AUTHOR'S NOTES: All Final Fantasy VII characters, vehicles and themes © Squaresoft, and no infringement is intended.
Repressed Memories
Chapter Seven: There Goes My Hero
Written by Cloud
Part Two

     I stood on the deck of the airship, peering through spikes of unkept hair that had been allowed to grow too long. The city of Midgar loomed before me like a booming metropolis, wisps of Mako exhaust gushing and dissipating into the scattered skies. The world looked as though it had been forged of metal, eight gigantic reactors powering a monstrous steel disk that the inhabitants had come to call 'The Plate'. This was exactly what it was, of course, a high-rise built over the slums that trapped them forever in the darkness of night; the only light supplied by the Shinra themselves.
     It was my first time ever in the mechanical monster of Midgar, but right now SOLDIER was the farthest thing from my mind. I pushed the thoughts back down, where I wouldn't to deal with them. Astfirie was gone, and she wouldn't want for me to suffer this way. I started as the door to the interior of the airship creaked open and Zack stepped out almost silently.
     "Cloud," he called, "I think we gotta problem on our hands." I nodded, taking the handle of my HardEdge and following my friend into the Highwind's interior. Sephiroth stood there, the black of his cape clashing violently with the white of the lab coat that the balding man he was talking to wore.
     "This is a rash decision, Sephiroth." The scientist stated, "We don't need a pilot like Highwind for the Space Program. It'll probably go under anyway, ever since he stopped the launch of the 26th rocket we built space exploration has not been one of our priorities." Sephiroth's eyes burned,      "I will have no one contradict my authority again, Hojo."
     "He built this ship himself," the man known as Hojo replied, "It will not be easy to take it from him. Cid Highwind will not go down without a fight." The dark man smiled,
     "I take it you've prepared something then…" The other grinned strangely, producing a syringe from his lab coat pocket.
     "Wouldn't want to have to injure one of Shinra's top pilots…" Sephiroth turned to Zack and I, as if suddenly realizing we were there.
     "Cloud, Zack, you're with me. Subdue the pilot with any measure necessary." The cloaked figure commanded. Zack looked to me for acknowledgement. I slowly nodded my head as I drew the HardEdge with Zack and the Great Sephiroth himself in tow. I didn't like the idea of taking the Highwind away from its Captain, but I felt sure that Sephiroth knew best. And it hadn't really been wrong for Sephiroth to want to kill the pirates. Hell, we all wanted them dead. In this way I rationalized what I was about to do to myself, in this way I would still feel like I was a hero even if what I was doing wasn't right. The three of us entered the bridge of the airship, Sephiroth taking the lead and standing menacingly in front of the Captain. The pilot's cigarette fell right out of his mouth, the ashes hissing on the cold steel floor.
     "What the @##@'s goin' on?!" he asked, a tinge of dread in his blue eyes. Cid Highwind was built well, wearing a flight jacket and goggles that he would never had needed in an airship such as this one. At his arms length was a spear he had obviously fashioned by himself, and I felt a cold anger rushing through me as I remembered the last dragoon I had faced. This Cid was a man to be reckoned with, but also one like so many others whose memory escaped me in the here and now. As the man who would one day be my friend angrily awaited Sephiroth's reply, the dark man produced a legal document from within his blackened cloak, handing it to the pilot.      "You are being transferred back to the Space Division where you will await the approval for the re-launch of the Shinra 26." Sephiroth stated evenly as the Captain's anger grew to a rolling boil, his rage mounting as he grit his teeth in silent fury. Then the words came pouring out of his foul mouth like a turbulent river that has broken through its dam.
     "You @#%^!" he shouted at the cloaked man, "You bastards know damn well that rusty old piece of shit is never going to outer space! There's no profit in it! Why d'ya need me to pilot the @#%#in' thing?!"
     Sephiroth stood ice cold, not even appearing to breathe, his face a completely callous mask to the reality he was binded to. A realization seemed to come over the Captain as Sephiroth's silence became deafening. "You just want to take my ship away from me, don't you? You dirty @#%#! I ain't letting this happen again, not in a million years!" The pilot dove for his spear, and that was all that Hojo needed to subdue him with force. I hadn't even seen him enter the room, but now he was upon the Captain, driving that cruel needle into his thigh and releasing whatever fluid it contained. The light from Cid's eyes dulled as the effects of the syringe came over him. The blonde man flailed drunkenly about, his senses failing him before he even came within reach of his spear.
     "Why?' he asked no one in particular, "Why are they doing this to me?"
     "Why Cid?" Hojo said in that same slow and even voice, as if he were talking to a child,
"Because you're the best, the best pilot that Shinra's got. Don't you want to go to outer space? Don't you want to fulfill your dream?" "Outer…space…" Cid said in a detached and drunken voice. For a moment it seemed as if the sedated man had smiled until he fell unconscious on the floor of his own ship.

