It's hangin' heavy over your head. You can feel the weight of it where your back meets your neck. It's sharp like metal shavings imbedded in your neck bones. Little splints of hurt that prickle every time you turn your head. It hangs heavy and it only seems to get heavier with time. It seems to be sinkin' closer and closer until someday it'll crush your skull.

It hung over her head and over all the heads of every person that passed her by on this lonesome eveining. Her hair was black and dry and brittle, more like eyelashes that had grown too long then actual head hair.

The thing over her head hanging miles or maybe just a half-a-mile over her head was rusty and glinting. Long stretches of silver-brass-copper plates were bolted in flat squares on it. The whole sweeping metal ceiling was a network of iron framework and tentacle electrical wires all encapsulated with these giant bolted pieces of flat heavy square metal.

The framework for the entire thing was laid out pretty well but time was pulling at the metal square sections and the bolts were bendin' in their sockets, being pulled one way by one sheet of metal and the opposite way by this other metal sheet.

The metal hung glossy and brittle over her head, crusted with red rust around some edges were the rain water had seeped down. Some of the tight lines of space where two sheets of metal pushed into one another were reemed with dried oil.

The top part was maintained fine, the part maintained for the rich folks was in tip-top fashion. It was easier to get to for one thing. You could stand on the top if you wanted to put in some bolts. But anytime a mutton handyman tightened one of those bolts it wasn't doin' much of any good since the bottom part was getting almost completely ignored.

The caked in oil around the metal sheets was the same tone and hue as her hair and if you'd been squattin' down lookin' at this girl you would have swore her hair was woven into the metal ceiling in hard geometric strands.

She wasn't looking at the ceiling. In fact, even though she wanted to blow it up she had already gotten kind of accustomed to it. It just hung there over her head and she'd gotten to ignoring it almost as much as she'd ignored the sun and the moon back when she could see them. Those two were quite the novelty now though to her heart and her head, now that she'd gone aways without seeing them. She'd dream about 'em, stare at the pair of them when they popped up on the tele. And when she dreamed of blowin' up the metal hunkajunk that hung over her head sometimes she was doin' it for her dearly departed sun and moon.

Maybe the others were too.

She was at the train station now and she had been waitin' for a train until an old friend popped up out of the ground faster than the celestial bodies could appear on an infomercial. He was lyin' slack against a sidewalk bench that wasn't even inches away from the drop off where the rails and the trains were waitin'.

He looked kinda different from when she'd last seen 'im, but not too much.

Same hair. Same eyes maybe.

She walked over to him like you'd cross over to a creature in a trap then she hunkered down to get a better look at those long lost eyes.

He was hidin' 'em pretty well with his eyelids, not that he meant to. He wasn't meaning to do much of anything. Just lyin' there like a sack a'salt.

This was their reunion, sure enough, him clear out of it and her not believin' her own pretty caramel coffee ground eyes. Her lips even parted a little at the sight of him.

This boy was named Cloud. To be honest, he wasn't much of a boy anymore. But he was a boy still enough, maybe not in his physique but still boy enough in his boy brain.

She tries to talk with him but if he ain't up for standin' then sure enough he's not up for talkin.' He just looks back at her with those strange blue eyes that are half-hidden under those heavy lids of skin.

She can see somethin' swimming in his irises though. Somethin' blue or maybe just somethin' invisible rearrangin' the blue that's already there like a heatwave changin' the shape of a desert horizon. The swimming thing tuns and floats in his irises and she can't take her eyes off the movement for a moment. But then she pulls herself together, blinks a few times, and takes in his whole face.

He's better lookin' then she remembers him bein.' Not by much but still his face has filled out. He's got strong bones under good skin. Skin's even a little tanned. Not that it hadn't been tanned when they were kids but she'd gotten pretty pale living beneath the metal overhang. It'd been awhile since she'd seen someone light-skinned with some sun-colorin.'

