Part 9: Entry 3/31/10-09

Entry 3/31/10-09

This was it. We were on the final Door.

RECORD- Preparations

Click Here For Video!

I'm doing my best to help, so why are they still treating me like a kid...?
I'm not a kid...!



All the same... I wonder if she couldn't be a little easier to talk to, y'know?
Whoever put her together made her a little too realistic...
Who wants a weapon that sulks!?
* sigh*



What do you think? Do you have any ideas what happened?
Inherited it...?
Yukari doesn't know for certain, either.
It's just that... you were the only one to hear his last words.
She has mixed feelings about that...
Try to understand.



Us... and not the Shadows that are littering the place.
Dammit... What's going on!?
I'm no Junpei, but I can't think of anything that could have caused this...
Anyway, we'll find all the answers if we keep going.
If there are any enemies weak to lightning, my Caesar should do the trick.
Let me know if you need me.



There's a secret to the Personas we don't know about!
Not much further to the deepest level...
I wonder what's waiting for us down there...



I'm not happy to have that said straight to my face, but then again... she could be right.
*sigh * What else are we supposed to do? We keep seeing things from our past...



We thought she was just acting that way, but...
If she really has the heart of a child, I think we should be more lenient with her.



The end of your journey... is it slowly coming into view?
The wild talent you've awakened to, and the answer to life that waits at your quest's end...
I do hope you find what it is you're looking for...

The last door was white, and the word 'Empyrean' was written across it in gold. We pushed through, and for what we hoped was close to the last time the Shadows were waiting.

RECORD- First Great Shadow of Empyrean

Click Here For Video!

This has to be...

Fuuka seemed like she wanted to say something, but she wouldn't tell us.



It must be...!
But, no... It can't...
...Oh, I didn't mean to distract you.
Enemy Shadows, incoming!

Boss Battle: Rebellious Cyclops and Acheron Seeker x2
Okay. This is a serious business battle. The Acheron Seekers are weak to Fire and Evade it, and the Cyclops is only really vulnerable to Fire (it Evades Physical, though in a pinch you can defeat it with such attacks). The Acheron Seekers have Agidyne, Garudyne, their multi-target versions, and Mind Charge. The Rebellious Cyclops has a dizzying variety of physical attacks and Power Charge. I totally forgot that I died the first run of this almost immediately to some poor planning, because the attempt never really got started. For this battle my main Personas are Surt, Chernobog, and Melchizedek. Surt Drains Fire, Chernobog has Invigorate and Nulls Wind, and Melchizedek is good in a pinch because he has Mediarahan. Doing this fight with Metis/Yukari/Mitsuru is entirely possible, it just requires a bit of thought. We want to keep Metis on the Cyclops mostly. We're going to leave Mitsuru and Yukari on Heal/Support most of the time. We'll use Surt's Ragnarok on the Acheron Seekers and hope to knock at least one down each turn. Once one gets low we can assign target all three party members to it. The good and bad thing is that Yukari and Mitsuru will use their Break skills to negate the immunity to Wind and Ice the Shadows have. This is good in that it makes them easier to beat and bad in that it wastes huge amounts of SP. We want to work hard on getting one of the Acheron Seekers down as soon as possible. Everything gets much more controllable if there's only one up. I'm using the Null Slash Heart Item from Chernobog on Aigis to make it less likely that I get killed by a Physical critting. The main thing is to keep Aigis' health up. This is number one priority. If the Cyclops uses Power Charge you NEED to use an Attack Mirror or Tetrakarn, of you WILL die. Don't be shy about using Balms of Life or even a Soma on this, the fight is hard and totally justifies using them. There's some element of luck obviously but if you watch the winning attempt in the video I don't exactly get great luck and still manage to drag out a win.

The mysterious shadow began to grow brazen.

RECORD- Second Great Shadow of Empyrean

Click Here For Video!

Then there is something we're supposed to see, further into the Abyss of Time...
......



......
I think... even if we don't chase that figure... we'll meet it in the deepest part of this place.
We're getting close. Let's keep moving forward.
Shadows incoming...!

Boss Battle: Onnen Musha, Kaiden Musha, Tenjin Musha
This is the last Big Shadow boss of the Abyss of Time. I'm getting all weepy. It's not very hard, though the horrible luck I get in the video makes it seem much worse. Onnen Musha always uses a physical (almost always a Slash type and usually single target) and has Power Charge, Kaiden Musha will use Life Drain and Mudo skills as well as attack, and Tenjin Musha uses heal and support skills, including Revolution (which increases every combatant's crit rate). He's just plain got to go, and we're going to take advantage of the most broken skill in this game to do it. Thunder Reign, the special skill Odin learns, does huge damage and 100% chance of Shock on the target. We're going to Shock the Tenjin Musha and let Metis go to town on him with physicals. He doesn't live that long under this, though he gets a Revolution off (more on this later). At that point I spread the group out to best take advantage of what will hit the Mushas that are left. This is when one of them gets super lucky and kills the whole party save Aigis with chain-crits. I was not amused, and it takes a while for me to recover. Once I do, the rest of it goes pretty smoothly. If you really need to use a Soma go right ahead, you get two for beating this. For the last one of these guardians this isn't really that unfair.

