On her way out of the room, Twiggy snags a “PhoenixDown” from a treasure chest. Weren’t they called “FenixDown” in the SNES version? OMG EYE CANT BELIEVE SQUARE WOULD ALTER THE TEXT OF THIS MASTERPIECE!!!!!1 Seriously though, they change shit like that, but they can’t make any of this dialogue more believable? What’s up with that?

Twiggy’s exploration of the Rebel Hideout leads her to Guile, who’s checking out the guy standing behind the shop that’s disguised as a Bar. Guile tells Twiggy that the only thing he has to say to her is that she can trust his brother implicitly, as Edgar’s always been “fair with [him].” Twincest implications aside, it turns out that Guile’s lying, too. Jesus! Can’t anybody here keep their own backstory straight?!

After Guile’s sparkling conversationalist skills die out, Twiggy sets off to find Edgar to see what absolutely riveting dialogue he has to offer. To his credit, Edgar admits that if the Rebels put too much pressure on Twiggy to join up, they’re no better than the Empire. Edgar tells Twiggy that the Rebels want her to make up her own mind. I hope you’ve got some time, boys. Or like, an extra spinal cord lying around someplace.

Anyway, after she’s had a deep heart-to-heart with all three of her male companions, Twiggy heads over to the shop and buys three more “Sprint Shoes,” just because. Then she heads to the front entrance of the Rebel Hideout, just in time to hear some random NPC announce that he let TSL outside. He’d been pawing at the door all morning! That’s what they get for suddenly switching him to Kibbles’n’Bits, those bastards.

Twiggy finds TSL outside, and bless his crotchety old heart, the old bastard cuts straight to the chase and demands to know if Twiggy’s made a decision regarding the whole “Last Ray of Light and Hope and Goodness and AWESOME!!!” thing. Twiggy, remembering her conversations with Winona and Edgar, decides to make a decision for herself, for once in her life.

She says… … … NO!

Okay, so maybe I made the decision for her. Details, details. TSL’s all, “Oh. That’s unexpected,” and the screen fades to black and fades back up on Twiggy inside the Rebel Hideout. See, we’re supposed to think, at this point, that this is one of those times in an RPG when you really don’t have any say in the matter, and the game will keep asking you again and again and again until you choose the “right” answer, but I’m such a 1337 G4/\/\3R!!! that I know better.

The only thing Twiggy does before turning herself right around and heading back outside is venture forward into the Rebel Hideout, where she snags a “Genji Glove” from a random NPC. For those of you who are playing along at home, the Genji Glove, a relic that lets a character hold one weapon in each hand, is the big payoff for telling TSL to sod off. Otherwise, all you get is a stinky old “Gauntlet,” which lets a character hold one weapon with two hands. LAME!

With a shiny new Genji Glove in her possession, Twiggy points herself right back outside, marches up to TSL and, for a second time, tells him that she simply cannot be the Ray of Light and Hope and Goodness and AWESOME!!! for the Rebels. TSL laments that he “thought as much,” and sends Twiggy back inside to see if she will possibly reconsider.

She won’t.

So, moments later, after having crushed TSL’s dreams underneath the six-inch heels of her strappy red stilettos for the third and final time, Twiggy leaves the broken husk of a man outside and slowly wanders back into the Rebel Hideout. “Hope…” she muses aloud to herself, “How can anyone put their hope in me?” Before Twiggy can cue up some Evanescence and go throw herself off a cliff or something, TSL comes flying backwards into the cave, all “What the fuck!?”

Twiggy and TSL watch with mild interest as a Rebel NPC slooooowly wanders into the Rebel Hideout and collapses on the floor. A bunch of random Rebels run immediately to the fallen Rebel’s side, and Twiggy and the rest of the party gather around as well. I would normally, at this point, ask how the hell everybody suddenly knew to rush to the fallen Rebel’s side, but I so don’t even care. Let’s just move on.

