Part 21: School Days

: Geo!! Everyone's waiting for you!
: Got it!


: I took the time to personally come and get you. The least you could do is hurry up!
: I wasn't even 5 minutes. Besides, no one said you have to pick me up every single morning...


: ...school again! Now THAT would be a problem!
: Yeah! So show the Prez some thanks for her kindness and get ready earlier, got it!?
: Man, you guys need to chill and stop pushing so hard. I've got my own speed I...

I would agree with Geo here regarding Luna being pushy, but... it is school. They don't exactly allow kids to set their own schedules.

Would still be a pain to transition into something like this after being homeschooled for so long, though.


: Oh, good morning, Ms. Stelar!




I left these in because c'mon, game. You've been... well, acceptable in terms of your text (font aside because we're not talking about the font). The most errors I've found are in the optional help missions which - fair. I get it.

Whatever

But this? Two separate text boxes for two lines of dialogue? My only hope is that the original text needed both boxes.

could you mean?


: ...he might be a bit behind everyone else.
: You don't need to worry, Ms. Stelar! I am the Class President of Class 5-A of Echo Elementary, Luna Platz! It's my duty to watch over all of my fellow classmates!! Right, Geo?

I wonder if that's how she introduces herself to everyone. Some random stranger on the street needs to know who she is.


: Oh, I see! Well, I hope you will continue to be good friends.
: Of course we will! Right, Bud, Zack?
: Yeah!! 'Course!

Zack is clearly a mute. I'm not sure why Luna continually asks for his input.


: It's nice that he's made such good friends! Oh, I'm so happy!

Yeah, right. 'Friends'.


: Well we wouldn't want that! Off you guys go then! See you!
: Bye, Ms. Stelar! Come on, let's go!!



: You think so? Anyway, we have to hurry or we'll be late!!

You really should pay attention to how Luna acts around people her own age compared to adults. It'll be important in a little bit.



Hey, mail as soon as we get to school! And what's this? Look at the icon!



That's right. Geo's mugshot will now (occasionally) be smiling in the text. I don't know what controls it.

...Is this Starforce 2?

And also because of course this happened:


This was the result of the first attempt at capturing the icon. Sigh.



Two emails, even. Let's see what the admin wants first.


: ...your friend. I now bestow yet another power you can use to protect this planet with. The name of this power is the Best Combo!

Oof, another tutorial. I'm not even going to bother transcribing all of it, since I can explain things faster.

Basically, in 1 turn (from exiting the Custom screen to entering it again - time of the turn doesn't matter) if you use three or more cards to deal 300+ damage to an EX or SP boss, that series of cards will become a Best Combo. These cards can't contain timestop abilities, and only Standard cards will work. You can save 7 of these Best Combos and set one to be your Personal Best Combo.

There's also some Real Brother stuff where you can use your Brother's PBC instead of their favorite cards if you're both online at the same time but who cares, I'm not doing it. Also someone can turn a Best Combo into a one-use Card but that's not for a while.

Let's talk to Sonia instead, she's less wordy.


: ...showed up in Echo Ridge! Are you OK? I hope you're doing alright...

Geo text your girlfriend Brother and tell her you're not hurt, sheesh.

God this Brother denotation is getting out of hand.


If you look real hard, there's a wavehole here!

Before we head to the next cutscene, there's some good stuff to explore. First off, a wavehole in the piano we couldn't access until now because of the play.


: I SING THE SOUND OF THE KEYS THAT ARE PRESSED! RE FA LA! *BEEP BEEP* THE HARDEST KEYS TO SING ARE THE BLACK ONES!



Eh. Whatever. Would have preferred Zenny, honestly.

Forgot if I covered it, but... It's basically Fanfare from the previous series, thread. Even though you're invincible whilst it sings, the summon is placed in front of you, with no known means to protect. The battle system works hilariously against Summon-type chips, you see.



This wavehole also holds the second rank of the Bell viruses.




Their chip is good damage plus a godsend for multi-deleting so it's going in my folder.



This also happened while I was recording the sidequests before this. Is it...





I'll be honest, this is the first Gold Mystery Wave I ever remember seeing. They've got INCREDIBLE card pools and unfortunately I didn't realize what this was until I'd already hit the button to collect it, so no savestate scum.

