Part 42: Thieves In The Ruins?! Have They Taken The Devil's Bracelet?!

Howdy, folks, and welcome back! Last time, on Attack of the Saiyans, Gohan was sent to Nemuria Ruins to find the Devil's Bracelet. However, he basically got lost, fixed a robot who saved his ass last time, and then Piccolo got impatient and decided to go find him, which is what we're doing today, so let's head out.



Alright, we've gotta get Piccolo's ass over there.



Thankfully, it's only about thirty steps to reach the pool of quicksand.



Which stumps Piccolo.



Why don't you apply more evil to the solution, Piccolo? At this point, you seem to think is always the solution.



Don't you yell at me, mister. I'm just sayin'.







...Huh. Why didn't I think of just blowing the quicksand up?



I consider just blowing up everything else. Why didn't I think about blowing up quicksand?

Goddammit.





We'll be fighting the same enemies from last time, so Piccolo doesn't have much to worry about.



He'll be wearing Popo's Turban for this next section. I'm not sure if Popo knows that Kami's body-double has swapped turbans with him, but it has happened.





Take a quick note that Piccolo landed in an entirely different area than Gohan.



Bud, at this point, Gohan is going to get strong enough that without him, we may as well rename this game "Dragon Ball Z: Watch The Z-Fighters Get Fucked"





So, finding Gohan isn't too difficult. It's just a bit of a jog over there.



There is treasure along the way, which as we all know, slows the process a little bit.







I can never have enough of these.



Just as I can never have enough of these. It's like finding X-Ethers in whatever Final Fantasy games have those items. Except I use them here.







Are there any video game ruins that are super-interesting to go through? Hell, the last ruins I went through for an LP...



...Motherfucker, there has to be something else.



Another +500 HP to someone, if I equip these. I'm not sure who I would give them to, if anyone, since I could give someone an extra 1,000 HP, but there are better accessories to use.



Alright, Gohan is right over there. Excellent.



Just gotta blast this rock outta the way and into the path.







And there he is.



Get your ass in this party, Gohan. I've missed my little avatar of Khorne.

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD



D-did you honestly need saving, Gohan? Nothing in here was posing a threat to you.



Piccolo, the only way Gohan is dying is if he isn't satisfied that he's completely killed something, and he proceeds to kill himself, follow the bastard to Hell, break Goz's legs, snap Mez's glasses, find the bastard he went to kill, rips his face off, makes it into a loincloth, then revives himself by giving the Devil and King Yemma the finger, and goes on to finish his day by eating a bowl of dynamite and praying that his father will love him some day.





Oh...Yeah, about that...





Well, this could come in handy.



It's going to be more fair this way; Piccolo can absorb some of the EXP Gohan would get by wandering around on his own, and we can't let our Genocide-In-Training reach his apex before it's time.





Get it? Got it? Good.





Piccolo, what do you think of this robot?



Well, the robot doesn't think much of ol' Mr. Green.

But if get Gohan to talk to him...









If we've ever reached the point where you can't keep walking forward, you've given up on life. Keep going, and remember, shine on, you crazy diamond.



Because moving forward, we've already found another Ki Drink Z.





Ah, back to this room, where Gohan got stuck.



With Piccolo along, we can move this obstruction. It wasn't until I had fired it with Piccolo that I wondered if Gohan could do it at this point, since Piccolo is along; I was wondering if the "No-blast-Gohan" script was still firing off if Gohan tried. I wish I had tried to test that.



Oh, well. Someone knows the answer, and I might even hit up my alternate save to try and test it. I'm trying to keep both files used, swapping between them for when I'm updating. It gives me a buffer of a dungeon or so.



Back here, we can loop around and go exploring over where we just opened up the path.



Man, I have a lot of redundant screenshots for this section. But, shit, it all looks the same, so the extra shots I have are to keep me on track of where I've gone. And maybe a few mistakenly taken shots.







Does anyone like dead ends in ruins? I mean, the ruins are a bit of a maze and labyrinth to begin with, but at least make all paths lead to something, even if it's just a treasure.





Sometimes, I wonder how many people are actually trying to follow along in the shots; I usually write the update assuming that you are, but it just occurred to me, some of you might not give a shit how to get through the dungeon.



Why, I bet some of you aren't even looking at these screenshots. Or reading these comments.



If you're not, what the hell are you doing here?



