21. Struggle

1

While President Shinra was anxiously awaiting the future of Sector 7, Cloud found himself fearing for it. In the cold, damp sewers he started to wonder how much time they had, and if it was actually possible to stop something like the crushing of a sector from happening.

The more he considered it the less hopeful he was.

But as long as there's a chance I'm going to try . . .

The sewer was dark, save for a small jade-tinted light in the corner of the murky ceiling. The muddy water cast wispy shadows along the nearly lightless walls. Floating in the air was the tinny smell of rust, which was only worsened by the stench of the grunge that was plastered on everything in the surrounding area.

Cloud was thankful when he saw the girls start to move - thankful for their safety and thankful not to be alone any longer in the sewer.

Aeris opened her eyes. Giving her his hand, Cloud asked, "You alright?"

"Yeah," she said, taking his hand and standing up. "I think I'm okay."

He then walked over to Tifa and did the same. "Yeah, I'm alright," she replied, looking around the dark underground cesspit. "This is terrible!"

Aeris knew that Tifa wasn't referring to their current situation - she was referring to the apocalyptic fate of the Sector 7 slums. Aeris walked over to her. "Well, it hasn't happened yet . . . there's still time."

But time truly was an erratic thing they all would later think on.

At one moment you have all the time in the world and everything looks promising, while at the very next moment you find yourself in a situation that keeps getting worse and worse.

And worse.

2

A low grumble suddenly filled the sewer. Ferocious breathing brought shivers like the tiny legs of spiders down each of their necks.

A monster - and looking at the thing that had sped at them from out of the shadowed tunnel ahead there was nothing else to call it but a monster - crashed down and immediately charged them.

Cloud had seen inexplicable beasts like this one before, although the others had varied in shape and size. He knew from experience that the Shinra had a lot to do with these creatures and how they came to be. He also knew that now was not the time to be dwelling on the past.

A story for another day . . . he thought, and then shuddered as the monster let out another growl and lurched forward.

The beast stood at least seven feet tall, with a sickening yellow tint to its scaly skin. Small tufts of hair sat on various places of its body; its eyes burned with blatant wrath. The four legs that it stood on were muscular, and supported an even more muscular body.

The broken, gray teeth sticking out this way and that from its snarling mouth were what caught the trio's attention however.

Aeris gulped and felt her body tense up. She looked around at Cloud and then at Tifa. They both were hurt and not prepared to fight in this condition. With only seconds before an encounter with the beast she said a silent prayer, and with the power of her people - the power of the Ancients - she healed them.

Even as the four legged yellow mess of an animal charged him Cloud suddenly felt reenergized. Looking at Tifa he could tell that she felt the same. Aeris winked at him just before the creature attacked.

As he was thrown against the sewer wall he knew that Aeris had something to do with his fast healing and that now of all times he was beginning to solve the mystery of his survival from the lengthy plunge off of the reactor.

Tifa darted back and forth, avoiding the thing's gooey arms and legs as they tried to pummel her. When the opportune moment arrived she jumped high, letting out a yell, and kicked the monster in its distorted and pulsing face, causing it to shriek wildly.

With a quick shake of the head Cloud was back on his feet, his Buster sword in hand. He attacked the monster's flank, its attention still fixed on Tifa's fluid movements.

As he pierced the beast, his blade digging deep into a leg that was now dripping with dark green blood, Cloud found it astonishing how out of sorts his mind was considering that he was in a life-or-death confrontation.

Even as he went in for another chopping blow, and as the beast turned at him with renewed vengeance in its eyes, he found himself thinking about Aeris and her connection to the Ancients, about the fate of Sector 7, and about the very presence of the creature he was battling against this very moment.

The beast had most likely been sent by the Shinra-employed Don Corneo, which would mean that Shinra wasn't exactly following their own 'See a Monster, Kill a Monster' policy.

