I had always imagined Fort Condor to be a majestic stronghold of justice and honor that housed cozy tunnels and beautiful eagles. In reality, the outside looked kind of jagged and ugly and the interior was rather dark and smelly. But the music was good.
The first thing we did upon entering the Fort was to make a beeline for the cafeteria -- all we'd had to eat in the last two and a half days were some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the Highwind. And who did we run into in the cafeteria but none other than Palmer, who was snacking on some lard.
"Yo! Palmer!" I greeted him.
"Hey-hey!" Palmer said. "Domino! Been lookin' for you!"
"Good to see you again," Hart said, sitting down at the table where Palmer was. "I was surprised you weren't up in the Promised Land with Shinra. What happened to you?"
"I've spent a lot of time in traction," Palmer said.
"Oh... yeah," Hart said. "Sorry about that truck."
"We've spent the last two days riding on the Ultima Weapon," Butch said. "But then we took over the Highwind. That was fun."
"The Highwind?" Palmer said. "Hey-hey! That's great! We're gonna need some real firepower to stop Shinra." He got up and started to pace the room. "And not only Shinra, but Meteor."
"But how can we stop a giant meteor?" Mukki asked. "It's.. it's.. it's like trying to stop Microsoft, except the meteor has less money."
"Hey-hey, I've already thought of a plan," Palmer said. "And we're finally going to get to launch the ol' Shinra-26."
"Oh?" I asked.
"There's a thing called Huge Materia," Palmer explained. "It's like regular Materia, except it's, uh, huge. My plan is to load up the Shinra-26 with the Huge Materia and launch it at Meteor. The only problem is going to be getting our hands on some of that Materia."
"Butch?" I looked at the Materia dealer.
Butch stood up and faced the rest of us. "Well, unlike a lot of Materia, Huge Materia can only come out of Makoro reactors -- only the reactors have enough power to crystallize that much Mako. And since they're not produced that frequently, we're going to have to go a lot of different reactors to get some."
"I do know that there's one Huge Materia in the Junon Underwater Reactor," Palmer said. "And I've already been working on that one. Hey-hey, and there's one here in Fort Condor. I've tried to persuade them to give it to us, but they're too worried about the safety of the condors."
"They're letting an evil company suck the life out of the Planet and a huge meteor blow it up, 'cause they don't want to hurt the eagles," Johnny said. "Makes sense to me!"
"Condors," I corrected.
"I hate to ask this... but what about AVALANCHE?" I asked.
"They're in Junon, awaiting execution for 'causing' the Meteor situation," Palmer said. "Scarlet's idea."
"YES!" I exulted.
"Hey-hey, but don't count them out," Palmer said. "Reeve is plotting to get rescue them. Cloud's missing, though."
We spent the next day or so planning on how to collect the Huge Materia, and (unsuccesfully) trying to get the Fort Condor management to fork over their Huge Materia. Fred would go to North Corel, collect the Huge Materia from the Corel Mountain reactor, and transport it to Rocket Town by train. Meanwhile, Johnny would go to the Nibel Mountains, get the Huge Materia, and continue on to Rocket Town. Palmer and the rest of us would sneak into Junon, retrieve the Huge Materia from the Underwater Reactor, steal a submarine, and take it to Rocket Town, where we would launch the rocket and its three Huge Materias.
"That's settled then," I said. "What could possibly go wrong?"
"Er...." Hart decided not to say anything.
A blaring security alarm starting sounding. "All personnel report to mountaintop!" somebody said over the PA system. "The fort is under attack!"
"Are we personnel?" Butch wondered.
"Hey, it's gotta be Shinra," Palmer said. "They're after me... and probably you, too."
"They can't hold the fort on their own," I said. "Somebody's going to have to stay behind and help them out." I surveyed my allies. Johnny and Fred were out -- they had their own tasks. Palmer knew Junon the best, so we couldn't leave him behind. That left Butch, Hart, and Mukki. "Mukki, I'm counting on you."
"No problem," Mukki said. "Don't worry, I almost beat the third level of Red Alert."
