Anyway, where were we? Oh, yes. The parade float going under the gate. The way it’s playing out, it seems like the clock hits 20:00 a good thirty seconds before the float actually ends up under the gate. Good thing Zell is watching the whole thing through the window so that he can order Quistis to flip the switch. And that’s not a euphemism for his penis. I gain control of Quistis, and I briefly wonder if I could stand around indefinitely until I’m good and ready to hit the switch. I don’t really feel like chancing it, though. The crashing down of the gate warrants yet another FMV. Sorceress Edea stands up in shock as the bars block off her exit. More importantly, she got cut off from her fabulous dancers! Sadly, we never get to see what happened to them. If people weren’t so interested in writing Squall rapefics, maybe they could come up with an interesting resolution for the dancers.

‘Especially with a schlong as big as yours…’

But that’s neither here nor there. With the gate down according to plan, let’s resolve the sniper team plot. There may be happy holographic clowns frolicking about, but Squally is less than pleased at Irvine’s latest statement. He’s all, “Hello, bitch, time to shoot off that big gun!” Irvine stammers that he “always choke[s] like this.” We’ll leave the obvious innuendo to the image caption, and focus on the other aspects of his statement. “I try to act all cool, joke around, but I just can’t handle the pressure…” he finishes. Okay, let’s examine this. Here’s a guy who, by his own admission, always buckles under the pressure. Yet of all the possible candidates to carry out this important mission, Headmaster Martine picked him? Either he’s the only gunner in all the Gardens or the game designers just wanted some tension here and they didn’t exactly think it all the way through. There is a third option — those in charge didn’t really want the sorceress dead. If they did, why would they send a group of inept losers to do the job? Jesus. It’s like choosing Tidus to be the stud in a human breeding program.

Squally encourages Irvine to just fucking shoot. “My bullet… The sorceress… I’ll go down in history,” Irvine freaks. “I’d change the history of Galbadia… Of the world!” Welcome to the main party of an RPG. The two of them go back and forth, Squally yelling at Irvine to hurry up and Irvine yelling that he can’t. There’s obviously some impotence subtext here, too. Meanwhile, the sorceress hops down off of the float and charges through the door to tear whoever closed the gate a new asshole. Or she would if she were the one character in this entire game with critical thinking skills. Eventually, Squally tries a different tactic. “I don’t care if you miss. Whatever happens, just leave the rest to us.” I don’t know who this “us” is — surely not that useless nag Rinhoa. Squally encourages Irvine to think of it not as a history-making shot, but as a signal for this mysterious “us” (maybe Squally has Multiple Personality Disorder?) to charge. This also proves that while Rinhoa thinks Squally is a shitty leader, he clearly is not. Oh, but I’m sure he’s growing and changing because Rinhoa has a magical Mary Sue influence on him.

Squally’s touchy-feely approach helps Irvine through his crisis. Plus, I’m sure there was an unspoken promise of hot and steamy buttsex somewhere in there. Irvine raises the phallic rifle, aims, and shoots. But like everything else in this farce of a mission, it goes horribly awry. Though the sorceress still stands right in the center of the float, with a target essentially painted across her cleavage, she manages to block the shot with some kind of shielding magic. I guess the designers of the plan forgot to take that whole magic thing into consideration.

PENIS!

Irvine sinks to the floor in a drama queeny wankst-filled fashion. Squally, hoping that this incident doesn’t cool Irvine’s lust for a little “action” later, reassures Irvine that he did everything perfectly. “Just leave the rest up to me,” he says suggestively. He tells the other two — yes, that includes Rinhoa — to “back [him] up.” He might as well ask one of the holographic bunny rabbits for all the good it’ll do him.

Here’s the part where another major flaw of the plan comes into play. See, it’s all convenient and stuff for the team to be located further away when it comes to the sniping aspect. But now that it’s time to implement Plan B, Squally has to make it from the clock on the roof of the prez’s mansion, through the crowd, to the gateway. The sorceress could be halfway back to Galbadia Garden by that time. Plus, there’s the whole issue of guards and shit, assuming that not every single guard in the city is a moron.

