Tales of Legaia- Chapter 6: Somebody to Love?
Owing to all the time saved in the Mines of Moralia, Shana decides to lead the crew to finishing her great quest of busy-bodyness. When we last left them, they had shared a magical moment in front of a lovely fountain. As so often happens, daddy didn't approve. Kirk, being the practical sort, simply advises them to elope! What wonderful morals us heros have. From there, we find our couple one boat ride over. Naturally, our first instinct is to... go and tell the father exactly where they are! Brilliant. Two boat rides later, we managed to get back just in time for a heated argument. Naturally, one pointed snark changed the world, and suddenly we're invited to a wedding. Yet another boat ride later, we're treated to a random scene of love and puppies and kisses. Shana is rewarded with some insanely lucky gloves for her efforts, as well as the title Cupid! Shana's arrows always hit their mark, I'm sure. Naturally, the party takes a small break afterwards to discuss their horrible meddling. After some light banter, Tigress bursts out with "I wanna get married right now!" Shiki blushes furiously. Could it be? Is it really love? Naturally, Tigress follows up with "I'm just kidding! Can't you tell?" Alas.
Moving along, we head back to the castle to report that Luna's fine wedding band is broked. The token androgenous mage guy sends us to the desert, to track down some Edward fellow for help. After running in great circles across the burning sand, we finally discover that the secret to summoning the next plot point is to slay poisonously poisonous Basilisks. So yet more deadly hours in the sand later, exhausted, partly petrified, swords broken, MP depleted, sand all up in Tigress'... anyway, but loaded down with valuable Basilisk scales, Edward finally appears. But wait! That's the Super-Powered Old Man from Act 1! But first things first, Kirk demands to know what can be done about his beloved feline beloved furry... well you know. Apparently, we need elven help for this love connection, which means we should in fact just go back where we started. Great. But while there, Shiki does inquire about what the Super-Powered Old Man is doing here. I turns out, this is his ancestor, making him the Super-Powered Older Ancient Dude or something. We further learn that he's heard of the Ultima spell, but hasn't yet mastered it. But knowing that his decendants still know the spell has given him new resolve. Yays.
Heading back to the castle (yet again. You'd think with this much travelling someone would have invented the Airship), we get passes to the Elven Forest. However, we're told that they'd shoot Tigress on sight (prudes), so she agrees to stay behind. By which she means she'll pretend to leave the party and then sneak after us.
After navigating the shockingly maze-like system of bridges leading to the village proper, the Lead Elf tells us that there's a monolith believed to house Origin in the back of the Maze Forest of Death. Who knew that Xenosaga played a small role in this game? Anyway, back to the Maze Forest of Death. Calling upon the narrative gods yet again to obtain the Awesome Map of Win, we quickly loot the treasure and find the Zohar. The Lead Elf then tells us an elven legend about Kangaroo, the Last Battle, which happened in ancient times and in which Origin saved us all. So, in this universe, it takes God to beat up a Kangaroo? Gotcha. Do not feed the marsupials. Anyway, one laser light show later, we have us some wedding rings. Heading back, we find that the elves have taken Tigress prisoner, even though the guards are totally cute but she's not really into that sort of thing, and that she's to be executed. Fortunately, a suspiciously pink-haired elf runs over and asks to take her place, and we leave without incident. By which we mean Tigress tries to push the issue and talk to the person who is totally-not-her-mother.
At this point, and I'm sure Kirk is setting his phaser to kill, we decide to initiate another sidequest! We head back inside and get some advice on fixing a bow that has, variously, been greased up by Chucky Cheese, chopped in half by Seifer, and been hit with Ultima. We're told that only a crazy woman living alone in a mansion can help us. This totally can't go wrong. We notice some amazingly lifelike statues decorating her front yard, but are welcomed inside without incident. She tells us that she'll be able to fix the bow... IF we can get the Lead Elf to talk to her. Easy enough. Oh, we also have to leave one of us behind turned into a statue. Easy en... wait, what? She quickly decides that Shana is the best choice, but Shiki instead volunteers himself (... this entire series of events is one brilliant decision after another). But Crazy Lady won't hear of that, so she charges her glowy death dome... only to have Tigress jump in. So even shen she's not in that much distress, people love sacrificing himselves to try and save Shana. Lovely. We take a brisk walk back to the woods, and as predicted have no trouble whatsoever getting the Lead Elf along for the ride. After a lengthy discussion, he decides... to let her turn HIM into a statue, because he loves her and it's the only way they can be together because she's a half-elf and... oooookaaayyy. Anyway, she does so, and the spell conveniently rebounds and de-stones Tigress. She subsequently breaks down and cries for a while, so our crew just gets the hell out of there.
So, back to business. Yes! The time has come at last to scale the phallic tower of the stars and win the heart of Kirk's one true love! We soon learn that while Luna doesn't keep particularly nasty creatures in her home, she is very pick about music, and we have to fumble around changing it every time we need a door opened. However, despite the interferance of some random pixie (... well, it's not as though Kirk hasn't slept around with far stranger things in this trip), we find Luna eagerly awaiting her beloved, and the wedding is held immediately. It seems to be a Vegas wedding, what with riding around on the crescent moon and the whole Luna Laser neon sign bits, but who cares, we got what we've spent... a good 80% of the game so far trailing after. That accomplished, we head for Midgards at maximum warp.
