5th Day - Thursday’s Shock
No rest for the weary, since the fifth day starts very early in the morning at 6:30. Today Io’s the one to greet Hibiki in the morning (and you can still continue on with the “Pervert!” running gag if you feel like it, but before she can get past the “good mornings” and to the heart of what she wants to talk about Hinako and Airi burst into the room. There’s a lot of conversational chaos and the latter two talking over each other, but it turns out the three girls are all here for the same reason: to discuss that state of Fukuoka, as Ronaldo’s apparently been showing the photo around to anyone he can. They all want to go there to see things for themselves, and the mention of Fumi being the one to ask regarding the Terminals summons her to the room like some kind of Beetlejuice. She’s in an especially bad mood today over losing a photo of her own, but before heading off she she says that yes, there is a terminal in Fukuoka, but she cut off access to it and won’t reveal why. Hm, so she won’t cooperate with us and lost a possession of her’s... My Megaman Battle Network senses are tingling...
I did some more fusing since it was the start of a new day, and one of the new demons I made was Tonatiuh, the first Omega (Fury in other Megami Tensei games). I’m mentioning this because Omegas have a very nice Racial Skill called Asura Karma that allows you to get two extra turns during battle, not just one. I don’t have to point out how useful this is, do I? I always try to keep at least one viable Omega in my demon stock at all times.
So to begin the day I might as well get cracking on those fetch quests. First I have to go down to Nagoya to meet with Ronaldo and give him the notebook I got from Airi. Sure enough, he recognizes the code inside as his mentor’s, and is able to decipher it. Apparently the notebook contains a long list of names and call records - Ronaldo exclaims that according to this Yamato’s been in touch with the top minds of the world, and whatever his plan is, it appears to be inside the server at JP’s HQ in Osaka. That’s where Ronaldo sets his sights on next, and he achieves Fate Stage 2. Osaka also happens to be where to go regarding Fumi’s lost photo, as Io assumes that she lost it at the Festival Gate when she was brainwashed. Sure enough there’s the photo of Fumi with a group of unfamiliar people and her ID lanyard resting on the stage where her computer set-up was. When we find her elsewhere in the city she takes it back, explaining that it’s a photo of the host family she stayed with when she went abroad for college and does agree to activate the Fukuoka Terminal for us. She doesn’t give us the code for it though, so we still can’t use it. She tells us to work that part out for ourselves. Well, Fumi being that gracious would be a bit uncharacteristic...
Speaking of Fukuoka, there’s something ominous if you look at the top screen at this point. Remember how I said in the first update that there was a map of Japan on the top screen, with cursors over whichever city you’re currently in? Well if you look at it now you’ll notice that the southwestern part of the country, directly west of Naogya, seems to be eroding away. Kyushu, Shikoku, and the western part of Honshu appear to be breaking apart, like the landmass is falling into the sea. Fukuoka is just barely hanging in there, now part of a new archipelago of islands...
That’s disconcerting, maybe Yamato will have some answers (ha ha, I made a funny). We can find him at Shiba Park staring up at the sky with a bunch of other JP’s personnel, and when Hibiki and Daichi talk to him he says that people have started dying from neurotoxin that’s being released in the city, and he suspects that an aerial Septentrione is behind it. He’s hear at the park because he suspects it’ll attack Tokyo Tower, and for once my sarcasm is unfounded for he finally gets around to explaining that the towers are important because they were constructed to channel the Dragon Stream to form a barrier around Japan to protect it from invasion in the post-WWII era. Now, here’s that little historical fact that ties things together that I mentioned earlier: Tokyo Tower, the Tsuutenkaku, and the Nagoya TV Tower are part of a five-tower set designed by the father of earthquake-resistant architecture Tachu Naito, the other two being the Beppu Tower in Beppu, and the Sapporo TV Tower in Sapporo (the Fukuoka Tower was designed and built in the late 80s, after his death), so the implication is that JP’s had contracted him out to design the towers. Yamato says that cities that lose their towers become vulnerable, to the calamity, and sure enough in the images we saw on Day 2 Beppu Tower and Fukuoka Tower had collapsed. The map of western Japan is now falling apart, there’s a black void covering most of Fukuoka, and those were the only six cities they could contact period, so putting two and two together...
Before the characters can discuss the ramifications of this a blob of some sort (it looks like of like a peppermint Hersey’s Kiss) falls out of the sky and lands on the street nearby. The two JP’s personnel go over to investigate and end up dying like the hapless red shirts they are when it bursts like a balloon, smothering them with neurotoxin. There’s no sign of any Septentrione nearby though, so Yamato immediately says that he’ll examine the impact sites in order to calculate the blob’s point of origin. Another blob falls from above and demons and spawn points appear, so to work.
