Final Fantasy - All Series Fan Fiction ❯ Requiem for a Dream ❯ The Beginning of the End ( Chapter 1 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
My very first FFVII fanfic! I'm so happy! Please give it just a little time: it will be much more of an obviously FFVII fic in the next couple of chapters. ^^ It's 500 years in the future - I don't think Cloud can live that long. ^_^;;; In the meantime, please read!

Disclaimer: I don't own FFVII (duh), Sephiroth, etc. No matter how much I want to own him, Square-Enix just ain't gonna give him up. So, I don't own anything you recognize as having been part of Shinra, the Meteor incident, etc., but I DO own anything you don't recognize. OK? Yay! I don't want any lawyers on my doorstep or they'll get introduced to my version of the Masamune. ^_^

Please feel free to leave a review. Even flames are good - just please make sure you've got proper grammar while doing so. 'Tis FanfIC SUXXX!!' does not qualify. ^_^

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“Okay! Lift it up!”

The serenity of the nighttime mountain was being rudely interrupted by a single solitary outpost with strobe lights and busy activity.

The site was big, circular, and surrounded by heavily reinforced steel fencing. At the center of the site was its reason for being, currently a gaping maw in the rock. A large crane-like mechanism leaned over it.

People and machinery buzzed around the mined out crater like flies, but now the chilly atmosphere was electrified by an undercurrent of anticipation.

“Just a little more!” the overseer, a stocky colonel with a fat face, shouted. “God damn it, not so fast!!”

The man working the huge crane hurried to fix his mistake.

“Hold it! That’s great, swing it over to the truck!” the colonel said into his radio.

The great load of ice dangling from the crane’s pincers groaned, and everyone froze and held their breath.

Slowly, it rose into the air, dropped down, and the pincers danced in the air like they were no heavier than paper.

When the load hit the truck, it bounced, but settled without blowing anything. The engineers had done a fine job with calculations.

Colonel Pershing let out the sigh of air he’d been holding. He put the radio to his lips, thinking he‘d rather be anywhere but here.

“Get a team down there, ASAP. I want security reconfirmed, a total sweep of the outside perimeter for a mile and a half. Shoot anything that moves. We’re in, boys.”

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It was snowing. Again.

Seventeen-year-old Rue Kaiser sat at her school desk, staring out the window at the flat, gray sky. It seemed to her that the monotonous, nearly continuous snowfall in the Northern Mountains was a lot like her life.

Boring, and never going to change or get any more interesting.

It spoke volumes for the merits of suicide.

Maybe when I die I’ll be reborn as a guy, and then I’d be able to have a little fun, Rue thought blandly as she stared outside.

It wasn’t that women weren’t free to as they wished, but they weren’t able to join the Military. And to Rue (and her peers), the Military represented freedom.

“Rue? Rue! Ms. Kaiser!”

Rue jumped, and looked up at her teacher sheepishly.

“Sorry,” she muttered. Great, now where are we?

“Page fifty-three, first paragraph,” Landon whispered over his shoulder.

I’ll thank him later, Rue thought. She went and found the page while the teacher made some offhand comment about how Rue should pay attention if she wanted to pass the test.

What Rue read promptly left her mind the second she finished it. The subject wasn’t hard, anyway. The government harped on the Meteor incident so much she was surprised she wasn’t bleeding it through the nose.

Rue fell back into lethargy.

Outside, the world passed by quietly, in perfect line.

The little Mag cars whined down the roads, electronic guidance systems processing directions and bringing their occupants to their destinations. ‘Driving’ was archaic, something only Rue’s late, senile great-grandfather had remembered dimly.

When the bell rang to leave, it barely registered in Rue’s mind until Carrie, her friend, prodded her in the arm.

“Hey! You spaced out all class. What’s up?”

Rue’s mind stalled a little.

“I was thinking…”

Thinking? About what? By the way, what’d you make on your SLE’s?”

“Ah…a seventeen,” Rue admitted, gathering her things.

“Really? Wow! You’re smart.”

