We're back at Zozo and Terra has a flashback that isn't from her point of view. Looks like Maduin, the Esper we met in some kind of tube at the Magitek Factory.

And it is Maduin. What a surprise.

Someone's breaking through the gate. This isn't as exciting as you'd think. Maduin doesn't even have a character portrait, and the game simply won't let you into the character screen.

It's Gestahl! Someone described him as your accountant grandfather.

Her name is Madonna. Like the pop singer. And also a term for a depiction of the Virgin Mary. And a term of address in Italy now outmoded and replaced with Signora.

Obviously, Gestahl takes her with him and we know the rest.

We have an airship. Let's explore. This is the Guardian, which blocks the entrance to the Imperial Palace. This is no Scooty Puff Jr. In fact, this thing is unbeatable. The only way to not run away or get KOed is to confuse a character as he's about to use a smoke bomb, causing him to run away, but the game just assumes you ran away and Guardian is still blocking your path. With this, they could easily conquer the world, but they don't.

We also have Setzer. By having Setzer, you technically have access to all the summons in the game by rolling three BARs. The bad news is that the slot machine Setzer uses is worse than the ones in Casino Night Zone. And it's possible to kill yourself with 7-7-BAR. Not sure if pogo jumping prevents that. Not true in Sonic & Knuckles and I don't know if it's possible in Sonic 2. At least you can stop the things. Magicite works, though. Your odds of getting Ragnarok are 1/25, more or less depending on how much the game hates you and wants to punish you with Tritoch in a battle where monsters absorb fire. 1/8 chance of Ragnarok working. 25% of getting the rare item. So you could have gotten some Crystal equipment from ProtoArmor. SlamDancer turns into Marvel Shoes. Grenade, Bomb, and Chimera all turn into Flame Shields. Hades Gigas turns into an Ogre Nix, which has obscene attack power, uses MP to critical, and has a chance of breaking that you can completely ignore by sticking on Edgar and only countering with it. Odds of success: 1/800.

Yeah, it's not even close to worth it.

The auction house in Jidoor is now open. This can be rather tedious, as one of the items up for bidding is a walking talking chocobo. You can't get this, and every time it appears, you have to sit through this, leave, and hope there's something useful. Useful things include Zoneseek and Golem, two useful espers. Someone in Maranda has a Seraphim esper for you. Why not? Even if you can get it a bit later for only 10 gold or gil or whatever you use.

This is Grenade, an enemy that you'll never see if you don't fly to the large forest west of the veldt. There's nothing important you can get from them except for a rage, and the rage probably sucks. They'll use blaze. The Fight command tends to cause him to explode. As I said earlier, you can get flame shields from them if you're prepared to spend too much time trying.

Near the town of Thamasa, which currently has less to offer than even Vector, there are Baskervors. They have Gaia Gear as a rare steal. You want that. Damaging him results in the Sneeze of doom, which kicks a character out of the battle. You don't want that, but there's really nothing you can do about it.

Chimeras (the thing with the heads of a dragon, a hawk, a lion, and a billy goat) drop Gold Armor. They have lots of HP, can't be hurt with status ailments, and use Aqua Rake, Blizzard, Fireball, and Cyclonic, but only the first one when with another enemy.

Cephaler (the nautlius) uses tentacle.

There are intangirs as well. I didn't take a screenshot of one because it's invisible, and making it visible results in death. Unless you stop it and wail on it for a minute. The Rhodox rage that Gau has works wonders. Uwa-aoo! The reason you killed it was to get lots of magic points and a rage. The rage makes you pep up, but if you Mute Gau beforehand...

The Empire is mobilizing.

The Espers are the returners' trump card.

You can finally recruit Mog as a permanent member of the party. Lone Wolf has him as a hostage. Lone Wolf was a character in FFV, who was locked up in a dungeon. There were werewolves in that game, but someone assumes he was just a guy in a wolf mask. Don't do anything. Both of them will be clinging on for dear life. If you rescue Mog, you get him now. If you rescue Lone Wolf, you can get a Gold Hairpin that you can get elsewhere.

Advantages: Dance is powerful.

Disadvantages: Dance is fickle and unpredictable, and he'll spend a lot of time falling over, even though he'll never be the next Baryshnikov.

Arbitrary Coolness Rating: 3. Other people like him. I don't.

