Anyway, let's do one more Cold Steel IV Act 3 session!
Now it's time to use those bond points! Well, I already screwed up the profile entries last time, so let's not worry about that anymore. Let's just start with the ones I know I want to do. The obvious first choice is Emma. She wants to test our a magical charm that she learned from her mother. Once again, we see Rean and Emma in their astral (read: naked) forms. Apparently, the charm causes their consciousnesses to merge for a bit. It seems to do the trick for Rean, and Emma says it was originally a lullaby that her mom modified. Emma lets slip that it's something her mom wanted to use on her father, so it's basically a love spell or something. This scene ends rather abruptly with Emma just being embarrassed. All right then.
Let's do Altina next. She's using her ARCUS to talk to George. Apparently, the Black Workshop is completely abandoned, and Alberich took all of his important research data with him. Even though it likely won't result in finding anything conclusive, Altina still wants to go investigate. Naturally, they won't let the two of them go alone, so Crow, Duvalie, Sara, Randy, Towa, and Angelica, as well as Valimar and Ordine, just in case. Rean and Altina investigate the homunculi labs, of course. They eventually find the tanks where she and Millium were grown. She thinks about how much she's changed emotionally since she's met Rean, but she still doesn't totally understand it all.
I decide to roll with Ash next. He got a call from his old gang buddy Brad from Raquel, asking to meet up. Ash decides it's time to put the past to bed so he can move on toward the future. Turns out Miguel the information has been blackmailing Brad. Ash blames his actions for the reason the curse has taken such deep root in Raquel. They confront Miguel and find out he's some sort of war profiteer now. Ash asks him point blank if he's the one who got him out of Hamel. After a little prodding, Miguel admits to it, but he says that the imperial army found out about it and bribed him into giving up Ash, so he pawned him off to the woman who would raise him in Raquel. Ash realizes that decision has been eating away at him ever since, and he tells him how he and his mom wanted to thank the guy who brought them together because he considers Raquel his home now, not Hamel. That being said, Miguel and Brad are still criminals, so Ash turns them over to the authorities. Felt like I had to wait a long time between Ash's bond events to see how it played out, but this was really good.
