Part 35: Sudden Exposition

What could have happened here?

...relaxed and spent their private time.
Looks pretty messy. These astronauts really need to clean up after themselves.
Probably pretty accurate to folks on long trips. Who cares about cleanliness past a certain point. One bad fart and it's all ogre.

Hmm? What's that over there?







The incident...





That's really not a good thing for Geo to hear.


I know this is important stuff? But... also, I feel like the room before the final boss really isn't a great time to do backstory. This game makes weird pacing choices sometimes.
Welcome to Battle Network storytelling, friends. Even in 200 years, writers still maintain their same bad habits.


And hey! It's Kelvin's first appearance in the flesh.








Isn't that supposed to be a one-way thing? This seems like it might not be a great idea.
Either that or die. Besides, maybe technology can put them back again.





Mega, get along with Kelvin's son? Impossible. It'd never happen.
Impossible. Next you're gonna tell me he'll learn to be kind. Nonsense.



Remember the first update, how Geo's Transer suddenly started beeping? Now we have an explanation for that.




Mega does do the right thing, in the end. It just takes him a while to find a way to justify it to himself.








Taurus kinda just has a turbo-hate for Mega, huh?
"HRRK! ME RED! ME HATE BLUE! CHARGE."




Do you get it? It's the thing Kelvin said, everyone! You get it? Huh?
...Who the hell named Geo's mom that?





Well. As much as I'll make fun of the story's writing sometimes, I'm glad we did get to figure out a little bit of what's going on. I would probably been complaining about the lack of bodies if this story beat didn't happen.

...an inter-planetary BrotherBand.
That part didn't work out so well for them.
Stop adding more Facebook friends! Don't you see that social media is bad for you!? Look, this very game agrees!

This on the other hand, will work out much better.

At the bottom it says... "Come home safely dad! -Geo" "Be careful honey. -Hope"
Kelvin has this displayed pretty proudly on the wall.



It might be a little tricky to see right away, but there are a few colored papers scattered on the ground. They're a wave hole, as you'd expect.

Before we explore this area, let's check out the wavehole I opened up.


Good job, Mr. Hertz! Generate that data!

Seriously, they're being very generous with the max HP. I'm 20 away from four digits.


These are the new viruses, by the way. The level 2 Rhino and the level 2 Sticky. But, more importantly, see that black hole virus? This thing is a menace.
Its normal attack is to launch a small planet down the column its in. After a few turns of that, it'll start sucking in, and drain MegaMan's HP. This one does go through barriers, so you can't stop the HP drain.
The problem is hitting it. 90 HP seems like a small amount for a virus this late, right? Well, yes, it is. But the problem is, Grabity's family can only be injured by Sword-attribute attacks. It's one of the hidden status types, like Breaking.
They are also vulnerable to Poison panels, strangely enough. So, use Ophiuca, Wolf Woods (both hits are classified as Sword), or Gemini (the second hit is a Sword attack) Mega cards. Or, just lock on and use a regular sword card.

A 5? That's an F, Yeti.
It got me the card, which was more important.

5 damage increase translates to 30, really. But also it's just a good thing to get.


Unfortuantely for this card, we already have the level 3.

A 7? That's a C. You barely passed.

And this thing. This is one of the few cards that instantly deletes enemies. It's useful to have around if you want to try it, though I don't remember if it works on bosses or not.
It's certainly OK for farming weaker viruses you somehow missed. It's kind of impossible to balance. Make it too good and everything is a cakewalk. Make it weak and it's useless. It's a one-hit kill, so there's no real room for middle-ground. Starforce 3 ran into this problem with the Darkness Hole GigaChip.

Enough of that, let's keep moving forward.

Okay yes, this first. CopyFokx is the second rank of Fokx virus.

Whoops, forgot to take a picture of the card itself. But you've seen the first version, this one is just more powerful.
I'm not seeing S-ranks, Yeti! Better go farm until you do!


Thank you, Mr. Hertz! This was very confusing to me when I first played the game as a kid.
Useless Hertz tells us after we found the first virus. Shove him out an airlock.

This area has a lot of teleport pads. If you teleport to the first area below the wave hole and then walk down into this spot...
We're flying! FLYING!

There's a hidden wavehole, out here.

The Living Mod. comp is pretty important.

First, because it pushes me to 990 max HP. One more HPMem and I'll be at 1000.



This Hertz is very important. If you say no...




He gives us this. It doesn't do anything useful right now, but it'll come in handy during the postgame.
The only Hertz I feel sad for.


Moving along, the rest of the area is just separated by the jumps.

This is pretty handy. Even if it's a recover card and thus not something I'm interested in using, it's still 300 HP.

The final comp space before we fight the FM King.

This area's pretty twisting.

And, with some very useful items tucked away. I've now officially broken 1000 HP!
But you didn't get all the HP Mems. Your HP is inflated by your Brother Bands. Fake news.

The gate is right at the entrance, by the way. The paths are very tangled up and they all refuse to go over the constellation.

The path to the exit does have this here, though. Not that it's helpful, but it does mean you never need to kill the Grabity for its card.
The game bitched out. It should have made you kill them.



Speaking of viruses! Nothing new, but these are all upgraded viruses from Ophiuca's dungeon. Even if there wasn't only one FM-ian left, we'd know.


Very nice! Though we've had this available for a while thanks to the Cipher codes.
This card is my fucking jam, right here.


200 breaking damage, when my Pegasus charge shot can freeze? I'll take it gladly, thank you.
And this one. Just eat breaking damage, enemy on field. Yes, you.


And the StickyRain2 is already outclassed. I really don't understand why they backloaded the game with so much new stuff this quickly.
Poor distribution planning. Or maybe they thought the final boss was reaaaalllly hard.The final version you fight for 100% completion ain't too shabby if only because he hits so damn hard.

There's also this. More damage, but nothing super special.


At the very end of the paths it finally lets me jump across the constellation. Was that really so hard?

Honestly, these constellations are very similar to the actual constellations in real life. So, you can probably cheat very easily.

Is this shrug emote?

Simple.







Is this a pickup line?

I... I kinda do. And it's called BreakTimeBomb.









The final door is open, and the FM King doesn't have any more servants to slow us down.
Not a single S-rank to be found this update. I taught you better than this, Yeti.
Just because I'm not showing them doesn't mean they didn't happen. Unless I've really overestimated you and you still don't have object permanence?