Chapter One: The Ordinary World
So here's an interesting question to unite the worlds.
Is there such a thing as a justified terrorist?
Cloud didn't know, but he supposed he might as well find out. It was as if nothing before that train had ever even existed. The Shinra Security personnel stood by, guns in hands like they'd always stood by. One of them was coming forward to check the train.
And the sexy redhead was leaping off the train to kick the guy in the sternum. Not dead, but the next guy went down unconscious when the black-haired guy came down. He was holding a pistol. Then there was this fat guy who was practically wearing a shirt that said 'useless comedy relief.'
Cloud only hoped he got butchered offscreen before they had a moment.
Good god, he wasn't living in a Saturday morning cartoon, was he? The prospect was horrifying to him.
Well, that might actually be a pretty good justification. Barret Wallace and his friends continue their quest to blow up Shinra Corporation. You blow up a Mako Reactor once an episode, and everyone has beer and pizza and goes home.
Barret leaped off the train last, wearing sunglasses. Then having a gun on his arm, which looked like it fired fifty caliber. That was evidence against the Saturday morning cartoon theory. "Merc, you're up."
Cloud leaped down from the train and drew his trusty sword.
So, the way Cloud saw this, there were a few basic possibilities here;
Possibility 1:
Cloud and friends were in a saturday morning cartoon universe. A sort of ironic hell where Barret Wallace and friends blow up Mako Reactors. And a bunch of mustache-twirling evil libertarian stereotypes. They talk about how evil they are and put the heroine in operatic bondage. But nobody ever gets killed. There is always some kind of good reason the Mako Reactor had to be destroyed, and there are no consequences.
Well, it was immediately obvious that Cloud was not living in a saturday morning cartoon. For one thing, he knew what a saturday morning cartoon was. And people who lived in saturday morning cartoons did not know what they were. For another, this place was way, way too bleak.
And not in a dark fortress of evil bleak. It was just industrial. You had the filthy walls because the janitorial staff didn't get paid enough. The Mako Reactor was pouring green fumes into the sky above Cloud. The air stank with fumes, and the train behind him was made not to look good or nice but just to be practical.
This world was too lived in to real.
Possibility 2:
Barret Wallace was the villain, and Cloud was his subordinate. Cloud would blow up the Mako Reactor with him and then regret it for the rest of his life. Everyone here would either follow Barret on the road to hell or die.
Now, Jessie and Biggs hadn't killed those guards; they'd just knocked him out. So they were probably redeemable. Barret himself, hulking and black though he was, probably was working for a bigger bad. Some mystery backers wanted to destroy Shinra Corporation because of reasons.
So Barret was either an unwitting pawn. The psychopathic brute of the organization who'd get used and disposed of. Or, Barret was a man with good intentions on the road to hell.
Either way, there was no way Barret was Big Bad material. He would need at least a few One-Winged Angels to get to that level.
What Cloud did know was that there were two guards running towards him. They had guns like he'd used once. Back when he was guarding Mako Reactors instead of blowing them up. That had been before...
Before a lot of things.
So, based on what he perceived of these guys, Cloud could make a judgment on what kind of universe he lived in.
He drew his sword as Barret walked past them.
"Stay where you are," said the man. "Put the weapon down, and you'll be given a chance to defend yourself in court."
What to do here?
What was possibility three?
Possibility 3:
Terrorism was justified.
The ruling authorities of the world were so brutal or so stupid that things had gone beyond the pale. They absolutely had to be stopped, and they had shut down all other alternatives. The only way to stop them was ruthless, utter destruction on a mass scale. Then collateral was just collateral.
And really, what was the difference between firebombing a city for an invasion and blowing up a Mako Reactor?
Nothing.
No. Terrorism was wrong.
Cloud Strife did nothing.
Nothing at all.
These guys were standard infantry for Shinra Corporation, switched in from the military. Which meant they got the standard training package everyone else did. And there were two of them. Now, none of their buddies had died yet. Barret Wallace and his people had run off.
Cloud was alone.
So, if they were the 'good guys,' they'd just take the sword from Cloud's hand and put him in handcuffs. Cloud hadn't even done anything yet; he'd just gotten off a train after seeing a crime. He was a valuable witness who could be used to convict the criminal in question.
Cloud had no idea where he was or what he was doing.
He didn't know the sides or anything. The only thing he did know was that he'd wanted to be a hero once. And this didn't seem like something a hero would do.
What would his Mom say here;
'If you're good at something, never do it for free.'
Mom had always had a very practical mind.
But Cloud had never wanted to be practical; he had wanted to be a hero. He'd wanted to drive fast motorcycles and blow things up. Now was his chance to do that with a clear conscience.
What would a hero do here?
The soldiers were coming closer now.
'A true Paladin would sheathe his sword,' came the voice.
Cloud couldn't sheathe his sword. So just stand here and hope someone takes the sword from your hand.
The guards smiled. "Looks like we've got a repentant monkey."
And then one of them drew a knife and went at him, laughing as he came forward. The blade sank into the uniform but was turned by the armor. Cloud looked down mutely as the blade broke.
And then he got mad.
His sword swung downward and cleaved the bastard in half. It split him straight down the shoulder, seeking deep. The sheer cutting power of the blade cleaved through armor and all the rest. The guard screamed in horror as he fell back, blood flowing over the train station.
The second guard raised his gun. "Stay where you are! You are under arrest!"
Cloud waited for his turn.
