Light from Darkness
The Final Fantasy VII Chronicles

Chapter 5- "Beneath the Rotting Pizza"

The 12 AM Midgar Train Express released a loud whistle, as it noisily skidded to a stop at the Sector 7 Train Station, the main exit door opened with a resounding clang.
Several groups people soon exited from the stopped vehicle, each running off to wherever their intended destination had been.
People from all walks of life.. Couples.. Parents with their children..
Even a few terrorists.
One example of such an archetype, the person known as Barret Wallace was one of the last to exit. He had leapt out from the door, and onto the walkway at which the train had parked. Barret had glanced about the familiar surroundings of Sector 7 for a brief, reflective moment. Home, sweet home.
As sweet as the slums of Midgar got, anyway.
Soon after this taken pause, he had moved away from the train, and over to a small stairway, before he finally reached the concrete tiled street that separated the train station from the distanced neighborhood a small distance away. A few dimly-lit streetlights illuminated the otherwise unending darkness the station was surrounded by. Barret's imposingly-built arms were momentarily stretched up, before his gaze was quickly swung back to the train.
"Yo!! Get over here, all'ya!!" Biggs, Jessie, and Wedge all ran over from their brief respite of examining their surroundings, grouping around Barret in the wake of his call. Cloud, meanwhile, stepped out in a conversingly calm manner, while slightly glancing back to the crimson-garbed guard just behind, who soon moved to block off the entrance to the train an instant following the last passenger's exit.
The guard turned in Cloud's direction, responsively, his tone suggesting of an assumption that the person was just another tourist of some sort.
"When you've been a train man as long as I have, you see a lot of people, and a lot of lives. People meeting, parting.. Joy, sadness..
After a while, it doesn't even get to you anymore."
Cloud was content to give a passive nod of acknowledgement, before he also headed over to the already-lecturing Barret.
Barret waved his arm in a dramatic series of gestures while he spoke, as he seemed to have quite the habit of doing. It helped get the point across for most individuals.
"This mission was a success. But don't get lazy now. The hard part's still to come. Don't ya'll be scared of that explosion!"
The AVALANCHE leader stopped in mid-speech, an evil grin forming onto the man's bearded face, with a subsequently followed smirk of pride.
"Cause the next one's gonna be even bigger than that!" With that, Barret abruptly sped off into a dash, stopping only momentarily at a passed streetlight, to call back out to the gathering, informatively.
"Meet back at the hideout!! Move out!" The group all nodded in unison, and moved to dash off after the again-moving Barret.. all save a certain spikey-haired mercenary, that was.
Cloud preferred to take his time, clearly, as he opted to wander about the trainyard a bit, in opposing directions the others didn't even seem to consider. Seeing nothing of extreme interest, except a peculiar area loaded with wreckage of railcars and tracks.. known in most common urban legends as the Train Graveyard.. Cloud eventually realized why.
Left with little other option, Cloud turned and hesitantly went off in the direction Barret and co. had gone, pace slowed just the slightest bit by a passing streetlight, which gave him a bit more time to listen in on a nearby young couple's .. typical conversation, given the general caliber of people that resided in the slums.
The young man of the couple was first overheard, who spoke with a soft, attemptively disarming voice. "I'll never let you go tonight."
The far younger, and more innocent-seeming girl of the two smiled to herself, just as well blissfully unaware of the shameless efforts at coercing her mindset.. or lack there of. That probably meant it worked.
She nodded jubilantly, before she responded in a high-pitched, cheerful tone. "Wow! Isn't there someplace we could go," she slowed her pace in mid-sentence, continuing in a voice that borderlined on seductivity.. if she weren't about five years too young to make it sound sincere. ".. to be alone?" The man blinked to this offer, grinning with a touch of faux nervousness. "Well, there's only the Train Graveyard around here.. And they say there's ghosts there!"
The girl frowned with intent disappointment, and glared down to the road beneath them, a leg casted aside to kick into the lightpole softly. "...Damn." "What?." inquired a perplexed male associate.

