SRW Scramble Commander 2 LP

Super Robot Wars: Scramble Commander the 2nd LP
Thread Part 1: https://archive.moe/m/thread/11730952/
Thread Part 2: https://archive.moe/m/thread/11770798/
Thread Part 3: https://archive.moe/m/thread/11798630/

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Edit: (16th Dec 2015): It has been brought to my attention that the archives are dead and thus these links with them. I'm thus leaving a text dump of everything (I think) I typed out for the LP in this pastebin.

The text here was from my habit of not typing too much in online forms because you never know when you might lose that shit for no reason, and was not originally meant to be seen on its own (since I was posting it on /m/ with pictures to go with it), and there thus may be parts where the text feels odd, because it was meant to go with a picture. Well, the archives are gone and I can't remember what pictures go with what posts so there.

Edit: New archives (images are gone though)
1: https://desuarchive.org/m/thread/11730952/
2: https://desuarchive.org/m/thread/11770798/
3: https://desuarchive.org/m/thread/11798630/


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DISCLAIMER: I MAY TAKE MY TIME AND IF THE GAME SUCKS I MIGHT JUST GIVE UP ON IT SO BE WARNED

Blah blah blah MU attacked 15 years ago and Tokyo Jupiter, Macross drops from the sky ten years ago and there was a war over it, one year war and shit, five years ago the gitaijuu from Godannar were starting to fuck everyone over but "tokki" (tokushukidouheiki = "special mobile weapon" = super robots) were mass produced and beat them. Super robot were considered overpowered and a bunch of laws were put into place to limit their use. And now it's the year 74 of the New Earth Calendar, and the Anti Alien Assembly (A3), an organization in charge of looking over alien overtechnology, is about to face a new conflict.

An unidentified unit entered airspace under A3 jurisdiction and Dancouga and main character Keiji Tachibana (in an airplane) sortie to stop it. Keiji gets shot down, but Dancouga manages to take out the unit, which crashes near to Keiji.

Keiji inspects it, and finds that the pilot was dead from unknown reasons (no serious wounds, robot itself barely damaged).

More enemies of unknown affiliation attack, but it's just Hizacks this time. It might be the Titans, but there's no IFF.

Shinobu asks Keiji to try using the enemy unit since it's barely scratched. He hasn't used any robots before (fighter pilot) but eh whatever.


Tutorial. SC2's an RTS.

Right stick and R1/R2: Camera
D-pad up/down: Change unit
O: Menu

Menu makes it looks like it's generally just the usual stuff only in 3D realtime.
There are movement commands to prioritise battle or movement, and using square instead of circle sets waypoints. Units have fields of view that also serve as their engagement zones; Enemies not seen by any of your units are invisible, but you tell vaguely where they are by red dots on the dark areas of the map.
Units have tactical settings: The ones available on the first stage are offence, defence, and avoid engagement. There's also a range setting for your unit to keep at, which also determines which attacks they use (there are no attack commands; Units fight automatically depending on their tactical settings).
There's also a manual mode that lets you control a single unit in case the pathfinding goes full retard on you or something.

(Also the tutorial reveals the name of the original before the story did, Habakiri)



First stage starts. Dancouga fights some enemies while Keiji gets out of the way, but enemy reinforcements show up and target him, leaving him with no choice but to fight. He handles the robot decently, and Shinobu mentions that he's also known as the "Scarface Kid".

After the battle Keiji feels sick, and not just because the enemy pilot's corpse is still in the cockpit with him- He feels like something is sucking his very soul out. He also says that he doesn't like the nickname; The scar's nothing special, it's something he got as a kid.

The operator, Valentina, mentions that the unknown unit's energy readings rival that of the Dancouga: It's a tokki, in other words, and because of all the laws around them (they're basically treated like WMDs) this might get troublesome.


Meanwhile in a mysterious place, a mysterious man who resembles a mysterious blue cosmos mysterious Djibril talks to other mysterious people. ???Djibril is mad that the Zero One was taken by A3. ???2 explains that the Zero One's celestial reactor requires the pilot's brain to be compatible with it, and that it's Djibril's own damn fault for insisting they use one of his cronies. ???3 worries about A3 having the Zero One but ???2 doesn't care; It may have a celestial reactor, but the frame is conventional and nothing special compared to what they're going to make.


Back at A3's HQ in South Atalia, Kouji's excited because Mazinger Z's arriving. Ryou explains that producing and possessing tokki strictly controlled which makes the unidentified super robot also super illegal, and Professor Hazuki mentions that he found what seems to be its name printed on the unit (SS01-Habakiri) and that the Titans claimed that the Hizacks that attacked A3 were like totally stolen by AEUG or Karaba or someone for sure, true story.


Mykene attacks the Mazinger Z in transit, and Dancouga and Kouji (pilder) sortie, with Keiji joining them in the Habakiri.

There's another tutorial, unlocking four new tactical commands: Charge (increases offense and decreases defense), snipe (duh), decoy (do less damage but draw enemy attention), and delay (try to stop enemies where they are).

Mykene's kikaijuu are fucking tiny compared to the Dancouga which punts them around like ugly little footballs. After the battle Keiji feels himself becoming one with the Habakiri.

Hazuki is puzzled about the Habakiri's reactor and has suspicions about it (he says he saw something ismilar nine years ago); He shoots off a few messages, and immediately gets replies from professors Aoi and Yotsuya who want to see the thing in person.

Combattler V's Battle Team arrives at South Atalia to escort the Habakiri to Dannar Base for further inspection. Dancouga will be guarding it along the way too.

They run into magma beasts which they blow up along the way, and end up heading to the Nanbara Connection first. There's also a new tutorial on air/space movement and special moves.

The Habakiri has Yotsuya think of a professor Soga, further confirming Hazuki's suspicions. Hyouma referring to the Connection as home has Keiji think about home and family, and resolve to forget about both.

They head towards Dannar Base the next day. Gou and Anna's wedding, gitaijuu attack, blah blah blah. Some head towards the Science Fortress Lab too and you split your forces in two to handle both areas.

More tutorials.

New movement types
Follow ally: Unit follows ally around and helps it out
Follow enemy: Unit targets only that enemy and continues stalking it till it dies

Attack parameters
B: Break, % chance of staggering an enemy
C: Critical (double damage) % chance
S: Stun, number of seconds effect lasts

Custom tactics: Lets you set how frequently the unit uses specific attacks

I end up sending the Habakiri to accompany the Godannar and G-Gunner at Dannar Base, and Combattler V and Dancouga to help out Great Mazinger and Mazinger Z (which just arrived in Japan)

Combattler V's fantastic AI has problems with the pathfinding and it spends half the battle trying to drill through the science fortress lab's bridge with its fucking head, but the battle goes fine anyway.

Tetsuya and Hyouma go on about being orphans and Ryou, one too, reveals to them that so is Keiji. His scar is apparently from when he lost his parents.

Yotsuya and Aoi take a look at the Habakiri and figure that it probably really is Soga's work, and Hazuki explains. Tokki/super robots were created nine years ago to fight the gitaijuu. They pitted a bunch of MP tokki designs against each other, and in the end two remained: Professor Aoi's Plasma Drive Series, and the other was professor Soga's Nemesis Series.
The Nemesis Series was powerful but little was revealed about the power source; In the end its reliability was doubted, plus there were issues in its mass production, which means the Plasma Drive Series was chosen instead. The only input into the Nemesis Series' generator is human brainwaves and a tiny bit of electricity, yet the energy outputted is massive. The design, structure, and operating principles of the generator are unknown.
The biggest issue with the Celestial Reactor is massive physical and mental stress on a user that isn't compatible (Keiji coincidentally is; The previous pilot wasn't).

Hazuki, Aoi and Yotsuya gather again later that night to discuss Soga's motives (revenge for not the Nemesis Series not being chosen?), and speculate about his backing (another of the problems with the Nemesis Series was the cost which meant they couldn't be easily mass procued; He'd have needed lots of funding to have built the Habakiri)




Meanwhile in space: Junius Seven is moving towards Earth. A3 heads to space to help ZAFT stop it. Keiji stays behind because he can't into space, and the Getter team joins up because Getter was made for space, remember? (A lot of people don't).  It turns out to be Coordinator terrorists, Phantom Pain attacks you for no reason, some meteor breakers fail so Getter 2 just drills the fucking thing up instead.

Dancouga, the Minerva, and some other people shoot down debris heading towards Earth. The terrorists attack them too, though, and your people can't keep up. Heero shows up the help out, and vanishes as soon as the operation is over. In the end, only a few small pieces of debris made it through the atmosphere, nothing that big. But the media somehow gets their hands on footage of the ZAFT MS on Junius Seven and declares that this was a terrorist attack by evil coordinators because of COURSE they do.


Some time later: Terra is carrying out Operation Overlord, and A3 helps out.

Mu showed up fifteen years ago and beat the shit out of the federation, leading loads of countries to split off and everyone making theirown weapons to fight Mu (MS, destroids). Keiji mentions how Tokyo Jupiter separated people from their loved ones and shit which foreshadows Haruka's asspull from the end of Rahxephon.

Inside Tokyo Jupiter: Rahxephon happens. If you haven't watched it, well, Rahxephon is the story of how the ishtori guides the orin to the yolotheotor so that they become ishtori-in-yolyotor. Simple, right?

Rahxephon pops out of Tokyo Jupiter pursued by dotems and the Allegreto. Your guys defeat it, but take out your SRW bingo cards because SURPRISE TELEPORTATION ALL OF A3 DISAPPEARS INTO A PORTAL/WORMHOLE/WHATEVER


Meanwhile in Barbem's secret evil room which totally isn't ripping off Evangelion in any way at all, Barbem says if A3 got blown to another world. If it was Muge's or Yami no Teiou's then they're fucked, but they might still be fine if it was the world "in between".

Here's a bit of unrelated trivia: You know how Fafner's characters all have names that describe them? 翔子/Shouko = 翔 = fly. In the show itself that's the only part of her name that's really relevant but her surname is Hazama. 羽佐間 = Hazama = 狭間 = in between.
Byston Well is referred to as 陸と海の狭間にある世界/the world IN BETWEEN the earth and sea.

Hazama Shouko/羽佐間翔子 = 狭間に翔ぶ子 "the one who flies to the in-between (Byston Well)"

The UX writer should get a fucking award.

