Part 34: Duetto Fragoroso

Duetto Fragoroso

Okay, so when grinding up Jungo and Fumi to catch up with the rest (didn't take too long) I used the Planetarium instead. The parking lot free battle's gone and been replaced by that; it's a higher level map so it went quicker. In doing so, Jungo got Mow Down so now basically everything ever is dead.

Something else that's neat happened too:



The last little bonus that Data Cards sometimes give you is unlocking a demon's skills early. If it needs to level up to gain a skill you want, but you can't be bothered to grind it up to unlock it naturally you can just grab a card with the demon equipped and hope you get it.

I really, really wanted Anti-Fire because it's gonna patch up so many weaknesses. That would be because I also got Hibiki to level 26 too. See, he was close(ish) to it already and level 26 grants some neat new demons one of which I really, really want.



...Not this guy. I made him by combining Orcus and Garm; kinda figured he'd end up being a powerful hitter with the chance to inflict Forget (stops dudes using spells/skills) occasionally. Oddly, despite having a higher natural Strength his entire default skill set is Magic oriented. Also he's a Fallen so Sacrifice, bleh.



Mahakala and Ogun helped me make this guy, though. This guy is what I wanted, ho. King Frost is the heery best because he's a Tyrant. Tyrants are amazing because of their racial skill. Tyranny basically means whoever gets him is never running out of MP anytime soon.

You'll see. Of course, to compensate every single Tyrant is a Unique demon. Unlike most things, there are no exceptions to this. And unlike with Fiends, they actually warrant it because Tyranny is absurdly good.



I said I'd make it, so I did. Here's Ghost Q; from the Ogun and Jack Frosts I had, I tried to make one as usable as possible. I didn't care about his stat distribution too much so I re-rolled until he came out balanced offensively. That seems like a terrible idea, but I'm giving him to Fumi and she's enough of a dedicated magic user to carry this sod.



Really, level 26 is good for two very potent demons; King Frost and Leanan Sidhe. Leanan Sidhe (Ogun + Sarasvati) is a great demon, because she's a Femme. The third Femme in line, so Devotion's even better now (Lilim was second but we had a Sarasvati by then so it was non-issue).

Of course, she gets superseded come level 27 when we get the next Megami (amazingly paced that), but hey she's pretty solid for the time being.



That there Man of Fury event is VERY long, so we'll hang out with Jungo first.

[Music: Exploration]





Are you tired, Hibiki?
I'll give you something nice before you go to the Nagoya branch.
That's thoughtful.
I made this. ...Eat it.

[Music: A Moment of Rest]

Thanks.



You came to Nagoya. Thank you very much.
You saved Airi, Fumi, and me. Thank you very much.
So, please.
Thanks.
Mhm... No, thank YOU.
I am a chef. I've been praised by my head chef before.



And the head chef is dead now...
...I'll make some more again, okay?

Jungo walks away...

Well, if that was the appetiser...



Then this is the main course. Buckle up, kids; we're in for a long ride.

[Music: Exploration]



...Here we are. Home of the JP's Nagoya office.
If my findings are correct, Ronaldo's inside. Hmph... I'm looking forward to this.

[Music: JPs -Geomagnetism Research Department-]



Let's do this.
Yeah... But thinking about it, we're not facing demons this time. That IS pretty scary...
Hahaha... You bet. Odd that fighting demons isn't as frightening anymore, huh?



Yup. Ronaldo's caused chaos here. Can't forgive that.
Well, man's history is a tale of war, after all.



Get pumped!
Oh, man... You're as blood-thirsty as they are...
But... we don't have a choice, right? At this rate, Nagoya is doomed...
You too, Io?
Awww, that's women for you. C'mon, let's make up our minds and get this show on the road.



[Music: Countdown]







You called?

Gah...! It's th-them!

Damn, that was quick. They're here already!



That's enough out of you! What do you call these supplies?
Medical goods, food... We don't have enough, but you're hoarding them!
...! That can't be helped! We're trying to survive, too!



