PUGGY!!! inches closer to Hix and Cleo, hoping to overhear Hix asking about him. Like something that positive would ever happen in his life. No, Hix just wants to know why Cleo, as a woman, is a fighter. Women can’t do that shit! They cook and make babies! The idea that women shouldn’t fight is strange to Cleo. “Just like men, women have things they want to protect. Don’t you have something you want to protect?” she wonders. Yes he does, Hix admits, but he’s just a super weak weakling with a tiny limp wang. His self confidence issues are totally not attractive to PUGGY!!! at all. Then again, PUGGY!!!’s sure he can make Hix feel like a strong brute man. In her own way, Cleo gives him a pep talk, then they bid each other a platonic good night. PUGGY!!!, meanwhile, has dozed off around the corner.

On his way out of the house, Hix bumps into the eavesdropping PUGGY!!! and gets all flustered again. Just when PUGGY!!! thinks this might finally be going somewhere, Hix stammers a quick goodnight and runs out the front door. Lame! With no chance at all for any action — unless Bear is in the mood — PUGGY!!! heads into the guest bedroom to catch some shut-eye. Cleo is already sound asleep. I rewound the footage to time it, and it took her ten seconds to walk through the door, get into bed, and go to sleep. I was going to point out the ridiculousness of the timing, but then I realized that there are days when I can totally relate. Bear is by the window, and unfortunately the only thing he wants to do with his mouth is talk. He’s restless because he’s been after The Count for a while, and now he finally has a lead. “[The Count] isn’t human. He misused a rune and became a vampire. He destroyed the village where I was born,” Bear exposits. I’m curious about how one could “misuse” a rune. Did he disrespect it by putting it in his butt or something? And the thing about his village is just information we already knew, partly from Sam’s recap, and partly from the way Bear started acting as soon as he heard the guy’s name. Obviously he wasn’t after The Count because of missed child support payments — at least not outside of fanfiction. A destroyed village. YAWN. “When I returned to my village,” Bear continues, “I saw members of my own family, who were turned into zombies by him, eating each other.”

…

…

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Okay, that’s gross and tragic, I know. But something about the phrasing, or the imagery, is just fucking cracking me up. I’m picturing Bear walking in on a Thanksgiving-type feast, but instead of a turkey, it’s, like, his dad on the table. The other zombies, dressed up for the occasion, are delighted to see him and invite Bear to join in the meal. This is just the way my mind works, folks. Ever since then, Bear has been on a quest to find The Count and make him pay for these hilarious atrocities. This quest is so important to him, this is the first time he’s bothered mentioning it. All that time spent helping the Lubrication Army and specifically not trying to find The Count was just…um… …Shit. I’m not saying that Bear needed to mention his Important Personal Quest every other second, but a little advance notice would have been nice. Bear tells PUGGY!!! to go to sleep, since he wants to stare at the moon and feel sorry for himself some more. PUGGY!!! decides now would be a bad time to make a sexual pun on the term “eating” so he gets in bed alone.

PUGGY!!! has a moon that will make Bear stay up.

The next morning, he awakens to find Cleo staring at him creepily. The rest of the house is deserted. I’m sure the townsfolk are just enjoying a quiet, peaceful day out of doors. But oh no! As soon as PUGGY!!! approaches the village square, the “Oh Shit” musical theme bursts onto the scene. Zorak stands at the front of a group consisting of three clones, Hix, and Tengaar. Although there appears to be nothing very threatening happening at the moment, PUGGY!!! and his crew still hide at the back of the group, just in case. The camera pans down to show a sprite with lavender hair and a brilliant purple cloak. He’s surrounded by a trio of blue-skinned, hunched over sprites, who are milling about in a most disorganized fashion. I won’t keep you in suspense — this is The Count and his team of zombie reinforcements. I see no skeletons — maybe they had the day off. “Good morning, everybody,” The Count greets them politely as we see his character portrait for the first time. He is one ugly motherfucker. Not that he was the least bit attractive in Suikoden II, but the very special Suikoden I graphics have really fugged him up big time. He’s not so much purple here as he is a very Michael Kors-ish orange color, and he’s seriously been into the dark red eyeshadow. PUGGY!!! feels an irresistible urge to give this guy a makeover.

“[The Count]! What do you want?!” Zorak screams. Someone hasn’t been paying attention. “I came to get your daughter, of course. It should be obvious. After all, she’s your daughter,” The Count explains. I’m not really sure what he means by this last part, unless there’s some sort of weird past love affair between The Count and Zorak and now The Count is trying to get back at him by sucking on his daughter. That seems the most logical interpretation. Again, Zorak refuses to hand over Tengaar. “Th-that’s right!” Hix tries to be studly. But then he has to ruin it by adding, “Besides, why are you in broad daylight when you are a vampire? Have you no shame?!” The first question might make some sense, considering we don’t technically know about The Count’s lack of traditional vampire weaknesses yet. But what’s this about shame? Is a vampire walking around in sunlight the equivalent of a human walking around with his nuts hanging out?

“Shame? What are you talking about? I became a vampire by using a rune, so I happen to be a well-bred vampire,” The Count replies. I officially give up trying to make any sense of this dialogue. Zorak tells The Count to get the fuck out, otherwise he’s going to show him “the power of the science Warriors’ Village.” Now that’s terrifying. Those clones and the guy in the headband look like they could kick some serious undead ass. Speaking of which, Zorak and the three clones run forward, only to be knocked to the ground by a flash of light and a high-pitched sound effect. All four of them are now sprawled on the ground. What’s interesting here is that the game designers created three different unconscious sprites for the clones. So they couldn’t bother to come up with different standing sprites for these guys when they appear in every God damn town on the map, but they thought it was worth making three different knocked-down sprites for one short scene? I will never understand their priorities.