Elsewhere: Raideen's Akira is dicking around. Sharkin has been defeated so the Youma Empire is gone for now. Sally and Noin show up and ask for help (the Preventers are A3's information division) because holy shit all their super robots are gone and they need to protect the Macross.
Akira leaves with Skull Squadron (also it turns out that Jinguuji was one of Hikaru's father's pupils alongside Fokker. Also totally unrelated but Jinguuji Marimo from Raideen is named after Raideen's Jinguuji) but whoops it turns out that emperor Barao just showed up and you're attacked by his cronies.

The boss heals unlimited times on this stage until Raideen is defeated, at which point you get an event where the star of La Mu restores it to full health (but not full energy so I can't fucking use any of my specials).
That night, professor Hibiki tells Akira about how his mother is alive and a Mu-jin (which I would've translated to Mulian or something but that's taken by Rahxephon and Hibiki says they're completely different things, though they do seem to be related).


A3 of course had gotten blown to Byston Well, right into the storm sphere where Shou is fighting Tod's cronies. Scale!

Shou fills A3 in on Byston well and they escape the sphere together (Tod makes it out too of course). Keiji collapses, the Habakiri having fucked him up real bad, and Seela says she senses something malevolent in the machine, though it's not evil aura energy like Shou asks.

The (Wing) Gundam pilots and Zechs show up at South Atalia to help fill in for the missing A3. Just in time, because the federation attacks; The Valkyries take out the fleet's main cannons, while the G-Gunner and Gundams defend the Macross itself from the Titans forces dropping in. Also some asshole meets an obnoxious bitch but who cares
Back on Byston Well: The Will Wips is approaching. Shou and Keiji head off to rescue Silkie since the castle won't be as heavily guarded with Drake away, and A3 heads to stop the Will Wips.

Also your people of course can't fit in the cave.

Kouji points out that the surface laws make it hard to make weird robots there. There are of course no such laws in Byston Well, hence Shot going full mad scientist. Anyway, Keiji and Dunbine easily rescue Silkie.
I also spam the shit out of the Habakiri's special which is basically a super powerful map attack as well as doryoku/perseverence which only costs 5 SP because of an ability I gave Keiji and he gets 345 EXP from this battle (units usually get 20-40 per map; Instead of gaining levels you spend EXP to boost stats)

Someone asked before if sized matters in this game and I replied that I hadn't seen a difference. In the battle against the Will Wips, Getter Dragon sent three aura battlers flying with a single punch. So yeah, I think it probably does.
Anyway Burn Burning shows up and is mad that Shou isn't around, and that other aura ship shows up and drives the Will Wips off.
(By the way, apparently Belri in G-Reco was originally named Beryl but Tomino fucked the name up and decided to run with it. Now that I think about it, that's probably what happened with the Will Wips in Dunbine, isn't it?)

Jacoba Aon is mad about you stupid surfacers fucking up Byston Well and wants to send all you stupid Earthlings back to Earth, but Shou says that he thinks they should take responsibility for what they've brought to Byston Well and wants to stop Shot and Drake himself. Jacoba also says that the world itself is shuddering in fear at the prospect of destruction, and that this also happened once before long ago, when the Voice of machines made by surfacers destroyed the very structure of the world.
    Persuaded by Shou and Marvel, Jacoba lets the aura machines stay for now, but sends the other surface machines (i.e. A3) back. Back on Earth, Chizuru and Kosuke offer some commentary on the themes of Aura Battler Dunbine (wahhhh pollution is bad and industrialisation is evilllll)

    So A3 is back at South Atalia. Godannar's Kouji Tetsuya points out how fucking confusing it is for him to be around Kouji and Tetsuya. Also the shit with Cosmobase happens and your people head up to space to stop it from falling to EArth.
    Even though you're trying to stop the Cosmobase from falling to Earth, the Titans show up to fuck with you anyway because they're assholes.

Blah blah cosmobase blown up blah

It turns out that the Titans were trying to CAPTURE the Cosmobase (they didn't know about the shit that was going on there) and they also tried to and succeeded in capturing A3's moon outpost; i.e.- The construction site of the Megaroad 01

(The Macross hasn't even launched yet but they're already building the Megaroad, yes)




AEUG wants to meet with A3 to discuss something, and they meet in Hong Kong.

A3 is primarily a defensive organisation, but Char wants them to stand up and join AEUG in fighting for the peace of the Earth sphere. Hayato elaborates, saying they want A3 to be a deterrent to humans fighting each other.
A3 isn't convinced, so Char mentions that they know about Operation Iconoclasm. Hikaru has no idea what's going on, so Fokker fills him in on the events of Zero. Fokker acknowledges that Iconoclasm was a big failure for A3, but questions why this is relevant now. Char leads them to another room.

AEUG has Kudou Shin in their care, though he's been asleep all this time. He'd been recovered from an Axis ship. Apparently Axis picked Shin somewhere up in space, and since he was with the Bird-man, that means Axis has their hands on it as well.
One of A3's missions is to keep alien overtechnology out of the hands of people who might abuse it, so allying with AEUG and Karaba would be in line with that. The Titans attack before Gloval can decide, though. Psycho Gundam!


Char trolls Shinobu, saying that this isn't A3 territory, so they don't have to do anything even if the Titans burn the city to the ground. The Titans, totally unaware of what's going on, demand that AEUG surrender immediately or they'll burn the city to the ground.

Since the (Wing) Gundam pilots aren't official members of A3, though, they can help out just fine and do so.

    AEUG is overrun by the Titans' numbers, when suddenly missiles come flying in and hit a bunch of Asshimars. Calculations say they came from... A circus tent

The Titans are driven off yet again, and Four has her newtype moment with Camille

    MEANWHILE: Hiiro is saving some assholes from assassins
    Pictured: Some asshole
    I have the asshole fuck off into a corner because who needs him when you have Midorikawa rolling buster rifle?

    Back in Hong Kong: A3 hasn't agreed to an alliance yet, but Char thinks it's only a matter of time. Camille is behaving like TV Camille for once and accuses Char of being a manipulative dick, and drives off with Four who hitches a ride.

    Shin wakes up after two years.


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Shin gets a new VF-0 and his old callsign of Skull 2 back.

Meanwhile, Kira's merry band has escaped on the Archangel, along with Hiiro. Except they don't trust him and lock him up. Waldfeld mentions that the colony Gundams helped out at Jachin Due.
The Wing Zero gets a transmission and the Archangel crew are about to check it out when Hiiro shows up behind them (having broken out easily) and tells them that they shouldn't because it's rigged to self-destruct if anyone but him messes with it.
The transmission's from the other colony Gundam pilots with A3, and is about how the federation has a trap set for the Minerva which is planning on cutting through A3 territory.
A3 also tries to contact the Minerva, but comms are jammed.

Some of A3 and the Archangel take on the Federation fleet (including Phantom Pain and Orb forces) as well as the Minerva's MS, while a group led by Godannar look for the source of the jamming which turns out to be a gitaijuu, and Mira is found inside it.

A3 ends up allying with AEUG, and Camille, Char, Amuro and Hayato show up at South Atalia to join up.

Sara and Chizuru interrogate Valentina on what she thinks of Keiji.

Youma Empire and MU forces including a Dolem) head to Mutropolis, and Rahxephon sorties to help A3 out. The Youma forces are beaten, and the MU forces retreat immediately as soon as that happens.

Shikigami is snooping around, and reveals that all of the corporations funding Mutropolis are in fact owned by a single entity. He doesn't say WHAT said entity is but it's obviously the Barbem Foundation.

The MU forces around Mutropolis were there to recover samples of the Youma monsters, and they find that they are, in fact, dolems. Maya says that it's because they are kin or Naacal who share the same roots as MU and that 15000 years have passed since this world, the ground zero world, lost the protection of Althera. Nobody in MU knows what the fuck she's talking about.

Helena reports to Barbem that MU has found out about the Youma, but he says that the truth is meaningless to them. Helena asks if he, who seems to know everything is afraid of anything at all, and he replies that he fears a second coming of the "zero point break", which is thankfully impossible. He also sends Ayato, Haruka and Elfie to join A3. Elfie also gets her Vermillion.

Menage Zero is fucking up gitaijuu on Mayan island, and A3 heads over to investigate. Shin is reunited with Mao, who can now hear the spirits, probably due to how she was infused with the Bird-man's blood.

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Lou meets Ken, and Campbell scans find the protoculture stuff in Mao's blood. Janera sends Warchimedes to abduct her while Dangel attacks the island as a diversion.

Shin rescues Mao while Godannar defends the island from the gitaijuu and Campbell. Bladegainer shows up too, and Gou channels his inner Ross Geller and calls Anna "Mira". Lou, hearing about Ken's motives, leaves with him.

Anna overhears Amuro and Gou talking and learns about Mira and runs off. Mao accompanies A3 since there are evil aliens trying to kidnap her and all.

Mao hears the voice of Jacoba Aon getting mad about how Shou failed to keep his promise, and the aura machines are banished from Byston Well to the surface world.

A3 looks for Shou and Marvel. They follow Dunbine's readings and reunite with Marvel, and run into Shou in his new Bilbine while defending a town.

Drake allies himself with the federation, and Shot gets a call from the mysterious scientist working on the Nemesis Series whose name is revealed to be Yukimura. They used to work together, and now that they're both allied with the federation they'll probably get a chance to work together again.

Yukimura is also building stuff for Sayuri, and tells Soga that he secretly did a brain scan on her and knows that she's being controlled by something. Of course he doesn't give a shit.

==========]

The Gouzards attack a city, but the Japanese government (which is controlled by a computer which is controlled by Sayuri) refuses to ask for help from any of the tokki, sending only defence forces (tanks and helicopters and such) to the place. Masato's father is in that city, and he intends on heading there even if he'll be on his own. Of course the rest of the Dancouga team join him, as do the rest of the tokki.

Meanwhile, the rest of A3 heads over to the Goraon to help defend it, as Drake's alliance with the federation also resulted in propaganda saying that the factions used the Goraon and Gran Garan are evil warmongers.

The Dancouga team fails to save Masato's father, plus the Gouzards self-destruct and destroy the entire city.

The other team manages to defend the Goraon, defeating Jeryl (whose Leprechaun goes into hyper mode) in the process.

