So you think you know all there is to know about FF7, huh? Quick, who saved the Planet from Shinra? That Strife kid with the weird hair? Nope, it was me! Mayor Domino of Midgar! Yes, I'm the true hero, but those AVALANCHE twerps swept me under the rug and took all the credit. They're almost as bad as Shinra. Now they're even ripping off my story; making a game about some guy who was the hero in a war but didn't get any credit. What kind of justice is that?
In the faint hope of claiming at least some credit for my heroic deeds, I present to you the TRUE tale of Final Fantasy 7, starring yours truly, Mayor Domino.
I never really meant to become a politician. At first -- this was back when I was at Cosmo Canyon, finishing up my doctoral thesis, The Study of Planet Life (yeah, I wrote that -- but do I ever get any credit?) -- I wanted to be a newspaper columnist, but the way things turned out, I ended up being a talk-show host instead.
So I had this talk show, The Mid-Afternoon Show With Tortellini Domino, Wednesdays at 3:30 on SIN. That was back when Shinra was a weapons company, although they still owned a television network. Now, my talk show was pretty popular, at least until Lewis & Clark: The New Adventures of the Corps of Discovery came along. It was a cartoon show about a band of explorer-turned-superhero Moogles who flew around in a covered wagon.
Lewis & Clark was on CNT, Corel Network Television. They were SIN's big rivals back then. Anyway, my talk show was getting killed in the ratings by Lewis & Clark, so Heidegger (Heidegger was the head of SIN in those days) decided we needed a new advertising campaign for my show. He called me down to his office in the Shinra Building (which was only 20 floors back then), and we had a little discussion that went something like this:
Heidegger: What kind of a name is Tortellini Domino?
Me: Uh....
Heidegger suggested we consult with an evil occult force to come up with a new ad campaign -- namely, the marketing department. It was election year (yes, back then you could vote), so the marketing department thought it would be "clever" to have an ad campaign in which I ran for mayor. Now, that was a pretty stupid idea for an ad campaign, but everything still would have turned out okay if it ended there.
But it didn't. The two real candidates for mayor were the incumbent, Bobby Biggalow, and Jean the frog from Breath of Fire 2. Most people assumed Bobby Biggalow was dead, because he hadn't made a public appearance in several years and bore an uncanny resemblance to a department store dummy on TV. That left Jean, but when Jean's major TV commercial consisted of him saying "Vote, vote, vote for me, me, me -- this is my election song", most people thought he wouldn't make a very good mayor, mayor, mayor.
When election day came around, the majority of the population took advantage of that write-in space on the ballot. I'm sure you can guess what happened. People put my name down as a joke thanks to my ad campaign, but when the votes were counted, I had won.
I accepted the position just as a publicity stunt. It would get attention, and I could always resign after a week or two. Unfortunately, before I had a chance, Shinra cancelled my talk show. That left me a choice of either being the mayor or being unemployed. I went with being the mayor.
My first act as mayor was to push a bill through the City Council banning strawberries in Midgar -- strawberries give me the willies. What I didn't know was that Shinra was operating some very profitable strawberry farms near Kalm Town. Shinra's lobbyists descended on City Hall (yes, we actually had a City Hall then) and the law was quickly repealed. This was only the first of what would be many conflicts between me and Shinra.
I did have a few friends at City Hall. One of those was Hart, a former scientist under Professor Gast in the Jenova Project. When Hojo took over, Hart resigned in protest against Hojo's genetic experiments. He didn't give up science, however, as he went on to build the airship Hart and was the second-in-command of the Space Development Division, under my good buddy Palmer. The other was Tseng, who was at that time the janitor of City Hall. He was getting paid a lot, though, because everyone thought he was really an undercover policeman. You see, he was a janitor posing as a policeman posing as a janitor.
Except for a time when a dead ferret got stuck in the ventilation system, my first four months at City Hall were fairly non-descript. Then I got to take a vacation (actually, it wasn't a vacation. The building was being fumigated after the dead ferret incident). Palmer had already gone to Rocket Town to supervise the launch of the Shinra-26 rocket, so Hart and I decided to go join him and watch the launch.
We took the airship Hart over to Rocket Town. We were greeted rather uncivily by the rocket's pilot, Cid Highwind. Cid said some things to us that I won't repeat, because I'm trying to appeal to all ages here. We later learned that Cid irrationally hated Palmer (and consequently Hart and I). I think he was jealous because Palmer has that cool Mako Gun.
So Cid, being the underhanded, shady, untrustworthy, con artist that he is, came up with a plan to get Palmer fired. He was going to sabotage one of the oxygen tanks in his own rocket, then send Palmer to fix it. While Palmer was trying to fix it, he was going to launch the rocket, but abort the launch because Palmer was still in the engine room. However, Cid's evil scheme was foiled when Shera, not knowing of Cid's plan, went to check on the oxygen tanks instead of Palmer. Thus, Cid and Shera took the blame when the launch was aborted, and Palmer got off free. Serves them right.
Cid was not happy about what happened. In revenge, he went and dug up some dirt on us and revealed that Hart had "stolen" a classified data CD from the Jenova Project. It was really all a misunderstanding. Hart had just borrowed the CD to use with Monster Rancher, because he'd heard it made a really strong monster. Nevertheless, Shinra stripped Hart of his position (they must have been bribed by Cid). Not only that, but they renamed the airship Hart to the Highwind. However, I at least managed to get Hart hired as my secretary.
| Next chapter: In Which I Found AVALANCHE |