Palmer, Hart, Butch, and I took the fire escape out of the fort and set off to the west towards Junon. As we put some distance between us and Fort Condor, we could see the Condor troops battling the Shinra on the mountainside. "Let's hope they win," Butch said.
I noticed Palmer was carrying a plastic white bag. My curiosity eventually got the better of me, and I pointed at it. "What's in that bag?" I asked.
Palmer opened it up and held it up for me to see. "A piece of meat."
"Would you care to enlighten us on why are you carrying that particular item?"
"Hey-hey, you'll see."
We eventually arrived in Lower Junon. From there, there was only one way up into the one -- the Shinra elevator in the side of the Junon supports. Unfortunately, said elevator was being guarded by some MPs. "This is Shinra property," he said. Apparently he did not notice -- or ignored the fact -- that among our ranks were three wanted criminals. "No admittance. Well, no admittance except in special situations. All right, there are a lot of special situations. So no admittance for you. Unless you're a special situation. But you wouldn't be in a special situation -- er, unless there was a generous donation."
"Do you take plastic?" I asked.
The MP gave me a level look. "Show me the money."
"Hey-hey, here," Palmer said, stuffing several bills in the MP's face. He took it, rather surprised. "Have a nice day."
The MP stared at the money, then shook Palmer's hand. "And you have a nice day, too."
We got in the elevator and flipped the lever to rise to Junon. The elevator ride started off normally enough -- the key word here being "started". About halfway up, the elevator just stopped. There weren't any weird noises or shaking or anything; it just stopped. At first, we thought that we'd reached the top, but we hadn't. We were merely stranded in the middle of an elevator shaft.
Palmer fiddled with the levers, but none of them had any effect. "This isn't good," Hart said succinctly.
"Anybody up for a game of 20 Questions?" Butch asked hopefully.
"Should I push the alarm button?" I asked, ignoring him.
"Go ahead," Palmer replied.
I hit the button. "We're sorry," a recorded voice said. "The elevator alarm system is temporarily out of order. If you need to be rescued, please call the Shinra customer support line at 1-900-32-6782-45.
"Good thing I have my cell phone," Palmer said. He took the cell phone out of his pocket and dialed the number we had just heard.
"Thank you for calling Shinra customer support line. If you need assistance in navigating Junon, press 1. If you need emergency services, grovel at our feet, then press 2. If you need rental services, press 3. If you are looking for gas, food, or lodging, press 4. If you need to talk to a live operator, press 5. There will be a 500 gil a second charge for talking to a live operator. If you need a service not listed above, tough luck, buster, you're screwed."
Palmer pressed 2. "If you need the police, press 1. If you need the fire department, press 2. If you need medical aid, we don't care jack squat what happens to you so just hang up the damn phone. To return to the previous menu, press 3."
"Er.... what do we need?" Palmer asked.
"Try number 2," Hart suggested.
"You have pressed the number 2 twice in a row. This would seem to indicate that you have a fixation with the number 2. We will indulge your fixation by forcing you to press the number 2 three hundred times in a row to advance."
It got rather boring.
Eventually, long after we had lost count, Palmer eventually got through. "Please input the street address of the fire by using the buttons on your phone and their corresponding letters."
"Uh... what's the street address of the elevator?" Palmer wondered.
"Hurry up," the recording said in a monotone. "We don't have all day. If you are too incompetent to figure out what the street address is, press the asterisk to connect yourselves to the special needs line."
Palmer pressed 9.
"For a recording in Cetran, press 1. For a recording in Wutaian, press 2. For a recording in Chocobo warks, press 3."
"I don't want foreign language!" Palmer shouted at the phone. This surprised me, because Palmer rarely lost his temper. "Just get me out of this elevator!" He punched the phone's buttons angrily.
"Wark wark wark WARK warkkk wark wark waaark!"
Palmer threw the cellular phone to the ground in disgust.
