Chapter Two: Under the Rotting Pizza
"That should keep the planet going…at least a bit longer," Cloud could hear Bigg's voice over the sound of some kind of beeping computer.
Wedge just responded, "Yeah."
It was Barret's inaudible grumbled that brought Cloud back fully into their world, "Okay! Now everyone get back!" Jessie said.
Cloud sat up, "Are you alright?" he asked.
"Yeah, com'on!" she pulled him up.
The two of them headed back through a flaming opening that the others were headed towards. Fire licked at the ceiling above them as the ran out. "You're leg?" Cloud said.
"It feels a lot better that the swelling went down, thank you," she said.
Wedge, Barret and Biggs were right outside of the opening waiting for them. When they were spotted Barret said, "All right, now let's get out of here. Rendezvous at Sector Eight station, split up and get on the train!"
Biggs Wedge and Jessie took off in different directions, Jessie gave Cloud a little wink as she went off. Cloud turned to Barret, "H—hey!"
"If it's about your money, save it 'til we get back to the hideout!" Barret said and then ran off up a flight of stairs.
Cloud walked off heading back in the direction of the train station. He went of the flight of stairs dodging old emptied out car bodies and bits of machinery that were lying around. He came out into a cobble stone street where people charged around in panic trying to get as far from the reactor before Shinra police showed up.
Cars were rolled over in the street and the power was flickering, but Cloud moved slowly so not to arouse suspicion. He came down the side of the curb and there was a theater at the corner, posters for the hit musical Loveless dotted the walls of the building. Critics' opinions on the musical were on the posters too.
Cloud had wanted to see the thing, but knew the time wasn't now. He found a fountain on the sidewalk and walked over to it. He stepped on the pedal that activated the water flow and started to wash his hands in it. He started to rub a little of the water on his face.
A voice from behind him interrupted him, "Excuse me," the voice was soft and melodious, like ringing bells chiming out the occasion of a wedding. He looked up to see a flower girl standing there, when she saw his face she asked, "What happened?"
Cloud stood fully up and dunked his hands deep in his pockets, "Nothing…hey, listen…" Cloud paused as he saw what she was holding and as he saw the rest of her. She had soft pale skin and gorgeous green eyes. Her hair was a chestnut brown and flowed down in front of her eyes in untamed bangs. The back reached down to her knees and was done up and in big beautiful braids that were held together by pin laces.
There was a big pink bow at the start of the first braid. She wore a red short sleeved jacket that stopped at her midriff and a long pin strapless dress.
Cloud glanced down at the basket of flowers on her arm, "Don't see many flowers around here."
She smiled, "Oh these? Do you like them—their only one gil…?"
"I'll take one."
"Oh thank you!" she plucked a red flower from the basket and handed it to him, "Here you are, she said in a cheery voice. Then she vanished off down the brick street.
Cloud continued down the road at amore hurried pace now, he took his trek down a back alley that met up with the next street over. Just over the buildings from that was Sector Eight train station.
Just as he was about to reach the next street a loud booming voice that could have only been a soldier called out, "Hey! You there!!"
Cloud started to run, he reached the center of the street then guards approached from both ends of the street. He cornered against a wall of Shinra and a hole that led to the under ground part of the train.
"Halt, you are under arrest!" yelled one of the soldiers clad in the same blue uniform as the ones Cloud had dealt with earlier.
Cloud shook his head, "Sorry, I really don't have time to be messing with you guys!" he said.
"Grab that kid, he's just babbling!" said another of the soldiers.
Cloud heard a train whistle right below them and moments later the train passed out from under the tunnel, the top of it was going by fairly rapidly. Cloud weight the options and then turned and dove onto the top of the train speeding off and looking back at his pursuers with a smile.
A while into the ride Cloud searched for a way into the train, he slung his body down over the side. Sweat dripped off his forehead stringing his eyes a bit. But he kept swing back and forth until he was able to kick one of the side panels of the train in, with a loud scream he flipped inside to be greeted by Barret, Biggs, Jessie and Wedge.
"Looks like I'm a little late," he said.
Barret slammed his fist down on top of one of the crates next to him, "Yo damn right, you're late!! Come waltzin' in here makin' a big scene!"
"No big deal, just what I always do," Cloud said.
"Shi't!" Barret said, "Havin' everyone worried like that you don't give a damn 'bout no one but yerself!"
Cloud got a cocky smile, "Hmm, you were worried about me?"
