Chapter One: Derailed
This train was not going anywhere.
It lay off the tracks, a ruined and twisted mess. It was rusted from endless years of water dripping down the upper plates. The machinery had long since been scavenged or been rendered useless by salvagers. Now, all that was left were broken windows and rotted upholstery.
Trains had been a symbol of the future once.
Cloud Strife wondered how many futures lay dead here in the graveyard. Some of these trains were less than a year old, having been swapped for new, inferior models. Others were priceless antiques, carelessly tossed aside like trash by Shinra. Puddles of rainwater had pooled on the broken concrete.
It was perhaps the most miserable site he'd ever seen.
Through this chain link fence, you could see it any time if you came over here to look. Turning away from it, Cloud walked along the station. He watched as the brand-new train pulled away. That train would be phased out and taken off the tracks in a year or a few months. Someone would hand the contract for making it over to someone else.
Someone would get rich on a new design.
And a new train would be put on the tracks, probably of inferior quality to the old. Though it might be of superior invasiveness. They'd started demanding ID cards, after all.
At the rate at which futures were derailed, it was a wonder if anyone even bothered thinking of them. But then, there were fewer people on these trains these days. Not since the war ended and the factories stopped producing. The Genesis Army had kept things going for a while but in the end. The lack of an army to send soldiers into the meatgrinder had led to mass closures. Cloud had worked at one of those factories once while saving to pay rent and join SOLDIER. He remembered pulling a lever up and down, up and down, in an endless repetition of redundancy. All to achieve his dream.
One more broken future, he supposed.
If there were any left at this rate.
The fires above Nibelheim, above Corel as the firebombs were dropped and the survivors fled...
The image of death amid the flames.
Cloud was not going anywhere either. Hoisting the blade of a dead man over one shoulder, he wondered what his name had been? It hardly mattered. Cloud had just left him, but perhaps he did not want to remember.
Sitting down by the station, he planted the blade next to him and waited.
Waited for what?
It wasn't as though he had money to get on the train, even if he had somewhere to go.
Futures may have been disposable.
But you had better hope you had cash if you wanted a piece of one these days.
It was said that if you died, your spirit became one with the planet. You fell into an ocean of spirits like a drop of water and became one with it. The idea didn't appeal even slightly to Cloud. After all the misery he'd gone through trying to be more than nobody, why would he want to be nobody for eternity. The uniform he wore and the sword in his hand, these things were what defined him, what was left of who he was.
The uniform…
It was violet and had flak armor. SOLDIER style, he thought. Zack had given it to him to replace the ragged and destroyed standard infantry uniform. Which was nice since Zack had become a bloody, bullet-strewn corpse a few weeks later.
Wouldn't it be nice to be someone else?
'You'll be my living legacy,' Zack had said with his dying breath.
A lot of good that was.
A lone, spiky-haired homeless person in a ragged uniform. It was hanging on to the sword, representing the honor of a line of honorless men. Hollander and Angeal?
It's not precisely the sort Cloud would have picked as inspiration.
Then again, the person Cloud had picked for inspiration had a psychotic breakdown. Then he'd started killing everyone. When he was on a routine mission inside Cloud's village. Which just happened to contain documents that broke him mentally. So perhaps Cloud wasn't the best judge here.
There was a theory that everything that happened in the uniform happened. Sometimes, it was by the planet's will, other times by the will of some forgotten Goddess. If there was a plan here, Cloud could only assume it had not been designed for his benefit. It had been an uphill battle, and none had been worth it.
Told what to think and feel, used as cannon fodder. Then, he was denied promotion because of a refusal to shoot civilians. He'd thrown up every time he went into crowded cities for months afterward. Especially when Hollander had begun his massacres in Junon.
Say what you want about Genesis.
At least he'd mainly focused his efforts on Shinra personnel. Civilians had gotten caught up in it but hadn't been the target. At least Genesis was nuts from the SOLDIER serum. That and desperate and trying to complete his stupid play. Hollander thought the creep had ordered his robotic minions to slaughter civilians.
And for what?
Because he'd been denied a promotion?
