The Shinra Mansion. Yuffie decided it was no coincidence that Albert Saunders' office in Nibelheim Manor was in in the opposite direction of the mansion's hidden circular stairway. The catty blonde lieutenant with the beauty mark, temporarily followed by another woman of roughly the same build in blue field dress, escorted her up the stairs to what had been the second-floor guest bedroom, but now served as a security checkpoint occupied by a man in uniform, whom the lieutenant called "staff sergeant", standing behind his desk. Behind him, the hidden doorway in the corridor had been removed, and replaced by a steel gate.

"Is this her?" the sergeant asked, skeptically. The catty lieutenant gave him what seemed to Yuffie an entirely inappropriate nod and the sergeant took out a metal keycard, which along with a six-digit keycode he used to open the gate. "The entire cellar level, what was the laboratory, is now the citizen's residence. Previously the entire mansion served that purpose, until the military decided it needed the space."

"Tired of sleeping out in the rain?" Yuffie asked patronizingly. The lieutenant actually laughed.

"We're not calling it a prison…"

"For political reasons," she interrupted him.

He gave an indignant cough. "As I said, we're not calling it a prison, and we're not calling him a prisoner. "Citizen Illyich is in a form of protective custody, as he no longer has any form of acceptable citizenship anywhere in the world, after his native citizenship was stripped by the government of Junon."

"So you're not calling him a prisoner for political reasons. Isn't that, like, the definition of a political prisoner?" Yuffie asked.

The lieutenant laughed again, almost doubling over, while the sergeant awkwardly ignored her claim and slid the steel gate open. "He's not personally dangerous in any way. He's forty-seven years old, and has spent the last decade in custody." Through the gate was mansion stairwell, which still featured its horrifically unsafe spiral wooden stairs, but now included a steel cage industrial elevator at the end of a short, safe walkway. The sergeant the stairwell a cursory glance before looking back at her. "Should you speak to him, don't believe anything he says. He's a political crank of the highest order."

Yuffie eyed the sergeant more closely in turn, her eyes drawn to the small metal insignia sewn into his uniform collar, wings superimposed over a spinning propeller. The emblem of the Polaris Air Force, formerly the Confederation Military Air Service. Coming from someone wearing the uniform of the military arm of a dead corporation. "Why the heck would I come here if I wasn't going to speak to him?" she demanded. "Don't answer that."

She and the catty lieutenant boarded the elevator, leaving the third woman behind, which with annoying slowness descended to the cellar level beneath the estate. While trying to keep herself from twitching in place, she turned to the lieutenant. "Has he been particularly troublesome?"

She just smirked in response. Another useless person, Yuffie thought.

In the intervening three years, the cellar level had barely changed, at least at first glance. The main area at the bottom of the stairwell remained largely unfinished, irregular stone walls a cobblestone floor. More electric lights had been put up, and there were a few new comforts like additional chairs taken from the upper levels, but otherwise, just as barren and inhospitable as she remembered. She was led into the adjacent corridor, not in the direction of the nightmarish coffin room where Vincent Valentine had waited for decades.

"I remember that part of the cellar, it was where Hojo's laboratory was from during the Jenova Project, and where…" She stopped herself. And where Cloud and his friend, Zack Fair, were turned into test subjects in the wake of Sephiroth's massacre. She wasn't here to exchange notes on Sephiroth's atrocities with the military in Nibelheim; she was there to interview a prisoner who had the misfortune of being housed in the same location for unrelated reasons.

"That's correct, where Sephiroth supposedly came to the conclusion he was born from Jenova, the last of the Cetra," the lieutenant explained, an unexpected seriousness in her voice. "All the hardware seized by your organization, the W.R.O., in the first year after Midgar's fall."

Yeah, but none of the books. The Nibelheim Manor laboratory had been the original home of the Jenova Project and, before the war against Sephiroth, still home to most of the original research; according to W.R.O. interrogations of survivors from the Department of Science and Research, except for copies divided between the 61st, 66th and 67th floors at 100 Central Plaza, practically everything had been left to sit underground in Nibelheim. In Yuffie's opinion, it was straightforward enough: the W.R.O. seized everything in Midgar, and excluding the scientific equipment, the military had seized everything in Nibelheim.

