Final Fantasy VII in its entirety ©Square Enix.


President Shinra probably never knew her father's name.

So many people worked for Shin-Ra Electric Power Company. Hundreds of thousands of individuals around the world, thousands right there in the city of Midgar. Each day the trains hauled Shin-Ra employees to the skyscraper in the center of the city. Her father worked on Floor 62, under Mayor Domino's assistant, a man named Hart. He was a librarian.

A few days after Cristobel's sixteenth birthday, in which he called to wish her happiness from his office, some accusations began to float around Sector Seven. She heard them when whispered at her high school, when gossiped about in the Shin-Ra housing neighborhood, and when they jangled into their home on the back of the phone lines. The calls were the worst. Mom took those, her calm voice belied by the fear in her eyes.

The accusations followed her father home from work, hounding his footsteps like the news reporters in their big, white vans with the big, red Shin-Ra Inc. logo pasted on their sides. Embezzlement. There was going to be an inquiry.

Lies, her mother said. Dad was unimportant. Expendable. A scapegoat. Someone was trying to cover up a crime by pinning it on him. It was all lies.

"Never doubt your father's integrity," she told Cristobel.

But when Cristobel asked what was going to happen to them, if they were really going to be forced below the plate to live in the slums with the mud and the rats if Dad lost his job, her mother didn't answer. She went back to the kitchen, a wet dishcloth in her hands, to wash dishes that were already clean.

In the end, integrity didn't save them. The inquiry went forward, and her father was damned before it started. With the discovery of a way to manufacture mako energy, which supplied the entire planet with electricity, Shin-Ra Inc. had also found a way to rule the world.

When the Turk showed up at their door, her father, gray-skinned, sweating, and silent, opened it and let him inside.

"It's simple, Mr. Coleridge," the young Turk said, standing there in their middle-class living room in his immaculate midnight-blue suit. He had slanting black eyes that gave him away as a native Wutaian, and sleek black hair that brushed his straight shoulders. The red tilak on his forehead looked like a gunshot wound against his white face.

Everyone had a white face in Midgar. Clear blue skies, the sun – these were things reserved for the uppermost floors of the Shin-Ra Building. She had heard that beneath the plate, there was no sunlight at all.

"You know why I'm here," the Turk went on. "You owe the President money. I've come to collect."

He's a manikin, Cristobel thought, watching the meeting from behind her mother in the hallway. His face had no expression at all.

"I can't pay," her father said. Even his voice sounded ashen. He said nothing else, nothing in his defense, nothing against the lies that had brought one of President Shinra's thugs down on them. He stood there, head bowed, unshaven and in yesterday's wrinkled suit.

Something flickered in the Turk's eyes, and Cristobel felt her heart go cold. He wasn't emotionless. He was bored.

The Turk reached into his jacket, pulled out a gun, and pointed it at her father. "There is more than one way to pay, Mr. Coleridge."

"Yes," said Dad.

"No!" cried Mom. She burst from the hall and ran to her husband, her wet dishtowel flinging water everywhere – a distraught housewife in slippers and an apron. She sobbed and pleaded with the Turk, with Dad, but neither man listened to her. She spun from one to the other like a dust devil amid unforgiving canyon walls.

Observing this, Cristobel felt sick to her stomach. What was wrong with her parents? Why didn't her father fight back? Why didn't he restrain her mother's hysterics?

Had he always been such a coward?

Right then, Cristobel understood something. This situation wasn't just about her father losing his job. If he lost his life, she and her mother were doomed. Where would they go? How would they live?

They would die down there in the slums, alone and destitute.

And it was all her father's fault.

"Stop it!" she screamed so loudly her voice hurt her throat. "Just stop it!"

"Cristobel!" her mother said shrilly.

The Turk looked directly at her.

At last, her father came to life. "Suzu, go see to her," he said, grabbing his wife's arms and pushing her away. "Go on, now. It'll be all right."

How? Cristobel wanted to ask. How could this possibly be all right?

Her mother, wild-eyed and blotchy-faced, shooed her toward the kitchen with the disgusting towel. Cristobel evaded her, determined to reach the living room, her father, and the Turk. Shouldn't she have a say in her own life?

The Turk primly sat, without being invited, in Dad's chair, the gun resting on his lap. Dad gestured as he spoke, something he always did when he had an idea. Cristobel and her mother struggled at the edge of the hall, Mom admonishing her in a constant stream of noise that didn't let her hear what the two men were saying.

No longer bored, the Turk's slanted eyes slid sideways and fixed on Cristobel. Slowly, he nodded. His satisfied expression startled her so much that her mother finally got past her defenses and shoved her backward.

Cristobel sprang back, ready to fight, but the men's conversation seemed to have concluded. When Dad approached, her mother instantly forgot all about her.

"Suzu." Dad smelled of stale alcohol. He didn't say anything else to his wife but held out his hand in a mute gesture.

Mom took it. They held a silent conversation together, the kind they used to have when Cristobel had been very young and in trouble, using only their eyes, telegraphing messages in their special parent-language.

Then they looked at her.

Walked past her. Disappeared into the kitchen.

The Turk stood up, returning his gun to his jacket.

"I believe," he said calmly to the empty room – he couldn't possibly be talking to Cristobel – "that we have reached an acceptable agreement."