I walked into the office and saw a small old man standing in front of a set of television screens set into the wall. I guessed that they were connected to security cameras around the building because I could see the lobby through one of the screens. He turned around and noticed me, "Ah, yes, the man from downstairs. I am Mayor Domino, pleased to meet you."
"What do you want," I asked.
"Yes, I suppose that would be a reasonable question for you to ask. The truth is that I like you boy, I saw what you did to those guards downstairs and I just loved it. You see, I'm supposed to be the Mayor of Midgar, but Shinra took all of my power away and now I'm little more than a librarian. So you see, any enemy of Shinra is a friend of mine and so I am going to help you escape the guards who are even now on the floor directly below us." He moved to the wall and flicked a hidden switch that caused the wall to slide over the television screens, hiding them inside the wall. He then walked over to a couch over by the door and pulled back the seat to reveal a secret compartment inside. It was just big enough to fit a person inside and after I got in he pulled the top back over. It was just in the nick of time too. As the darkness closed in on me I could hear a muffled argument from outside. For a while I thought that the guards might break down the door and search the room with or without Domino's blessing. Eventually the talking stopped and a few minutes after that light poured into the compartment. Mayor Domino helped me out and sat me down on the same couch. He sat on the one across from me and began his interrogation. "First I want to know your name boy," he asked.
"My name is Zack," I replied.
He nodded and continued on, "I would also like to know what you are doing in this building anyway? Are you an AVALANCHE operative?"
If I remembered correctly the boy had told me that AVALANCHE had been some group fighting the Shinra. Not knowing what else to do I agreed with him, "That's right, I'm part of AVALANCHE. I'm here to get some information from the archives that we need to fight Shinra. Can you help me get that information?" I asked.
"Ha! Of course!" he said, "anything to harm Shinra. It just so happens that I have full control over the library, I can get you anything you need."
"Excellent," I said smiling, "but I think it would be better if I were allowed to search the archive files myself."
He shrugged his shoulders, "whatever you want, just tell me. Here," he said and placed a laptop on the table. He took a cord out of his pocket and plugged the laptop into a socket in the wall with it. "I have the whole building wired," he said with a grin, "those arrogant Shinra think I'm some sort of incompetent fool, but what they don't know can't hurt them." He laughed and then got serious again, "this laptop is now connecting you to the entire library system which I secretly saved digitally onto the Shinra Mainframe. You'll be able to find anything you want on this computer." At this he got up and began to walk to the door. "I'm going to go to the staff lounge, I don't know when I'll get back but I'll leave my assistant Hart to watch for security." He then walked out the door and I was left alone in his office.
"Well now, lets see what we can find," I said to myself. I was at a blank screen with a single window for me to type in something for the computer to search for. I really didn't have any idea what to look for so I typed in my own name to see what would happen. I was surprised as nearly 20 pages worth of data flickered onto the screen. I started reading with the knowledge that it was going to be a very long day. When I finally looked at the clock it turned out to be late at night. I had read for over 15 hours straight without stopping. I now knew almost everything about myself that I needed to. As the knowledge poured in more and more of the fog was pulled away from my memories. I knew who I was and what had happened to me. I had left my hometown and had come to Midgar where I ended up in Shinra's elite fighting force known as SOLDIER. On a special mission with the famous Sephiroth I was horribly wounded. The archives did not say who wounded me but it talk about what happened afterwards. A fellow soldier and I had been taken by the head Shinra scientist, Hojo, and used as the first subjects in the Sephiroth Clone Project. The other soldier had been deemed a failure but the two of us escaped from the laboratory anyway. The report stated that both of us went missing while on our return journey to Midgar. I remember being attacked by a Shinra Border Patrol. They had nearly shot me to death. Somehow I had survived and had been taken inside the city where I had woken myself up from the brink of death.
I researched SOLDIER, Sephiroth, and Hojo all in attempt to understand what they had done to me. All that I could figure out that as a SOLDIER I was infused with Mako energy and something else called JENOVA cells. There was not a single file on JENOVA, whatever it was. There was not much information on Sephiroth either which made me think that the two might be connected in some way. The thing that also interested me was the fact that so much of this happened around the small town of Nibelheim, one of the most Mako rich areas in the world.
I was exhausted and Domino had still not come back yet and so I curled up on the couch and drifted off to sleep wondering what had happened to the other soldier that had escaped with me.
A figure was approaching me from out of the darkness. "Aeris?" I asked. I could hear laughing as I noticed the inferno that accompanied the stranger. He walked through this firestorm as he approached me. He grew closer and closer until I could see that it was a man wearing a black cloak. He had silver hair growing down past his waist and he carried a gigantic No-Dachi blade in his right hand. His eyes were emerald green and seemed to burn intensely with an unholy light. "Who are you?" I asked in fear.
