Chapter Text
It’s quite late… Well, she thinks it is. The doctors and other researchers have left, and most of the main lights have been turned off. So probably late. Aerith Gainsborough sits quietly, arm hooked up to an IV of some sort, watching an old Shinra branded television set. Professor Hojo comes over, notices the static, and hits the top of the TV to make the static noise stop.
Ah, there it is. The floating lights. The television has no audio, so Aerith is left to her young imagination on what those lights could be. She admires the blurry image of the lights floating up, up, up, and the canyon that they float over. She has to see it. She will see it.
“In your dreams,” Hojo says, snorting as he walks away.
She doesn’t argue back. Not yet.
She’s 22 years old today. 22 years of never seeing the sky, the floating lights, or a flower still in the ground. She’s pacing around her room, wringing her hands together anxiously.
“Happy birthday, Aerith.” a voice echoes as Tseng, a member of the Turks, enters. He’s holding a small slice of cake.
Since her mother died, Aerith has been under the care of Tseng, mostly. Hojo comes in, takes her blood, then leaves, but Tseng… attempts, she guesses. He seems the most likely to crack if she were to beg hard enough to leave- and today- she’s going to.
“Aw, thanks,” she says, taking it gingerly, and then immediately sets it on the table. She stares at him intensely. Begging isn’t really her strong suit, honestly.
“Is there anything you want for your birthday?” He asks finally.
She nods, “Yes! Actually, yes!” She walks over to the side of her room, and pulls out a book, “Before you lecture me, please hear me out!” She flips it open, and there’s a drawing of the floating lights, and herself dancing under them. “Every year, around this time, there’s this floating lights festival in Cosmo Canyon. I-”
“No.”
She tilts her head up, hurt but not undetermined, “Tseng, I’m 22 years old!”
“You know exactly why we can’t go.”
She doesn’t. Not really. She’s heard Hojo talk about it time and time again. Special blood. Blood of the “ancients.” When she begged to go outside as a child, to see the floating lights or the flower fields from books, she was told that evil people want her for her ancient blood, for her magical abilities.
Well, said magical abilities have done zilch so far.
“No one is going to look at me and assume I have… ‘magical abilities’! Tseng!”
Tseng rubs the bridge of his nose, “Aerith. This is the last of this conversation.” And with that, he leaves. So much for a birthday celebration.
She’d get there. She just knew it. She had to.
Cloud Strife. Ex-Soldier, now errand boy, apparently. He’s been with Avalanche, the anti-Shinra terrorist force, for a while now, and has gotten used to seeing the varying degrees of inaccurate wanted posters for himself. This one though… egregious. They didn’t even get his nose right.
“Wow,” Jessie Raspberry, one of Avalanche’s members, gasps, “So ugly.”
Cloud doesn’t humor her with a response. He already isn’t fond of talking, and also… she’s right. It is so ugly. Biggs and Wedge come by to gawk at it, pointing at the poorly drawn Cloud.
“You four!” Barret Wallace, leader of this cell of Avalanche, calls out, annoyed, “What the hell are you doin’!? Tifa and I are waiting on you!”
Tifa, the dark haired woman standing beside Barret, is Cloud’s childhood friend. She looks tense, and she should be. Today they are infiltrating Shinra’s main building. Shinra, the electric power company, uses mako, the “lifeblood” of the planet, as Barret puts it, to fuel everything. They are also terrible to the undercity residents, to their own employees, their army, and to SOLDIERS. Cloud would know. They’re only here tonight because of a tip they got from one of their insiders; Shinra is keeping some sort of materia locked up. One that no one has ever seen before. One that they are going to great lengths to hide. Not a ton to go off on, but the spy seemed worried about them having it, and said Wutai was looking for it too.
“Goofin’ around on one of the most important nights of our lives!” Barret says, disappointment leaking into his voice, “Let’s not fuck up inside the building. Got it?!”
Biggs, Jessie, and Wedge all nod, and Cloud stays still, not bothering. This mission is a mistake. But he’s getting paid, so it’s fine. 2 thousand gil. He repeats to himself. 2 thousand gil.
He makes his way inside the Shinra building, eyeing his fake ID. Would this even get them into the basement? The Cloud on the card doesn’t look convinced, either. He scans his, and blinks in surprise when the elevator door opens. Huh. Jessie pumps her fist, clearly proud of her handiwork.
