Cloud stared dully at the television. The light coming from the screen was the only source of illumination in the main room since he couldn't be bothered to turn on the lights and he'd left the shades closed—the darkness felt more fitting with his mood anyway. Tifa had dropped by earlier that morning to see if he wanted to go with her to the gates, to watch the President's demonstration together. He'd declined her invitation, saying he'd rather just stay and watch it at home. For a moment, he'd thought she was going to offer to stay with him, but thankfully, she had only smiled softly and said she'd leave him alone.
That was all Cloud wanted these days.
The last week had passed in a blur, ever since he'd quit the Fangs. After failing to cross the Barrier, he'd returned home and hadn't ventured outside once. There was enough food stocked up that running out wasn't an immediate concern, although he knew it wouldn't last forever and he'd eventually be forced to come up with a real solution. For now, he'd done his best to banish the taste of Ancient food from his memory and tried to get used to hard bread and tasteless soup once again. He had yet to fully succeed.
The advertisement playing on the television finished and the picture changed to a camera that must have been placed up on the city walls, looking down at the barren wasteland outside. It was a familiar location to Cloud, right outside the gate where he'd gone to visit Aerith each time. While it could have been a coincidence, he was confident it wasn't and that Sephiroth had told his father it was where Cloud had crossed over.
A huge crowd had assembled to watch the demonstration, more people than he'd ever seen gathered in one place before. They were fenced off from the stage where he assumed the President would be standing and while the raised platform was covered with a makeshift roof to provide some shade, the audience was forced to endure the full brunt of the blazing sun. The sight only made him even more glad he'd decided to stay home.
Several guards filed onto the stage before a moment later the President himself strode into view, waving to the gathered crowd. Cloud's attention was instead drawn to a man standing off to the side of the President, a man with small circular glasses and a long white coat. Sephiroth's father. A burning rage filled him, shocking Cloud with its intensity after not feeling much of anything at all for the last few days. Everything was his fault. Hojo was responsible for killing Cloud's mother, and for making it so he'd never be able to see Aerith again.
For a moment, Cloud wished he had gone with Tifa. Then he would have been able to rush up onto the stage and tell everyone the truth—that Hojo and the President were evil. He slumped back into his chair, the brief surge of emotion draining out of him as quickly as it had arrived. It was a pretty dream, but that's all it was. No one would take the word of some stupid kid over the two most important men in the city, assuming he was even able to make it past all the guards surrounding the stage in the first place.
"My people! Today is a day that will go down in history!"
The crowd exploded with cheers, forcing the President to stop talking. Eventually, they fell quiet and he began to speak again.
"Today, here, now, we will cast aside the shackles that have held us down for so long and seize our freedom!"
Another cheer erupted from the crowd, this one even louder and longer than the first. A small, selfish part of Cloud hoped that the Barrier would fall, if only so he could maybe once again see Aerith. Not that she'd ever want anything to do with him after what he'd done, especially if he was indirectly responsible for the Barrier being destroyed. That would mean letting Hojo and the President get what they wanted though, and as nice as it would be to get to see her again, he'd much prefer to watch them fail.
A shadow of a smile flickered across Cloud's lips as he continued to watch. Hojo clearly had no understanding of how the Materia worked. It was made to heal things, not break them, the exact opposite of what they wanted it to do. He had no idea why they thought any of this was going to go the way they wanted, and it was going to be incredibly satisfying to watch their plans crumble into dust. It paled in comparison to the revenge he wanted, but it would have to do. Cloud was already looking forward to seeing the shocked looks on their faces when nothing happened.
"Why are we here again?" Barret asked, hating the feel of the sweat pouring down the side of his face as he shielded his eyes from the sun overhead.
Myrna signed in exasperation. "Because this is important, Barret. If the President is right . . . this could change everything."
"Sure, but we could just as easily watch this from the comfort of our home. 'sides, didn't we already agree that there was no way this was actually going to work?"
"No, you decided that on your own," his wife replied. "I'm simply praying that you're right."
"The Ancients will no doubt respond negatively to what we're about to do. They want us to suffer, to live lives full of despair while they enjoy their luxurious comforts. However! You have my word that we will not back down! We will not stop! Never again will we allow them to seal us away like unwanted trash! Shinra is here for you, and we will lead Midgar to a bright and glorious new future."
Barret wasn't one to roll his eyes as Myrna loved to, but it was a struggle for him not to do exactly that after listening to the President's unhinged ranting. While he shared the general sentiment of the man's message and also resented the Ancients for locking them away, large parts of what he'd said were clearly overstated. For instance, how could he possibly know what the Ancients wanted or what life was like on the other side of the Barrier? The entire point of the damn thing was to prevent that.
