Plot Summary

Five years before our story begins Shinra, Inc., an evil corporation that sucks Mako energy, the life essence of the planet, from the earth and uses it to power the world, sent a team of investigators to the town of Nibelheim.  The Mako reactor in the town was reported to be malfunctioning.  With the group were Cloud Strife, who left Nibelheim a few years earlier to try to get into SOLDIER, Shinra's elite military force, and Sephiroth, a mysterious youth who is far superior to anyone else in combat.  Tifa Lockhart, Cloud's childhood friend, serves as the guide for the group.  While in Nibelheim Sephiroth visits an old library filled with details of Shinra's past experiments and learns that he is the product of one of them.  He was born from an Ancient, a race now all but extinct, named Jenova.  Sephiroth, who possesses the slightly off-kilter personality so common in Final Fantasy villains, vows that he should rule the planet as the last remaining Ancient, and heads to the reactor to rescue what is left of his mother Jenova.  In a confrontation at the reactor, Tifa is badly wounded, Cloud stands up to Sephiroth but amazingly does not get himself killed, and Sephiroth disappears.

Fast forward five years and travel to the city of Midgar, a city entirely suspended on a plate and powered by eight Mako reactors, with the Shinra headquarters in the middle.  Cloud now finds himself as a mercenary working for Avalanche, a group who fights against Shinra and their planet abuse.  Tifa is one of their agents and Barret Wallace, a man with a gun for one arm, is their leader.  In a dramatic opening mission the group blows up one reactor and retreats to their hideout in the slums below the plate.  During the next mission to blow up a reactor President Shinra interrupts the party, and in the ensuing battle Cloud falls to the slums below and meets Aeris can't-remember-her-last-name, a girl that would change his life, for Aeris is an Ancient.

Aeris, descended from Ancients she fights for the future of the Planet.

Cloud Strife, mercenary with a complicated past that he must first remember and then accept.

Shinra seeks to use Aeris' powers as an Ancient to their own goals, and she has been running from them for several years.  She hears the Cry of the Planet, and knows that if Shinra is not stopped from draining Mako energy the Planet will be drained of its life source.  The two find Tifa and return to Avalanche's hideout in time to find that Shinra is planning to drop Sector 7 of Midgar onto the slumds below, thus literally crushing the resistance.