They pile into the elevator and look at Barret expectedly. He stares at the buttons, and presses one. They all look at him curiously.
“Stop lookin’ at me. I have no idea.”
Tifa tenses even more at that. Cloud can feel her anxiety from here.
“What if the tip wasn’t true? It could be completely unreliable.” She finally says, looking at the ground. “Materia? What kind of materia is so strong that Shinra has it in lock and key? One they aren’t flaunting? One Wutai is actively seeking it for themselves?”
“We’ll know exactly what it is the minute we see it.” Biggs reassures, but he doesn’t look so certain himself, “Our tip guy hasn’t been wrong before. Why would he lie about something this big?”
Tifa bites her nail, deep in thought. “You’re right,” she finally relents. “We’ll know it when we see it.”
If Shinra employees are confused by some weird nonuniformed people walking around with a man in SOLDIER gear, they say nothing. They have that dead-inside gaze, one Cloud feels an ache for. A remembrance for. Shinra works their employees to the bone. Also, people walk through Shinra headquarters for tours all the time. Maybe not tours at 10 at night, but… still.
They reach a basement door, and Cloud enters first upon Barret’s insistence. Might as well get as much as he can for his 2,000 gil.
The basement they’re in houses a lot of materia. Tons of it. But it's all things they’ve seen before. Curaga, Firaga, a Fat Chocobo one which is kind of nice, but no… otherworldly war-starting materia. All of this stuff could be synthesized.
It’s quiet. Unnervingly so. The floor is grated metal at this point, and you can hear every move and sound the group makes. Wedge at one point looks over the edge, and his face pales. It must be a long way down.
“Ah!” Tifa cries out, “This door, it looks pretty important, right?”
It has the words HIGH SECURITY all over it, and they all look at one another. Cloud scans his keycard, and it opens.
It’s a fairly cold room, and in it lies a white, shimmery materia, suspended in a cryotank.
“Wow,” Tifa murmurs, “I’ve never seen materia like this.”
Cloud hasn’t, either. They step toward it, and Cloud takes it from the chamber. Holding it in his hands makes him feel light and fluffy, almost.
“Well? What does it do?” Barret asks.
“I… have no idea. It doesn’t seem to do anything.” Cloud compels it to do… something. It doesn’t. It just gives him that light and airy feeling. Is it really just casting a “feel more calm” spell? What is this?
“What?!” Barret asks, “Is it … in the early stages of being made?!”
Jessie looks around the room, digging through some drawers. She pulls one out, “It’s simply called ‘White Materia,’” she made a face, “‘A vow to take us to the promised land.’” She lifts her head, “No clue.”
They’re all silent for a bit. White Materia? Promised Land? What? And how is a materia that can cast no spells going to take anyone anywhere?
“I-”
“What are you doing here?!” A voice cries out, holding a gun. Shinra infantry. Well, they did expect a fight, at the very least. A couple more infantry soldiers shuffle in behind, and Cloud mockingly raises his hand before grabbing the Buster Sword and taking them out in one swipe.
“Now this is what we pay you for!” Biggs grins, nudging Cloud.
“Don’t think we’re done. They’re going to send more.” Cloud said, stepping over the infantrymen as they stepped out.
He was right, of course. As soon as they exited, more infantrymen and shock troopers pointed their weapons directly at them. Another easy takedown for the group. Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge may not be fighters, but Barret, Tifa, and Cloud especially were.
They run up the metal grated stairs, the elevator is too dangerous.
“Fuck,” Barret curses, the ways up to even the first floor seems like its going on forever. Cloud… honestly isn’t faring any better than Barret, to be honest. Everyone’s struggling, besides Tifa, who is a good 5 floors ahead of them.
They finally, finally reach the first floor, still standing on metal grating. They take a moment to catch their breath, because-
“Send it in!” a voice cries out, and they all turn. A huge metal monster-looking weapon emerges from the floor below, and starts rapidly beeping.
“Cloud!” is all Cloud hears before the hulk of metal shoots a grenade, and he feels himself fall, floor after floor.