"Wha!" Barret called. "I'm takin; it outta your money hot stuff!" He walked to the front of the car. "Wake up, we're movin out, follow me."
When Barret was gone Wedge turned and said, "He Cloud, you were great back there!"
"Hehe…Cloud, we'll do even better next time!" Biggs said, he and Wedge walked off.
Jessie walked over to the open door, "Wish I could shut this, be careful around it," she turned to Cloud, "Oh your face is covered in dirt," she wiped it clean. "There ya go."
She walked a little ways towards the door, "Thanks for helping me back at the reactor there," she said and then walked out of the train car.
Cloud hesitated a moment and followed after her. A loud booming voice came over the inter come, "Last train out of Sector Eight Station Last Stop is Sector Seven Train Graveyard. Expected Arrival time is 12:23 AM Midgar Standard Time…"
Barret was next to an old man on the side bench of the train, Biggs was in the far front corner alone and Wedge and Jessie were examining something. Cloud walked up to where Jessie and Wedge were.
"Someday our group will be famous and so will I!" Wedge declared to Cloud.
Cloud ignored it and taped Jessie on the arm, "What's that?" he asked.
"Hey Cloud, wanna take a look with me?" she asked, "it's a map of the Midgar Rail System, let's look together and I'll explain," she paused. "I like this kind of stuff—bombs, monitors you know flashy stuff."
She pointed to the screen, "Okay, it's about to start," on the screen there appeared a green wire diagram of the city of Midagr. The citer was circular with the tallest buildings residing in the middle. There were two plates of the city, and upper and lower. People in the lower plate had to deal with all of the pollution and grim that sunk down from the Mako reactors.
"This is a complete model of Midgar," Jessie went on to say. "The top plate is fifty meters above ground, a main support structure holds the plate up in the middle while the plate over ever sector has it's own support…we blew up the first reactor in the northern part of the city. The numbers go up all the way to Eight. Together they provide Midgar with power. Each of the eight sectors have a designated reactor, but two could function off one reactor if need be.
"All of the sectors used to be named but no one in town remembers them—that's just the kind of place this has become. Now look at this, this is the route our train is on," she started up again pointing to a path marked by white dots that lead from one sector to another. "The route spirals around the main support structure, we should be coming around the center right now.
"There are ID sensors at each of the check points in the city, it checks backgrounds of everyone in the train by linking to a central data base at the Shinra building—which is here," she pointed to the tallest building in the center of the city. "We're using fake IDs—so no foul!"
Suddenly red lights began to flash in the train car and a siren sounded, "Speak of evil…that mean's were at the ID scan checkpoint," Jessie said.
Then, as abruptly as it had come the lights returned to normal and the train continued on its spiraling path. Barret leaned back and looked out the window, "Look you can see up to the surface, this city doesn't even have a day or night—if the plate weren't there we could see the sky…"
Cloud walked over and gazed out too, "A floating city, pretty unsettling scenery," he said.
Barret stood and folded his arms, "Huh? Never expected that out of the likes of you!" he paused. "You jus' fulla surprises!" Barret moved to the front of the car, "The upper world…a city on a plate…it's jus 'cuz of that fucking 'pizza' on a plate that people down here are sufferin'!"
"Then why not just more to the upper plate, no brainer there…" Cloud said.
Barret sighed, "Dunno, probably 'cuz they ain't got no money. Or maybe cuz they love their home no matter how bad it gets."
"I know, no one lives in the slums because they want to. It's like this train: it can't run anywhere but where the rails take it…" Cloud gazed out and the train reached the station in Sector Seven.
Barret was the first off the train, "Yo!! Get over here, all ya!" Cloud, Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie all gathered around. "This mission was a good one, but don't get lazy yet, don't be scared of that explosion cause the next will be bigger!" Barret ran a little distance ahead, meet back at the hideout, move!"
Everyone ran back to the hideout, but Cloud walked slowly. As he left the train station there were mounds of trash piled up taller than him. He started to wonder about what Jessie was saying about all of the sectors having names and wondered how it would all be if the place was clean.
Then he looked off to the side to see a large towering object with stairs circling around it all the way to the top. He stared at it, "That's the support she was talking about—how does it hold up all that weight?" he asked himself.
He stopped and looked at it a little longer, then from somewhere a kids voice called to him, "Hey mister!"
Cloud looked down to see a young boy standing by the bottom of the support pillar, the boy was as close as you could get without jumping the fence.