Speaking of dance, let's go pick up some dances. Bring Gau along because you're going to the Veldt. I don't normally recommend bringing two characters who attack on their own, but Mog has an attack command that's reasonably strong. Firstly, if you didn't get the Dust Requium (sic), get it by fighting some were-rats or something in the caves of Narshe. Leave Narshe to get the Wind Song (Ind Song, fulfilling the need for a typo in the Anthology) in the grasslands, Forest Suite in the forest and Desert Aria in the desert, like those two weren't obvious. Zozo has the Love Sonata. If you didn't get it outside, fight a battle inside. Mt. Koltz has the Earth Blues. Then land in front of Baren Falls and go to the Veldt to get some rages. When you're done, move on through the Serpent Trench and get back here. You'll have the Water Rondo. Make sure you get it, because it can be missed. But you can't misplace the airship.

When you're done with that, move on to where you're supposed to be, which is that cave beyond the Imperial Camp. In the first room and only the first cave, you'll see this formation of Lich, Apparite, and Coelecite.

Liches are able to use Mad Touch to confuse at the start of battle. They'll even cast Fire 2 and Fire 3. Ice 2 and noiseblaster are more cost-efficient than Life or Phoenix Down. Wall Rings are useful, if you don't mind not being able to heal yourself in battle. I always found reflect to be more trouble than its worth, especially since there aren't any Opal Rings in this game.

Coelecites are the red scorpions. Hypnosting puts you to sleep and Magnitude 8 does what it normally does, if Coelecite had enough MP to use it, anyway. Why's it in there? Who knows?

Apparites are palette swapped whispers that absorb fire. If you haven't figured it out, the monsters here are fire-based. Worse, they can use Imp Song to turn you into Rydia without the good. They're green, they're weak, and de-impifying yourself with the Imp spell does not ignore M.Block, meaning you'll miss when trying to de-imp yourself. Lovely. I mean, it's peachykeen and all that you can block Imp, but having 90 M.Block when an imp isn't the best thing in the world. Good news, though. You'll have a ribbon or two by now.

Zombone is another palette swap. Wall rings are useless against them, so if you had them, take them off and replace them with something else. They attack physically unless you take forever to beat them, where they will chuck a bone at you to turn you into the walking dead. I didn't explain Zombie earlier, but it's a lot like being confused, except your HP is reduced to zero and it doesn't change, you'll attack indiscriminately, and you're dead. If everyone is either zombie or KO, game over. It also has the annoying effect of staying with you after battle.

Fun Fact: Zombones don't absorb fire.

Oh, boy, a changing maze! Don't worry, it's not actually that hard. If you fall into the Tang, you have to start over again.

Someone tell me what I sought to accomplish. Ignore the screenshot. I'm going to tell you other things. There are items here that you should not leave this cave without or you will regret it. The Assassin dirk randomly kllls an enemy in one hit. However, unlike proper one-hit kill weapons like the chainsaw or Deathbringer or Assassin's Arrows, instead of failing against undead and maybe doing damage, the Assassin does the X-out sequence and restores it to full HP. You don't want to do this, so don't bother equipping it. There's a Tempest. If you missed it earlier or you want two, you get it here. There's a Coin Toss relic for Setzer which I suggest not using for now. It's useful later. It splits damage and uses level x 30 gold. A mere 600 or so damage. There's a Genji Glove for those of you who can't have too many genji gloves.

Ing uses Lifeshaver. It's Earth elemental and otherwise, drain. Gaia Gear causes Ing to drain itself and transfer the HP over to you.

This Ninja does not show up on the Veldt. He's weak to lightning, and Terra has no excuse to not have Bolt 2 by now. He says there's a hidden treasure in the plaza beneath the grand stairway. There are invisible treasures, including an inviz edge, 2000 GP (according to the game, but in reality, it's 293 GP), a remedy, and a water skean. Yawn. There's some important stuff a but further from here. The next room has a stepping tile that opens a door leading to the Atma Weapon, which you simply must have before leaving. It's barrier-piercing and dependent on your HP, unless you have a thief's glove, in which it's a weapon with 255 battle power. It also looks like a lightsaber. Vwoom. Whoosh.

At the end, you hopefully have the Atma weapon, and you meet Kefka.

Celes is nowhere to be found. Must be some neutral plot.

Uh, sure, whatever. He uses Poison, Fire 2, Dischord, Attack, Rasp, and Slow. He'll sorta do a special attack, but will miss. Magicite doesn't work here. The cave has a new exit. Make sure the Atma Weapon is in your inventory. You might have thought you got it when you didn't. And feed the cat!

When you have the Atma Weapon, make your way to camp and someone delivers the bad news. If Setzer is the one to deliver it, congratulations! You broke the game.

Espers have sacked Vector. Arvis makes a snide remark.