Preamble: Apologies in advance: this is a LOT of world-building and philosophical treatise, even by my standards, especially given the wait. Hopefully it leads to somewhere enjoyable, but I was sitting on the text of the manifesto itself for some time and really felt obligated to include it.
Manifesto. Yuffie was still angry at him. Angry at him because the minute he'd given her the manifesto, she'd realized that she couldn' justt bring it to the Kalm Library to have it copied or digitized or whatever else they would do and forget about it. Angry because she realized the moment she did it, this document, left unread for years, would stop being a secret. Angry because what that could have meant for AVALANCHE.
What kind of idiot reads a document into a tape recorder? "This kind of idiot, apparently." The TC-5500 was sitting within arm's reach on the table. In her other hand was a cheaply printed booklet with a light blue paper cover. The title was printed under an obstructive red stamp declaring it secret by Shinra's Public Safety Department, the red ink fading from the diamond-shaped emblem.
"Corporate Society and its Industrial Future," she read the title aloud and cutting through the silence of Heidzig House's sitting room. Moving the microphone on it stand, she pressed down on the metallic recording switch.
[START]
Kisaragi: I'm at Heidzig House. In front of me is the a copy of a booklet allegedly written by Fuhito, a member of AVALANCHE killed by Shinra sometime before Barret Wallace assumed leadership of the cell in Midgar. [PAUSE] It looks like this copy was concealed by the Shinra, and even Fuhito's death, were concealed by Shinra and the military through the present. Why, I don't know, because it seems obvious that Shinra would've benefited to publicized something like this, but through the entire AVALANCHE Insurgency they never even suggested there was an earlier campaign under different leaders, even internally…
[STOP]
She felt her own hand pressing the switch, out of instinct, and gave a sigh. That was rambling. Crap.
Rambling was no use to anyone, especially on a topic like this. She considered traveling the tape backwards and recording over it, but felt the laziness or a desire to procrastinate deterred her.
So, all these years later, the W.R.O. never found any mention of someone called Fuhito in Shinra's internal archives. Which could mean a few different things. It could mean that he might only be mentioned in documents that Edge City hasn't recovered yet. Or they might not be in Midgar at all, and instead at Junon instead. We never found the Turks' records, after all.
Should she have been writing this down?
Or, it means that Fuhito didn't actually exist.
She considered the possibility. It wasn't as though someone like Victor Io wouldn't have a plenty of time in the last three years to fabricate the whole thing. That was assuming Victor Io was Victor Io. Until now, the old man had shown her no papers, no authentic documents, no evidence to his identity beyond the suspicious Heidzig House, which by itself was hardly certain proof.
And if he was who he said he was, was that better reason to take him at his word? A military officer and an employee of the Shinra Corporation. So, either way it kind of sucks. But it's not like I've got nothing.
She took the booklet again, staring at the blue cover. Shinra's ink stamp was fading but still very legible, and her training suggested it was authentic. REVIEWED ON 5 OCTOBER, εуλ 0007. The date was appropriate—Shinra had only obtained this four years ago, however many years after it had been composed by Fuhito.
"And Fuhito isn't around to defend himself," she joked privately. "If he ever existed. Which he might not have."
With exaggeration caution, she opened the cover to the first page, then remembered to hit the recording switch.
[START]
Kisaragi: Corporate Society and its Industrial Future. That's the title. First page, introduction—its words, not mine. There's a lot here. [PAUSE] The electrification and corpora…tization of Planet has had catastrophic consequences on humankind. They have greatly increased the material wealth and life expectancy of those of us privileged enough to live in cities and urbanized zones, but there we have witnessed firsthand the misery, degradation, and psychological suffering brought on by the technological ascendance of our species over all others. The current racing pace of capitalism-driven technological and industrial development will inevitably worsen this situation, and will certainly subject humans to greater degradation, but in particular it will continue to inflict escalating harm on the natural world, which will have unavoidable consequences even among the most fortunate and affluent in the urbanized zones. [PAUSE] Okay, this is…a lot. But I guess we can be pretty sure Io wasn't just making it up. That, or he's some kind of evil genius. Sorry, continuing. [LOUDER] At the core of this paradigm is the trans…national corporate body Shinra, where it has remained in in the last decades since the development of its most important industrial technology, the Mako Electrical Powerplant or Mako Reactor. Shinra's global system of scientific control may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it will aspire towards a lower level of public degradation and psychological suffering from its industrial-technological might as to ensure its own political and social indispensability, but this will only occur at the continued cost of physical suffering and environmental degradation necessary to sustain the global corporate machinery. Such a system would not necessarily need to continue exclusively under the dominant character of Shinra; it might take on an affiliation under another corporation or a nation-state, but the consequences are inevitable. [PAUSE] There is no way of reforming or modifying the system to stave off a global calamity.
