Kusuha's been brought to the White Star and is already being put to good use, as Ingram finally proves he's no stranger to creepy brainwashing antics: he's managed to convince the now blank-eyed Kusuha that she's his weapon and we're her enemies — or rather, anything that stands in their way is her enemy, which includes us. Guess we'll be facing her as a boss soon enough. Levi has her doubts whether the brainwashing is as reliable as it seems, since Galuin seemed to show signs of resistance in his last battle, and she's worried it may happen again. Hey, it worked pretty well so far, I wouldn't worry too much.
Still, to reassure her, Ingram demonstrates Kusuha's loyalty by having her answer questions. She once again confirms the Hagane crew is her enemy, but starts hesitating when it comes to specific questions about Ryusei and Bullet. That certainly was a convincing demonstration, Ingram. Still, she eventually gives in, which he considers good enough.
LEVI: (.....This scene...this situation seems so...familiar...Was I...like that too? No...I'm of pure Balmar blood.)
Ooh, foreshadowing. For the record, the Balmarians are the alien race of which the Aerogaters are only a single army fleet. They play a much bigger part in the Alpha timeline than the OG timeline, but in my opinion OG does a decent job of portraying them as well. Anyway, Gaza is ready to be sent on his first mission and Levi figures they might as well send Kusuha along with him. Their quality control standards aren't all that high, but that all works out in our favor.
What's not in our favor is that the SRX team is temporarily barred from deploying while they're being investigated because of their connection to Ingram, and because their mechs use EOT that Ingram designed. That's another three good mechs out of battle for the upcoming mission, which reduces our power quite a bit. Still doable though, I guess. Tetsuya confirms they're already arguing for the team's innocence, but it'll take a while before they're officially cleared for deployment. And here Ryusei was hoping he'd get to save Kusuha right away. Bullet's intensely practicing his sword techniques for pretty much the same goal, even though he claims it's because he needs the discipline to become a true samurai.
RIO: A samurai...?
BULLET: You know, like ninjas?
RIO: (I don't think he knows much about Japanese culture.)
Yeah, this guy's got his heart in the right place, but he can be rather clueless about all this samurai stuff he learned from Sanger, who is only a slightly more credible samurai for that matter. Well, time for him to show off the results of his training, because the ol' enemy alarm just went off again. Aerogater units are attacking Kawasaki for reasons unknown, and so the Hagane and Hiryu are sent in to take care of them once again.
Gaza appears on the battlefield for the first time, communicating with an unknown person about his mission. The voice claims he's not attacking where he was directed to go, but he claims Atad gave him permission to kill every human he sees. They argue a bit more until Gaza tells the voice to shut up, and we arrive on the scene. Surprisingly, Gaza suddenly gets a headache freaks out when he sees everyone, amplifying his bloodlust. Tasuku gets a weird feeling from him but isn't quite sure what to make of it, and Gilliam records the mech's data just in case this is important. This guy's really got the spirit of a detective.
Luckily, most of my units can fly, but some of are once again going to get slowed down by all those houses.
Mostly a matter of taking down those grunts, although I'd best stay out of Gaza's range for now. Not too hard, since he's way at the top, but still. For the most part, I can just let whoever engage the enemies, since no one is really in dire need of kills. Still does more damage than expected when a dozen bugs ram my units, but other than that their weapons don't have much effect. They do like to waste their spider nets on units that don't move much, too.
The first line of enemies goes down within a few turns, and Russel reports that enemy reinforcements are arriving. Now Bullet also starts experiencing psychic flashes, which sorta makes sense as the reinforcements consist of Kusuha in her Type 2, along with a few more grunts. This poses kind of a problem since we have to stop Kusuha without killing her, which is kind of hard to do. She goes straight for Bullet's Valsion, so that's a good thing at least. Can't take care of her just yet if I want the BM for this map, which means taking care of Gaza first.
Some of my rear units jump into the fray to get rid of Kusuha's grunts, and Excellen gets to peg a few of them from far away thanks to the Radar Modules I put in her mech. Theoretically, I could hit them from such a distance that they couldn't even counterattack, but it's not like I need to bother for these things. Slowly grinding my way through the last of Gaza's grunts as well, which also means I'm getting in range of his Oruga Cannon attack. This is one hell of a nasty attack he's got, and I generally end up evading or defending instead of counterattacking. Only advantage here is that using that attack quickly drains his energy, so I can deplete his good ammunition in a reasonable time. This is one of those bosses who runs away at low health, which means going through the usual routine of draining his health and energy shields, and then setting up a finisher once that is done. Because I didn't have the Type 2 to set up the usual Doomblade combo, I had to improvise a bit. Also had to spend some skill points to give Masaki a support attack, but it worked out well.
He goes down, and I get my BM — now all that's left is taking care of Kusuha. I have to bring her health into the critical range without destroying her, which is eventually achieved by first bringing her health down with some of the Valsion's Cross Smashers, and then finishing it with a weak attack. Took me a moment to find an attack weak enough to do it while still decreasing her health, but Excellen's weakest bullets managed to do the job. In hindsight, it would've been cool to finish the job with Bullet, but oh well. They try to get through to Kusuha while her mech's disabled and almost manage to disrupt her brainwashing, but she disappears before they can do much. Dammit. Well, the battle's over now, so there's nothing to do other than returning to base for now.
Bullet's not taking the situation well, as one might expect, but eventually Kyosuke and Excellen manage to calm him down. Although Kusuha is still gone, they figure they have a good chance of getting her to return to normal since they already managed to get through to her a bit on the first try, so I'm guessing she should be able to return to her old self given enough time. Meanwhile, Radha is analyzing the ICS data and has called in Gilliam to ask a favor.
GILLIAM: Is this about the yoga?
RADHA: Oh, no... (Do people think all I care about is yoga?)
Well, you kind of brought that upon yourself, Radha. Anyway, she needs his access code.— the data actually belonged to Ingram, but she knows that Gillliam has the same code. Great security system there, guys. Of course, he does question why she needs the code, which he is quick to give when she reveals the encountered enemy's energy pattern is similar to the samples used by Ingram and Viletta. Gilliam was already considering the same possibility, so he counts it as evidence he can use himself.
On that note, Ryusei still hasn't been cleared of suspicion, as he's still being questioned about being a possible Aerogater spy like Ingram. It's not like they're that paranoid, but the name of Ryusei's mother was also found in Ingram's files, since she was a test subject at ICS. So yeah, it's quite a shock for him to hear this but he doesn't look too suspicious, so he'll probably be cleared to go soon.
No mechs really need urgent upgrades this chapter, so I dumped some money into giving the Weissritter better armor. It usually stays out of combat and often manages to dodge, but otherwise only has 900 armor. At this point in the game, that practically means an instant kill for anything that hits it. It's almost a vanity purchase, really.