But what am I saying? Who cares about that sense shit when we can have another impressive FMV? First, I spend three minutes junctioning. I love how that crappy throwaway train mission and the SeeD field exam had big old time limits, but in this case, everyone seems to have all the time in the world. Not that I really want a huge time limit sequence, but that doesn’t mean I can’t mock this anyway.

When Squally is thoroughly prepared — and the sorceress is perhaps relaxing with a fun-filled ice skating session at Galbadia Garden — he tells Irvine to “take care of Rinhoa.” He clearly means this in the same way that the mob might “take care” of a problem individual. Then, it’s time to kick some sorceress ass! Squally jumps off the edge of the clock onto the roof, which is a couple of times his height. Fair enough, but ouch. At the podium, he whips out his gunblade (heh) and jumps all the way to the street in FMV form. Holy shit. A bunch of people, including Galbadian Army soldiers, freak out at the crazy gunblade-wielding weirdo landing in their midst.

Then — and I shit you not, here — he climbs into a nearby convertible, backs up quickly without running anyone over, then races full speed toward the gateway. He crashes the car sideways into the gate, but literally a second later, his non-FMV form flies through the bars. I think it may be time to look at some of the problems here. That’s my job, after all. Assuming that Squally can jump off the roof, gunblade in hand, and manage to hurt neither himself nor anyone in the crowd, why on earth was there a fucking convertible in the middle of the crowd, keys in ignition, with its fucking engine running? Upon watching the FMV several times just to make sure, it’s clear that Squally hops in and just takes off without even having to start up the vehicle. This is truly beyond ridiculous. Oh, it makes for an awesome FMV, I’ll give you that. And Squally looks hot while driving a car. But it makes the motorcycle sequence in FFVII look like a God damn logic exercise in comparison.

Apparently Edea decided to face away from her unseen attacker and the ensuing chaos since the shot, as she’s turned toward the front of her float when Squally enters the gateway. But Squally isn’t looking at her. For his prince, Seifer, crouches at the front of the float, smirking that sexy smirk that makes Squally weak in the knees. Plus, we get a crotch shot of him. After that, there’s a pointless close-up of Edea and her freakish eye make-up looking pissed or turned on or bloated with gas. Seriously, her expression isn’t very distinctive here.

Back in regular gameplay mode, Seifer addresses his boy toy. “Well, this is how it turned out,” he drawls, leering at Squally’s sweaty leather-clad form. “So you’ve become the sorceress’ lap dog?” Squally snits, unable to hide his jealousy. He wants to be Seifer’s lap dog. Seifer corrects Squally, saying that he’s her knight and that’s, like, totally different. This doesn’t make Squally any happier. How could he? And with this woman? EW. Seifer strikes a pose, announcing that this “has always been [his] dream.” Which jives with what was in the Garden computer system regarding Seifer’s library habits (yeah, that’s the part I foolishly did not recap), but it seems rather odd that Edea still had to talk him into it earlier. Whatever. The point is that it looks like Squally has been ditched for a witch.

I KNEW IT!!!!

Cue boss battle versus Seifer. This time it’s one on one, just the way Squally likes it. “Squally, you’re mine!” Seifer says at the beginning of the fight, making Squally swoon. Although he’s not pleased with the mixed signals here. Does he still have a chance or not? Seifer needs to stop toying with him, damn it! Regardless, the two of them resort to their default form of communication — gunblade versus gunblade. And the sexual tension is thicker than the Dicku Tree’s…trunk.

Squally spends most of the battle sucking magic out of Seifer. And I mean it like that. Between thrusts of the gunblade, Seifer wonders if Squally thought he was dead. “Not until I fulfill my dream!” Seifer winks. Again with the mixed signals. I’m kind of wondering how Seifer knew about the spreading of disinformation — who was responsible for that? But we never really find out about the elaborate conspiracy involved. It was just another ploy that the game designers used to add some shock and surprise to the parade scene. Yawn.

