Part 123: Episode CXVIII: An Inevitability

Episode CXVIII: An Inevitability


Music: Widespread Illness



So ditching the plot when a crisis is occurring is once more a poor life choice. That’s fine. We’ll get back on track and hurry over to the Machine Village to see what’s ailing ‘em this time. Hopefully it’s just another Bad Bot or—



Music: ENDS



Uh oh...



UH OH!



UH OH!



UH OH!!


Music: Wretched Weaponry



The machines are... eating each other!? Pod, where’s Pascal!?
Unknown. Cannot establish connection.

A2 advances forward all of a yard before a very upset looking Pascal zooms up on his hover butt from below.



What happened!?
I don’t know. Some of the villagers suddenly went mad. They began attacking their friends. I managed to help the children flee to safety. But I fear everyone else is...
You need to get out of here before you’re next. Just go. Run! I’ll figure out how to handle this!
But what about you?
These guys can’t touch me. Now move your ass!
R-Right! <hovers off>



Welp. As disheartening as it is to see the Machine Village destroyed, we all knew this was eventually going to happen in some form. Frankly, it’s surprising it lasted this long with minimal trouble. Route A/B were all about world building. Route C is about world destroying. So here we are... A2’s new task is to destroy all of the berserk machines and save anyone she can.



She will only be succeeding in that first part... It’s too late to help any of the torn apart nameless machines. They’ll expire on their own if they’re not caught in the fight between A2 and the rampaging robots.



Most of the named machines in the village are already dead. Hope you bought everything from the shop keepers here because the machine village economy has officially crashed and so has its proprietors.





Turns out the machine family came back to the village at some point. Father Machine has gone joined the ranks of the mad machines. He has to be put down.



We’re a bit too late to help the rest of his family...



The recluse Son Machine’s overbearing mother didn’t make it. According to the radar, the hermit kid is still in his house... His burning house. Locked behind an unhackable lock. So welp... Not much we can do there to help.



I’m afraid the Weird Machine’s playing dumb act wasn’t enough to save him from the cannibal machine onslaught. Smart and dumb machine steel tastes just the same to them. Assuming machines can taste.



Jean-Paul’s friend and the Machine with Make Up both have been retired. Yet somehow that prick Jean-Paul is still out there perfectly fine. Bastard...





Pascal didn’t manage to evacuate all the machine children. Everyone down in the playground pit ate it. Never get did to tell Little Sister machine where children come from...





It’s pretty annoying to track down every single hostile machine, especially since two of ‘em are the obnoxious worm machines doing slow looping patterns at the top and middle layers of the village. Given the 2D plane this area is locked into, it’s actually kind of difficult to lock onto their weak point and there’s only a limited window before it’s arbitrarily out of bounds from attack. But once all the hostile machines are destroyed...



Pod, scan for survivors.
Scanning. No life signs detected.
None, huh...?


New Music: Wretched Weaponry (Quiet Vocal)



Ah! A2! How is my village? My people?
I’m sorry. I couldn’t help them.
Oh no...
Are the children all right?
I’ve taken them to the abandoned factory.
All right. I’m on my way.



Pascal, I dunno if the Abandoned Factory would be my first choice for taking a bunch of machine refugees. That place’s history doesn’t have the most stellar survival rate regarding machines. But if you say so...



Remember how I mentioned earlier it is best not to go off the beaten path with 9S when playing as him as it’ll spoil things? Yeah, if you ever come here as 9S in his chapters it’s an empty charred ruin. We’ll check that out next time we swap characters. But for now, let’s head over to...



The Abandoned Factory. There was already one machine massacre here. Maybe the reasoning is it would be absurd for two to happen the same week. Let’s head on in.



Oh, A2...
So what exactly happened?
I don’t know. Some of the villagers just started to... feed on each other. If you hadn’t come along, I’m sure we would have met the same grim fate. Thank you.



So we’ve got some downtime now. Boy... were where they hiding all of these machine children? This is like twice the normal population of the Machine Village when running around. Did they have a shipping container full of ‘em out back...? Regardless, in order to progress we need to speak with Pascal a few times and he’ll answer questions on recent events leading up to this latest disaster.

However... what if we just started attacking some of these unfamiliar robot children? I mean... I’ve never seen most of these kids before. What if they’re dormant berserk machine infiltrators?! Better safe than sorry.



A2!? Stop that at once! If we’re destroyed now, we can’t be restored! This isn’t funny!



Look, better safe than sorry. We’ll just cull a couple to weed out any suspect machines and...







Tch... Caim wouldn’t have gotten a mission failure ending for killing a bunch of unarmed kids.






Video: Episode 118 Highlight Reel (You should watch this.)





Machine Village Concept Art – They should have known something was up when they were named “11945’s Mostly Likely to Be Burned to the Ground Village” in a recent machine lifeform poll.