Cloud

I won't forget.

Cloud, SOLDIER first class. No, I was an Ex-SOLDIER now. Shinra had betrayed me, and they nearly killed me before I made it back to Midgar, but I did make it back. I was pretty injured when I found my way into the city, and had to collapse by a small train station not too far in. It was risky to be out in the open, but it was less likely that Shinra would be looking for me inside the city, especially in the slums. It turned out that I was right, and sitting there just so happened to be a good idea after all. It wasn't too long after I stopped to rest, as I remembered it, that someone very unexpected came up to me. I heard a voice, and then felt a tap on my shoulder. The voice repeated itself.

"Cloud...?" It was Tifa, my childhood friend. I hadn't seen or heard from her in over four years; not since the disaster back at my hometown, which I tried not to think about too often. There wasn't any way that being stuck on the past would fix anything. I knew who was at fault, and that was all that mattered at that point. Tifa, however, did make those memories come back. It was an unpleasant sensation, but at the same time I was glad to see her. Before then, I hadn't even known that she had made it out of there alive, never mind the fact that she'd moved to the city.

Once we'd gotten to talking, Tifa filled me in on a few of the details in her life since that day. She'd been taken to Midgar by her old mentor so that a good doctor could see to her injuries, and she recovered pretty quickly. After that, she opened up a business; a small bar in the Sector Seven slums. She was holding her own pretty well, despite having to survive under the plate above, but living constantly boxed in by the rotting walls of the Shinra Electric Power Company's home city wasn't sitting too well with her. She hadn't, couldn't, and wouldn't forgive Shinra for what they had done to Nibelheim. That's when she met AVALANCHE.

AVALANCHE was a small but effective anti-Shinra group that the company had labeled as terrorists. The group was run by a burly muscle-head named Barret, and consisted solely of him and three other members at the time. When they met Tifa, they were without a hideout, and constantly on the run. I had no idea whether it was her kind nature or hatred for Shinra that made her do it, but Tifa offered to join AVALANCHE and house them in her bar, so naturally the group agreed. That was all before Tifa came to me, but the more she told me about it, the more it sounded like an opportunity. I didn't really care about AVALANCHE or their leader or anything, but I had already decided that I was going to try and get a job doing pretty much anything for money, and being a mercenary for a terrorist group wasn't beyond my standards at that point, especially if it meant helping Tifa out a bit after all those years.

So that was where I found myself; kneeling on the top of a speeding train, readying myself for an ambush on the very people I used to work with. I hadn't been filled in too much about what we were going to do, but it didn't really matter much to me. I trusted Tifa not to have thrown me into a pack of complete psychos, and as long as I was getting paid, I didn't mind finally doing some damage back to my old, back-stabbing employers. I crouched down a little lower on the train as it slowed into the station, checking the materia I'd equipped into the new accessory Tifa gave me for my wrist. It had been a while since I'd used any magic, as I usually preferred to fight up close with my sword, but I never knew when it might come in handy.

The brakes on the train screeched, and it jerked to a stop. I counted a couple of seconds and jumped off the car, down onto the pavement of the station. The bulky leader was there waiting for me, and the other members of AVALANCHE were running ahead, having already dispatched the only two guards. At least they worked fast, I figured. Maybe they'd even be able to keep up with me once I'd gotten into the action. I straightened myself out, returning a stare to the leader to break his silence.

"C'mon, newcomer," he said, waving his right arm. I quickly toke note that his hand on that arm was replaced by a Gatling-gun; probably the point he was trying to emphasize to me. "Follow me!" He started running in the direction of the other three members. He was doing one of two things, I decided: he was either trying to be helpful in showing the way, or he was trying to make the point that he was in charge. Given his natural disposition, I assumed the second, but either way I knew where I was supposed to be going, and could probably have gotten there faster than the rest of them if I'd wanted to. Instead, I took the time to relieve one of the unconscious guards of one of his medical supplies: a potion for quickly healing minor injuries, which was pretty standard-issue for guards like them.

As I moved to follow the leader, a couple infantrymen ran right out into the station from the side. Judging by their startled expressions and the fact that there was only two of them, I was willing to bet that they were only responding to the sounds of the disturbance. It felt a bit strange to fight a couple of infantrymen when I still had such recent memories of being close to them, but if I had let them go then they would have only shown up in more significant numbers, and I still didn't need a sighting of me to be reported just yet, not when I wouldn't just be jumbled in with AVALANCHE as a whole. Both men were dropped before they could hit me with their panicked spray of bullets. My own strength almost felt foreign to me as I swished the Buster Sword through the air. It had been too long since I'd really been in a battle.

