Mission Two

After the raging success of the first mission, where I only lost half of my squad, I was feeling pretty good to go again!

As I waited for my next mission to present itself an ad came on TV. Rows of identical soldiers, waves of flying dropships, what was it an ad for? Some sort of hamburger. The Advent Burger, available in stores now. Two <unintelligible Advent soldier speak> patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.

Looks pretty good to me! Oh, right, they're the bad guys so I'd better be suspicious!

Turns out the base they've flown me to is only running on minimum power and Chief Engineer Shen needs some whopping big battery to get it all to full power. Looks like a job for some awesome soldiers! I've been joined by Collin "Sixth Doctor" Baker and Ada Lovelace from Team Physics! Also some dude with a hockey mask. I dunno. Don't ask.

I've previously  discussed the Doctors, Earth's first defence against alien invasion. It's good to have the Sixth Doctor with us! 

How did Ada Lovelace get there, I hear you ask? If you don't know of her, brief summary here, but basically she was instrumental in early computing, being the first computer programmer. Well, Albert Einstein actually developed wormhole technology, though hid the results from all mankind. He's been travelling through space and time, a bit like Doctor Who, but with even worse special effects (yes, it's possible). He's recruited lots of famous scientists (especially physicists) and they join the fight against Advent. You can pick a Team Physics member by their scary tattoos. Also by the way they carry pens with them to note down complicated formulae.

A resistance-led truck breakdown has led to Advent being stranded in the wilderness with a whopping big battery on the back of a flat bed truck. How convenient! It's well guarded by some really low level minions. Thank goodness they didn't think to put a <redacted due to not knowing about them at this stage of the game> guarding it!

Jane.
See Jane?
See Jane run?
Run, Jane, run!
See Jane slice this guy in half!

Ah, this commander is unimpressed with our antics and tries to use his finger-gun. It malfunctions.

So in come the aliens! This is a sectoid. In XCOM they were kinda cute almost. They had baby psychic powers and only had three hit points. In XCOM 2 they are taller, some sort of human hybridisation (or maybe they're just eating really well, those burgers I saw the ad for did look pretty good!). They have more impressive psychic powers and if you don't take them down fast with your newbie troops you can face psi-zombies (resurrected from dead units), be mind controlled, panicked, disorientated etc.

This one gets a face full of Sixth Doc lead.

The mission goes like clockwork! I went very heavy on grenades and was pretty careful moving forward. There were a few injuries, but no casualties!

Rookie Sixth Doctor gets upgraded to a grenadier, heavy weapons specialists that can lob grenades long distances and/or use a minigun to crank out the bullets.

Ada Lovelace, very fittingly, is upgraded to a Specialist, she gets a cute little Gremlin drone that can be upgraded to either heal or hack or a bit of both. I think she'll go the hacking line as befits her experience!

Ahh, what a big battery! We'll be able to watch the big screen TV with this sucker!

Doc Tygan has further analysed the chip that was in my brain. It could pass huge lots of data directly into my cerebral cortex. I try to pay attention, but I am hungry. An Advent Burger would hit the spot. I'm not sure what data they'd want to pump directly into my brain. 

That stupid burger jingle is stuck in my head.

Turns out that the base we're in isn't like the old underground XCOM base, it's a whopping big ex-alien spaceship! The big battery was instrumental in restoring full power. Now we've got a really cool mobile, flying base! Also, the big screen TV works!

So now we're mobile we'll be able to uncover more alien dastardly plots. But first I've directed them to find the nearest Advent Burger joint.