In a flashback that’s more gold-toned than sepia-toned, Winona enters a cave with Rachel, who has hair like the 16-bit version of Cindy Crawford. Rachel asks, “WINONA! What are we off to find today?” Oh god, she must have totally loved him, because she actually bought into his treasure hunting bullshit. Winona fingers his bandana–don’t look at me–and answers, “Soon, you’ll… You’re not going to believe what awaits us up here! Come on, it’s worth a fortune!” Ugh, it’s an engagement ring, isn’t it? He spent the expected three months’ salary on it, which means he robbed someone who makes three times the average monthly salary. Edgar is probably shitting a brick, hearing this.

But because Winona was apparently the kind of attention-seeking twit who made his proposal a big spectacle that’s more about him than the person he wants to marry, he decided to hide this ring on a “treasure hunt” that requires traversing several rickety wooden bridges, and SURPRISE, the very first one wobbles under his feet. This fucking guy. Rachel cries, “WINONA! Look out!” and leaps onto the bridge, shoving Winona to safety and falling to her horrible death. Well, kind of safety, as Winona is now on an island in the cave with the exit on the other side of a busted bridge. Still better than Rachel, though. He screams her name and leaps into the abyss after her, which is really the least he can do after orchestrating this whole fiasco. Fade to black, since these two are dead forever.

Nope! Sigh. Back at Rachel’s house, Winona creeps on her as she lies unconscious in her bed. She comes to, but stammers into Winona’s happy face, “… … …? I…I can’t remember anything…” Whew! Short-term amnesia will keep her from remembering what a colossal fuckup her boyfriend is. Winona dodged a bullet! But wait: she literally remembers nothing, including that she has a boyfriend at all. Edgar can relax now. Cut to Winona being bodily thrown from the house. A sprite helpfully labeled RACHEL’S DAD screams at him from the doorway, “Get outta here! It’s your fault she’s lost her memory!” No argument here.

But Winona has the grossest possible retort: “Wait a minute! She said ‘Yes!’ We were gonna…” WHOA. Back it up. He was taking her to her engagement ring, and there’s no way a clueless dude who sets up a phony treasure hunt for a ring isn’t also springing the proposal on his lady as a surprise. I bet the ring was in the middle of a stadium full of people at the end of the cave. So unless she said yes from the bottom of the cave, after her head had cracked open, she didn’t say yes to jack shit. And even if she did, what kind of callous horse’s ass is still making wedding plans after his fiancée has a near-fatal accident, let alone one that was his own fucking fault? You at least have to earn back her love and trust first! There are rom-coms about this exact scenario!

To my undying pleasure, Rachel is not all, “Daddy, apparently I said I’d marry this stranger, so I’d better get my blue garters on.” She comes out of the house to yell at Winona, “Go! I don’t know who you are, but ever since you came here my parents have been upset!” After Rachel and her dad have slammed the door in his stupid face, another sprite ambles up just to tell him, “You’d best leave Rachel alone. She’s going to have to make a new start of it. WINONA… Your being here doesn’t help.” NICE. Winona hangs his head and skulks away, hopefully never to darken her doorstep again.

Winona provides the sad denouement to his companions: “A year passed. When I returned here, I learned that Rachel had perished in an Imperial attack. Her memory returned just before she passed away. The last thing she uttered was…my name…” Oh, fuck you, game, there is no way that would ever happen. That is too far even for fiction. “I should have never left her side,” he says. “I…I failed her…” THAT is the lesson he’s taking from this? That he should have ignored HER STATED WISHES and stayed, and that is how he fucked up? Because he not only could have stopped the Empire from murdering her, somehow, but is the only person who could have possibly done so? Oh my god. Like, oh my fucking god.

In summary: Winona committed attempted manslaughter on his proto-fiancée. He wanted to marry her anyway, despite her having no idea who he was and also not wanting him around. She died because of something unrelated a year later, and now he’s the big bad heeeeeero crusading against that unrelated evil so he can be mad at something that isn’t himself, since that would require self-awareness. And that’s not even getting into how Rachel only exists as a cipher–a proof of Winona’s tragic past and super virile manly heterosexuality who conveniently dies so he can be an unencumbered hero and Edgar’s fucktoy.

