The first mission was simple enough: Stop Skull Kids from attacking Lon Lon Ranch. The group went out, and saw Skull Kids attacking. They then swore as foully as possible, to show their determination to fight. Or perhaps it was because the GM nerfed all their weapons mid-session, mid-battle, without warning. That would seem like a good reason, actually. The group beat down that foe, then went into the Dark World, where they then swore some more while defeating more Stalchild enemies. Eventually, Ganondorf joined the battle, and the swearing intensified. He was defeated, only to then become "Ganondorf 2", a sentence so stupid, I will give a pass to the fact the Questers began swearing even more over it. The Questers destroyed a special rune and the bizarre evil stuff all vanished, and the mission was accomplished.
The next mission was about Gunicard, the defense AI, on the Gaia Defense Station, up in space. An 'intruder' was detected. The group went up, with significantly less swearing this time. They escorted away an 'intruder' off the station, only to discover Gunicard had gone rogue and actually caused hallucinations to occur to that person, who was actually a maintenance worker. Worse yet, Gunicard had tricked the Questers into arming it with a nuclear warhead. The group talked a lot about what just happened, but in the end, what was done was done.
After that, the group took on a concerned civilian's mission. Apparently they had read a book and used a spell without really understanding what they had done. So! A crazy person named Nadra Liah went to burn down their house! And then showed up immediately when the Questers went to discuss about it! And then, to quote Dragoshi, "Ahem. Our mission was a complete and utter failure. A member of the mage's council flat-out incinerated our client's house. We then proceeded to take her on. Though, it seems that somehow Julian's blade corrupted her mind."
It was then Metal Man began to remember strange nonsense about 'Neo-Earth', where he spoke of floating cities and other such nonsense. He sent the Questers to the 'Magnetic Wastes', a Magenta-sanded filled place with weird blue buildings in it. There, there were a lot of malfunctional computers and things sitting around there. Eventually, the group found a dead Solarian (the enemies of the Neo-Earthians.) But he wasn't dead. He, Rathos Lell, had possessed the defense systems (the 'Quint') and swore to kill all those who lived. The Questers fought him to a stalemate, then his virtual computer existence fled to the 'network' of Nintendus, vanishing. Then the group were treated to a history lesson. The Slaughterer, the ship Rathos Lell piloted, had tried to destroy this Neo-Earthian outpost, but got hit by a blue laser and crashed, hence everything that has been going on as of now, naturally. ...Not that any of this really amounted to anything? But now you know.
Another session occurred, but nothing of import happened. Well, Julian beat up Metal Man many times, and Metal Man used his 'The Void' side to show off his ability to make annoyingly red text in his speech, but that was it. Charles did some weird stuff too, but I leave out him and other 'outsiders' from the main plot summary to avoid this becoming a confusion festival.
After a battle in which Charles booted Metal in the head and won, then the group was sent to go debug the malfunctioning Gunicard again. The plan was simple: Go to load a second nuke, then use the exposed computer to debug the problems in Gunicard and stop it from being able to nuke people without warning. One problem: They got the debug computer command working, only to discover that Rathos Lell was also there with them, and trying to nuke Eisnaught now that Gunicard was offline! Julian stopped that cold, though, with a good Computer Use Check. And so they managed to also reboot Gunicard in non-paranoid mode.
Meanwhile, in a separate mission, the group went out... and encountered Stalfos and Ganondorf's Dark World stuff. Again. Geez. The Questers liberated the area from Ganondorf, returning the Star Rod to the Star Temple. With the help of Charles and The Wraith, mostly. Ganondorf's hand even showed up and got zapped a bunch in the process. Then Julian beat up Metal AGAIN, after the mission, in another pointless match.
Aetos then 'joined' the Questers while pretending to be "Leon Yetch." Wolfman made his way back to the Questers, changed by events he wouldn't talk about when asked. Then another battle occurred, where The Void kicked Julian's butt.
After all that, the group went to investigate a disturbance. Ivo Robotnik was back! And he was trying to steal the ruins of Kuja's Dimensional Cannon! Whatever that means! He made some pretty good progress on re-activating the cannon, and surprisingly, the group did NOT begin swearing endlessly in response. They did fight giant Eggman statues, though. (Indeed, almost every session so far seems to involve fighting a group of some sort of enemy, in this season.) In the end, the Questers could not stop Eggman from... firing the cannon, which was too damaged to fire. So the cannon blew itself up, and threatened nobody in the process. The Questers, seizing on this, blew up the ruins even further. But that was what Eggman wanted -- he had just tricked them! He snagged the Time Stone that had been hidden inside the cannon (and exposed by the C-4 Julian detonated), revealed that Leon Yetch was actually Aetos, warped in Garrick to make matters worse, and then basically challenged the Questers to make good on the bounty on Aetos' head. Then he stole Aetos himself when the Questers refused to play ball, and reversed time.
Despite this, it was considered a success, because the Cannon needed to be destroyed. For whatever it was worth. But it wasn't worth much, because it was revealed Ivo had stolen yet another Time Stone already; he had sent Questers from Season 6 into the future to take them, and so, it had already happened as of this session!
Meanwhile, Archaeologists had found trouble. An ancient area... no, more like a recent area where Zio had taken over Master Hand's control unit (some ancient nonsense we can safely ignore) that now was taken over by... 'Kuja's Orphans', the lost soldiers of Kuja's empire. Led by Revenant Ruvyn, an evil phoenix-y red mage who burnt the Archaeologists to cinders. Who argued a ton to try to convert the Questers over to Kuja-ism, but failed, thus causing another fight to happen. The Questers broke the illegal Time Machine he was using, got the Time Stone within it, and then offered to have a proper discussion about things instead of once again fighting to a futile finish.
The Mages' Council's war on houses continued. This time, a man in black armor began attacking a Toad Town Citizen's House. The Questers discovered this was over a Time Stone being found there. They went to extract it, only for Ivo to magically show up, and convince the Mages' Council armor dude to help him steal it instead. The Questers figured out the Armored dude was named 'Jin Tetrad' and then convinced him to turn on Ivo, who then froze him in time in retaliation. Ivo then also brandished the ability to kill Aetos with one button to try to take him hostage and prevent the Questers from taking the Time Stone. The Questers negotiated to warp Aetos back and send away Jin Tetrad, only for Ivo to then threaten to nuke the Questers with Gunicard. The Questers succumbed to nuclear intimidation and gave him that stone, only to not give him the other Time Stone, resulting in him launching the nuke anyways, and fleeing again, bringing him up to 4 Time Stones!
