Part 40: 07/26/09 - 07/28/09: Yabbashah The Dry Land (Part Two)

So, our summer stay-cation begins today but right now it's just another Sunday.


Tanaka's not selling anything worthwhile today, so we'll keep our money.


Almost everyone is hanging out in the dorm, but only Ken has updated dialogue here. A bit unusual, but whatever.


And before the news begins, Feather Condor has a message for you all!
Hopefully this one isn't just lies. I'm still sour about last time.

Feather Condor: After all, you've got me looking out for you! So don't worry! We'll meet again next week!
...And now, the news.
Oh, it was just about Apathy Syndrome. I guess it is getting close to the Full Moon now...
But, hey, remember how I said almost everyone was inside? There's one exception. Yes, just one.





Well, I mean, I don't have a Junpei-sense so that might very well just be you. Don't really know the kid well enough to say one way or the other on the rest, though. Depends where we're setting the bar, maybe?

...Oh right, it's Sunday and all so we should maybe just see what Maya wants. It, uh, can't get much worse at least.








You mean an SMT MMO is closing?! Say it ain't so. I can't IMAGINE anything like that.

> Maya faces away from you.



> Maya is getting all worked up.

> Maya gets closer to you.

I, uh, I'm fairly confident in this one...



> Maya seems sad.


You're... gonna stop playing before the servers go down?


> Maya seems a little happier.

Given some of the things you've casually admitted to, this surely falls under the banner of "dangerous." Not for me, mind, but hey.





Something tells me you might be in for a bit of a surprise...

> It seems Maya cares about you.
> Your relationship is stronger now!




> Maya's player signed off.
> You decide to log out as well.
Y'know, I get the impression Maya using her chatlog won't really help much on this one. I'unno, call it a hunch I guess.

July's dark secret reveals itself today, I guess. Sort of. It already did before though.

Namely it repeatedly has extended periods of time where you can't do whatever you want!


I can only hope that this one is going somewhere. For all its fault, Yakushima did give us a lot of things implicitly. And Aigis.


But right now all it's doing is reminding me that we haven't spent time with Yuko in, like, ages.


Mercifully, it only steals our daytime slot and not the whole day. We can't really do too much during the daytime since we don't have school anymore, but we still have options!




...What do you mean "if"? Of course I can handle it. Just who in the hell do you think I am?!


I see that Akihiko and Ken are... bonding...? Sure, let's go with that.









Don't worry, Junpei, we already knew that.




That's certainly one way you could look at it. Another is that no one else uses a gun to avoid unfortunate accidents, or because this is Japan and getting a gun is both really difficult and hella illegal. Doubly-so when you're a high schooler.




Ooh this one's easy!


Tatsuya Suou is the main protagonist of Persona 2 as a whole, being the player character of Innocent Sin and the deuteragonist of Eternal Punishment. On its own that doesn't make him the protagonist, no, but the duology's subtitles do. The Innocent Sin is something that Tatsuya does, and the Eternal Punishment is something that only he truly goes through...
But, this isn't a Persona 2 thread so we'll leave it there (for now?). His Primary Arcana was The Sun and his initial Persona was Vulcanus.
Oh and also he's bisexual, and because Persona 2 is rad this is just a minor thing that isn't a major character trait or a thing that he gets mocked for or anything. He's just a guy who happens to be bi.


But, anyway, Tartarus! We don't have anything to talk to Elizabeth about yet, so we'll just gather our party, switch some gear around and head on up.

The Mage's Mark restores a fixed 3SP a turn which sure doesn't sound like a lot but it helps way more than it sounds. Giving this to Mitsuru for sure.


So, we're on floor 73 which means that this isn't true. Thanks, Fuuka.

Before we carry on, though, we're gonna pick a fight with something. This'll do.



"Orgia" here is most likely referring to the ancient Greek practice of overly ecstatic worship in some sects. This was particularly true when it came to gods like Dionysus, and it may or may not have involved rigorous amounts of sex.
...why yes, it IS also where we get the word "orgy" how did you guess








We don't really have a frame of reference to how much of a "significant" increase it is, but it's just a flat 150% damage boost. It lasts for about 3-5 rounds and then Aigis is thoroughly useless for a while.
I, uh, I don't really use it all that much personally. We'll see it in action later at least once. Possibly not much more than that, though. We'll see!


So, y'know how last time we got the Pleiades in a rare chest? Yeah, uh, it turns out...