A lot of people don't like Ronaldo. In a surprising twist, I actually do. He has the sheer balls to call Yamato's entire everything out, which is impressive on its own. Admittedly, I may be a tad biased because of Reasons but we'll cover those as they come up.

Yet... violence does no good... It's a shame.
Ugh, what a pain in the ass. There's no point arguing.
Aahhh! Th-Those guys are the demon tamers from JP's!



You might not be able to see it clearly, but he totally has his phone out right now. Looks like he wants a fight!



There's a couple of escape tiles for the dude's holding boxes again. Naturally none are getting out.

Ronaldo...! Y-Yes, sir!
Oh, man... I guess we have to fight now.
Don't let your guard down. He's pretty powerful.



[Music: Desperate Situation]



Like with the Fumi/Botis fight from before, we can just rush an ending here by taking out Ronaldo immediately. If we do that, though, we miss out on some neat things.



Okay, so what we crack here is only important to a point. Naturally, we want Drain and Anti-Phys above all else. The rest is mostly irrelevant but nice bonuses; no new Auto-Skills for once so we can pick and choose whatever seems nice.

Drain is only on Ronaldo's team, but not only on Ronaldo himself. Both Ronaldo and his strongest demon have it. We're getting it from Ronaldo. Anti-Phys is on Ronaldo's strongest demon and some random schmuck. We're getting it from the demon.



Oh, right. Ronaldo's actually a threat. Kind of. See Ronaldo himself is a punchyman much like Jungo; he's a higher level than Jungo but already has his points in Vit so he doesn't punch quite AS hard, but he's not as glassy either. If that's not enough, he casts Drain with reckless abandon because it gives you basically infinite HP/MP if used right. It costs a whole 2MP to cast, but gives more back.



The real issue is this guy. Baphomet is a Vile demon, so he has Chaos Wave. He's also pretty tough and one worth getting once we can. Unlike Orcus he doesn't have anything we can exploit and he doesn't cripple Ronaldo's movement even if he does stop him getting Extra Turns.



That being because of this thing. Suparna is a rarity in that its a Flight demon that doesn't completely suck. If we take out Baphomet and let this guy alone then Ronaldo suddenly has greater movement than us. If we take this guy out but leave Baphomet then we're still fighting against a dude who can murder us for basically free from a range of 3.

Ronaldo's hella competent is the point. That functional attack range of 7 is nutso as well. Human bosses are the biggest threats by far (at least on a first cycle), so Ronaldo starts that trend off with a bang.



All in all, cracks gunning for this time looks like this. Drain/Anti-Phys/More Jungo Power/nice bonus healing.



Hey... He looks really confident! You think we can beat him...?
...Justice is relative. Debate is useless. Let's settle this.



What are you talking about? Just return the supplies you stole! Give them back!
I understand how you must feel, but fighting isn't the way! Right, Hibiki?
I can understand how he feels, but we can't let him win, either.



The one saving grace with Ronaldo is that he doesn't immediately jump on your party with his absurdly good attack range. Instead he waits until we've wasted his buddies over here. How generous.



Let's take him up on his offer. This guy's basically a warm up anyway.



Ordinarily, throwing around dance skills like this would be a terrible idea. We don't quite have amazing MP pools just yet, nor do we seem to have any way to restore it for when it matters right?



Wrong. This is Tyranny. It gies you MP for absolutely nothing at the end of every skirmish. It also reduces enemy team initiative, because the MP thing isn't good enough on its own I guess.



On the other side of the field, Daichi beat up a poor, old Salaryman and got access to the medi- uh, group healing. Leanan Sidhe has it by default, though, and Daichi doesn't have the magic stat needed for it anyway.



Surprisingly, this guy actively picked a fight with Hibiki. He could totally have just used that platform on the left to try and sneak past us but noooo. He had to be a hero.



I hope it was worth getting your ass kicked over. I really, really do.



