07J: Healing the Rifts

07J: Healing the Rifts

Hope reunites with his father

You regain control of Fang outside of Hope's house.  Head forward and left to get a Phoenix Down from the Treasure Sphere here, then join Hope at the door to his house to trigger the CS of Hope reunited with his father.  Hope tells his dad that mom is dead, and then we cut away to the inside and a bit later.  Dad is understandably broken up over the loss of his wife - Hope has had longer to come to terms with this obviously - and maybe cannot handle his father falling apart.

Hope tries to tell his father what the plan is - and Dad reacts in a way that is much better than you might have anticipated.  Perhaps he is not a member of the brainwashed generation after all?  Fang looks all warm and fuzzy and then we are back in control of her and look!  A save point!  Right in the middle of Hope's dining room!  Man, what an odd place for a save point?!

Now is a good time to see to Fang's jobs and kit - you should now have capped Commando and Sentinel should be one crystal away from being capped.  Saboteur will need about 3 full points and the Accessory point so four in total - an easy grind!

You can spend a few minutes exploring the apartment - there are examine spots in it - so why not?  You might want to check the TV - you can catch the news broadcast that is mostly about you.  The CS cuts away to Lightning who is also watching TV in the bedroom with Snow, who then wakes up. 

Lightning and Snow have a deep conversation and make up, and it is really about time that they made nice, right?  Hope makes an appearance to pass on a message - his Dad wants to talk to them. 

The scene in the living room is understandably rather tense, and while Snow tries to take the blame yet again for Nora's death, Hope points out that Snow rescued him, which implies that he feels that the one sort of balances the other oue.   Dad pretty baldly sums up the situation, including the threat that L'Cie represent to innocents - which is considerable and sort of makes you wonder how any of them could see a graceful way out of this situation.  I sure don't!

Snow declares that they will take down the Sanctum, to which Hope's father offers a rebuttal - that tearing down the forces of control will ultimately lead to even more death and destruction.  What he means by that is simple enough though largely unstated - often you are better with the evil that you know rather than a new one you do not.  

The conversation that was happening in that room likely would have been both interesting and very informative, as they were about to touch upon the political and cultural aspects of the occupying force and the threats that it represented - so is it really a surprise that just when they are all ready to work together and get down to the nitty-gritty the man shows up?  Nah!

- Time to fight again -

A gas attack begins an otherwise bog-standard raid by a mixed group of soldiers.   You should be able to quickly take control of the situation and eliminate the immediate threat, but Fang is right; barricading yourself in the apartment is just  an invitation to a siege and you cannot win that sort of fight.

There are additional troops in the house - go ahead and take them out now.  If you decide that you want to cap off Gang's jobs this is actually not a bad place to do that grind considering that you do not need a lot of CP and there are two groups of mobs worth a total of just over 300CP that you can burn through in less than 2 minutes?  That is a quick grind spot if I ever saw one!  You will easily 5-star both fights and the spoils can include some useful items including premium Gil-value items, so what do you say?  Want to get those pesky Stage 5 job levels capped now?  I know I do!

Right, so it took five fights and less than 15 minutes to cap off Fang's jobs and pick up an extra Accessory Slot - not a bad piece of work!  Remember this was mostly about getting Fang up to speed here - she will be playing ain increasingly important role as a DD member of our party, and with her Sentinel Skill she also has the ability to Tank when needed..  Grinding her to cap was mostly painless and the bonus is that all of our other party members banked that CP to use when we get our next unlock!  Bonus on top of bonus!  Excellent!  Another consideration here is that much of the spoils you just picked up have indirect and direct value for upgrading weapons - something we are actually going to need to do in a little bit.

Before you move on along the path check the corner of the room for a Treasure Sphere and grab the vial of Ethersol out of it.   While we are on the subject, you may want to be really careful about using Ethersol - it has the effect of fully charging your ATB meter which is clearly a valuable resource to have, so you will not want to use it indiscriminately.  In fact you will likely want to hold on to all that you get, because these things - like Deceptisol - will be invaluable when you start doing the long series of Stone Missions later, so it does not hurt to plan ahead now, right? 

In the way back area of the flat that is shaped like a hook you will find a Sphere with a Brawler's Wristband - this is a new accessory for us and one that Fang can make good use of, and it is also one of the items you will want to be collecting for the Weapon and Accessory collection Trophy/Achievement.  Do not sell these no matter how broke you are - you want to not sell ANY accessories or weapons until you absolutely know you will not need them later!

Now examine the red examine point and you get a CS with some thumps, and a chat between Snow and Hope's Dad - and then a new threat arrives.  An airship and some elite troops.  Fang wonders out loud "Who ordered the Battalion?"

Snow holds his coat out in the window to test their attention and it gets shot up - which means they are in fact paying attention!  Next he does something really dumb - he actually exposes himself, walking out to confront the enemy!  All things being equal, the same thing that happened to the coat should have happened to him - but as the script did not call for "Snow does scarecrow dance as large chunks of flesh and bodily fluids are forcefully removed from his body" that does not happen...

In a flowing string of words that - if I can be frank - seems completely out of character for him, Snow makes a convincing plea, and then the PSICOM Colonel steps in.  While he appreciates your position, he is one of the long line of military who follows the party line - regardless of how faulty that logic is - and he explains that to you.  You know, under different circumstance you could have been mates with this guy - you never know!