The man calmed himself, realized he wasn't going to attack and opened fire. But Cloud had known he'd do that. Reflex, long forgotten, reawakened, and he leaped to one side. The bullets rattled off the cobblestones, shattering them, and Cloud surged forward. Bringing the sword down, he cleaved the man's head from his shoulders.
Then he walked over their corpses and sheathed the blade.
Just like a hero would do.
Cloud wasn't a hero. But he wasn't going to just stand in a train station and get knifed to death when he hadn't done anything wrong. These guards were just thugs in uniform.
Was there a fourth possibility here?
Possibility 4:
Both sides are terrible.
The terrorists are bad, but the government is worse. Or at least so bad that the terrorists are actually a credible alternative.
Right now, Cloud was leaning toward a mix of three and four.
'If you're good at something, never do it for free,' Mother had told him.
Wasn't terrorism supposed to be wrong?
Wasn't blowing up skyscrapers and shooting police officers. He was supposed to be something the bad guys did. The sort of thing some psychopath in a turban did. Between gorging himself over a starving population and posing in photos.
Yeah, Cloud was definitely living in a Possibility 4 universe.
Fucking simps. They were all controlled by the big corporations anyway. If Shinra wanted to take over Britannia, Mr. President could tap his foot twice. And Sephiroth would come out of nowhere and kill everybody at least until Sephiroth went completely nuts after driving everyone in SOLDIER nuts.
Anyway, wasn't the President supposed to be a respectable and wonderful person? Someone who took care of his populace? Like hell. All the guy cared about was money and the bribes he put out and got. The whole system was completely rigged.
How do you live in a world like this?
As you would in any other world?
How would Cloud live in another world?
How would he live in this one?
It didn't even matter. The bottom line was the alarm was going to trip sooner or later, and the security and robocops would come. And then they'd all die.
Because they weren't the heroes.
Terrorism was wrong.
Was that how you did it?
'A true Paladin would sheathe his sword.'
Just pretend terrorism was wrong in all circumstances. Don't break the rules. Ignore any evidence that the government is wrong. Ignore all evidence that the terrorists might have a point. Just go on, live, and be the knight in shining armor.
Cloud looked at these people, soon to be dead.
'I can't live that way,' thought Cloud. 'I got off a train station and tried to surrender. And the cops tried to murder me. Now I've killed them, and their friends are going to murder me if they find me.
'Because they felt like putting a knife in me instead of detaining a valuable witness.'
So, work for free?
Where had he gotten this sword? It was called the Buster Sword. Not a 'normal' sword. Not a 'simple sword.' The buster sword. Very destinctive. Cloud must have picked it somewhere. It must have been important to him.
"So, who is this guy?" asked the black-haired guy with violet eyes, fiddling with the console.
"Oh, he was in SOLDIER," said the busty redhead. "But now he's with us now."
They seemed like decent people.
They might not be.
But they seemed like they could have been decent people. So, they could have been decent people. Even if they were some kind of sociopath, sociopaths could be good people too. A good person is someone who does good things.
They...
They were not doing good things. But neither was the government.
And judging by what was going on here, these guys seemed a lot less psycho than the people he'd met. How had they gotten these codes anyway?
Maybe they were just psychos. Faux affably evil bastards. They'd all start shooting one another in the head, and Cloud would be the last one standing.
"And it's done," said the black-haired guy.
"We're in?" asked the redhead.
"Good," said the black-haired guy. "We've sacrificed so much to get here.
"We can't let it all be in vain."
His tone was bitter.
Bitter and sad.
"My name is-" began the fat guy.
"I don't care about your names," said Cloud.
He didn't want to know their names. Because they were all going to die anyway, and they weren't appearing in the sequel. These guys weren't Sephiroth; they weren't even Barret Wallace. They were just some mauve shirts who had gotten up for one job so they could be killed off.
Probably to establish the main hero was in danger or something. At the very best, they'd get a tragic one-liner. Right before a smirking, Barret Wallace revealed himself to be a filler villain.
The door opened, and the man did not shoot the redhead in the back of the head. They just walked on through, relieved they hadn't run into any more guards to shoot. Hurrying on, they came to a checkpoint and got behind cover. As they did, several guards came down the steps to meet them.
Cloud looked upwards and saw them hurrying down with guns and weapons.
Was it him?
Was he just insane?
Well, the guards were all focused on him, and the others were slipping away. Using him as a distraction. Okay, okay, that was a distraction done. It was Cloud's turn.
There were a lot more guards now.
Draw his sword for battle...
And do nothing.
Why was he doing nothing? These guys weren't going to take him prisoner. They didn't do it when he hadn't committed a crime. Why would they do it now that he'd seen them commit a crime?
No, no...
Maybe those guys back there had just been the psychos of the group. Traumatized war veterans who had gone too close to the edge. Maybe they were really good people, and Cloud had widowed their wives...
"Looks like we got a witness," said a soldier mocking. "Shoot this Nordic monkey."
And they opened fire.
Because, of course, they did.
They were disposable filler villains in a video game. It was a video game, and Cloud was the hero. That was why it was okay for him to kill these faceless goons with families, friends, and criminal records.
So he blocked the bullets with his sword.
And then he went for the throat.
He carved through their armor like a knife through paper. He cleaved their limbs and smashed their faces like Siegfried. Driven mad by one too many nightmares. Lightning shot from the materia upon his sword, burning through flesh and blood. Ice raised upwards as more guards came.
