Part 6: Mission 2 – The White Knights

Mission 2 – The White Knights




Aki and Noal quickly identify the approaching Radam swarm.
D-Boy is already transforming to intercept.


Click below to see the manliest transformation, ever:

TEK-SETTER!


TEKKAMAN BLADE!





Noal scoffs that the guy has decided to fight after all and while Blade will not ignore the Radam in front of him, he thinks to himself that he's got to hurry and end this quickly.



Here are both units we can use:


Oh, I do love Tekkaman Blade so much. I’ll do his proper analysis later but here’s the rundown: as it says in the tin, he uses a sword which means he’s a melee. He’s VERY dodgy on his own and would be even more due to his broken SS size (compared to the gundams which are all M).



The Blue Earth is a pure support unit with only one, WEAK, attack. Use it to get some free damage if you can be sure that it won’t be hit with the counter as it has crap for defenses.

This is a good time for me to go off on a tangent and talk about size modifiers. They apply extra effects depending on the difference between two units that attack each other.

ADDENDUM: As it was indicated by Dr Pepper and others, Size Modifiers are broken in W. Pay them no mind in this game but I'll leave the information below just to cover my bases (and the info can be useful when playing other games of the series where Size works).

All units have a Size on them (seen in this picture. See the (サイズ) tag near an SS in the inferior left corner on Blade’s stat picture above? That’s the Size display.
A unit’s size can be: SS (Super Small), S (Small), M (Medium) (Like the Gundams and Valhawk), L (Large), 2L (Extra Large) (like the Valstork).

The smaller size of a unit compared the it’s opponent, the tougher it’ll be for the enemy to tag him with a strike BUT the damage of your small unit will suffer a penalty (I.e. you may have a hard time hitting a mosquito but you won’t be in a lot of pain if he gets a bite in).
The opposite is also valid, a big enemy will get a damage bonus if he manages to hit a smaller enemy.



Back to the fight now. The Radam units have the same high-accuracy point blank attack as the enemies from last mission. See?


A quick Focus cast and we’re good to send Blade into the fray. From this position he can counter all but one of the Radam.


Blade only has one post-movement attack so let’s go for it: Tek Lancer. Click the image below to see it:



: Radam! I refuse to die until I have crushed each and every one of you!
: Take my anger and my hatred!



These buggers have a bit of HP so we can’t oneshot them. Still, we got one of them weakened so we can now see their stats:


Nothing major here. 4600 HP, 110 EN, 900 armor, 90 dodge and 5 movement. These have only two attacks, one weak shot with a 2-5 range that they can’t use after moving and one slightly stronger melee attack at point-blank with a +40% accuracy modifier. They are made to be sent in droves and to annoy your group as they tear through them and they WILL be annoying. Why? Check the left side of those two screens I posted above.

On the top right corner of the left screen, it show’s Unit Abilities and these bugs have a Large HP and EN regen. Which means they’ll get 30% of their total back when their turn hits – that’s 1380 HP he’ll be getting back as soon as we end it. All Radam units have this, so it’s good to kill them in one turn so you don’t have to worry about them afterwards.


Nothing else we can do as the Blue Earth’s out of range.


Enemy Phase!

They start a zerg-rush towards blade, surrounding him to get their melee attacks in. He’s got no problem evading and countering them all (with focus, their melee attacks has a 10% chance to hit), though.


Ah. Our friend is back, slightly healed and out for revenge. Blade dodges and Tek Lancer finishes him off for good.


Player Phase!

I’ll bring the Blue Earth up close to Blade to take a pot-shot at a weakened Radam. Click the image below to see it.




You got killed by the Blue Earth. Go hang your head in shame.

Blade kills another before I end my turn.


Enemy Phase!



Bugger attacks Blade. Bugger dies.


There’s one half-health Radam left , so it’ll be taken out in our turn.


Player Phase!



Let’s give Noal a bit more time in the spotlight. God knows, this is about as much as he’s going to get.


With the initial enemies dead, D-Boy is glad he made it in time.
Noal sniffs that the whole affair took too long; Aki calls D-Boy back to the Blue Earth but he quickly realizes that it’s not over yet.





