Making of A Sword
For Sephiroth
Disclaimer: FFVII
I am probably butchering Cid's accent. Forgive me! Southern accent is too hard!
[Chapter 14]
I sat still until dawn that day. Dried tea stuck at the button of the cup. It looked like stain of blood, or tears.
I did not want to go to work, or do research about Masamune, or even distract myself. So I filled the form to request a two-week leave, claiming I got PTSD from Genesis copies' attack. Scarlet approved without hesitation - I was probably nothing but a useless annoying brat to her.
When the break started, I actually began to seriously consider life as a baker. During the two weeks, I went all over most of the bakeries and cafes in Midgar, taking notes of their menu, price and the style of their store. I really had no idea if I should quit for this, but doing this sort of research kept my brain busy.
Until that day, I passed by "92 `C", a newly opened bakery specialized in innovative cakes. I saw a girl in apron getting repelled from the store and the chef threw some sort of pastry out after pushing her out.
"What the fuck is this shit you made? You call this food?"
"But my cake is famous in the slums!"
The girl cried. And then the door closed on her face,
"Then get the fuck back to your slums! As if the upper plate want your kind of people here!"
She stood in front of the door and her shoulders started to shake, probably because of crying.
By the end of the two-week break, I already got sick of every corner of Midgar, even of my apartment. I went back to the company and forced myself to focus on work, making up the engineering and material science I lacked. I tried to come up with a method to fuse magic with weapons without consuming too much mako.
When I reinforced a standard SOLDIER sword with a small amount of mako containing thunder element, Scarlet finally showed some interest in what I was doing, but nothing more than mere interest. She spent most of her energy on that big project I couldn't join. I believed they were cooperating with the space department for some sort of rocket, and that took most of her time.
That august, I received an email titled "Budget Report". I usually don't read this kind of trash, but this time I clicked it since I wanted to know how much money our department had. I didn't anticipate this being that last straw. The email said,
"After exhaustive engineering by the Weapon Development Department,
prototypes of the next generation of weapons are feature-complete
and being tested in the slums. Once mass production becomes
feasible, it would enable us to lower human resource costs by
drastically cutting down on the number of personnel. With high
expectations for these new weapons, we announce the following
changes to the budget:
[Security Department]
7 billion gil (Original: 10 billion gil)
[Arms Dev. Department]
11 billion gil (Original: 8 billion gil)"
"Being tested in the slums"…what does that mean?
After what happened before, I already learned not to ask for information from the Turks. So I kept my eyes on local news to see if there was any sudden attack or explosion. As expected, a week later, some independent TV channel reported that a rocked crashed in sector 5 slums. A few civilians were injured but no one was dead.
I went to the slums on a weekend. That was the first time I ever came down the plate. Right after I got off the train, a disgusting stale smelled rushed to my nose. The slums were just as I imagined, dark, dirty and shabby. Random scraps of building materials piled up all over the barren land. I studied them carefully and recognized they were Shinra' s construction material. It was true that people from the upper plate dump trash into the slums.
I tried to ignore the terrible air and the dirty water on the ground, and found some random person to ask for direction. I told him I was looking for the crashed rocket, and he pointed at a direction.
"Just follow the light. That rocket crashed outside a church. You won't miss it."
I followed where he pointed to. After ten minutes, I saw a church in the front. That small. white church sat on top of a bunch of trash, beautiful like a miracle. Surprisingly, I was not the only visitor here. A man in blue jacket was standing in front of the remains of that rocket, smoking one cigarette after another at the proof of Shinra's crime, scratching his greasy blonde hair in misery. I kept peeking him and then I saw his face.
"Cid…Cid Highwind? Mr. Highwind?"
I walked up to him in shock. Our department work with the Space program a lot, I have seen his profile back in college. He was a famous scientist in the space program. I wonder what this project had to do with him.
"Ya know me?"
He eyes widened.
"Yes. I'm from the arms development department. I heard that some project was being tested in the slums and thought that was weird, so I came here to check…"
"Ain't the first time."
"What?"
"Ya don't know?"
He looked at me for a second and scratched his hair again in annoyance, took and big inhale of his cigarette and tossed it to step on it.
"Ya look so young, so ya pro'ably don't know. 'bout ten years'go, Shinra was testing bombs. It's suppos'd to be 50 kilometers away from Kalm. Then it went wrong. Bomb'd Kalm instead. "
He was speaking of this as if he was talking about something normal. I felt cold sweat began to form on my back.
"What happened afterwards then?"
"After?" the man sneered, "who da fuck knows, uh? People in Kalm disappear'd. Rebuilt the city, fake some bullshit to the media…I'm not supposed to be talkin' about this, ya know?"
Then he gave out some cold, dry laugh, "I shouldn't have stay'd in this shit hole. But damn! I just can't leave. I just want to see a real rocket, one can go to space, not this - this shit."
He kicked the pile of trash in front of him. Metal pieces and broken concrete slid to the ground.
"Then I'd give Shinra the finger and leave!"
"Yeah," I heard myself saying, "You are probably right."