Before PD can finish his sentence, there are more crashing sounds and the piped in music changes from “Galbadian national anthem” to “Oh fuck! Some serious shit’s goin’ on, yo!” Seifer rushes onscreen, cutting Galbadian soldiers out of his way. Squally squeals in delight upon seeing his knight in shining armor, but then tries to cover his exclamation with a cough. No one buys it. Seifer holds his long, hard blade against the president’s throat and the TV camera goes all funky as the cameraman drops it and runs like fuck. Then Quistis shows up onscreen, telling all the soldiers to stand back. Apparently it wasn’t that hard to break into the TV station. Zell asks Squally what they should do, and Squally, worried that he’ll be way too excited to see Seifer in person, replies that they’re just going to stay there and do nothing. His plan is ruined when Quistis orders the “Timber team” to come help her. Squally hopes he’ll be able to control himself.
As the group runs up some more stairs to reach another walkway, we get our first view of the TV station. It’s fucking huge and “Timber TV Station” is plastered on the side in giant letters. It easily towers over all other buildings in Timber, thus rendering the whole search for the place pretty much pointless. And this also proves how dumb Rinhoa and her cohorts are for not knowing where it was. Stupid, stupid Rinhoa.
When the party changes screens, the camera fades out in a TV static effect. The game designers threw this in to try to be clever, but it really makes no sense, since neither the previous nor the next scene is from the view of the TV camera. Whatever, game designers. Thankfully, upon changing screens, Squally finds himself right inside the studio where all the action is taking place. Quistis, Seifer, and the prez are the only people left because everyone else ran like wusses when confronted with Seifer’s massive blade.
Quistis tells Squally that they need to restrain Seifer. He takes a moment to recover from the mental image this causes, and then demands to know what the hell Seifer is doing. Seifer wants to know what they’re planning to do with PD. Squally suddenly realizes, to his dismay, that Seifer is trying to help Rinhoa carry out her president-kidnapping scheme. As Squally stands there with his hand covering his face, trying to suppress his jealousy, Zell starts to shoot off his big mouth about Seifer’s relationship to Rinhoa. Seifer tells Zell to shut the fuck up. Quistis explains that Seifer broke out of the “disciplinary room,” and this only serves to turn Squally on some more, as he imagines himself and Seifer in such a room. When Zell calls Seifer a “stupid idiot,” Squally breaks out of his funk for a moment in order to defend his prince. Zell isn’t finished, however. “You’re gonna take this stupid idiot back to Garden, right!?” Zell shrieks at Quistis.
At this point, everyone gets mad at stupid Zell, because he revealed Seifer’s — and their — origin. President Deling, less stupid than Zell, picks up on this and basically threatens that the Galbadian military will destroy Garden if anything happens to him. Seifer is pissed at Zell, Zell hangs his head, and Selphie continues to look around at all the neato TV equipment in the room. Seifer, no longer having the upper hand, drags PD into the next room and orders, “Take care of this mess! Instructor and Mr. Leader!” Squally can barely hide his excitement at being called “Mr. Leader” by his man, although he would prefer that Seifer be the leader in any bedroom exploits. Meanwhile, Selphie checks her shoes for dog shit, as is smart to do in these situations.
The scene changes to the next room, which is lit with an eerie blue light. Uh-oh. Seifer stands on a raised platform with the prez. In the center of the platform, a large cloth is draped over something. At least, that’s what it looks like. At that moment, some magical circles appear on the cloth, accompanied by some typical magical sounds, creepy harpsichord music, and heartbeats. Just a hunch here, but I think this is supposed to be bad. A woman steps out of the curtain, saying, “…Poor, poor boy…” Any person with half a brain can tell that this is the sorceress who was mentioned earlier, what with her long, black dress with black feathers around the top, not to mention the magical stepping-through-cloth powers.
The sorceress calls Seifer a confused little boy, and spouts some psychological bullshit at him. Quistis runs into the room, only to be stopped by a magical paralyzing blast from — you guessed it — the sorceress. She offers Seifer a way out of his current situation, continuing to refer to him as a boy. Seifer’s all, “Don’t call me that!” He doesn’t want Squally to think of him as anything other than a strong, brute man. This goes back and forth for a while, and finally the sorceress offers, “Come with me to a place of no return. Bid farewell to your childhood.” Yeah, that sounds promising. Seifer lets go of President Deling, who runs his fat ass out of the room. At this point, Squally and the others arrive, only to be met with Seifer waving farewell to them with his gunblade. As Squally, Zell, and Selphie become paralyzed as well, Seifer and the sorceress leave through the magical curtain. Squally is all, “NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!” but no sound comes out.
The camera fades out and back in on the room. Squally and the others are unparalyzed, and the room looks normal. Suddenly Rinhoa runs in, apparently done with her little pouting session. She’s all, “Where’s Seifer?!?!?!?!?!” Squally replies, “I don’t know, bitch.” Rinhoa is worried about Seifer, and runs dramatically out of the room once again. This is going to be a long game. Quistis runs after her, and the others follow. Everyone meets back up on the walkway in front of the giant TV screen. Rinhoa informs everyone that her base was destroyed, but her friends are all okay because “they’re good at escaping.” She giggles. Yes, because it’s so funny that her base was destroyed and all her friends are a bunch of wusses who only know how to run away. And God damn you, game designers, for having the train blown up while Rinhoa wasn’t on it. That wasn’t part of the plan!
On the next screen, Rinhoa says that they need to leave Timber for a while. For once, she actually had a good idea. Is someone recording this? She asks if they have a safe haven where they can take her, and Squally puts his head in his hand in disgust. Rinhoa brats, “This is an order, an order from your client, remember?” Squally is wondering how he can dispose of her and make it look like an accident, but then he reads the script and reluctantly agrees. Rinhoa jumps up and down like an idiot and then runs offscreen.
