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Final Fantasy 7. Tifa Lockhart: Journey to Midgar.	By : Nickamano Category: Final Fantasy VII > General Views: 7334 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: Final Fantasy 7 is created and owned by Squaresoft, now Square-Enix. Nothing here is owned by me. It was created for entertainment purposes, and I am not profiting financially from the creation and online presentation of this story.

Chapter List
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22. Last Leg.
The truck was easy to spot, parked on the road leading into the car park, and though it was a wheeled flatbed truck it was engineless, little more than a lightweight chassis and frame and was drawn by two stocky looking Chocobo.

“Yep, you’ll be Tifa alright.” The driver said, his eyes alight and his grin licentious. “Tomi said to look out for a ‘stunning wench with long legs and huge kno…’ erm, ‘look out for a healthy-looking young lady’.”
“Oh, did she now!” Tifa grinned up at the man.

He was suddenly looking a little sheepish. Slender and almost handsome, with a mop of receding brown hair and silvery stubble. He looked to be in his thirties though he was grey beyond his years, or maybe older than he looked. He had a round soft face, and wore spectacles, making his hazel eyes look small and squinty. Despite his initial boundary-pushing lewdness, he seemed pleasant and friendly enough, so Tifa gave him the benefit of the doubt.

She hopped up into the truck’s cabin alongside the driver and dragged the heavy old door shut behind her.

This time, there were no infantrymen at the Eastern checkpoint, though there were a cadre of three of Shin-Ra’s Custom Sweeper mechanicals, along with a pair of cobalt blue suited and booted investigators. A pretty young woman, short in stature and slender, with pageboy-cut, golden blonde hair, and lightly tanned skin. Along with her was a tall, lean man, maybe a decade older than his partner with long, straight, shiny black hair, dark, narrow eyes and pale, almost white skin.

Concerned about having been identified as the culprit behind the deaths of the infantry troopers, Tifa hid in the back behind the cabin, in a small compartment used for smuggling the most illegal and dangerous cargos. It was accessed via a hidden trap door behind the passenger seat and was just large enough for her to sit inside. Of course, all of the cargo was technically illegal black-market goods but Shin-Ra apparently kept a blind eye to the illicit trade, as long as it kept the slums residents’ quiet and happy. The driver, apparently named Roja, didn’t question her about her request to conceal herself and she didn’t question him about his cargo.

Being stopped and interrogated by the dark blue suited investigators seemed to go smoothly enough, much more straight forward than Tifa had expected. Roja seemed to be on a list of regular travellers and they didn’t hold him up for more than a cursory glance. Listening in, Tifa had to admit he was a good actor, remaining calm and good natured and keeping up a flirtation with the blonde woman, who bristled at the attention. However, the other man who seemed to be the woman’s superior calmed her and allowed Roja to continue on his way.

Once they were out of sight of the checkpoint, Tifa popped out of the smuggling compartment and took her place on the passenger seat alongside Roja, who immediately instigated his apparently standard, though harmless, flirtatious assault on the simultaneously blushing and laughing teenager.

The driver reminded her of the grandfather from the little two-carriage caravan that had taken her past the edge of the Great Desert up to North Corel. He’d been flirtatious and sometimes outright dirty sure but also harmless, and actually looking back, quite good-natured and fun. And Roja turned out to be just the same. He flirted with her none stop throughout their journey though, more than once he put in a caveat, something akin to “if I’m overstepping with the naughty talk, just let me know and I’ll stop.”

Tifa, assured him she didn’t mind too much, though if he tried anything physical or did go too far, she would easily handle that… Though she might have to take over the reins until he came around, if he wasn’t too concussed.

He laughed at that and seemed to accept her at her word as, beyond a few lewdly veiled compliments and flush-cheeked glances at her, he was as much of a gentleman as he was probably capable. And Tifa enjoyed the trip, gave as good as she got, and they eventually came to Midgar’s Eastern Gate checkpoint on friendly terms.

Over the last five or ten miles, it was hard to work out distances by carriage as she was never sure how fast they were travelling, Tifa watched the green mesas. The highway had slashed a long and straight path through the low lying, sickly greenery which abruptly faded to a strange desert-like place. It turned into cracked rocks, parched earth and sudden cliffs, as though the land on which the road had been built had suddenly dropped twenty feet.

It was as though all vegetation had got bored and decided to up sticks and leave. There were a few little packs of savage animals visible across the petrified, lifeless earth but they would all be hunting each other, looking for the sickest or most tired, of the herd or pack or pride, to show weakness. And then the others, their own pack brothers, or other predators, would pounce. There didn’t seem to be anything else to eat but each other.

Tifa saw more of those Bandits too. Human or humanoid she wasn’t sure, a few of them sprinted across from the edges of the highway, from the rocks that formed its shoulders, and tried to intercept their carriage, but Roja had a rifle. Plus, the Chocobo, without requiring instruction accelerated into a sprint, outrunning the on-foot bandits easily.

Roja killed one of them with his rifle too, but apparently didn’t want to waste his ammunition as, once they were safely beyond their range of attack, he stowed the long-barrelled weapon. At almost the same moment, the Chocobo automatically slowed their speed back to their standard canter. Tifa glanced back behind them, watching the bandits running for safety, as a swathe of other predators sprinted over toward the single bandit corpse.

Roja tapped Tifa on the shoulder and then nodded his head forward as she turned. She looked up and saw the great high wall that separated the Capital City Midgar from the world beyond. It was designed to control immigration rather than emigration but was equal parts large, imposing border and protective shield, made of dull grey concrete with panels of reinforced glass. And it was approaching fast. Of course, beyond and above the wall stretched the dark elliptical silhouette of the upper plate and peeping above even it was the central skyscraper of Shin-Ra’s tower complex, at literal ground zero in the very centre of the upper plate.

As close as they now were to their destination, Tifa decided to conceal herself once more in the smuggling compartment. They were quickly approaching another Shin-Ra checkpoint just before the Eastern gate entrance, and she knew it would be best to maintain an accurate picture of the lone driver and his cargo, just in case the checkpoints were communicating with each other.

Foetally crouched, her knees under her chin in the almost pitch dark, Tifa listened carefully as the truck was given permission to pass through the gate. She heard the gate’s electronic hum as it slid shut behind them and then the reverberating boom of the electronic locks slamming home. And Roja took them onward, around a bend and then drew to a halt, halfway down a narrow side street. He finally tapped on a long sliver of bendy metal that rattled inside the compartment, signalling to Tifa that it was safe to get out.

“Well, here you go hot stuff. Midgar slums. Sector Four.” Roja, said.
“Thanks, Roja. It’s been fun.” She said, tossing him a grin and a wink.
“Hell, but I’m gonna miss you girl. Best’a luck to yer.” He said with a wave.

And then he tongue-clicked the pair of Chocobo into walking on and the little truck began to roll away up the filthy, grime laden road, leaving Tifa waist deep in a dank cloud of rather musty smelling dust.
End of Part two – FOLLOWING YOUR HEART.
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Final Fantasy 7. Tifa Lockhart: Journey to Midgar.