Priscilla.
[START]
Kisaragi: I'm in Under Junon Village, speaking with Miss Priscilla Mahadevan, spelled M-A-H-A-D-E-V-A-N. [DEEP BREATH] She's a private in the Junon Home Army, their reserve military force. Priscilla, is all this true?
Priscilla: Really?
K: It's just a formality for the recording.
P: Fine. [PAUSE] My name's Priscilla Mahadevan, I was born in Under Junon sixteen years ago and have lived here all my life. Except for a year in Erujunon with my uncle, and two years at a boarding school in Junon City.
K: And when did you join the army?
P: Are you still angry about that, Yuffie? [LOUD SIGH] Earlier this year. The week after I turned sixteen, which is the youngest age I could enlist. Hey, wasn't Cloud that age when he enlisted?
K: Cloud enlisted in the Peace Preservation when he was fifteen. Because he lied about his age, and is…was stupid. Though at least Cloud had the sense to leave his crummy village and travel to Midgar. Didn't you always say how much you hated Junon?
P: So, is this gonna' be an interview, or just you yelling at me?
K: Sorry. [PAUSE] So, you've completed basic training in the Junon Army with the rank of private. Why did you volunteer? Junon doesn't draft women or girls for their military forces.
P: You know, it's a long story.
K: I'm counting on it.
P: [SIGH] So, after Meteorfall and Shinra left the city, there was a couple months when there was no government. I heard it was the same everywhere that wasn't destroyed like Midgar was. A lot of the, uh, industrialists, factory managers, people who stayed behind after Shinra left came together and former a new government.
K: This is the Junon Labour Party, the first new political party in Junon since Shinra's time. They were helped by the influx of refugees that came from Midgar, though most of them settled in Kalm and then in Edge.
P: Yeah, them. Well, thing was, after Shinra left, or dissolved, or whatever happened to them in that first year, the thing everyone probably should have seen happening happened: wages stopped coming in. There wasn't even a statement from Shinra about it; everyone just stopped showing up to work, and Shinra just stopped paying them. Which meant none of them could spend any more money than they already had. Which meant, after that, no one else could be relied on as customers could afford to spend any more either.
K: Like the people in your fishing village.
P: Yeah. [PAUSE] They called the Bank Panic of '08, because all the banks, including the ones not owned by Shinra, stopped lending out money. The Labour Party, which appeared at the same time, ran on a platform of nationalizing…everything. Almost everything. Everything previously owned by Shinra, so the Underwater Reactor and the waterworks, and all the transportation infra-…structure, and also all the factories. On top of any other businesses over a certain size, like the airplane factory and the oil company. And all the private banks. They said that if they'd do that, they would restart the economy and get everyone back to work. 'Course, no one knew if they could actually do it. I don't think even they did. Practically all of them were Shinra's middle-management. So when the elections came up, they ran against the Tories.
K: You mean the Junon Conservative Union, made up of the old families from before Shinra's time, from Arujunon and the city.
P: Yeah, them. They were Shinra upper-management, or something, though I guess most of them were happy when Shinra left, because they definitely had all the money and all the reputation, if those things are different. The winners would form…a government…for the New State of Junon. Yeah, that was it. Everyone assumed the Tories would win, they were the obvious replacement for Shinra.
K: But they didn't. Why is that?
P: No one knows. At least, I don't. But one thing that did happen: on the eve of the election, you guys—the W.R.O.—said you were going to nationalize the whole of the city of Midgar.
K: That's…not exactly what Reeve said, but yeah, basically.
P: So if the W.R.O. could take all of Midgar, and use it to build the city of Edge, why couldn't people actually in Junon just…take Junon back? [PAUSE] That became Labour's argument. The Tories claimed it was impossible, that if Shinra couldn't own Junon, no government could hope to do it either.
K: And so Labour wins in a landslide. But that doesn't really explain why you joined the army three years later.
P: [LAUGH] I'm gettin' to that. So, Labour won, and they started what they called the first Five-Year Plan, beginning with taking all the property Shinra had left behind. They started with the Underwater Reactor, remember?