[STOP]
"Okay, this is ridiculous." Yuffie pushed the microphone stand away from her, shaking her head. Even if she couldn't rule on the document's authenticity, any suspicion that the document was an invention of Victor Io's lonely mind and free time in Kalm was assuaged. If he was smart enough to write this sort of thing, he wouldn't be some hermit in Kalm.
Running a hand over her forehead, she looked back at the papers. She didn't feel like reading aloud anymore.
If the system were to broken apart and destroyed, the consequences will still be catastrophic. But the greater the system is allowed to grow the more catastrophic the consequences of its collapse, so if it is to be destroyed it would be wisest to do so sooner rather than later.
She brushed a mote of dust from her eyes. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not require violence; it may be sudden or it may take years or decades to complete. I cannot predict any of that. But I do intend to describe a path for those of us who intend to resist this system in order to save the living organism of the Planet, as taught to us by the sage Bugenhagen. This is not to be a political revolution. Its object is will not be to usher in a world free of suffering and injustice. It is to create a world free of humankind's subjugation of the Planet to its whims.
Fuhito. Whoever he was, he had a way with words that Barret didn't. She propped her chin against her arm. Maybe Barret knew him. If she did, she suspected she wasn't going to enjoy asking him. She ran a finger down the page, smudging the cheap typewriter ink, then flipped through the pages. The text was divided into sections or chapters, each with a capitalized title or header, just as the first had begun with 'Introduction'. Well, that's convenient. She skipped through the first few pages again, stopping on the forth page.
She smoothed the page's wrinkled corners out. THE MAKO ENERGY INDUSTRY. With the development of reliable electricity production from Mako energy and the newfound profitability in their electric power company, Shinra predictably abandoned all ongoing research into exotic power generation from radioactive transmutation, as well as refinement of its existing expertise in steam turbine power generation, with regards to fossil fuels, as well as concentrated solar power and underground hydrothermal circulation. In particular, two major controversies existed 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, and that divestment was in the best interests of both humankind and the rest of Planet's living ecosystem. And almost certainly three decades ago, Shinra nor anyone else possessed a clear reckoning of the Lifestream's vital importance to all terrestrial life forms, humans included, beyond the religious and cultural, though the corporation had an early awareness of the toxicity of natural and unnatural high levels of mako exposure.
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. The Wutaian Empire's mountain coal and oceanic oil reserves, and their deficiencies, are reasoned today for the late arrival of the industrial revolution in Wutai. By obvious contrast, the Eastern Continent's industrial revolution, beginning in the Midgar Basin before reaching the Junon coast, predated it by practically a century. Shinra's own postwar scholarship claimed after analysis that the Wutaian Empire's entire prewar electrical energy needs could've been met by just part the mako energy reserves in the Wutai Home Islands alone. While this may sound like corporatist propaganda, its further acceptance by military scholarship in Junon gives it substantial weight. Mako energy would've changed history.
Yuffie stared at the blocky letters, her eyes wide. 'Wutai', 'Wutaian'. None of this theory—that the Great Wutai War or the one that followed it were the consequences of fuel and land shortages in Wutai—had ever so much as been uttered to her. Not in Wutai and not in the East since she'd arrived. The line in Midgar, before and after Shinra, was that Wutai's colonial war in the Western Mainland was "manifest destiny"—the foreign concept that the Wutaians, her people, were destined to expand across the continent, from the Nibel Mountains to the Corel Basin, from Cosmo Canyon to Costa del Sol, and not the descendants of Easterners from the Midgar Basin and Junon. As stupid as it sounded to her, it fit with the stories her father told her, from the opposing perspective.
Not one had once mentioned fuel, or 'living space'. The closest thing is Shinra's reason for starting the Second Wutai War, rights to build a Mako Reactor in…
Her thoughts stopped.