Something had happened five years ago – and Cloud knew what that something had been – and the citizens all over the Planet had suddenly found themselves sharing their towns and villages with creatures of all repugnant shapes and hideous sizes.

Shinra had organized a team to disperse the monsters but there had been too many.

And apparently they weren't following their own advice some of the time anyways, he thought, as he watched Tifa get swept off her feet by one of the monster's limbs.

He screamed, causing the beast to look away from Tifa.

Now's not the time to be thinking about what happened five years ago . . . there's other things to think about right now.

He gripped his sword tighter, and watched as the beast breathed in and out rapidly, its harsh breathing disturbing the thick air in the sewer.

The creature was certainly not expecting its potential prey to be so powerful, especially when Cloud jumped onto its chest and drove his sword through its belly. Avoiding the eruption of blood and acid from its wounded stomach Cloud jumped off the dying body and joined Aeris near the wall of the sewer.

Although he knew he wanted to question Aeris about how she had healed him, as well as ask her what the Shinra guard had truly meant in the church when he had called her an 'Ancient', Cloud holstered his sword and only glanced at her. He was content enough at the moment to simply be glad she had helped, and that they had all survived the attack.

Tifa ran up out of breath and yelled, "It's too late! Marlene, Barret, the people of the slums . . ."

Aeris looked her in the face. "Don't give up, never give up hope. It's not easy to destroy the pillar, right?"

Tifa's face reacted with a tiny glimmer of hope. "Yeah . . . you're right! We still have time."

"Then let's go!"

3

They ran down the sewer for what felt like hours looking for ladders.

Every time that they came to an intersection or a curve in their run they all immediately found themselves looking towards the ceiling for an exit.

But there were no ladders, and they truly needed to find one fast.

Five long minutes into the search they started to think that there was going to be no escape from the wretched sewers and that Sector 7 was going to be left to its fate. They wouldn't have even been able to retrace their path, having not paid any attention in their desperate search for an exit.

Cloud heard Tifa softly crying as they ran through the endless tunnel, hope shrinking down to a minuscule amount.

"It'll be all right," Cloud said, not slowing in his jog as he spoke.

He could tell that Tifa had looked at him briefly, but he continued looking ahead of him, his eyes searching insistently.

4

Finally, after almost ten insufferably long minutes, a ladder came into sight. It appeared to be the only thing in the entire sewer not covered with grime, the hazy light from the slums above dimly illuminating the small, circular section of the sewer.

Scurrying up as fast as they could the trio soon found themselves out of the sewer, and into the Train Graveyard.

The graveyard had originally been part of the nearby train station, but just as they had done with large sections of Sector 6 the Shinra had used the other half of the Sector 7 train station as a disposal for trains that were out of commission. The result turned the dumping area into a labyrinth of fractured trains and broken steel.

Cloud remembered that the Train Graveyard had been close to the Sector 7 pillar, and thought about the luck they'd had to end up here of all places. He also found it hard to believe that he had just gone to look at the massive column two days ago after his first mission with AVALANCHE.

He looked around and sighed. The pillar may have been close but with the vast wasteland of broken trains and rubble ahead of him, he didn't know whether to rejoice or to give up.

We're close, but how are we going to get through this maze of trains?

In one part of his mind he was still focusing on the things Aeris had done at the church and back in the sewer.

Too many things, he told himself. Focus! Focus on the present!

He glanced at Aeris, but all he managed to say was, "Aeris, I got you mixed up in all of this . . ."

He was scared for her, he was certain of that. If the Shinra were really after her he would be taking her right to them, for they would without a doubt be at the pillar this evening.

"Aeris . . ." he said to her, unable to find the right words.

She gave him a cold stare, her eyes thinned. "Don't tell me to go home, Cloud. We're all in this together."

Cloud sighed. He didn't want anything to happen to her. He looked at Tifa. He didn't want anything to happen to either of them, he wouldn't be able to live with himself.

