Episode 5 gets off to an odd start because of how worthless episode 4 was to anything surrounding it. It was basically a MASSIVE tangent / tack-on that ended up being pretty much entirely self-contained (good, because it made very little sense) so nothing we see here is going to build on it, and the transition is going to be abrupt / look shoddy no matter what. About the only thing you will see from it is “Hitsugi’s magic good/evil splitter sword” that Xiera is able to MacGuffin up a copy of because “of course”. So, the single magical-girl flower transformation plot point weapon comes out of episode 4 and that’s about it.

If you skipped episode 4:
Hitsugi was the magical angsty teenager that your character had to help in order to defeat a combination of an immortal Earth wizard magic/man & the Photoner’s original attempt at cloning Xion that they “Threw away” into another dimension. That dimension contained “Earth” and more importantly “high school in Japan”. Through her ability to use Ether (other dimension equivalent of Photons) she ends up manifesting a katana that can split apart good and evil forces inside of people and also things.
The Xion clone was called “MOTHER” there, by her/it’s own choice and was not nearly as smart nor as evil as the Photoners history books said it was. It dies at the end of the story of Episode 4.

Once you have completed all of the available quests in Episode 4, you can get this one, under ‘onward to episode 5’. You will have to agree to change the game over to episode 5, and this does affect the lobby to a small degree. (Ex. It takes away blonde girl from the bridge area/her quests, so if you didn’t do them you’d have to shift it back, etc)
Now, you get a black & white and sepia CG explanation with subtitles.  After the whole "Earth is in another dimension and we went there", it explains a new PD was born into the world, after a series of riots on earth the situation with ARKS was changing too. As long as there’s photons PD will resurrect no matter how many times it gets defeated. We were trying to rescue the victim of sacrifice within its core.

241 9/23 at 1000
A ghostly flower like point arrangement is hovering over a green planet. You and Matoi arrive to the bridge, but Xiao is already there and he has aged himself up. He now looks about like 18 or 20. He asks if everything’s ok, you look tense. Matoi explains she’s been preparing for a long time to welcome him back.

It should be noted that Xiao looks like a male version of Xion. He has a long ‘rat tail’ of blue hair on his otherwise short style. He has chosen a lab-coat-like outers with some purple and rainbow/foil areas. He has chunky calf-high boots and the shirt has purple criss cross accents. His pants are the same blue as Xion’s under/clothing. He also has black gloves that leave the thumb open. The biggest deal though is that he’s wearing her glasses & has just about the same shape/color of eyes.
Of course, this is as it should be, he’s basically like Xion ver 2.0 so it’s really appropriate that he took this form after ‘a period of time’.
The question that'll never get answered is why is this one male, and why did the planet identify as female? The hint for Xion was that her closest relationship was with a female photoner scientist so choosing a female is logical that way. "I want to be like my friend".

Xiera says she’s nervous but will support both of you to the best of her abilities. He says it’s a strategic op to save Persona, and it starts now. Now, Xiao will sit in Xiera’s chair. To advance, you have to choose

Salvation Vanguard.
Xiao has calculated a way to grant you the power to save Persona on a major ARKS operation. It warns you that it is timed, before you start.

241 9/23 at 1030
On a pad ship in a weird red tunnel, you stand with Matoi. This is in outer space somewhere, headed toward the greenish planet. The tunnel is foggy around the edges with red and black. A ‘pad ship’ has a big flat area on top and is square. The thrusters are all underneath. It projects a screen from it’s center so you can control it. It probably also has a force-field that traps atmosphere and certainly has a gravity generator.

Xiao calls in that even as Persona became the host for PD, they continue to resist its control. Every time PD fights ARKS, it is weakened and every time without fail Persona sends it back in time. They are trapped in an endless cycle, returning to the point when PD was resurrected in the new form. Matoi closes her eyes insisting we have to save them, and you will nod. Xiao says that Persona is in the core of PD now. As long as the connection remains it’ll be impossible to save Persona and get it out. But, even if you succeed, PD will simply seek out a new host, this is the worst case scenario because it puts us back where we started.

