And “coincidentally,” that is where Cronabe and the others find themselves when they head through the double doors. If there isn’t some stabbing before the end of this recap, I’m going to be fucking pissed — the hallucinations promised me! A pedestal sits in the center of the glowing circle in the center of the room. A set of pixels atop the pedestal indicate the presence of something Really Important. But before Cronabe can investigate, the camera pans up to show two figures standing at the back of the room. It’s El Asso Wipo and Jesus! Just kidding, obviously it’s Lynx and General Viper.
Given that the only way to reach this room is by flipping all six switches, General Viper and Lynx must have gone through the whole rigamarole, then hid in the Dragon Room — just out of sight of the camera — and reset the entire dungeon. This probably happened several recaps ago. Ever since then, they’ve just been chillin’ in the room, possibly doing naughty things with the Dragon Tear, waiting for Cronabe and his buds to show up. The umpteen million obstacles that Viper and Lynx placed in their way just ensured that the two men would have more alone time or something. Seriously, I’m just trying to figure out their reasoning for not actually doing anything with the Dragon Tear, yet still trying to keep Cronabe and the others away. What am I saying? This is Chrono Cross — there are no reasons for anything. Except drugs.
Lynx pretty much admits that he and his “friend” Viper have just been sitting around waiting for Cronabe, confirming each of my suspicions. “I have nothing personal against you, but anyone who hinders our plan must be eliminated. I am rather sorry about that…” Viper assures them. Well, good. I’m glad to know that, while I’m still to be murdered, at least it wasn’t done out of hatred or anything yucky like that.
“General…! What is going on here?” Glenn demands, looking back and forth between Viper and Lynx jealously. Viper is all, “Baby, it’s not what you think…” but Glenn isn’t going to take that shit. Battle time! And General Viper is a yellow elemental. Imagine that! Surely that must mean that this is our last boss battle. Hooray! Wait, why are you all looking away uncomfortably?
Oh, I just bet you will.
Glenn manages to fight through his tears, peppering his attacks with phrases such as, “So is he better than me?” and “I thought we had something special!” But Viper’s superior battle skills and experience are no match for the angry slashes of his jilted lover, and soon he falls to Glenn’s blade. Even though the Yay! You Didn’t Die! Screen indicates that the trio won the boss battle, General Viper still acts like he was just holding back and now he’s really going to fuck them up. Only we never really get to see if he’s just bullshitting or not, because Lynx does his teleport-to-two-feet-away move and stabs Viper in the back, both literally and figuratively. He’s got fresh young boy-meat now, and he doesn’t need this old codger anymore.
Lynx admits that he was just using General Viper all along, but takes several screens worth of text to say so. Viper’s last words are a plea for forgiveness from Riddel. Dude, she can’t hear you. Before Glenn gets a chance to kick Viper’s philandering corpse, Lynx decides it’s time for them all to die. But in boss battle form. Shit!
Sigh. You know, Lynx is not a very smart furry. If he’d thought ahead, he might have realized that attacking the trio side-by-side with General Viper would be a more effective strategy than sitting back and eating popcorn while letting the general do his thing. Not that I would have liked that, but it would have made more sense from the villain’s point of view. Even if he were being lazy, hoping that Viper would finish them off so Lynx wouldn’t have to worry about his recent manicure, once he figured out that Viper was not up to the task, he could have at least left the general alive long enough to help him out by fighting alongside him, then proceeded with the stabbing.
Like I said, this way makes it easier for me, so I guess I’m glad Lynx is an idiot. I don’t remember enough about the last time I fought Lynx to say whether or not his tactics have changed much. He still wields a scythe, and he’s still a black elemental. And honestly, I’m too busy trying to turn the field blue so I can use Biotch to summon FrogPrince. Although I bitched about the irritating steps necessary to summoning earlier, I actually manage to complete them successfully during this battle. That must mean that fighting Lynx is as difficult as facing a limp-sword-wielding Tidus if I can waste all that time using unnecessary blue elements.
FrogPrince himself is probably the most sense-making thing in the entire recap. Instead of being a rubber statue of a fuchsia pig wearing high heels and a scuba-diving suit as one might expect from this game, FrogPrince is actually a blue frog wearing a crown. Not unlike how a prince would wear a crown — do you get it? Although his powers are diminished by -1 seeing as how he’s assigned to a level six element slot, he still packs quite a punch. The whopping 426 points of damage he delivers to that asshole Lynx essentially decides the result of the battle. Meaning the furry loses. Even with his gigantic scythe and inevitable twenty dicknipples.
