Chapter Two: Quiet Graves

The blood haze had lifted.

The rage which had filled the veins of Avalanche was quieting. Now all they heard now was the thrumming of the train to the slums. They sat within a cargo car, lying around with weapons readied. Barret had put out several bribes to make sure they could use it without any questions being asked.

Don Corneo would look the other way to anything, provided you paid him. However, Jessie had narrowly escaped becoming one of the sex slaves at the Honey Bee Inn. Peering out the door, Jessie saw Wall Market stretching below. It was a place designed for tourists from the Upper Plate, where you could buy virtually anything. Sex, drugs, anything, even murder.

There were some chilling stories of pretty girls disappearing and working at the Honey Bee Inn for a bit. Then they'd disappear, usually about the time they got injured or became less popular. Bodybags got moved out of Wall Market all the time, so Jessie was certain there was something evil going on.

And yet, Wall Market was necessary.

It was on a rapidly dwindling list of shopping centers that hadn't shut down since the war effort. People in the slums sometimes had to walk miles to it to buy groceries. Many of the stores had shut down with the factories going under. Gangs of thugs had obliterated others, probably paid by Corneo. Still more had been arrested for one reason or another or simply been unable to pay the jacked-up rents.

When one business went others, others did as well.

Soon Shinra started making big shows of providing financial and food aid. All of it was stolen by warlords long before it got to people. Not that they did anything about it, they paraded about what wonderful people they were. Fundraisers were held almost daily to help the poor, suffering people. Good people, wanting to make the world a better place, gave their money.

And all of their money was then just grafted off by one official or another. There was no oversight and no enforcement.

But it did not matter because Barret's plan had worked.

Jessie shut the door, sat down, and thought about what that meant. She had never expected to win. The attack on the Midgar Reactor had been a hail mary, the last-ditch effort of defiance. She'd expected that at the very best, they'd go down blowing the place and never see what happened next.

Instead, it had gone perfectly.

The reactor was blown sky high, and even the Shinra officials would have to take notice now. At the very least, they'd inconvenienced them and hurt their reputations. Maybe there would be some investigations that would rip up President Shinra's reputation. They'd killed a lot of Shinra soldiers and humiliated their army.

It was a total win.

So did you do with the victory? Cheer?

That reactor was powering hospitals. They'd gone after it because it was the most expensive and obvious thing they could target. It couldn't be covered up, and it would lose Shinra billions. That was to say nothing of the damage to the power lines. And the trouble and expense of hiring the construction crews would be a major hassle.

No one else was speaking either.

"Well," said Biggs. "It had to be done."

Jessie nodded. "It was either that or sit on our hands and wait for the end."

"Barret," said Wedge. "Are you okay?"

Barret was looking down at his machine-gun arm. He'd had that grafted on to him to make a statement. To make it so he could never live a normal life, that was what he'd said. Barret had read the Illiad, and the story of Achilles had resonated with him. Achilles had been given a choice between living a happy, inglorious life and a short but glorious one.

He'd chosen the latter.

There had been a time where Barret would have picked the first one in a second. They'd been a crew of repairmen, for crying out loud. Barret had always been professional, him and Dyne.

They'd done good work for lower prices than most others. Barret had helped with the construction of the North Corel Reactor.

Maybe that was why Scarlet had burned it down. Barret had cut into her business, as had many other people. North Corel was too productive for its own good. Or maybe the bitch liked watching things burn; who knew?

Jessie still remembered the day.

The bombers had been sighted overhead, and everyone had thought they were practicing. There had been a number of drills, probably to get people complacent. Then the bombs started dropping. Buildings went up in a vast wave of flame as people were turned to bloody chunks by the explosion. A lot of people had tried to get out by the main road, but Scarlet had been waiting for them. None had escaped that way, and the dozens had mowed them down.

Dyne and Barret, though, had kept everyone together and gotten a small group of them out. They'd run up a mountainous region nearby, trying to escape. Only they found the Shinra waiting for them too. Jessie had thought they were dead, but Cloud had been in charge of the operation.

Apparently, he had been one of Scarlet's favorites at the time.

He ordered the men to stand by and let them pass. But they were soon nearly overtaken, and Barret and Dyne had chosen to make a stand. They'd sent everyone off ahead and started an avalanche. It had been done with some makeshift explosives they kept in a cache. It had blocked off Shinra for a few precious minutes and given them time.

But they hadn't gone far before Scarlet, and some of her people were near at hand.

Barret and Dyne had made many echoes in the canyons by throwing their voices. That had drawn off Scarlet and her men toward them.

Jessie and Biggs had made a run for it with everyone else and heard a lot of gunfire. They'd thought for sure they'd never see Barret or Dyne again, but Barret had come back short an arm.

Scarlet had blown his arm off while he was trying to pull up Dyne from a ravine. The other Shinra soldiers had refused to shoot him. Or they were bad shots, and they kept going wide. Either way, Dyne lost an arm and fell to his death. Barret nearly died himself, he'd patched up his arm as best he could, and they got work building things.

They'd been forced to work as slaves for anyone who would take them. They'd been hardly paid at all for their trouble. And nothing got better ever. Wages got worse; healthcare got worse, benefits got worse, hours got longer. You could be fired in an instant if you so much as pointed a problem everyone solved.

The manager assigned to a given place by Shinra was no longer a mere leader.