The bastard had already been one of the most highly-paid specialists in the world. He was in the top ten list. But because he wasn't considered number one, he'd decided to start a terrorist organization. He hadn't even had the guts to get his hands dirty until he had the same terminal disease as Genesis.
Zack and Cloud had put him down in the end.
How the hell had Zack kept that spark of optimism anyway? Cloud didn't show his emotions much. Mom had taught him to keep his face expressionless, especially during business dealings. Zack did not have a poker face and, worse, didn't start paying attention until it was too late. Somehow, he'd dodge the elaborate machinations of the thirty-gambit pileup. All without even knowing they were happening.
Cloud hadn't known much either, and Zack was never stupid. He had a knack for understanding people and was good at charming them. It was probably why Zack had been selected for SOLDIER and not Cloud. Cloud had been the guy who gave him his missions and analyzed them for options. It was a profoundly depressing feeling to know his legacy would be mission control.
Though he had done well enough at the job to be assigned to the Modeoheim Op, he was a higher-tier ordinary soldier. And physically, Hojo had done something to him.
What now?
Sitting here by a train station until he died of starvation would take a while. And Cloud had rations in his pack. What were his options?
'You have to make a living,' said a voice in his mind.
It was not the kind of voice he liked, the calculating, rational one. The one that he used to analyze every situation. The one he had to work past every time he realized how hopeless his problem was. Very few things were more disheartening than rationalizing a situation.
'Eliminate the impossible, and what was left over was the truth.'
Mother had taught him that.
Analyze the truth, think about your goal, and find the best way. That was why he'd walked to Midgar across half the world years ago. That's why he'd left home and made a promise…
A promise to who?
Oh, right, Tifa.
Hadn't there been a shooting star that night? Who even cared? She was probably dead or worse by this stage.
'A rational analysis of any situation will eventually breed hopelessness. Sometimes, considering all your options can close options. It is often better to act impulsively and then adjust your plans on the fly. If you analyze too long, someone else will act first. If you let yourself become trapped by analysis, you will discard your options.
'When in doubt, it is usually better to act than to do nothing. Force yourself into motion and do something, anything. And if you don't have a goal to work toward, your goal should be to survive long enough to find a new goal. Self-destruction automatically closes off every possible door you could ever take.
'To live, you need food, water, and shelter. In our modern society, those things are easiest to attain with money. So you need a source of money first unless you intend to live by hunter-gathering.'
Cloud knew a thing or two about survival from the Wutai War.
But he had not come to the towering city of Midgar for nothing. Yet why had he come here? His mind was still buzzing from everything that had happened. Zack had wanted to come here to meet his girlfriend, Aerith. Cloud didn't know what plan he'd had other than that. Something about being heroes.
At a guess, Cloud decided it involved fighting Shinra Corporation.
All their other enemies were dead by now. Hollander had bled out with Cloud's knife in his throat after Zack cut his belly open. Genesis had walked off to meet his Goddess and gotten zapped across the cosmos.
That had been absolutely hilarious, actually.
It would have been more satisfying if he'd been fried by lightning from heaven. Cloud had been about ready to cut his throat. Cloud was almost ready to cut Lazard's throat, too. Zack hadn't wanted it, and Cloud had to admit that he now hated Shinra almost as much as he hated Genesis. Lazard was more or less both, though.
Cloud was happy Lazard was dead, ambushed by Shinra soldiers.
That was one thing he'd left as a corpse in the wasteland that he would not miss. The bastard had used his troops as disposable pawns in a game of personal power. He'd either been Hollander's partner or superior. Though the exact details of the arrangement had been unclear. The Genesis army didn't have a prominent chain of command, and its power dynamics constantly shifted.
What was impossible?
Cloud could never get into SOLDIER like this, nor could he expect to receive a Shinra paycheck. If found and identified, he was a dead man. But he could work as a mercenary. So what were his options?
He could join an anti-Shinra group.
He had no sponsor, but his eyes glowed with Mako these days. So he could pretend to be from SOLDIER. The organization had fallen to pieces enough that they might buy a defector. Cloud could tell them he'd seen too much at Nibelheim. It might check out, and they might take the chance.
Any other options?
Organized crime, maybe. Gangsters would kill to have an Ex-Soldier, but Cloud would never be that desperate. He didn't sign up to become a criminal; Mother would never forgive him.
