As soon as Cesario learns that the Stone was a fake, he immediately freaks out because if the Count was in cahoots with Rudvich to get the Stone, which he so obviously was, Heidi and Ophelia are in danger! Cesario tells GM that they need to get back to LIONEL CASTLE, like, yesterday. GM suggests that they take a boat back to the east end of the continent, the better to almost sneak into the castle. Then, sepia checkers cascade across the screen and I’m asked to decide if I want GM to join the party as a full-fledged member. Yes, I do, it turns out, as letting GM join up is the trigger for a virtual smorgasbord of future Fanboy-gasams, including, but not limited to, enlisting a HUGE ROBOT OF DEATH! and FF7’s Cloud. So, like, woo-yay for GM.

The line leading to LIONEL CASTLE via ZIGOLIS SWAMP retracts into GOUG, and another line emerges from GOUG, delves southward into the ocean, and connects to WARJILIS TRADE CITY to the east before shooting northward to hook back up to LIONEL CASTLE. Cesario walks across the ocean, which I guess is supposed to create the illusion of sailing, or something, and stops at WARJILIS. Yay Sprite Graphics.

So realistic!!

The Camera spirals down around the mast of a boat in WARJILIS TRADE CITY. Cesario emerges from a below-deck cabin and walks across the dock, noting to himself as he goes that there don’t appear to be any troops from LIONEL out and about. Instead, he soon finds out, there’s the Dearly Departed Delita, who appears as if on cue to harass Cesario for trying to get involved in the Princess/Stone fiasco unfolding before our very eyes. The Dearly Departed Delita tells Cesario that while Cesario can only save Ophelia from one of her problems, The Dearly Departed One can save her from all of them. Whatever that means. Cesario is too smitten with the Dearly Departed Delita’s stunning Golden Armor to ask the questions he probably should be asking, and frankly, I just don’t give a damn, because we all know that Cesario’s going to end up being the one doing any and all saving in this game anyway, regardless of what anybody might say to the contrary.

As the Dearly Departed Delita turns to leave, Cesario asks him what he plans to do, exactly. “[W!LL], [B!LL], your brothers, everyone… [They] haven’t noticed they’re all swept up in the same flow. I’m just going against it. That’s all…” the Dearly Departed Delita non-answers. The Dearly Departed Delita tells Cesario that, as long as they’re both looking for the Princess and the Holy Stones, he’ll see Cesario again, “if [they] live that long.” The Dearly Departed Delita walks away. Cesario looks conflicted. That scene was pointless.

While Cesario wanders about WARJILIS, spending his hard-earned Gil on all manner of new equipment and items, the camera cuts away to pay our dear, dear friend Count Dracula a visit. It would appear that the evil Count has called an evil summit, for when the camera fades up on Dracula’s inner sanctum, we can see that Gaffy and Rudvich are already in attendance. I wonder how Rudvich found out that his lackeys were unable to kill Cesario, since he already had the “Stone” and was halfway back to LIONEL by the time the battle was even over. Watch your step, dear reader, there be plot holes about.

Anyway, as we join the evil summit, already in progress, Gaffy incredulously demands of the Count: “You’re using the princess as bait to get the stone back? That’s not something a holyman would do.” Before Count Dracula can assert his infallibly divine authority over Gaffy, Rudvich leaps forward to call Gaffy a bastard –hee!– and point out that, had Gaffy not let the party escape from the Waterfall battle, none of this would even be an issue. “Well, you nitwit, Cesario stole my fucking armor before the battle, not to mention the fact that I didn’t have an army of Archers, Thieves, and Summoners to back me up. What’s your excuse, asshole?” Gaffy doesn’t snidely retort, but totally should have.

Dracula pipes up to tell Rudvich to stow the ‘tude and then he tells both of his bumbling minions that he’ll return Ophelia to Foulfellow –remember him?– as soon as he gets the Stone from Cesario. That was the plan all along anyway, apparently. Dracula tells Gaffy that he should worry less about the details of the plan, and should concentrate more on killing Cesario and the party, since, you know, we’ve hit every curve they’ve thrown to date. Dracula also adds that “the thief who stole the stone is with [the party],” like that’s further incentive to best Cesario or something. I’ve never tested it, but I’m willing to bet that, even if I had not let GM join the party, Dracula would have told his minions that he’s with us. That prediction is based solely off of the high level of editing we’ve seen in this masterpiece to date.