So, to save Persona we have to split it apart and utterly destroy the PD. Previously we had no way of doing that. But now we do! He excitedly explains. Xiera now chimes in that by using the latent abilities of Hitsugi’s Ame no Murakumo, we found a way. Her weapon could separate light from darkness, it saved Aru first then Mother from becoming a DF. So, we should be able to apply the same theory here. Xiao says we studied the sword’s abilities through watching it in action and so can replicate them. Using the bond between you and persona, you can now summon it, so he leaves the power in your hands as it’s something only you can do.

First it materializes the katana, then the double that the character is usually assigned in cut scenes. (no matter what your class is, it always has this) Xiao says the task now is simple, subdue the PD and reveal the core. If it works, you can then use the special Hitsugi Power Sword to separate the two. Then, both of you will have to use your powers together as one. Matoi says ther’s so many things she wanted to say and share, but she’s ready to go and do this. You prep the weapons and face down the tunnel as the pad ship shoots missiles at PD.

PD is…abstract.
It’s a red and black with gold borders theme, with a few areas of white. Mostly symmetrical, it best resembles a type of ‘flower’ abstraction with large petals arranged around a central core. The top and bottom are also petaled. It approaches the flying pad and turns 3 petals toward it at a time. The exterior of the petal each has a different offense. There’s 2 independent ‘stabby claws’ on flexible tentacles. There’s an oval covered in ‘eye like’ (they have a pupil, and all roll about independently) orange orbs that produces energy attacks and another spiky oval thing like a venus fly trap that can grab a character and slam it down. Each of the offenses can eventually be broken or ‘chipped’. (visible damage) It will change colors, rotate to other petals and try distant attacks of meteor type throws/missiles as it attacks other ARKS ships in the tunnel of…energy. Breaking these will eventually cause it to reveal a ‘stem’ a large metallic looking spike under it with which it can slash and stab the pad.

Destructing this enough, and the aforementioned ‘core’ will then be revealed which is a pinkish / whiteish glowing ‘orb’ type thing in the center. Attacking it (it is a large weakpoint) will have it manifest a…probably demonic looking torso-ish thing. This is black, has 2 arms with 5 fingered hands, a head but no face/maybe gold mask on the face, and the ability to open ‘the evil eye’ in the center of the chest. This thing does finger lasers, summons spiky ring eyeball things to float around the board, does energy attacks, opens the evil eye and pounds on the pad. This torso thing is big. It’s probably about 3 of the tallest character high, or larger. One hand could grab any character with ease.

*Highly likely that it is humanoid in appearance because of Persona that’s stuck in there/or the original sacrifice of the Photoners was also humanoid, so it makes sense that this thing would look the way it does/manifest like this.

It does NOT get to the part where it casts an evil halo of magic that sort of messes with the timeline a little bit. (Always does this in mpa) Once under this attack, everyone is separated into an ‘alone’ 1 v 1 pad with Persona (Trench coat purple sword man) OR Revealed Persona (The thing that your character could have become if it kept going wrong in time)

After defeating the Persona 1v1 (In MPA, if 1 person defeats it, it ends for everyone. If no one defeats it fast enough, this allows PD to do an OHKO hit on 80% of the party no matter what.) you can attack the torso more. If it loses enough HP before the end of the fight the gold ‘mask’ will shatter off revealing that it never had a face under there it’s just basic black/red gore that glows a bit. At this, it can open the evil eye on the face area and attack more. That’s the final stage, then it ends. It never reaches this phase in this fight.

Fighting it is about like the mpa, only less difficult.

At 1100
It will collapse, and now, Xiao says do it, now’s the chance. But it sends out spiky balls which Matoi and you CG-scene fight away and then both shoot the power blue beam from the double saber and her wand on its ruined non-face. This is about to kill or separate it.

Just A Little More!
I’ll Save You!

If you say I’ll Save You! A distortion happens and the image of it wavers, Xiao feels it’s manipulating space time to escape somewhere, where is it fleeing to? In an actual good intelligently evil ploy, it reaches out to smash Matoi, but you can get her out of the way. However, as you do, it takes the opportunity to grab you in one hand and vanish. As it vanishes, leaving Matoi alone on the deck of the pad ship and Xiera is panicking because the readings are disappeared but where’s you? Xiao confirms we’ve lost them. Matoi drops her rod, shouting that it can’t be!

