, just got to be sure that if we do, the movement on the ground is held off enough to prevent me getting locked out." Wedge interject nervously.
He eyed the man, knowing that they wouldn't have much longer than fifteen seconds. Too little time to get the man down safely should the card and shooting be synchronised.
"Can you get down in twenty seconds or less?" Wedge nodded at his question. "Then knock him off, once you shoot knock this to the street." He placed an empty vial on the lip of the roof. "Don't wait up, as soon as this is moved, you run for the gate. Do not miss the cut!" Instantly he darted from the sniper. He felt, rather than saw, the man slip into position for the shot, he did not look back.
"...He's not one of us, the guy will betray us!" Biggs protested.
Barret shrugged. "The guy's no' done it so far. Son of a bitch might later, but we's gotta keep the train goin'! Plus she gave the guy a good report, we can trust her."
As he walked from the stairwell that led to the roof, he was instinctively aware of who the topic of conversation was. He didn't care, all he wanted was for this farce to be over so he could pick up the next mission somewhere else. Calmly he walked over to the trio and stood before them.
"Your sniper is set, once he has taken the shot he'll drop a vial from the roof, when it hits the floor we open the gate." He cut in conversationally.
"I ain't gonna tell you again! You might be some big Soldier man, but I am the leader!" Barret barked, "this missions' goin' my way, if you don' like it then fuck off! But you's gonna kiss goodbye to your money."
He rolled his eyes, now is not the time for this shit, he thought to himself. "I am not interested in your leader nonsense, I care only for this mission's success. Now, if you want to wind up in a prison cell as a failure then be my guest and carry on your macho approach. But unlike you, I know these reactors and the best ways in."
"Awright then, you give us your big plan!" Barret ordered.
He shrugged. "The plate is too sensitive to simply cover and walk on. Barret, you and I are both pretty strong so we can easily hoist Jessie up off the ground using a rope looped over that street-lamp." He announced, pointing to a fixture some four feet from the security panel. "Biggs then pushes her like a pendulum until she is close enough to card slot, at which point she thrusts it home, opening the gate."
Silence ruled before everyone began to laugh, he stood motionless as the crew lost all their focus. He had had enough, the whole thing was a complete nonsense, if they wanted to be brash then they would, but he wouldn't be part of it. Silently he turned his heels and walked back towards the station, knowing that if he followed the train lines, he'd reach the inner plate and a way out.
A thick arm was suddenly planted on his collar and spun him around, his eyes stared straight into Barret's. The face was devoid of the humour that had been there just seconds earlier, by his side the two aides stood stock still. Not knowing if the pressure of the situation was about to blow up worse than the reactor would.
"You walkin' out? Gonna jus' leave us to go right along alone?" Barret snarled, inches in front of him. "Who'd you think that you're dealin' with?! Avalanche ain't about being an army, but about sticking it to those bastards!"
"Are you done?" He asked coldly. "You want this mission to work? Then you think serious or you fail."
Barret snarled. "Listen! We ain't gonna jus' be like the Shinra! We want to take them down. You in or you out?"
"You going to listen to a simple and effective plan or laugh your way to jail?" Sooner or later he will learn, he intoned silently.
"Enough, let's bury this." Jessie cut in suddenly, "the plan actually sounds like it will work. We laughed at how someone as military bound as you would be able to come up with something so childish. It caught us out."
"I served in Wutai, simple but effective, it won us the war." Though it does come across as blasé, he agreed silently, "strike while the iron's hot, you in?"
Barret smiled and reached for the pack. "Let's get this party started!" He announced, before raising his right fist into the air.
He lay tight on the rooftop, his eyes intently staring at the distance. A dot formed in the centre of the scope, trained on where the bullet would go through. Below he watched Barret raise his left arm, the signal for the mission to go green. Calmly he made short rasping breaths, his heart rate quickening as he envisioned the aftermath of the shot.
Shaking the cobwebs from his mind, he placed his chunky finger on the trigger and prepared to fire. The tiny air-stream that was spewed from the fan underneath the barrel faded to the right by about one degree. Coolly he calculated the shot in his mind, knowing that he'd have only a split second to shoot again should the first slug fail to find the target.
Refusing to be cowed by thoughts of failure, he pulled the trigger and felt the weapon recoil under his armpit. Though the barrel spewed no sound as the slug flew from inside. Wedge kept his eyes on the enemy and watched as the target was punched backwards, a hole in the centre of his skull. He felt exultant as he rose to his feet, yet a sudden downer came upon him, this was only the beginning. Swiftly he kicked the vial off the edge of the roof and rushed down to join the others.