Many more bad guys show up, and Aki calls D-Boy so they can escape.
Noal realizes that you'll have to go on fighting just to blow open a hole to escape through – neither of them has a choice but to keep going.
Blade knows that this is bad…if this keeps going, he’ll…



From the shadows, a sinister figure wonders how Blade, an incomplete Tekkaman, will make it through this fight.
The figure vows to watch Blade's pitiful end closely indeed.

Well, this is just peachy. Blade and the goddamn Blue Earth going up against 21 Radam Bugs…

Time to get crackin’, I suppose.


…Crap. I went a bit too crazy with Focus usage on Blade. He’s running low on SP and will only be able to pull off 1 more cast (his Focus costs 15 SP).

Better say a prayer to the RNG gods, send Blade in to fight the 3 closest Radam (the only ones that can reach him on this turn) and hope he dodges their melee attacks so I can save this last Spirit for when he’s in the middle of the bulk of their forces.


I take on one of the left. Blade does get a crit but the bugger still lives with 288 HP (the numbers like to play around randomly before settling down on the correct damage; ignore them in this SS).
Now I’m gonna have to contend with three of them coming at me with their melee attacks next turn...good thing the Blue Earth can repair.


Enemy Phase!

All groups start homing in on Blade but only the 3 nearby are close enough to get in melee range.



Here goes…




HA! One dead!



Blade starts feeling that his time is nearly out and says they can't continue this fight.
Aki notices him struggling but Noal wonders if D-Boy is faking again to get out of the fight.
Aki asks what’s wrong but Blade simply yells at them to run while he holds the enemy off.



Noal is in no mood to be in D-Boy's debt and wants to keep fighting.
Blade tells him to do as he says, warning that if things go on like this, he'll end up killing them too.
Noal asks what the hell he's talking about...



Blade explains that an incomplete Tekkaman like himself can only maintain his own will for thirty minutes...which is of course why he pulled out of the previous battle.
He tells Noal that after thirty minutes, the will of the Radam that had been transplanted into him would take over, rendering him a demon that destroys everything in sight.
It's been 25 minutes since D-Boy sortied, and he pleads with Noal and Aki to escape while he guards their retreat.
Noal sounds less sure of what to make of this, but tells Aki to keep fighting.



Unless they can defeat the Radam, neither they nor her precious D-Boy can be saved.
Blade is a bit surprised as Noal's assistance but he says his interest in D-Boy is purely as an anti-Radam weapon.
D-Boy may be deffective but at least he has that much value left.



The plan is now to wipe out all enemies within that remaining five minutes (read: end this battle in the next 5 turns – this one included).



The shadowy observer is watching, thinking that Blade is on his last legs and decides to finish him off personally.
Right then, Aki detects another unit approaching; Noal asks if it’s Radam reinforcements but she cannot confirm – it’s only one, human sized unit and it’s approaching fast.
Noal figures it must be another Tekkaman but…







Blade quickly identifies the unknown as a Detonator from the Eviluders.
The watcher is astounded that the Eviluders have come all the way to this planet.




The Detonator wastes no time in wasting most of the Radam in a single attack.
Click the image above to see The Detonator’s Ahnk Attack.





Only the Tekkamen seem to have heard of the Eviluders before, who seems to be an enemy of the Radam.
Noal wants D-Boy to say what these things are but Blade tells them that he'll explain later, after they defeat the remaining Radam.



The watcher can't believe an Eviluder would side with the humans, and withdraws in haste to report all this to his lord Omega.
Noal says that if the Eviluder is helping us, then we shouldn’t piss him off – focus the attacks on the Radam!
Inwardly, Blade wonders why a Detonator-class Eviluder would be helping them…


Back to the fight!



The other two Radam bugs go after Blade, he manages to dodge one and I tempt fate well enough to get a Tek Lancer on one of them, while still dodging a 40% chance melee hit (How long can I keep this up, I wonder).





Our buddy is doing his slicing-and-dicing attack from before (You refuse to do that MAP attack again, eh?) but he can’t oneshot them, either.