K: I do. I was with Reeve when he issued the ultimatum for Junon to shut down the Junon reactor. [NERVOUS LAUGHTER] Everyone thought it was gonna' lead to a war or somethin', Neo-Shinra taking over in Junon.
P: [LAUGH] Yeah, they did. But the government agreed, and they shut it down. Almost zero electricity production in the whole city, you remember that high-voltage tower that Cloud had to climb to get up to the city? Anyone could climb it. I'd never seen it dead before. A world without electricity. Let me tell you, if you thought Under Junon was miserable before…
K: It's the part of the world after the Shinra Corporation that no one really predicted. Energy policy is basically eighty percent of what Reeve does as head of the W.R.O. nowadays. It's a hundred percent of what Barret does. [PAUSE] So what did you do? The new oil power plants took time to finish, but with no electricity, how could you even operate the machinery…
P: They saved us.
K: [TURNING] Priscilla is pointing out the window over her bed, at the sea. There's nothing out there presently.
P: You know you really don't have to describe everything I'm doing. [SIGH] I meant it, you know, metaphorically. The navy came back. The navy that survived Meteorfall and Sephiroth's kaiju. A lot of them, maybe most of them, didn't come back. My favorite uncle, on my mother's side, was a submariner. He didn't come back.
K: I'm sorry.
P: But they did come back, some of them. The Midgar and the Junon. They're the two biggest ships, named after Shinra's two cities. The Junon was a floating wreck, they haven't finished repairing it yet. But they could sail back into harbor, which they did, and Labour ordered these massive power lines connected to them. Both of them had these massive oil-fire generators, see, that Shinra had kept operational for…forever, way before you or me were born. All of Junon's oil production went to the navy after the underwater reactor was completed.
K: It wasn't common knowledge, but Shinra talked about converting the Junon Navy, and what it had taken of the Wutaian Navy as war prizes, to mako power, after the second Wutai War ended. I was about ten at the time. I guess the expected cost prevented them.
P: Lucky for us, or Edge would've demanded they be scrapped after the Jenova War and Meteorfall. They demanded that for any mako-powered cars and trains, didn't they?
K: Priscilla, if you're angry, take it up with Reeve. It's not like there was no reason to stop using mako after the Holy materia was summoned, you know that, right? This wasn't just done on some stupid whim!
P: You don't know how hard it was for us in those days!
K: Harder than it was for the people in Edge? Rebuilding their lives from the ruins? [PAUSE] Sorry, I shouldn't be yelling.
P: Yeah, me too. Sorry.
K: [LONG PAUSE] So, once the navy was back in port, they used it to generate power for Junon City until permanent power stations could be built like they were in Kalm and Edge. Something similar happened in Costa del Sol, didn't it?
P: Yeah, it did. God, I wish I could go to Costa Del Sol once before I die. The only nice place in the whole miserable world since Meteorfall, I heard. [SIGH] So, the navy saved the city, helped it get back on its feet. Labour made a new honorary title for the ship captains and navy chiefs, Hero of the State of Junon, and promised that no matter what the bureaucrats in Edge said about Shinra's Peace Preservation, there would always be a place for the military.
K: So then...that's a long way of saying they didn't let you into the navy, did they?
P: [ABRUPT LAUGHTER] Nothin' gets past you, huh?
K: Not on a good day, I'm the White Rose of Wutai after all.
P: [LAUGHTER] After the W.R.O. started building up their own army, in the early days of Edge, Labour passed this big defense buildup law. They said that if Junon was to survive, it needed electricity, and not just from battleship generators. And for electricity, it needed sea lanes.
K: Sea lanes and oil. They're not wrong about that, the coal industry is choking Kalm a little more every day.
P: I…I don't think they're lying about any of it, to be honest. Every week there's news about new oil discoveries in the Midgar Mountains, in the Mediterranean, off Gongaga. If we didn't claim it, Edge would. And you did.
K: And we did. That's what Barret does for a living.
P: And with Shinra gone, I never thought about what I'd do when I grew up. It's not like I was gonna' marry Cloud Strife or anything.