What? Little boys?

Dracula assures Gaffy that he can catch the whole party plus GM using the Princess as jailbait. With promises of lots of protection and a fake Princess to boot, Dracula sends Gaffy on his evil way. Rudvich’s penis shrivels up into nothing as Gaffy makes his exit with Dracula’s blessing, and he whines at Dracula, “Why him?” Instead of responding, Dracula simply lets a particularly sinister string of notes hit the soundtrack as he rises from his chair and crosses the room to Rudvich’s side. “You failed enough. Now you must take responsibility…” Dracula threatens. Then, with a running start, he launches himself at Rudvich. Despite the camera’s valiant attempt to pan away from the impending gore, we still hear Rudvich scream and we see the entire screen turn red as Dracula kills him by… uh… … You know what? I’m going to let the poll take care of this one.

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The camera returns to Cesario just in time to watch the party migrate northward from WARJILIS to BARIAUS VALLEY. It starts to rain, and we see Heidi dash into the valley. Heidi looks worriedly about as a man’s voice yells from behind her, “Don’t try to escape!!” Heidi whips around to see a Generic Knight from LIONEL casually saunter onscreen. The Knight whistles another Knight, two Archers, and two Black Mages into battle, and, just then, the tell-tale clamoring of Birkenstocks off-screen heralds Cesario’s arrival onto the scene. With a forceful “I’m protecting [Heidi]! Geronimo!” Cesario and his army of Generic Recappers leap into the fray. And by “leap into the fray”, I mean wait patiently as the Random Text God informs us that the goal of the battle is to save Heidi and then watch the enemies all take their first turn. Once it’s her turn, Heidi turns to Cesario and incredulously asks what the heck he’s doing in BARIAUS VALLEY, and Cesario responds that, duh, he’s saving her helpless ass.

Expositing further, Cesario tells Heidi that the plan was to attack LIONEL CASTLE to save Heidi and Ophelia from Count Dracula’s sinister clutches, and then he interrupts himself to ask what happened to Ophelia. Like any of us really care. Heidi tells the party that as soon as she and Ophelia caught wind of Dracula’s plan to screw them over, they tried to escape. Ophelia didn’t make it because her capture is central to the plot for some inexplicable reason, and now she’s going to be executed! With that vital information sorted out, the party makes short work of the enemy units without further interruption. At the end of the battle, Heidi exposits that Ophelia is scheduled to be executed at the GOLGORAND EXECUTION SITE any minute now, so, after allowing Heidi to join up as a full-fledged member, the party shakes a leg on out of there. Wasting no time, Cesario leads the party directly south-west to the GOLGORAND EXECUTION SITE.

The camera fades up on GOLGORAND’s guillotine, currently housing a downtrodden Fauxphelia. An eerily familiar-looking executioner in a black cloak asks Fauxphelia if she has any last words –she doesn’t– as the party shuffles onscreen. How refreshingly synchronous.

Cesario shouts for the Mystery Executioner to release the Princess so that his dream of becoming a True Hero can finally be realized, but, shock of shocks, the Executioner whips off his cloak to reveal his true identity –Duh, it’s Gaffy– and the “Princess” whips off her dress, hair, and face(?!) to reveal a Generic Archer. This bait’n’switch would be so amazingly out of left field if we hadn’t already been privy to Gaffy and Dracula’s evil plotting just moments ago. Oh, dramatic irony. You’re just the bastard child of the family, aren’t you?

Presto Changeo!

