Tales of the Abyss: gameblog 3

I officially nickname Tales of the Abyss "Tales of Gankutsuou".

As if the similarities between the whole overly naive boy from a noble family being absolutely infatuated with a 'highly respectable' worldly older man, one who knows and can do anything (according to the boy), so much so that the boy ignores whatever negative things the person with a supposed crush on him others with more common sense (and a high suspicion of said worldly man) may say, not to mention the inclusion of GAY highly misinterpretable scenes between man and boy, and then *cough* weren't enough....

...Van and the Count having THE SAME FREAKING VOICE is the ultimate clincher.
Nakata George likes playing with young boys' hearts.

Spoilers and caps galore, as usual.





....crud, I waited quite a bit to start typing this up, and my memory is starting to fail me. I could just turn on the game and leave it on Luke's journal, which is a retelling of the events that have happened so far, but that would require me to continually turn around in my chair to see the TV (which is directly opposite from the computer, so...yeah. But I have my notes instead! (And I take better notes on a game than I do while listening to lectures in class orz)



Anyway, there are these sky trams that go back and forth from the port to the main city. Upon arriving, Luke feels rather deflated since, although he's come home, it doesn't feel like it at all, seeing as he's never left his own home in the 7 years after he was found when he was abducted.




Going a little bit further into town, they come across the Shikkoku no Tsubasa again, talking about some suspicious stuff with some soldier. HMM. It's commented among the party that they resemble this circus troupe "Kurayami no Yume".

...so they're a bunch of thieving clowns?




And you can trigger a random event in the middle of the town when you approach some chick. A bunch of girls will start hitting on Guy *KNOWING* that he's afraid of them. Hee.



Vatical. Apparently the protective outer walls were made from one of the large fuseki that fell to the ground or something? *doesn't care about little details like that. Yet vaguely remembers them.*

We wander all around town, which is relatively big, before finally heading to the castle to report to the king.



Inside one of the chambers, the party find out about Tear's obsession of cute things when she stares at the maid like an obsessed Lesbian 's maid uniform for a while. .....will we get titles that lets Tear dress up in the maid outfit later on?



In front of the throne room, it's learned that Morse is inside, busy poisoning the king's mind of Markt, so Luke says they'll all barge in and threatens to use his position to get the guard fired if he stops him. Heh. *smack*



So they storm right in, a bunch of random ossans whom I'm not interested in are all WTF, introductions are made, and the letter from Emperor Peony is handed over. One of the old guys apologize to Luke for his rude comments of "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU" for.........not knowing who Luke was, obviously, and I don't remember what Morse was doing, because he's not eye candy, and not-pretty people in RPGs usually don't interest me. What. Probably stuttering over some sort of excuses or still trying to badmouth Markt, which was now difficult to do with Jade being there.




Without much else to do, the King says that Luke ought to hurry home, since his mother collapsed from worrying. Ion mentions that he wants to go see Luke's house, but Morse (the old fat dude talking in the second picture; see, you prolly wouldn't bother to remember him either) tells Tear to stay behind for reporting. Tear disagrees, saying that she feels it's her responsibility to see Luke safely back to his house, and Morse says whatever.

So we head back over to Luke's house. And it's only then I realize that Luke's manor and the castle are next-door neighbors.
Gives a whole new spin on Natalia being the girl next door. But as they enter, they come across Luke's father who spouts some more cryptic stuff about Van (notice how people never tell you *anything* in this game?). Cecil (the lady from before) heads back to the port (I didn't even know why she was there in the first place), and papa heads on over next door to talk with the king (personally I think it'd be highly amusing if they swapped like, barbecue stories over a beer, talking over the fence boundary, but that's just me).



Everyone is relieved that Luke is back, Ramdas refers to Mieu as "Mieu-sama....", the maids scare Guy, and Beil (Peil? I can't tell if his name starts with a Be or a Pe) the gardener seems to more than he...seems. I hate repeating words like that in the same sentence =A= Also apparently Luke's fiancee, Princess Natalia is there in the meeting room, but we sidestep that for a bit and go reassure Mama that the Bocchama is safe and sound. Tear apologizes profusely, but Suzanne just says so long as it wasn't some major threat upon Luke's life by the enemy, oh, and siblings shouldn't fight, because fighting among family members is sad!



We then finally get to meet Natalia.

たっ・・・高びー

But she acts more how I think princesses would act (since in stories where we get a princess on the side of the protagonist, they tend to be THE FUCKING NICEST PEOPLE EVER, nevermind that they've been PAMPERED ALL THEIR LIFE (and I like RANDOM CAPSLOCK IN CASE YOU HADN'T NOTICED YET).

