The three comrades walked towards Wall Market, the sirens having calmed
from the plate crash the night before. Barett, uncharacteristically
subdued, set about tuning and adjusting his gun-arm. Tifa walked softly
and gracefully, seemingly oblivious to the extra weight of her steel-plated
boots.
Cloud was a different story, his eyes were bloodshot and he had thick circles under his eyes. Even his normally spikey hair was limp with water from his shower, giving him the illusion of being extremely worn out. He walked on, though, until a figure bumped into him from behind. Before he could really react, the person snatched the blonde man's coin purse.
Two more came up quickly and robbed Tifa. A fatal error was made on one of the thug's part when he decided to cop a feel of Tifa's chest. No sooner had he grabbed with his dirty hand, the young woman snatched his thick wrist, slipped under his arm, and pulled. There was a sickening pop, and the thug screamed. Not being it the best of moods, she yanked again and was rewarded with a snap and another scream. His arm went limp, broken in two spots.
Cloud, infuriated that someone would disgrace Tifa so, kicked the man in the chest as the young martial artist released her hold. The robber fell back, and as his shoulders hit the ground, Cloud's wide blade bit through the flesh of his stomach. He screamed for several seconds, before gurgling and choking on his own blood.
The remaining two thugs had Barrett to contend with. He easily beat up the first, retrieving Tifa's money, and had thrown the second one into the dirt at gunpoint. Both watched in silence, as Cloud had brutally murdered the first. Tifa and Barett were very much surprised at Cloud's visciousness, never really thinking he would be one to be so bloodthirsty.
The young man seemed to realize what he had just done at that moment and looked up from the corpse with wide blue eyes.
Just then, the remaining thug leapt to his feet and sunk a small flip-knife deep into Barett's shoulder. He roared in pain and threw him back to the ground, once again training his gun at the man's chest. He fired, but the gun did not respond, only clicked oddly. "Dammit!" The dark man scoffed as he fiddled with the gun for a second. The thug wisely took this moment to quickly make his escape, leaving Cloud's money out of fear of pursuit.
"I need to stop at a fucking weapons shop now!" Barett fumed. "Goddammit!"
Tifa and Cloud paid him no heed, Tifa was too shocked from Cloud's lack of restraint, and Cloud himself was busy staring at the blood rolling slowly off his silver blade. "Cloud," Tifa touched his arm. "Its okay let's keep going."
"I didn't mean to," He looked at her, like a small child about to face punishment. "Tifa, I-"
She reddened, his look of insecurity touched her. "It's okay, Cloud." She stepped closer to hug him awkwardly. "Thanks for protecting me."
"I never thought I could kill someone like that." He sighed, hugging her back. She was such a good friend.
Barett, as hardened and as worldly as ever, piped up. "You better get used to it, Spike." Cloud frowned at the nickname. "Kill or be killed, y'know."
Cloud and Tifa broke apart and followed the angry Barett through the alleyway to Wall Market. They noted that there was considerably less traffic than the last time they had been there. "I need to replace this gun," Barett grumbled. "Let's go to the weapons store."
"Afraid to go alone?" Cloud jeered, happy to pick fights with the older man. He was also trying to clear his mind, and pissing Barett off would help distract him.
"You little shit! Hell no!" He whirled on Cloud and the two stood chest to chest. "I thought it would be best for us to move in a group."
"Shut up, both of you." Tifa called from behind her shoulder, she was already walking towards the weapons shop.
They gave each other pointed looks and continued after her. The weapons store was tiny, the three of them barely fit. As Barett haggled over the price of his equipment, Cloud and Tifa discussed ideas for the plate. The shopkeeper's assistant, leaned over the counter towards them. "A buncha debris fell in the alley behind this store, you could probably climb it all the way to the top."
They looked at him quizzically. "Really?" Cloud put in.
"Yeah, go see for yourselves."
They thanked the man as Barett turned, grimacing. As they left, he grumbled about the outrageous pricing, and began bolting the new gun to his arm. "So, what's the plan, Spike?"
Cloud bristled at his new nickname, but responded snidely, "There's debris back here," he turned the corner, and sure enough, there was stacks of debris piled all the way to the plate.
