Preamble:
You might be surprised to learn this chapter is actually well ahead of schedule (considering the time I appointed to other stories). It's also a lot less world-building and a lot more characters being characters, mostly.
Simon Heidzig. Looking up from couch without moving her head, her eyes wandered to the fuzzy, monochrome picture of Heidzig House's ancient television, dutifully receiving the airwaves through the rooftop aerials. The picture was clear enough that she could see a man in some variety of military uniform rising from his seat at a round table and angrily gesturing.
"There's being polite, and there's being insulted. And these insinuations, frankly, are just that: insulting. If you're claiming that State of Junon is attempting to resurrect the Shinra Corporation's pre-Meteorfall corporate autocracy, I ask you this, sir: where is your proof? Where is your global corporate empire?"
The figure standing nearest to the military man seemed to try and calm him down with no success. Depending on his level of importance, the man from the Junon military should've been someone she could recognize, but between the inferior picture from the television and her own laziness, she didn't feel like answering that question.
"Has anyone told you that you protest too much?"
"Has anyone ever asked you to present proof with your accusations?" the military man countered.
What exactly do we expect when our political advocates are all such bold-faced morons? It was hard to watch news television and not find the whole situation very bleak.
Between pauses in the arguing, she heard the stirring of the old man, incoherent mumbling and the occasional short breath. The apparent moderator, a younger man in a suit with what looked dreadlocks in the soft picture, gestured with a pen. "As Junon's parliament has claimed, this ongoing military buildup is the formal response to these multiple crises in the aftermath of Midgar's destruction: the Reunion attacks, then the appearance of the Deepground Army…"
The camera switched. "But if that's the case, why is Junon investing in its army and navy, and not modern security forces like those in Edge? Or even better, joining the shared security and counterterrorism framework of the W.R.O.?" the earlier accuser questioned, a man she quickly recognized.
"What, so the leaders of Edge and the World Regenesis Organization can accuse of us creating a police state? And as for membership in the organization, with advocates like yourself, it's not surprising that…"
The military man's voice cut with a turn of the large knob, the set switching off. The old man stirred again, almost talking in his sleep.
"So, old man, you want to tell me what Fuhito's meant with all that?" she muttered softly under her breath. "Oh, wait, you couldn't, because you said you've never read it. Thanks."
It was useless to be angry though. Even before his unexpected hospitability, the old man had been more accommodating than her wildest dreams. Who thought a ranking veteran of Shinra's pre-Meteor military forces would be willingly spilling his guts for her? A smile came over Yuffie's face as she sat up properly in the armchair, feeling its plush, unoffending armrests to her sides.
Really, I should be thanking Rufus, as much as I hate the idea. This has worked better than my wildest expectations. Assuming he's actually real to begin with, he told me basically everything he knew about Fuhito, AVALANCHE's original leader. And he's actually willing to talk about those years that no actually in AVALANCHE is old enough to remember, and people like Bugenhagen pretend never happened.
She smirked. Yeah, all thanks to the Wise Sage Bugenhagen, spiritual leader of AVALANCHE and current day pain in my ass.
And mentor to Fuhito, the man who apparently tried to destroy the whole world. If what she'd been told was accurate, which it might not be. All the same, everything that the old man had told her, everything that he'd been willing to be say on tape even. Could she really ask for more?
He didn't tell me what the combination was to the safe, of course, she heard herself say inside her mind.
Lieutenant Colonel Heidzig, from Junon. The first leader of President Shinra's bodyguard, dead before the end of the Second Wutai War. Replaced by Major Io from Midgar. The same Victor Io who was sleeping under a blanket in the kitchen, boots and gardening overalls sticking out from under it. This is why you need to plan your retirement, I bet.
She was on her feet, climbing up the stairs with a deeply-rooted ninja deliberateness. An unnecessary deliberateness, because aside from inconveniencing a sleepy old man, what consequences were there for waking him up? Old habits die hard.
On Heidzig House's second floor, across from the bathroom and the master bedroom, was a sitting room and adjoined study. In that study, behind heavy wooden desk and flanked on either side by shuttered windows, was a portrait of a man in military uniform. It may've been Heidzig, or it might've been a Heidzig's father or some other dead man from the past.
Her curiosity had limits. Behind the extremely conspicuous portrait, as she suspected, was a wall safe about a meter and a half from the floor and thirty centimeters diagonally, recessed into the wall. There was a handle and a mechanical single-dial lock, along with a pair of keyholes.
I could get a W.R.O. lock-cracking team here in ten minutes. But where would be the fun in that?
