A/N – Not much to say, so here's chapter ten, part two!
Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy 7 or any characters from the original game...there, I said it.
Chapter 10 (part 2)
"It all started about a millennium in the future – the distant past for me, mind you – when a rebel group started wreaking havoc on this planet; no one knows who exactly they were or why they began all of this, but whatever they did they did with unheard expertise. All we do know for sure is that they were genetically enhanced, ex-militants, numbering around two hundred. The mayhem lasted for ten years before the ruling government got fed up with the complaints from various cities, and ran with their tails between their legs.
"Of course, they had to get rid of the potential threat somehow and thought that blanketing Gaia with nukes would do the trick, however overkill the idea was." Rollin told the woman to the best of his story-telling abilities, trying to keep it as factual as possible but finding it very difficult to do so without adding bias. Tifa furrowed her brow in thought.
"So, that's how humankind ends? In a mushroom cloud?" she asked in disbelief, and Rollin shook his head from side to side.
"No…it keeps getting better and better." He replied with a hint of sarcasm, "There was another planet that held human life; some people from Gaia found it by accident via a satellite before all of this: it crash-landed, started taking pictures, and sent them back to the surprise of everyone. By the time Gaia was thoroughly nuked, twelve ships docked on the newly populated Cyphus with the higher-ups from this planet, leaving billions behind to burn in a nuclear hellfire. Cyphus: my home.
"And those scum ended up running the show again. Sure, there was relative peace for about a millennium and a half, but almost as if their worst fears came true, the rebels came back…and in far greater numbers this time. That might not have been much of an emergency if we had a large enough and well trained army, but that wasn't possible without drafting most of my generation."
"That shouldn't have been a problem, right?" Tifa asked, and Rollin shook his head again in dismay.
"It was just called drafting…the truth of the matter was far from it: children as young as ten, most barely into their teens, were given guns without prior training and forced to kill people that were much older, stronger, and tactically advanced; most of them didn't survive. Then the leaders started to get more secretive, and that resulted in us: the Children's Militia, Section 13." He paused, remembering all of the squad member's faces, "There were eight of us: Michael, Drammer, Jack, Lloyd, Angela, Cody, Marle and myself; a squad of kids, two of which were…enhanced, so to speak, by mako."
"You mean like SOLDIER?" Tifa spoke. Rollin shrugged his shoulders.
"In a way, yes; however, the mako energy was purified and fused directly to our DNA." He procured some papers he had kept in his pocket for safekeeping, handing them over for her to see, "That's the only proof I have." Tifa skimmed through the documents, and handed them back.
"…You're not making this up, are you?" she queried, keeping Rollin's gaze locked on hers. Strangely enough, it was almost as if he couldn't move even if he tried to. Finally she sighed heavily, processing all of this information at once, "So let me get this straight: you're from the future, and here to warn us, right?" he let out a muffled chuckle.
"Actually, I got here by accident…kind of funny, now that I think about it." He closed his eyes, watching it happen all over again in his mind with a smirk on his face, slightly amused this time around, 'And all because my curiosity got the better of me.' He thought. His eyes opened automatically, feeling as if he had lost an extremely heavy burden attached to his back.
"I'm not sure what everyone else will think of you, but," she placed a hand on his shoulder, "I believe you."
"…Thanks." He said, standing up and walking towards the now welcome warmth of the inn.
A/N – Reviews are golden!
Until the next chapter,
Lloyd Redgrave