Preamble:

The material proceeding this, following "The Interview", is now Act I - KALM.

ACT II

JUNON

In dimly-lit offices of the Junon Admiralty Board, they lingered silently. Except for one of the men, a newcomer in a characteristic scarlet greatcoat made famous by the Midgar Army, they wore the black and white wool uniforms of the Junon Navy, tunics over blouses and ties, peaked visor caps sitting on the table between them.

A low-ranking junior officer took the thirteen centimeter reel of 6.35-millimeter audio tape from the army officer and meticulously loaded it into the bulky RT-909 open reel player in an open cabinet along the wall, carefully spooling the magnetic tape into the brushed-metal machine.

"She couldn't have picked a more obsolete media format?" one naval officer asked loudly, leaning towards a superior sitting at the end of the table, wearing a black double-breasted tunic with the three large stars of a Junon vice admiral on his epaulets. The admiral shushed him before returning to his visor cap in his hands.

"What was her name again, Godo Kisaragi's daughter?" another, significantly older admiral asked.

"Yuffie, Yuffie Kisaragi," the sitting vice admiral explained softly.

"And this was all the work she'd done?" the most elderly officer in the room asked, leaning in his direction.

"We don't believe so, we think she copied this tape from another." The vice admiral glanced at the man at the reel-to-reel who gave a nod. "There's only a few minutes of her conversation with the major here."

[START]

Kisaragi: If this Fuhito character was such a big deal, why haven't I ever heard of him?

Io: You'd have to ask the Turks. Fortunately for you, they're still around [LAUGH] so that's possible, especially for someone such as yourself. [PAUSE] Maybe he wasn't such a big deal. After all, he didn't succeed and you, a member of AVALANCHE, had never heard of him.

K: You know, there's a lot of things I bet you've never heard of.

I: Why bet against a sure thing? The older I get, the more I wish I knew less about more things. I've settled for not being able to do anything about them from here, in relative obscurity.

K: Sounds kind of cowardly, no offense.

I: None taken. You might want to follow my advice, even, if you have that luxury. [SIGH] But you chose to life of duty, didn't you? I don't know what you did before AVALANCHE, but you could've left after Shinra's fall, couldn't you have?

K: That's [PAUSE] a complicated question.

I: I'm sorry to hear that. And I'm sorry you've decided to take this task yourself. You don't need to be my age, to see what I've seen, to realize what a terrible thing knowledge becomes when you have enough of it.

K: [ABRUPT LAUGHTER] Well that just sounds stupid.

I: I wish it was.

K: You think I'll learn something I won't like?

I: Honestly, I can't even fathom what you'll learn. But I know this: Shinra grew rich not from guns or from mako, but ideas. And like they say, money is the root of all evil.

[STOP]

From the end of the table, the vice admiral gestured, and a junior officer reached forward and struck the switch, stopping the spinning reels on the player. The other officers sat in silence, eyes wandering among each other, waiting for what came next.

With great deliberateness, he rose from the table. Some of the others leaned towards the door, only to stumble when the vice admiral grasped his white-crowned visor cap and held it against his black uniform tunic, lowering his eyes in respect. The man in the army uniform imitated him, lowering his own hat, and the other officers followed suit. One navy man belated realized he had no cap to doff and instead kept his hands by his side. The sailors stood at attention.

"And that's all that was on the tape?" he asked, without raising his eyes.

"Yes sir."

"Victor Io was a legend in the New Midgar Army. He served honorably and with distinction in three wars. He might've liked to talk too much," the army man explained quietly.

"And we will never see his kind again," the vice admiral waxed in response. There was a murmur in agreement from the others. The moment of silence endured a few moments longer before he raised his arm and placed his cap on his head. The junior officer stepped towards the wall and flipped a switch, raising the electric blinds: the setting sun over the Mediterranean Ocean flooded into the office.

"On more pressing matters, the foreign ministry's talks with the W.R.O. foreign office have finished. They were as unproductive as expected." The younger admiral rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. "There will be no negotiation on our disputed territorial claims, especially with Gongaga's withdrawal of South Sea claims, thereby…" By then, he had become acutely aware of the increasingly panicked expressions on the men facing him and the windows, as one gestured past him and shouted a warning.

A large pane of glass his right shattered, showering fragments across the table and hardwood floor beneath them. The vice admiral was more than shocked; he barely managed to prop himself on the table when Yuffie Kisaragi, having entered through the space the window had occupied, took him by the lapels of his uniform.

The room was immediately filled with panicked shouting. The doors slammed open and four rifle-armed sailors poured in, rifles raised. Yuffie glanced at the closest one and with subtle flick of her wrist, angled the massive shuriken previously holstered on her back at him, just as he squeezed the trigger. The shuriken deflected his shot, sending it back into his right leg and dropping him.

"Lower your weapons!" the vice admiral stammered them. "You're not going to stop her with bolt-action rifles!"

Impatient with their response, Yuffie holstered her gigantic shuriken with one arm and used her other to fling a trio of smaller blades into the two sailors behind them. After the cries in pain, the fourth sailor seemed to get the message and lowered his weapon's barrel, and she turned back to him.

"Listen, Admiral Kiss-ass. No more pretty words, no more mind games. I'm going to ask a question, and you're going to answer it, and your best buddy Rufus isn't here to save you."

"And you're sure you don't want this on tape?" he stammered with a terrified grin, still trying to free himself from her grasp.

"Off the record!" she growled. He beckoned her to continue with a manic nod. "What is it, this new weapon? What did Shinra give you? What did it take them three years to finish? What was the Midgar Army going to use to end the Hundred Years War before Shinra stepped in?"

The smile faded from his face, only to be replaced by awkward chortling that turned into outright laughter.

"A weapon? You think this is about some weapon?"

Yuffie swore loudly. "Excuse me! I mean, don't fu-…freak with me, Kessler!" she snapped, dragging him off the glass-covered table before shoving him against one of the remaining window panes.

"You really do! So the White Rose of Wutai is living in the past and doesn't even realize it." Vice Admiral Kessler cried in pain when she shoved him back again, cracking the glass. "You want to know what Shinra gave us? It's been in front of you this whole time. Just look with your own eyes!" he shouted, gesturing awkwardly behind himself.

Resisting the urge to close her hands together around his neck, she glanced over the black wool and golden cloth epaulet on Kessler's shoulder. Behind him stretched Junon Harbor, occupied by one of the two identical flagships of the Junon Navy.

"Shinra didn't grow rich from guns. Shinra grew rich from power. And that's literal, not metaphorical, Ms. Kisaragi!" Kessler gloated.

She looked back at him, unable to hide the confusion in his face. "A…ship? But you already had those ships!"

"You don't get it, do you? This isn't the Mako Age anymore, it's the Information Age! And what is the truth of the Information Age?" He struggled to lean towards her. "Victor Io was wrong. Knowledge is the root of all evil," he whispered.

Author's Note:

I'd like say I completed this chapter in record time, but aside from being very short (that's something other people do, so why not me?), it was also almost completely written earlier, though it needed substantial modification. I'm also trying something new, in case it wasn't obviously apparent: just like how this story (unintentionally) began with a prolepsis ("flash forward"), so will this new act. I've been using this story as a way to experiment, though I'm prepared for not all experiments working (feedback is useful for letting me know what works and what doesn't). There will probably be a decent gap between this and the next chapter, appropriately.