That's pretty much par for the course with the regular weapons we can find too. The Pleiades is only rarer than stuff like the Silver Saber because it has ~10 Attack more and +4 Magic instead of the +3 here.
We're still totally gonna be giving this to Mitsuru immediately though.

On Floor 76, Fuuka opts to let us know that, yes, there IS a boss fight to be had. But it's quite a ways away. Thanks, that's helpful.

Skipping on up to the 78th floor wherein we hit another thing with a bus stop sign. Because that's awesome.


Namely because 78F is where we get the newest batch of enemy Shadows. Devoted Cupid here is both the rarest and also the weakest, so whatever. It's hilariously weird how it has regular old Dia though.

Jupiter Eagles aren't quite the most common, but they have some fun potential to be annoying if they ever got turns. Mercifully, they don't so they don't get to use that Masukunda at all.

The most common new Shadow is the Golden Beetle, which kinda stretches the definition of "new" a bit, yeah. Significantly weaker than it was the last time we saw it, for sure, but it's still the tankiest normal Shadow around these parts.
Well, excluding the Avenger Knight but that's weak to Hama so I think that's fair.

And lastly, we have the Ardent Dancer who on the one hand has both Marin Karin and Sexy Dance. On the other hand...

This is very common. Very, very common.


On the 80th floor, Fuuka figures out where the boss fight is. The 85th floor is a bit more a trek after the previous fight on the 72nd, but it's not really that big a deal.

The Two-handed Sword gets a weird buff in Portable, as you may or may not recall at this point.

It's not so much that it's made stronger, per se, but it's available WAY earlier for some reason. We'll be giving this to Junpei later on if I remember.

And, well, that's all that happens until we hit the 84th floor. Normally I'd skip this one too but we get a rare treasure here...

Namely, this thing. This is sort of decent armor, but it's particularly noteworthy in that it is also what Liz is gonna give us when we make an Orthrus with Dodge Slash.

Yes, really. It's kind of a downgrade over what we already have, even! I'll be giving this to Makoto though, so that his vest can go to Mitsuru. That way she gets a proper upgrade and also returns to having a decent character model again.

...Or I could've waited like a minute longer and given her this instead. It's 64 Def so it's less than the Bulletproof Vest though.

But I'll still give it to Makoto for convenience. The lack of a +2 Strength isn't that big a deal.

And that's that, so now we have our fight on the 85th floor.

This is normally where we'd check in with Liz but the only remaining sidequests, that aren't Orthrus, require us to get past this Shadow so let's get right to it!



Honestly? No, it really kinda isn't.

It's kind of a bit of a slog to fight, but that's not at all the same thing. For example, this? This is the most damage Mitsuru will ever manage to contribute.
This guy resists Slash and Pierce, sure, but he reflects Ice. And Fire. And Elec. Fucking hell, that just leaves Strike and Wind...

So, what can the Tower do? Well, not a lot that's really threatening. Sure, it can Poison Mist to try and Poison everyone with his 20 Luck (his worst stat)... and he has Poison Boost for good measure... but it's such a non-issue I wouldn't care.

It's basic attack might very well be the most on-paper dangerous thing it has, which is really weird. And that's mostly because it can Crit for less than the previous musclemen.

Everyone who isn't Mitsuru is going to be helping out with their (de)buff capabilities sometimes and also Strike attacks mostly. Which is a problem when this annoying boy also has Dodge Strike to just mock you when you try it.
Realistically you're gonna be fighting this guy with Wind spells and basically nothing else, because he doesn't have Dodge Wind.
Unfortunately, I only have Garula on Pale Rider which isn't necessarily a problem but...

Oh and of course he has Mind Charge. It sure seems like every Tartarus boss lately has had a Charge skill.

Notably, the Fanatic Tower is lacking in that he doesn't have a Heavy tier skill. He only has Zionga and not Ziodyne.

Which is fine with me, but it doesn't really make a difference because I'm packing an Elec nullification. Thank you, Take-Mikazuchi!

Oh and of course he has Mazionga as is required.

The lack of Ziodyne just means he can't maybe seriously injure Mitsuru. Akihiko is, well, Akihiko so he takes barely anything. I'm immune so this guy can't really kill me barring bad luck and... Aigis is weak to Elec but takes sub-50 damage anyway. Granted, this IS after a Tarunda but that's still sub-100 whereas Mitsuru loses nearly half her health.

This may or may not be because Orgia Mode was enabled at the time, but I don't think that gives a defense buff as well. I can't say I've played around much with it, though.