That was Wutai's explanation, wasn't it? And by happenstance, the explanation of AVALANCHE and the W.R.O.. But was it actually what happened?
Tifa would say don't believe everything you hear. Or read. Good advice, all things considering. Holding back a twitch, she flipped back to the second page of the booklet. "The Science of the Political Left," she read aloud. "Oh, this'll be good."
THE SCIENCE OF THE POLITICAL LEFT. Practically everyone must agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. One manifestation of this disturbed atmosphere was the consolidation of anti-Shinra politics on the leftist band of the political spectrum, so a discussion of the science of leftist politics under Shinra's corporate domination can serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern society in general. But what is leftism? In the prewar and pre-Shinra half of the last century, leftism was identified with the Junon socialism of the prior century. Today leftist politics under Shinra are left in disarray and organized, if it can been called, solely along the lines of organized labor and trade unions firmly under Shinra's yoke. Who can be called a leftist? The company's enemies, or the company's well-heeled servants? In the prior political age, we mostly spoke of socialists, collectivists, feminists, gay and lesbian advocates, and other "politically correct" types. In actuality, such widely disparate groups will possess widely disparate political objectives, and it is necessary for us to consider how those goals align with our struggle against this corporate society.
She frowned. God, I hope it's not all rambling like this. She skipped down towards the end of chapter.
The Shinra Corporation had previously made it a mission to intellectually neutralize any sort of dangerous political thought, from either the left or the right of the political spectrum, after it succeeded in the goal it shared with the governments of the Midgar Confederation: to materially neutralize any sort of dangerous political force from the West, principally the Wutaian Empire. Shinra had committed serious errors after the Hundred Years War; the failed Wutaian rebellion of the Second Wutai War should never have been allowed to happen. Such complacency would not be repeated, or so Shinra believed. The political purge that followed reflected that fierce attitude of prevention. Shinra's predecessors in the government had successfully cleansed Junon of its leftist opposition in the Hundred Years War. As recently as May of εуλ 0003, Shinra demonstrated their willingness to use the most brutal methods to pacify dissident labor in the township of Corel, mirroring the wartime destruction of historic Kalm less than ten years earlier. Shinra's tolerance for the political left begins and ends with labor agitation.
Yuffie felt herself in a cold sweat. "Well, if there's one thing Fuhito and Shinra agreed on, they both hated leftists."
"Who hated who?"
Yuffie almost jumped out of her seat and turned to see Victor Io sitting in the hallway. She felt herself turn red; she'd been so engrossed in her reading she hadn't heard him entering through the door to the yard.
"A lot of people," she blurted out. "I'm starting to get that impression from this."
The old man stared at her. "I imagine that you would," he finally added. "He was an…unpleasant customer, or so I've been told."
Imagine? "Have you ever read this?" she asked pointedly.
"No, actually. As I told you, I didn't really know Fuhito. I left this…I leave this…to better men than myself." He scratched the wrinkles on his right temple after dropping his gardening tools by the door. "And better women."
She ignored him and looked back at the booklet. "So you knew you had this, and you never read it."
After sitting down in an empty chair in the kitchen and gingerly stretching his legs, he shook his head. Yuffie stared at him. I really can't tell if he's lying or not. So let's try a different approach. "Because, so far…it's a heck of a read."
"I can imagine so," he repeated. Yuffie twitched. "So, will the W.R.O. release it? To the general public, I Mean, after you've delivered it to them, I mean."
She scoffed at him. What are you, stupid? She managed to hold that back. "N-No," she blurted out instead. "I don't think so. Not in the immediate future, anyway."
"Really?" The old man yawned, and Yuffie realized it was already late in the day. "That's a shame."
"Well, I'm sorry to rain on your dreams of being the next great whistleblower," she chided him. "But you can't just make something like this available to, you know, the public, okay?"
"Why not?"
"Because people aren't fu-…freakin' ready for it, that's why not!" she snapped.
He smiled drowsily. "I'm sorry that someone so young would be so cynical."
"Oh, shove it." She shut the pamphlet and put both her hands on it, as if containing some sort of magic talisman. "You know what, Shinra was right not to release this either. Some things are better left forgotten." And considering I didn't even know the name Fuhito before coming to Kalm, maybe we'll be lucky for once and it'll stay forgotten.