But anyway, she seemed genuinely worried about Luke, and I was rather surprised that she did seem to be quite (openly) fond of Luke, none of the usual ("OMG he's just my fiancee because our parents MADE US (but tee-hee deep down inside I secretly do wub him but KYAAA it'd be soooo embarassing to say!!!")), which was quite the refreshing change.



She then torments Guy by drawing near and saying that when Luke and she marry, Guy'll have to get used to women since he'll become her servant.





Natalia also explains what's up with Van, and apparently there's doubt that it was all Van's doing in having Luke teleported away, to which, naturally, Luke freaks out about, which is also what Luke's dad was mumbling about when he was leaving. He asks Natalia to talk to the king about it, and Ion and Anise say they'll look into things on their side too.

Natalia also mentions that she hopes Luke hurries up and remembers the propose he made to her when they were little brats, and Luke is just "gzzzuh....memory loss here, remember?" She says she knows, but it would be like, FATE if that's the first thing he remembers, tee-hee!

After that they only thing left to do is to sleep and trigger the next event, but upon returning to main room, you can apparently get part of Luke's Ougi when you come across Ramdas (who gives you money to buy the scroll that has its teachings on it or something from some merchant. Yey.)



After that there's REALLY nothing left to do, so they all hang out in Luke's room and smoke pot leave Luke and go on their merry ways.



Next day a maid comes to wake Luke up and informs him that Natalia has sent for him. Luke is kind of confused at this and asks if his house arrest has been lifted, and apparently it has, as he can enter and leave the manor as he pleases.



Back to the castle, Luke overhears Morse and Tear talking about the 7th Fuseki and some place called Aczelius when he also hears his name. Luke barges into the conversation, but Morse denies anything and is just "hay sup thar Luke! 8D;;;;;"

So they find themselves before the King again, and talk is brought up about the peace treaty between Markt and Kimuelasca. Apparently in the letter from Emperor Peony, there were certain conditions that he wanted Kimuelasca to adhere to...I think. Maybe it was Kimuelasca that brought up the conditions, I don't remember. In any case, the King has decided to take the treaty into account and goes over the details.

Over in Markt territory there is a mining town called Aczelius. The miasma has appeared there, and they need to evacuate the townspeople. The problem is that the Markt path leading there is also completely filled with the miasma, so they can't make it through on their side. Since the town actually used to be Kimuelasca territory (it's sort of near Choral Castle), the treaty asked the Kimuelascans to help them evacuate and give them refuge in their kingdom.

Which is all fine and dandy, but the main reason Luke was called is because the King wants Luke to go as the emissary of peace/ambassador type person. Except Luke doesn't want to go.



So the King bargains with him, saying that if he agrees to go, he'll see what he can do about Luke's precious Van-Sensei. He then goes on to saying that there's a reason that Luke must go (yey, we've all been waiting for it!) Tear is asked to read part of Yuria's 6th score, which says something about in the year ND 2018, the one who inherits Yuria's power will lead some people in some mountain to safety, and that it'll be a man with red hair born in Kimuelasca whose name means 'the light of the holy flame'. I.E. j00 r teh CHOSEN, Luke!

(Also, I think this prophecy is the thing that's said at the very beginning of the game with the first anime cut scene. I know I heard something which sounded like a date, and I think it was ND 2018, but it didn't make much sense to me at that time.)

Luke sees this as the whole "way to become a hero" thing and agrees. Then he gets to pick his party (although it's pretty much decided for him), and apparently ~*~*~*VAN-SENSEI*~*~*~ will come along too! And Natalia wants to join in but the King is No.

So everyone else goes on to do their own thing, and Luke asks if he can see Van (who was caught and put in the dungeon...don't recall if I mentioned that).




And then it becomes SPECIAL. So, Luke arrives in the dungeon just as they're letting Van out and they get to talk.

Van tells Luke that there's more to the Score than what was read by Tear, and that it continues on to explain that Luke is to be used as a weapon. Van doesn't want that to happen and asks Luke if he wants to join him in the Oracle Knights. Which is probably akin to Van asking for Luke's hand in marriage in Luke's mind, so yeah.

He continues to explain that he has a seperate idea for Luke. Instead of evacuating the people from Aczelius, as what the score seems to be getting at is that the real war will actually start if Luke does so, Luke should use his solo-chou shindou power to neutralize the miasma radiating from below the town; that way the people can remain where they are and the war won't start. After that, Luke can elope flee with Van to Daath (the HQ for the Lorelai religion I think?) to escape being imprisoned again.