"Backup! Send backup!" screamed someone.
Then came the dogs. Howling like hellhounds from the depths of hell, but they weren't hellhounds. They were just dogs, mutated by experimental prototypes and tortured. They are put in pods and injected with needles as part of Hojo's pet projects.
'Just like me,' realized Cloud.
Who was Hojo?
Did it even matter?
He was Hojo, and he had pet projects. And you know those pet projects when you see them. There was a dog in front of Cloud, a dog that should have been begging for scraps from Mom's table. Instead, it had tentacles designed to pierce Kevlar that were trying to rip out his throat.
So, all he could do was kill it.
Hack the dogs face off and kill his master. And then kill more. And no one gave a damn because they were just random faceless mooks.
And Cloud was the Chosen One.
He knew he was the Chosen One because he had spiky blonde hair, and when he looked at his face, he looked pretty good. No blood had gotten onto his face like last time.
There was no blood on his face.
Like last time...
And there were others, cutting their way through a chain link fence.
Like kids.
Delinquent kids playing a game before the end of the world.
What did these guys want anyway? Why were they cutting their way through a fence? Presumably to get to the other side so they could blow up the Mako Reactor up there. Why were they blowing up the Mako Reactor?
It probably had something to do with the fumes.
"Wedge, secure the exit," said Barret.
Wedge? Was he the fat guy with the gun who was totally going to die?
The wall broke down, and they bent under to get through it like rats creeping into the dark. Only the black-haired guy stayed behind, a gun in hand. He had a pistol in his hand, but Cloud thought he wasn't the kind of person to use it.
He didn't seem like the kind of person for gunfighting. More like the kind who slipped by and assassinated someone. All while the real fighting was done by infantry.
Granted, fighting out on the field was not something a commander was supposed to do. So an assassin killing the commander to avenge his fallen comrades seemed pretty good.
"More coming," said the black-haired guy. "And I agree with you.
"It doesn't matter how you try. You can't do it. You can't change the world."
And he left Cloud.
Cloud turned to see more guards coming down to fire at him from above. His sword was out, flashing in the artificial light. One lost a leg, another lost an arm, and both screamed before being cut down.
"Filthy eleven monkey!" screamed one as he backed away, spraying and spraying.
"Nordic works for me," said Cloud.
What the hell did eleven mean? Some sort of designation or second-class citizen? Well, all of these guards were white. And Cloud was white. But he was being led by a black man. So, he guessed that numbers were used to designate lesser races.
So he was living in an ethnocentric state.
Was that why they were blowing up the Mako Reactor? Race relations?
And he cleaved the man down. More came around the corner, and he killed them, too, before hurrying back to the chainlink fence. Ducking under it, he left behind the bloodstained stairs. They wondered what it would look like from an assassin's perspective.
Although an assassin would probably shoot the person from below. Not charge up the stairs with a sword while being shot at. So that was something.
Well, maybe Cloud was living in a backwater. Some hellhole in the middle of the worst place on earth. A place that civilized societies hated and looked down on, but just wanted to help them. Maybe it was just this regional area that was the problem.
Hurrying out, they came to a huge walkway overlooking a vast cityscape. You could see innumerable lights far below. There were all sorts of flying machines moving about, with cars. This place had all the hallmarks of an advanced civilization far below them. You could see huge machines here or there.
So...
They were advanced. There was no way a country like this could be weak or small. Judging by the ruins lying nearby,
They were not the good guys.
This Mako Reactor was not an isolated incident. It was not the exception that proved the rule. It was
"Wedge, secure the exit," said Barret. "Jessie, Cloud, get the elevator."
Hurrying on, Cloud soon got to an elevator.
The redhead was working on things now, adjusting her headband, and Cloud noticed her hair was not that red. Browner, really. Had she been working on it earlier? "Could you press that button over there?"
Cloud went over to it and pressed the button.
Then he wondered why Wedge wasn't doing this. Shouldn't they be telling the useless fat guy to take care of this kind of thing?
Well, Wedge had a job.
His job was to open the door and secure the exits.
Cloud was just standing here in an elevator. The resident was super-soldier, and Jessie was telling him to push a button. What exactly did that mean?
Apparently, Jessie was so impressed by his capacity to murder sentient-breathing people she had promoted him to button pusher. Or alternatively, Cloud had never been in SOLDIER, which made Tifa a manipulative witch messing with his mind out of spite. In which case, he was just some random lab experiment Hojo put together out of spite. And Cloud wasn't actually a super-competent individual.
He was an idiot whose mind was mixed up. Which Jessie had basically given him the job of pushing the button out of pity. And that platoon of SOLDIERS he just slaughtered was some kind of mass hallucination.
Yeah, let's just go with being Sephiroth's war buddy. It seemed less convoluted.
Well, that made sense.
Cloud's job was to kill the people they couldn't kill. Obviously, he was the muscle for this operation at least until the giant robots showed up and killed everyone.
Well, maybe they'd get lucky this time.
How many times would they get lucky?
Well, maybe twice.
But on a long enough timescale, the likelihood of survival drops to zero. Prince Lelouch's law, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Your Mom got shot? Well, don't worry, your sister is also crippled and blinded for life. You the favored son of Emperor Charles? Not anymore; you're getting sent to Japan as political hostages. You've gotten your little sister to Japan? They put you up in a fucking shack. You fix up the shack? The Prime Minister prick son deals you a no-holds beatdown. All because he's a pretentious, hypocritical asshole. One with no sense of self-awareness.
