Thursday - Our Requiem
Joe’s prediction was pretty on point, for the third day starts with another Arcturus-related dream. This one has Yamato announcing to the party (I assume, as Daichi and Io are the only other two to appear) that Arcturus has arrived and the void’s rate of encroachment has greatly accelerated with Chiba Prefecture, just east of Tokyo, having already been swallowed up. As he begins to say that the Triangulum are far worse than the Septentriones his voice along with the text in the dialogue boxes suddenly becomes distorted and warped, as if being caught in electronic interference. Through this we can still make out a few words and phrases such as “corrupt”, “Akashic Record”, and “disappeared from the world”, then everything is once again covered by static, and Io is shown waking up and wondering what the meaning of the new dream was.
Hibiki meanwhile wakes up in the infirmary at 6:30 and told by Otome that once again neither she nor any of the tests she ran on him while asleep were able to find anything wrong with him. After receiving that news he heads out to the main hall where he finds the others gathered around the newly-arrived Makoto. Makoto explains that she decided to use the special train to skip town because Miyako was starting to get suspicious of her, and no wonder, since her plan to uncover her true intentions apparently considered of just asking her upfront. Io speaks up to tell the others about her dream of Yamato saying that Hibiki had disappeared, and once again it turns out that everyone but him had it. Fumi reports that her work from last night is complete, and she thinks she’ll now be able to control the computer systems for Al Saiduq’s jar, so we might be able to rescue him now. Unfortunately JP’s seems to be shoring up their defense of the Tokyo Terminal, so we’re going to have to do it fast. Not to mention, today is when Arcturus should arrive, and the party’s no closer to figuring out the true nature of their dream, so all the more reason to save their captive friend and hope he has some answers for them.
But that can wait another /checks watch/ two hours, for we got another block of free time available before we have to launch the rescue attempt. So start with I’m going to watch a scene right here at the Nagoya branch that we’re going to have to see anyway with Makoto, who’s busy thinking about the relationship between JP’s and Nicaea in this world. Her concern is that unlike the old world where the nature of the website was a running subplot until we met Al Saiduq, here JP’s has made very little effort to investigate why it’s up and running this time. She even suspects that they may be leaving it alone intentionally. Hibiki can suggest that Miyako learned of it from Al Saiduq after capturing him, and while Makoto admits that that does make sense it still leaves other questions unanswered. Leaving it active in order to increase the number of demon tamers available to fight the Triangulum is another possibility that would ordinarily make sense, though Miyako clearly doesn’t want others’ help. Makoto promises to keep investigating, though she says it’s going to be much more difficult now that she’s left JP’s herself.
So the next two events that I’m going to watch involve others’ thoughts on Miyako. The first with Makoto, still at the Nagoya branch, opens with her and Ronaldo talking about their differences in the previous world and resolving to start over again as comrades. Once he leaves she talks to Hibiki for a bit about how she and Ronaldo actually do share similar ideals and then the conversation segues over to the subject of Miyako. Makoto’s impression of her is that she acts cold-heartedly because she just can’t stand to see people die and while she can understand that mentality she doesn’t want to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist who saves some innocents at the cost of others, she wants to save everyone; thus if they come into direct conflict, which is pretty much an inevitability at this point, she’ll be willing to fight her former boss for the sake of following her own sense of justice. Makoto then holds her hand out for a handshake, and while Hibiki does not have any pervy options this time around you can wig her out by calling for a secret handshake. Her Fate reaches Stage 3 and we can move on to Io in the Crystal Court underground mall. Io’s been thinking about Miyako, how she tried to keep them away and was never honest with them, and she’s decided that she wants to truly know and understand her, with the hope that by confronting the Chief and trying to understand her viewpoint they can end their conflict without having to fight (spoiler alert: that part fails because video games) and then work together to fix the world. I guess I can’t fault her for being idealistic, though at this point in the game I certainly can’t fault Keita for calling her naive earlier.
