He wasn't right. You know that. How could he have been?

  The "hubris of men," and "blissful emptiness"; it's all melodramatic hogwash. You believe in humanity more than that. There's life and meaning everywhere you look.

  Don't you remember those veterans from the tenements? They're the people society looks down on the most, but are so much wiser about the state of their city. They've lived in its ugliest trenches for years; they see everything that's wrong with it day in and day out. There's nothing empty about that.

  Even the yuppies who live on the plates aren't so shallow as they appear. People engage with works like Loveless because they still believe in artistic expression. Even if through a vacuous outlet, they still try to find meaning in things, and apply that thinking to the real world. Loveless, like all art, is a reflection of life, not just a distraction.

  And those people you fought with in the reactor. They're not a special bunch with any unique ability to stand up to Shinra, they're just regular citizens who see the writing on the wall and want to fight for the planet and the people. You know that they're fighting the right enemy. And if tonight is proof of anything, it's that there are people all over still willing to rise against tyranny.

  You know that. Or maybe you don't. It's probably easier for you to be disillusioned and belligerent to make up for the fact that you can't believe in anything good like everyone else. Maybe you act like everyone is doomed because you don't have anything to offer them. It makes sense, right? Only a man who believes in nothing would assume all other men believe in nothing.

  You're not like the rest. They carry on with purpose, and live the life that they feel the most comfortable in. What do you do? What have you done? All of this that has been provided to you, that you've squandered. You are the very weakness you abhor, Cloud Strife.

  It's pitiful. Your blood, your heartbeat, your organs, your nervous system—so many processes that work tirelessly every day, wasted on keeping you alive. You take up space in a bed you haven't earned any right to. You carry around a sword that isn't yours and recklessly slaughter with it.

  Expect no love to be returned, for what little you give. But you're probably fine with that. Go on and collect your gil, mercenary. You're late for your train ride.

  Poor Cloud Strife... always one step removed... always missing your queue...

  He heard their voices through the door of a freight car on the platform between. The tunnel was just faintly lit enough for him to see around. He tried to brute force through the lock with his hands and failed, so he cleaved it off and threw the door open. There were four guns ready to blast him off the train, until they saw it was him.

  Biggs grinned. "Ha! Looks like the crazy bastard made it after all."

  "Where the hell've ya been, merc?!" Barret griped.

  Cloud shut the door behind him. "Sorry to keep you waiting."

  "You have fun out there?" Jessie asked.

  The overhead lights clearly illuminated a lot of blood on his sword. He put it back on its magnet. "Not really."

  Barret glared down at his chest. "Ya collect a fuckin' flower while you were at it?"

  Cloud remembered that was there. He would have gotten rid of it now that it was drawing attention, but... he knew he shouldn't.

  "I think it looks good on you," Jessie quipped. "It's a nice contrast to your generally dismal demeanor."

  Biggs walked up to Cloud and punched his shoulder. "Well who gives a shit about that! Come on, the whole gang is assembled again, and we're heading back to Sector 7 scot-fucking-free!"

  Wedge laughed. "Yeah! We actually did it!"

  Biggs high-fived the three of them. Barret started to crack a smile as they chortled and reveled in their success. However much money Cloud asked to do their job, he should have gotten a bonus for the morale boost.

  Barret pumped his fist and proclaimed, "Hell yeah! A new era begins tonight, with AVALANCHE at its center!"

  Cloud was taken aback hearing that word. He remembered the terrorist group Avalanche, and it didn't look anything like this ragtag party.

  "Avalanche. You people are Avalanche?"

  Jessie gave him a confused look. "Uh... yeah? Did you not know?"

  "It ain't just 'Avalanche,' kid," Barret insisted. "We're 'AVALANCHE'! Say it with a little more grit!"

  He tried to stare into Barret to see him better in this new light. It started to make sense. "I fought you people in wartime before."

  "You mean you fought the Shinra proxy organization formally known as Avalanche, that used to fight for the planet but now just takes orders from the president to help feed their propaganda."

  None of that made sense, but it didn't matter. "They fought for human extinction. You weren't exactly freedom fighters."

  "Well, it was for the planet anyhow! But we ain't with 'em anymore. This team here is a splinter cell, carryin' on the real mission with no strings attached."

  "But you still call yourselves Avalanche?"

  "'Course not. We're s'posed to be different, and wanna make sure the people notice it. So we're AVALANCHE!"

  Cloud blankly stared at him.

