Needles. Sometimes, Yuffie Kisaragi decided, the least subtle, most direct approach was the superior one, which was also available to her by virtue of her position. Rather than repeat the approach of playing at detective as she had in New Kalm, she instead decided to leverage the political power of the W.R.O. to get what she wanted: a face-to-face meeting with the man she'd been repeatedly told she needed to speak to. For once, no sneaking around, no dumb attempts at subtlety. I ask for a meeting, and I get one. Just like a real journalist, right?
"So, how's it look?" The question was directed at the person at the other end of the telephone conversation, while she stood in a trademark Junon City telephone booth, dark red wood panels instead of the metal-framed glass of Midgar and Edge.
August Fitzroy took his time answering. "Okay, so, External Affairs got through to the Junon Foreign Ministry. So you're sure you don't want to speak to, you know, the actual foreign minister?"
"Is his name Tom Kessler?"
"No, I'm pretty sure it's Yosuke Taira." August's rendition of a Wutaian name could've used work.
She stuck her tongue out in the booth. "Then no. Just get me a meeting with him?" She frowned. "What's the issue, anyway?"
"Well, apparently, he's a busy guy."
"Is this about those bone-headed weapons inspections that aren't going to actually make any difference whatsoever?"
Silence.
"August!" she barked.
"Reeve told me to tell you they might be. I mean, what're the odds the guy you want to speak with is literally the point man for that too?" was the sheepish reply.
Yuffie groaned. "Gawd! I mean, what the heck's the point of official channels if this doesn't work? Like, seriously!"
"Okay, okay, I'll ask harder. They'll probably agree, I mean, he's the spokesman after all." A pause. "Just don't, you know, make a scene. Reeve asked that too."
"Did he now?" she asked sarcastically.
"Yeah, I don't get it either," he confessed.
"Well, my original plan was to stand at the end of Cheapside and scream 'I'm Yuffie Kisaragi, bring me to Tom Kessler!' over and over until achieving the desired effect," she explained, referring to one of the busy thoroughfares that lead out to 1st Street, the lowest of Fortress Junon's avenues.
"You think that would work?"
"Pretty sure it wouldn't not work. Ever seen someone do that before?"
A few seconds of stunned silence, to her gratification. "You've got me there, but eventually, that wouldn't work."
Yuffie grinned at the handset. "Don't question me, August. I'm a ninja."
"Wouldn't a ninja, presumably, sneak around?" August inquired.
"Shut up, which one of us here is a ninja?" While she posed the rhetorical question, there was an unexpected knock on the booth's door, and she was greeted by a pair of patient looking, well-dressed men in black double-breasted wool jackets with rows of gold buttons, with white-crowned visor caps; the style of the brass of what had been Shinra's navy, the seagoing Peace Preservation, she believed.
"August, I'm gonna' call you back, okay?" she asked, keeping her eyes on them through the glass door. Before August could respond, she hung up and yanked the door back, staying inside the booth. "Yes?" she mewed.
"Ms. Yuffie Kisaragi?" the older of the two, a pale man with fading red hair and freckles, asked loudly through the glass. His younger, swarthier companion with dark black hair, raised a gloved hand, hiding a smile.
"Who's asking?" she asked cockily.
"I don't think you care about our names, but we're from the Junon Navy. Would you mind coming with us?"
"Where?" She stayed inside the booth.
"Somewhere you'll want to go, we think," his younger companion, with one fewer stripe of gold fabric sewn into his sleeves, explained calmly.
Yuffie's eyes darted towards the plastic payphone and then back at the two navy men, both not visibly armed. That wasn't the whole story, of course: they could've had concealed firearms, like the Turks typically carried. They could even have materia, if neither seemed to possess the telltale luminous eyes of SOLDIER. But in truth she wasn't afraid of either of them if those possibilities, or if they had backup. Because in the end of the day, they're just two guys in fancy uniforms, and I could probably break their necks without breaking a sweat.
"Fine." She slung her luggage over her shoulder and smoothly pocketed a coin from the payphone's return slot. "Lead the way, buddies."
Where they led her to a small section of Junon North Harbor, to was what looked a cute-looking Cessna seaplane with unfolded wing and bobbing on two large floats where its landing gear would've been, up and down with the current in the harbor. Yuffie was surprised not to see one of Shinra's ubiquitous twin turbine S-70 transport helicopters, or the older, single-turbine B1-A small helicopters. The four-seat Cessna looked like the civilian owned by normal people on coastlines across the world, particularly valued with the collapse of the global transit infrastructure with Shinra, but painted in a dour grey-green color with the emblem of the Junon Navy on the side.
