The Sinners burst into the casino, ready to mount their daring heist.
The security guards recognise the gang's Tingtang getup on sight and simply give them nods of acknowledgement while Saude and Effie, still dressed as croupiers, swiftly escort Rodion to the casino cage - presumably to pick up the chips she'll need for the buy-in at the top floor. Dante is amazed watching the two of them work, everything from their expressions to their body language seeming to fit their disguises to a T. For the moment the Sinners are left to mill about in the lobby and wait.
Sadly there are not new talksprites for the gang to reflect their Tingtang getup.
Gregor: "Try not to go saucer-eyed at everything like a fascinated kid, Don Quixote. You'll seem fishy..."
Ishmael: "The guests here look dead inside with their dim eyes, and they smell worse than the Tingtang schmucks we faced. Do they even wash..."
Gregor: "I don't think they'd be too happy about you holding your nose right before their faces, Ishmael..."
Ishmael: "But, this is the kind of bilgy stench I'd only ever caught from deckhands..."
Ishmael might consider herself well-travelled but she ain't travelled far enough if she doesn't know just how bad gambling addictions can get, let alone here in the Backstreets where even the remotest restriction or safeguard on siphoning the money and wishes from the pockets of the unfortunate has doubtless been removed long ago. Especially down here on the ground floor, where clearly the primary attraction is slot machines going by the background CG - truly not even the barest veneer of skill or ability to assess probability, you just sit down in front of the addiction box and pull the lever until your brain has been warped forever.
Oh hi gacha mechanics-
Don and tiktok brainrot stimulation, name a more volatile duo.
Don Quixote: "What must I do to hear the jolly bells as the other patrons are?"
Dante: <I don't think I've been to one of these places before, so I wouldn't know...>
Hey wait a second how does Don not know what a slot machine is. Like she's smol but she objected in what seemed to be legitimate frustration when Rodya implied she's young, and she's the only Sinner besides Ishmael to have the Fixer Identification Number on her ID card filled in.
Narration: Looking at all the flashy symbols and numbers spinning had slowly eroded my resolve to act the part of a stern manager.
Dante: <I, I guess a little peek is fine?>
Could Don really have just not encountered gambling before in her travels across the City? Maybe if we assume that J Corp is like, The One Gambling District, but even if there's a high concentration of it there that doesn't mean the 'culture' and tech of J Corp hasn't spread all over the City. Wing products proliferate everywhere, that's capitalism baby! And no way in hell a place like this regulates gambling to the point only the Backstreets has it.
Don Quixote: "It says here to press the button! Is pressing it what one ought to do?"
Maybe if she consciously spurned it as amoral, a vice that would distract her from her righteous duties, but she clearly has a completely surface-level, naive with all the flashing colours and lights and spinny-
Uh-oh.
Narration: The hand I'd swiftly otustretched to stop Don Quixote from touching the machine unexpectedly fumbled and landed smack on the button-
Dante: <Yikes!>
Narration: -and in an unpredictable series of coincidences, someone had left a token in it, enough for one game.
Meanwhile, literally just across the room, leaving Dante and the Sinners unattended for all of two minutes;
Effie: "That manager? It was the only favour we asked of them, they'd better be doing a good job."
Rodion: "You can count on Dante, dear duo~ They're one of the few sensible pals who gets what's up."
Saude: "That's good to hear. With so many sheets attached, they should be able to win any game with ease. We just need to be careful not to draw attention here."
Narration: Waves of casino chips plunged from the machine, so many that I wouldn't dare try to gather them up.
Big lmao that Dante made sure to grab a red hawaiian shirt so their disguise still fit their aesthetic. If they swapped shirts with Don they'd be in Christmas colours.
Narration: I came here determined to do something right, and it fell apart all so soon.
Being Durante Is Suffering.
Other patrons of the casino begin rubbernecking, jolted from their addiction-fuelled reveries at the realisation that waltzing into a casino and hitting the jackpot on your first game is some freak sh*t. Unfortunately, security comes to much the same realisation, and approach to administer an ID check.
Yes, even though they make more money than God they get really upset with you and kick you out if you're too good at the games where human skill is a factor, because scam merchants always feel deeply entitled to your money.
Faust: "Chance in this place doesn't work the way we think it usually does. You could accumulate your luck for a big payout or trickle in small amounts to break even, but winning the jackpot on your first try should be a literal impossibility here."
Faust explains that, of course, to make it slightly more unfair than even real life casinos, control over the 'lesser singularity' of J Corp means that this casino is fixed so that you engage with the push and pull of the wishpower economy or you get f*cked.