Cloud couldn't help but stifle a responsive chuckle to this scene, before he headed off after Barret to a four-way intersection, composed of a simple dirt path, and a considerable amount of mechanical wreckage.
As he caught a glimpse the group head off to the south western path, the mercenary began to follow.. before he noticed the nearby sight of a casual-attired man busied in the midst of a distanced gaze, from his seated posture upon a metal pipe near a chain link fence.
Whatever it served to seal off, it must have been something important, a conclusion Cloud reached from little needed hypothesis.. razor-sharp barbed wire ran along the gate's entire perimeter, while any remotely accessible means of entry were sealed by no less than three individualized locking mechanisms.
Intrigued at this sight, Cloud paced over, stepping onto the pipe for an attempt at a better view.. which put him right next to the seated man, who was thrown off balance by the presence of the unexpected visotor.
The man waved his arms in a wild gesture, barely maintaining his precarious balance, as he sharply glared up to Cloud with a mixture of surprise and annoynce.
"Hey now!! Be careful! What on earth are you doing?" Cloud just shrugged, not finding it an inquiry worth answering.
Unhindered by this, the man just kept on going. "Just butt out! Geez.. Oh.. You've come to see it too, eh?"
The seated figure took on a knowing expression, as he gave a bit of an understanding nod, while he continued to speak in a lowed tone that bordered on fearful.
"There was a bombing on top of here, once.. If this pillar were to ever come down, everything in the slums is dust.. Well, there's no point in worryin' about that. Hey, look!"
The man nodded upward to the sight in question, the gesture of which Cloud's resonated stare trailed, eventually incited to gaze up at the vertigo-inspiring sight giant, narrow tower of metal, reaching approximately half a mile into the air.
That wasn't half as startling as the considerably more massive steel, rectangular pillar beside it, either. Particular in that this 'tower' was connected to a gigantic plate of steel, metal, and mechanical parts. None other than the same that kept the Slums buried in eternal darkness.
The smaller tower, which was the sole accesible of the two, seemed to possess a long stairway that cycled around its slender construct, that extended skyward to the eventual, distant sight of a circular platform of sorts.
The man smirked upon realization of Cloud's stunned look, which had been currently fixated on the steel girders surronding the pillar, holding it in place.. though bearing witness to the sight of the rusted, ill-maintained supports wasn't the most inspiring of sights, either. ..even if the faint yellowed lights they possessed continue to flicker undyingly, that wouldn't save a soul if the Pillar ever collapsed, and Cloud well knew it.
The man's voice finally continued persistedly enough to pierce Cloud's distanced thoughts. "It's huge, isn't it? This is a strange and wonderful place.. And it's my place, too, but you can come here when you want. Bye, bro!" The man, rather suddenly following his farewell, arose from his seat, turned, and was off for another Sector.
Cloud, who doubtfully would have given a response even if he had been given the opportunity, just kept going back in the southwest path, trying not to keep the.. disturbing sight of the support pillar in his thoughts, which remained there even as he hurried off to catch up with Barret and the others.

*********

In the center of the small town which makes up the whole of the Sector 7 Slums, it was a generally peaceful evening. Families were gathering, dinner was being served, children were being put to bed, gunshots rang out in a choir-like pattern. Typical evening in a Midgar neighboorhood, really.
Adults responsively acted as most would, scurrying about like frightened mice, the children of whom were pulled hurriedly into rundown homes for cover from the violent recoils of weapon fire.
Somewhere at a centered locale known as the Seventh Heaven, meanwhile, the present company were steadfastedly calm in the midst of the continued gunfire that was being released from a source that resided only footsteps away.
Barret just liked to let off steam sometimes, after all.

It wasn't any surprise, moments later, for the occasional passerby to bear witness to the frantic sight of drunken, despondant individuals fleeing the brightly lit establishment for their very lives. Shinra didn't have the breath of a fury a ticked off man with a gun for an arm tended to possess, and even the drunk well knew it.
Barret glared to the fleeing cowards, gatling-fist warningly shaken at the passerbys that lingered too long, who understandingly ran for the hills.

At sometime during these scene, Cloud was strikingly calm as he paced into the open neighboorhood, mostly ignoring the passing exclaimations of a group of enthused children. "Explosions, explosions! Oh man! AVALANCHE is so cool!"
Clearly hearing more than he had wanted, the mercenary went right by without a word.. at least until another individual sped right up to him, an elderly woman who was rather panicked, and not as willing to have the feelings on her chest shoved aside for ramblings.
"Did you hear the news?"
Cloud shook his head.. the unspoken message of a man who didn't want to be bothered.
The woman wasn't well recipient of the obvious.
"There's a news update.. They say that there was a terrorist explosion up above, and this time, it was a Mako Reactor!! You know what this means?"
Not a word. Maybe she'd take the hint.
"Ya see, I keep on top of these things, an' if ya ask me.. If you knock out Midgar's power, then all of it's computers and signals are going to be knocked out too."
Maybe not.
"Financially there must've been about a billion gil worth of damage. An' that ain't all! A lotta innocent people got killed too! If the explosion had been in the middle of the night, that woulda been one thing. At least the people coulda gone in their sleep.."
Cloud didn't even bother a nod to acknowledge the frantic person, who continued on down the street to gossip with the next passerby whom she could force to listen.

Finally, he had managed to make his way over to the infamous Seventh Heaven Bar, which struck him as the rather apparent destination, what when one noted that the neon-sign that proclaimed the bar's namesake was riddled with bullet holes, and with the man who probably created a vast number of them standing right beneath it.
Barret looked to the arriving Cloud with a swift, deviated stare.. almost too eager for someone wanting to pick a fight. He seemed disappointed that it was someone he knew, since his readied gun-arm was slowly lowered following Barret's achived recognition of the oddly-banged mercenary.
"..Oh, it's you. Ah well.. Go ahead, get in 'ere.. and be quick about it, time's a wastin'." Barret hurriedly waved to the partly opened doorway behind him, at least before a distraction incited his turning of attentions, particularly to glare over at a staggering, lunatic individual who had just flung a shattered glass bottle into the solid wall behind his upright, massive presence.
"..You want some too, eh..?" All too eager to please, the hail of bullets that came back at the man from Barret's fire'arm' sent the drunk diving for cover beneath the raftered floor of the supported tavern's exterior.
"Didn't think so."
Cloud had long since gone into the beckoning doorway, and hadn't even bothered to look back.