"I assume we're taking this plane to where we're actually going," Yuffie declared loudly as a trio of busy looking sailors in white-and-blue uniforms began detaching the floatplane from its moorings.
"You're correct." The older navy man looked at her inquisitively, so she could clearly see his grey eyes under the visor of his cap. "Don't trust us?"
"No, but you say that like I've never jumped out of a flying airplane before," she fired back, pulling the door facing them open and nimbly climbing on, equipment still hanging from her shoulder. "Jokes on you then."
From inside the small cabin, she watched the two navy men look at her, then each other, and raised their white-gloved hands in front of their mouths in an extremely lazy attempt to disguise their laughter. She rolled her eyes and glance at her surroundings: the tiny airplane lacked much military accouterment inside as well, aside from some official-looking plaques on the back of the seats in front of her and on other furniture. It might've been an example of seizure by the Junon in the wake of Meteorfall; it was known to happen, when the military decided people, mostly outsiders, had no business owning their own planes merely because "They bought them from Shinra" or some other unconvincing excuse. She found the latch for the small window facing the harbor and popped it open.
"You two gonna' stand there polishing your medals all day, or are we gonna' fly somewhere?" she snapped at them, head almost all the way through the window. She became acutely aware of the bobbing sensation of the floating machine, rising and falling gently.
More poorly-disguised laughter as the younger of the two climbed in, sitting behind one of the yokes, and the older followed suit. After some squawking through a headset that the younger had traded his fancy hat for they were pushed away from the pier by sailor, turned to make a straight line for the open sea, and were soon airborne.
Yuffie clenched her jaw as she opened her luggage and began manipulating the controls on the TC-5500 reel-to-reel, wondering what symptom would appear next. She didn't get airsick, or even seasick, the way she had three years ago, and on top of that, she was pleasantly surprised to find that the floatplane was actually a smoother, and significantly quieter, ride than one of Shinra's helicopters, despite its small size.
"So, we've heard that you're been interviewing employees of the Shinra Corporation," the older of the two said from his seat, as his comrade seemed to operate the control.
Yuffie could feel herself turning red. At least it was distracting. "Yes." She frowned. "Who told you that?"
"I think you just did," the younger of the two replied jovially. She could hear the other one snickering.
She rolled her eyes but resisted groaning. "Fine then. If you two are so well informed, you mind if I record this conversation?" she asked, producing the metal microphone in one hand.
"You weren't already?" the elder asked. "Go ahead, that's probably okay."
"You know we're not employees of Shinra though, right?" the other pointed out.
"Whatever, close enough." She stretched out as much as she could in the row of seats. "Just start whenever, okay?"
[START]
Older Man: [RELUCTANTLY] Uh, sure. I'm Lieutenant Commander Moore. This is Lieutenant Nguyen.
Younger Man: That's spelled N-G-U-…
Kisaragi: [HURRIEDLY] Yeah, I really don't care. So, how long have both of you been in the Junon Navy?
Moore: Oh, eleven years in my case. And Nguyen, this'll be your…third?
Nguyen: Fourth year.
K: So both of you were in the military during the Jenova War.
N: I mean, Moore here was. I was still in the naval academy.
M: [CHEERFULLY] And what did you do during the Jenova War? Picking pockets in Midgar?
K: [SARCASTICALLY] Oh, nice try, but this isn't about me. So you were in school, and you were aboard a ship?
M: Yes, seaplane tender, hence the flying. An old seaplane tender surrendered by Wutai after the Hundred Years War, one of the Chitose-class. She was sunk by one of the Weapon monsters, and is in the process of being resurfaced and converted into an aircraft carrier.
K: [FEIGNING INTEREST] Is that a fact?
N: If there's the budget for it anyway.
M: So what did you do during the war? Go to school?
K: Yeah, that.
M: [AFTER PAUSING] And? Where did you go to school?
K: Didn't I just say this wasn't about me?
N: Anyone ever tell you you're not particularly good at this whole interviewing thing?
