Squally tries to head through a doorway, and a train-style closing gate blocks his path. In all caps, it orders him to make reservations at the counter. A little kid behind the counter chirps, “Gatey gets mad if you go in without paying!” The fuck? Gatey? Squally suddenly decides that he doesn’t want to stay in this cracked-out place, which is just as well, since the game designers made up a half-assed excuse why my party can’t stay there anyway.
But you….just said it.
Squally and the others visit the entrance to Timber, only to find a Galbadian soldier verbally abusing the Timber security guards. Rinhoa goes all bleeding heart over the poor guards, never mind that her stupid antics are what’s getting them in trouble. The group returns to the train track overlook, where a lameass Rinhoa fanboy tries to flirt with her. When he can only manage to stammer stupidly at her, he internally whines about how he’s such a loser. Dude, you’re trying to get into Rinhoa’s pants. That’s why you’re a loser. He shoves a Potion at her and then runs off. A Potion. Thanks.
Their next stop is the [Timber Maniacs] building. Timber Maniacs turns out to be a magazine, not a homicidal group based in Timber. This ultra-professional business has a bunch of magazines messily piled up on the floor. The receptionist asks Squally what he’s doing there, calling him “honey” in an attempt to flirt with him. Obviously her charm has no effect on Squally (because he’s gay), so he tells her that he just wants to look around the place. Since she’s trying to get in his pants, the receptionist is all, “Sure, just look around the entire building, because I’m sure I won’t get in trouble at all for giving a group of random teenagers full access to the facility! Tee hee!”
Squally finds a draw point in a darkened room. He’s not concerned with that, however — his mind is completely consumed with thoughts of Seifer sweeping magazines off the desk and bending him over it. Then he notices that Rinhoa is in the room with him, and fantasy time is over.
In another room, where it looks like most of the hard work takes place, a rather effeminate artist hits on Squally. Squally, of course, has eyes only for one man. Although for a moment, he examines the artist, thinking that his gray jacket is rather similar….but no. Squally then talks to the other guy in the room, who turns out to be the editor. Whereas the artist specializes in “random useless dialogue,” the editor obviously drew the exposition straw that day. Squally asks about the Timber Maniacs magazine, and Exposition!Editor gives the entire history of the damn thing. It was established 20 years ago, and is full of freelance writing written by fans/wannabe journalists. So in other words, it probably sucks about as much as your average fan-written website rules, just like VGR. As the E!E drones on and on, Squally starts pouting and internally bitching about how adults suck because they talk too much about pathetic shit. That doesn’t stop Squally from asking for the next bit of information.
Yeah, women. Riiiiiiiiight.
This time, he randomly tells about the Laguna dream that he and his friends shared. This sets off another bunch of reminiscing on the part of E!E. Once again, Squally is irritated at himself for triggering a second round of boring dialogue. So what does he do next? That’s right, he talks to the guy again. When asked about the current situation in Timber, E!E starts rambling about the past. About the only relevant information we find out is that there was a sorceress war a while back. Let me guess — 18 years ago. Anyway, Squally gets bored and probably starts daydreaming about Seifer.
With those riveting bits of dialogue out of the way, Squally decides to raid the piles of magazines. Squally informs us that he’s already read most of them, since they’re gay porn from the “battle series.” However, he finds a “Girl Next Door” magazine in one of the stacks. This is a porno mag, and upon seeing the “girl” in the title, Squally immediately becomes disinterested. Still, he puts it in his magical disappearing sack, in case he needs people to think he’s not gay at some point in the future.
Upon the urging of a random NPC, Squally and company head into the house next door. Squally asks the woman in the kitchen where the hell the [TV Station] is. The woman actually has an answer for him. Great! She tells him that the easiest way to get there is to go through the [back alley] which they can view through her [2F Window]. The [pub] also figures into this, as it was built after the [TV Station] stopped broadcasting.
Squally feels the same way.