I ran onward and closed the distance between myself and the group members in a matter of seconds. The three of them were stopped in front of a gate, and the leader seemed to have disappeared. A slim man dressed in green turned to me, pushing his bandana back up onto his forehead.

"Wow, so you used to be in SOLDIER, huh?" he said, apparently making small talk. "Not everyday ya find one in a group like AVALANCHE."

"Yeah, SOLDIER," a red-headed girl repeated, looking up from something she was doing to the gate. "Aren't they the enemy? What are you doing here with us?"

"Woah, hold up, Jessie," the man in the bandana interrupted, and the girl went back to work. "He was in SOLDIER. He quit, and now he's one of us, right?" The question was probably directed at me, but I still didn't understand why we were standing around and chatting. I stayed silent and the man raised his hand to me, making sure that I knew who he was talking to. "Didn't catch your name..."

"Cloud," I said after a pause, and he seemed pleased to have gotten an answer.

"Cloud, eh? I'm..." That was exactly what I was worried he'd follow up with, and my patience wore out before he even finished his sentence. They weren't as fast workers as I had thought.

"I don't care what your names are," I responded with a shake of my head. "Once this job's over, I'm out of here." He seemed considerably less pleased at that point, but we didn't have to stand around in silence much longer as the muscle-man leader finally showed up again.

"The hell you all doin'! I thought I told you never to move in a group!" He shouted, pushing his way into the middle of the group. "Our target's the northern Mako reactor. We'll meet on the bridge in front of it."

The gate that Jessie had been working on finally came open, and the three other members scattered inside. Before going the same direction, the leader turned back to look at me one final time.

"Ex-SOLDIER, huh? Don't trust ya!" he said with a swing of his gunned-arm. "If you weren't sent to me from Tifa, I'd do with ya the same thing I do with the rest of this Shinra trash!" He took a step closer to me, but I only stood taller to match him. "The name's Barret, but we ain't about to be friends. Stay close so I can keep an eye on ya."

I decided it best not to try and pick a fight with that guy. It seemed to me that he was more muscle than brain, so there was no point in exchanging words with him, and the best scenario would probably end in me being kicked off the job. I followed him as he turned and started to run in the direction of the reactor, and memories of my surroundings started to come back to me. My eyes turned up to my left to see the Shinra building looming over the city. We were definitely on the upper-plate, which meant that getting into the reactor would be pretty easy.

I continued to follow Barret as he approached the bridge that ran by the front of the reactor. Somewhere along the line we were joined by the third member, a chubby man who had remained silent so far. He gave me a look-over as we ran, most likely interested in my story of why I was an Ex-SOLDIER, but I still felt no need for idle banter. We came to the bridge just as Jessie was ducking under enemy fire. Even before she saw me, I was around her and dispatching the attackers. Barret ran passed me without even a look as I returned my sword to my back, but the girl flashed me a smile. That was it, after crossing the bridge we were past the first wall of the reactor.

"Biggs, get that door open!" The leader shouted, gesturing ahead to one of the security doors on the inner wall, just before turning back to me. "Yo! This your first time in a reactor?"

"No," I answered with a shake of my head. "I did work for Shinra, y'know."

"The planet's full of Mako energy. People here use it every day," He said, pointing his gun around the place. I wasn't really sure why he was telling me that, since it was a pretty well known fact that Mako was a valuable resource. I shrugged at him, and it seemed to make him impatient. "It's the life blood of the planet, but Shinra keeps suckin' the blood out with these weird machines."

"I'm not here for a lecture," I said, almost disappointed at his choice of words. "Let's just hurry."

"That's it! You're comin' with me from now on," he grumbled, restating what he'd already made clear minutes before. "Biggs, how's that door?"

"Code deciphered!" the man with the bandana said, pressing one final button that caused the door to slide open. The next door in was deciphered by Jessie, and we quickly moved onward into the elevator that would take us inside the reactor. Barret pressed a button, and the elevator started to take us down. He turned back to me again.

"Little by little, the reactors'll drain out all the life," he started up again, trying to emphasize his point, "and that'll be that."

"It's not my problem," I said with another shrug. I didn't want that guy thinking he could convert me to his cause just because he hired me on as a mercenary.

"The planet's dyin', Cloud!" he yelled, swinging both arms in frustration. I stared at him for a long moment before shaking my head again. There was something so uneasy in thinking about death.