“Thanks,” Rue muttered. She didn’t want to talk about test scores.

“I made a fifteen. Mom’s really happy with me.”

“Hn,” Rue said, and followed Carrie down the hall.

“But what were you thinking about?”

“About how I’m going to be stuck here until Doomsday,” Rue said bitterly.

“No you won’t!”

“Yeah, I will. The Agency only takes the most smart people, I’m not even in the top fourth of the class. And you know the Military won’t take me.”

“Unless you shave your head, but--”

“And they don’t give passes to anyone who doesn’t have to have one.”

“But I bet Mizuki’d help you out! Outside of the Blue Ribbons, you’re the likeliest to get out of this Hellhole.”

Rue sighed.

Right,” she agreed sarcastically. “And out of nowhere, my knight in fucking shining armor is going to ride in here and carry me away. Yeah, like that’s going to happen. Its as likely as…”

Rue trailed off, unable to find a comparison.

“Rue?”

“What?”
They now stood outside the school, mostly undisturbed by the freezing temperatures they’d grown up in, and ignoring the snow.

“Race you to the ice cream store,” Carrie challenged.

Rue stared at her.

“Ice cream? It’s like, twenty below.”

“By the time we get there, we’d be warm enough,” Carrie said, and flipped her curly black hair over her shoulder. She grinned wickedly.

“It’s icy.”

“When’ve you given a damn about that?” Carrie retorted, acting shocked with her friend.

Rue considered for a moment. Go home and be miserable, or go to the ice cream place with Carrie and be entertained for a few golden hours.

They stood at the top of the stairs, other students milled about around them.

“Carrie…”

Carrie waited patiently, as Rue turned to face the stairs.

Loser pays!” Rue shouted, suddenly springing down the steps and shooting off across the snow covered lawn.

It didn’t take Carrie long to wake up.

Get back here!” she yelled, and leapt after Rue.

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The pair of girls almost fell into the pastel colored shop, laughing hysterically as the paler, brown haired girl proclaimed victory with relish.

You cheated!” Carrie accused between gasps.

They stumbled into the front counter, still laughing.

“You’re just mad ‘cause you lost!” Rue retorted, and turned to the guy behind the counter. “Lime sherbet cone, please.”

“Regular cone?”

“Yeah. Regular size.”

“Alright,” he replied.

“I’d like a double chocolate small sprinkle cone,” Carrie said. “And our orders are gonna be together.”

Carrie turned to me.

“You want to spend the night this weekend?”

“Thought you had some band thing all weekend,” Rue replied distantly, staring at the many vats of ice cream.

“Yeah, but I’m not going,” Carrie said flippantly. “Teacher’s an ass.”

Rue smirked. One or two run-ins had been enough to convince her that Carrie’s band director was actually either an alien, or a devil.

“Was he mad?”

Furious,” Carrie affirmed gleefully. “You should have seen it.”

“Somebody should have got it on tape,” Rue said.

“Anyway. Did I tell you that Leon asked me out?”

Rue gave her friend a skeptical look.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I said no,” Carrie said, and handed over her credcard to the cashier.

“That’s good,” Rue replied. “I wouldn’t trust him.”

“Me either,” Carrie agreed. “People like him don’t go out with people like us unless they’re looking for a couple of laughs.”

“Didn’t your cousin get strung along like that?” Rue asked, as the two girls sat in a two person booth next to the front window.

“Yeah,” Carrie said. “But she doesn’t like to talk about it, so I don’t know what happened.”

“You know, just because they’re ‘going somewhere’ doesn’t give them a right to make idiots of the rest of us,” Rue said bitterly.

They think so,” Carrie replied icily.

“Test scores aren’t everything!”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” Carrie reminded her. She spooned more ice cream into her mouth.

“Changing the subject. What’d you think you made on that pop quiz?” Rue asked.

“In Partridge’s class? Oh, don’t get me started. I bombed it. What do you think you did?”

