At the end of our last foray, I got a little bit furry on you. A furry foray, if you will.
And I must apologise about that. Today I'll try to keep my closeted weirdness to a dull bubble beneath the surface, in such a manner that my repressed furriness will lead me to snap one day and walk into the post office scratching a gun against my cheek, wearing nothing but my pajamas and a glazed look on my face.
But the fact remains that Prof. Hojo seems hell bent on breeding one of our (human) protagonists with a (super furry) animal. Tifa walks over to the tank containing the angry beast and taps on the glass, which I'm sure is helping immensely. The whole situation isn't ideal, really, and something I should attempt to halt immediately while all the scientists' backs are turned. Right after I check out what's in this tank over here.
Cloud approaches the small window in the metal tank apprehensively, muttering the name printed above it:
Jenova...
JESUS CHRIST.
I don't like this thing at all. It brings back horrific memories of a date I skipped out on once (and coincidentally the girl's name was Jen). Cloud has a total mental breakdown, which is kinda understandable, and this prompts Barret to take a look - he quickly concurs that Jenova is uglier than Nick Cage's current career prospects. "Where's it's $#&*ing head?" he yells.
Where's it's head? It's head? Dude, should we not address the eye-boob thing first and foremost?
"This whole thing is stupid. Let's keep goin'," he adds. I agree, and we do.
I grab a brand new (and brilliant) materia called poison, which does pretty much what it says on the tin. It doesn't work all the time, but if you can slam it on an enemy it not only hurts them pretty bad in the initial casting but carries on dealing damage throughout the battle. We then head up to the top level and find Aeris in a big glass tank being observed by Hojo. We confront him and state we're taking her back.
"Are you going to kill me?" Hojo asks. "I don't think you should. The equipment here is very delicate. Without me, who would operate it? Hmmm?"
This stumps our gang. I'm not entirely sure why, either. Hojo has basically just admitted that the glass tank is very delicate; I'm not sure how much expertise it takes to 'operate' glass, but if I were Hojo, I would have tried convincing us that Aeris' glass prison is entirely indestructible. Y'know, since we have a guy with a gun for an arm in our party.
So instead of doing the right thing by shooting Hojo square between the eyes, breaking the glass, rescuing Aeris and getting the hell out of here, we have to watch as the animal thing is introduced into the tank with Aeris. It starts growling at her and the whole thing lights up so bright that we can't see what's going on inside. Barret picks this moment to fire wildly at the tank - yeah, good one mate. Try not to hit the people on the other side.
While all this is going on, Cloud demands to know what in the world Hojo is playing at. He answers candidly: "Lending a hand to an endangered species... both of them are on the brink of extinction. If I don't help, all these animals will disappear."
I don't think this guy really has a hang of speciation, and whoever approved his funding for didn't give more than a cursory glance at Prof. Hojo's science credentials. But that said, I can't really argue with his reasoning - in fact, saving extinct species by breeding them together is a pretty benevolent thing to do, all said and done.
"... animals?" Tifa chips in. "That's terrible! Aeris is a human being!"
Oh yeah, sorry. I can totally argue with Hojo's reasoning. That is fairly shitty when I stop to think about it. I agree with Tifa and absolutely everything she says, now and in the future, and as such this horrific experiment must stop.
Lo and behold, Barret's wanton firing spree breaks open the tank and both of the animals (humans, whatever) are miraculously unharmed. The beast lunges at Hojo and pins him down while I order Barret to escort Aeris out of danger...
... and things are dangerous indeed. After all, does anyone else feel we're overdue for a boss fight?
Boss #5: Sample HO512 - HP 1000
The Tyrant from Resident Evil 1 is the toughest boss we've had to fight so far (I don't know why I keep feeling the need to say that - all of the bosses in Final Fantasy VII are progressively difficult).
He poisons us all right from the get-go, and the three smaller enemies - not worth killing because he just respawns them - follow up with a barrage of attacks. I have Cloud cast bolt on him but it misses. Tifa lobs a graviball his way in an attempt to insta-halve his health, but that doesn't work either. Graviballs never do anything to any monster in this game, so I should have known that would have been a pointless waste of a turn.
Pretty soon everyone in the party is down to half-health themselves, and we're yet to land a blow on him. For the first time in the adventure so far, I'm seriously considering the chances of dying in battle and this blog suffering a very abrupt end. Luckily, I get the chance to heal everyone up before the beastie floors us completely.
A silver lining aspect of getting our asses handed to us with all the trimmings is that our limit bars fill up lickety-split. We use them to turn this frown upside-down and launch a series of killer blows from our side - despite being a heavy hitter with minions on his side, the T-Virus thing only has 1000hp so this brings him down to a level where a only a few simple fire spells are required to wrap things up nicely.
Cripes. That was a close one. But at least Cloud, Tifa and the random fox thing proved to be a good team together in the face of such adversity.
Speaking of which, what is that thing's name? Cloud asks him, and it answers that we can call it what we wish. Apparently it has the power of speech. Sure, why not.
Hmmm. What to name this new addition to the party?
I suck at names. That's why I've stuck to the default names up until now. My own name is Zeke, for crying out loud - I've not got a great frame of reference with which to judge these things.
Perhaps I'll ask my people on Twitter to see if they have any suggestions. No, screw it - they never answer jack shit.
Huh. Maybe I'll borrow one of their names.
Emily is a scriptwriter and game journalist who has helped me out with charity gaming endeavors in the past, so she's entirely worth a follow and also she gets the naming honour because it was the first name I found which would fit 9 characters.
Congrats, Emily: you are officially a gaming fox.
Tune in next week as Cloud, Tifa, EmilyKing and the rest of the gang find themselves in a lot of hot water! Also, Jenova visits the doctor to get her eye-boob checked out.
If you're enjoying the series so far, do consider giving to the charity fundraiser up on the top right (even if it's only a dollar!) And remember, the second I'm dead, this entire shebang will be over for good...