Tifa looked around the muddle of metal. "I've been here before, not in a long time, but I have been here before." She looked crazily around at the mess of trains. "There is a path somewhere in the debris that will get us back to the Sector 7 train station. From there we can run to the support structure. We can make it to the reactor tower."

5

Following Tifa as she weaved in and out of the cars Cloud could see how scared she really was. So many innocent lives were in danger and she probably knew every single one of them. He was positive that five faces had been glued to her every thought, probing her to get to the pillar as fast as she possibly could.

Barret, Wedge, Biggs, Jessie, and Marlene.

However many other faces were stuck securely in Tifa's mind as they ran Cloud didn't know for sure, but he imagined that there were quite a few, she'd been in the slums for quite a while as far he knew.

At a point in their run it appeared as though they had reached a dead end. Tifa's frustration became apparent as her entire body began to tremble.

Cloud hated seeing her so upset, he had never liked seeing her in pain.

He looked around the area of wreckage and quickly realized something.

We're close!

Climbing up the side of a broken train he could see some of the lampposts that lit the station ahead. He jumped back down and said, "Hey! The station is just on the other side of this train!" He couldn't help but smile seeing Tifa's face lighten up like a fresh summer sun, revealing a vivid radiance in her dark, brown eyes.

Aeris put her hands on her knees, audibly panting. Out of breath she weakly said, "I can't climb that." She looked around the area for other options, only to find that there weren't any. "Just leave me and go!" she demanded.

"No!" Cloud said, fearing that the moment he let Aeris out of his sight that the Shinra would grab her.

Tifa pranced around, anxious to get to the other side.

Cloud looked at the train in front of them again.

The door.

He stepped a few feet back, and then charged the door. Its rusted hinges gave no resistance. Once through the door he grabbed his sword from its holder across his back. With the sword's handle he smashed through the encrusted window on the other side of the locomotive and cleared the shattered glass away.

Without wasting any time Tifa and Aeris quickly climbed into the train and crawled through the window, mindful of the splintered glass along the edges. Aeris gave Cloud a small smile as she passed.

Out of breath and seconds away from giving in to their excessive fatigue the trio sprinted on.

6

They passed the train station, sprinted down the dirt path towards the fork, and then finally took the right at the fork in the road, heading straight for the support structure.

Gunfire was abundant in the air and from the foot of the pillar they could see Shinra soldiers spread out along the staircase that lined the tower.

They could also see a fair number of dead and bloody soldiers in the area around the base of the pillar.

Tifa yelled, "We made it! The pillar's standing!" A guard standing on the bottom step of the staircase, recognizing the newcomers as members of AVALANCHE, dashed towards her, but in an emotional time like this should not have messed with Tifa. She grabbed him by his head and screamed, slamming her knee into the guard's face, easily loosening his teeth. Like beads of ivory the chunks of enamel flew into the air as the guard hit the ground, out cold.

"Wait!" Cloud cried, pointing up at the platform on the pillar. "You hear that above us?"

Aeris responded, "Gunfire?" Seven hundred feet above them they could barely see Barret, only a tiny spec from that distance, violently fighting soldiers. All along the stairs up to the platform the rest of the AVALANCHE team were fighting as well.

They recognized all of the unmoving blue shapes on the stairs as the lifeless bodies of Shinra guards, their uniforms streaked with blood.

All they heard for the first tense minute as they dealt with a few more guards that had spotted them was the nonstop firing from Barret's gunarm as it pounded the area with noise. Then suddenly they heard a different noise.

A scream.

Growing larger as he fell closer and closer to the ground Biggs screamed until the inevitable impact occurred. Crying out with horror, Tifa watched her friend fall from roughly halfway up the staircase that led to the platform. When he landed, thirty or so feet away, they all ran to him.

Tifa stood over him, silent. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. His body was undeniably crushed from the outside in, his legs twisted in ways that signified that his bones had been pulverized.

