After equipping, the party heads toward the elevator. The glass elevator, as before, is just big enough for about three people to fit. Of course, we only see Airhead’s blocky form. But bear with me, here. As soon as she hits the elevator button, something attacks! The view changes to the battle screen, where things are…a bit different. First of all, we can now see two glass elevators descending side by side. Although we couldn’t see the other elevator on the previous screen, this is still acceptable, since there were two elevator doors. Less plausible is the fact that the elevators have expanded to the point where one of them holds a large tank-like vehicle with phallic cannons, and the other holds the party in battle formation. It looks like the elevator platforms can now hold about twenty people. The saddest part is that there are probably numerous threads on the internet where people have fanwanked this into making sense in their little minds.
Loading ...The tank shoots the other elevator, causing the glass to shatter. At the time this game was released, that was pretty fricking cool. But now, it makes me laugh that they’re worried about details such as the status of the glass on the battle-stricken elevators when they can’t even keep a single thing straight with the rest of the game. The tank is weak against Bolt (lightning, duh) magic, and sadly Gay Lion does more damage with it than the magic-heavy Airhead.
Money shot!
When the party sends the tank to the great elevator in the sky, some robotic thing with helicopter propellers descends to fight with them. Never mind that the elevators should have reached the bottom floors by now — look at the cool way we animated the elevators to move at differing speeds!
With the helicopter robot out of the way, the action switches to Bitch and ProtoSeifer’s tense confrontation. Again, I get a menu for Bitch to remove the materia of the other four, but for some reason this menu is different than the previous menu. It’s like nonsense within nonsense. They must have special classes for that in game designer school.
I did not need to see ProtoSeifer’s wedgie.
ProtoSeifer waits patiently while Bitch equips his materia. When Bitch is finished, ProtoSeifer wonders why Bitch has such a hard-on for his ass. Um, let me rephrase that — he wants to know why Bitch is so eager to fight him. “You seek the Promised Land and Sephiroth,” Bitch explains. Of all the reasons to beat this guy’s ass, that’s the main one? What about all the scary threats of fear and stuff? ProtoSeifer confirms Bitch’s accusation, then informs him that Sephiroth is an Ancient, just like Airhead. Which makes her not the last one, provided that his claim is true. IS IT?!?!?! “…A lot has happened. Anyway, I can’t let either you or Sephiroth have the Promised Land!” Bitch shrieks, like he wasn’t completely apathetic to this shit just hours ago.
‘And Sephiroth is MINE, so step off, beeyotch!’
With this bug suddenly up his butt, Bitch heads into battle. ProtoSeifer, as it turns out, has a buddy to help him — a black panther with a long penisy thing coming out the back of its head. ProtoSeifer himself, now that he’s on the battle screen, is a lot more detailed. Now I can see that he has a shorter white coat over a long white coat. This may be a precursor to Rinoa’s mini-skirt-over-biker-shorts or perhaps Quistis’s long-skirt-over-pants look. It’s all about layers, just like the deep and meaningful story of this game. Bitch takes out the panther first, then blasts ProtoSeifer with more fire magic, which makes ProtoSeifer giggle. Well. Finally, ProtoSeifer decides that enough is enough and grabs onto the landing rail of the nearby helicopter. They fly off into the night. This, again, was pretty badass at the time, but doesn’t hold up so well over the years, especially to a cynical gamer such as myself. Now it just looks like they’re beating us over the head with their limp “OMG C00L” stick.
Bitch heads down to where Tita waits. Notice that Tita wuvs Bitch sooooooooo much, but left him to fight that battle all by himself while she picked her ass. Bitch. Not Bitch, bitch. Also: suck it, game designers. When Bitch reaches Tita, she wonders where ProtoSeifer is. What, did she expect Bitch to drag his corpse along? Bitch has a small dick moment as he admits that he wasn’t able to finish the job. But he could be a jizz mopper with herpes and Tita would still want him.