At 1300
Back on the bridge Xiera is working hard to find out what went wrong. Earth Guide reports in that they can’t find your character on Earth. Matoi is very sad. But a transmission comes through that a black hole has suddenly appeared and is distorting the image that the person has taken through a telescope. Xiera says those aren’t really rare but…ones that appear abruptly are impossible. However, it’s intermediate mass, and something is denying observation of it. It’ll draw in a whole galaxy if it keeps going. What’s going on, it defies logic!

Matoi wonders if it has anything to do with PD and your char vanishing. Xiera says to give her a minute because the timing is too poor for it to be anything else. Xiao returns by teleporting in through rings and those ‘thought fish’ that Xion produced in her ‘water’. He says you already got the black hole report, so there’s good and bad news. The good news is, he found some readings for your char. Matoi wants to rush off to the rescue and gets worked up. But he says to calm down because there’s the bad news. Because the readings are in the center of the hole. The one and only absolute system, and the place where the universe began and the place where the planet Xion used to be.

*Then, it isn’t a real black hole.

And that’s where we’ll find our missing guardian.

So, what they’re probably going to do from now on is just continually mis-name this thing as ‘a black hole’ but it’s not. What it REALLY is, is some type of interdimensional PORTAL that is creating a gravity field (that’s sucking up stuff now/why they say black hole) It’s position is where Planet Xion used to be, which is fine, because she was just orbiting a star (like you do) being a normal planet.

This chapter begins in a flowery field where you are standing alone and confused. There’s gray skies above, pink flowers, and grass all around an open plane. There’s evidence of humans though, with a few broken low fences and some wooden sticks in the ground. There’s not much time to look around though because action is nearby.

Strange 2-legger lizard-dinosaurs with human looking people and knights on them are charging to stop a white hair woman who was also on a dinosaur. They shoot her off, and a sword man knight goes to kill her but she duels him.  All of the pursuers have knight helms on (no faces to see) and armor. They say she is wanted dead or alive, and all royalty here is trash.

She says she looks sweet but has real knowledge. A soldier smells a magic glowing pink rose which he throws to create a portal of shapes/runes in red lines up in the air that lets out strange goblins with clubs so she has to battle them. As more goblins are unleashed, she may begin to struggle to get rid of them all. Once slashed with a sword, they vanish instead of dying.

 However, you interfere and hit goblins so she demands to know who/what you are. Goblins keep coming and defeating, so rose guy foregoes smelling and crushes a new rose now, and makes a white portal which he says is never tiring to see. Summoned beasts should kill the cheeky and arrogant foes quickly. She asks to count on your assistance vs these foes, so you nod at her.

Now, you have to fight goblins. He says there is plenty of ephemera left so more will come. They do, but it is all club goblins and a pale goblin who has a sack full of prickly bombs. These are not difficult to defeat (if you defeated PD with ok ability).

This girl has twin tail hair style, that’s pretty long/mid back. She has frost blue eyes and is the usual light beige color. The hair is very…feathered though? The hair hangs kind of wide instead of straight down. She has on a blue/white outfit and carries an all white non-photonic western style sword.

If you beat them all…
The knights will run away and their lizards will run after them because this new foe (you) stopped their summoned beasts. She thanks you for your assistance, but confesses she was too impatient to see her brother and wasn’t mindful of search raids. She asks your name and you tell her, so she says you’re her savior. You disagree but she says her life is at stake due to the king of the nation. Her name is….

But a mysterious voice cuts her off! At the same time, a glow starts on your character that it cannot be rid of. As sparkles increase, the voice says “that’s as far as you go lost child of the record, let’s go back.”

She’s shocked you disappeared, and says no way who was that just now?

At 1400
Matoi sits glumly on the floor in Xiera’s area and you appear suddenly in the Bridge! Xiera starts panicking and wavering about to see if you’re ok. Xiao says you are so sudden but glad to see you are safe. Xiao says ya mind telling us what just happened? So you apparently start to try to do so, but a pool of water-like stuff appears in the bridge. Water ring/lines are hovering a few feet off the floor in mid air, as energy gathers in the middle. Nobody really knows what to do, except be shocked.

Suddenly, a woman appears hovering in the air there. She’s dressed in white, has a silver cross-mark shape necklace/charm on her chest and wide long, straight hair. The hair has an odd texture/effect under it. It fans out over her back as a cape would. The under-texture of it is speckled with glows/stars and is purple/blue and black like outer space. The top texture of the hair is normal and a sandy blonde color. She has part of it pointed up in bracers like 2 triangle cat ears on top of her head. Bangs cover one eye/side of face completely. Her eye (that’s visible) is about the color of her hair, but there’s a teeny cross/star in the pupil.