The bugs manage to tag him once in melee, he should be fine…I hope.



Player Phase!

Things seem to be going well until our Detonator friend seemingly notices something…



A new set of foes appear (Shit…).


These new units are Eviluders too, but they immediately show they’re not friendly by blasting our folks.
The white Detonator has no choice but to fight back against them.



About that time, the Valstork shows up, recognizing the white mech from the previous battle.
Duo identifies the other units on the field as Tekkaman Blade and the Space Knights.
Kazuma doesn’t want to ignore other humans in danger and requests permission to launch.



Bless knows the Space Knights work for the Outer Space Development Company, and isn't opposed to paying Freeman, their commander, back a bit for his past kindness.
He knows that the Space Knights are very much like Duo's Preventers, and lets everyone join the battle.
As Bless identifies himself as a Trailer, Noal does the same and requests our assistance against the Radam.
Noal explains briefly that there's only four minutes left, and facing both the mysterious Eviluders and the Radam at once isn't going to be easy but Kazuma isn’t about to let them stop him from finally seeing Earth.

Now we get to deploy our troops. Since we only have 3 units in our team, we can send them all out. We can select at which square of the deployment area they first show up in, so let’s set them up to work on both fronts.



As we already have Blade and the Blue Earth down there, I’m gonna send in Quatre to help them out.
Kazuma, Bless and Duo are gonna help the Detonator face off the Eviluders up top.

Off to work we go. Orgun did a good job in softening up quite a few of the Radam bugs.
Only 4 of them are in full health and those will be our main target this phase so we can kill them all in one go during their phase.

Let’s use that last bit of Blade’s SP and get a Focus going.


I position Blade well in range of all nearly all of them.


Very good.





Quatre is somewhat close but he can only reach a couple of them. We’ll go as far as we can and take one out with his Cross Crusher. Click the image below to see it.





We don’t want Noal to be too tempting of a target that he’ll bring the bugs away from Blade and Quatre.
So let’s position him slightly far away and weaken another one that’s at full health.




Bleh. I guess I shouldn’t expect so much from a crappy support plane.


Now, for our Eviluder team.



Bless is too far away to do anything, so I’ll only move him closer while casting Invincible for safe measure.




Duo is the speediest one here, so let’s Accelerate + Focus and send him over to the other side (so they don’t swarm the Detonator and, possibly, kill him).



Good man.

Kazuma’s gonna handle the right flank. I’ll be keeping him in Airforce mode since he doesn’t have morale to use his strongest Cross-Combat attack and this form is more evasive. Focus is used.


He shoots the one farthest away with a Beam Shot Launcher. It crits but doesn’t kill


Kazuma is stuck fighting Eviluders but he actually does have dialogue if he goes for a Radam:

: K-kazuma, the Radam are too much like bugs... eww...
: Don't be scared, Mihiro! Our job is to exterminate 'em!



Enemy Phase!




The swarm of bugs down below starts coming after Blade.

One by one, they get dropped.
Blade now has so much morale that he can kill them in oneshot with his Teklancer if he crits.



He crits often.

They can’t hit him and he takes down 4 Radam bugs on his own. I still want to let Quatre get a bit of experience, though.
So, I’m gonna dodge everything else and let 3 guys alive.

Like Kazuma, Blade has a small line if he gets to tangle with an Eviluder:

: Damn you, Eviluders! I will not let you and the Radam make the Earth a battlefield!


Upstairs, the Eviluder mooks on the left flank are going after Duo, as predicted.


Unfortunately, the two that are farthest away are out of his attack range. So he can only dodge their ranged attacks (Unlike the Radam, the Eviluder mooks’ strongest attack is ranged. This means they’ll always hang back and snipe if there’s someone they can hit with it).

The ones on the front, however, aren’t so lucky.



You know who’s lucky? Duo! Click the image below to see him oneshot it with a lucky crit!



I don’t wanna spend so much of Duo’s EN so how about we see if the Vulcans can handle the 872 HP left on the one he weakened last turn.





Son of a bitch…You see why the Vulcans suck?



