Big Gay Fitcher hands Flik some forged enrollment documentation for the kiddies to get into the academy. “They’re three years out-of-date,” he tells them, “so please tell the guards you were delayed by the war.” Which war, I wonder. This one hasn’t been going on for three years, and the last one ended exactly three years ago. Pointing the finger at either one, therefore, is a dead giveaway that you’re lying, but something tells me those guards will be just gullible enough to accept this explanation. Flik asks if Big Gay Fitcher would please do the lying to the guards for him, since he’s, er, got a silver tongue (sorry for the mental image). But he just can’t do it: “There are many in Greenhill that know my face,” he lisps, looking a little frightened and jumpy all of a sudden. Really, it shouldn’t be a problem as long as the party stays away from any public men’s restrooms, but Fitcher can’t be persuaded. Oh well. He advises the party to come up with some aliases to fill in on the forms, promises he’ll contact them if he can find out anything about Teresa’s whereabouts, and practically sprints out of there. Seriously, what crawled up his ass and died?

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Flik just cannot handle the brain-taxing job of coming up with a few fake names, so he asks Barry to do it. Barry has to do everything. He decides he will be PUGGY!!! and Nanami will be Gremio, for no other reason than that I think it’s funny, all implications of Nanami being hot for her adoptive brother aside. A Black Screen of Who Cares about the Rest of the Party takes care of almost everyone else’s names, but Nanami insists that Flik should get a new name, too. Barry gets to choose from “Bluto,” “Blue Thunder,” and “Sturtheim Reinbach III.” Two things: first, “Blue Thunder” is absolutely hilarious and sounds like Flik’s porno name; second, I have no idea if “Sturtheim” is a translation error and should be “Schtolteheim” or if it’s some intentional joke I’m not getting. Whatever, he can be Sturty for a scene or two–which is, at the absolute most, how long these guys will be able to remember that they’re not going by their real names. Sturty doesn’t like his new name because he’s a whiny little bitch, but shrugs and says, “Let’s go, Barry! I mean… Let’s go, PUGGY!!!!!” And now I myself am contributing to this game’s over-punctuation issues. I feel so dirty.

The group approaches the guard standing at the gate, who tells them, “Under orders from the Commander, those that have no business in Greenhill may not pass.” Notice how they keep refusing to say his name? Oh, this is so transparent. Like anyone in this game can resist the allure of a good name drop. Sturty tells the guard that they do, in fact, have business in Greenhill, of the rescuing-the-mayor-and-foiling-the-enemy’s-plans hitting-the-books variety. Sturty spins his little lie about the war to the guard, who wonders, “You don’t look like a teacher… These kids…they can’t be…your children?” I’m choosing to believe the guard says this because Sturty looks so obviously gay, and that his young age has nothing to do with it.

Sturty and the kids manage to get past the suspicious-yet-gullible guard and step onto the lovely red brick streets of Greenhill. Sturty tells his charges they need to get “enrolled” at the school right away, because God knows this whole plan will fall apart unless they are actually enrolled. There’s no way they could just lie about it. He also yells at them not to get “distracted.” I don’t see any attractive Suikoclones walking the streets in their birthday suits, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

Most of the local NPCs are less than interesting, except for a girl at the inn named Mairie, who is crying in the corner over some no-good, cheating jerk by the name of Pico. “That darn Pico, what’s he up to…?” she wails pathetically. “‘You’re the only one for me…the only girl to have captured my heart.’ Whatever!” You know, he’s probably not lying–she probably is the only girl in his life. I mean, he’s a male character in this game and he’s named Pico–the odds are kind of stacked against him being straight.

Up the street from the city gates, PUGGY!!! and pals step into a large courtyard, paved with the same lovely red bricks, where a blonde girl in a school uniform is in the middle of a confrontation with a Highland soldier. Apparently the girl just stomped on the soldier’s foot, which she claims he richly deserved, because “that’s what you get when you stare at a lady with those perverted eyes!!!” If by that, she means, “frightened, what-are-those-things-on-your-chest eyes,” then I guess the guy’s a perv. The guard threatens the girl, whose name is Nina, with some unspecified punitive action for bugging him. He also refers to her as “just a kid,” which triggers a sharp, blinding pain in my forehead. Oh, wait, that was me stabbing myself with a pencil. That’s another tetanus shot for me!