Bear, the dickhead, thinks that he’s studly enough to take down The Count all by his lonesome, and of course PUGGY!!! gets forced into the action. The battle, like the first battle against The Count in Suikoden II, is not winnable. Even if it were, I would not win, because I forgot to form my party properly and most of my short range fighters are in the back row. There isn’t a single gaming mechanism I can’t screw up. I expect the battle to be over in a single round like most battles of this type. For some reason, the game designers didn’t make The Count strong enough to kill me that quickly. So I have no attacks that can hit him, and he can take his time murdering my party. Great. It takes six God damn rounds for me to die. At least I lasted longer than that shitty wuss Zorak.

Laugh at my crappy battle arrangement, Suikoden fans.

Only Hix and Tengaar remain standing at this point. The Count continues to address Zorak, asking for his daughter’s hand in marriage. “She will have the honor of becoming my 70th bride,” he says, just to be a jerk. PUGGY!!! feels nauseous at the thought of marrying that many women. Hell, one consummation would be bad enough for him. The Count doesn’t wait for Zorak to reply. He steps forward to nab the underage Tengaar, but Hix runs forward to block him. Just for the record, Tengaar is 14 in this game, in case this plot wasn’t disgusting enough already. PUGGY!!! forces himself to believe that Hix is only protecting Tengaar because she’s the village chief’s daughter and because Hix in general is a stand-up guy who helps anyone in need, even if that person has boobs. PUGGY!!! is like a reverse GameFAQs poster here.

Hix is all, “Leave her alone, you big meanie!” And The Count is all, “I will kill you now.” But Tengaar can’t bear to see her big studly man get knocked to the ground or zombified. After ordering him to get out of the way, she steps forward to meet her gross vampire fiance. “I like your style, young lady,” The Count smarms, checking out her 14-year-old bosoms. “If I go with you, do you promise not to harm the villagers?” she naively wonders. Because that type of promise is so often followed. Has she never watched The Princess Bride? But The Count is all, “Yeah, sure I will.” “Tengaar! I swear, I swear, I swear I’ll come and rescue you!” Hix screams as Tengaar follows The Count back to their honeymoon suite. PUGGY!!! tries not to vomit. “I’ll be waiting for you, Hix,” Tengaar swoons, which should make The Count strike down his competition right then and there. But then The Count, Tengaar, and the three zombies — who have been waiting so patiently all this time — walk peacefully offscreen. Either The Count is going to come back to murder them all later, or he’s so excited about the prospect of some sweet statutory, he really is planning to leave them alone.

Cut to the guest room at Zorak’s house, where Cleo and Bear are staring at PUGGY!!! in bed. PUGGY!!! decides that’s not any less creepy just because there’s a guy there. “Have you come to your senses, PUGGY!!!?” Bear asks eagerly. “He was right in front of us, and we were powerless.” Yeah, PUGGY!!!’s aware of that — he was the only one alive for the last three rounds of the battle, thank you very much. Bear has somehow determined that they need a “special weapon” in order to fight The Count. He then pulls something out of his ass about how normal weapons are even more worthless against runic vampires than they are against regular vampires. If he’s such a God damn expert on the subject, then why did he force PUGGY!!! into that pointless, painful battle? Regardless, it’s not like Bear has a clue on how to find such a weapon, so he asks Zorak if he has any leads. For some reason, the three non-essential party members are present for this conversation when they’ve been missing for every other cutscene. What is up with that?

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Zorak doesn’t know of any magical vampire-fighting weapon right offhand, and it sounds like this is the first time he’s ever even thought about the subject. “Wait. Perhaps that place…” he trails off mysteriously. Bear tells him to fucking spill it already. As it turns out, there’s a place to the west of the village called the Temple of Qlon. PUGGY!!! is already in the know, thanks to a random Suikoclone he talked to earlier. When Zorak launches into the story about the priest named Qlon who founded the place, Bear threatens violence upon his person. Also, I’m thinking that this guy and the Penis Castle greeter Qlon are one and the same. I know this is, like, the one RPG series where more than one person can have the same name, but I think it makes things more interesting if Penis Castle Qlon is actually an ancient priest who looks like a little boy and whose real dream in life is to be a castle greeter. I have to get my kicks where I can.

Anyway, there is a “secret” hidden in Qlon Temple, according to Zorak. “Boy, that really tells us a lot,” Bear snarks. That’s almost verbatim what I was thinking. Cleo thinks they might as well check it out, since it’s their only lead. Of course, they’ve done all of fifteen seconds of research, so it’s very possible that with a little more time, they might find an actual lead. I mean, what are the chances that the very thing they need to defeat The Count is located a short distance away from their current location and is at the first and only place they’ve heard about? After this short cutscene, I make PUGGY!!! talk to Zorak again, just in case he says anything funny that I can use for a screen capture. Right away, all five party members emerge from PUGGY!!! and I’m forced to sit through the entire cutscene a second time. This type of thing always happens to me. At least it’s not as bad as the similar incident with Blathers in Cockarina of Time.

This break between destinations is as good a place as any to end the recap. Next time, don’t count on any actual rescuing, but if we’re lucky, Qlon Temple might not be a total dead end. There may be some actual plot revelations and time traveling, too. See you in Part 12!