Io didn't seem so bothered. "Well, either way, I'm sure it's in good hands now."
She watched him. "You look tired," she concluded. "Why don't we continue tomorrow, bright and early?"
"Oh, I'm not that sleepy." He yawned again, with almost comedic timing. "The gardening just…" he trailed off.
Yuffie rolled her eyes and after taking the manifesto, stood up from her chair. "Yeah, right. Don't worry, I'll get my own food, like a grownup," she told him as she made her way to the backdoor.
"Well, let me know if you change your mind," she heard him announce helpfully. Holding back a sigh, she folded the manifesto in half lengthwise before cramming it into her the inner pocket of her vest. Most of it stuck awkwardly out from underneath her vest, even after she zipped it up. The air was tolerably clear; they were upwind of the power stations, for now.
She knew that, as in Edge City, Wutaian cuisine or something attempting to pass as it had proliferated in Kalm. Legend had it that Midgar had better Southern Wutaian barbeque than the Wutai Isles themselves, courtesy of émigré from the west, but with Meteorfall she'd never learn the truth behind that claim. She'd never been a picky eater, even as a child; she settled on the first Wutaian fast food joint she'd found, not concerned with the menu, and she was pleased to see her food delivered in the same paperboard pails you'd find Edge.
"And you're faster than the coffeeshop!" she declared, sitting alone in a booth by a window overlooking the alley leading back to Market Street. The server, a Wutaian boy younger than her, stared at her and nodded, her meaning clearly loss on him.
"Uh…beef yakisoba and the tempura shrimp?" he asked.
"That's me. Domo," she added quickly as she took both cartons and split apart the disposable chopsticks. The waiter promptly began busing the adjacent booth—she was halfway through her noodles when he paused in front of her, arms full of empty cartons and bowls.
"Sorry, ojousan, but what's that?"
With a mouth full of noodle, she looked back at the waiter and down to see Fuhito's manifesto almost falling out of her vest. "Oh, it's just an interview I'm working on. I'm a journalist," she assured him.
"Oh." The boy looked just as uninformed as he had earlier, but turned and left without another word. With her free hand she crammed the manifesto as deep into the pocket as she could manage. If I was Tifa, I could store a whole volume of Economic Reports: Anti-Shinra Activities in my cleavage. But I'm not Tifa, she thought with a grin.
Despite the private joke at her old friend's expense, she found herself reaching into her pocket and fishing out her PHS. This isn't over. Thanks to Victor Io, this has started. And it won't end with me, no matter how much I'd like. She felt the pamphlet against her breast. August will need to know. Reeve will need to know.
Barret will need to know.
The file, like so many others, would probably end up in the W.R.O. Archives and Records Administration. "I need to talk to Barret," she announced, dropping a few coins onto the table.
Returning to the Heidzig House, she found the old man sitting on the same chair she'd left him on, sound asleep but holding a paperback novel over his face with one hand. Poking him in the shoulder, the paperback fell to the floor and his arm went slacked. Frowning, she picked up the arm by the hand and almost dropped it. His hand was ice cold, as was his other one after he touched it.
"God, you're like a stereotype for old people!" she muttered, leaving the kitchen and returning with a blanket she'd seen in the study. Draping it over him, she shook her head and returned to the large table in the study where she'd left the TC-5500. Her hand was already on the folded booklet with its blue paper cover when she groaned and stomped back outside, into a covered section of the yard, having flipped open her PHS.
"This is what I get for listening to Rufus Shinra," she muttered, using the keypad to bring up the device's stored contact numbers. "I mean, the man ordered Tifa's execution, what exactly was I expecting?" she asked herself as she highlighting the number for August Fitzroy's office in the Kalm Library.
"I mean, sure, Cloud probably would've killed him if it wasn't for that dumb bodyguard cat of his, but the point still stands…" she grumbled under her breath. As the dial tone sounded, she tightened her grip around the PHS's molded plastic shell. When Shinra was still around, two new models of PHS came out a year at least, usually more. The whole personal electronics development had slowed since then.
August Fitzroy picked up shortly, his tinny voice rushed. "Boss! Go-goshdarnit boss, you took long enough, I've been trying to reach you for a day and a half!"
