Final Fantasy 7

Emerald Princess of Vernea

Chapter Seventeen


"How do we get to the Shinra Building?" asked Tifa once they were standing outside of Aeris's house.

"There ain't no train that goes up there anymore..." said Barret.

Tifa crossed her arms and thought for a moment. "...Well," she said finally. "Let's just go to Wall Market. We might be able to find something there."

Cloud and Barret nodded. Wall Market was in Sector 6, and logically that seemed to be the best place to start in their search to find a way up to Shinra Headquarters, which was situated in the large tower in the centre of Midgar. So they left Aeris's house behind them and headed quickly towards Sector 6.

It was a painful thing to do as they passed through the park again and look upon the smouldering pile of wreckage that was formerly the Plate. The fires were slowly beginning to die down now, and there were still no signs of life. They didn't stop to look at the wreckage or to mourn over their lost comrades – they were on a mission now, and there was nothing they could do for their friends now. Biggs, Wedge and Jessie were dead, but they would never be forgotten.

Sector 6 was also in a state of panic like Sector 5, although by now the people were beginning to calm down and return to their nightly lives, left only to wonder how and why the Sector 7 Plate had fallen. There were a few pieces of debris scattered around from when the Plate crashed, but nothing was seriously damaged.

One thing Cloud did notice as he walked through the sector with Tifa and Barret were the expressions of some of the people who were looking at him. Many of the people, in particular the men, were looking at Cloud with sneering looks and pointing at him, laughing amongst themselves knowingly. At first Cloud was confused, until he was hit with a terrible flashback of how he had to walk through the sector clad in a purple silk dress and blonde wig. The people here had obviously heard of his escapade in Corneo's mansion, and now he had become the laughing stock of Sector 6. He walked faster through the sector, wanting to get away from the staring, jeering eyes of the men.

For a while they wandered through the sector, trying to find something that could give them a lead to making it up to the upper plate and towards the Shinra HQ. They questioned a few people, but no one really knew or didn't care. The further north they headed into the middle of the sector the more debris there was that had fallen from the sky when the Plate crashed. Most of the debris had been gathered outside the Weapon Store, where a man was busy hauling a large broken chunk of metal that looked like an engine of sorts inside through the back door. Cloud signalled to Barret and Tifa to wait while he went inside the Weapons Store.

He found the man at the back of the store, with the large broken engine lying next to him as he worked on it. For a moment or two Cloud just looked at the various weapons that had been manufactured within the store, unsure of what he was really looking for to help him and the others get to the upper levels. He eventually caught the shop owner's attention, and the man looked up at him.

"You goin' up to the plate?" he asked suddenly. Clearly word spread fast throughout the sector. He stood up and wiped his hands on a dirty old cloth covered in oil. "You better have a Battery," he advised Cloud, walking to the fence that separated him and Cloud, and held out a small box of large square-shaped batteries. They looked pretty battered and dented, but they had obviously been fixed.

Cloud tilted his head as he looked at the box. "You're gonna sell me something you just found?" he asked.

"Hey, you knew?" the shop owner asked. He shrugged dismissively. "But I repaired it, so it's all right."

"Why do I need a Battery to climb up to the plate?"

The shop owner grinned knowingly. "You'll find out when you get there," he said. "How 'bout 100Gil for each?"

Cloud looked down at the freshly repaired Batteries, unsure as to why he would really need them in order to get to the plate. Then he remembered that the people of the slums were desperate for money, and the shopkeeper had no real reason to lie to him.

"...All right, I'll take them," Cloud said finally.

He delved into his pocket and pulled out 300Gil, exactly enough for the three batteries that lay in the box. He handed the shopkeeper the money through a large hole in the fence, and the owner in turn pushed the box of batteries through a similar hole. Once Cloud took the batteries the shop owner turned back to his job of repairing the engine he had carted into the shop.

Cloud left the shop to where Tifa and Barret were waiting for him. They looked at him in bewilderment as they saw the three batteries he had purchased, but they didn't say anything.

