Space—
—An infinite ebon void, whose intractable depths shine with the light of a thousand different stars, painting heaven with the fires of all creation.
Where did it start? How did it come to be? Who created it? These are just a few of the questions that the universe, in all its vastness, has inspired in the minds of men from the very beginning. Perhaps the answer is out there, somewhere— but that remains to be seen.
A sprawl of eternal mystery, the timeless vault of space is silent, its stars but soft embers in secret emulation of strange multihued crystals, twinkling as if they know all the answers. Perhaps they do, for who knows what they have witnessed in all their endless days?
Spinning. Curling. Winding.
On invisible tracks the stars make their orbital journey across the sky at incalculable distances. Some burn brightly, while others are merely the ghosts of stars long expired, whose light continue to shine on. Like signs left on Earth to mark the passing of the Ancients, in this, they are gone but not forgotten.
This is where the story began, so long ago— where the stars live and die, and the answers lie on wings of angels. Here, the shifting stars are seen through the eyes of the migratory Cetra. A young flower-girl in Midgar sees them too, in the wafting, curling emerald embers of the Lifestream rising up from a metal vent. Her body is painted a sickly green by the witchfire glow of Mako, as she clutches her hands to warm them or to pray— or both— in the alley between Goblin's Bar and MASONS, a theatre featuring the hit play Loveless.
In the farthest reaches of space, there are other reminders of things not yet dead. Beyond the range of hearing, beneath the velvet cast of the cosmos, all is not silent; gentle, ghostly wailing echoes across the boundless void; like the haunting call of whales, the planets cry.
The flower-girl rises, the hem of her dress swirling down around the tops of her ankle-boots; her braided hair tied with a fat ribbon swinging low across her back. Straightening the padded, cropped jacket around her shoulders, she carefully hangs a basket full of flowers of every color from the crook of her elbow, keeping them close, protected— flowers are rare, here, though they may not be precious— and she walks from the mouth of the alley, toward the street's edge.
There she beholds Midgar, flying outward for miles, jading every horizon with dooming metal towers, making her insignificant by contrast.
This is where the final chapter begins.
Above her, the MASONS billboard tells the many passers-by that Loveless opens on the 25th of June. The star of the play, a girl with long raven hair and a green sundress is immortalized in standee above the title, the words My Bloody Valentine falling vertically to her right across the bill's border.
Up and down the street, pedestrians bustle back-and-forth. They find their way around without noticing her; like citizens of any large city, they have found ways not to perceive one another as much as they possibly can. This is the Upper Plate though, and here, where the streets are well-lit and the people live nicely, there are too many things for the eye to choose for them to settle on a vagrant selling flowers.
In turn, she does not notice them. Something else has caught her attention.
Stepping closer to the sidewalk, where strange, boxy cars sputter and zoom along the street, forcing all walkers to step lively lest they be run down, she strains to listen—
Midgar towers and extends, a behemoth of steel and iron, a full-metal labyrinth of colossal frame and impossible design. In this tangle of rust and rivets, it works to choke out that voice only she can hear...
Search-beacons sway on heavy iron bases, sending beams skyward, stabbing through clouds of smog into a starless sky. Rising above the city at its center, a single tower is licked by the spotlights climbing its silver face, scaled by glowing Mako vents, passing over the red diamond emblazoned with the Shinra, Inc. logo. Gathered 'round it at the city's edge, in a cromlech of steel and smoke, eight giant furnaces vent writhing, ghastly slow-fire into the air; first green-toned, as it floats higher it becomes tenuous, thinning into fingers of steam before curling out of existence. These reactors, marked with numbers from 01 to 08 across their curved sides, brew from every angle. From various sidelong vents, they belch steam at intervals. At their tops, they open wide like the mouth of a volcano, where the sickly green glow of power rises from within.
—to what is only a whisper, so faint she almost believes it to be her imagination, maybe even false hope—
In the gigantic, mindless sprawl of Midgar, pipes and wires and rusted gridwork run up and down walls and walkways, dividing streets and crossing lanes seemingly at random. Here houses and shops are stacked one on top of the other, built thoughtlessly into the gargantuan façade of the city, to accommodate the numerous life within. Here, to every wall a poster is affixed; some so faded they are illegible, others nailed over the ones before them. The noise. The rust. The neon. The life. The light. The darkness...the Reactors rule over all, humming lowly, making this parody of life possible, all the while draining it away.
—but she knows that isn't the case. Somewhere, tonight, her prayer has been heard—
The Crystal rotates at the axis of worlds, its facets passing through darkness, and back into light. And, always, a Hero arises to lead the way. Here is the man who will turn the final page:
He sits alone in the darkness at the back of the freight compartment he'd stowed aboard. As the train passes through lit tunnels at dangerous speeds, wisps of light fall through the slats in the top of the car before shooting up his chest and rushing over his face, briefly sketching his features in the dark with instantaneous flashes of light; the roll of his shoulders, the set of his jaw, the large and heedless spikes jutting from his skull.
—and answered. It is not the first. It will not be the last.
Cry of the Planet
As the first chapter of this story begins, it is apparent that it is also the final chapter. A train rocketing north through Midgar signals the end; unfinished business begins a process of finishing. The train races toward North Gate Station, beneath the shadow of a Mako Reactor with a bold white 01 painted across its face. Sparks fly from its tracks as metal grates against metal, and the squeal of steel-on-steel screams into the night.