K: You know, he never did marry Tifa.
P: Now you're just being mean, Yuffie.
K: [LAUGHTER] Sorry. So what happened?
P: [SIGN] Well, I didn't lie about my age. And Labour eventually passed the draft, but it only applied to boys, and they all wanted to join the navy. Especially the refugees, who didn't have any other choice. Really as much as anything, I just wanted to get out of Under Junon. Not even see the world just see…something else. I used to dream about Midgar, but so did everyone else. I bet you and Cloud did too when you were little. Now Midgar's destroyed. And the air force is…more exclusive, or something, I guess. You need a formal education for them. I was still too young, but when I asked the recruiter, they didn't seem all that interested in, well…
K: A short, flat-chested west coast girl?
P: [LAUGH] That's rich coming from you! But with the draft, the military has all the men they need. I wasn't going to get into any service, but less the navy, until…
K: Until the Deepground abductions happened, didn't they?
P: Yeah. [PAUSE] The government says almost four hundred people were kidnapped, mostly from Junon City and the bluffs. I guess Deepground didn't want to bother with Under Junon. Was it worse in Edge? The radio only said a few dozen people were kidnapped in the largest incident.
K: A lot worse.
P: How many?
K: [INSISTENTLY] Trust me, a lot worse. [PAUSE] So, the Deepground Army appeared—an actual crisis—and Junon's leaders were caught with their pants down, so the draft actually starts to take effect. So the Junon Army founded the reserves, which you joined.
P: The Home Army is all girls my age or older, that or really old men. Since I finished basic training, I don't have to stay in the barracks, which…I guess is ironic, considerin' what I just said. After my two years, if I want, I can apply for noncommissioned officer training, which means I might get deployed into the forward army, or even another branch.
K: There are easier ways to get out of Under Junon, Priscilla.
P: Not if you don't have a job or any money, there aren't.
[STOP]
Turning the record knob on the TC-5500 reel-to-reel back, Yuffie glanced up at Priscilla. Still wearing her combat armor, even her boots, she was sitting at her one-room cottage's sole table, next to the sink and countertops. Yuffie had pulled up a chair from the small vanity next to the drawer loft bed. Like the rest of Under Junon, it was exactly how she remembered it: a girl's home, with pink curtains and a matching clock and sheets. A three-panel room divider stood in front of the pink-and-purple rug, each wood panel marked with a five-pointed yellow star.
Priscilla followed her eyes. "I was never going to be an actress in Costa del Sol. No one makes movies anymore."
Because Shinra was bankrolling all of them, and no one make movies for free, do they? Cinema and theater, at least in their modern incarnation, were not returning any time soon. "I guess they don't."
"You know what the worse part is?" Priscilla stood up, suddenly active. "All that time before Meteorfall, I just assumed I was going to leave Under Junon one day. Because that's what everyone does. I didn't know where I was gonna' go. I hoped anywhere but Junon City. Maybe Costa del Sol, maybe Golden Saucer, maybe Midgar or Kalm. So long as it was anywhere else, that meant Junon didn't win."
She threw her back against the bare spot of wall next to the loft bed. The thin wooden walls of the cottage rattled from the mass of her body armor. Yuffie smirked sadly. "But all those places are worse than Junon now, aren't they?" How's that for irony?
She glanced Yuffie bleakly. "It was either this, or I could go to Wutai."
Then you made the right decision. "Really?" she asked, feigning curiosity.
"My grandparents raised me on this story about how the Junon coast used to have these beautiful beaches. But then during the war, Shinra built the fortress above us and ruined everything." She looked up at the wooden ceiling above her, a hand on one of her kneepads. "Not once did I ever ask them what the war was about. I just assumed it was some…coincidence, bad luck like a hurricane or a flood."
"Or a meteor falling to the planet," Yuffie muttered somberly.
"Shinra did it, and that's all that ever mattered. Now they're gone, along with our mako and cheap electricity and everything they sold us, which is everything we owned." She glanced at Yuffie, sitting up. "They're not the same people, you know. I know it sounds like they are, and I know that's what Edge says, but they're not."
