The Shinra Museum. The longer she stayed in Junon, Yuffie Kisaragi begrudgingly acknowledged, the more she was force to acknowledge that in spite of everything else, it seemed like a normal, pre-Meteorfall city, and thus, perhaps the most normal city that still existed in the world. The lower wards in the Fortress were characterized by various shops, working class cafes, traveller motels and various modest tourist traps. In spite of the unshakeable military presence, the people there carried on their small, petty lives much the same they had before the fall of the Shinra Corporation, the best she could tell. Civilian electrical service was more consistent than it was Edge, even if the price per kilowatt-hour was roughly the same.
In one of the lower wards, Cheapside, along 1st Street, she entered a familiar six-story building, home to Setting Sun Café and Motel, along with a few trinket shops and a nightclub almost entirely populated by sailors from the navy. It was as she remembered it from the AVALANCHE days, and even a few woefullly out-of-date advertisements and notices from Shinra remained posted on the wall. Must be kitsch, she thought. In spite of, or perhaps due to, its proximal location to Junon Harbor, the businesses in the Fortress had a blatantly utilitarian air about them compared to the more genteel surroundings of Upper Junon. She wondered how well they did with tourists if the club relied on the military so much.
"What would you like?" a surprisingly attractive waitress asked her, wearing a rather ragged apron over a dark colored sleeveless blouse and miniskirt.
"Green tea and a scone. Unless they're terrible, then just the tea." The qualifier had the effect desired, causing the waitress to frown under her long, blonde bangs and leave for the counter. She checked her PHS, which had rung once outside on the street; she'd gotten a text.
She was about to read it when the tea came in unadorned porcelain cup—possibly one of the few actual industrial exports still coming out of Wutai—along with three well-browned scones and some dark red jam. Even in Edge, Junon was known for its fruit preserves, probably the most popular agricultural product regularly produced from the countryside. A strange, almost sentimental feeling set in, which she understood as joy; eating this scone with actual Junon preserve might be the best thing to happen to her since she came to this place.
Then Kyrie Canaan, with her undersized shirt and jean shorts and oversized cap, entered the café and ruined it. She sat down at adjacent table, back to Yuffie's chair and gestured at the same waitress, as Yuffie scowled in the opposite direction.
"The parfait of the day, please," Kyrie requested, gesturing at a small chalkboard advertising the same dish.
"You know, you're not supposed to be an actual detective, able to find someone," she growled, holding her teacup near her lips. "In case it's not clear what I mean by that: leave me alone."
Kyrie audibly smirked. Yuffie could picture the self-satisfied look on her face, and it took some self-control to avoid cracking the porcelain in her hand.
"In an hour, meet me at the Shinra Museum, in the lobby of the Citadel, next to the War Memorial Museum," Kyrie whispered rather indiscreetly.
"Kyrie, the only thing I can think of that sounds worse than going to a Shinra Museum is going to any museum with you," she hissed back, fishing the gil out of one of her pockets and dropping a few coins onto the plate with one hand, and devouring the scones with the other. Thanks for ruining the jam, you dumb bimbo.
"Gosh, why are you so angry all the time?" Kyrie asked.
"None of your damn business," she snapped back, her voice rising. They were starting to create a scene, though she didn't particularly care, and was rising from her seat when she felt a gloved hand grasp her arm as she reached for her luggage.
"Just do it, trust me," Kyrie hissed in response. "Look for the picture of the old boss."
Yuffie grumbled an inarticulate command about not being touched by a slum-dweller before leaving the café, her order half-finished, pausing only to make sure Kyrie wasn't following her down the stairs back onto the street as she crossed it. She had no intention about telling Kyrie about her experience aboard the Bonaventura, or discussing things like missiles or weapons inspectors. Regardless of her feelings towards that slum street crier, it wasn't any of her business to begin with.
After crossing the street, she found an empty spot on the raised armored mantle between two groups of tourists and sat down against the steel barrier, sighing, then checked the text message she'd received over her PHS. It was a text from August Fitzroy, which she read aloud to herself quietly on the street.
"Still nothing new on Aske, sorry. May be close to a breakthrough on the Clean Air Development Plan. Reached out to Barret, said he told you everything he knew, sorry if that was a bad idea." She groaned. "Gawd, August, the whole point about forgiveness being easier to ask for than permission isn't to openly admit it."