"Yeah, sorry about that August." She had silenced her voicemail long ago. "Wait, did something happen?"
"Wait, you don't…" August cursed. "Okay, sorry, you go first."
She rolled her eyes. "Fine. So, besides that whole…Directory thing, do you actually have city historical records at over there?"
"Well, yeah, Boss, we would. It's a library. What're thinking of?" He sounded calmer.
"First, don't call me 'Boss'. Second…and this is going to sound strange, but do you have any records that might otherwise have been destroyed?" The confused silence over the line confirmed her suspicions. "Yeah, I know."
"Can you be any more specific?"
"This would've happened during the Second Wutai War, so sometime from the end of 1991 to calendar year one." She paused. "In fact, if it did happen, it was probably around 1996 or…"
"Or 1997, yeah, during Wutai's behind-enemy-lines campaign. I was still in Midgar, never thought I'd be thankful for that. But…Kalm? Not just Old Kalm?"
"Not exactly." She paused, clenched her jaw, and looked around guiltily. "Is there anything pertaining to when Kalm itself was destroyed? Not by Wutai, but by the Midgar Army fighting Wutai?"
Silence, this time from shock. "B-…ma'am, you mean this Kalm? The Kalm we're standing in right now? New Kalm?"
She sighed. "Yeah. Maybe part of Old Kalm District or something?"
"You're joking, right?"
"Yeah, August, I joke about how Shinra destroyed all or part of your hometown a decade ago and covered it up, 'cause it's such a funny topic."
"I get it, sorry. I…this is going to sound strange coming from him, but I'm not sure even Shinra could do that and have no one realize it. I mean, there are some ruins from the township of Old Kalm that were either destroyed by the army to root out Wutai during the Hundred Years War, or when the commandos abandoned their positions, but…"
It was going nowhere. "Yeah, I know, Kalm isn't Nibelheim. Just looked up anything relevant to unintended destruction, friendly fire, outdated military maps, even the cover up from that time period. Anything that looks good, no matter how weird. You can put the request to HQ too, if my doesn't look secure, just use my PHS's tracking and send a courier."
"What do you think you'll find?"
"I'm not sure. And I don't know what exactly it has to do with Deepground either." I'm really counting on Rufus Shinra having not totally screwed me here. She sighed at the thought. "I read something interesting, that's all."
"Speaking of reading, Shinra was officially supposed to open their archives—the ones they still had—a year after Midgar fell."
She sighed. "Yeah, well, Shinra was also supposed to officially pay restitutions of some sort. Then every chump with a truck and a shovel decided to push the bodies out of the way and take everything that wasn't bolted down," she grumbled. How the heck do you get Shinra to pay restitutions if we can't even figure out what Shinra still owns?
"You still there, ma'am?"
She blinked. "Yeah, I am. Hey, what was it you were freaking out about before?"
"Wow, you really don't know? Haven't you turned on a radio or something? The W.R.O. issued on arrest warrant. On him."
Yuffie frowned. "Wait, what? They're going after Domino?" She cursed loudly before whispering again. "Damn it, I've been investigating Domino for eighteen freaking months and they wait till I leave to issue a warrant? Son of a…"
He cut her off. "No, not Domino! They arrested Hart!"
"What?" She cursed again. "Hart?" She swore again, and louder, practically yelling.
J. Steiner Hart had been the last Deputy Mayor of Midgar under the Luigi Domino Administration, even more of a corporate appointee than Domino himself, since his office was unelected. The two had publicly disliked each other for the last few years of the Midgar Metropolitan government but had reconciled after the city's destruction and the founding of Edge. After immediately repudiating Shinra, Domino had held one seat or another on the Edge City Council since its creation—now he was running for mayor, with a good chance of winning.
Hart, on the other hand, had gotten out of politics entirely, and pursued his second profession, between his first one, teaching mathematics to Shinra's princelings, the overly privileged offspring of high-level management, and his third calling, politics: investment financing. He'd been one of the best investment bankers in Midgar before his political appointment, and helped finance the construction of Gold Saucer for no less than President Shinra himself. Now, after Shinra, he'd formed the Intercontinental Properties Group, with offices from Edge to Wutai.
