What Could Have Been Vol. 14

And...here we go.

As mentioned before, I kept in some stuff to hint the Dragons were not on the up and up. So them turning out to be evil isn't as much as of a shock.

Let's cut back to earlier, though; we meet Lynx outside the Galatea Project room, banging on the door now that Lachesis is dead and cursing it out for not letting in the "most perfect FATE."

Eventually, he gives up and turns around, noticing the party.

Lynx: ...I assume that since you fought the defective regulator, you know the majority of what composes me.

Leena: Very much...Mother Brain.

Lynx: Mother Brain...feh. A defective machine created by a defective people . I am as far beyond her as primates are from rodents. The perfect marriage of flesh and metal, organic brain and silicon logic.

Tarnruff: Says the man who spent most of a year chasing his own tail in an attempt to enter a base he was born in...

Lynx: I am not to blame for problems caused by the body of my organic host. In any case, it does not matter now.

He then reveals Serge is the Arbiter of Time, a being chosen by the planet to be the opposite of the Frozen Flame-just as Lavos uses the Flame to increase conflict and provoke evolutionary struggle, so does the Arbiter bring peace and change through harmony and symbiosis. The Prometheus Circuit, Robo, noticed this resulted in Serve having a unique biometric signature, and reprogramed the Flame's security to only allow the Arbiter or his friends in. By swapping bodies, Lynx hoped to fool the base, but Robo was one step ahead and tied the biometrics to Serge's soul instead; a lot of what Lynx has been doing is attempting to develop the same signature by performing heroic deeds...except as a psychotic robot in organic form, he does so by being a force of chaos and upheaval, as he doesn't understand peaceful change, only dominance and power (it's also discovered earlier he has no idea why Porre became an empire after he taught them advanced tech to make repairs to Chronopolis).

Cue boss fight with Atropos-Lynx, as he tries to take Serge's soul. During this, several things happen that become key to winning, namely Lynx weakening when attacking Serge due to "glitches." Why becomes clear after the fight, when Lynx pulls one last trick-

Turning into his body's original form, Wazuki. When it's clear Leena realizes that Atropos is still in control and he's just getting ready to backstab Serge, Lynx resorts to emotional blackmail and says that if he dies, so must Wazuki.

And then everyone realizes the reason Lynx can never seem to kill Serge is that Wazuki keeps preventing him, and that the real Wazuki has spent more than a decade containing Lynn's true potential. And from there, they realize death would be a mercy for Wazuki, a release from a long, often losing, struggle against the invader of his body. Cue cutscene of Serge giving the death blow, and Wazuki regaining his mind just long enough to hug his son before he dies, and Atropos' hologram winks out.

From there, happy scene as Kid is brought back to her senses and renounces her quest for the Flame ("That thing...it's evil. It turns you into your darkest self, makes you forget you aren't the only thing that matters"), Leena announces her intention to take control of Chronopolis and make time right...And then Harle steals the Flame, revealing she is an agent of the Dragons and she cannot deny her true mission of using the Flame to alter time so that the Dragonians lived. In fact, the second moon is actually the one from the Dragonians' world, and the site of the final dungeon.

Of course, then it's revealed that Lavos summoned them, not the planet. Conflict above all else.