It seemed hardly possible when his eyes squinted up. Cloud almost shrieked when he saw this and loudly yelled, "Biggs!"

Barely moving his lips the fallen rebel responded, "Cloud . . . you remembered . . . my name." He closed his eyes, probably the only body function he could still control. "Barret's up top . . . help him. Tell him I'm sorry I wasn't any help . . ." His mouth stopped moving and they all knew that he had passed away, knowing full-well how astonishing it had been for Biggs to have said anything at all in the condition his body was in.

7

Tifa grew angry but she held back her tears for Biggs' sake. She had hated the Shinra before, but she hated them even more now.

Cloud paused for a second, and then stood up and said, "I'm going up!" He looked at Tifa. Her devastated face only showed a miniscule amount of the pain she truly felt.

She walked to Aeris, clenching her fists, and said as calmly as she could, "Aeris, do me a favor. I have a bar called the Seventh Heaven in this neighborhood." She wiped her eyes. "There's a little girl named Marlene a few houses down . . ."

Aeris nodded. She felt their pain - she was raised in the slums and knew many of the people just as well as Tifa knew them. Not wanting to waste time she interrupted Tifa and said, "Don't worry, I'll put her somewhere safe. You can trust me . . ." Without another word she ran off.

Cloud and Tifa looked at each other, silently preparing themselves for the ordeal ahead, and then started their long run up the stairs.

8

They ran straight up and into the endless screams of dying soldiers and the nonstop patter of gunfire. Encountering a guard every few flights they soon became unfathomably tired.

About two hundred feet above the ground they saw Wedge sitting on the stairs, his face an unhealthy chalk-white tone. His left leg from the knee down had been shot off, leaving only a few strings of splintered flesh. His face was cut up so badly that there seemed to be an area to the left of his nose that was completely void of skin. He barely had the energy to raise his wounded head when he heard them call his name.

He spoke softly to them, blood slowly dripping from the corner of his shaking mouth. "Cloud . . . you don't care . . . what happens to the Planet?"

Cloud knew that the dying man in front of him must have been thinking random thoughts, his brain a shattered mess in his last few moments before death. Cloud propped him up and said, "You'll be okay, we can get through this." Tifa was yet again speechless seeing her beloved friend in such agony.

"Thanks, Cloud," Wedge said, perhaps understanding that Cloud was only trying to help. A small drop of blood ran down from the corner of his eye like a crimson-colored tear. ". . . Don't worry about me. Barret's fighting up there with Jessie and Biggs. Go help them."

Cloud didn't dare tell him about Biggs' death. He grabbed Tifa's hand, nodded at Wedge, and then continued up the stairs.

9

For the next couple hundred feet the gunfire and screaming had lessened. The amount of soldiers fighting them had also reduced in quantity.

Twice Tifa stopped, either because she physically couldn't go on, or emotionally, but Cloud knew that he couldn't leave her on the stairs. He slowly helped her up only to find something that would hurt her emotionally even more.

Jessie, squirming uncontrollably, was impaled on the post of one of the railings along the side of the staircase. Cloud couldn't hold back his tears seeing such a vicious and horrifying sight. Tifa threw up the contents of her stomach and fell forward onto the steps. Jessie's face was pale and her eyes glared a lifeless dull gray back at Cloud.

A puddle of her scarlet blood lay beneath her on the stairs. She looked at Cloud with a tragic face. "Cloud . . . I'm glad . . . I could talk with you one last time." The nonstop trembling of her skewered body caused her voice to shake.

Looking back and forth between her eyes and her gaping wound Cloud choked out, "Jessie . . . don't say 'last' . . ." He wiped his face and held back his urge to scream of the injustice of the Shinra.

Tears free-flowed down her pale face, mixing with the blood that was pouring down from a deep cut on her forehead. "Cloud, that's all right," she said weakly. "Because of our actions, many . . . many people have died. This probably . . . is our punishment." She reached out to touch his hand. By the time Cloud lifted his, life had departed from Jessie. Cloud grabbed the hand anyways and shouted. He screamed until nothing came out anymore.