Did you manage to somehow befriend him?
Well, Britannia uses your mistreatment by Japan as an excuse to break their truce and invade you. Then you get murdered by the Japanese people, who were supposed to be your hosts. Because Britannia had no honor. Because Japan had no honor.
And this country deserved a better class of hero.
This is not to say Cloud was planning to give it to them. If you're good at something, never do it for free. Mom worked like hell in Midgar to get the money to move to Nibelheim; she'd learned to be a guide. She'd done a lot of things that had helped Cloud get his start and be ready to join SOLDIER.
At least until some fucking psychopath with a chip on his shoulder. One who decided to assassinate her to work out his Mommy issues. Or had that happened?
Not that Cloud was Lelouch or anything.
He wasn't related to royalty, considering the number of children Emperor Charles had. Honestly, fuck that guy. I mean, he spent his time sipping fine wines and surrounded by gilded whores. All while talking about social darwinism. What the fuck did he know about social darwinism? He'd never carried his little sister through a corpse-strewn wasteland.
The guy was born Prince Charming and had all his political enemies removed. All in ways that couldn't be connected to him. And for what? So he could lead a life of absolute degeneracy?
Not that he had a choice.
The guy was nothing. He was nothing but a glorified puppet who didn't even have the guts to try and pull his own strings.
So what did this Barret guy want anyway? Rob a bank? Take over the world? Revenge? Yeah, revenge was sounding pretty damn likely right now.
"I finally get it," said the redhead. "Thank you."
"What?" said Cloud.
"For confirming for me just how completely worthless this nation is," said the redhead.
"Tell me about it," said Barret.
"Why don't you?" asked Cloud. "You seem to be wanting to make a speech."
"Don't mind if I do; we're on camera anyway," said Barret. "You feel that? That hum in your hearts? That's your blood. It runs red through your body like Mako runs through the earth."
"What, you mean sakuradite, Jessie?" asked the black-haired, sounding like he thought the whole thing was bullshit.
"Mako is a sakuradite variant used in various major civilian purposes," said Jessie if that was her real name. "Everything the complacent public needs to keep the TV on."
"It doesn't have everything the complacent needs," said the black-haired man. "You need spectacle. A distraction to keep them occupied from the truth."
"Damn straight," said Barret. "Shinra has everyone chasing fast cars and looking at magazines. And while they're doing it, nobody even cares they're bleeding the planet white.
"Sooner or later, the planet is gonna get drained completely dry, and then that'll be it."
"Please, Barret," said the black-haired guy. "On the subject of heroic freedom fighters, I am long into the realm of apathy.
"It's just a game.
"We blow up this Mako Reactor filled with undesirables and clear a few city blocks. Britannia uses it to rally people against terrorism. We blow up another one; they use us as a pretense for mass extermination. We raid Shinra Incorporation and murder everyone inside it. Then President Shinra collects the insurance money."
"How the hell is President Shinra gonna collect the insurance money if we've put a katana through his head? Biggs, if that is your real name." asked the redhead.
"We're not going to put a katana through his head," said Biggs. "We're all going to get massacred by gunships so Barret can swear revenge over our corpses. Probably right before the sky falls and everyone dies.
"Besides, shedding tears over those people isn't going to bring them back to life, is it?"
Biggs had played this game before. He knew exactly how it ended, and somehow, he'd survived long enough for a replay. Obviously, the guy knew what he was doing.
"It's not my problem," said Cloud. "All I want to do is finish this job before the robots come."
"What, you mean those automated pieces of junk Shinra uses?" asked the redhead. "Complete joke. All they do is scan through a predetermined algorithm. Basically, they have a default position;
"Terrorism is wrong.
"And all they do is stand in one place all day waiting for a terrorist to show up and try to blow the Mako Reactor up. If they kill the terrorist, Shinra patches them up, and they do it again. Rinse and repeat until they run into a mother badass enough to kill the damn thing."
"Which is, of course, what this is all about," said Biggs. "Evolution in action." He checked his gun. "All tasks at hand have been cleared.
"We're down to the final stretch. Now is the part where the Chosen One proves his worth by killing a giant robot with a butter knife."
"Buster sword," said Cloud insistently.
"I can take the robot on my own," said Barret. "We don't need you, merc."
"Whatever," said Cloud.
"What?!" said Barret.
"I said 'whatever'," said Cloud.
"SAY WHATEVER AGAIN," screamed Barret. "SAY WHATEVER ONE MORE GODDAMN TIME, YOU FORMER SHINRA LAPDOG! I FUCKING DARE YOU!"
Cloud said nothing. It was obvious that Barret was a walking mass of anger management issues. He would probably have flown off the handle eventually, no matter what happened. He was obviously just using the Mako Reactor as an excuse to blow stuff up.
Just like Cloud.
What drove a person to that? Obviously, Barret had put this plan together quite effectively. He knew more or less what he was up against, put a qualified team together, and had done pretty well so far. And judging by the gun on his arm, he could probably take the machine alone. Or at least thought he could.
But he wasn't stupid enough to not go in with any backup besides Biggs and Jessie.
"Get help," said Cloud.
Barret sighed. "It's not you.
"It's just... you got all these fucking high-school students. They all think they're gonna be Super SOLDIER. Shinra chews them up and spits them out, using Britannia as a fucking puppet. And anytime someone tries to raise the alarm or something, they massacre everyone.
