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Surely there is honor, even in the blackest of our days.
Surely there is honor, even in the blackest of our hearts.
Surely there is honor, here, now. No period in human history has ever needed it more.
The times have become nightmares.
Final Fantasy 7 - Apocalypse Past
Three years have passed since Cloud Strife's apoplectic loss of faith - and the overthrowing of humanity.
We have entered into a new period in the history of our planet. We have posited the onetime mastery of bacteria over our planet; we have confirmed the onetime mastery of dinosaurs over the planet. We witnessed, firsthand, the onetime mastery of the human race over this planet.
All this has changed.
Our species - what remains of us - has been relegated to a slightly altered position in the global food chain. Deprived largely of the tools and technologies that elevated us to dominance, we have instead returned to a more primitive state. We hunt the deer and bison...are hunted by the tiger, the black bear. Most are mutated, to some degree or another. Meteorfall's effects were not only relegated to the dead.
To envision Planet, one must picture a series of concentric circles, radiating various degrees of Hell. The epicenter, of course, is Midgar; something of a different place, these days. The entire eastern continent was rendered almost entirely uninhabitable, with the exception of some patriotic survivors scratching out a living near Fort Condor. The rest of the world limps on...a mortally wounded planet, drained of its essence, consumed by a single being.
Sephiroth. God.
He rules us now, malevolent, insane; dispatching bizarre and unwarranted damnation upon subjects of his choosing. With all his plans successful, and all his enemies defeated...he has succumbed to the overwhelming power welling inside of him, and yet is being driven mad by the constant question: why does he have it? What does it serve him? He hungers for outrage, for excess, for catastrophic relief. We - my comrades and I - believe it is only a matter of time before he destroys the world for good.
We have pledged to stop this from happening.
We are the Reclaimers, the military arm of the Human League. We are all that is left of civilization.
My name is Vic Wright. I run a deep-penetration recon squad for the Reclaimers, Advance Division.
I have been sent back to Midgar.
(author's note: sheZAM!)