Act 2 Climax-Mir Attacks!

[former_endboss]

So, Mir's winding up the middle part of her canon here and is about to seize control of both Lady Shurelia's body and the Tower of Ar Tonelico both. And then, as you might have heard, she's going to launch a first strike across dimensions using a combination of her research on the Network and the TSAB's own dimension-jumping techonology to kludge together a patch for Ar Tonelico to let the tower fire it's primary weapons into other worlds.

So when this all goes down and Mir starts killing people, who's going to stand up to her and go on an adventure to stop her?

Comments

[x_battousai]

Hmm, tough one for me. On the one hand, Kenshin would like to try to reason with her, but at the same time, with interdimensional attacks, Aqua can't really ignore it...

[former_endboss]

¿Porqué no las dos?

Incidentally, Mir's world has a literally broken heart, so ummm, yeah, no idea how that works in KH terms.

[x_battousai]

Hmm, interesting...

[former_endboss]

I can provide more info if you'd like.

[x_battousai]

Sounds good, thanks!

[former_endboss]

TL:DR warning, this is...kinda complex.

But to simplify a bit, Ar Ciel, the world upon which Ar Tonelico takes place, was devistated by a war between it's inhabitants that caused tremendous physical and metaphysical damage to both the planet and it's Heart of Gaia, the thing that let's a planet...be a planet! Supporting life, having a nice habitable surface, fresh air, a magnetic field to ward off harmful radiation, even gravity is dependent on a well-functioning heart. So when the people of Ar Ciel cracked their world's heart it...kinda was a bad thing. Energy leaked out, and it didn't regenerate or heal properly, causing the planet to devolve and spawn new life forms to devour the old ones and try to salvage itself. This effort was doomed to failure, but drove humanity back to the Towers along with their Reyvateil creations. There was even, briefly, a plan to shoot a powerful Reyvateil into the planet's core to fuse with it and help heal the planet or something. But that was cut short, and nothing ever came of it.

But the Planet's condition continued to deteriorate and at this point...it's got maybe five, ten years tops before it's terminal. And at this point, the only thing that can save it is a transplant-and I doubt Aqua knows how to preform a planet-sized Heart Transplant. It's not immediately obvious, but Mir and Shurelia are squabbling in the dust of Clock Town at 11:45 of the third day of Majora's Mask. Unless something changes soon, Ar Ciel will start to break appart and everyone on it will die a slow an agonizing death. Mir's aware of this-she just thinks that she can come up with a solution easier if there are fewer humans around. Shurelia? She might not know how bad the situation is.

[shiningwaters]

Hmm, Aqua's power as a Keyblade master can allow her to open or seal off the hearts of worlds. Or she could figure out how to merge its heart with another heart, such as Mir's heart--while she doesn't know it happened already, this info could help, if you think it might work.

[former_endboss]

Well, Mir's 'heart' is not only too small but the wrong shape, a triangle instead of a square to use a metaphor. I am not making this up, the setting material describes a Reyvateil as powered by a 'Triangular Core Loop' while the 'Square Core Loop' is the Heart of Gaia.

As for locking or unlocking it-sadly, it's at the core of the planet, and you'd need some sort of sci-fi wtfery to get to it. Once there, she would probably discover that it's like trying to use a key when someone else has already shoved a mess of hairpins into the lock and broken them off inside it, clogging the works with tiny pieces of broken wire.

[shiningwaters]

Hmm, not sure how much she'd be able to do, honestly. Maybe slow down some of the outward flow of energy, but with that bad damage, I don't know what she could do.

[former_endboss]

well, it's more incidental setting stuff compared to Mir using the Tower to attack people.

[shiningwaters]

Yeah, that might work better.

[former_endboss]

Sorry that I have a tendency to ramble on about Ar Tonelico's weird backstory and stuff if given half a chance.

[shiningwaters]

No problem! It helped me figure out who and what's probably going to work out better.

[former_endboss]

Glad to hear that! have an icon of Mir with pigtails.

[alldevouringabomination]

You already know my answer, more or less; staggeringly powerful endbosses are nothing new for Kirby, and since she's likely firing at his friends ANYWAY...

[former_endboss]

Mir refuses to be beaten by a pink Funbun. Which is why her policy with Kirby will be to try and drop him off the many unsafe catwalks at the top of Ar Tonelico.

[alldevouringabomination]

Try being the key word here.

[former_endboss]

HOW CAN IT JUMP LIKE THAT?

This is going to be hilarious

[alldevouringabomination]

Fumu: Come, Warp Star!
Kabuu: WHOPPU STALL!

How can it possibly fly like that?

[former_endboss]

Point defenses to full power! Shoot that star down!

[alldevouringabomination]

Meta Knight: He is now Crash Kirby.
Fumu: Crash Kirby?

Giving him more Copy Ability sources? Well, there's a first time for everything!

[former_endboss]

Though if Kirby eats Mir, given her normal Viral tendencies, this could suddenly veer towards a bad end...

[alldevouringabomination]

...let's not find out. Besides, all the other ducks will want a piece of her after what she just pulled.