The Federation blames the city getting wrecked by the Gouzards self-destructing on A3 acting out of line. A3 makes a public statement saying that you've gone rogue, as not doing so would give the federation an excuse to grab the Macross and do whatever the fuck they want. A3 does have the decency to say the Archangel and so on went rogue too which means they're free to join with the tokki. All of your people are thus declared Menage Zero.

Your people are also meeting up with the Argama and someone (forgot who) notes that this makes three ships with names starting with A. A3!

Some people are all sad over this stupid shit but Wufei yells at them saying "we're right and people who are right must be strong".

Kouji thinks your group needs a new name, and other people agree, saying that if you don't come up with one the media will start calling you whatever the fuck they want (like, say, "ex-A3 terrorists").

    Keiji comes up with "A Force", which has a double meaning, the other being "A 4th" which according to Amuro means "a fourth A inheriting the will of A3" which makes no fucking sense.

    Durandal wants Lacus dead really hard and sends ZAFT after A Force. Meanwhile, a Mikene base is found. The Mazingers and some of your people head to the volcanic island where Mikene is, while the Archangel takes on the Minerva.

And yeah, so to recap, in this the Archangel people aren't stupid fuckers and are just helping to defend Earth from the Titans and evil aliens and then ZAFT just decides to be assholes and attacks them.

A Force clears out the Mikene base but most of the forces had already escaped via underground tunnels, ready to launch their all-out assault on Japan.

    Emma comes down to Earth, bringing the Zeta and Nu with her.

    Mikene launches their attack on Japan, and you have to split your forces up into three groups; Great Mazinger's defends a power plant where nothing special happens, Godannar's area has gitaijuu show up and Anna returns with Go-Okusar, and Mazinger Z's area has an area with civilians you have to defend and WHAT THE FUCK ALL THE ENEMIES HEAD THERE AND ANYONE STEPPING IN THERE IS AN INSTANT GAME OVER AND IT'S IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING MAP SO EVEN YOUR OWN RETARDED AI KEEPS TRYING TO GO IN THERE EVEN THOUGH THAT'S A GAME OVER TOO AND HOLY SHIT IF YOU KILL AN ENEMY AND KNOCK IT INTO THAT AREA THAT'S A GAME OVER TOO FUCK THIS BULLSHIT

    The Audumla is forced to crash-land by the Titans, while the Archangel gets a message from the Science Fortress Lab... sent by Ankoku-Daishogun.

Soga and Yukimura have completed the Nemesis Series. The pilots, modified by Yukimura with tech from the Murasama and Lodonia Labs (Destiny's NotMurasame labs) are ready too, with Yukimura himself being pilot of the seventh. They discuss the source of the Celestial Reactor's power, a thing Soga found deep under the sea twenty years ago, the Origin Unit. In the end he never did manage to figure it out; the Celestial Reactors are just cheap imitations of it.

Ankoku-Daishogun awaits A Force at the Science Fort Lab.


A Force defends the Audumla from a Titans attack; Four dies (saw when I was looking up shit on the Ankoku-Daishogun stage but she's a secret and I didn't get her) and Wooder tries to kamikaze the Audumla but only blows himself up.

The two Mazingers stealth their way around the science fort lab then defeat Ankoku-Daishogun, and the dimensional corridor to Yami no Teiou's realm is closed.

Barbem reveals some of the plot; Apparently all the extradimensional invaders are after this Ground Zero World because it's the only world exempt from time-death, where time in the world slows down. Mikene took three thousand years to launch another invasion because the time in their world is really slow, and even if they hurry it'll take another few hundred or even thousand years in this world for them to try again. Barbem's plans (tuning) will be done by then.

A3 and the tokki professors are working on trying to prove A Force's innocence behind the scenes, and the professors upgrade the Habakiri to the Amanohabakiri, which supposedly reduces the stress from the celestial reactor.

Professor Hibiki found Lemuria (Akira's mother) in Tibet and she heads towards Japan in a flying ship; The Youma empire attacks her over the ocean but Raideen and A Force shows up in time to save her, and defeat Gekido Kyoretsu in the process.

Meanwhile, South Atalia is attacked and occupied by Federation forces including the completed Nemesis series, the Ascalons.

Mysterious towers appear in the pacific, near to where Soga found the Origin Unit.

========================

Akira's mother Lemuria identifies the towers, or rather the still partially submerged island, as the lost city of Althera, the land of the ancestors. The empire of Mu sank 12000 years ago, but Althera was an even older place that the people of Mu themselves spoke of in legends, which said it was where mankind was created.

The sight of Althera makes the Youma emperor Barao mad for some reason, and he wants it destroyed. He heads towards it himself, along with Gourai Kyoretsu who transforms himself into a giant monster.

The showdown with Barao takes place over the ruins of Althera. Lemuria uses the star of La Mu to power up Raideen and A Force to help defeat him, but uses all of her remaining power and dies in the process. Althera sinks back under the sea.

Sally tells A Force that before she died, Lemuria told her that someone tried to take Raideen and the Star of La Mu, 12000 years ago. Ayato says it's probably irrelevant since it was ages ago, but Sally adds that said someone had blue blood. Meanwhile, Barbem notices that the Star has been used, which means Lemuria is dead. He tells Helena about how the tuning of the MU world failed, and how it was because this ground zero world is the only world in which it will work, as tuning also nullifies the zero point break.

Shin meets Stella, while Yukimura sends the Abyss Gundam on a mission on its own to where Althera sank. A Force, afraid that the Federation might get their hands on overtechnology, needs to stop the investigation of the ruins. Also, all of the tokki professors are missing after heading to Japan's central administration bureau to talk about A Force's Menage Zero status.

Skull squadron finally returns, bringing the news that South Atalia had fallen to the federation.  They also have data on the Ascalons, as well as the destroid monster that went berserk and attacked the Macross before the federation forces showed up.

The data says that the Destroid had just been rolled out, and not been accessed externally. Wufei points out that this means that the mastermind behind the attack on South Atalia must have been whoever made the Destroid in the first place, and Masato recalls how his father once told him about a secret organisation comprised of weapons industry people who control the Federation. Wufei connects the dots, saying that Masato's father's knowledge of this secret organisation is probably why he was targeted and killed, and that there being a secret organisation running the weapons industry also explains the tough laws on tokki and why they were targeted for Menage Zero in this whole mess; They're bad for business. And since Shikibe Industries was funding the tokki, that's another reason for Masato's father being targeted.

Masato is mad because he was A3's Achilles' heel. Some people question why the tokki were left alone all this time then if this secret organisation wanted to be rid of them so much: They needed them to deal with the invaders. But now that the federation is mass producing its own tokki, the Nemesis series, there's no need for them anymore, hence Menage Zero. Shinobu realises something- The Japanese central admin agency refused to permit them fighting the Gouzards, and even sent Leos to attack A Force during that operation- This means they're working with the federation and secret organisation.

A Force still needs to stop the inspection of the Althena ruins, and the Getter team heads over on their own while everyone else heads to Japan to save the professors. The mysterious entity possessing Sayuri waits for A Force, and asks Yukimura to send a single Ascalon over.

Getter Poseidon defeats the Abyss Gundam as well as a bunch of ZAFT forces that also showed up to check out the ruins. After the fight the ruins sink even further down; Benkei says at least 6 km. Getter Poseidon can handle that depth fine, but no MS can, which means the ruins are safe from the federation and ZAFT for now.

Meanwhile, an A Force team led by Dancouga heads to Japan's central administrative bureau and reaches the central computer, and confront Sayuri. Muge Zolbados reveals himself; The Dancouga team don't recognise him, because they've never met before- He came from a parallel world where he was defeated by a parallel Dancouga.

Muge drops Sayuri's body to possess the pilot of the Ascalon and takes on A Force, but the celestial reactor refuses him; This was a trap by Yukimura. A Force easily defeats the weakened Ascalon, and Muge is destroyed along with it.

It turns out that the Abyss had managed to transmit some data after all, and along with the data from the Macross, Yukimura now knows how to activate the origin unit. He needs something to do so, though, and says he'll go get it himself.

A Force learns of Yukimura's name through Sayuri's records, but  get nothing else as she doesn't have any memory of when she was possessed. The professors are rescued fine. Meanwhile in Eurasia, the federation and Bishot are mass murdering entire cities, due to the number of anti-federation activists who support the Gran Garan (which had been helping refugees and such in the region).

Sting and Stella's memories have been wiped so they've forgotten about Auel. Stella is now in the Destroy Gundam, and along with Neo and Sting are accompanying Bishot in Eurasia.

An A Force team led by Bilbine and Dunbine defend the Gran Garan from Bishot's forces, defeating the Black Tri uhhhhh Three Red Musketeers and Tod as well. Two Ascalons show up too, but after one is defeated Yukimura has the other pull back, saying it's about time they break away from the federation.

The remaining A Force members led by Freedom confront the Gare Garing which is razing a city.

After the Gare Garing retreats, Phantom Pain shows up, as does Impulse which is on a recon mission but tries to stop the Destroy too.

Shin soons realises that it's Stella piloting the Destroy and tries to stop her, but Freedom butts in and finishes it off, and Shin is mad.

Shin goes into seed mode for the first time and destroys the Freedom.

The Gare Garing happens to retreat in the direction of the Gran Garan, and decides to charge it; Elle rams the Goraon into it instead.

Hayato says not to feel too bad for Elle; Her soul has surely returned to a peaceful Byston Well with no aura machines, and hell, Musashi is probably hitting on her there right now.

Kira is alive with no explanation form how he survived his MS blowing up in the sky after being stabbed through the cockpit, Djibril is mad at how he's lost a Destroy AND an Ascalon (he hasn't heard about Yukimura leaving yet), and then Durandal hijacks all the TVs in the world.

TO BE CONTINUED

===============

Durandal broadcasts his speech to the world: "THE ENTIRE WORLD IS ACTUALLY BEING RUN BY A SECRET ORGANISATION SHADOW GOVERNMENT OF JE- UH I MEAN RACISTS WHO PROFIT FROM WAR BECAUSE THEY SELL WEAPONS! TRUE STORY"

The speech is accompanied with footage of the Destroy and Garing blowing shit up in Europe, and noticeably excludes A Force and Elle ramming the Goraon into the Garing. A Force is mad at how they're just shitting all over her sacrifice like that. Scirocco is watching too, and says he's impressed. Yazan isn't, and points out that this is bad for the Titans, but it doesn't really matter to Scirocco.

