Eyes on Me

But first, skin color based genocide!

The Ragnarok is infested with enemies called propagators. They come in four different skin tones and can revive one another. To kill all eight of them, you'll need to kill each color back-to-back. I started with the purple ones because the first one is hard to sneak past. The red ones followed, and the other two (green and orange) were nothing special. Once all of them are dead, we have access to the cockpit.

There's an incoming message from Esthar, and the senders give Squall orders on how to return to the planet. Rinoa wraps her arms around Squall's back, so it's kind of a hug. After Squall inputs random letters and turns off the gravity, for some reason, he takes his seat in the pilot's chair. He asks Rinoa to take a seat next to him, but she disobeys. Instead, she floats into his lap. Rinoa wants to be held, but Squall, despite being whiney about her for the last twenty hours, doesn't acquiesce. They talk about being a kid, but there's an obvious disconnect here. Rinoa was comforted by a loving parent at one point, and even the general was kind once upon a time. Squall never had that. The closest he had was a big sister. When she disappeared, he grew a shell. Why didn't he spend time with the other kids? Q, clearly, was there for him, and Selphie and Zell were cool kids. Irvine seems harmless. His trauma story is pretty weak. They get to talking about what's going to happen when they land?

Rinoa is an evil sorceress now. Will she be sealed away like Adel? Squall doesn't respond now. Rinoa is terrified and confused. This isn't helped when ground control informs us they'll need to do just that. Rinoa takes her seat, still scared, and Squall finally acts like a man. He holds Rinoa's hand as they land.

The ship lands safely in the desert south of Esthar, and a man comes to pick up Rinoa. Despite all her reservations, Rinoa knows she needs to go be frozen. Squall initially tries to stop her but stops being a man and reconciles that she chose to go. He heads to a passenger room just as Selphie shows up. The escape pod crashed, and Ellone was gone. Piet waited for the rendezvous group, but Selphie found a chocobo and rode it here. Zell and the rest arrive now to overhear what happened with Rinoa. Selphie left when he started talking about the spaceship, and Irvine went shortly afterwards. Zell and Q, though, insulted Squall. After all he went through, he's just let his girlfriend leave? He finally hits puberty and becomes decisive. We're gonna save Rinoa! Suddenly, the Ragnarok starts to move, and we know what's happened. The scene in the cockpit plays out exactly as they imagined! We now have Final Fantasy VIII's airship. We can explore around the planet now, but do that later. To the Sorceress Memorial!

Rinoa is being carbonated, but the guards let us through to "see off our comrade." We enter, and everyone gets mad. But we're determined, and Selphie and Zell prepare for battle. The guy in charge runs off, and Squall follows him to where Rinoa is. He breaks the pipes affecting her, creating a lot of smoke. Rinoa jumps out of that mood setting atmosphere, and our two main characters finally hug each other! We leave the building, but the guards are still ready for a fight. A large, mute man climbs the stairs and lets us pass. Back on the ship, Rinoa is still concerned and wants to go to the orphanage. There's also the Adel and Ultimecia stuff...

Zell left the couple after we followed the teleporting dog, Angelo, to a field of flowers. The two restate they want to be together, and Rinoa tells him about a dream she's had. Or, a nightmare. She's all dressed up and waiting for Squall, but he never comes. Check out. She starts running through various landscapes in search of him, but she never finds him. Squall, finally saying something good, tells her that they'll meet here. She kept running because they had no meeting place. But now, she can run here: the field we saw in the opening CG. Zell returns and informs us that Esthar's leader wants to see us. It might be a trap, but the message was from a guy named Kiros. Hmm... But I'll go there...

...tomorrow!

Maybe. I went exploring first. Jumbo Cactuar was across the channel from where we first gained control of the airship. More importantly, Zell told us about the Deep Sea Research Facility. They used to research Drawing and junctioning here, which makes me question how both of those things are explained in-world. After a tedious game of red light, blue light (or blue light, no light), I fought Bahamut. "Fought." I actually Drew Full-Life and Flare for twenty minutes while casually attacking. Junction Stop to your status defense and have more than 3500 HP. Afterwards, we'll get our penultimate GF and have 9999 HP! I also visited the Island Closest to Hell and Heaven for small but noticeable end game spell Draws. Finally, I beat up a million elvorets in Esthar to get my main party's ultimate weapons. Good thing the anacondas were the only fight before Bahamut. There's still one more thing at the DSRF and another side quest near Trabia I might do. But I'm finally coming to the end! For a game I hate, I sure am playing it a lot...