Now is when Ronaldo moves. He's actually positioned rather smartly here.



In the off-chance Fumi had a Dragon, Ronaldo'd still be safe there. If she had a Vile Orcus then he'd be counterattackable no matter what anyway.



Drain is great when you use it. Not so much when its used on you, especially from a Baphomet 3 tiles away just to rub it in.



Let's fix that small part right now, shall we? Baphomet's going down.



[Music: Decisive Battle]



Baphomet resists most things we throw at it, sure. It also has like 200 HP so it might take a while anyway. But when 75 is what it takes with the resistance, I'm kinda glad because this would be waaaay too easy otherwise.



And just like that, Fumi now has the ability to ignore Ronaldo's fisting powers.



She's totally using this by the way. Be foolish not to.



Speaking of fools, this guy tries to fight Jungo which works out well for us. On the other hand, this is the random schmuck with Anti-Phys so maybe Jungo's fist won't be forever.



Or, y'know, he can just abuse Mow Down to wreck the Powers. That works too.



Especially since it lets Flauros net the final blow so Jungo gets some of his HP back.



I'm not entirely sure what most people's opinions of Double Strike is but I think it's super good. Not so much right now, but once we get some more things to accompany it then Jungo's gonna be running with this to murder all the things.

Like, even harder than he already can.



There's still one dude left over by Jungo and Daichi, so we can't finish Ronaldo off just yet. We can, however, get rid of Suparna.



King Frost has Double Strike too, so we can see how nice that is. Wee bit of an overkill, so we just have to be careful to not accidentally beat Ronaldo now.



Needless to say we do just that, so Daichi's gonna hopefully finish this guy off so we can end this.



Thankfully, this guy's a bit of an idiot and brought a Dragon and a Vile demon. Neither of which is phenomenally good, especially when Ronaldo had a better Vile anyway and we've gone through billions of Bai Suzhens by now.

Also their increased attack ranges don't stack. That'd be insanely broken if they did, huh?



Like, she doesn't even stand a chance. It's pretty pathetic, honestly.



The guy himself got lucky to survive by the skin of his teeth, though. Like absurdly lucky.



So he squanders it and tries to fight through Jungo.



It doesn't end well for him, let's put it that way.

Oh and yeah with Double Strike if it crits then both his crit. It's pretty good!



As an amazing change of pace, reinforcements don't run in to help out Ronaldo at this point. Since we need to wipe him out with Hibiki, there's a minor problem; he may instead be drawn into hitting Fumi.



So to make this impossible, I had her run 4 spaces away and then use Ghost Q's Uncanny Form because I'm not using it for much else.



This lets her move safely out of the line of fire at this rate even if it is a tiny bit unnecessary.



I wanted to bring this to a close sooner rather than later, though. It worked, so now we have to just finish off Ronaldo and we're done.



Of course, he punches Leanan Sidhe pretty hard but she's not all that resilient anyway so whatever.



In return she blasts Ronaldo for 297 damage from a Force Dance. Even if he had full HP still, this'd take him out in one.



Much like with Fumi before, though, we don't get to reduce his HP to 0. At least we got Drain. We might just need this very soon...



Needless to say, this is going on Hibiki and is basically never coming off. It deals Almighty damage, costs 2 MP and recharges itself so it can last for long enough to take out basically anything it needs to.

MP is effectively Not A Problem for Hibiki.



And that brings Ronaldo to his end. Once you get rid of Baphomet, it gets easier but Ronaldo himself still isn't to be taken lightly. You could argue he gets tougher to put down on account of getting Extra Turns again, but really I'd rather that be an option; at least we can retaliate then.



Don't even get any good post-battle EXP this time. How disappointing.

[Music: Exploration]



Why don't you stop? We have more manpower. You're not going to win.
Hmph... Are you telling me to surrender? That's not going to happen.
If I don't stand up and fight, there wouldn't be any justice!
Come on, let's fight.