Djibril says he's fine as long as he has the Nemesis series and Macross... But he can't reach Yukimura.
"Control code Djibril α! Send the Ascalons a top level order!"
"That code is invalid."
He finally realises that Yukimura has bailed on him and commissions a shuttle to the moon.

The federation is splintered, with some factions forming an anti-Logos alliance that also includes ZAFT, while the pro-Logos factions gather in a few bases to protect members. This includes the fleet around South Atalia, which leaves the island open. A Force decides to retake South Atalia, but also get news that Drake is heading there too.

Meanwhile, Yukimura welcomes Shot and Drake to South Atalia. Drake, mostly talking to himself, says that he understands that the wild aura energy around the two aura ships have to be purged from this world, but wants to put his own feelings over his understanding: He wants to settle things personally. Yukimura asks what got him to choose to ally with him, and Drake says that he'd like to see the stars, then immediately says it was a joke.

Yukimura hurries the A3 engineers working on the Macross to prepare it for launch (them not having much of a choice, with the rest of A3's staff and a load of civilians being taken hostage). Meanwhile, Athrun, also suspicious about A Force being edited out of the footage of Europe, gets Meilin to hack into Durandal's private channels to figure out what's going on, and ends up eavesdropping on a conversation between Durandal and Scirocco. Scirocco is secretly supporting the Destiny Plan, because it'll put an end to the age of the handful of geniuses having to bend to the will of the unwashed masses, and Durandal on his part believes that newtypes will play a crucial role in his coming society.

Scirocco mentions that a few million or even a few dozen million people might have to die for the plan but Durandal shurgs and says it's to save mankind. They then catch on that someone's eavesdropping and Durandal takes measures. Meanwhile: Shin and pals admire the Destiny and Legend.

By sheer chance, Athrun ran in the exact direction where the Gran Garan and Will Wips are about to clash. A Force drives Shin and Rey off and Athrun lands on the Garan, just as Drake shows up. He asks where Shot is, and one of his cronies says that he stayed on South Atalia; Drake figures that Shot abandoned him for Yukimura, but isn't too bothered because he thinks it's a matter of course.

The Will Wips falls to Wing Zero pumping it full of non-stop twin buster rifle fire, and Drake dies wishing he had a chance to see space.

The rest of A Force returns to South Atalia, which is being defended by Shot, who also has two Ascalons to accompany him. Shot is both impressed with and jealous of the Ascalon, and notices similarities between it and his aura machines; He thinks that if he has some time to study them, he might be able to make something even greater.

The forces defending the Macross under Shot's command put up a fierce fight (as in I hadn't lost any units at all up till now but got Heavyarms and Rahxephon shot down on this stage), but the Amanohabakiri takes down the Ascalons while Amuro fin funnels everything into oblivion, Musy included. Eventually only Shot is left, and the Amanohabakiri cuts him down while fin funnels shoot him from every direction.

Yukimura says it's a pity; Shot might have made a good partner. Valentina then picks up energy readings approaching from above. They're of the same reactors as the Macross itself. It's alien code zero, the ID for the very first form of alien intelligence mankind encountered, that of the giants who created the Macross.

Gloval appeals to Yukimura, saying that this is no time for man to be fighting each other, but Yukimura says that the Zentraedi are their problem, not his.

The fight against the Zentraedi starts off with fin funnels and Amuro counting his seventh kill. Then his eighth, and ninth, and soon the battle is over.

Back at the Campbell mobile fortress, Warchimedes has a panic attack over the Zentraedi.Dangel says their battle data says they're nothing, but Warchimedes insists that he has no idea what he's talking about; These are the giants that have been fucking Campbell up for twenty thousand years. Even if you defeat them there's always more. Way more. Campbell's so afraid of them that there are now orders to completely avoid the Zentraedi, lest they find their home planet. Janela doesn't give a shit, though; Those orders were given by previous rulers, and she's the current ruler and she says go fuck the Zentraedi up. The Zentraedi being here means there' s protoculture stuff here to get, and getting that stuff is more important than anything else.

Shou looks at the sinking wreckage of the Wips. Seela says it isn't over yet, though: Burn Burning got away, and she senses that he will bring disaster with him when he returns.

A Force calls out to the enemy forces (i.e.- Yukimura) occupying the Macross to surrender. Gloval replies instead, telling them to get out of the area: The Macross is launching. It turns out that Yukimura's Ascalons have the Macross' reactor hostage; If they destroy it the whole island will blow up.

The Macross takes off, and Yukimura opens a channel to Axis- He's prepared to negotiate with Hamaan Khan.

TO BE CONTINUED

================

The Valkyries are upgraded for space: A-Force is heading after the Macross. Athrun joins up, while Meilin is left behind on Earth with the Preventers.

They also picked Neo up back in Eurasia; He'd previously gotten suspicious of Yukimura and looked up the list of people who'd been brainwashed, and recalls that Mwu's name was on that list. Now that people are calling him that, he's starting to realise what happened.
Meanehile in space: The Eternal has picked up info that the Macross hasn't actually left Earth yet; It's still in the stratosphere, avoiding the Zentraedi while heading towards the Armed ships. Bright is trying to head it off in the Aghama.
Waldfeld wants to tell A-Force this but the area the Eternal is in is filled with ZAFT. Lacus says to do it anyway and launch the ship.

South Atalia's mass drivers and HLVs were destroyed, so A-Force heads to Orb to use its mass driver. Yuuna acknowledges Cagalli as the real deal and is immediately arrested by her command.

Meanwhile, Burn wakes up on the Macross. Drake and Shot are gone, but Drake's troops are still around. Burn would make an apt commander, but he's too injured to fight. Yukimura offers to fix him up. He says it's risky, that if he's unlucky he'll just suffer and die. But if he's lucky, his hate and anger will make him even stronger. Burn accepts, and Yukimura connects his brain to a celestial reactor, removing the natural limiters a human brain has.

Back at Orb, Cagalli gets the Akatsuki and immediately hands it to Neo, saying that since he's now fighting for the Archangel that means he's an Orb citizen. Wait what?
Anyway ZAFT attacks the Eternal, so Kira and Athrun head over in the Strike Rouge and the shitty Gouf Athrun stole from the Minerva.

Kira and Athrun get the Strike Freedom and Infinite Justice and pew pew pew.

Shou leads the charge on the Macross. The Titans and ZAFT crash the party too.

Shou finally settles things with Burn, and Yukimura sends out the last Ascalon that isn't his own.

The Zentraedi decide to butt in on this free-for-all too, but A-Force fends them off. Yukimura left without any troops escapes in the last Ascalon.

Djibril arrives at Daidalos base... which is under the control of Scirocco, who's working for Durandal.

Hikaru and Minmay are reunited on the Macross, while Shou and Marvel discuss what to do next. Both intend to find a way to return to Byston Well.

The Macross docks with the Armed 1 and 2 and meets up with the Aghama. Gloval tries to smoke but Claudia reminds him that smoking isn't allowed on the bridge.

The people who were held hostage tell A-Force about Yukimura. Neo knows a bit about him. Shuuichirou Yukimura. Worked directly for Logos. Probably Japanese. Everything else unknown, erased from the federation databases. Neo was suspicious of him when he ordered Auel around, though, and did some sniffing around, and found info on local networks. Supposedly Yukimura is an ex military doctor, with a doctorate in cerebral physiology. Wufei says he'll have Sally and Noin check that out.

Bright and Amuro's reunion is interrupted by the sensors detecting movement in the direction of the sun: The Zentraedi ship is moving.

Gloval asks if the main cannon can be used, but it hasn't been repaired yet. He decides to use the fold system instead, and the Macross folds to the dark side of the moon with the Aghama in tow.


Meanwhile amid the debris between the moon and L5, Yzak and Archer are checking out an abandoned colony after hearing reports that it's moving. Yzak mentions in passing that most of the Logos members have been arrested; Even Anaheim Electronics has agreed to hand over Melanie Hue Carbine (there goes his dream of taking back the holy land of Israel). Only Djibril is left.
Suddenly, the Macross and Aghama fold out right in front of them.

Apparently the Earth's gravity field messed with the fold coordinates, resulting in the Macross showing up here. Even better, Hamaan's forces are right in front of them.
Hamaan calls out to the Macross, thinking Yukimura's still in control. Char has Gloval let him answer.

Char, master negotiator, says Yukimura is gone so get lost, but Hamaan says she had been planning on negotiating with A3 all along- Yukimura was just an alternative. While only one alien ship has shown up so far, more coming, maybe an entire fleet, is an obvious possibility. Earth should be preparing for such an invasion, centred around the Macross. But instead, mankind is still having petty squabbles. She says that it's time for the Earth sphere to be united, and wants to ally with you. Char wants to know who'll lead this alliance, and Hamaan replies that while Axis will lead, so will A3. Fokker asks: A3 with the Macross, and Axis with the AFOS (Bird-man), right? It turns out that Axis let you have Shin on purpose; He's a messenger, to let you know that Axis has AFOS. Gloval warns that man can't control it, but psycommu tech, Hamaan claims, will allow them to communicate with it- Or rather, the woman inside it. Sara is starting to respond to the psycommu; Hamaan wonders if this means man is evolving on Earth too, or if she's a throwback to what man used to be. Either way, Hamaan delivers her ultimatum. Choose between uniting against the alien threat, or continuing the bloody wars between man while cowering in the shadow of the giants. She leaves for now, giving A-Force time to think.

Kira says that while conflict is bad, if they join hands with Hamaan, they'll lose what makes them A-Force. Hayato questions if they can really control the Bird-man, and Ryouma notes how Hamaan said Sara is "starting to respond", not "responding", to their psycommu tests. Shin talks about the events of Mayan island. The Bird-man was fighting of its own volition, not by Sara's will. Even if Axis does manage to communicate with her, that doesn't mean they'll be able to control it. Also, to accept Axis' offer is to abandon Sara and use her as a tool.
A-Force and A3 thus decides to reject Hamaan's offer, and sorties to defend the Macross from Axis.

Camille and Hamaan have their newtype moment, Yzak and Archer wander in and job, and Char says he never betrayed anyone in the first place. They defeat the Qubeley, and Hamaan runs off.