Speaking of crappy amateur detectives, I'm running out of leads here. Victor Io's cryptic words echoed in her mind: history lived in Junon, and Junon alone. She put her head between her hands and legs, sighed deeply, then stood up, remembering to take her luggage with her.
Squished between the Fortress and Upper Junon, as far as she could tell, was the central government ward that was home to major institutions of the State of Junon, including the house of parliament, the health, welfare, and education ministries, and the state libraries. The rest of the government—like the military, most obviously—was probably housed inside the Citadel. What she didn't realize was that the Citadel, completed in Shinra's time decades after the War Memorial Museum, was actually linked via underground lobby to the older structure.
To her surprise, the first thing she saw upon entering the museum was a scaled model of a sailing ship, still large enough that its tallest mast was ten meters in height. The informative plaque at the base identified it as a "galleon", belonging to Junon's Age of Sail, five hundred to two hundred years earlier, the sort of thing she'd only seen in illustrations in books or paintings, and had never associated with Shinra.
"From the Age of Sail, the Golden Hind, which circumnavigated the Planet from 1620 to 1623, as a privateer for the kingdom of Junon." She raised an eyebrow skeptically and studied the intricate mechanical detail of the model. There was no helping being impressed by it, these artefacts of an ancient world that had stopped being centuries even before Meteorfall, now sitting under the high, windowed ceilings and between the polished concrete pillars of this exhibition hall. Two other, smaller model ships could be found on opposite ends of the exhibition floor; looking up to the windowed ceiling, she could see a single-seat monoplane suspended by industrial cables, presumably an actual aircraft, of the same model she'd seen rusting away on the television broadcast back in the Seventh Heaven.
Nice reminder that there used to be museums like this back in Midgar. Back when there was a Midgar. She gave a sigh and continued looking around. An informative sign pointed down an inclined walkway at the end of the exhibition hall leading to the Citadel Historical Museum, the official name of the Shinra Museum.
The Shinra Museum, predictably, was much less impressive than exhibition hall in the War Memorial Museum before it. There were no scaled model ships or full-size aluminum-bodied aircraft; there was no where to put them, given that the museum seemed to be allocated just a portion of the floor space of the Citadel's lobby floor, and populated by various knickknacks and relics signs confirmed had been salvaged from the ruins of Midgar in first year after Meteorfall, largely from the Midgar Memorial Museum on the 60th Floor of 100 Central Plaza, the highest floor of the building accessible to the general public before Midgar went under martial law. Much of it was in poor taste; all of it was visibly damaged or worn out.
"So this is where all that crap went," Yuffie declared aloud; a nearby docent in what looked like a military uniform with its decorations removed shushed her for her inconsiderate behavior. Though the ceilings of the Citadel's lobby were unwindowed, and lower that the earlier exhibition wall, they were still high enough to accommodate what must've been the massive example of the Shinra Corporation logotype that welcomed people to the original 60th Floor, wedged into the corner with jagged-edged steel and rusting red paint. The unlit letters for 'MEMORIAL' were joined by a small, humble-looking sign welcoming guests to the Citadel Memorial Museum and asking they refrain from touching any of the exhibits.
Yuffie looked past it. "What the hell is this?" she asked, following by more shushing. On a beaten, chipped pedestal stood a larger-than-life statue of the unmistakable Shinra the Elder, an aged, hard-faced man in an expensive double-breasted suit, rendered in discolored, pockmarked bronze alloy with fractures and holes across the face and upper chest, but still recognizable. An information plaque explained that the statue came from the 60th Floor, alongside what survived of the large, modernist two-tone painting of Shinra's various industrial products: truck, buses, passenger sedans, ships, locomotives and even the still-used S-70 military helicopters, along with an old-fashion looking mako reactor in profile.
