Final Fantasy VII: Lifestream - Book 1: Arrival

ONE

This entire mess, or at least our part in it, started with the mission to take out Mako Reactor 1 in Midgar. You've probably heard all about it by now, and that's where most accounts of our journey usually begin, understandably enough. The bombing of the reactor was like lightning striking a charged wire, sending shockwaves all across the city as it set the stage for the terrible firestorm that would later follow.

But I'm not going to start there. That mission didn't just happen on a whim. It took a lot of time, planning, and preparation before we were ready to pull it off. And I think that understanding the events that built up to it is just as important as talking about the bombing mission itself, especially considering what it ultimately led to and the terrible losses it brought about, both in the initial attack itself and in Shinra's brutal act of retaliation that came later.

So with that in mind, I'd have to say it all really began two months before that, when I first walked into Tifa's bar one night. I'd been out of circulation for a while, doing mercenary work here and there, and had only just arrived in Midgar. Tifa had been there at the train station, her hair as long and dark as I remembered as it hung past her hips, though now she had tied it into a neat fishtail at the end.

It had been years since we'd last seen each other. Five, by my count. Tifa was excited, of course, but there was also a wariness in her eyes as we talked that I didn't understand back then. It was like she was trying to figure out if it was really me. But of course it was. I knew that. I was Cloud, her old friend from Nibelheim. I didn't have any doubt about it. Not then, anyway. I knew who I was.

"It's been so long, Cloud!" Tifa smiled. "Why don't you come back with me to Sector 7? I own a bar over there, the Seventh Heaven."

I shrugged. "Alright. Seems like you're doing well."

She chuckled. "I manage. But what about you, Cloud? You said you made it into SOLDIER?"

"Yeah. I left, though. After what happened back home."

Tifa's eyes an unusual blend of brown and a deep red the color of fine wine narrowed ever so slightly for a moment before returning to normal so quickly I wondered if I hadn't just been seeing things. When she spoke, her voice had lost a little of her cheer. Not really surprising, though, considering what I had brought up. "I don't blame you, Cloud. It was a terrible time for us. But enough about that."

We walked off the platform and headed toward the Sector 7 slums, neither of us speaking for a bit. A lone streetlamp lit the area, and over by the train stood a single attendant in his red uniform, helping people disembark. Across from the platform, rows of dark and dead train cars stretched out across a tangled maze of broken and crisscrossing tracks that ran for miles into the distance and formed what was known as the Train Graveyard. A fitting name, especially with the stories and rumors of ghosts and such that supposedly haunted the place. Not that I really believed any of them, mind you. At least, not yet.

Anyway, Tifa and I walked away from the station, making our way through dirt paths and small mountains of discarded junk. There were no real streets down here, just narrow, muddy trails that always seemed to leave muck on your boots. Or worse, depending on where you were. And the air was always choked with a fetid mess of unpleasant sounds and smells, most of all the eye-watering stench of leaking mako, which in many places in the slums was strong enough to make you gag if you tried to breathe too deeply, or even at all.

Quite a contrast to life on Midgar's upper plate, which was as clean and prosperous as the slums were poor and dirty. The travel brochures and television ads all claimed Midgar was the greatest city in the world, where anyone could live like a king all thanks to Shinra's powerful new energy source, mako, which created electricity far more efficiently and cleanly than oil, coal, or other fuels ever could.