Are you just waiting to see where we finish, so you can post about power levels and what colors beams are?



WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE IT CONFUSES AND SCARES ME



Well, there's the save point, so we're not too far off from the end. Finding Gohan is the meat of this part of the dungeon. After that, it's just a little scooting around to get over here. This is really Gohan's show, and Piccolo only shows up just in case he needs backup.



This will heal any status ailment in the game, as well as taking out multiple ailments on the same character. A Remedy, in other words.



We loop up and around to the save point.





Where we encounter these two and their treasure chest.



Huh. Must've been something good in there.



A couple of fucking geocachers, Gohan.



Lord only knows what jerkoff planted this here and the directions to find---Piccolo...What were you up to when you weren't in the party?



Of this, I have no doubts. He could easily solo this next boss.



"I want the Devil's Bracelet to remain free from gore and bone splinters."



Or else Piccolo wants to get one shot off before Gohan drains their blood into the skull of a grizzly bear, adds some Reese's Puffs, and enjoys his dinner (as Gohan has learned he's a breakfast for dinner kind of guy).



Look who's talking, you furry bastard. I'm pretty sure I've seen you in the pictures from Anthrocon.



And you...We won't even discuss your crimes.





Well, Gohan does have a collection of fingers now, but that's probably only a treasure to him (and Exhibit A for the state).





Great, how the hell am I going to hand over my limitless supply of cash? It'll never end!





Just after one.







More like "will be" famous, as an unsolvable missing persons case.





Where is the exit, anyway? I've not found one in here. Please, could you help me find just that? Is it behind you?



Don't make me snore.







Don't encourage him, please.





Alright, let's send the Tinman back to Oz.



IN PIECES!



We're going to need some Rage Gauge to do this properly.









The 'bot only has 11,000 HP. So that's almost a quarter of it there.



He'll put up a token resistance, though. He's not without defense.



A decent damage drill strike; nothing fancy, but they don't all have to be.



He can also grab...A mushroom? Is that a fucking mushroom? Do you have the Mario Brothers as your tank crew?



Whatever the reason, it's effective.



It deals a bit of damage, but thankfully, no status affects attached to the attack.



So, let's get to the strategy I had for this fight. It mostly involves Gohan.



However, he does one thing I didn't count on, didn't have a plan ready for. In fact, when I saw what he did, I only reacted instinctively. And not to anything I did in the fight from then on; no, my body reacted instinctively.







And with that, we finish out this fight by going from hitting them with the rough equivalent of a Tomahawk Cruise Missile to the flyswatter that your grandmother keeps in the kitchen for when those little bastards get out of line.



Piccolo gained about four levels from this little excursion. The Turban helps out a lot when trying to get someone caught up or over the curve; look what wonders it did for Gohan.



This is an item that does not exist. It's just a McGuffin to pad out the game a little bit; you could have given it to Piccolo, for fuck's sake, to give him an item akin to Yamcha's Perfume.



"What Hot Topic did you find this at?"



Stronger? I don't think that's the right word to describe Gohan's substantial rise to power.



Well, he did use the Evil Assault. That's pretty Evil.



...Oh, God. I'm going to go smoke while Gohan has his after-school special.



Oh. That didn't last nearly as long as I expected. I guess they've really shortened these things up.





Not much else to do at this point, I guess.





And on that last, passionate line, we fade to black.



Whatever finding the exit took, it apparently took all day. The sun was shining when you went in there!



His knuckles are sore from all the bad guys he was punching.





"And you got your pansy ass kicked, right?"



Well, to be fair, at this point, Piccolo is the strongest warrior on earth. If he had been this strong when they had fought at the Tournament, Goku would have been reduced to a greasy smear by a nasty look from Piccolo.



However, Goku has gotten much stronger, too, and could probably trounce the entire team of Z-Fighters are they stand.



Fucking when!? When did you and Goku talk, Gohan? We sure as hell didn't see it!



Piccolo knows they didn't talk, not even during the Dragon Ball hunt.



Well, Piccolo could still easily kill them. Though, if he tried that giant form thing, he'd finally stand up to Ox-King's shoulder.



I'm about to! Just a few more screenshots.







Well, there are some father-son relationships that play out just like this.



Muse on that while you realize we're at the end of another chapter. And next time, we'll start a new chapter!

Stay tuned!