Wow, Shine isn't looking too good.
It seems they're doing all kinds of experiments on her after taking her to the Earth Cradle, and Adler is trying to convince her to help them while she's easily influenced. No such luck, as even now she demonstrates she has enough willpower to resist his mind-altering shenanigans. He kicks it up a notch and starts injecting some inducing agent to brainwash her more efficiently, despite the danger this stuff apparently poses to the victim. He doesn't care that much what happens to her, since he still has other pilots like Tempest that can gather combat data.
Tenzan walks in to see what Adler's doing, who explains that this is necessary to improve their mech technology and develop something he calls the GEIM System. It's never made quite clear if those letters stand for anything, but I'm gonna assume they do. I'd say it's sorta comparable to the T-Link System in that's designed to allow pilots to perform better through mental control, but takes a heavy toll on the user's mind. Tenzan thinks he can solve just about any problem the GEIM System could be used for, and Adler gives him the requested permission to attack with the still unfinished Unit 3.
The Hagane receives word that the EFA base at Sevastopol is being attacked, and luckily it's located on their current course so they don't need to make any detours. This is exactly what's worrying Daitetsu, however, as he figures the DC may be doing it deliberately to slow the Hagane down. Which would make sense, seeing as it's one of the biggest threats to the DC right now. Oh well, no other choice but to go right through them, distraction or not.
Not Tenzan this time as one might expect given the intro, it's Tempest leading the enemy forces once again. He also hasn't stopped prattling on about his long-awaited revenge, which he once again explains to every character that wasn't there last time. The DC now has mass-produced Valsions, which is probably gonna make things difficult later on, but the characters present mostly note that he's a revenge-obsessed maniac.
TEMPEST: That's true. I'll never forgive those who stole Giganscudo 16 years ago...and I'll never forgive the EFA for destroying a space colony just to quell terrorists!
Oh, this certainly is a new development. Tempest further reveals things about the Hope incident and Giganscudo that even Tasuku was unaware of: the EFA built a giant cannon long ago to oppress space colonists, terrorists stole Giganscudo from the EFA, and the EFA blew up the Hope Colony's outer wall in the process of trying to get Giganscudo back, killing everyone. And now Tasuku is piloting that same machine. Man, that's gotta sting, knowing your robot was responsible for one of the greatest disasters in recent history. He can sorta sympathize with Tempest, though he points out now isn't the best time for revenge with aliens about to attack the Earth. Think Tempest is gonna listen? Of course not.
Time to fight. Simple enough situation, Tempest's Valsion and a squad of grunts, with plenty of cover along the way. Not that I'll be using much of it; the Battle Mastery for this map is achieved by defeating Tempest within 3 turns, so I have everyone move towards him as quickly as possible, incidentally attacking the other enemies as I run into them on my way there. Attacking Tempest himself is still mostly something for my high-level units, and unfortunately this means lower-level pilots like Rai and Aya will spend most of their time dealing with the grunts. They're still pretty tough, and Rai still almost gets shot down when they decide to focus their fire on him, but he manages to survive the first turn by the skin of his teeth.
On the second turn the fast units like Cybuster and Irm's Grungust have managed to reach Tempest, and fortunately he doesn't seem to have much in the way of barriers. Still, this is definitely going to require the use of Valor-boosted attacks to bring his health down fast enough. The grunts are going down rather slowly, but by eliminating a few more of them, my units' Will at least becomes high enough to use stronger attacks. Killing enemies really is the most convenient way to raise it, since every one of your units gets a point per kill, and it's safer than getting hit all the time.
One turn left, but fortunately Tempest's health goes down quickly now, and he actually has still quite a bit of health left when the game decides to give me the BM. Well, that was fortunate I guess, didn't even have to resort to any of the antics I used in the previous episode...
TEMPEST: I'm done warming up. With my Valsion Custom...I can defeat them and the EFA! Huh!? What is this system...!?
Well that doesn't sound good at all. He spontaneously regains all his health, and Hans now suddenly decides to drop in with his forces as a reinforcement for Tempest. That's just great, now most of the map is suddenly covered in enemies. He's kinda surprised Tempest is still having trouble defeating us even with the Valsion, but his attention seems to be focused more on Kyosuke than anyone else. Kyosuke and Hans have a little talk about why he joined the DC, and it turns out Hans is mostly interested in the Earth Cradle as humanity's best hope for survival.