Edgar, Guile, and Celes have not one goddamn word to say in response to this, and they all leave. I figure I’m done with Winona’s “tragic” past (that implies it was his tragedy, and fuck that noise), but noooooooooooo. Edgar drags the party into a house in the northeast corner of town, supposedly inhabited by an odd herbologist, first from the back to snag a Green Beret for Guile, and then through the front door. In the basement, they come upon an old man tending the corpse of Rachel, who is arrayed in a bed, surrounded by her flowing blue hair (of course) and vases full of red roses. What in the everloving fuck is going on down here? The old man greets Winona, saying it’s been “a while,” and adds, “Uh? Oh, that!? Worry not! Your treasure’s quite safe! Uwa, ha, ha!” HIS TREASURE?! Sweet Jesus, it’s worse than I thought. “Treasure hunting” has taken on a new meaning!

For my, and the mortified Edgar’s, benefit, the old man exposits about what he’s done. “I used some herbs to put her into suspended animation. She won’t age a day! Uwaa, ha! That’s what you wanted, right? Had to use my herbs, I did!” Nope. NOOOOOOOOOOPE. In one last flashback (god willing), Winona again lurks at Rachel’s bedside, now in the herbologist’s basement. The house quack adminsters to her, while Winona asks if the herbs “saved” Rachel. “Of course!” the old man replies. “The love of your life will sleep here like this forever. Kwa, ha, ha!” That would be quite awful and violating enough, wouldn’t it? But no, this scene has more for us. “What if there were some way to…call her back?” Winona wants to know. “If you could call her back…” the old man says, “…she’d come back! Wah, ha, ha! I’m sure you’ll find something that’ll bring her around! Kuha, ha, ha!!” So Winona is, I assume, on the hunt for a drug that will make Rachel “come around”? All the showers. Give me all the showers.

Winona says one more time that he failed her, and maybe I will be charitable and assume he means he failed her by being a piece of shit who couldn’t leave her the fuck alone in life or in death, and one more time they all file out without anybody uttering a single sympathetic syllable to him. But Celes comes back to stare at Rachel and mutter, “WINONA…” Oh, he’s so caring! Maybe she can be his new Rachel! Maybe I can fill this wastepaper basket with my vomit!

I would say let’s never speak of this again, but that would be writing a check future recaps will not be able to cash. Sigh.

I steer the party the fuck out of Kohlingen so fast that they’re halfway to Jidoor when I remember I could have subbed someone (WINONA WINONA WINONA) with Flaffy, which he would have been amenable to for a mere 3000 gil. Well, fuck it, he can just enjoy his beer. He’d probably leave after five minutes of Edgar bitching about Winona’s secret suspended-animation non-fiancée. I know I would.

Just about due north of Kohlingen, Edgar happens upon a lone shack in the middle of the plains. No place, fictional or otherwise, has as many lone shacks in the middle of nowhere as this world, and I’m including Montana. Inside, he plunders a Hero Ring from a spitoon and finds an old man who is planning to build a colosseum. “We can’t let the world become too peaceful!” he tells Edgar. “People are at their best when they’re at war… My colosseum will be a monument to war! If I can ever get the help I need to finish it, that is!” Goddamn right. Listen up, everyone: a few trillion of your taxpayer gil should do the job. But he probably needs to plant some fake WMDs near the Imperial capital, to be on the safe side.

The gang takes their leave of the Bush ranch and backtracks south past Figayro Castle to Jidoor, situated in the middle of a mountainous peninsula. It occurs to me that I probably would have lost Flaffy to his five percent chance of being a welching bitch before even getting here, so that worked out for the best. Except Winona is still here and I’m still mad at him.

So. Jidoor! It seems like a very clean, well-to-do city, and Edgar quickly learns why from a man with a gray ponytail mullet: “The poor people have all left here for the mountains to the north. There they’ve built a town.” And I’m sure they did so completely of their own volition, with neither encouragement nor gassed-up Greyhound buses provided by the Jidoor Society Club. A friend recently whined on Facebook that her trip to San Francisco was ruined by how dirty and overrun with homeless people the city is, and that she would not be returning until the city treated her like an important visitor by making itself cleaner for her. I have to imagine she’d be in favor of the establishment of Povertyville.