"Then they go and fucking say 'whatever' to everything.
"Everything. They change up the names now and then, but they just say whatever by another word. Nobody gives a damn what the truth is as long as they get their fucking meal ticket."
"I cook my own food, Barret," said Biggs. "I don't need my own private harem of psychopathic schoolgirls."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" asked Jessie.
The door opened, and Cloud walked through.
Into a vision of hell.
The industrialized facade gave way to a greenish tint. There were no lights in this place, nothing like the illumination Mako provided. There was a manmade superstructure descending downward. Whispers were all around them, telling them to believe it.
Believe what?
Cloud didn't believe it, whatever it was.
Not that getting down the staircase was any use. For one thing, many pieces of the stairs had fallen away. He felt like he was walking on autopilot, picking his way down the decaying structure. There was a ladder slowly leading down, but it didn't lead to a walkway or stable ground. It led to a pipe, and the fumes were worse here.
The further down you got, the more they were around you. As Cloud set foot on the walkway, he saw the pipes were hot. He wondered how long he could stand here.
"I'm guessing you've been to this kind of place before," said Jessie, if that was her real name.
"Not really," said Cloud. "Different reactor, different layout.
"Besides, most of the troops who get sent to these places are psychos. That or people so weak they can't be used in the wars."
"Which one were you, Bradley?" asked Jessie.
Ah, right, the alternative.
Enjoy killing people.
You could buy everything Shinra said as absolute truth. You could go full renegade. You could just do your job. Or you could do your job and love every minute of it.
"Fuck you!" said Cloud. "I didn't join SOLDIER to kill people. I did it because I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to drive fast motorcycles and use a giant sword to kill demons from hell.
"I don't give a damn about those cowards who gun down fleeing civilians from giant robots. Or pretend like they're big damn heroes cause they mowed down an entire crowd of guys with small-arms. All while behind two feet of armored plating.
"The Purebloods are fucking cowards. Britannia are a bunch of cowards.
"And Bradley is as corrupt as any of them."
Who were the Purebloods anyway? Well, the name told you everything you needed to know, didn't it? They had blood, and it was pure. And that made them better than you because they had super-rich parents. Social Darwinism at work.
"Bunch of glorified bullyboys," muttered Barret. "Fuck 'em."
"Like the Emperor," said Biggs.
"What, the guy who makes all the speeches about being born beautiful and superior," said Barret. "All while sipping fine wines and surrounded by whores.
"He's a goddamn pretender. He never had to see a crowd of civilians butchered in front of him. All he ever does is delegate. Cornelia, I want these ruins. Go conquer them and shoot all the civilians who want to keep their culture intact. Schneizel, the bad revolutionaries are causing me trouble. Go bribe them into betraying their glorious leader for a court rank.
"Then playing fucking JPOP."
"That form of entertainment didn't last much longer than the invasion of Japan," noted Biggs. "Sephiroth ordered Genesis to murder all the JPOP stars."
"Genesis, who that?" asked Cloud, blinking.
"Don't insult my intelligence, Jessie," said Barret.
"No!" said Jessie. "Genesis was not in a fucking boyband! Genesis was never a celebrity! He was never a credible rival to Sephiroth! Why can't people just admit that!
"The guy was a dancing monkey, and nobody even wants to remember he's part of the universe!"
"Everybody admits that," said Barret. "Even Genesis.
"All while all the treacherous complete monsters get off Scot Free. Benjamin Franklin style."
"Fuck Benjamin Franklin," said Jessie. "He sold out his friends, his country, and his pride for a fucking court rank. What, Congress is extra special nice to him, so he decides to sell out the revolution?"
They were climbing the ladder down and just talking.
"Well, it is easier to lead a completely hedonistic life if you don't stage a revolution," said Biggs.
"That's why nobody is ever going to remember your real name, Biggs," said Barret.
"What does it even matter?" asked Biggs. "I can change my name anytime I want. Just fill out the right forms. Or say my name is something different.
"If you can't tell the truth, just lie.
"Lie and lie, and eventually, everyone will believe the lie. Once everyone believes it, you get them invested in it. All you have to do then is get them to be ready to kill to defend the lie."
"What like you?" asked Cloud.
"Well, one doesn't aspire to terrorism," said Biggs with a laugh as he got off the ladder. "If, however, circumstances were to arrange for there to be no viable alternative...
"I could see myself in that sufficiency."
"You do mean you," said Jessie.
Everyone laughed.
Except Cloud, who wasn't having fun. No one was really; they were just getting the good feelings out of their systems. Getting their immortal souls out of the way so they could do it. Walk across this last industrial walkway, set the bomb, and blow this place to hell.
Cloud was the regular life of the party, wasn't he?
Silent like the dead. All he could do was look away from these guys, the lies they represented, and look at the ocean of green. He wondered what would happen if he fell in there. Would he fall into the river and sink until he got to hell? Or would he go to heaven?
Cloud wondered where Mom was.
"You set it," said Barret. "I don't trust you."
They wanted Cloud to set the bomb?
Of course, they did. He was a mercenary, and they needed him to be invested in the cause. All of them were here for that reason. They were true believers, and he wasn't.
'Wait,' said a voice. 'This isn't just an ordinary reactor.'
It hurt.
It hurt a lot.
Cloud had some doubts about this. So far, it had seemed pretty clear the government was the bad guy. And even if the government weren't the bad guys, Shinra was. And even if Cloud didn't want to fight Shinra, it was too late.
