Meanwhile, back in Alexandria, Marcus has devised a cunning plan of escape.
He and Steiner are going to rock the cage.
Because the cage is suspended from a chain on the ceiling, the guys are able to swing it back and forth like a pendulum until it crashes into the stone balcony around the edge of the room, allowing us to escape. Man, that's some crappy prison design.
The enemies here are the same Alexandrian soldiers we were fighting with Zidane's group back in Cleyra, only, now they're actually kinda dangerous because Steiner and Marcus are quite a few levels lower than other party (and I haven't been giving Marcus any good equipment because I keep thinking he's going to leave the party at the end of whichever segment I'm currently playing).
I'm still not thrilled to be killing them, though, and neither is Steiner, because he doesn't do his victory pose after defeating them, though Marcus doesn't have any such compunctions. I'm also a little put off by the fact that the camera angle seems to be permanently set in these encounters so that I'm staring at their half-naked butts the entire time. On the plus side, they're worth a lot of exp in relation to my low levels, so distasteful themes aside, I spend a little time grinding on the half-naked women to get my chubby man in the helmet up, and this sentence is really getting away from me, so I think it's time to move on.
As we escape the basement, Marcus immediately ditches us to head for Evil Forest, but fortunately the exit from the dungeon is apparently also the preset arrival destination for teleporting from the queen's airship, and Zidane's group arrives just in time to miss Marcus. Vivi fills in Steiner that Brahne is going to have Garnet executed, which he actually believes, coming from Vivi instead of Zidane or Marcus, and a countdown starts. We have 30 minutes to reach Garnet before Brahne does. Wow, either teleporting isn't nearly as fast as I thought, or it takes less time to fly from one side of this continent to the other than it takes me to drive to the store for snacks and back.
More soldiers are posted all over the castle and its grounds, and chase as as we run past... until we pass into a new screen, at which point they completely forget about us. Some of the Knights of Pluto are also hanging around, and give us advice on where to find Garnet, which would be more helpful if it wasn't already pretty strongly implied that we should head for the queen's chambers by the fact that it was the last place we saw Garnet before she got her magic sucked out.
Behind a secret passage in the queen's room, we find a staircase descending into the depths of the foundation, complete with spinning bridges that serve absolutely no logical purpose. Castle Alexandria's architect must have gone to school with the ones who made all the ancient ruins in the Metroid universe with super advanced doors that can only be opened by shooting them with specialized energy blasts.
It's not hard at all to beat the 30 minute time limit, even if you're not very good at evading the soldiers and check every room in the castle. The main purpose of it being so long is to give us time to fight an optional boss in the castle's library; an evil book that is only accessible during this segment of the game. I'd be more inclined to fight it if I'd had an opportunity to save the game after grinding Steiner on those ladies, and I'd rather not repeat that joke again, so we'll just head straight for Zorn and Thorn, who are still here for some reason even though they must have finished extracting the Dark Matter from Garnet at least 45 minutes ago.
The time limit doesn't stop when we engage the jesters, who fight by giving each other magic spells to cast on the party. These spells can be pretty devastating, but can be canceled simply by attacking the charged jester before he can cast it. The only problem is that they don't tend to wait long between getting the spell and casting it. Zorn and Thorn have separate health pools, and the battle ends once you defeat either one of them, so once again the main challenge comes from stealing everything before the time limit runs out, and keeping your health up without an actual healer in the party. Freya's Reis's Wind spell should suffice on the healing front, though.
The timer even continues after you beat the Murderous Mopp jesters, not actually stopping until you cross the room to reach Garnet. Considering that the purpose of the 30 minute timer was to get to Garnet before Brahne did, and there's no way she's going to get to Garnet before us once we're already this far, it seems really cheap that you could get this far and still lose because you ran out of time with less than 10 yards and no obstacles between yourself and the princess.
Garnet is comatose, but alive, though Steiner's almost too distraught to notice. This, of course, is the perfect time to interrupt with another ATE, this time of Marcus running through a rather not-petrified Evil Forest. That distraction out of the way, Zidane carries the unconscious Garnet back up to the queen's room, where we take a moment to rest. Even Steiner is too emotionally drained at this point, and instead of taking the chance to lambast Zidane for not arriving in time to save Garnet, he challenges Zidane to blame him for failing to protect the princess. Zidane isn't in any more mood to argue than Steiner is, though, and for once neither of them has any choice words for the other.
Zorn and Thorn show up again with Beatrix in tow, making for our third fight with her. Nothing's really changed from the last two fights. She still has the same attacks, and she still curb stomps us after a set number of turns. This time, however, Beatrix relents after Zidane points out Garnet's presence to her. Seeing that the queen truly meant to kill the princess, Beatrix finally acknowledges that she's been on the wrong side this whole time, and uses her magic to heal Garnet. Steiner still insists that there must be some misunderstanding, that the queen couldn't really have given that order as hard as Zorn and Thorn insist that Beatrix's efforts to awaken Garnet are in vain. They're also equally wrong, because Garnet wakes up after the third casting.
Brahne waddles into the room at this point, and declares Garnet useless now that her summon spells have all been drained from her, and orders the jesters to throw us in prison. I'm not sure where they're going to put us, now that the giant two-man bird cage is busted, though. Beatrix stays to hold the queen and the jesters off, Freya deciding to stand with her, but why bother? We already kicked the jesters' butts down in the basement, and I hardly think that Queen Tubalard could put up as much fight as a level 1 baby Fang, and Beatrix is on our side now and even tougher than our entire party put together. Why are we running away, exactly? Oh, because they have a big, fluffy, pink rabbit-dog monster!
Yeah, I'm not really feeling the increased threat level, especially since Beatrix promptly one-shots it.
More of the rabbit-dogs chase us into the stairwell, and I purposely let them catch us to get some exp for Garnet, who is now woefully behind the rest of the party in level. We're cut off partway down by some of the improved black mages, but they go down as easily as before.
As we near the bottom, Steiner starts having a breakdown. Beatrix has turned against the queen and Freya is standing up for her annihilated kingdom, and he's running away? He asks Zidane to guard the princess and take her to Doctor Tot in his stead, and then turns back to join Beatrix ad Freya, who have also retreated into the stairwell from the rabbit-dogs they can both kill in one or two normal attacks.
Seriously, why are we running away?!
