Premable:

As I previously stated, I took a 'break' to work on other stories. Unfortunately, I did not make particularly impressive progress on said other stories, and eventually I decided my time was better spent putting something out. Part of that is opportunism (I don't want people to forget this story so quickly after it began), and part of that is efficiency of effort. This chapter probably would've been easier if I'd put it out sooner, or at least shorter.

Detective. As she left the Kalm Library, August had given Yuffie a cotton breathing mask to take with her. She was confused as to his motives but understood the moment she stepped through the massive wooden doors at the library's entrance: the air outside the Kalm Library was terrible, practically intolerable. Yuffie couldn't grasp why, it hadn't been an issue when she'd arrived in the city.

"Because now we're downwind of the coal-fire plant." August took her on a short detour: from the Kalm Library's clock tower, it was possible to see past the city walls to the winding road that seemed to run along the famed Kalm River. Maybe twenty kilometers away, it broke off into a large, fenced complex of modern grey buildings with reddish highlights along the riverfront, with several tall towers. After a few seconds, she realized the tall towers were smokestack, and that the thick overcast was actually a heavy cloud pouring out of them that easily reached to the city.

"It only lasts hours, half a day at most, and you get used to it," August assured her. "You can see the fuel piles past the main building, on the edge of the complex.

Yuffie could feel her tears welling up in her stinging eyes; with the mask on, her coughing was minimized though. "This is terrible," she declared, as if reminding him.

August held back laughter under his mask. "Again, you get used to it. You know who built that plant? The…"

"The W.R.O.," she grumbled in unison with him.

"Kalm didn't have its own reactor, and those long-distance high-voltage transmission lines out of Midgar were the first things to be cannibalized. Not that they'd do us any good if they were still around, I've heard Edge barely has enough electricity for itself."

"Well, you're right about that," she grumbled angrily as she slung her luggage over her shoulder. She considered sharing an observation how Edge, at least, had power stations that burned diesel oil. Then she reminded herself how little good complaining to him would do. She remembered a conversation with Barret. "I saw a bunch of streams on my way up here, how do they manage the coal ash leaching into the water table?"

August stared at her. "The what leaching into the what?"

Never mind. "Never mind."

Despite her poor mood, August had been more helpful than she'd hoped. The printout she'd been given was sorted first by the eight different wards, then alphabetically by surname. The first of the wards was the Elm Tree Ward, supposedly Kalm's wealthiest as measured by property values.

"Barnes, Cassini, Han, Heidzig, Moon," she muttered under her mask. The remaining six were distributed across the less wealthy wards. She felt her eyes welling up with tears again groped for her motorcycle goggles in her pocket, only to realize she'd left them with her vehicle. Holding back vulgarity, she continued down the street from the library, through the increasingly thinning crowds of pedestrians, before forcing her way into the nearest building.

Rubbing the tears out of her eyes and gulping in air after pulling off the mask, she knew she was inside one of Kalm's popular coffeehouses just by the smell of roasted coffee beans before sight and sound returned to her. A fistful of paper napkins later and she felt normal enough, only hoping that no one had noticed her.

Kalm's coffeehouse culture was famed even back in Wutai, and had endured the fall of Midgar. She thought it strange, considering coffee plants didn't grow anywhere near Kalm—a few years in the W.R.O., listening to economic speeches spouted by Reeve and the other financial leaders, and she'd learned that coffee was mostly grown in the highlands of Gongaga and Junon, excluding the southern Coffea mideela. Kalm's climate was a little too cold and a little too wet for Coffea gongaga. Yuffie did't like the taste itself, though she craved the aroma.

Midgar mostly drank tea. Maybe because of how long Wutai ruled, she remembered. Staring at the printout, she could hear more talking heads on the television over the quiet din of the coffeehouse patrons. T.N.N. again, as usual. She could recognize them even without glancing at the television hanging near the ceiling on the opposite wall.

