Mission 3.5
“Lost Cause Part 2”

Briefing:
N/A


Third Mission Part 2 Intro:
As the Falconry nears the HQ, it becomes unmistakeably clear that something has gone very, very wrong – Waveral resembles very much the aftermath of one of their own missions: ripped walls on one side, fires sparsely scattered everywhere else. The Falconry speeds up and makes a hasty landing. The elite gets out to investigate, with the pilot following closely behind.


Third Mission Part 2:
The elite and pilot head to R&D to get the pilot fitted with an Aura Suit Mk.1, and meet, surprisingly, no resistance along the way; though there is a faint, deep banging sound that they hear all the way to R&D. Just as the elite fits the pilot, the banging sound stops, and an explosion rocks the facility, knocking out the power. The emergency lights flicker on and the elite & pilot sneak out of the Aura Suit storage. They are then met with two pairs of huge, glowing eyes – Tired Lightning’s TL-3 and TL-B. After trashing nearly the entire central area of Waveral’s R&D, the elite and pilot finally fend off both mechs. TL-A, heavy mech/support divison leader – now the commander of Tired Lightning’s unit – radios TL-3 and TL-B, screaming for an answer to what the hell was going on. TL-A now knows that the elite is back, but orders his men to stay put, and stops all radio communication.

The elite and pilot make their way to the hangar: the most likely place that the rest of Tired Lightning will be. When they arrive, it becomes eerily quiet. Slowly stepping forward, after about 50 feet, the ceiling in front of them collapses with all four mechs landing in front of them. TL-A backs off and stays out of the crossfire to give orders, while the elite and pilot fight the now very coordinated Tired Lightning. Another carnageful battle ensues, with the elite and pilot wounded, though victorious.

Joseph (TL-A), piloting “Scioras”, finally appears. Scioras is a later second-gen heavy mech, and is totally and utterly worthy of the weight class “heavy.” Joseph feigns surrender, the elite and pilot go up to meet with TL-A(Believing the surrender to be real), keeping their weapons ready. Just as they get within range of talking, however, Joseph immediately reactivates Scioras and obliterates the pilot with a direct hit from his cannon! The elite fights TL-A alone, with the pilot half-dead, implanted into a wall. The elite defeats Joseph’s mech and only it’s plated cannon remains, but Joseph ejects just before it explodes. Rushing to the mech to investigate and try and guess where Joseph might have gone, but the next thing he knows, the elite is knocked several feet away from the mech by something hitting him from behind.

Joseph is in full battle armor, with a mounted energy shield combined with some other technology (Listed as Unidentified Tech before modding for the Aura Suit, it’s actually the WE-SHIELD.),  on one arm and wielding a huge modified Ordant Gunblade in the other. After finally defeating Joseph, the last member of Tired Lightning, he walks over to the pilot to get him out of the wall and to an infirmary. As he’s walking over there, his visor begins to malfunction. Thinking it’s an EMP field, he offs the visor. His gauss gatling gun then powers down, and then everything loses color. He stops to look around, and everything goes red. Then it all goes black.


First Deep Coma:
Under levels of extreme prolonged stress and near-death, a special type of coma called the Deep Coma occurs. In a deep coma, the person is slowly sunk into the fact he/she is not awake, but in a schitzophrenia-like coma that slowly becomes more deranged. The elite wakes up, thinking he passed out from exhaustion. The pilot is groaning in pain, and the elite digs through the stacks of boxes surrounding him to get a good leverage space for getting him out of the wall. After a powerful, combined effort, the pilot is pulled free of the wall, and they head towards the infirmary. They open the door out of the hangar, and oddly, the power is back on. Thinking of their own situation rather than the circumstances, they continue limping towards the infirmary, and meet a nurse along the way. The pilot is placed on a stretcher and they rush him through to the infirmary. The pilot keeps mumbling something that the elite can’t understand on the way. Once they finally reach the infirmary, the pilot is hooked up to a myriad of medical equipment and the nurse leaves the two alone. The pilot opens his eyes wide, whispering loudly, “You idiot, you idiot! None of this is real!”

The elite, not understanding, asks the pilot to repeat what he said. The pilot responds that he doesn’t know how or why, but they are not in the real world, but they are locked in some kind of dream. The elite, digesting this, lays back, and a hand appears from the wall next to his chair. The elite jumps up and faces the wall, and more hands appear from it, and engulf the chair. A plastic bag is forced over the elite’s head and he begins to suffocate. The pilot rips the tubes from his body and wrestles the nurse off of him, and the elite shreds the bag. The elite then shoots the nurse to death, and the two realize they have to get out, now. They rush to the hangar, which has been twisted into some metal mass not of this world.

They turn to head out but the door is gone as well as the medical hall. A massive Joseph rises up from a black void in the center of the room. Joseph almost scrapes the ceiling while standing. He then crouches down slowly to face the two. Staring in a way that can only spell death, he asks them coldly, “Tell me, elite. What is loss?” As soon as he finishes the sentence the elite wakes up in the infirmary again. It’s daylight out, and everything is peaceful, as if nothing happened at all. The elite sits up, and just as he does so, a gigantic, dark, plated gunblade plows through the window, wall, floor, ceiling, space and time – Night Joseph’s Ordant Gunblade. Ripping what little remains of the window and wall to the left of the elite, Night Joseph faces the elite again, this time in an angry complexion, blackened and impossible, just like Night Warden.