A ghostly image of Sephiroth dropped down from above and landed on the elevator. Sephiroth was carrying a surveyor's transit and some blueprints. He started looking around through the transit and made some marks on the blueprints, paying no attention to us.
"Hey... Sephiroth!" I said. Granted, it was probably a pretty dumb thing to do, but it just didn't seem right for Sephiroth to be completely ignoring us.
"This'll be perfect," Sephiroth said to himself, then turned to us. "Er... hi. I'm checking this place out for my upcoming theme park, Jenova World. Things are looking good. When I take over the world I'm going to make this place Jenova World."
"I thought you were trying to destroy the world with Meteor," Hart said.
Sephiroth put down the blueprints and stared at us. "Shoot," he said eventually.
"Face it, Seph," Hart said. "You're a failed villain. You don't have an evil laugh, you don't have a sinister plan, and nobody cares about you. You can't even manage to come up with plans that don't interfere with each other!"
Sephiroth stared at us. "Don't worry, we've got a plan to stop Meteor," Butch said. "Just get us out of this elevator."
"All right, all right," Sephiroth said. He muttered an incantation and a giant winged hippopotamus appeared. "You can ride that," he said.
We gratefully hopped on. The hippo flew up the elevator shaft. Sephiroth watched us go. "Do a number on AVALANCHE for me, will you?" he said. "Mwah ha ha ha!" I suddenly realized we had been tricked, but it was too late.
We got off the hippo and walked out into the streets of Junon. Through bad luck or a cruel twist of fate (or maybe Sephiroth's work), we arrived there just at the same time as.... AVALANCHE. The whole group - Cloud, Barret, Tifa, Red XIII, Vincent, Yuffie, Cid, and Cait Sith - was there.
"Oh no, I thought you guys were dead," I groaned.
"Do we look dead, foo'?" Barret said.
"We've been trying to sort out this @#$#! storyline," Cid said. "Can't say we've been very succesful."
"I'm not a SOLDIER, but I play one on TV!" Cloud said by way of explanation. Now, that is just pathetic. What kind of a line is that? How can somebody spout garbage like that and still be the main character? And now he's in FF Tactics and Ehrgeiz? What's up with that? They should have at least put ME in as a secret character in Xenogears or something!
"Just let us get through, Domino," Vincent said. "We need to retrieve the Huge Materia from the Underwater Reactor."
"So do we!" Palmer said.
"Let's rap for it!" I suggested.
"Absolutely not," Hart said adamantly.
Cloud drew his sword, and Barret and Cid readied their own weapons. "Perhaps we could avoid bloodshed here," Red XIII said, stepping forward. Of all the AVALANCHE guys, Red was the only one that I respected. I would have respected more if he hadn't hooked up with those morons though. "How about we race to the Huge Materia, and whoever gets there first, wins?"
Cloud looked at Red, then at us, particularly Palmer and his substantial stomach. "Sounds good to me."
"All right," Palmer said. "You're on."
AVALANCHE immediately took off running. We jogged along behind them at an intentionally slow pace until they had disappeared from sight. Then we called a helicopter taxi, hopped in, and flew straight to Al-Junon. We got off and proceeded to the elevator to the Underwater Reactor. I looked out the window. AVALANCHE was just climbing up into Al-Junon now. We were in the lead.
When the elevator arrived in the underwater reactor (this time without incident), we were in a long white-floored room with blue walls. A door to our left was being guarded by a large dog. Palmer fished into the plastic bag he'd brought along, took out the piece of meat, and threw it to the dog.
"Ah, the old throw-the-piece-of-meat-to-the-dog puzzle," Butch said. "Very clever."
We stepped by the contented dog and hurried down the corridor. Palmer reached into his coat pocket and grabbed a Junon guidebook. "Okay, let's see here," he said to himself. "We're here, that means..."
We passed out of Junon and into a long clear underwater tunnel. We could see the ocean floor around us. Fishes swam by, pressing against the plexiglass tunnel. "Oooh, pretty," Butch said, looking around.
"We don't have time for that," I said, pushing him along.
A huge ghost ship suddenly materialized in front of us. "Look out!" Hart cried.
