I packed my bags and headed back to Midgar. When I got back, I found out Hart had done some recruiting for my failed rebellion. He'd recruited Johnny, Mukki, Zangan, and Holzoff (the mountain climber) to our cause. Unfortunately, said cause no longer existed, or at least was not under my control. I explained the situation to them and sent them home. They seemed pretty accepting about it, although Zangan complained that "even the rebellions are downsizing now."
It was also election time, which meant that every citizen got to go to the polls and fill out a little sheet like this:
Which do you prefer? (check one, or both is even better) ( ) Shinra runs the city ( ) I get executed
Most people chose the former for readily apparent reasons. President Shinra won a resounding victory over nobody in particular. He and the Shinra Board of Directors (Heidegger and the gang) did choose my old friend Tseng, who was still believed to be a policeman posing as a janitor, to head the Turks, replacing Natron O'Daffer, who was removed from his post and flogged after commenting on Vice-President Rufus's hair. Tseng knew about my activities, but he kept quiet about them. Although I was grateful for this, I was worried about Tseng, as the past leaders of the Turks had frequently met with unfortunate circumstances -- one of them was allegedly abducted by aliens, one locked himself in a coffin (but he later joined AVALANCHE -- go figure), one purchased a copy of Spawn: The Eternal, and most recently, there was O'Daffer and the hair incident.
Now, I could fabricate some tales about how I was involved in the Sephiroth incident in Nibelheim. I could; but I won't. That's because everything I'm telling you is just the real story, unaltered by AVALANCHE's lies. Truth to be told, I didn't do anything particularly exciting for a while. Mostly, I hung around in my so-called "office" in the Shinra Building, spending my time devising an elaborate puzzle involving the research archives that could not be humanly solved without assistance, and also wishing I had my swivel chairs back; Hart had won the last race we ever had and I wanted a rematch.
A few years passed. I had become (not willingly, mind you) a total yes-man for Shinra, all my thoughts of rebellion buried back in North Corel with some idiot would could talk in fonts. Then one day, a report filtered down to me (via Tseng) that Sephiroth had apparently reappeared, or at least somebody that looked a lot like him.
Now, this seemed a little unusual to me, because we all knew Sephiroth was killed in Nibelheim (I knew the whole story of what happened in Nibelheim; it was obvious. I could have told them, but they never asked, did they? They would have just claimed they figured it out on their own anyway). Hart and I thought about it and both came to the conclusion that the Lifestream was involved. Seeing a chance to advance myself in Shinra, I volunteered to go to Cosmo Canyon and see if I could find out anything on how Sephiroth might have returned.
I was hoping for a nice vacation in Cosmo Canyon (after all, it has lots of cool stuff there, like humor, fanfics, the PaRappa desktop theme -- okay, enough with the plug), but Shinra had other ideas. First of all, I was flying on HautAir ("The majority of our flights land safely!"), and, even worse, the in-flight movie was Ernest Goes to Hell. I wanted Resident Evil.
While on the plane, I remembered that Reeve had given me an "important package" to open later. I decided to see what it was, so I opened it. It was one of the "impossible" jigsaw puzzles that was all red and had 1,000 pieces. Just what I needed!
I spent most of the plane trip trying unsuccesfully to fit the puzzle together. When I finally arrived at Cosmo Canyon, I grabbed my suitcase, checked in at the motel, and discovered that I had accidentally picked up someone else's suitcase by mistake. It was Baron Ouromov's inexplicably unopenable briefcase. Since there was absolutely no way to open it, I just left it there and went over on to my alma mater, Cosmo U.
I thought I would enjoy seeing Cosmo U again, but upon my arrival, I found that Bugenhagen had cut my name out of the Study of Planet Life and was distributing free copies of it. I made a mental note to add him to the Study's "idiot list." Shortly after arriving at Cosmo U, I ran into Professor Hojo, who was sent by Shinra to "help" me in my research.
Hojo and I were unable to turn up anything the first day. On my way back to the motel, I was passing by Cosmo Candle when I noticed none other than "font boy" Barret. He was talking with Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie. Amazingly, Biggs and Wedge had apparently not been killed yet. I hid inside a trash can and listened to them. Barret was saying that it was time for AVALANCHE (they were still using that stupid name) to move to Midgar and take action against Shinra. I tried to climb out of the trash can, but the lid was stuck.
I tried to turn over so I could kick the lid off, but the trash can was filled and I had no room to manuever. Next I tried to rock the can over on its side. I succeeded, but this improved the situation little. "Help!" I shouted, pounding on the sides of the can.
Eventually, a passing policeman heard my pleas and opened up the can. I tumbled out of the trash can. "Thanks," I said.
"Hey," said the policeman. "You're Mayor Domino, aren't you?"
"That's me," I said. "Want my autograph?"
"No," said the policeman. He then informed that I was being immediately expelled and sent back to Midgar, as Hojo had kidnapped Bugenhagen's adopted "grandson".
Back in Midgar, I told Hart about what I heard at the Cosmo Candle. Perhaps the rebellion had a chance after all. I gathered my old recruits -- Johnny, Mukki, Zangan, and Holzoff. We sent Johnny to the slums (where I presumed they would be) to locate AVALANCHE's new hideout. The others I kept ready in case AVALANCHE needed any help.
Eventually, Johnny located AVALANCHE's headquarters: a bar in Sector 7 called 7th Heaven. He had actually discovered it on accident; he had really wanted to use the pinball machine. Meanwhile, Hart had hacked into Shinra's supercomputer (codenamed "Deep Magenta") and discovered the code to open the security gates at the Makoro reactors. I sent a message to Johnny (who was remaining in the Sector 7 slums as a spy) and hoped he could deliver the code to AVALANCHE. He must have, because the next day, Makoro Reactor No. 1 exploded, followed shortly thereafter by No. 5.
| Next chapter: In Which Sector 7 Collapses, and President Shinra Bites the Dust |