"Mister look at how high up it goes—one day I'm gonna climb all the way to the top," said the boy. Then without warning he looked at Cloud, "What would happen if that pole were to break?" the boy asked. Cloud just shook his head.
Rinsing the question from his head he staggered into town, just beginning to notice how tired he really was. All of the houses were like shacks, with torn old pieces of scrap metal and wood making up most of their materials.
Cloud spotted Barret near the front steps of an old wooden house with a porch surrounding it. "Go on in Cloud—don't you wanna see you lady?" asked Barret in a mocking tone.
Cloud just continued inside of the old house, the second the door opened the voice of a child called out, "Papa!" but upon seeing Cloud the little girl in the pink dress charged off into the back room.
Biggs, Jessie and Wedge were over at a table eating already, from the other side of the table came a voice, "Marlene! It's rude to run off when someone comes in like that!" A fair skinned brown haired brown haired woman emerged with the little girl Marlene in tow.
There was a smile on the brunette's face, "Looks like everything went well Cloud," she said. She was a beautiful women with dark brown hair, and hazel eyes. "Did you fight with Barret?" she asked.
"Yeah," said Cloud.
"I should have known, you've been prone to fights—and he always starts them!" she said.
Tifa looked at Cloud through her gorgeous brown eyes; her hair is dark brown and very long. It nearly touches the ground before the small red tie wraps it up. She had on two gloves, one with the fingers out and the other with s metal knuckle on it. Her clothes were pretty skimpy; a white sleeveless shirt that clung tight to her body and a short black skirt with an unbuckled belt for style. Her boots had spikes in the front and cleats on the bottom.
Cloud nodded, "Thanks for worrying Tifa," he threw one arm around her waist.
"Don't be mad at Marlene, she just really missed Barret," said Tifa. She paused upon seeing the flowers in Cloud's hand. "Flowers, how nice…you never see them in Midgar."
"Well, I thought the same thing," Cloud said calmly.
Tifa accepted them, "Mm, they smell wonderful!" she said.
Cloud went and sat on the table, just as Barret entered, "Papa, you're home!" yelled Marlene as Barret scooped her up and put her on his shoulders. The two of them looked very different, she had fair, fair skin, where as Barret had brown skin.
"You all right, Barret?" asked Tifa?
Barret smiled bigger than he had until this point, "Great," Barret turned back to his group where they were at the table, "Get back here fools, time for the mettin'!" he said.
All of them jumped up from the table in a hurry, Jessie and Wedge got up with no problem, Biggs on the other and knocked his chair over. He left it and followed Barret to the back corner of the bar where there was a large love tester game, it was busted.
Barret kicked and pulled back on the joy stick of the tester, the game started to rock and then head down into the floor. Revealing a long metal ladder, Barret mounted the ladder with Marlene still on his back and headed down, the others followed.
Tifa shook her head an smiled as she watched them disappear into the floor, "That's like them," she said. She looked to Cloud, "Well get over there!" she said as she picked the stool up that Biggs had left.
Cloud ran over and started down the ladder, the room he entered was a control room of some sort. There was a large screen broadcasting the news—it was about the bombing that had been perpetrated.
Jessie was parked in front of a computer near the large video screen, she wrapped away on the keyboard. Biggs and Wedge sat together at a small table, and Barret stood at the far side of the room opposite where Cloud entered.
Wedge looked up, "So you decided to join us?" asked Wedge joking.
Cloud ignored it as he saw Barret heading his way, he folded his arms and asked spoke, "Yo, Cloud, I wanted to ask you something…"
"Yeah?"
"Was there anyone from SOLDIER fighting us today?" asked Barret.
Everyone else in the room stopped what they were doing at the sound of the word, SOLDIER, Cloud burst out laughing—almost darkly, "You're kidding right—because there was none, I'm positive."
"You think this shit's funny?" asked Barret, Marlene jumped down at this point. "You sound pretty sure."
There was nothing humorous about Cloud's expression now, it was dead serious, "If there was anyone from SOLDIER, you wouldn't be standing here now!"
The rest of the room watched, frozen on the two, "Don't go thin' you so bad jus cus you was in SOLDIER!" Barret said. "Yeah you're strong, all them guys in SOLDIER have to be—you're workin for AVALANCHE now, don't go getting' ideas about hangin' with the Shinra.
"The Shinra?" Cloud just mumbled. "You asked me a question, a stupid one, but a question nonetheless—all I did was answer it." Cloud headed over to the side of the room where the ladder was, "When your ready to talk about paying me, I'll be upstairs."