Cloud and Tifa were both on the stairs, crying and screaming violently. The air was still riddled with the occasional blast of gunfire. Blood poured off of the staircase like water from a steep cliff.

Somewhere above, somewhere that was not here, people were living away their lives.

But not here.

Death had placed its comma in Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie, punctuating their lives for the rest of time.

Only fifty feet or so below the platform that Barret currently defended, Cloud got to his feet and slowly picked up Tifa. He gave her a quick, determined hug, and then forced her up the stairs behind him.

10

A guard greeted Cloud when he finally reached the top. With the anger and hatred that he felt for all of the Shinra and with the anger he felt for anyone that would do such atrocious thing's to innocent citizens, he pulled out his sword and drove it through the masked man. In a frenzy he slashed through the dead body a few more times, sending quarts of warm blood into the clammy air. Soaked with other men's blood he raced to Barret who was sitting on the ground breathing hard.

Tifa, still silent, joined them as Cloud pulled Barret to his feet.

There were only two guards left and when Cloud had made sure that Barret was all right he took care of the soldiers, slashing through their bodies before they even had a chance to react.

"What about the others?" Barret asked, breathing heavily.

Cloud shook his head. "Not now . . ."

Behind them a helicopter hovered down to the edge of the platform. Tifa looked at them both and said, "Here they come!"

Reno, the red-haired Turk that Cloud had seen at the church in the slums, jumped from the helicopter and raced along the platform to the mechanism on the side of the pillar. Pressing a few buttons he watched as the trio ran towards him. He looked over and yelled, "You're too late! Once I push this button . . ." He laughed and pushed it. A red light flashed, an alarm activated. "That's all, folks! Mission accomplished." He then pulled out a metal rod, as if hoping they were going to try and fight him.

Tifa desperately yelled, "No! We have to disarm it."

Sneering at her Reno said, "You won't even have the chance." He clicked a switch on the rod, proving it to be some type of electrical device.

Reno ran at Tifa and swung at her, she tried to block it but the shock it gave her threw her back onto the ground.

Barret was out of ammo but still went towards Reno with all of the strength that he had left. He dodged the rod and smacked Reno across the face with his gunarm. The Turk quickly countered, sending the rod into Barret's ribs.

Cloud ran with his sword and slashed away at the Turk. Reno blocked the sword with his weapon, sending the sword out of Cloud's hands. Still furious, Cloud tackled him.

While falling backwards Reno took out a knife and cut Cloud across the leg, the knife scraping wide across the appendage.

Screaming, Cloud rolled off of him and out of the way. From where he was laying he could see Tifa unconscious on the ground. It reminded him of his untimely flashback in the No. 5 reactor.

This time I'm not going to lay here helpless, he thought, picturing Tifa crying over her father's dead body.

Next to him he saw Barret getting kicked by the Turk. The large man tumbled backward and almost fell on top of Cloud, who had crawled over and then stood guard over Tifa.

"Barret," Cloud said. "Stay with Tifa!"

Reno smiled when he saw Cloud charging forward, still without a weapon.

Lifting the rod over his head Reno prepared to swing the rod when Cloud was close enough, but was dismayed when Cloud leapt high into the air.

Before he knew what had happened the rod was being ripped out of his grasp and Cloud's somersaulting body was behind him. With one quick swing Cloud sent the rod into the Turk's face, shattering the tip of his nose.

Quickly ducking the next blow Reno bent low and kicked out Cloud's legs, sending him to the floor of the platform.

The Turk then stood up and removed his hair from his face. After a quick look at his watch he held up his phone and said, "It's time." He limped over to the edge of the platform and leaped onto the hovering helicopter.

Cloud knew he had to do something. He stood up slowly and made his way to the mechanism on the pillar. "This is not a normal time bomb," he said aloud after a few seconds of studying.

