Part 110: Episode LXXXIV: This is a Story About Flowers, Dragons, Destiny, and Cubes... But Mostly Cubes

Episode LXXXIV: This is a Story About Flowers, Dragons, Destiny, and Cubes... But Mostly Cubes



Music: Aethervox



We now jump ahead to... an apparently out of time campfire scene with just Dito and Decadus. Huh? What are you idiots doing in The Land of Sands? It's April 21st. You're supposed to be going and getting killed or turning into birds over in Notspain in two days time. Stop dicking around! And where are those other two chowderheads? Explain yourselves!



Yep.
And what was Michael called previous to that?
I don't know. Michael never liked talking about his past much.
I see.
…..
Don't you think it's time you started referring to Mikhail by his name?
Someday.

That explained nothing as to why you two are here or why this DLC even needs a weird framing device of Zero between missions deciding to tell just Dito and Decadus about her past. You're just making things unnecessarily convoluted here. What timeline is this even supposed to be?



Mind answering a couple of questions?
Sure. Ask me anything.
Well, first of all, what do they like to eat?
Don't know.
Well then, how do they make fire? The stuff they breathe, I mean.
Don't know.
Um... okaaaaaay? So I heard once that dragons don't have good peripheral visi—
Don't know.
What abo—
Don't know.
I didn't even ask a goddamn question!
.....
I heard a story once about a nasty zombie dragon that exists somewhere in the world. If that's true—IF it's true—I kinda wanna see it.
.....
So, did you and this stupid dragon Michael become best buds right away, or what?
What do you think?
Seems doubtful.
Heh. You've been paying attention.
So did you split up after that or what?
Hold on. I'm getting to it.



Anyway, one day later we return to Zero's story proper. We can just go ahead and ignore that campfire intermission as the strangely cut prologue never goes back to that framing scene. Indeed it goes to an entirely different one for the conclusion of the DLC. Which again, makes me think this whole bit was just hacked out of the main game and cobbled together when they got the idea to do prologue DLC for the rest of the sisters.



Verse 2: Flowers and Dragons
Music: Registance – Battleground



Well that's certainly a vague mission objective. You might recognize this as the same sky map we recently fought Ezrael and Three not long ago. There's actually a bit more to it in Zero's Prologue version of the map we didn't see when it was just a new generic boss skybox. Regardless, there isn't much at all to this mission.



But when I think about it now, I perhaps see the hand of fate at work. Zero was a woman imprisoned within her flower's curse. A flower whose history deeply intertwines with the drago—



Eh? Leave me alone, girl! I have a gravely important tale to impart.
Trust me. No one gives a shit. And where the hell are we going, anyway?
Bah! To think I chose to aid one with such uncouth and abhorrent taste in language.
Okay, first of all, enough with the bullshit fancy talk.
What!? You dare ridicule the 12,000 years of knowledge imparted to me by—
Huh? Didn't you say 8,000 years yesterday? Quit fudging the numbers.
Ridiculous! I would never stoop to the level of... fudging. Still... I suppose I could be convinced to try a piece if it was offered. Even a lofty dragon such as myself gets something of a sweet tooth from time to ti—
All right, all right. Stop!





So the core objective of this stage is to shoot down Gargoyle Cubes. A lot of gargoyle cubes. Like more gargoyle cubes get shot down in this stage than every other aerial enemy in the entire game combined, including past gargoyle cubes.





Evidently, Octa's line about gargoyle cubes needing immense magical energy is either bullshit or Three was just using inefficient gargoyle cube fueling methods because this desert is infested with the damned things.

Initially we only need to kill ten of the floating boxes.





Following the initial ten, Michael will decide to do a canyon trench run around the Land of Sands for some target practice. The route around the canyons is automatic and will loop to the beginning (along with resetting the gargoyle cube tally) if Michael fails to shoot the allotted number of sky crates before the next loop. All this is mostly just to give the player something to do while the Narration Zone™ gets a good work out.

10 + 10 + 16 + 16 unit waves of gargoyle cubes later. Yes, those are all separate waves of shooting galleries...



I know about the flower within you, girl. It is intrinsically related to my proud dragon race...



Dragons had been the natural enemies of the flower since ancient times. And dragons were the only creatures in existence that could destroy the flower. When he saw I was infected with it, it kind of... hit a nerve, I guess. Michael kept describing it with words like “destiny” and “preordained.” Annoying as hell, actually. But whatever.
All I needed was his help. The flower had become my sisters, and they had to be destroyed. And once that was done, I had to be destroyed as well. After I told him that, he stayed quiet for a while...



Actually, he stayed quiet for the duration of blowing 48 frikkin' gargoyle cubes from the skies. Did Michael originally have some race bigotry against gargoyles (is that even a race or just a title?) that got mixed up with wyvern when reincarnating as Mikhail? Is that what happened. We do not encounter any wyvern to gauge Michael's disposition. But the dragon clearly cannot abide flying crates of plasma shot in his airspace.



He'd been alive for a very, very long time. Long enough to know every kind of loss imaginable. And sometimes all that pain and loneliness got in the way of his thinking. But after a while... he whispered two words to me: “Very well.”



And then he went on to kill another wave of 32 gargoyle cubes. Then 16 more for good measure. And then another 16 more. Then he flew high into the clouds to do away with 28 more of 'em. But he made a grave miscalculation. 154 gargoyle cubes destroyed had crossed the line...



And so did the Grand Gargoyle Cube: Ancient Progenitor of all Cubes of the Skies of Midgard descend from the heavens. It crackled with the wild, unimaginable energies held within. Before Michael and Zero knew it—



...It exploded in a single shot like every other gargoyle cube in existence. Alright, mission. I'll give you that one was kind of a funny gag. Not punchline for over 150 of the same enemy funny but...



The mountain.
Which mountain?
I believe it's called Mount Vern...smith? Burn...slice? Er...
Huh? Speak up!
The name doesn't matter! It's a holy mountain, all right?
Forgot it, did you?



Music: Inquitus



The dragon had lived for millennia. He had fought thousands of battles. He had lost count of how many people and other creatures he had killed.



In the end, all that remained was a mountain of smoldering castles and half-burnt corpses.



And over the sand and endless years... everything the dragon once believed in had become as ashes in the wind.



And that brings us to the half-way point in Zero's Prologue. Tune in next time when we make sure absolutely no ground mission map gets by with only one use as we make a return visit to Mt. Bernstein of the Vice Norden Whatever!








Video: Zero's Prologue Verse 2 Highlight Reel