When we left off last time, Sector Seven was in grave danger. Shinra soldiers were busy planting bombs around the support column holding up the section of city above the slums, and they were mere minutes away from detonating.
Tifa and Cloud race to the top. Can they stop the Shinra corporation from destroying the column?
Nope, apparently not. A bunch of people die as a result.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The futile attempt to save the slums from the falling chunk of city above unfolded with more drama than a Chris Crocker video. Firstly, on the way up we come across the dying Jessie who tells Cloud she loves him (in a roundabout way). I get given the option to shrug the comment off or acknowledge her properly. As she's in her final moments and because Tifa is watching, I decide to be nice and comfort her as she shuffles off the mortal coil.
Nah, not really - I tell her I don't care for her affection. What? C'mon, Tifa's watching. I don't want her to think Jessie and I had something between us. Christ.
We also bump into our fourth boss, who sets the bomb and tries to slow us down. Enter Reno of the Turks, played here by some FFVII cosplay kid:
Obviously they're are a lot more intimidating in the game.
Man, the more I think about it, the more I realize just how damn cool the Turks are. Can I be a Turk? If so, how do I apply? If not, why not? All I wanna do in this game is wear a suit and quote pithy lines at enemies, not play some blonde emo kid with relationship problems.
As it stands, they're not hiring and if you can't join 'em, beat 'em. Except that's easier said than done - Reno doesn't put me into any hairy situations with my health bar, but he's got a reasonable stack of HP himself and doesn't seem to keen to relinquish it. In addition to the meaty attacks he lands with his electric-baton thing, he also has the ability to encase my party members in what I like to call the Toblerone attack:
In a nutshell, this freezes them and only an attack from an ally can break them free. The problem is that, me being me, I over do it and end up cutting my own characters to ribbons by queuing up more attacks than necessary. "Oh hey you're free from the Toblerone attack! Welcome back to the fight, here's a sword up your arse to spur you on."
While it's great to have Barrett back alongside us, it's Tifa that takes almost all the damage in this fight as Reno repeatedly uses his rod on her. Stop giggling in the back.
With Cloud and Barrett dealing the bulk of the damage and Tifa splitting her time equally between healing us, being stuck in a triangle and being attacked by her own allies, Reno finally flees the battle and leaves us to deal with the bomb.
"Damn! It's a time bomb!" Barrett declares.
"Cloud, I don't know how to disarm it. Try it!" Tifa cries.
"It's not a normal time bomb," Cloud replies, nonsensically.
IT'S NOT A NORMAL TIME BOMB.
Before anyone can call Cloud out on his bullshit, Tseng appears on a helicopter. Guys, why doesn't AVALANCHE have a helicopter? The leader of the Turks has one. The Shinra president has one. I want to conduct our business in a goddamn helicopter. My own office would be nice too, but I guess we can chat about the details after we solve the bomb situation. Oh and I want dental cover. But yeah, bomb situation.
Tseng taunts us from above. To add insult to injury, he's managed to kidnap Aeris.
Oh no. Please let Aeris go. Don't hurt her. Et cetera.
Before they fly away, Aeris itimates to us that Marlene (Barrett's daughter) is safe. Congratulations on finally doing something useful, Aeris. Given that there's nothing left to hang around for besides a firey, crushy death, we utilize a support cable and swing off the Sector Seven pillar and into safety.
Hurrah! Mission accomplished, and no harm done.
Besides the bomb going off, of course. And the deaths of our dear team members Biggs, Wedge and Jessie. We'll never forget you guys.
Hmmm. The abduction of Aeris is also a bit of a failure.
And the deaths of everyone in the slums below. And probably everyone who lived on the fallen section of the city.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_1u3bgPjKB4[/youtube]
Balls. Well, at least the team are happy enough and healthy!
Oh yeah. Sorry, I keep forgetting about Biggs, Wedge and Jessie. Your lives may have faded but I promise that from here on, we'll keep your memories alive in our hearts.
Pressing onwards, the six surviving members of AVALANCHE make thei... ack, sorry, the three surviving members make their way through the rubble to Aeris' mom's house since that's where she was likely to have hidden Marlene. It's also a good opportunity to tell Elmyra that her daughter got kidnapped. I'm fairly sure she's going to be somewhat irked by the news.
Who knows, perhaps I'll get lucky and she won't even remember me or my previous screw ups with regards to protecting Aeris.
Ummm... did I ever mention previously how lovely those curtains are?
It's Steve, actually. I'm not sure we've met before, ma'am.
Turns out Barrett's daughter is here and in good health. Elmyra, probably in utter dispair at how useless everyone else is in the story, has a massive go at him for being the worst father in history.
She also gives us a heavy chunk of exposition on Aeris' backstory. Elmyra, her adoptive mother, found her at a very young age weeping over her dying biological mother at the slums train station. Since Elmyra's husband was overseas fighting a war at the time, taking the young child in and raising her as her own provided some much needed companionship.
She also reveals the reason why Shinra wants Aeris so much in the first place; she's an 'Ancient', the sole survivor of a special bloodline who have special powers such as clairvoyance, 'talking to the planet' and all kinds of other mystical nonsense. If Aeris was a middle-aged woman, she'd almost certainly be divorced, believe in the healing power of crystals and own seventeen cats.
But anyway, the Shinra corporation are also seemingly into Deepak Chopra and that kinda thing, and want to perform experiments on Aeris and her mysterious powers. Elmyra has also been aware of these powers (despite Aeris trying to hide them) including her ability to gain knowledge about things with seemingly no means to do so.
But the main thing I take away from all the exposition and flashbacks is this:
Aeris appears to have been an insensitive jerk from an early age. She's about as inept at breaking terrible news to people as I am.
Elmyra reluctantly agrees to carry on looking after Marlene while we go after Aeris. Apparently, Cloud has some further questions about the Ancients which we'd like to ask Aeris. Questions which are brought on by his worrying tendency to hear cryptic voices every know and then which may well be caused by a brain tumour for all we know at this point.
So to satisfy Cloud and because there's pretty much nothing else to do, we make our way through Sector Six, scale a precarious sequence of rubble and wire between the Sector Six/Seven divide where the plate fell. After a lot of clambering, we finally get up to the plate surface.
But the question is... how do we get into the Shinra headquarters?
We've got two options, guys. Either a) Bust right in through the front door and fight our way through the swarms of guards, or b) take a side entrance which is conflict-free but involves five minutes of straight walking and a lot of character chit-chat between Cloud, Tifa and Barrett.
We shall decide next week...
Thanks to YouTuber Valen213 for the footage of the pillar collapse (I couldn't be bothered to upload my own) and to Inutsuzuki for the Turks cosplay image. I was kidding earlier, btw - you look dapper and should dress that way all the time.