Ivo Robotnik fixed the destroyed house to congratulate the Questers for being fooled into giving him the Time Stone. Then Gunicard, due to the previous mission where the Questers fixed his programming, deactivated the missile at the last possible moment, causing the deactivated nuclear warhead to crash into HQ and serve as a conversation starter rather than ending HQ's existence as we know it. What the Hell? Wolfman then got trolled by Jin Tetrad and Tirk Tovnic (yet another Mages Council jerkface) who told him that houses were unimportant and walked away. Then Ivo made Wolfman think he was going to die and used a fake nuke to annoy him. Then Wolfman got back to HQ and saw a giant dead nuke in the roof. Did I mention the word nuke? Because that's what this chapter has done to me, say that word way too many times.
Metal Man went off his rocker again, going on about being a Neo-Earthian who fell down a pit and fought with Tridus over a Solarian Machine only to be damaged and cyberneticized and living long ago but also in the future. Also that Solarians went back in time and influenced the Atlanteans with their Solarian Machine. Then to continue his madness, he pointed a thousands of years old TT33 gun at Aetos and demanded him to be a Quester. Then he had SIMBER handcuff Aetos to Julian after Aetos said 'yes', solving nothing. (Aetos and Julian had a feud, you see, but that had been cut out of the previous log because all they did was slap-fight in a semi-OOC way, now of course, it was properly made IC, when instead, Aetos and Julian probably should have just been forced into time-out until they stopped it.) Increasingly escalating zaps occurred from the handcuffs to try and fail to make Julian and Aetos stop hitting eachother. Then Dr. Mario tranquilized Julian, who passed out, and... that was a session. What the hell?
Next up, the most ridiculous way to solve the fact Julian had a bunch of useless items and money to get rid of occurred: The Championship Arena League (CAL), otherwise known as "That thing where Questers fight eachother for no reason while Charles says 'TO HELL WITH THIS'". A gigantic mess of Questers then fought eachother all at once. Julian won, which proved exactly why Charles was right to boycott the match. Then Charles had a moment where this Metal noted some secret of his and then decided to kill the Metal, but the Metal struck back and was not killed, while also proving his leadership kinda sucked because crushing Charles' hand was an overkill thing to do when he could have just restrained him.
Then Metal tried and failed to prevent Julian from getting angry again. But Julian knew this was an attempt to prove he was easy to anger, so he deceptively pretended to not be annoyed. Thus, the already-chill, TV-watching Julian was not convinced of anything other than Metal was not sneaky enough to catch him in the act of being angry.
VG said what everyone was thinking out-loud about the CAL as another pointless fight with Metal vs. Dragoshi occurred. "There isn't much I can control on these boring CAL fights..." Julian then had a boring CAL fight where he defeated Gumbo the Goomba.
Then Gunicard pointed the group towards a crater in the ground... it was Ivo's old HQ, and it was indeed a mission, despite Charles not considering it one. (Oh, and that nuke was properly put away and the roof hole dealt with.) It was the ancient base the Aribar Army had attacked the Questers in, long ago, and Ivo had past accosted the Questers with. The Attack of the Aribar Army, to be precise! Swearing increased as it became clear the former Ivo hangout was reacting as if Ivo had returned. Aetos blew up a door that was holding back magma, endangering everyone. Then he got thrown down a deep shaft and broke his bones and was KO'd. Presumably, to prevent him from killing everyone again. A DAMN CONTROL PANEL was causing the problems, apparently. The Questers debugged the problem, causing a computer to scream at them in bizarre voices.
After a lot of annoying nonsense, the bottom of the bunker revealed the Master Egg MK 2, aka a plot hole. Why would past Robotnik use the Aribar Army if he had THAT? Or for that matter, why hadn't he retrieved it and used it against the Questers now? Oh well. Ivo came back to try to stop the Questers from stealing his Master Egg MK2, but it then punched his time traveling Egg-o-matic straight into the wall! The battle began and a ton of dodging went on, because Ivo was a scummy dodging person. The Questers then accidentally killed Charles, then failed hard enough that Bob, Lord of Electric Death showed up to save them. Then he exploded and Ivo had to flee. Finally, a video by The Void explained why one could not use the Master Egg MK2 to basically insta-complete the Season, something about Time Calamities or whatnot (a theme that connected with Revenant Ruvyn also mentioning a Time Calamity... odd, given both The Void and Kuja were hated enemies, yet both cared about the same thing.)
Julian fought a mutated Shyguy in the boring CAL and won, and Aetos also beat up Gumbo the Goomba in the boring CAL, both advancing. Then the group went to the ancient Neo-Earthian outpost again. Garrick lamented that he was not a part of the plot relating to Neo-Earthians or Solarians, making it clear all he wanted out of life was a lifeless computer terminal to praise his past accomplishments from his pre-SSQ backstory. Speaking of people who wanted to be talked about, some Neo-Earthian named Rand wrote his name on a bunch of IOUs about books he took, Solarians he killed, and then left a bunch of dangerous super-nanotechnology laying all over the place. Charles then gave exposition about how The Businessman tried to give this tech to Kuja, but that Kuja was unable to make proper use of it.
The insane Rand eventually fought with Garrick to a standstill, then helped Garrick to find The Businessman via fixing a machine. The Businessman was bemused, noting that Rand had already bargained for infinite life, so what was the big deal? Garrick ranted at The Businessman, who could tell he was seriously mentally unwell and decided to not do Business with him. Garrick returned, and realized he had nothing to really do. He took the Time Stone from Rand's weird machine, then walked back to Charles, who was doing an imitation of an ancient Foghorn Leghorn cartoon while bored, and then went back to HQ. All of this was then also taken as a lesson to NOT use Astral technology, as it all had a cost (e.g. Rand's unwanted immortality).