  "It's stylized in all caps," said Jessie. "Acronym is still pending."

  He half-chuckled at that idea. "It's the same word. You think anyone's gonna know the difference?"

  Barret said, "Maybe not right away. But they'll learn."

  It didn't matter how dumb that was anymore. His business with them was finished.

  Jessie blurted, "Oh, the security gate's coming! Cloud, over here."

  They had stuck lines of reflective wrap on the walls to block the pillar's ID scanners. Cloud walked into their coverage, and a minute later red light flickered momentarily from the edges of the car's sliding doors.

  They waited to make sure no alarms went off, and Jessie went, "Hell yeah! And that's all she wrote!"

  They all hive fived around him. Barret twisted his gun and pulled it straight out of his arm, revealing a base adaptor that it had been plugged into. He opened Biggs' backpack and swapped out the gun for a metallic hand, just a stiff chunk shaped in an open palm and fingers that couldn't move. The gun was zipped away and he said, "Alright, let's move up."

  Jessie started peeling down the wrap, and the others squeezed through a pileup of boxes and gas cylinders to the door. As Cloud followed them, Jessie fist-bumped his shoulder and said, "Thanks for the assist. Couldn't've done it without you."

  The levels they were going to appease him made him suspicious.

  They walked through already unlocked doors outside and into another freight car, this one more crammed with boxes and some civilians sitting and standing around anxiously. None of them looked as they passed by. Past that was the back passenger car, with rows of mostly empty seats.

  The dozen-so people inside were all alerted hearing the door open and the wind blasting in as they entered. Barret, a man twice the size of anyone there, walked into the middle and slumped down on a bench. A couple wearing edgy punk outfits on the other side of the car opted to leave to the next one. The passenger cars were connected by tunnel.

  A scrawny man in a full red suit and tie two sizes too big, the easy mark of a Shinra executive, was standing on that side as well. As the band of thugs came in his direction, he shivered nervously and said aloud, "This is what I get for taking the last train..." and moved cars as well.

  A screen was on the wall next to where he was that showed Midgar's train map, which Jessie went to check out. Wedge sat across from Barret, and Cloud noticed most of the weapons he had at the start were missing. Biggs walked into the tunnel to peak at the neighboring car, then came back and reported, "Damn, the train's packed to the brim. Everyone is getting the hell out." He leaned against the wall opposite Jessie.

  Barret snorted. "They prob'ly won't be happy to end up in the undercity."

  The train tilted down as it began the spiral around the pillar. All was quiet but the shaking of the wheels.

  Wedge whispered to Cloud, "Is that a real flower?" He was looking at it like a moth at a shiny bulb.

  He pulled it out from under his leather strap. "You wanna have it?"

  Wedge choked. "Oh, uh... I'm sure there are other people out there who would appreciate it more. Not that I wouldn't appreciate it! Just... I know how to take care of cats more than flowers."

  He slid the flower back. "You're a cat guy. So how'd you end up in AVALANCHE?"

  He nervously groaned. "That's a story..."

  Cloud wasn't interested. He kept walking, down to the end of the car for no reason, with the passengers' eyes averting to his giant sword. He ended up next to Jessie, and looked over her shoulder at the map.

  She turned to him and said, "Don't suppose a dangerous guy like you takes the train often?"

  He tried to cobble some snarky reply, and came up with nothing. "No."

  She chuckled. "Yeah, you seem more like the type who stubbornly walks everywhere. Cloud would never drive a car." The route map showed a few stops before landing in Sector 7, at least half an hour of waiting. "So you know Tifa, right? She introduced you to us? How far do you two go back?"

  Tifa. He had heard that name before. It belonged to somebody distant. He unburied the name "Tifa Lockhart" and looped it over and over in his head to make sense of it. But hearing it more made it make less sense. The name felt bigger than him, like it belonged to a celebrity. He had delusions of knowing that person... but he couldn't. Not him, and not them.

  Little Cloud, daring to tempt fate by exiting the comfortable solitude of his home, if only for that moment. It was his same dusty old town, the sun beating down and the wind kicking up sand at eye level. The irregularity in the way all the wooden houses and stores were placed on the ground irked him; all facing different angles, built different distances apart. It seemed so stupid and disorderly.

  He took care not to get too close to the house next-door as he sauntered down the path, as per usual. But she wasn't in her house watching through the window. She was outside again, with her three idiot guy friends, sitting in a circle on the hill to the lower part of town. He couldn't go that way.