Regardless, the rest of the crowd seemed to eat up everything he said without question, their cheering reaching a fever pitch that sent an uncomfortable chill down his spine despite the extreme heat. These people would believe anything the President told them, and over the last few years, they had all been inundated with negative sentiment towards the Ancients. Striving for their freedom was all well and good, but the last thing Barret wanted was to see a new war begin in his lifetime.
"But enough talk! Let's get down to business, shall we?" the President said, smiling broadly. He held his hand out to the side and Professor Hojo walked forward to join him. "Professor, please do your thing."
The scientist nodded his head once before raising his hand up into the air over his head. The sun briefly reflected a flash of green light, likely from the strange orb they'd shown on television a week ago. Barret expected the man to go on his own rant, but instead, he remained completely silent, staring up at his hand with an intent look on his face. Given the dramatic speech from the President, the sudden silence made the whole situation rather underwhelming.
Everyone waited as one for something, anything, to happen.
After roughly a minute had passed with no change, Barret gently squeezed his wife's arm. "Well, so much for—"
There was an alarmingly loud crack, almost like thunder, as a jagged fissure in the air—running from the roof of the stage up out of sight—appeared out of nowhere.
"The fuck?!" he yelled, stepping forward to put himself between whatever it was and Myrna.
His language earned him a smack on the back from her, but he hardly felt it as he kept his focus on what was happening. Panic had broken out among the crowd, people screaming and desperately trying to get away from the platform where the President was standing. The man seemed calm enough, although from the way his soldiers were milling about like ants who'd had their nest kicked it didn't seem like they'd been informed about what might happen.
Barret tried to take some small comfort in that. If the most important man in the city wasn't worried, then it was probably fine. He hoped. Unfortunately, thanks to the inaction of the soldiers, the situation in the crowd was rapidly deteriorating—to the point where people were being shoved to the ground and then vanishing under the panicked surge. At this rate, it was only a matter of time until someone got trampled and died in the chaos.
Grabbing Myrna by the shoulders, he gently moved her from where they'd been watching on the outskirts over to the nearby wall where it would be safer. His wife hardly seemed to notice him, her eyes wide and her entire attention fixed on the gaping rift in the sky. Barret couldn't really blame her, the sight was absolutely terrifying. "Stay here, I'm going to try and calm people down, prevent them from killing each other if I can. I'll be right back."
Myrna nodded faintly, her mouth moving but no sound coming out.
Barret frowned. He'd never seen her like this before, but then again, it wasn't every day the sky ripped open. Reluctantly leaving her there, he pushed his way into the crowd, shouting for people to calm down and offering anyone who'd fallen a hand up. Thanks to his large stature, he had no issue staying upright, although no one seemed to be paying him any attention. Seeing a young girl with long, black hair on the ground, he pushed his way over to her and positioned himself so that the crowd had to move around him—opening up a small pocket of space for her. "Come on, up you go," he shouted, holding out his hand.
Before she could grab it, another child darted in, this one a boy with short, spiky black hair. "Don't worry old man, I've got her. You should probably keep an eye out for snakes though, we wouldn't want any catching you off guard!"
The words confused him as the two kids hurried away until recognition kicked in a moment later. That boy was one of the two who'd played the prank on him a few weeks back! "You! You damn brat! I better never see you again!"
Forcing himself to focus on the situation at hand, Barret pushed the snake incident to the back of his mind and turned to see what was happening on the stage. Hojo was still standing in the same position although there was now a distinct green glow emanating from his hand that had nothing to do with reflected sunlight. Apparently, whatever that little orb was, it did have the power to do what they claimed.
The giant crack filling the sky seemed to have grown slightly larger while he'd been struggling with the crowd—reminding him of nothing so much as an enormous pane of glass. Of course, the last time he'd seen glass with that much damage had been a few months back when he'd been helping to repair an old house. They'd tried to remove the window without completely breaking it, but as soon as they got it out of the frame it had fractured, making a shockingly loud noise.
To his horror, almost the exact same noise filled the air as thousands of smaller lines shot out from the main one as if perfectly mirroring his memory. The only good thing as the entire sky shattered above them was that it wasn't glass and nothing at all came raining down on them. Instead, reality itself seemed to warp, his vision going blurry for a moment before snapping back to clarity. Except the sight before his eyes made no sense.