What’s SUPER interesting to note is that her top/vest thing has “ARKS” written on it in their lettering and a row of the stars that are its logo. The top ends in a ‘skirt like’ pleats, and she has white pants. The sleeves also go kind of ‘out’ like a skirt bottom too. She has normal enough white pants except for the zipper area is an open triangle that goes down probably too far. They’re also seemingly connected to…boots…that merge with the shin area and have no heel. So, leg shapelessly goes from knee to floor this way.  (She has no no under shirt and it looks like no bra either, except her underroos or whatever would go there seem to be star shaped as you can see a bit of them.

She’s sorry for bringing you back so abruptly she was impatient as well. Xiao demands of this new figure how did it get there and who is it? She says how then? Didn’t she just blow in here like the wind? (Yea ain’t no wind in space) Don’t tell me you were having a secret meeting! Sorry! You have to knock before entering, right? How awful of her, because she was by herself for so long maybe she forgets how to interact with others? Xiera summons a screen, and finds out that she’s made of nothing but photons. She looks like ARKS but she’s not. Matoi says she’s not a darker, do you know her? You don’t. She wonders why everyone’s acting so weird. Xiao asks her what she is. It didn’t occur to her that you wouldn’t know what she is.
As you can see here she's a bit of an off-base character with wierd things to say all the time, no explanations and kind of a scatterbrained approach to existing/talking. 

She is Alma.

She will tell you that she was the first Claris Claes. But for now, she’s Alma, so just call her Alma and that’ll be great. (yes that sentence isn’t 100% normal, but it’s here to illustrate that she’s not) Xiao says that one should be dead. Her body is long gone…so what you see now is just photons. She has now lowered herself almost to the ground. As you know, her body was destroyed by Luther. Her heart and photons though…never disappeared, they went into the Akashic Record the entire time. Basically when she died her soul became a part of it, understand?

You Want Us To Believe Such Claims?
Can You Back Your Claims?

*Remember, Xion was kind of ‘the Akashick Record” here, so she’s claiming Xion somehow absorbed or recorded her upon her untimely demise at the hand of Luther/Loser much earlier. She’s claiming that this kept her mind/personality going, and now she is manifesting out of just photons here today.

Now, this isn’t someone you want to be rude to probably, so if you ask Can You Back Your Claims? She tries to think of evidence…I wonder if there’s something…She’ll show you a cool trick! Watch carefully, so 3, 2 , 1, she disappears into nowhere. Everyone looks all around and finally find her over by Xiera’s chair. Matoi says she feels the technique that was just used…and that you’ve felt it too! It’s Loser’s time stopper! She says that’s right, he managed to copy it after experimenting on her. But also, Su gets really mad claiming it’s a technique, she tells you it’s silly to not say that it is magic. Gi and Ri were always clueless though when she did such things.

So it is confirmed that this Alma thing has one of Luther’s powers, the time stopper. It works for everyone in the area except the user. Nobody knows the size of the area it works on. Basically it stops the ‘world around her’ and lets her move/do things freely until she releases it. That’s how it worked for him.

*No one knows who these people are, she just cheerily telling names and stories now. She says Gi and Ri are still around, those two will know just who she is. Xiera asks her to whom she refers. She says it could be Regius and Maria, are they still doing fine? Matoi feels those are nicknames that would stun them if called. (Gi for Re-GI-us and Ri for Ma-RI-a) Alma says she understands because they always say to stop calling them that. Xiao says they’re on a mission and won’t be back for some time. That’s too bad…she laments. But that won’t matter anyway because they never had a connection to Xion so they couldn’t see her anyway. Matoi asks that she knew Xion?

*Everybody knows Xiao can pull people from anywhere and probably also any-when with his powers. He could yank back Maria and Regius from wherever they've been sent at the nod of his head, but he doesn't AND he doesn't act like it's possible here either. This is smart, and probably also to protect them should this Alma thing prove to not be as nice as she seems.