There is a bit of stalking and eavesdropping going on during this time too.



Luke asks Van why he cares so much for him he's always looking out for what's best for Luke, and Van tells him that it happened in the past, and he's forgotten it, but when Luke was younger, he underwent horrible torturous (is that a word? *checks* yes) experiments to uncover stuff about his Chou Shindou power. At that time, Luke had begged Van to take him away to Daath and Van's heart went out to him, so he tried to help Luke escape from Vatical. The 'kidnapping' by Markt back then was actually Van trying to free Luke from the experiments.




Van says that he needs Luke to keep this all a secret from everyone, as this time his plans won't fail.


Oh, and he also says "Watashi ni wa omae ga hitsuyou nano da"

There they go with those ghei lines of theirs again. And I rofl like mad. Is this Tales team primarily female?

But yeah. Anyway. Luke is excited that Van wants so much for him and is eager to please (*rereads that line. .......*), and I don't believe anything that Van is spouting.



Luke rendezvous with the other party members, and Jade has bad news in that the Oracle ships are on the lookout on the ocean nearby, and they figure Morse is trying to interfere again. The decide to go a different way and take the land route to Kesedonia, then take a ship from there. Van says that he'll go by ship to be the decoy. Luke is upset that he and his beloved sensei are to be parted yet AGAIN, but it can't be helped, and Van heads off to the port.



Along the way they bump into Anise, who tells them that Ion is missing, and it's been reported that an Ion-like persona was seen with some circus like people. They figure the Shikkoku no Tsubasa kidnapped him and that's what they were doing in Vatical the previous day. When Anise tries to leave the town to look for him, Sink appears and gets in her way. The party realizes this means they can't leave the town either, as then it'll be known to the Roku Jinshou that they're planning on taking the land route to Aczelius.



Guy comes up with an idea and says they ought to check out the old abandoned factory, as they might be able to find a way out that way. But first he wants to take Luke on a date somewhere, so they stop by some dojo of sorts, which isn't really central to the plot, but I wanted to put up a cap because the guy's name is Miyagi. Hee.


And....my mouse randomly froze as I was typing part of this up, so I had to reboot and retype T_T Luckily I save this thing frequently.


Mr. Miyagi teaches them how to customize/upgrade their special attacks/ougis and gives them these special stones and uh, stuff. After that's done, they head over to the sky tram which leads to the abandoned factory. The guard that's usually there is gone, and someone mentions that a girl went ahead of them. I WONDER WHO IT COULD BE.



Upon arriving, they're met with Natalia, who, being a wagamama princess, expects to get her way and demands that they take her along too. And it seems like whenever I took photos of them in a dark place, the speech bubbles were contrasted to the max, making it nigh impossible to read a lot of what was said.





She says that she's likely to be more helpful than that 'stupid-looking Oracle' and that 'anti-social Oracle' and moreover, if Luke doesn't let her come along, she'll spill to the whole world Luke and Van's special sekrits. No better way to show your love than blackmail! Luke is like OMG FINE but you gotta PINKYSWEAR (BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh that's so cute) and Natalia says I thought you didn't like pinky-swears? Which...is an odd thing to dislike, but whtvr.

And so Luke lets her join and Anise and Tear are like "ugh, men."

And then it's just getting through the dungeon. Which wasn't completely evil but had me stumped for a few minutes near the end. Also, now that Natalia is in the group, after a battle if you get Luke to cook something, there's a skit. And everyone comments on how bad Luke and Natalia's cooking is. Heh.



And I realized that Luke is one of those heroes that *all* the chicks are in love with. Well, Anise is in love with his money, but it still counts. It doesn't actually bother me that much though.

At the end, they find an exit leading outside the castletown, so Guy's hunch paid off. Yey! And we get our second anime cut scene.



*LAWZ at Guy and Jade in the back*



They find a large Oracle landship of sorts and that the Roku Jinshou have Ion with them. Luke runs forward to attack Asch. 1. It's raining, and Asch's normally slicked-back gel hair is more foppy, and 2. This is actually the first time Luke has scene Asch's face up close.

And he realizes that Asch looks *just* like him. 8D

Seriously disoriented, (and the fact that he's a lot weaker anyway), Luke doesn't stand a chance and Asch easily takes Ion away. Everyone else is WTF and Luke feels sick.



And randomly Jade, because the photo came out unblurry, and it's hard to capture anime sequences without getting them blurry. Well that, and Jade has that "I NO WUTZ GOIN ON HERE! but I'm not gonna say anything" look to him.

That and I think Jade's hot. What.