From the helicopter a voice yelled, "That's right. You'll have a hard time disarming that one. It'll blow up the second someone touches it!"

Cloud looked up and saw a familiar face. It was a man named Tseng, the head of the Turks.

Tifa, her eyes open now, looked at him and yelled, "Please stop it! You can't do this!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" Tseng barked. "Only a Shinra Executive can set up or disarm the Emergency Plate Release System. You all are shit out of luck!"

Barret threw a nearby guard's empty gun at the helicopter and yelled, "Shut up, you Shinra filth!"

A small smile formed within Tseng's thin lips. "I would be careful . . . you might just injure our special guest." Grabbing her by the hair, Tseng raised Aeris' head into sight.

"Aeris!" Cloud and Tifa yelled simultaneously.

Tseng laughed. "Oh, you know each other? How nice that you could see each other one last time. You should thank me."

Cloud stepped forward and shouted, "What are you going to do with Aeris!?"

Tseng shrugged. "I haven't decided. And frankly, it's not up to me. Our orders were to find and catch the last remaining Ancient. It's taken us a long time, but now I can finally report this to the President."

Aeris leaned towards them, still being held by Tseng. "Tifa, don't worry! She's all right!" Tseng yanked her back and slapped her hard in the face. She fell to the floor of the helicopter out of sight.

The Turk laughed again and then gave the trio a condescending wave. "Well, it should be starting right about now. Think you can escape in time?"

He was out of sight in seconds as the helicopter swiftly flew up and away.

11

From up above they heard the pillar start to explode in various substantial sections along its length. Chunks of flaming steel along with concrete the size of houses began to fall towards the ground below.

Tifa frantically yelled, "Once the plate starts coming down it'll be too late. We gotta hurry!" She started heading for the stairs.

Barret grabbed her and yelled, "No! There's no time!" He hastily looked around and then pointed to a long wire attached to the platform. The wire was connected from the platform they were standing on all the way to the edge of the plate on the divide of Sectors 6 and 7. "We can use this wire to get out!"

Tifa looked at him, not sure that his idea would work. But with larger and larger portions of the tower coming down she had no time to consider any other option.

Barret held onto the wire while Cloud used his recovered sword to cut it from the platform. Tifa grabbed onto the wire and closed her eyes.

And then it happened.

The full explosion incinerated the remaining pieces of the pillar and blew the team away from the platform.

In the nick of time Cloud had grabbed onto Barret, not even getting a grip on the broad wire.

Rushing away from the exploding pillar at an intense speed the trio could hear the plate start to release, the metal moaning and groaning as it rubbed and began to drop.

As they swung down and away, faster and faster, they could hear the screams of not only the people below them, but of the people who had not yet left the plate above them.

The noise deafened them.

The dust and wind blinded them.

The collapsing and cracking plate was coming closer by the second, the sky above literally falling towards them.

Their hearts were beating faster than they had ever beaten before, the distinct thumping in their ears almost as loud as the destruction happening around them.

Hanging on for their lives they rushed by the structures and garbage of the slums so fast that all they could make out was a brownish blur of items. The intense speed wrinkled their skin and even made it impossible to keep their tearing eyes open any longer.

The ground was getting closer.

A quarter mile away from where the pillar had been, still clinging onto the wire, they heard the massive section of the plate hit the ground with a gargantuan dissonance of clamor. Dust and debris filled the air and choked their struggling lungs.

Everything in Sector 7 had been flattened.

Everything . . . and everyone.

The wire was almost touching the hardened ground. With what seemed to be only a few feet away from the giant crash of death the team finally fell off of the wire and crashed into the garbage and other items scattered along the soiled slum floor.

Dust and smoke blocked their vision as they rolled and rolled, crashing into anything in their paths.

When they finally stopped moving they could no longer hear the screams of the Sector 7 citizens.

There was no longer anyone to scream.