After sitting down, Chord remains uncharacteristically silent, staring out the window and watching the scenery go by. Just what's going on in that noggin? Confusion? Anger? Sadness? Hardware failure due to months' worth of vital processing component war damage being ignored? Or maybe he just found a cool game to play to pass the time?

The ship processes the directions automatically as MIDI walks off the bridge and down into his workshop.

Oh, hey, Pancake Party! I hope you don't mind, fellas, but I'm gonna take us for a detour. Not like we have any solid leads anyway, is it?
After punching some numbers into the console and flicking a few levers, the ship breaks off from the rickety piece of crap Trio was in and accelerates immensely.

Chord follows silently.

Chord isn't frozen anymore, but he doesn't seem particularly in a good mood either.
Mhm. Is that our line?

Surprisingly, Darkened Chords opts for Buster Shot this time around.

Live Free or Claw Hadal or something, all the fourth installment titles suck

Chord turns to L.
What are you even talking about?! I don't even know you, I don't remember you or Mega Man Shiny over here fighting Trio, and (points at Doc and Dark) these two assholes I know for a fact were NOT ON OUR SIDE!

Amadeus is too late to prevent Doc Robot and Dark Elite getting punched in the face.

Mighty, Sharena and I guess Emalf stand in front of a crudely drawn pentagram that's also on fire. A bunch of really expensive dice sets have been thrown into the flames and are now slowly being disfigured.

I swear I know what I'm doing.

---

You--!
Chord is evidently not happy to see Doc Elite, immediately jumping up to greet him with a fist to the face.

Hadal Claw again. Bye, defense buff.

Darkened Chord fires off another Hadal Claw.

When the turn order says so, a red laser charges at Beta Satan from a small rift in reality. The rift cracks and expands from it, eventually producing a charred, angry little idiot. i made this character before i was informed you people would be putting in actual effort into them pls dont ratio

---

Hadal Claw | Water/Laser | 30 damage100% Accuracy4 WE
A laser that somehow has a tapered end deletes the target's outermost shield or removes Defense buffs before calculating damage.

Muramasa Hone | Shadow/Cutter | 10 WE
The user pulls a giant sword out of nowhere and sharpens it, boosting all three of their stats by one stage for every 20% of HP, rounded up, that they have lost.

You're actually quite similar to the two at the scene in that regard. They seem to be spectating a certain battle via a large screen.
...
So, you don't intend on doing anything about this?
Threats like this have come and gone. It's not our place to interfere, nor do I think we're completely unprepared if he does get to us.
I- I know, but, this guy's different! Not even Bass is this- aggressive! This guy just kills people for no reason!
I know, but I doubt the world is just going to let him have his way forever.

SheepMan: Excellent! Let's get going, then.
The Navi follows behind the Met at exactly its walking pace.

Okay, that's a bit less disappointing, but it won't save ya!
Pulling up her Custom Screen, she just about plucks three cards that she uses at the first opening sequentially and without pausing: an IceMeteor290, a ChainBubble380, and finally a PlasmaGun370, the latter's output being quadrupled by both the bubble and the scalie's poison element!

---

IceMeteor290: Hits closest enemy's row with... meteors! ...made of ice!
ChainBubble380: Encase the first enemy in each row in a bubble!
PlasmaGun370: Paralyze and spread into an X shape on impact!

...That's it? Ten? I'd expected a bit more from- gah, nevermind.
As her vision returns, she is once again greeted with the sight of the ugly crocodile-broken-jaw-wave-man, continuing to avoid him for a few moments longer until her cannon arm charges, at which point she fires a water balloon at him which explodes into a cross shape dealing 40 damage, with bubbles briefly filling the diagonals of the would-be 3x3 square as it fades!

As you walk down a hall that seems to have recently been exploded, the door to a room labeled "Workshop" is open. The inside has definitely taken a beating. Everything of value is gone, the walls are covered in blast marks, with a dagger with runes carved into the blade stabbed into one too. A cracked boomeraxe hangs from a rusted metal rack, and nothing seems to have disturbed several years' worth of dust besides two sets of footprints. One leads to a table upon which there is a hole in the dust shaped like a playing card then circles back to the exit, while another goes straight through a different, now open and heavily rusted blastproof door into a much bigger room:
The giant hangar is chock-full of various pieces of electronics and weathered blueprints and piles of scrap. Most of the place is covered in two decades' worth of dust, but some of it has been blown away and replaced with rust coming in from an open skylight. The most complete doodads seem to be a couple of strange speaker-like devices with crystalline membranes sitting on one table, and there is a giant pile of junk metal in the far corner of the room. What really dominates the scene, though, is the massive cannon suspended midair by extremely tense chains, with many, many powerlines running to it from a haphazardly constructed computer terminal... which MIDI is already plugged into. Figures.