"This is the world that Shinra wanted, that Shinra might still want: a world free of borders, free of nations. Last month, Shinra put out a formal statement advocating on the importance of the continental single-market! So we should ask ourselves—do we want what Shinra wants? Or do good fences make for good neighbors?" a T.N.N. personality asked.

It was something about economics and politics, which when T.N.N. wasn't talking about sports or the weather, was their mainstay. To this day, Yuffie didn't understand them and she suspected most people didn't.

"I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but aren't most of those people, you know, criminals?" a woman's voice asked incredulously. "Do we let criminals write government policy?"

"Too late for that," an oh-so-witty co-host declared. Yuffie let out a loud, piercing laugh with the maximum amount of sarcasm she could convey, clearly audible to the other patrons for several seconds, before returning to her printout.

"No, seriously, why isn't the W.R.O. taking leadership here?" the newswoman chided her colleagues. "Since the end of the Deepground Crisis it feels like Chairman Tuesti has been kicking all these political balls down the street. And now another ball is in Shinra's court."

"It's not that simple. You want to talk recent history? Fine: first, that Shinra, as in the company, was too big to prosecute, whether people realized it or not. Don't forget, everyone assumed Rufus Shinra was dead at the time, along with Martin Heidegger and Joy Scarlet Cassini. Second, that Shinra responded to the threat of prosecution by warning they'd pull all their funding to the W.R.O., which is hardly surprising since the point was to divest Shinra from its wealth. Third, that the 'appropriate' punishment for the company was the seizure of all useful Shinra materiel, permanent or otherwise, by local authorities, excluding mako reactors, which is what happened anyway."

"Yeah, I remember the court case brought forward by the W.R.O.—you didn't have to be a Shinra sympathizer to realize it was a mockery of due process for the company's survivors."

"Seizure and distribution of all of Shinra's property and materiel going back to 1968?" she asked.

"As if. Try 1959, when Shinra was first incorporated from the Junon and Midgar arsenals. The weapons company! God, is there anyone in this studio who was alive back in 1959? Back before there was even a Shinra Electric Power Company. But of course, that's what happened anyway, didn't it? A half-century of Shinra's property, up for grabs. Too bad after Midgar fell, most of it was in Junon."

"They're not wrong about that," Yuffie heard herself muttered under her breath. A coffeehouse patron in the adjacent table seemed to notice her, but said nothing.

"Shinra should've moved the Gold Saucer over there to replace the cannon," he joked. Raucous and annoying laughter from the television followed.

"Let's think about it seriously though. I know Reeve Tuesti. Reeve Tuesti is a good man. But even he must've realized this was the most draconian, absurd example of victor's justice since the Midgar Confederation, and Shinra and everyone else, demanded an unconditional surrender at the end of the Second Wutai War. That it wasn't about rebuilding lives, it was about getting revenge. That's right: it's the kind of thing that Shinra would've done back in the day."

The other sounded visibly uncomfortable. "Well, you have to consider what Midgar and Junon went through back then. Meanwhile, half of the people working at the W.R.O. worked for the Shinra Corporation before Midgar fell!" she reminded them.

"Half? That's being generous."

"Does anyone mind if I change the channel?" The question came from a tall, apron-wearing barista who was reaching up to the television. He had a certain, subtle nasal tinge to his voice that August hadn't had but was commonly associated with the working-class Kalmish.

There was a murmur of agreement from the patrons, and he changed the channel to the Chocobo Races at Golden Saucer, which garnered another mumbling round of approval.

Yuffie shook her head in pity while unfolding a city map she'd taken from the bus terminal, then began looking at the erratically crisscrossing streets and alleys around the Elm Tree Ward.

"Looking for someone?"

She almost jumped out of her seat: a tall, hazel-haired barista her own age was staring down at her, a metal coffee pot in one hand and a forced smile on her face.