They continued to head north, back up towards the section of the sector where Don Corneo's mansion was built. As they approached Cloud and Tifa saw that the mansion was now dark and all the lights were switched off – in fact the mansion looked entirely deserted.

"Wanna see somethin' awesome?" came a young voice.

The three turned to the sound of the voice. It came from a young boy, standing with a group of his friends near the entrance of the mansion beside a fairly dark alley. Cloud and his friends looked on as his friends nodded excitedly, and the boy turned to the alley.

"Follow me!" he said.

And with that the boy turned and ran into the alley, with his friends running excitedly behind him. Cloud looked to Tifa and Barret, who slowly nodded their heads. The mansion ran along the back of the wall that joined with Sector 7, and any lead, no matter how small, was better than nothing. So they headed down the alley after the children.

As they entered the clearing behind the alley, they were surprised to find that the kids had all disappeared, with the exception of one young girl who was standing almost frightened beside the wall that separated the two sectors, which had been covered with graffiti. A long, thick cable was hanging near the side of the wall, and as Cloud, Tifa and Barret looked up they saw that the cable was coming from the remains of the cables and tubes that had previously been holding the Sector 7 Plate in place, and now were hanging down loosely all the way to the slums.

"Everyone climbed up this wire," the young girl said, her voice trembling slightly as she looked up at the size of the wall and how high the wire climbed. "Looks scary... Brrr."

"Can we climb it?" Tifa asked the young girl.

She nodded in reply. "Yeah. It leads to the Upper World."

"Awright!" Barret exclaimed. "We'll climb this wire!"

Cloud turned to him. "There's no way we can do this," he protested. "You know how far it goes up?"

"There IS a way!" Barret insisted. He turned to the wire. "Look! What's that look like?"

Cloud looked at the wire, wondering what it was that Barret could see that he couldn't. To him it was just a long black cable dangling from the wreckage above them. It was a thick wire and looked strong and sturdy enough, but apart from that it wasn't anything special.

"Just a normal wire," Cloud replied finally.

"Oh yeah?" asked Barret. "Well to me it looks like a golden shiny wire of hope."

Together Cloud and Tifa looked up at the wire once more and the ruins that lay beyond it. Even though they couldn't see all the way up to the top, it did seem as though it led all the way towards the upper plate.

"You're right," said Tifa. She turned to the two men. "This is the only way to save Aeris..."

"Okay," said Cloud. "That was a bad analogy, but Barret, I understand how you feel." He looked at Tifa and Barret, who nodded back at him. He then nodded. "Let's go!" he said, sounding enthusiastic.

He then turned towards the cable behind him. He jumped up, grabbed onto it, pulled himself up and began to climb. Barret followed him, using most of his upper body strength to pull him up the wire since he had only one hand he could use to climb with. Tifa was last to jump onto the wire, which meant she was also the last to see the horrors that awaited them at the top of the wall.

The rest of the girl's friends were all standing on the top of the old concrete wall, gasping and exclaiming in delight and fear as they looked at what lay beyond the wall, and as Cloud climbed up and looked in, he also gasped.

He could see directly into what remained of Sector 7. Of course he could not see the slums, for they were buried deep beneath the plate. What he was looking at was what was left of the town built on top of the plate, which was just a large, smouldering wreckage. The metal of the plate and the houses were all broken up and distorted, twisted around into the most unbelievable positions. Electric cables had broken and were crackling – everything was a ruin. However, despite the devastation, there would be a small chance of people on top of the Plate surviving, but less could be said for those trapped under the Plate.

"Oh man! This is terrible!" one kid wailed as he looked down at the wreckage.

"Hey, scary, huh?" his friend said. "Dad told me that it's the Shinra's doing."

Barret stared into the wreckage, his eyes opening wide as he saw the devastation. He knew that deep beneath that wreckage were Jessie, Biggs and Wedge, buried forever, for he doubted the Shinra would lift up the Plate. He was slightly relieved to know that at least some people knew that Shinra was to blame for this tragedy and not AVALANCHE, so the Shinra's attempts to blacken their appearance had failed. Tifa refused to let herself look down into the wreckage – she didn't want to see the charred, messed up graveyard that Sector 7 had become.