She was prepared to irreparably damage the lock to open the safe, but turned out not to be necessary. After a few minutes with the tools she had on hand, the safe opened with an unpleasantly loud creaking and inside she found the exact same thing experience told her was inside most safes: smaller boxes. Rolling back a chair covered with the same years-old layer of dust as everything else in the study, she took the first of the narrow, worn-out cardboard boxes and opened it.
"You're joking."
Someone had the same idea she had: the contents were a half-dozen minicassettes, each with a paper label with a handwritten series of numbers. She was prepared to play a game of 'Guess of the Shinra Company media format' when shaking the box revealed what looked like a compatible cassette player. Wow, everything's coming up Yuffie.
Shinra's minicasettes—she wasn't sure what the official name was, but that was what everyone called them—were just a shrunken version of the magnetic tape audio format compact cassettes that Shinra put out more than a decade before she was born, used for pre-recorded music. Though Shinra had planned to replace it with the similarly named compact disc, or CD, format, Meteorfall and Shinra's own decline had ended that. The minicasette format had never been intended for music, but was a common tool of office dictation, and the MCC-610 Personal Dictator, as the little device awkwardly described itself, made that clear. She'd seen enough MCC-610s still in use at W.R.O. headquarters to know to check the battery compartment on the other side.
Finishing, she took another cardboard box from the safe, set it aside the first, and opened it. Its heft and weight had indicated less uniform contents than the first box, and it didn't disappoint: rolls of photographic film in their plastic cases, a small paper notebook like the kind she kept but older, a few aged military decorations attached to colored pieces of ribbon, a polished brass cigarette case with a variation of the Shinra diamond stamped into the lid, and other small, outdated knickknacks.
"God, maybe that's why you're all dead," she grumbled, prying open the cigarette case. Instead of cigarettes, a single, pocket-size photograph fluttered out with faded colors.
She flipped it over. Three men posing in front of what she soon recognized was the Junon Upper City, as seen from an inbound ship, the Sister Ray still in service in the background. She looked at the men closer. All three of them bore some resemblance to the painting she'd taken down, so she presumed the eldest, wearing the same dark red uniform the men at Healen Lodge, was Heidzig. The young man on his right was wearing the archetypical dark blue battle dress uniform used by the military under Shinra, minus the helmet and body armor, while the young man on his left wore the same pattern of clothing but in dark green. Shinra's naval infantry.
"So, the father and brothers Heidzig," she guessed out loud, taking out the plastic headphones she carried in her vest for playback with the TC-5500, and plugging it into the audio jack in the minicassette player. The cassettes were labeled with six-digit dates which cycled back to zero for the new calendar. Taking the latest, she saw it was from summer of the last year of the Second Wutai War. He said that Heidzig didn't survive the war. So if that's true, this might be the last…
She felt a pang of guilt. "Sorry, Victor Io. If it were just me, I wouldn't be doing this. But I have a grown-up job with grown-up responsibilities to consider," she told herself, loading the minicasette into the player and shutting the smooth plastic action. "So it's time for Yuffie Kisaragi to possibly listen to the voice of a dead man."
Last thing anyone we need is thinking of the Shinra as being human, she thought, holding back a laugh.
According to the casette's plastic case, the tape allowed for thirty minutes of playback, between two sides. She was prepared for precipitous drop in quality compared to the 13-cm reel recording tape used in the she wasn't prepared for was the high-pitched screeching at the beginning of the tape that nearly made pull off the headphones. She held down in the small fast forward switch until she was confident that the screeching had been replaced by squeaky human voices. What the hell was that?
[START]
First Speaker: You think it's that bad?
Second Speaker: [MUCH OLDER SOUNDING] You wanted the truth, didn't you? [PAUSE] In my opinion, yes, I think the man at the top has lost it. Realistically thinking, how far are we from even breaking ground on New Midgar? Ten years? Twenty years? Do you think either of us will be around to even see that?
1S: Well, the man at the top better be. You know his son will never agree to it, not if he's in charge.
2S: God willing he will be. [HOARSE COUGH] In either case, I won't be there to see it.
1S: Come on, don't say that, Colonel. [LAUGHTER] You've always hated the Midgar Basin, wouldn't you want to see the Promised Land?
2S: [DIFFICULT LAUGHTER] What I want, Saunders, is irrelevant. What I think is I won't.
Saunders: I think you have ten more years, easily. Especially if you quit the cigarettes and the drink.
2S: You're always thinking that way, it must be something medics do. [PAUSE] Well, as Vic would say, no matter what happens, there's always Junon.
S: [LAUGHTER] With all respect, sir, of course he'd say that.
