As suspected, Barret was being too hard on himself. He used to live in a mining town called Corel. Coal was getting used less and less, so the villagers voted on letting the Shinra build a Mako reactor in the mountains nearby. Barret was one of the supporters of the idea, while the only person against it was his friend Dyne. The village accepted the Shinra offer, but soon enough, the company showed its true face. For some reason, probably to remove the potential bother, they burned down Corel and killed everyone there. Barret and Dyne were on their way home from the reactor when it happened and got ambushed by a guard platoon. Barret survived with his arm ruined, but Dyne fell off a cliff.
Flash forward to today, all the survivors moved tho North Corel and they blame Barret for all that happened, for some reason Cloud didn’t really understand. I mean, sure, Barret was a Shinra supporter back then, but so were most people.
In any case, this didn’t matter now. The gang needed to get information and the best place for that was to go where everyone goes – The Golden Saucer. The entrance fee was costly, at 3000 Gil, but hopefully it would be worth it. Barret went to sulk on his own, while Cloud took Aeris to explore and investigate.
This is one of the images that drew me to the game. I saw it first in a Croatian gaming magazine called PSX.
At the Wonder Square, they encountered a strange creature, describing itself as a fortune telling machine called Caith Sith. As far as fortune telling goes, it seemed to be broken because, even though it’s supposed to be able to find lost items and people, it couldn’t say much about Sephiroth’s whereabouts. He did say one thing, though. Cloud will find what he’s after, but he will lose something very dear to him on the way. This puzzled the creature, so it decided to accompany the gang.
Things made a turn for the worse at the Battle Square. The guard at the entrance was found dead. The party decided to investigate further and soon found most of the people there to be dead or dying due to gunshot wounds. Before they could understand what happened, the security arrived and mistook them for the killers, casting them to the desert prison bellow the Golden Saucer. This is where the gang found Barret again. Even though the gunshot wounds pointed at him, he denied the blame. Apparently, there was another person with a weapon drafted to his arm. The doctor who did the procedure on Barret said so.
Upon some exploration, Cloud found out the only way to escape the prison is by winning a race as a Chocobo jockey. Of course, in order to become a jockey, the local “boss” needs to approve it. As suspected, the boss was none other than Dyne. He survived the fall and had the same procedure as Barret, but he was not as well of mind. He wants to destroy everything due to what happened to him. He wants to destroy the rest of the town, the Shinra, the world, even his daughter, Marlene, who Barret took care of for the past few years. He is going to start with the gang.
Cloud was ready to engage, but Barret asked him to hold back. He was the one who needs to handle this and so he did, without much issue. Before the Dyne realized he was in the wrong and then threw himself off a cliff, for the second time.
With the “boss” out of the way, Cloud was “approved” as a jockey and it was just a matter of time before he won his first race. Even better the owner of the Golden Saucer, Dio, realized the gang was wrongfully accused and pardoned all of them. As an apology, he additionally awarded them a buggy, which will allow them to traverse rivers and deserts. He also gave them the crucial information they have been looking for – Sephiroth is on his way to Gongaga.
