FFVII - Nearing the end

Once we arrived at Mideel, Tifa immediately overhears some people talking about a poor spiky haired kid who washed ashore. She goes running into the clinic to find Rhek in some sort of vegetable state which the doctor explains is due to the most severe case of mako poisoning he’s ever seen. After trying and failing to get through to Rhek, Cysra tells the team that she’s going to stay with him, to be by his side. They understand and Cid (Yorick) is elected as the new party leader.

Aboard the Highwind airship once more, the team is a little lost as to what to do next until Caitsith tells them of a new Shinra plan. Rufus is planning to gather the huge materia in the world and launch it at Meteor to blow it out of the sky. Somehow the team thinks this is terrible and must stop Shinra from trying to save the world... Never quite understood that logic. So off we go to get the huge materia pieces before Shinra can. Our first stop is Mount Corel. We arrive at the reactor too late and have to chase down a train to steal the huge materia. Next it was off to Fort Condor, named because of the gigantic condor sitting on top of the reactor. Once there we have to fend off a Shinra attack in a little army battle mini game. I opted to just let them reach the base and fight a boss in normal fashion instead. I picked up the second huge materia and the Phoenix summon.

With two of the huge materia in hand Ichorid suggests we go check back in with Rhek and Cysra, which we do. Nothing has really changed but while we’re there, Ultimate weapon attacks Mideel. We have to fend him off for a bit until he retreats. However, once he bails, the earth erupts and the party hastily bails as the life stream gushes up to the surface and swallows the entire town. However, Rhek and Cysra don’t make it out in time and are engulfed in the life stream.

Inside the life stream, Cysra enters the mind of Rhek who has separated into multiple versions of himself, as he tries to find himself, who he really is. We go through several memory sequences and scenes until we finally piece things together. It turns out he really did exist, they prove it to themselves by Rhek remembering things that Cysra didn’t know about in their youth or she’d forgotten about. It also turns out that while Rhek was not the first class SOLDIER Zack, he WAS there. He actually failed the test to join SOLDIER after he was injected with Jenova cells. he was a simple infantry man then, but was ashamed that he didn’t make SOLDIER, so when they enter Nibelheim, he’s one of the guards and keeps his mask on to hide his identity from Cysra and the rest of the town. So he WAS actually there during all those events, that’s why he remembers them, but not as the first class SOLDIER accompanying Sephiroth.

However, when Sephiroth cuts down Cysra, and Zack runs up to stop him, Zack is cut down too. Rhek is the one who arrives and finds Cysra hurt, pulls her aside then runs up to find Sephiroth for revenge. Along the way he picks up Zack’s Buster sword and comes upon Sephiroth with Jenova. As Sephiroth turns around, Rhek puts his Buster sword through Sephiroths belly, go RHEK! Afterward, Rhek goes back out to check on Cysra. Sephiroth comes out hobbling, carrying Jenova’s head and Zack tells Rhek to go kill Sephiroth. Rhek follows Sephiroth out onto a high landing but Sephiroth’s had enough. This time it is cloud who gets a stomach full of steel as Sephiroth turns to face him. But instead of going down, Rhek grabs onto the sword and, with it still through him, he lifts Sephiroth into the air and throws him over the side to plummet to his death. Rhek killed Sephiroth! Don’t remember that at ALL...

So now that Rhek is whole again in his mind, he and Cysra awaken in the life stream and swim to the surface, they wash ashore with the rest of the party. Once everyone is recovered, it’s time to go after the next piece of huge materia, in Junon’s underwater reactor. Shinra put the huge materia in a sub, so we grabbed other sub to pursue, and in a sub mini game, sank their sub. So we got the third huge materia, and now have a sub. Cool. With the sub now in hand we went back down to a crash site and got the Hades summon and some final weapons/limits for Yuffie and Cid.

Next stop was Rocket town, where Shinra somehow had one more piece of huge materia left and was ready to lauch Cid’s rocket to space to stop Meteor. So Cid jumps in the party and we head in. Once we go through the trouble of fighting our way to the control room, it’s put into auto pilot, locked down and we lift off toward Meteor to blow up with it... Doh! But of course there’s an escape pod. We grab the huge materia and eject before impact. Without the huge materia the impact does nothing to Meteor.

Back on the planet surface, we don’t really know what to do next so we go to Cosmo canyon for advise from Nanaki’s grandfather. The party spoke about Aerith for a bit and about how she said she’d handle Sephiroth. We finally decide to go to where she died to try and figure out if there was something there she was trying to use. Grandpa went with us to City of Ancients, and we find out about the Holy materia. This materia (white materia in contrast to the Meteor black materia) is what the planet uses to rid itself of threats. If called upon it should immediately vanquish any threat to the planet. Be it Meteor, Weapon, Sephiroth, or even the humans. After some snooping around we activate some ancient projector system and there we got a cut showing us Aerith’s hairpin, which had the Holy materia in it. Apparently she already prayed to Holy on behalf of mankind. Holy should respond by removing all threats to the planet, but something is blocking Holy’s power, Sephiroth... So basically now, kill Sephiroth and Holy will go off, killing all threats, I win the game.

In the mean time, Rufus has moved the cannon in Junon to Midgar to fire upon Sephiroth in the Northern crater. But weapon is on its way to destroy it, so the group must face off against Diamond weapon to save Midgar. After beating on it for a while, it gives up and retreats. However, Rufus will not let it wander off so easily, he powers his new super gun with all the energy of Midgar and fires in a very cool cut scene. As the cannon fires, weapon returns a volley of its own, the energy beams cross paths. Midgar’s cannon is the first to strike, it passes right through weapon, one-shotting it, on it’s path to it’s main goal, Sephiroth’s barrier in the Northern crater. It shatters the barrier, go Shinra. However, the Weapon’s final volley also hits Midgar, and in the process it strikes the presidents office, supposedly killing Rufus. But we know from Advent Children he survived that blast.

Anyway, Reeve, one of the Turks, is revealed to be StupidCat and tries to take over but fails. And now it seems that the cannon is still charging, even though it’s fired. Hojo is trying to overload the systems and destroy Midgar to give Sephiroth a huge supply of mako energy to achieve his goals. Stupid Hojo. But apparently no one there can stop him. It’s up to the party to go in and save the day once more.

Game is nearing its end, time for some last minute clean up, including final limits, leveling, mastering, gold chocobo to get Knights, the Ancient Forest, etc... Should be able to wrap things up in a day or two. I believe all that's left of the story is Midgar for Hojo and the Northern Crater which is just Sephiroth.