He'd had to kill those men.
What was he supposed to do? Just stand at a train station and let himself get shanked to death? Die in the middle of nowhere to justify the sadistic murder boner of a Luciano Bradley wannabe?
He was in this for life.
No matter what had brought him to that train station, Cloud Strife could not leave the game. He could not quit. He could not open a magical console and press the quit button.
Cloud was not a kid playing video games. His Mother was not in the next room about to tell him to take out the trash.
She was dead.
His home was burned to ashes and covered up in the shadow of Mount Nibel. Snowflakes off the shoulders of the One-Winged Angel as he shrugged over the dale. Insignificant and minor beings of no importance.
Just like Cloud.
A minor amusement on the way to greater things.
What would Cloud say to that kid? The one he wasn't anymore?
A kid who was just trying to play some video games to escape the fact that something really bad had happened. He had heard the game was good, a classic, and bought it. He'd put it in to escape from reality for a bit, and now reality was staring back at him in game form.
It was September 11th on the Julian Calendar. But Julius Caesar did not conquer Britain.
Eowynn did.
Cloud took the bomb and moved forward.
What would he say to that kid?
'Someone has to pay for their crimes, kid? Who is going to be?'
What the fuck was going on here?
'You did this?'
No, Cloud did. Cloud was going to do it. He was going to set the bomb because there was no other way out. If he turned back, Barret shot him. If he didn't turn back, they made a dramatic escape, and Shinra shot anyway.
But the kid...
The kid could go home.
'Is this really what you want?'
Cloud set the bomb to ten minutes. It seemed like a short enough time and something out of an action movie. All he had to do was press the button, and the bomb would go off.
For what?
To establish world peace?
Cloud didn't care about peace. He joined SOLDIER to be a superficial, nihilistic supermodel. One killed people and dated supermodels just as vapid and bloodthirsty as he was. All Cloud cared about was fast cars and getting his harem of women who only pretended to care about him.
That kid wasn't Cloud.
He could never be Cloud because of what had happened to him.
Maybe it would be better if he stopped playing a game about terrorism.
'You can still go home,' said Cloud. 'Lucky you.'
"Won't this start a bloodbath?" asked Jessie.
"I don't give a fuck about Britannian civilians," said Barret. "And neither do you."
And Cloud realized...
Barret was right.
Cloud didn't care. He never cared. Cloud Strife was nothing but an empty vessel. One by which a spoiled rich kid could experience his psychopathic desires. The universe around him was custom-tailored to make terrorism right.
To make this the right decision.
Corporations were slowly but surely destroying the world for profit. They were harvesting the souls of the dead for money. All while using a genocidal ethnostate to commit mass murder. All Shinra asked in return was to sell the bombs and the guns and get their insurance money.
Charles Zi Britannia waved it all off as an insignificant matter.
Shinra Corporation collected their insurance money.
A couple of neighborhoods of monkeys got slaughtered. All so Shinra could get the contracts for rebuilding them. Princess Euphemia smiled and told you that you were allowed to call yourself a human. So be grateful, your sheep.
And Cloud Strife was the hero who made it all possible.
Why was Biggs even here? Shouldn't he be with Wedge? Was he trying to prove something to himself?
"No!" said Biggs.
And his gun was out and at Barret's back in a moment.
"What the fuck are you doing?!" said Barret.
"Get back!" said Biggs. "This story is finished!
"This can't be possible! This never should have gotten to this point!"
"Biggs, put the fucking gun down," said Jessie. "We all knew exactly what we signed up for-"
"Fuck you, Jessie," said Biggs. "You are standing there with your ninja headband and your paper-thin armor. And you are telling me that blowing up a Mako reactor in the middle of a crowded city is right.
"This is a bloodbath waiting to happen.
"We don't even know what the long-term effects will be! For all we know, we're going to poison the entire fucking city!"
"Who gives a fuck?" asked Barret. "Britannia commits mass fucking genocide as a matter of course! They wouldn't even blink before pulling this shit on the numbers!
"Would they have the fucking insurance system set up if they didn't want to use it!
"They don't get to fucking thrown down the gauntlet and declare total fucking war on the universe. Then they complain when they get total war! They bombed the fucking cities of Japan into dust! They slaughtered entire civilians!
"You saw it just the same as I did! And they don't even give a fuck about their own kind! Do you really think any of the guys who are gonna be reviewing this footage will care? They're just eating popcorn while watching it on replay! They are probably making a gag dub before they shrug and say, 'It's my job.' Then they drop an innocent civilian off a fucking skyscraper. And they declare, 'Ends gained through contemptible means aren't worth anything.'
"This is the only fucking way.
"We got off the fucking train and they tried to knife us. We tried to negotiate, and they used it to surround us. There is no fucking getting out of this film reel. Even if you tear up the fucking film reel, you are still in the film!
"We can't just fucking out of this film!
"We are on rails! It's them or us!
"And if we don't kill them, they are gonna kill all of us! They'll conquer the world saying, 'Ends gained through contemptible means aren't worth anything.' And they'll say it over and fucking over until they believe it. And people who wish for a more peaceful world will believe.
"But in the end, it's just a fucking manipulation!
"They want to be the fucking heroes! But they don't have the balls to sacrifice anything or get their fucking hands dirty! So they prop up the real fucking heroes like puppets and sneer at them! And they do it for so fucking long that the heroes finally snap and go berserk!