Cloud listened intently and as soon as the shattering glass inched through his ear drums he barked for the plan to start. Barret had been elected as the anchor, the rope coiled tightly around the back of his waist and he was crouched at an angle of forty-five degrees. Directly in front of him, Cloud mirrored the position and they each began to pull backwards. Jessie slowly inched from the floor, gesturing for them to continue the movement with her arms.
He watched her constantly, knowing that shortly the pair would have the difficult task of keeping her at one constant height whilst the rope was subjected to swinging forces and extra weight. One slip from either of them, and that plate would send the distress call throughout Midgar. He refused to let the thought unsettle him and suddenly he anchored his legs in one place, tightly holding the rope still.
Biggs wasted no time and took three running steps towards his hanging ally before pushing at her behind with both hands. Jessie swung for a few feet before coming back towards him. Carefully Biggs braced his palms in place to control the back-swing, before helping the pendulum motion go forward again. Four times the move was repeated before Jessie felt confident enough to go ahead. Calmly she wrapped her palm around a jutting iron bar and held her position above the card slot. Swiftly she pulled out the transparent card and slotted it home, a green light surrounded the panel and the gas pistons sounded, triggering the door process.
Beneath Jessie, the light emitting from the ground died and instantly the rope slackened, letting her down. Avalanche gathered their movements and rushed through the opening. Cloud began to count seconds as he stood at the gap and looked to the street beyond. From the stairwell Wedge appeared and desperately tried to run. His bulky frame rendering his efforts far slower than any of the others.
At the side of the walls the gas pistons sounded again and the gears began to warm up. Wedge grunted and rushed as hard as he could, his feet pounding over the darkened security plate. Suddenly he flung himself into the air and skidded on his belly across the threshold. As he came to a halt against a metal pipe, the gears ground into life and the gate closed behind them.
"Well for better or worse we are inside." Cloud orated.
"Yeah and we's not gonna just go out the same way we came in. Wedge, use that stuff of Jessie's and get the main gate to Sector Eight open. We are goin' to take the rail route to Sector Seven. Everyone else follow me!" Swiftly Avalanche ran towards the cooling tower and the reactor's main entrance.
If the tower had seemed imposing at the very entrance, up close he truly understood the nature of the beast. At surface level the tower stretched for over two hundred feet into the air. As he glanced below he was chilled by how deep the reactor was, even though he had been inside one before, it still caused fear to bubble through him. His eyes stopped trying to digest the image of the tower once it got past the service levels between the plates. The distance was too much to take in.
As he attempted to draw his vision back from the edge, his pupils drank in the hypnotic display of lights from the ground below. A black curtain of darkness had draped across the scene, with distant lights from houses and streets in the slums punctuating it, as if they were stars in the sky above the slums. Crafting the illusion that he was staring at Earth from the heavens. Just looking at it made him feel dizzy as he thought of falling into it.
He forced himself to look back up to the mission ahead, aside from Wedge, the others had turned and gone into the reactor. As a location, the Shinra had thought of everything. With Midgar being split into eight sectors there was always going to be space between them on the upper levels, so the rulers had filled the gaps with the reactors. The only means of getting to them was a bridge that crossed between the sectors, while another formed a t-shape that led to the entrance of the reactor.
He rushed along the bridge at the centre and through the main doors, instantly he felt the environment change. Where there had been a subtle breeze and a delicate sense of being high above the world. Here, the air felt dense and hot, it pressed against him harshly. Ignoring the sensation he walked along the concrete corridor and up the small set of stairs. The rest of the group stood waiting impatiently at the top.
"You keep preaching about being quick, then take forever." Biggs snorted.
"We's not got time for that. This place's gonna explode when we's through with it!" Barret countered.
"Which is something I've been meaning to ask about." He announced coldly, "how are we going to pull that off? A reactor this size would require an explosive the likes of which haven't been seen since the war."
Jessie smiled at the former Soldier. "It would if all you wanted to do was drop a bomb here and run away. We're a little more intelligent than that; this whole tower has dozens of air ducts that take pressure away from the cooling tower. Strap a bomb to a panel inside that and it'll explode, the flash launching a chain reaction that will feed through the entire thing."
He nodded. "Not a bad plan, but where do we pull that off?"
"Jessie knows all abou' it," Barret cut in and waved the comment away, "meantime we gotta do this! The planet is full of mako energy, the people use it everyday. Thanks to these bloodsuckers all the energy is being stolen from our world!" Barret preached suddenly.