[STOP]
After turning the knob on the reel-to-reel, Yuffie quickly and loudly blew a raspberry in the destruction of Lieutenant Nguyen, and both laughed loudly in response. She leaning backwards to deliver a kick to one of their seats when she spotted a ship coming off the left side below them, probably about thirty kilometers off the coast of Junon, too big to be a destroyer but otherwise resembling one, with a pair of funnels roughly halfway and two-thirds of its length, and two groups of double-barreled turrets, three in front of the first funnel and two behind the second. Unlike the Fort Corel, weak plumes of black exhaust were still visible rising out of its funnels; without something concrete for reference, it was impossible to say, but it did look smaller and less massive.
"Is that an escort ship?" she asked, leg still poised to strike against the back of Nguyen's seat. He craned his head over to get a look in the same direction, despite presumably knowing the answer.
"Good eye for a civilian. It's the light cruiser Bonaventura, an older girl in the Junon Navy." She was reminded of the bizarre tendency among Easterners to feminize inanimate machines, ships in particular; Cid was the same way. He glanced at Moore, who had already started talking into his headset in a precise, mechanical function, presumably to an air traffic controller. "Moore'll have us down in a few minutes. Feel free to fastened your seatbelt," Nguyen said in jest, and she stuck her tongue out again.
Nguyen had not been exaggerating, and in less than a minute Moore turned the floatplane around and brought her down parallel to the Bonaventura, which she could now see was sitting still in the ocean. Unlike a helicopter, there was no way to feasibly land the floatplane on the escort ship itself; to her surprise, they were lifted up by the means of a crane near the first funnel.
Up close and through her window, there was no denying the Bonaventura was old. Possibly very old, and certainly older than she was. It was completely different than one of the W.R.O.'s coast guard cutters. But she could see the meticulous effort put into maintenance, probably the occupation of the scurrying sailors onboard at that moment she decided. Yuffie was working up the nerve to ask where exactly she was being taken when Nguyen opened his door and leaned halfway before grandiosely shouting, "Make way for the W.R.O. inspector!"
"Wait, I'm not the W.R.O. weapons inspect-…" she began before the deafening racket of the ship, or at least its crew about the deck, drowned out her out. Several sailors rather jubilantly repeated the lieutenant's declaration, and after a moment, she could hear something—either the engines or the propeller blades or something else—whirling to life as the Bonaventura began moving under its own power.
"This way, inspector!"
"Make way for the World Regenesis government's weapons inspector!" a particularly deep voice announced from a massive man of a sailor, tall as Barret in the old days, but more slender upon closer inspection. Strangely, over his white-and-blue sailor's uniform he was wearing body armor, the kind the army used, as well as a much simpler steel helmet held down with a chinstrap. Some kind of cannoneer? She'd forgotten what they were actually called in military service.
She gave up trying to correct them as she was escorted among shouting voices to the relatively unoccupied deck space between the two funnels, where what else was waiting for her but more sailors standing by large, modern-looking packing crates, the kind the W.R.O. transported relatively valuable but not crucial or necessarily fragile equipment in. The tall, deep-voiced sailor from before stopped in front of one, undid the latches and pulled open its lid, his large frame obscuring the contents.
"Ms. Kisaragi, was it?" She turned to see another naval officer, a woman, in the same uniform as Nguyen; something was off about it, and after another second Yuffie realized the uniform was mirrored from that of the two men. Wait, do all women wear reversed uniforms?
"Yeah, that's me, I'm the…inspector, apparently," she said unconvincingly.
The lieutenant gave her an amicable smile. "Just follow me, please."
A trip up an exterior stairway brought them up one level, where what looked like a reviewing stand had been set up, complete with a table and folding chairs, overlooking the open deck space. Three more men, all in black uniforms, were staring at the activity below, one of them a geriatric with what she assumed was his cane left unattended on the table. The other two were substantially younger, and were talking. Yuffie gave up on trying to capture their words on tape, the lid still closed on her TC-5500's carrying case, and instead strained to hear them.
"And so this gas-cooling system, what was the element again?"
"Nitrogen," the other answered.
"Nitrogen gas-cooling system overcomes the background infrared radiation problem?"
"And that works?" the geriatric belatedly asked. One of the two younger men turned and spotted Yuffie, tapping his compatriot on the sleeve with a white-gloved hand, and all three turned to face her. Once again, their uniforms were subtly different than Nguyen's and Moore's; all three wore double-breasted black coats with two rows of polished gold buttons, and likewise, their epaulets were covered in solid gold thread, as though they were painted on, and with three or four large stars on each.
"Thank you, lef-tenant," the one on the right said, pronouncing "lieutenant" strangely. All three then stared at her in strange silence, in stark contrast with the loud chorus of activity that continued on the deck behind them. The man in the middle was about to speak when the geriatric to his left spotted something out of the corner of his eye and gestured wildly.