[PAUSE]
She lifted her finger from adjacent pause switch. So the second voice, that belongs to Heidzig, it must. And he was talking to…someone named Saunders? Frowning, she pressed the fast-forward switch for a few seconds before playing the tape again.
[PLAY]
Heidzig: Of course it was. If you don't believe me, ask Io. He remembers the democratic period, he was around. Let me put it this way, how do you think the company ended up ruling the world? Because Shinra is a genius? Or because the elected leaders of the Confederation were all morons?
Saunders: Some of both?
H: Well, they were morons, but at least they were capable opportunists. That meant Shinra didn't need to kill them. [PAUSE] And, if something should happen to Shinra, god help you all, because they'll come crawling back and there will be no saving you. [SIGH] You're too young to remember a time before Shinra clearly. The fundamental laws of reality haven't changed. You don't get ahead by being clever. You don't get ahead by being beautiful. You get ahead by being a subtle crook. [COUGH]
[STOP]
Raising an eyebrow, she ejected the minicasette and flipped it over: on the reverse side, a small paper label, but with more tiny handwriting then six digits. "Conversations with staff, N.M.A.," she read aloud. New Midgar Army?
Gingerly turning the tape over again and setting it aside, she glanced back at the pile. There was another tape from the same year, marked 02-01-99 on one side and cryptically L.D. on the other. Sighing, she took the tape, loaded it, and braced herself for more electronic screeching, only to hear no such thing when playback began.
[START]
First Speaker: I want to assure you, Simon—do you mind if I call you Simon? I want to be perfectly clear about what I think is bothering you.
Heidzig: And what's that, Mr. Director?
Director: I assure you, that SOLDIER will not be taking the military's role as bodyguards the president. Not during this revolt, or after it. SOLDIER will not be charged with guarding the president's person, not under my watch anyway. You may get some trouble from the Turks admittedly, but you won't get any from me.
H: Well…thank you, Mr. Director. That…means a lot to me. And the rest of the battalion, of course. We may be in uniform, but no one wants to be out of work.
D: Of course, of course. I'm always happy when I'm able to be the image of congeniality.
H: [PAUSE] But…
D: But, as the image of congeniality, I'd like you to be congenial as well, Simon.
H: Ah.
D: I'd like to put an end to this…organizational labyrinth…over SOLDIER itself. As you said, SOLDIER is in uniform, and was created, by the company, as an elite paramilitary force within the regular army. But SOLDIER is not just another unit, like your Presidential Guard Battalion.
H: So that's what this is all about, isn't it? [PAUSE] Lazar.
Lazar: [SMOOTHLY] Yes, it is.
H: You need our helicopters and trucks. It wouldn't be very [COUGH] very seemly for SOLDIER to concern itself with petty matters of logistics and supply lines, would it? And the company has better things to do or just doesn't see much profit in it.
L: [SUPRESSING LAUGHTER] I…suppose they've left it to the military for that reason. I'm not too proud to acknowledge SOLDIER's reliance on the regular military. I just don't want any interference, any further interference, from the army on those in SOLDIER deployed to Wutai. [PAUSE] But otherwise, the military is certain indispensable.
H: No. We're not indispensable. We're landscape.
L: Excuse me?
H: Look at me, Lazar. [PAUSE] I'm an old man. I won't be here for much longer. I'm the definition of dispensable. I'm a brick. There's a hundred thousand of me in the in the Midgar and Junon armies. One brick crumbles to bits, another takes it place, and the wall stays where it is. That's what the military is, you see, a wall. It survived the whole hundred years war, just standing there. Landscape. And as long as the trains run on time and the reactors aren't sabotaged and the Wutaians don't murder us in our sleep, no one cares. But the landscape doesn't change. [PAUSE] Don't patronize me, son. I'm not Marshal Heidegger, and I'm not Department Head Cassini.
L: Colonel Heidzig, I…
H: I know your story, Lazar. You grew up poor. The difference is, you were only in the slums until your teens. I grew up in the ruined world of the Hundred Years War. I was poor for forty years. And I'll tell you what I think. I think SOLDIER's day is done. Take it from an old man more than three times your age. [PAUSE] You've been put in charge of an anachronism, because that's what SOLDIER is. Dashing warriors fighting with swords and magic. Childhood heroes from a terrible age no one wants to remember. That day is over. So unless you want to patrol the slums and run the trains, I wouldn't take the future for granted. [LAUGHTER] Maybe SOLDIER should become President Shinra's bodyguard.
