We've successfully entered Neviim, as our adversaries have now correctly concluded. Atad considers this the perfect chance to assimilate our entire crew at once after she kills them, and Levi will lend Atad her powers for this purpose. Levi herself is gonna enter Judecca's core now, figuring Atad and Ingram can handle things in her absence. Atad is given a reminder that Excellen is immune to her mind control, and after that she's on her way.
Having arrived on the inside of the star, we find...ground and air?
Atmosphere and gravity, even! It seems like a space colony, where every aspect of Earth's environment is simulated, down to the roads. I wonder if they use a lot of cars out here. Quite a sudden change, from outer space to normal terrestrial conditions. Doesn't seem like anyone's around so far, but that probably means we're soon gonna run into an ambush. I don't see any victory or losing conditions on my mission screen, either, which makes things doubly suspicious. Though not permitted, Tasuku switches to private communication with Leona for a moment to almost-confess, but figures he'll tell her everything after the battle.
As is to be expected, the silence doesn't last long, and after 2 turns of hanging around, enemies start to appear. Against expectations, they're not Aerogater craft of any sort, but DC mechs! Elzam explains that they're using discontinued ID codes as well, which leads him to the conclusion that these are actually resurrected and modified DC troops. Which hurts him especially, since he used to fight alongside these people. Rescuing them like we did with Kusuha and Shine is not an option either, since these guys have been directly modified instead of merely being controlled.
Well, at least they're not difficult to deal with, just some standard DC mechs and jets. I almost feel bad about wasting ammo on them, but I guess we'll have to do so to proceed. We've got resupply units anyway, even if they're kind of a hassle. At least it'll let some of my character get some kills in; Sanger and Elzam only need a few more to reach 100. Also saves me the trouble of casting Spirit to get my Will up. They are soon disposed of, but Kyosuke has already guessed there's more than this. Suddenly, Aya has another one of those psychic flashes, making her completely freak out, to the alarm of her teammates.
RADHA: (It's the same pattern as in Geneva. No, it's Mai—) Aya, reduce your T-Link connection by 40%!
Well, that fixed the problem, though Aya still feels like someone was reading her thoughts. We're now presented with the next challenge, four Valsion Customs to defeat. Presumably, they got the designs for these the same way they got the designs for other DC mechs. The Battle Mastery requirement is now revealed to me: defeat them within 6 turns. And I'm currently on turn 5. This could be tight, unless I start using my buffs this early. I guess I'll have to do so if I want the BM, so using Valor's fine to some extent when taking down these juggernauts. Darkness Slash, Supreme Sword and Colossal Blade are great at dealing massive amounts of damage, so this giant sword extravaganza really hurries things along. At my current strength level, my team can take down of these per turn, so it neatly works out to 6 turns. Battle Mastery earned!
Well, that was simple...I just hope I still have enough power for the rest of the level. The next one to appear before is Viletta, but she has no interest in attacking us this time. It is explained that she was one of Radha's colleagues at Mao Industries, and she herself reveals she's been investigating the enemy all along. A bit hard to believe given the earlier encounters with her as an antagonist, which she wholeheartedly acknowledges.
VILETTA: ...I know, but my mission is to stop them. If you don't believe me, then just shoot me.
Not that I could, anyway. I must say, I'm pleasantly surprised here, because she's got a Gespenst Mk II-S, which is actually kinda useful. Last time I played this level she arrived in an R-Gun, which does fuck-all in most combat situations. The only thing it's got is its Metal Genocider attack, which requires very high Will and lots of energy to use, for average damage. So, here comes the next challenge..copies of ourselves? They even made copies of the mechs, and it doesn't seem the pilot copies are aware that they're copies, instead thinking that they're the originals.
KYOSUKE: Assault 1 to all units...our fakes just arrived. As anticipated.
I love how completely unfazed he is by this. "Yup, here comes the fighting-your-evil-clone scenario." Even Excellen thinks it's old hat, honestly. The copies are under the impression that they're about to fight THEIR copies, and the ensuing conversation quickly becomes very confusing. If the game didn't have explicit friend-or-foe coloring, I think I'd be completely lost at this point. Regardless of her opinion on the trick itself, Excellen is still rather impressed, given that she couldn't see the others' illusions last time around.
VILETTA: It's the same shadow as the Valsion Custom...the mech's a fake, built from data they collected. The pilots were created by scanning your minds...they're shadows with substance.
Well, it would certainly explain the situation if they are indeed mental copies of us. I didn't completely test this idea since I mostly went for practical combat considerations, but I think that when you fight them with the same character, they'll have a brief conversation that highlights the originals' differences compared to the knockoffs. For example, when the two SRXes fight each other, clone Ryusei will warn original Ryusei about destroying the SRX since it could have catastrophic results, but by this point the SRX team has accepted that anything involving the SRX carries a risk — one they are willing to take. Clone Ryusei is, of course, utterly shocked at this proposition.
They're not exact copies of your mechs, either — the upgrades that have been applied vary, and the weapons loadout isn't the same. This is actually a fairly entertaining battle, and occasionally they posed a bit of a challenge, but with some effort they went down like all other enemies. They were stale copies after all.
Atad realizes her Trauma Shadow trick doesn't work anymore, and reveals herself along with a swarm of mechs. Remarkably, she makes an attempt to convince us to submit willingly, since being brainwashed would mean never to worry about the past or future, only living for battle — exactly what humans want.