What was his goal?
Dreams and honor.
That was something Zack always went on about, something Angeal told. You had to have dreams and honor.
Could Cloud find this Aerith person?
She might want to know what happened to Zack. Then again, finding her might be impossible since Cloud knew nothing about her. Other than mentions of selling flowers. Even if he did, telling her that Zack was brutally murdered by Shinra troops could get her killed. Zack probably would not appreciate reuniting with his girlfriend in the afterlife, at least not for a few decades.
Could Cloud tell her a partial truth?
What was the point?
Shinra would probably kill her just in case. They'd burned North Corel because Barret Wallace had negotiated a favorable deal. And Shinra didn't feel like sharing the profits. So they'd burned the whole place down. It's somewhat ironic since they actually made a lot less money now. Everyone would be richer if they stuck to the contract Barret had negotiated.
But no, Scarlet just had to satisfy her sadistic little urges.
'Never expect a corporate executive to be good at making money, Cloud,' Mother had said. 'CEOs are the stupidest people you will ever meet. Their skillset is knowing nothing about anything that goes on in their company. Their entire life is knowing nothing about what goes beyond their social class. And their entire social class has the combined intellect of moss. That and the morality of the devil himself.
'Don't believe them. Don't trust them. Use them to achieve what you want, then break them when they are useless. They will do exactly the same thing to you in a heartbeat.'
Sometimes, Cloud wondered if he was actually remembering his Mother.
Or something else.
Then he saw her.
Tifa Lockhart's hair was much longer than the last time he'd seen her. She'd traded hiking boots and a skirt for short shorts split at the thighs. Also, her breasts were huge, so Cloud wondered if she'd gotten implants. Her hair was long and tied behind her head, and her midriff was toned and bared under a white shirt with suspenders. Red eyes locked on him.
"...Cloud?" said Tifa. "Cloud, is that you?"
"To an extent," said Cloud in disgust. "I didn't know you survived Nibelheim. How did you get out of the reactor?"
Tifa halted. "You were there?"
Cloud halted. "Oh, right, the uniform. I kept my helmet on the whole time."
"You were infantryman who fought off all those Genesis copies?" asked Tifa. "The one who tried to protect me?"
"Yes," said Cloud. "Not that did us any good."
"What are you doing here?" asked Tifa.
"Lying by a train station because I am broke," said Cloud.
"But why are you by the train station?" asked Tifa.
"Because I walked to Midgar because I was broke," said Cloud, in no mood to be cooperative.
"Well, why did you come to Midgar in the first place?" asked Tifa.
"Looking for work because I was broke," said Cloud.
Tifa halted and looked back. "Where's Zack."
"Dead," said Cloud. "He was ambushed and murdered by Shinra right before we got here. I barely got out alive."
"Well, what happened with Genesis," said Tifa.
"He quoted a stupid play, got bisected by Zack, and didn't even have the decency to die at the end of it," said Cloud. "Hopefully, he got eaten by a bear where we left him healed. I hope to never again lay eyes on him."
Tifa halted. "...What happened with Sephiroth? I don't remember much after he slashed me. If you were there… do you know? Master Zangan said he could only take me out of there."
"Well," said Cloud. "I can only assume we had a fight. I remember going after him with Zack's sword. He was distracted and tired and thought one of the things in those tanks was his Mother.
"I'm pretty sure he killed me."
Tifa blinked. "What makes you say that?"
"Well, I don't remember the fight," said Cloud. "But you and I are alive. And Sephiroth is dead. So naturally, he must have won."
That was a fair and reasonable assessment of how things had played out.
Tifa shifted. "I don't think that makes sense, Cloud."
"He turns legendary dragons into shishkabob," asked Cloud.
Tifa halted. "So you're looking for work?"
"More or less," said Cloud. "Do you have some?"
"I uh…" Tifa halted. "Well, that depends on what kind of work you want."
"If money is involved, I'll kill anyone you say," said Cloud flatly. "I don't have a lot of options at the moment. And I'm ready to consign my moral compass to the train graveyard."
Tifa halted. "Why don't we go to my bar."
There wasn't any getting on the train coming into the station. So he'd have to make due at this stop.