Aerith paces around her room. There’s one door leading into it. Even if she got past this door, there was still Hojo’s entire lab to get through, and then the fact that she’d have to navigate the entirety of Shinra HQ without a map.
But today is the day. She’s 22 now. She’s gonna- is that her ceiling crumbling?
Her ceiling completely falls in, and she runs to the side of her room, covering her head. She slowly, gently removes her hands off her head, and turns. There’s a blond man, covered in rubble, passed out on her floor. Out of his hand drops a white, shimmery orb.
She slowly picks it up. It… feels right. It feels like it’s hers. She’s so mesmerized with it that she barely acknowledges the man on the floor groaning in pain, and she gasps in horror.
She grabs a steel pipe that fell in the rubble, and knocks him out again, adrenaline rushing through her. What the hell?! What was going on?!
What would Tseng think? Wait- oh my god, what would Tseng think? That she was brave enough to fight off any attacker?! After all, the blond stranger does have a giant sword on his back, and she just knocked him out with a steel pipe!
She opens her drawer to her desk, and slides the shiny orb inside of it. Now, to tie the stranger up. She awkwardly shoves him into her closet, locking the closet shut with that same steel pipe from earlier.
“Aerith?” Tseng’s voice rings out after a while of Aerith standing there and panickedly staring at her door.
“Yeah! One second!” she calls back, opening the door. She plasters on a smile as he walks in. “Okay, I know you said no floating lights-”
Tseng cuts her off, “Your ceiling.”
Aerith freezes, “Uhm, about that. Let me finish what I was gonna say first!”
Tseng crosses his arms.
“Listen, I know you don’t want me to see the floating lights, because I can’t protect myself, or whatever, and Shinra is my home, but listen-”
Tseng cuts her off again, “Aerith. The decision was final.”
“If you just let me-”
“No.” He says, and then presses his fingers to his ear to talk to whoever is on the other end, “Okay, I’ll be right there.” he says. He looks to Aerith, “When the ceiling crumbled in, what came with it?”
Aerith hesitates, “Nothing.” She finally says.
Tseng opens his mouth, but someone must’ve called him on his earpiece, because he presses his fingers to it, “I’m on my way. Stall Avalanche as long as you can.” With that, Tseng leaves.
Oooookay. Now to figure this mess out. She removes the steel pipe from the door, holding it anxiously and untrained in her hand. Then, she swings the closet door open.
“Ugh,” Cloud groans, falling out of the closet.
“Eek!” She screams, raising the pipe over her head.
“Stop!” He yells at her, “I’m already tied up.” Well. He’s not tied up well, but he chooses to omit that.
Aerith lowers her weapon. “Who are you? How did you find this place?”
He frowns, “What place? Shinra HQ?”
“Me,” she answers, “How did you know I was here?”
He looks at her like she’s crazy, “I got attacked, upstairs. I fell through the floor.” He blinks a few times, “My materia.” He says, looking around for it.
“The orb?”
He doesn’t reply at first. “You live in Shinra HQ yet don’t know what materia is?”
She shrugs, feeling dumb all of the sudden. Was she supposed to know?
She crossed her arms, coming up with maybe her best… and worst idea yet.
“Do you know the floating lights? In Cosmo Canyon?”
“The River of Lights festival? That hippie thing?”
She blinks, “You do know it!” She internally cheers, “Okay. Well, I’ll give you back your ‘materia’... if you take me to see them.”
“No.”
She leans forward, “Okay. I can give you right back up to Shinra, since Tseng was looking for you. And you’ll never find that orb thing.”
“It’s in the desk drawer… isn’t it?”
BAM. And Cloud is out again. The steel pipe is awfully trusty!
She tucks the materia into her hair, held in by her braid and ribbon. When Cloud wakes, she sets the steel pipe down in an attempt to come off less “bad cop.”
“Okay. Now you’ll never find it. You could tear Shinra apart and never find it.”
Cloud inhales, “Fine. I’ll take you to the lantern festival.”
Aerith cheers, “Really! Oh my gosh. Thank you!” She goes to untie him.
“Cloud.” He says.
“Hm?”
“My name?”
She finally undoes her poorly done knot, “Oh! I’m Aerith.” She grins at him. “Don’t worry, Cloud. This’ll be the easiest job you’ve done yet!”
Cloud seriously doubts that.