Leaving the area, I guide the group to the only other place currently on the Empire section of the Not!WorldMap, the town of Astana. Upon hearing the awesome BGM of the town, I look it up online only to find that it has the bizarrely random title of “Maybe I’ll Even Buy a Sheep”. Since there’s no indication that Astana is a market town, nor are there any sheep in the vicinity, I’m not sure I even want to know how the composer came up with that title. Anyway, there is little to do here — the majority of town is blocked off by an enormous phallic symbol golden cannon pointing out over the entranceway. I don’t even know where to begin in picking apart the logic behind this — what happens when people want to leave town? Are they forced to stay behind the cannon until someone decides to raise it? I’m assuming the cannon is there for military purposes and not just for decoration (though the latter possibility actually wouldn’t surprise me in this game), but why the hell was it placed right in the middle of the main thoroughfare of the city? Was the town constructed around it, or did someone just think “Hey, I know the perfect spot to place our gigantic cannon — right across the entrance, so nobody can get in or out!” You know what? I’m past giving a fuck. I just want to find Elina so the game might actually go somewhere.
I don’t think ‘Penis!’ quite does it justice.
An Imperial soldier standing next to the cannon reveals that it’s called the Carronade Cockonade, and that Astana is an important military base, housing hundreds of troops. I assume that they all live inside the barrel of the Cockonade, considering that it’s the biggest structure in the damn place. Something that looks suspiciously like an anthropomorphic armadillo asks Ruley whether he’s seen the large aqueduct nearby. Since aqueduct is in red, I can safely say it’s the next destination on the Great Elina Hunt trail. As for what the crown princess of Wyndia would be doing walking around a random waterway in enemy territory…I got nothin’. Still, the party seems to think it’s as good a lead as any, and who am I to argue with these paragons of intelligence? As there’s nothing else to do in down except admire the impressive girth of the Cockonade, I decide to head straight to the aqueduct and get it over with.
What…sought anger management? Grown a personality?
Before entering the aqueduct itself, I take a moment to make camp on the Not!WorldMap, since the fucking Cockonade also prevented me from using Astana’s inn. Outside the tent, Clay is brooding over something, and for some unknown reason I decide to make Ruley interact with him. Maybe I particularly hated myself on the day I recorded this footage. “Well, I’ve done it now!” he sighs melodramatically. Self-pity at 12 o’clock! “There’s supposed to be a truce between the Alliance and the Empire…if anyone finds out we’ve snuck into the Empire, we’ll all be in a lot of trouble!” Uh, haven’t they already found out? Or does he think Triple H is just going to keep that nugget of information to himself? Wait, he is actually dumb enough to believe that, so I suppose my sarcasm was unnecessary this time — it’s like laughing at a dog chasing its tail because it doesn’t know any better.
But he isn’t done yet. Because the game designers have a vendetta against me, he just HAS to finish his wankfest with “But now that we’ve come this far, there’s no way I’m going back without Elina!”
…Sorry about that. I just had to go into the next room and scream for a bit. All better!
Next on Ruley’s masochistic Talk-To list is Sandy, who awkwardly reveals that she’s never been outside the castle before her current journey. I’d never have guessed! Thankfully, that’s all she has to say for now, which makes for a nice change, but also lulls me into a false sense of security. TikTok is her usual inoffensive (if insane) self, declaring “TikTok says she is impressed by that device.” For a second I get horrific images of her concealing something battery-operated inside her armour, but it turns out she’s just talking about the Rainbow Gate. Well, I suppose it was rather fabulous, if you’re into that kind of thing. Ruley quickly decides to head inside the tent and get some shut-eye before Sandy starts twittering about the gate’s pretty colours and Clay starts ranting about how they’re not bright enough for Elina’s return journey (not that she’ll be getting one. Whoops, spoiler!).
-bate? *is 12*
Exploring the aqueduct, the first thing the party stumbles upon is a random battle against a Goo Mage and a Goo Count. The Goo Mage is a bog-standard “one hit, and that’s all she wrote” monster from earlier in the game, but the Goo Count is a little more unusual. It spends the first turn guarding, then casts a low-level spell during its second turn. Prior to this, an info box pops up, reading “It looks like Goo Count was counting something…” I’m not exactly sure what it was counting, and nor do I particularly care. However, I’m simply going to assume that it was keeping a tally of all the times Clay has mentioned Elina in this recap. This way, I don’t have to do it, and I now have a decent enough explanation for the monster going down so easily. Win-win.
Probably the number of shots I’ve taken since I started writing this.
The dungeon itself is very…well, aqueducty. Seriously, it’s just an aqueduct (sorry, aqueduct). There’s not much else to describe. Of course, the game designers had to make it that little bit more irritating by sticking on some ladders and walkways that are impossible to traverse without rotating the camera a thousand times, but even with these hurdles, it doesn’t take long to reach the goal — a mole-man standing next to a winch and various other pieces of machinery I don’t know the names of. Catching sight of the blue-haired teen, the girl with wings, and the walking Breville sandwich toaster, the mole-man immediately jumps to the most outlandish conclusion and greets them with “You must be the repairmen, right?”
It gets worse. None of the party replies to the guy, possibly as gobsmacked as I am. For reasons best known to the game designers, he interprets their stunned silence as “Why, yes, young man. We are indeed the repairmen of whom you speak, despite having no uniforms, ID, or documentation to support this. Can we get through now?” Satisfied that these freaks of nature are the people he’s been waiting for (the nature of the repair work they are apparently here to do is never expanded upon), the mole-man offers them a ride on his gondola. And no, that isn’t a euphemism. The gondola carries Ruley and his fellow ‘repairmen’ to another section of the aqueduct, from where they can reach an open hatch, beneath which can be seen flowing water. With no idea where the waterway will take them, they jump in, quite possibly condemning the entire structure to collapse in the near future due to them ignoring the essential repair work they were supposed to carry out. I hope they can all sleep at night.