Don Quixote: "Chips are raiing down like shooting stars!"
Don, presumably, is eating casino chips like chocolate coins.
Ishmael: "I'm disappointed. You're none other than our manager, and I expected you to show your capability and clear the disgrace of failure from us."
Narration: Ishmael's barrage of scathing whispers was something to marvel at, as Gregor muttered in awe. On top of that, her piercing gaze I had never felt before... it made me want to weasel away under a rock, if there was one. For once, I thanked my clock for lacking eyes to meet her glare.
Executive Manager Dante rolls Worst-Timed Poker Jackpot, asked to Kill Themself Immediately.
Of course it may not just be Dante's fault the Sinners are suddenly getting far too much scrutiny, as Gregor hurriedly points out. For when Dante turns to look and see what he sees...
Regrettably a joke that doesn't land as hard without a custom talksprite or a CG of her out of disguise.
Ryoshu, still in her LCB fit, because she just didn't put on a gangster outfit and walked in at the back of the pack and nobody noticed.
Gregor: "Gah... Manager Bud, today isn't our day, huh..."
Dante: <Yup... looks like we're screwed. Royally...>
Effie: "This can't be... All the work we did to put this plan in motion... Faust, what were you thinking volunteering to bring these fools along for your missions? You're supposed to have near-unparalelled brilliance, right? Then use it!"
Faust: "Even though I haven't worked with them for long, I was able to realise something: I ought to become a Faust that believes in uncertainty."
Faust: "That is what my 'plan' entails."
Effie: "I have GOT to kill myself."
Dante: <Alright... It's time for our usual gig...>
That's the spirit, Dante! Go girl, give us pessimism.
A brief fight with casino security ensues, but I'll skip over it for now in favour of moving to the next map node, which has a slightly more notable one.
In fact, Ryoshu is just as bored with the trash mob battles as me if not moreso, her eyes inexplicably glowing bright red not unlike Vergilius' - she can just Do That.
This is honestly the most pressed we have ever seen Ryoshu, she's more pissed about having to fight security guards than she is about getting her skull cored out by Don's lance.
This is definately payback for the decapitation in Canto I.
Ryoshu, surprisingly, only shakes her head with a look of complete confidence.
Ryoshu: "... This is art. Poetaster, gimme the knife."
Yi Sang: "You may forever take it from my hands. The blade will be better off parting ways to wander about the air for however long."
Blursed image.
Narration: Ryoshu held his dagger and threw it straight into the air. It struck an anchorage on the ceiling that kept the chandelier still, causing it to sway precariously.
Narration: Indeed... Ryoshu may be weakened from what she once was because she became a Sinner, but nevertheless... She was still the best swordswoman we had, able to cut through steel like a proverbial hot knife.
Narration: Sure, she treats my words with less respect than she would a wad of gum, but that wasn't a problem.
Narration: Everyone's eyes turned to the swinging chandelier... and eventually, flustered by all the gazes falling upon it...
Yi Sang: "Thus, in a haze, it succumbs."
Narration: The chandelier crashed to the floor in full force, making a tremendous noise.
Narration: Nothing else happened.
Dante: <So, uh, what was that for? Ryoshu?>
Ryoshu: "... a performance."
Gregor: "You just made that up, didn't you?"
Ryoshu has been getting some fantastic character moments and she still has a couple more in the works, it's quite remarkable.
Here we see the lobby battleground, complete with fallen chandelier in the background courtesy of Ryoshu. There are three kinds of Casino Security - Collected, Confident and Rigid. This lot have +2 Offence level, making them deceptively dangerous to clash against for the baby Sinners (we'll revisit that in a jiffy, don't think I missed that offhanded line while Ryoshu was beclowning herself), but more than that the brown-coated Casino Security have some utterly heinous coin effects that will effectively cripple a Sinner if they land - the blackjack-wielding Confident ones have Hold It Right There which inflicts two stacks of next-turn Power Down, a somewhat depreciated status that drops the Base Power of all skills the entity uses by the Count, and the baton-wielding Rigid ones have Freeze! which inflicts a whopping 4 Plus Coin Drop next turn. Plus Coin Drop is arguably the strongest status debuff in the game, as the vast majority of enemies flip positive coins and the benefits of reducing coin power are only magnified against multi-coin skills, the most dangerous kind. To put it into perspective there's a 2* ID we'll probably talk about after next Canto who is a sleeper powerhouse support unit if nothing else because of his ability to inflict 2 Plus Coin Drop next turn with his skill 2.
