Eyes: Brown
DOB: August 15
Age: 35 at start of FFVII
History: Barret Wallace grew up in the small blue collar town of Corel. Athough Barret's parents were rather poor and both had to work long hours to support the family, they loved their son very much and his childhood was not unpleasent. Coming from a tough neigborhood, Barret soon developed a rather gruff exterior, but deep down he was a caring and sensitive person.
Barret developed friendships with many of the kids from the neighborhood, but he became especially close to a boy named Dyne, who lived just a few houses away from him. This freindship would last Barret even into his adulthood.
The mountains surrounding Corel were rich in coal deposits, and the mining process was a major contributor to the economy of the town, and pervaded every aspect of it. In Barret's early years, nearly eighty percent of the inhabitants held jobs related to the coal industry. So it was no surprise when Barret's first job at the age of sixteen was to act as a messenger at the coal mining factory.
Some people became quite prosperous working for the mining company, but for ordianry workers such as Barret's father, life was never easy. Barret's father was a diligent worker who did not complain and worked extra hours whenever he got the chance to make a little more money for his family, but the extended period of time he spent in the unhealthy enviornment of the coal mine eventually took it's toll, and he contracted black lung disease. He died just prior to Barret's eighteenth birthday.
The death of his father marked a major turning point in Barret's life. Up to this time it would have been quite likely that Barret would have followed in his fathers footsteps and become, like so many others in Corel, just another worker at the coal mines. But his father's demise opened up Barret's eyes to the awful conditions of the workers in the mines and the exploitation of both the people of Corel and the surrounding enviornment by the coal mining industry. He vowed that he would do all in his power to enlighten people as to just what was going on in their town.
However, the death of his father also placed a much greater financial burden on him and his mother, and for a long time his activisim was secondary to the simple matter of survival.
Immediately after his father's death Barret began looking for a job outside of the coal mining industry, and soon after he quit at the mine, vowing never to return.
This probably turned out for the best. Like his father, Barret was a diligent worker, and he soon found himself rising up in the company, a chance he probably would never have gotten had he continued working for the mining company. With his financial burden finally eased, his mind turned once more toward activism.
Although speaking out against the company that drove the economy of the entire town did not make him very popular, there were others out there who shared his concerns. There were a few city officials who also had doubts about the wisdom of having a coal mining company practically running the town, and Barret soon became well known as a staunch supporter to them.
All this anti coal mining activity put him at odds with his old friend Dyne, who was himself doing quite well working for the mining company. Dyne agreed that the industry had it's flaws, but pointed out that the company had done a lot of good things for Corel as well, and that the change should be effected by people within the industry, and not forced on it by government regulation. They spent many nights together arguing their points, but even though the discussions occasionally got heated, they still remained friends.
Even with their strong opinions, life went on rather normally for both Barret and Dyne for quite some time afterward. They both met women and got married, each being the others best man. Soon after Dyne had a child, a little girl named Marlene.
It was shortly after this that Barret reached the second turning point in his life. This happened when the large conglomerate, Shinra Corporation came to town and made a proposal to the city council.
Shinra's proposal was nothing less than to replace the mining facility with a Mako reactor. If the town agreed they promised to hire all the workers currently employed in the mines to work in positions at the reactor, footing the bill themselves for any retraining that may be necessary. They pointed out that coal was a relatively ineffiecent source of power and that Mako was a much cleaner form of energy and the wave of the future.
This argument was irresistable to Barret and he was quickly won over. He argued vehemently on Shinra's behalf when they met to discuss it, and eventually Shinra's proposal was approved, with only Dyne expressing strong dissaproval.
The Mako reactor was quickly built, and for the first time in his life, Barret thought he had a real chance at happiness.
Unfortunately, Barret's contentment soon came to an end in a horribly violent fashion. Although no longer working in the mines, Shinra did not seem to care much more for the workers than the mining company had. In fact, they tried to control the town to an even greater extent, if that were possible. Their strong arm tactics when it came to anyone who disagreed with them soon had a number of people grumbling. A few people even openly stated their belief that the mining company had been the lesser of two evils.
No one alive afterward was really sure exactly what happened that day, or if they did, they never admitted it. Something happened at the reactor. The workers that survived stated there was an accident, but Shinra claimed it was sabatoge. Whether true or not, Shinra's revenge was swift. Coming to the conclusion that most of the town had turned against them, they decided to make an example of it. They sent in Shinra soldiers and destroyed the town, killing most of the population. Both Barret and Dyne's wives were killed in the attack.
Barret and Dyne were on their way back from Gongaga when they heard of the attack. While hurrying back to Coral they ran into an attack squad led by Scarlet of Shinra. As they tried to escape the hale of bullets, Dyne stumbled at the edge of a cliff and would have fallen had not Barret grabbed hold of him. But before Barret could haul him up Scarlet fired at the now unmoving targets. Her spray of bullets cut across Barret's right arm and Dyne's left, severing them both and sending Dyne tumbling down the cliff face. Thinking his friend had perished, Barret somehow managed to stumble back to Corel.
There were few people left, but the survivors tended to Barret's wounds, and he eventually recovered. While recovering Marlene was brought to him, the only other survivor of Barret's or Dyne's families. For his old friends sake, he vowed to take care of her as if she were his own.
With little left of the town and his life shattered, Barret decided to leave Corel. In truth the few people left were not sorry to see him go, for they all remembered how strongly he had argued in Shinra's favor when they had first come to town, and most of them, fairly or not, blamed him to a large extent for what had befallen them.
Barret could hardly blame them. His support of Shinra at that time would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Eventually he made his way to Midgar, and settled down there to forget his past and start anew. But his restless spirit and anger at Shinra would not let him rest easy, and after a while his old activism started to reassert itself. No longer trusting the official reports from Shinra he reasearched the development and use of Mako energy and discovered that it was slowly sapping the life out of the planet. As he had with the mining company, he soon became a vocal advocate of shutting down the reactors.
But Shinra was a much larger corporation than the mining company that had existed in Corel, and had much more political clout. The politicians in Midgar knew that opposing Shinra was equivilent to politcal suicide, and none would support him.
With no political support Barret knew he could not oppose Shinra with conventional methods and have any hope of success. Realizing that nothing short of radical intervetion would do, and feeling justified after what Shinra had done to his hometown, Barret turned to militant intervention. With a few friends he had met in Midgar who were of like mind, he formed the anti Shinra resistance group, AVALANCHE Knowing that violence was just about inevitable, it was at this point that Barret had a gun attachment grafted onto his arm.
Barret knew that he would need to recruit new members in order for his group to have any impact at all. He had heard that many people who were discontent were gathering in secret in a certain bar in the sector seven slums. Since he was known himself to be anti Shinra, asking a few discreet questions gave him the name of the bar and it's owner. After visiting Seventh Heaven and talking to it's owner, Barret realized he had found someone of like mind in Tifa Lockheart. Her bar soon became the headquarters of the group, and plans for striking out at Shinra were soon well underway.