Final Fantasy VII: Full Circle
Prelude
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Somewhere today is a beautiful day. Above the clouds, geese stretch their wings and fall back on the breeze, letting the wind take them where it will… even if the skies ahead are starting to look murky.
Beneath the clouds, life takes on a different color. Heat and toil fall to those who walk the land – here is an endless stretch of clay, lifeless aside from the occasional scattering of some random lizard or insect. Those without tough skin and cold blood should find these conditions more than a little oppressive – so much is true for at least one red-coated mammal right now.
Followed by the matching red trail of its company, the creature pants and tramples along the bottom of a fissured, dried-out ravine. Its weary legs push forward, driven by the narrowing channel and a resolve likewise focused ahead.
Coming to a cul-de-sac in the ravine, the creature and its train spring up the impeding cliff until they stand firmly on top, overlooking a massive city in disrepair.
The geese pass over them.
For those familiar with this world, the scene described here conjures up images Nanaki and his offspring, reaching the end of their pilgrimage to the forested ruins of Midgar five-hundred years after Meteor.
The resemblance is deceptive; at this time it has been only two years since the cataclysm. Nanaki (also known as Red XIII) is still childless, his current party currently limited to only one red-coated companion. The city hasn't been swallowed up in vegetation either: though still hurting from Meteor's wounds, Midgar remains populated, functional, and fully committed to rebuilding itself.
And reinventing itself.
Initially, the city had been put up with the sole purpose of draining the land beneath it. The Lifestream, whose subterranean flow regulates the cycle of life and death, had been moving too slowly for the tastes of some. Hence Midgar: a way to make the cycle go faster, a way for a privileged few to purchase generations' worth of vitality at no cost to themselves.
So it went. The great minds behind this enterprise went on to amass enough natural wealth to sustain all life on the Planet a dozen times over – but that was not enough. With all material pleasures provided for, their appetites took on a metaphysical aspect, craving acquisition as an ends to itself. They piled gains upon gains over the bottomless pit in their hearts, happy let the future rot for a whim.
These men were the Shinra Electric Power Company.
Named for founder and CEO President Rufus Shinra Senior, the Shinra Company made its fortune trafficking the Planet's lifeblood, patented and sold as "Mako energy." But that was just the start of it; the so-called electric power company grew its monopoly to encompass power in all aspects. Piece by piece, city and state disappeared into the corporate machinery, with Midgar and Junon leading the way. By its tenth anniversary, Shinra corporation had grown from a vendor of basic utilities to an absolute world order. Those who dared resist – the proud people of Wutai, for instance – faced swift reprisals from Shinra's superhuman army, SOLDIER.
In times like these, it seemed that the empire's reign would never come to an end.
But an end did come. It came with the coming of the end of the world, a lethal moon-sized ball of cosmic space coagulate cultured from black magic.
Jenova's Chariot.
Curd of the Milky Way.
Meteor.
As it drew closer, the Planet veered into chaos: titans sleeping beneath the earth were roused to rampage; President Rufus Shinra Junior and what remained of his loyal subordinates were killed; all eight of Midgar's reactors were destroyed in the pre-impact hurricanes… yet for these disasters, it was the ceasing of this destruction that dealt the greatest injury to the Shinra company. When the Lifestream erupted from the ground to repel Meteor, a long forgotten truth surfaced with it, a truth that took years of propaganda for Shinra to suppress.
And when the people of Midgar saw those green rivulets move on their own and wash away Armageddon, in that moment they saw their fuel source for what it really was.
It was alive.
It had saved their lives.
It was life itself!
And they had been burning it away for reasons like microwaving a bean burrito.
After suffering so much damage to its reputation and commercial asserts, the Shinra Company found itself reduced to a pale shadow of its former self in the democracy that rose from the ashes of Midgar: no army, no empire, just a has-been electric company named after a now extinct bloodline. The corporation suffered its final act of emasculation at the hands of the new Midgar city council, which issued a series of environmental regulations making it all but impossible to legally produce Mako.
What happened next wasn't hard to predict: dozens of alternative energy companies sprang up overnight, each hoping to claim Shinra's former monopoly. After witnessing several months of counterproductive rivalry, the city council decided to step in and choose a victor worthy of government subsidy, an "official solution" to Midgar's energy crisis – for the time being, at least.
Stationed on that cliff looking over Midgar, Red XIII and his crimson companion stand before an awesome and terrible sight. Land, air, and sea all bear the mark of the victor: in drilling rigs, tankers, refineries, and smog, the Ibsen Oil Company has written its supremacy across the landscape.
In little over a year, Ibsen has grown powerful enough to buy up much of Shinra's former military. Using their new purchase, the oil company has deployed forces in the Gulf of the Northern Continent (colloquially known as Bone Village), home to the Planet's largest deposits of fossil fuels. Of course, Ibsen's spokespeople are quick to assure the public that these actions are justified: "We are merely protecting our industry from acts of terrorism by extremist groups," they say, citing a recent bombing of a refinery in the area. To many, all of this sounds terribly familiar.
And so the geese continue toward the horizon in their yearly migration. Mako or oil, smog or no smog, the cycle continues to repeat itself.