North Corel
We had not long passed the Corel Reactor, a crumbling shadow of the ones I had seen in Midgar. It looked as though it hadn't been operating for years, a train jutted out of the entrance but not fully blocking the way ahead. There lights were off, remains of an explosion protruded from the side of the reactor. It was so silent and uncomfortable and monstrous. The size of the reactor, despite its damage, was still intimidating. Though why Shinra would completely disregard one of its reactors, when Mako energy was its biggest revenue, was beyond me.
I shifted uncomfortably at the sight. Even though Midgar had eight of the things this was my first time anywhere near a reactor. I could feel a buzzing in my head, similar to yesterday with the Lifestream but only this was far less coherent. While yesterday was unintelligible, I knew it was people trying to speak. This... this was just a horrific wail. It was just noise. I squinted my eyes, feeling a headache coming on from just being in the reactor's presence. I looked over to Aerith and she was taking it a lot better than I was.
"Have you ever heard it like this?" I asked.
"No..." Aerith shook her head. "It feels as though it's... in pain."
"The Planet's being sucked dry, of course it's in pain," Barrett spoke up, a bite in his voice.
"Yeah we know, no need to say it like that," I bite back defensively.
"Just sayin'," Barrett shrugged and headed off down the tracks. The others followed on behind him. Again I took up the rear, with Aerith this time. As masochistic as it sounded part of me wanted to linger around the reactor. If only to try make any sense of the wailing, as impractical as it might be.
"It looks like no one's been here for years, why would Shinra just ignore it after it gets damaged?" I asked aloud, only partly expecting a few to either acknowledge or answer my question. I probably sounded a little stupid but I needed more information and sometimes you just needed to ask questions like these.
"Shinra uses and abuses anyone and anything it can get its hands on," the answer came from Angel, probably the most surprising part was that her tone wasn't dismissive to me. She was being factual and... helpful, dare I say? In all fairness she was probably the only aware of how clueless I was to this world. "As soon as your usefulness has ran out, they drop you, or kill you. They do anything to get you out the way. Same goes for the rest of the world: if it's not Midgar, they don't give a shit."
"They didn't care about Midgar when they dropped the Plate," Tifa said. She did bring up a good point.
"Well that was the case, then," Angel replied. "Now it's Neo-Midgar they're interested in. Or at least it was until the President got killed."
"Neo-Midgar?" Nanaki asked.
"We heard them talk about it when we were trying to rescue Aerith and Christie," Tifa mused. "I think it was what they were planning to build on the Promised Land."
"Pretty much. It's been in the works for years now, since Sephiroth died from the looks of it," Angel said. "It's the reason they needed Cetra to being with, so you guys could play bloodhound and sniff it out for them."
"Where did you learn this?" I asked, still being wary in case she would shut off again. I was surprised she was being fairly open and talking to us really.
"I went undercover working in the Shinra Headquarters when I arrived in Midgar," she answered. She looked at me and gave me a knowing look. "It was just something I came across when I was looking for something else. It's how I knew you were there."
"What were you looking for?" Aerith asked. Angel's lips curled down and she furrowed her brow as though she was debating with herself. The silence went for a few moments before she glanced at Aerith.
"Personal information."
"About Nibelheim?" I asked. She looked at me but with no anger, only the continued look of deliberation.
"... About something that happened there," was her answer. "Not that I found much beyond the official reports; everything I needed was stored away. And Hojo was the one with the key. So my best shot is going to Nibelheim and finding answers there." She shifted the bag on her shoulder and fixed her sights on the tracks and the road forward. "I'd rather not talk about it any more."
"Geez, here I was hoping we'd get more than a few sentences out of you," Yuffie said and proceeded to go on ahead.
As we went on I could see, in the distance, what looked like a small settlement. Further beyond that there was a tall structure that resembled a tree of sorts. The train tracks ended just before we reached the settlement. The place was a shanty town, crudely propped up tents scattered around, one well with the side crumbled. Dust blew around, dirt covering the roofs of the buildings. They lacked any sort of proper materials to build proper homes from themselves.
My heart sank looking at the town. The people living here had no other choice; they had no where else to go. They had to make do with the what they had. I shifted my weight from side to side, trying to see if there was anything I could do. My mind just instantly went to that place. My mind instantly thought of Kilika. I already had the feeling that these people were forced to live like this because of Shinra. I hadn't seen any sort of settlements bar this one on the way to this one so I couldn't exactly piece together what had happened. Chances were, if Angel's earlier words were anything to go by, it had something to do with the reactor.
"We should ask around if anyone's seen Sephiroth," Cloud spoke after the thick silence. He started to take a step forward when Barrett put his arm in front of him. Cloud looked up at him with a questioning look.
"... I'll go first. Wait here," he said. Barrett walked into the settlement by himself. I shifted slightly on my feet, unsure of what to make of his sudden and drained demeanour.