In fact, most of what was on display seemed to come in the form of paintings or reproduction photography, rather than more tangible artefacts or sculptures. There were more Shinra corporate logotypes, some of them predating the founding of the Electric Power Company when Shinra was just one competing player in the corporate landscape. There were framed design documents and schematics, helpfully labeled as declassified, for Shinra's largest industrial projects: construction equipment, powerplants, even examples of Shinra's largely-failed family of rocket launch systems and spacecraft. And there were photographs: company photos of the long-forgotten founders of the Shinra arsenal in wartime Midgar. Another was of a young man in coveralls with a wrench, dwarfed by the truck or military machine engine he was working with, not looking at the photographer. Yuffie frowned at it, wondering what bothered her about the photograph: the man was her age, maybe a little older, kneeling in boots inside a warehouse or tunnel of some kind.
Then it struck her: he looked almost exactly like a younger Rufus Shinra, albeit with shorter hair and a modestly larger jaw. The nearby plaque confirmed her suspicions: the elder Shinra, not an elder, but no more than twenty, taken around 1960 in Junon, near the height of the First Wutai War.
"Everyone comes from somewhere." Another annoyed hush from a docent, and Yuffie turned to see Kyrie approaching in the soft light.
"I know you think that's wisdom, but it really isn't," Yuffie mumbled at her before turning back to the blown-up photographed salvaged from Midgar.
She smirked at her, apparently unconvinced. "Shocking how much stuff they got out of Midgar, isn't it?" she said, looking around at the other exhibits. "All that trouble, and how many people actually bother to see it? It doesn't bring in the tourists like the other building does."
"What am I doing here, Kyrie?" she snapped, trying not to shout. She sighed again. "And who is they?"
"If I had to guess, I'd say the army. Immediately after Meteorfall, there were only two groups of people going into Midgar: emergency responders, and the Midgar Army. And if those responders kept anything, it probably would've been destroyed or seized when they were folded into the W.R.O.."
She's not wrong there. "Kyrie, you have ten seconds to explain to me what I'm doing in this museum to bad taste before I get you arrested. One…two…" she began counting, as Kyrie reached into her undersized shorts with her oversized gloves, trying to find something.
"I've got it right here, and…"
"Three, four, five…"
"Okay, okay! Here! You can have it, geeze!" She stuffed folded, crinkled piece of paper into Yuffie's right hand. "He said you'd be able to figure it out."
"He? Who's he?" she demanded, smoothing the paper out against the wall before gingerly unfolding it. One side was blank; the other featured a hand-sketched diagram of a tall, cylindrical building of some kind, on a tapered foundation. "What the heck is this, a grain silo? Wait, forget that, who's he?"
"Aske."
Yuffie took her by the right strap of her shirt. "You met him?" More angry shushing, and Yuffie dragged Kyrie around the corner, away from the docent. "Where?"
She immediately regretted that; not laying hands on Kyrie specifically, but what she betrayed in the process of doing so. It was fine reminding the taller girl from the Midgar slums she could lay her down with a single, effortless blow, except now she knew. She knew she had something Yuffie wanted, something important, and that realization took barely seconds to appear in Kyrie's dark eyes. To her credit, she did try in vain and conceal her triumphant smirk. "Come on, Yuffie, you get what you paid for. You know that."
Yuffie released her, glancing back at the sheet. "Barely. Besides, given that I know you're full of crap anyway, why should I believe you?"
Kyrie's smirk vanished. "He—or she—said that if you were actually Yuffie Kisaragi, you'd be able to confirm the authenticity."
"Of what? That it's an authentic piece of paper?" She scowled and glanced back at the sheet of paper, a piece of museum stationary. It might mean something, or it might not.
"I…didn't think to ask," Kyrie confessed. "So, what's the big deal about Aske anyway?"
"It's not about Aske," Yuffie hissed at her. "It's about the future. As if you have any idea what that means."
"Well excuse me! We can't all be foreign princesses," she snapped back, smoothing out the creases in her clothing where Yuffie had manhandled her. "You're not paying me enough for this. You wanna' know the difference between you and me? Three years didn't make me such a jerk."
