Mad Rat Dead - 6-7 - VS Parasite (S+ Rank)

At this point, both Mad Rat and Rat God are at the limits of their patience, and both of them now just want the other one gone for good. Mad Rat tries to understand Rat God's logic, namely that his death will result in Rat God's death too, but to no avail--Rat God's instincts are just so alien to him, that she accepts her death so long as she can procreate inside of a cat--that Mad Rat realizes the only way to be rid of Rat God in his life is to fight her directly and win. Rat God, meanwhile, wants to end Mad Rat here and now so she can rewind time without him being in the way. And with that, the final boss of this game is underway! Curiously, the game lists this boss battle as "VS Parasite" rather than "VS Rat God." That lets me avoid spoilers in the title, and it gives a clue as to what Rat God's true nature is--but that will become evident at the end of this battle. Stage: VS Parasite Song: MAD RAT, DIE by Camellia (150 BPM) Starting Timer: 999 She doesn't call herself Rat God for nothing, because her attacks hit with an intensity and relentlessness not seen by any other boss prior! She is part of that "teleport around and throw lots of surreal attacks with humongous hitboxes" category of final bosses you may have seen before with Dr. Wily in Mega Man, Dracula in Castlevania, and multiple entries in the Kirby and Super Smash Bros. series. She uses giant ki blasts, spikes traveling across the ground, little square things that hover in the air and create deadly energy barriers to restrict Mad Rat's available space, a portal that pulls Mad Rat toward it, and turning into a giant version of her top hat that slams against the ground and creates a rapidly-moving shock wave. She also likes to combine these moves, as most of them linger for as long as Rat God wants. If Rat God uses the hat move three times in a row, the hat will burst open, revealing her dazed and without her hat. This is when she's open to get attacked. Attack her twice in this way, and she will turn into a ball of cells and fly upward. Mad Rat will need to follow her up using platforms that appear here, but there are Nightmares and those square energy barrier generators along the way out. Upon reaching the top, she'll grow larger and create a crescent-shaped spinning shield around herself. Mad Rat must double-jump up through the gap in that shield and strike Rat God to damage her. Hitting her three times in this stage defeats her, though that's easier said than done, considering that means a total of nine hits, by far the most of any boss character in this game. Due to the length of this battle, if you're aiming for the S+ Rank, this is the stage with the lowest room for error. I estimate that with flawless play, you will defeat Rat God with approximately 165 beats left on the timer. Getting a combo of 100 or more in this boss battle is also one of the hardest ones. Not only are Rat God's attacks hard to dodge and constantly coming at you, but this is the only boss stage, at least on Normal difficulty, to not have a regular beat to follow at all times. Not only that, but Camellia pulled out all the stops for this one, having a difficult-to-follow melody for "MAD RAT, DIE" that sometimes degenerates into pure noise. (This is not a bad thing as far as the quality of the song goes. Noise is a legitimate genre of music.) It takes heavily from "MAD RAT, ALIVE?," the song for the very first stage in the game, but it is the very opposite of the hand-holding style that tutorial stage's music had. Upon Rat God's defeat, we see her in her true form: a pile (not a ball) of cells. She can only speak and listen. She can't even move, to show how pathetic and powerless she really is when deprived of both of her hallucination powers and rewinding powers. She can only live inside of another organism and trick them into doing what she wants. When they catch on and resist, it becomes a lot harder. It's also a little bit sad that the very last thing Rat God says is "I only want to live..." While someone else has already pointed it out, now's the time to let the cat out of the bag (but not let it eat an infected rat): Rat God is a single-celled parasitic lifeform known as Toxoplasma gondii. In its natural life cycle, it reproduces inside of a cat (all felines, really, but housecats are the most common vector); its eggs are then pooped out with the cat's regular poop. Rats and mice that eat nearby get infected; as Toxoplasma matures, it then goes to the brain to make the rodent boldly go toward a cat to get eaten, infecting the cat and completing its life cycle. Humans can be infected too, but as cats don't eat humans, their life cycles end there if it happens. Humans infected with toxoplasmosis tend to like cats more and act bolder but with periodic immune responses. Toxoplasmosis is the most prevalent parasitic infection among humans, with about 10% of the world population infected and some places with infection rates up to 60%.