"Yeah," she said, as calmly as she could manage. "Uh…right. Coffee, large, with extra cream and sugar," she quickly ordered.

Instead of leaving, the barista loudly repeated her order in the direction of the counter before looking back down at her. "That's a lot of names."

She resisted the urge to cover the printout with her hand. Yuffie's fear, since she'd reached the city, was that word would get out, and her arrival would coincide with however many former Shinra Corporation employees leaving. Information leaked out of the W.R.O. like a sieve; not just Shinra, but practically every other organization of stature knew what they were doing, where and when they were doing it. Shinra, Inc., just seemed particularly successful in doing so, always a few steps ahead of the W.R.O. in what the voices in Yuffie's worst nightmares called her greatest professional failing. She forced a smile, hopefully better than the server. "Yeah. I don't suppose you recognize any of them, do you?"

"Sorry, we get our share of customers from the Elm Tree Ward, but I don't recognize any of them." She frowned instead. "That's strange, come to think of it."

Whatever you do, don't go shouting them to your coworkers, you dumb bimbo. Thankfully she didn't.

"Are you some kind of detective?"

Yuffie chuckled. She had more cover stories than she actually remembered, starting from her days as a mysterious ninja in the forests outside Junon. "I'm an independent journalist from Edge. We're doing some pieces on displaced people from outside the city, trying to put them in contact with distant relatives across the continent, that sort of thing," she explained smoothly.

The look of surprise from the server satisfied Yuffie, and she returned to her printout and unfolded map, the barista staring over her shoulder. "Well, if anyone would have money to spare, it'd be people living at Elm Tree," she muttered coldly.

Yuffie barely held back a sigh. "And you're sure don't recognize any of these names?"

"Hey, Jun! Jun!" she barked. Yuffie put her hands to her face as the worker behind the counter wiped his hands on his apron and circled around, peering inquisitively at Yuffie's table while she groaned in displeasure. "Any of these names look familiar to you? They're from the Elm Tee Ward."

"What're they on a list for? Tax evasion?"

"No, she's a journalist," Jun's coworker explained.

"Didn't I order a coffee?" Yuffie gently reminded both of them after lowering her hands.

"Heidzig…as in the Heidzig House? That's in the Elm Tree Ward, big three-floor townhouse. And the Cassini Family, don't they live in the Elm Tree Ward? Or they used to. I could've sworn the Cassinis were big in the town before Meteorfall," Jun elaborated, tapping a spot on the city map. "But I don't think they even live in Kalm anymore. They probably packed up and headed west."

"I've never heard of them," Jun's coworker declared.

This is what qualifies as intelligence in the W.R.O.? We're so screwed.

"Moon…well, there are probably a half-dozen families with that surname in Kalm…"

"What about the Heidzig House?" Yuffie interrupted him. "Where is that?"

Jun blinked and pointed on the map again. "Right there. Historic Heidzig House. Built when Shinra first came to Kalm a couple of generations ago," he bragged. "Actually, I think Shinra built the whole block of houses."

"You're such a nerd. I bet you vote," she mocked him.

"You take that back."

"Jun Domino."

Yuffie was already rooting through her vest pockets. "I'm just going to go, you've both been a really big help," she explained quickly, fishing out a handful of metal coins and slamming them on her table in the same swift motion that she gathered her printout and map. Three silver-colored holed coins, a larger coin in deep copper color, and the largest coin, polished silver with no hole, but a diamond-shaped emblem on the face; total of 660 gil. Before Meteorfall, it would've paid for up to a week's nights room and board in the countryside; even in the hyperinflation of the last few years, it was enough to pay for several cups of coffee in a Kalm café. Tifa doesn't know she could've sold the reel-to-reel for twenty thousand gil with the right buyer.

"You don't want your coffee?" one asked,

"I get all my coffee by mail-order," she assured them on her way out, slinging her luggage over her shoulder. "It's faster."