Alma says we were always together, so that’s how she knows of Xiao. Xiao clarifies that if one doesn’t have a connection with/to Xion, they can’t see her. Is that why you came here to us, a soul from the Akashic Record? She says yes to confirm all. And…people like that are the only ones who can stand against that thing too…pointing at the ‘black hole’ on the screen. She understands it’ll be difficult to trust her, so she’ll say everything she knows. (excitedly)

This end Chapter 0.

Well!
This is just full of surprises and gets off to quite the rolling start. But, unlike in Episode 4, none of them look like they’re just hand-waves or other trash. Everything so far looks fairly explainable, and possibly better yet—explain other things that we didn’t know about earlier 1-3 plot points and characters we actually care about.

Weird World:
The dino riding land is clearly a planet in another dimension that the ‘black hole that isn’t’ is the portal to get there.
Alma knows all about it and can shift people back and forth at will.
The portal IS a foe of some kind as Alma needs people to fight it (you)
It’s got something to do with how PD escaped during the battle when it figured out what the sword was going to do.
Questions:
So Alma got some of Xion's powers when Xion absorbed her?
Did Xion never mention Alma to keep Luther thinking she was dead the whole time?
Who else was 'so close with Xion'? Is Alma a 1-off or a fluke that this happened to?
If others can't see Alma, she could write on paper or type messages to them & still communicate?

What Are Photons?
Alma is on the bridge and will explain more of photons to you. She says they’re an element connected to the Akashic Record. They’re the essence of the record itself. They’re used as the way for the Record to record everything in the universe. When you use it, you channel the energy that was recorded from memory and replicate it. The photoners used it for an energy source but it could do so much more. But if you ask how…explaining it will get difficult. Xion didn’t think she could explain it very well either and only showed how to use it as energy. She somehow knows how it works, moreso than most. But she can’t explain how and why it could be used differently. If only she could…maybe the world would have been a better place. She wonders if people would have laughed and smiled…

She really looks regretful here.
This is a good bit to have. Basically Xion couldn’t explain how to do techs with photon, so she had the photoners using it probably like nuclear power or free electricity or something to power all their stuff instead. Alma frets about explaining what she knows (being unable to, that is) because could she have prevented stuff like Luther, possibly.

The Meaning of Claris Claes: With Alma & Matoi
On the bridge, both Matoi & Alma appear to talk with you. Matoi calls her the legendary hero before her. She says legendary is pushing it…because it was only 40 years ago at best. She was just really good and almost cheating at it, in terms on strength though, 2^nd generation is above her. And strictly speaking anyway, she’s not Claris Claes…so Matoi asks her to clarify and she says it’s hard to explain too, the photons within her are Claris Claes but, she had a double personality. She had a weak constitution so she was bedridden and had nothing but spare time, so she always talked to her photons.

(Is she nutz)
Then suddenly, it had its own personality which surprised her (as you do), but the people around were even more surprised because she had a rude way of talking. She would ‘leave it to her’ when she struggled to move her body or was facing off in combat. She was always willing to step up so they named that one Claris Claes. (Does that word 'claris claes' mean 'go getter' in the language? That's what they seem to be implying here but?) That’s why Maria & Regius don’t call her that, but she doesn’t mind whatever you call her but for her own sake do try Alma. (So, she does mind) Matoi says she understands but…So Alma asks her to not be so formal. Matoi tries to understand this too, and asks how’s the first Claris Claes doing in her body now? Alma doesn’t know, because she gave up on her body and disappeared.

Matoi is confused.
Alma will try to clarify by saying that she gave up her body and became her body. (What) So, in other words her body is the Claris Claes and her heart (And the photonic creature you see here) is Alma. Matoi asks if Claris Claes protected Alma, but really saying either protected the other is rude, because her last words were I won’t be borrowing this! But, that makes her it too, so she could get used to being called that.

The scene ends.
Wow ok.
So Alma made up an imaginary friend because there was somehow NO entertainment 40 or 50 years ago? No one ever came to see her and chat? There was no tv? No books? No video games? It doesn't make sense that she could get THAT bored that as a teen, she would make up an imaginary friend out of 'her photons'. I mean, you could understand some little 6 year old child with no parents going out of her own mind if irresponsibly left alone to suffer but Alma was being treated obviously really well then so this whole "She got too bored in bed" thing doesn't want to fly real well here.