Hahahahahaha, wonderful. Among those you could have gotten from this area were...

quote:

Gold A8A Locations: 0 32/ 64 50% (-220, 276, 256)
1 32/ 64 50% (-188, -12, 256)
Contents: 0 32/160 20% 15000z
1 32/160 20% Recover300 (Yel)
2 32/160 20% Barrier200 (Yel)
3 32/160 20% HarpNote (Blu)
4 32/160 20% TaursFireEX (Blu)

Good on you



200 free damage is still great for getting S-ranks though, so why not?



The second new wavehole is in the light. It only opens up after completing one of the sidequests, so it's gotta have great stuff, right?



I'd sigh but it's more useful than a card I'll never use. I also regret to inform you that there is no Mr. Hertz in this comp.

Good. GOOD.



Moving up to the wave road of the theater room, LupaDonna now appears. Their song does... something to Geo.



TripSong prevents enemies from moving while singing.



And I learned something new. Turns out, these viruses DO have counter timings. Incredibly precise and totally pointless (Lupa- viruses can't affect Geo while he has a barrier up) but you can counter them by shooting them right before they start singing.

A lot of Starforce 1's counter frames are overly precise. A notable step back from Battle Network 6's. To me, there's no excuse since a lot of the same lessons can absolutely apply. Though I do feel BN6 was a bit overly generous with the counter frames, it was better than being way too tight.



To progress, we'll talk to everyone in Geo's class.



Right after I invade everyone's privacy. It's also interesting that a few of the NPCs don't have Transers. Look at the girls in the top left. This is the point where the devs got a little lazy with their NPCs, not that I'm blaming them (too much).


: Thank you for visiting my Transer.


: I get the feeling that we're going to be good friends.

It's worth pointing out that the top three of Pat's favorite cards are all the Trap cards that only work if you're fighting another person over WiFi. They're anti-Navi, trap square, and anti-healing respectively. (I forgot to take a picture of his other three cards, whoops.)

Shame on you, Yeti.


: I've never felt like this before.

Luna's Transer message has also changed. Cool.




: ...got to be happy and helpful to everyone!


: The Navi pop group "NAVIP" was sooo cool!

NAVI-P? Or "Na-vip"? Who can tell.


: Good! Then I don't want to hear any more of that "not coming to school" business!

"Idk, first day I was here my mind was assaulted by an evil alien. Not sure why I'm staying home, tbh."




: But I bet I won't even find one since they're so popular now.

I'm sure the internet is still upselling special cards like that at a massive profit, so you'll only have to spend twenty times as much as it originally cost.



Let's talk to our new best friend classmate.

: Looks like you are fitting in just fine. I'm happy for you.


After school...


: Now, I want you all to go straight home! I don't want to hear anyone was horsing around!


: ...Math homework. If you still don't have it by tomorrow, it'll be 1 week of detention!
: Oh man, no way... My head's gonna blow if I hafta think that hard!
: Hmm? Didn't you say 3 days ago... that you had finished it, but you just forgot to bring it in?
: Uh, um...

Bud, please. This is why you have to be careful about your lying, so you don't contradict yourself later.


: Don't look at me! You should do your homework on your own!! If I helped you, it wouldn't help you in the end. Right, Mr. Shepar?
: That's right! You should try to do them by yourself!

I'm like, 90% sure that's just a plural issue with 'homework' because I always use homework as a collective singular ("I have a lot of homework", "My teachers assigned me homework") instead of plural ("My teachers assigned me three homework").

Yeah, no one says homework as plural, to my recollection. Maybe it was supposed to be "worksheets"? No clue.

: But I always do it myself and give it my best.


: ...turn in always has the same mistakes as Zack's... Coincidence...?
: Ah!!



C'mon, dude. Just change a few numbers around! Or, if you're copying from someone that has it all right, just make a few mistakes. Then it's not as obvious.

At their age I was already an upcoming super liar. Got away with being sneaky and everything.



(Back to sad Geo...)

: You know, school's not half bad. Mr. Shepar and the others are really nice. I never knew school could be this much fun...


: ...can you please come to the studio after we're done here? I'd like to talk to you about something. Don't worry, it's nothing bad.
: Yes, sir...

The entire class didn't go "Ooooooh" as soon as Geo was asked to see the teacher, horrible and unrealistic writing, game gets 0/10.

I, for one, am disappointed in the series' best story.


: And remember your homework tomorrow, Bud!




: You should at least do your Math homework. I never thought I'd be this embarrassed to be Brothers with you!!