"There she is!" he shouted gleefully. "Due north!" All three practically dove for their binoculars, despite there being spares left on the table afterwards. Yuffie stared at them, making no effort to hide her confusion, before walking over and taking a pair herself and looking in the same direction
What is with these guys? "Mine are broken," she declared authoritatively before lowering them. The three kept staring through theirs, the elderly officer twitching with excitement. With a patient smile, the woman in the lieutenant's uniform took her binoculars momentarily, removed protective caps over the lenses, then returned them to her.
"So what are we watching?" she asked, able to see through them and into the orange sky over the Mediterranean Ocean.
"Ms. Kisaragi," the one on the right said, standing closest to her. "Thank you for joining us as envoy of the W.R.O., it's an honor."
Yuffie laughed, hard enough that it almost stung, as she scanned the horizon. "Seriously, what am I looking for?"
"Try your 10 o'clock, about twelve degrees over the horizon," the middle man said helpfully.
"Can you say that like a normal person?"
"This way." The man on the right grabbed her binoculars, still against her face, and shifted it slightly in the direction of a small, distant flying object. "A twin-engine aircraft flying to the left. See it?"
Yuffie grunted and he continued. "That's it. Artomol Ar-20, also called an Artomol Albatross. Turboprop cargo aircraft from the Second Wutai War built by the Shinra Corporation."
"It's not a Guernica," she declared.
"The Shinra Consolidated Guernica FB-1 is actually a folding-wing flying boat, unlike the Albatross, with twice the wingspan and eight-thousand two-hundred and forty horsepower, nearly two-thousand more than the Albatross." Yuffie peeked away from her binoculars at him, as he began to lead over the railing at the edge of the deck as he gave his history lesson. "Junon still has a whole fleet of those, though a few were lost fighting the Weapons. The Albatross, unloaded, has a top speed of five-hundred fifty kilometers an hour, two hundred more than Guernica's flying boat."
"That's pretty fast," Yuffie offered. Faster than the Shera in cruising flight, I'm pretty sure. She brought her eyes back to her binoculars.
"I believe this one was an antique salvaged from one of Junon's abandoned airfields. The last Ar-20 probably left the factory before you were born." He lowered his binoculars, standing straight again, and she turned to see him regarding her with a wide, friendly smile. "We're going to shoot it down."
"Excuse me?"
"Fire one!" someone shouted from behind her. She instinctively swung in their direction; behind her, there was something like barely-audible burst of mechanical clicking that lasted for a second or two, followed by a much louder, much deeper rush of air and the sound of a rocket engine's ignition. She turned back in time to see the second, separate ignition as a plume of smoke rapidly left the ship, launched somewhere between the two funnels, rising into the sky.
Even if she couldn't pinpoint the missile launcher on the ship itself, she could smell the exhaust, and tried to clear the air around her with a hand. "So this is a weapons test?" she asked finally. "You coulda' just said so."
"Don't lose the Albatross!" the geriatric shouted unnecessarily.
She searched the skyline and located the aircraft, just as there was another shout of "Fire two!" followed by another burst of clicking and another loud missile launch. She kept her eyes on the Ar-20, discovering it was farther than she realized.
"So who's the death row convict who you've got chained to the pilot's seat?" she asked.
"Please. Do you have any idea how rare trained pilots are since Meteorfall?" the nearest man smirked back. His voice became more thoughtful. "Shinra's had robots largely capable of flying aircraft for a decade now. Not well, but sufficiently capable for this purpose."
"It's going to miss," the geriatric declared somberly.
"Also, a suicide pilot would just fly their craft into the ship or something else," the middle man explained. She momentarily glanced at him and saw him gesturing with his hands, his flattened right hand impacting his left fist dramatically. "Just like during the war."
Yuffie felt herself twitch at the remark and returned to her binoculars just in time to see a white streak narrowly miss the aircraft, exploding in a yellow fireball several plane-lengths ahead of it. The navy men variously groaned and sighed, and she was thinking of a suitable putdown as the seconded guided closed in on to aircraft before exploding in flash accompanied by a grey-colored cone of debris.
"Hit! It's a hit!" someone shouted. She had already lowered her binoculars and was watching the expanding plume of fire as the aircraft spun wildly and began its descent. Some cheering could be heard in the background noise as the three men exchanged congratulatory gestures and words.