Squally heads to the second floor of the house. Two little kids await there, and if Squally were Seymour, they’d be in big trouble. One of the kids tries to extort money out of Squally because a random cat is eating up their food. Don’t ask me — I don’t get it either. The other kid is standing on his hands, because that adds so much to the scene.
This translation brought to you by 12-year-old internet users.
Squally looks out the window to see….the back alley, a save point, and a drunk guy. Gosh, was that ever helpful. When he steps away from the window, the hand-standing kid turns right side up and demands money. Unfortunately for the little prick, his mother comes up the stairs just in time to catch him and give him one hell of a spanking. Once again, I am immensely glad that Seymour isn’t around. Well, I’m always glad when that’s the case, but right now in particular. With that exchange out of the way, Squally heads downstairs and back into the streets of Timber. I think this scene might qualify for one of the most pointless ever. And that’s saying something.
Squally receives a warning from a random NPC regarding Bad Guys in the vicinity of the pub. Another random NPC exposits about evil laser beams around the [TV Station]. What’s interesting here is that there aren’t any laser beams around the station. At all. This is completely false information. And if you can’t trust your NPCs to tell you what’s going on, who can you trust?
…The hell?
On the next screen, some kids stand on a bridge that spans the train tracks. One of them explains that the bridge splits when a train goes under it, and that they try to jump across without falling to their deaths. So what we’ve got here is one of those typical situations where the parents are too lazy and inept to watch their children. But when the children die horribly from their own stupid actions, it’s suddenly a huge, “unexpected” tragedy.
Next, Squally and company step into a house that has the total square footage of my freshman dorm room. Within this tiny house, however, is a faucet that produces magical HP-replenishing water. You’d think with something that nifty, the family could have made enough money to build another room or something.
Does man-juice count?
Squally and the others head down the stairs to the [pub]. A couple of Galbadian soldiers are hanging around outside, bragging about stealing shit from a guy inside. You can tell they’re bad because they refer to Timberians as “hicks” and “bumpkins.” As soon as they spot Squally, they attack. I’m not sure if this is because they received orders to kick the asses of suspicious-looking teenagers or if they’re just homophobic hate crime perpetrators. Either way, the gay gunblade-toting teen, the hyperactive skater dude, and the useless girl manage to bring the soldiers down. At the end of the battle, Squally receives a “Buel card.” This becomes important in a moment, surprisingly.
Upon entering the pub, Squally and company are treated to a whiny monologue from a drunken homeless guy sitting in front of a door. He bitches about the Galbadian soldiers that stole his preciousssss card, and about life in general. Then he starts in on the dumbass resistance group that tried to kidnap the president, because they’re essentially responsible for all the crap that’s currently happening in the city. See, even drunken homeless guys know that Rinhoa and her group are idiots. Rinhoa starts to protest, but then a person at one of the tables stands up and takes over, saying how good and sweet and pure the resistance groups are, and everything bad is the fault of the Galbadians. God damn NPC.
Since the drunken homeless guy is sitting in front of the door to the alley, Squally needs to find a way to move him. One way is to buy him his favorite drink, which involves talking to the people in the bar and trying to figure out which of several drinks DHG likes. Or, I can give him the shitty Buel card that I got from the Galbadian soldiers. Guess which option I choose? Upon giving him the card, DHG is so overjoyed, he lets Squally keep the card and gives him a Tonberry card, which is less shitty. And he has one of the non-drunken people in the room help him move his plastered ass away from the door.
Now Squally is in the alley. The view is exactly the same as it was from the [2F Window], only this time…well, they’re in the alley, like I said. The kids from the house are looking out of the window and having some inane discussion about the kidnapping of the president. I don’t even know why I recapped that. After talking to the puking drunk guy, who has nothing whatsoever to add to the game, Squally heads onto the next screen.