He screams, both depraved and saddened, “LOSS IS A PARADOX! IT IS A LIE OF HUMANITY AND A IMPASS OF SUCCESS!” The soundwave alone could rip apart the planet, but Night Joseph slams his foot into the infirmary and knocks the elite out of the building and somehow into a city. Appearing again from a void below him, Night Joseph soars upward, and roars in his godlike voice, “THEN TELL ME, ELITE! DID YOU LOSE ANYTHING WHEN YOU TOOK DOWN THAT ZEPHYR?! DID YOU LOSE ANYTHING AS YOU PLACED SUCCESS INTO YOUR HANDS, AND LOSS INTO MINE?!” Gripping the elite in mid-fall, Night Joseph plows him through floor after floor of a skyscraper, the elite begins to feel that he may die here, as a comatose maniac. As soon as the thought hits him the Night Joseph lets go, and the elite is on top of something massive.

Looking beneath him, it is the Night Warden, deactivated, in its full-sized glory. The pilot is already trying to pry open the hatch. The elite scrambles to get over there and help him pry it open, and they manage to do so. Night Joseph now realizes where the elite is and begins to walk towards them. Hastily starting up the Night Warden, it rips through the earth and steel just before the Night Joseph reaches them. Piloting the Night Warden, the two barely manage to defeat Night Joseph, and the Deep Coma ends.


Third Mission Part 2 Outro:
The elite wakes up, and sees the pilot still in the wall. Limping over to the wall, he shoves off the boxes, and pries out the pilot. The elite can’t help but notice a pinching pain in his back. The two head to the infirmary, and oddly enough, the power is still on in the medical hall. Thinking of their own situation rather than the circumstances, they continue limping towards the infirmary, and meet a nurse along the way. The pilot is placed on a stretcher and they rush him through to the infirmary. The pilot keeps mumbling something that the elite can’t understand on the way. Once they finally reach the door to the infirmary, the elite starts backing up, realizing this is a loop. The nurse grins and begins to walk towards him. The elite continues to back up till he is against the wall – something pops out of the back of his armor and everything goes black. The elite wakes up, crazed and full of adrenaline, and it takes 6 people to hold him down.


Debriefing:
After the elite finally calms down and realizes he is indeed back in the real world, he learns that the pilot who was following him died upon impacting the wall from Scioras’s blast. The elite had hallucinated that the pilot was alive in the adrenaline rush of fighting Joseph and his mech. The elite demands to be patched up enough to attend his funeral, and is promptly given the honor. (The player is allowed to choose what the elite says about the pilot during the funeral service.) Afterwards, the elite finally meets Ingram Fallish himself. Fallish wanted to know everything that happened in the Deep Coma. Afterwards, Fallish gives the elite a Pilot License, the very same one that belonged to the pilot that fought with him. Fallish also gives him a chip that was left behind in his hospital bed, but tells him to take it to R&D before doing anything with it. While walking to R&D,  the elite can’t help but wonder, how the pilot in the Deep Coma knew none of it was real. He quietly thinks to himself, “Yes, yes I did lose something.”


Direct Reward:
Collosus Tech, Pilot License, S-Cannon Tech, Unidentified Tech, ???


Indirect Reward:
Collosus, Scioras Cannon, WE-SHIELD, Unlimiter I


-Collosus is described in the Mission 3 document.
-Scioras Cannon is the very same tactical plated cannon salvaged from Scioras, modified to plug into the same slot as the Beastwielder Gauss Gatling Gun. The Scioras Cannon can use several types of ammo and is useful in a variety of situations.
-WE-SHIELD is the Unidentified Tech salvaged from Joseph. The WE-SHIELD not only holsters medium Aura Weapons, it can also be used as a highly effective energy shield. It uses up shielding units as it is active, but does not drain shielding as it is damaged, it only drains the shielding over time. As more medium weapons are acquired, the shield becomes more and more efficient, dropping from 100% to 25% with 3 holstered weapons, and 0% with 4 holstered weapons.
-Unlimiters are acquired by ending a Deep Coma. A hidden piece of the Aura Suit, it becomes visible by overcoming a major event in a Deep Coma, once the piece is removed from the Suit, the Deep Coma will end. Unlimiters give inhuman strength, regeneration, or reflexes, for the exchange of mental stability. The player can only deactivate an Unlimiter in 10 second intervals, and schitzophrenia-like symptoms will slowly develop until it reaches Deep Coma status. A Deep Coma will not occur, however, and it can be stopped by deactivating the Unlimiter. Activating two Unlimiters will increase the schitzophrenia rate to 1.5x and increase the interval to 15 seconds. Activating three Unlimiters will increase the schitzophrenia rate to 2.0x and increase the interval to 20 seconds. After deactivating an Unlimter, a safety mechanism prevents the player from reactivating an Unlimiter for 60 seconds.
-Unlimiter I gives inhuman Strength.

END OF ACT I.