Cloud, Tifa, and Barret race to the top of the support tower in time to fend off Reno of the Turks, Shinra's spy organization, but too late to stop him from kidnapping Aeris and detonating the bomb to destroy the tower.  The three manage to escape but scores of people, the rest of Avalanche included, die as Sector 7 comes crashing down.  The only thing to do is to infiltrate Shinra headquarters.  There they manage to rescue Aeris and also Red XIII, a creature being used in experiments, but eventually get caught and are thrown into jail.  While in jail Sephiroth comes, rescues Jenova who was being held in the building, murders President Shinra, and flees.  After a brief showdown with Shinra's new President Rufus, the group escapes Midgar in an awesome highway chase scene and heads to the village of Kalm, where Cloud relates his Sephiroth story.  The group decides that they must both chase Sephiroth and stop Shinra from achieving its goals.
  The party chases Sephiroth and Shinra (who is also following Sephiroth) halfway around the globe, through such locales as the port of Junon, the resort town of Costa del Sol, Barret's hometown of North Corel (where he is not very well liked) and the fabulous Gold Saucer casino and amusement park.  At the Gold Saucer Cait Sith, a cat riding a giant Moogle (go back to my interests page for a picture of one) joins the group, giving the reason that he can predict the future and knows they have an interesting one.  A "man with a gun-arm" goes on a rampage, and Barret and the others are sent to the desert prison below the casino.  Barret finds that the real culprit is his old friend Dyne, who has now turned against him and whom Barret must fight in a sad battle.  They escape the prison and head to Cosmo Canyon, Red XIII's hometown where he has not been for several years.  His real name is Nanaki, and his grandfather Bugenhagen knows all concerning the Planet's troubles, and enlightens the group.  Red XIII discovers that his father Sero was actually a hero (he had thought him a coward) and vows to continue the journey in his honor.
  Next stop on the world tour is Nibelheim, where no one seems to remember Cloud or the events of five years ago.  Hmmm, what a cover up.  Past the Nibel Mountains lies Rocket Town, where Cid, a would-be astronaut if Shinra hadn't abandoned its space program, spends his days tinkering on aircraft.  Shinra tries to get him to loan them his airplane so they may pursue Sephiroth, but he refuses and the party, which on a whim Cid decides to join, manages to escape with it.  It is learned that Sephiroth is headed for the temple of the Ancients, and after requiring the Keystone needed to enter, it is stolen by Cait Sith, who is actually a robot being controlled by a Shinra exec back in Midgar.  Although Cloud would like to rip his stuffing apart, he refuses to leave the party.  They follow Shinra into the Temple, where Sephiroth appears to be after the Black Materia, an item that will allow him to become immensely powerful, although it's not known exactly how that works.  Cloud and the gang get to the Materia first but through some kind of mind control Sephiroth forces Cloud to hand it over.  Cloud faints and reawakens with the others, minus Aeris, in safety.  Aeris has gone off, claiming that only she, as an Ancient, can stop Sephiroth, by finding and using the White Materia.
  The group follows Aeris' trail to the City of the Ancients, and finds Aeris with the White Materia, praying.  Sephiroth appears, paralyzes Cloud and the rest, and in a truly heartbreaking scene stabs Aeris.  Sephiroth flees, the White Materia is lost to the depths of the water below, and Cloud, devastated, gives Aeris a burial at sea.  The entire group vows revenge and follows Sephiroth north to the polar regions.  Of course, Shinra is not far behind.  Sephiroth relates his version of the events in Nibelheim, in which Cloud was not actually there.  Like him, Cloud was created as part of an experiment, and these memories were implanted in him (this explains the mind control, Cloud is supposed to be just another Sephiroth-clone).  From his resting place Sephiroth seizes control of Cloud, and uses the Black Materia in front of everyone, Rufus and the boys from Shinra included.  The Weapons, ancient guardians of the Planet, are released, and all hell breaks loose.
  One week later Tifa awakens as a Shinra prisoner in Junon.  Matters are far worse than that.  The Black Materia called a huge meteor towards earth, and it can be seen in the sky speeding towards the planet.  This will cause a huge wound in the planet, and Sephiroth, resting in the northern limits, will absorb all the energy the Planet uses to heal the wound, thus becoming all-powerful.  Moreover, Cloud is nowhere to be found and Shinra plans to execute Barret and Tifa as scapegoats for the mess.  With the help of Cait Sith (?) and Cid, and aided by the distraction of a Weapon attacking, the group escapes from Junon aboard Shinra's airship.  Shinra is now gathering Huge Materia, which it plans to use to somehow stop the meteor.  Well, take away the Materia and the Planet's screwed so the group can't let that happen.  First, though, Cloud is found in a coma in a town near a Lifestream spring.  He was sucked into this healing mass of the planet and spit out in a coma.  Tifa stays with him and the others beat Shinra to two Huge Materia and come back.  An earthquake causes Tifa and Cloud to fall into the Lifestream, where Cloud finally comes to terms with what happened in Nibelheim.  He was there but was not a SOLDIER, merely a common guard.  He could never live up to his failure to become a SOLDIER; he knew the story because he witnessed the events but did not take an active part in it; could not protect Tifa.  With his past understood and accepted, Cloud vows to defeat Sephiroth.
  The last Huge Materia, being held at the underwater reactor in Junon, remains in Shinra's hands and is loaded into the rocket in Rocket Town, to be blasted into the Meteor.  Cloud and Cid sneak into the rocket just before it takes off, collect the Huge Materia, and leave in an escape pod.  The rocket slams into the meteor, wounds it, but the meteor, which is almost eerily alive, pulls itself together.  Bugenhagen reveals that Aeris was probably trying to use Holy, a magic that could block Sephiroth's calling of the meteor.  The crew returns to the City of the Ancients and activates a machine that may stop the meteor, but only if Sephiroth is defeated.  Before they can achieve that a Weapon attacks Midgar and blasts the Shinra building, Rufus inside, to pieces.  In charge of Shinra now is Professor Hojo, who plans to use the ultra-poweful Mako cannon to blow away Sephiroth's barrier and kill Sephiroth while he rests inside.  The party skydives into Midgar and encounters Hojo just as he blows away the barrier, but manages to stop him before he tries to kill Sephiroth, which can only be done by returning to his hideout in the northern limits.  The gang travels into the dark reaches of Sephiroth's cave and ultimately Cloud delivers the finishing blow.  Success is not guaranteed, however.  The group escapes from the cave in the airship just in time to see the meteor about to crash into earth.  Just before it does, however, the Lifestream emerges from the depths of the Planet and stops it.  With Cloud's help, Aeris' prayers had been answered.