The group walks up some stairs and ends up on a walkway in front of a giant TV screen. The screen is covered with red words and emits a typical static sound. Rinhoa thinks this is creepy. Squally explains some stuff about TV broadcasting that doesn’t pertain to anything we need to know about. Suddenly, Marty conveniently appears on the stairs and informs everyone that the president is ready to start the broadcast. He says that there’s a buttload of guards around the station. “So we can’t just rush in…” Rinhoa einsteins. Actually, I kind of wish she would. But alas. “We’ve gotta come up with a new plan now!” she decides. So she made up a plan that any sane person would know was idiotic and didn’t even think up a backup plan? Yup, sounds about right.
Her next retarded idea is to wait until the president and the guards have gone, and then sneak into the station and make her own broadcast. When she asks Squally what he thinks, he tells her that the SeeDs aren’t there to give her advice — they’re there to follow her orders. Zell is all, “Yup, even if you order us to do completely stupid shit.” Rinhoa is saddened by this. “Oh, what an easy life it must be, just to follow orders…” she sighs. She’s completely ignoring the fact that they have to deal with her, thus increasing the difficulty of their lives immensely.
Squally is all, “…whatever.” He wants her to succeed, because that’s the only way he can get the hell away from her, but adds, “I find it hard to believe that you can do it, though…” Rinhoa is shocked that anyone would speak to her in such a manner. She orders him to say what’s on his mind. Here’s where I have a choice — I can have him tell her off or say nothing. Going with my earlier decision, I of course choose the former. Squally asks her how serious she is about this whole deal, and proceeds to tell her how moronic she and her group are. “How do you think we feel, working for such an organization?” Stupid Zell tells him he’s being too harsh, and then I get another choice: “…Guess I’ll follow up” or “We’ll just leave it at that”. The first option sounds like it would continue along this path of Rinhoa ripping, so I choose it. Unfortunately for me, I have been tricked by the wily game designers. Squally fucking apologizes. GOD DAMN IT.
Rinhoa starts going all drama queen on Squally’s ass. “Maybe this was all a big mistake,” she whines. She thought that SeeD would be the answer to all her prayers, but as it turns out, they aren’t as into the cause as Rinhoa and her cohorts. Duh. She calls off the plan, and then adds, “So…you guys probably think this is all a game to us. …Well, it’s not! We’re serious. So serious…it hurts.” I don’t know whether to cry or laugh my ass off at this ridiculous dialogue. Maybe I’ll just stab this pen into my eye. Rinhoa runs dramatically down the stairs, passing Selphie, who’s finally made her way to the others. And just in time, it appears. What a coincidence!
A picture comes up on the TV screen, and then fills my screen. A fancy podium, complete with fifty kajillion microphones is backed by some red and gold curtains and a couple of flags. You know, your generic important-guy-addressing-some-people setup. A chubby blond announcer guy tests the microphones in order to make this game more realistic or something. He’s as excited as a little girl at the prospect of the first live broadcast in 17 years. He introduces President Deling as the Galbadian national anthem plays in the background. Okay, we get it — PD’s important.
President Deling steps up to the podium. He doesn’t turn into a giant red blue zombie, so it looks like he’s the real deal. He spouts something about bringing peace to the world. Selphie gloats that she was right about the peace proposal. Except that she wasn’t. “Unfortunately, there are some trifling problems standing between Galbadia and other nations, and they must be resolved,” PD continues. Yeah, that doesn’t sound so promising. There are some crashing sounds offscreen, but the president keeps blathering on about a conference with the other nations’ leaders. His whole purpose in orchestrating this live broadcast is to introduce his ambassador for this conference. Even Zell thinks this is totally lame. “The ambassador is the Sorceress…” PD begins. Squally’s ears perk up at the word “Sorceress.” Okay, so we’ve had several hints about the existence of sorceresses, but once again, the game designers don’t see fit to explain it to us. Let’s just pretend we’re all shocked at this Really Important Plot Twist and move on.