Under Junon. "In more recent news, the flagship of the Junon Navy arrived in port in Erujunon to celebrating crowds. The JNS Midgar, at over two hundred meters long and weighing more than thirty-two thousand tonnes, is one of the two Midgar-class battleships launched by the Confederation in the second half of the Hundred Years War, also known as the First Wutai World War. With the collapse of Shinra, the Midgar and her sister ship the Junon, are second in length only to the Junon Air Force's airship Highwind and the W.R.O.'s airborne command ship the Sierra, decommissioned since Battle of Midgar."
Pops won't like that, Yuffie Kisaragi thought at the radio broadcast's use of official name given by the W.R.O.'s military office to Cid Highwind's airship that had been sunk by the Deepground Army. The old man insisted on naming it after his wife, Shera, which the W.R.O., and Shera herself, emphatically refused. Officially, it was named the Sierra.
"Despite its successful circumnavigation of the world, it's believed the Midgar has been recalled to its home port for urgently needed repairs. The Junon, a year younger than the Midgar, was damage in engagements with the Weapon creatures during the Sephiroth Crisis three years ago, and has spent more time in laid up for repairs than at sea since the fall of Shinra. Though the Junon government claims they will eventually relaunch the battleship bearing the city-state's name, rumors abound that the Junon will likely be cannibalized for spare parts for its operational predecessor and for Junon's post-Shinra naval buildup. In related news, calls for a new round of inspections…"
"What a boring topic," Yuffie declared aloud before switching the controls to the radio set she was wearing. The compact headset crammed under her motorcycle helmet did a good job masking the sounds of riding a civilian dirt bike along what was left of the Midgar Highway, formerly the Midgar-Junon Expressway, which the Midgar-Kalm Highway split off from. Shinra had never completed it; what existed ran south through the Midgar Basin through a valley in the Midgar Mountains before reaching a tunnel completed during the war by means of forced labor. Shinra had hoped to expand it, and through the other side run the expressway south through the Junon Forest, then back northwest to the Junon Heights and the fortress city itself. Like many of Shinra's ambitious construction projects, it was never completed, the expressway occasionally turned back into ancient wartime roads. She didn't trust the tunnel itself either, but the alternative was a long, winding, and obviously dangerous pass up the Midgar Mountains and down the other side, the shortest crossing adding hours to the trip.
Now Shinra wants to build a railroad where the expressway was going to be. Good luck with that, she thought with a snort. As a north-facing cliff face of the Midgar Mountains loomed in front of her, she kept following the paved roadway south.
"How do you find the Junon Army?" "Just keep going down the highway." It was a joke that had begun circulating in the wake of Deepground's mass abductions starting in the outskirts of Junon, and the military's apparent inability to do anything about them. Except Junon hadn't been idle. Before the Battle of Midgar, they announced a new mass mobilization policy, the reintroduction of conscription for the first time since the dissolution of the Midgar Confederation. "In case the worse should happen," was their reasoning. After the W.R.O. prevailed over Deepground, they did not change policy.
"What could you do with a whole army in this day and age?" Reeve liked to ask. Unlike their navy, a ground-based force, even supported by the world's second-biggest air force, could not just wantonly claim territory across the continent. Junon found things other things to do. For starters, they patrolled the whole of the Midgar-Junon Expressway, as much was left of it. This allowed them to set the rather arbitrary tolls on trade coming out of Edge, which infuriated the actually rich people who lived in Edge, scarce as they were.
They also seized property formerly belonging to Shinra outside of Junon. They started with Fort Condor: the pre-Wutai War pathetic excuse for a castle that Shinra had strangely attempted to convert into a mako reactor. The slipshod job attracted a massive monster, resembling the grand condor of legend, and a number of anti-Shinra rebels. AVALANCHE ended up aiding the rebels against the equally bizarre mercenaries hired by Shinra to retake the fort, but that was all history now. The Junon Army showed up at the abandoned site and, per its agreement with the W.R.O., dismantled the reactor—and the rest of Fort Condor, including the empty condor nest.
