Chrono Trigger - Masamune

Once the monster in the cave is vanquished. Crono is supposed to explore the rest of the cave and find a pond. Jumping into the pond brings the party to the familiar present. I completely forgot all about this and went out of the cave. Then I just roamed around in the pre-history, trying to figure out how I could get back home. After a futile search, I ended up looking online. Only then I was able to make my way back to my familiar neighborhood.

Once back in the present, it is easy to find the gate back to Queen Leene’s time. Things are dire here. The castle is bare. All the beds are filled with injured soldiers, and the rest of them are on the floor. There is not enough food. The commoners and the army go starving while the head chef is preoccupied with getting the best meal prepared for the king. He has to be shamed into doing something for the soldiers.

The army is making a last stand on the bridge. Magus and his forces clearly have the upper hand. It does not help they are well fed while the Guardian army is starving. They are all waiting for the prophesied Hero to come turn the tide of the war. The Captain asks Crono to go back to the castle and see if enough rations can be arranged to feed the army.

I vaguely remembered the Chef and the Captain being related but could not recall where I had heard that. This is where we find out about them. These two guys are siblings. Their rivalry has devolved into enmity over time. The Chef see the Captain being too full of himself. Chef’s main gripe is the Captain thinks only the military is making sacrifices for the country while all others just reap the benefits. He does carry himself with and air of self-importance that lends credibility to Chef’s accusations. When the Chef is told about how his brother’s life may be in jeopardy, his heart melts in the fire of brotherly love. He gives some jerky to feed the army. How we are supposed to feed the whole battalion with one jerky, is something the Captain will have to figure out on his own.

Back at the bridge, the last stand is broken. The Captain is gone. A dying soldier lets us know he went ahead to fight the fiends. As Crono and his friends make their way over the bridge, fighting off the Magus’ minions, they have their first meeting with Ozzie. He is one of the three generals of Magus. This is not an actual fight. Every time the Heroes get a few hits in, Ozzie runs away. Once at the end of the bridge, he leaves the party a giant skeleton to fight off. This can at best be described as a mini boss. Not exactly a hard fight.

Once over the bridge, there are some new towns and forests to explore. The people in these towns are excited because they have seen the Hero with Medalion return to them. Surely, he will be the one to save them from the fiends. How can they not trust him? He has a medallion and a cape! At first, I thought it was Frog they were talking about, but this is an entirely new person. Upon further investigation, Crono find out this Hero is a young kid named Tata. He used to be a troublemaker but turned up with the medal one day. People identified the medal quickly and recognized him as the long-prophesied hero. Trying to get a chance to talk to him, the adventurers go to his house.

Tata is not there but his father is. He is happy about the new rise in status his son has, although a little baffled by this turn of events. Like any narcissist, the father makes this about himself. He is happy that people think of him as someone who raised a Hero.

That is some Bon Apple Tea material

Let’s take a peek in the Cursed Woods before we go on to the mountain. At the end of these woods is a giant bush covering the entrance to a hideout. And inside we find Frog! He has become a hermit and nothing we can say or do will bring him back to save the kingdom he swore to protect. If there was any doubt about him being Tata, it has gone out the window by now. Not much else to do here, might as well go up the mountain and see if we can recruit this Hero with the medallion and cape to our cause.

Making the trek up the mountain, Crono comes by a cave. A kid is playing in here, but he is clearly not the one we came looking for. But while we are here, let us just see if we can pull the sword in the stone. Maybe Crono is just King Arthur and we can have our own Round Table going. The kid tries to warn Crono off of messing with the sword. When Crono does not take heed, this kid calls his brother in for help. These two are Masa and Mune (get it? Masamune?) and we must fight them to prove our worth. After getting their butt handed to them, Masa and Mune come to realize how worthy Crono is. They transform back into the sword. Although we have the blade (and the hilt from Frog), the sword is not whole. Maybe there is a swordsmith somewhere in one of these timelines we can go to and have Masamune mended. The blade carries the inscription MELCHIOR, and we definitely know someone who goes by that name!

The two kids turn into these…

Then combine to form this…

Only to turn back into these kids.

Before time travelling once more, Crono decides to go check up on Tata one last time. Crono finally gets to meet him at his home. Tata has had enough of this Hero business. He had found the medal after a green looking man dropped it. When Tata tried to return it, this green man told him to keep it. At first, all the attention felt good. Tata loved pretending to be the Hero. Being a troublemaker, he had not felt much adulation from people around him. Especially with his father being self-absorbed, Tata rarely felt important. Adoration that came with this medal was addicting. But then he started getting some unwanted attention. The fiends came looking for him to make sure they could put a stop to him before he fulfilled the prophecy. This was more than Tata could handle. Crono is the first person who has truly listened to him, and Tata cannot help but open up to him. He hands the medal over to Crono so he can be done with this hero business. He will definitely not be joining our band of time travelling adventurers.

Melchior instantly recognizes his creation

Past Medina village lives an old man who has helped us in the past. He goes by the name of Melchior. When Crono shows him the blade and the hilt, Melchior instantly recognizes it. He was the one who made this sword. So many questions I had about his methods. The biggest one being what did he do to make it sentient and who are the two kids fused with it. But this is not the time for curiosity. Melchior has some bad news for us. To mend Masamune he needs Dreamstone, which has long been extinct. The good news is, Crono can go really far back in time and find some when it was readily available. We know where we are going next.

11-30-2020