The Questers went forth to investigate something to do with Ganondorf in the Spirit Temple. There, they discovered, a bunch of Iron Knuckles to fight. What, you expected something new from a session involving Ganondorf in this season? Get real. Indeed, the Knuckle was a 'Titanium Knuckle' and Ganondorf was inside it. So the group fought it endlessly, learned that was a bad idea, then led it into the quicksand to mercifully end this repetitive battle. Julian said this season's catch phrase, "What the hell was that?", then 19 more Titanium Knuckles began to emerge from the temple to make sure this session wouldn't end yet. The Questers led the new Knuckles into the sand, where they sank (after slaying Aetos). Then... Bowser took over the Temple instead!
Bowser used the power of BS (or Ganondorf's Will since he was now 'dead'?) to get the APN on his side and claim he was the victim of a Quester attack. Apparently this worked as now the 'IIF' was out to attack the Questers. The group fled home after the IIF attacked, and Metal Man went rogue. He declared the IIF the enemy of the Questers, told SIMBER to gun down the IIF, plotted to nuke the IIF, and then threatened Aetos with his gun and claimed if he didn't work with them, he was a member of the IIF. Aetos eventually made some alternate plan, and then the legendary Sky High trolled him by walking in drunk and saying weird things before running away. Garrick then won a sparring match against The Void. Yeah, that's normal, right?
Another mission proceeded: Save Ivan and Julian from the IIF. Wait, Julian was captured by the IIF? Here I thought that was a new concept as of SSQ^2... anyways, Charles tried to derail the mission by morphing into a monster (and probably plotting to try to kill Metal and everyone yet again), but then Metal knocked him out and decided to use him as a decoy to confuse the IIF. He then put Dragoshi in charge of the main charge into the IIF building. The group charged forth, failed to break in, then IIF Agents went to counterattack Quester HQ and then potentially attack it with a nuke. Metal was indecisive in a critical moment, allowing them to continue to attack. Desperate, the group ran to the garage and got out the Dauntless, the Quester ship from Season 6 that
Meanwhile, a kangaroo court began, where it was set up so that Julian looked like a villain who was out to kill everyone. Hey, wait a minute, he really does tend to do that... ah, right. The difference here was ignoring the fact he usually fought VILLAINS and making it look like Bowser was a good guy. Ironically, despite being a horrible Quester, Phantom / Ely managed to work well as a lawyer. He pointed out multiple inconsistencies, the highest one being that it was an APN mission -- and therefore, Julian's leader (the APN) and not Julian would be responsible. Even if Julian went off script, it was also revealed that Bowser was intentionally provoking the situation with the intent to create the problem rather than waiting for IIF assistance!
Back at the failure battle of doom, the group continued down the glorified loading screen -- I mean elevator to the garage. Metal Man continued to hint at who really made the Dauntless by turning his own CAC into a B-2 bomber shape -- AKA the shape of the Dauntless. Confusion continued as SIMBER noted Aribar was coming for the Questers' Time Stone, and IIF Agents were invading the garage, still. Metal reacted by using the CAC to drop a bomb (perhaps a Nova Bomb?) directly on an agent, obliterating them. Talk about overkill. The mysterious leader of the IIF called for help to his ally... Ivo Robotnik. He complained that the Questers' anti-Kuja resources were too much for them and that they were now flying over to kill the entirety of the IIF. Apparently Ivo's 'agent' also failed (coincidentally, the Questers didn't feel like giving Aribar their Time Stone.)
With regards to the court case, Phantom revealed a scandalous document: The IIF was helping a 'third party' to kill the Questers. It was all there, in writing, on official letterhead! Agent Larry had enough and tried to kill everyone in the room to hide this, but Phantom and Julian were both quite experienced in killing, so it was somewhat moot for a single IIF Agent to take them all on. The Agent continually healed, and then tried to cloak himself, but neither worked. The Smash Dex revealed the true name of these people: IVAN'S INVESTIGATION FORCE. Now if only that'd been noted several chapters ago! Eventually though, the Agent died, after dropping enough C-4 to level the entire building and a ton of other healing items. What a cheaty jerk.
Aribar worried that Ivo would attack him for failing the 'mission', then the group busted in to the IIF tower. There, they discovered Julian and Phantom had rescued themselves. I mean what did you expect? The Group went to go kill the leader of this evil alliance, only to find Shadow the Hedgehog was their leader. DUN DUN DUNNN. He revealed that Ivo Robotnik had, during Season 6, tricked the Questers into stealing a Time Stone. And the final Time Stone... had to be handed over, because the IIF had created Gunicard, and Gunicard would now nuke Quester HQ immediately if they didn't hand it over!
It nearly went to that, but then... Metal released Rathos Lell on Gunicard, making Shadow's nuke button inert! Shadow, however, was too tough to kill, and so Shadow leaped out the wall (blowing a hole in it to escape to a helicopter), ending that confrontation. Thus, supposedly, the IIF was totally dead. As we know, I would NEVER use it again. Never ever ever. Ever! Old me would NEVER think of re-using it, ever!
Thus, the dire discussion began. Kuja's Time Calamity was to involve resetting the entire universe. The only way to prevent it had been destroyed as that was the Dimensional Cannon that Ivo took the Time Stone from earlier. Ruvyn himself was too busy being evil at the time to be of any use. The group went to find Ruvyn, fearing he and his elite remaining Praetorian Guard of Kuja soldiers was now the most elite force in the land (since the IIF was now turbo-dead, right?) The first place to visit: Kakariko village. There, they found... Sephiroth. Whoops, wrong villain! They kept searching, and using the Stone of Agony from Ocarina of Time, Charles found... Ruvyn hiding underground, speaking to... ex-IIF agents? Wow, couldn't go one session without violating the 'IIF PEOPLE ARE DEAD' clause, me!
The Questers crashed the party, while several OTHER villains who were supposed to be dead (Kuja Infantrymen, Denon Supersoldiers... etc) were offended that they would interrupt their 'God.' Rather than fight though, they all delivered a sermon to the Questers, then walked away, like annoying traveling evangelists would.
