Now it's Steiner's turn to bust things
up.
But first, it's time to correct
something I've probably been getting wrong this whole time. The
queen's name's an oddball one, so I suppose it makes at least a
little sense that I've been spelling it wrong all the times I've used
it thus far. Brahne is the more correct spelling, even if my
spellchecker disagrees with me.
Anyway, on to the game. Vivi's plan is
to use the teleporter pods on Brahne's airship, the Red Rose, to get
the party back to Alexandria. It works, somehow, and Vivi, Zidane
and Freya go beaming off to the castle.
At the same time, Steiner and Marcus
are finally getting around to freeing themselves from their
situation. It was just a matter of shifting their weight until the
cage slammed into the ledge more or less at the same height as the
cage. Once the cage gets wedged into the structure, the pair makes
their escape. There is some effort from Beatrix's soldiers to stop
them, but it's light, and the duo soon makes it to an exit.
Marcus says he's going to head for the
Evil Forest to use the Supersoft on Blank. Conveniently, Zidane and
his team materializes in the same place and tell the knight what's
going on, as well as that they need his help to get her out.
Steiner's as dense as always about this, but goes along with them
anyway. For some reason, it's a timed event to get to Dagger, and
it's a rather substantial time limit, all things considered. It's a
half-hour time limit, which makes me think we're supposed to explore
or something. Either that, or I was really lucky and managed to have
only light resistance. The soldiers do pursue some, but they're
easily avoided, and some even seem to give up their pursuit if the
party gets too far away. This is another one of those situations
where I was expecting random battles as well, but didn't get any.
The route to where Dagger's being held
is a fairly straightforward and obvious one. At the end is the
cathedral where Zorn and Thorn took Dagger's eidolons from her. It
seems we're getting there not long after it happened, as the two
jesters are still there, watching over their princess. We've kinda
gotta beat on them for awhile to get through to her, which was no
real problem since Zidane had his Trance meter all but filled, and
using a few well-chosen limit breaks on them really took down
comparatively quickly.
Once the scripted battle ends, the
party finds that Dagger is in a coma as a result of what the red and
blue guys did to her. Steiner goes overboard one more time and
questions his right to even live, let alone be a royal knight, based
on what just went down. The good news is that the others talk him
into escaping, but before they do, there's a scene showing Marcus
getting to the Evil Forest.
When the party gets back to the room
where they first found the entrance to the path to the cathedral,
there's some discussion of how both Zidane and Steiner are changing
in their views of things as a result of what's going on. About that
same time, it turns out that the Red Rose has gotten back to
Alexandria as well. Beatrix shows up and knocks the party down to a
single point of health each, after which Zidaine points out that they
have the princess with them and Brahne wasn't just fucking around
when she said she intended to kill her daughter.
Naturally, this changes everything for
the general, who has a change of heart and uses some sort of spell to
bring Dagger around. It doesn't seem to work the first couple times,
and Zorn and Thorn, who had been watching all this for awhile, think
it's a laugh riot until the third time really is the charm.
Finally, Her Yugeness puts in an
appearance, telling Beatrix to throw Dagger and the others in the
dungeon. Beatrix replies by pretty much telling Brahne to go fuck
herself and joins forces with the party. She and Freya stay behind
to buy the others time to escape with the princess. On their way
out, Steiner finally decides that defending Alexandria and his
princess doesn't mean always being with her, and goes back to help
the ladies hold back the queen's forces. I guess the shock and
trauma of the last hour or so and seeing all these other folks
ballsing up had an effect on the guy.
There's a save point in the basement
chamber where Dagger was being held, so I made use of that as a good
breaking point for this issue. I also made use of my second save
file, just in case I somehow managed to screw myself somehow here. I
don't think I did, but it's possible. Finding out is something that
will have to wait until next time, though, as I'm still in that
unfortunate habit of doing all this way too late at night. So, until
then, stay safe, keep gaming, have fun, and DFTBA!
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