So Cesario and company have been tricked into a battle at the GOLGORAND EXECUTION SITE, and Gaffy makes the party his bitches not once, not twice, but three times. Three times, Gaffy reminds us that Cesario has the Yellow Holy Stone that Count Dracula wants. Three times, Heidi finds out that Cesario is really a Beoulve, but decides that she trusts him anyway. Three times, I bludgeon myself to death with a blunt object the size of a PSX controller. Finally, on the fourth try, Cesario manages to uncork a Decanter of Discontent on Gaffy’s ass, and the party scrapes together a strategy to disable the army of Time Mage and Archer Bitches without dying. I used a fucking lot of Phoenix Downs, though. Stupid game. Also, as a side note to any readers who think it might be a good idea to use any form of communication to let me know that this is like, totally the easiest battle evar…. don’t. I will hunt you down and strangle you with your own small intestine.

Anyway, once the enemies have been enema’d, the camera cuts away to some mysteriously mysterious dungeon place inside of LIONEL CASTLE, and we join the Dearly Departed Delita and Ophelia in their own rendition of the “Prisoner/Helpful Double Agent” Cliché, already in progress. Long, boring story short, Ophelia wants to know what the Count has in store for her, and Delita assures her that she’s simply being taken to her rightful place. Much distrust from Ophelia’s end, but their bantering is cut short as Count Dracula and the Geriatric Knight in the Purple Tunic from last recap make their entrance on the scene.

Dracula and the Knight goggle at Ophelia like she’s in a freak show or something before “Knight” lets it slip that she’s “almost too good a substitute for a Princess.” DUN!! You can practically hear the record scratch. All eyes on Knight, and Dracula gently lets “Vormav” know that Ophelia had been previously unaware of her “substitute” status. Vormav is all “well, that sucks for her, then” and proceeds to tell Ophelia that she isn’t really Ophelia, just a substitute conjured up by a bunch of old priests and politicians to replace “Luveria”, a princess who died at birth. Actually, it’s very unclear as to what is really going on here, because Vormav tells Ophelia both that the Princess is deceased and that Ophelia will replace the Princess when she’s old enough, which doesn’t mesh with the “the real princess is dead!” story. So I think that Luveria might really be a gross mistransration of “Ruvelia,” the reigning Queen who, according to her in-game bio, despite being currently imprisoned in BETHLA GARRISON, is very much alive. At any rate, THIS GAME MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE. Vormav attempts to save face by telling Ophelia that, had the Late King been unable to father another baby, Ophelia would have taken the throne and everything would have gone according to plan, but with Orinas (the kid W!LL wants to take the throne so he can rule Ivalice as a regent) in the mix, everything is fucked to hell and back.

Despite the obvious clarity with which Vormav presents his story, Ophelia crumples into a heap of disbelief and tells him exactly where he can stick his story. Vormav tells Ophelia that whether or not she believes him is irrelevant, as the rest of the world already considers Ophelia to be the Princess, and that’s all Vormav cares about. If Vormav had a moustache, he’d totally be giving it a few Snidley Whiplash-esque twirls about now.

Ophelia’s all “I’ll never be your puppet!” and Vormav is all “We just want to help you take the throne!” and I’m all “Why the hell isn’t this scene over yet?” Then Vormav lets Ophelia know that he’s on neither W!LL nor B!LL’s side, he’s just in it for himself a “collaborator.” Then Dracula tells Vormav that he’s leaked quite enough for one day, and suggests that the three men leave Ophelia alone with her thoughts for awhile. As Dracula and Vormav make for the door, Dracula declares that “once [Ophelia] comes to her senses[,] she won’t refuse [their] help.” The Dearly Departed Delita gives Ophelia A Look Wrought With Significance before he leaves.

Cesario’s going to be SO JEALOUS.

We rejoin Cesario on the World Map, just outside of the GOLGORAND EXECUTION SITE, right where we left him. At this point in the game, Cesario is supposed to lead a full-on assault on LIONEL CASTLE to save Not!Princess Ophelia, but right now, he’d rather just level up for a million years at his favorite battle site ever, BARIAUS VALLEY. Really, having all the time in the world to level up and buy new equipment for all the party members is just wonderful. It’s awfully nice of Dracula and company to patiently wait around for Cesario to show up before enacting the next step of their nefarious plan. I just hope Ophelia brought along a magazine, or something.