"And then they manipulate the hero into suicide and take his clothes so they can be the hero!
"Because a lie agreed upon must be the truth. Well, it fucking isn't! A lie agreed upon is still a lie! Britannia is a fucking lie! Shinra is a fucking lie! Every single person in front of me is a fucking lie!
"Nothing but lies!
"You didn't give in to despair. Not when these motherfuckers slaughtered their way through the invasion! You didn't give up when you saw all those corpses! So why the fuck should you give up now! Just when we're about to give back a fucking fraction of what they've been dishing out! We're doing this with our bare hands while they do it on computer screens!
"We are gonna kill every single fucking one of their men, and then we are gonna kill the Emperor! That and no fucking less is the price these fucking sheep pay for letting the story get this fucking out of hand! They tore up the fucking scripts. They burned down the director's hometown. And now the director has them at fucking gunpoint!
"And the collateral...
"The collateral is unfortunate! But all tasks at hand have been cleared!
"I did not fucking come down here so the new Prime Minister of Japan could marry some social climbing whore! I didn't come here, so the fucking traitors who stabbed my country in the back could smirk for the camera! I came here to obliterate Shinra! And so did you!
"You have this brainwashed vision of reality where Britannia is really not so fucking bad. And you know it's bullshit, so you're here to fight them. But you're not willing to get rid of the fucking illusion because it's the only thing you have left.
"Well, you can't keep the fucking illusion.
"We either to go all out or go home! And we can't go home! Because Shinra fucking burned it all down for insurance money! And Britannia doesn't give a fuck if they did!
"Well, they're gonna give a fuck!
"We're gonna leave them in the fucking ruins as they were, just like they left us! They do not get to fucking walk this off! They're a bunch of fucking Nazis! They do not get to fucking smile for the camera with their whole social climbing wife and live ever after!
"Their whole fucking civilization is gonna burn! I am going to take absolutely fucking everything from these people! That is why you chose me to be the leader! You could have set this whole fucking thing up yourself! You didn't need my speeches about the planet, you just needed someone who could kill a lot of people!
"You could get a mercenary for that anywhere! Hell, you could probably have done this stealth mode if you wanted to! You are here to obliterate Britannia, just like I am here to obliterate Shinra! The only difference is that you think Britannia is the bigger bad, and I think Shinra is the bigger bad!
"But who fucking cares?! We're gonna have to kill them all anyway, or they will kill us!
"Even if we went back in time and made it so we never came here, where the fuck would we be? You'd still be a walking mass of fucking complexes who is gonna die as soon as anyone finds out you are...
"Whatever you are.
"Jessie is still gonna be a fucking half-breed under alias! Waiting to get shot when the final solution comes! I am still going to be fucking nothing to these people! Nada! Fucking zero! Everything I ever loved or cared about is nothing but a pile of trash for them to stamp on!
"And that is why you are here!
"You are zero! You know it! I know it! The whole fucking collective unconscious knows it! You just won't fucking admit it to yourself! The guy in front of me is nothing but a paper-thin, empty shell who exists as a survival mechanism! You cut yourself off from who you really were because you needed to in order to survive! But the guy I'm looking at is not the real you! The truth is, you want to do everything I have said! But you know it will lead to the destruction and loss of everything!
"And you're afraid to take the next step. Because you know they deserve it, and you know it's the right thing to do! And if you admit it is the right thing to do, you have no choice but to realize how fucked your life really is!" Barret paused for breath as Biggs lowered his gun. "I don't blame you.
"But this has to be done.
"And right now, Cloud is gonna prove it. Because if Shinra is right and Zack Fair is the hero, there is no fucking way Cloud can push this button. Because of the Shinra Corporation's replacement. Sephiroth has to come right the fuck out of nowhere right fucking now!
"He has to be alive and fine, and this whole fucking thing has to be a bad dream, and my wife is still alive! Unless you want the replacement, replacement Zack Fair! In which case, he might as well be right here in front of us!"
Replacement Zack Fair?
Zack had always been close with Sephiroth, hadn't he? They'd sort of been... war buddies. Cloud had seen a lot of both of them. However, he'd always been the weakest of the group.
And then it happened.
Out of the ceiling above descended the hero. It was clad in shining armor and glinted with armor like Lancelot of Old. A symbol of loyalty to the ideals of the world, wielding a lance that blazed with light. An image of the divine representatives who ruled over this world. An avatar of everything which Shinra had sought to inspire in this world.
The hero was a giant metal scorpion who repeated an algorithm of 'terrorism was wrong.' All its thought processes were dedicated to reaching that conclusion. All to arrive at a predetermined result, which it had always been programmed to achieve.
Kill and replace.
So rose the dreadful ghost. The blade was raised as the hero raised its weapon and descended. The weapon met the rival midway, and the blades were met. Lightning surged from both as the rattling of machine-gun fire surrounded them.
Nothing but a cold, dead legacy.
Where was Zack Fair?
Where was Tifa?
Where were the honors, the medals of honor, the dim feeling of friends about him? The fireforged friends he was supposed to go home with?
Where was the proof that Cloud had been in SOLDIER at all?
Where was his record?
Where was his home?
Nowhere.
Nothing.
His clothing was custom.
His name might as well be a lie agreed upon. He could have changed it as soon as he walked off the train tracks, and nobody would have known or cared.
Cloud Strife had come into existence as he leaped off a train. The guards had tried to murder him, and there was nothing he could have done. Cloud had been in SOLDIER.