  There was an alternate path there behind the houses on the other side of the water tower, but he still had to walk near her to get there. He drooped his head down and went as quiet and fast as he could. Maybe if he couldn't see her, she couldn't see him.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  "Cloud!" her vibrant voice hollered. He looked in her direction to see her standing and waving at him in her little white dress, and his head instantly snapped away. His stomach deflated and spine twitched. His mind was a neatly stacked tower of blocks that was now falling into a clutter. All that mattered was getting away from there.

  "Are you ignoring me?!" Her upset face pouted at him. It made him worse. The melancholia, the aimless resentment, the panic, he rejected all of it. He had to look away again and keep going. He wished he could tell her to leave him alone, but he couldn't tell her anything.

  Tifa. Goddammit, how could he have forgotten about Tifa? They were twelve years old, and now, they're...

  But the revelation of her underpinned an even greater revelation to him: he used to live somewhere. There was an open sky, sunlight, weeds in the ground, mountains, and proper wooden houses. A place that was real, and not here. It was all his once. And it was also Tifa's.

  But Jessie brought her up. What does she know about Tifa? Why was Tifa important?

  "Hello?"

  Cloud shook himself back. "I... what?"

  "You and Tifa. What's the story with you two?"

  He did know Tifa. And... she knew him? That had to be wrong. There was no story that could exist with the both of them.

  "There isn't a..." He was almost inclined to finish that sentence. But he was talking to Jessie.

  "Eh, don't worry about it. I don't mean to pry into your history. Besides, I'm sure she'll gossip everything to me when we get back." She winked. Whatever that was intended for.

  They were going back to Tifa. She was in Sector 7 as well. Right now.

  Barret stared out the window, taking the view of the undercity and the plate above out of the pillar tunnel as they travelled closer to the ground. "Look at this. It's all 'cause of that damn pizza in the sky that the people down there gotta suffer." Here comes the spiel again. "Shinra sucks up all the mako and kills the land, then builds a whole city on top of 'em to put all of their luxury and entertainment while these people work for slumlords and drown in liquor."

  "They were doomed no matter what," Cloud said. "And so's everyone on the plates."

  "Oh yeah, hotshot? How so?"

  "There wasn't supposed to be an 'undercity' when Midgar was built. It was a transport hub and parking lot for visitors, then turned into a refugee camp after the fiend epidemic, and Shinra invested a few gil out of their pocket to put walls up and pay a few real estate moguls to kick together this slapdashery civilization so they could go back to gawking at their great vanity project from a high tower. And the undercity heiled them as saviors for it for a generation, and didn't demand any more. They got the deal they accepted."

  Barret looked confounded. "Huh. Man, you say all that, and then ya tell the planet to eat shit and act all snide at us for bein' anti-Shinra? I don't get you at all."

  That was fine. He didn't either.

  "I'll second that," said Biggs. "The planet's at a crossroads, and you can't only be in it for yourself. At some point, you're gonna have to pick a side."

  "Between what, Shinra and you?"

  Barret stood. "If you believe in fightin' against tyranny, I think we've got a place just for you in the team. If you ain't, then we can let you off the train right now—and maybe offa the pillar too."

  The threat had a higher chance of landing if Barret didn't point that stupid metal hand at him. They could just as easily fight tyranny by throwing toilet paper at the president, and get exactly as much accomplished. But he was too tired of arguing to say that aloud.

  An overweight balding man a couple benches down from Barret was staring at him. "Hell is you lookin' at?" The man quickly turned away. There were seven other passengers in the car who could overhear that conversation.

  Cloud took a seat in the back of the train, shut his eyes, and waited out the ride. He could still only think of Tifa. With every spin of the train wheels, they were coming closer. According to Jessie, they've already met. There was some throughline between him, AVALANCHE, and her. But was it meeting her that brought him to AVALANCHE, or did he find AVALANCHE first while looking for work and that brought him to her?

  On the third stop, Biggs came to nudge his shoulder. "Here we are. Let's get home."

  Shit. He stood up as people were piling outside from the other cars, meeting friends and relatives at the station relieved to find them okay after the reactor explosion. He stepped outside into a noisy cluster, nervous to see Tifa somewhere in the crowd. But no one was there to meet them.

  While everyone around was talking, Barret stood on the station platform triumphantly, took a long inhale of the polluted slum air, and shouted, "Hot damn, we are good!"

  AVALANCHE cheered and went for a third round of high-fives. Now the job was really done, unless a Shinra battalion was waiting outside their base.