The two men followed the pile all the way up. Tifa had already begun to climb, they noticed, when they looked back down, and they hurried to catch up with her. It was slow going, but they made it to the top. Barett was especially slow because he only had one good hand to work with. After nearly two hours of straight vertical climbing, they stood on the plate, and gazed at the star-filled night sky.
"Damn, man." Barett breathed. "I haven't seen the sky in so long."
Tifa nodded. "I know what you mean."
Cloud was about to say something when he realized that he couldn't remember when he last saw the sky either. Just before he came to Midgar, probably. But when was that? How long HAD he been in Midgar? He suddenly couldn't remember. A splitting force made itself know in his mind. He gripped his temples in pain and sank to his knees. Tifa immediately rushed to his side, worry written all over her face.
"Cloud? Are you okay?"
"Ugn... yeah I'm fine." He stood, and brushed himself off.
Barett ignored his mental episode, and looked at the huge ShinRa building. "Hey, you oughta know this place pretty well, huh?"
"No," Cloud answered, "This is the first time I've been to the headquaters."
"I heard about this place before." Barett said, "Every floor above the 60th is special and not easy to get to, even for employees. Must be where they took Aeris." He looked around. "The security's pretty light now. Alright, let's go!!" He started to move forward, but Tifa grabbed his arm.
"Wait, you're not actually going to walk right through the front door, are you?" She furrowed her brows in disbelief.
"Well, what's it look like, Tifa?" He rolled his eyes. "I'm gonna kick some ShinRa ass, and-"
"Through the main entrance?" She almost shouted incredulously. "Barett, they'll kill you before we even find Aeris!"
"There ain't no other way!"
Cloud shook his head. "How else can we get it?"
The stairs.
"Oh yeah," Cloud shook his head. "There are stairs over here somewhere. It's a maintenance entrance or something."
They both looked at him oddly but followed him down an adjacent alley. Sure enough there was an unlocked door that led to a staircase. Cloud peered up between the flights, but couldn't distinguish the top
Barett frowned, "Yo... You really gonna take these stairs all the way up?"
"Well," Tifa sighed, "We've got to get to Aeris to help her somehow."
"Talk about out of the way..." the dark man groaned.
"I don't have time to argue with you! I'm going!" Tifa spat, tired of fighting with him.
"Yo, Tifa! Don't go off alone!" He followed her, taking the stairs two at a time.
After a short while, Barett was breathing heavily and had started taking the stairs one at a time. "Don't know... why the hell... we gotta climb..."
Cloud, ahead of the other two, was still climbing at a quick pace. "Because we don't want to start a commotion until we've saved Aeris." He frowned, the added, "I doubt that's possible though..."
Barett snickered to himself, annoying Cloud further. "Knock it off. You're giving me the creeps."
Through his breathing, Barett managed a smug smile. "So even you will fight for someone else. I had you figured wrong I guess."
Cloud didn't see Tifa's hurt face, but kept looking straight ahead. "Who cares what you figured!"
"I'm just sayin' mebbe I was wrong..."
Tifa laughed despite her hurt feelings; Barett had actually admitted he was wrong.
Cloud continued jumping up the stairs, leaving a good sized gap between he and Tifa, and Barett behind her.
"What's so funny, Tifa?"
"Nothing."
Barett had taken to whining to pass the time after a few minutes. "How much farther do these stairs go on?"
Tifa sighed, also beginning to breath heavily. "Why don't you ask them?"
"It's not one of them endless stairways or somethin', d'ya think?"
"Of course not!!" Tifa shouted in annoyance. He could be such a kid sometimes.
"Right... couldn't be that... Are we there yet?"
"Not yet." Cloud grumbled.
"...there yet?"
"I said not yet!"
"Yo..."
Tifa almost turned around to slap him, he was being so obnoxious. "Look, don't even ask! We're way way way way far away from being there, ok!?"
Barett stopped climbing for a moment. "Damn, man! I've had it! I'm going back!"
"And take just as long going down as you did coming up?" Tifa's own calves were burning, and her lungs wanted to explode, but she kept moving upwards.
Barett didn't reply, but he stopped for a moment to catch his breath.
"C'mon, Barret. Pull it together!" Tifa called.
