I have to say, he’s really painting me a word-picture.

The point is, this is fucking stupid. Kyle yells impotently, to which Xeboobia chuckles, “Oooh…sticks and stones…and all that. I’m afraid your schoolyard taunts have failed to achieve the desired effect.” Can’t say I’m buying the high-and-mighty act from someone who has thus far seemed petrified of engaging our heroes in combat of any kind. Xeboobia’s list of accomplishments to this point is, in its entirety, 1) Impersonate an old lady and 2) Curse an old man. She ain’t shit. “I shall see a bloodletting,” she goes on. “I care not whether it happens to be yours or theirs.” Sure. You’re totally going to kill the girls. You can be a badass whenever you want!

Despite Xeboobia’s incredibly empty threat, the boys feel they have no choice but to square off in battle. The two of them “hit” each other for zero damage, but Kyle, out of my control, decides to be extra showy and use Power Sweep and Sonic Riser for zero damage. The AI had better not be using up his real MP for this exhibition shit. After three rounds, Xeboobia has had enough. “Do you think you’re really fooling anyone with that pathetic show?” she asks. I don’t know. Do you think you are? She demands they up the realism or she will totally brutally murder their lady friends, don’t think she won’t!

But Kyle’s sprite decides to take a seat on the ground, because he’s opting out of this exercise. “I’d gladly save Mia’s angelic life…” he explains to a befuddled Xeboobia, “…but there’s no way I’m gonna put my life on the line for that beast-chick! And there’s no way I’m gonna fight the Dragonmaster, ’cause I don’t wanna lose!” I swear, if Xeboobia actually falls for this, she is dumber than I could have ever imagined. Mia and Squeak are shocked, and Jess just mumbles some ellipses, but I am holding out hope that at least Mia is wise to Kyle’s game and is playing along. (Squeak, for his part, could not possibly be dumber than I’ve imagined him.) Xeboobia says Kyle must be bluffing, but he growls, “Look in my eyes and tell me I’m bluffing, [Xeboobia]! You’ve never had to suffer through one of Jess’ temper tantrums, have you? Go ahead! Finish her! I could use a little peace and quiet!” He could not be laying this on thicker if he had an offset spatula and a tub of frosting.

Jess takes major exception to Kyle’s assessment of her, and it doesn’t even matter if she knows what Kyle is up to because her reaction would be the same regardless. “You brainless mutt!” she snarls. “What are you saying? I don’t yell at you…that much!” They argue back and forth in this manner–Kyle at one point says Jess needs “the discipline [her] dad never gave [her],” which is a left turn in their relationship I could have really done without–until Xeboobia is convinced of their dysfunction. “I have a feeling this little tete a tete is going to be interesting,” she says. “I suppose I’ll kill you first, then, Alex, and watch the quarrel next.” Yup! She’s so going to do that. Any minute now. But before she can–OH NO–the screen lights up with the power of Jess’s healing magic, and she announces the Moaning Eggs have been taken care of. She and Mia hop down to Kyle’s arms while Squeak says, relieved, “Wow! You WERE bluffing!” Oh, Squeak. Never change.

“Every time I have you at my mercy, you manage to escape…” Xeboobia says. I can’t imagine why that keeps happening! Just one bad beat after another with this lady. “…But not this time.” With what she thinks is dramatic flair, she tells them their “final curtain” is falling, and summons…another Moaning Egg, before teleporting out. Jess, with maybe two minutes of stalling time, managed to dispel two of these things, but Xeboobia thinks one of them will kill all four of these kids? Her quarterly performance review is not going to go as well as she thinks.

Nash would not like how Alex is pointing his sword right now.

The Moaning Egg, on the battle screen, turns out to be a large, shadowy ghost face named the Shadow Spectre. It looks like Ghastly got a gritty Hollywood reboot. But despite the fact that it can use its Black Bile attack to mute characters, and that I am a dumbass and tried to cure Alex’s silence with the wrong goddamn item, it is still a joke; it takes about 10 turns to go down, but our teenage heroes are never in any actual danger. After leveling up, Jess learns Miracle Litany, which she should maybe use on Xeboobia to see if she can miraculously heal her plot-mandated stupidity.

“Kyle, I never knew you were such a talented thespian!” Jess says after the battle. No, neither Squeak nor Kyle turns that, on accident or on purpose, into a “lesbian” joke. The Working Designs VP of Laff Riots must have gone to the bathroom. “That was the best acting I’ve ever seen–and you ad-libbed all your dialogue!” Kyle responds, “Thespian?! Aren’t I the wrong gender for that, Jess?” Motherfucker. I swear I did not remember he said that, and now I’m just leaving this paragraph as is. It can stand as a reminder of the fleeting moment in which I gave this game an ounce of credit.

