Target: Mako Reactor 5
Time: 2100 Hours
Two security operators patrolled the rail yard, new sergeants who'd just been bumped up from the enlisted ranks. They paced and cajoled, bored on guard duty, bantering about bullshit that they struggled to hear over the rush of an approaching bullet-train. Then, the sheen of tungsten carbide flashed in their peripherals.
A dark warrior leapt from the train roof, his boots hitting the ground in between the two dumbstruck sentries. A hyperphonic slash from a huge Buster Sword splayed them out facedown on the concrete, the barreling train whipping blonde spikes in the sheerwind wake.
Cloud ran along the platform cat-like scanning for danger. All was an eerie quiet, and the uncanny lack of security near a Reactor site made him uneasy. He leapt around to find two more sentries with rifles up drawing a bead on him, but just a fast he found them splayed out on the ground. A flash of two wooden katanas, and Cloud saw Tifa standing in fighter's stance between the two strewn bodies. He threw her a smile, she flashed him a wink, and together they raced through the null of industrial night toward the towering Reactor facility.
Scattered clutches of guards popped up, and Cloud dispatched them all with Tifa bringing up his flank. When they crossed the drawbridge, he whipped out his phone like a switchblade.
"Barrett, it's all clear."
Barrett and his hired joeboys rendezvoused with Cloud at the drawbridge from a hole in the chainlink fence, two big bruisers and one chick, probably his current squeeze. She eyed Cloud with a hungry look that made him want to take a shower.
The joeboys and their girl got to work on the door, plugging a keybox into the computer console and disabling the security cameras. Then a rainbow-table brute-force hack cracked the access code, and a jammer key glitched the cardslot. The blast door entry lights flashed an alarm for a split second, and then went quiet as the airlock released and the door slid open.
Tifa took a running step, but Cloud's arm shot out to block her.
"Half now!" he ordered Barrett.
"Da hell you mean half now?!"
"Half now, or we don't go in!"
The SOLDIER's cyan eyes glared in gleaming slits. Tifa didn't recognize him. He gripped his hand around her shoulder in a protective clutch, squaring up with a big man and his entourage who all had guns trained on him.
Barrett grunted. "Ballsy move Lil' Mo."
Then he pulled Tifa's full cut from his Carhartt coat pocket. Cloud would get his at the end. Barrett needed his sword.
Satisfied, they ran through stealthy, like ninjas in the night.
Cloud and Tifa raced ahead, perfectly in step with one another. The ebb and flow of the universe seemed to connect them by a thin thread at the hip. They knew each other's movements before they made them. They split at a hallway that blueprints showed would meet up at the main reactor chamber, scanning for enemies and any straggler guards. On Cloud's end, he found nothing, and met up with Tifa at the other end of the facility with Barrett and company in tow. Cloud flashed Tifa handsignals to ask her if she'd found anything—she got that he preferred to talk in visual cues. She shook her head, no one on her end.
All clear.
The joeboys got to work on the entrance to the main drilling chamber, had it cracked in less than two minutes, and they all filed into a vast antechamber wreathed in pale green light. A central conduit jutted down into a pool of neon ooze that flowed from the lithosphere of the planet itself—Mako.
Barrett and his posey set the charge—a bag packed to the brim with Semtex and insulated fertilizer bomblets—and hooked it up to a cellphone trigger. IED's had nothing on this handiwork, fusing different colored wires like a crayon box. They armed the charge, set it against the conduit, and got the hell out of there.
Outside the chamber, three guards ran at them who hadn't been there before. Cloud tri-slashed in an effervescent ring, sending two guards flying in a V pattern, while Barrett went full-auto on the third guy.
"I thought you cleared the area Mo!"
"I did!"
They ran on, but four more leapt out from around a corner, and then four more after them.
"What the hell? Where are they all coming from? It's like they're spawning out of nowhere!"
They took them out ASAP, but two steps later two more appeared.
"Gettin' real tired of all these damn random battles."
Barrett hadn't even finished reloading his arm when two more sentries popped out as if on cue.
"Oh my gaawwwdddddd!"
They took them out, yet again, and ran on, until…
A clutch of ten guards appeared from around a corner like some scene out of a scifi flick about matrices. Cloud and his party ran back through a service door that took them down a cleaning crew corridor. Reactor facilities were vast compounds for technical operations, doubling as freight bays, testing grounds, office space, and laboratories. They ended up in an empty lab with vacant cages stacked along the walls.
However, the lab was not completely empty. Behind a layer of sheet glass in a cylindrical holding canister thrashed a monstrous beast that resembled a cross between a lion and a wolf. The creature was imbued with markings and brands indicating its part in the bioweapons program, and bald spots on its back denoted Materia slots—just like SOLDIER's. It slashed and roared at the glass like freedom was not enough for its insatiable appetite, its glaring eyes making the party members' blood run cold.
But then Tifa caught sight of wires attached to the creature running all the way along the ground to one of the cages stacked by the wall. She hurried over to peer inside, and found—a dog. An emaciated King Shepherd whimpered in the dark, weak and filthy from neglect. Tubes and hypoderms potmarked its body, leeching life energy to the thrashing monster in the glass. The chart pinned to the cage denoted its project name—RED XIII—with the word "deceased" printed next to Reds one through twelve.
"Tifa, let's go!" Cloud called.
"Cloud, we can't leave him!" she panicked while everyone one else prepared to head down another side hallway. Here Cloud learned a lesson about girls in a life-or-death situation: Best friend on two legs vs. Best friend on four legs, two legs loses.
Cloud gave a great groan and slammed his sword into the cage. He dug through the broken metal to collect the mutt in a furry heap, then raced down the hallway after Barrett. Ambling around twists and turns, they finally found their way out to the badlands around the drill site, and backtracked to the train station.
"Mo, there's a dumpster over there. Ditch the mutt, we gotta go!"
"What the hell, man?"
Barrett cocked his arm-cannon at Cloud.
"Gotta catch the train and I need your sword. Aint nobody got time fo'dat."
"Just knock it off!" Tifa jumped in front of Cloud, arms splayed with a piercing glare at the big man. "It'll be alright."
Barrett snorted. "If it ain't, don't expect me to pay ya for it."
"We're wasting time," Cloud shot back. "Let's go."
They hid out behind the station right as the Express Train pulled up. No one got on at these outlying Reactor stops except personnel, and at this hour of night it was dead. Barrett chuckled at that pun running through his mind, fingering a mechanism in his pocket. As the train started away, they all raced to the last supply car and hopped in through the connecting corridor doors.
Canisters and shipping crates lined the interior. Cloud slumped down against the wall with the shepherd wheezing in his arms. The chick still eyed him with a leering look that seemed even more visceral now that Cloud had shown a potential soft spot for animals. One of the joeboys nudged him with an elbow.
"Yo, you gonna fight'im? I know a—"
"No!"
"Sheesh, touchy."
The guy backed off. Cloud's bullshit threshold was officially exhausted.
Barrett eyed the GPS in his good hand with the intensity of a master strategist.
"Game."
He pulled up a menu screen with a single red button.
"Set."
His thumb hovered over the icon like the nuclear launch codes.
"Match."
He pressed the button, and in the distance, the Reactor exploded into hegemony. The combustion shook the train in a nominal quake, and everyone braced against the walls. Barrett let out a mad man's laughter.
"HAH! Score! Notha' one bites the dust! Good game, AVALANCHE! Good game."
Meanwhile Cloud sat slumped against the wall, stroking the red muzzle of a dog crumpled in his lap.
"It's all a game. This is all a fucking game."
.
[Red XIII Joins Party]