Luna, please. How did you not learn your lesson from last time. At least she's not threatening to stop being Brothers this time.


: Zack, I want you to go home with Bud and start on those Math problems right away. Do you really think Bud can finish it all by tomorrow? I didn't think so. That's why I want you 2[sic] to hurry up and get to it!!

(That's a sic because you shouldn't use single digit numbers in place of words)

That's true, but both BN and Starforce take text-styling liberties. BN, for instance, does this a lot, and will also never put spaces after commas. Hell, if you compare the above screenshot to one just below, it even looks like ", Prez" doesn't even have a space!

: Yes, Prez...



They book it after that shout. Not that I can blame them.


: ...I'm always so tired?


: Yeah... Being Brothers with her must be taxing... Well, I should get moving to the studio.

One thing that I wish they'd done with Luna is make her slightly less of a bitch as Geo got to know her. Something along the lines of 'His opinion was colored because she was nagging him, but now that she has what she wants she's actually less annoying'? As it is, it's been four scenarios, and even the start of the fifth she's still obnoxious.


: ...is more trouble than having no Brothers!

Case in point.

Yeah. This is why I could never get with Luna as a character I'm supposed to care for. even taking into account the reasons that are given for her personality.



Let's figure out what Shepar wanted, anyway.




: Grk!!



Shit, it's the cops! Again!

: What's wrong? Come on and say hi.


: He's looking into what happened here during that incident a few days ago.
: I haven't seen you in a while. Almost forgot your name. Geo, was it?
: Y-Yes, sir. And what can I help you with?
: You remember the incident here, right?
: Y-Yes...


: ...I found some very high levels of Z waves. What I'm getting at is that anyone with eyes can see this last incident was drenched in Z waves, and it happened just as soon as you set foot in a place you haven't been in for 3 years.

The irony here is that the Libra thing had literally nothing to do with Geo or Mega. They just have awful timing.

I plead the fifth of S-rank.


: The cause of the incident was me. This child had nothing to do with it. If anything, he's a victim!

Yes. Exactly. Victim, perfect way to describe it.

: Hey, please calm down, Mr. Shepar. I wasn't saying he was the culprit. I was just trying to see if the boy knew anything. Maybe something we don't know?


: Um, I have no idea what you're talking about...
: Come on now, you must know something. After all, you have been close to every other incident so far involving Z waves!
: But that doesn't mean I know anything...


: ...Z waves are really an alien life form!!
: (H-How does he know that!? This is bad... Just how much does this old man know!?)
: These aliens have bodies made of EM waves that normal people can't see with the naked eye. When they get near humans, they get inside people and make them do evil things. If you don't watch out, you might get taken over by an alien too!! And if that happens, you could be a danger to everyone around you!

Thanks for the lecture, but Mega possessing Geo is really just making him rich. I've finally managed to collect 50000 zenny by just saving it up.


: Ha ha ha!! EM aliens? Oh, that's a riot! But you can't trick kids today with that kind of story! Right, Geo?
: Aha ha ha...
: So, are you satisfied, Mr. Copper? He really knows nothing about any aliens.


: ...I have a few things to talk about.


: (Wait, it'd be a bad idea to get on the teacher's bad side. Better play it safe...)



: I'm sure we'll see each other again real soon.
: ...Um, bye!!




: You talking to aliens over there, boy?

Wow, Mr. Copper, what excellent ears you have.

: He's probably gonna tail us like crazy from now on, even more than before.
: And just when I had made some friends too. Talk about things I could do without... Well, at least we can go home for today...

Now you have your very own Javert to go with your new friends. You're moving up in the world, Geo!


: Did you and Mr. Shepar finish already?



: It's none of your business...
: Oh? Booooring. How do you expect to ever become friends if you keep on saying things like that?

Geo's smiling again and it's really weird to see that with his usual sulky dialogue.

: Friends?
: You still don't know how to make friends, do you? School's only half as fun when you don't have any friends.

It's okay, I'm sure Giver made it through just fine.

It's OK, Yeti. I'm sure we were always friends.


: ...since you look so pitiful all the time...
: Me, join your group?
: That's right! I also told Bud and Zack to be nice to you! So, aren't you happy!? If you are, you should say something!!

Here we can see a wild introvert being adopted by an extrovert, the main way introverts meet new people.

Yeti speaks from experience, quite clearly.

I mean yeah, I'm not gonna deny it.