Nina is unafraid of the guard, even though she seemed to think he was going to take her to the back of a windowless van a second ago. While the guard hesitates and wonders whether to smack her around or not, our group of heroes looks on, wondering what to do. PUGGY!!! is given two options: “Let’s save her!” or “I didn’t see a thing.” Our hero is in no mood to come to some girl’s rescue, especially when she’s kind of asking for trouble, so he goes for the latter. Gremio is totally not having this. “WHAT??? No way, no way!! PUGGY!!!, you’re not gonna help? Are you a man or a mouse?!” If we replaced the hyperactive punctuating with several nonplussed cries of “Young Master!” this Barry-Nanami/PUGGY!!!-Gremio parallel would be spot-on. Not that Konami recycled the character dynamics from the first game in making this one. After all, Suikoden II is the greatest, most innovative RPG ever–why else would it cost a hundred bucks on eBay?

Sturty agrees with our hero, as leaping to some schoolgirl’s defense would hardly be inconspicuous, but Nina makes up their minds for them by running into the group and hiding behind Sturty’s manly blue cape. So once again, PUGGY!!!’s choice was not actually a choice. Sturty reluctantly steps up to confront the soldier, presumably in an effort to protect his leader from gaining a reputation as a rescuer of damsels in distress. No hotties are going to join the Yaoi Army if that nonsense is floating around.

The part of Nina will be played by Mr. T.

Meanwhile, Nina is still hiding behind Sturty, who has every appearance of wanting to beat her up to save the soldier instead of the other way around. Then the soldier stupidly calls Sturty’s blade “dull,” and we know Sturtheim of the Blue Lightning isn’t going to take any shit-talking about the quality of his sword. (Let’s just say he keeps it well honed.) Sturty barely has to get up in the guy’s grill about how sharp his blade really is before the guard bolts like he’s got Prince Adolf running after him with a book of matches. Completely ignoring Nina, Sturty rounds up his pack–not even bothering to use their aliases in front of this stranger–and ushers them toward the academy. In their wake, Nina makes incoherent, awestruck noises.

Lesbian Suikoclone!

The party enters the main building of the school and approaches a bespectacled woman sitting behind a receptionist’s desk. The woman, Emilia, notes how weird it is to see students are enrolling in the middle of the year, to which PUGGY!!! almost replies, “Oh, sorry we didn’t make the September deadline–we were too busy protecting the country from a bloodthirsty conqueror,” but then remembers the whole incognito thing.

At this point, Sturty says randomly, “You say you were delayed by the war?” Way to go, translation team. Emilia’s all “…..” because clearly Sturty has some issues with sticking to reading his own lines. Let’s just move on before we see Muku Ranger Red howling and Shiro crying “Mu-mu!!!” Emilia says the kids’ papers are in order, and welcomes them to the “New Leaf Academy, pride of Greenhill!” That should be on a sign outside the city, with the Lions Club and FFA logos.

Emilia is about to get the kids officially enrolled, but before she can get to that she has a question for Sturty. “These children…” she whispers, “are they yours?” Sturty answers that they are not, a little too testily. Yeah, it is the second time in five minutes he’s gotten this from a total stranger, but his vehemence suggests he thinks Emilia wants to jump over that desk and make babies with him right this minute. Calm down. She doesn’t want to fuck you.

Once all the bureaucratic stuff is out of the way, Emilia begins the campus tour. Halfway to the stairwell, she gestures around (well, she would if she weren’t a sprite) and says, “Down here, we have the blacksmith, Runemaster and appraisal classrooms. You’ll find trainees in each; be sure to talk with them.” Translation: there are some NPCs in these rooms; be sure to talk to them for badly translated dialogue and possibilities of free stuff! Emilia mentions that the study hall classrooms are on the second floor, and that the kids should visit everything on campus to help them figure out what their “major” will be. Is this a boarding school or a university? Or a vocational school, since the available majors seem to be blacksmithing, runemastery, and antiques appraisal? It’s like they crammed every idea of what a school can be into this place, and none of it fits together properly.