The desert around the city was gone. In its place, about a stone's throw away, were a wall of trees. For a brief moment, Barret thought the old forest had somehow returned, but these trees were much too large and far older than the ones he remembered from his youth. Which led him to believe this was an Ancient forest and that—thanks to magic—their worlds had . . . merged together. Somehow.
He couldn't imagine the forest had originally had a massive, city-shaped hole in the middle of it, so did that mean they'd just . . . wiped it out of existence? It was an alarming thought, although it seemed better than the alternative of trees erupting from within the city and destroying nearly everything. He almost expected to see the Ancients themselves peering out from behind the trunks, but their shadowed depths remained still and motionless.
The chaos from earlier had mostly died out as everyone else stopped to stare at the shocking sight. Barret saw Myrna still standing where he'd left her next to the wall and he hurried back over to rejoin her. A mix of horror and awe was written across her face, and he would have found it mildly amusing if it didn't perfectly describe the situation.
"You okay?" he asked, gently resting a hand on her arm.
Myrna nodded shakily. "I never thought I'd—" She cut off, a single tear tracing its way down her cheek. "It's so beautiful."
He knew what she meant, he'd also never imagined he'd get to see a living tree again after the desert had consumed everything. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he held her closely against his side. "I guess they managed to pull it off."
"They did."
"What's next?"
"I . . . I don't know. I can't imagine anyone knows."
With the weight of the future looming over them, Barret led Myrna slowly back home as the crowd dispersed. Given what had just happened, it seemed like there should have been more celebrations, but everyone he saw looked more stunned than happy. Barret hoped things would all work out for the better in this new world they found themselves in, but he knew deep down that, unfortunately, things were never that straightforward and easy.
"I'll remind you all that I warned the Council of this very possibility," Raena said loudly, rising to her feet with a smug look on her face. "I said that the Humans would go to any lengths to achieve their goals and I was right."
Vincent was thankful he was in the audience and not up on the Council stage next to the woman because he wasn't sure he'd be able to stop himself from throttling her. Even if she'd guessed correctly that the Human child had been a spy, there was no reason to be so arrogant about it, much less lord it over the rest of the Council like this. The meeting had been running for an hour so far, and this was the first time the woman had spoken. Her agenda was painfully obvious, and it drove him crazy.
"We now face a threat to our very way of life that harkens back to the dark times before the Barrier was created," she continued, turning to face the audience more than her fellow Council members. "We cannot afford to continue to idly sit by as the Humans prepare to destroy all that we hold dear!"
"Enough!" Lucrecia shouted, jumping to her feet. "The Council is no place for baseless fear-mongering! The Barrier continues to hold strong even a week after the incident. There's no reason to think the situation is going to get anywhere near as bad as you're painting it!"
Raena spun to face his wife, stabbing her finger through the air in Lucrecia's direction. "And yet by your own admission, the Barrier has changed since then! Unless you were lying to us?"
"Of course I wasn't! The Barrier has indeed sealed itself off in some manner, preventing all travel and communication across it. While the situation is undeniably concerning, there's no indication that it's going to fail."
"But there is a Materia on the other side, and we both know what that means."
Vincent frowned. The Humans having access to a Materia was obviously less than ideal, but it felt like Raena was implying something more than just that.
"And what has been done about the traitors responsible for allowing this theft to occur? Oh, that's right, nothing! It is our responsibility as the Council to hold these criminals accountable for their actions!"
The air rippled lightly as Lucrecia clenched her fists at her side, rage burning in her eyes as she opened her mouth to speak.
"Perhaps we should table this current topic for another time and instead focus on what we can do to prepare should the worst come to pass," Irian proposed, his warm voice a welcome source of calm reason.
His wife shot the man a look before taking a deep breath and slowly nodding her head. "I agree," she said, returning to her seat. "I say we should continue to analyze the changes that have happened to the Barrier so we can get a better understanding of the impact and if there's any chance it might return to the way it used to be."
"No!" Raena shouted, actually going so far as to stomp her foot as if she were still a child. "I refuse to—"
The air thrummed with magic, causing the hairs on Vincent's arms and legs to stand on end. At almost the exact same moment, several voices from around him in the audience cried out in pain. To his horror, both Eola and Lucrecia toppled out of their chairs down to the ground as if they were puppets whose strings had been cut.
Chaos erupted as people began screaming and shoving to get away. Not hesitating, Vincent leaped to his feet and struggled to fight through the press of bodies, pushing down the stairs to reach the platform before rushing to his wife's side. He breathed a heavy sigh of relief as he came to a crashing halt at her side, noting that even though her face was contorted in agony and her jaw was locked shut, she was at least still breathing.
