Chapter 7 was very clearly a special chapter going in- regardless of whether Mario was informed, the player knew this would be the big siege on the X-Naut Fortress. And yet, at the same time, we also knew we weren't going to stop them there.
The opening segment in Fahr Outpost is two screens to put in the game's ice enemies before getting to town. Practically the only reason they get you backtracking to open the cannon (other than game padding) is to give the ice enemies spotlight. Remember to treat them seriously- Frozen is serious business, and if you die, you may not have saved all the backtracking because you didn't think there was any risk involved. I swear, if that was an intentional layer, that would almost be cool enough to forgive them for the General White errand. That's only funny if you're not the one doing the walking. I think the problem is the game already has such a huge backtracking issue that even the casuals are getting bothered- if this was the first, or even the second egregious case, the joke might've landed a little better. Still, though, if you're in this for the narrative haul, seeing that cannon fire made it all worthwhile.
Once we're on the Moon, it's a short walk through a sluggish, repetitive map of the surface (as Goombella lampshades, this is basically what exploring the Moon would be like and sucks for her, too), we finally get into the X-Naut Fortress. The cool theme carries into a relatively normal dungeon, gathering a bunch of keys to find our way to Crump while also fiddling with the diversions of a crane game and the quiz show of a robot Thwomp. Thus far, Grodus has only got one general, and that's Crump. He wonders how he is losing. The fact that Crump can be the only boss encounter we find may be responsible for taking the wind out of the chapter's sails: other RPGs might've used this chapter as an opportunity to throw a few more bosses our way, although the part of the story where Grodus doesn't seem to entirely care about who he's left behind to defend the Crystal Star certainly affects things. Perhaps Grodus intentionally left it easy for us. Would explain why his Key Card was on his desk and not burrowed in his stash.
"After" the Chapter, but still rather clearly a part of it, is the escape sequence, where Mario gets to meet TEC. Because Peach was so guarded about them thus far, Mario has only heard about their involvement once, and overall the tone of the conversation feels more like a first meeting on Mario's end as well as TEC's. TEC's job is to tell Mario about Grodus's plans- or, more accurately, where to find Grodus. After having been stabbed shut down, they know they can't stop and go over the details, especially if they want enough power to send Mario to safety and blow up the fortress behind him. TEC blowing up the fortress, too, has another layer in addition to merely keeping it out of X-Naut hands: They are the Fortress. Its functionality is tied to them- hence why they're still operational even after Grodus shut them down and all our escapades that probably used a lot of power. But TEC doesn't want to be a part of that anymore. If they can't leave the Fortress, then better they be destroyed than continue being party to the X-Nauts. A surprisingly dark outlook, but one mostly driven by the fact our heroes are not yet technologically advanced enough to figure out how to download a backup of TEC's system memory to a thumbdrive. And even then, I'm not sure portable saves in 2004 were advanced enough to store something on TEC's scale- nor do they own a computer in the Mushroom Kingdom that TEC could occupy. If they own any computers.
Mechanically, Chapter 7 is honestly kinda harder in Fahr Outpost than the X-Naut Fortress? The Frozen status allowing the icy enemies to combo you is a real kick in the teeth, while the X-Nauts usually won't survive long enough to use buffs if they spend a turn applying them. X-Yux can end disastrously, but they don't spawn in groups with other things, so you can always focus fire them. ...Unless they Stop you. Magnus von Grapple 2.0's audience cannon is highly dangerous without Power Lift, admittedly, but this is a trick that works once. It's certainly a magnificent way to combine Crump's comic relief with the fact he can actually be dangerous when he's trying. A fitting send-off for the comic relief villain: A boss that's just hard enough to be threatening, but easy enough you start to wonder if Grodus wasn't packing everything he could.
