Final Fantasy VII/Mako Reactor no. 5

Sector 7 slums
Back in Sector 7, you will meet a lot of scared people. Head to the bar - the building on left where Barret is waiting.

Inside, you meet Tifa Lockhart for the first time in this game. If you bought flowers from Aeris, you can give them to her (or Marlene...)***. Talk to the folks there. If you try to get out, Barret will come in, and gets the meeting downstairs going. You can ask Tifa to make you a drink if you want to.

Downstairs, you'll get to talk more to the AVALANCHE folks and see exactly how cold Cloud is. As you try to get out of the house, Barret will give you your pay (actually you spend most of this money buying armor and weapons and materia FOR Barret and the others) - and you sign up for the next mission.

So, in the morning, after greeting Barret and Tifa (who will now accompany you for a while), up. Barret asks how to use Materia. Choose to explain if you want to see a tutorial on Materia system. You can now use the Materia menu to arrange your stuff.

Outside, there are a few places to visit. You can talk to people, and visit houses. You also have some money to spare now, so you can visit the weapon shop and the materia shop. Pick up as much Materia as you think is necessary (don't buy too much, as most of the useful materia you will find later on), and maybe also some protective stuff (iron bangles are *lost-forevers*), potions, maybe even an extra Phoenix Down (there is never enough of those).

Barret hinted that the weapons store guy knows something. Talk to the guy behind the fence and he forwards you upstairs. Beginner's Hall has a cute dog, and a lot of helpful tutorials to get you familiar with all of the basic aspects of the game. There's also a Save Point there. Here, you can also pick up a free All materia (equip immediately. Pair with restore so you can heal your party) here, so it pays to see this stuff. And did I mention the dog is cute?

Reactor no. 5
Once you're done, head up-right from the town the way you came in and head back to the train station. The train is waiting, hop aboard.

Inside, talk to folks again, Tifa wants to show you the security monitor again. Something goes wrong, and the security lockdown starts. You now have 15 seconds to head out of each car - just follow where the rest of the folks are running again. Eventually, you'll reach the last car, and you get to jump out of the train.

Once outside, there's really not much else to do but go up. There's a security gate there. Examine the air conditioning duct, and head down. What follows is a simple maze-like thing that really isn't a maze at all - you don't have people running ahead of you to guide you, but whatever route you take, you'll finally end up to the crawlway leading to the reactor and a save point. Along the way, you'll meet Jessie and Wedge, and find (at least) an Ether, Potion and a Tent, which is right beside a save point.

Once you get to the duct and emerge to the reactor side, you've got to slide to get down. Reactor no. 5's inner building is exact same as the no. 1 - this is familiar territory now already, I hope.

Head to the reactor core room again, plant the bomb, and Cloud gets another flashback. This time, far more weird than the one in the first reactor. What kind of reactor is this then? Why's Tifa got that hat? What's going on in here? Again, I assure you things will make sense later, but as of now, you just have to note that Cloud has some weird flashbacks and mental issues.

The good news: There isn't a boss fight here. What can that possibly mean? Well, among other things, it means that the boss fight is somewhere else. So, to get out, head back the same way you exited the first reactor, and up the elevator.

The security room is different in this reactor. Tifa and Barret go to the other side of the table. Try to hit the button at the exact same moment as the others. It doesn't need to be exactly at the same time, just close enough. (Is the security in this power plant really this awful, or is there something even more sinister waiting here for us?)

Head out, and there's a save point on the other side of the room. Save here, because you won't be getting to a save point until in the next chapter of this walkthrough...

So we get out of the reactor... oh, this was a trap. How unsurprising. A trap so cunning that the very president of Shin-Ra had to show up to congratulate you for your unsuspiciousness and introduce you to his secret weapon and your certain doom, called Air Buster.

And with the explosion, the bridge breaks and Cloud, after a short struggle falls.. falls... falls...

...into nightmares. But at least the wake-up will be pleasant.