As bad as it sounds, there has never been any indication that either Junon or Rocket Town actually intended take advantage of any of Hojo's research. In fact, they didn't even use them during the Deepground crisis. More likely, it seems like Polaris has been hoarding all that research either for unlikely leverage over us in diplomatic negotiations, or more realistically, because they don't trust us with them. As if Yuffie needed another reminder of the sad state of diplomatic relations after yesterday's conversation.

The lieutenant used a metal keycard to open the door at the end of the corridor; through it, what was still discernably an ancient-looking library, its walls lined with shelves that were a little barren if not empty, and in the center a large, academic-looking table that had probably been brought down here a hundred years earlier. Sitting at the table, behind a short stack of notebooks, several pens, and even a mechanical typewriter, was a short, bald man with a graying mustache and goatee, who removed his eyeglasses and looked up at her.

"Good afternoon, Citizen Illyich," the lieutenant announced precisely. "May I present Yuffie Kisaragi, of the W.R.O.."

"So you're going to talk to the old man, right?" That was what Reno had told her in the observation area of the Nibelheim Reacto, catching her by surprised. The skinny, spindly assassin from Shinra's General Affairs Department was leaning against a concrete pillar, absently mindedly scratching at the large placard bearing an information diagram for Shinra's earliest production-model mako reactor with one of his fingers.

I hate being blindsided like this. "Who?"

"Uladzimir Illyich," he explained, smoothly pronouncing the name. "The failed political theorist who's spent most of your life in prison. Proof that there are threats to the political order we Turks aren't responsible for dealing with."

"That sounds like a challenge," she grumbled back. "You want to tell me how you knew that was on my agenda? In case you've forgotten, I came to Nibelheim to talk to you." Her lip twisted more. "By the way, don't think I didn't miss how you dodged by question—Junon's Clean Air Development Plan. What is it?" she repeated, more insistently.

Reno sighed in a particularly infuriating matter, suggesting she being the source of aggravation in their conversation. "The doc showed you the reactor, didn't she? The inside, I mean. Be straight with me, Yuffie, does your boss think that Junon or Polaris are operating mako reactors somewhere in the western continent?"

Yuffie resisted the urge to tell Reno to blow off, forcing herself into the mindset where she could seriously contemplate a genuine question from one of the deadliest enforcers of the infamous Turks; it took her several long seconds, during which Reno started to anxiously twitch and look around in the darkness of the observation level. Finally she answered.

"No, I don't think so. He used to, and I think in a way, he wishes they were. Using the lifestream…" she began, before stopping. "The use of mako energy for industrial purposes, as Shinra would put it, has globally-reaching catastrophic consequences in years or decades or more. And right now…"

"And right now, Junon and the W.R.O. are racing towards a political flashpoint in a manner of months or weeks. One that Reeve has no answer to," Reno finished for her. "Because discovering an active mako reactor would at least remind us of this agreement made by the entire world after Meteorfall, what was it called?"

Reno twisted his head, tilting it to the right with a dramatic expression of concentration. "The post-Shinra global consensus?"

"When Reeve went on television a couple years ago, after the commemoration of the Meteorfall Monument in Edge…the original one, I mean…he had a roundtable with a bunch of political scientists. One of them was from the Royal University of Kalm, I forgot what his name was. He called it the 'end of history', meaning that this is what everything would be like in the future, going forward." She pursed her lips grimly. "Edge City, Meteorfall Square, the Wall, the Narrows…all built with Shinra equipment and materials from Sectors 3 and 4, all being overseen by Shinra's building company. Shinra was secretly claiming they owned Edge City, from Meteorfall Square outwards. That's what they were being accused of."

There was a reception desk against the wall, probably abandoned since well before the Jenova War or even the burning of Nibelheim. She sat down on it, staring at a defunct plastic telephone set. "Gawd, I miss those days. Everything's just gotten worse since then."

Reno stared at her, opening his mouth to respond before closing it. After a few seconds with his head hanging against his shoulder, he stood up, walked over to the other side of the reception desk and sat down again. "The Clean Air Development Plan. It's Junon's plan to resurrect pre-war industrial technology for power generation, something that's not reliant on exhaustible sources of petroleum."

