CHAPTER 12: Aftermath... comes Earth Science!

Darkness.

Pain... all across your body, like a ton of bricks just fell right on top of you. Then again, a tunnel made of bricks weighing probably a ton DID just fall on you, so the feeling's justified.

You're disoriented... even if you could see, everything would be swirling around. If you weren't laying down, you'd surely fall. As your hearing returns, you can barely hear your accomplice's muffles and moans... they must certainly be feeling as much pain as you are. They all went through the same thing, after all.

"Ugh... ow. So... Dyne... that was your idea of a 'small explosion'?" Zack spat, hoping the AVALANCHE leader could hear him.

Dyne let out a cough to clear his lungs before replying. "Th-that... wasn't supposed to happen," he tried to convince not only Zack, but himself as well.

"There... there's a light up ahead..." Jessie informed the others. Not that it did any of them any good, as they were all pinned beneath almost a ton of rubble... or so it felt like.

They had been running into the sector 8 alcove when the blast unexpectedly went off. Most of the man-made "cave" was incinerated, but a good chunk of it remained enough intact to fall onto the reactor's saboteurs. They had been lucky... if they were any slower or any faster, the blast would have most certainly gotten them. Whatever bad fortune had caused the explosion to become so intense gave pity to the five-member team, and spared their lives. This pity also allowed for what was left of the artificial cavern to support most of it's own weight, only trapping its occupants under relatively light beams and debris.

A slight crumbling could be heard, and a bit more light shone through the tiny cracks and holes in the debris. It was obvious that someone was digging through the remains of the tunnel, possibly for any survivors.

Dyne suddenly began to feel nervous... if it was a Shinra team, they would most certainly get the blame for all of this, with no way of talking out of it... but if it was one of the AVALANCHE "rescue teams", they surely had to be informed that there were indeed survivors trapped in the rubble before they gave up.

Then again, if they didn't say anything, they could well slowly die down there. Dyne had to think fast...

"Hey, DOWN HERE!" came Zack's voice, making Dyne's decision for him.

Dyne muttered a near silent curse at Zack's remark. Looks like they'll find us now, whoever they are... the AVALANCHE leader thought to himself. The rubble began to clear away faster, and Dyne could hear the people above shouting out to one another. Time seemed to slow down for Dyne as whoever was digging through the debris came closer...

Finally they broke through. Bright, artificial light poured through into the small hole where the AVALANCHE members lay, and Dyne swallowed hard as he saw several figures in front of him... but he couldn't make out any features...

"Hey, Tifa!" Zack yelled. One of the figures came in closer and removed more debris to make their way down.

Tifa peeked down into the small hole. Everyone was pinned by rubble, but none of them seemed too badly hurt. Biggs and Wedge appeared to be unconscious, though. She turned to the three people behind her. "Quick, get a crane, and get the others over here!" she commanded. Two of the three others nodded and ran off in search of their objectives, the third unable, still in shock of everything around him. Tifa had to -regretfully- bark her orders at him a second time before he snapped out of his stupor and did what he was told. Tifa knew how he was feeling, but also knew this was not the time for emotions. The buxom ninja looked back down into the hole. "You guys okay?"

"Yes, Tifa, we're fine..." Dyne started, "But I want to know just what the hell happened back there!"

"Yeah, Dyne, what DID happen?" Zack said with more than a hint of contempt.

"Look, I don't know!" The blue-hair man spat, "But I'm going to find out... and whoever's responsible... is going to pay dearly." Dyne then paused for a moment to collect himself. He looked back up to Tifa, "Report. What's... what's our status?"

"Well," Tifa said, looking around for Shinra troops before she responded, "Reactor number one was totaled, and most of the surrounding area was destroyed, too. I-I think there's been damage to the adjoining sectors and the Shinra building, as well. The Shinra say they are evacuating the area because they suspect there may be Mako radiation floating around... Of course, that's just up-top. We've had to re-route our forces to help evacuate the slums in those sectors..."

Tifa was cut off as the crane she requested came rolling in, along with a few dump trucks and about a dozen AVALANCHE members. They quickly went to work, digging through the debris. They had to be careful not to move any pieces that were holding the small hole together, and not make it collapse on itself. Dyne was the first to be pulled free. He scrambled up out of the small enclosure, past his agents. He had to see the destruction he inadvertently caused. He needed to know how many people died by his hand this time, because of his mistakes.