  "Now listen: tonight may have been a success, but let's not get complacent. If that explosion spooked ya, then make sure ya let off all those fears here and now, 'cause the next one's gonna be even bigger than that!" There were dozens of people within earshot of that. "Now let's get back to the bar! Can't keep Tifa waitin' any longer!" They darted away through the crowd down the cobblestone road.

  Cloud gazed up, at the sun lamps dotting the sky, the lights shining out from the train tunnels to the plate they just circled down, and the two giant outstretched pillars propping up the plate a thousand feet above them, and the pillars in every other sector. He thought about how easily the city would come collapsing down if those pillars went away. It would take so little to cleanly wipe out the entire population of Midgar in a finger-snap. He imagined the whole beautiful structure shattering in midair, each broken piece of the plates a fiery meteorite crashing in a hail of burning dust and blood, hundreds of times over until not a square inch of the former city remained standing; a picture of hell, here on Gaia, engulfing mankind's greatest technological marvel, and Cloud at the center, the end of all things. And then he stopped.

  The team had disappeared down the path going right into town. He pushed through the crush, and was left to wander the rest of the way to the bar.

  By every metric this place was shittier than Sector 5. The dirt ground were blacker and littered with trash and stomped cigarettes in nearly every square inch, the shacks people lived in were extra pitiful, there was hardly enough lighting to produce the undercity's trademark green hue, unmoving white puffs of smoke lingered in the air all over, a long stretch of sloppily constructed sheet metal walls blocked a badlands zone full of fiends and gunshots could be heard behind them, posters for the Loveless play hung on fences and walls, and some businesses had cheap dying neon signs to compensate for the total dryness of the landscape.

  He brushed past a lot of sad souls as he pretended to know where he was walking. The mako junkies were plentiful at this time of night, lying down with heads pressed to leaking pipes or sitting around in the dirt staring at their hands or passerbys, all of them in outer space while their brains leaked out of their ears. A posse of middle-aged drunks was dancing around a radio blaring grating electronic music.

  The one establishment with even the appearance of formality was his target. A big sign reading "Seventh Heaven" hung from the two-story building, replete with a big porch with stairs at the entrance. The AVALANCHE crowd was gathered by the stairs. And behind them...

  He was standing too close. He backed away while they didn't notice him, and kept going, gripping his sword handle unnecessarily just to feel a whit of security.

  She was taller. More defined. More muscular than women tend to be. A white crop top under a sleeveless black jacket, black shorts with a skirt attached. But the same round face, long black hair tied at the ends, and big eager eyes. So much was different, but nothing had changed.

  It punched him in the gut. The loss of breath, the twitching, the pounding head and heartbeat—it was the same feeling as a child. He still couldn't belong anywhere near her.

  He had heard that shortness of breath and a rapid heartrate when you see someone are supposed to be "good" signs, signalling "desire." But this was not that.

  He stood by in the background as she talked to the AVALANCHE people. She looked very distressed, inspecting Jessie's beaten face or Biggs' leg wounds or Barret's various cuts and bruises or whatever injuries Wedge sustained guarding the reactor entrance as they regaled her with tales on how they got them.

  He heard, even from this distance away, Biggs say, "So first, a fucking pack of genetically modified hounds got released and one tore the hell out of my shin, and then when we were inside, this insane ninja guy jumped me alone and I got fuckin' shot!"

  Tifa didn't match their enthusiasm. Cloud started to etch closer, and heard her say, "Okay, I've only got a couple more minutes on break. You guys head inside, and when the bar closes you can talk about everything."

  She shooed them into the bar, except Biggs went to sit on a rocking chair on the porch and look over the town. Tifa turned back to await Cloud. That eager stare was back on him. His hand dropped from his sword. Now he had no choice but to approach her.

  He walked so slow and cautiously to stall their reunion that she walked the last steps to meet him. It was stupid to be so edgy about talking to her, when they've clearly already done it before recently. He can't imagine it was this bad then though.

  "Hey. You made it." The voice was sweet and raspy. She was smiling. As if she knew him. Why? It was trying to assuage him, but it put him more on edge.

  "Yeah" managed to escape his lips after fighting its way through his throat.

  The smile went away. "Was it as bad up there as it looked on the news?"

  "Yeah," he said again. "We sure showed 'em."

  "They said more than a hundred people might have died. Civilians and military."

  "Shinra News says a lot of things."

  Her face sank just a little bit, a more subtle way to communicate discomfort than her intense pouting in youth. But she lit up just a little upon looking at his chest.