Indignantly, she brushed her hands across her top and stormed off towards the exit. Yuffie held back a loud groaned and pressed her free hand against her head. Dumb bimbo, I'd rather deal with the Junon Navy. She glanced back at the crinkled piece of paper, loosened her grip, and held the piece of paper in front of her. Wrinkles aside, it was a fairly neat sketch of a tall, narrow structure with segmented rings at either end on a trapezoidal platform foundation. An oddly-positioned cross-mark was placed to the left of the main sketch. "Looks like an industrial smokestack or a…"
She paused, then looked at the individual exhibits on the wall opposite of her. A row of monotone, faded schematic diagrams under glass, with individual plaques explaining their importance, each representing one of Shinra's industrial products, just like the modernist two-tone painting behind the statue of the late President Shinra. A top-down view of a helicopter, with its four long rotor blades, a mako-powered locomotive alongside its older coal-fire counterpart. The first production mako reactor, aptly labeled number one in the schematic, also known as the Mt. Nibel Reactor.
Yuffie held the paper in front of her, able to see the inlaid lighting on the wall in front of her. When she lined up the sketched outline with the design on the wall, the small cross-mark fell onto a separate piece, a map of the Mt. Nibel region in the Western Continent that was home to the reactor.
Nibelheim. The mountain hamlet home to Shinra's first production mako reactor, and not coincidentally the first town destroyed by the ex-SOLDIER Sephiroth. The mark indicated a point outside the hamlet itself.
Maybe Kyrie's not completely useless, but she probably is. Nibelheim had more than its share of history too, even if she hadn't been around first-hand witness to any of it. The village Shinra rebuilt to hide the descent into madness of their most celebrated war hero; a secretive research installation hidden in plain sight, the resting place of her friend Vincent Valentine for decades, and coincidentally where she had found him again after he was nearly killed by ex-SOLDIER Rosso the Crimson. There was an immediate sick feeling in the pit of her stomach; it wasn't a place she wanted to return to another time, it wasn't even a place she wanted to know still existed.
And there was another dilemma. Rosso the Crimson, almost certainly, was dead; if she wasn't, she certainly wasn't in Nibelheim, half a world away from the only life she would've known, in the ruins of the city Shinra built. The W.R.O. had secured the region in the first two years after Meteorfall, only to abandon it when the Deepground crisis demanded noncrucial personnel be recalled from the western countryside to secure the major population centers. Nibelheim was surrendered to the New Midgar Army's air forces, headquarters out of Polaris Air Force Base, constructed by Shinra out of what had been Rocket Town. So far, they had behaved themselves—the Organization's only regular presence in the region were regular reconnaissance flights confirming the Corporation's deactivation of the Mt. Nibel Reactor. And Shinra wasn't apparently interested in Mt. Nibel otherwise; all their industrial labor went into the Sunset Mountains that the military had so tediously squabbled with the Corelian State over, home to no known mako reserves after decades of surveying. Barely any traffic was detected region, and they had neglected to restore the link to the Corel Railroad that ran northeast to Coasta del Sol. All actionable intelligence seemed to suggest that Shinra was no longer interested in Mt. Nibel, because Shinra was no longer able to profitably exploit mako energy. All the oil was next door.
So the unpleasant possibility, however remote, was that Aske wasn't someone connected to the Junon government. It was that they were someone connected to the Deepground Army.
Yuffie swallowed uncomfortably, looking back at the exhibit and the adjacent map. And she didn't like how convenient it was that, immediately after Thomas Kessler's unsubtle hint seek out the original designers of Shinra's reactors, someone else was more subtly suggesting the same. She didn't like being played for the fool, but she didn't see much choice.
Carrying case over one shoulder, she paused by entrance passage back into the larger museum. "What was it a memorial too?"
"Excuse me?" the docent asked.
She pointed. "This says memorial. I get why the building outside's called that, but what was this a memorial to back when it was in Midgar? The city hadn't been destroyed yet." She thought of Rufus Shinra's unlucky Meteorfall Monument.
The docent looked genuinely surprised; Yuffie thought someone must've asked her the same question at some point. "To be honest, I don't know. I suppose they're a memorial to much the same thing: the Wutai World Wars," she finally answered.
No accounting for taste.
Author's Notes:
More Kyrie, and more references to areas specifically introduced in the new incarnation of Final Fantasy VII-which potentially makes me a little bit of a hypocrite given my previously voiced objections (don't worry, I'm still not planning to buy the game), but they're just so very useful as building pieces. Whenever the next part of the remake (or reimagining?) comes out, and brings the player to Junon, I could be in big trouble. Anyway, as always I welcome reviews and thanks for staying with the story thusfar.