[former_endboss]

Like you darling ducklings will even be able to touch her...

[alldevouringabomination]

...define "touch".

[former_endboss]

Force her out of Shurelia?

[alldevouringabomination]

Oh boy. This is gonna be real interesting.

Not that I'm doubting the abilities of the community members, but still.

[former_endboss]

Don't worry, a band of local heroes are on the case to stop Mir as well. And they have a clue as to what might be needed to make Mir get out of the Administrator.

[alldevouringabomination]

Lyner saves the multiverse world and Shurelia with his special snowflake jerkiness?

[former_endboss]

Oh good, another girl falls victim to his 'charms.'

Why is it that only Mir's beau is an actual decent human being?

[alldevouringabomination]

She needs a positive example of humanity and less reasons for genocide?

[former_endboss]

Correction: she needs a baritone to harmonize with.

Which is pretty much the same thing.

[alldevouringabomination]

If only all relationship problems could be solved with proper application of music.

[masked_god]

This is a little late, but Karakael is having too much fun baiting her.

He is also used to thinking on a scale completely different to most of the other community members.

How many worlds can Mir destroy? Would Karakael be able to bait her into going after his billion-planet galaxy?

[former_endboss]

She would totally destroy billions of them if she could-but she's short on targeting data and rather strapped for resources. So maybe one or two more with direct fire. Max. She's much better at wiping out cities. Ar Tonelico is only at about 10% of maximum power, and Shurelia stripped it's strategic weapons for critical parts to repair other parts of the Tower.

That said, she can create self-replicating weapons and turn those loose. Which will probably cause a lot more havoc than her ability to actually destroy with her available weapons, especially if her Viruses get out of the computers and into the Thinkhives.

[masked_god]

Hmm. How about 2 planets straight up destroyed, and 25 infected with the Thinkhive viruses? Which might actually be just as bad, given that the thinkhives can move mountains if they wish.

What are the self-replicating weapons like?

[former_endboss]

I imagine that a Thinkhive Virus could possibly be just as nasty as the TITANS from Eclipse Phase if you've ever read up on that setting. Maybe a little Exsurgent Virus for flavor. Though even 'destroyed' will be more like a total nuclear exchange and less like a Death Star unless she can find something on those planets she can use to blow them up remotely.

They're called Viruses in canon. Techno-magical constructs that infest the Tower, pigggybacking it's systems. They can subvert existing defenses, and some of the advanced models can do 'phase' tricks where they go insubstantial for a split second to dodge attacks. Really more an annoyance to anyone who's prepared, but if they get somewhere where they aren't expected...

And even Mir can't call them off easily.

[masked_god]

How would she think of forcing everyone on a planet to go into cryogenic suspension? Kaaree probably wouldn't let her get her hands on any of the actually dangerous planets (like the ones with child-brain-driven asteroids and the like) though the equivalent of a nuclear apocalipse might be completely possible on some of the worlds, depending on the tech. level.

What would she do with a planet with no system of government and little to no technology? About half of the worlds are like that...

oooh, she could infest the dispersal plates. they're basically transporters. and if the Viruses get into those, just think of all the havoc they could wreck...

[former_endboss]

How easy is it to cause massive cryogenics failures and kill people in those tubes? Because we all know that Mir doesn't actually care about destroying planets, she just wants to kill.

And you know, worlds like that really aren't very good for conquering or making war on-just too distributed and resistant to attack. The benefits of being hill people-Civilization doesn't pay you much mind.

Yes, that's pretty much what I was thinking of. Teleportation networks are their bread and butter. They use them pretty aggressively in Ar Tonelico, and they're pretty much the only things that do. Everyone else is a bit leery of being torn apart and reassembled.

[masked_god]

Well, it is relatively easy to freeze people in eternal suspension, but not so easy to kill them outright. The entire purpose of the dispersal ships is to prevent the loss of life while still creating as much physical destruction as possible.

True. Though the people from the Inquest are quick to hail anyone who can wrestle control of their planets from the guiding computers as "gods". Would that tempt mir, or is she more interested in destruction?

So systems like that are what would be the worst hit by Mir's attacks. Good.

[former_endboss]

Well. That will NEVER do. Those ships have got to go. Maybe altering their guidance systems to steer them into suns? Crafting battleships of her own to hunt down and destroy them? Mir disdains and tramples upon the rules of Men and the Inquest.

I don't think Mir's ego runs in that way really-she wants to kill humans, or lobotomize them to use as mindless slaves if she can't kill them. Being a god to them brings up bad memories. She would much rather freeze a planet than conquer it, rather release a bio-weapon than subjugate the inhabitants with secret police and total surveillance.

And yeah, technologically advanced and interconnected systems are PRIMED for Mir to rip into. Especially any with automated factories, since she can use those to make robots-low end stuff might just be stuff like Drones with Guns, but the high end...they call them Children of Light, and they look like mikos or angels. And they fight like monsters. And if you knock one down, they'll just drop into sleep mode, recover their energy, and optimize combat protocols to come back even stronger.