Second Chances

An Unfamiliar World

Jessie Rasberry never believes in second chances.

Why would she? In all her brief and miserable existence, life never gave her a chance to do anything right. From a chance to follow her lifelong dream to become an actress, a chance to spend the time with her loving father once more, a chance to help her mother make a living to sustain themselves in the cruel world under Shinra's iron grip, a chance to atone for the damages she caused by blowing up the Mako Reactor.

It didn't even give her a chance to live her life before taking it away.

That was before something happened.

And she came back...

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The sky was crimson red. A calamity from the stars descended upon the metal city below, spawning pillars of fires that leveled buildings and tore the earth itself apart. Thousands of people were scrambling futilely for covers. Some just stood there and accepted their fates. After all, how could one escape the end of the world?

Then the light came. A holy pale blue light approached from the north, rushing straight towards the Meteor. The planet's last hope of salvation came to protect it in a last-ditch effort to avert the apocalypse. But it lost. The crimson calamity eventually broke through the last line of defense and seemed poised to destroy everything in existence. There was no hope left. Nothing short of a miracle would save this insignificant planet from its final moments.

As if the planet itself sprang to life, ribbons of green light sprouted from the earth and danced through the skies and lit up the darkness in a majestic display. It was the Lifestream itself. The lifeblood of the planet and all that lives upon it, pure and untainted. More and more streams of light arrived from all over, as if life everywhere answered the planet's rallying cry and came together to face the great calamity, united as one.

And she was right there, among those brilliant lights, when the miracle finally happened.

Against all odds, the calamity from the skies was finally destroyed. Against all odds, the planet was victorious. Against all odds, life prevailed.

That was the last thing she saw before everything turned white. As she gradually lost herself away, a kind, motherly voice spoke to her, accompanied by a scent of flowers.

"Thank you for your help, my friend."

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It had been exactly seven months since the fall of Sector 7. The day that Jessie Rasberry died.

That was what everybody believed at the time, anyway, and for good reasons. She was dead , plain and simple. There was no way she could've survived the explosion that literally blew up in her face, and even if she could, there was still the matter of an entire city plate getting dropped on her. 

Hell, Cloud and Tifa were there to see her last moments, begging her to cling on to life in a moment that came straight out those tragic movie scenes she had wished she could star in: a young maiden laid dying in the arms of her close friend and the man she loved. One last ironic practical joke the cruel life played on her before it took her last breath forever.

Except for some reason, she lived.

According to what the doctors told her, some girl named Kyrie found her while she was salvaging among the wreckage, badly beaten but somehow still alive. She and a few of her friends then dug her out of there before sending her to the Leaf House at Sector 5 slums, where Jessie remained until she could receive proper medical attention, which wasn't very long as for some reason, Shinra's Director of Urban Development happened to be in the area and he decided to take her to one of the finest hospitals on the Sector 5 plate.