Preamble:

This entire story is in a format very unlike my usual work, as should be immediately obvious. If I consider expanding on the concept, I'll probably fall back on more my more conventional style of prose, but I thought I would try something different, and this was a convenient opportunity to do so. Otherwise, it's all my predictable standbys: vaguely original characters, unreliable narrators, unseen bureaucracy, disaffected but polite military careerists, the usual.

Interviewee: Go head, Ms. Yuffie Kisaragi.

Kisaragi: Before we begin, and I'm keeping my promise, would you mind introducing yourself? For the recording.

Interviewee: You mean 'for the record'?

Kisaragi: Huh?

Interviewee: Never mind, it doesn't matter. My name…my name is Victor Io, spelled I-O. I was born on the ninth of May, 1945, in what today is called old Junon.

Kisaragi: And what did you do, Mr. Io?

Io: Victor is fine. Or Io. Whichever you prefer, anyway, I…was a professional military careerist. I mean, I was a soldier and then a commissioned officer in the First Wutai War. [PAUSE] Do you mind if I?

K: Go ahead. Mr. Io is lighting a cigarette.

I: You're new to journalism, I take it?

K: What do you mean?

I: Never mind. Anyway, the First Wutai War, or the Midgar-Wutai War. It's also sometimes called the Continental War or the Hundred Years War. This was the war that went on for decades before you were born, that ended in 1975. I remember because I turned thirty shortly after Wutai left the continent. The war…forgive me, I'm going to presume you're not familiar with this…ended with the ejection of the Wutaian Empire from the Eastern Continent and the Liberation of Junon. In the process, the political order here, in the East, collapsed. Countries like Junon, the Duchy of Kalm, pretty much every state in what was called the Midgar Confederation collapsed. [PAUSE] You see, that was the reason for the political ascendancy of the Shinra Corporation and…

K: What's wrong?

I: I'm sorry, I'm getting very off-topic.

K: No, it's fine!

I: No, I'm rambling. Anyway, I was second lieutenant in the Grand Army of Midgar, before it was disbanded. Afterwards, which is probably what you're more interested in, I was commissioned officer in the reformed Midgar Army, when it formally became part of the Peace Preservation Force, under Shinra's Public Safety Division. That was around the time New Midgar…well, Midgar…was being built. Eventually I became captain of the Presidential Guard.

K: So you were an employee of the Shinra Company?

I: Yes, same as everyone else in this neighborhood. Which, I suppose, brings me to the point promised.

K: Go ahead.

I: You aren't the first journalist who's asked for this interview. And I'm not offended. But I would like to say something, for the record: the Shinra Corporation, or the Shinra Electric Power Company, or Shinra Incorporated, or whatever we'll call them, was not evil. A corporation is a legal and bureaucratic invention. It is not a person. It's not capable of being good or evil. It can only exist through the efforts of people, individuals, who can be evil, or corrupt, or ambitious.

K: Which people at Shinra, at the company, were?

I: Very many were, of course. Obviously, you didn't need to tell you that. I knew many of them over the course of my career, especially as Captain of the Guard. [PAUSE] That's really all I insist on saying. I'm sorry if I sound defensive.

K: That sounded pretty rehearsed, actually.

I: You can guess why. Please, ask any questions you had.

K: Actually, it does sound like a good place to start.

I: How so?

K: Could I ask you how you feel about the collapse of Shinra, the company I mean?

I: The collapse of the Shinra Corporation. [LAUGHTER] Not to put too fine a point on it, Ms. Kisaragi, but I assume you're referring the successful insurrection against the corporation in Midgar by the group AVALANCHE?

K: Yeah, I…guess I am.

I: Do you mind?

K: Mr. Io is putting out his cigarette.

I: You really don't need to narrate like that. [PAUSE] But yes, I'll answer your question: it's probably best that it happened when it did, and not earlier.

K: Really? I mean, really?

I: That answer surprises you? I could see how it'd be surprising coming from me. But I was born before the original founding of Shinra's corporation, after all. I'm not a scientist or an ecologist, but even the S.E.P.C. publically communicated that Mako energy was a finite, exhaustible resource for electricity generation. People knew it wouldn't last forever, which was why more had to be found. Always more. The same was true about the manufacture of materia. Sooner or later, we'd be in an environmental crisis. [PAUSE] Before the city's destruction, I lived in Midgar for almost thirty years. You may not believe it, but it's certainly long enough to witness firsthand the extraction impact of this substance, this…'lifestream' as it's called now…by the corporation, in flora and fauna. Even knowing that Midgar's air quality had little or nothing to do with the eight Mako Reactors and everything to do with the city itself, there's a compelling argument that we were approaching a crisis point regarding energy production and resource extraction. [PAUSE] I'm sorry, but you're giving me that look again. Is any of this making sense?

