To make people actually remember, here's it once for posterity: Minako is nonbinary and uses they/them. This message will be pinned so you people stop getting it wrong and pissing me off. If you get it wrong in the future I'm going to be much less nice, considering you have to scroll past it just to read the quest.
You latch onto the old souls of Walpurgisnacht. What you are bombarded with is noise. Sound and noise and agony as the Witches inside swarm around you.
The myriad formless eyes of countless bodies materialize. The central form stands ahead, a single statue of an artist bowing down. A body of words and scripts and dances and love surround you. One by one they drift around. One by one they stare you down. One by one they encircle you, curious and entranced.
And then they speak, and your migraine returns.
You raise your hands. The voices do not heed it. You shake your head. The voices pay no attention. You open your mouth to speak.
A hundred hands cover it before you can utter even a single word. They do not want your company. They do not want your solution.
But you shake your head and pull them off. "I want to give you peace!"
The hands grip your body.
And you are forced out of the vision.
[=]
You are back in the real world, and Langstenacht screams in pain. The body stumbles, the arms quake, and the eyes flicker over towards your form. There is a faint hint of purple within the center of its eye, and it raises all six hands in an attempt to strike towards you.
It hits a green shield instead.
Takane fires multiple shots, each of them rapidly blocking attacks from Langstenacht as it tries to engulf you in cold. Each time your gems grow a little duller, the purple light gleams, filling them with color. The thing that prevents your grief now directly counters entropy.
You raise your oversized bat over your head, your girlfriend firing shot after shot as you bring it down upon Langstenacht.
The Witch of Entropy blocks the weapon with its bare hands. It grips it tight, a skyscraper-sized tube of metal crumpling under its grip. And it's then that artillery fire rips into its back in a series of white-hot yellow explosions. Mami circles outside, her boots skating across ice, Tiro Finale cannons firing one after the other, shells ripping across the ground, ice cracking, air splitting, snow melting.
Langstenacht screeches again, finally ripping your bat apart as it pulls ice out from the ocean beneath it. The gears twist and turn, the clouds overhead spin rapidly, and it pulls a single, massive pillar into the sky.
It rears it over its head. And then you dive right back in.
[=]
You ride a wave of pain into a pit of despair. The ground shudders in ice. The world is cold and dark. Energy is eaten away. Power dies in the presence of so many doomed souls.
"I can still help you!" you shout again, but it's already forced you back out.
[=]
This time, Takane is too busy firing grenades at another hand to stop another one of Langstenacht's strikes from reaching you. You raise a bat to block and a massive pistol rises out of nowhere, firing once before the fist crashes down.
You're knocked backwards, the pistol flying up into the sky before it disassembles itself into myriad gun parts. You rear your bat behind your head, the chain elongating into a massive, city-spanning weapon before you whip it forwards. It wraps around the broken mask of Langstenacht, spinning several times as you tighten the chain and force it to keep you airborne.
Meanwhile, Takane keeps herself aloft with recoil from her gauntlets as Mami simply fires from the ground. Alongside the cityscape of Kasamino, you can see Homura rushing through, quickly picking civilians up and moving them away from Langstenacht's growing sphere of influence.
Your eyes flick back. The witch is forced towards the ocean, ice and snow covering the surface with breakneck speed as it rises. The gears underneath twist and grind, sliding against one another as it readies itself.
On the ground, you can see Mami immediately take a few steps back. She glances towards you. 'Mina! That is a Walpurgisnacht move! It is doing something big!'
'What the fuck do you mean "Something big"?!'
Mami readies her cannon and loads herself in. 'Takane! Mina! Try tilting her! I have an idea!'
You keep your momentum on your swing and pull as Takane rockets herself directly into Langstenacht's head. Two strikes immediately turn Langstenacht sideways, and Mami fires a self-loaded Tiro Finale directly into its chest.
Her feet rip into its sternum, cracking bone and shattering glass and shredding the blue dress as the witch itself is turned sideways. And then she jumps upwards and loads a single three-barreled Tiro Finale.
Three shots flip Langstenacht upside-down. Its head scrapes against the ice, six hands scrambling across as its ribcage floats back into place. The body clumsily stumbles around, unused to the position it once held, as the gears' attack fires directly upwards.
It splits the sky and shatters the frozen ocean. The clouds are blasted away, turned to long, wispy streams of frost as they part, letting just a little bit of the sun shine through. The air turns frigid, blasting outwards with biting cold as Mitakihara is thrown backwards. Pillars of ice ripple from the ground, strings of water spilling into the air before flash-freezing.
Kasamino is rocked by the explosion as the magi on the seafront brace themselves. Several of them, in the middle of the construction of a new protective wall, barely hold on as the wind blasts the end of the barrier, threatening to collapse it atop the magi on the pier.
And it's then that several pillars of flesh hold fast. The wall holds against a constant, oppressive wind as Saskia braces it. In another part of the city, several of the Glow's former members rush forwards, pressing against the wall as yet others help to evacuate the outer reaches of Kasamino.
And then there's you, blown backwards by the explosion as Langstenacht presses upwards. It floats into the air, gears twisting as its myriad hands twist and turn.
You dive again. The pain is wild. It's still screeching in agony but something feels more...right.
And then it turns towards you.
[] Latch onto the old identity of Walpurgisnacht. [DIFFICULTY 3] (This entity has not completely vanished)
[] Latch onto the new identity of Langstenacht. [DIFFICULTY 3] (This entity feels a wistful longing)
[] Latch onto Lady Rin, the most recent soul. [DIFFICULTY 4] (This entity is a monster)
Is going much better than expected! Excellent news!
Anyway, the procession is clear. We're going to have to take care of all four (now three) aspects to finish this thing off. For a couple of reasons Rin should come last. Not least because if I'm wrong it means we avoid having to deal with Terfimus Prime.
[X] Latch onto the new identity of Langstenacht. [DIFFICULTY 3] (This entity feels a wistful longing)
3.
END US END US END US END US END US
END US END US END US END US END US
END US END US END US END US END US
END US END US END US END US END US
END US END US END US END US END US
END US END US END US END US END US
4.
YOU ARE
WEAK SLOW
UNWORTHY
PITIFUL
NOT DO
IT
PATHETHIC
5.
SALVATION
IS ENTROPY
DEATH END
CEASE STOP
DEATH
Had. Had an ending. The dangly bits on the left side of the first letter point left, not right.
And you're still short some letters on the first image.
And 'CAN' on the fourth image between 'UNWORTHY' and 'PITIFUL' on the right side, presumably to make 'CAN NOT DO IT'.
3.
END US END US END US END US END US
END US END US END US END US END US
END US END US END US END US END US
END US END US END US END US END US
END US END US END US END US END US
END US END US END US END US END US
Oh yeah. Just gotta keep spamming Pray and not dying.
And now, maybe I'm seeing patterns that aren't there by trying to fit the identities in buckets of, "Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue." That's probably just because I saw "old" and then "new" as options.
Chronological order seems reasonable. Langstenacht is the accumulation of memories of despair, building upon one another. If we can pull out the foundation, perhaps the tower will fall. Or, at least, be significantly less stable.
[x] Latch onto the old identity of Walpurgisnacht. [DIFFICULTY 3] (This entity has not completely vanished)
