Brothers

The Brothers are a pair of minotaurs from Final Fantasy VIII, named Minotaur and Sacred, that the party can obtain as a Guardian Force. They reside in the Tomb of the Unknown King and must be defeated to join the party. After their defeat, the player also receives their cards for Triple Triad. Obtaining Brothers in the Steam version earns the player the achievement Brothers.

The kanji on their shields means "older brother"  and "younger brother". Combining both kanji (兄弟) spells the Japanese word for "brother". During dialogue sequences, Sacred speaks in capitals, while Minotaur speaks in lower-case letters. While Sacred is the younger brother and Minotaur is the older brother, Sacred is bigger than Minotaur.

Boss
The duo is fought in the Tomb of the Unknown King. The pair is constantly healed by Earth Regeneration as long as their feet are touching the ground. The duo's special hit, Mad Cow Special, is an Earth-elemental attack against all party members used when both are alive.

Attack
The Brothers use an Earth-elemental attack called Brotherly Love when summoned. Brothers' summon time is 19.3s, which, according to the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania, allows the player to boost the damage to around 220% of normal damage using a regular PlayStation controller.

Its damage is calculated as follows:
 * $$Damage = 60 * Level / 10 + 46 + 4$$
 * $$Damage = Damage * (265 - TargetSpr) / 8 $$
 * $$Damage = Damage * 46 / 256 $$
 * $$Damage = Damage * Boost / 100 $$
 * $$Damage = Damage * (100 + SummonMagBonus) / 100 $$
 * $$Damage = Damage * (900 - ElemDef) / 100:$$

Elemental Defense starts at 800 (0%), 900 nullifies damage and 1000 absorbs it. If an enemy is shown to be weak against an element, its Elemental Defense is below 800. If damage becomes negative (due to high Elemental Defense), the target is healed by that amount.

Stats
The following table represents the base stats.

Abilities
Abilities learned naturally by Brothers are listed below:

Final Fantasy Record Keeper
The Brothers appear as bosses in the Record of the Tomb of the Unknown King, although Sacred is known as Sekhret.

The player can prepare by attaching Wind and Poison-based abilities, as the Brothers are vulnerable to both elements. The strategy is nearly identical to the source game: the player should focus on one of them while buffing the party with Protect and Shell to curb damage and halt their hit-all Mad Cow Special. To earn the Target Scores, the player should direct the Wind attacks at Minotaur and the Poison attacks at Sekhret.

Mobius Final Fantasy
The Brothers appear as an ability card in Mobius Final Fantasy.

Etymology
The Brothers appeared in Final Fantasy V, named Minotaur and Sekhmet.

They are called Taurus in the French version.

Trivia

 * The Brothers are alluded to in Final Fantasy XI, in an Empty Battlefield titled "Brothers". The battle is against a pair of Tauri, Eldertaur and Mindertaur, and true to their origins, Eldertaur is the smaller of the two.