...Oh and Overheating is a bad thing for Aigis since it takes her rad defenses and completely and utterly demolishes them. Yikes!

Sometimes when the Fanatic Tower is feeling particularly smart, he'll cast Elec Break on someone and... forget to capitalise on it entirely.

And that's it. The Fanatic Tower is a long fight because of his 2000HP and his array of annoying resistances but he sure ain't a hard fight.
Noteworthy is that so long as you have Emperor at rank 3+, you can kinda just not give a shit and remove his Ice repel entirely.
He's also clearly weaker than most at this point since he only has 24 Strength and 25 in Magic, Endurance and Agility. Weird.



At first blush, it sure looks like we're only getting the one treasure this time which is a bit of a weird decision, don't it?

Compared to the last few, this is definitely a good thing. It gives us another cleared request when we're done, potentially nets us a lot of money later and, uh, acts as a buffer to any nasty instant kill game overs that aren't "and then it crits for eleventy billion damage." Again.

Around the corner from there, we have the requisite Soma as well. This was apparent on the map as well, I think.

We just have a bit more to climb as Fuuka remains perplexed by the most simple and obvious pattern. It's almost like this happens everytime we near the end of a block...

And sure enough! We're not gonna leave just yet though.

We need to collect this, since it IS the entire reason we're here at all right now.

I'm not at all sure why Elizabeth cares about whether or not we collect these. They serve as sort of markers for our progress through the tower, sure, but...







The rewards for these sure don't seem to match just how much of a time consuming ordeal they can be, huh. It's just, like, spend ~3 hours running through Tartarus for 3 full revivals is nice and all but it's not at all proportionate.






This is technically the same amount of effort, sure, but it's a better reward. And also it was part of a chain so we got a bunch of stuff, really, there. I dunno, it seems weird that the game always gives you a Soma but expects you to do it in a time limit for something worse.

Anyway, we'll give up Mithra and Lamia to make Orthrus now. We don't really need Lamia any more (we have Hermit at Rank 9 after all) and Mithra's kinda super outdated so...
Yeah, it's not a good Orthrus but I so don't intend on ever using him anyway so I don't really care.






Oh, Elizabeth, you shouldn't have.
No, really, you shouldn't have. It's not like this is ever gonna get used. We already have one, even.

The Homunculus request was the last one in that chain, but there's more fusions to be had. Like Oberon before him, Oumitsunu's request will just sort of solve itself once we hit level 30.
There's only one more request we can do right now, so we might as well since we're already here.

Just gotta grab one of these from Yabbashah first. It's easy to get despite being a "rare" treasure; it spawns on the 74th floor (and a couple others) which means we just use the Terminal to go to the 72nd, run up two floors and search there. Didn't find it? Use an Access point or Traesto and try again.





+4 Strength and +2 Luck sure isn't bad at all. Could always just trade gems for it though.
But, hey, with that we're back to having every quest done that we realistically could right now. There's only 3 still open and they require grinding to level 30 (nah) or being at a later date than we are now.

Oh and huh the Kunitsuna is better than the generic Two-hander so I guess Junpei gets a bit of a HP buff again for a little while.

And we're done with Tartarus for now! Hurray!

...Sadly, we've still got this for the next few days so we'll just have to deal with that I guess.








It... sure seems like an exaggeration, but it's really kinda hard to tell for sure to be honest. Could sorta go either way.




That's actually a really good point. The Dark Hour and Tartarus came into being because Mitsuru's grandpa decided to try and control Time and messed up. But where did Shadows come from...?






Kinda hard not to, really.


And there's nothing on TV, so we're done here for tonight. But what to do, what to do... it's a Tuesday and we have options...

So for the first time in like a month or so we can spend time with Tanaka again!








I, uh, I though for a moment there Tanaka was going to NOT be a dickhead and I got kinda worried. Fortunately(?), he managed to return to normal.






> You sense that President Tanaka has strong feelings for you.
> You feel like you understand him a little better now.


I actually had kinda forgotten. I guess when you have half a million in your wallet that tiny amount stops mattering.
...But half a million is also a paltry sum that I don't expect to last very long so...


> President Tanaka left with a grin on his face.
Tanaka's definitely in a good mood, since he didn't even make a silly joke revenge threat this time. Weird.

And we just have to hit the books a little tonight before we go to bed. Can't stay up too late since we do have sports training to do for the next few days still. Yay...