Then there's the Casino Security Chief, the one in the grey coat kind of concealed under the right side of the turn counter there. He has the third form of surprisingly nasty negative status effect he throws around with wanton abandon - a whole lotta next turn Paralyse! As I explained in the Canto I postscript paralyse fixes the power of X coins the entity flips that turn to 0, which is absolutely crippling for the base IDs who wager so much total skill power on their coins and have so few to throw around.
Another reason normal battles can be kind of frustrating is that the autotarget AI has almost no conception of what clashes are possible in your party's given speed ranges, so you end up taking completely needless one-sided attacks in the process. It's fine for our purposes, as it gives me another opportunity to illustrate a small detail - Don's flinching sprite is an interesting character choice for something that flies by so quickly. Rather than looking obliviously silly, or genuinely pressured, she leans into the oncoming blow with an expression of something like annoyance.
The battle ends in another victory, and the casino security guards slip away with their lives upon defeat instead of exploding into giblets.
Saude: "You all know that our goal is to win the game being held on the top floor, not reduce the ground floor of the casino to rubble, right?"
Dante and I agree that some of the Sinners definitely don't know or care.
Saude: "Not only must we reach the top, we also have to win the game as our objective states... Thus, we need the wishpower to make it happen."
PainPeko.jpg
Outis asks where best the group can procure more wishpower from their immediate environs, and Saude points out the roulette table near to the entrance - people tend to pop into the casino daily to test their luck there, so it will have naturally accumulated a steady trickle of wishpower.
Dante: <Think you can pull that off?>
Outis: I have carried out countless operations much greater in scale."
Outis: "Your preposterous blunder amounts to nothing in the grander scheme of things, Manager. It has to have been the fault of the drudging dredges hwo obfuscated your ability to make sensible decisions! Don't let their words deter you!"
Dante: <Preposterous... I see... Wait!>
God, f*ck. Even Outis can't fully brush aside that dipsh*t move with the slot machine, she's just spinning it as 'listening to the other Sinners (derogatory) temporarily rendered you A f*cking Imbecile, executive manager, you can't be blamed for such psychohazards'.
Meanwhile, Heathcliff is already making a mad dash for the entrance.
Narration: Were we too focused on the conversation, or did we collectively lose our minds?
Dante calls after Heathcliff to ask what the f*ck he's doing, but Heathcliff shoots back urging the group to stop chattering and get a move on heading upstairs already. Then, making his inexplicable behaviour yet more mad-seeming, he turns and heckles the casino security within an inch of their lives.
Heathcliff: "That blondie over there is a rookie who's as unfledged as he gets. And that mate there we call our manager has a bad case of lost memories and can't wield a weapon to save themself. This is what you're struggling against? What a joke..."
Dante and Sinclair mutually wail and sob and cry and throw up to have been subjected to such bitter invectives.
Heathcliff: "And last thing, that club you're holding deserves a better owner."
The security chief rushes forward in a rage, swinging for Heathcliff's skull...
Hey you have a Counter not an Evade, I call foul.
Saude is genuinely edging her aneurysm like it's 11pm on the 31st of November and she's ready to pop if the wind blows the wrong way.
Narration: Spouts of what I assume was once wishpower until moments ago poured through the poor remains of the roulette. As if in death throes, Saude let out an agonised scream before clapping her hands over her mouth... I couldn't help but turn away from the tragic sight.
Narration: "When I grow up, I wanna be a wish sticker, giving hope to everybody!" I could almost hear the unfilfilled dreams of those lost wishes in my imagination."
The even funnier thing is that this wasn't an accident. Oh no. Heathcliff has a plan.
Heathcliff: "Oi, listen up, you thickos. Do you want to admit to your boss 'bout breaking this thing while fighting us and get lambasted for it? Or do you want to make it our fault and let us through?"
Rigid Security: "T-this was... a month's worth of luck..."
Security Chief: "... it won't be any safer for you upstairs..."
Heathcliff: "Eh, never been too close to safety anyway. 'Preciate the advice."
Heathcliff may have destroyed our backup source of wishpower, but he did so in service to a genuine Soul-Read of the security chief that secured the party an exit to the next floor of the casino rather than subjecting us to grinding through every security guard in the building. Heathcliff truly out here illustrating the difference between Intelligence and Wisdom, even if he doesn't get credit for it.
Heathcliff returns and expectantly asks Dante to heal his shoulder, dislocated by a mere graze from the security chief's baton. Dante can only stare at him blankly, perhaps looping back around to Numbed By The Horrors.
Faust: "Took you long enough to realise."
Effie: "Faust... This is one of those times when it's better to keep your mouth shut."
The group proceed upstairs to the next floor.