Irritation that it was, the barista's description of the Heidzig House was promising: a house, or a block of houses, built by Shinra was too good to pass up. She contained her excitement. The air had cleared almost enough to breath without a mask, much less see clearly. A narrow cobblestone street snaked up the hill, in the opposite direction of the Kalm Library from the café and past a number of respectable-looking shops with rather diverse offerings: a books and manuscripts store, a women's jeweler, antique furniture, and even a materia vendor that also sold overpriced body armor. "Guess they're chasing the successful mercenary crowd," Yuffie wondered skeptically, resisting the urge to enter the shop herself and review their stock. At the far end, the narrow street merged with a wider one. According to the map, that was the Elm Tree Ward.

Along the storefronts, a boy was running alongside a girl, both in matching middle-class school uniforms. They were probably no more than ten and didn't seem impeded by the air quality. With the minimal amount of movement, Yuffie reached out and took his shoulder with her free left hand. "Hey, kiddo," she asked, trying to match the more subtle dialect of Kalmish she'd detected in August's own speech. "Do you know where the Heidzig House is?"

The child looked inconvenienced, but not particularly irritated. "You mean the big empty house in the ward?"

Yuffie looked perplexed; she wasn't clear on if this was actually question or not, but the boy continued. "It's on the corner way past Market Street, past all the other houses. It's the empty one."

His friend looked impatient. "With a red roof."

"It's empty except for the groundskeeper," he added, wrestling his arm free from Yuffie's surprisingly strong grip.

"Yeah, him."

Yuffie released him. "Wait, groundskeeper? What groundskeeper?"

"There's an old man who visits the house take care of it." Now the boy sounded like he was lecturing her.

"'Cause no one lives there."

"Yeah, I heard that the first time," Yuffie grumbled. "And you're sure the house is empty?"

"That's what I said," he retorted.

Yuffie gave a deep sigh under her mask, then consulted the printout again. "Well that's just great. Hey, neither of you have heard of Cassini or Barnes or Moon have you…?" To little surprise, both children were long gone by the time she looked up. Right, because that's what I would've done.

Rather than hope for more reliable children to pass by, Yuffie compromised with herself and entered the shop in front of her to speak with the attending merchant. A local shopkeeper—especially one in business long enough to actually sell materia—would have to be a dependable source of information, she reasoned. The Heidzig House now sounded less promising, but that still left four other options even before the rest of the list.

As the door's bell rang, in the figurative space behind her eyes, she saw Tifa's smooth, pale features leering at her. Shut up, Boobs. This is my job. Sort of.

She put on her best face, the kind reserved for the general public in more genteel places than Edge. "Uh, excuse me, could I speak to…"

"Are you with the media?" The question was posed by a large, robust-looking woman with sandy-colored hair in a pair of long braids and a flower, a very Kalmish look overall. Upon closer inspection, she wasn't much older than herself, wearing a green dirndl, a very Kalmish fashion, that was stretching under strain of her chest.

Come on, people, get clothes that fit. It's not hard. "Actually, I am…sort of."

"And you're from Edge?" her voice was a little nasally and unexpectedly harsh, though not necessarily on purpose.

She kept up her smile. "I'm sure my inelegant choice of clothing gave that away."

"So you're, what, an investigative reporter?"

Yuffie clenched her jaw and walked up to the wooden counter. "Three for three. You're very good."

The merchant cocked her head casually, straining her bodice further, and beckoned her closer. "You're not the first one to come. Edgers aren't really all that interested in Kalm otherwise, y'know?" She gestured with one long arm abruptly, nearly striking Yuffie in the face. "The ones that talked to papa didn't have tape recorders though."

Yuffie's face practically lit up in spite of herself. "So this is a family-owned shop. You…you wouldn't mind if I asked you a few questions?"

The woman crossed her arms over her large chest and pouted. "Would you promote the shop?"

"Sure!" she lied, already reaching into the TC-5500's large case and fishing out the microphone to demonstrate. "I'll just take a minute, I promise it'll be worth your time!"