L: Maybe we should. The Turks wouldn't appreciate it though, would they? [LAUGHTER] When SOLDIER has defeated Wutai, we'll hunt monsters. There's no shortage of those Mako reactor across both continents. And when the monsters are all gone [PAUSE] Well, I suppose we'll have to find something else that makes up indispensable. You know, I'm not only thinking of my position. I intend to do this job as competently as I can. And if the military's alleged alternative to SOLDIER is actually better for the company, then I won't stand in the way, Simon.
H: [FORCED COUGH]
L: Simon?
H: I don't believe you, Lazar. SOLDIER is a Shinra's nest of monsters, so why should I? [PAUSE] Of course, what do I know? I'm just an old man with three metal stars on either shoulder. I probably don't know half of you've learned about SOLDIER since your appointment as Director of Emergency Services under Military Affairs. All those terrible secrets.
L: Would you like to know them?
H: [DIFFICULT LAUGHTER] Oh, god no.
[STOP]
The dead air that followed caught her off guard, and it took her a few seconds to realize that Simon Heidzig had deliberately stopped recording at that point. Lazar? Have I heard that name before? Shinra's Emergency Services Department was a cover name for SOLDIER, or the part of SOLDIER that wasn't in the New Midgar Army or in Junon. The distinction was still fuzzy all these years later. But she, de facto head of intelligence at the W.R.O., had never heard of it having a formal director, someone personally appointed by President Shinra himself as all directors and department heads were.
So who was Lazar? Removing the headphones, her hands wandered towards the contents of the other box, stopping at the three rolls of film. I could confiscate these. Actually, I could confiscate all of this. And that's assuming Io even noticed. I might be giving him too much credit.
Her gripped tightened on the tape player. So, then I should take it, obviously. Because I'm not some criminal. I'm an official of the World Regenesis Organization, goshdarnit!
She'd ejected the minicasette and was holding it in her left hand, between her thumb and index fingers, staring intently at the dull paper label on the side of its cheap plastic, like she was waiting for it to object.
Damn it. Frowning, she dropped the minicasette back into the box and loaded another one into MCC-610. She could sleep some other time. "Geeze, Tifa, you couldn't have given me one of these things?" she asked herself, putting her headphones back on.
She spent another two hours playing and replaying the Heidzig's tapes, when the sun starting to peek over the rolling hills outside Kalm. Yuffie then meticulously replaced the contents of both boxes, making a mental note to decide what would happen to the contents of Simon Heidzig's safe at some to-be-determined point in the future. She had plenty else on her mind in the meantime.
The destruction of what we thought was Old Kalm. SOLDIER's curtain call after the surrender of Wutai at the end of the war. The Army Group Midgar, the New Midgar Army, and the Junon Army. Junon and Deepground. Junon and Wutai.
At the bottom of the stairway, instinct made her look around in the darkness, as though she was expecting something besides old furniture under white sheets and shifts of faint light pouring through cracks in the blinds.
Simon Heidzig and Victor Io.
She silently slipped through the kitchen door, only to almost give in to a fit of coughing. The sulfuric Kalm smog had returned, practically blindsiding her. She immediately drew her mask over her face, crossed out of the Heidzig House's small square lot, and into the cover provided by one of Kalm's white-and-red telephone boxes, where the air was marginally better.
Coughing, she took out her PHS and used the redial function—she hadn't been calling anyone else in her time here. Maybe I should let Tifa and Cloud know how I'm doing. As usual, someone from August Fitzroy's staff on the midnight shift answered quickly. "Yuffie Kisaragi again. Sorry, I know it's later than usual. Or earlier. Whatever."
An understanding response. "Listen, I got a couple things, but can we start with a general search for anyone with the given name 'Lazar' among Shinra's directors or department heads? This would've been during the last war. If it helps, he was probably in his twenties or early thirties, and from Midgar originally?" A question. "Yes, probably, but I don't know what sector."
Another response. "Thanks, I'll wait." She tried to take a more comfortable posture inside the glass-lined telephone box, propping her back against the door and resting her free hand against the brushed metal public telephone set, also made by Shinra. Like everything everywhere.
"Boss, are you there?" a different voice asked.
"August? Geeze, I hope they didn't wake you up for this."
"Nah, I didn't actually want to sleep." She heard him yawn. "Actually, I wanted to tell you, we weren't having much luck learning…what we don't know…about Shinra's destruction of Old and possible New Kalm."
"Don't worry about it, I know it's a long shot." Maybe I need to just go and start asking people where they were ten years ago. 'Cause that worked so good for Nibelheim. "So, this Lazar guy?"
His tone shifted distinctly towards pride. "Better luck with that. How does Lazard Deusericus, Shinra's Director of Emergency Services for the New Midgar Army sound?"
