Deepground Lab
-Vincent and Shelke and Yuffie are in a lab somewhere. Vincent puts the conscious Shelke into a mako container to recover.
-Where are they? I have to imagine they just repurposed a Deepground lab or medical facility recovering from the Nero fight rather than taking Shelke all the way back up to the surface.
-The plan: Vincent will take on Nero and Weiss, and Yuffie will try to shut down the reactor.
-Yuffie leaves to do her part.
-Afterwards, Shelke calls out to Vincent from within her container. A computer screen lights up: “Discoverer: Grimoire Valentine.” Dunno what that means, or why the computer lit up. Does it mean Grimoire discovered Shelke? Or discovered Deepground? Or something else? Probably option #3.
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Flashback – Shinra Lab
-Turk!Vincent wanders into the lab, looking for Lucrecia.
-Vincent sees a computer with Grimoire’s file open and seems shocked. Looks like he had no idea his father was involved with Lucrecia’s project. Hell, for all I know about Vincent, maybe he didn’t know his father was even alive (keyword: was). We’ll probably find out soon enough.
-Lucrecia wanders in, still distraught. Vincent expresses shock/outrage about Lucrecia working with Grimoire. She confesses.
-Wait, what is this?
-Ok. When she confessed, we were no longer in the lab setting but rather a void black/purple abstraction. Lucrecia runs off, apologizing, leaving Turk!Vincent alone. But Turk!Vincent’s response is what gives me pause:
“But I never blamed her. All I wanted was to see her smiling face.” This has to be Present!Vincent speaking through Turk!Vincent’s mouth. Not a pure flashback, but a memory with his present self providing commentary, if that makes sense.
-Lucrecia fully signs onto Team Hojo. We see her basically throw herself at him, offering to do whatever his experiments need.
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Deepground Lab
-SHELKE wakes up. OH!! That wasn’t Vincent. Not directly. Or maybe it was, but it was Shelke observing it all through those data powers she has. Maybe? Seems like a reasonable guess. Whatever the logistics, I think we saw real memories and emotions and reactions from Vincent, and that Shelke observed them too.
-Shelke wants to know Vincent’s motivations. He says it’s to stop Omega and Deepground, but admits uncertainty as to whether that’s his real motivation.
-I’m not quite sure what Shelke’s words have to do with what we just saw in the flashbacks, but it’s still nice to see Shelke continue her shift away from Deepground’s apocalyptic mindset.
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Next time: the next stage, “Beginnings,” which looks like it starts with Vincent in Mako Reactor 0.