At Daidalos, Djibril aims the Requiem at Aprilius and A-Force. A random Titans officer asks why not aim for the alien ship, and master tactician Djibril says they can always take their time and shoot it later, it's only one ship after all. The Requiem blast misses though, and instant destroys Januarius and December while barely missing the Macross.

=================================

They have no idea why the Requiem missed and Djibril is mad.  Scirocco just chuckles, suggesting that it was his doing (it's later revealed that he programmed the it to always miss if aimed at Aprilius.)

Minerva can't reach Daidalos in time to stop a second firing, but A-Force can. Even Rey is suspicious of Durandal now, wondering if all of this is part of his plans too. But even if it were, Rey has decided to follow him all the way, and follow him he will.

240,000 people were killed when Junius 7, just one colony, was destroyed. This time, six were hit. Plus Heero points out that Junius was a farming colony with a lower than average population count. Emma wonders where they're getting the energy to power such a thing, but Valentina says they already know. They're picking up a reading of a same model of reactor as the Macross' on the moon. The Titans are using the Megaroad 01 to power the Requiem. Anyway, A-Force heads to the moon.

You have two teams assaulting Daidalos: One heading inside the base to stop the Requiem (S-size only), and one taking on the remaining federation forces outside. Yazan and Sting guard the base, but are easily taken out. Neo has an event where he tries to stop Sting, but the kid's been brainwashed way too hard. In the end, Kamille never even meets Yazan (he's stuck on the other team; He has lines from the show with Keiji instead)

Scirocco suddenly ambushes the second team, and has unlimited HP and fucks you up hard (mostly because 1: There's friendly fire in this game, and 2: He charges right into the middle of your group making everyone shoot each other). Kamille has some of the show's lines with him which is weird because the Zeta story barely happened and this is the first time they've met.

A-Force destroys the Requiem's central control room (with Djibril still in it), then defeats Scirocco. Mission complete. Durandal mourns his death, saying that everyone close to him- Talia, Creuset, and Scirocco, keeps leaving him behind.

Bright hurries A-Force to pull out of the area. Some point out that they just saved Plant, but Bright reminds them that while ZAFT did oppose Logos, they did nothing to deny the propaganda Logos was putting out about A3, and even put out their own (Europe). Sure enough, the Minerva arrives ahead of the ZAFT fleet, and Rey asks Talia to open fire. She refuses, however, and lets A-Force leave the area.

Scirocco made references to cooperating with someone before he died, and Athrun tells Kamille and Char that he suspects that it's Durandal- After all, it was him eavesdropping on the two of them conversing that resulted in him deserting ZAFT in the first place. Kira says that if they were working together, and Scirocco was controlling the Requiem, that means Durandal just killed seven colonies worth of his own people.

A-Force gets some info on Yukimura's Nemesis Project from Sayuri (whose memories are coming back) back on Earth, courtesy of the Preventers, and Gloval declares a moment of silence for the victims of the Requiem.


============================

Hikaru goes on a recon mission with Anna, except it turns out that it wasn't Anna in the back seat, it was Minmei.
KYUUN KYUUN KYUUN KYUUN WATASHI NO KARE WA PAIROTTO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohmLCC2huQ

    Hayase is mad. Kaifung, Anna, and for some reason Gou accompany her in the shuttle, and Focker is here too (drunk)

They all get kidnapped by the Zentraedi.

(Trivia: I heard before that Hayase Mitsuki in Kimi ga Nozomu Eien/Muv-luv is named after Hayase Misa, don't know if it's true though. But Alternative Mitsuki does have the same rank (1LT) as Misa.)

A-Force puts together a plan to rescue them. The Macross probably can't take on the alien ship on its own; Valentina suggests that they send A-Force in instead. Also, no smoking on the bridge.

    One group draws attention by attacking the forces outside the ship while another group enters the ship to rescue the prisoners.


A-Force leaves the Zentraedi ship without Minmei and Kaifung as they don't know where they are, hoping to regroup and try again, but the ship begins to fold away. Hikaru hesitates to leave without Minmei and as a result is folded away with it (and Hayase who's on his Ostrich). A-Force scans for a PCS reading but the ship is no longer anywhere in the solar system. They do pick up another, weaker reading though: Looks like Axis is awakening the Bird-man.

Mao tells A-Force the two versions of the legend of the Bird-man. In one, the Bird-man creates the first man and woman, and then goes to sleep, warning that if awakened it will sing the song of destruction. In the other, the Bird-man, is commanded by the god Procuture to sing the song of destruction, and instead cuts off its own head.
The latter story is from 10,000 years ago, which is also when the Mu empire sank, and A-Force also recalls how Jacoba Aon mentioned a "voice" destroying the world ages ago. 10,000 years, voice and song, COINCIDENCE?
Anyway they set off to stop Axis and sava Sara.


Also a Meltrandi ship arrives in the solar system to check out the Zentraedi, except they're too late and the Zentraedi are already gone. They decide to check out the Macross instead.

Hamaan hurries the awakening of the Bird-man. Her cronies say they aren't sure if they'll be able to control it, but she says that if they can't, well, they can just run away and let A-Force take care of things. Plus that'd leave them weakened too! Best plan ever.

Hamaan asks if you've decided to unite man alongside Axis. Char acknowledges that uniting man is necessary, but Axis, the ghost of Zeon, is not fit for that role.
Hamaan retorts:  Who, then, should decide the future? The foolish masses? How? Through a majority vote? Even though that will result in a world where the few truly innovative ideas are stepped on and discarded by the ignorant majority? That is the sort of world which history has proven turns out to be rotten to the core, unable to do anything except through capital.

Char says he has no intention of debating the pros and cons of republicanism with her, and says that the newtypes will totally fix everything, like really, probably. Real convincing argument there.

Also, Kamille says he and Char will take care of Hamaan. Char goes "what, me too?" and gets "yes you too CHAR AZNABLE" in response.

A-Force takes on Axis and Hamaan, and Yukimura crashes the party halfway through, as do the Meltrandi led by Millia (whom Max pursues when they retreat).

    Sara, inside the Bird-man's head, feels the kadun of hatred filling the battlefield, and the Bird-man awakens.

I have Keiji fend off Hamaan while Amuro takes on the Bird-man alone. Hamaan retreats and Keiji joins Amuro when the Bird-man is at around half health.

I discover its weakness: While it has a ridiculous amount of firepower it can bring to bear on anything in front of it (reducing the Amanohabakiri to half HP in seconds) it can only shoot at stuff in front of it.

And it can't turn around.

    SRW fixes another bad ending.

Max follows Millia home and ends up getting folded away.

(I like the knife fight version of events better
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km45Nus0GJE) [Embed]

    Fighting Yukimura had Keiji draw on more power from the reactor than usual and he's fucked up hard.

    Sara wakes up in the Aghama's infirmary and is reunited with Shin and Mao. Macross Zero: Fixed.

    Amuro thinks they should recover the remains of the Bird-man and the Wing boys head out to do so (Wufei starts off going "but Nataku's for FIGHTING not cleaning up" but goes anyway)

    Back on Axis, Hamaan learns that A-Force has defeated the Bird-man and wonders if Char will be able to accomplish the unification of mankind and the defence of Earth.

    The Wing boys and Combattler V escort the containers containing the Bird-man's parts back to the A3 base on Earth, but they're attacked by a Campbell magma beast and the containers fall to Earth. They're tough enough to make it through the fall (made that way in case the Bird-man tries to put itself back together or something) and Campbell's floating fortress heads towards their general area, Janera still being after protoculture stuff. The Aghama heads down to Earth to stop them.

Yukimura crashes the party again (apparently the Ascalon is capable of atmospheric reentry) and Keiji, still recovering, hops out in the Amanohabakiri to fight him. Yukimura asks for his name, and gets it.

Keiji also starts to hear voices, and asks if it's Yukimura's doing. It's not, but Yukimura says that like his own 07A, the 01, being a prototype, doesn't have synchro limiters. That's why Keiji, like Yukimura, can hear the ancient thing calling them from deep underground. He's significantly more powerful this time, but runs off again after taking some damage.

    Oh and A-Force beats the Campbell forces and kills Dangel.

    Janera complains about not being able to recover most of the containers (they got a few) and Warchimedes asks that she at least show some respect for his brother Dangel. She replies that he died because he was an incompetent bum, now hurry the fuck up and analyse the protoculture stuff.

Fokker notes that though they got most of the Bird-man's parts, they never found the head. Kakizaki hopes it just burned up in the atmosphere or something, but they shouldn't count on it.

Hiiro asks Zechs if he remembers the Zero system- It calculates all possible outcomes, and shows the pilot the future. When facing Yukimura, Zero showed him no future. There's only one possible reason why- There is no possible outcome with him winning against the Ascalon 07A. But maybe the Amanohabakiri has a chance.

    The Campbell analysis of the Bird-man's parts is completed. All they found was genetic modification devices. There's plenty of gene tech on Campbell (all of their magma beasts are actually life-forms they captured on other planets they conquered, genetically modified), so all that effort was for nothing- The Bird-man's parts are worthless to them.

A-Force asks Sara to tell them more about the Bird-man. While she was sleeping inside it, she was able to experience its memories, and she knows more about it now.

The Bird-man has the ability to control the "two snakes" found inside blood (Athrun figures she's talking about DNA) and that's how it created the first man and woman, and not just them, but all of mankind. Every single person on the planet is a descendant of the humans the Bird-man created.

Char asks why it tried to destroy its own creations, then. According to Sara, the Bird-man asked her when it awakened, both times, if mankind had succeeded in making ships that would cross the stars, and if it had stopped fighting. After hearing that the answers were yes, and then no, it had said that anything that would bring disaster to the galaxy must be stopped before it can do so.

    Fokker recalls hearing about the protoculture theory from doctor Aries (who's dead now); The theory that mankind was created through intervention by extraterrestrial life.

    Bodolzar tells Britai and Exedor about protoculture, saying that humans are it, and thinks that the two samples (two?) might be able to figure out the fragment of culture he has lying around.

Amuro has more questions for Sara: He wants to know if the story of 10,000 years ago is the same thing as the creation myth. In the newer story, the Bird-man stops its "song of destruction" by cutting off its own head; He points out that this contradicts its goal of destroying mankind.