So....while everyone's not sure what's going on, Jade points out that, at any rate, their plan to sneak past the Roku Jinshou undetected were all for naught, and so maybe they ought to just return to the ports and take the ship anyway. But apparently the King was still more suspicious of Markt than he let on, and so after the ship with Van set sail, they closed all their ports. In any case, Jade says to Luke (mockingly, of course) that he's the ambassador, the 'leader', and that he should decide.

Luke says they'll just continue on their way, and the others discuss which way the ship headed, because they need to get Ion back along the way. It's decided that it seems like they were heading toward the desert, so off they go!

And I'm back on that horrible horrible world map which makes me lost as usual. The desert is fun to trek through, because the climate causes your character to move through it considerably slower than his/her normal speed, and so you pretty much can't run away from enemies 8D It's good for leveling up. And we need the money. And I spent probably an hour leveling up in the desert and blew nearly all my money buying them new weapons and stuff T_T

Anyway, there's one small oasis in the middle of the desert, and they head for that (or rather, I did after I'd explored every last corner of the desert that I could)



They enter and Luke gets one of his headaches, and it turns out to be Asch uh, talking directly in Luke's head. Whee! Asch tells Luke that Ion is in the Zao Ruins, to which Luke is all "why are you telling US that?" With no other leads to follow up on, they decide to listen to the voices in Luke's head (................) and dig up info on the Zao Ruins in the Oasis. Despite historians and stuff hardly knowing jack on them, all the locals can point them in the right direction. (.....................)




While there, we get more of Jade's snark and more of Luke's funny faces, both of which I ho for.



So they continue on to the Ruins.

Oh yeah, after wandering around in the desert for a while, there's a chat between Luke, Natalia, Jade, and Guy. Natalia's having a hard time withstanding the heat, and one suggests that she walk behind either Guy (I just typoed that as Gay. I think it might be a sign) or Jade to take some cover in the shade. Luke asks why he wasn't suggested, and they say it's because he's short. Hee.

They arrive at the ruins.
They enter the ruins.
What else would they have done?

DANJON KOURYAKU TAIMU.



Along the way Mieu can learn a new power and like, bash rocks. w00t.



At the end of this rather long dungeon, they come across some building with a weird door in it, and Asch, Sink, and Largo with Ion performing some sort of ceremony. Or something.



Never being ones to talk things out peacefully, Luke and co. immediately get into a fight with Sink and Largo and kick their asses easily (okay, I think I may have used a life bottle or two during the fight)

Asch likes calling people "kuzu" and attacks Luke. They execute the exact same move at the same time, and Luke is all "omg why do you know the move Sensei taught me????!" And Asch is like "....uh, because we both studied the same style, KUZU!" But Sink steps in.



Yeah, I have no idea what Sink is saying to Asch, but I think it might have been "if you keep making that face, it'll stick like that forever".



Anyway, they say they'll hand Ion over on the condition that they leave the ruins now without turning back.

Rather kind of them, if I do say so myself. As they leave, Largo seems to recognize Natalia for some reason. So Asch is like..."Largo, do you recognize Natalia for some reason?" And uh....why do you know her, Asch? Also, Guy seems to take Sink into account, saying something to the effect that "he looks similar". So Sink is like..."Guy seems to be taking me into account. Perhaps he knows". And fun cryptic stuff like that.



They leave and ask Ion what it is they were having him do. Ion says that the Zao ruin is also a Sephirot (one of those things Regret took him to when the Roku Jinshou overran the Tartaros), and that it's protected using a special Daath sealing technique, and they wanted him to undo it. Or something. But he wouldn't say any more than that, because these people like their secrets.



Finally the reach Kesedonia...which I thought was an island at first, but actually it was a peninsula.




They decide to head over to the inn when Asch decides to bully Luke again. Whee. Asch mocks him by telling him he can control him because he and Luke are connected, and that they are one. ...we won't get into that or any of the possible connotations it could mean, but yeah, Asch is like the playground bully.




Luke puts on a show of bravado with little more than a "leave me alone!" and Asch mocks him and controls him, making him pull out his sword and direct it at Tear.

And everyone else just stands around and watches.





Luke attempts to stave off Asch's mind control but only succeeds in passing out. He wakes up to find most all of them worried about him and wondering what's wrong with him. Jade suggests that it's likely Dist did something to him when Luke was captured at Choral Castle, and that when they catch the idiot (Jade's words), they'll make him remove the spell/whatever.

