Chapter 6: Beneath the Pain - WRO Headquarters
-The place is wrecked. Destroyed.
-No need to go upstairs, not that the stairs or elevator seem to be intact. I can go to the door on the first floor leading to where I fought Azul and Shelke when I was last here though. Downstairs.
-I was half right in my guess last time. There was a roaring beast, and I wondered whether it was something new or just Azul being beastly. The answer is “yes.” Shelke and Shalua join Vincent as he sees a massive lumbering beast throwing aside WRO soldiers and roaring.
Shelke says this beast is Azul. Some transformation.
-It starts smacking the shit out of our group, but Shelke goes transparent to dodge a swipe and brings out some kind of shield materia to blocks it.
The materia forces behemoth!Azul to transform back into humanoid!Azul. I’m surprised it’s a controllable transformation, but humanoid!Azul is fully cogent, wondering why Shelke is stopping him.
-Interesting. It seems like Shelke was about to let him pass and rejoin Azul, before he really tries to kill her. She’s unworthy of his group.
AZUL: “Your only skill is collecting data from inside a virtual reality. It makes me sick to even think of you as a member of the Tsviets.” Not a big fan of the power of information, eh Azul?
Shelke’s role was to find the keeper of the protomateria (Vincent), and now Weiss has ordered her termination.
-Shelke temporarily disables Azul again with her materia. Shalua and Vincent move to escape, but Shelke stays briefly. Shalua coaxes her into leaving, but not before leaving herself trapped inside with Azul. It’s a bit weird, since it doesn’t feel like a narratively necessary sacrifice, but oh well.
Shalua says goodbye as she holds the door barely open with her prosthetic arm, then Azul breaks free and kills her. The door shuts.
-Vincent and Shelke leave.
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Ruins of WRO Headquarters – Later
-Reeve sits, despairing in the WRO ruins as Vincent tries to encourage him.
-Wait… what? Apparently they got Shalua’s body, put her in one of those tanks, and are trying to save her. Come on. She’s dead. I call shenanigans. Azul would’ve smashed the crap out of her body.
-Yuffie is angry at her death, Shelke is disbelieving, dismissive. “She was a fool.”
-This reaction pisses Yuffie off, but Shelke here is pulling an Anya more than being actually dismissive. She doesn’t know how to react, how to process emotion after a decade of being a mako-addicted soldier for Deepground, and comes off cold.
-Shelke doesn’t understand the whole concept of sacrifice. Vincent tries to explain.
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Vincent’s Flashback
-He’s Turk!Vincent, sleeping under a tree and awoken by Lucrecia.
-They have a cute little bit of flirty dialogue. Picnic time.
-I can’t tell whether this is a voluntary flashback from Vincent, or some telepathic part of Shelke picking up on his memories… or…
-Ok, I think it’s something else. I think this isn’t VINCENT’S flashback, but LUCRECIA’S. Azul mentioned something about downloading the doctor’s memories to Shelke’s neural net (am I mixing up TNG!Data vocabulary with Dirge of Cerberus?), so this seems most likely some of Lucrecia’s memories triggering and firing off inside Shelke’s brain.
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WRO Headquarters
-Reeve rejoins. He decided to not give up.
-The Omega Report collected from Shinra Manor was incomplete. They need the rest to know more before attacking Midgar.
-Shelke to the rescue! She has Lucrecia’s findings, and can access them.
-Ok. Look. Shelke just described her mission to locate and retrieve Lucrecia’s data as her “prime directive.” I have to believe this, plus the whole neural net thing, is at least a minor TNG reference. Do I ship Data/Shelke now? Maaaaybe.
-Shelke’s info is incomplete, fragmented. Hopefully uploading the files that Vincent recovered will complete that, and help Shelke “regain control of [her] mind.” Lucrecia’s stuff has been crowding out her own self.
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Next time: rejoining an old “friend.”