After that fizzle of a mission, Metal told the Questers it got worse: Ivo had a base under the sea, and now the Questers had to go there with dangerous teleportation technology. The Questers momentarily experienced an 'all-white realm' where 'The Businessman' was present, then landed 3-4 feet above the floor in the undersea base and crashed into the ground. Ah, the wonders of incomplete teleportation. (And of referencing both Half-Life 2 AND Phantasy Star Online Episode II!) Ivo bust into the room and attacked with his 'Egg Slicer', not wanting to wait before fighting Questers yet again. Somehow, he had all 7 Time Stones, and somehow, he actually could kill Questers properly.
The Questers began destroying the Time Stones to try and prevent the Time Calamity, only for the Time Calamity... to become ever more present, by the percents noted by Ivo's machine. Of course, as the battle went on, Ivo noted that destroying the Time Stones would not stop him. Then cloned himself, and his clones gained evil metallic tentacle machines that began beating people up. Then Julian threw the main Ivo into a time portal... cloning him into himself and a separate 'Eggman', followed by Dragoshi saying something about Walruses and ripping a hole in reality further, that would have grave consequences far into the future.
Ivo noted he would apparently encode 'emeralds' to destroy time. Speaking of time being destroyed, Charles Magellean ran into the portal and messed it up too. Aetos blew up the last Time Stones for good measure, causing 'The Great Time Disaster' as Charles remained gone. Then, several Charleses leaped out of the portal, and danced to Smooth Criminal in a well choreographed dance number. After that, Julian failed to hit the alternate reality Charleses with a baseball bat, then hit Ivo with the baseball bat. Who then activated the damn fourth Time Stone in the past, from the future, in order to summon more clones of himself... ow, my brain.
The nonsense continued until the last machine Ivo had was smashed by angry, swearing Questers. 6 seconds away from victory, the 7th Stone was NOT encoded. All the weirdness went away... but unbeknownst to the others, it was mostly due to meddling by Metal back at HQ, in combination with their work against Ivo. Speaking of, Ivo exploded violently to kill all the Questers, and succeeded! Ahhhhh!!!
...The Businessman kindly revived the Questers almost free of charge (since the deal the others didn't know about had occurred), and then they encountered a strangely introspective Metal hanging out in a graveyard of Questers. Bit on the nose, especially for people who just came back from the dead due to a Faustian Bargain. After giving Mega Boy's grave a good whacking with a shovel (as that was equally as respectful as the person who was buried there), there was an evil tombstone -- Zio's, of course. It's always Zio. Except it wasn't Zio, but Sephiroth again, hiding as Zio's tombstone. What The Hell?
Obviously, they returned to HQ after that. Or did they? No. Not all of them. Metal sat there in the graveyard at midnight, lamenting Star Steel's death and also his own no longer canon plot! Then Charles sent a letter about how he could no longer live with the Questers and now lived in peace somewhere else. The group discussed how both Aetos and Charles were a problem, and Metal agreed to kill Charles if it came to it, but was evasive as to how to properly get rid of Aetos if he turned on the Questers. He considered a proper trial for that, anyways. The trial began with the group confronting Aetos with his betrayal, and The Void recounting how Aetos had been willing to help him in killing everyone. Aetos actually agreed with the story, noting that he was certain he could help stop Kuja from ruling the world by killing the Questers. The Void noted he had indeed said that story and also that he'd tell any story to trick people into doing his bidding. The Void even noted at the time he couldn't do much for Aetos, so being supportive of him then... was the highest support possible. But in the end, the waffling continued, and Metal made no actual choice, which in of itself was a choice -- a bad one. Aetos was officially exiled off to Turion, and none of the actual questions asked were solved.
After much bickering, a group went to handle a disturbance in the Arctic. A ship had crashed, and aboard it: Phazon. Well, not just any Phazon. The signal of Rathos Lell had corrupted some Phazonic entity with a Metroid's brain, thus causing: Metroid Rathos. As the Dark Ages-esque SSQ plot was exposited upon by Metroid Rathos himself, the Questers contemplated how to end the spooky Thing-like thing and its threat of trying to 'assimilate' everyone. The group determined that the payload was in no danger of escaping, and so, escaped themselves, leaving Metroid Rathos to scream angrily and be stuck in the arctic.
The next mission was to handle some hacker on Gunicard. They found the angriest man possible cursing them out, messing with Gunicard. His wish: to destroy the planet. Ivan hadn't approved his project, so he was irate and wanted to take it out on everyone. He was also angry because the Questers made his own science projects irrelevant by existing. Indeed, he was an Ex-APN employee. The Questers beat him up, then he threatened to detonate the planet with a dastardly button press (taking a page from Ivo, I see). He threatened also to attack the Questers with 3 items he took from them, only to discover Gunicard had disabled his planetary destruction button while he'd been rambling. He fled through an escape pod, deciding his plot had failed. But apparently some day, the Questers would be menaced by the items he stole -- and his name was given, "Captain Ramsey", angriest man who ever served Ivan -- formerly of the Weapons of Mass Destruction division, apparently. He was actually made redundant by the IIF and in turn by the Questers destroying the IIF.
Tingle had obtained the Fatal Crest keyblade and was fighting the Mr. Saturns to the death to try to obtain a 'map' of some kind. Naturally, the Questers were dispatched to stop him. Sephiroth showed up and took the keyblade after Tingle eventually got KO'd and Wolf went for a dunk in the fountain. Then some Questers drank some Saturn Coffee and went hyperactive. We'll skip over their antics as they were meaningless and kinda stupid. Said antics were only really recorded as a warning not to do anything like that ever again. Seriously. I don't want anything that ridiculous in the RPG ever again.
Then the group went to handle some disturbance in Silph Co.'s tower. Instead, the Questers WERE the disturbance due to the curse of the Saturn Coffee. Ignoring the redundancy of the Saturn Coffee-Questers saying weird words over and over again, we get to the main plot: up at the top of the tower was some weird dungeon setting with insta-death doors and puzzles. After wandering through that mess, the group encountered Erin Kareen, which also became an education in strange ways of talking as well as names not necessarily having to fit specific patterns to be associated with specific people. The mad scientist definitely put the 'mad' in mad scientist, screaming like a Jigglypuff at the Questers and drinking Ever-clear mid-battle. Even more randomness that was also kind of annoying (hey, I won't give past me a pass for being tediously 'weird' and 'randumb' any more than I will Saturn Coffee people) occurred.