Finally we can go and see Fumi in her lab for some comic relief. She wants to do an in-depth examination of Hibiki to figure out exactly what it is about him that triggers everyone’s memories, so naturally this would involve stripping him down to his skivvies, because why wouldn’t it? Of course such a process can only be accomplished by her forcing him into a chair and straddling his lap to start removing his hoodie (depicted by smushing their character portraits together), but she finds the buttons to be incredibly stubborn and immovable, like a gender-flipped version of the bra-removal difficulty jokes. Naturally this occurs in time for Io and Daichi to walk in to the lab (the only time in the game where more than two character portraits are shown on the screen at once) to get a big helping of Not What It Looks Like, though naturally it’s possible to choose the dialogue options to make it sound like it’s exactly what it looks like. It’s silly, stupid stuff really, but the voice acting is entertaining enough to elevate the material to Actually Pretty Funny territory, especially when Daichi runs off crying, actually crying that he’s sick of this “crazy, stupid, ridiculous world!” Fumi, meanwhile, is pretty much oblivious as to what the big deal with those two is, and decides to give up and just cut Hibiki’s hoodie off of him. While she goes searching for a scalpel he wisely decides to get the heck out of dodge, though Fumi is able to achieve Fate Stage 2 from all that.
There’s a bit of free-battling to be done following those scenes so that I can crack the very useful Diarahan spell and Null Force to go along with the Null Fire and Null Ice I picked up yesterday, then at 8:30 the party meets up at the Nagoya Terminal, ready to launch their rescue operation. Since there’s a high chance that there’s a trap in store on the other side it’s proposed that Hibiki choose a team to scout things out. Our choices are “A team that knows Tokyo best” (Daichi, Io, Joe, and Makoto), “A team ofl strong and powerful men” (Jungo, Keita, and Ronaldo), “Me and all the teenage girls” (Io, Airi, and Hinako), and lastly “Me and the former JP’s agents” (Makoto, Otome, and Fumi). Daichi ends up getting dragged along no matter which team you pick, but the only one he goes on willingly aside from the first is the “cute girls” one. Predictably. Your choice only affects Fate points though, since as soon as Hibiki and his chosen group take the Terminal and hop over to the Tokyo side and indeed find JP’s agents and JP’s-controlled demons waiting for them we place a call for backup (phrasing it as “I need you!” elicits an amusing reaction from Makoto) and we can freely dispatch whomever we want to do battle.
Mission 11: To Tokyo
- All enemies must be defeated
- The whole party cannot die
The Terminal chambers were obviously not originally designed with the intent of being used as mission maps, for this map is by far the smallest one in the game, barely covering a 7x8 panel area. We start out surrounded, JP’s agents behind fold-out accordion barriers in front of us, demons behind us, and almost all of them have the Dragon demon Asp on their teams to give them range in these close quarters, save for one demon team that’s led by a Baphomet instead. Getting ganged up on and being helpless is not fun, so for this battle I decided to forego my usual “no Dragon/Vile” rule by coming out with a Baphomet of my own and a Pazuzu so that I could counterattack. I made sure to nab the Spirit Gain Passive Skill as well, as it rolls the Life Boost and Mana Boost skills into one, increasing the units HP and MP by 20%. Nice for Magic Knight characters.
Knock off three of the four JP’s agents and two more will arrive as backup. As members of the “Demon Acquisition Squad”, these two have stronger demons, carrying around upper 30s guys like Gui Xian, Cu Chulainn, and even the Lv. 40 Balor compared to the mid-30s guys that we were started off on. The agents themselves are stronger too, and one of them has Shield All EX and specializes in strong Physical hits. That dude managed to KO Fumi who I try to build into a dodge tank. Ah well, that’s what Recarm is for.
Completing the mission earns us 5000 EXP and 9000 macca.
After our victory we’re free to pass through and Fumi claims that JP’s won’t bother trying to set up ambushes at the Terminals anymore now that they’ve seen how futile it is. In the meantime, all of the events left over from earlier have been transposed over to Tokyo, and we have just enough time to watch one more. Since he has the lowest Fate of the active party members I’m going to see what’s up with Ronaldo outside the Shinjuku Opera City Tower, a location we very briefly visited at the start of Yuzu’s 8th day in Overclocked. We come across he and Airi talking about, surprisingly, her father Dera-Deka. Given the differences between the two worlds’ JP’s agencies here Dera-Deka is still alive and well, and according to Ronaldo he’s coordinating the Nagoya police department’s relief efforts and actually fighting demons this time, naturally without dying. We Hibiki steps in to the convo he’s telling Airi about how understanding her father was when he turned in his badge and she says that he was also supportive of her dream to become an idol...after objecting a bunch of times, that is. Once she leaves Ronaldo talks to Hibiki a bit about how he was affected by his mentor’s fate in the previous world (he still doesn’t know that he wasn’t actually rubbed out by JP’s) and, showing his growth, how important it is to not be chained down by the past, no matter how unjust it might have been. He achieves Fate Stage 2 and it’s time to break into the Skytree.