"Yeah, well all I know is I'm just flesh 'n' blood.... 'cept for this arm of mine. Don't treat me like I'm some ex-member of SOLDIER or somethin'!" He shouted in defense.
"What about me!? I'm human too! Oh, do what you want, I'm going on!" Even as she said this, she stopped to lean against the hand rail to breath for a moment.
Cloud stopped and waited for them.
"Yo... What floor is this?"
"I gave up counting." Tifa admitted, wiping sweat from her brow.
"Why they gotta build these buildings so damn tall? That ShinRa... they're just no damn good."
Tifa didn't reply.
Barett followed her, wheezing the entire way. Sweat was pouring down his dark forehead, and his chest was heaving up and down. "Man, I'm beat..." He feigned praying for a moment. "Marlene, Daddy wanted to see your face one more time..."
Tifa, now thoroughly annoyed, stopped to glare at him. "Would you stop acting like a retard and climb? It's just a bit more! I hope."
They wheeled around to the next flight of stairs, and almost directly into Cloud, who was standing impatiently in front of a door. "F-finally m-made it..." Barett wheezed. N-never wanna see... no more stairs the rest of my life."
"This really takes it out of you..." She was also panting, and wondered for a moment how Cloud wasn't dripping with sweat. "But this is it. We'd better get ready!" The blonde man opened the door and walked out nonchalantly, followed by Tifa and then Barett.
Sometime later they came out of the elevator on the sixty-sixth floor. As they passed along the wall, Cloud stopped in his tracks. A small lanky man in a white labcoat walked towards the main room of the floor.
Hojo.
Cloud's head suddenly split with pain, he almost blacked out, but he managed to stand and not attract attention to himself. "That's Hojo," he said a moment later, "The head of the ShinRa Science and Research Department. He's a sick bastard." As the man walked into the conference room, the powered doors slid shut behind him.
"What do you think he was doing?" Tifa asked tentatively.
"You didn't know?"
The three of them whirled to see a young female in a business suit behind them. "All the ShinRa bigwigs are getting together for an executive meeting."
Tifa attempted to act calm. "Oh, I wasn't informed."
"Yeah, they don't ever tell anyone, but you can usually hear bits of their meetings in the bathroom, so I like to eavesdrop every time and again." She popped her chewing gum loudly. She glanced at her watch, "'Scuse me, hon. Lunch is almost over."
The woman left and the three rebels exhaled in relief simotaneously. "The bathroom, huh?" Barett asked. "Let's go."
They crossed the hallway and found the bathrooms, and they discovered that they were unisex restrooms. They were all a little thankful, wondering how they might explain an embarrassing situation.
They could hear, as the secretary had said, traces of voices coming from the vent above one of the toilets. "Let's go," Cloud nodded, and he hopped onto the toilet seat. Carefully, he moved the ventilation cover up and over, allowing him to clamber into the duct. Tifa and Barett followed suit.
Only a small bit down the duct, they passed another vent, through which they could see a long table occupied by several ShinRa heads in suits. These included President ShinRa and Hojo.
A man with slicked back hair and a goatee, was shuffling through a stack of paper. "We have the damage estimates for Sector 7. Considering the factories we already set up and all other investments, the damage is estimated at approximately ten billion gil." He put the papers on the table dejectedly. "The estimated cost of rebuilding Sector 7 is-"
The president cut him off. "We're not rebuilding."
"What?" The goateed man looked utterly shocked.
"We're leaving Sector 7 as it is, and restarting the Neo-Midgar plan." He said, quite tersely.
"Then the Ancients-?"
"Yes, Reeve, the Promised Land will soon be ours." The president affirmed.
As Cloud looked on, he was suddenly able to name everyone in the room. Unsure of where the memory had come from he looked at the different faces. Reeve, the head of Urban Developement, was the goateed man. To his right, Palmer, the head of the Space Pogram. Then Heidegger, Public Safety Maintenance, followed by Hojo, and then Scarlet, the head of Weapons Development.
"Also," The president said, "I want you to raise the mako-production levels in each reactor fifteen percent."
Palmer, a short, fat, bald man perked up considerably in his chair. "Rate hike! Rate hike!" He performed a little dance. "Please include the space program, sir!"