“I don’t know,” Rue said. “But I read the chapter a little after I took it and saw a couple of answers I got wrong. Like that guy who went insane - that was Sephiroth. I put Shinra. Go figure. There’s at least two answers I screwed up on.”

Both girl’s heads lifted at a familiar shrilling scream. An alert; the Military had entered the area.

“Don’t tell me there’s another Mako leak?” Carrie muttered.

“Why don’t they just revamp the whole system? It’d save a lot of money in the long run.”

“Because they’re idiots,” Carrie replied. “We’d better finish up pretty quick.”

“Yeah, I don’t want to explain that ‘All I was doing was eating ice cream, sir’ and get dragged back home under armed guard,” Rue said, and finished the last chunk of sherbet in one wolf.

The other patrons of the shop were getting up and leaving, too. The Military had absolute authority, and unquestioned right to block off and barricade a section of space if they wanted to.

The two of them ate their cones quickly, and left the store without a word.

The only sound on the streets were the slow moving military trucks, that roared around with too much torque and not a lot of speed.

Whatever this leak was doing, it was big, Rue thought. Or else there wouldn’t be so many troops here.

All things concerning Mako and energy supply were handled by the Military. It was all closely guarded, and although it certainly occurred to ask why, no one Rue yet knew had been so stupid.

Rue had seen too many troops to care to look at these.

“This is going to make it such a pain in the ass to get back home,” Rue commented.

“If it’s too much of a pain in the ass, just stay over at my house,” Carrie said.

Overnight?”

“Yeah, your parents’d understand if you couldn’t get back past the Military’s block off,” Carrie said. “Come on. My mom’s making spaghetti tonight.”

Rue considered.

“…No, I can’t,” she said, finally. “My mom wants me home tonight to clean. I’ve been putting it off.”

“But we’re talking the Military here, Rue! If you fuck up and go where you’re not supposed to, who knows what’ll happen!”

“Bah, I’ll just take my shortcut,” Rue replied. “I’ve taken it before when there’s a leak and I’m late, and there’s never been a problem.”

“…You sure? This looks like a big one…”

“I’m sure. Besides, I know those back alleys pretty well.” The two stopped at a street corner. This corner was where their trips home split.

“Okay, then. I’ll see you!”

“Bye!” Rue said, and waved as they parted ways.

Rue turned soon after that into a less populated, less wide street that was lined with snow covered awnings and boarded up windows.

For the most part people were heading in the opposite direction than Rue, but that was normal.

She ignored everyone else, but found the little inlet to the mazelike inner city alleys that crisscrossed the oldest parts of the town.

They hadn’t been intended for humans, and were very narrow.

Rue squeezed herself through, and stumbled out into the more navigable inner alleys. These were decent enough for a human to pass through if they didn’t mind narrow paths and towering walls around them.

“Okay, turn right at the red arrow and straight on until you see the Barrows Tower,” she muttered to herself, reciting directions she knew in her sleep.

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Right, then. Chapter numero uno. Ichi-ban, une. What ever. It's done. ^_^

I'm very displeased with FF.net's lousy half-assed new formatting system, since it screws up with my scene breaks. Why is that, hmm? Lousy fucking losers. Just load it to the page the way the author wanted it!

But, anyway. I guess I must explain myself. Sephiroth IS in existence at this time - but I'm not going to have him burst forth from the Lifestream without any apparently good reason like some rather strange parody of The Littler Mermaid. Sephy-chan is currenly experiencing the effects of rigor mortis. ^_^ I'm not a fast writer. Like in cooking (what the hell do I know about cooking, but it's a good analogy anyway) rushing is gonna kill it. But the reason I've got my OC starting out the fanfic is that while she's NOT IMPORTANT TO THE MAJOR, MAIN PLOT OF THE STORY, she is one of the supporting characters who sets events in motion. Oh and please don't ask me if she's going to be revealed as some descendant of an Ancient who nobody knew existed. >_<;;; The game explicitly said Aerith was the last ancient - well, half Ancient anyway. Sephy gets to have all the distinction. ^^
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