Ah, also around this time it's decided what should be done with Ion. They figure he ought to come along with them, as that way they can protect him and stuff. It'd been building up for a while since they left, but around now is when Luke starts to become really bratty. Basically a lot of "OMG why are you guyz listening to ME???!! I'M the amBASSador HERE!!!!!!" and it's just like....STFU Luke, you didn't even want to come in the first place.

It gets worse as they continue on but uh...we'll get to that.




They reach the Markt consulate to get them to put out a boat for them to reach the other continent and find a letter from Van, saying that he's already gone ahead. Luke is, naturally, displeased and blames it on their stopping to rescue Ion (...) but then suddenly Guy starts acting funny. Sink was sneaking around outside the consulate, waiting for them, but they didn't notice him and Luke thinks Asch is controlling Guy too.




Jade notices the carslot curslot on Guy and says that that's likely to be the cause of his being controlled. Ion mentions to himself that that's a form of Daath fujutsu only usable by a doushi (i.e., Ion). Gee, WONDER WHAT THAT MEANS 8DDDDD

From his stalkingplace, Sink notes that Guy's resistance to his power is pretty strong, but shrugs it off, saying that he'll be involved in the Aczelius incident anyway. Hmmmm.



As had been suggested by either...Ion or Jade (prolly Jade), once Guy puts some distance between himself and the spellcaster, the hold on him should loosen or be lifted, and after they get on the boat, Guy is indeed able to recontrol his own body.




Once they arrive at the Kaitool military port, from there they need to cross the Deo Pass to reach Aczelius. Van is nowhere to be seen and this makes Luke prickly as usual and says it's because they made an unneeded pitstop, pissing off just about everyone. Anise starts showing her true self to Luke with an "anta, baka?" and Tear and Natalia point out that hello, Ion is like, THE head of the Lorelai religion, Luke argues back that he's OMG! the ambassador for their little party! and it's like a little kid's argument and is ARGH STFU. Ion tries to bring a bit of peace by saying he's not that important (LOL), there's more bickering, Guy says to Luke pretty much that uh, that wasn't cool to say, and Jade just laughs and says oh how young everyone is.

And they set up the trail.

Things are reaching a messy, annoying stage that gets on my nerves.
And it continues to go downhill from there. ¬_¬




Anyway, about halfway through, Ion becomes pretty tired, since it's not like he's the most physically fit of the group. So they decide to stop. Without Luke's permission, who, of course, bitches and bitches about it all because hey, HE'S the important one here, without him they aren't REALLY bringing peace to the two nations and omg where is Van-Sensei, if Van-Sensei were here HE'D know what to do and would listen to Luke and BLAH BLAH BLAH.

Naturally everyone else ignores him.





Near the end of the pass, they encounter Regret. Regret seems to be trying to win Tear over to her side (since Tear is originally a subordinate of Regret, and I guess Regret is still fond of her, despite her being on the 'other side'). Tear says no, she's following Morse's orders, and why are y'all kidnapping Ion and making a rounds of the Sephirots? And...Regret calls Luke a failure (I'm not really remembering a lot of significant connectors in the conversations, so it'll seem pretty jumpy).

Regret also goes on to saying how they're trying to change the world, because at the present time, no one seems to have any qualms to having their entire lives dictated by Yuria's scores. They'll have the scores read for everything, even what to cook for dinner, and no one is trying to live their own lives without their future being predicted, and that this has to stop.

So uh. Why were the Roku Jinshou being considered the 'conservative' side? They're obviously anti-Yuria.

Anyway, I don't remember how, but the conversation goes onto something about a 'forbidden technology', which both Jade and Ion seem to know something about, and you get to see Jade pissed for real for once when he accuses Regret (i.e. Roku Jinshou) for being the ones to revive this forbidden technology.

Then uh, we get in a boss battle with Regret. And she forces me to use a few Life Bottles (T_T those things aren't cheap you know), but we defeat her and she goes on her merry way.



However, after that, nobody really goes into specifics, which annoys the already aggravated Luke further, especially since Regret says things that seemed to significantly point out something about Luke, but even if they know what's going on, nobody's talking, and they continue on.

Luke pauses to angst and whine that Van-Sensei is the only one who understands him, and if only Van-Sensei were here.....

There's a skit after leaving the trail between Tear and Luke, with Luke angry that nobody tells him anything and that Van-Sensei would know what to do, and Tear berates him for not thinking about what he should be doing for himself. Then it's on to Aczelius.


Upon entering the town, they see that things are in bad shape. The miasma is everywhere, and there are sick people everywhere too. Apparently the miasma wrecks the internal organs (I was amused that they had that in English for some reason. They had the kanji, but it was read 'intaanaru orugan'), but there are people who have a natural resistance to the miasma (not completely, but they don't get sick as quickly as the others who have) are trying to help the best they can. The party is relatively shocked at the state of things.

