Part 125: Mission 36 - Into the Blue of Farewells - Part 1

Mission 36 - Into the Blue of Farewells



Our people are startled as the Tuatha quickly starts an emergency surfacing maneuver.
Gauron gets on the horn and welcomes everyone to today’s side-attraction; of course, everyone is shocked to see him walking about and Mardukas quickly realizes that something must’ve happened to his guards.
Gauron quicky says that McAllen and Trowa have been sent on a little journey, one from which they'll likely never return; Mardukas tries to organize a way to recapture the bridge but Gauron has completely sealed off the area - unless we plan to sink the ship there's no way to enter by force.
He adds that this is what we get for being so intent on stopping terrorism.







He adds that he called some new guests for our party: the Zaft under commander Marco Morashim, with Yzak, Nicol and Dearka in tow after fishing them out of the desert.
Yzak doesn't like how Athrun has gone on ahead to look for the Strike, even if it was on Creuset's orders.



Gauron explains to Tessa that parties always have surprise guests, and doesn't seem too worried about the fact that the Tuatha's sinking is likely to mean his own death.
What Tessa wants to know is how Gauron was able to get DARNA, the sub’s main computer,who now recognizes him as Captain Gauron, to accept his commands.
It turns out there was someone in Mithril willing to sell the Tuatha's secrets, letting a certain genius on his side easily invade the system; Tessa knows who he must be talking about, and Gauron says that she'll probably end up meeting him now, given how smoothly things have been going.
Of course, Tessa now knows precisely why the Marimea army and the A21 Cell had such impressive tech.





She'll have to wait before she's able to do anything about it; not that Gauron is paying much attention, he's occupied watching the little Zaft vs. Wärter battle.
Mardukas knows that there must be a way to regain control but, until it’s clear, we’ll just have to keep the Danaan protect; of course, Gauron doesn't like our people ignoring him to concentrate on the Zaft, so he orders the Danaan into battle and to fire on anything that gets in range.



Secret Alert:
Zaft will retreat if you shoot down Morashim, so make sure to take down all three Kids(Nicol should be killed first, mind) beforehand.
It shouldn’t be annoying if you’ve made good use of your water adaptors.



Only Aki can make it in range to attack anything, so let’s at least get the mayhem going.








Not bad, Not bad…



Everyone else moves up ahead.



Enemy Phase!



Tessa knows that she won't be able to regain control of the Tuatha through ordinary means with "him" holding the reins.
Her only choice is the Lady Chapel, but that will take some finesse.



Luckily, she can communicate telepathically with Kaname, and has a favor to ask of her.
As she starts to explain her plan, the battle is raging outside and Gauron can’t believe Kashim is missing such a huge fight.



Zaft starts to send its mooks in – Blade gets targeted by 3 of them but the result is the same:














I forgot that he got a new Crash Intrude after the time-skip…

All other mooks are unable to get in range.



Player Phase!



Kaname's just been told of Tessa’s plan and, in shock, says that she isn’t sure she can do something like that – her yelling is quickly noticed by Gauron.
Tessa uses a derringer to buy Kaname some time to run, getting knocked unconscious for her pains; Kaname runs off down the hall, and Gauron leaves the Tuatha on autopilot while he runs off after her.


You can see that Zaft seems to have planned ahead on their bid to sink the Danaan – they’ve bought several new toys and all, but one, have underwater capabilities:





The underwater troops are, respectively, the yellow GOOhN (yes, really) and the blue ZnO. Both feature decent HP with some medium-range weapons (though their strongest attack is point-blank).
The biggest annoyance is that they move unhindered through water and receive it’s defensive boost if you try to attack them with a weapon that gets penalized (beam-type weapons are specially useless when the target is underwater).



To deal with flying opponents, Zaft also brings in the DINN – they’re rather unremarkable possessing lower range than the above units but slightly more Mobility (not enough to dodge reliably, though).
Like the BuCUEs, they’ve been seriously nerfed from their Alpha 3 counterparts who sported an S ranking in Air which made them dodge a LOT more.