Loading ...The woman who lives in the house next to the Timber Maniacs building meets them in the pub. She conveniently heard about Rinhoa’s misfortune and offers her a place to stay. So everyone follows the woman back to her house. Zell crouches in the corner because he still feels stupid, as he should. Rinhoa tells everyone that the woman is the leader of another resistance group called “Forest Fox,” and that pretty much all the people of Timber are involved in some sort of resistance. So not only do all these people suck balls at meeting their goals, but they also have no creativity when it comes to naming their groups. Sad.
After the White Screen of Passing Time (not to be confused with the Black Screen of Passing Time), Selphie asks what the hell Seifer was doing at the station. Rinhoa’s all, “Tee hee! He came to help me because I told him aaaaaaaaall about the Forest Owls!” Squally has to restrain himself from smacking her. Suddenly a Galbadian soldier knocks at the door. The woman of the house plays the “Don’t scare my small chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiildruuuuuuuun” card as her older daughter ushers everyone upstairs.
In the second floor bedroom, Squally talks to Quistis to trigger the next cut scene. “He was so angry when he found out it was only the 3 of you dispatched to Timber,” Quistis explains. “‘What!? They might end up fightin’ the whole Galbadian force! And all they dispatch are 3 rookie SeeD members!? Dammit! I’m going to Timber!'” I like how Seifer knows about this sooper sekrit SeeD mission, like they just randomly give this information to non-SeeD members. Anyway, Seifer didn’t show up because he was worried about Rinhoa, he was concerned about Squally. Squally feels a little better about this, but is still a tad peeved at Seifer for abandoning him.
Quistis wonders what’s going to become of Seifer. “He may already be dead,” Squally says, hiding his true feelings on the situation. Rinhoa’s all pissed off because Squally is so nonchalant about the whole deal. She says she feels sorry for Seifer, causing Squally to think, “(…Feel sorry? Seifer would hate to hear that.)” Because Squally obviously knows Seifer’s nature better than Rinhoa. Duh. Rinhoa wants to know why Squally thinks Seifer is dead. He’s all, “DUH. President Deling and the sorceress are allies, and Seifer attacked the president. Does it hurt to be that stupid?” Rinhoa vapidly hopes that Seifer is alive. Squally is unimpressed by her brainlessly accepting nature, and pissed off that she’s all over his man, so he tells her he doesn’t give a shit about what she wishes. Rinhoa whines that he’s mean and calls him a “MEANY!!” in all caps like that. Wow, that sure showed him. Stupid Squally apologizes to her anyway. I wonder what I did to piss off the game designers.
At this point, the Forest Fox leader informs them that the soldiers are gone and they can make their break now. Quistis, Zell, and Selphie run down the stairs. Rinhoa stops and faces Squally for a moment — because this is supposed to be a Really Important Character Interaction Moment — and then follows. Squally debates throwing himself out the window, but then decides to go with the others.
As Squally heads for the door, Quistis asks him where the hell they should go now that the trains are running again. She brings up “Garden Code Article 8, line 7.” This is fancy talk for, “In the event that returning to the assigned Garden is not possible, report to the nearest Garden,” which is fancy talk for, “Go to [Galbadia Garden], dumbass.” Quistis and Rinhoa, conveniently well-versed in geography, tell Squally to disembark at [East Academy] and head through the [forest west of the station]. Armed with this critical knowledge, Squally decides the party. The first order of business is to get Rinhoa the hell out of there. Unfortunately for Squally, I give him an all-female party, but that’s because Zell is currently acting like a moron.
On the way to the train station, Squally and the others run across an old man whose name is given as “Mystery Man.” Only he’s not that mysterious, seeing as how he yells, “Rinhoa, Squally! It’s me!” Good going, Pregnant Guy in Disguise. Even though their destination is a secret to everyone except themselves and the denizens of the Forest Fox household, PG has conveniently developed psychic powers that allowed him to find it out. He was only able to purchase five tickets. For those of you who can’t do math, that means that one person will have to stay behind. Since PG is not a playable character, he gives his ticket to Quistis. Quistis tries to refuse, but PG goes into another fit of labor and shoves his ticket at Quistis before going to hide in the corner. Rinhoa’s all worried that she won’t see him again, but he tells her he’ll be okay. Unfortunately for all of us, that’s true.
The playable characters all head onto the train. It looks exactly like the train from earlier. Selphie starts freaking out over the door to the next compartment, once again too stupid to swipe her own damn ticket, so Squall complies and opens it for her. This has no effect on the plot whatsoever — it’s just the game designers’ poor attempt at character development. Squally morphs into Captain Obvious and tells everyone that they made it. Quistis once again thanks PG for that, even though he’s not there. Rinhoa informs Quistis that PG is obsessed with porno mags, as casually as if she were saying that he collects stamps or likes to do crossword puzzles. “I’ll keep that in mind…” Quistis replies. That exchange wasn’t creepy at all.
The only other thing of note in this scene is Zell’s continued self-pity. I have Squally leave him alone, because his pouting is irritating me. This triggers the scene of the train arriving at [East Academy Station] It appears to be a platform in the middle of nowhere, but since it’s on the overworld map, I can save. Hooray!
I can’t handle any more Rinhoa dialogue at the moment, so this is where the recap ends, I’m afraid. Join me next time to find out how Squally is dealing with the possible demise of his true love. Of course, we all know that it’s not the end of Seifer. I mean, hel-LO!