Natalia rushes off to try healing some people, Luke says she shouldn't touch them since it's dirty and could be contagious, and he gets a lot of verbal bitchsmacking back. The others go off to see what they should do while Luke lingers back and is unhelpful, wondering why he should be doing such dirty work, wondering where Van-Sensei is, and if only he could neutralize the miasma like Van had planned, they could fix everything and he could be a hero without all this pesky stuff. They find out that Van's unit has apparently already gone ahead in one of the mines, and that they should follow to help the people down below.



They make their way down to the entrance also, but as they're about to enter, an Oracle Knight shows up telling Tear that the location of the 7th Fuseki has been found. Since that's Tear's primary mission (even though it was supposed to be uh, a secret mission ¬_¬) she takes her leave of the party for now. Natalia is also a healer, so yeah, we're fine.

They make there way down down down the mine shaft to the very bottom, where workers who are suffering severely from the poison are waiting to be helped. (I love gameblogging about the actual dungeon parts. It only takes a sentence.) The others fan out to help people, while Luke remains his sullen self and wonders where Van-Sensei is.





OMG WUT DOS IT SEY???? Luke is attacked by another Asch-attack (=_=) and Asch says to Luke "WTH are you doing? Get the hell out of there now". Luke is uh, why should I be listening to the Roku Jinshou. There's a commotion up above and Jade leaves to go check it out.



Asch continues to yell in Luke's head, telling him to leave or he'll do something he totally can never undo.



Luke ignores him and presses on on his search for the lovely Van, and he's rewarded when he and Ion find him a bit further in the mine.




They find another of those Daath seals, and Ion points out that hay, it's another Sephirot. There's no point in opening one of these, but Van insists, and Ion's like, okay!

Oh lawz.

More screaming from Asch. "WTF man! Are you planning on destroying Aczelius?" "Right back at ya! No, I'm gonna SAVE it with my super duper neutralizing powah. STFU."



They come in front of some huge device -Van calls it a Passage Ring- and tells Luke to go down near it, as from there he'll be able to use his Chou Shindou to neutralize the miasma.




"I just switched to Geico, and saved a bunch of money on car insurance!"
i.e., I'm not sure what they're saying exactly either, so just a general idea of the conversation that took place (I could be forgetting some things and making up others).

Jade finds that Tear has returned, but she's the bearer of REALLY FUCKING bad news. There was absolutely nothing to do with the 7th Fuseki; she was taken to the Oracle ship where she found that the unit that supposedly went ahead with Van had all been killed, and she herself was trying to be kidnapped.




Back in the Passage Ring, Van tells Luke to concentrate and to release all his power, while referring to him as
"Foolish Replica Luke"


DUN DUN DUN





From there Luke's no longer sure what's going on. He can sense a lot of power draining from him (and they even have a flashback of the scene between Van and Luke on the ship, and figures that if he just listens to Van, all will be alright.

Yeah, sure.



Back to Tear and Jade, Tear finally gets to the important stuff.

That is, Van is trying to destroy Aczelius. So Jade is curious as to where she heard that, and she points to Asch, who's running like a bat out of hell......back into a cave leading to hell. And the other two follow after him.

AND EVERYTHING GOES TO ABSOLUTE HELL AFTER THIS. Literally.



They arrive too late. Luke has already used the Chou Shindou to neutralize the 'miasma', or rather, the Passage Ring. Van congratulates the Foolish Replica Luke on finally being of use. Ion, on the other hand, is rather useless. Asch appears out of nowhere with "I TOLD YOU SO"s, but apparently having Asch die on him would be bad, so Van sends some birdie to capture Asch and take him outta there. He was going to save Ion instead, but apparently Asch is more important. Tear and Jade and everyone catch up, Tear yells at him for betraying them, even though uh, she always thought he was a traitor, saying that he'd agreed to let the 'gaikaku daichi' (which I supposed could be translated to 'outer earth' or something of the like).

Van says that he'd intended to keep Tear alive so that she could witness...what exactly was it that he'd said? The filth of everything and how it needs to be cleansed, or something to that effect. At any rate, I remember groaning at that cliche, because I was really interested in seeing what Van's dastardly plans as villain for this world was. And it was just "Oh GAWD puh-leeze".　　But he also calls Tear by her full first name, which is something like...Meshtearica. ...it sounds like a badly mangled Engrish Metallica. No wonder she calls herself Tear for short.