"That's a mouthful!" she replied excitedly, managing to keep the smug satisfaction out of her voice.
"I know. We got his appointment to that position, fifth of March, 1999, from the President's Office. Doesn't say when it ended, guess that was a separate document, or maybe he held that post until SOLDIER was dissolved."
The image of the tall blonde in black leather flashed before her mind. About that. "Anything else?"
"Surprisingly little, especially compared the files on Heidegger and Scarlett. And the chairman himself, course. Really, according to HQ the whole SOLDIER database is full of holes, which I guess isn't surprising considering what happened with Deepground," he confessed.
Her expression changed. "Then give me a guess, can you do that?"
"SOLDIER was formally part of the military. So it's possible anything on Lazard Deusericus was filed accordingly, in which case…"
"Let me guess—the records are either sitting in Midgar, in the ruins of the Shinra Building, or they were evacuated with the rest of the military, are in Junon."
"Yes ma'am."
She held back a sigh. I need to go to Junon. The old man would say the same, I bet. She really didn't want to go to Junon, in fact, she'd avoided being publicly scene in Junon since before Meteorfall. Another thought occurred to her. "And speaking of Junon, and I caught some of the highlights of Albert's late night sparring with their boys," she told him, referring to the earlier TV program.
"Oh really? What'd you think, ma'am?"
"Tell him to stay away from the c-word, or it'll make problems for me and Reeve, and one of us will make problems for him, you know?" she asked threateningly.
"Yes ma'am."
By the time she finished, the smog was beginning to seep into the telephone box regardless. Mask over her mouth, she returned to the Heidzig House directly, a little more carelessly kicking off her boots as she pondered her situation. So, I could go back to August Fitzroy and keep trying here in Kalm. Or I can do the least pleasant thing, and go to the one place on Earth where the Reeve Tuesti's authority doesn't reach, where AVALANCHE aren't heroes and Wutai war is remembered. She grimaced in the dark at the options. Even framing them in those terms didn't help.
"Or you could go back to Doofus Shinra and ask for more help," she told herself aloud, before breaking out in short laughter. President Shinra's unflattering nickname among his detractors, from the first year after Meteorfall, never failed to get a laugh out of her. No one used it now, of course. The man had gone from a ghostly rumor to something worse. There were no more jokes to be told.
Simon Heidzig and Victor Io. Lazard Deusericus and Rufus Shinra. Bugenhagen and Fuhito. All old or at least older men, and more and more an impenetrable barrier between her and what she was searching for. "So if the military didn't particularly like SOLDIER, or the Turks, who did they like? What was that they wanted?" she asked herself softly, recalling the tape.
"The military doesn't know what it wants. It never did."
Yuffie nearly jumped out of her shoes and spun backwards. At the other end of the room, Victor Io was still sitting in his chair, asleep, boots sticking out from underneath the colorful plaid blanket that was beginning to slide down his shoulders. He mumbled something further under his breath before his head shifted and his breathing grew shorter.
Goshdarnit. She never remembered being so startled by someone who was so generally unawake. With quiet steps, she approached him and pulled the blanket back up, very carefully brushing his cleanshaven cheek with one hand. Geeze, how are you still this cold? She rolled her eyes.
Author's Notes:
To begin: I'd like this chapter to be shorter. I hope the next chapter will be shorter. I say that for practically all my stories, and it's a problem. Hopefully it's actually not a problem for the reader, and just an organizational and effort problem for me, but I can't determine that without feedback.
With that out of the way: more Crisis Core (I suppose the absence of that title is conspicuous given the subject matter, we've gone this whole story without a single mention of Zack and barely any discussion of Sephiroth). The game itself is arguably less "problematic" than Dirge of Cerberus was for the reasons detailed earlier, though it's not without its own issues. On a similar topic, as if anyone cared, I won't be purchasing and playing the Final Fantasy VII: Remake (Part 1) for a few reasons, though I've largely familiarized myself with the plot direction (and plot changes). I can imagine some might find that odd, especially with much of North America under self-quarantine leaving it a very good time to play video games more generally. For the curious: even before the game launched, I was holding off due to watching my expenses, not wanting to play it on Playstation 4 (technical considerations), and my own suspicion of Square-Enix actually finishing the all the parts after this long of troubled development. The usual reasons that won't matter in the least to others.
With that in mind, I am grateful to anyone who's still reading, and do hope you'll consider leaving feedback to let me know you're there, and are staying safe depending on the current quarantine conditions in your place of residence (there's a a sentence that won't age well).