One Mako reactor down, seven left to go. Cloud has signed up for the next bombing mission but all this blowing stuff up has got him tuckered out - he sleeps for the night before meeting the guys back in the bar.
Tifa runs an entire inn with enough space to house at least six people, and Cloud decides to sleep here. Hardcore, dude. Beds are for chumps.
A message is waiting to say the guy in the weapon store has a giftfor me (awww!), Tifa tells Barrett's five-year-old girl to look after the bar (what?) and Barrett tells us all to meet at the train station at our leisure (which will give me time for some retail therapy). Barrett also asks what's the deal with materia, the little orb things that allow us to cast elemental spells. It's an intrinsic part of the gameplay, so I guess it'd be best to explain how it all works here not only for Barrett's benefit but also for any readers not familiar with Final Fantasy VII.
Basically, Materia come in a variety of colours depending on what function they perform. A party member can equip these to one of the empty slots in their weapon or armour, and if they have enough MP, they ca... Forget it, I'm actually boring myself as I type this.
Materia is magical and you won't understand. I'll look after all that. This is what I tell Barrett, also.
The guys head off to the train station while I make a bee-line for the high street (cluster of shacks). While Cloud doesn't look like the kinda gal who would enjoy maxing out his credit card on a new frock, I like to think that he'd enjoy this break from the others before we get back into it.
I have 2,000 Gil. A kid offers me the use of his room for 10 Gil. Piss off, kid. Money doesn't grow on trees. It's reluctantly paid to you by cranky freedom fighters.
I ignore him and speak to the weapon shop guy. He doesn't say anything about a free gift, but does have a better gun which I buy for Barrett, being the thoughtful bunny that I am. I also pick the three of us up an iron bangle each - not just because it'll help our defence stats, but also because Tifa looks smoking hot in iron accessories.
What? How dare you accuse me of intentionally setting up reasons why I have to search for images of Tifa Lockhart to illustrate my posts.
The whole exchange leaves me with 1,400 Gil. Nobody seems to know anything about this gift of which I got a message. Feeling hurt, I help myself to the free 'All' materia lying on the floor on the second story. 'All' materia is pretty kickass, actually - you link it to another materia, and instead of casting it against just one enemy (or ally, if it's a positive spell) it lets you target all of them at once. Probably didn't need to tell you that, really.
So that's handy. Before making my way to the station, I poke my head in at the materia store. Sometimes it's good to legitimately buy your magical equipment needs as opposed to just finding it lying on the floor, but materia sure is expensive; I buy two (a Fire and another Restore) and that leaves me with 46 Gil to my name.
Seems a bit silly taking all my pay and investing it in the next mission - a bit like an office worker spending his month's wages on staplers - but I don't know what else I would have done with the money anyway. Rented that kid's room for a month? No, that's weird. Let's get on the train and proceed to the next reactor.
On the way to the train, some chump tells me I'd better take good care of Tifa. Pfff, stay out of it, wise-guy. I'm Tifa's #1 admirer around here, and you can rest assured that I got her back as I lead her to blowing up a reactor. Unfortunately, we don't get very far before finding ourselves in massive danger.
On board the train, the incredibly sweet but perpetually incompetent Jessie has screwed up our fake IDs. This sets off a dramatically flashing alarm and the train carriages go into lockdown mode - we have to run to the front carriage before we get trapped. It's not difficult and the game gives you ample time, but the penalty for failure is severe - in fact, it's the most severe we can get in this blog, which is a game over screen and a very anticlimactic end to an Iron Man Mode blog.
This is what it what look like if the blog did come to an end. It hasn't come to an end - sorry if that sudden graphic scared you - just showing what it *would* look like if it came to an end. Er... Keep reading!
The twenty or so seconds it takes me to get to the front carriage is the most stressful experience I've had so far. My heart races and I physically scream at the NPCs in the train to get out of the way, the cat on my lap wakes up suddenly as a result and buries her claws into my knees, that causes me to momentarily lose control before finally diving through the last door with only a few seconds to spare. Phew.
That's unfortunately not the end of AVALANCHE's woes, as it seems we now have to jump out of the train. Yeah, that's right - our very best option at this point is to jump out of a moving train.
And leap off the speeding train we do, while I notice an interesting window into the group's psyche: they're excited, but also a little hesitant about jumping out of the door, and it takes all three of them urging each other on before they manage to jump. This briefest of interactions reminds me that despite their sincere bravado and belief in their cause, they're still barely into adulthood, frightened deep down, and rely on each other for strength. It's sweet.
But enough sentimental mush. There's ass-kicking to be had, and that's what I embark on for a good half an hour. Because we had to bail out in the train tunnel beneath the reactor, it takes a lot of climbing and clambering through small holes in order to get into it. But the guys fight well together and we wade through the enemies with relatively little kerfuffle. At one point we bump into Jessie, who directs us down the wrong tunnel. Typical.
Oh, Jessie. Just go and put the kettle on.
The reactor itself looks near identical to the last one, but why wouldn't it? The Square Enix graphic designers must have adopted the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' rule. And by graphic designers, I mean the Shinra architects who planned the reactors. Of course.