"Labour? No, not exactly," she admitted. I used to never say things like that, "not exactly."
"But the military leaders are. Well, the ones that lived through the Jenova War." Priscilla cocked her head, almost resting her cheek against her right shoulder pad, and reached past the small, unlit hearth and flipped on the boxy plastic radio sitting on an end table next to room's lone cabinet. Tinny, distorted voices filled the cottage.
"Thus, it will be the recommendation of the Foreign Ministry to the Party to allow for a new round of arms inspections as requested by the W.R.O.. While we do not acknowledge…Reeve Tuesti's complaints to be legitimate, as the State and the Party have consistently cooperated with W.R.O. inspectors, providing both unfettered access to infrastructure and interviews with relevant personnel."
The voice changed, replaced by a woman's whose voice was substantially clearer. "This was the statement issued by Junon's Foreign Minister, Admiral Yosuke Taira, less than an hour ago, in response to the government's demands for a new round of arms inspections. Earlier today, Chairman Reeve Tuesti announced…"
Priscilla flipped the switch into the earlier position and the voice died. "We still get foreign radio."
"The sign of a free society," Yuffie announced hesitantly, glancing at the end table. Above it was one of the few changes to the cottage: a collection of color photographs pinned to the wooden walls, taken of and by Priscilla during what looked like her basic training with the Junon Home Army. Rows of young women with short-cut hair and Shinra-made uniforms, training with rifles or machine guns or other pieces of military equipment.
The largest photo featured almost forty women and a pair of red-uniformed officers, standing on two rows of school bleachers: Priscilla's platoon from basic training, Yuffie guessed. In the raised back row, towering over the recruits, was a single fair-skinned blonde woman strapped into formfitting black leather, a massive hammer-like scythe slung smugly over her shoulders, capped with a massive materia gem.
"So the Junon Army has members of SOLDIER in it?" Yuffie asked as casually as she could manage, hoping Priscilla couldn't see the hair on the back of hear head standing on end.
"Oh, you mean Rachel?" Priscilla retracted back into her chair, boots together and legs crossed like a child. "Maybe she was, but not anymore. She used to visit all the girls recruited into the Home Army regularly when we were in boot camp, maybe as an aspirational goal."
Rachel.
Priscilla laughed again. "None of us were ever gonna' be like her."
"I didn't know there were any women in SOLDIER."
"Yeah, me neither."
"But they were in Deepground."
"What does that have anything to do with anything?" Priscilla asked, eyebrow raised.
Yuffie turned back to her and shrugged helplessly. They don't know that Deepground took twelve hundred people, mostly from Edge. "And you said her name was Rachel?"
"That's what she told us. You should go interview her, or someone who actually knows what's going on." She sighed. "What are you even pretending to be a journalist for? It sounds like the sort of thing AVALANCHE would do to infiltrate the fortress."
She frowned. "Please tell me you're not doing that."
"Nah, I became a journalist for a much better reason," she assured her, stepping towards the triangle-shaped table and checking the tape travel controls before turning the dial in one direction, then the other, the capstan motor whirling with it. Elena's right, it's not that quiet.
Priscilla put her hands on her "Well?"
She stopped the tape and turned to her. "I think I'm gonna' save the world."
"Great. Because the W.R.O. definitely isn't."
Author's Notes:
I intended to finish a chapter in another story (you can guess which one if you look at my profile), but adding another to this one, but circumstances said otherwise (it's a short chapter, the other story is great deal more complex and more challenging to write, etc.). Since there really isn't much to described from the perspective of Under Junon that isn't immediately more relevant to Junon City itself, or involves fish skeletons and other depressing things, this mostly became another case of "What happened here in the three years," courtesy of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII being really uninterested in Junon (as I noted earlier). The end result may be a setting that feels a lot less like something in the game or Advent Children and more like something from our world with the serial numbers filed off and some of the names changed. World building is only good if it "works" after all, but at least this was a short chapter so if it doesn't, the damage isn't too bad. Let me know what you think, and there will probably be a good gap between this one and the next for me to think on it.