Mission 15: Garden's End
Loading screen courtesy of Professor Frink
Adam Zorn and Jimmy Jupiter go home to New Aeden with two others, and face off against the reality altering Simon Hart of the Connection.
Part 1
Two of the Connection members are wearing the bodies of Jimmy and Adam's fallen comrades - you have to defeat them and stop them from hurting the civilians on the map, while ushering the civilians to a portal that takes them off-world. The civilians start off in four cages in the city-you have to move in reasonably quickly and engage the Connection or they'll start killing civilians, possibly causing you to lose the mission -10 out of 24 rescues is mandatory, 20 out of 24 earns you bonus points.
Its a big map, so if you don't have a handy Atlantean or telepath to scan for you you'll have to search for the cages - from your characters point of view looking away from the Victory Fortress, there are two nearby to the left, one of which is guarded by Orbital Girl, and two to the right further away, one guarded by the Red Hood. So send your slower character to engage Orbital Girl and the faster ones (and this includes Adam Zorn - he can chain-teleport across a map pretty quickly if you direct him) to take on the Red Hood.
Orbital Girl
Orbital girl hovers almost all the time, and uses high knockback crushing powers - so tackle her with ranged characters, preferably heavy ones. (Adam Zorn is almost ideal here). Killing her will release Jo Tau, the energy form wearing her body, who uses similar attacks in the form of a special tractor beam to throw her opponents around.
The Red Hood
A bit of a batman type - with a gadget for every occasion. He relies mostly on melee attacks with energy bolts, gas bombs (acid burn) and an area stun signal thrown in and will use these intelligently - specifically throwing gas bombs at Jimmy to take him down. So use Jimmy against Orbital Girl by throwing objects at her. There is a special little trick to this - if confronted with Chaos, she'll notice that his staff is voice controlled, and can perform a special HELIUM attack on him to prevent him from using his extra powers and turns him into a plain old melee fighter.
In case anyone's wondering - the NOCTURNAL AVENGER attribute doesn't do anything, its just a little joke I threw in. You face him once at dawn, and he never gets twice as strong.
When the Red Hood falls, Gabriel Horne pops out and commences attack using vertigo and enrage attacks. He isn't particularly dangerous by himself- and tends to act more as a backup to other Connection members.
Sondra Strange
Sondra is hiding inside a civilian in the other cage near Orbital Girl/Jo Tau's cage. When the cage is broken, 'Sondra' will develop a mysterious headache and pop out to attack any hero who talks to the distressed civilian. This can be delayed at your leisure - so leave her till last with Adam Zorn ready to blast her when she appears.
Connection Energy Forms
This is the first time you go up against these guys, but not the last by any means. They fly, they're fast, they have very little health and they heal. They also have a fair chance of absorbing a lot of energy attacks but are vulnerable to crushing, so keep throwing things at them. Other useful attacks against them are Anemone's telepathic scan field, King Zero's Bion Field beam (the fall will often KO them) and Chaos' Mercury Punch.
They tend to congregate and swarm on one individual, leaving that poor unfortunate mental blanked, irradiated, dizzy, thrown around and generally helpless, so its almost mandatory to take them on in pairs unless you have a particularly well-designed custom character.
Part 2
Things get considerably harder in Part 2, due to two factors: Simon is there in person and can re-spawn fallen Connection energy forms, and secondly, no-one can fall in this mission. This is probably the toughest mission since the face-off against the Pharoah.
Characters with low health and no Passive Defences, such as Chaos need watching closely.
Your first task is to cross a small town block into the park while Simon animates objects around you - almost immediately one of the large tower blocks will come to life and start attacking - so just run for it, possibly using the Q+ Beam combo to take it down.
By the time you reach the end of the street, Gabriel and Sondra have usually caught up, so be ready to take them out before they get too close.
Beating up the Connection is not a priority - Simon can respawn them and has a sort of infinite DISPERSED FORM ability himself. If you take him out he dissolves temporarily and all other Connection members fall, but he'll always reform again within about 15 seconds at full health. So take them out if you need to but concentrate on your main priorities.
First, Jimmy has to atomically excite the main crystal nexus. To get there quickly, send Adam in by chain-teleporting and then Castle with Jimmy.
Once Adam's done this, use him as a decoy for the other Connection members - he can survive a lot of dizziness and irradiation before falling (and can teleport out of Simon's crystals), and none of this matters when he gets sent back home first.
When Jimmy has excited all three crystals in the nexus, Prof. Zandor sends a beam down to quantum-jump Adam back home (similar to the way he arrived in our world when the Horror zapped him). Adam turns into a portal then which everyone else must use to end the mission, leaving Professor Zandor free to blow up his planet in a last desparate measure to destroy Simon.
There are two cages of civilians here. If you can get any of them near an excited crystal they transform into superhumans thanks to the radiation given off by the crystals, and will join the fight with their heat vision and superbreath. This is definitely worth doing, not only for the backup but to unlock the final optional characters in the campaign.
Professor Zandor will lend a hand if things are looking bad for the team by spawning holograms of Adam and Jimmy to draw the Connections fire. If they detect either this or the transforming rays which he sends down to activate the crystals which Jimmy has primed, the Connection will notice and send Jo Tau up to disable his satellite - thsi puts a time limit on the mission which can only be delayed by taking Simon out. This forces her to restart her space-flight from his position at ground level again.
Recommended Characters
Anemone - tough, the stun radius from her telepathic scan is useful. If she has Becalm its an effective way of dealing with Simon. Either of the optional Atlanteans are also useful here. Telepathic Scan also comes in handy for locating the villains in part 1.
Miss Amazing - her vulnerability to being irradiated or acid burnt can be a problem when dealing with Simon or the Red hood. (Ironic, since it represents the damage Simon did to her when she first appeared.) But as always, she takes the edge off a 'No one must fall' mission with her ability to Raise the Fallen. Although you may want to save her till later because of this....
Chaos - Mercury punch is good. Corrode is good-ish. Condense is good. Alcubus is good. Low HP and low speed are bad - keeping her gaseous requires a bit of attention. If you can get Alcubus out to transform the street furniture via Puppet Master before Simon can it may be easier to get through town. LOTS of combo moves with Jimmy and Adam is another plus.
King Zero - Bion beam is good, icing up is good, low speed is bad but overcome partly by Ice Slide by now.
Jack of Diamonds - not much good against flying opponents, and a complete menace if she's hypnotised. She's much better placed later on.
Ace - moderately useful - surprisingly poor against flying opponents and Unheroic doesn't help for last minute escapes. Better left till later.
My final recommendation is Chaos and an Atlantean. Or of, course a well designed custom character. Crushing beam attacks, mental defences and high health and speed will all help a lot.