When we last left off, we were right in the middle of the exposition sequence from hell. We found out a little more about Bitch’s man-crush on the mysterious Sephiroth, explored the entirety of Bitch’s hometown, and met up with the shittily-dressed Tita. A trip to the local Mako reactor introduced us to the eeeeeevil experiments of Professor Hojo, and Sephiroth had his first psychotic episode. Got all that? Good, because we’re not fucking done yet.
That makes one of us.
Back to the present, right after Bitch avails himself of the lovely save option. “Tita… You were waiting outside then?” Airhead wonders, speaking of the reactor where Sephiroth threw his giant hissy. She was. “We returned to Nibelheim. Sephiroth confined himself at the inn. He didn’t even try to talk to me,” Bitch says, unable to keep the pout out of his voice after all these years. Suddenly, according to Tita, Sephiroth disappeared. But by “disappeared,” she means that he walked a few feet over to another building in town. Namely, the giant, out-of-place mansion I briefly mentioned in Part 7. The Nibelheimians creatively named it “Shinra mansion” since some Shinra folk used to live there. Is that something sinister I smell?
And with that, we travel back to the exciting past, where several blocky townsfolk gather outside the mansion. I recognize Tita by her retarded hat, but God only knows who the rest of those tiny 3D sprites are. Wait, I think I see Zangan. Anyway, Bitch and Bob leave the inn and run their asses over to the mansion. If the townsfolk figured out Sephiroth’s location before Bitch did, despite Bitch rooming with the guy, then I can only conclude that Bitch and Bob were engaged in some hot and rather distracting buttsex. I mean, the way they left the inn one after the other just smacks of “I’ll follow you out so no one suspects.”
Bitch stops at the gate where everyone is gathered and nods to them before continuing on, like “Yeah, he’s my sugar daddy, I’ll see what’s up.” Inside the mansion, little red “This is a doorway, not just something the game designers created to look like one” arrows litter the screen. Bitch ignores them all for now as he runs up the stairs and enters the right hallway. Inside a small room, a random Shinra soldier is confuzzled, since he saw Sephiroth go into the next room, but now he’s not there at all! Can Bitch solve this puzzling mystery? Also, where did this random soldier come from if Bob is still outside and Schtolty is dead? It looks like it’s our favorite time again!
Loading ...Bitch cautiously enters the next room, hoping his detective skills will come through for him. A half circle of tower protrudes into the room, with a “hidden” door embedded in the side. Seriously, this is supposed to be a secret entrance. Even the strategy guide says so, and Dan Birlew didn’t write it so it must be correct. Well, in the case that the extremely obvious door shape didn’t clue Bitch in, the red “DOOR HERE” arrow would. I sure hope that Shinra didn’t hide anything secret in there.
Inside the “hidden” door, the camera changes to an overhead angle so we can see the circular wooden staircase descending into the depths. Spooooky. Actually, it just looks like we’re staring down into a toilet. How appropriate. At the bottom, Bitch finds himself in a cave-like tunnel, complete with creepy stone stalactites. He passes a doorway, but this one doesn’t open. That’s okay, I’m sure there’s nothing important there anyway. Finally, Bitch reaches the secret Shinra library, filled with a veritable buttload of books. And some creepy lights for atmosphere.
Sephiroth stands, book in hand, reading out loud. This is convenient to me, the player, as otherwise, we’d have a rather boring scene with Sephiroth staring at a book that may be a torrid romance novel for all we know. Well, this one reads, “…an organism that was apparently dead, was found in a 2000 year old geological stratum.” And this isn’t a wooly mammoth or frozen caveman we’re talking about (yes, I know the time period is totally off, so don’t fucking e-mail me about it). Nope, we’re looking at Jenova here, named by the oft-referenced Professor Gast. We find out other tidbits from Sephiroth’s reading, such as Jenova being an Ancient, the Jenova project getting approved, etc.
Sephiroth paces some more, now reading silently as this particular portion of the book is not relevant to us at the moment. He heads down a hallway, and the camera switches to point down said hallway, tilted slightly for a dramatic effect. He stops, his silken girl hair cascading down his back as he looks up, deep in thought. “My mother’s name is Jenova… Jenova Project… Is this just a coincidence?” he asks no one in particular. But since I’m here, I might as well answer. Yes. Yes, it’s totally a coincidence and will have no bearing on the story whatsoever. In fact, this is the very first time ever in an RPG where something didn’t prove to have Deep and Powerful Significance. Jesus, Sephiroth, have you never played a video game before?
Loading ...On a related note, I’m now left wondering about how Sephiroth even knew his mom’s name was Jenova. I mean, presuming that he wasn’t birthed and raised by a headless blue-nippled corpse, did some genius scientist spill the beans? “Yeah, your mom’s name was…uh…Jenova. But she was a totally normal chick and you’re not a result of a bizarre experiment or anything.” Why didn’t they just tell him his mom’s name was Marie or something? Then all this shit would have never gone down. Oh, but then we couldn’t have this fascinating and powerful drama. My bad.