K: Sorry, but you said something earlier. [PAUSE] Before I asked you if you really felt that way. If I rewind and playback the tape, you know…

I: That it was probably for the best that it happened when it did?

K: Yes, that. "And not earlier," you said.

I: Well, if it had happened earlier…sorry, I don't completely understand the question?

K: What if it had happened earlier?

I: Well, the…the Sephiroth Crisis happening when it did. Of course, the military bore some responsibility for Sephiroth's desertion and rampage in the first place. There was a military operation, called the 'Great Sephiroth Plan'…

K: When Shinra destroyed Sephiroth's barrier around the Northern Crater.

I: I'm surprised you'd know that.

K: [LAUGHTER] You'd probably be surprised what by what I know, gra-...sir.

I: I suppose that's possible, Ms. Kisaragi. [PAUSE] But it was a blessing of sorts that the insurrection…that AVALANCHE, I should say, succeeded when it did. Not just for environmental reasons, or even because of Sephiroth. If the first AVALANCHE Insurrection had succeeded in Calendar Year 3, I suppose…

K: Suppose what?

I: I can only commented on what I knew in my capacity as a commissioned officer in the Peace Preservation.

K: What does that even mean?

I: Not a great deal, admittedly.

K: Could you just answer the question?

I: Apologies, I didn't mean to frustrate you. I suppose that, if the first AVALANCHE Insurrection after the war had succeeded, we'd all be dead, because that was AVALANCHE's goal in the first place. Years before either Sephiroth or the Northern Crater. [PAUSE] I'm sorry, I've said something to offend you.

K: [LAUGHTER] What? No! I'm just…surprised, that's all. It sounds like a heck of a story.

I: I suppose it is. But don't take my word for it, you could just read those books on the shelf behind me. A few decades of incomplete corporate records, but the details are there. I like to think of it as my severance package when I left the corporation. [LAUGHTER]

K: I was meaning to ask, where did you get all those books?

I: There's no harm in telling you. The military archives on the forty-fifth floor of the Shinra Building, 100 Central Plaza, Sector 0, Midgar City.

K: You just took them?

I: I suppose I did! It was a collaborative effort, almost half of what you see was salvaged or otherwise taken from the sixty-second floor research library, which was part of the Midgar Metropolitan Government.

K: The what?

I: The Midgar…nevermind, don't worry about it. You're free to look at any of them if you'd like.

K: I might do that. [PAUSE] For journalistic reasons, of course.

I: Oh, I'm sure.

K: So about this…first AVALANCHE Insurrection you mentioned? You were…?

I: Well, I never fought Barret Wallace's AVALANCHE. I mean, you can see it for yourself. I'm an old man now, I was an old man then too. The Midgar Military Police is…was a career for young men, even before AVALANCHE returned, between the mob, the wildlife, and everything else. But Fuhito's reign of terror was really my last actual combat campaign before becoming a glorified bodyguard for two presidents. It's probably the only reason I'm here today, that and a great deal of luck.

K: Fuhito? Who's Fuhito?

I: You don't know? No, you wouldn't, thanks to us. He was the original leader of AVALANCHE, the brilliant mind who would've killed all human life to save the Planet. The most dangerous man no one's ever heard of.

Author's Notes:

I've thought about writing this for more than ten years, probably closer to fifteen. As for the 'why now?', well, even before Square-Enix teasing the possibilities and potential of a modern high-definition reinterpretation of the game, I've had a lot of fun playing that twenty-year-old game on Xbox again (and the occasional frustration). Originally, the story was a bit more intimate, beginning early in the life of the now-interviewee, decades before the events of the game (when all that time was a blank slate for Square-Enix to fill). Since then, we've had the film Advent Children, a few short stories and a handful of video games to fill out those gaps, though not much has required embellishing. Since this is a bit experimental, I may just let this sit as it is-it's hard to say how interested people are in reading about globe-trekking Yuffie playing expose journalist and interviewing the surviving officials of the ancien regime in a post-Shinra, post-Mako Reactor age. If you do actually want to read more, be sure to let me know.