"…fine, you can use that chair. As long as we finish before my next order pickup."

Yuffie spent the next few minutes enthusiastically thanking her while setting up the reel-to-reel on a clear spot on the counter, its microphone pointed at the merchant. The tall shopkeeper began upon seeing Yuffie enthusiastically gesture at the slow-moving reels that were visibly turning at a rate of almost ten centimeters of tape per second. She had a name, Anja, and a family legacy, the store belonging to her father, and his father, and his family, backwards in time to the founding of Kalm or even to the Ancients, though of course they had not always sold the wares at this precise location. Anja talked about that legacy, and the current condition of the marketplace, and even the broader economy of Kalm as a whole until Yuffie politely pressed the topic of the Heidzig House.

"About that," she asked skeptically. "It's just some old homes built by Shinra back after the war ended, not the last one, the one before that. Why do you care?"

"Oh, it's just routine stuff…" she assured Anja, who did not see Yuffie snap the microphone cable into the small metal jack concealed by her elbow.

[START]

Kisaragi: [LOUDLY] So, these city homes that were built by Shinra after the World War, let's talk about them. See, our audience is interested in historic Kalm because of all the romantic stories they grew up hearing. That neighborhood is part of it, right? Just like your shop, and all these legendary businesses! I mean, who hasn't heard of the Kalm Night Market?

Anja: And you're sure you got all that, everything I told you?

K: Yes, yes, of course I did. Trust me, my listeners are always looking for rare materia and weapons.

A: T'be honest, we haven't had that much materia or guns since Shinra fell. Though at least what stock we do have tends to go quickly.

K: Yeah, I can see that. So, about the neighborhood…

A: Ya, I don't know actually know that much about it. [PAUSE] But I know some of those particular houses are probably empty, on account of all the real estate prospecting. They're wertvoll, uber-valuable, you know?

K: Wertvoll means valuable. I did not know. So if they were so valuable, who did Shinra sell them too?

A: No one. I mean, before Meteorfall, Shinra leased them to important families in Kalm, families of executives probably or local agricultural scientists. Maybe the military.

K: Really, like who?

A: Ich weiss nicht. [SHRUG] I mean, it was called Heidzig House. Probably a family called Heidzig and for a long time. I remember hearing that name when I was a little girl, connected to Shinra, but I can't imagine they're still here after all these years. Even before Meteorfall there was no family living in that house, never mind after the riots.

K: The anti-refugee riots, you mean. You think they might've been chased out during those?

A: [INCREDULOUS CHUCKLE] Only if they didn't leave before that.

K: And do you recognize any of the other names at the top of this list? We…I think they were residents of the Elm Tree Ward, though necessarily in that same neighborhood.

A: Let me see. [PAUSE] Sure, why didn't you ask earlier? Anyone in the neighborhood should know these names, well, some of them. Barnes was in the Midgar Army, he fought in the World War way back when. And Old Man Han was the head of emergency services in Kalm, along with his sons, before the Deepground Kidnappings. I know a Moon family had an eldest son who left Kalm a few weeks before Meteorfall, part of some overseas military expedition to somewhere or another.

K: Wait…really? You're actually sure of all this?

A: I'm saying it, aren't I? My old man was a volunteer firefighter under Han. [PAUSE] Cassini I don't recognize, I don't think I've ever heard that name before actually. It's a weird name, don't think I've ever heard of that one before.

K: Forget it, that's plenty to start with. Now I have too many possible leads.

A: Hey, you've got addresses and everything…if you know all this, why are you talking to me anyway? What kind of list is this anyway, just who are you?

K: [LOUDLY] We better wrap up here actually, thanks you for your time, Ms. Anja, you've really been a big help.

