Pandemonium
-Zidane enters the gates. Sassing all the way.
-No music. Just a background hum, like a low wind perhaps.
-The coloring here is red. Pods filled with red lights. Terran souls most likely.
-Garland emerges to meet him. Twelve years ago, he lost his “prized Genome.” Zidane. Zidane was sent to disrupt the soul cycle.
-Garland doesn’t want to destroy Gaia. He wants to turn Gaia into Terra. (…which probably involves destroying the life currently on Gaia, just saying…)
-It was not planned for Zidane to grow up on Gaia. Wait…
-WAIT KUJA WAS A GENOME??
-Garland beckons Zidane forward to learn more about this. It’s not yet time for the aura to turn red apparently.
-Garland has the ability to teleport short distances. That’s gonna be a pain in the butt to fight.
-And he wants to use Zidane still somehow. How? To lure Kuja?
-Garland directly states that Kuja is like Zidane. Even has a tail! Though he hides it. Keeps trying to assert his individuality, really striving to not just be another Genome.
Wow. Hearing this is making me feel… hm. Not quite sympathy for Kuja, since he still stakes his individuality on murder and mayhem, but something like sympathy. Understanding.
-Garland sent Kuja to disrupt the flow of souls, an action best done by war. And Kuja fomented it like a champ. There’s something sad to me in that. Kuja asserted his individuality while still acceding fully to the wishes of his creator.
-Kuja was the reason Zidane was dropped onto Gaia. He knew he’d try to destroy Gaia, and was jealous at Zidane’s comparable power.
-The full plan laid bare. Disrupt the cycle of souls on Gaia, create a void there, and fill the void with Terran souls.
-The art and music of this whole conversation is fantastic. Garland gliding and teleporting like a ghost across the platforms of Pandemonium, Zidane hopping to catch up.
-The Mist is involved. The Iifa Tree is the “soul divider.” Even now, it blocks the flow of Gaia’s souls with Mist (since apparently we only partially destroyed it) and allows Terra’s souls to flow in.
-We reach a pinnacle of sorts. An observatory, where Garland can monitor the radiance of the planets, the core of the soul flow.
-Kuja functions as an “angel of death,” sending souls flowing to the Iifa Tree… until now…
This is really cool. I don’t quite understand everything, but I get that he wants Zidane to replace Kuja now. We see Garland on high like a malevolent god, his red radiance shining on Zidane below.
-He wants Zidane to live as an eternal, some kind of god alongside him in the starts. Part of Terra’s eternal cycle.
Zidane: “FUCK. THAT. NOISE.” [I paraphrased. Sue me.]
Boy did Garland misread Zidane. Zidane’s true place is with his friends. His loved ones. Gaia. He wants to take out Garland right now. To become an angel of death to TERRA. HELL YES.
(not like that’s likely to succeed right now, but whatever. Details.)
-A voiceover: “A body becomes a vessel which greets a new soul…” is that Garland? Yes. Zidane is in pain. I think that Garland is in the process of hollowing out Zidane, reverting him back to a Genome.
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Kuja
-Kuja seems to have arrived here in Terra.
-He wants Garland’s power. To rule Terra and Gaia both. I tend to think that Garland will come out on top, since he seems so much more in control, more assured, but could go either way.
-As Kuja mwa-ha-has, the Invincible floats up from beneath the cliff he’s standing on. Hard to tell if it’s about to sneak attack him or if he’s summoning it. I think the latter.
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Zidane
-He’s on a throne of some kind. Amnesia.
-Not total amnesia. He remembers he was once Zidane.
-Memories flash before him of his friends, talking to him.
-Memories of them complementing him, speaking to him. He’s rejecting it.
-Music right now is amazing.
-HE WAS HOLLOWED OUT BY GARLAND BUT THE MEMORIES OF HIS FRIENDS AND THEIR VOICES BRING HIM BACK
-Eiko and Vivi are here.
-He’s weak. Stumbling off. Doing the whole “Let me do this on my own” thing that he warned Amarant against, and now it’s up to Eiko and vivi to pull him back.
-Not entirely successful. They go after him, but Zidane shouts out: “Shut up, you **** brat!” at Vivi. Wow. I’ve seen him be angry, but never mean. I hope Vivi knows that Zidane isn’t entirely himself right now.
-A gate slams behind him, cutting off Vivi and Eiko from Zidane. He continues to stumble forward.
-The knififcorn, Amdusias, appears for a fight. Not normal battle music. The same music from before.
-FREYA APPEARS TO HELP!!! Bless you, Freya.
-Amarant shows up too. The whole gang. He’s not alone, despite how much at this moment he wants to be or feels like he must be.
-We defeat the creature together. Zidane continues to stumble off alone.
-The next room he goes to has Steiner and Quina fighting for their lives.
-This is a plant monster called an Abadon. Zidane joins in and helps them defeat it
…but keeps moving.
-AHA! This is guilt as much as anything. He knows his nature is as a destroyer of worlds, and feels like both a danger and burden to these people. Trying desperately to cut dies. Bless their souls for not making it easy.
ZIDANE: “You’re all a bunch of babysitting bastards!” Next room.
New monster. A Shell Dragon.
-I’ve been trying to parse this music, think of what it’s doing to me. It hit me. It’s making me think of a doomed gunslinger walking to the showdown.
-The dragon smashes him down to one HP… AND FUCKING DAGGER EMERGES TO HEAL HIM UP AND SAVE THE DAY.
-They defeat the dragon. Together.
-God, he feels SO GUILTY. Unworthy. Unworthy of their friendship. Like a faker, a fraud.
-Dagger… lord, Dagger has BEEN HERE!! As she was escaping from Alexandria with a trail of broken people behind her, protecting her, she felt guilty as hell, unworthy. She’s now passing on the lesson she learned then: they are protecting her for their own reasons. They value her. She is valued. She is valuable.
Zidane is valued. He protects his friends. They protect him.
-Everyone behind him streams in, one-by-one, proclaiming their love for Zidane and their desire to help him in their own way, for their own reasons.
-Zidane runs back. With his friends. To meet the other party members.
VIVI: “Don’t leave us again!”
ZIDANE: “Never.”
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Next time: TO GARLAND!! Is this the end of the game? The final dungeon? It certainly smells like it. In a game full of callbacks, Pandemonium is a hint that it might be the final dungeon. And yet I don’t know. The red aura will likely go off, doing something to the world, so… no idea.