The world's boldest environmentalist! He thought contemptuously. Barret did not seem to be some kind of preacher, and the suddenness of the action was excessive. "I didn't sign up for this to get some lecture. Let's hurry."
Barret's face flushed crimson. "Tha's it! Your ass' coming with me from now on!"
He felt like falling into laughter; this whole mission was beginning to collapse at every single turn. But with the figure hanging by his side from this point on, it might finally shut the man up. With everyone prepared for the mission ahead, he took point and walked to a huge sliding gate that stood at the end of the corridor.
Before he had the chance to think about how the mechanism worked, Jessie slipped by his side and inserted another of her transparent cards into a slot. Seconds later the sound of grinding gears filled the air, before the doors began to slide backwards.
Beyond the gate was a sinister looking industrial morass. The floor had changed from greyed concrete to a criss crossing form of wired mesh that appeared fragile. Only as he saw that many thick bars the braced them did he understand how no one had ever fallen through to the mako pools many metres below them.
A line of lights also navigated the mesh flooring, numerous cables that glowed red, green and blue all coiled about one another. While on the walls, the logos and hazard signs reflected the rainbow of colour back at him.
"You sa' you's been inside a reactor before?" Barret asked suspiciously, as the figure gingerly led the way.
He nodded. "Many times; just not for a long while."
Barret seemed to take in his words before he shook them off, changing the subject abruptly. "We need to get down the elevator. From there, we go on further."
Silence filled the air as the pair began the walk through the open level of the reactor. The echoes of his footsteps disturbed him; it suggested that the place was totally empty and he didn't entirely trust it. One doesn't just get away with knocking off your main man; no doubt, somewhere inside this mechanical maze, another set of men were waiting.
Suddenly a klaxon sounded, as if to prove his silent theory right. Directly in front of them, he saw the narrow line of light within the thick elevator door fill with shadow. Swiftly he darted forward, the sword swiftly detaching from his magnetic sheath and flashing into the air. At his movement, the others had also followed suit.
A loud pinging sound filled the air and the doors opened. No one advanced at first, until a wall of slugs was peppered from rifles that lay on the ground. Instantly he reacted, dived to his left and executed a roll that carried him back to his feet behind a pillar. Calmly he thought through the moves he had before rushing round the left hand side of the pillar and into the sanctuary of another directly ahead.
A quick glance back had let him see that Barret looked on as he drew the unit's attention to him. He continued to supply the distraction and watched Barret duck behind a thick pipe and carefully aimed his arm through a small gap in between the thick pipe that granted him cover, and a tiny steam pipe set above it. Realising the man was about to fire, he ducked into cover. He smiled as the ruse worked. The Shinra guards had been so focused on taking him out, that none of them had seen the danger until it was too late. One man took three shots in his right leg; he winced as he saw the shin, kneecaps and thigh all punctured by slugs. The guard screamed and fell to his back, while confused comrades spun around and fired blind, their own bullets clashing with the pipe. None saw the black man lying on his stomach, cowering low to avoid any of them drilling through the cover and into his body.
A repeated sound of clanging disturbed the air and the guards turned to see the grenade bounce towards them. As the guards saw their lives flash before them, one brave comrade threw his gun aside and dived atop the grenade. His body was blown into three pieces when the volatile object exploded, shielding his fellow infantrymen from the danger.
Despite the second chance, they were all too shocked to take the lifeline that had been offered them. From their left, he re-emerged and attacked, the giant blade colliding with the temple of one man, causing brains and blood to explode across the lift. A figure tried to use his rifle as club, but the wooden butt was smashed to shards against the heavy blade. He responded by head butting the figure, before thrusting his own weapon through the enemy's chest.
Behind him the other two members entered the fray. Jessie lethally twirled her blades through the air, their edges slicing sinew and chopping through flesh. Two guards fell to her deadly dancing style, before the brash Biggs followed up with some ferocious clubbing. His baton smashed one man's temple like a hollow egg, before he backhanded the weapon across the last guard's face, sending him sprawling from the elevator and straight into the gunfire from Barret's arm.
As the silence descended once again, he cleaned his sword and then swirled it into the magnetic sheath on his back. The others gathered their breath before they too sheathed what weapons they had.
"That tells me we'd better hurry." He suggested.
"No time to fuck around, Biggs; keep you' eyes on the doors back there." Barret snapped when Biggs had been about to retort. "Jessie, you's comin' along with the big guys." Nothing else was spoken, the trio darted onto the elevator, and towards the lower levels.