"What is it? What happened?" he demanded, panic washing through him. He'd never seen Lucrecia in this much pain before and it was tearing his heart in two.
Her eyes squeezed shut momentarily before she took several deep breaths, her hand shakily reaching out to grab his. "It's gone," she whispered, looking up at him with tears running down her cheeks.
A chill shot down Vincent's spine. He didn't need to ask what she was referring to. Somehow, the Humans had managed to do it. The Barrier was no more. He feared what that meant for their future.
It had worked. It had actually worked! Hojo stared out at the towering trees in awe. Not because they were anything special, but because of what their sudden appearance signified: the Barrier was gone! He had done it, single-handedly destroyed the cage that had kept humanity trapped for generations.
And this was only the beginning.
The President was already celebrating with several other high-ranking members of Shinra as if they'd accomplished their final objective. That was fine, for now, but he'd need to ensure the man saw there was still so much more work to be done. With possession of the orb it shouldn't be possible for the Ancients to lock them away again with another Barrier, but that wasn't enough. He wanted access to more magic, more ways to learn and experiment, and all of that was possible now.
What he needed more than anything was to capture a living, breathing Ancient. Preferably a female. Once he had access to a proper specimen, then his true work could begin. First and foremost, breeding. He was wildly curious to know if it was possible for an Ancient and a Human to have a child, and if so, whether that child would be able to use magic. They would be able to break the Ancient's monopoly on magic if that were the case, and that would open the door to an entirely new world.
Entrusting such an important task to Shinra's soldiers was out of the question, but Sephiroth would do quite nicely. Unfortunately, with the swarm of people rushing around to congratulate him it would be impossible to find his son and give him instructions on what to do. Plastering a fake smile on his face, Hojo waved and began thanking people as they pressed in to talk with him—raging internally at the waste of time. Perhaps it wasn't the worst to celebrate this victory for a while, but he swore to himself that he wouldn't rest until he'd learned every last one of the Ancient's secrets.
Aerith knew she was dreaming during her nap, but despite that, nothing she tried to do to wake herself up seemed to have any effect. Instead, she was forced to watch the images dancing in the depths of her mind. It wasn't all bad, at least. She was flying, the ground flashing below her in an array of green and blue as trees and rivers passed by. This must be what it felt like to be a bird, and if this was all the dream was then she would have welcomed it, but these days her dreams often seemed to take a scary turn.
All around her, the glimmering dome of light pulsed with energy—rainbows of color shifting and sliding across its surface. The damage she'd noticed before was painfully obvious now. Large voids of nothingness had spread across huge portions of it, consuming the flashing colors. Even as she flew, Aerith could see more fissures spawning at an alarming rate. It wouldn't be long before they were all that was left, consuming the beauty of what had been.
Reaching out, she tried to touch a portion of the dome close to her, unsure if there was anything she could even do but wanting to at least try. Her hand passed through it, a faint lingering sense of something passing through her like the feeling of stepping outside on a cold winter morning. It frustrated her as it was accompanied by a sensation that she might have been able to do something more, despite not knowing what that would be.
A loud cracking noise, similar to the one she'd heard in her dream of Cloud, rang out from her left and Aerith turned to fly in that direction to see if she could find the source. Only a few seconds later she did: a . . . hole, torn through the sky itself revealing not the forest she could see on either side, but instead the city Cloud had run into. The sight seemed impossible, how could she see the Human's city while clearly still on her side of the Barrier?
And then it hit her.
Somehow she was seeing the Barrier itself, despite it being an invisible force. In all the stories her mother had told her, she'd never said anything about mages being able to perceive it. Of course, since this was only a dream, anything was possible. Everything she'd seen up to this point seemed to indicate that both the damage and the hole in front of her were varying signs of the Barrier weakening. A feeling of dread welled up inside of her as she watched the hole get larger and larger.
Everything snapped to an abrupt halt. In that fraction of a moment, Aerith felt an immense pressure pushing in on her from all sides—causing her ears to pop—accompanied by an overwhelming sensation of raw sadness that was not her own. As suddenly as they had arrived, the pressure and emotion vanished. At the same time, the remaining sections of the Barrier flickered, faded, and vanished from sight.
Before Aerith could fully process what had just happened, she found herself hurtling towards the horizon, moving far faster than anything could naturally move, to the point where everything turned into an indistinguishable blur of color. Thankfully, this didn't last for too long as it was both uncomfortable and deeply unsettling. Once she was able to make out the ground again, she found herself once more flying over the forest although there were no discernible landmarks to indicate where she might be.