“Professor Gast… Why didn’t you tell me anything? …Why did you die?” Sephiroth whines. Yeah, what a jerk for dying. I get control of Bitch again, but Sephiroth isn’t in the mood to talk. He’s totally throwing himself a pity party, with all the decorations and booze and stuff. Bitch is all about the wankst, but I’m not, so I just leave.
As soon as Bitch exits the room, we see a wankover sequence of Sephiroth reading book after book like it’s going out of style. Seriously, Sephiroth could star in one of those “Reading is Really Fucking Cool” posters that they have up in school libraries and mean it. Bitch narrates the story of Sephiroth reading and reading and reading as we see a montage of shelves emptying and books piling up on the floor. Now that’s not cool — you’re supposed to return books to their proper places when you’re done. He’s not going to be allowed back in this library.
“He continued to read as if he were possessed by something, and not once, did the light in the basement go out…..” Bitch continues, like there’s something wrong with that. The screen fades to black as the infamous bell-and-heartbeat musical riff starts up again. Uh-oh. Bitch wakes up on a bed in a random room, apparently unable to tear himself away from his man long enough to go back to the inn. Yeah, this is a mansion, but it’s all dusty and run-down and stuff. Plus, no room service.
‘Wow, I had the strangest dream that I was stuck in a nonsensical game and fanboys impersonated me poorly all over the world…’
Bitch heads back to the “secret” library, stopping along the way to check out an interesting safe in another room. But he can’t do anything with it. That’s okay, I’m sure it’s filled with completely uninteresting shite anyway. The random soldier sits in the room with the “hidden” doorway, muttering something about Sephiroth being different. This would imply that he’d actually been downstairs to see Sephiroth, but that’s just crazy. No one could find that carefully camouflaged door. Spurred on by the ominous music, Bitch hurries down the circular stairs, losing precious seconds because no one bothered to install an elevator here.
He got a masculine haircut and put on some pants?
In the library, Bitch hears an offscreen Sephiroth laughing evilly. Well, without voice-acting, I can’t say for sure that his “Ha, ha, ha….” has that connotation. Maybe he’s just reading VGR. On his way down the crooked bookcased hall of drama, Bitch notices that the entire library has been returned to its pre-Sephiroth state. It’s good to know that even in the midst of his psychotic breakdown, Sephiroth has taken the time to clean up after himself. Bitch finds Sephiroth in an office at the end of the Hall of Drama, sitting at a desk. Bitch is all, “Sephy, honey, are you all right?” In return, Sephiroth just calls him a traitor. This is not cool with Bitch. “You ignorant traitor,” Sephiroth clarifies. “I’ll tell you.” And boy, will he. Reaching so far into his ass he finds a colony of game designers, Sephiroth pulls out a huge mess of exposition.
Here’s what we find out from Sephiroth’s excessive reading. A really butt-ass long time ago, the Cetra were in charge of the Planet. “Cetra was an itinerant race. They would migrate in, settle the Planet, then move on…” he explains. The wording here sucks. Does he mean that they migrated to the Planet from, like, outer space and settled the entire Planet? Or that they always lived on the Planet, and simply migrated to different areas, settling them along the way? Before you send me any e-mails telling me that I’m a retard and I just don’t get it, let me remind you that if any of you got this shit, you wouldn’t argue about it incessantly on message boards.
“At the end of their harsh, hard journey, they would find the Promised Land and supreme happiness,” he continues. Does that mean that the Cetra actually went around, colonizing the Planet (or planets), then when they retired, ended up at this kewl Promised Land place with the hookers and beer? Or is this some sort of religious myth? It really sounds more like the myth thing, but Sephiroth seems to believe it, much like anyone who takes the Bible at its word.
Moving on with this fascinating and completely sensible story. Some of the Cetra got sick and tired of this shit. “Those who stopped their migrations built shelters and elected to lead an easier life.” But if they were settling the Planet, wouldn’t that involve building shelters and living there? Or is he talking about some group of non-Cetra? In which case, how would their stopping to build and live in shelters prevent the Cetra from continuing their journey? And if there were non-Cetra around at this point, why did the Cetra need to settle the Planet? Either way, these shelter-building bastards “took that which the Cetra and the planet had made without giving back one whit in return!” What we’re supposed to get out of this is that the Cetra were wise and wonderful and great, and the lazy jerks, whoever they might be, were the ancestors of Bitch and everyone else who is not Airhead, Sephiroth, or Jenova.
Then, something unspecified yet terrible happened. The Cetra were wiped out, but the other guys, because they were sneaky and bad, hid so that they survived. Which would make them smart, one would think. “The Planet was saved by sacrificing the Cetra. After that, your ancestors continued to increase,” Sephiroth explains. Dude, it’s called Survival of the Fittest. Jesus, this story is fucking lame.
Bitch hasn’t put together this story with the earlier out-loud reading that Sephiroth did, so Sephiroth has to tell him, in tiny words, that Jenova was the Ancient they found in the 2000 year old stratum. And the fact that Sephiroth’s mother was named Jenova was no coincidence, as we surmised quite a while ago. The aforementioned Jenova Project “wanted to produce people with the powers of the Ancients…….no, the Cetra.” Which is the same thing, but whatever. None of the rest of this shit makes any sense. So Sephiroth was the result of this project. That doesn’t explain the girl hair, though.