That's enough talking. Let's go!

Yeah, we only just got done kicking your ass once. Probably can't do that again immediately afterwards.

[Music: Silence]



Wh-What...!? What's this!?
......! Look! Up there!



......!?

[Music: Countdown]



...Oh, is it that time already? Had to jump in right now though? Like, immediately after one boss fight we get another? Oh alright then.

Wha...! What is that!?



Your cell phone rings...



Careful... There's a third monster following Dubhe and Merak!
We don't know anything about it, but our information says that it's in Nagoya right now!
I'm looking right at it.
What...? No way! I'll be heading over there right away! Don't--

The call drops suddenly...



She said not to fight it.
Wow, that's pretty smart, coming from Makoto.
...Didn't you see it just now? It has a really strong electrical discharge.
If that Phecda thing's target is here...



Really? Why's that?
Oh, right, you wouldn't know. This transformer station here is important.



......! So Phecda's after that...?
I don't know what its aim is, but whatever it's up to, I'm sure it's a threat.
Let's destroy it!
All right... Let's do it! We can do this ourselves!



Looks like someone's gonna be giving us a hand here. How nice.

...Huh? Ronaldo? I thought you'd have escaped already.
...It's not going to be an easy opponent. This is no time for us to be fighting!
Thanks.
...Don't take it the wrong way. I'm only postponing the fight between you and me.



We'll talk later. For now, get rid of that thing!

[Music: Septentrion]



Okay, so Ronaldo's a guest. His team is completely identical to when we fought against him not 5 minutes ago which is nice. He's not dumb enough to immediately switch his team around to be a hindrance.



In terms of cracks, this is everything. There's 4 skills, they're all available from all over the place. Naturally, we'll just grab the lot.

Power Hit makes Jungo outdamage his crits. We want it.

Vigilant is Watchful but Better and has a nice added bonus too: whoever has it gains more (120% base) exp for fights they win on top of getting 96% EXP for any fight they're not in (Demons with it only get 80% though!). It's pretty good for grinding, really; give it to Hibiki and everyone levels up superfast.



And because I have a cunning plan, I switch Leanan Sidhe out for our crappy Hamsa. I have my reasons, don't worry.



Anyway, Phecda himself? Yeah we can't really hurt this guy. He's immune to everything but Almighty, has a movement of 5 moves like he has Flight, can attack from 2 spaces away and doesn't have an extra turn delay.

Good thing we cracked Drain before otherwise we'd have no choice but to leave this guy to Ronaldo, huh? And since it has 900 HP that'd take a while.



Since he's brought some friends with him, we'll clear them out right now. Much like before, we only need to beat Phecda to win but that's easier said than done so let's grab what we can first.



Now that we're in place next to this Hamsa, Hibiki can bring Leanan Sidhe back in. Getting rid of this one now, because this duck really, really hates Jungo for some reason. It will defy all logic just to fight him even if it means moving when Hibiki's much closer.

I don't even know.



At least it's an easy opener and lets Hibiki get Mazan.

Not using it, though.



First I get taken hostage, now I'm fighting monsters... FML!
So that's the monster they've been talking about... I wish I could study it...
What are you doing!? You aren't going to cause chaos in Nagoya any longer!
This isn't the best time... But I have to do it!
...This electricity's bad. I have to beat this thing before it does anything nuts.
...Can't believe I'm fighting alongside JP's... But here we are, and it has to go down!



What...!? It split in two!

Yeah, okay, so we don't really fight an invincible Phecda. We have to fight two of them instead.



Thankfully, they're not ACTUALLY invincible any more. Far from it, in fact. Each half is immune to one thing and crippingly weak to the other. The red one here is immune to physicals and is crippingly weak to elemental magic. Almighty is neutral no matter what.



Naturally, green is the opposite; immune to magic that isn't Almighty (and that includes Mystic this time) but dies if you punch it.

