”What we need to be able to get you to do is to remember the shooting without reliving it. And you have been reliving it.” -Dr. Keyworth, “Noel” (The West Wing)
1,000 AD
-This is kind of beautiful.
The desert north of Porre is now forest, and what used to be barren in the old 1,000 AD and Fiona’s Villa in 600 AD is now Fiona’s Shrine.
-WHOA! The equipment that’s sold in Fiona’s Shrine is ridiculous. Ridiculously expensive, but it protects against a variety of statuses. This is stuff worth farming for.
-Robo is on the altar.
A deactivated object of praise for his work.
-400 long, long years. Time is awesome. Not in the “cool beans, broseph” sense, but in the sense of something that inspires both awe and fear in me. This game sure knows how to harness that sense.
---
Reunion!
-We all celebrate around a campfire.
-Hm. Robo’s 400 years of thought make him believe that Lavos may not be responsible for the gates. Then who?
-He thinks that the time periods are too… specific. Too important. The gates aren’t throwing us to random points in time. My bet is that it’s Crono’s spirit somehow manipulating this.
-The conversation turns introspective, philosophical. Is this all just someone’s (i.e. crono’s) life flashing before their eyes? Will that happen to these characters when they die.
-BURY ME IN FEELS I JUST ONLY NOW NOTICED THAT LUCCA IS CLEANING OFF AND REPAIRING ROBO. AGAIN.
-Marle asks if there’s any particular time Lucca would want to return to, and she gets all quiet. The question impacts her. She evades the question. What time is she thinking of?
-Frog hypothesizes that Lavos is somehow tied with the Entity that is causing these gates. Still guessing that the Entity is Crono, but they are making the Entity sound godlike, on the level of Lavos himself. Is Crono about be like Gandalf/Obi Wan Kenobi, where he dies and becomes far more powerful as a result? Crono the White. Force Ghost Crono.
-The other possibility that jumps to mind is something quite a bit scarier. Not Crono, but an entity that harnessed Lavos for some evil purposes. Zeromus to Lavos’ Golbez. *shudder* If so, it might mean that the “black wind” was more than just Janus foreseeing the time portal sucking him in.
-Eeesh. This line of thoughts reminds me that I still don’t have an explanation for what pulled Marle in back in the Middle Ages.
-They sleep.
---
Campfire Still?
-I thought this was done. The screen faded to black and I was sure that I’d wake up in the overworld. But no. The screen lights up again, and we’re still in the campfire. Lucca wakes up.
-HOLY SOUND EFFECTS BATMAN, I HAVE GOOSEBUMPS. It’s like, a howling wind mixed with a kazoo. Except terrifying. [Later edit: Why the hell did I try to use “kazoo” to express terrifying. *bonks self*]
-Lucca can’t get anyone else to wake up and I’m freaking out
-There’s a Gate near the campsite. Lucca. No. Don’t go in it.
-Nobody will wake up though. I think I have to go in it.
-THE GATE OPENS AND IS BRIGHT RED. ABORT! ABORT!
-SHE GOES INTO THE FUCKING GATE
---
990 AD
-OH GOD OH GOD THIS IS THE MOMENT THAT LUCCA WANTED TO GO BACK TO
WHAT’S ABOUT TO HAPPEN
-IT’S HER HOME
-She’s reads a note that journal entry by her bed.
LUCCA? HATES???? SCIENCE???!!?NFLKN
-That weird alien sound is still sending chills up my spine in the background. And it contrasts with the beautiful and sunny day in front of us. And it all adds up to me freaking right the fuck out.
-I’m wracking my brain, wondering what this is. I thought at first it might be a parent dying, but of course not. Her parents are alive.
-A note in the kitchen from here dad says that the password, in case of emergency, is his wife’s name. Lara. What kind of emergency? ???
-Lucca moves into the main room.
Lara got her skirt stuck in one of Taban’s inventions and is panicking.
-The machine starts to move. It starts to suck Lara in, and little Lucca (KID LUCCA OMG OMG) doesn’t know the password and is just a kid.
-I tried entering the password, and I couldn’t. It wouldn’t let me. Just said “Enter password.” Unless there was a button I was supposed to try that showed me letters, but I didn’t see anything like that.
-The Machine sucked Lara in. Destroyed her legs while little Lucca watched it happen helplessly. Oh god. I never even considered why Lara was sitting in her chair whenever we saw her.
-We find her then slumped on her bed. Defeated.
-OH GOD
OH GOD JESUS CHRONO TRIGGER HOW ABOUT YOU STOP PUNCHING ME IN THE HEART FOR TWO FUCKING SECONDS??
Last session I was crying with laughter at Ozzie’s Fortress. Now? Not laughter. Not a bit. Jesus lord.
Could I have done it? Could I have pressed the right buttons on the controller and saved her? [Note: this is rhetorical. I’d prefer not knowing for now.] I’m just sitting here playing what must be a 20 year old game and I still feel wracked with guilt.
This was the exact moment Lucca strived for. This was her dream. She worked ever since this moment for the hope of helping her mother. She was presented with the chance to literally rewrite the past and solve it. And failed.
This is one of the worst kinds of hell. A second chance, but one she cannot take advantage of. She has to see her own trauma, the most defining trauma of her life, and relive it with full knowledge.
Jesus.
[Later edit: I can’t believe I forgot to ask the most obvious question: why did a time gate bring Lucca back to that one moment she most wished for, on the very night she was thinking about it so consciously? WHAT IS YOUR DEAL, TIME GATES?? ]
-She takes the gate back.
---
600 AD – Campfire
-Robo is there to meet her. She seems to tell him what happened, or he just knows.
-AND ROBO JUST WANTS TO GIVE HIMSELF TO HELP HER
FRIENDSHIPPPPPPPPPPPPP
-He gives an item he created in his forest, GreenDream, to her. An accessory that I find out shortly after grants a one-time auto-re-animate. Nice.
-but whatever who cares about items FRIENDSHIPPPP
---
Next time: continuing around 1,000 AD, probably to check out the southeastern continent.
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