They were an inspired figure whose word was law, regardless of what reality had to say about that word. Of course, you were allowed a certain amount of vacation time. At least, provided you were never stupid enough to use it. You didn't have to do unpaid overtime, so long as you didn't want to be fired.

And eventually, they realized nothing was ever going to get better.

So they either had to give up all pride, dignity and hope to become slavish wage slaves to their abusers. Or they had to get nuts and start breaking stuff.

Barret chose the later.

"Cloud never came," said Jessie after a moment.

"Well," said Barret. "We can call it redemption if he didn't make it."

"He's alone up on the plate with nobody to help him and no contacts," said Biggs. "The guy is a dead man walking."

"Wasn't he in SOLDIER, though?" asked Wedge, who was a more recent addition. He wasn't from North Corel; he'd been part of a train car of teenagers that had picked them up. Within them, they'd never have gotten away.

"I don't buy it," said Barret. "As soon as Tifa brought him in, I had my doubts. He was practically comatose when he came in. For all we know, he could have hallucinated the whole thing. It's not as if Tifa has had any contact with him."

"He turned sixteen armed guards into meat sauce with a cleaver," said Biggs.

"Yeah," said Barret. "But if he was in SOLDIER, he'd have turned them all into meat sauce before we could fire a shot. Sephiroth, he ain't."

"And anyway, even if he was a lower-tier SOLDIER, you'd think he'd be real professional. Guy fights like a berserker, and he's the only one who couldn't stick to the schedule.

"Plus, he got demoted for letting us go by, and he wasn't part of SOLDIER then. Doesn't seem like enough of a murderer to fit the bill."

"And here's the murderer!" said a voice.

Suddenly the train door slid open, and Cloud vaulted through, looking to be in a good mood. He landed there and walked through. Jessie thought that someone who fell through that door could hurt themselves.

He uh...

It would have looked extremely dashing if he weren't covered in blood.

Jessie and the others had swapped clothes, of course.

"Where the hell did you come from?" said Biggs.

"Figured I didn't want to pay for a ticket," said Cloud. "So I rode the Phantom Train instead."

"Cute," said Barret, taking out a suitcase and tossing some clothes at him. "Stop acting like a damn, kid, will you. And change outta those damn clothes. Toss the uniform, will ya."

"This uniform is one of a kind," said Cloud flatly.

"Then scrunch it up and put in the case," said Barret. "Jessie, close that goddamn door, will ya."

Jessie stood up and shut it, turning to see Cloud stripping down behind a set of boxes. He had a major scar on his sternum and others on his hands. There were several other injuries, one of which looked like a bullet wound. Even so, he was extremely chiseled, and his wild blonde hair only added to his appeal.

But, unfortunately, he was clothed again, and the outfit was packed. He combed his hair, and Barret donned a long coat that hid his gun arm. Then, now clad in nondescript clothing, they pulled up hoodies and headed in through the train car. Ahead of them were a lot of people. There were windows here, and when they sat down, Jessie could see outside. The sun was rising over the wastelands, and helicopters were coming in the distance.

People were getting up to eat breakfast and read the paper somewhere out there. They were reading books, playing video games, and such. There were still plenty of people who were doing well because of Shinra. The rise of industry had improved a lot of lives and increased medical technology.

Then Shinra had cornered all the markets and run everything into the ground.

Billions were spent on weapons technology today, even though the war ended. What was it for?

Looking, she saw Cloud reading a book. "What are you reading?"

"Moby Dick," said Cloud.

"What is that, a porno?" asked Biggs.

"It's a story about whaling, man's struggle with nature. Also, the futility of seeking revenge upon something that cannot think," said Cloud.

"Is it any good?" asked Jessie.

"I don't know," said Cloud. "I haven't been able to get past the first chapter."

The train eventually did arrive.

They shuffled out of it as quickly as they could, doing their best to seem incognito. Granted, they'd probably be marked for shady characters. But shady characters usually went on the train, so it was better than being terrorists. Their weapons had all been put away within a black canvass bag. Wedge got the job of lugging this, mostly because he'd contributed the least.

The train station was... depressing.

Once, it had been bustling in the days when Midgar was the center of the world's commerce. Now it was the center of the world's banking and rapidly becoming obsolete. Shinra corporation had obliterated the life in the surroundings to make this place. There had been an unending crowd here at one time as people came in and left.

Now there was nothing. A bare concrete platform set up on cobblestones falling to pieces. Nobody could even remember the names of the towns around here, for they'd all merged into one mass. And above them, the plate blotted out the sun, a daily reminder that they were outcast and forgotten.

No one lived in the slums because they wanted to.

And if things kept going, no one would live here at all.

So it was that the group trudged little by little through the barren rock between one place and another. The plants here had all died for lack of sun, and the dirt had been swept away to other places. Only areas at the absolute edge of Midgar could grow crops from the sunlight that peeked in. These areas were used almost exclusively for farming to prevent famine.

Or they had been. The crops had long since ceased to grow all together, sun or not. Now there was only fading grass. And there were no flowers; there hadn't been flowers in years.

But, soon enough, they got home. Or at least what home was.

Barret went up the steps and into the bar, and a moment later, the patrons all filed out. The window shutters were pulled up as they moved up the steps. So it was that they entered the Seventh Heaven.

Jessie paused only a moment at the gates and looked upwards. You could hear the police sirens even from here. How many people were consumed? How many lives had been snuffed out by that blaze of fire and fury, born of rage and helplessness?

Who would bear the punishment?

And who would carry it out?

Jessie opened the door and walked into the bar.