We finally get to the plot. After that nonsense fight, Erin Kareen also was a Mage Council member (but strangely not interested in destroying houses.) Apparently, that weird crazy Erin Kareen was an 'alternate dimension' version of himself. Some version of Erin Kareen then used a weird machine to exorcise and evil force that was haunting Julian. It was called The Fury, and stole Julian's appearance in order to get him in trouble with angry acts that weren't actually fully Julian's will to do. (Thus excusing Julian of any recent acts of extreme anger he did, conveniently!) Apparently, each 'Cycle' had a 'Phantom Lord' associated with it. The Fury was the Phantom Lord of this 'Cycle.' The only way to stop all this was to prevent The Fury from finding all his 'pieces', and apparently the Void was a previous Cycle's Phantom Lord (as well as, considered much more prodigious / powerful than The Fury ever could be.) Erin Kareen finally explained the point of the Mages' Council: To control and prevent this cycle from getting out of hand. Wait... where the hell were they during Season 3, land of The Void? And who appointed them to that in the first place?
To make matters more mysterious, the Metal Man decided to note how he would stop the 'Cycle' by slaying The Fury and stealing his 'pieces'. As his The Void half wanted to rule this cycle as much as he did the prior one. Nothing could possibly go wrong with this 'plan'! Then Wolfman and Metal speculated on stuff pointlessly for a while. Then the group stole a scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, riding an elevator through a glass ceiling into... the Phantom Lords' Phantom Realm! There, they found The Fury, masquerading as Julian. He ran in terror, realizing the Questers were FAR angrier than he ever could be! Then they began to talk about the Cycle. It seems interrupting it would doom all of reality...
...And right on track, The Void floated up through a hole and noted this was HIS mission, and HIS plan to kill The Fury! The Void countered, claiming the Cycle would kill all the Questers if allowed to occur (possibly causing said Time Calamity in the process). The group then lost interest in The Fury and went with The Void's plan: investigate the Quester Hunter Satellite that got lost after being blasted away from Nintendus long, long ago. To avoid further confusion, I will of course, only note what is relevant to this plot rather than nonsense. Which is that there was anachronistic knowledge about the Phantom Lords on a computer in there! (And antimatter weaponry, of course, which I only reference due to my abiding curiosity about the Star Ocean 2 Dark Ages plot). And of course, the data file read as follows:
'Plans: We, the Thirteen Gentlemen, have assembled under the order of The Void to destroy the Questers and rule both Saga and Nintendus. This will be accomplished by releasing invincible obsidian robots, named 'Super soldiers', which are, so far, unstoppable. In addition, when one of us dies, we merely replace one member with another.
Should we succeed, we can destroy the world for our lord and master, The Void.' Noting that if they really were on The Void's side, it is odd that he would more or less forget about them, and so this joins the many failed attempts to make my inter-season plots 'make sense.'
Sephiroth was once again hinted at as one of the members of the Thirteen Gentlemen, Sardis Mongul (The Season 6 Solarian) supposedly wrote down about the Cycles including how The Void was Cycle 1, the current Time stuff was Cycle 2, Cycle 3 was lost due to data corruption. Denon of the 13 Gentlemen had stolen this anachronistic document and made his 13 Gentlemen based upon it, apparently trying to capture the power of the Phantom Lords. (Of course this was post-hoc fallacy, as the actual Season 2/3 stuff lacks any references to any of this!) The most important canon clarifying incident was that Eldorado, the 13 Gentleman with the gold mask who was supposedly Wolfman, showed up... while Wolfman was there, disproving that he was Wolfman. Sure, he seemed to be 'lost in the past' but unlike some time-shifted characters, he didn't even act like the person he supposedly was (not even in a 'mind controlled version' way). He killed the Questers and destroyed himself with the 13 Gentleman Cannon... and forgot that Questers had lives while he, a fake fraud, had none, so the Questers revived and he was dead. Well, that solved that stupid plot hole well enough.
The group returned back, and The Void noted that by breaking the cycles, the 'endless destruction of Neo-Earth shall cease.' First time Earth, then Neo-Earth, then Nintendus, apparently was the pattern. The Void went to the Satellite and blew it up again; but as a truly cursed object, the 13 Gentlemen and their Satellite kept re-assembling, proving they had been trapped in the Astral Realm forever, and ensuring 'Eldorado' would never bother the Questers again, at least until I forgot this log and probably used him later on in SSQ for a one-off gag or that time The Void attacked in Season 10 ANYWAYS...
Julian announced the 'CAL Beatdown', which then proceeded. The Gladitorial games of cruelty and violence caused poor Gumbo the Goomba to 'die' to Digi, Trigger, Dragoshi, Metal Man, The Wraith, Gibby, Garrick, and The Void. After that... horrific atrocity, the Infantryman was up, and lost to Julian. Unlike the boring past matches, it instead took on a horror pretext, given Gumbo had to endure constant damage just to get a paycheck.
A real Mission proceeded next. Ruvyn was after old pieces of Kuja's empire: So the Questers had to stop him. It was the old Quester Hunter HQ from Season 2, with the whole memory lane. Well, the false, rose tinted glasses version, with a weird emphasis on death and destruction added. Dagon's dead corpse, Rupture Farms Factory stuff, yadda yadda, blah blah. Zio was also confirmed dead near the pit where he was fought by Alys. (IF ONLY HE STAYED DEAD, DAGNABBIT) The entire place was just a giant morgue. Magnus the vampire was dead, stabbed by a steel column. Vampires were dead everywhere, too. As was a bunch of old Oddworld fauna. Apparently, there was also Ganondorf's corpse, even though that makes no sense, how did he get here? Oh no, zombie Ganondorf! The Questers fled from that area, only to find 'The Oath to Revenge', which then caused Revenant Ruvyn to show up and begin chewing the scenery.