ShinRa ignored him. "Reeve and Scarlet will divide up the extra income from the rate increase."
Palmer flopped back into his chair. "Oh man."
Reeve was busy shuffling through his papers again. "Sir, with all due respect, if you raise the rates, the citizens will lose faith."
"It'll be alright," the president sighed dismissivly. "The ignorant citizens won't lose confidence, they'll trust ShinRa Inc. even more."
Heidegger laughed loud and heartily. "After all, sir, we saved Sector 7 from AVALANCHE!" He laughed again.
In the duct, Barett growled. "That dirty fucker."
Back in the conference room, Hojo placed a red binder on the table. ShinRa directed his attention to the scientist. "Hojo, how's the girl?"
The pale man looked at the fat president over his delicate eyeglasses. "As a specimen, she is far inferior to her mother. I'm still in the process of comparing her to her mother, Ilfana, but for now, the difference is above eighteen percent."
"How long will the research take?"
"More than twice the speciman's life expectancy." He sighed heavily. "It would be almost impossible to complete in one lifetime." He pulled a paper out of the binder and passed it down to the president. "I'm thinking of breeding her. That way, we would have a specimen that would withstand extensive testing and research longer than the original."
"What about the Promised Land?" The president raised a gray-blond eyebrow. "Won't it hinder our plans?"
"That's what I'm calculating right now," he said, annoyance evident in his dark eyes. "The girl is strong, but I'm sure she has her weaknesses."
The overweight president nodded. "That concludes our meeting." The employees stood and dispersed. After they had left the room, the rebels looked amongst each other, and sighed. They were in the middle of something much bigger than they had anticipated. Something in which Aeris held the key.
"They were talking about Aeris, weren't they?" Cloud scratched his head, unsure of what to do.
Barett shrugged. "I dunno."
Tifa absently scratched her arm. "Probably."
"Let's follow them. Maybe we'll find Aeris that way." Cloud waited for Tifa and Barett to exit the duct before following close behind them. They walked back out to the hall, just as the hunched form of Hojo turned the corner.
They followed him, Cloud leading the way, staying out of sight. Hojo went to the stairwell, and disappeared from sight as he entered the door to the sixty-seventh floor. Dashing up the stairs, they made it to the door before it locked them out.
Cloud was a different story, his eyes were bloodshot and he had thick circles under his eyes. Even his normally spikey hair was limp with water from his shower, giving him the illusion of being extremely worn out. He walked on, though, until a figure bumped into him from behind. Before he could really react, the person snatched the blonde man's coin purse.
Two more came up quickly and robbed Tifa. A fatal error was made on one of the thug's part when he decided to cop a feel of Tifa's chest. No sooner had he grabbed with his dirty hand, the young woman snatched his thick wrist, slipped under his arm, and pulled. There was a sickening pop, and the thug screamed. Not being it the best of moods, she yanked again and was rewarded with a snap and another scream. His arm went limp, broken in two spots.
Cloud, infuriated that someone would disgrace Tifa so, kicked the man in the chest as the young martial artist released her hold. The robber fell back, and as his shoulders hit the ground, Cloud's wide blade bit through the flesh of his stomach. He screamed for several seconds, before gurgling and choking on his own blood.
The remaining two thugs had Barrett to contend with. He easily beat up the first, retrieving Tifa's money, and had thrown the second one into the dirt at gunpoint. Both watched in silence, as Cloud had brutally murdered the first. Tifa and Barett were very much surprised at Cloud's visciousness, never really thinking he would be one to be so bloodthirsty.
The young man seemed to realize what he had just done at that moment and looked up from the corpse with wide blue eyes.
Just then, the remaining thug leapt to his feet and sunk a small flip-knife deep into Barett's shoulder. He roared in pain and threw him back to the ground, once again training his gun at the man's chest. He fired, but the gun did not respond, only clicked oddly. "Dammit!" The dark man scoffed as he fiddled with the gun for a second. The thug wisely took this moment to quickly make his escape, leaving Cloud's money out of fear of pursuit.
"I need to stop at a fucking weapons shop now!" Barett fumed. "Goddammit!"