In particular, two major controversies exist for fossil fuels. The first was environmental, and should be of particular interest to us: Shinra could accurately claim that use of fossil fuels—principally coal, oil, and natural gas—demonstrated a history of immediate environmental harm and long-term alteration of the climate via carbon dioxide levels…The second was geopolitical. Though it has been publicly denied since by both sides of the war, the historical motivation for the emergence of the Wutaian Empire was scarcity of land suitable for agriculture, or 'living space'. The World War of the last century can be attributed to scarcity of land but particularly scarcity of resources, above all, fuel. Fuhito's unpleasant thesis, in its blocky eastern script printed in cheap ink, banged against the walls inside her brain.

"If you're wondering, they didn't come up with the name. 'Clean Air Development' was being used more than fifty years ago, years before mako became the default means of generating electricity globally." He ran his left hand through his spikey, messy red hair. "You've been to Kalm recently. The city's choking on its own air supply so bad it makes the Slums look like the Nibel Valley."

"Don't denigrate the Slums," she reproached him, smiling faintly. "After all the dust and debris settled since the Battle of Midgar, the air quality's practically better than anywhere else in the Midgar Basin. It's definitely better than Edge City next door. Maybe it's Planet's way of telling us anywhere we humans go, we ruin our environment. The whole of Edge smells like automotive diesel. Wutai's going to be the same in five to ten years."

She looked at him. So the Turks have been following me. As if there were any doubt about that. "But they're not bringing back mako reactors," she repeated.

Reno shook his head once. "Sorry to disappoint you, but no. I have it on good authority that Junon's been talking to Shinra about pretty much everything except mako reactors. Guided missiles, aircraft engines, new early-warning radar. They've even talked about converting one of their battleships into an aircraft carrier." Reno paused, his face looking as if trying to grasp how ridiculous it was. "It's a type of large, flat-top ship, long enough for small fixed-wing aircraft to take off from. Not just helicopters, monoplanes. So you can have this floating airfield that can sail anywhere to the world in a few weeks, launch aircraft and bomb the hell out of your target. Apparently Wutai and Junon had them in the Continental War."

She looked at him, frowning. "You mean like the Wakamiya-Maru?"

"The Waka-what?"

"It was a seaplane tender, a big one. Converted from a cargo ship. Apparently, at some point a hundred years ago they redesigned it so that planes could actually launch off the deck."

Reno nodded slowly. "Yeah, like that, I guess." He surveyed the sparse, crumbling brick walls of the observation level. Nothing about the powerplants, just fuel oil furnaces and boilers, same as the rest of their fleet."

"Well, there's no reason for them to build a mako-powered fleet after even Shinra failed to do so. They control two-thirds of the world's oil fields already." She grimaced. "So, Barret thinks you work for the Junon government's Petrochemical Ministry, and have been leaking him information."

Reno gave her an attempt at a coy grin. "I felt sorry for him."

"And this Clean Air Development thing…it's some pre-Shinra industrial plan to divest from oil and coal, two things Junon already has in quantity, because…" She paused. "Because that would give up Reeve's last means of possible future leverage on them. And if the W.R.O. beats them to it, then Junon loses both leverage and the technology race."

"You're making it sound like just another arms race," Reno explained mockingly, gesturing over his arms and pretending to hold something large on his shoulder. After a few seconds, Yuffie realized he was making the motions of someone firing a shoulder-carried missile launcher, like the kind she'd seen demonstrated on the Bonaventura at Junon. They really are following me everywhere.

"Now that I know who you are, can I ask you another question?"

He shrugged indifferently. "Sure."

"Does Doof-…I mean, does Rufus Shinra think there's going to be a war?" She tried to keep a lock on those small, turquoise eyes.

Reno gave an almost melodramatic sigh in disgust, throwing his shoulders forward. In a different life, he would've made a really hammy actor. As oppose to a hired killer who dropped the Sector 7 Plate. "The boss hopes not. Because it's going to suck if there is." He leaned towards her across the desk. "You probably think war is profitable for the company; but this isn't thirty years ago, or even twenty. Reeve basically gets everything he needs on loan, and he's even gotten extensions on the interest payments for another decade. Except when the boss just gives him money for nothing. The way things are going, in five years Shinra will be paying him to take their equipment. And Junon…"

He gave a groan. "Junon' better, but barely. Take that fancy new missile they bought, the 'Needle' or whatever they're calling it. The company pays someone to design the missile, another person to design the homing seeker device, another person to launcher, all based on Shinra-owned patents. Then the company sells it to Junon at a pre-negotiated price, eventually fulfilling the TO&E. The company gets paid, the military gets a new man-portable air defense system. Everyone's happy. Except if Junon doesn't like the delivery time, they'll just seize the technical package. If they don't like the price, they'll just seize the patents. Since Meteorfall, basically all of the company's industrial assets, which by the way is incredibly valuable to Reeve too, is in Junon. How do you think the country has remained economically solvent this whole time? For almost three years now, basically the entire wealth of the Planet was going from Edge, to the W.R.O., and then to Junon, and then back out to the Planet." Reno propped his arms behind him and stared up at the ceiling. "F-ing economics. I should've paid more attention in school."