The tall, proud Shinra tower was the only thing he could see. Almost everything else in the immediate vicinity had been reduced to a flat path of smoldering rubble. There were no more streets or alleys, just a large, empty field of cement, metal, and glass. Most of the remains of the reactor and nearby buildings had been forced away from the blast, only leaving a charred, burning plate at Dyne's feet. The plate was still holding together, but barely. There were gaps in the ground, and it seemed to continue to crumble slowly into itself. Dyne fell to his knees, and bowed his head, dismayed at the destruction. This wasn't supposed to happen. Not like this. The scents of burning flesh and stone assaulted his nostrils, smoke scratched at his eyes, and his heart sank.

Zack, who'd finally been freed, approached Dyne slowly from behind, also taking in the carnage. He noticed that only the buildings on the furthest edges of the sector were still in tact, everything else in the area was just a flat plain of dusty debris. Dyne looked behind himself at the former SOLIDER, and their eyes locked. Neither of them said anything, they didn't have to. Dyne just turned back around and sank his head back down. Zack shook his head and stormed off.

Tifa witnessed this, and took off after him, using a hand signal to tell the others to keep working.

"Hey, where do you think you're going?!" Tifa yelled out.

Zack slowed down enough to let her catch up, but he didn't stop all together. He only spoke a few minutes later when they were far into the next sector. "Dyne promised this wouldn't happen..." he muttered, looking at the ruins of a playhouse. It seems mostly intact, but the side of the wall had collapsed under pressure when the adjoining building had fallen on top of it. The remains of a large sign indicated that the play "Loveless" was being shown. A small orange truck was flipped over, and was burning slightly on its exposed underside. Zack scanned the area with analytical eyes and saw an arm sticking out from under a boulder. Kneeling over, he picked the debris up and tossed it aside. A young man, no older than 20, had lay crushed beneath. Nothing could be done for him.

Tifa watched as Zack seemed to become slightly panicked. He wandered around, picking through the debris as though looking for something... or someone. "Zack..." Tifa started, running a hand through her short brown hair, "There's nothing here... we have to help free the others and get out of here... there's Mako radiation in the air, not to mention what Shinra troops will do if we're identified..."

Zack turned back to Tifa and gave her something of a cold glance, then quickly went back to what he was doing. "I can withstand the radiation," Zack informed her, "And I look like any other SOLDIER, so I've got nothing to worry about." After he said this, Zack picked up another couple of rocks and dug through some more debris, but didn't find anything. The entire street was lined with rubble, even though most of the buildings in the area seemed to be relatively all together. Zack reasoned most of the debris he was shifting through may have once been part of the reactor, or buildings which may have been close to it.

"What are you looking for?" Tifa inquired, losing patience but still curious as to what Zack was up to.

"I... know someone who comes up here a lot," Zack explained, "I... if she was here, I HAVE to know..." he said, trailing off.

Suddenly, Zack and Tifa were assaulted by a bright light from above. A Shinra helicopter had spotted them, and hovered menacingly over the two, forcing up dust from the ground by its mighty propellers as they cut through the air.

"Identify yourselves!" someone said using a loudspeaker from inside the flying contraption.

"Relax!" Zack shouted back, "I'm just looking for survivors!"

"I said, IDENTIFY YOURSELF!" The voice responded.

"Hey, look! I'm a FIRST CLASS SOLDIER! I don't have to answer to you!"

There was a brief silence for a few moments...

"Hey, YOU'RE THAT RENEGADE!"

And with that, two troops positioned themselves by the doorway, aiming their machineguns at the duo below them.

"Run!" Tifa warned, already making her escape. Zack took off after her as bullets flew in his vicinity, barely missing him. Getting across the rubble was hard work, as they had to be careful not to get their feet stuck between two boulders or trip on a pipe. Zack quickly spun around, and concentrated on his Bolt Materia...

...but it wasn't there.

"Oh yeah," he lamented, remembering that he'd given it to Jessie. He jumped back as bullets sprayed the ground he stood on. He gambled on using his Ice Materia, and targeted the engine. Green light emanated at his feet, and thrusting out his hands, a burst of cold energy racked the engine... and melted into water.

The helicopter began to sputter and spin out of control. The water left over from the Ice spell had caused the helicopter's computer to short circuit and burn out. It struggled to stay in the air as the pilot wrestled with the controls, but nonetheless the flying machine crashed into the nearby remains of a small apartment building, blowing up into a ball of flame. The Ex-SOLDIER wasted no time contemplating if there was a better way to handle the situation, and took off back towards Tifa and the others.