She tried to talk to him for a little bit more but he just kept starin' back with those glazed over eyes. Finally, she tried to scoop him up but he was too heavy. All dead weight. When she'd first seen him she'd been a little afraid that he was dead until she'd seen him breathe.

She tried to scoop him up again, pull him over her shoulders but that didn't work either. She began to get worried that one of the ticket collectors might notice her strugglin' with this heap of flesh an' bone. She set Cloud down again, not that she'd moved him by much. The boy had a huge piece of blade hangin' off his back and that wasn't helpin' the moving process by much.

Tifa grabbed the handle of the blade and tried to pull it up, pretty much sure all the while that one of the ticket holders would call her a thief and blow his whistle. She'd seen some muggings go off without a hitch around this station so despite what she might've been telling herself, she knew no one was goin' to say anything about some lass yankin' some comatose kid's blade.

All the sudden he clicked on. Maybe it was the threat of someone yankin' his sword. Maybe it was just spastic. Lookin' into her eyes hadn't done it for him, seein' her tits waver up and dance a little as she moved from a crouch to a stand hadn't woken him up either. He was awake now though.

Those lids flapped back and those great thick rings of blue stood out round with the waves of distortion slidin' over 'em. He was awake now.

His hand flew up behind his head and took her wrist with a firm but not crushing grip.

Tifa stopped pulling and looked down at his glove-covered hand.

He pulled her away from his blade like a parent leadin' a kid from danger and brought her up infront of him. He took her all in at once and ladies and gentleman if hadn't a noticed those tits before he sure as hell noticed 'em now. The blood thrummed into his dick at the sight of her but his mind was somewhere else, somewhere frozen and cold. He was starin' into the forgotten pieces of time that were hanging before his eyes. Time had been lost to this boy. He had wandered through distance and here he was now with his flesh aching and his mind empty.

The discrepancy between the warmth between his legs and the icyness that had grown into his chest and head made his stomach lurch. The confusion was as thick in him as lust or loss and maybe soon enough he would vomit.

Cloud cringed forward ripping his eyes away from the sight of the woman.

"Cloud?"

He heard his own name in a voice he knew. He'd seen a woman, a full and round woman standing before him surrounded in this cage of dust and metal. The sickness abated from his gut and some warmth began to melt all that ice in his shoulders and head.

This boy had been fucked with seriously and as a consequence a jolt was coming into his brain that had very little to do with his original biology. Something foreign and burning was jolting in his mind, pushing him into a position, netting up the torn memories in a fashion they weren't meant to go in. Sewing him up so he wouldn't notice the great gaps of black that hung in his memory. Something was buzzin' in his head and when the white pulses disappeared, he was a little more machine and a little less afraid.

He looked up into her eyes and sure enough it was her. Then anything that had been stitched together within the last few seconds of his mind had pulled apart again and he went slack. Cloud's head fell back against the bench and the lids slipped low over his eyes.

Tifa had seen it though, a flash of recognition fall over his face. She had to get him out of this place. She crouched down and took him by each arm. To her surprise, he moved towards her. There was somethin' wrong with him. Something wrong enough to give her chills as her skin touched his. As she brought him up to his feet chill after chill was sweeping over her skin like wind through a rice field.

One set a' chills was for his strangeness. Another set was for his familiarity. Another set was for his looks. She drew him up close to him, hip-to-hip and she felt a warmth flood to her pussy. She drew her arm a little tighter around his waist but his arm still hung limp over her shoulder.

When she took a step though, he took a stumblin' step with her. He was heavy against her makin her back bend off to a side that made it hurt around the middle. Between tryin' to guide his feet and tryin' to keep from fallin' over, only snippets of thought could float into her mind. Mostly questions many of which she'd forgotten a time ago.

Suddenly, she wondered if he knew.

Now you might be wonderin' just what it was she was wonderin' that he knew and I ain't got time to go into the details. Let it suffice to say that Tifa's whole town got burned down when she was younger and it had to do with that subject. Nothin' sinister about it, she was just wonderin' if he knew or not because it would matter a great deal for him. I shall explain why in a bit for those of you who don't know already.