Only if there’s a high possibility of drowning.
I’m still reeling from the utter absurdity of the previous scene, so it takes me a while to recognize the area the water channel has carried the group into. Then it hits me. Remember the weird dream everyone but TikTok shared way back in Part 3? No, me neither, but since we’re about to experience an exact replay of it, there’s no need to panic. We fade in on a prominent shot of the mouth of an underwater passage, before witnessing the party drying themselves off in a vaguely prison-like area. Some creepy-yet-mysterious music plays as Clay Einsteins “This is it! This is where they’re holding Elina!” Fuck’s sake. “Yes,” Sandy agrees, her gaze wandering to the bars on the wall. “It’s just like Ruley’s dream showed us…” Okay, not very much making sense here. Yeah, imagine that. First of all, Clay has apparently developed psychic powers, since there is no fucking way he could know Elina was here otherwise. Second, if this IS the place she’s being held, how amazingly convenient that the flow of water from a random aqueduct led them right here. Of course, one could fanwank this into making sense by hypothesizing that the building’s water supply is carried directly from the aqueduct, but in that case, surely the water would be channelled to the surrounding areas, too? I mean, it would be just as likely for the gang to emerge in a random NPC’s toilet as it would be to end up in the exact place they needed to go. Third, this shithole probably isn’t the best place to hold a high-security prisoner (like, say, a fucking princess), considering it can be breached simply by diving into a pool in a public area (even easier if you’re wearing a maintenance worker’s overalls!). Last, but certainly not least, have none of these dunderheads paid any thought to how dangerous it is for Ruley to be infiltrating the territory of the very people who are hunting him?! I get that Sandy and Clay need to be here to search for Elina — and how many times have I had to type that bitch’s name in this recap thus far — but it’s incredibly short-sighted of them to drag Ruley along when a representative of the Empire has explicitly stated that they’re after him. Then again, I should probably just put this down to Clay and Sandy being their usual special selves.
What could possibly go wrong?
Oh my God. I think I’m getting a migraine, and I haven’t even talked about the paradoxical nature of this entire sequence — the dream the party had hours ago was a vision of the future they are experiencing now, yet in the dream, Sandy referred to already having seen it in another dream. I apologize for not explaining this very well, but it hurts my brain to even think about it, so I’m going to move on.
As they pass through the area, taking in the torture instruments along the walls, the party enters battle against a pair of annoying flies. Now, these flies possess the assholish double-whammy of having a ridiculous evasion stat AND the ability to inflict poisonous poison. I’m sure we can all imagine how this could prove to be a careless gamer’s undoing if, for example, he decided to leave the game on auto-battle while he went to get himself a drink, then returned to the unwelcome sight of the Game Over screen and subsequently had to replay this entire portion of the game because he’d also neglected to use a save point ever since turning on the fucking PS2. Yeah, that would really suck. I’m sure glad nothing like that happened to me!
An hour and twelve minutes A few moments after their battle against the Flies of Doom, Ruley and the others ascend a stone staircase and creep down a corridor lined with blurry portraits. A door at the end of the room leads to a large council chamber with a throne-like seat at its head and a thick curtain behind it. Really, I could have just typed “it’s exactly the same as the room in their dream” but I like to be thorough — even when doing so prolongs the agony of recapping this juggernaut of confusion. Just like in the dream, Clay whispers “Somebody’s coming!”, and then we see two abnormally-tall men enter the room through a set of double doors at the far end of the chamber. Lord Yuna, a creepy-looking fellow with elf ears and a fox tail, enquires as to “the status of the sacrifice”. His companion, a nameless NPC, replies that “it continues to…grow”. I think I read that line in a SquallxSeifer fanfic the other day. As Yuna and his associate continue to talk about their sacrifice, who is undoubtedly a complete stranger we’ve never heard of before, Clay instructs the others to hide behind the velvet curtain to avoid being seen. Something tells me this isn’t going to end well.
As the group walks behind the curtain and attempts to reach the other door, we get a change of camera angle. Lord Yuna’s nameless buddy (who I’m now going to call Jim, regardless of the fact that he’s never seen again after this scene) continues to babble about their precioussss sacrifice: “Yes, Lord Yuna, at the present rate…” He trails off and a confusion!bubble appears above his head as Yuna’s head snaps to the left, having caught a glimpse of electric blue miniskirt out the corner of his eye. Nope, our fine heroes can’t even do something as simple as hide behind a solid object properly. Why am I surprised at this? Without a word, Yuna decides to take care of bidness and freaking shoots into the air like a cork from a bottle, presumably taking a shortcut to wherever the intruders are headed. Why can’t Clay or Sandy have a cool ability like that?
Cut to the inept fucktards in the adjacent room. Taking a moment to regain her composure, Sandy declares “Whew! Looks like they didn’t see us!” In response, the offscreen voice of Yuna crows “Ah, but we did.” As the party freaks out, Yuna flies headfirst through the wall and lands gracefully on his feet in front of them. Talk about making an entrance. “Well now, we can’t have this, can we?” he creeps, fox tail bristling as he takes in the assortment of dunces before him. “This building belongs to the Fou Empire. And you are Easterners, are you not?” Clay sweatdrops before stammering “We’re…uh…looking for someone.” And yes, he managed to resist the temptation to namedrop Elina for the millionth time. There may still be hope for him yet! Sandy takes it upon herself to fill in the blanks, and when Yuna learns the identity of the person they’re searching for, he gets both a confusion!bubble AND a shock!bubble over his head. Hmm, I wonder what that could be about. Because I’m an idiot.