Right after Emilia finishes her spiel, a severe man in a yellow turban walks by. Emilia says, “Oh…Lord Shin,” like she really doesn’t think he should be there. Yes, this is the guy who accompanied Teresa to the Dumbfuck U.N. Summit in Muse. I’m sure you guys had figured that out, since there can only be so many guys in one game who wear yellow turbans, but I thought I should be clear. Shin turns around and gives Emilia a blank stare as she explains that she’s showing around some new students and their blue-clad guardian. Why would he care? Dude’s just passing through. He says as much and excuses himself. Sturty, ever the sharp one, asks who that was, even though you’d think he would recognize him from Muse. I know there are some real fashion catastrophes in this game, but Shin is still difficult to miss. Emilia tells him and us what we already sort of know: Shin is Teresa’s assistant, but she’s been missing since the city was invaded. “Missing, huh…” Sturty Shions. Well, this super-dangerous rescue mission wouldn’t be very interesting if Teresa were just hanging out in the mayor’s office, would it?

This ten-second walk into the corridor apparently begins and concludes our tour, as Emilia also excuses herself, giving the “students” leave to walk around campus and introduce themselves to any people with portraits they might meet. Sturty decides that this is an opportunity to try and hunt down Teresa, but I see this as what it always is: a recruitment drive. Or, at least, the preamble to one.

In the runemastery classroom, PUGGY!!! finds a couple dozen students in the thrall of one Runemistress Jeanne. This particular Jeanne–in this recapper’s opinion the most attractive of all the Jeanne clones to date–appears to have stripped a bit of silk curtain from a nearby window and garbed herself in it, and since she’s Jeanne she looks fantastic anyway. (Bitch.) Jeanne greets PUGGY!!! with a “tee hee” and a jiggle (I saw a pixel move near her chest, that’s a jiggle), and, as she’s not available to recruit yet, goes back to passively fueling fanboys’ masturbation fantasies.

Try as he might, PUGGY!!! can’t find any more portrait people in the school building–they’re probably all on their smoke break–so he decides to speak with Emilia again, and find out what the hell was up with the shoddy ten-second tour. But whatever his harsh words for the academy’s recruitment office were, we’ll never know, because I see that he has the option of grilling Emilia about Shin, and we can’t just let that chance slip by. Emilia, understandably, is curious why this random student wants to know about Shin (unless he’s looking for fashion tips). PUGGY!!! is forced, in the name of the good ending, to confess, “We’re searching for Teresa…” Boy, this undercover thing is going really well.

Emilia seems to find this secret more amusing than scandalous, which I suppose is a good sign that she’s a Portrait Person on the side of the good guys and not a villainous dominatrix headmistress or something. (I have not seen a fanfic to this effect, but I’m sure one exists.) She notes that “that person named Flik has been nosing around quite a bit.” So, in the couple of minutes, tops, that the group has had to investigate, Flik’s already blown his cover? Given that Flik of the Blue Lightning is apparently the most famous person ever to grace God’s green earth, you’d think it would be doubly important for him, of all people, to keep his identity to himself during this delicate spy mission. Well played, Flik. Well played. Even Bear wouldn’t have fucked up this early in the game. And that’s my cue to drop the goddamn aliases myself, as I keep accidentally typing everyone’s real names, anyway, and it’s getting annoying.

Once a handy Black Screen of Whispered Secrets has filled in Emilia on the plan, the headmistress winks at Barry and says, “Well, I’ll be off to the nearest Highland soldier to rat you out. Sucker!” Kidding. “Please, find Lady Teresa,” she says. “I know she’s alive somewhere.” I know I would laugh if it turned out she’d been killed by Highland assassins weeks ago and this entire mission was for nothing. Emilia also promises to do whatever she can to help them. Barry wonders what a skinny schoolmarm could possibly do to help him, but then again, he’s got winners like Tai Ho and Gengen in his army. Compared to that, Emilia’s already in the cream of the crop.