TSL gives the Rebel a quick once-over and Tiduses that somebody fucked his shit up real good. Oh, I thought he was just really tired or something. Thanks, TSL. The Fallen Rebel mumbles that the Empire’s troops captured South Figayro and are approaching the Rebel Hideout as we speak. Which is not good. Thinking fast, Edgar yells to Winona to get his ass back to South Figayro to free up space in the party make sure their Honeymoon Suite at the Inn doesn’t get ruined do a little bit of espionage work behind the front lines, and Winona is happy to oblige. After telling Twiggy that she’d better keep her hands off of Edgar if she knows what’s good for her, Winona leaves the party for South Figayro.

With one member of the party taken care of, TSL demands that Edgar make up a plan for the rest of them, too. Some kinda leader this guy is, eh? Edgar tells everybody that they can escape by riding the Lete River all the way back to Narshe where, we’re meant to assume, they can meet back up with Baron Liverspots and that Esper-cicle that tried to micro-nuke Twiggy. And Edgar, to his credit, doesn’t just make Guile sling Twiggy over his shoulder and drag her along, either. He actually convinces Twiggy that if she goes with them to Narshe, she’ll be able to learn more about her own past. And we all know that Twiggy’s all over that shit.

TSL tells Edgar that his plan is a very good one, as there just so happens to be an entrance to the Lete River from the Rebel Hideout, and they’ve got a raft and everything set up there. But TSL couldn’t think of escaping via the River on his own. Riiiiiight. After abandoning the remaining Rebel NPCs to their own devices, TSL leads Twiggy, Edgar, and Guile to the raft.

Once the party’s hopped on, the Black Screen of Meta-Game Commentary pipes up, alerting me to “Protect [The Sunflowardly Lion] at all costs.” If he dies, we die, see. That little fucker.

Okay, so for this section of the game, the party just cruises along the river, fighting monsters, sea monsters, naturally, that whip us with their tentacles and pinch us with their crab claws and squirt ink in our faces and other assorted aquatic annoyances. We do have one saving grace working in our favor, though, and it’s TSL’s special ability, Health. Every turn, TSL can cast Health, which restores oodles of HP to the entire party for free. Also, even though every character in the party gets blinded by “Ink,” like, five battles into the river, every character has a skill that isn’t affected by darkness — Tools, Blitz, Magic, etc. — so I don’t need to waste a slew of healing items or Twiggy’s MP curing my dumb characters. Actually, to tell the truth, I’m not even sure that Darkness makes a difference as it is. In the SNES version of the game, there was a glitch in the evasion randomizer thingy, so Hit% and Evade% never even mattered. I sincerely doubt Square fixed it for the PSX re-release. Everybody write that tidbit down, as there will be Trivia Pop Quiz at the end of the game.

Boring, boring, boring, the party cruises down the river, fighting, sometimes entering these random caves with save points, and cruising some more. Oh, and there is this one part of the river where you have to choose which direction to go, and choosing to go up, the top choice, just takes the raft in a big circle. So, like, some lazy gamer with a Turbo Controller could totally set it up so that the party goes around in a circle over and over and fights random battles on their own, with TSL Healing all the way, and level up while they sleep. Not that I know about that neat little trick from previous experience, mind you. I AM TEH HARDCORE GAMER!! NO SHORTCUTZ!!

More rafting down the river for forever and ever until the raft randomly stops and a little purple bug floats down next to it. A party member, probably Edgar, screeches, “What? WHAT IS IT?” Well, if the boss music swelling up in the background is any indication, I’d say that this is a boss.

… Oh god, where do I start? Right at the beginning of battle, the purple bug, who, apparently, is actually an octopus, splashes up through the water, revealing a row of teeth of which I, as a very stereotypical British lesbian, am immediately envious. His eyes are also doing this googly thing where they point up and away from the rest of his facial area. They are most unsettling. “Uwee hee hee…” the octopus snorts, “Game Over! Don’t tease the octopus, kids!”