Yuffie gave up trying to hide a smile at his apparent misery. "So a war wouldn't be profitable?"

"Peace is profitable, barely. Mostly peace is cheap. We can afford peace. The global economy is so…freaked up…beyond recognition that that's the best we can hope for. Why do you think the company kept the peace, or has tried to, for thirty years? Out of the goodness of our hearts?" He did sound miserable at the prospect. "So, you undertand why I called you out to this empty monument to the…futility of anything ever getting better?"

Yes, but I don't like rewarding bad behavior. She begrudgingly gave him a slight nod. "Have you actually spoken to this guy, Illyich?" she asked, the name still awkward to her.

"Spoken? No. The air force isn't joking when they say he's kept under tight guard twenty-four-seven; they don't even let him go outside if they think anyone's looking. But I was able to pass notes with him. Slowly," he complained. "He's going a few sympathizers in the military, even then anything barely gets through."

"Sympathizers?"

"Well, he's popular in Junon you know." He turned to her once more. "Like I said, he's a political theorist. And that's not his real name, his real name was Vadim Chaikovsky, but he never published anything under that name. Does it mean anything to you?"

Yuffie hoped she had control over her face. "No. But he has supporters in Junon?"

"That's why he went there after Midgar fell. Not enough to keep from being thrown back into jail. If you've ever read any of his stuff, it's actually convincing. At least, I think it is. He was writing even before he was imprisoned, a pamphlet called 'What Is to Be Done?' which you can still get as contraband in Junon. Sort of his…manifesto, or something."

"Like Fuhito's?"

Reno laughed, almost despite himself, glanced at her incredulously, then laughed again. "God, I haven't heard that name in years. You know what? Maybe things aren't so bad, now that I think about it."

"Did you kill him?" Yuffie felt herself turning red at how abruptly she'd asked. "Sorry, I didn't mean…"

Reno made a mock gesture of firing his right hand like a handgun, mouthing the sound, before dropping his hands to his sides again. He's killed plenty of people, after all. Fuhito might've been the one person who actually deserved it. She cringed at the thought. "Illyich is…well, he's the opposite of Fuhito. Or maybe Fuhito's the opposite of him, considering who came later. Don't take my word for it though, talk to him. That's what you're here for, after all."

She frowned, more deliberately this time. "So you're not going to agree to an interview?"

He gave her a look suggesting she must've known better. "Turks don't go on the record, Yuffie Kisaragi," he chided her.

"You think he could stop a war?"

"God, I don't know. Maybe? I doubt he could tell you anything about what the Clean Air Development Plan is, so sorry if I got your and Barret's hopes up."

And there she was now, sitting down at an empty chair at the table across from Uladzimir Illyich. She set her luggage down at the far end and opening it, revealing the TC-5500 and its accessories packed neatly in. Illyich had been looking at the clock on the wall: a little before ten minutes after noon, though he didn't seem irritated at her tardiness when he looked back at her. She studied him from the corner of his eye as she unpacked: he was a small man, taller than her but smaller than a comparative young person like Cloud Strife, with some thinning hair on the back of his round, bald cranium, giving it the effect of looking larger than it probably was. Well, at I can tell they're feeding him. Dark eyebrows and a goatee on his angular chin completed the look, altogether rather passive and even comical.

He wore a ratty prewar suit, a threadbare dark colored tie around his neck giving him the look of a 19th century schoolmaster. Why would someone actually dress like that, except as a punishment by those above them?

It became clear that he was waiting for her to start the conversation, worn, boney hands together in front of him on the tabletop. "How are they treating you?" she asked as sympathetically as she could manage to this odd-looking stranger who had apparently missed the last decade, including the end of the world, one hand holding the microphone and its polished metal base.