Tifa and Cloud paid him no heed, Tifa was too shocked from Cloud's lack of restraint, and Cloud himself was busy staring at the blood rolling slowly off his silver blade. "Cloud," Tifa touched his arm. "Its okay let's keep going."
"I didn't mean to," He looked at her, like a small child about to face punishment. "Tifa, I-"
She reddened, his look of insecurity touched her. "It's okay, Cloud." She stepped closer to hug him awkwardly. "Thanks for protecting me."
"I never thought I could kill someone like that." He sighed, hugging her back. She was such a good friend.
Barett, as hardened and as worldly as ever, piped up. "You better get used to it, Spike." Cloud frowned at the nickname. "Kill or be killed, y'know."
Cloud and Tifa broke apart and followed the angry Barett through the alleyway to Wall Market. They noted that there was considerably less traffic than the last time they had been there. "I need to replace this gun," Barett grumbled. "Let's go to the weapons store."
"Afraid to go alone?" Cloud jeered, happy to pick fights with the older man. He was also trying to clear his mind, and pissing Barett off would help distract him.
"You little shit! Hell no!" He whirled on Cloud and the two stood chest to chest. "I thought it would be best for us to move in a group."
"Shut up, both of you." Tifa called from behind her shoulder, she was already walking towards the weapons shop.
They gave each other pointed looks and continued after her. The weapons store was tiny, the three of them barely fit. As Barett haggled over the price of his equipment, Cloud and Tifa discussed ideas for the plate. The shopkeeper's assistant, leaned over the counter towards them. "A buncha debris fell in the alley behind this store, you could probably climb it all the way to the top."
They looked at him quizzically. "Really?" Cloud put in.
"Yeah, go see for yourselves."
They thanked the man as Barett turned, grimacing. As they left, he grumbled about the outrageous pricing, and began bolting the new gun to his arm. "So, what's the plan, Spike?"
Cloud bristled at his new nickname, but responded snidely, "There's debris back here," he turned the corner, and sure enough, there was stacks of debris piled all the way to the plate.
The two men followed the pile all the way up. Tifa had already begun to climb, they noticed, when they looked back down, and they hurried to catch up with her. It was slow going, but they made it to the top. Barett was especially slow because he only had one good hand to work with. After nearly two hours of straight vertical climbing, they stood on the plate, and gazed at the star-filled night sky.
"Damn, man." Barett breathed. "I haven't seen the sky in so long."
Tifa nodded. "I know what you mean."
Cloud was about to say something when he realized that he couldn't remember when he last saw the sky either. Just before he came to Midgar, probably. But when was that? How long HAD he been in Midgar? He suddenly couldn't remember. A splitting force made itself know in his mind. He gripped his temples in pain and sank to his knees. Tifa immediately rushed to his side, worry written all over her face.
"Cloud? Are you okay?"
"Ugn... yeah I'm fine." He stood, and brushed himself off.
Barett ignored his mental episode, and looked at the huge ShinRa building. "Hey, you oughta know this place pretty well, huh?"
"No," Cloud answered, "This is the first time I've been to the headquaters."
"I heard about this place before." Barett said, "Every floor above the 60th is special and not easy to get to, even for employees. Must be where they took Aeris." He looked around. "The security's pretty light now. Alright, let's go!!" He started to move forward, but Tifa grabbed his arm.
"Wait, you're not actually going to walk right through the front door, are you?" She furrowed her brows in disbelief.
"Well, what's it look like, Tifa?" He rolled his eyes. "I'm gonna kick some ShinRa ass, and-"
"Through the main entrance?" She almost shouted incredulously. "Barett, they'll kill you before we even find Aeris!"
"There ain't no other way!"
Cloud shook his head. "How else can we get it?"
The stairs.
"Oh yeah," Cloud shook his head. "There are stairs over here somewhere. It's a maintenance entrance or something."
They both looked at him oddly but followed him down an adjacent alley. Sure enough there was an unlocked door that led to a staircase. Cloud peered up between the flights, but couldn't distinguish the top
Barett frowned, "Yo... You really gonna take these stairs all the way up?"
"Well," Tifa sighed, "We've got to get to Aeris to help her somehow."
"Talk about out of the way..." the dark man groaned.
"I don't have time to argue with you! I'm going!" Tifa spat, tired of fighting with him.