Just before Cloud could start up the ladder, Tifa was on her way down. She let go of the ladder half way down and landed expertly on the ground bending her legs to numb the fall.
"Cloud, wait" she started. "Please."
Barret folded his arms, "Let 'em go, he misses the Shinra!"
"Shove off," Cloud yelled flipping the table that was in the center of the room over. "I don't care about Shinra, SOLDIER, the Planet or AVALANCHE!" Cloud jumped onto the ladder dodging past Tifa and scrambled back up.
Barret starts to wail on the punching back with his fist and his gun fist as fast as he can, sweat dripped down from his brow and splashed down his shoulder. His punches increased on the bag as he hit it. Marlene just watched as her father's rage grew.
Tifa followed Cloud back up to the top floor of the place, the second she reached the bar floor she turned to see Cloud, before she could even say anything he was starting to open his mouth.
"Cloud, listen up, you have to join us—we need you," she said.
Cloud shook his head, "Sorry Tifa," he said.
Tifa walked over closer to where he was, "The Planet is dying, slowly but it's dying no matter what you say—we all have to do our part—"
"You sound like one of those preachy old nuts—'the end is coming! Ooo'," Cloud mocked her.
"I'm serious!" she shouted.
Cloud folded his arms, "So let Barret and his buddies do something about it, this is nothing to do with me!"
"Fine be that way, leave—break your promise!" Tifa said.
Cloud's expression went from indifference to confusion, "What promise?" he asked.
"You forgot that too, huh?" she asked.
Cloud tried to form the picture in his mind, it came back slowly. The night it took place there were so many stars in the sky; their numbers seemed endless yet so simple. Cloud was sitting on the side of the large well; the well itself was old and wooden it's entire structure seemed old fashion.
Cloud was a lot younger, his hair had shorter spikes. There was a disturbed air about him, he just sat staring at the ground. A lot of thoughts were pouring through his mind—his thoughts jumped from thing to thing. He could remember it; but the most prevalent force in his thoughts was Tifa.
Then she appeared over the back of the well, Cloud turned instinctively to see her. She smiled sheepishly, "Sorry, I'm late—you said you wanted to talk?"
Cloud hesitated to nod, "Yeah—come this spring I'm out of here?"
"Where?"
He froze again, "I'm going to Midgar—"
Tifa looked down slowly, slinging her knees from side to side her glossy dark hair moved with her, "All the boys are leaving town—"
"Yeah, but I'm going to be something special—I'm going to be in the war fighting along side The Great Sephiroth!" Cloud said standing up with a defiant look on his face.
Tifa seemed concerned, "Isn't it hard to join SOLDIER…and that war with Watui—it's getting pretty dirty I hear…"
"I won't be able to come back to town for a while—" said Cloud.
Tifa clasped her hands, "But you'll be in the newspapers if you do well, right?"
"I'll try—" said Cloud.
She folded her arms, "Just promise me, that you'll always be here for me," she said.
"Ummm…"
"If I ever get into a bind, promise you'll save me, all right?" Tifa said.
"What?"
Tifa rolled her eyes, "I've always dreamed that when I get in trouble my hero would be there to save me—like those old stories about the princess and her knight?" she stopped. "You're listening right?"
"Yeah—"
Quickly Tifa shoved him off the side of the well, knocking him to the ground. She tumbled down on top of him and rolled him out across the ground. "Say it!" she commanded playfully.
"Okay—okay—I promise…………"
His mind flashed back to the present, "I guess you do remember there?" she asked. Her eyes sparkled with a renewed confidence that she had won.
"I'm not a famous her—I can't keep that promise," said Cloud.
Tifa clasped her arms behind her back, "But you joined SOLDIER, and that was most of the promise there—you're my hero for just sticking to it."
Just then Barret appeared in the shaft where the ladder was, he stopped right in front of the spot where the love tester had been, "Wait a moment big time SOLDIER, promises are promises—here's your cut of the deal—I didn't even take out your late fee…"
Barret handed him fifteen hundred gil, "This is my pay—you'll have to better than this next time!" Cloud said.
"That means…" Tifa seemed so excited.
Cloud folded his arms, "I want twice this much next time—" he said.
"Wait a—" Barret started to say, Tifa grabbed his arm.
She whispered in his ear quickly, "We really need the extra help—so let it fly till we hook em." Tifa looked to Cloud, "Thanks, Cloud."