His thick eyebrows rose momentarily, though not in the dramatic fashion of Reno's the night before. "Insomuch as they intend for me to spend the rest of my life here, not well I think. But I have been treated materially worse in the past." His small, grey eyes drifted towards the reel-to-reel tape player with its polished metal casing and array of switches and dials. "Speaking of which, I know enough to ask if you're using this technological anachronism for my benefit."

She held back a sigh. "I'm not. I have to deal with certain…technological and material shortages," she said very carefully. "Something I think you're familiar with."

He seemed suitably convinced by her answer. "Like the uniforms said, my name's Yuffie Kisaragi. I assume you've never heard of me, considering…the last few years. I am…I was a member of the revolutionary group AVALANCHE, which played a major role in overthrowing the Shinra Electric Power Company before the Jenova War, during which we also fought Sephiroth."

"Shinra's most celebrated general turned hated traitor, the hero of the Wutai World War," he elaborated for her.

So he knows some of what's happened after the last ten years. "Yes, that's correct. And since then, I've been working with the World Regenesis Organization, an international body made up of scientists, engineers, and even ex-military who're trying to rebuild the world since then. We've been on the frontlines trying to protect the Planet from any major threats that have emerged since the fall of Shinra."

"Because Shinra has fallen," Illyich concluded calmly. She could see that he'd extended one finger, pointing at the branding on the TC-5500, as if the device by itself refuted that statement.

She glanced over her shoulder at the lieutenant, who was standing by the door, smirking at them both. "Well, not exactly, I suppose. That's actually something I'd like to speak to you about, if you don't mind going on the record."

"Of course not, Ms. Kisaragi. Everything I say or do in my daily life is being recorded, after all," he pointed out, without any hint of irony but as stating a stark fact. "But I'm not sure how much help someone my age, in my circumstances, would be in this situation."

"Well, you might be surprised. Speaking of which…" she said, turning in her chair and shooting daggers at the lieutenant with her eyes. "You! Get. The hell. Out," she commanded.

The lieutenant looked slightly bewildered as Yuffie kept staring angrily at her, before scoffing slightly and exiting through the door back into the corridor. She turned back to Illyich. "I just don't like them watching over my shoulder everywhere I go," she explained with a coldness she found surprising.

Illyich cocked his head slightly. "You become accustomed to it, not that I'm encouraging this particular way of life." He looked back down at the field recorder as Yuffie lifted the Plexiglas lid and began the process of threading the 6.35-mm width magnetic tape through the playback and recording tape heads. "Though I am surprised at your choice of technology, even if the military authorities don't allow me to use any computer, telephones or things of that nature."

"That must be difficult for you."

He rested his hands over his stomach and smiled softly. "Not as much as you might think. Whatever is happening in the outside world since then, I've had a long time to accommodate myself to this way of life. Things were certainly less comfortable during the last two wars, but from my perspective in custody, I haven't really had an opportunity to understand how the end of the Shinra Corporation's global hegemony has shaped today's politics. It's not an exaggeration to say whatever's happened since Meteorfall, I haven't been privy to the details."

Lucky you. "I'm…sorry to hear that. You would think someone as disconnected from daily life as yourself wouldn't still be considered such a threat that…" She paused. The small man sitting across from her, with his wrinkles face, bald head and almost comedic goatee kept staring at her patiently. "That you'd remain in prison, I mean."

He seemed amused by that. "Well, during my organizing days, my politics made me an enemy of the government, and then an enemy of the Shinra Corporation."

"Your writing, you mean. I'm sorry, I haven't read any of it myself," she apologized.

"Oh, don't worry about that. All my writing was a product of an earlier era. Even I can guess how much the world has changed since then. I've learned a few things myself."

"Like what?" she asked curiously.

Illyich visibly thought about it for a few seconds. "Render unto Shinra what belongs to Shinra," he said with an unexpectedly mischievous wink.


Author's Note:

This chapter came about earlier, rather than later, than expected; a rare problem for me, and probably a good one to have; I suspect it's not too difficult to tell that I wrote almost three-fourths of this chapter in a single day, and just polished it up slightly afterwards. Likewise, what will be happening in the next chapter (whenever I get around to it) is probably self-evident (another interview, with an original character, because you don't really expect someone like Reno to sit down for a tape interview, do you?). I do intend to elaborate more on Jenova (it or her legacy were actually less present in this chapter compared to the next one), but it's an awkward topic to broach when so few characters would've encountered her at any point. As usual, please leave a review, and thank you for sticking with the story this long.