Sara says that the first men created by the Bird-man lived peacefully on a giant city in the sea, which Hayato guesses is the lost city of Althera they heard about from Lemuria. But one day, the men tried to give the Bird-man a Voice with which to sing.

    The Bird-man rejected the Voice, and the song turned into one of destruction. The Bird-man then cut its own head off, and sank into the sea. Sara only knows what the Bird-man itself knew, so she doesn't know what the Voice actually is, only that it was something the Bird-man feared.

    Neo wonders what the Voice was: Some sort of weapon? But this contradicts both stories (Sara's and Lemuria's) which say that the people of Althera were peaceful. Trowa says that having weapons means that they had enemies, and Fokker guesses that Althera probably learned of the Zentraedi somehow and created the Voice as a countermeasure to them.

Meanwhile: Keiji's back in the sick bay, and Valentina's there too, having collapsed from overwork after the last operation. Keiji asks if she ever wondered what it'd be like to have another life. She asks if he means he has regrets, but he says no, regret requires you to have done something that you in hindsight didn't want to do. But regardless of what he and his parents did, his town burned, and his parents died. That's what war is. He doesn't want anyone else to have a life like his.

The conversation goes back to the A3 academy, and it turns out that Valentina's the one who gave him the Scarface Kid nickname.

    The two professors discuss Keiji and the Amanohabakiri. His vital signs have returned completely to normal now, and they still have no idea how the celestial reactor is affecting him. The reactor is growing stronger and stronger, and they wonder if this means that he's adapting to it, or if it's the other way round. Hazuki wanted to stop Keiji from using the Habakiri, but didn't because he doesn't know if that would make things better or worse. The only thing they can do is search for Soga and find out what he knows.

The TERRA members are called back to Niraikanai

Meanwhile, it turns out that Hikaru and Hayase hadn't folded away with the Zentraedi ship; Instead they found themselves in some other ruins, with human-sized stuff. They explore the place and find a data disc.

A-Force returns to South Atalia where Bright is reunited with Hayato for the first time in seven years. Thanks to Sayuri, A-Force's Menage Zero status is removed, and they return to A3 command.

Back at TERRA: Ayato isn't allowed to return to A-Force, and then overhears Yakumo letting it slip that he's a Mulian. Kuon tells him that Rahxephon can re-enter Tokyo Jupiter, and he runs off in it. Isshiki sends the Vermillion after Ayato, and radios for help from A-Force too, saying that he's betraying mankind for MU.

At the same time, news comes in that the ruins of Althera are surfacing again, and that the Campbell fortress is heading for it.

A-Force sends a group to pursue Ayato and get him to come back, and another to take on Campbell.

Ayato escapes into Tokyo Jupiter.

Meanwhile, Hikaru and Hayase finally manage to find their way out of the ruins they were trapped in, and discover that they were on Earth all along, inside the Althera tower.

Campbell's floating fortress arrives. Janera recognises Althera as not a mere city, but an ancient protoculture city-ship. She wants to recover the protoculture tech, but Combattler V and other A-Force members arrive to stop her.

Hikaru being a fucking genius comes out in his Ostrich again and Janera, figuring A-Force has gotten their hands on protoculture tech before her, sends all her forces after him.

When the fortress is damaged Janera tries to escape into orbit, but finds that the engine's been sabotaged: Warchimedes says that since she wants the protoculture so bad, she should fight to the death for it, like his brother Dangel did.

Warchimedes' robot is destroyed but he ejects and makes it to Althera's tower; When A-Force defeats Janera, though, her fortress goes crashing into the tower killing him as well, and the city sinks into the sea again.

Helena asks if they should send people to inspect the ruins, but Barbem says there's no need; The Althera of this world is heavily damaged, but the Althera in the MU world was in pristine condition and he got everything he needed from it there.

    Ayato wanders Tokyo Jupiter trying to find out who he really is but ends up with less answers than he had before (learning that his mother isn't really his mother and such). He ends up leaving with Asahina, whose brainwashing is incomplete and leaving her confused.

    Elfie and Haruka had followed Ayato into Tokyo Jupiter with the Vermillion. Though they fail to find him, they do stop by Haruka's old school, where she reveals how she used to be in love with him before Tokyo Jupiter separated them.

    A-Force checks out the data from the disc Hikaru and Hayase found in Althera. In addition to the information they'd already gotten from Sara, they find out that originally Althera belonged to the protoculture and that they had only intended to temporarily leave Earth, when the Zentraedi war came to the solar system. In the end they never came back.

Meanwhile, Noin and Sally are continuing their search for Soga, and manage to find his hideout with some help from Futagami, who's looking for Ayato in the same city.

Ayato is lying low in a hotel with Asahina, who's starting to see visions of a copy of herself with blue blood.

Soga tells Sally and Noin about the Origin Unit. He found it at the bottom of the pacific while testing deep sea robots, and discovered that it had the ability to turn human mental power into actual energy. In the end he couldn't figure out how it worked, and only succeeded in making bad copies of it, the Celestial Reactors. It was only recently that he learned why humans had problems adapting to it, thanks to information Yukimura brought back: It was originally meant to be used with the Bird-man. To be precise, its bio-interface, the head, which Yukimura just stole from A3.

Sally and Noin now realise that the Origin Unit is in fact the Voice. They ask Soga where Yukimura is, but it turns out that he'd already left, with the last, greatest Nemesis unit, made to use the Bird-man's head and Origin Unit.

Suddenly there's a huge earthquake: A large mob of gitaijuu has shown up.

A-Force sorties to fight the gitaijuu, when Yukimura's Ascalon 07A shows up; It's unmanned, and is being controlled by a new type of gitaijuu. Soga notes the irony of how the 01 which he'd abandoned is saving humanity from an Ascalon, which has become a monster.

After the gitaijuu are defeated, a dolem appears. A-Force can't do anything to break through its barrier, and Rahxephon appears in front of Ayato. He gets in, vowing to protect Asahina.

AYATO-KUN

SAYONARA

Soga is dying; He'd connected himself to the 07A's Celestial Reactor, in an attempt to try to figure out what Yukimura is thinking. It didn't work, though, as he's not compatible.

Yukimura is his wife's maiden name; Shuuichirou Yukimura is his son. When he was developing the celestial reactor, he used his own son to test the connection, and that twisted him into the mad scientist that he is today. He was working with Yukimura all this time out of guilt, seeing this as penance for his sins.

    Futagami finds Ayato at last, but Helena also shows up, to take him back to Barbem.

    Shou grabs Ayato and they escape on his bike. Hayato had already loaded the Rahxephon up on the Audumla, and they run off before Helena can catch up.

    Back at TERRA Kunugi has been relieved of his position, replaced by Isshiki. Watari says that Ayato should be fine, though: To Barbem it doesn't matter where Ayato is, as long as he reaches yolotheotl.

============

    Isshiki is mad that Ayato has run off with A-Force and asks them to give him back. They refuse, saying that the orders to send him over here in the first place were from the Barbem Foundation, get Barbem on the line you bum. Barbem as usual is giving zero shits and not picking up his phone so all Isshiki can do is whine. Oh and Hazuki is now the chief of A3.

Bad news: They found information about a new virus in Soga's data. Yukimura found it and named it the insania virus and blah blah blah just watch Godannar. Anyway everyone in the whole fucking world is infected. It only affects men so all the guys in A3 aren't allowed out for the time being.

Of course there's a huge gitaijuu attack at this point; You're limited only to female main pilots (which means the only units available to are the Go-Okusar, Neo-Okusar, Dunbine, Vermillion, and Gundam Mk 2 if I'm not forgetting anyone)

    Bladegainer crashes the party, Ken kills the gitaijuu that killed his wife and recovers the Celeblader (giving it to Lou whose Cosmodiver you blow up), and then immediately gets rabid syndrome and you kill him. He tells Lou that this is what happens to someone who lives for revenge, wahhhh. She joins you immediately after because why not.

It turns out that the doctors developed some meds to stop the onset of rabid syndrome from Mira's blood. It isn't a cure, but it's good enough for now.

Valentina overhears them talking about Keiji and wants to know what's going on with him because she's in love with him. Hazuki says that they can't separate him from the celestial reactor because his brain is now dependent on it; Cutting him off from it might kill him. According to Soga's data, the only way to free him is to let him completely synch with the reactor, like Yukimura did, but this will change him like it did Yukimura. The Voice, or Origin Unit, wasn't just a weapon created for the Bird-man- It was also supposed to rewrite the Bird-man's basic orders, making it attack Althera's enemies, and due to how the Bird-man and humans have similar biostructures, this function works on humans too.

In other words, Yukimura's brain was rewritten and given "destroy all enemies" as a base instinct. Sally says that he probably got his position in the federation in the first place by murdering people in his way, though there's no evidence. In other words, his entire existence now revolves around destroying his enemies, and if he doesn't have any, finding stronger ones. That's the reasoning behind the Ascalon and Habakiri's names: He's always looking for a bigger dragon to slay.

Anyway, the celestial reactor is fundamentally the same thing as the origin unit, which means there's a great chance that increasing Keiji's synch rate with it will do the same thing to him. For now, there's nothing they can do for him.

Up in space, Rey tells Shin to just believe in Durandal, that he can do no wrong. He also tells him his life story (all the clone shit and Kreuset).

The Eternal gets hold of information that Durandal brought some stuff from Mendel (that genetic lab colony where Kira was made and Durandal used to work) into the Messiah, just as Durandal starts his Destiny Plan speech.

(The speech text is mostly copypasted from the show but for some reason the people in the game interpret it to mean "let's turn all of mankind into coordinators")

A Federation base doesn't want to be coordinators and starts preparing a fleet. Durandal says that since the Destiny Plan stands for all mankind, to oppose it is to become an enemy of mankind, and blows up the base with the Requiem.

    A-Force figures that Durandal's probably going to fire the Requiem at Orb next and sets off to stop him. One group heads towards Daidalos again, and another towards the hollow colony it needs to aim at Orb. Minerva ambushes them and fires at the Archangel but Neo blocks it and gets his memories back. The Minerva's MS team then prepares to attack, but is by distracted by Max and Millia (Max now as a zentran).

Daidalos base team is led by Athrun.

Max tells Millia not to aim for the cockpits. She says that's a stupid idea, so he says he challenges her to compete at who can defeat more enemies without hitting the cockpits.