Tease the octopus? I’m still waiting for him to whip out an accordion and nasally whine, “Heeeeey Laura? Wanna marry me?” I mean, come on. I’m definitely getting an “I will show up at your house again and again and again at the most inconvenient times, despite your best attempts to be rid of me!” vibe from this guy. And so, Ultros, FFVI’s resident “annoyingly recurrent, but still kinda funny” boss, gets a shiny new nickname, Urktros. Oh, and don’t mind that rumbling noise. It’s just Jaleel dropping dead and then rolling over in his grave.

Because Urktros is the Comic Relief boss, he shouts all sorts of clever exclamations during battle, not entirely unlike those annoying pull-string toys loved by children the world over. When Twiggy roasts Urktros with her Fire Magic, for example, he squeals, “Yaaooouch! Seafood soup!” When Urktros attacks Twiggy, he cries, “Delicious morsel! Let me get my bib…!” and then rapes her up the ass with a huge tentacle. Oh, come on. He’s a fucking octopus. Nature’s very own Tentacle Monster. I seriously hope none of you expected to get through this without me using “rape” and “tentacle” in the same sentence.

Urktros manhandles the party with his undulating appendages for what seems like forever. And ever. Once, Urktros cries out, “Y…you frighten me!” and slaps TSL across the face with a fat, purple member. I almost die of a heart attack, but, thankfully, TSL manages to stay alive. Long after I’ve grown a three-foot beard and died of old age, Urktros shrieks, “Th…that’s all, friends!” and disappears beneath the water.

As Urktros disappears under the waves, the Marimbas of Wacky Undersea Hijinks start a-bongin’, and I realize that Something is Amiss. Instead of just sitting tight and sailing away as fast as the raft will carry them, all of the party members dash to the nearest raft edge and peer out into the murky depths. Swear to god, I can hear the Jaws music cueing up in the background. Get back on the raft, you morons!

“I guess we thrashed it,” Guile stupids. Edgar’s all, “Don’t bet on it… It’s probably just hiding from us…” All the more reason to get back on the freaking raft, you dumbass! Nobody listens to my brilliant advice, though, because at that exact moment, Twiggy shrieks that there’s a tentacle wrapped around her leg. Luckily for Twiggy, but perhaps unluckily for the player, Edgar pulls the tentacle off of Twiggy’s leg and pulls Twiggy herself back on the nice, safe raft. Yes. Safety is good.

Guile leaps back to the edge of the raft — dumbass! — and announces that he’s going to try to dive under the freaking water to hit Urktros with one of his Blitz moves. Edgar, who I’m beginning to think is the only person in this game with any brains, tells his brother that he’s a fucking lunatic, but to no avail. Oh, and there Guile goes, over the side of the raft and into the water. I’m sure this will end nicely.

Twiggy, TSL, and Edgar talk about Guile’s stupidity and chances of survival for awhile, and then TSL predicts that “Any moment he’ll flop right onto the raft!” On cue, like one of those trained Orcas at Sea World, Guile flops out of the water and right off the top of the screen. Dumbass. “[He] seems a little too perky…” Edgar understates. See, that’s ironic, because Urktros actually threw Guile out of the water. SEE? IT’S FUNNY!

Everything above happened while the characters were still arranged about the battle screen, by the way, but now, the camera flips back out to “Rafting down the River” mode, and we can see Guile’s unconscious sprite floating to the right down a fork in the river, while the party rafts down the left. Oops. The screen fades to black. THE END. Just kidding. It seems we’ve actually reached a crossroads in our journey. The camera fades up on the Proto-Wheel of Heroes, with Guile, Winona, and TSL/Twiggy/Edgar all gathered around a sparkling save point in the middle of a whole bunch of dark nothingness all around. From the top of the screen, a Moogle announces:

“EDGAR and TWIGGY race toward Narshe while protecting [The Sunflowardly Lion]… but what about GUILE, who was swallowed by the raging waters…? And… how is WINONA faring, after having penetrated the Empire’s defenses in South [Figayro]… Is all going according to plan…?” All very good questions, I’m sure, but they’ll all have to wait until next time. Talk about your cliffhanger endings, eh? …Sam? Choose away! If you need me, I’ll be applying a cold compress to my “.” key. The poor dear just had quite a workout.

See you in Part 4!