The members of the Planet's most notorious rebel group stood, looking up in awe at the wall they would have to trek in order to get to their newfound friend, Aeris the Ancient. The tallest one, a large black man, cursed under his breath as the leader, a blue-eyed young man with blond hair rolled up his sleeves, gripping a single wire that hung down the heavily graffitied wall.

As the dizziness in Syrina's head swam away, she opened her dazed eyes. The last thing she expected to see was a large black man's butt as he tried to use one hand to climb a seemingly unstable pole. Any thought of looking around to see where she was went out of her mind as she rolled away from the pole and the man, afraid of being squashed in case he fell. Her hazel eyes widened as she noticed the reason he was having difficulties, One of the man's hands was gone, a machine gun replaced the hand so he was unable to get a grip to pull his large, muscled body up the pole.

The black man turned around and raised an eyebrow at the shocked looking girl who seemed to have materialized behind him, "Where'd you come from?"

The others, the blond man and a dark-haired girl with long legs and small clothes, now alerted to the girl's presence, jumped off the wire and looked curiously at her.

Syrina shook her head to clear her thoughts sending a few curls to hit her in the face. She glared at the mischievous hair, as if it had hit her on purpose, and then felt a shiver down her spine as she looked at the people around her. "Who-who are you people?" She asked, trying to make herself sound brave yet failing dismally. Her hazel eyes darted around to look at the trash piled around and at the large amount of graffiti on the wall. This was not a place she ever remembered seeing and it scared her.

The girl leaned down and grabbed Syrina's hand, lifting her up off the ground. The black man spoke first, "We're AVALANCHE. Protectors of the planet. I'm Barret, this is Cloud. And she's Tifa. Are you tryin' to get up to that damn pizza too?"

Syrina looked up at them, still very confused. "Are you that hungry?" She wondered why they were climbing up a pole to get a pizza, but thought better of asking. Maybe these people were so poor that they lived in slums and had to climb up poles to get to the closest pizza place. Who was she to question how they did things? "Um… By protectors of the Earth do you mean you work for the government? Like the army or green peace or something?"

Barret raised an eyebrow but his gaze soon softened. He began to feel sorry for the girl who was obviously extremely confused. Maybe it was a spell or some sort of head trauma that caused this poor girl to forget how the world worked. Feeling a fatherly sort of protection over the girl he put his arm around her shoulders, "Do you have a safe place to go? There's about to be some shit goin' down around here and you don't need to be out when it does."

"What? What kind of shit?" For some reason she wasn't very scared of the man's fatherly touch, a very different change from the feeling she had when her real father put his arm around her shoulders in the past. Mentally, Syrina shrugged it off and tried to think. "Where am I? I…" She gulped as she remembered that she had last been in her room and she fought to hold back tears. "I don't know how I got here… I don't know anybody around here… I don't even know where I am."

Tifa looked very distressed, "You guys, we have to get to Aeris. One of us can stay behind and make sure she gets somewhere safe."

Cloud shook his head, having had an experience in his past similar to this "No. We take her. God knows what'll happen to her in this state, especially here. And all of us need to be present if we're going to get Aeris away from thousands of Shinra employees worth of defenses."

Barret nodded in agreement then turned to the girl, "Yo, listen, at least you know us now. See, we have a friend who is in a shit load of trouble right now. Shinra is the closest thing to that government you mentioned we have 'round here and they're a bunch of evil people. Their main office is right up there." He pointed with his gun-arm up to the top of the seemingly endless wall. "That's where our girl is. Now, it's gonna be a lot of work and probably dangerous, but do you want to go with us to get her? It's probably safer than down here with all these fuckin' perverts."

Syrina looked up at the wall and tried to envision climbing it. Not only was she afraid of heights, but also she hated doing too much work. If she stayed where she was she'd be dealing with perverts, but at least that was something she knew how to handle and could deal with. As she opened her mouth to speak she grabbed her head in pain. Hundreds of voices were crying out to her yet she couldn't understand the words they were speaking. She felt as if she was in her dream again. Finally she came to a conclusion of what the voices wanted her to do and she nodded her head. "Ok, I'm going with you."

Barret smiled. "Can you climb? Or do you need a ride?" He patted his back, offering a piggy-back ride as Cloud and Tifa scooted up the wire.

Syrina smiled as she remembered him trying to get up the wire. "Um... I think that you don't need the dead weight... I can try to climb." A sudden vision of her sad attempts at rope climbing in Gym class came to mind. "Yeah... I'll try..."

He jumped on the wire pulling himself up rather quickly for someone with only one hand. After about ten feet, he turned around to see the progress the brown-haired girl was making. Very far below him, Syrina had put on a pair of leather gloves she found in the trash and was using them to help her climb. Her feet moved against the wall as she attempted to reach the others, but she lacked upper arm strength and kept falling down. For what seemed to be the tenth time, Syrina fell onto the dirt and quickly stood up, dusting her butt off as if that would help her situation.

Barret let go of the rope, jumping down to land beside the girl. Seeming to be interested in something on top of one of the many piles of trash he walked away. Pulling up a decent-looking suitcase from the trash he inspected a tag on the handle. "Are you Syrina?"

Syrina looked up at Barret and saw him holding her ratty old suitcases, or what she considered to be ratty and old. She nodded her head slowly and walked closed to where he was standing. "Wow... Yeah, those are the suitcases I packed before..." She stopped short and crossed her arms, half to think but half to control her growing urge to cry. "Yeah, but I can't take them with me can I? Just leave them..."

He grabbed the suitcases and walked them over to a large pile of trash, stashing them safely behind it, he nodded "They'll be safe here. We'll come back and get 'em later. But for now, you need some help on this rope?"
Syrina's face flushed as she threw her pride aside and nodded, smiling in embarrassment. "Yeah, definitely."

Barret laughed and pulled her up onto his back. As he pulled himself up the rope he gave Syrina the same speech he had given Cloud much earlier on why Shin-Ra was such an evil corporation. He also explained AVALANCHE's start and the recent events that had taken place. He could sense her confusion at most of the things he was talking about, but continued on anyhow, hoping at least something he said would jog her damaged memory.