But as it turns out, Kyle claims he was not acting at all, just “speaking the truth” about Jess’s tendency to “whine like a week-old puppy!” Yeah! He doesn’t care about being PC! Like and share if you’re brave enough, I bet 99 percent of you won’t! Mia giggles at this, “It’s so much fun to watch you two fight! I can always see the smiles in your eyes…” This should be an enormous red flag to the rest of the group regarding how lonely and fragile Mia is in this moment, but Kyle and Jess just ignore it in favor of yelling at each other some more. Kyle finally realizes he may have crossed some line–YOU THINK, DUDE?–and asks Jess for a truce until they deal with Ghaleon, to which Jess replies, “Fine…whatever…” Look, I know this game is going to end with these two officially official, and probably holding hands or something. I’ve moved through the five stages and am now in acceptance. But it would be really super if there were a scene in Eternal Blue where we find out unequivocally that they got divorced after like five months. Like Lemina breathily reciting “The Ballad of Jessica de Alkirk’s Ironclad Pre-Nup.” I don’t ask for much. …And now I’m back to bargaining.

The kids find the exit to the mine a couple screens farther up, and very conveniently find themselves within the forcefield-protected crater. The purple iron schlong that is THE GRINDERY is just to the northeast, and due east is something that looks like a giant mottled egg. That could be where Gams is hatching Alex’s six kids, though, so let’s check out THE GRINDERY first. To my pleasant surprise, Ghaleon did not rest on the laurels of his forcefield–he also thought to lock the front door. Of course, I’ve been loudly bitching this entire time that Ghaleon wanted Alex to show up here, but as long as the game is pretending otherwise, it’s nice that it’s consistent. The kids stare down the sturdy-looking door. Mia says, all Serious Cat, “This is where Ghaleon’s horrid ode to destruction is being erected.” Hee. Erected. And Ghaleon would probably appreciate that she compared THE GRINDERY to a lovely ballad. That seems his speed.

And then Ghaleon will be forced into a standoff with Obamalthena over the use of this federal moon land! Diabolical, Kyle.

Mia doesn’t sense any magic around the door, but it’s nonetheless solid and not opening for them. Jess mentions, way too quickly and easily, the building “with the unusual shape” southeast of here. “Perhaps that’s some sort of secret entrance to this place…” I started running a D&D campaign recently, and this feels like a justification I would stick in the mouth of an NPC just to get my players to go where I want them to go. But I’m sure I’m totally wrong. (I’m not wrong.)

Inside Eggtown, the party finds a completely normal, not-at-all-alarming series of chambers covered in webbing of some kind. I’m just here for magic and adventure with hot teens and their dysfunctional relationships, game! I did not sign up for any Shelob shit. Dispersed throughout these chambers are brown cocoons, complete with viewing windows that show nothing but darkness, that is, until the party gets close, when a variety of sizes and shapes and numerical configurations of fucking eyeballs peer out at them. Ewwwww. The first cocooned creature has one giant eye that looks like the moon. The real moon, not this one that is 5/6 covered in rolling green hills. “It’s…so…cold…in here…but I…won’t…be like…this much…longer…” it hisses. “Soon…it will…be…the humans’…turn…to suffer…” Think I’ll skip transcribing the rest of the dialogue in here. Gotta preserve that period key for Suikoden II. Anyway, Kyle wonders what the deal is with this, and Mia pulls wholesale from her asshole, “It appears to be a protective cocoon. The walls of the sac absorb the weak magic field of the Frontier…and radiate the inhabitant with life-giving power. The weaker members of the Vile Tribe might have to stay in cocoons all their lives…” Unless this is inscribed on a plaque under the fucking cocoon, I do not have any idea how Mia could know all of this. The others, of course, take it as gospel, though Kyle still doesn’t think much of their resentment of humans: “Whatever bitterness they have should be directed at Althena, not her creation…” Spoiler: Ghaleon is way ahead of Kyle on this, though it ends up being six of one and a half-dozen of the other.

At no point do any of our heroes attempt to speak with the Vile Tribers in the cocoons, though they are alive and obviously can speak; instead, they exposit to each other about the creation of their world and the banishment of the Vile Tribe, just in case I hadn’t had Alex read those helpful library books. Gotta cover all the bases and make sure I know what’s up, since clearly Ghaleon is only honoring the wishes of his adopted people, and therefore their motivations will continue to be relevant!