I ducked under the ghost ship's sweeping paddle. "I hate random encounters."
Palmer still had his nose in the guidebook and was not paying attention as to where he was going. The ghost ship's paddle caught him in a rather painful location and lifted him into the air. The guidebook fell from his hands and landed in the back of the ghost ship.
"HELP!" Palmer wailed.
I rembered that Palmer had finally given us some weapons -- Mako Guns -- back at Condor Fort. I drew my gun and fired at the ghost ship. It reeled backwards and dropped Palmer. The four of us kept up a barrage of Mako Gun shots until the Ghost Ship exploded.
"Yes!" I exulted. "We won a fight!" We received 1600 EXP and 2000 gil, and found Phoenix Down x 1. Butch gained a level.
"Wow, if we keep this up, maybe we can learn some Limit Breaks," Hart said.
"Look! Down there!" Butch said, pointing down. We looked down through the bottom of the tube we were in to another tube running along the ocean floor, inside of which was AVALANCHE.
"They're catching up," I said, dashing ahead. "We've gotta move."
We ran into the underwater reactor. Palmer located a certain piece of machinery in the sprawling mass inside in the reactor and showed it to us. "Hey-hey, here it is," he said. "The Huge Materia's in the reactor, so, hey, we've got to use this claw to load it into the submarine."
I examined the controls. "Cool, this is like the Wonder Catcher at the Gold Saucer," I said. "This'll be fun." I guided the claw over to the reactor, and lifted out the Materia. Just as I was doing so, AVALANCHE ran by the reactor on an elevated bridge. "Do you think I could grab them with this claw and drop 'em in the Mako pools?"
Palmer had his cell phone out and was calling the Turks' office. "Hello?" he said, trying to make his voice sound deeper and conceal his identity. "This is Agent Guttersnipes reporting. AVALANCHE is leading an army into the Underwater Reactor at this very moment. We need help! Agent Guttersnipes out." He then hung up the phone.
I finished loading the Huge Materia into a submarine. It was the only red one, so it would be easy to locate. "The submarine dock's this way," Palmer said, pointing at a door. We hurried to the submarine dock, blasted the MPs with our new weapons, and climbed in the red submarine. Just as we were climbing in, we saw Reno arriving with the Carry Armor. "Hee hee, that should keep them occupied for a while," Palmer giggled.
"Does anybody know a thing about piloting this?" Butch asked.
"How hard can it be?" I said, taking the controls.
"That's what you said about snowboarding, too," Hart reminded me.
"Oh, shush."
With some trial and error I managed to get the submarine to submerge out of the reactor and set off in a sort of north-west direction (using the word "direction" rather loosely).
"This music is driving me nuts," Butch said. He flipped on the submarine's radio. "I want to let you of my desire; let it let it go, I'm al-"
Hart dove across the radio. "I don't think so," he said, changing the station. The familiar tune of Techno de Chocobo came on.
"You're listening to WARK, the world's #1 Chocobo rock station, and a proud subsidiary of Shinra Inc. And now, 'One Winged Angel.'"
One Winged Angel began, but was interrupted by a burst of static, followed by a message from another submarine. "Leader Submarine is missing! All craft attempt to locate the Leader Submarine."
"That must be us," Hart said.
I cranked up the speed and we took off. Unfortunately, we were pointed in a somewhat downward direction, and we experienced a personal meeting with the seafloor. The submarine bounced and shook a little, but wasn't damaged severely. As I was trying to get the nose pointed upwards, something big, green, and dangerous-looking dived towards us.
"It's Weapon!" Butch shouted.
"Are all those Weapons like the same thing or what?" Hart asked. "I mean, they say 'It's Weapon!' but there's five of them. Is it like Mr. Saturn in Earthbound or what?"
"I'm trying to concentrate!" I shouted at Hart. I tried to go between the Emerald Weapon's legs, but with my abilities (or lack thereof), I just bounced off its foot.
"Incoming torpedo!" Palmer pointed frantically at the submarine's radar.