The one nearest to her began to explain things in an animated fashion. "Fifty percent's hardly bad for a new weapon, but two missiles couldn't be taken as a suitable trial."
"Still, you have to understand, speed's obviously not the challenge to overcome, and a small single-engine propeller aircraft is a much colder target than the tailpipe of a jet engine, turbine exhaust, and so forth," his colleague explained to the geriatric.
"So what does the inspector think?" the old man asked in response, glancing at her.
Their self-congratulatory celebration had given Yuffie time to prepare a response. "I think firing two ship-launched missiles to shoot down one obsolete prop plane isn't all that impressive, even if they look fast," she said, a cool expertise in her voice. "Though I suppose you're not limited by numbers, given how many a cruiser this large could carry," she added, looking around in search of the launch tubes the missiles must've emerged from.
The geriatric and the middle officer stared at before beginning to snicker. Yuffie scowled in response. The closest naval officer managed a more dignified smile. "Ms. Kisaragi, that was not a ship-fired missile. That missile was fired from a man-portable weapon carried by a sailor aboard this ship."
Yuffie could feel her eyes widening. "Huh?"
He gestured forward to the lower deck. The very large sailor from before was holding a portable missile launcher, the kind she'd seen used by both AVALANCHE and Shinra in times were a gun was insufficient and material was unavailable, a metal tube painted in dark military green a meter and a half long, with a large battery pack, trigger, and various optics and other electronics bolted onto one side, over one shoulder. A less impressive, smaller sailor was standing next to him, holding a similar tube, examining the battery pack.
"Huh?" Yuffie heard herself repeat.
"What're the production numbers look like?" the geriatric asked.
"Shinra projects one hundred launchers and three hundred missiles monthly, which would fullfill the army and navy's TO&E in less than two years." The man next to him laughed. "Though if that's not soon enough, we could just take the whole production line. We buy the whole technical package and we won't need Shinra for it."
The geriatric said something in agreement. Yuffie continued staring at the sailors on the deck below as they returned one of the missile launchers to the large crates she'd seen earlier.
How is this possible?
"Come the actual trials, hopefully some of these bugs will be ironed out," she heard one of the men on her deck speculate.
She remembered the Battle of Midgar, when the Deepground Army—the most technologically advanced fighting force on the Planet—had deployed their mechanized corps against the W.R.O. air forces. When they fielded what she had learned were known technically as "self-propelled antiaircraft weapons", in their case huge four-legged armored walkers born from Shinra's horrible ingenuity but otherwise forgotten by time, and carrying automatic cannons and surface-to-air missile artillery. They were joined by heavily armored infantry, each carrying a smaller but still massive surface-to-air missile launcher. Deepground, unsurprisingly, had been expecting attack from the air.
On the other side, the W.R.O.'s helicopter gunships and the Shera itself responded with air-to-surface missiles. Both weapons were powerful and available in volume, but extremely limited in their tracking capabilities, which were hardly better than what Shinra's forces had fielded in the Jenova War. Deepground's antiaircraft missiles, as good or better than the W.R.O.'s, had a successful hit against incoming (and generally not maneuvering) helicopter gunships of between one in ten and one in twenty, and had inflicted the worst loses on the air force in its history. The Deepground had no reason to save their ammunition obviously. The W.R.O.'s ground attack missiles were hardly much more successful, considering the circumstances.
Among actual man-portable missile launchers, she'd seen the Turks use unguided missiles in various improvised ways—indoors against outdoor targets, even from aboard their annoying transport helicopters—with various degrees of success, like against Kadaj's Gang the year before that. When Weapon attacked Junon, the Peace Preservation's marines had shoulder-fired ground-to-ground (or ground-to-sea as the case was) missiles that could hit the broad side of a monster, if not with much effect.
And here was Junon, with a missile launcher that looked to weigh less than twenty kilograms loaded, capable of firing a missile on a prop plane faster moving and smaller than the W.R.O.'s hulking gunships, almost five kilometers away, with a one in two rate of successful hits.
How is this even possible?
"They're calling it the 'Needle'. As long as Shinra gets paid, what do they have to complain about?" she heard someone explain.
There was a laugh. "Good point. While Shinra was wasting money and time with their techno-soldiers and other useless proofs-of-concept, they could've been developing a useful military weapon like this," another jeered.
"You pay a corporation money and they give you something in return. Maybe capitalism does work," another replied with a laugh.
"Kessler, I think your guest has something to say."