There, we decide to put on the full display for the helpless guards at the castle, including the endorsement of the only other Kingdom on the planet, our obvious badassitude, a fully fledged summ... er, Space Captain, a pyschotic sex-starved witch... really, it was a bit overkill. I mean, this is a kingdom who's getting their asses hopelessly beat into the dirt by Seifer. SEIFER. The closest five year old with a pointed stick should be enough, let alone experienced badass fetch-questers like us. For good measure, we name-drop the Super Powered Old Man, and quickly enough Kirk is appointed head of a special forces division including... himself, Shiki, Shana, and Tigress? Well, whatever, he is the Captain. We get a quick tour of the castle, paying special attention to the Magitech research facility. This will clearly not be important later.
While we're waiting for things to happen, Tigress insists on going home for a while. There, she yells at her father, then starts crying, then speculates on what could have caused the Elves to sever all ties with humans. This clearly has nothing to do with the unimportant concept of Magitech. We head back, only to learn that Seifer has sent an underling to formally declare war! The underling promptly takes a child prisoner and threatens to kill Shiki and crew. Baffling as this is, the Super Powered Old Man decides to one-up everyone and test out his Ultima spell, using it to get a critical back attack on the hapless minion! Despite a fatal stab in the process, he pulls off a good dissolve and we move on to the big war meeting scene.
Anyway, our task is to defeat Seifer's mightiest minion... wait. Seifer has another minion besides Fujin and Raijin? This is indeed a disturbing universe. For simplicity, we assume this to be Ouka and that there's some fucked up reality warping going on. Anyway, we need to beat up Ouka, which will clear the way for the army (or maybe just us? The King of Midgards is a bit of a wuss on details I think) to knock Seifer down. We traverse the fields, which are in fact distressingly mazelike, dodging enemies liberally to speed the whole thing up, and rather mercilessly defeat Ouka with hardly a second thought. We head back, mission accomplished... but wait! The enemy is coming from the Skies! The scientist decide to charge up their lasers, and unleash their Magictech weapon on the enemies... apparently an All-Ultima, from the looks of things. Neat. We then get a pointless cut to the Forest of Mithos, talking about a sudden calamity or some nonsense. Clearly these events are unrelated. Anyway, the Altima Cannon chooses this moment to blow up, meaning that there's nothing to fend off the whole attack from above. While pondering the situation, Shiki is suddenly sucked into an inconvenient dimensional void. There, Lenneth appears before him, riding a mighty pegasi! Could this hapless death-dealing Swordgirl finally meet her true goddess? But, no. Apparently, Lenneth is just looking for a stray Gungnir that was stolen from the tomb of Odin. Despite tracking thieves, she's willing to pay a fitting reward for Gungnir's return. Steeling her courage, Shiki mentions that she COULD use a good ride...
Cutting back to everyone else, well, nothing's actually happened aside from general "ohfuckohfuckohfuck" sentiments. Then, Shiki returns riding a great white Pegasus! I guess Lenneth didn't quite catch her meaning. Anyway, Shiki flies off, Tigress at his side and Gungnir in hand, for probably the biggest Romantic Hero moment she could ever ask for. There, the pair again effortlessly fell Ouka, and head back to ground. The loser scientist decides to hand over Super Powered Old Man's notes, among which is a spell book. However, clearly is not the right time for that, it's time to kick Seifer's ass!
We head into UltimeciaSeifer's castle. Despite being entirely too large, he's clearly running out of useful minions. So we leisurely trigger traps and raid for treasure until we get board, then jump through some magic mirrors and head off to face the head Knight himself. Oddly, Seifer doesn't seem to be too interested in owning us, but maybe we just don't look like chicken wusses. Anyway, the battle begins! But Tigress gets the first word, a little something like this.
I am the love of my broom
Mana is my body, lightning is my blood
I have cast over a thousand spells
Stand in the light of heaven
Open the gates of hell
Have travelled time to learn so many spells
Yet destiny calls, your life now ends
Thus now I pray: IN-DIG-NA-TION!
And that, as they say, was that. Well, Seifer fled, but that's really a minor detail compared to learning that Tigress was secretly Archer this whole time! Shiki, Archer! True love at last?!
Afterwords, we decide to see what OTHER cool stuff Super Powered Old Man left for us. Raiding his house, we learn that there might be some ruins called Thor that'll get us some hot Ultima action. First, though, Shana insists on doing something about the Mithos Tree. Kirk agrees, something about magic and causality and hot sex and you know, who cares, Shana said it so we're stuck with it. Our first step is... taking a nap, wherein Shana learns that the best Divine Power requires a unicorn. From there, we head back, only to learn that Shana isn't nearly strong enough alone for Martel. But hunting down the legendary phallic horn seems like an adventure for another time.
Credits:
Shiki- Is love really a dream within a dream?
TigressArcher- IN-DIG-NAY-SHUN
Shana- No horny enough
Kirk- when did Luna get so... artificial?