We rejoin the other three as their elevator — which is now tiny again — finally reaches the lobby. Mr. T goes out the front door to clear the area of guards or something. We hear his gun arm go off, then he comes back inside, shooting out the door some more. He announces for our benefit that they’re surrounded — he’s not just randomly shooting his gun. This time. “If I was alone this wouldn’t be a thang but, I gotta reputation to protect,” he bad grammars. I’m not quite sure what in the hell this means, except that maybe he would puss out if the others weren’t there to see him and laugh at his metaphorically flaccid schlong. I should charge a fanwanking fee. Airhead tries to be a martyr, thinking that the Shinra guards or whatever will just let the others go as long as she turns herself in. Not that I really give two shits what happens to her, but I just spent two hours trying to save her ass. No way is she getting captured again. Mr. T says this, leaving out the part where he doesn’t give a crap. “You got caught up in this over Marlene. Now, it’s my turn to watch out for you!” Airhead thanks him, calling him — are you ready for this? — “Mr. Mr. T.” Man, I love when my nicknames pay off. “That don’t sound right!” Mr. T calls her on this ridiculous double title.
‘You ignorant whore.’
Gay Lion reminds them that, hello, they need to shut up and find a way out of this mess. Mr. T throws a hissy. “You a cold man. Just like someone else ’round here I know.” Get it?! He’s talking about Bitch because Bitch is a coldhearted badass!
At that moment, Tita comes bouncing down the stairs to meet them, conspicuously missing Bitch. Mr. T wonders where the crazy bastard is. Tita, to give more “dramatic weight” to the next scene, just tells them to follow her as she runs to the back of the room. FMV time! In Good FMV Style, Bitch comes roaring down the stairs on what I’m assuming is a badass motorcycle. This is supposed to make the fanboys go “Duuuuuuuuude!” and cream themselves. Tita looks around the room until she sees a small sea-green truck on display. Bitch swerves by it as the other four run their badly motion-captured asses over and hop inside. Mr. T and Gay Lion ride in the truck bed instead of squeezing into the tiny vehicle, as it doesn’t miraculously change size like everything else in this game. This is another thing that, back in 1997, was quite impressive, but now it just looks like a bunch of stop motion barbie dolls.
OMG TEH SIGN SEZ SHIN-RA SO ITS WRONG 2 SAY SHINRA
Much breakage of glass ensues as Badass Bitch and the others drive up some stairs, and look around for a bit. Bitch breaks through yet another window (Duuuuuuuuuude!), flying through the air to land on a deserted freeway overpass. The truck immediately appears behind him, trying to remain somewhat inconspicuous so we don’t wonder how it, too, managed to make it onto the freeway.
The breaking glass and action-movie-style vehicle chase are supposed to distract us from wondering things like “How did they manage to start up those vehicles?” or “Why did Bitch ditch Tita and make her run down the stairs by herself?” or even “Where the fuck did they find a motorcycle on the upper floors?” or perhaps “How did they know that there would be vehicles in the lobby when they didn’t even visit that part of the building?” Yes, folks, we have once again abandoned all reason for the sake of a cool scene.
Holy shit, I freaking hit one.
The kewl FMV serves another dastardly purpose — to lure us into a false sense of security before dumping an irritating minigame on us. Fuck! Back in Crappy Blocky Polygon Style, the green truck trundles happily along the series of conveniently-deserted highways, and Bitch must protect it from evil Shinra motorcyclists with his sword. The controls are easy enough — move the motorcycle around and strike left or right. In practice, however, I am all thumbs. Or is “all thumbs” a good thing when you’re talking about video games? The point is, I fucking suck at this minigame, suck like Squall trying to prove his prowess to Seifer. If this were real life, Bitch would be arrested for DUI. And he would be dead. I’m just glad I don’t put my video footage on the web for people to point at and laugh.
Several humiliating minutes later, the motorcycles stop chasing our heroes. That’s because the overpass ends and the Shinra motorcyclists are surprisingly smarter than lemmings. To add to the excitement and tension of this scene, another tank-like vehicle herds Bitch and the others toward the dropoff. This would be the next boss.