She turned to see all three of the black-uniform-wearing men looking at her, relaxed expressions on their varied faces. Despite the claim, she was still at a loss for words. All she could picture was hundreds of soldiers in the Junon Army running across the Western Marches, missile launchers hanging from shoulder slings, obliterating the whole of the W.R.O.'s airborne military.
"I'm not stupid you know. You did this to send a message to the Reeve and the organization," she stammered out.
"Well, give us a little credit, young lady," the geriatric almost sneered. "We thought the daughter of Imperial Wutai might want to see if the republic could still fight a war after the fall of Shinra."
Despite herself, she shot daggers at him with her eyes. The man who'd been standing nearest to her put a conciliatory hand out. "Gentlemen, maybe I should take over from here. You needn't trouble yourselves further."
The geriatric gave an absent-minded nod as his nearest companion offered him his cane and escorted him down the stairway to the lower deck. Yuffie stared at the uniformed man standing remained, the one called "Kessler" and stared at his epaulets with three white starbursts arranged in a triangle below a the rectangular emblem of the New State of Junon: a vice admiral, she thought.
He met her glance, still smiling, and removed his white-crowned peaked visor cap, deferentially holding it against his chest with one hand. "You'll need to excuse Force Admiral Beyer, he's a veteran of the last two Wutai World Wars, his worldview shaped by the Hundred Years War. People don't change."
She muttered "Yeah, I'm starting to notice that. So you're Thomas Kessler?"
He nodded leisurely. "We weren't formally introduced." Again, that strange accent.
"You heard I was looking for you, huh?"
He took a moment to answer. "You weren't the most discreet about it." He gestured towards the stairwell. "With your permission, we'll return you to the mainland now."
I bet that bigmouth Kyrie blabbed. She shook her head. No, that would be saying she actually mattered enough to have a connection to a spokesman for the Junon government. Which she doesn't. She swallowed her anger. "Then do you know what I'm doing?" She tried to match his friendly smile. "I'll give you a hint: I'm not one of Edge's weapons inspectors."
"No, I suppose you're not," he admitted contemplatively. "I know the last time you came to Junon, it was as part of AVALANCHE's war against the Shinra Corporation." He turned to the southeast, where Fortress Junon was still visible, a blocky rectangle on the cliffs just below the horizon. "Of course, Shinra fell what might as well have been a lifetime ago. So I suppose you're on some other business on behalf of your side, the World Regenesis Organization."
She kept her eyes on him. For a moment, he looked uncertain what to do with his right hand, now holding the plastic visor of his cap between white gloved fingers. Finally, he relented and secured his cap over his short-cropped, straight black hair.
"Is this about the former-Deepground Army?" he asked. She could swear his eyes darted briefly at the sailors, still carting around their 'Needle' missile launchers.
"Lucky guess," she declared. "Maybe you're not as stupid as people say."
She thought he might rise to the insult, but instead he took a very unmilitary stance, hands open and palms facing her, for a few seconds with a grin. "I'm not promising you an interview."
"I can be very persuasive," she countered. "Especially when I'm back on dry land and not aboard this floating piece of history." Now get me off this ship before I break my concentration and vomit all over that nice clean uniform of yours.
Author's Notes:
Another chapter, not produced very fast (in fact, quite slowly, thanks to my other stories), and quite long for that. I don't intend to make a regular thing of that, but I know I said the same thing about my older stories. For my fellow aeronautical aficionados, we have a real world-inspired example of military spending: a perhaps somewhat modernized Dido-class from the British Royal Navy. Aside from that, Cessnas (as in Kansas-base American aircraft corporation) are a thing in Final Fantasy VII, alongside Korean BBQ, unless they've been retconned out (which they might in the remake)-you can picture the "cute little plane" as being a Cessna 185 Skywagon, with folding wings and floats for the Junon Navy. The unlucky Artomol Ar-20 is a cross between the venerable Antonov An-24 and its successor, the An-140 turboprop aircraft. English audiences will probably know the Guernica by its unusual romanji, the "Gelinka" which appears multiple times in the video game, associated with Shinra's campaign against Sephiroth: the city of Guernica, Spain, doesn't exist in the world of Final Fantasy VII, and even if it did, you probably wouldn't name an unarmed seaplane after its destruction by bombers. Attention to mechanical detail is a trait common in quite a few of my stories; too bad I'm not Miyazaki, huh?
For everyone else, thank you for staying with the story this far (especially after this wait for an update), and as always, please let me know what you think!