[STOP]

With her equipment under her arm, Yuffie couldn't get out of an increasingly suspicious Anja's shop fast enough and she almost didn't notice the smog that had descended in the meantime almost requiring she pull her mask back on. She'd gone from wondering if such a Heidzig character even existed to not only confirming his connection to the Shinra Corporation at some time or another, but that Barnes, Han, and Moon were almost certainly military veterans formerly in Shinra's employ. Even if Heidzig House was empty, as seemed likely, there were other strong leads to work from.

The three-floor red-roofed townhouse stood at the corner of the narrow street branching off Marketing Street, behind what had likely been an iron gate taken down sometime after Meteorfall. Some of its neighbors, built in the similar style and with matching dimensions, looked relatively empty; Heidzig House looked thoroughly abandoned, even if it wasn't falling into disrepair. The brick walls of the bottom floor were losing a battle to creeping vines, and every visible window appeared painstakingly shut and boarded.

"They oughta' fire that groundskeeper if he actually exists," she muttered, pausing in front of the cobblestone walls that partitioned off the small grounds between the building itself and the sidewalk. They were devoid of the usual signs of human habitation: gardening tools, children's toys, even simple refuse. Nothing but nearly-overgrown grass and weeds.

Undaunted, she walked along the hidden stone path to the large front door. On the brick wall, concealed by a distinct layer of black-and-brown particulate matter deposited by rains in the direction of the power station's smokestacks, there was a smooth, even spot, which she wiped with one hand. Heidzig, a plaque declared in bold, capitalized letters underneath the soot.

"Just like the sign says. I should've just come here directly," she muttered herself.

"Because you're looking for someone."

Though she didn't jump this time, Yuffie did turn red in embarrassment at not having noticed the figure standing just around the corner of the brick house, ankle-deep in shrubbery and overgrowth. He was old, sufficiently old to be unusual in this world since Meteorfall, when women and especially men of that age were an aberration in the Midgar Region and across the eastern continent. She could tell immediately that he was older than Cid, older than her father, the two 'Old Men' in her life. Older by decades, in fact.

She recovered quickly enough. "You must be the groundskeeper." He was dressed like it, after all, even stereotypically so: thick wool overalls in faded tan-grey over a collared shirt, a thick scarf around his mouth and chin, goggles over his eyes. In his hands he held a shovel, with a broom tucked underneath his arm.

"You're looking for Heidzig," he announced, muffled by his scarf before shaking his head. "Sorry, not here."

Heidzig, and not the Heidzigs or the Heidzig family. That was interesting. "Actually, I was. You know what happened to them?" she asked, playing along.

She knew what answer to expect. Instead, he dodged the question. "You're from the W.R.O.," he announced. "Clearly."

Well, that's one way not to answer. She forced a laugh. "The neighborhood remembers them, but seems to think they've been gone for a while."

"And you'd like me to corroborate that?"

"Otherwise I can see you're really busy," She glanced at his tools, eyebrow raised.

The groundskeeper seemed to take pause. While she stifled the urge to cough, he slowly turned around and wandered around the corner of the house, so she followed him. The front of the house had been eerily empty and unattended, like more subtle scenery from the Ghost Square Resort at Gold Saucer. The yard behind Heidzig House was the opposite, overgrown and littered with all the abandoned junk she was expecting earlier: multiple abandoned bicycles, an outdoor table covered in dirt and vines, a small, ancient children's swing set turned over, two ladders that she could see immediately, what looked like streetlight removed from its moorings resting against a gardening shed with a boarded-up door. You're not great at your job, dude.

Very deliberately, the groundskeeper dropped both instruments on the table before sitting down on it. He was taller than she'd realized, especially for his age. He pulled down his scarf to reveal he was clean-shaven, then to her surprise, produced a cigarette and a chrome-plated lighter that he began fumbling with in his clumsy wool gloves. What, is breathing not hard enough for you as it is?