We thought we were nearing the end of our journey...

RECORD- The Seventh Door

Click Here For Video!

You think? It's no different than the rest of the ones we've seen...
But that fits, logically.
Which means that the Abyss' origin—the reason for the time skips-- is here...
...Oh! There's something I had to tell you all.
It was in the papers about the Abyss of Time I mentioned before...
Did you find something?
If the report is correct, this place came into existence as a reaction to the creation of Tartarus...
A reaction...?
The gigantic tower rising so high left a gigantic hole in its place. That's the Abyss.
Does that mean they've known about this for 10 years?
They decided it would be harmless if left alone, since it would probably disappear with Tartarus.
But it also said that since the Abyss is just a byproduct, there should be no Shadows in it...

If that was true, though, why had we been in constant danger...?



And it if was supposed to go poof along with Tartarus, why are we standing in it now?
Did they forget a decimal place or somethin'?
No, their logic makes sense.
What was supposed to vanish is still here because of some force. One side's removal caused an imbalance...
...What could that force be?
Who knows? Maybe it's somewhere down here.
One thing's certain, though: it's deeply connected to all of you.
What's up with that!? What the hell did we do to deserve this...?
Well, there's another door...
If that's here, then maybe...
What's goin' on? Is that the big "reason" behind all this?
If we leave out Aigis, Metis, and me... Whose past is left?
Hey, yeah... Who else was there that had powers like ours?
Who cares? There's no use speculating with it staring us in the face.
We'll know once we open it.

Whatever was behind the door, we were beginning to get worried.



And we've come to erase that reason.
We could be in for a battle. We should be very prepared before entering.
She's right.
...This appears to be our goal.
Don't worry. We can do this.



I opened the door. And a nightmare was waiting.



My nightmare...

......
I...
I... am...
......

And this is the part with...



......!
You're--!?

I start to chase him...



Please! Wait!

And as always...



No! Don't go!

And just as in reality, he's gone.



I dedicated my life to that purpose...
But... I can't fulfill that purpose anymore...
There's nothing more I can do...
Can I continue to "live" this way...?
Does my life have a meaning...?
......
If so... I wish... I could return to being a mere machine...





Though I didn't quite remember it ending that way...



That's... the cause?
D-Don't look at me...
But... Well...
I didn't expect that we'd get to see him again... Although he did have his back turned...
...Indeed.
......
But what's it mean? That looked like it was Aigis' memory.
What kind of clue is that...? Aigis didn't have to awaken to her Persona abilities, right?
No, she did... She awakened to the special power he had.
Aigis, what was that? When did it happen?
......
I... always woke up to that.
It was so painful to lose him... I withdrew into my room, unable to do anything...
For a while, I did nothing but chase after him in my dreams...
Aigis...
Sister...



It felt like a weight on my chest lightened and fell off...
That must have been... the last of the dreams I had.
But I don't' see what that has to do with my awakening...
Sister... are you still in pain?
The person we saw... He's the one who had the same kind of power as you, isn't he...?
......
*sigh* So that's the big cause of all this?
That didn't explain anything...
...Don't you get it?
What we saw was only my sister's memory, but... all of you want to see him again, right?
Then the answer is obvious.
...What's that supposed to mean?
What I said at the start was right all along...
The fastest way to solve this would be to eliminate all of you.
So... that means that figure we keep seeing is--
Wait, something's wrong...!

Something was coming...





Just as I thought...
It's coming... The monster that's taken the shape of your regrets.

And the black figure, the one whose shape we never really wanted to believe, walked out of the shadows.



Is that...!?
You gotta be kidding... That can't be--!
This is the reason for everything...
From the Abyss of Time's failure to disappear, to the presence of the Shadows... This... was born from all of you.

It was time to fight our greatest regret.

RECORD- The Shadow of Regret

Click Here For Video!

Boss Battle: ???
So now we're fighting a Shadow of the Main Character from Persona 3. And what's his gimmick? Well let's give a bit of a fer'instance:





That's right. He copies the Personas of the party. For Aigis he copies Athena, her original Persona. Note that he won't do anything for Metis, he can't copy Psyche. He'll use powerful Strike attacks while he's in Athena, and a combination of ma-dyne attacks and the Severe single target elemental attacks while anyone else. Every so often he'll switch Personas. The main strategy for this involves your party. Basically, you don't want to bring in characters who can hit each others' weaknesses unless you have an item that lets you cover them. This means, for example, don't bring Yukari and Junpei unless you can Null Wind on Junpei. As long as you can handle the elemental attacks and keep Aigis insulated from Strikes when he's in Athena the fight's pretty straightforward. I use a mix of Kohryu and Cybele in this. Kohryu gets Null Strike and I've got him set up with Spell Master for cheap Mediarahans and Samarecarms, so he's great against Athena. When he's in his other forms I switch to Cybele, because I've got her set up with a passive skill that makes me more likely to crit him. Crits do still knock him down and give you an all-out attack, so physicals are a great way to speed up the fight. The fight can get tense at times but if you got this far you should be good.



We'd defeated our greatest regret. We thought our ordeal was finally over.

We didn't yet understand that it was only now truly starting...