As Ruvi lies dead on the floor, Denzel runs outside looking for help. He is met by an unknown voice. The man asks him why he’s not in the slums, where the news ordered everyone to take shelter in. Denzel says he doesn’t have a TV. The man then asks where his family is...
He, along with everyone else in a truck behind him, bury Miss Ruvi. His name is Gaskin, and Denzel joins the group as they go down into the slums. They get there by traveling down a now abandoned rail line. On the way down, the group has to stop. There was a lone child ‘blocking’ the way. He wasn’t blocking anything; rather, there were black marks on his back. No one wanted to get near the infected child except for Denzel. He did everything he could to ease the pain, from carrying him to rubbing the child’s back like Denzel’s mother used to do for him. His back was sticky, but Denzel carried on. At some point, though, a woman informs Denzel that the child has died. We don’t know what became of the kid's body. We continue on with a conversation between Denzel, the woman, and her daughter.
The girl thought Denzel was wearing a girls shirt, seeing that it was a pink floral thing, and tried to give him a blue jacket. The jacket used to belong to the girl's big sister, but she’s gone now: dead. The jacket ending up going to the dead boy. Denzel notices the Chocobo insignia on her backpack.
We return to the modern day, where Denzel and Reeve discuss the early outbreak of Geostigma. No one knew anything about it, obviously, but people somehow knew it had something to do with the Lifestream. We’d come to understand it was Jenova’s doing in time.
A hungry Denzel is watching people come and go near a makeshift, and rancid smelling, gravesite. Gaskin tells the boy to eat something and sends him off to find food amongst the discarded baggage. He ends up finding the Chocobo backpack filled with cookies. Gaskin eats a few and says their still good to eat, so Denzel eats a few, as well. Before this dialogue, the writer makes note that one of the bodies being placed in the grave was a small child, so I think we know what happened to the backpack's owner. He says to himself that Gaskin seems like a good man, similar, but still different from his father.
We then learn of how Denzel spent his time down here. He and several other kids started a business finding salvage in the wreckage of Midgar. Much of this wreckage went to a new city named Edge, but some went to other private parties. They'd find specific parts and would get paid with food. Edge is a city people seemed to look forward too, but most of the kids had a worthwhile life here. They could contribute to something and be free, whereas, if they went to Edge, they’d likely be just orphans. Eventually, though, either through emigration of death, the remaining people of Midgar left. Gaskin was one who died of Geostigma.
One day, while looking for rats to eat, Denzel came upon a church in the sector five slums. It’s the same sector under which Ruvi is buried. There he saw a motorcycle with a phone hanging from it. He called the first number on it, and a woman picked up. She sounded excited at first as she uttered, “Cloud, it’s so rare for you to call me.” For some reason, perhaps because he was a child, Denzel began to cry. He went to wipe away his tears, and, upon doing so, felt an immense pain through his head. He looked at his hand and saw the black substance he’d seen many times before. He doesn’t remember what happened next, but alludes to the plot of Advent Children, and, one last time, we return to the present.
He says he’s alive thanks to all the people he’s met: Ruvi, Gaskin, Arkham, and the scavenger team. He also thanks Cloud, Tifa, and Marlene. All he wants in life is to be strong like them, and that’s why he wants to join the WRO. Reeve then responds that the WRO, as of right now, doesn’t accept children. He then asks Denzel to “draw out the power of adults”. Denzel (and myself) has no idea what that means. As Reeve leaves, he turns to the boy and thanks him for “taking care of my mom”, indicating Ruvi is Reeve’s mother.
Johnny and Denzel then have a quick talk about the WRO, Cloud, and how Denzel wants to be like Cloud. Cloud was a military man, so Denzel thinks he should follow in his footsteps. Johnny says times have changed and, "Well, those who can soothe someone's pain are popular these days. Maybe even more so than those who wield weapons.” Denzel, sadly, doesn’t seem to like this and remains dejected as the story ends.
This gives everything I want in a story such as this: backstory on several characters, a reintroduction of a seemingly insignificant character, and really tugs at the heartstrings. As a slight negative, and I know this sounds dumb to say, but am I the only one who felt that too many people died? It gets across the point that Geostigma is a deadly disease, so it’s probably just me being overly nitpicky. There's something that sticks out to me with the story I want to take notice of. Despite Shinra being an inhumane organization, and Midgar being a sketchy place to live, we can see just how many amazing and selfless people there are in the world. You see this a little bit of it in the game. Sure, Wal Market is flooded with creeps and freaks, but the red armored infantrymen all seemed like kind people. The homeless man on the train, the dressmaker, even a few hard-nosed, but caring, men like both weapon shopkeepers are good, honest people. It really shows through here when Denzel lists all the people he looks up to. Life isn’t as bad it could be, and it’s up to all of mankind to make the planet great. I have no idea if that’s what the moral of this story is, but that's what I’m taking from it.
#RuviForPresident
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