Gaea’s Cliff
-Some climbing and we reach the pinnacle.
-The northern lights!
-There seems to be a whirlpool thing. But green. A… Mako-pool?
It’s in a crater atop the mountain, almost like a volcano but not that deep.
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Crater
-The crater is from an old meteor. Still healing, and Sephiroth is using the healing energy here to try to summon another meteor. Like beating someone with their own cast.
-Another of those cloaked clone things is in our way. Like the one before, it falls down, disappears. Muttering.
What’s it talking about? Are they projections of his soul or something?
(-AND YET AGAIN the question on my mind isn’t just Sephiroth. He already Villain-Monologued his plan to me. I at least kind of get the gist of what Sephiroth’s trying to do. But Jenova’s nowhere to be seen, and that makes me nervous. What’s she up to??)
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Whirlwind Maze
-Map name just changed on me.
-Sorry for the FFVI comparisons, but something about the environment of this crater feels a lot like the Floating Island at the end of the World of Balance.
-HELL YES! Got the “Neo-Bahamut” materia! Swapping out Shiva.
-“Look! Up in the sky!” “It’s a bird!” “It’s a plane!” “It’s…” “No, trust me dude, it’s a plane.”
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Air Shinra
-The Shinra plane to be exact. Scarlet, Heidegger, and Rufus himself.
-Wait… they say that this is the Promised Land?! I guess they mean the thing inside the whirlwind.
-Hojo’s on the plane too, and Rude. Interestingly, he says that the Promised Land doesn’t belong to anybody. He doesn’t think it’s a thing.
-That’s where “the Reunion” (???????) will take place.
---
Whirlwind Maze
-The hooded figures are marching through the maze slowly. They don’t fight. In fact, lots of them keep dropping dead and falling off the cliff. WTF is going on?
Reunion-bound.
-I’m an MMO player. That’s my bread-and-butter. The hooded figures scare me because they remind me of a common boss mechanic in an MMO:
Boss X is big and scary, but we can deal with him. When Boss X summons a scary minions who hurt us, we kill the minions and then back to the boss. However, when Boss X summons weak little nothing minions, we DEFINITELY kill them. Because Boss X most likely summoned the weak little nothing minions to eat them or sacrifice them or do SOMETHING to use them as fuel for supercharging him.
That’s my working theory about the minions and the Reunion. That they’re lost souls – maybe even the souls of Cetra – that Sephiroth is luring towards the Promised Land, but as they near the gateway, he YOINKS their power. Like Kefka with the espers.
Hm… although according to that theory, the souls would be oblivious to what Sephiroth is doing. But these caped figures know it’s Sephiroth and seem to feel some allegiance to him.
GAH I HAVE NO IDEA
-I think Cloud learned “White Wind.” Awesome!
[Later edit: I was wrong. It didn’t take.]
-Top of the mountain. Sephiroth is here, and kills two cloaked figures, knocking them off the mountain.
CLOUD: “Sephiroth! This is the end!”
SEPHIROTH: “You’re right. This is the end of this body’s usefulness.”
WAIT DOES THIS MEAN JENOVA WAS POSSESSING SEPHIROTH??
Maybe not. Hm. He disappears, but a disembodied voice says, “Our purpose is to bring the Black Materia to our master…” Not sure if this is the hooded folks talking, or Sephiroth, or who. It can’t just be Sephiroth – it said “Our.”
VOICE: “Those who carry Jenova’s cells…”
CLOUD: “Master…” No, dude! Now’s not the time to get mind-controlled!
-Sephiroth reappears above our party, does an Aeris Memorial Dive Bomb, and slashes us all.
-Cloud gets up. Boss fight. But the music isn’t normal boss music, it’s trippy cosmic magic music.
-The boss is Jenova-DEATH.
But it was Sephiroth’s avatar like two seconds ago, just like the prior times we’ve fought Jenova-XXXX. Jenova’s puppeting Sephiroth then?
-It has this pulsing yellow nodule on its neck that I didn’t see on any of the others.
-Neo-Bahamut is BADASS! Jenova-DEATH goes down pretty easy.
-AHA!! Now I get it. The “Reunion” is Jenova’s cells reuniting with her. She was in her container and drained by Shinra, and all these different parts are returning to her. Or something?
-Cloud says this wasn’t Sephiroth we’ve been chasing. It was Jenova’s cells disguised as Sephiroth. Some of that must be inside Cloud, which lets him get puppet-mastered. So Sephiroth was never more than just a good SOLDIER warrior who died and Jenova’s been using his old shape.
-GAH. Maybe not. I think I’m so close, but probably wrong, since Cloud says the real Sephiroth is beyond here, and he must be helping pull the strings.
-We take back the Black Materia.
- Tifa has one of those common sense moments video game characters pretty much never have. Cloud’s about to charge forward against Sephiroth, but Tifa reminds him that bringing the Black Materia to Sephiroth is probably a bad idea. He gives it to Barret to hold onto.
-Ran into more Wind Wings up ahead. Had Tifa manipulate one to cast White Wind on us for Cloud to Learn it, but it wasn’t an option. And Aero3 didn’t take.
-Can’t get past this bridge.
-DAMMIT. This invisible wall on the bridge keeps knocking me back. I have no idea why. I tried waiting until the green wind wave passed, but still get knocked back. Tried like 10 times and no luck. Wtf.
-Finally made it past the bridge. No idea why, but whatever.
-The screen fades into white.
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Next time: Encounter with Sephiroth.
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