Yuffie didn't understand the Fort Condor affair, not at first. She thought she did now: it demonstrated Junon's ability to build, and destroy, as it saw fit. In the year that followed, Junon effectively annexed the rest of the Fort Condor region, and then the whole of the Southern Plains, practically a third of the Eastern Continent south and west of the Midgar and Mythril Mountains, and east of the Junon Peninsula. And the W.R.O. did nothing. Reeve focused on protecting the independence of the Mideel Archipelago to the south, widely believed to be Junon's next target.
[START]
Kisaragi: So, basis for Junon's takeover of the whole region was legal, apparently. Junon has gotten really good at using the law to justify their scheming. After the end of the Wutaian occupation of the continent during the Hundred Years War, the Midgar Confederation claimed sovereignty over the entire continent. [PAUSE] After Shinra collapsed, the legal question was raised and Junon claimed, and was awarded, successorship as the surviving half of the Confederation state. No one seriously thought they'd actually press those claims. Maybe because we're all stupid. [PAUSE] I'm here at the north entrance to the MMBT. It's patrolled by the Junon Army, but mostly there's civilian drilling workers here.
Nearby Speaker: What're you doing?
[STOP]
With the heavy leather strap over one shoulder, Yuffie lowered the microphone she was holding in her free hand, the other keeping her motorcycle steady as she waited by the side of the road. The question was posed by a Junon soldier a dull blue uniform, a frown visible under his bulky white helmet, his long-barreled assault rifle slung rather leisurely over his shoulder.
"Nothing," she insisted, drawing her hand out from the leather case and opening and closing it, demonstrating that it was empty.
"Is that a tape recorder? Kind of big for a tape recorder."
"It's nothing. Shut up. I want to go through the tunnel."
"Pass?" The infantryman pointed at himself; on the various portions of white-colored composite armor worn over the blue battledress uniform, in the place of the dark red SEPC corporate logo was the bolder, bright red rectangular coat-of-arms of the State of Junon; under that were the words JUNON STATE BORDER AND CUSTOMS SERVICE in bold script. After another minute, she realized there was Wutaian inlaid in the coat-of-arms in a neat square: 国境警察.
"Here," she told him, taking out her W.R.O.-issued passport. He stared at it through the glowing red photoreceptors in his helmet before handing it back to her. "All right, Ms. Yuffie Kisaragi. What business do you have in Junon?"
"I'm going to the city," she announced, as blatantly vague as she could manage. The infantryman frowned more under his helmet before gesturing at companion to join him.
"If you're journalist, I presume you have some credentials?"
"I might. But I'm not going to show them to you," she declared.
The first soldier looked irritated enough to cause a fuss when a voice bellowed from behind him in the direction of activity deeper into the tunnel. Yuffie was impressed by how loud it managed to be. "Hey, what're you two stopping up traffic for?"
The two soldiers exchanged looks, a comical sight with their matching helmets. "What traffic? It's the first time all day the traffic's let up," the second one muttered to the first indignantly. Towards the entrance, a middle-aged man in the dull-colored boiler suit and white helmet of some kind of labor foreman strolled up. There was something immediately off about him; after a few seconds, Yuffie realized that he was missing his left arm at the elbow underneath the suit. He did, however, have the red diamond of a Shinra Corporation subsidiary sewn over his breast.
"Well? You gonna' let her go are you gonna' send her on her way? Pick one!" he demanded gruffly. Yuffie suppressed her laughter as the second soldiers indicated via gesture how little trouble all of this was worth, and the first one conceded the point with a wave of his hands. Raising a leg off her motorcycle, she began to push it across the uneven transition into the tunnel.
"You know real customs and immigration ain't as easy as those boys," the foreman warned her grimly, his jaw clenched on his thin, roughly-shaven face.
"I know, I've been to the fortress before." Approaching him, she squinted at his clothing in the dim red-orange lights of the tunnel's entrance. Shinra Mining and Exploration Company. What, the power company's too busy to dig for its own fuel? Craning her head as she progressed, she looked over his back: visible deeper down the tunnel, section of walls on either side had their decades-old meticulously tiled walls torn down and what she assumed were crude exploration tunnels dug perpendicular to the pain tunnel with heavy machinery.