"Yo, Tifa! Don't go off alone!" He followed her, taking the stairs two at a time.
After a short while, Barett was breathing heavily and had started taking the stairs one at a time. "Don't know... why the hell... we gotta climb..."
Cloud, ahead of the other two, was still climbing at a quick pace. "Because we don't want to start a commotion until we've saved Aeris." He frowned, the added, "I doubt that's possible though..."
Barett snickered to himself, annoying Cloud further. "Knock it off. You're giving me the creeps."
Through his breathing, Barett managed a smug smile. "So even you will fight for someone else. I had you figured wrong I guess."
Cloud didn't see Tifa's hurt face, but kept looking straight ahead. "Who cares what you figured!"
"I'm just sayin' mebbe I was wrong..."
Tifa laughed despite her hurt feelings; Barett had actually admitted he was wrong.
Cloud continued jumping up the stairs, leaving a good sized gap between he and Tifa, and Barett behind her.
"What's so funny, Tifa?"
"Nothing."
Barett had taken to whining to pass the time after a few minutes. "How much farther do these stairs go on?"
Tifa sighed, also beginning to breath heavily. "Why don't you ask them?"
"It's not one of them endless stairways or somethin', d'ya think?"
"Of course not!!" Tifa shouted in annoyance. He could be such a kid sometimes.
"Right... couldn't be that... Are we there yet?"
"Not yet." Cloud grumbled.
"...there yet?"
"I said not yet!"
"Yo..."
Tifa almost turned around to slap him, he was being so obnoxious. "Look, don't even ask! We're way way way way far away from being there, ok!?"
Barett stopped climbing for a moment. "Damn, man! I've had it! I'm going back!"
"And take just as long going down as you did coming up?" Tifa's own calves were burning, and her lungs wanted to explode, but she kept moving upwards.
Barett didn't reply, but he stopped for a moment to catch his breath.
"C'mon, Barret. Pull it together!" Tifa called.
"Yeah, well all I know is I'm just flesh 'n' blood.... 'cept for this arm of mine. Don't treat me like I'm some ex-member of SOLDIER or somethin'!" He shouted in defense.
"What about me!? I'm human too! Oh, do what you want, I'm going on!" Even as she said this, she stopped to lean against the hand rail to breath for a moment.
Cloud stopped and waited for them.
"Yo... What floor is this?"
"I gave up counting." Tifa admitted, wiping sweat from her brow.
"Why they gotta build these buildings so damn tall? That ShinRa... they're just no damn good."
Tifa didn't reply.
Barett followed her, wheezing the entire way. Sweat was pouring down his dark forehead, and his chest was heaving up and down. "Man, I'm beat..." He feigned praying for a moment. "Marlene, Daddy wanted to see your face one more time..."
Tifa, now thoroughly annoyed, stopped to glare at him. "Would you stop acting like a retard and climb? It's just a bit more! I hope."
They wheeled around to the next flight of stairs, and almost directly into Cloud, who was standing impatiently in front of a door. "F-finally m-made it..." Barett wheezed. N-never wanna see... no more stairs the rest of my life."
"This really takes it out of you..." She was also panting, and wondered for a moment how Cloud wasn't dripping with sweat. "But this is it. We'd better get ready!" The blonde man opened the door and walked out nonchalantly, followed by Tifa and then Barett.
Sometime later they came out of the elevator on the sixty-sixth floor. As they passed along the wall, Cloud stopped in his tracks. A small lanky man in a white labcoat walked towards the main room of the floor.
Hojo.
Cloud's head suddenly split with pain, he almost blacked out, but he managed to stand and not attract attention to himself. "That's Hojo," he said a moment later, "The head of the ShinRa Science and Research Department. He's a sick bastard." As the man walked into the conference room, the powered doors slid shut behind him.
"What do you think he was doing?" Tifa asked tentatively.
"You didn't know?"
The three of them whirled to see a young female in a business suit behind them. "All the ShinRa bigwigs are getting together for an executive meeting."
Tifa attempted to act calm. "Oh, I wasn't informed."
"Yeah, they don't ever tell anyone, but you can usually hear bits of their meetings in the bathroom, so I like to eavesdrop every time and again." She popped her chewing gum loudly. She glanced at her watch, "'Scuse me, hon. Lunch is almost over."