Hans decides to get rid of Kyosuke while he has the chance and orders Tempest to attack, who does not seem to acknowledge this and starts acting progressively creepier. Those blank eyes really complete the whole thing, even if Tempest hasn't changed his shtick about revenge much. In fact, it's now pretty much the only thing he can say, as if he were a zombie. Latooni explains that she's seen this happen before during her time at The School, and Radha guesses that the Valsion is affecting Tempest's mind. At any rate, the only option left is to destroy him, which suits me just fine.
So, now it's a battle against Hans' forces and Crazy Tempest, and I have to say the former is a much bigger pain here. Not only is it a massive horde of pretty decent units he's got, they also spawned in the middle of my forces, which may lead to some of them biting the dust if I'm unlucky: he's got lots of Barrelions, a row of jets, three tanks and a submarine or five. Most of my units are holding up quite well, though Bullet is soaking up enough hits that another one would end him. But as the only hit point that matters is the last, I'm able to just heal him the next turn and he's good as new.
The jets are the first thing I want to take care of, since they're very good at dodging and hitting; everything else can be reasonably dodged with liberal use of Focus. Once the Valsione has made its way through a group of Barrelions blocking the way, I move it into position for a Psychoblaster, taking care of most of the minor enemies. I let the Hagane join in for once as well since it can lend fire support, and it should survive as long as it can use Guard. Impact Cannon does a nice job of taking out a few of them, and once their ranks are scattered it's just a matter of having the others take them down one by one. Kusuha did need to provide defense support for a hopelessly surrounded Aya, but otherwise it was a fairly standard brawl.
With most of the grunts taken care of or at least no longer posing a threat, I once again focus my attention on Tempest, who is still able to fire Cross Smashers like nobody's business and he's got a good chance of hitting my units. Here's where the nearby buildings come in handy, as they allow my units to remain within firing range of him while having their dodge rates significantly boosted. From this position he becomes a whole lot easier to take down, which is helped by the lack of time limit. A few turns later, he is finally killed for real, insisting to his last breath that he must avenge his wife and daughter. Latooni can sort of sympathize with his situation as well, since she only managed to escape her past thanks to the help of others while Tempest has been repeating the same thing for the last 16 years.
LATOONI: Please, go back to your family...your battle ended 16 years ago...
LUNE: Father...please guide his soul to where it belongs.
TEMPEST: Anna...Lei...la...
Now all that remains is Hans and his submarine squad. They're even less of a threat than all the other grunts I disposed of already, since they can barely hit anything, and when they do it barely does any damage. Hell, I managed to move out of their attack range by moving my units a bit further inland. These damage sponges just take a few turns to kill, and I save Hans for last just so I can give Kyosuke the honor of delivering the final blow.
HANS: Fools! The only way humans can survive is the Earth Cradle! But for those of you who only know war, your fate will be the same as mine! Go ahead and throw your lives away fighting the aliens! ...Forget...that...aarrgghh!!
I think we can safely assume he died for real as well, since they rarely scream like that for non-fatal injuries, and I'm at least gonna assume Hans wasn't that much of a pansy. So yay, we eliminated two DC officers in a single episode! This does mean we've attracted the attention of more DC forces, which are currently homing in on the Hagane's location, but we don't need to fight any of those right now. I guess we'll see them in the next episode.
Adler receives a report on how the battle went, confirming that Tempest and Hans are indeed dead. Lily's actually starting to get a little offended by Adler's "oh well" reactions now, but she speaks about one sentence of criticism towards him before she shuts up and accepts her orders to fight in the next mission. For that matter, he himself has decided that it's time to go into battle as it's finally time to start their assault on EFA headquarters in Geneva. At least he does more than merely sitting around and ordering people to go die, and him volunteering to go and die is almost admirable.
In the Earth Cradle hangar, soldiers are adjusting the cockpit modules on the mechs and are about to perform work on Sanger's mech as he walks in and says he'll do it himself, hinting that he's got at least some mechanical skill as well. Lily meets up with him, confirming that they've both been to the next mission, and desires to ask some unspoken favor of him. Meanwhile, Thomas is looking on, and decides this may be the best time to quietly abandon the cause.
THOMAS: (We're hitting them with everything we got. This is it. Good luck, Divine Crusaders. I call it quits.)
During this mission, I got a Thruster (boosts speed) and a Generator from the enemies I defeated, and I guess the R-3 can use the Thruster. Used the money to further upgrade R-2's armor, Weissritter and Guarlion's maximum EN, and Alteisen's HP. I think I'm just about unstoppable with a force like this.
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