So that means that I’m all finished with this particular plot point and can move on to the next endlessly talked about destination, right? Well, obviously not. Lynx is about as dead as any other RPG villain before the actual end of the game. Meaning he’s all, “Okay, so you didn’t die. Even though I’m still WAY studlier than y’all, I’m not actually going to follow through and kill you — I’m going to do something bad, though!”
Before he can, Steve conveniently enters the room, since she apparently thinks we can’t have any sort of plot-related scene without her. I mean, I don’t see any of my other unused characters, like Neofio or Pip the Gay Pokemon barging into cut scenes like fucking attention whores. But we’ve already had it hammered into our brains like a head-humping rabbit that a Very Importantâ„¢ Steve-stabbing scene will take place in this very room, so they had to get her in here somehow. And given what’s about to happen, I don’t feel it would be advantageous to complain. In fact, why not do a dimensional time-travel to get Tidus in here, too?
Steve spews a boring threat, causing Lynx to chuckle, no doubt evilly. Then, he fades out with an ominous magical sucking sound. Well, I guess Shion made it here, too. After a short moment of everyone staring moronically at the empty spot where Lynx stood, suddenly he reappears — in the exact same spot! But now he’s floating in the air! Okay, the guy burned down a daycare, so we know he’s Really Bad and Stuff, but I still don’t see why everyone in the room isn’t laughing their asses off at the guy.
“[Cronabe], have you ever questioned who you really are?” Lynx asks suddenly. I doubt that’s one of the higher questions on Cronabe’s list. It’s definitely below “Why the hell can’t I talk?” or “Why do people keep sharing their deepest secrets with me when I don’t fucking care?” or even “Did Glenn grope me in my sleep last night, or did I just dream that?” Really, can we just get to the stabbing without all this philosophical expositiony shit?
The other three characters turn in unison to stare at Cronabe, like they’re just aching to hear his answer to this asinine question. Or see his pantomimed answer, as the case may be. Lynx just keeps on with the third pretentious degree, next asking “What has been the significance of your existence up until now?” By this point, Cronabe is wondering if he should just go ahead with the stabbing in order to shut Lynx up. After all, stabbing Lynx (or slicing him, rather) obviously didn’t work to shut him up, so Cronabe is willing to sacrifice Steve for the cause. Like I mentioned earlier, that would have the added benefit of eliminating those stupid one-sided nighttime wankst-fests as well. Score! Yes, this must be the correct course of action: three premonitions can’t be wrong.
Before Cronabe can do his thing, Lynx bores him into stasis by more jabbering. “On that ominous day 10 years ago, the boundary of space and time was torn, and part of me, in fact, died…” Too bad it wasn’t his vocal cords. I won’t speculate any further as to which part actually did die. A sudden FMV flashback breaks into Lynx’s lame monologue, and this might mark the first time a reused FMV has actually triggered a feeling of relief in me. It’s a drawn-out version of the black panther demon attacking the cameraperson. Or Cronabe, since we know he was attacked by a panther demon. Or Lynx, since this is supposedly his flashback. Or maybe Cronabe (or Lynx) was the cameraperson and that’s why he just stood there like a tard while the cat pounced on him. We’ll never know.
Back in the dragon chamber, Cronabe takes a few steps forward, as Steve Mary Sues over to him. Still no stabbing. “You cannot defeat me, [Cronabe]…This is because denying me is the same as erasing your very existence,” Lynx blahs. Wha? So Lynx is saying that he’s an animagus interdimensional furry version of Cronabe, born from an unholy union between six-year-old Cronabe and a black panther? I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be getting out of this. Even Steve thinks this is all BS, and tells Cronabe not to listen to this asshole. Ignoring the obvious pot-kettle implications of this statement, she’s got a point.
Lynx counters with the clichéd classic “two sides to every story” line, listing some opposites just so we understand the deep philosophical nature of this concept. Steve’s pretens-o-meter is tragically broken, plus she’s just dumb, so she’s all “DURR?!” The Dragon Tear suddenly lights up in the center of the room and turns into an FMV. It’s very blue-balltastic, and makes Cronabe feel kind of funny inside, as evidenced by his very intent, lobotomized staring at the object. More artsy close-ups of Cronabe waste our time and the game’s budget, then we see Cronabe’s reflection in the Dragon Tear suddenly and shockingly morph into Lynx and back. Whoa, dude! Cronabe staggers back with his hand over his face, like a Korok after the Dicku Tree discovers its secret stash of rupees.
