#10 - In Which I'm Totally Dead

We need to stop Sephiroth casting Meteor, and not a second to lose!

What? We're not at that point yet? Gahhhh! Fine, back to escaping from the Shinra HQ. We need to break into two groups, solely because game mechanics dictate that you can't have any more than three people in a party. Aeris suggests it's because if the five of us go together in one big group, we'll be noticed - almost as if a party of three comprised of a man with a gun for an arm, a talking fox and a guy with wielding a five-foot sword might just about fly under the radar. Except I don't go with that configuration. I really want to give EmilyKing, our newest team member, a proper run around but I recall there's another hard boss fight ahead and I want to stick to what I know. As such, I take Tifa and Barrett while leaving EmilyKing to escort Aeris down to the meeting point. Speaking of which, where are we meeting up?

Okay, sure. We'll make our way down and we'll see you th...

Erm. Sure, I got that. Thanks for the tip-off.

Wow, that was annoying. I'm glad they're going together. Leaving me to only imagine the fun conversation Aeris and EmilyKing are sharing as they make their way down to floor 66, I pick up an Enemy Skill materia from the empty tank, which is totally bitchin'. In a nutshell, if a character has it equipped when they're hit by a variety of special enemy attacks (there are around twenty in the game) they'll be able to use that attack thereafter. Most of them are really powerful attacks, too. I let Tifa hold it because she's lovely. So we're on floor 67 and need to go down to 66. What happens next? We're given a keycard to floor 68 by this guy (after a bit of intimidation).

Only following orders, huh? Where have I heard that before.

I ignore floor 68 and head downwards - after all, one of the underlings I just rescued has sternly instructed me to proceed there immediately and not to be late. But perhaps I should have gone the other way, because I find the elevator and they're not in it.

Someone else enters the elevator instead... someone I don't particularly want to see; Rude from the Turks. This is quite clearly a trap, confirmed when the Turks's leader Tseng also follows us in and politely asks us to press 'up'. Looks like we're busted, despite Aeris' big idea to travel in two groups. "You all got caught, too?" Cloud asks rather redundantly to the other handcuffed team members as we're led to President Shinra's office to stand before the top cat himself. The only person missing is Aeris, who we're told is "in a safe place". Prez Shinra goes on to add that as she's the last surviving member of the Cetra race, he's expecting big things from her as she leads the corporation to the 'Promised Land', a place where the mako energy flows like water or some shit like that. To be honest, I zone out for the rest of his preaching and we're eventually taken to holding cells. We're imprisoned, but that doesn't prevent me from talking to the guys in the other cells.

I frequently wonder what Emily King is doing, but that's another story. The most interesting dialogue comes from talking to Aeris, who (not knowing that Tifa can hear her) reminds me that I'm owed a date for acting as her bodyguard way back in episode four. Tifa makes her presence known with a pointed 'Excuse me'. Awkwaaaaaard. She then addresses Aeris directly...

... Why are you such an insufferable bitch? Nah, not really. She innocuously asks if the Promised Land exists to which Aeris responds with a mixture of hippy nonsense and disturbing references to the voices in her head. This whole thing is vexing me, so I order everyone to go to sleep. GO TO SLEEP. NOW. And it's a pretty good sleep, too, because when I wake up the doors are all unlocked. Yay! The guard outside is dead. Yay (for us)! Jenova seems to have escaped from its tank and gone on a rampage. Boooo! Bantering amongst themselves, the guys are suggesting (without saying it outright) that Sephiroth must be all up in the base and freaking out everyone's dudes. Knock it off back there - Sephiroth died years before we even started this adventure, and I'm sure the very cryptic and elusive references to him so far aren't leading up to anything. Oh FFS.

SEPHIROTH! SEPHIROTH! LATIN WORDS! SEPHIROTH! On the plus side, President Shinra is dead. Yay! On the down side, Sephiroth killed him so it's clear he's knocking about the place. Booo. But hey, he's left his badass sword in the President's back! Yay! But none of the characters seem to have the smarts to take it for themselves. B... you get the idea. There's one survivor in hiding - the fat Space Program executive, Palmer - who testifies that he saw Sephiroth with his own eyes and heard him state that he would not allow Shinra to reach the Promised Land in order to sap it of mako energy. The team comes to the logical conclusion that Sephiroth must be on our side; an enemy of our enemy is a friend, and all that. But Cloud disagrees with a very persuasive argument: No. Just... no, apparently. He doesn't expand on his thinking here, so I talk to the other people in the room to see if I can learn a little more. EmilyKing states that the only thing she knows about Sephiroth is his name. Barret has heard that he'd been assigned somewhere else for a long time. Aeris claims that nobody has ever seen him bleed or cry (a neat line that sets up how much of a badass game villain Sephiroth is). Tifa wonders what kind of person he is (as above, Tifa. A badass.) I ask President Shinra his opinion. This is fruitless; I momentarily forgot he's dead. So, I guess Sephiroth is someone we have to deal with as a long-term issue. But for the short-term, let's go back to the deceased President issue... who is going to step into the dead man's shoes? Who has the strength of character and leadership skills to seamlessly takeover and lead the Shinra corporation to glory? Who will rule the city of Midgar in the face of such great adversity?

I WILL. I ELECT MYSELF THE NEW PRESIDENT OF SHINRA, INC.

I'll become a humble saviour in a world rendered grotesque by years of greed and avarice. I will take the former President's iron fist and wrap it in a velvet glove, stopping at nothing to help those in the Midgar slums before collectively working towards a new world. A better world. I'll do all this not in the name of capitalism, but humanity.

Come, friends! The time has come not to rest idle. This is the time to raise up the banner, and all hands shall help it fly. And as I stand here in this office as an equal amongst you, I pledge that we shall rise like a phoen...

... goddamnit, the President's son has just arrived by helicopter. And that speech was going really well, too.

FINE. You can be the president. But only because you're his son, and I want a go after you're dead. Speaking of which, I plan to totally kill President Shinra Jr.  Just as I get psyched to do so, Cloud sends everyone else to make their way out of the building so he can fight alone. Dude, really? He's actually pretty hard... ... but that puzzling act of unnecessary bravado pales in comparison with the stupid move I personally make next. It is a mistake that will almost certainly get us all killed in the next ten minutes. Here's the low down. Before fighting Rufus Shinra alone, there's another pretty tough battle which you have to take on while controlling Aeris, Barret and Red XIII (named in my case, for reasons I'm starting to forget, EmilyKing). The main difficulty of the fight is that you are separated from the boss and can't use close-up attacks, whereas he's got the advantage of having long range artillery. You can attack with Barret's gun as usual, but the other two are limited to using materia only in order to cause damage. So I'll just give those three plenty of materia, and they'll be fine. Right? Wrong. Because I ACCIDENTALLY strip them of all their materia before the fight.

Right, this is not my fault here, guys. This was my thought process: Tifa says she'll wait for Cloud while we go engage the giant boss thing. The game gives us the confusing option to remove Cloud and Tifa's materia... erm, surely Cloud's going to need some for his own boss fight? I only want to take Tifa's, really, since she isn't getting into any nasty bust-ups. So I'll 'leave it as it is', and swap with just Tifa instead. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. That option, apparently, is totally final. "Pffff, you had your chance," says the game.... "I hope you like taking on this bad boy with absolutely no materia of any kind, very few healing potions, and only one guy who can actually attack the bastard."

I'm taking bets on whether or not the next five minutes will be my last, and I'm personally going to bet against myself.