A/N: Okay, this is more like an introductory chapter to the story, just to get all you readers acquainted with a couple of the main characters. Sorry if it seems a bit slow. The rest of the story will get more interesting, really. Just have faith! Um, yes, I want feedback. The more the merrier. I want to know if I'm writing some decent stuff or...not...decent stuff. Alright that's all the commentary for tonight, my brain needs rest.
Disclaimer: Everything that has to do with Final Fantasy and belongs to Square Enix...um...belongs to Square Enix. The new characters such as Tori and Miya Momoko are mine.
Tori Momoko didn't consider herself pretty. In fact, if anything she thought of herself as one of the plainest slips of female life there ever was. Many girls who, like her, were seventeen-years-old usually had looks that would make monsters swoon around them and figures that could kill. Tori was always the black sheep of the flock. The other girls would have rich, flowing black hair whereas she was stuck with a dark brown that had a slight curl to it. Her eyes were brown too, but when she looked at them, they weren't rich like the other girls. Of course, these thoughts may have just been the side effects of common teenage feelings or perhaps it was just some case of PMS, but Tori blamed her plainness solely on fate. Maybe she just wasn't meant to be a pretty young woman with friends left and right, which was what some girls seemed to be able to do miraculously, even in these dark times.
It had been two years since Meteor had hit the metropolis that was Midgar, if you could even call it a metropolis. It was more like a city run by a company that was insane enough to be able to get away with sucking the life right out of the planet. She never liked the idea that Shin-Ra was killing the planet, but she'd never had the courage to act like some resistance groups, and, with the passing years, had grown to accept it as a way of life. The concept that some things needed to be given up in order for other things to prosper had been drummed into her head ever since she was a child growing up in the Sector 3 slums. While it certainly didn't make for the best living conditions, at least Sector 3 was a little better than some of the other sectors. There wasn't as much violence and drugs, although this fact didn't mean that her home had been completely safe.
Her parents were as goodly a couple as they could be in such conditions. At least they tried to make life as good as possible for Tori and her younger sister, Miya. Miya was three years younger and had been blessed with a bright and peppy spirit that had the uncanny ability to draw all the attention and affection to herself. She was also, much to Tori's chagrin, given the looks of a supermodel. Before Meteor had hit and Tori and Miya were in the meager high school that Sector 3 could offer, all of the decent guys had been drawn to Miya like moths to a lantern, leaving Tori in a shadow. The strange thing was, that although she recieved all this praise, Miya would always recognize Tori as the older sibling, stronger, wiser, and much more knowledgeable when it came to life on the streets. Miya had always found some way to get herself into trouble when it came to people in the slums. When it ranged from deadbeats who would do anything to pick up a girl or some gang being tracked by the local police that somehow managed to pull Miya along for the ride, Miya had always needed protection, and Tori had been the one to give it.
When Sector 3 was destroyed by the impact of Meteor, Tori and Miya had sought refuge underneath a large pile of rubble that had been a lot sturdier than it appeared. The entire city had been in a panic and it had been by sheer luck that the sisters had been near the ruins when they were. Their parents, however, hadn't been so fortunate. Soon after Tori and Miya had crawled out of their shelter with dirt and ashes all over their high school uniforms and with little more injuries than cuts and bruises all over their skin, they had gone back to their once familiar home only to face a near barren plot of land, their parents nowhere to be seen. The sisters had searched day and night through the damage for their parents just as so many other people around the ruined city had done, always searching for lost loved ones that they knew deep within their hearts hadn't made it.
Well, now that their old life was gone, a new life had to be established. Days of wandering around the ruined Midgar left the sisters mentally and physically exhausted and completely vulnerable to anything that might come their way. They had barely able to survive without resorting to common thievery to get food. Not like anyone ever tried to resist them, though. The food they found had been left over in the ruins of homes all around the remains of the sectors. The inhabitants of the homes had either been dead or, like them, had gone to search for a new life. It had been through the kindness of a benevolent old man that Tori and Miya had found hope. He had found the sisters asleep side-by-side in a little alcove under a spent machine and had taken pity on them. He had introduced himself as Jiro and had brought them to his home, which turned out to be a used bookstore in the region that would have been Sector 2 before Meteor. Jiro and his wife had given them food and a place to stay and get cleaned up. The grime from the ruined city had collected on them, making them not at all recognizable when compared to how they had looked before.
After the generous hospitality offered, Tori and Miya had wanted to repay the elderly couple in some way, so, in return for giving them a place to stay, the sisters began to work in the bookstore and do errands for them while trying to help the rest of the people in the sector who weren't as fortunate rebuild their lives. For two years Tori and Miya lived in this way. While the rest of Midgar was recovering, they had found a rare solace that, unfortunately, along with the temporary peace that the rest of Midgar had found, was doomed to end.