The foreman followed her eyes. "Sorry about the mess," he announced casually.
Pausing in front of him as she passed, she gave him a skeptical look. "What're guys digging up here, anyway? Coal?"
"What're going to Junon for?" he fired back.
"None of your business."
"Exactly," he said in agreement. "Now piss off, would you kindly?"
The exploration tunnels continued sporadically as she continued southwards, seeming to grow larger in size behind the obstructive metal screens put up in front of them as she got closer to the Junon end. The racket from both sides grating her nerves and causing her to speed up her pace as she pushed her motorcycle along. Predictably, there were more Junon Army on the other end of the tunnel, the same unremarkable young men in the unmistakable dark blue uniforms of the Peace Preservation, though these were joined by an officer in garb largely identical to the dark red coats and blue trousers worn by the military at Healen. Unlike on the Midgar side, the seemed to have no interest in her even as she passed, so she called out to them casually as she climbed back onto her motorcycle.
"You know, if you guys really want to ruin that tunnel, you should just get some explosives and be done with it."
This seemed to amuse the soldiers and their officer. "Hey, who says we won't?" he said with a rather bold grin quite unlike the tired, spent men at Healen. There was something about these Junon Army troops she didn't care for.
Traversing the better-maintained highway that cut through to the coastal plains along the Mediterranean on her motorcycle gave Yuffie time to think, and even time to record, the TC-5500 propped against her back as she leaned forward on the bike, and the microphone fixed to a loop on her vest.
[START]
Kisaragi: I never talked about it with Cloud or Barret or anyone else, like they would give a crap, but I used to dream about Junon when I was growing up. Those expensive tutors my father hired when I was growing up, Wutaian scholars, would tell me the approved story. Junon, the oldest city in the East, older then the cities whose names are forgotten and are just collectively called Midgar. It's not Old Junon. That fishing village we used to sneak into the fortress the first time, that's all that's left of the seaport city that was built on the ruins of the original villages, a thousand years ago, and the fortress was built on top of that. [PAUSE] Victor Io said that history lives in Junon. I don't know about living, but it's squashed underneath it. The city of the goddess Juno, or Jun as we call her in Wutai. Since Meteorfall, it might be the only real city that still exists in the world. The State of Junon acts that way, at least. [PAUSE] Since before Shinra, nothing seems to survive for long in the East. The Imperial City in Wutai is more than a thousand years old, I know that much. And if something did survive…
[STOP]
Feeling over her back and into the carrying case with one hand, she stopped the reel-to-reel. And if it did survive, we probably destroyed it during the war. Victor Io was wrong. History didn't live in Junon, just Shinra's short epoch. Shinra buries history, or burns it down, or whatever they need to do to keep looking to the future. Suddenly, Rufus being an unhelpful jerk suddenly makes more sense, doesn't it?
She felt her PHS vibrate in her breast pocket: she had cellular reception again. Not thinking of the microphone, with her other hand she produced her PHS and flipped open the screen, where there was a new text message waiting for her, from none other than Reeve Tuesti himself.
"Got your report, great find in Kalm. Hope you're as lucky in Junon, don't hesitate to reach out. Please ignore the calls for a new round of…inspections?! We need something to distract from Hart?!" She flipped her phone shut and almost swore. "God...goshdarnit!" She almost threw her phone in a fit of anger. She wasn't angry at the inspectors; in a way, they might've been the only people who took their jobs seriously in the whole of the World Regenesis Organization. She was angry at the farce that was about to follow.