: ...I don't really know if I can be a good friend to anyone yet... So... I'm sorry.
: H-Hmph!! Turning down my invitations is definitely NOT the way to becoming friends! See if I ever invite you again!! If you want to re-think things, I suggest you do it now!!

That's gotta be embarrassing, so I can't really blame Luna for getting upset here.




Huh. They're back?


: And by the way, how are the Math problems coming along?
: .........
: I don't think you 2 can finish that quickly... Are you slacking off!?
: .........
: Well, say something! Am I right, so you're not going say anything?

Wow, those lessons from Zack must be really effective. Bud's dialogue even mirrors his!

It's weird for them to not listen to Luna. The only exception is when it was Sonia's concert, and even then they just avoided Luna instead of trying to talk to her about it.


: You mean the Prez's goon squad? I don't even know where to begin...
: No! That's not what I meant at all!

...Uh oh.

: Then what!?




Hmm, this his abruptly taken a shift for the worse. I'd go so far to say that this is even a 'Bad situation'.

: Wh-What are you doing!? What's the meaning of this!?
: Jam-m-m-m... Mmmaaaaaaah!!


: Aaaaaaah!!

Oh. Well that explains that, at least.


: Eeeek!!

Now that Geo is here, she scrambles to her feet and hides behind him.


: B-Bud and Zack turned into m-m-m-monsters!!
: Luna! Get back! Those 2 are imposters!!
: Heh heh heh!! You're in quite the dilemma, Geo Stelar!!

A smug asshole also approachs, and for once it's not Giver.

Someone is stealing my schitck. Yeti, kill this person. And that way I'll have full brand awareness.




: Did you miss me!? Let me introduce you to my newest creations! The EM humans!! They're a little low on brain, but guess what? If humans stay near them for too long, they become just like the EM humans!!

Seriously, I thought we kicked this guy's ass already.


: ...over to me, I'll let you go. If not, I think you know what's going to happen.
: (Argh!! I can't change into MegaMan in front of Luna!)



So, wait, can she hear this or not...? The EM humans are definitely visible to Luna without the Visualizer, but she probably can't see the Jammer.

Presumably the Jammer is communicating on an entirely different frequency. And I guess the Visualizer gives sight as well as sound...? The Visualizer doesn't affect Geo's auditory sense. But then again, this was happening since the start of the game, so it's at least internally consistent.


: That's fine. I can pry it from you. Go, my EM humans!!
: Aaah! They're coming right for us!!


: So first, let's get out of the school! Come on, Luna! RUN!!
: You don't have to tell me twice!




Thoughts on the situation, Luna?



She's got a point. Maybe I can use the wavehole?


: ...I pulse in!

Fiiiiine. Let's go drop off the Prez.

Yeah, leaving her alone is not what hereos do. Shame, Yeti. Shame.



: Shush! Quiet!



: If only I could find a safe place to stash Luna, I could pulse in...

So much for getting out of here.


: So what are we going to do?
: We can't get out from the front, so we're gonna have to turn around and find another way out.
: Are you kidding!? There's more of those guys back where we came from!!
: I know that. But this is a dead end, and it's just as dangerous here, so let's get the heck outta here!


: ...ago, you've done nothing but tell me what to do... I guess I don't have much of a choice, though... Hey, wait for me!

Fucking tsundere bullshit. "You don't tell me what to do, b-baka."


: ...but don't think you can boss me around, OK!?

Even while attacked by aliens, she keeps her pride.

This is not the time to care about this.


: And why do I get the feeling you know something?
: ..........Uh, I don't know anything...

Well done, Geo. Totally believable.

Alright, I'm offering deception classes, courtesy of me. Enroll now to get 20% off your first bundle of lessons. Want to know how to trick the Internet into believing there's a never-before-seen cutscene in a game that was cracked open for 10 years? Sign up here. You'll make everyone look like fools before long.


: If only MegaMan was here instead of you. He'd squash those guys in a heartbeat! Oh, MegaMan... Won't you come save me...?
: Ha ha... Yeah...

That's awkward.

If Geo were more like me, he'd record this interaction, and rub it in her face later.


: The elevator's here.



Shit, they learned how to use elevators! Now nowhere is safe!

Couldn't they...take the stairs?

This is the Battle Network future. I'm perfectly willing to believe that they got rid of stairs.


: Eh!? Oh... OK!





Trapped in a room, with no wavehole in sight, with Luna... Well, this sucks.

Cannibalism, when?