Satan’s Playground
-Our party lands in the playground with the demon gophers. Sector 7 is completely crushed and covered in metal. Barret rages out, screaming for Marlene (who I’m sure is still alive), Jessie, Wedge, and Biggs (who I’m sure aren’t).
-Why did they want to kill us so badly that they were willing to destroy Sector 7? Because of Avalanche?
-Barret takes a fine stand, that it WASN’T Avalanche’s fault.
It was Shinra’s.
-Barret wants to take the fight to Shinra, but Tifa isn’t sure how she feels. (About what?) Cloud walks off to find Aeris.
-DUDE. STOP WITH THE LONELY HERO THING. Barret would totally help you find her since it coincides with fighting Shinra.
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Sector 6
-Cloud immediately makes my point for me as he gets his ass kicked by a bunch of fairly standard monsters, Whole Eaters, on his own.
-Phew. A few steps later, Barret and Tifa catch up to him. He’ll join up, but first asks about the Ancients.
Double phew! Excited to learn about this.
-We head to one of those fade-to-white text flashbacks. “In my veins courses the blood of the Ancients. I am one of the rightful heirs of this planet!” Who’s saying this? Cloud? President Shinra?
No. Sephiroth. These flashbacks aren’t mere memories. They seem to knock the wind out of Cloud when they happen. Hm. Moving on.
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Sector 5 Slum
-Sick guy are still sick.
-The kid I chose not to steal 5 gil from gave me Turbo Ether, which he bought with the money he didn’t have stolen. Hurray for karma!
-Oh man. We’re going to have to tell Elmyra, Aeris’s mom, what happened, aren’t we? This is going to suck.
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Chez Aeris
-Elmyra knew already. They took Aeris from the house. Does that mean the kid is here too?
-Aeris is the “last Ancient. The sole survivor.” We sorta got that (except that Sephiroth said that he was one too – something I imagine will be addressed), but Barret brings up a great point. Wouldn’t Elmyra’s mother be an Ancient too?
-Aha! Elmyra’s not her real mother. Her husband was a soldier, sent to Wutai. He went on leave…
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Elmyra’s Flashbacks
-Everyone at the train station is hugging loved ones in greeting, but no Elmyra’s Husband. Aw.
-She went to the station every day, but he never showed.
This is really heartbreaking to see.
-Then she goes to the station one day, and a woman is there, dying on the steps I think? It’s hard to tell. She has Aeris nearby, and asks Elmyra to take her. Oh, I think I get it – the woman is just a random… dying woman? (No, I don’t get it.) Anyway, she took Aeris and that was that. Husband never showed.
-Aeris later said that the woman wasn’t even Aeris’s mother. “Her mother had already returned to the planet [???], so she wasn’t lonely.”
-We keep beautifully transitioning between past and present.
-Kid!Aeris tells Elmyra that she senses as the husband dies. Wow. If you can sense that, being the Ancient must suck.
-She keeps talking about souls returning to [this] Planet. Is that what Mako really is? Souls that Shinra’s able to harvest somehow?
-Now we flash to when Aeris was a teenager. Tseng comes to Elmyra’s home. They found her. He tries to pitch that Aeris can help usher the world into some kind of utopia, and I trust him exactly 0%.
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Present – Chez Aeris
-I don’t quite get why Shinra waited until now to grab Aeris. It’s not like she’s been on the run exactly. I mean, yeah, she’s eluded the Turks a few times, but it seems like her permanent residence has always been here.
-Cool. The party immediately brings this up.
-Oh man. She could’ve eluded them now, but had Marlene in tow this time. She traded herself for Marlene’s safety.
-Poor Barret. He wants to protect Marlene, his daughter, but wants to fight with Avalanche to save the planet in order to protect Marlene’s future. No way to win.
-Tifa starts to pull a Cloud by saying she “got Aeris into this,” and Elmyra fills the Aeris role of shutting down this guilt-trip here: “Don’t say that. Aeris doesn’t think so.” Like mother (adoptive, but still mother), like daughter.
-BARRET AND MARLENE I’M DYING
THIS IS ADORABLE
Marlene, the matchmaker. I feel like this pair of responses will channel me onto Team Aeris or Team Tifa. I feel like Cloud’s most likely response here is “I don’t know,” that he wouldn’t open up to Marlene with “I hope so,” so I’ll go with that.
-Time to go. We’re heading to Shinra’s headquarters to get Aeris back. Barret and Tifa are both coming.
I’m super nervous, because they keep alluding to how awful it would be to leave Marlene without a father, and parallels to Aeris’s potential adoptive father not coming home from war, and Barret’s tough choice leaving her while he goes to fight, and it feels like they’re setting up Barret to die, and I WILL FLIP TABLES IN SORROW AND RAGE IF YOU DO THAT GAME DON’T DO THAT K THX.
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Next time: Wall Market to find a way to Shinra HQ.