"The only thing I care about is finishing this job before security and the Roboguards get here." He made a noise as I talked and turned away, frustrated but silent at the least.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened. I waited until the others had gotten out, and then joined the battle that had already started. There weren't too many guards to meet us, and most of them were too surprised to hold their own for more than a few seconds. I took down one as Barret threw the last against a wall, and then I heard a cry come from just down the stairs to the side.

"Wedge, look out!" I heard Biggs say. About halfway down the metal staircase, the chubby man, apparently Wedge, was surprised by a couple of new infantrymen. Without a second thought, I took a large leap off the top of the stairs, over Wedge and down to meet the enemies. It wasn't strange for a SOLDIER to be able to make such a jump, but somehow I still felt impressed by my own achievement. I cut both of the men down as I landed.

"Wow, thanks," Wedge said, his eyes retracing my path through the air. Saying nothing in return, I proceeded onward through the door at the bottom. The next room was a deep one, after which we would find ourselves in the lower levels of the reactor.

"There's quite a few ladders here," Jessie said with a sigh, stepping past a broken section of the floor. Biggs jumped over the broken bit and smirked back.

"Better start climbing then!" he said, taking the lead down the first of many ladders.

Due to the layout of that particular room, we didn't run into many enemies during our decent. As we reached the end, I dropped off of the final ladder to end some infantry gunfire that Barret had been attempting to deal with for the past minute. Those troops couldn't manage to hit me either, and after them, it was quiet. The green glow of the Mako pool beneath the structure we were on illuminated Jessie's face as she stared off the side.

"Woah, that's a lot of Mako," she said, and Barret nodded as he continued down a bridge to one of the energy processing machines.

"When we blow this place, this ain't gonna be nothin' more than a hunk of junk." he said, tapping the machine and turning his head to look at me. He held out a metal device in his real hand; the last part of the mission description. "Cloud, you set the bomb."

"Shouldn't you do it?" I questioned, trying to remind myself that Tifa trusted those guys.

"Jus' do it!" he said, smacking his gun-arm against the nearby railing. "I gotta watch to make sure you don't pull nothin'." It seemed apparent that the trust issue was mutual.

"Fine, be my guest." I really didn't mind arming a bomb, although that was usually something taught to infantrymen as opposed to SOLDIERs. SOLDIER operatives were generally given the more dangerous missions, but they weren't as expendable, and too much could go wrong while handling bombs. It seemed strange to me that I'd ever even learned how to do it. Suddenly, my body tensed and a sharp ringing noise sounded in my head. Watch out, a voice sounded in my head. Remember the last reactor...

"...What's wrong?" Barret asked, probably reacting to the look on my face. My mind was jerked back into focus, and I looked at him.

"Huh?" I said, blinking as he stepped over with the device in hand.

"What's wrong, Cloud?" he repeated, this time less concerned. "Hurry it up!"

"Yeah, sorry," I said, taking the bomb. I had no clue what just happened, but I put it behind me to focus on setting the device. It was a pretty simple mechanism, so it only took a few seconds to arm, but as soon as I did, an alarm started to blare from somewhere above us.

I spun around, eying the area, and spotted exactly what I was worried about. A Roboguard had arrived and was quickly coming our way. It was one of the large models, built like a scorpion with machine guns and a high-powered laser in it's tail. It dropped down to the bridge from a higher platform, and Jessie, Biggs and Wedge were forced to take cover from a steady spray of bullets. Then, it turned it's attention on us.

"Heads up, hear it comes!" Barret yelled, pushing past me and firing off a stream of bullets that pelted the red metal of the robot. It quivered against the shots and halted it's approach to return fire at the man. "Shit!" Barret said, diving out of the way. As usual, I wasn't about ready to scamper from cover to cover while my opponent tried to shoot me down like some kind of game. The Guard Scorpion's strength was in long range, and mine was in close, so it was time to close the gap.

I ran forward, guarding a few oncoming bullets with the flat side of my blade, and got up in front of the robot, right between the two guns where it couldn't shoot me. It staggered back against a few hits from the Buster Sword, attempting to get me back into it's sights. As soon as Barret got another opening, he released a second round into the Roboguard's side. The sound of the bullets hitting and piercing the metal so close to me was loud, and I swore that if that guy hit me, I'd take him down as fast as the machine.

The sides of the robot made scraping noises against the bridge as I fought it back to the wider area near the ladders. With a sudden jerk, the scorpion tail came around the machine and jabbed at me, leaving a gouge in the wall as it missed. It came at me a second time and I ducked the attack, striking the tail. The third time grazed my shoulder, drawing blood. I wasn't too used to the feeling that came with tearing skin. As I had thought, it had been too long since my last real battle, and even longer since I'd gotten hurt. I winced, but it was only a scratch, and it wouldn't stop me from fighting.