When Squally gets tired of “drawing magic,” he hits Seifer a few times with his gunblade, beating his ass but good. Again in that way. Seifer bends over, whining in surprise about losing. I’m kind of surprised, too — that was disgustingly easy. Plus, I didn’t know Seifer was such a bottom. Squally is both happy that he doesn’t have to pummel his true love any more and disappointed that he doesn’t get any more gunblade play. Off the battle screen, Squally snipes that Seifer is “losing it.” Rawr! Hiss!

That tends to happen when you’re the bad guy in a video game.

With that little flirtatious interlude out of the way, it’s Edea’s turn for some action. Not in that way. “A SeeD… Planted in a run-down Garden,” Edea monotones. Get it? It’s a totally clever metaphor involving the actual name of the group and its base! And Edea’s about to break out the weed whacker. Hee…”whacker.” This battle gets its own special Sorceress Battle Music in order to distinguish this from other types of boss battles. As Edea and Squally face off, Rinhoa and Irvine arrive just in time to create a three-person battle party. You know, it really would be more convenient for the gateway team to fight the sorceress if the shot missed, since they’re right there and all. Instead of the three furthest away people taking care of it. The nonsense is breeding like rabbits.

Rinhoa Mary Sues, “I can fight if I’m with you!” I guess she won’t be fighting much in this game then. Irvine, meanwhile, wants to “redeem [him]self.” Even though he didn’t fuck up. Whatever, Irvine. Get over yourself.

Now, I can fight this particular battle in one of two ways. Either I can take the brunt of Edea’s powerful spells with my characters or GFs and heal a lot, or I can summon Carbuncle to cast Reflect on my characters. The latter causes Edea to waste her turns dispelling the reflect instead of attacking. As long as I keep summoning Carbuncle, the worst Edea does is a really shitty physical attack. In other words, this battle is easier than convincing Tingle to have sex with Link. I spend about 90% of the time drawing nifty magic. Finally, when I’m tired of the battle, Squally lets loose with a Renzokuken (which should really be named Renzococken), taking out his anger and jealousy on this woman who brainwashed and seduced his lover away from him. Bitch.

Since the sorceress is an important enough character to the story, this battle does not result in her death. Yes, another one of those. And the second one in a row, no less. What actually happens is that she fires off her limit break via FMV. Summoning a group of phallic ice shards, she magically thrusts them forward through Squally’s shoulder. Ouch. But we don’t really care about the main character or anything — nope, this is All About Rinhoa. We see her expression of shock and horror — which is what she’d look like if she ever got the hint that Squally doesn’t want to have sex with her. There’s a pointless — yet artsy — fast zoom-out to the cheering crowd. Back where the plot is happening, we get more expressionless close-up shots of Edea, then — shock! — an actual shot of Squally looking less than thrilled at his current predicament. Although he does like to be impaled by things. He falls dramatically backward off the float. That might hurt a normal mortal, but we’ve already proven that Squally can fall several times his height and be totally fine, so this is no biggie.

The scene wouldn’t be complete without another overdramatic shot of Rinhoa, crying out and reaching toward Squally. That Irvine guy is nowhere in sight, as he is not Rinhoa, and thus the game designers don’t want to waste precious FMV footage on his unimportant ass. Our last view before everything goes to black is a close-up of Edea’s yellow eye with its rather keyhole-shaped pupil. Squally’s first unfortunate encounter with a key-related object.

So that whole mission was pretty much a gigantic fucking failure. No surprise, since it appears to have been concocted by a team of Tiduses. But at least we got a lot of Rinhoa FMVs and screentime, yay! Pardon me while I shoot myself.

Well, folks, this brings us to the end of Disc 1 and also this recap. I’m sorry we all had to waste our time on that whole pointless mission, but the good news is that things get better in the next recap. A lot better. Hint: Squally in prison. With Seifer involved. And restraints. Aw, yeah.