Inside the inn, Edgar finds another identical silver mullet fox, who adds, “Bunch o’ liars up in Zozo! Never can trust ‘em.” So when the people in Zozo tell our heroes that they were driven out of Jidoor by a mob of old dowagers wielding ivory-handled whips, they should dismiss that foolishness out of hand. Got it. Yet another identical Jidoor mulletclone says, “Once in a while one of the idiots from Zozo’ll wander down here, lookin’ for an easy mark. Watch your wallet!” Now, the latter two mulletclones seem to be painting a picture of Zozo as a den of criminals and thieves. But the fact is, the first guy Edgar spoke with went out of his way to characterize Zozo’s citizens, or at least their recent predecessors, as penniless vagabonds. So even if they are all murderous lying cutpurses, there’s still at least one guy here who equates that with being poor, and as the entire population of this town is comprised of identical twins, I’m going to assume they all feel that way. So fuck ‘em. I bet Zozo is, like, so nice.

Just in case we don’t get it yet, there is an auction house in the middle of town, filled with haughty snobs with more money than sense. One guy with Crono hair (read: too poor for haircuts) feels fortunate to even be sitting among his betters, telling Edgar excitedly, “This ain’t the kinda place a poor person usually comes!” Another man in the same row, but seated as far as possible otherwise from poor Crono, gasps, “You like art? No!? Philistines!” God, this town is fucked up.

Only a couple people in the rest of Jidoor aren’t obsessed with shitting on their less fortunate neighbors. One wastes my time by telling me that Maria, the singer down at the opera house, is a total babe. No one in this group cares, and I’m sure that will not become even slightly relevant at any point. The other, a woman thankfully without a gray shock of hockey hair, says, “A girl wrapped in fire sped off to the north, into the mountains.” Twiggy: a magical little burrito. This means the party’s next stop is Zozo, which will surely prove all its haters to the south totally wrong.

But before leaving, there’s one more house to check out, at the north end of town. One mulletclone intimated earlier that the richest people in town all live on the north side–meaning, incidentally, that those dicks from earlier who wouldn’t shut up about Zozo are wealth-aspiring wannabes at best–and given that this massive manse is the only house on said north side, I think we can make some assumptions about the person who owns it. The chyron labels it “OWZER’S HOUSE.” Who is Owzer? No goddamn idea, because he isn’t here, but I’m sure he’s a fucking Republican too. His mansion is, of course, ridiculously opulent, even moreso than Romney Manor in South Figayro. I’m pretty sure it’s gold-plated. The entire west side of the house is given over to an art gallery, as Owzer is apparently an avid collector. I’m not sure which painting I like best, “Empty Bucket on Black Background,” “Empty Treasure Chest on Black Background,” or “Empty (Thank God) Chamber Pot on Black Background.” But clearly they are the dregs compared to “Twin Oil Lamps that Look Like Boobs on a Black Background.” This man’s taste is unparalleled. So classy. So luxurious.

We’ll deal with Owzer and his MAKE FIGAYRO GREAT AGAIN campaign later. It’s time to go to Zozo, on the back of some cute-ass chocobos. I could really do without the chocobo travel music right now, but it’s better, marginally, than 30 minutes of random battles. Of course, once I factor in the random siren-like effects in the song, and the bizarre behind-the-back camera angle rather than the top-down world map view, and the vague nausea I incur from the combination of the two, I think I’d rather have killed some bunny rabbits. But by the time I’m done complaining Edgar has hopped off his chocobo outside of Zozo.

On the map, Zozo appears to be a tiny town at the base of the mountains, maybe the size of Kohlingen. But when the party enters, they find an urban hellscape of tall tenement buildings laced with fire escapes. That is, it’s large, and it’s urban, and that latter point is the most pointed wink ever winked that those kind of people live here. It’s a big bad city! With undesirables!

There’s just no way that we can already consider the point “ZOZO = BAD” well and truly made, because we are stupid and the game designers are correct to have no faith in us. So in addition, charcoal gray clouds hang overhead and the city is pelted with rain, the kind of rain that is probably 50 percent motor oil and is a constant presence in all hard-boiled detective novels. And Zozo is so lawless that the party is also subject to random battles within the city limits, even indoors. With, of course, thieves and criminals that look like loot sack-toting goblins and demonic ladies of the night. But also “HadesGigas,” giants with visible panties who cast a Magnitude 8 earthquake when they die. So this is presumably also where all of Hagrid’s cousins were driven by Lucius Malfoy and the Death Eaters. Those posh-ass Jidoor snobs are worse than we thought.