That’s like asking Wakka to stop smoking the weed.
The rest of the FMV is basically Cronabe on his knees, clutching his head while Lynx looks evil. When all the mallety Cronabe-and-panther themed imagery fades, Cronabe lets go of his head and looks up at the camera. But oh noes! He has evil eyes! Seriously, his eyes go all dark and slit-pupiled for a moment. And he grins evilly. Wait, I think something is going on here!
Wait, is he evil?
Although dogs freaking know that Cronabe just turned evil, Steve is all, “DURR, are you OK, honeybuns?!?!?!” Missing, of course, the INTENSELY EVIL EYES. She freaks out some more because her maaaaayun is hurt or something. She shuts up when Cronabe stands up and responds, “Yes… I’m fine…” And this sudden bout of speech is still not enough to clue Steve in to the fact that This Is Not Cronabe. But I can’t fault just Steve, because neither of the other two fucking rocket scientists in the room figure it out either. My God, forget the Dragon Tear — harness the energy of the stupidity in this room, and you can power any fucking thing in the Chrono universe. Jesus.
The four mental giants turn to face Lynx, who looks down at his hands in confusion but says nothing. It’s as if he has suddenly struck mute. How strange. By this time, every person in the universe with more than a single brain cell knows that this is the old body switcheroo plot. That we’ve seen in pretty much everything ever, from Freaky Friday to Utena. Even Tidus would be all, “‘Those guys didn’t switch bodies.’ That’s what I would have said, if those guys hadn’t switched bodies. But they did switch bodies. And then I felt…sleepy. I hate my old man.”
Because everyone in the room is retarded, they listen to Wannabe-Cronabe who orders them all to attack Not!Lynx. “This is the end of you, Lynx!!! Say yer prayers,” Steve overpunctuates. And still no one thinks it’s odd that Lynx backs up instead of bombarding them with ten thousand pretentious questions. I think their stupidity actually hurts me. Can I sue Square?
Boss battle time! This time, I get to be Not!Lynx. At first, I think I’m supposed to hold off on attacking in order to prove Cronabe’s identity or something like that. Surely that should be obvious enough for these idiots to grasp, right? RIGHT? Not so fast. Holy crap, even the formerly jabbery villain standing there in battle like a lump of mute play-doh doesn’t clue in these dumbasses. How is this possible? Even though this is one of those unwinnable battles, I decide I’m going to go out fighting. Because ripping into a bunch of fucking lackwits with a giant blade is nothing if not therapeutic.
Afterward, while Not!Lynx lies panting and not moaning because he’s THE MUTE CRONABE, Wannabe-Cronabe takes several dialogue screens to insist to Steve that she finish the job. I hypothesize that Wannabe-Cronabe could say, “I’m actually Lynx, and I switched bodies with Cronabe in order to trick you into killing him off” and Steve would still not get it. When Steve continues to stand in place, drooling from the lack of a working brain, Wannabe-Cronabe is all, “FINE! I’ll kill him with your dagger, then.” Because apparently the swallow (heh) isn’t lethal enough or something. I don’t really know his fucking reasoning. Maybe he likes pulling it out of Steve’s skirt or something. Anyway, once he’s liberated the blade from its sexy sheath, he monologues, “Watch this, [Steve]… I’ll avenge Lucca for you! Die, LYNX!”
And this statement of all things is what clues Steve in to what has taken place. Because she never mentioned Lucca’s name to Cronabe during her campfire jabberthon.
Well, I played Chrono Trigger. Duh.
Okay. This would be like if Tidus and Auron magically switched bodies, and even though “Auron” went around referring to Jecht as “my old man,” calling it the “Macarena Temple,” and Wankeseing all over the fucking place, Yuna or whoever only figured out the switch after “Auron” forgot the name of his ultimate weapon. It’s just…ugh, I’m imagining Tidus, Rinoa, and Shion smacking the shit out of these people for being so abysmally stupid. My brain cannot fathom this. The universe shall rip asunder.
Lynx had apparently counted on the retardation of the other party members as well as Cronabe’s muteness (so Cronabe couldn’t go “Hey guys! I switched bodies with Lynx! Er, don’t kill me!”) in order to carry out this most dastardly of plans. Now that he’s been found out, he must take extreme action. And here’s where the stabbity stuff comes in.