09F: A Focus Revealed

09F: A Focus Revealed

First Barthandelus Fight

Colonel Librarian and the Lord High Mucky-much are here waiting for us - and Colonel Librarian puts herself in the hero's slot only to be betrayed by her Lord and Master - who it turns out is a Fal'Cie!  Now the truth comes out - you learn that Cocoon is nothing more than a factory for raising humans - raising them to be used by the Fal'Cie for their nefarious purposes!

You may have guessed that this is the Boss Fight for this Chapter - and yeah, it is: Barthandelus the Fal'Cie must die, and you must do the killing!

Okay you know the drill - you start with the Right Pauldron and then the Left Pauldron, then switch to the Right Ailette and then the Left Ailette, and once all four are destroyed, you target Barthandelus and pound that Fal'Cie into the dirt, oh yeah! 

A few things about this fight - first, you get plenty of warning that he is going to unleash his special attack because he charges up to do it - and that actually takes him a while.  You know you need to make sure you have fully healed your team before he cuts loose with his special attack, since you have no way of knowing what two members of the team are going to get the major hit from it.  As the fight starts you should cast Shell and Protect on the party before you do anything else, since you really need those to mitigate the damage that this guy can dish out.

Once you have Shell and Protect cast it is simply a matter of hitting him with everything you have as quickly as you can.  Use your potions to heal after every attack, and switch to your Medic when you get pounded by his special.  If you are using the potions consistently you will not have to switch out to Medic as often, which means you will quickly stagger him, and thus be able to deliver some serious hurt to him.  Obviously you want to maximize your time in stagger, because that will ultimately shorten the fight.

After you defeat him you will receive 6,000 CP for the fight, some random loot, and your Crystarium will expand another level!  You then get to watch him die - sort of - because he is back!  Yeah, you cannot kill Fal'Cie by killing the form that they occupy - in order to kill a Fal'Cie for real, you have to use Ragnorok - a Demi-God Eidolon.  Now you do not know this, but two of you have received the Focus to summon Ragnorok.  What two?  Well, ask yourself this - which one lost her memory?  And which one pretended to lose her memory because she could not face the truth of her Focus?  Right!  Fang and Van!

Barthandelus then tells them something that none of them are prepared to accept - and the CS cuts to the ship pretty much coming apart around their ears!  As if things are not already bad, here comes the L'Cie hunter Cid, determined to blow us out of the sky!  Things go a little wonky and then a little sideways as the ship you are in starts fighting the battle on its own - and then passes through the shield that is supposed to be able to keep ships - and people - out of the city! 

Passing through the shield lets you escape from the attackers, and as you fly through the city your attention is drawn to what is outside of the airship, so Sazh is not paying attention to what is approaching in front of it - and you end up flying directly into a building!  Well, sort of - it is clear that just before you actually hit the building the ship does something magically odd so chances are we are not dead!

The game prompts you to insert Disc 3 - we will have to do that to find out if we die then, right?  Once you insert Disc 3 you are prompted to save - do that - and we cut to a CS in which we are inside some sort of construct.  Van offers that it looks like a piece of Pulse.  Fang wonders why they would keep a piece of Pulse under the floorboards, and that leads the team to discuss the whole combined Focus in detail.

Van tries to cheer Snow up - and he is looking pretty stunned - and then Van voices what I know I - and probably you - were thinking - why would a Cocoon Fal'Cie want to destroy Cocoon?  We do not get an answer to that question - yet - what we do get is a new Trophy/Achievement unlocked: Instrument of Truth.  That means the end of another Chapter!