They continued to climb the wire past the children, and headed up into the deep maze of broken pipes and chunks of metal that had lodged in the air from the top of the Sector 6 Plate.

The cable eventually came to an end a little further up, and the group climbed onto the large pipe that it was dangling from. From there they looked around to see which would be the safest way of going up. The pipes twisted around each other, many of them dented and broken from the disaster, and many ladders had been bent completely out of shape. There was one ladder that had been dented so it made a dip before rising up again towards another pipe that led higher up towards the upper world. There was a fan next to it, although the blades were a little out of reach right then.

Cloud jumped from the pipe they were standing on and onto the pipe that held the fan. The blades were too strong to be pushed into place, but there was a small square box near the foot of the fan, and as he looked inside he could see that it was a battery slot. He then realised that this was what the Weapons Store owner meant when he sold Cloud the batteries.

"...Maybe if I put a battery in..." he wondered aloud, looking down at the three batteries. "The propeller might work. I guess I'll just have to believe the shopkeeper."

Tifa and Barret watched hopefully as Cloud pushed one of the three batteries into the slot. It was a struggle to get the battery in since everything was so rusty, but he eventually got the battery in and a light lit up on the side of the fan.

Slowly, the blades of the fan began to turn. They creaked loudly as rust broke away from their hinges, fighting the urge to stop and beginning to turn slowly. They began to speed up a little, absorbing the power of the battery and turning around for the first time in years.

It wasn't the fault of the fan when the light suddenly exploded and the blades began to slow down again. The battery was very old and had been very hastily repaired, so it was no wonder that the battery lost its power very quickly and began to die out. Cloud watched as the blades began to slow down, and sighed with relief as they stopped, with one blade stopping right beside the pipe that led onto the ladder they needed to get to.

The group wasted no time in continuing their long journey up to the upper world. With the blades now in place they were able to climb onto the pipe and then onto the ladder, which was stuck firmly in place between the two pipes. After the ladder then began to climb the pipes, using the dents and ridges as handholds and footholds for them to hold onto so they wouldn't fall to the ground, which was already a long way behind them.

They came to a stop again as a large metal bar blocked their path on a pipe further up, which was easily removed as Cloud but the second of the three batteries in a nearby box. The bar lifted up with a loud creak, allowing the group to pass. The pipe itself ended a little further on, but the pipe on the other side of the abyss looked as though it continued to rise. There was, of course, a large gap between that pipe and the one they were standing on, with only a gently swinging bar between them.

"Looks like the only way is to jump onto that bar," Cloud assumed. "Should make it if I jump before it comes too close."

Tifa and Barret looked at him confused, and exclaimed loudly as Cloud suddenly dived off the pipe towards the bar. Tifa cried out and covered her eyes, unable to watch in case Cloud fell.

Cloud caught hold of the bar as it swung towards him, and held on with all his strength. With the extra weight now on the bar it began to swing more strongly, and with each swing he got closer to the other pipe. When he was close enough he released his hold on the bar and fell onto the pipe, quickly grabbing onto the ridges to stop him from falling off. He signalled to Barret to follow, and Tifa sighed with relief as she opened her eyes and saw Cloud was safe.

The rest of the journey was fairly simple once the bar obstacle had been passed. There were no other blockages or jumps to make, no pipes to cross over, just a straight journey straight up towards the upper world.

Everything was fairly quiet on the upper plate surrounding the Shinra Building. The tower itself was lit up with many searchlights that were rolling around the sky. A single helicopter was flying overhead examining the wreckage of Sector 7.

Cloud, Barret and Tifa stood together near the entrance of the Shinra Building, looking up at it in the darkness. Cloud had one hand grasped onto the handle of his sword, while Barret's gun-arm was raised and ready, and Tifa pushed her gloves firmly into place for the inevitable battles that lay ahead. Slowly Cloud turned his head towards his friends, who nodded back at him. Cloud then turned back to the building, and then the three of them began to run to the Shinra Building, the rescue mission that would unwind the rest of their stories finally beginning.