Quote Originally Posted by zx12y View Post
Thanks for the rebuttal Skyblade, always appreciated. I think Psychotic put my thoughts the best in that the beast was foreshadowing of the bonus scene linked by Skyblade.

The scene I describe actually occurs on a different day before the big fight that leads to them being incapacitated. You really need to understand the context in that some of Cloud's last memories before being traumatized were of him being next to Sephiroth in the reactor. So, the beast actually "is" Cloud in a figurative sense, in that Cloud created the fictional event of the beast breaking out of the capsule to parallel his own process of being infused with Jenova then escaping with Zack. Cloud's mind didn't want to accept the reality of him being experimented on in that tank. His mind places himself as having a conversation with Sephiroth to mask the missing time in the capsule. This is all likely the workings of the Jenova cells working through him.
I know. But the point is, we know that the experimentation on Cloud did not begin until after the fight scene. You'd already linked that video, so I had no reason to do so.

We also don't know that the beast event is a fabrication. It is certainly a possibility. But, again, it could have been one of the reconstructions from Zack's memories. Zack talked to Cloud a lot. Which makes sense, actually. Zack is an extremely outgoing person and Cloud had suffered a lot of mental trauma. Talking can help to keep someone focused and awake in that situation (similar to a concussion, you don't want them falling asleep, you want them focused), so Zack could very well have told Cloud about what was in the reactor.

Actually, in all likelihood, Cloud knew about it even earlier. After the beast incident, Sephiroth locked himself in the mansion for weeks. Zack would almost certainly have shared what they found in the reactor with the rest of the ShinRa team while they were sitting there, essentially killing time until Sephiroth said it was time to go home. So Cloud would most assuredly know what the cause of the delay was, and why they were remaining so long.

The beast is out of context. Where did this beast go, why didn't Cloud and Sephiroth react at all? I mean, Cloud and Sephiroth fought that stupid dragon earlier under similar circumstances. The scene blanks out, just like Cloud's memories. This theory explains why the memory exists. Pretty crackpot theory at this point, I know, but I still love it for what it is.
Actually, the beast, at the time it broke out, seemed only half formed. They likely either killed it, or it wasn't yet ready to survive outside. Either way, this would be another indication that it was a reconstruction of the tale as Cloud was told it. The fate of the monster is largely unimportant. In fact, the cutoff could have occurred even if the beast ran outside and Cloud killed it. That is already the start of a time-skip section of the story (where he jumps forward several weeks time in a few scenes while describing Sephiroth's obsession). Remember, the flashback is explaining Sephiroth. Most of the extraneous bits are only told because the rest of the team asks for it (such as Cloud visiting his mother). There is no reason, in the story being told there, why that monster's fate would need to be expanded upon. The importance of it was that it served as a catalyst for Sephiroth's insanity.



While it could fit as a fabrication, and would make sense as the sort of thing that a mind would construct to help cope with the problems it faces, we do know that something occurred which changed Sephiroth that day, and it is very unlikely that Cloud would not have known what that event was (even though he wasn't there), or that, if that event had been fabricated, that we would not have discovered the truth when his memories were rebuilt.