Part 27: Part Twenty-Four: Let's Play Abuse The Elderly!

Part Twenty-Four: Let's Play Abuse The Elderly!

Last time on Persona 2...

The team chased after Katsuya, who in turn had chased after Sneak. Sneak was revealed to be Police Chief Togashi, and he proceeded to drop some neat information about the New World Order before dramatically declaring that he had betrayed Katsuya's father then being shot dead by Captain Shimazu. Katsuya and the others battled and defeated Shimazu, despite his cheapass instant death attacks, and Baofu suggested that they head back to his Lair to regroup.

First, however, we've got sidequests to do.

Specifically, we need to drop by and see if there's any new CDs ou--

--man, those mallgoths are getting weirder and weirder every day.

Ixquic is...uh...Ixquic. God knows why she's here, aside from adding a little more to Sumaru City.
Hey, Misses? Have you seen an old lady who runs at 100 kilometers per hour around here? The kids in the neighborhood said they saw the 100km/h Hag at The Seedy CD. As a warrior, I can't let that slide, can I? That's why I came here, but I can't find any demons...Um, Misses, can you help me find it?

Okay, so we're going to hunt down and brutally murder an old lady for the atrocious crime of running really fast. I don't know about you guys, but I'm feeling nice and heroic. Then again, things haven't been going so well recently for characters who run really fast, so maybe this isn't such a bad idea after all.

Well, the guard who was in front of this stairway earlier is gone, so I guess that's a clue to go right on in.

Jack Fucking Frost meets us at the top. It's like meeting a celebrity!

...wait, what?

...hey, that's not cool.

Little blue bastard. Okay, I guess we'll need to prepare a little for this particular venture.

First off, we drop by Parabellum and load up on new weaponry for everyone. Note how much all this shit costs. Baofu is our strongest physical attacker at the moment, due largely to Hel having absolutely ridiculous stats on account of mutating approximately fifty bajillion times.

We also summon up a new Persona for Katsuya - remember Nata?

We add in a STR Card for good measure...

...and poof, here he is. While we can't use spells of any sort in this dungeon, Nata gives a hefty STR boost, which, combined with Kat's already high natural STR, turns our police hero into a physical powerhouse.

We head on into the Seedy CD. It's not a very exciting dungeon; we didn't find anything super neat and the demons are incredibly easy to make up for our magic being sealed away. It's not long before we run into the 100km/h Hag; she hauls ass in the opposite direction, so it's not long before we encounter her a couple more times and she sticks around.

She's not very talkative, so it's time to do what we came to do and wipe the floor with her saggy ass. Again, we don't have any magic, so this isn't a very exciting fight - a few rounds of gunfire/coin tossing/rapier stabbing and the Hag heads off to the Great Nursing Home/Track Meet In The Sky.

She drops the Title, of course...

...and Ixquic's happy to see it.
Wo---w!! You actually beat the 100km/h Hag! Um...Misses...Um...Can you trade that High-Speed Title for my treasure? I really need that...Come on, please!!
I'm not really seeing what's so impressive about beating the shit out of a nigh-defenseless old woman, but hey, whatever floats your boat. Sure, take it.

In return, we get one of every type of Incense stat-booster item; one of my gaming quirks is that I never use these damn things, so it's not much of a reward. If you guys have any suggestions about who needs which stat boosted, post away and we'll put these things to use.

Before we head to the Lair, we've got a few more loose ends to wrap up. For instance, we drop by the Time Castle and register our various Spell Cards, including the rare Earthquake Card that teaches Maha Magdyne.

We also summon a new Persona for Ulala, who's been stuck with Iris for the past year or so. Genbu is pretty one-sided, so we add an Aques card to him to make him more versatile for Fusions and summon him up.

He's not the greatest Persona ever but he's better than Iris, so.

It doesn't take long to rank Genbu and Nata up all the way, thanks to mutations and the magic of frameskip.

Since we've got a pretty good chunk of money left after our weapon spending spree, we load up on magazines and turn them in at Kuzunoha to see what we can win.

It takes a little bit of real time to resolve magazine contests, so we put said time to use by getting some mutations for our new Personas. Rock Fall is a powerful all-target Earth attack spell...

...and Kotoludi cures Possession, which is basically useless.

We head over to Kismet to check on the results of the contest, and lo and behold, mailing in 99 entries to Battle Master enabled us to win! Yay for skewed odds!

Unfortunately all we get is a Pure White Bandana, an accessory which increases a character's LUK by four when equipped. It's useless, especially when we can get the far superior Miracle Object (+15 LUK) from the Casino instead.


Miracle Magazine, on the other hand, sends us a big for having the audacity to only send in three magazines.

If we use Hotei instead of Nata on Katsuya, we can create a new Fusion thanks to Genbu - Earth, Fire, then Maha Magdyne results in...

...Last Quake, which does loads of Earth damage to all enemies. This'll be pretty damn handy for the next dungeon.

Since we want Katsuya using Nata, however, we need to replace another character's Persona. Ellen and Sif have been largely useless ever since we got them, so we summon Surt for Ellen instead. We add a Garu card, since Surt's another one of those one-sided Personas, and call him up.

Nice guy, huh? Ellen's only got average compatibility with Devil Personas, but she's got enough SP to make up for the difference, so Surt should work fine.

With all our prep done, we finally head over to Baofu's Lair.

Inside, there's an alarm going off on the wiretapping equipment.

Of course, I can't do diddly about cell phones and public phones...

Well, look who it is. Hear who it is. Whatever.
Tatsuzou's voice: I see...
Baofu: Yung Pao!
Katsuya: That guy must have been spying on us!

Tatsuzou's voice: Don't worry, he's already in the country on a tourist visa. He's got money, too...

Yung Pao's voice: You come alone...No tricks.
Tatsuzou's voice: You are very cautious...Very well. The promise was to accept all deals. See you then...

Maya quickly uses her reporting skills to give us a brilliant deduction of what this means to the plot!

Baofu basically repeats what Maya said.

Katsuya and Nate spew elipses like huge faggots.
Baofu: I'm going ahead to check things out...
Ulala: H, Hey...

And just like that, Baofu leaves.


Katsuya seems to have a plan in mind, so he asks Nate to help out...

...Ellen talks about that pole shift stuff that the New World Order is trying to accomplish...
If that happens the whole world will rain for days...floods, tsunamis, volcanos, and earthquakes...Every kind of disaster...And unless they are airborne, most people won't survive...How could they use the Wang Long for such a thing...

...and Ulala makes herself useful by telling us what we need to do next and where to go to do it.
We head out in order to get moving to the factory, but as we leave the Lair, we fade out to the Conference Room...


Well, that's who that guy from the intro was.


Sugawara is the Smithers to Tatsuzou's Burns.


The X-1?

Sugawara leaves, but quips quippily on the way out.

Why is that obstacle left alone...and what is the Paradox? Honestly, Gozen's ideas lately are...
The Paradox? Sounds like another mystery, gang!

Tatsuzou: Gozen's ideas are far beyond our comprehension. We must all accomplish our duties.

After the others leave, a man with sunglasses watches on.

All of you who played Persona 1 are probably going right about now.
Elders driven by ambition...A human that causes chaos to be chaos...or is it...

Gozen offers no answers to Guido's cryptic rambling.

COMING UP NEXT: Metal Gear?!?!