The back entrance to the Requiem that A-Force used before is now heavily guarded, but Dearka and Yzak decide to betray ZAFT again and head into the base. The Minerva catches up and you sink it and all its MS except for the Legend which ran off after Freedom.

    The Station 1 team is led by the Eternal and Freedom, and has to put up with the Messiah shooting at you every once in a while (you're given a painfully long unskippable sequence where you're shown where it'll hit and have to move your units out of the way; You have plenty of time and enemy units retreat during this period so it's more annoying than anything else). Rey shows up in the Legend and the Amanahabakiri cuts him down halfway through his conversation with Kira.

    Suddenly, something fires a beam from really far away and destroys Station 1. Meanwhile, Yzak and Archer succeed in blowing up the Requiem ("GUUREITO!")

    And before Durandal can figure what's going on the Messiah is hit by a massive beam too, sinking it.

Macross cannon motherfuckers

Shin and Luna have their crying on the moon in their wrecked MS scene (Shin's also visited by Stella's ghost who as usual has nothing substantial to say) and Talia leaves the crashed Minerva to head towards the Messiah

Kira confronts Durandal in the Messiah and they have their usual talk where Durandal just raises valid points and Kira goes B-B-B-B-B-BUT and it ends with Kira pointing his gun at him saying "I don't want to shoot you! But...! But...!"

Heero pops out of nowhere and goes "Don't falter, Kira Yamato. This will not end until you pull the trigger."

>just do it faggot

    Heero was suspicious of the Destiny Plan. Sure it will bring mankind peace and all but WAIT WHAT ABOUT ALL THE FUCKING ALIENS?

    The other Wing boys are also on the Messiah, going through Durandal's files. They find evidence of the rest of the Destiny Plan.

Trowa finds the cloning devices; Over 2000 of them (only one is in use, though).

The rest of the Destiny Plan was to create a clone army and have them using tokki and the Macross to fight the invaders. Durandal acknowledges this, but says that this isn't like with Raww. The baby in the cloning tube volunteered for this; He'll be implanted with the original's experiences and memories and thus be satisfied because it was his own decision. And what's wrong with a clone army? Earth can live in peace, while the guardians quietly mop up anything that will threaten that peace.

Rey shoots Durandal because clones, and Durandal realises that oh wait this basically IS the same thing as Raww and Rey. Sorry!

The Messiah starts to blow up and Talia joins Rey and Durandal. Before they go, Durandal asks A-Force to take the clone baby with them. He's just been born and hasn't been implanted with anything yet.

A-Force returns to their ships. Millia tells them about how the Macross was originally a Meltrandi ship, and Ayato is amazed at how there's technology that can turn a regular human into a giant, saying that the protoculture seems like tjeu were invincible. Haruka points out that they clearly weren't since they're extinct now.

Amuro, Char and Kamille discuss the messiah baby. They can feel that it's a newtype. Heero says that of course it is: The baby is Scirocco, or rather a clone of him. Kamille says that while Scirocco was a dick, the baby is innocent; Even if it shares the same DNA, your genes aren't what determine what you are and the Destiny Plan was stupid.

Mira heads off to Plant with Lacus to make a cure for the insania virus, and Shin and Lunamaria visit Orb, meet Kira and Athrun, and join you.

Four weeks have passed since Durandal was defeated (they gave the messiah baby to that priest from Seed). The Federation, A3, and ZAFT are now working together under the United Government and are working on exterminating gitaijuu, while Seela is calling out to Bishot/Drake remnants asking them to come back with her to Byston Well. Shin and Lunamaria have fit in nicely with A-Force too.

Meanwhile: Barbem awakens Kuon, saying he wants her to sing, while Watari and Rikudou say that Ayato has little time left to live as a human.

 The preparations for Operation Downfall are underway, but the United Government orders Isshiki to stand down. He doesn't tell anyone about the orders and instead has them carry it out immediately. Also, a massive number of gitaijuu are discovered hiding underwater near to Japan.

Tokyo Jupiter vanishes, but instead countless floating cities appear all over the world. Isshiki is fired and replaced with Kunugi.

The MU cities don't seem to be doing anything at the moment and there's some discussion on what started the MU War 15 years ago in the first place; Like this time, MU didn't do anything, but humanity decided to nuke them anyway and that started the war which resulted in Tokyo Jupiter and the Federation losing power and all factions building their own weapons which indirectly lead to the One Year War and the war for the Macross and everything.

 Kuki's hologram shows up and demands that mankind surrender within 24 hours or suffer the consequences. Also, the gitaijuu, responding to how mankind seems to have suddenly multiplied several times (due to MU showing up), or now combining into one giant monster.

Kuki's Largo starts moving towards Niraikanai, and Haruka identifies him as the guy who ordered the nuclear attack against MU fifteen years ago in the first place.

A-Force is to split into two groups, one to take on the gitaijuu and one to stop the encroachment of MU's dolems. When Elfie asks where Kunugi is they find out that the stayed behind at the TERRA HQ, and Futagami, actual name Juumonji, tells them that Kunugi's daughter was killed in the nuclear attack on MU fifteen years ago. Ayato decides to head back to Niraikanai, and Hazuki sends some of A-Force to join him too.

 Kuon returns to MU, while Haruka tells Ayato about their past and how she loves him. He says that he loves her as she is now.

The priest from Gou and Anna's wedding reveals himself as... nobody anyone recognises, and tells them what he knows about the gitaijuu boss, helping them to defeat it.

(Gameplay-wise: Massive map attack and absorbs other smaller gitaijuu that manage to reach it, regenerating parts and healing)

 Elfie leads the group over the ocean taking on the Dolem army heading towards Niraikanai.  Kuki's Largo passes through.  And you destroy Miwa's Alegretto. In other words nothing important happens.

 Ayato leads the group defending Niraikanai. Mamoru shows up and you kill him, and Kunugi orders you to leave when the Largo arrives. Ayato doesn't want to, but Kunugi sets the city's defence systems to target A-Force, and they reluctant do so.

Kuki says that Kunugi shouldn't blame him for his daughter's death; Kuki only gave the order, Kunugi's the one who actually fired the missiles.

The Largo razes Niraikanai, but Kunugi activates the TERRA HQ's Jupiter effect mechanism.

 The Largo is destroyed and Niraikanai is engulfed in the same absolute barrier that used to cover Tokyo.

 Suddenly Reika shows up and says that it's time, and Rahxephon disappears.

Keiji and Valentina talk on the Lydia Litviak. He's been hearing a call lately, from beyond the sea. Before he can elaborate, surprise orbital bombardment from a Meltrandi fleet that just folded out nearby. The Macross takes out a few ships with its main cannon, but there are fifty more ships to go, and it needs more time to recharge.

 Suddenly a song- Though with just humming and no lyrics- starts playing, and the Meltrandi, confused by this new weapon, fold away.

The Zentraedi fleet, with Bodolzar's fortress, folds in to the solar system.

Earth's forces gather; Plant has below thirty ships, ex-AEUG has ten, and other ex-Federation forces have under a hundred.

The Zentraedi have two million ships.

The Zentraedi call a truce instead of attacking, though. They're not really interested in the microns, but want the Meltrandi defeated, and thus want Minmay's song completed. They send Minmay back and demand that Earth completes the song with lyrics.

Britai has a conversation with Lady An about the nature of love; Previously he would not have listened to such deculture opinions, but through talking to Minmay, he's now open to new ideas. She tells him about how she still loves Treize, and that love is joins all people together.

After she leaves, Exedor talks to Britai, who says he wants to become a micron. "Yack deculture!" "I was joking." "Jo-king?" "It's a word I learned from Minmay. It means not serious."

A-Force learns from the Zentraedi that both humans and Zentraedi were created by the protoculture. They figure this means that the information recovered from Althera, a protoculture city, may be really important, and continue going through it.

Back on Earth, Rahxephon's ishtori in the form of "Mishima Reika" who doesn't actually exist tries to guide Ayato as the orin of xephon to yolotheotl but ends up deciding to follow him instead.

Minmay says that she loves Hikaru but he's sick of her and loves Hayase now, Hayase bringing news that she's found the lyrics to the song in the Althera data finds them together and misunderstands which results in Hikaru saying she's misunderstanding and Minmay running off crying and Hikaru telling Hayase that he fell in love with her when they were wandering through those ruins and just watch the movie.

Bodolzar somehow gets the news that Minmay is missing and that the song still isn't ready, plus the Meltrandi fleet show up with their own fortress, prompting him to start opening fire on everyone.

Ayato wakes up on Earth. The sky is filled with explosions from the battle with the Zentraedi, and "Helena" tells him to ignore it because it's time to tune the world. Ayato says he'll decide how he lives, not how he's told how to live, and that while he will throw away his humanity, it's because he wants to continue to be himself, and for that to be he has to protect Haruka.

"Helena" says it's time to go, but Itsuki says he'll stay behind. She shoots him before leaving.

 Watari and Juumonji see a light heading up towards the sky. Juumonji, addressing Watari as professor Kamina, tells him that it's Kamina's son, made from the first M-type sample. Watari says he has something to do, but Juumonji says that's not his job; Dirty work is Juumonji's specialty.

 Back in space, the Earth fleet has taken heavy casualties, and the Aghama is getting hammered, but suddenly the Zentraedi forces attacking it are destroyed by beam fire.  Hamaan's here to save the day.

Axis backs up A-Force, helping damaged ships and recovering escape pods.

Hikaru slaps Minmay until she agrees to sing the stupid song.

A-Force sorties: Valentina tells Keiji that she still loves him, and Hikaru's Valkyria is upgraded with parts meant for Fokker's.

Minmay starts singing, and Britai says even though he's never heard it before, it feels nostalgic to him. Exedor says that the song is speaking directly to their genes, and that it has the power to bring culture back to them. Britai and his fleet announce that they're going to support the Macross, and call out to other Zentraedi to take back culture by fighting Bodolzar. 17% of the Zentraedi fleet turns around to join him.

The Macross heads towards Bodolzar's fortress, fending off enemies while supported by A-Force. Rahxephon, in its true form, arrives from Earth to help.

Upon seeing the Rahxephon though Keiji starts to hear Yukimura's voice, telling him to destroy Ayato. The Habakiri is a Nemesis too, and the celestial reactor was created to bring an end to things; The Rahxephon is its opposite.