"You know me, you can feel who I am slave," he replied in a steel cold voice. He had the air of a person who knows that they are in absolute control. He was right actually, I could feel who he was, and it was if there was a bond between him and me.
"Sephiroth, you are Sephiroth," I said.
"Good, for a puppet you are quite intelligent, but I have not sensed you before now. You are powerful and would have served mother well earlier in our plans. I cannot understand why I did not sense you so I will need to find out for myself, that is why I am here." He reached out his left hand, which began to glow with a white light that was at once intense and yet sickening. I felt as if someone were peering into my soul, like someone was looking into my deepest thoughts. "Ahhh," Sephiroth sneered, "I see that the girl was not satisfied with the clean death that I gave her, and even in death she tries to plague me. I am afraid that although the strength you posses would be useful to mother, I will not take the chance of the girl using you to further her own plans."
"The girl," I asked, "you mean Aeris?"
"Yes, I believe that was her name, it is of no concern to me. She got in my way and nearly ruined my plans before I eliminated her." He said this in an absentminded way that made me angrier than I had ever thought possible.
"I will kill you for that," I said.
He laughed at me, "Hardly, indeed it is going to be me killing you in order to keep the girl from interfering again." I could see his hand glow brighter and brighter. My spine arched as spasms racked my body. My teeth were clenched together and my hands balled into fists as I tried to fight the pain.
"Is that...the best...y...you could do?" I asked mockingly between sharp breaths. His brow became wrinkled in anger and concentration. Instantly my body felt like it was being torn apart. I could not have held out much longer when a new element entered my dream. It was a single flower and it fell gracefully down between the two of us to land on the floor. It was radiating a pure light that filled my spirit with strength. Against the monstrous powers of Sephiroth the spirit of Aeris coupled with my own will began to win out. Finally Sephiroth was panting and his head hung a little lower.
"This was only a small example of my power," he said, "when you feel the full force of mothers strength you will fall, even with the help of the Cetra girl!" I had had enough of this and I was growing tired myself.
"Get out of my head," I growled and thrust the vision of fire from my mind. Instantly the figure of Sephiroth wavered and disappeared like smoke. I walked up to were the flower lay and picked it gently up in my hands I stared at it and thought once again of Aeris.
I awoke with a start and almost punched the Mayor out of surprise. He was standing by my bed shaking my shoulder.
"Hello there and good morning," he said, "I would appreciate it if you didn't knock my teeth out, especially since I brought you coffee."
I grabbed the cup and drained the contents in one gulp; afterwards I jumped up and down fanning my tongue and trying to yell through my burned mouth.
Mayor Domino laughed at me, "I thought you knew that it was hot. O well, we have more important things to worry about." As the Mayor talked I used Cure to heal my mouth. "You see," he said, "while I was in the lounge yesterday I overheard some officers talking about the incident you caused in the lobby. Since they were unable to apprehend you they have decided to barricade the lobby and the emergency stairs so that no one can get in or out of the building without them knowing about it. I knew that you would need to get out if you were ever going to get the information to your friends. I spent the entire night working and I finally came up with a keycard to the 69th floor. From there you should be able to walk up to the helicopter pad on the 70th floor. You can hijack a chopper there and make your escape before Shinra Security even knows what hit them." He handed me a keycard with the Shinra Insignia and the letter 69 on the front.
"Thank you Mayor Domino, Thank you for everything you've done to help me," I said sincerely. I took the keycard and walked out of the office to the elevators.
I opened the elevator and slipped the card through the reader before pressing the button for the 69th floor. The elevator began to move up and I let out a sigh of relief. Until then I had expected something bad to happen like it always seemed to. I really didn't know what I was going to do so I decided that I would first get out of Shinra HQ and then wait for Aeris to give me new instructions.
The lift continued on its upward course and I saw that I was almost there. Finally the door dinged and opened. I walked out into a side room with some snack machines. I went through the only door there and came out into a main hallway leading from what looked like a set of stairs. There was another door; this one was much larger than the other ones. I pressed the button and the door slid open with a whoosh. There beyond was a large room with twin sets of stairs leading up to the floor above. I was almost out and probably could have made a clean getaway except for one problem. Apparently the curse had not yet lifted from me because standing in the room was a whole platoon of Guards and some other uniformed men who I recognized as a team of SOLDIER 3rd Class. I was almost instantly recognized and a shout went around the room.