  "Wow, is that an actual flower? Where did you get that?"

  Cloud remembered that was there. "Someone was selling 'em on the street while the reactor burned."

  Biggs snorted behind them and said, "The hustle never stops, I guess."

  Tifa told Cloud, "If you don't mind hanging around for about another twenty minutes until the bar closes, Barret will have his meeting with the others in the basement and you'll get your payment."

  He tepidly nodded. She flashed another smiled and rushed back inside.

  Cloud looked at Biggs in his rocking chair on the way up the steps. "Not gonna join the others?"

  "Nah, not till it closes. They're all gonna be getting hammered and shit. Believe it or not, I'm not the alcoholic type."

  He didn't have a response to that, so he entered the bar. They had table space for dozens, and nearly every chair was filled. The place was a shitshow. Everybody was in a maniacal drunk state moving around and shouting untelligible things to random people, and food scraps and drink puddles were all over the floor. AVALANCHE was at its own long table joshing and bantering with each other about the job.

  Cloud found an empty two-seat table by the door. All he had to do was sit there and wait. Tifa was at the bar ahead servicing a full row of lads in barstools, while another guy behind the counter with a big bald spot and puffy brown hair shooting to the sides was barking orders at her. Cloud stared down at his table and the crumbs stuck between cracks in the wood to distract himself, but couldn't not hear her voice over everyone else's.

  It would have helped if he was left alone, but some hairy burnout with too much fat in the face insisted on slamming down on the other chair and splashing his pint of beer on the table. How overjoyed he looked, flushed like a toilet and unable to keep a straight posture.

  "'Sup! Hhhhow we doin'?"

  Cloud didn't acknowledge him. He didn't notice. He kept eyeballing Tifa, then looking somewhere else, then shooting back to Tifa, and again and again. He took a long chug of beer and noticed Cloud again.

  "My guy! My guy! Do you know her?"

  He clearly gestured at the bar.

  "God damn, guy, chick's got me fucked up!" He paused to laugh for no reason. He leaned in and his voice lowered. "Do you—do you know her?"

  He took more sips of beer. "'Cause—between you an' me, I've been tryna get like, like, like an in with her for a while, y'know? Works here nearly every night. So beautiful. Like..."

  He looked again, and punched the table. "Like damn! Just look at her, guy. I'm not fuckin' crazy. Just look, I'm not crazy."

  Cloud wouldn't so much as try to look at Tifa the same way this guy did. Staring at her stirred no good feelings in him.

  "Guy, if I could just... I gotta get here early, beat all those fuckin' pigshits to the bar. If I can just beat them to the bar..."

  He shot up and kicked his chair back, and lost balance. His legs gave out and he dropped halfway to the ground before catching on the table with his glass, spilling it onto his head. He flung back into the chair, tried to chug the rest of it and choked, and scooted back to the table. His beer-soaked mouth was foaming as it sucked in rancid breaths.

  "I gotta—gotta put my ultra masculine charm to the test, yeah? I'll get 'er. I'll do it."

  This was becoming too sad to be around. He didn't want Tifa to see him anyway sitting lonely in the back of bar, and feel pity.

  Cloud left the table and the left the bar. He could finally take a clean breath when the door shut behind him. Biggs was still on his rocking chair. He figured he'd take a seat on the opposite side of the porch.

  Biggs said, "Not your scene either, I take?"

  Cloud said nothing. Gazing at the slums and all the garbage kicked to the edge of all the walking paths felt more rewarding.

  "Yeah, most of the guys this side of town are dipshits. I know it's pretty hard to have faith in humanity looking around down here, but dipshits or not, everyone's still worth fighting worth, no?"

  Another beat passed, peppered by the sound of gun popping in the badlands.

  "You know, I've been thinking and I wanted to ask: you ever get scared when you're out there on the job? Like, when that pack of hounds was mauling you or you were fighting that scorpion mech or the Turk, was there ever a moment where you were thinking to yourself, 'Shit, this might be it'?"

  He cared for the question about as much as he cared for the dead Turk. "No."

  "Not even for just a second? Just a little bit? 'Cause if none of us were with you in there, you woulda gotten torn to pieces."

  "I'd have been fine."

  "Damn. Stone cold." Biggs almost let the moment rest, but then said, "Just don't get too cocky, yeah? Gotta know when you're up against something you just can't crack."

  How helpful. Now Biggs shut up, and Cloud lulled off to the distant popping of gunfire.