By: Caleb


The first I ever heard of SOLDIER was when I was seven, a young boy living in a small village far from the war.  You might remember that war, the one that gave the Shinra an excuse to take over government.  I remember hearing tales from travelers fleeing Wutai and passing through my small village of Gongaga.  Sitting by the fire in the inn, the traveler would tell us all about the war; we didn’t have television, and travelers were our best sources of news.  Gongaga was remote.  The travelers all spoke of SOLDIER, the elite troops of Shinra Incorporated, and the conversation would always lead to one man, Sephiroth.  Sephiroth could single-handedly take out and entire brigade of rebels and his tactics were unparalleled.
Every journeyer had a description of the great general; they all agreed that he was tall, silver-haired, and green-eyed, and that he was stronger and smarter than any man alive.  Glorious he was called by some, noble by others, and still others would call him a god.  On top of being all these things, he was my idol; I wanted to be just like this hero of faraway places.  I’d often picture it; the war continuing, Sephiroth dying in some unfortunate tragedy, but ready to take his place and lead the forces of Shinra to victory would be Zack, no, the Great Zack.  It was in the Gongaga Inn, at age seven, that I realized that my dream was to join SOLDIER.
The war ended, soldier and SOLDIER alike went home, and Shinra Incorporated began controlling the world.  Mako was cheap, and the Shinra representative convinced the people of Gongaga to accept a prototype reactor in the village.  Everything was going fine until I was about fourteen, and the reactor blew.  No one really knows why the reactor exploded; it just did.  After all, it was a prototype; it was the most likely type to have problems.  However, it did decimate my home, and my best friend died in the fires caused by the blast.  Once again, I resolved to join SOLDIER, but this time it was for a different reason.  I was going to destroy the people who had destroyed my home, and I would do it from inside their organization.
 

 As soon as I was sixteen, the minimum age for entrance into SOLDIER, I left Gongaga, the town where I had spent my entire life, and headed for Midgar.  Nothing much had changed in the two years since the accident; a few more people had died, some had moved away, but the burned up reactor still sat there, mocking us.
 So, like I said, I set out from Gongaga on my sixteenth birthday.  It was raining, and my parents were crying.  Had there been movies in my childhood, I would have thought of how great of a movie scene our parting would be.
 It rained all that day, and I had the most difficult time setting up a fire.  Come to think of it, I really had a hard time doing just about anything.  Except fighting.
 Now don’t make fun.  I was a stupid sixteen year-old, and I thought that all I’d have to do is go to Midgar, find the Turks, and I would be accepted.  I had not thought of how I was going to reach Midgar, how I would find the Turks, or what I would do for food until I did make it into the Shinra army, regardless of whether or not I made it into SOLDIER.  Like I said, all I could do was fight, and that was a lucky thing.
 Just after I had managed to get my pitiful, smoky fire lit and cook a small rabbit my father had trapped for me, a troll attacked my camp, no doubt attracted by the smell of the roasting meat.  I had been avoiding the roads for a simple reason: thieves ply their trade along roads.  I figured that if I could avoid the swarms of highwaymen, I would have an easy trip to Midgar.  Have I mentioned that I was stupid back then?
 So this troll barged into my camp, and I drew my sword.  It was a really stupid-looking sword, but I had been trained with it, and it was almost a part of me.  I called it the Buster.  I won’t give the details of the battle, but I will say that I almost lost.  I was lucky that the troll happened to step in my fire and burn his foot.  That distracted him long enough for me to lob off his head.  I spent an hour rekindling my fire, and then I checked the corpse for stolen Gil.  There wasn’t any.  I disposed of the troll’s body and slept with no dreams.
 I traveled on in that manner until I reached a river, which was on my map, and then a desert that was most certainly not on any map I had.  I had planned on easy traveling to the town of South Corel, then I would hitch a ride to Costa del Sol, but it looked as if South Corel was no more, and I wasn’t going to even attempt a crossing of that quicksand desert.  Since I couldn’t cross the desert, I would have to find a way around it; maybe the town of North Corel would still be fine.
 As I skirted the desert, keeping it on my right, I saw a strange, golden tree-shaped structure looming over the horizon.  I was going to have some major questions to ask when I reached North Corel.
 Perhaps I should have been thinking about how I was going to finance my little expedition, and how I was going to pay for a stay at the Corel Inn.  But, like I said, I was only sixteen.

TO BE CONTINUED…