Revenant Ruvyn then began chanting ominous nonsense. He was going to summon all the dead back to life. It was going to be the end. Nobody could stop him, until... *STAB* Sephiroth killed him. Whoops! Sephiroth then flew through the ceiling, laughing at how useless all of the old stuff was. Revenant Ruvyn revived once more, and stood up -- but admitted, he wasn't himself. He had been possessed by the ghost of Kuja, and had been trying to revive his legacy, with a false Genome body. In reality, Ruvyn was being puppeteered due to how dead Kuja was. Thanks to Sephiroth, the torture ended. Ruvyn saluted to Questers the real Ruvyn would never have known or cared about and then died a more honorable death than probably the actual Quester would have had, but oh well! At least we ended a plot thread, right?
Oh wait, there was more. A single Kuja Supersoldier (jury still out as to whether he was a Denon/13 Gentleman/Void Supersoldier who betrayed them or a copy Kuja somehow made) still held on, refusing to give up on reviving Kuja using a necklace and a drop of Kuja's blood. He had to be given a good thrashing until he, too, gave up the ghost. And by give up the ghost, I meant his trillion souls were too much for his one body to take, so when he tranced, he burnt to a crisp. Whoops! (Probably an inferior copy since I doubt the actual Super Soldiers mentioned earlier would die from that.) The Questers were congratulated by the ghost of Alys, then went back to HQ, wondering why they had to see all those trillions of corpses. Indeed, I don't know how those bodies got there, as many of those dead enemies died elsewhere, later on. Oh well, it was probably haunted.
Freaked out by all the enemies everywhere, Metal created a simple plan: Re-activate the Neo-Earthian outpost, so as to use its powers to blow all threats to bits. The group walked right past a cure for cancer and shrugged, as well as other miracle remedies, then found frozen Neo-Earthians and Solarian corpses. They called in Metal to try to make sense of the horrifying mix of wondrous tech and corpses. Metal explained that a gun Trigger found was an attempt to make a device that could make anything you shoot with it explode like a fusion bomb. Long story short, the outpost was re-activated, Metal gained control over a deadly blue laser that destroys all in its path (and never used it after this session for some reason), Ramsey attacked and got his butt kicked by said laser, but then, through a series of hilariously bad miscalculations, Aribar & the Questers created the monstrosity with the Item Combiner that Ramsey had plotted to send after them in the first place.
It was a Chaos Controlling, Air Tank Having, Napalm Scything mess of a monstrosity. And it was Ramsey's armor, giving him the tech he'd always wanted! He then began swearing, like a certain chef did. It was finally a match for the Questers' own swearing, which made them swear even more, outraged that an enemy would have the temerity to swear at them. The group fought some more, and also swore some more, sometimes in ways that make it hard to tell what swear they actually used. After Dragoshi Earth Bite smashed Ramsey into a wall, a slot machine appeared and destroyed all the tension by dispensing coins due to fourth wall dice roll reasons.
Ramsey got even angrier and revealed he was The Fury! Then the group ran to Metal for help. Metal revealed that Ramsey was actually just a fragment of The Fury, activated by all the rage he had just accumulated. Aaand Metal had no clue how to contain The Fury, so he turned into The Void and began beating up The Fury instead. The group joined in, eventually KOing The Fury. The Void then captured The Fury, so as to defuse the danger of Ramsey becoming The Fury, or something complicated like that. Anyways, the threat was over and all the Neo-Earthians inside the Neo-Earthian outpost were beginning to be resurrected and so on and so forth.
The group went on over to see some Chozo ruins, after getting scared about the Magnetic Wastes being filled with Phazon. As if they needed more ways to be scary. The ruins included runes that spoke of the Chozo intentionally storing their phazon there, for reasons unknown, then warned of the wrath of a 'Circular King.' The Questers thought it meant Kuja. It really meant Ivo, of course. Specifically, a Death Egg-like sphere that the group saw coming out of Lake Hyrule. Whoops! Ivo gloated about his new battle station: The Gravity Egg! When the Time Stones were shattered, the heat energy was used to power the Gravity Egg, thus causing it to retain all the power of the destroyed stones. Aribar explained thermodynamics to Ivo, but Ivo noted he had plenty of batteries. Digi wondered if he had a million AA batteries, and so do I, because how on Nintendus would he store enough power to replace the Time Stones after the heat went away?
Eggrobos attacked, rockets attacked, the Questers ran from the chaos the mad doctor had unleashed. Thermodynamics be damned, he was going to use his inefficient mechanism to ruin everyone's day! Ivan Robotnik got mad and deployed the APN's attack fleet. Soon, the sky became a massive battlefield, with no obvious winner. Especially because it was Robotnik on Robotnik violence. Eventually, Wolfman ran on foot and did the obvious thing of telling Metal about it... he scoffed at the threat, because he had a magical Neo-Earthian radio that functioned despite all the interference. The Neo-Earthians cheaped out and merely destroyed all of Ivo's 'distraction fleet', with help from Gibby and the others (who managed to help take out a Wing Fortress and chase Ivo away from that). Never you mind the blue doomsday laser that would have ended this in a single shot. That might actually be helpful!
Aribar was desperate to bring Aetos back, certain his habit of betraying the Questers (especially to Ivo) would help them fight Ivo. So he went to Turion and tried to convince Aetos to rejoin, but Aetos stubbornly refused. He eventually relented enough to try to demand Metal not have the Manifesto apply to him, but.... Metal said this: "Otherwise it's my fault if he runs off and kills people 'in the name of good'. Having been responsible for at least ten such people in the past, I'm not going to let it happen again."
Aetos demanded several extra terms to add in addition to the Manifesto. Metal smiled madly and agreed, then noted the one about Harming Nature would allow him to tell Aetos to do anything he wanted, as long as he came up with an absurd excuse to justify that. Ridiculous, and precisely why he was not interested in adding or subtracting random clauses, as why should Aetos be special compared to other Questers anyways?
Aribar: "Next you'll be saying he has to kill anyone who takes a shower!"
Metal Man: "It does harm nature, you know."
The discussion continued on, getting more and more ridiculous. The Void suggested cursing Aetos with a Q branded into his forehead that would burn and eventually slay him if he did evil deeds. After saying that, he did say what I said here now, about how ridiculous it was that Aetos wanted to have special privileges to defy the rules that nobody else would have. Aetos reacted to failing at this by...