But out ham-fisting all of these qualities is the fact that, just like that jerkoff in Jidoor said, everyone in Zozo is a pathological liar. It is literally Oppositetopolis, where everyone says the opposite of what they mean. One of the face-down vagrants in the streets–Jesus Christ, we get it, Zozo–chirps at Edgar, “Great people, here!” A spiky-haired man with an eyepatch, tending bar in the southwestern-most building, tells Edgar he hasn’t seen any crying pink ladies around, but adds, “Might wanna check the top of this building.” For the girl that isn’t there! Which she’s not, because that’s also a lie. This place is great!

Edgar heads for the pub, which I’m sure is just a world-class establishment. Also I’m pretty sure every building in this city has a bar on the bottom floor. This is the least subtle thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been hit in the face with a basketball. The barkeep, another Crono pirate, says for some reason, “Clock’s second hand’s pointin’ at 30.” There is no clock anywhere in this room, so that’s…nice. Edgar heads upstairs and out onto a balcony on the second floor, nabs a tincture from some guy’s room (who is the criminal here?), and backtracks back to the rainy streets.

To the north, the party finds the inn, which has a couple of overflowing trash cans nearby, but at least there are trash cans at all. Inside, the first thing they see is a clock. Sadly, this one does not have an elixir ready for the taking, but needs to be set to a particular time for some opaque purpose. Clearly the Crono pirate from earlier was hinting at this very thing, except that he was lying. Or he was just lying about what time it is, if indeed I’m supposed to be setting this thing to the correct, current time and not just some preordained time, like a clock-shaped combination lock. The point is, there are actually NPCs all over town who will happily lie to Edgar’s face about the correct time, and by process of elimination (or just already knowing what the right answer is), Edgar determines that the time to set on the clock is 6:10:50. An entire wall rumbles out of the way to Edgar’s right at the correct time, allowing him to grab a Chain Saw out of a chest. The Chain Saw, a new tool attachment for Edgar’s Swiss army knife, is awesome not only because it’s a fucking chain saw, but because Edgar has a 25 percent chance to instakill with it, and when the murdering mood strikes him, he dons an adorable serial killer hockey mask. And now it’s Guile and Winona’s turn to get the strangest boners.

After Edgar’s checked all the town’s shops–none of which actually provide any shopping, because nobody here wants to actually pay for goods, DO YOU GET IT YET, HOW ABOUT NOW–he returns to the first building the party visited, and takes up the lying NPC on his suggestion to check upstairs. On the second floor, he joins an odd procession of Crono pirates as they file down a hallway and up more stairs. Several of them lie to Edgar about the time, as he smirks and fondles his Chain Saw. He and his treasure-hunting paramour have out-thieved these fucking chumps. And he’s royalty, so those dickheads in Jidoor will probably congratulate him on his ingenuity and capitalist acumen, while sneering at the sad lowlife who actually owned the Chain Saw in the first place.

So, this building is really goddamn tall. Edgar winds his way up floor after floor of fire escapes, eventually coming across a dead end room with a Thief Glove (ahem, TREASURE HUNTER GLOVE), and just as he wonders if he’s gone as high as he can go, and I begin to heave a weary sigh at the prospect of backtracking through a hundred more random battles, he sees a Crono pirate Mario-style wall-kicking his way up between this building and the next. This reminds him of the dude who earlier ordered him to never consider trying this exact thing. This fucking town. Edgar finds a suitable place to make his leap, and ultimately ends up two buildings over. I know he’s a rugged adventurer or whatever, but I have a hard time believing an aristocrat nerd in a flowing cape could execute this maneuver on his first try. I could have brought out Winona or Guile or Celes just so this would look less stupid, if I cared about this not looking stupid.

I have to admit that I zone out for a bit at this point–I am too old for these endless random battles to hold my attention when Twitter is right there–but at some point, after a lot of shuffling up fire escapes and intra-building parkour, the party winds up on the top floor of the building they started in. Motherfucker, that guy was actually telling the truth about Twiggy being up here, even though he denied ever seeing her. I am disgusted with myself that I ever even considered defending this place. The Jidoorians were right–this town should be leveled to the ground.