Mideel
-LOL - Took an elixir from an old guy’s house, and as I was about to leave he noticed I stole from him! Subversion of video game logic to the max.
We have the choice to lie and say we didn’t take it or tell the truth. I opt for truth, and he lets us keep it. I wonder if I hadn’t taken it whether he would’ve given us something better? I’ll bet if we lied to him, he would’ve snatched it back.
-Cloud’s still out of it, and Tifa’s understandably upset.
-Then the ground starts quaking. Cloud: “They’re coming.”
-The lifestream seems to be bubbling from beneath the earth. We get a lightshow outside.
-Another Weapon flies above, a black dragon thing. Mecha Godzilla or a different one? Boss time!
-Pretty easy. She does heavy damage with spells, but All + Restore materia for Cure 3 keeps us topped off. Nanaki’s awesome limit buff helps us make short work of Mecha Godzilla.
-Well… sort of. We win, but she just flies off and escapes. The trippy lifestream light show stops.
-OH SHIT I WAS WRONG IT DIDN’T STOP. It kicks into high gear now.
-Cid, Barret, and Nanaki scatter.
-Meanwhile at the clinic, Tifa and the doctor try to move Cloud somewhere safer during these quakes.
-THEY WENT OUTSIDE, SHIT COLLAPSED, AND THEY FELL INTO THE LIFESTREAM
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The Lifestream?
-Tifa’s floating in a black expanse. If she’s dead, I’m throwing my keyboard.
-The sounds are weird bloop-bloops.
-She seems to interpret the bloops as someone talking, and she responds with, “I know nothing about that!” What’s she hearing?
-Ok, I’m pretty sure this isn’t aliens. But with the sounds and the questions and her running in place and everything…
Just saying.
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CLOUD’S BRAIN???
[Later edit: “Cloud’s Unconscious Mind” or something might be more accurate, but this is how I thought of it while playing.]
-Is that where she is? We see different versions of him floating around or sitting, planets, it’s this whole weird dreamscape.
-She senses this, and senses also that Cloud’s searching for himself somehow. Tifa, wonderful awesomeness that she is, decides to help.
-1st Cloud: Talking about a secret wish or feeling of some kind.
-2nd Cloud: At the gates of Nibelheim, when Sephiroth came there five years ago. All this started.
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Cloud’s Brain – Nibelheim
-It’s the town as they remember it.
-Five years ago. She met the real Sephiroth for the first time, who came with “a young, vibrant SOLDIER.”
-Tifa remembers Sephiroth as cold even then. Jenova his mother, and his father still unmentioned.
-Ok, the truth comes out fully (or maybe not so fully yet?). She was here, and was hoping Cloud would be assigned, but no luck. It was a different SOLDIER.
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Cloud’s Brain
-And yet, this isn’t the whole truth. She says the black-haired dude was there, but won’t give an answer about who that person was. Huh. She’s not lying – it seems more like one of those “You must seek the truth yourself” things.
-I tried that other “tender feelings” Cloud again, but still no luck.
-The next Cloud she talks to remembers the night they spent outside, under the stars. He wonders if that was a lie too. She doesn’t confirm or deny, just asks him to remember at his own pace.
(-This is beautiful. So well done.)
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Next time: Onward through the brain.