The roadway eventually started to turn west, as she made her way deeper into the New State of Junon. The military activity grew similarly: Army Group Junon or the Junon Army or whatever they called themselves, traveling in convoys of large, tall 6x6 military trucks that would pass her on the road, visibly loaded with soldiers in uniform. Obviously there was no way to just enter Fortress Junon by land; that had been true three years ago, and it was even more true today: the small villages and refugee camps-turned-towns that ran along the bluffs immediately to the west, collectively called the Junon Heights or Arujunon, and the seaside towns that ran south to the secondary port city of Erujunon, and Junon Gulf to the north effectively encircled the city itself. Sometimes, the old ways were the best: she'd take the more-or-less same route she used immediately after she first joined AVALANCHE, cursing the spikey-haired weirdo, his big-breasted miniskirt-clad girlfriend, and their lumbering idiot of a boss for dragging her into Shinra's seaside fortress.
Yuffie resisted the urge to smile. It'd taken almost an hour, but following the highways in the direction of Erujunon only to break off and take the side roads back north, she was treated to the southern face of the tiered fortress city of New Junon, a massive steel ziggurat with a gradually rusting orange hue and terraces of concrete and pavement. She half expected to see the Sister Ray pointing west. Beneath and below it, the dim lights of the Old Junon fishing villages, awkwardly sandwiched underneath the fortress and between it and Erujunon. Finally there came a perimeter fence with a clearly visible sign advertising the Junon Border and Customs Service, the coat-of-arms of the rectangular profile of the city in miniature, and approximate distances to New Junon, Erujunon, and the Heights.
Yuffie's motorcycle came to a halt just behind one of those Type 939 military trucks, a faded Shinra badge visible on the registration plate fixed to its enormous bumper. It was waved through Security Checkpoint Water Gate, as another sign indicated, and then it was her turn; a thin woman with neatly-cut dark hair, about her age, in a red Peace Preservation uniform with an old-fashion striped green-and-white armband gestured at her before glancing at her comrade, another woman in the nearby guard shack.
"Papers, please." The woman officer, a single small star rank insignia on her shoulders and collar indicating she was a 2nd lieutenant, asked almost exactly like her W.R.O. counterparts at the desk at Kalm. Reaching into one of her vests many pockets, she produced her identification and travel permit—as expected, the woman raised her passport book and compared the photo to Yuffie, who immediately replicated the inappropriately wide, toothy grin she knew she was sporting in that photograph, canines bared. She was satisfied by the similarity. "Reason for visiting Junon?"
"I'm a journalist out of Edge. Independent," she added quickly. Reaching over, she showed the contents of her traveling case to her, despite her apparent apathy.
Very deliberately, the woman passed her documents to her uniformed comrade, sitting behind the desk in the small office. "You're a little late to cover the navy's celebrations."
"Oh, I mostly do human interest stuff. Personal histories, that kind of thing."
"That's nice," she muttered ambivalently as she checked around her motorcycle and luggage. The other woman stamped her passport and travel permit at her desk before handing it back to the lieutenant after she finished, who neatly placed the permit inside the passport book and held it at Yuffie. "You may want to register with the W.R.O. consulate, the phone number and address for the Junon City office is on the paper with your permit. Currency exchange is…"
"Don't need it, I only have gil," she promised, referring to the prewar Midgar's currency Shinra had taken over.
"Right," she said, as Yuffie took the documents back. "Enjoy your visit to the New State of Junon, Ms. Kisaragi."
"How long have you been working here? I mean, in customs and immigration."
The woman glanced over at the other officer briefly, who shrugged. "I've been with the Border and Customs Service for almost two years."
"So you were here during Deepground?" The lieutenant's look of mild amusement hardened at the word. "Never mind. Thanks."
Passing through the checkpoint, the road took her in only one direction: to the fishing village closest to the fortress itself, directly beneath the Junon Airport and descriptively called Under Junon. Traffic died down to almost nothing, and the military presence reverted to foot traffic among a hamlet of rectangular brick cottages with dark shingled roofs interspersed among the airport's support beams and power conduits. History lives in Junon, Victor Io told her. At least in places like Under Junon, time was frozen; the shattered cobblestone road leading up to a freight elevator in the side of the fortress had been paved over, but broken concrete steps still led down to the beach and smaller docks, the preserved skeleton of a massive fish at least decades caught still hanging from a hook on macabre display. The air smelled strongly of diesel, though it was nowhere nearly as aggravating as the Kalmish smog, and the dully-dressed locals and the military presence skipped on masks. A small detail of Peace Preservation troops were loitering in front of the Under Junon Inn, laughing at one another—all women, Yuffie noted. Considering how empty the village was, as usual, even on foot military presence seemed a little disproportionate. Man, I hope they don't know about the inspectors.