Cloud Strife was a backstory for Zack's Buster Sword.
A perfect living legacy for the dead.
"NO!" screamed Cloud.
With a final roar of anger, Cloud's blade struck the machine. The armor bent, and he hit it again. Lightning tore through it as he hacked and slashed in a mad rage, hacking down the limbs. He put out the beast's eyes and smashed its sonic sensors. His blade carved through what looked like a transmitter.
No pleas for mercy.
No quarter was asked or given.
Man and machine tore at one another.
And then it was done. Cloud threw down his enemy and smote the beast where it lay. The explosion tore through the industrial remnants. The platform broke around him as lasers cut through metal and steel. But none of them touched him as Cloud screamed in final rage.
And then he pressed the button.
And he just stood there as the timer started. Staring at it. Biggs and Jessie were leaving now, but Barret was just standing there like a mere extension of himself.
Cloud wondered if he should just stay here. Wait here until the timer runs down.
He wondered if there would be some kind of non-standard game over.
But then...
He'd never see it because he'd be dead.
It would take a lot of nerve to sit through ten minutes of suspense, waiting to know you were going to die. But what would that help?
"We have to get out of here, guys," said Biggs. "This whole place is going up!"
"...You're the only one who cares," said Cloud.
And he sat down to wait.
Wait for what? For a sudden wave of green to consume the world. For the world to end and some celestial angel to come down and say it was all a bad dream. He'd never actually been in SOLDIER, that it was just a fictional organization in a fucking video game. That his Mom wasn't dead?
That he was a socially acceptable individual instead of a psychopathic monster. One pretending to be a hero? Was any of this okay?
Barret hadn't left him yet.
Why not?
Objectively speaking, Cloud wouldn't be able to take his pay if he died here. Barret ought to just cut him loose. Was he part of the party now?
"Are we leaving?" asked Cloud.
"I don't give a fuck," said Barret in disgust.
Cloud should just wait.
Wait for the timer to run down and die here. Tear up the film reel and let the miserable movie end here. Just pretend like some other revolutionary did the job instead. And he was just some random filler villain who was used to establish the stakes of the plot.
Maybe it would be a better world than this.
But it wasn't the world he lived in.
Cloud didn't really care if he died. He wasn't nearly invested enough in Cloud Strife to care if the game ended here. And Barret did nothing but yell and shoot things.
Not exactly hero material for either of them.
But...
The kid was still watching the timer. Just sitting there in a chair watching the time tick down. He hadn't turned the console off or walked away. So the kid had to be still there, watching.
Wasn't he getting bored?
The kid...
The kid obviously had to have some reason for wanting all this. He had to be invested in this plotline. Why else would he be sitting here, except to see if there was some kind of non-standard game over?
A game is happening to a different version of Cloud Strife.
Someone who was so fucking unsympathetic and one-dimensional that nobody could care. Just an insignificant murderer who would do anything for the next high. Decked out in fancy armor with a fancy sword.
But there was nothing to the guy.
He deserved this.
To set off an explosive device in the middle of a Mako Reactor in the middle of nowhere and just die there. All he ever wanted to do was kill people, so just burn alive and die already!
But the thing was...
If this video game was real, then Cloud Strife was just a character. His whole existence was defined by what the kid put into him. And if the kid was still watching, he obviously must have seen something in Cloud worth watching.
Maybe...
Maybe the kid wanted to see the world outside of this place. See how things came to this? Meet new people, see interesting sights, find fascinating new cultures, and kill them.
It sounded like a fun game.
To hell with the non-standard game over.
"Cloud, Barret, come on!" said Jessie.
No broken film reel could be worth not seeing where this was going.
So Cloud Strife stood up. He dusted himself off and checked his watch. Walking to the ladder, he began to scale upwards as quickly as he could. The timer was a bit lower, but he had plenty of time to spare. So just run.
Run and run.
As Cloud Strife ran, he saw that Jessie had fallen behind.
Biggs was nowhere to be seen. He must have rushed out ahead, but Jessie was lying there on the ground, and her leg was trapped under fallen debris.
Cloud had plenty of time left.
But...
Jessie wasn't important, was she? Realistically, if she couldn't free herself from this, she was only going to drag them down. They were all gonna die anywhere sooner or later.
So Cloud ran and pulled the debris off her.
Because that was what heroes were supposed to do, wasn't it?
Well, maybe he was qualified to be an antihero by this point. Maybe the kid would be a bit sad when Cloud died for the sins of this world.
Someone had to.
They left the reactor.
Fleeing up into the elevator, they found Biggs waiting. He waited for each of them to get into the elevator, and then he rushed in and punched the button. As the timer went down slowly but surely, the hum of the elevator was around them.
Cloud thought about walking in the free air again.
Walking across green fields, carrying a sword instead of a pistol. To climb the highest mountains and stow aboard ships. To battle evil empires and cast out darklords.
Just... once.
The entire world was ahead of him.
So why not see it?
Wedge had gotten the gate open, and they ran.
Behind them, the explosion went off. A vast mushroom cloud blew up, flowing upwards into the skies of Area Eleven. The complacent civilians looked up with faces pale as the shattered concrete fell. Alarms sounded like the sound trumpets heralding a new age. And the age of blood, death and...
"Better living through terrorism," said Jessie, trying to crack a joke.
"That should keep the planet going a while," said Biggs.
Now you just had to hope the kid still liked them.