Predictably when we arrive at the Karamachi Plaza beneath the tower there’s already a platoon of JP’s agents standing guard outside that we’ll have to fight our way through. However there is another wrinkle added to this scenario by the leader rather loudly urging one of his subordinates to escape so that we can’t get our hands on the card key she has for the secret elevator inside. Guess what we’ve gotta do?
Mission 12: Truth
- All JP’s agents must be defeated
- The whole party cannot die
- The JP’s agent with the card key cannot escape
There’s no fear in losing track of the agent with the card key since she’s the only woman among them, but like the second Spica body during Keita’s recruitment mission she starts out much closer to the escape panels (just next to the top of the stairs leading to the upper level where the AiHina Stars’ concert stage still is) than we do. In fact, we’re forced to start all of our deployed characters practically as far away from her as possible and a couple of the agents have Legions with Evil Bind so you need to have movement demons like a Wilder and/or Avian on board. Or just use the ghetto option in a Genma (True Phantasm eliminates the extra cool down time for taking actions) like I did due to lack of foresight. Shield All, Ziodyne, and Null Elec are good skills to crack here, and just like the previous mission two more agents will arrive as backup, though unlike them they won’t have stronger demons than their fellows. That’s about it.
Completing the mission earns us 5200 EXP and 10000 macca.
With the agents cleared out we’re free to descend to the secret lab where Al Saiduq is being held, and after Ronaldo spends some moments marveling at the facility as it’s his first time down here Fumi uses the nearby computer console to shut off the tank’s “jamming signal” in order to wake our friend up. There’s a flash of energy from within the tank and Al Saiduq finally does wake up, a bit groggy at first but then he recognizes Hibiki and the others and politely greets them as if they’ve simply been apart for a long time rather than him being held captive. Daichi immediately begins bombarding him with questions as to what’s going on and Al Saiduq asks how many days its been since the first Triangulum appeared and upon getting his answer says that we must defeat Arcturus as quickly as possible. He’d love to help us, but unfortunately the device he’s currently imprisoned in is imbued with Dragon Stream energy, so it’s impossible to destroy via supernatural means.
Anyway, it was indeed Miyako who captured him, and Al Saiduq warns that we must not fall into her grasp, as her plan to end the Administrator attacks somehow involves sacrificing all of our lives. When the party worries that Yamato’s absence means that he’s been captured or even “sacrificed” already Al Saiduq assures us that this is not the case, as while Yamato is indeed no longer in this world he is still alive. The solution to that conundrum is that he is technically outside of it, as he is currently in the Akasha Stratum, domain of the Administrators. Why he’s there and what he’s doing, Al Saiduq is only able to tell us that a complication had arisen “after” battling Arcturus before there’s another flash and he loses consciousness again as alarms start to ring. The party has no choice but to split up and flee, though Daichi promises that they’ll be back to save him. Al Saiduq will achieve Fate Stage 1 and regain his Fire and Elec resistances along with his Curse immunity, even though he naturally won’t be rejoining the party for a while.
We don’t need to fight our way out, this time at least. The next event has the party regroup in Shiba Park to go over the few, but important bits of information that we were able to get out of Al Saiduq. First is Miyako’s plan, and they have no idea how sacrificing themselves is going to stop the Administrators, nor how capturing the other Triangulum factors into it. Next there’s Yamato, why is he in the Akasha Stratum, and how are they going to get him when they don’t have Al Saiduq or the Dragon Stream energy that let them reach it before? Then Airi brings up him talking about the battle with Arcturus as if it had already happened, and the others agree that that was especially strange. However, given that and the nightmares, Fumi says that she can put together a solid hypothesis, and that is that they did actually battle Arcturus before; this is not the new world they created after defeating Polaris but in fact a third one, created after they all died at the final Triangulum’s hands.
So yeah, boom, there it is. The dawning realization of how dire their situation really is slowly sinks in as the party realizes that they still know absolutely nothing about their deadly opponent. Makoto calls for the group to start investigating right away all the mysteries that still exist. Everyone departs the park, a gloomy pall hanging over them all.
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