     The pilot's sedated grin was burning in the back of my tattered mind. There was getting to be a collection of voices in my head, which I had come to jokingly dub 'The Peanut Gallery.' I shut them all up, feeling feverish as I did so. What we had done in there was wrong, genuinely wrong. Sephiroth wasn't the hero I expected him to be. Nothing within the cruel grip of reality will ever live up to the dream that you fabricate within the reaches of your own subconscious. Nothing is ever as pure and just and heroic, as the naïve human heart tend to make it out to be. Only by becoming the master of your own illusionary world will you ever find ultimate good within one person and ultimate evil within another. As it always has been, there was no truth, there was no justice, as both are in the eye of the beholder. Suddenly I didn't want to become a member of SOLDIER anymore, I just wanted to run. Somewhere in this world there must be something worth fighting for.
     There is- a beautiful young lady who lives in Nibelhiem. Astfirie was dead, but I could still become somebody, go back to Nibel with all my fame and prestige and sweep Tifa into my arms. It was the only hope that I had left, and it burned a blazing fire in my soul. I would become a member of SOLDIER first class, and I would fight with the anger of a man that love had forgotten.
     Maybe I wouldn't even have to go through the training. Sephiroth had seen what I could do, perhaps he would get be into the program without the usual regulations. It seemed like a good plan, but I wasn't going anywhere without Zack. He was the only friend I had in this world, and he was coming with me.
     I walked about the interior of the airship, searching for the other punk kid who had shared in my joy and my pain. My boots clanked methodically against the metal floor as I turned the ship inside out, but he was nowhere to be found. I entered the room he had been staying in, which was completely cleaned out of any of his belongings. Had Zack had a change of heart? My eyes strained to find any evidence that my friend had been here, and came to rest on an envelope addressed to me. I quickly tore it open, ripping a part of the page itself as I did so. Luckily for me it was still readable. The letter read:
     Cloud-
     I'm going to Sector Five to see Aeris. Sephiroth has already left the airship. I asked him to admit us into SOLDIER without the training, but he insisted that for our own good we enter the program at the block. He told me that he expects both of us to do well, but without the mental development we wouldn't be strong enough to do what has to be done. I was a little disappointed, but there's nothing we can do about it. So I guess I'll see you at the barracks, because Cloud, it's time to show the world what we can do.

Your friend,
Zack Garek

     Show the world what we can do! Yes, I'd show them. I'd show them all! Sephiroth had basically just slapped me in the face for not killing Astfirie's murderer, if I had been a cold-blooded killer I'd have been admitted already! I realized my hands had clenched into fists, crumbling the letter in senseless anger.
     "I'm coming for you Fate, and Hell is coming with me!" I heard myself shouting aloud, "D'ya hear? HELL'S COMING WITH ME!!!" The world burned a fiery rage as my senseless anger forced itself out from within my heart; anger at Astfirie for leaving me here alone, anger at Sephiroth for not being a hero in the truest sense of the word, anger at the world for destroying my mind- and smoking vengeance on my mind for allowing itself to be destroyed.