Nearby, a small pile of loose rubble began to shift slightly, unseen by anyone. A larger piece was pushed aside from beneath, and a slender figure emerged, surrounded by a golden glow of divine protection. The glow faded away, and the flower girl emerged, a puzzled expression across her face. She was shocked, to say the least. This had been unexpected. She knew that the reactor would explode... It was her destiny to be there to witness the aftermath. But something had changed... something else had happened which was not supposed to.

Adding to the mystery were the two people running away. She thought recognized them both, but neither of them should have been there... especially not HIM. Not even daring to try to contemplate all of this, the flower girl stumbled over to the radiator where she had been standing before, only to find something else amiss.

No more energy poured out from it. She would receive no more answers here. She had to get back home, that much she knew... though it now seemed as though everything she "knew" was about to be called into serious question...

Zack and Tifa met back up with Dyne and the others. Biggs and Wedge were just coming around, having been freed from the debris. Zack was about to give Dyne a serious piece of his mind, but realized that Dyne had more pressing concerns at the moment.

Three tanks lumbered slowly but surely towards the AVALANCHE members, flanked by five helicopters. A HumVee rolled in behind the tanks, as though being escorted by the mammoth war machines. With a simple hand motion, Dyne "ordered" his people to stay put as the battalion approached. The roar of the tanks treading through rubble filled the air, making for an ominous approach. As the Shinra approached AVALANCHE, they slowed down and came to a stop. A few men piled out of the tanks, dressed in what looked like radiation containment suits. They started spraying the area with some kind of mist, which solidified into foam and fell to the ground.

The Helicopters landed nearby with more such men, who started doing more of the same, but they were flanked by normal MPs, who readied their guns at the militia members before them. The other vehicle came around the lead tank and stop a mere few feet from AVALANCHE, and President Shinra stepped out. He was a short, portly man with blonde hair turning white, as well as a thin, unbecoming mustache to go against his flabby face. He wore a pair of glasses to aid his failing eyesight, and held a cane to support his chubby, though inadequately weak, form. In short, he looked much worse than a man of his age at 54 normally would. He wore a very expensive dark-red suit, made from the finest Wutianese silk, and his shoes were made of real leather and laced with gold, probably costing what a normal person would make in a month. So despite his decrepit form, he still held an air of importance, dignity, and leadership to those around him.

Though Dyne and his followers were not so easily taken.

"President," Dyne spat, though feigning respect.

"Dyne... Jackman, correct?" The president responded in much the same tone.

Dyne didn't answer, and did not speak as both he and President Shinra stared down one another. The president conceded the staring contest to look around at all the destruction. He noticed that there seemed to be an unusual calm... most sights of destruction contained chaos and panic... but here, there was just an eerie, hallow "peace" if you could call it that.

"This is quite a mess you've caused," Shinra said in a patronizing tone. It almost seemed as if he didn't care that he was standing on a mass grave right at that moment.

"I've caused nothing," Dyne replied, folding his arms. "In fact, I'm sure this is your fault." Dyne had said that, but in all honesty, he was completely unsure what to make of the situation, who was responsible... But he was not about to give the President of the Shinra Empire any leverage by admitting any fault.

President Shinra let out a slight grunt. "Please. Give me some credit. I know that you and your playmates planned to bomb one of my reactors. And I'm sure I would have done more to stop you if I knew you planned on wiping out all of Sector 1 with it."

"I planned no such thing!" Dyne retorted, growing a tad angry with the president's lack of concern. "This only proves how unsafe these death-traps are!" With that, he swept his arm and took a step towards the President, but was stopped by the sounds of about a dozen guns being loaded. The AVALANCHE leader narrowed his eyes and very, very slowly stood straight back up, regaining his composure. "I assure you, 'Mister President', AVALANCHE has nothing to do with this. Such a stunt would be suicide, and I do NOT send my men on suicide missions." Dyne paused to let that sink in. "You've surrounded your city with time bombs. If they don't blow us all to oblivion, the radiation will slowly weaken us, the monsters they create will kill us... and if not that, then they'll continue to suck up on the Planet's resources until there's nothing left!"

The president looked at the taller man with a neutral expression, then slowly gazed around. He counted no more than a dozen of these... "Earthquakers" or whatever they called themselves, and while he was sure that his men could take them out...

"Get back beneath the plate with the rest of the trash where you belong," Shinra said dismissively. With that, he turned around and hopped back into his vehicle, and instructed the driver to head back to Shinra HQ.

