Black Matrix Zero 17: Bugs In Silly Hats

Okay, Telomere (I think) seems to be a big-ass tree (I think). Cain's still catatonic, but seems to react to the place in some way. Carpets is still advising us for something or other and we talk about a bunch of crap that, again, is NOT Incest.

The gang then decides to fly up the tree, with half the party carrying the half what ain't got wings. We got a scene of wacky pairings where everybody chose a person to fly up freight- I think there were wacky sitcom misunderstandings. Yay. Short version: the girls carried up the kids because they are girls and can't carry Exal who is a big strong dude, and Zion carried Stei. Flying puts Cain into Berserker Freakout Mode, but he keeps it in check.

We come in for a comically hard landing, of course. The wings will now never be used again, and will definitely not figure into anybody's mobility attributes during battle, no SIR.
We run into one of the jerks with goggles...

...who is actually one of these in disguise. Uh, yuck. Could we have purple Mandalorian-looking bug guys back instead, please?

And then, naturally, it's combat time again! Definitely taking Cain and Lilith so I can get them to 17. I decide to leave Valtos home too because I wasn't too impressed with him before.

Oh good. We've split the party. The bugs- also called Pasca -are all 17, so no problem(I hope).

And some of them are wearing silly hats, which is great. But dear LORD, that was a slog. Those things are tough- they did damage in the 70s with some of their physical attacks, broke three digits with magic, and I had to get Yohane and Exal back up at least twice each. And I burned through most of my restoratives. Woof.

And now we're flying up the side of the tree again. I guess we found a convenient balcony to do all the fighting. Cain's still close to losing it, but we make it to another landing. Hopefully one without bugs!

Well, no bugs for us. They seem to be fighting the Goggles Brigade. That's win-win, as long as they don't decide to, like, eat the goggles or anything...