The right flank goes after Kazuma but he can attack them at range. Click the image below to see how the Beam Shot Launcher works for the AirForce mode.



Attaboy.



Oh, this here’s a clever chap. He saw that Duo can’t counter from that distance…*grumble*



This one, not so much. Let’s see how he handles being on the wrong end of a Double Proton Cannon.



Damn it, Bless! You were supposed to get a lucky crit!

Another one goes for Big Daddy.



Thank you, Bless!


And they all get a level out of the deal.



The Detonator softens the one that attacked Duo. Leaving it properly tenderized for a kill on our turn.


Player Phase!


Noal reminds us we only have 3 minutes. I know, I know.

Let’s clear up the Radam so we can focus on the remaining Eviluders.


One for each of our guys.


Blue Earth takes the one of the right and they get a level.


Quatre ain’t playin’ and takes the one on the left. Click the image below to see how it ends.





And then Blade finishes the last one.






Let’s show off the Valstork’s Guided Micro Missile MAP attack, so they can take out those two weak Eviluders (do note that it’s smart-targeting, so you don’t need to worry about Kazuma). I use Strike with Akane to make sure no one catches a lucky break and dodges it. Click the image below to see the attack.


This will probably be my most used MAP attack.


3 versus 3. I guess, I can let the Detonator take on the weak one and weaken the other two with Duo and Kazuma for an enemy phase kill.



Or Duo can get a lucky crit and kill his outright.

I wonder if Jet Flowsion might be enough…



Bah.



Enemy Phase (dead men (alien…) walking).


They both go after Duo, who’s now in Range.





One less eviluder, one more level for Duo.



Whoop-dee-doo. Vulcan managed to kill something.



All of the enemies in the area have been cleared and Aki wants to recover Blade ASAP, before his time completely runs out.


However, before that’s possible, Blade charges at the white Eviluder. Click the image below to see it.


That was a Sword Cut parry, mind you.





Blade demands to know why he helped our people.
Furthermore, he asks who he is and what he’s doing here.



The Detonator vanishes, leaving only the word "Orgun" to linger.
That's Heero-level cryptic, Duo thinks.
In any case, the Trailers are happy to help the Blue Earth, and enthusiastically offer to help make repairs.


Neither Noal nor Aki have heard of the Valstork Family before, and Noal is rather skeptical of why two Preventer anti-terrorist operatives are hanging out with a shipload of Trailers.
Horis says that their Blue Earth took a whole lot of damage and they could repair it – of course, that’ll cost them: 30000G, up front.
Noal panics over the huge sum of money but Akane and Kazuma say it’d be well worth the money – besides, they need to make a living.


Eventually Bless says he'd like to speak to the Space Knights' employer, the Outer Space Development Company's "Mister Freeman".
Noal wonders how a Trailer would know his Chief but quickly agrees as that takes him off the bargaining hook.



As for D-Boy, Kazuma wants to know if he's the "pilot" of Tekkaman Blade - Aki says "yes", not wanting to let the full truth of the Tekkamen be known to a civilian.
Either way, D-Boy was exhausted and was taken to the medical room to rest under Mihiro’s care; Akane thinks about that weird name and Aki explains that, since he couldn’t remember his original name due to amnesia, they gave him a nickname.
Our people quickly start wondering (and taking bets) on what the "D" stands for: Dynamite? Delicious? Dramatic? Diving?


Nope. Noal takes all their bets and says that the "D" is for "Dangerous".
Kazuma instantly starts worrying, realizing that Mihiro has been left alone with this, allegedly, dangerous guy and runs off to protect her.



At the sick bay, D-Boy is waking up and is quickly startled when he mistakes Mihiro for his sister Miyuki.
Right then, Kazuma busts in telling the “dangerous bastard” to get away from his sister – he warns that he’ll personally kick him off their ship is he grabs her again; D-Boy apologizes, saying that her face made him recover a bit of his lost memories and he reacted by impulse.
The recovery came just in time, because Noal has some questions: D-Boy acted as if he knew those Eviluder guys and, if so, Noal wants to hear all about them.
Kazuma has questions and wonder just who D-Boy is, that he can pilot the same vehicles the bug-like Radam commanders do.