"What's with him?" Yuffie asked. I watched as Barrett went out of view and felt a pit in my stomach. Waiting around was putting me a little on edge considering his tone. I was trying to piece together possible reasons why he was acting this way, what could have been here that was the cause of it, and if anything could be done on our end to help the situation.
We kept waiting for him to return but it started to feel like an eternity. I knew I was over worrying but I couldn't help it. I glanced over to Tifa, the worry plastered onto her face. She looked back to me and gave a weak smile of reassurance that I returned to her, more for her comfort than anything else.
"Maybe we should check on Barrett?" Tifa eventually spoke up, directing the question to Cloud. He turned to the group and looked around at everyone before rolling his shoulders back.
"Everyone stick together," he said and he led us into the town.
Everything was close together, people were close together but they were also doing their best to keep their distance from us. Looking around the settlement couldn't have been any bigger than the village in Besaid. Even still we couldn't find Barrett amongst everyone. There weren't many deviating paths and the ones that were leaded to residential tents with the main path being the setting for vendors. My eye caught sight of movement as Oswin made his way to one of the stalls selling vials of various substances. I stopped and turned to watch him casually interact with the man at the stall, who did seem a little tense. They spoke for a few minutes as Oswin picked out several substances and paid the vendor before returning to the group. Well, me since the group had went ahead.
"Nosy, aren't you?" He said with an almost playful tone. He opened his bag to show me the items inside. "Purely medical, I assure you."
"You don't need to do a full inventory every time you buy stuff," I told him.
"Well I suppose I don't, but," he shrugged and closed his bag over, readjusting it on his shoulder, "if it keeps the suspicions of your team at bay then I'll do it regardless."
"You're set on the fact they don't trust you?"
"By your choice of words there, Christie, does that mean you trust me?" I looked at him with a furrowed brow and he nodded, "of course you don't. Not that it offends me; just because we both associated with Oblivion it's no grounds for trust. Well we've made our agreement, so as long as we all adhere to that there should be no problems."
"As long as it stays that way," I'm watching my back enough as it is. Even though Angel was very clear about her reasons for travelling with us, I still felt on edge any time she was behind me.
We walked down to the other side of the settlement to a new path, one that took us to a station of sorts. There was one person at the counter and an open tram with cables leading upwards. My eyes followed the cables and they vanished into the dust clouds but they headed in the same direction as the huge structure I had seen prior. A sign by the counter named it the Gold Saucer.
The team had arrived before us and had found Barrett who was sitting on one of the few benches that were scattered in the area. Tifa had turned when we arrived and I gave her a smile in greeting. I could already feel the mood of the group get heavy as we approached and Barrett… didn't look like himself at all.
"What's happened?" I asked.
"We don't gotta talk about it," Barrett answered. "I fucked up. I let these people down. That's all there is to it." He rose up and sighed, his shoulders sagging down, shaking his head. "... My hometown used to be around here… it got buried four years ago."
"Wait, how? Was it the reactor?" Aerith asked. Barrett shook his head.
"No… it was my fault," he said. "Before the reactors were even built, Corel was a mining town. Not the biggest, or the richest, but we got by. Then the Shinra came to the town, they promised to make Corel a richer, greater place to live. And all we had to do was give them permission to build one of their mako reactors. Everyone seemed on board with it: better quality of life, more money into town… pretty much whatever lies they could come up with… and we believed all of it. Only one who refused was my friend Dyne, he didn't want to give up the coal mines. It wasn't just our source of income; it was our town's legacy. But he had a kid on the way and my wife… my wife, she… was ill, we thought if Shinra helped the town we could get better treatment for her. Dyne gave in and… that's how we ended up building the Corel Reactor."
"So what happened?" Cloud asked after a brief silence.
"There was an explosion at the reactor. Dyne and I were both out of town for a few days when it happened. Shinra ended up blaming the town, said it was a terrorist attack, so they decided that Corel had to be burnt to the ground. They just stormed in, killing everyone. My wife, my family, my friends… there were no survivors."
"Barrett… we all believed Shinra's lies back then," Tifa tried to comfort him but it didn't seem to do much in the way of helping.
"Hey, uh, the train's going to be leaving soon if you're planning on boarding," the assistant at the counter yelled across to us. The train doors opened up and he looked at us, waiting for our decision.
"We should probably get on," Cloud said. He, Yuffie, Angel, and Nanaki all filed onto the train first. Oswin, Tifa and I followed with Barret and Aerith taking the rear.
"I didn't realise that was what happened," I whispered to Tifa, who nodded slightly in agreement.
"He never said anything to me," she said. "And I don't know what the people in town said but it's clearly got to him. We'll give him time. He'll be alright."
Well, yeah, that's nearly been a year, haha. Again, sorry for everyone who had been reading this and was waiting this damn long for the next part but a lot of personal stuff happened last year that really put everything on hold. I swear the next update won't be in 2020. Thanks so much to everyone who has read this, and the people who recently discovered it, you're all fantastic. I'm not going to leave this story unfinished no matter how long it takes.