Tifa brought him to a bar that she worked in. She set him down on a bench and got another good look at him. That boy was as slack as a dead fish though. She flipped on some lights to get a better look at him. (Do keep in mind that this bar is under the great slab of metal that is always hangin' over her head. Now you got a bit of an idea just how huge the damn thing is.)

It's him alright, bathed in that ugly fluorescent light that makes everything a dull scabbed orange. He's a little more with it, his head's still see-sawin' a little.

She crouched down infront of him and looked into those eyes with the swimmin' nothin's on 'em. He's lookin' right through 'er. His pupils were tiny and his irises were round and big. His eyes were glassy and staring like a doll's eyes.

It was hard for Tifa to sleep that night. She didn't know quite what she'd gotten herself into. A living corpse up sitting on the bench seemed like it could just as soon plop over and turn into a dead corpse. Worry kept spinnin' in her torso until she finally laid down.

Cloud on the other hand simply continued to stare while the scattered bits of his mind tried to coagulate. Bit by bit, memory after memory, something of his old self continued to rise out of the muck, puttin' this drop o' the hat here that kiss on the cheek over there. By mornin, course it didn't look nothin' like mornin' for the giant hunk of metal hangin' over their heads, he was almost coherent.

The big man came up that mornin' and got a good look at the little-star eyed punk. Talk about yer warm introductions. Now I've heard other versions. I heard as soon as all spiky-hair walked through the door, the big man challenged him to an arm wrestling match. Out of that version, I've heard a two outcomes, one bein' that the big man one, other bein' that the little punk did. Either way, from everything else I here, I figure that side of the tale's completely bullshit bogus anyhow.

Course I heard other versions too, some involvin' train rides and train wrecks, but I won't be gettin' into those. I'll be stickin' with this version, and if you'd like another one that's fine, go out an' find it.

Least way, way I'm tellin' it and believing in it, the big man caught sight of the runt and didn't want nothin' to do with him. Nevertheless, Tifa was bound to keep him around and no one was changin' that. See, when push came to shove, it was her with the authority, not big man Barret. The main reason for this, among others, is that Barret had come to her, not the other way around.

Well, shit, hold on, let me back up a bit. Real quick, the bar Tifa worked out had had quite the history. It's main luxury was the downstairs basement that was accessible solely through pullin' a lever on a one-armed bandit, that's a slot machine for you nonbettin' folks, that activated an elevator. This basement had housed all sorts of types throughout its short existence but when the old crew was put out and Tifa got the bar, it was Barret who would come askin' for the place. The two had negotiated, and the little girl Barret had at his side had done some charmin, so that soon enough. Barret and his crew were hiding, key word bein' in that sentence hiding, from the law.

'Cause you see, Barret ain't the law-abiding type. Well, maybe he was, but things bein' the way they were, Barret was goin' against the law for reasons I will not as yet divulge.

So Barret and the people he kept under 'imself would sleep out and coordinate in the business, plannin' out their nefarious deeds while ol' Tifa would wander around upstairs keepin' the upkeep of an honest business. Between the two of them, Barret and Tifa were makin' a substantial sum gilly for a pair of somes slummin' it in slums.

That was a heap a background I'll know, and I'll be sure to elaborate later on. Right now, I wanna get back to when ol' Cloud finally snapped out of his trance.

The presence of the big man hadn't done it. Tifa's tits hadn't done it. Havin' a man gunned down right beside him hadn't done it.

Barret had gone out to do the things that persons like Barret do and the business of the day was comin' and goin' in the little bar. Tifa was behind the counter washin' glasses and cleanin' dishes. Men were sittin' on the stools, layin' out their best one-liners on the lasses and as was typical, even tried a few on Tif when ass-pinchin' and winkin' proved to be of no avail.