"THIS ISN'T OVER!" Dyne shouted out in defiance. The Shinra military men slowly backed away into their own vehicles and proceeded to leave, letting the haz-mat crews and rescue workers do their jobs.

The President sat back in a leather seat of his HumVee while his driver spoke, "Sir, why didn't we just KILL THEM?!" The driver was also a short, fat man, though he possessed much more muscle than the president. He had a long, black beard and wore a green army uniform decorated with several medals.

"Heidegger, you have to understand, Dyne has the support of nearly half the population in Midgar. If he dies, we face a full out civil war. He's the only thing keeping those rats beneath the plate in their place. Also, doing that would make a martyr of him. There's too many cons..."

"So what do we do now, sir?" the chubby general asked.

"Well, since we managed to evacuate most of sectors 8, 1, and 2 before this all happened, we've at least made some decent PR... though now we'll have to answer such questions like 'If we knew it was going to happen, why didn't we take preventative measures' and the like... though since we own the press, we can make sure we have acceptable answers to such questions before they're asked. Hopefully this will start convincing people that Dyne and his bunch are destructive, ruthless, and not worthy of sympathy. I think all things considered, we set them up for a nice fall."

"Sure, blow up a reactor and destroy 3 sectors... small price to pay, sir," Heidegger muttered.

"Heidegger, you're a military man, not an urban welfare worker. Quit complaining."

"...yessir."

***

The trip back to the Sector Seven slums was quiet and full of melancholy. AVALANCHE took freight elevators back down onto the surface, a recent addition they had built into the plate sections without Shinra's knowledge. Zack was in a truck with Jessie, Johnny, and a bunch of other people he didn't know. Zack was carefully thinking over what had happened... Was this supposed to have happened? Was Dyne lying to him just to gain his allegiance, or was this really an accident? Zack normally didn't ponder about such things, and found himself coming up with all sorts of ridiculous answers. It didn't help that Jessie kept looking at him and turning away, while Johnny was giving him an intense, suspicious stare.

"What're you looking at?" Zack muttered to Johnny, completely devoid of his omnipresent sense of humor.

"You ratted us out and messed with that bomb... I don't know HOW, but I know you did," Johnny answered candidly.

"Johnny, stop it!" Jessie interjected, a hint of contempt in her voice, "Zack didn't do anything... at least, not to the bomb! I was there! Dyne had it the whole time! Zack never had the chance to do anything!"

Johnny gave the girl a sour look, but then focused back on Zack. "You really didn't do anything?"

"I swear..." Zack said, holding up his hands and shaking his head. "This whole thing just pisses me right off. When I find out who did this-"

"Prove it," Johnny said, interrupting Zack.

"Huh?"

"Give me your SOLDIER's oath that you had NOTHING to do with this!" Johnny said challengingly, standing up.

"How do you know about that?" Zack asked, referring to the SOLDIER oath.

"I tried to join before I shacked up with these guys. Now, give me your oath!"

"I can't do that," Zack replied humbly.

"Because you DID have something to do with this!" Johnny spat accusingly.

"NO, because I'm not in SOLDIER anymore, jackass!" Zack defended, almost standing up himself to face his accuser.

Johnny remained silent for a moment and sat back down. The slightest hint of a smile seemed to appear on his wolfish face. "Well, I guess at the very least you're not as stupid as Tifa says you are."

"Yeah, that's r... HEY! She said WHAT?!"

"Oh, why do you care what Tifa thinks?" Jessie interjected, who sat a bit closer to Zack now than she had been before.

Zack looked between Jessie and Johnny for a moment, then plopped back with his hands behind his head. He brought up one of his legs and crossed it over the other. "No, forget it, I don't. Let her think I'm stupid, I don't care! Heck, she probably IS smarter than me, what with room for THREE brains on that body of hers..."

Jessie snickered as Johnny let out a hearty laugh. But then that was it. No one talked the rest of the way, as they were all suddenly reminded of what had just happened. For no reason whatsoever, they unanimously decided to drop the accusations and jokes in light of the destruction they seemed to of unwittingly caused. They knew it was going to be a long next couple of days...

***

pAiN... green, turning brown... light, becoming dark

So pain-

ful

cannot, think

disruption, change... in reality... out

of control Must stop the

experiment?

No... too late cannot ride it through it must be no

I'm afraid you don't have a choice.

what have youIwe done!

You'll never find out, until it's too late.

mUst.. mAkE cOnTaCt... con-TACT with hEr..

NO.

pAiN... p a i n . . .*

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