The woman left and the three rebels exhaled in relief simotaneously. "The bathroom, huh?" Barett asked. "Let's go."
They crossed the hallway and found the bathrooms, and they discovered that they were unisex restrooms. They were all a little thankful, wondering how they might explain an embarrassing situation.
They could hear, as the secretary had said, traces of voices coming from the vent above one of the toilets. "Let's go," Cloud nodded, and he hopped onto the toilet seat. Carefully, he moved the ventilation cover up and over, allowing him to clamber into the duct. Tifa and Barett followed suit.
Only a small bit down the duct, they passed another vent, through which they could see a long table occupied by several ShinRa heads in suits. These included President ShinRa and Hojo.
A man with slicked back hair and a goatee, was shuffling through a stack of paper. "We have the damage estimates for Sector 7. Considering the factories we already set up and all other investments, the damage is estimated at approximately ten billion gil." He put the papers on the table dejectedly. "The estimated cost of rebuilding Sector 7 is-"
The president cut him off. "We're not rebuilding."
"What?" The goateed man looked utterly shocked.
"We're leaving Sector 7 as it is, and restarting the Neo-Midgar plan." He said, quite tersely.
"Then the Ancients-?"
"Yes, Reeve, the Promised Land will soon be ours." The president affirmed.
As Cloud looked on, he was suddenly able to name everyone in the room. Unsure of where the memory had come from he looked at the different faces. Reeve, the head of Urban Developement, was the goateed man. To his right, Palmer, the head of the Space Pogram. Then Heidegger, Public Safety Maintenance, followed by Hojo, and then Scarlet, the head of Weapons Development.
"Also," The president said, "I want you to raise the mako-production levels in each reactor fifteen percent."
Palmer, a short, fat, bald man perked up considerably in his chair. "Rate hike! Rate hike!" He performed a little dance. "Please include the space program, sir!"
ShinRa ignored him. "Reeve and Scarlet will divide up the extra income from the rate increase."
Palmer flopped back into his chair. "Oh man."
Reeve was busy shuffling through his papers again. "Sir, with all due respect, if you raise the rates, the citizens will lose faith."
"It'll be alright," the president sighed dismissivly. "The ignorant citizens won't lose confidence, they'll trust ShinRa Inc. even more."
Heidegger laughed loud and heartily. "After all, sir, we saved Sector 7 from AVALANCHE!" He laughed again.
In the duct, Barett growled. "That dirty fucker."
Back in the conference room, Hojo placed a red binder on the table. ShinRa directed his attention to the scientist. "Hojo, how's the girl?"
The pale man looked at the fat president over his delicate eyeglasses. "As a specimen, she is far inferior to her mother. I'm still in the process of comparing her to her mother, Ilfana, but for now, the difference is above eighteen percent."
"How long will the research take?"
"More than twice the speciman's life expectancy." He sighed heavily. "It would be almost impossible to complete in one lifetime." He pulled a paper out of the binder and passed it down to the president. "I'm thinking of breeding her. That way, we would have a specimen that would withstand extensive testing and research longer than the original."
"What about the Promised Land?" The president raised a gray-blond eyebrow. "Won't it hinder our plans?"
"That's what I'm calculating right now," he said, annoyance evident in his dark eyes. "The girl is strong, but I'm sure she has her weaknesses."
The overweight president nodded. "That concludes our meeting." The employees stood and dispersed. After they had left the room, the rebels looked amongst each other, and sighed. They were in the middle of something much bigger than they had anticipated. Something in which Aeris held the key.
"They were talking about Aeris, weren't they?" Cloud scratched his head, unsure of what to do.
Barett shrugged. "I dunno."
Tifa absently scratched her arm. "Probably."
"Let's follow them. Maybe we'll find Aeris that way." Cloud waited for Tifa and Barett to exit the duct before following close behind them. They walked back out to the hall, just as the hunched form of Hojo turned the corner.
They followed him, Cloud leading the way, staying out of sight. Hojo went to the stairwell, and disappeared from sight as he entered the door to the sixty-seventh floor. Dashing up the stairs, they made it to the door before it locked them out.