What's the reason for the final battle being held in the Ocean Palace? I ask because recently I've just thought
"What would have happened if Crono had used the Masamune in the Mammon Machine instead of using the Red Knife?"
Suppose that for some reason the CT:CE party goes back in time to do just that. The Masamune damages the Machine more than the Knife could have, some crazy reaction happens. The sword absorbs a huge amount of energy like the Knife had, but it absorbs so much that it briefly turns into the corrupted evil Masamune (but just for a few seconds for a visual effect, because it's still "normal" during the Fall of Guardia cutscene on PSX). The Frozen Flame which was trapped inside the Mammon Machine discards the Machine shell into the DBT to free and save itself from the reaction.
Schala, the Chrono Break and King Zeal (of course) can still fit somewhere in there before/during/or after.
If in the storyline the party has a good motivation for attempting this action, this could be a nice way to amplify the epic while filling many gaps between CT and CC:
- why does the Lucca ghost say the Mammon Machine (or parts of it) was also sent in the DBT
- how could it have been sent in the DBT from the Ocean Palace while we saw it in the Black Omen later
- why does RD suggest that the FF was inside the MM, but CC suggests that the FF didn't get destroyed when the MM did (there's a lot of abbreviations in this sentence)
- why is the Masamune evil/prone to evil in CC (and looks coincidently like a big Red Knife)
I think it could work well and very conveniently, especially combined with the Chrono Break event and if we find a good reason for the party to go back to that point in time. The only problem is that, in one single place and with one single starting action it basically sets nearly all of CC in motion from the distant Time Devourer stuff to the closer Fall of Guardia incident... is it something okay (the Lucca ghost does say that the Ocean Palace is where everything started) or is it a bit too convenient to sound natural?