So, because she was so photonically inclined, somehow part of her own personality split off maybe, like her 'rude' side that she tried to hide and now blames the imaginary friend for but then she accidentally embodied it somehow and it said "I'll not borrow this body" and took off. So.....did it do that when she 'died' in battle 40 years ago? It'd be pretty easy to do if the main mind of Alma was sucked up by Xion when the body got pushed too far in the Falz fight.

Questions:
Where's the body now containing the imaginary friend?
Is it a 60 year old woman running around somewhere smarting off to all? (Granting Alma died at 20 which was 40 years ago)
Is it dead and this Xion-Helped-Spawn photon ghost is the only thing left of her? (Seems likely)

Omega
AP 241 9/23 at 1450
On the bridge Xiao wants to review the info, so calls upon Xiera for a status update of the ‘black hole’ (remember, it is not, it is a portal hole to another dimension with the OMEGA in it--calling it a PortalHole would be VERY logical and much better less confusing but they never will, just like how they abuse the word "Evolution" when they MEAN "Transformation"--those 2 words DONT mean the same thing and it causes confusion.) She pulls up a floating screen to show a black circle with the red around it (that is typical of darker type influenced stuff and that’s likely no accident) She says with her info as the base, using the Florenberg Black Hole Equation a cinematic goes through false-color mapping of space as the ‘hole/portal’ sucks in planets and nebulas and various things until it fills up the screen. Matoi frets that the universe will grow dark. Xiera says that the current understanding is that it shouldn’t consume/expand so fast so something is very wrong with this one.

*Ok yeah nobody better be even slightly into astrophysics here (like uh...watched it on tv level) because it'd have to be going at like a bajillionty X the speed of light to even do slightly a bitsy portion of what she's illustrating here. This is in again wacky game trash everythings godzilla-dramatic level which is silly if you think about it for more than 1 minute--and annoying for the same reason because throwing absurd garbage 'turn off your brain' is not an exciting way to plot anything.

Xiao looks to Alma for help, saying she was like a soul in the Akashic Record…and no doubt she was the one who could return your character to here. He knows that your pattern came out of the black hole, so it would make sense that Alma could cross between here and whatever’s inside.

So what’s in there? Where’s it lead?
He's asking the important questions. She tells him that he already knows, because there’s only 1 answer. The original place Xion was, the birthplace of the universe, a place that existed at the same time as the universe beginning. It’s the actual Akashic Record. As for the planet you ended up on, let’s just call it OMEGA for now. (Omega is the final character in the Greek alphabet, which they DO use here, you will see an occasional letter of it in armor names or guns sometimes. Greek does have “Z” in it but it’s “Zed” and not at the end) Omega is a world born from the records recorded by the AR, it is the embodiment of records. Or, it could be easier to understand that the AR is having a dream and the dream is that whole planet. This confuses Xiera. (Rightly so)

She connects it to Earth by saying that the series of conflicts there…did Ether do this? Alma says it’s possible (but its pretty clear she doesn’t know) But, the photons that were discharged onto Earth, staying there, mixing with Ether, everything got strange after that. Matoi wonders if Xion had anything to do with it even though she’s no longer…. (she leaves off alive) Alma claims that’s a misunderstanding because Xion is Xion, and AR is AR and they are separate. While it is true that with Xion’s death there’s no longer an entity that can interface with the AR…but the AR is still there. Nobody can see it, but the universe continues to record everything.

Xiera tries an analogy that the AR is the library and Xion was the librarian?
Alma likes this a lot, and says there’s no one to maintain it but the library is still there. It can’t be accessed normally. But it has become a single world OMEGA. Xiao accuses the PD of transporting itself there and fusing with it. This caused the fake black hole portal problem. Alma says that it’s the conversion of the records into dreams that take up physical forms. It’d be fine if that was it-- but something vile is in there too. If left unchecked, everything will be consumed even the future and the past. That’s why she’s here. She claims to be someone who nolonger exists but she wanted to see the future Xion and everyone worked so hard for.

The scene ends.

Making sense of this is difficult anyway.
Gonna try it:
1. The Akashik Record is USUALLY an inaccessible, self-contained energy that 'records' everything that happens everywhere
2. Xion may have originally been part of it, but she was the only thing that could access or alter it
3. Xion is permenently dead so now no one can access the record
4. The AR is in it's own little pocket dimension that broke off 'when the universe began'
5. Persona/PD got into the pocket dimension and fused into the AR in an attempt to escape defeat/death
6. The AR has accidentally dreamed up an entire planet full of people & for some reason they ride dinosaurs
7. Because the AR is what it is, 'dreaming' things for it becomes physical reality in the pocket dimension
8. The pocket dimension is raging out of control because PD infested it & now it's ruined

A decent set of explanations thus far.