Finally, here’s Morashim’s Vosgulov Class Submarine – it’s essentially like the Danaan, in which it’s bulky and sports long-range attacks.
Mind you, while Morashim is loaded with Pilot Skills (Coordinator, Command L2, etc), he does not have Prevail meaning he’ll go down easily.



Now, we can really get to work. We don’t have a time limit, so we can thoroughly take down all troops before sinking the sub.










Thank god that I had so many terrain adaptors or this mission would’ve been VERY annoying (during my first playthrough, I didn’t know that a water-level was coming…it was not nice).



Even with the terrain parts, these mooks are still quite resilient.



I know you won’t let me down, Gai.










I knew it; you’re such a great guy!






Kouryuu, assisted by Saburouta, weakens a GOOhN and Anryuu finishes it off.



How about Volfogg and Ryouko? Surely he’ll get a crit and leave it nice and weak for her…?












Nope. Also, do note that the Aestis frame does not apply the Water-Terrain that the 0G Frame had…which means we have 3 units that will be greatly penalized when attacking the water mooks.





At least it’s weak enough that Quatre can take it out easily. Further ahead, Duo cuts a ZnO down to size.



Kazuma has no water-adaptor and nearly all his weapons are poorly rated on the terrain.
This puts him on the job of hunting BuCUEs.










Still, it’s a job he can do well.





Further ahead, I’m once more shown that the Aestis are not reliable water hunters.
Gai Daigouji needs to join in to help Ryouko finish the job.



Lowe can be quite useful during this mission, mind. Even without parts, Melee weapons, like his Gerbera Straight, are ranked A in water.












He just needs a wee bit more morale to be able to oneshot these folks with a critical hit.





Aki and Yumi focus on a GOOhN and take it down easily.



Following up on Mao’s work, Vesna goes for the kill.














Hm…Weaker than I expected but, then again, I haven’t been upgrading her weapons much.



Blade gets a nice crit and leaves the ZnO ripe for killing.



We’ll deal with that later, it’s easier to have Sommer weaken another enemy and take them both out in a counterattack.



Enemy Phase!



Of course, Gai doesn’t need that shit.



Duo works as well as Blade, of course.










Mind you, even though his weapons are called BEAM Scissors, they don’t get penalized by being underwater.





The GOOhN and ZnO try their luck against Lowe – shame that he’s the best at luck.



Now, it’s time to finish the job.








Boom!



The other mooks are starting to reach us, so Quatre extends the red carpet.



Here come the fliers.










It barely manages to survive Gai’s swatter.



Down below, Lowe gets zerged by two BuCUEs and one DINN – he kills them all with his Gerbera Straight.





Yzak and Dearka waste their moves by going after an evasive Gaofighgar.



Morashim, however, is close enough to get hit back.










Err…seems like I never noticed Gai Daigouji setting up for a Support Defend. Whoops!



Player Phase!



Kaname finds the "Key" in Tessa's room, but now has to make her way to the Lady Chapel, wherever that is.
Before she has time to think things through, Gauron manages to catch up to her.



Thankfully, Sousuke stayed inside and gives Kaname some cover fire before running away with her.
As they lose him, Sousuke is busily asking if she's hurt or whatnot when she tells him that she's not some kind of luggage for him to carry around; she denies even that she was so afraid when faced with Gauron, but trails off, and Sousuke tells her he has something to say to her.
Whatever it is will have to wait since Gauron catches up to interrupt the “teen love” and a gunbattle erupts.
She promises to show him that she can do stuff on her own, and tells him to finish whatever he wanted to say when the see each other again.



She makes it to the Lady Chapel, recognizing the TAROS Omnisphere system from the Arbalest's cockpit (though this one is older).
This one is connected to the ship's controls instead of a Lambda Driver, but Kaname quickly figures out what Tessa wants her to do.



That’s all for this update. Now, I can’t say for sure when the next one will come as my computer’s fan has turned to shit and the thing is about to burst into flames – I have a replacement but it’s nowhere good enough to run the emulator properly.

Either way, expect everything to (hopefully) be settled by the end of next week and then we’ll wrap things up.
Come next update, we’ll make short work of the Zaft cronies and see if we can’t give Gauron a proper ass-kicking.

See you all then!