Meanwhile, as all this conversation transpires, the entire area under Aczelius is caving in on itself, causing complete devastation all around. Van hitches a ride on another of his birdies and flies off, leaving everyone to their doom. Funny enough, the land beneath Aczelius is oddly hollow, so there's quite a lot of falling to do. Luckily the Tartaros that the Roku Jinshou had swiped from Jade is nearby and is falling with them (lol?) and so they escape inside in hopes that its floatation device will suck up their impact whenever they land.



When they finally do, they realize they're not in Kansas anymore. They're in the 'underworld' aka 'Qliphoth' (and man, these randomly used Jewish terms in the game are hard to figure out the spellings of =_= (*knows virtually nothing on the religion*) But apparently the Daath (the name of the religious capital (?) in the game) is also known as "the Abyss" so, yeah. There are some connections between it all. And the Sephirots are also called 'Sephirot Trees' but that's a little bit later on. I'll stop talking about it because Judaism confuses me.)

Anyway, in Qliphoth, the miasma isn't just a gas; it's an ocean. Whee, fun. They watch some kid fall in and drown. HAHAHA. In any rate, Tear says there should be the city of...Yuria City somewhere nearby, so they board the Tartaros in search of it.

Along the way (since there's pretty much nothing around), they get Tear to spill the beans since she obviously knows the place.

......and so she goes into explanation, which I'm not too keen on remembering, organizing in my head, and poorly translating. Then after that is the part where I get mad at everyone else, so it's not a happy part of the game for me =(





...........
...The land that everyone is living on is referred to as the 'gaikaku daichi', the outer earth. The land once used to be a part of this Qliphoth.

About 2000 years ago, as the story goes, their land of Oldorant (which looks like 'old deodorant' to me) was covered in miasma, and so Yuria used her scores to seal the miasma inside the earth. But in actuality, they actually ripped up the land of Qliphoth and, using the Sephirot Trees (power points) as a pillar, sent those land pieces up to 'float' in the air, sealing in the miasma this way. However, the only people who know this are the inhabitants of Qliphoth and people higher than the rank of "eishi" (kind of like what Morse is, except he's a 'Grand' Eishi, whatever Eishi would exactly translate to) of Lorelai know the truth to this.

The Daath seals were put in place to protect the Passage Rings, which control the Sephirots.




Ahem. And so then it's pointed out exactly what Luke did: he basically erased the Passage Ring, which creates the pillar. Without the Passage Ring, the pillar/Sephirot disappears, and there's no longer anything holding up that part of outer earth from Qliphoth. So everything falls down into the miasma ocean.

And this information sends Luke into pretty much hysterics. He claims over and over that he didn't know and that he swears he was just trying to neutralize the miasma, why are they all blaming him, Van-Sensei told him to do it, repeat ad infinitum.





And one by one, disgusted by Luke's denial in his part in destroying a part of the land and killing lots of people, making sure to relay that disgust to Luke, they leave the deck and Luke alone.

Lessee....
Jade: I'm going to the bridge, staying here will only keep me annoyed by stupid rantings
Anise: OMG WTF Ion-sama, let's leave this awful idiot and GO
Ion: I was powerless to do anything, but honestly Luke....
Natalia: You've changed ever since your memory loss
Guy: Please...don't....disappoint me any more than you already have
Tear: ...it was stupid of me to ever think that you might have some good qualities.




Finally the only one left is Mieu. Mieu, the ...abused but loyal pet sticks by his master's side. He tells Luke to cheer up; he understands how his master feels because it was fault that he killed lots of his friends too (the forest fire accident)



Inside, Tear gives out directions and stuff.

Ahahaha. From here on for a little bit, Mieu takes over for Luke in writing in Luke's journal. It's written all in hiragana and katakana and all sentences are ended in '.~desu no'

"master is not feeling well, so from here on Mieu will write in the journal desu no."
"Yuria City was beyond a big waterfall desu no."



Once they land, everyone heads inside. Luke hangs back and Tear tells him to hurry up. Luke says that everyone will just continue to shun him so he doesn't want to go.




They soon find that Asch is there waiting for them. Luke is none too pleased to see him and demands to know where Van-Sensei is. Asch mocks him for still calling him 'Sensei' after he's been so completely betrayed, and Luke goes into his "It wasn't my fault! x 3" line




I...forget the specifics. Anyway, I think that then Asch goes on to saying that's why Luke's a useless replica (probably threw in a number of "KUZU!"s too while he was at it). Luke still isn't grasping what's being told to him and merely mentions that that's what Sensei was saying too. Thoroughly disgusted by then, Asch says "I'll tell you, 'Luke'". Tear tries to get him to stop, but it's too late.