"Get out of my way and no one will get hurt," I yelled as I unsheathed Reaper and snarled at my surprised enemies. Instantly every weapon in the room was visible and all the soldiers were glaring menacingly at me. "O boy," I said to myself, "here we go again."
"What do you want," I asked.
"Yes, I suppose that would be a reasonable question for you to ask. The truth is that I like you boy, I saw what you did to those guards downstairs and I just loved it. You see, I'm supposed to be the Mayor of Midgar, but Shinra took all of my power away and now I'm little more than a librarian. So you see, any enemy of Shinra is a friend of mine and so I am going to help you escape the guards who are even now on the floor directly below us." He moved to the wall and flicked a hidden switch that caused the wall to slide over the television screens, hiding them inside the wall. He then walked over to a couch over by the door and pulled back the seat to reveal a secret compartment inside. It was just big enough to fit a person inside and after I got in he pulled the top back over. It was just in the nick of time too. As the darkness closed in on me I could hear a muffled argument from outside. For a while I thought that the guards might break down the door and search the room with or without Domino's blessing. Eventually the talking stopped and a few minutes after that light poured into the compartment. Mayor Domino helped me out and sat me down on the same couch. He sat on the one across from me and began his interrogation. "First I want to know your name boy," he asked.
"My name is Zack," I replied.
He nodded and continued on, "I would also like to know what you are doing in this building anyway? Are you an AVALANCHE operative?"
If I remembered correctly the boy had told me that AVALANCHE had been some group fighting the Shinra. Not knowing what else to do I agreed with him, "That's right, I'm part of AVALANCHE. I'm here to get some information from the archives that we need to fight Shinra. Can you help me get that information?" I asked.
"Ha! Of course!" he said, "anything to harm Shinra. It just so happens that I have full control over the library, I can get you anything you need."
"Excellent," I said smiling, "but I think it would be better if I were allowed to search the archive files myself."
He shrugged his shoulders, "whatever you want, just tell me. Here," he said and placed a laptop on the table. He took a cord out of his pocket and plugged the laptop into a socket in the wall with it. "I have the whole building wired," he said with a grin, "those arrogant Shinra think I'm some sort of incompetent fool, but what they don't know can't hurt them." He laughed and then got serious again, "this laptop is now connecting you to the entire library system which I secretly saved digitally onto the Shinra Mainframe. You'll be able to find anything you want on this computer." At this he got up and began to walk to the door. "I'm going to go to the staff lounge, I don't know when I'll get back but I'll leave my assistant Hart to watch for security." He then walked out the door and I was left alone in his office.
"Well now, lets see what we can find," I said to myself. I was at a blank screen with a single window for me to type in something for the computer to search for. I really didn't have any idea what to look for so I typed in my own name to see what would happen. I was surprised as nearly 20 pages worth of data flickered onto the screen. I started reading with the knowledge that it was going to be a very long day. When I finally looked at the clock it turned out to be late at night. I had read for over 15 hours straight without stopping. I now knew almost everything about myself that I needed to. As the knowledge poured in more and more of the fog was pulled away from my memories. I knew who I was and what had happened to me. I had left my hometown and had come to Midgar where I ended up in Shinra's elite fighting force known as SOLDIER. On a special mission with the famous Sephiroth I was horribly wounded. The archives did not say who wounded me but it talk about what happened afterwards. A fellow soldier and I had been taken by the head Shinra scientist, Hojo, and used as the first subjects in the Sephiroth Clone Project. The other soldier had been deemed a failure but the two of us escaped from the laboratory anyway. The report stated that both of us went missing while on our return journey to Midgar. I remember being attacked by a Shinra Border Patrol. They had nearly shot me to death. Somehow I had survived and had been taken inside the city where I had woken myself up from the brink of death.
I researched SOLDIER, Sephiroth, and Hojo all in attempt to understand what they had done to me. All that I could figure out that as a SOLDIER I was infused with Mako energy and something else called JENOVA cells. There was not a single file on JENOVA, whatever it was. There was not much information on Sephiroth either which made me think that the two might be connected in some way. The thing that also interested me was the fact that so much of this happened around the small town of Nibelheim, one of the most Mako rich areas in the world.
I was exhausted and Domino had still not come back yet and so I curled up on the couch and drifted off to sleep wondering what had happened to the other soldier that had escaped with me.
A figure was approaching me from out of the darkness. "Aeris?" I asked. I could hear laughing as I noticed the inferno that accompanied the stranger. He walked through this firestorm as he approached me. He grew closer and closer until I could see that it was a man wearing a black cloak. He had silver hair growing down past his waist and he carried a gigantic No-Dachi blade in his right hand. His eyes were emerald green and seemed to burn intensely with an unholy light. "Who are you?" I asked in fear.