Butch spun the periscope around. A gray submarine was leading the chase after us. I slammed wildly on the controls, and our sub start to back up directly towards the torpedo. I quickly tried to go ahead, but ended up rising instead. This had the unexpected effect of causing the torpedo to lose its lock on us -- and go after the Emerald Weapon instead.
The gray sub's next torpedo also hit the huge green creature. It swam towards the gray sub. The sub's hatch opened and three figures climbed out. I soon recognized them as Cloud, Tifa, and Cid.
Cloud cast a Flare spell on the approaching Emerald Weapon. The Weapon barely noticed the attack and proceeded to use Aire Tam Storm. The three AVALANCHE members ducked back inside the sub.
"Don't just sit there!" Butch yelled at me. "Get us out of here!"
"But- but- but he just cast a fire spell underwater!" I protested.
I swerved around in a generally westward direction. Meanwhile, a large number of blips started to appear on our radar. Butch took a look at them through the periscope. It was the rest of the Shinra submarine fleet. "Oh oh," he said.
"What?" I asked, concentrating on "piloting" the sub.
"The rest of the submarines are closing in on us."
"Oh oh," I agreed.
A barrage of torpedoes shot through the water towards us. I tried to shake them off, but there were too many and I had no idea as to what I was doing. The torpedoes started pummeling the sub's armor.
"Rise! Rise!" Hart shouted. "We're going to have to eject!"
I took the sub up as high as I could, then we threw open the airlock, dived out, and rose to the surface. "Hey-hey, do you think they'll get us up here?" Palmer asked as we treaded water.
I looked down and saw our submarine sinking forlornly to the ocean floor, taking the Huge Materia with it. We were lucky to have made it out when he did.
Butch pointed up into the sky. "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's -"
"I HATED that show!" I shouted at him. "Not only was it incredibly stupid, but it drove my talk show off the air too. And then I got to be mayor, and I got stranded out on a glacier and then on the back of a dragon and now we're out in the middle of the ocean with a fleet of submarines after us and -"
"- the Highwind," Butch finished.
I waved my hands desperately. "HELP! HELP! Down here!"
"We could spell out 'hell' again," Hart suggested. "That might get their attention."
The Highwind stopped and threw down a rope ladder. Gratefully, we climbed up -- a long climb -- onto the deck of the airship and stood dripping there.
"YOU again?" Yuffie said.
I stared at her. My mouth opened and closed, but no words came out.
"What are you doing on my airship?" Hart demanded angrily.
"Your airship?" Yuffie said. "This is our airship! Finders keepers, losers weepers!" Laughing to herself, Yuffie turned and walked back inside.
We followed her in. The rest of AVALANCHE -- minus Cloud, Cid, and Tifa, who were down in the sub -- was on board. "Hello," Vincent said.
"What's going on here?" I demanded, losing my temper. "How did you get on here? What did you do to the crew?"
One of the pilots waved his hand. "We're right here," he said.
I stormed up to him. "How did AVALANCHE get on our airship?"
"We gave it to them."
"WHAT??"
"We gave it to them."
I stared at the crew member, seething. "When I told you to help the fight against Shinra..." I said in a tone of barely-controlled rage.
"Yeah?"
"...I didn't mean to give the airship to AVALANCHE."
"Sorry," the pilot said. "Kind of late now to do anything about it, though, huh?"
I did not reply, but simply stormed back out onto the deck. "Hey, but we did shoot down a Gelnika!" the pilot shouted after me.
Butch, Palmer, and Hart followed me up. "Those idiots," I said. "Those idiots."
Cait Sith walked up onto deck on his Moogle. "Hey, guys," he said. "So what are you up to?"
"Shut up, Reeve."
"Barret wanted to dump you guys overboard, but we managed to convince him to take you as far as Costa Del Sol and leave you there."
"You're so kind," I said sarcastically.
"Hey, Tortellini, lay off on him," Butch said. "We're lucky they're taking us that far."
| Next chapter: In Which Palmer Is Betrayed |