Both still have 900 HP when at max; since they split Phecda's remaining HP normally you'd think 450 but nope! Neither seems all that tough on their own, but read the Phecda Clone description carefully. On their turns, they can re-fuse back into the whole, averaging out their remaining HP. This can be done even if there's only one left; the dead one revives with small amounts of HP. This sounds like its abusable to grind easily. Understandable, right? It's level 32, a Septentrion boss and they always work as EXP candies.

Not this time. Atlus are on to you.



Anyway, Ronaldo's a bit dim but he's able to survive well enough for now. He just charges at either Phecda or towards a random demon. Of course, no matter where he goes he positions himself so he can be attacked first.

Because of course he does. Why should he take advantage of that Baphomet he has?



I like how this Hamsa knows its going to get wrecked so it's throwing out Ogun's Bind before attacking. Smart move.



It's not gonna make that much of a difference, but it could be a minor inconvenience I guess. Whatever.



Phecda-Red tries to fight Ronaldo, because it's not completely stupid. Ronaldo can't really hurt it THAT much because he's a punchyman and this one laughs at punchymens.



Phecda-Green tries the same thing, but with much, much worse results.



Daichi has one job to do here, and its take out this one demon that's hiding in the back. Should be easy enough to do, right?



...Somehow he botches and everything misses the Nozuchi in the Extra Phase. Like, the Garm does too so its not just Leanan Sidhe's paralysis being an annoyance.



And in a cruel irony, the game opts to give us the Elec Set add-on in the middle of the Phecda fight. Real clever.

Can totally use this to throw Elec Repel on a dude if we wanted to, though.



The other Nozuchi tries to fight Jungo. Let's see how well that works out for this one, shall we?



Jungo gets the results we want from a marginally harder fight no less. Admittedly both of his demons being poisoned is an inconvenience but it's no big deal.



Thankfully, Daichi pulls it out immediately afterwards too. Nozuchi tried to fight, went as well as you'd expect it to.



Ronaldo's doing something vaguely smart here and using his range advantage to hit that Jack Frost.



He hit it so hard all three of them died. I'd be mad about all that EXP being lost if it wasn't kinda out of the way anyway. We have bigger fish to fry now that they're all nice and isolated.



Like Merak, Phecda also has an attack it can do on the map. Dark Thunder is a bit worse; it hits every team within its 2-tile battle range, it can potentially hit a lot harder than Circumpolarity and both halves can use it. And if they do there's a good chance anyone nearby could just die on the spot.



What...!? The parts rejoined!

On the other hand, it can totally just combine back into one borderline invincible unit and make us wait for a while. When its whole like this, it can still do Dark Thunder but it seldom ever does.

Not complaining about that, since it works well for us.



Oh and Ronaldo has a max range of 3. Phecda has a max range of 2. You see where this is going I'm sure.



Ronaldo might be an aggressive fighter, but he's not an aggressively stupid fighter. He won't do something that's a blatantly terrible idea, most of the time.



Oh and a new demon team spawns in every now and then at this point. Whatever. They're not getting close enough to matter at this point.



Ronaldo keeps using his range advantage while the rest of the party moves to pen Phecda in to a small area. If it splits now there's a good chance we just win then and there.

Of course if it DOES use Dark Thunder then we may end up on the wrong end of a TPK.



Fortunately for us it opts to split first. Phecda-Green ends up on those stairs and is kinda stuck from our perspective. Gotta swap Hamsa in so we can take advantage of my Cunning Plan to ruin its day.



Combining the ease of movement with Mezuki's Aggravate makes for something very nice and powerful indeed.



Let's bring this thing to a close now, shall we?

[Music: Break Out]



Hamsa can pretend to help. Mezuki got wiped out by a combination of its poison and Phecda-Greens spells. Whatever.



Did I mention I like Power Hit? Because I really like Power Hit. Especially in Jungo's hands.



Berserk is pretty good too, though without the guaranteed crit its not quite as nice this time around.



Green is on very, very low HP so let's just take out Red and then finish it off nice and quick.