Mission 23: Poisonous Day
- The mission ends when either:
- All demons are defeated
- Yamato finishes his work
- The whole party cannot die
- Yamato cannot die
So now we have to escort Yamato. Have no fear though, he’s Lv. 52, has Media, Life Aid, and a full team of demons so he won’t be going down easily. The problem is though that to take his first reading he has to wade right into the middle of the poison field the blob left behind. When these things explode the poison they leave behind covers a 5 x 5 area, which is fairly large and will damage the entire party of whoever’s standing in it (and Curse protection doesn’t seem to help). So we definitely need to take them out before they explode, since the way the Shiba Park map is set up those poison fields cover a lot of space.
? (Lv. 42)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Weak to Fire; Resists Physical, Ice, Elec, and Curse
- Paral Eyes - Attempts to paralyze enemy party.
- Drain - An Almighty-based attack that absorbs some HP and MP from one target.
- + Poison - Physical attacks may poison enemies.
- Retaliate - Moderate chance of countering Physical attacks.
- Preserve Extra - Chance of enemy removing extra turns lowered.
- Alioth Shot - Grants usage of Explosive Shot.
- Explosive Shot - Explodes after a few turns, poisoning a 5 x 5 area of the map.
Fortunately these things don’t have all that much defense, so a concentrated Fire assault works like a charm. Though I found the hard way that cherry-tapping them with physicals isn’t a good idea because Retaliate actually hurts like a bitch. The other demons to watch out for on the map are the Ikusas. They may have been demoted from their Bonus Boss stint in Overclocked, but as Toukis they pack a punch, will boost their crit rate with Aggravate, and they specialize in Assassinate and + Stone. Not good, not good at all, so bring Force, their weakness. And also once you’re almost done with the demons a new boss demon will show up.
Hitokotonushi (Lv. 36)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Weak to Fire and Elec; Resists Ice; Absorbs Physical; Nulls Force
- Might Call - Each team member is guaranteed a critical hit.
- Mighty Hit - Deals a critical Physical hit to one target.
- Crit Up - Critical hits deal more damage.
- Extra One - Guarantees the user an extra turn.
- Ares Aid - Critical hit rate boosted by 50%.
- Double Up - Can initiate battle twice in one turn.
- Pyro Jack x2
The Pyro Jacks on his team discourage the use of Fire so you need to take those guys out before you can really go to town on him. And you want to beat him fast, since as you can see he’s based around dealing heavy critical damage. And it would’ve also helped if I wasn’t an inattentive moron and tried taking him on with a team that were mostly Physical specialists... Anyway, once you beat him he has a curious line about how he’s actually...something because he dies before he can say what exactly. Maybe it’s a mythological in-joke, I dunno. Mission complete at any rate once the straggler demon teams are taken care of.
Completing the mission earns us 1100 EXP and 3700 macca.
Yamato finishes his calculations and determines that the new Septentrione, Alioth, is invisible and overhead. He calls the JP’s personnel stationed at Tokyo Tower and tells them to look up in the sky with their phones’ filter module equipped, and everyone is shocked to see a massive structure
(something like fifty kilometers in length if I remember the anime right) floating high in the sky. That image was actually one of the first released in the original ad campaign, and Alioth always struck me as looking like something straight out of Bokurano (same artist, naturally). Yamato orders them to temporarily cut power to the Tower and turn off the barrier to avoid being targeted. It works, and Alioth begins heading north instead, straight towards Sapporo and the fourth remaining tower.
Since it’ll still take the massive Septentrione a few hours to reach Sapporo Yamato says that they have no time to waste in devising a countermeasure, yet since Alioth’s in the upper atmosphere there’s no way for their demons to reach. So our task for the day is going to be devising a method to shoot it down. So after we get the notification that Hitokotonushi can be fused we’re let loose to come up with that method...and it’ll be, for lack of a better word, highly unorthodox...
- Tonatiuh
◊
- The shortened form of Ollin Tonatiuh, one of several sun gods in the Aztec pantheon. He also doubles as a god of war, and if displeased he would refuse to carry the sun on his back across the sky. It is alleged that the Aztecs sacrificed up to twenty-thousand people a year to him, though most scholars believe that number to be exaggerated.
- Ikusa◊
- The shortened form of Yomotsu Ikusa, the demons who serve in the army of the Japanese underworld, Yomi. In the myth of Izanagi and Izanami, Izanagi was pursued by them after he took a peek at Izanami's rotten and unsightly face. He was only able to escape by throwing a peach seed at the horde.
- Yuki Jyorou◊
- A type of yuki-onna ("snow woman") spirit that appears before travelers and sometimes hands them a baby to carry. The baby gradually becomes heavier and heavier, and if it is dropped the traveler will be killed. If he doesn't however, he will be given additional strength instead.
- Hitokotonushi◊
- A Japanese mountain god. His domain is the realm of words: no matter what he says his oracles always come true. It is suggested that he was intended to be the deification of echoes, explaining a story in the Kojiki when an emperor and his entourage encounter the god on Mt. Kusanagi in a guise identical to their own.