She watched him struggle for a few minutes in silence. "You know, that's a dangerous habit at your age," she pointed out patronizingly. "Mister…"

He kept fumbling with the lighter. "I never…thought of it as dangerous," he confessed as he struggled with it. "Unhealthy, certainly, but dangerous? Coming from a fighting woman for the W.R.O. who would know danger. Could cigarettes be half as dangerous as the Deepground Uprising?" he inquired smoothly. While Yuffie suppressed her own coughing, the more talkative groundskeeper had an easily discernible Midgar accent, almost cosmopolitan, that couldn't be confused with the rural twang of the Kalmish.

She wanted to see where this was going. "They are when the air quality is this bad. You know there are studies nowadays that show how smoking increases the risk of heart disease and weakens your blood vessels and lung capacity. Even at your age, you should know that."

He finally succeeded in lighting his cigarette. "But for a young woman like you, a conqueror of evil, a champion of this world, certainly a bad tobacco habit can't begin to compare to the jeopardy you've put your life into." Holding the cigarette in a bulky glove, he smiled at her with unexpectedly unstained teeth. "I'm old enough to know a great warrior when I see one," he explained oddly.

Her first instinct was self-effacing laughter, so she did, only to be interrupted by her own coughing. The old man gestured at a still-living tree towards the middle of the yard, as though the air quality were somehow better underneath it, opposite the overgrown table. She moved and her own coughing subsided quickly enough, and she continued her self-deprecating giggling.

"And how would you know I'm such a great warrior, old man?" she questioned him, with a cocky tilt of the head of a smile. "Just something you gain with age, unlike gardening? Because it doesn't sound that dangerous."

He laughed in response, the cigarette still burning in his gloved hand. "Oh, God didn't wait until I was an old man to put my life in jeopardy. God did it when I was a younger child than you. The calamity, as we knew it then, did not come from the sky. It came from the west, and it began before I was born. And I thought, surely, it would not abate until after I died," he declared grandly.

His eyes narrowed, giving him an entirely less harmless appearance. The thin, bony features of his jaw and brow came into stark relief. "It was the Empire of Wutai, and it conquered much of the known world. You'd know, as one of its heirs. Not that I'm accusing you of anything untoward."

Yuffie stared at him. "Wait, are you…you're him aren't you? You're collecting the pension, so are you Heidzig? Are you the captain of the guard?"

He was smiling now. "I was born in Junon, and I fled with its refugees the Marches when it fell to Wutai. I was conscripted into the Grand Army of Midgar as a teenager, and fought at Fort Condor, Fortress Junon, Corel, and Nibelheim. When the truce was signed, I became an officer—eventually, I served as executive officer to Simon Heidzig, the former military chief of staff the New Army of Midgar. I was at Wutai when it fell, and for my service, I remained his deputy in the Peace Preservation Force of the Corporation called 'Shinra'. I am Major Victor Io, former-Captain of the Shinra Presidential Guard Battalion."

He looked at the mostly-expended cigarette and stuffed it into a pocket of his wool overalls before turning back to her, smiling. "Well then, you should come with me, young lady," he told her, less poetically. Just a few steps from his table was the backdoor into the brick house, which he quickly unlocked with a key she hadn't seen him carrying.

She paused. "If you know I'm from the W.R.O., why are you inviting me in?"

Hand on the door, he looked back at her. "Because you're Yuffie Kisaragi. And I remember seeing you save lives during the evacuation of the Shinra Building."

Author's Notes:

So, I committed to Victor's concluded speech for probably no better reason than whimsy. Now I'm worried about how it turned out, along with the rest of this chapter. I'm a little sorry for how long it is (this sort of length is more like my other works, which are plagued by the problem of long chapters), and can only hope it's worth reading all the way through. At least, the length gave additional opportunity for Yuffie to play both journalist and detective, as well as to make use of another charming news excerpt. Pretty disparate parts that hopefully came together successfully. You can probably infer what happens next, given how this story began in the first place (and hopefully I can capture that success again), and I hope you'll stay around to see it!