He isn't anxious, but his heart is beating fast, anticipating the rush of adrenaline, the feeling of a coming battle, the grip of the sword's hilt clenched firmly between his fingers. This isn't just like any other mission, though he won't tell you that— it is his first in a long, long, time; and for a second instance in his life, it is because of her that he feels the battle-haze falling on him stronger than ever. He felt like this once before, one night five years ago, on a truck en-route to ("Yo!") Nibelheim. It was storming that night—
"Yo! Newcomer, you with us?"
Cloud's eyes rose in the darkness, twin orbs of feverish green fire, responding to what he recognized less as words and more as unnecessary chatter. Below him, the only other noise in the car was the continuous cla-clack of the train's wheels setting into the rails every few feet. The man speaking to him was a hulking shadow in the far left corner; a huge black man with rippling muscles; a beard that looked more like worrier's stubble; and fierce but tired eyes. To the right, a roly-poly, squat looking fellow was hunched down and playing with some kind of fancy sniper's carbine. Between these two and Cloud, boxes were set on either side of the car, and on the left wall near the middle, they were deliberately stacked high. On the first level of crates, a musclehead was sitting with one leg swinging and the other bent inward while he worked at his boot-laces. Above him, a slight-framed, somewhat pale girl was working on the overhead hatch.
"Glad I got your attention. As I was sayin', we go in and get out. What we don't do is shoot unless we have to. That goes double for you, newcomer— if you gotta haul out that giant steak-knife none of us is gonna get out of here without a shit-heap of trouble so keep the reins on it unless you have to."
"Got it," Cloud said with a noncommittal, half-there tone to his voice.
"You better, or it's your spikey-ass," he said, rising to his feet. "Don't need no ex-Soldier screw-up messin' up my plans."
Cloud shrugged. "Okay."
"I'm heading to the next car up. Don't do anything stupid, none of ya."
"Us, stupid?" The big guy up on the crate grinned at the leader. The big black man's face dissolved into even more of scowl than before.
"If stupid is as stupid does, than stupid is the one thing you do better then anyone else!" The big man said, before turning away. The door at one end shuddered open and a rush of hard wind passed through the boxcar. The door went shut hard. Once again there was silence, save for the repetitive sound of the passing tracks that could be felt as well as heard.
The musclehead shifted on the crate until he was facing Cloud. He tightened the red headband across his forehead with a well-practiced double-fisted tug to the knot at the back of his head. "You used to be in Soldier, huh? Not every day you find one in a group like Avalanche."
"Soldier?" The girl above turned away from the hatch to look down at them. Her legs were dangling just to the left of the tough-guy's head, and as she re-adjusted, she nearly swung them into his face. "I thought they were the enemy?"
"Easy, Jessie," the musclehead said, turning away from her legs. Whether he was replying to her question or reacting to nearly being kicked was unclear. He went on to answer, anyway. "He was in Soldier, but he quit them, and now he's with us. Ain't that right, uh," he turned to Cloud. "I didn't catch your name."
"Cloud," the spikey-haired Soldier replied. His hands were clad in heavy brown gloves with thick, knobby metal bracelets for cuffs, and they were wrapped around one of his knees, while the other leg was laying straight out. Beside him, propped against the wall, was the largest sword any of them had ever seen. Silently, the three of them doubted he could carry it, much less wield it.
The big guy made to respond, "Cloud, eh? I'm—"
"I don't care what your names are," Cloud interrupted, "once this job is over, I'm outta here."
The door at the front of the car came open. The musclehead, the girl up top, and the silent roly-poly in the corner started visibly. Cloud didn't even twitch.
The leader had returned, and was standing in the open doorway. Now that light was flooding in from the outside, his features could be made out a little more clearly. The open brown jacket over the bear-like hunch of his shoulders, the sleeves of which had been long since torn off, leaving tattered circles around the arm-holes; the dog-tags hanging from a chain around his tree-trunk neck; the rings of body-armor encircling his midsection, encasing his ribs in steel; the dark green pants feeding into heavy brown boots; his arms bulging with muscles; his left hand sporting a fingerless glove with large steel bracelets bolted together over his wrist, his right hand gone— probably due to his choice of nightly activities— and wrapped in thick white gauze where the hand should have been.
Perhaps it was a new injury...or perhaps not? Cloud noticed that it still looked sizable for a missing hand. It definitely wasn't a cast over a hand that was still there; he would have been able to make out the curve of the knuckles.
The leader spoke up. "The station is gettin' close. We gonna see a lot of the boys in red when we get off. If you have to bust one up, no killing; these guys aint Shinra Soldiers, they're Midgar police and doin' their jobs." The big man turned toward Cloud. "You got that?"
"No lethal ordnance, right."
"Jes' don't kill em," the leader replied. "Biggs, Wedge, you two git up here with me. Jessie and Soldier-boy stay back here. When the train stops you better be ready to jump."
"I'll be ready," Cloud said coolly. The tone of his voice made the leader want to break every bone in his body. The two mercs, Biggs and Wedge jumped up to the next car. The leader stepped off behind them and slammed the rolling door behind him abruptly.
"Just us now, I guess," Jessie said.
No reply.
A ratcheting snap echoed through the boxcar, and Jessie nearly fell off her tower of boxes. Triumph flooded into her face, and she smiled as the bolt threw open, then she nearly screamed as the wind caught the door and tore it open before she could grab hold of it. Luckily for her, the train was slowing down. It was pulling into North Gate Station.