Will You Lend Me A Hand: With Alma
On the bridge Alma appears telling you she’s explained everything to the best of her ability, so will you lend her a hand?

All Right

That’s a choice, but it’s also the only one so it’s not. She’ll say thanks, annnnnd the scene ends.

Later, she drifts around on her strange glowing pastel rainbow ball. (This ball has never been seen before but nobody remakrs about it) She lays on the ball as it sparkles and floats through the air on the bridge. She swings her feet and seems pleased, reading Xiera’s many floating screens. Xiao says that PD has combined with the Akashic Record, we’ll have to defeat it to separate them. It’s a straightforward plan, it’s no different than what we’re used to. He is having trouble imagining the situation on Omega, and how even to get there.

So, he asks Alma how she gets there because no ARKS ship can go into a black hole. Well not a REAL one, but remember, this ain’t no black hole/it doesn't function like an actual one, it's really a rampaging portal that nobody explains where the sucked-in stuff goes. She says to stop time and just fly in there. He believes that’s an expected answer, and asks if it’s the real job of Claris Claes to do reckless things. Matoi might have a small affront at this. Remember the order they go in, Alma was first and died, Matoi was 2^nd and ‘vanished’, and ClarisClaes the anger management girl is third. Matoi is slightly bothered by this because she is a Claris Claes title holder too, and feels he accuses her of being reckless--but this isn't what he really means, he's after Alma here, but not badly so.

Xiera misinterprets her, and says that the law of gravity doesn’t apply if time is frozen. If we are able to ignore gravity we can send you to Omega, and Xiera understand the theory but feels its risky. Alma says it’s not risky because she got your char out so it’s surely reversible. But it’s rather taxing and she could do it better if Claris Claes was still here. And that’s why, 2^nd gen, can you help me?

Matoi is shocked at her ask. She explains she needs people outstanding at photon manipulation so if she’ll do it, everything will be fine. So, Alma needs a booster or backup to be able to do it well/the transport of 2 people to Omega.

You’ve Got This Matoi
It’s OK

If you encourage her with You’ve Got This Matoi, She says she’ll do her best, be careful and you do your best too. Xiao tells Xiera she’ll have to go there too, he’ll manage the ship in her absence. Xiera excitedly says that she’s going too, but then protests about her lack of combat ability. Alma reassures her by saying she’ll concentrate on a form for her that will allow her to perform navigation duties instead. However, the appearance you might take on is up to Omega itself. Xiera is fretful, saying she’s uneasy and it’s her first time on-site but she’s got a bad feeling.

I’ll Protect You
You can Opt Out If You Are Scared

You can’t actually tell her she’s able to opt out, because Xiao is the being with the most authority of all people (ever?) and he’s already commanded her to go. So, if you say I’ll Protect You , she says she’ll be in your care. Alma is happy about this, telling everyone that once she stops time in the area, you can approach the hole with the campship. The closer you are, the easier it is to send you through so prepare well before entering the camp ship. You nod at her, and it unlocks Story Quest The Existence of Salvation.

The Existence of Salvation
“Even when the situation is grim, those who don’t give into despair will find the existence of salvation that will appear before them.”

In a purple swirl tunnel, Alma explains: The world of Omega is a draem formed by the AR. The memories of the universe are all scrambled up. The people and cultures in omega are the result of planets of different ereas that got recorded. It’s a dream of the universes’ record so there’s an endless supply of the unexpected that can happen there. It seems strange of me to say this because it was I who invited you, but watch yourselves out there. She’s counting on you.

You appear in a grassy field , exactly like the one from the first time you went there. Looking around, it’s basically empty, but a tiny glow spins around your character, confusing it.

It’s Xiera as a fairy! She’s tiny! In a pink and white dress, and without shoes. She has pink ankle cuff bracelets, detached puffy sleeves, and purple with blue wings. Her pigtails are now ringed with flowers. She explains that by using this form, she can always be by your side. Now, she’ll navigate for you, so lets try to find civilization.

Chapter 1-1 The Savior begins