She brought her motorcycle to a halt underneath a raised cottage next to one of the massive steel support pylons, the kind that had served as a model for the ones in Midgar, and killed the engine. The town felt eerily familiar; though she'd been to Junon on W.R.O. business before, she hadn't been to Under Junon since before Meteorfall, and everything was too recognizable for her comfort. The lights in the raised home weren't lit like its neighbors, and after frowning for a moment, she reached for a drably-dressed local as he passed by.
"Hey, is Priscilla still in town? I'm an old friend."
"Yuffie Kisaragi? Yuffie, what are you doing here?"
Yuffie glanced down the paved street. The detail of soldiers had begun to split up, and the smallest among them, clearly still a teenager, pulled off her helmet to reveal a somewhat swarthy girl with hair cropped short in the front, leaving just a few messy dark strands for her bangs, and a ponytail short enough to fit under a Shinra-manufactured helmet. Yuffie gaped at her.
In a small but smart-fitting blue Peace Preservation uniform, Priscilla Mahadevan hurried along the street to her, helmet under one arm, noisy boots on her feet. Instinctively, Yuffie noted she wasn't armed, though she did have a standard rifle bayonet sheathed on her belt. Then she kept staring at her, mouth agape.
Priscilla didn't seem to notice her expression, or didn't comment on it. "Yuffie, what're you doing here? Did you just get into town?"
She finally found her words. "…when did you join Junon Army?" she blurted out finally, looking to her left and right. The rest of the detail were still lingering outside the inn, and an officer in a dark red uniform with a kepi cap climbed up the stairs from the beach followed by a sailor in a startling white-and-blue uniform, while a few more military traffic cops stood by the freight elevator. Except for the sailor, all were female. "Did you get drafted? When did Junon start drafting little girls?" she demanded.
Priscilla's violet eyes widened before she sighed. "No, they don't draft little…I signed up a few months ago, after my birthday."
"Aren't you sixteen?" she asked, her body language emphasis how aghast she was.
"How would were you when you joined up with AVAL…you know who!" she countered. Priscilla visibly did the math in her head. "Aren't you, like, nineteen now?"
"This isn't about me," Yuffie snapped back authoritatively. "Priscilla, you hated Shinra! And you hated Junon, for that matter!" she growled in a hush voice.
Priscilla rolled her eyes the way a teenager might at a meddlesome adult. "Come on, Yuffie Kisaragi of Wutai, let's get you inside already."
Author's Notes:
Another quickly-produced chapter using existing parts (and cutting a few out): we come to Junon, quite obviously one of my favorite locations in the whole game, and deliberate how one goes to Junon, which like most rural geography in the game is a pain in the ass. The 2015 remake trailers (which I didn't really pay much attention to, as I kind of lost interest in a FFVII re-imaging at the end of the Playstation 3 era personally) did something notable: an elevated highway in one of Midgar's sector actually states "Junon x miles", which, aside from the bizarre occurence of Midgar using imperial rather than metric units of measurement, basically stated that, by roadway, the city of Junon was approximately two hundred kilometers away (a few hours drive depending on speed, obviously) from urban Midgar. Even at the most contracted distances, one has to imagine this is alluding to a Midgar-Junon highway that Cloud and company, being a bunch of eco-terrorists traveling on foot, do not use (then again they were following "Sephiroth", actually Jenova, who wasn't either apparently, and Kalm is in the opposite direction.
If you're sad that Yuffie didn't stop at Edge, or for that matter the ruins of Midgar, on the way, without spoiling anything, don't be too sad. As for Priscilla (no surname given in the original game, and presumably not 'Priscilla Dolphin'), including her came to me somewhat late in the writing...so it's either a stroke of genius or a waste of time. Let me know in a review!