...Contacting Ivo Robotnik, taking Aribar hostage, and demanding Shadow arrive immediately. Shadow did arrive immediately--ticked off that he had been called. He then said various nasty things about wanting to control Aribar and Aetos and shot up everything waiting for them to make their answer about being his to command -- though he noted since Aribar was a Quester, he wouldn't be killed even if he refused (wouldn't stick, what's the point?) He also noted he wanted to revive The Fury at full power and eradicate Nintendus via the cycles -- over, and over again, as the Phantom Lords willed it. Obviously Aribar and Aetos didn't go for this. Aetos died, permanently, from Astral Machinegun fire, and Shadow left. Aribar had to return back home, though with an added bizarre mission: To make Sky High a God of Turion. It was the only way to revive Aetos! *facepalm*
The group used the Astral Realm to go and deal with the imminent (but not imminent, given all that Aetos stuff happened and nobody said 'We don't have time for this!') threat of the Gravity Egg. The Void led the group through a shortcut, as once again, it was necessary to go through the Astral Realm to reach such a distant, space-borne target. Weird, X-Zone esque obstacles (as well as nostalgic ones like the lying / truth telling gargoyles) confronted the group, proving the GM wasn't certain what the actual Gravity Egg would be like and needed some filler to pad for time. Eventually the first Gravity Egg-related obstacle appeared: The infamous Charles Valhalla force field tech, stolen by Eggman, being used to protect said Gravity Egg. This variant was defective and weak to dirt, so a single Earth Bite attack shorted it out. Then more weird BS (a phantom train from the X-Zone???) attacked, and was eventually dispatched by an Ivantek Grenade to the undercarriage.
Finally at the 'Outer Corridor' of the Gravity Egg, the real action could begin. Specifically, an entryway to an area with more expository panels. Bizarre expository Monitor Panels that went on and on about how Ivo had spread the Time Stones around the world after originally owning them, in order to play a shell game; he already had them all, but just wanted to trick the Questers into thinking that he didn't. The Gravity Egg had already been reconstructed underwater since a while ago. Security machines attacked the group, and then the group repelled them. More rooms awaited, filled with more monitors, and more battling. Eggrobos were fought, EXP was gained. More walking, more corridors. An Unknown tube that went somewhere was found, so the group jumped down it without checking it. Then an Unknown orb of secret material was inside the secret unknown room. The group threw an EMP grenade to escape the Unknown room, and then found another room, which showed Gunicard was under attack.
Ivo showed up on the monitors, and explained his insane plan: To make Nintendus larger by colliding the moon into it. Then, he would rule EGG-NINTENDUS. Or perhaps just rule a dead planet, because that's not how anything works. The group ran around and found different corridors, and encountered more Eggrobos, though this time they ran from them. Ivo continued to chant a countdown of fifty-five-ish minutes to doomsday. The Orb room was replaced with a downwards corkscrew walkway. Aribar valiantly died via Eggrobo attack while the others fled down the corkscrew... only to discover there was no air out there and that it was just a time wasting diversion set up by Ivo.
The group wandered around the giant space station some more, being frustrated by dead computers and dead-end hallways. Apparently, the Gravity Egg was really powerful: It crushed all ships that got near it, even nukes could not reach it. More time was wasted screwing around with Eggrobos. Then the group found an area with reversed gravity. Wow, something somewhat interesting, if stolen from the Death Egg, after so much waiting! Seventeen minutes remained. Finally, the group found an evil computer that was controlling the entire area, and engaged it in a boss battle! It exploded after some fighting, revealing another pathway.
Ten minutes remained as The Gravity Egg's Gravity-Controlled Moon reached 83% of the way to Nintendus. Five minutes remained as the group tried to turn the newly found Gravity Egg Weapon Control Panel to reverse the movement! But Ivo was not having it, and it became a computer panel hack-off to figure out who would prevail! Eventually, Trigger defeated Ivo and stopped the Moon from moving any closer to Nintendus. Ivo re-started it, but then the Questers stopped it again! But the Moon was too close now, and regular old gravity had begun to pull it to Nintendus, five minutes remaining before even THAT could not be stopped! Trigger then jammed the Gravity Egg so it couldn't meddle any further in what was going on. But this meant that despite being in limbo, the Moon could eventually fall... unless the group stopped Ivo directly. (No, I don't know why it went from 'five minutes to automatic destruction' to 'defeat Ivo and it won't do it', given all that I just said. Plot takes over, I guess!)
Down an elevator (a gravity elevator!) and more Ivo taunting later, the group experienced a door that went to outer space. Cheap life destruction occurred, then things continued. More doors and panels were in the way, and electricity was the answer. Then Righteous Indignation was the answer. Finally the emergency handle opened the annoying door to the 'Bridge.' There, a fake 'Egg Man' taunted the Questers. Then the entire room exploded after they attacked the Robotnik Robot. The group then went to a separate bridge. This one was made out of the finest poisoned candy money could buy. Gibby ate it, and it was delicious. Wait, what the hell?
A Quester blew up a nearby wall, revealing a Bridge made out of Cardboard. Aribar Magma blasted the wall of the Cardboard Bridge, revealing a mirror that fell down and shattered into a million pieces. The Ninja showed up and warned the Questers away from entering what was probably a Bridge made out of mirrors, noting he had captured the 'real' Robotnik. Wait, how did The Ninja get ahead of the Questers?
Aribar then said the best line of the entire Season.
Aribar: "Great. Now we can't run into the trap unaware. Thanks for spoiling it for us."
Ivo got so desperate, he restored the power to try and fix the moon problem. He was for some reason afraid of the Questers being killed by all the Bridges made out of cardboard, candy, aluminum and who knows what else that were imploding due to being of low structural integrity (gee, ya think?) The Ninja led the group to The Eggman, who then noted he couldn't make Nintendus Larger if he accidentally destroyed it instead. Ivo demanded they let him fix his Gravity Egg Weapon and use it to 'carefully merge the moon and Nintendus'; otherwise, they would fight and the Moon would crash uncontrollably into Nintendus and destroy it!
