Our stealth mission immediately goes south on the front gate, and we kill our way through the parking garage. Somehow, this doesn't raise the alarm.
Inexplicably, there is no one posted in the main entrance to the Shinra building at night. Then we do some parkour given convenient light fittings and cushions, and then security shuts itself down. And apparently the captive science experiments are just casually logged at the main reception for some reason. ' Excuse me, Ms Guard Hound, can you just put a pawprint here, thanks. We hope you enjoy your stay.'
Dammit, someone's helping us again. Can't let these leads have their own accomplishments, can we?
I climb the stairs because I remember it being more fun (I walk up, for extra effect). No elixir lying around this time, sadly, but they keep the core of the conversation. The floors all being numbered takes away from the effect somewhat. So we arrive at floor fifty nine and get cued into the tour guide...of the secure floors of the Shinra building? Okay.
I'm almost hoping that President Shinra is behind this, deliberately making AVALANCHE go through the exhibition about how great he is just to troll them. It's all made up for by the idea that somebody managed to rope Hojo into doing a tour guide segment in the exhibition. Whoever pulled that off deserves a bravery award.
Apparently Sephiroth has hacked the exhibition just to be a troll. Gotta pass the time somehow, I guess.
Aaaand Mayor Domino is behind it. He's an AVALANCHE plant. Sigh. Hart tries to gouge us for cash, but I don't bite despite having finally managed to make some money mercing in the previous few chapters. When did I scare an accountant, I don't remember that.
Our contact is helpfully displayed by the objective marker, which I imagine annoys people that paid out. He wants us to play video games to prove who we are. Done.
I briefly get distracted by video games like every good terrorist in the middle of a rescue mission. Why do Shinra sims always pit you against Shinra machines? 'Time to simulate the invasion of Wutai, in which you will be attacked by a bunch of your own backup gone rogue. In our experience, that happens a lot.'
I die in the last round, running out of MP again, and don't care enough to try again.
Chadley is just loitering in the recreation room, hacking into the system to check our progress. So far I've everything done except 200pc stagger and master all types of materia, so he's nothing to me.
We get to the conference room, and listen in on the vents. Very nice touch that we get a few other conversations en route.
We follow Hojo, mildly annoying him by threatening to put a few bullets through his skull, and he unleashes H2SO4 on us. It looks cool and I defeat the minions just to see if they ressurect like the others. They do. Okay. He's not too hard, and then we head to the main floor, where Hojo has uncharacteristically predicted that we will go down to a few soldiers, which seems odd after defeating a much more dangerous creature. It doesn't work, and then Hojo is kidnapped by ghosts, which confuses him a bit. We rescue Aeris, and then Cloud faints as we encounter Jenova.
Red XIII goes for Hojo's throat, and the ghosts are annoyed when Barret tries to stay behind.
We're off script again. I wasn't expecting this chapter to get so far, to be honest, so where do we go from here?
