Midgar was a city of lights. A bustling and rushing city which glowed in the night. It was full of energy. And I had never seen such a thing before.
I was the simple county boy from Nibelheim, a place whose only claim to fame was the reactor beyond the mountains and the mansion, where we were told some very important Shinra scientists once worked. To most of the children of Nibelheim, it was off limits. It was the town's haunted house and no one liked to go near it for there was said to be ghosts and monsters in the abandoned building. No one ever talked about what happened there and I doubt that anyone knew. Whatever the scientists did, it was top secret. But otherwise, the place I grew up in was unremarkable.
In my trip to Midgar, I had seen a great number of things. I had seen Costa del Sol, the beach resort town in my mission to join SOLDIER, where I was told there was a Shinra recruiting station at the port. Carrying only a backpack, which carried some items of clothing and with gil in my pocket, I arrived there and saw what people who had money did with their spare time. They hung out on the beach, the girls dressed in skimpy bathing suits and the men wearing gaudy swimming trunks. I ignored most of this and went to the recruiting station and told them that I, Cloud Strife, wanted to join the Shinra army. After taking care of all the paper work, they told me I was to leave for Junon the next day with a bunch of other recruits and that I needed to find a place to stay in the meantime. I ended up sleeping that night on a bench along the main street, since I did not have the money to spare on getting a hotel room.
The next day, the other recruits and I headed for the Junon base where our basic training was to take place. Junon was cold and metallic, with a huge cannon pointing out towards the ocean. It was a base used in the war and now it was mostly used as a port, moving supplies and people between the two continents. When basic training, we were sent to the barracks at Midgar, and that's when I saw the lights of the city. I thought it was a gorgeous thing to see for I was certainly on my way to being in SOLDIER.