The group bickered. The Gravity Egg continued to lose structural integrity, most likely because it was probably made out of candy and cardboard elsewhere, too. Ivo demanded Gunicard's power to help restore the Gravity Egg's generators. (I guess the heat from the Time Stones ran out?) The group got Ivan's authorization, and Gunicard re-powered the Gravity Egg despite having been heavily damaged by the attacks earlier. Then, Julian ran in to prevent the prevention of the world being destroyed. But... it wasn't Julian. It was... The Fury!
The Fury realized the gig was up and turned into Eggman instead. Ivo played the victim, proclaiming it was The Fury and The Void's fault for all that he did in the past, and therefore, he should be off the hook. A crazy battle began, as the 'Secret Ending' triggered. Eggman (The Fury) (The Unnecessary) became mecha-equipped via magic and began (The Battle). It was then The Real Eggman determined The Fake Eggman was trying to delay The Questers so that The Moon would crash into The Nintendus, killing The Everyone.
So Ivo 'honorably' volunteered to stay behind while the Questers would go ahead and save the Gravity Core, allowing the apocalypse to be prevented. Or... well, let them just walk out of there, and then Ivo crushed everything, including himself (supposedly), stopping The Fury from breaking the whole thing to do with the moon. But how did the Moon stop from crashing into Nintendus if The Gravity Egg was gone? Ivo then survived despite the Gravity Egg combusting, thus adding to my general confusion, bewilderment, and wishing I had a gigantic control room made out of chocolate. The Fury was 'captured' in addition to all of this.
With that big problem... avoided by... not talking about it (seriously, nobody said 'the moon is now in the proper part of the sky / integrated with Nintendus' at ANY POINT! IT WAS JUST FORGOTTEN AND LEFT ON THE EDGE OF CRASHING INTO NINTENDUS.) Aribar gathered the Questers to save Aetos by doing a preposterous plan: Making Sky High, former Fallen Quester, former Kuja Commander, and many other things (none of them good), into a God. Since this plot point was more tedious than interesting, I'll just sum it up more tersely than usual. The group obtained a staff and magical grapes and skipped the entire death-trip through ice mountains and fire and whatever because literally months had gone by due to time being different on Turion. Thus the locals had gathered what they needed for them already in the time that passed.
Tirk Tovnic (head of the Mages Council, I think, it's hard to tell given we NEVER SEE THEM MEET PROPERLY IN THIS SEASON) gave the unofficial blessing to revive Aetos due to the fact that Turion was not Nintendus and therefore the 'don't revive people' law that normally would be enforced harshly against them did not apply. Sky High became a God, then used magical lightning to revive Aetos from his grave. And then Julian said what I thought mentally reading this, which is that Aribar had to have something wrong with him to want to revive Aetos, given Aetos was going to probably immediately continue the behavior that caused the problem in the first place. And then probably get killed again. But I digress.
Thankfully, Aetos was willing to sign the Manifesto this time. It was either that or more arguments about what was environmentally sound, a fate worse than death. Then the sound of a jet engine was heard, which was definitely harming the environment. Was Aetos going to go to jail for that? No... for it was...
Ivo Robotnik, the person who had definitely not lied about joining the Questers' side! Sky High was a useless God for he was frozen in time instantly by Ivo. But Aetos was less useless because now that he had signed, he was a Quester again. Ivo noted if he defeated the Questers, he would be given Nintendus. I don't know who agreed to this, though. Was it The Businessman? Ivo made it clear he would win now, because he was using a suit modeled after Razor, instead of relying on Aribar's powers like he had with the Aribar Army. The group pointed out that Razor was no longer a going concern, so even if Razor was epically powerful, it still hadn't made him a long lasting Quester. But Ivo, a weird fan of replicating powers of specific Questers, was unmoved.
After seeing that being a fake Razor would not cut it, Ivo whipped out a gun that was actually the
Old Quester Azure showed up, and wrote an immense post involving dragons, doing what he could, and watery lightning. It was about to miss, but Ivo actually rolled quite poorly, causing him to be hit by it. Ivo used Meteor Revolution to even the score, then Aribar helped partially un-freeze Sky High with the might of King Erwin. Then Ivo threw Julian at Aribar with gravity powers and killed them both like a rogue G-mod player. Well, it was pretty on-brand for him to have a gravity gun, at least. Much better than the Dog House Gun.
The sides traded blows and Gibby became increasingly upset because his attacks never hit because this was definitely not an imbalanced battle where some people hit a lot and others not at all due to a system that was definitely not imbalanced. Then Sky High's freeze counter expired and he woke up. Sky High helped stop Ivo by 'preventing him from stopping chaos control with his time powers', which was so specific as to almost be useless. But it was still something, I guess.
Ivo continued to take actual hits. His jetpack damaged, his pride damaged, blood running down his face, he told the Questers nothing would stop him. He soon tapped into eldritch powers and began to use Astral Fury as if he was a Phantom Lord. The beams of energy went into the sky. Rocks, er, lasers fell, and almost everyone died. The group countered with several 'staff projections of Kales Brando' and lightning. But despite taking several people's worth of health of damage and being thrown all over the place, Ivo would JUST NOT DIE. He was damaged past his normal HP... he did not care. He grabbed Dragoshi by the collar.
Ivo Robotnik: "NEVER... QUESTION... THE... EGGMAN!"
Then he overloaded the Gravity gun, gave an unearthly scream, and caused a giant gravity shockwave. Soon, he faded from sight, after having thrown everyone around with his final temper tantrum. Thus, contrary to his statement earlier, something stopped him... apparently, his own action, given how he was fine until he did that whole giant gravity shockwave thing. ANYWAYS, everyone got their EXP, except for Julian, who just got less because he died, which wasn't particularly fair because he always gets targeted in every fight BUT EVEN MORE ANYWAYS...
Sky High went to clean up the mess. Ivo was said to have gone to an 'unknown realm.' Dr. Mario revived Julian for probably an extortionate number of coins. Metal continued sleeping on his desk while The Ninja literally wrapped red tape around him, as he was in the throes of Chair-table syndrome. And the credits, credited to Bob Dole, occurred, ending the story for this season.