A faint noise began to grow, initially only a small murmur like a creek flowing through the woods until it grew to the roar of a waterfall plunging off of a rocky cliff. It wasn't much longer before the source of the noise came into view and the sight took Aerith's breath away—spread across an exceptionally large clearing, a massive battle was raging.
On one side she immediately recognized Cetra clothing, although something about them nagged at her as being slightly off from what she was used to—styles that felt more recognizable from books her mother had shared than what she saw day to day. Opposing them was a vastly larger force made up of both man and machine. The fighting seemed to have been going on for quite a while as far as Aerith could tell, indicated by the charred trees and the huge grooves in the dirt. As she watched, several Cetra began chanting together, an enormous ball of flame appearing in the air above them before it launched toward the Human army.
People tried to flee from where it was going to land, abandoning the large machines, but even so, most of them didn't make it, disappearing in a horrific explosion of fiery death. Almost immediately after, one of the large machines rocked in place, a beam of light shooting out from a long, metal arm sticking out of its front. The beam sliced across the clearing, leaving a gash in the ground, cutting through the Cetra ranks, and even setting trees on fire on the far side. She didn't think it had been magic, but it certainly seemed just as powerful.
Without pause, a large number of Humans broke off from the front lines, charging across the open ground between the two sides. In their arms were long metal objects that reminded her of the weapon the man had hit Cloud with in her previous dream. Several Cetra that didn't appear to be mages since they were carrying swords and shields raced out to meet them, magical barriers snapping into place around them.
The Humans lifted their weapons and came to a halt before the two forces clashed and while she couldn't see anything happen, something must have shot out of them as the barriers around several of the Cetra warriors shimmered from impacts. Most of the shields seem to hold, but not all of them as a couple of bodies collapsed to the ground. The remaining Cetra put on an extra burst of speed, trying to close the gap as the magical protection around them continued to flash from invisible hit after hit. Once they did reach the Humans it was a slaughter, the line breaking as swords cleaved through air and flesh alike. Despite the Cetra seeming to win the skirmish, the overall numbers still seemed to be on the Human's side.
The loss of life was astonishing, and horrifying, and made Aerith want to throw up. She could almost feel each life as it winked out of existence but knew that had to be a figment of the dream. Even so, the senseless slaughter on both sides was more than she could stand. Tears were running down her cheeks and as much as she wanted to close her eyes to block out the sight she wasn't able to. A faint noise filtered through the sounds of the battle and she realized in horror that it was her own screaming.
Aerith jerked awake with a start, sweat-soaked clothes sticking to her uncomfortably as she took several deep breaths to try and calm her racing heart. Even though it had only been a dream, she couldn't get over the feeling that everything was about to change.
And there we have it, the Barrier is no more! I wanted the final chapter of the child years to really be special, so we toss the single PoV right out the window and get to see everyone's reactions to this massively defining moment.
Cloud is, understandably, not doing very well and, unfortunately, his confidence that Hojo's plan is doomed to fail is also misplaced. It's rough kicking him while he's already down, but he's reached his lowest low now and things will begin to slowly improve.
From there we move on to Barret and Myrna who get to watch the event unfold live. I hope the descriptions here do this scene justice because the scale of what's going on is just incredibly hard to describe well, haha. I went fairly exposition-y here with Barret's understanding of what happened to try and help clarify—essentially the two worlds were overlayed on top of each other, separated by the Barrier, and now without it, Midgar has essentially just sprung into existence in the middle of a Cetra forest. The city is spared though, cause yay magic, and we're now working with a single, unseparated world.
Next up is Vincent, who's had criminally little page time. Of course, that'll be changing now that the Cetra are going to be playing a larger role in the story beyond Cloud paying Aerith visits. On this side of the Barrier, its destruction is physically felt by the strongest mages, but otherwise the general panic is a near match to the Humans.
And then, unfortunately, we get Hojo, who is disgusting and awful. Sorry.
Lastly, it felt only fitting that since Cloud opened the child years back in the first chapter, Aerith gets to close them. She also gets to witness the Barrier fading away, albeit in one of her strange dreams. From there, she goes on to see an unusual battle that she doesn't fully understand, although it's more than enough to horrify her. Poor kiddo.
And with that, the childhood years come to a close. I hope everyone enjoyed them and the initial groundwork they laid out, and is excited to see where the story is heading. We've got a large time skip jumping us ahead to the teenage years, which we'll pick up with next week! See you then!
Next Chapter: Change