Asch tells him that he, Asch, was born in Vatical to a noble family. Seven years ago he was abducted by the villain Van. And Luke, or "Luke" rather, is nothing more than Asch's replica.

(At which point I was busy going "I KNEW IT!! I KNEW ITTTTT!!!!! I KNEW ASCH WAS THE REAL LUKE" because I dunno, I'm proud of myself for having figured out a rather obvious cliche. Heh.)



Naturally, now was not the best time for Luke to learn that truth, and especially in that manner. So, pretty durn hysterical, Luke gets into a sword fight with Asch, whom he loses magnificently to.



Asch says "cut yer whining; it's not like I want to acknowledge such a worthless piece of trash is my replica". And Luke passes out.



All this time Mieu has continued to update the diary. And it was actually reading that passage there that I almost broke down and wept =A= Even with Mieu's hiragana and ~desu nos.

「けっきょくたたかいのあと、ごしゅじんさまはきをう
しなってしまったですの。とうぜんですの。つらいこと
がいっぱいあって、かわいそうですの。」

...NAKERU JA NEE KA YO ;_;




While Luke is still unconscious, Asch begins talking to him through that special telepathy they have. He tells him that Luke is a perfect replica of Asch's, right down to the same number of Phoneme vibrations (i.e., that thing that's like fingerprints in that everyone has a different number that I mentioned back in gameblog 2 I think), and communication between replica and real body can be had through their phonslots (which is what Dist was opening up in Luke while in Choral Castle, so that Asch could talk directly to Luke (and give him headaches while he's doing so) instead of simply giving him headaches but Luke not being able to hear anything like he had been all the years he was locked inside his own house. (Or rather, Asch's house.)

Asch says that that's also how he could control Luke on occasion, then heckles Luke by telling him to try controlling Asch. Luke, though unconscious, can see and hear what's going on through Asch (although it's highly unlikely that he was controlling him).

At this point, I can control Asch (since Luke is still knocked out on the bed). I talk to Mieu, who says he'll remain by his master's side, and Luke is all "Mieu.... ;_____;" at that. Hahahahahaha, you better start treating Mieu better now, Luke. He's the only friend you have.



Wheee, I find it amusing to control Asch and have him find and keep the Ramen recipe 8D Downstairs we find Tear, who tells Asch that he should speak with her grandfather, the ruler of Yuria City, Theodoro. She also mentions that she won't be returning to the outer earth with them.

We wander around the city and talk to people (and be nice and give some bum 3 apple gels). Heh, it's amusing to talk to like, Natalia, because by this point everyone else has learned that Asch is the 'real' Luke and that 'Luke' is just a clone and the childhood friend that proposed to her was actually Asch, but since she didn't know that she's been mooning over Luke all these years. Confusion MAX.




Blah blah, Theodoro goes on about stuff I don't care about. Although the people of Yuria City are apparently the 'observers', and therefore they can't leave the land of Qliphoth; however if the others want to return, they could probably use the remaining power of the Aczelius Sephirot to boost the Tartaros up to the surface of the outer earth again. After making sure they've prepared, they set off.



So Asch, Ion, Jade, Anise, Guy, and Natalia board the Tartaros to get back up to the outer earth. Asch says he mistook what Van's real objectives were, and to find out what they are now, he'll need to trail him for a while. Since they're hardly not connected to all this now, the others say they'll hang out with Asch for a while to see what'll happen, and they return up above, leaving Tear, Luke, and Mieu in Qliphoth.

They head off to Belkend, where there's some research institute that Van has been coming and going from to investigate. Luke (in his journal, having seen and heard this through Asch's eyes) realizes that since yeah, they don't know why Van had Luke destroy the passage ring, it'd be good to check things out.

Now that I'm back on the surface and I have a SHIP, I naturally waste the next hour or so exploring everywhere I can go with it, including all the harbor towns with ports (since you can only dock the Tartaros at town ports).



In one of them you can have Natalia start learning her ougis.

After finding Belkend, I quit (and haven't touched the game in over a week =A= ), partly due to at that point I was still pretty damn pissed at a lot of things (even though I took out that hour in the end to explore, STFU).


Up to this point, I'm at 30 hours of play time, although about 5 could be deleted for me just goofing off, getting lost, or leaving the game on while I went to surf the net/download the photos from my computer/eat etc.



I still have my rant, although it's not nearly as angry as it was to begin with.....but it's uh, 4 a.m., I'm really tired now, and my rants are already incoherent enough while I'm fully awake. Plus this entry is already long, so I'll get into my thoughts on part of what transpired here tomorrow. Maybe.