Daichi's spells aren't what I'm really interested in here, though. It's Leanan Sidhe's, of course. Garm has no way to hurt Red, so he just guards; Daichi has Force Dance so he can at least vaguely contribute.



Unsurprisingly, it survives that minor onslaught. Fumi's got this thing wrapped up, though.



Like, not even a close contest. Between her Anti-Phys, and absurdly good Magic, Red didn't stand a chance. Now we must kill Green before it gets a turn otherwise it'll reform and Red'll come back.



I'd actively let that happen if it gave good EXP. 425 is okay I guess, but its nothing compared to other bosses.



...Of course that leaves Hibiki to finish off Green otherwise Ronaldo'll void the EXP. It ain't surviving two punchymens in a row, so it needs to be Hibiki who finishes it.

So, no pressure.



Of all the spells it could use, it picked the worst one. The King absorbs it, Leanan Sidhe reflects it and Hibiki shrugs off magic damage like it ain't no thing.



To say we only really have the King as a strong Strength unit here, this is pretty decent for a spellcasting demon using its noodle wrists.



Since that's a weakness and all, it DOES outdamage Drain. Barely.



Not that it matters, since Hibiki just finished it with that Drain.





Now THAT'S more like it. We'd get less than that if the same person beat both halves of Phecda, by the way.

[Music: Exploration]



Yes.
Oh, hey, Ronaldo. Are you okay?
Yeah, mostly... Damn, what WAS that thing?
...That was Phecda, an enemy of JP's.

[Music: JPs -Geomagnetism Research Department-]



Sorry. I did hurry... I apologize.
Sako... you too? This really isn't my lucky day.
...Ronaldo Kuriki. So you were behind this, as I thought.



...... I won't do anything, for now. Thank you for helping us.
...Don't be ridiculous! I don't need mercy from the likes of JP's!



Wait... Are you kidding me!? He's the one who destroyed the branch... and Nagoya...!
...You must be Ban. I've heard about you. JP's does not hold personal vendettas.
Um, Makoto? Do you have the authorization for this? I'm sure Chief will be steamed...
...I'll make the report to him. This is my decision.
Hmph... Sako, I'll leave today because I can tell you're being sincere.



All right? Hotsuin is up to something! Do not trust him!
Oh, hey! Wait, you coward!

[Music: Exploration]



...Fumi, stop.
More than that, guys, you all worked really hard today.
It was easy.
Heh heh... That's more like it. You're very dependable!
Haha, well... We help each other out, right? There's no need to thank us.
I want to, though. Without you, who knows what would have happened to Nagoya?



That being Hinako.

After Dubhe and Merak, Phecda appeared, as if tracking the Septentriones.
You thought of that, didn't you? We don't know what they are, but this is a great step.



Oh... no... It's the other way around, really...



Nagoya JP's will be back up in no time.



Daichi... I'm glad you're safe. I'll send a medical team to you for testing. Rest up.
...... Thank you... very much.
Well, I need to help get the facilities up and running again, so I'll see you later.
Oh, Makoto, wait.



What's up?
Oh, sorry... I was just thinking about what Ronaldo said...
...Huh? Why would you do that?
Oh... uh... but...
He said there was no food... And not to trust anyone in JP's... Why would he say that?



Hmmm... Yeah. Maybe JP's is having a better time of it than everyone else.



Yeah... Maybe we're being treated much better than we think...
Yeah.
Oh... Don't worry, I'm just rambling again. Let's go, Hibiki.
Yeah, come on. We still have time until the train home, so we should look around Nagoya.



Man, somebody put on his wuss pants today. Let's go!



On the one hand, we're effectively done for the day already. Just got a bunch of spending time chilling with people to do, as well as I guess one or two bits of plot left to deal with.

Since we can totally hang out with Ronaldo and Fumi now, we'll be doing that next time. Maybe then every option will be able to fit on-screen without scrolling. Maybe.