Yuffie had been quietly investigating Domino for abuse of political power, not Hart, as well as possible foreign interference and even sabotage of Edge's upcoming mayoral and council elections. But she knew I.G.P. was made up of bankers from what had been Shinra Electric Power Company's financial arm, close to Hart, and assisted its rich clients in the recovering funds lost with the collapse of Shinra's corporate empire as well as complicated legal transfers of wealth between Wutai and the continents.
She hadn't really cared about Hart: whatever financial maleficence he was guilty of was becoming increasingly normalize in Edge, and it was Domino's concentration of power she feared.
"What did they get him for? Let me guess, money laundering? I bet it was money laundering." She barely even understood the concept of laundering before the W.R.O. began investigating I.G.P. in earnest.
"Try sex trafficking."
"You're joking? What, for his clients?" Hart had a reputation for womanizing even back in Midgar, but he wasn't the deviant his clients were known to be. At least, that's what Yuffie thought.
"Looks like it. Let me tell you, the prosecutors were not happy about this. I guess the chairman pushed them into it. You might still nail Domino yet." He paused. "Sorry, bad choice of words."
If I nail Domino, I want it to be for trying to take over the Edge City government, not for free flights on Hart's sex party plane. "Yeah…" she mumbled before cursing a third time. She really didn't need this now, with a brief pang of nausea coming seemingly from nowhere.
"I mean, I won't miss him either, but this really happened at a bad time, whether Reeve knows it or not. It's going to kill any financial conferences in Edge for the next six months, at the very least."
"Oh, who cares about a bunch of rich bank…people," she hissed. "This is gonna' have very real consequences on the W.R.O. operational fundraising, you know that? And you can forget your precious Directory the second the rich and famous realize their contributions are bankrolling a bunch of computers that might one day track all their sex-scapades."
"Oh, crap, I didn't even think of that."
"Yeah, Reeve's hardheaded sense of morality may've really screwed us over this time," she speculated quietly. "Especially if he wants to pass through that new security budget."
"Not to mention the Junon Operation."
Yuffie groaned. "Hey, how's this for an order: don't talk about the Junon Operation. Ever."
"Yes ma'am!"
"Or the Friends of Junon. Or the Committee for a Free Junon. Or any of those other state-sponsored lunatics. 'Cause right now, you're my state-sponsored lunatic, got it?" she asked. She was about to chide August further when she saw some movement out of the extreme corner of one eye; her whole body snapped into tension, turning back into the Heidzig House to see a half-asleep Victor Io standing in the kitchen, barefooted, clutching the blanket she'd left on him.
"Who are the Friends of Junon?" he asked groggily before yawning. "I apologize for eavesdropping."
She snapped the PHS shut with one hand. "…no one?"
"Oh. Good night then," he muttered again, wandering in the direction of the stairs, still holding the blanket. Yuffie didn't move until she was certain he had climbed up the stairs to the bedrooms on the second floor.
She wanted to hit herself in the head, but held back. Man, maybe I'm the reason we have a problem with leaks.
Author's Notes:
I return. As I promised myself, I put some attention to earlier works (two chapters for two earlier stories, including my primary work), so at least there's that. At least you had a long chapter to look forward to, even if it probably feels rather disjointed as the combination of a few different concepts I wanted to last year. What it means is a lot of worldbuilding, for those who enjoy that sort of thing (for those who don't, I apologize), particularly in the form of Fuhito's spooky and historically inspired manifesto. Hopefully it was everything it needed to be: in truth, the cell phone game he exclusively appears in doesn't give us that much to work with regarding Fuhito, and his ideology stated in it is mostly just what Square-Enix needed in any given appearance. The manifesto probably doesn't narrow it down that much, but at least it demonstrates he was a thinker when he was leading AVALANCHE. It also, to my surprise, forced me to decide between Yuffie actively reading the document out, or simply presenting it as text…and as in the past, I ended up deciding to do both, and hoping it's not a big pain for the reader.
At the very least, I don't expect chapter to take nearly this long (and it will probably be notably shorter, with the absence of this one's intellectual madness). I hoping for it to be less discussion-driven and Yuffie being Yuffie, though I still need to determine exactly what that is. At least we got to see Yuffie flex a little bit of her acquired political leadership muscle of the last three years. As always, thank you for staying with this and feel free to let me know if you are!