"You know me, you can feel who I am slave," he replied in a steel cold voice. He had the air of a person who knows that they are in absolute control. He was right actually, I could feel who he was, and it was if there was a bond between him and me.
"Sephiroth, you are Sephiroth," I said.
"Good, for a puppet you are quite intelligent, but I have not sensed you before now. You are powerful and would have served mother well earlier in our plans. I cannot understand why I did not sense you so I will need to find out for myself, that is why I am here." He reached out his left hand, which began to glow with a white light that was at once intense and yet sickening. I felt as if someone were peering into my soul, like someone was looking into my deepest thoughts. "Ahhh," Sephiroth sneered, "I see that the girl was not satisfied with the clean death that I gave her, and even in death she tries to plague me. I am afraid that although the strength you posses would be useful to mother, I will not take the chance of the girl using you to further her own plans."
"The girl," I asked, "you mean Aeris?"
"Yes, I believe that was her name, it is of no concern to me. She got in my way and nearly ruined my plans before I eliminated her." He said this in an absentminded way that made me angrier than I had ever thought possible.
"I will kill you for that," I said.
He laughed at me, "Hardly, indeed it is going to be me killing you in order to keep the girl from interfering again." I could see his hand glow brighter and brighter. My spine arched as spasms racked my body. My teeth were clenched together and my hands balled into fists as I tried to fight the pain.
"Is that...the best...y...you could do?" I asked mockingly between sharp breaths. His brow became wrinkled in anger and concentration. Instantly my body felt like it was being torn apart. I could not have held out much longer when a new element entered my dream. It was a single flower and it fell gracefully down between the two of us to land on the floor. It was radiating a pure light that filled my spirit with strength. Against the monstrous powers of Sephiroth the spirit of Aeris coupled with my own will began to win out. Finally Sephiroth was panting and his head hung a little lower.
"This was only a small example of my power," he said, "when you feel the full force of mothers strength you will fall, even with the help of the Cetra girl!" I had had enough of this and I was growing tired myself.
"Get out of my head," I growled and thrust the vision of fire from my mind. Instantly the figure of Sephiroth wavered and disappeared like smoke. I walked up to were the flower lay and picked it gently up in my hands I stared at it and thought once again of Aeris.
I awoke with a start and almost punched the Mayor out of surprise. He was standing by my bed shaking my shoulder.
"Hello there and good morning," he said, "I would appreciate it if you didn't knock my teeth out, especially since I brought you coffee."
I grabbed the cup and drained the contents in one gulp; afterwards I jumped up and down fanning my tongue and trying to yell through my burned mouth.
Mayor Domino laughed at me, "I thought you knew that it was hot. O well, we have more important things to worry about." As the Mayor talked I used Cure to heal my mouth. "You see," he said, "while I was in the lounge yesterday I overheard some officers talking about the incident you caused in the lobby. Since they were unable to apprehend you they have decided to barricade the lobby and the emergency stairs so that no one can get in or out of the building without them knowing about it. I knew that you would need to get out if you were ever going to get the information to your friends. I spent the entire night working and I finally came up with a keycard to the 69th floor. From there you should be able to walk up to the helicopter pad on the 70th floor. You can hijack a chopper there and make your escape before Shinra Security even knows what hit them." He handed me a keycard with the Shinra Insignia and the letter 69 on the front.
"Thank you Mayor Domino, Thank you for everything you've done to help me," I said sincerely. I took the keycard and walked out of the office to the elevators.
I opened the elevator and slipped the card through the reader before pressing the button for the 69th floor. The elevator began to move up and I let out a sigh of relief. Until then I had expected something bad to happen like it always seemed to. I really didn't know what I was going to do so I decided that I would first get out of Shinra HQ and then wait for Aeris to give me new instructions.
The lift continued on its upward course and I saw that I was almost there. Finally the door dinged and opened. I walked out into a side room with some snack machines. I went through the only door there and came out into a main hallway leading from what looked like a set of stairs. There was another door; this one was much larger than the other ones. I pressed the button and the door slid open with a whoosh. There beyond was a large room with twin sets of stairs leading up to the floor above. I was almost out and probably could have made a clean getaway except for one problem. Apparently the curse had not yet lifted from me because standing in the room was a whole platoon of Guards and some other uniformed men who I recognized as a team of SOLDIER 3rd Class. I was almost instantly recognized and a shout went around the room.
"Get out of my way and no one will get hurt," I yelled as I unsheathed Reaper and snarled at my surprised enemies. Instantly every weapon in the room was visible and all the soldiers were glaring menacingly at me. "O boy," I said to myself, "here we go again."