D-Boy goes on to explain that it's due to his System Box, a crystalline object that lets him transform into Tekkaman Blade.
This sounds like the plot for some kind of anime, and Horis wonders aloud if D-Boy had gotten his powers by being modified by some kind of evil organization.



No one is sure, but what is sure is that they've fought the Radam many times, and that the Tekkamen are somehow connected to them.
The important bits are lost in D-Boy's missing memory, though.
About the best they've been able to tell is that D-Boy is indeed an Earthling, with some indications of tampering of his body by some unknown process.



D-boy's knowledge of the Eviluders as "enemies" is apparently thanks to some data that the Radam must have input into his Tek System.
Enemies of some fairly serious meaning, from what little D-Boy can recall - he cites a vision of a large-scale war between the two sides, spanning across millenia.
They don't seem to be here to wipe out the Radam though, and Bless fears the consequences if some vast foe, powerful enough to give the Radam pause, were to come to Earth en masse.



The white Eviluder who fought on your side is a "Detonator" class, one of the military leaders - similar in both form and function to the Radam's Tekkamen.
The only visions of the Eviluders D-Boy can remember are of them invading planet after planet, either conquering or destroying it all.
Still, he's as puzzled as the rest of us as to WHY one of them would help us in the previous battle.



There's no telling what it's really up to yet, but our group decides to refer to it as "Orgun" for now in deference to its last word.



Heinrich von Freeman then calls in, chatting with Bless for the first time in fifteen years.



When Freeman asks about her, Bless tells him that his wife Yuumi is ten years dead from an accident.
Freeman starts apologizing but Bless tells him not to worry about it: it was thanks to Freeman that they even met in the first place.
Regardless, Freeman received Noal’s report and thanks us for assisting the Blue Earth.



However, Freeman did not call to catch up their friendship, though: the Radam have increased activities recently and offers Bless the job of ferrying the Blue Earth back to the surface, with them temporarily under his command.[/b]
This is great for avoiding bankruptcy, but comes with a condition attached.



Yesterday, Nergal Heavy Industries finished a ship based on a totally new concept at their Sasebo Dock.
The Feds wanted Nergal to hand the ship over, but the company refused - the prototype ship has recently fled the Federation army into space.



Noal figures that serves the Federation right for being so stuck up all the time; Akane wonders why he's so hostile towards the Feds - aren't the Space Knights an arm of the Federal Army?
Aki explains that the Space Knights report to the Federation Special Forces bureau, independent of the regular military chain of command.
Kazuma's been listening closely enough to realize that Duo and Quatre also report through that parallel chain of command, raising him again in Duo's estimation for not being as dense as he thought.



Either way, the added condition to Freeman's job is the destruction of this new vessel, codenamed Nadesico.



Elsewhere, a sinister figure receives the minion's report of Eviluders in the Solar System.
The minion figures he only saw advance scouts, but expects the main force to appear in short order.
The boss, who is referred to as Lord Omega, likes the idea of using Earth as the final battlefield between their two sides, and orders the minion to call in the border forces as well.



He wants the domination of the Earth to hurry, but the minion figures the elimination of Blade should happen before everything's in place.



The minion reveals himself as Tekkaman Dagger, and he is quite vindictive about Blade (who gave him that scar on his face) - until he gets payback for his humiliation and Blade's betrayal, he won't be able to focus.
Lord Omega humors his request and gives him a device called Interference Specter - Dagger vows to guide Blade to Hell with it.
Omega notes that all those born of the Radam are fated to return to Hell... and it is high time that Blade learned that lesson.



Elsewhere, I-ZACK informs Professor Kanzaki of a call from outside - someone has sent a message directly to him.
This is quite startling as very few people in the world could connect directly to Isaac but, unfortunately, he couldn't pinpoint the pulsed signals originator.
One thing was certain, though: the signal originated from space - somewhere near Block 20 of the Orbital Ring, in fact.



The signal carried a varied amount of data and it's been signed by one calling himself Orgun...