Keiji attacks the Rahxephon but stops after Valentina yells at him for a bit.

Both him and Ayato go back to helping out the Macross, which makes it to the fortress.

 A second group heads into the fortress to kill Bodolzar.

Britai and Exedor say the real fight starts from here: There are over a thousand Bodolzar-class fortresses in this galaxy alone.

Claudia wonders what that song was. Hayase says it was just a pop song; A regular love song from an ancient, alien city.

Back on Earth: Isshiki somehow managed to find "Barbem" and guns him down, but is in turn shot by "Helena"; It turns out that Barbem had switched bodies with her.

Juumonji shows up and asks Barbem just what it is that he wants to accomplish. Barbem says he just wants to see how things end. He doesn't know how the world will change; That's up to the two who have reached yolotheotl.

A3's professors are on the Lydia Litviak, which is now near to the Barbem Foundation's secret HQ on Kalung Mutiara Island. The united government is going through the facilities, but they were too late; They're all empty. This is odd, as information said that Barbem had his own private army. The professors wonder what's going on here; Yotsuya thinks Barbem heard of the raid and escaped, but Yumi says that if that were the case they would have at least destroyed any evidence: Instead the facilities are left completely intact. Saotome points out that the Foundation's assets have been frozen, too.

Hazuki guesses that Barbem no longer has any use for the island, or even the Foundation itself. Saotome has a bad feeling abotu this.

Kuon says that the two xephons, as mechanical gods made of time given form, are wanderers of countless worlds. Their song will tune the world and make it one, and the time of tuning has come.

Maya asks Kuon to guide their son.

Ayato descends to Earth, and A-Force prepares to follow him down.

Meanwhile, the A3 professors go through Barbem's data. They learn that Barbem had named the disaster from 12,000 years ago the "Zero Point Break". Through that event, the universe, which up till that point was singular, was shattered into countless parallel worlds, and is even know shattering into more pieces. The longer ago a world split away from the main timeline, the slower its time is.

The Mu empire, the Youma empire, the people of Mayan island, and MU are all descendants of the people of Althera. Hazuki wonders why so many invaders from other worlds are targeting this world, and Tatsuya finds data that answers that: This world is the only one continuing directly from the original, pre-Zero Point Break world, where time does not slow down. In all other parallel worlds, time gradually slows to a stop, bringing about the heat-death of time of that world, where past, present, and future have no meaning. All of the invaders were seeking refuge from this. This also explains the 3,000 year time gap between invasions from Mikene.

Keiji's now in such bad shape that he can't even leave his machine. The other members of A-Force say he should sit this one out, but he wants to go down to Earth with them. Cham says they should let him, and when Shou thinks she's being irresponsible, she asks him to look at Keiji's aura, which is now clearer than it ever was.

The professors finally figure out Barbem's goal. The Rahxephon Project was created to reunite all of the parallel worlds into one, fixing the structure of time. They now understand why MU stopped their attack; Once the process of tuning begins, everything will be meaningless.

Meanwhile, A-Force lands on the Gran Garan.

 The tuning begins.

 Barbem is happy to see his plans finally coming to fruition, and his creations creating a new world. Juumonji says he must be satisfied now and shoots him.

A-Force learns of the tuning. It also turns out that Haruka (as well as a few other top-level members of TERRA) knew about it all along.

The final, united world takes on the form chosen by the tuner. TERRA had hoped that Ayato would choose this world. If Ayato had remained in Tokyo Jupiter, he would have chosen MU, but he saw the outside world, fought to protect and save it. Heero points out how he even once returned to MU, but came back. Wufei says that if Ayato is truly strong, he won't make the wrong choice.

A-Force chooses to believe in Ayato.

Tatsuya says that their enemy isn't Ayato, but Yukimura. The last Nemesis has a weapon that can destroy the structure of time itself, and has to be stopped at all costs.

The Gran Garan reaches Ayato just as he defeats the Belxephon, but before the tuning can start, Yukimura shows up.

 Yukimura says he isn't interested in A-Force anymore. His entire life has been spent seeking a stronger nemesis as he himself grew stronger, constantly looking for a greater dragon to slay. His life is now at its end: He has the power of a devil, strong enough to slay a god, and is standing before a god.

 Yukimura unleashes a wave of destruction, but Ayato protects A-Force. Yukimura says that the origin unit's energy is infinite, and just turns it up.

 Seela gathers all the aura energy, and carries out the purification, sending it to Ayato.

 This still isn't enough, because Yukimura turns up the power again.

 Akira, with the help of Sara, Minmay and Lacus' singing, calls on the Star of Ra-Mu.

 Yukimura exclaims that this is magnificent, and everything fades to white.

When your people awaken they find themselves in a weird zone comprised of ruins floating in space.

Yukimura says that while A-Force managed to survive by combining the Rahxephon's quantum waves with aura power and mutron energy boosted by the power of ancient song, that only protected A-Force, and not the rest of world.

 Yukimura explains the Origin Unit; It was originally a device created to open a hole in the structure of time and create a new parallel world. The people of Althera had planned on escaping to that new world to escape the threats from beyond the stars. But then they realised that if they had such power, it would be easier to just destroy their enemies instead. Then or now, people are people.

 The remade Origin Unit brought about the Zero Point Break, and that is what Yukimura had just done again. The base structure of time has now completely collapsed, and everything, except for this area, has returned to chaos. Though A-Force managed to gather up an equal amount of energy to oppose him, that doesn't mean the two energies were equal; The power of destruction is the most dominant one; All universes contain from the beginning a vector that makes them head towards destruction.

 He also knows what's keeping A-Force around; The power of the Rahxephon. Once it's destroyed, everything will finally come to an end.

 Haruka and Valentina crash their shuttle into Yukimura's face, freeing Ayato

 Several of the lines to the origin unit are cut, and Yukimura says that he'll play with A-Force while waiting for it to repair itself. Even if he can't use the time-space destruction wave, the final Nemesis, the Azoabe, is still overwhelmingly powerful.

 Yukimura says he now knows what the song of destruction referred to in the Mayan legends is. It's not the weapon itself, but the emotions- hate and fear- of man that created the weapon. Since ancient times, man has continued singing that song, and he and his machine are the last echoes of it. A-Force is all that's left, and once they're gone the destruction of all things will be complete.

Keiji says he'll defeat Yukimura even if it kills him. Amuro says the Nu Gundam isn't for show. Heero says that even if the universe is destroyed, there are no changes to his mission: "I will kill you".

 A-Force deals a lot of damage to the Azoabe and Char asks if that did it. Of course it didn't, and the self-repairs kick in and reconnect the origin unit.

 Keiji charges the Azoabe and deals the final blow, destroying it completely, the Amanohabakiri along with it.

 Yukimura is gone, but the world is still destroyed, and now A-Force is starting to fade as well, but Ayato tells them not to worry. Haruka, Valentina, Keiji, and the rest of the world is still here, too, turned to possibilities in the chaos. Shards of worlds are floating around them, and Ayato shows A-Force a few: Gou, Anna and Mira see a world where Mira never died; Amuro and Char see a world where Char tries to drop Axis on Earth; The Getter team see a world where Musashi is alive, and so on. Ayato says that all the worlds are, like their own world, filled with both happiness and sorrow. Athrun says each and every world is its own one and only world.

Ayato prepares to carry out the tuning, and A-Force says that no matter what he chooses, they'll be satisfied with his answer.

Four months later: The world- Or rather, all worlds- are back to normal.

Ayato did carry out the tuning, and fixed the structure of time, but didn't unite the worlds, instead restoring all the worlds in the multiverse to as they were. MU is gone too, but not because their world was erased, but because they went back to their own, healed world.

Hamaan is missing, and Char heads to Axis. He tells Amuro that he understands he'd be suspicious of him, after seeing the Axis drop of another world, but asks him to trust him; He now sees hope in this world.

Athrun and Kira are now working for Orb (there's also mention of Kira's rank and how he's Athrun's boss now). Cagalli is too busy to have time for Athrun.

Londo Bell is being formed to keep the peace; Amuro and Camille will be joining it.

Tetsuya and Ryou (Dancouga) are now instructors at the A3 academy. Masato takes over his father's position at Shikibe Heavy Industries, and Kouji works for him, on robot development. Shikibe is currently building satellites using deuterion beams to transmit energy from photon/Getter/Mutron energy power stations.

Akira spends his days moping around looking at the big Raideen face rock (Raideen itself is sealed away and used to provide Mutron energy).

The Battle Team and Godannar help with disaster relief. Yotsuya says they got into contact with the Campbell home planet, which has undergone a revolution while Janera was away and is now run by pacifists. The Megaroad 01's first destination is going to be Campbell. Mira is heading to Plant to help make a cure for the Insania virus.

Getter and the Zentraedi help clear out space debris.

Shin and Lunamaria join the Preventers (Wufei is put in charge of them) for now; The organisation itself is going to be absorbed into Londo Bell later.

Zechs parts with Noin; He's going to join the Megaroad 01 on its journey to Campbell.

Duo goes back to his junk store, Trowa goes back to his circus, Quatre goes back to whatever it is he does, and Heero goes back to being missing.

Hikaru and Misa are now married, and Fokker retired to a tropical island where Claudia makes him pineapple salad every day. Shin, too, left the army and now lives with Sara on Mayan island.

Minmay and Lacus are having a joint concert tonight, representing natural and coordinator, earthnoid and spacenoid.

Elfie thinks of Haruka, and Shinobu mentions how not just Ayato and Haruka, but Keiji and Valentina never came back either. Sara (Dancouga) asks Elfie if she ever heard of how Haruka and Ayato met, and says that they probably went to a world where they never had to part in the first place.

 Kamina Ayato and Mishima Haruka meet for the first time.

Part of Ayato remains with Ishtori/Reika as part of Rahxephon, the two of them having now become observers of time, holding together the world from in between. They tell Keiji and Valentina that because they had melded into the chaos, their bonds with the original world were weakened, and they are now free to choose a new world to go to. Any possible world, regardless of how small the possibility, is a valid choice.

Valentina mentions how Keiji once said he wished he could have lived a different life, and says that this is his chance to live that life, but he says that it's this world that makes him who he is, and in another world, he would probably have never met Valentina. He wants to return to his own, their own world.

They hear a song, and take a step forward.

THE END