In a cave off the back end of Eggtown, Jessica says she’s getting a “weird feeling,” leading Kyle to ask, in earnest, “What’s wrong, Jess? Do you sense some kind of danger?” What is she, Lassie? Is there a well up ahead with a pile of Vile Tribe kids at the bottom? But no, Jess simply says, “This place just feels oddly…familiar.” Well, it’s a big cave attached to an egg, and it’s providing life juice to hate-filled Vile Tribe fetuses–do I need to draw a diagram? The party proceeds with caution, only to find, standing in a shaft of, uh, earthlight coming from outside, another purple goblin. “Welcome to the village of Cadin,” he tells them. “We’ve been waiting for you.” Sir, this is not a village. It’s the world’s grossest nursery/orphanage. And behind Grape Goblin II, Son of Grape Goblin, is another miraculously functional Althena statue. This explains why Jess felt something “familiar” here, but I have to point out she didn’t say anything of the sort when they found the last statue. Jess’s precog nun powers are really hit-or-miss, but I guess that checks out given how she never goes to class. But apparently this is a shrine to Althena, not just a statue, because there are some rocks marking out an aisle and somebody lit some torches and cut out an earthroof. Totally different.

For whatever reason, the fact that this shrine is here is enough to rouse the suspicions of Jess and Mia, who wonder what’s going on here. They literally just had this explained to them by Grape Goblin, but no matter–their suspicion is justified because Son of Grape Goblin turns out to be Fellatio in disguise. “It’s a trap!” Kyle shouts. I guess he can’t hear the “Tranquil Den of Loving Love” music. “Everyone, draw your weapons!” Kyle is trying a little hard here to sell Fellatio as a threat, given that he didn’t react this way to Xeboobia, and this is seemingly done just so Fellatio can say, “No…this is not a trap, and I will not engage you at this time. You were guided here so that you could learn the way to enter Ruid.” But they weren’t guided here! They found a locked door and were all, “Hey, look, an egg biodome.”

“The Vile Tribe lost many lives building that armored encampment…” Fellatio is saying, “and it cannot be entered by any means save one…” She quickly coughs up what that is: a hidden door to the left of the real door, accessed via a super-secret password. Jess feels like now–after Fellatio has told them it’s a password-protected door, but before she’s provided said password–is the best time to question why she’s being so helpful. “Good point! What am I thinking?” Fellatio replies, and teleports away before giving up the goods. Sigh. I wish. She actually says, “The Vile Tribe has been sentenced to a slow death for five hundred years. From the moment we were banished to this barren wasteland, we were dying. And, unless we claim some of Althena’s power for ourselves…our end is all but certain to come about during this generation.” Something something climate change. “My sister [Xeboobia] said we must seize that power by force,” she goes on. “Althena’s will must be bent to serve our immediate need for survival. I do, however, have my reservations about her methods…” But they’ve worked so well thus far! Every move a right one!

Of course, Fellatio’s quibbles are more moral than logistical: “Instead of stealing Althena’s power, I believe we can beg forgiveness… After all, we were the ones that transgressed the bounds of good. I believe that in her love and wisdom, she would welcome us back into her light.” I wonder if Xeboobia and Royce now really regret sending Fellatio undercover to the Shrine of Foreshadowing. She has been a pill since she became a born-again Althenan. But to Fellatio’s point…I have notes. For starters, are we to believe that in 500 years, not one member of the Vile Tribe considered this approach? Isn’t it more plausible that Althena’s already been petitioned to let these poor fuckers off the hook, and in her spite and pettiness, told them to pound moon sand? Second, even if that would have worked before, it probably won’t work now after all the Slag Sisters have done. Really need a clean record of at least six months before you go hat in hand to the parole board. Fellatio seems nice, but I’m not sure she’s thought this through.

‘Jessica’s clay sculpture of an IUD really spoke to me.’

But despite my concerns with the details of her “plan,” it is nice to hear Fellatio admit, “I have realized what my sisters are doing is wrong…” Though it’s worth noting that she was the one who imprisoned the Blue Dragon (the best dragon!) so she was at least mostly on board with Team Fuck Althena even at that late point. But better late than never! Kyle still thinks this is all a trick, but Fellatio doesn’t really care if they believe her. “If you insist on seeing me only as an enemy, I would not be surprised,” she says. “In that case, I would have to fight all of you alongside my errant sisters…because my tribe deserves a chance at a real life in a real world.” What if the Vile Tribe just…moved into the Stadius Zone? There’s room. Is there some kind of magic barrier that prevents them from doing this? And if so, how did the Slag Sisters circumvent it? Did they find some loophole in the visa program?

The party huddles up to discuss Fellatio’s motives. Basically they all trust her, because she was already the nice non-skanky sister, and she dished a bunch of exposition in a protagonist manner. Nobody even has to float pretending to trust her just to get the damn password. These kids are all so earnest. “I think we should trust her, Alex,” Jess says. “I mean, she waited here for us.” She waited in a room! Wow. I’m ready to hand over the nuclear codes. Mia says, more helpfully, that they’ve seen the good in the Vile Tribe since they arrived. “They might look different,” she says, “but they act and feel much the same as humans do.” Good lord, they might almost be human! But let’s not go crazy. Even Kyle is fine with trusting her, so with unanimous party consent, Alex says, “We believe you, [Fellatio].”