I struck away the tail again, and the tip of it started to power up the laser. The robot's mistake, however, was to scan the area over for targets other than just myself, as it caused a green light to glow from a place on it's head. I found my target, and leaped up onto the robot's back, stabbing into the sensory receptor that it so generously made visible to me. Suddenly blinded, the robot fired the tail laser aimlessly around the room. I dodged the beam, and watched as it cut through the floor, dropping the bottom of the bridge out from under itself. The robot went tumbling down into the Mako pool below, and I leaped back onto the remaining ground where the others were safe.

"You were definitely in SOLDIER!" Wedge said, clapping a few times. Barret didn't look too ecstatic, probably having expected to take the thing down himself, but he kept his mouth shut.

"Not to rush you guys," Jessie said, running up to us from further down the bridge, "but there's ten minutes to detonation!"

"Let's get out of here," I said, and the others started up the nearby ladder. I followed closely behind as everyone found their way up through the room.

The escape from the reactor went pretty well, apart from Jessie getting her leg stuck at one point, as very few infantrymen seemed to have stayed around. Even still, I knew we were cutting it close, and as we got back up onto the bridge above, just outside the second wall, I heard the bomb go off. We weren't as far away as we would have liked, but at that point all we could do was run like we meant it. We took a sharp right after the bridge out of the reactor, and as the flames poured out, we dove into a nearby tunnel and stayed on the ground as the place shook, until everything went silent.

After a moment, I stood back up and took a look around. Everyone with me seemed to be fine, but the tunnel entrance from where we came had collapsed and been blocked off by debris. One by one, each member of AVALANCHE got back to their feet, Wedge last. After dusting himself off, Barret smirked at the smoking heap we left behind us.

"That will keep 'em off our trail for a while!" he said proudly, looking none to pleased when I decided to correct him.

"Nah," I said with a shrug of my shoulders. "With the Roboguards here, Shinra will break through this and be back on our tails in minutes."

"Well, let's try and extend that time a bit then," Wedge piped up, shifting through a pouch he had and drawing a second, smaller explosive. He seemed to have interrupted the fit Barret was about to be in. "Jessie, if you don't mind?"

"My pleasure," the girl responded, taking the device and beginning to fasten it onto a part of the wall that was still intact. "That should keep the planet going, at least a little longer."

"Yeah," Wedge agreed, and I noticed Barret nodding as well. Those guys really seemed to take pride in what they were doing. It almost made me feel like I was as uninformed about Shinra's business as I was about their loyalty in the past. Though, it really didn't matter anymore, I supposed.

"Okay," Jessie said, finishing the preparations on the explosive. "Now everyone get back!" I took note that the incredibly short timer on the device was already counting down, and turned heel to run the opposite way down the tunnel. I could hear the others running behind me. It wasn't a long distance from where we were to the tunnel's exit, but even being in front I was licked by the flames behind me when the thing blew. I dive-rolled out the exit, letting my back cool from the fresh air. I'd ran a bit ahead of everyone else, so I imagined a few of them would be emerging with some minor burns, but something told me that those guys were used to getting singed here and there. I couldn't say I was too different.

Barret jumped out of the tunnel next, followed by Biggs and Jessie, who surprisingly had smiles on their faces. Wedge ran out last, hobbling about as he struggled to put out a fire that had apparently caught the back of his pants. Once he'd succeeded in cooling himself off, he walked up to us with a grimace that he twisted into a smile, and Barret stepped forward to address us.

"All right, now let's get out of here," he said, gesturing his hand and swinging his gun-arm. "Rendezvous at Sector Eight station! Split up and get on the train!"

On that cue, the three other members nodded and started to run in separate directions. Barret turned to run away as well, and I stepped forward to stop him.

"H-hey!" I called, and he stopped in place just before turning with a huff.

"If it's about your money, save it 'til we're back at the hideout!" Then he was off. Normally, I would have made him pay me right then and there, but I was planning on seeing Tifa again before looking for my next job, so I figured it wasn't a big problem. So all I had to do was find the train station in Sector Eight, huh? I had been there plenty of times during my work in SOLDIER, as it was close to one of the Shinra building's main entrances, so it wouldn't be a hard thing to find. All that concerned me was that I might run into someone I knew in the past. After all, I was one of the only first classes at the time.

I supposed that Shinra would have to know I was alive eventually, so with a stretch of my arms, I started off to the train station, through LOVELESS avenue.