ATAD: Why else would you have come all this way...? That's why the Neviim and Judecca sought you out...You humans, with such a desire for combat. Gaza Haganer...no, Tenzan Nakajima is a prime example.
Their rebuttal is fierce, and Atad can see she's not going to convince anyone with this speech, so she falls back on her original kill-and-enslave plan. And surprise, Gaza is somehow STILL alive after taking a metric ton of Tronium to the face! Well, I'm glad I skipped trying to fight him last chapter if I'm gonna have to do it now anyway. Unfortunately I think I wasted a bit too much power already, which is going to take a while to recover, but I don't have time for that right now since I'm sure these mechs are all gonna try to swarm the Kurogane now. They appeared on the other side of the map, too, so I'm gonna spend at least two turns just getting over there. Well, I guess the ship will survive as long as Gaza himself is stopped, those grunts aren't hard to deal with.
Those that are still capable are sent forward into the mess of enemies, with a few heading off to Drone Jam Gaza, and the rest of them take turns being repaired are resupplied before joining the battle. I'll leave Gaza for later, first I'm gonna clean up all these other enemies. Surprisingly, their railguns still deal nasty amounts of damage if they hit. Given their numbers, I wasn't really expecting that. It's a shame I have to leave half my forces behind for now because they're still restoring themselves to combat level, but at least the enemies have stopped progressing forward and are now just fighting my troops. Using energy-intensive attacks is fine to some degree, as long as my resupply units can keep up with traveling back and forth to meet demand.
After multiple turns of this, and slowly filtering units back into the fray of battle, the enemy numbers thin out until only Atad and Gaza are left to deal with. Atad is a non-moving unit, by the way, she just sits there on the other side of the map waiting for someone to attack her. The Vayyikra's they're both piloting have some nasty attacks, but they're still quite tolerable compared to their infuriating Double Image ability. Seriously, anytime I attack, even with a 100% hit chance, there's gonna be significant chance that it'll auto-miss anyway. I wasted more than a few finishing moves only to have these people No-Sell them. Still, at least they have no HP regeneration, or immunity to Armor Breaker. By the way, all these defenses he had made the use of Fury a very good idea during this battle. That at least mitigated his auto-dodging ability a bit.
I finally get his health down to zero, and since he's doing a Dying Speech thing this time, he's probably dead for real. In his last moments, he regains his memories as Tenzan, or at least he's replaying his memories from the day before the Burning PT tournament, rambling about how he's gotta set up his game machine. Ryoto briefly mourns his passing, but Rio tells him not to think too much about it, deciding someone like Tenzan deserves no pity for what happened to him. Ryusei seems to briefly eulogize him as well, stating that Tenzan's game has ended.
Now all that remains is defeating Atad, who merely muses at Tenzan's death that she must have pushed him past his mental limits. Since she's not moving anyway, I take a few turns here to repair and resupply everyone, also letting them recover a bit of SP for those who have SP Regenerate. This has taken 20 turns already, and it's not like I have an interest in making it last much longer, so once everyone is ready, we march towards Atad to repeat the previous procedure.
Goes a bit quicker this time, especially now that I've learned the use of Fury, and because Excellen has enough SP to cast Daunt on Atad a few times, causing her damage and hit rates to fall through the floor. Could whack her with a few Energy Drains as well, but her health is falling quickly enough that I don't think I need to bother. I have Elzam and Viletta fall back now because they've run out of SP, and I'm not gonna let Atad have an accidental kill at this point. A few turns of vicious sword bludgeoning later, she too goes down, spouting Angrish and trying to wrap her mind around how a Balmarian could be defeated by humans. Same way as all the others, I'd say. She flees, heavily wounded, and the Kurogane continues its journey of turning Neviim into Swiss cheese with its drill.
Meanwhile, Atad is obviously not ready to die and is going to try powering up her body using the earlier-mentioned Zfylud crystal and Levi's data. And as she goes through Levi's top secret files, something interesting catches her eye...a file on a former ICS subject called Jennifer Fonda which happens to look exactly like her, leaving her utterly stunned and leading her mind to the only possible conclusion. As Ingram confirms, she's a modified human like the others.
ATAD: No...! I'm Atad Shamran! ...I've traveled the galaxy with the Neviim...
INGRAM: A false memory created by Judecca. There isn't a single Balmarian on board the Neviim. Myself included.
Wow. That certainly does explain the Human Aliens, but then the question remains where this all started if all the Neviim contains are humans. And Ingram...at the beginning of the plot he was human, then an Aerogater, and now he's back to being human? And is he the only one who kept his memories? I guess we'll hear the answers to all this in the final battle, which is coming right up. As for Atad, Ingram's dialogue implies that he just killed her, having fulfilled her purpose in his scheme.
Let's do some final character upgrades! Sanger and Elzam get their awaited SP Regenerate, Rai gets Mental (SP costs reduced to 80%) and Ryusei gets Expert (EN costs reduced to 70%). I still have a significant number of points to distribute, but I'll wait and see if I need them for anything in the end. Almost all of the money is spent on upgrading TK Burst Slash and Colossal Blade, and the remainder is used to give a few mechs some minor stat boosts.
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