When we get to the core, Cloud has another of his little spazz attacks and flashes back to a time when reactors were made to look even more steampunk than they do now (a better time, I feel):
All right, chill out.
In the flashback, Tifa mourns over the body of her father. She surmises out loud that some cheeky chappy we've not met yet, Sephiroth, must have tickled him with his sword and she swears vengeance against not only Sephiroth but also Shinra, Mako reactors, SOLDIER, and just about everything else she can name within a ten meter radius of her. She then picks up the sword next to her dad's body and goes on the warpath.
Sheesh. Cloud comes out of his flashback, I delete the joke I just wrote about Tifa being a bit premenstrual, we plant the bomb and set about fleeing from the scene. Jessie appears to have removed the ten minute timer from her bomb design, so I'm pleased to see she's bucked her ideas up. I'm also not jumped on by a giant boss robot modelled after a tarantula or a narwhal or some other impractical choice for a functioning mechanical robot. In the absence of any pressing issues, I don't have to flee from this reactor at all. I slowly mince my way back to the surface.
And it's probably a good job there isn't any kind of time limit because one issue I do come across, and have enormous difficulty overcoming, is a very simple timing 'puzzle' which a mentally retarded four-year-old child with ADHD could solve. All I have to do is press the space bar, count to three in my head, then press it again to get through a security door...
Yeah? Well what Jessie says and what Jessie thinks is accomplishable are usually two very separate things.
... It takes me no less than twenty eight attempts. I was going to post the video footage here, but there's nothing interesting about watching me repeatedly mash a key on my keyboard for six minutes like a baffled gibbon. Trust me.
Finally through the security door, presumably with my team mates silently wondering why an elite member of SOLDIER can't operate a button and whether it was a good decision to hire him, we come to a suspended walkway. This is going well.
Ah, good - we're being surrounded by Shinra guards. Things are getting even better.
It seems this whole operation was a massive trap for us, and the only way they could have known we'd be here is if someone in the team screwed up.
Damn it, Jessie!
Ok, she's not around right now and has nothing to do with mission planning, so it's not her fault. But cursing her whenever something goes wrong with a mission is AVALANCHE protocol. Nevertheless, they somehow figured we were going to hit this reactor and decided to let us do it but make sure we were wiped out in the blast. But this is a pithy effort in holding us up, is it not? A bunch of Shinra guards we can take down in no time? We're not even on a timer with this bomb anyway, so it would take a pretty big distraction and/or boss fight to hold us up, right?
Anyone familiar with my writing knows that whenever I throw out a sentence like that (especially with the line break for pacing), I'm going to predictably report that the event I just declared unlikely to happen actually does happen as some sort of punchline. In this case however, I'm happy to report that we fight the soldiers off and get out of the reactor without anything dramatic happening.
Hah! Double bluff. As well as the multitude of guards, President Shinra himself shows up... on a helicopter. A HELICOPTER.
Despite the peril we're in... I feel kinda honoured?
So does Cloud, it seems. As Barrett hurls abuse at the President, Cloud merely doffs his cap (or spikey hair do) at him and cryptically says "Long time no see, President." I'm guessing Cloud forgets the other team members are suspicious of him joining the anti-Shinra party when he used to work for those guys, especially since he has already openly stated he doesn't care about the AVALANCHE crew. If anything screams 'incompetent mole' more than this (and holding everyone up at that security gate when all he needed to do is press a button) then AVALANCHE deserve to get infiltrated by a Shinra spy, IMHO.
But the seeming allegiance is broken fairly swiftly by the President, who can't remember Cloud's name without prompting and states he can't be expected to remember every SOLDIER member's name, unless "of course, you became another Sephiroth." Again with the obscure reference to this Sephiroth guy... he sounds pretty beefy. Never played the game? Keep reading, you'll find out in another thirty blog posts or so.
After the brief interaction, President Shinra flies away in his chopper but not before leaving us with:
BOSS #2: Air Buster, HP: 1,200
He doesn't give me much concern, though a point of interest is that he introduces the player to the 'team splitting' dynamic. Usually the three party members are on one side, and the enemies are on the other. In this case Cloud gets pushed behind Airbuster and the other two are stuck in front of him, which is pretty much a good thing - he can't get a back attack on us (double damage), but I can on him depending on which way he's facing.
Being an electrical robot, Bolt materia causes more damage to him than anything else (there's some vague logic there) so I throw as much lightning at him as possible while attacking him from behind with whichever party member is able to do so. Each party member gets pretty battered at least once, but not so critically that they die before I'm able to use Restore materia to top them up.
A limit break attack or two later, and... Ker-Blammo!
Final Fantasy VII Boss #2, You're dead, sir. Thanks for being fairly unremarkable as I took you down good and proper! Although it seems you got me good and proper too, because in your death throes you've exploded and knocked Cloud off the open walkway.
Just hanging here wondering if I can blame Jessie for this predicament too.
While the open walkway system offers a splendid and panoramic view of the charming, commuter-friendly slums beneath, you don't really want to be hanging off it by one hand because there's nothing to stop you falling to a terrible death and slamming at terminal velocity into the floor of the charming and commuter-friendly slums beneath.
