The “ghost” is hiding in an alcove in the opposite hallway. Nanami announces that on her count they will jump in and “tackle it.” Shiro howls enthusiastically at this plan, and you’d think that would tip off the “ghost” that it’s being followed, but the silhouette doesn’t move. When Nanami shouts, “GO!!!” they all rush in, with each member of the party making an incoherent, oddly spelled noise. The mystery person yells at them, “What the hell are you up to!? Are you insane?!” I would really like to know what connotative difference there is between “?!” and “!?” The subtleties of this dialogue are clearly beyond my comprehension.
Anyway, yeah, the “ghost” is Flik, and he’s all pissed off because the kids totally blew the cover on his late night excursions to the male strip club in Greenhill’s red light district. He says he was “tailing Shin,” but we know that basically amounts to the same thing. Flik rants at length about how Shin is “sneaky” and “hard to follow” and so on, even though the man wears the wardrobe equivalent of road cones and bike reflectors. Whatever, Flik. The party envelops Flik and they collectively try to pick up on Shin’s trail, which leads to another dead end hallway. And look at that, there’s another unlit lamp! What to do?
Barry the Genius opens the next secret passageway–this one leading outside behind the school–causing Nanami to proclaim that her little brother is “so cool.” If only that coolness would translate to more hot babes at his castle! Sigh. Barry wallows in his lonely misery as the party heads into the forest behind Greenhill. The path the party follows is very wide and clear, which makes me think it must be well traveled or well known. It also makes me think Shin wants to be conspicuous–wouldn’t it be easier, and less suspicious, to just slink through the trees instead of disappearing inside a closed school building in the dead of night? Does he think that people will just assume he’s spending his evenings molesting school children? Hell, maybe he is doing that and I have this all wrong.
The forest path is fraught with perils like Holly Boys and their Holly Elf cousins, little Peter Pan pixies who attack by waving their berry branches (which certainly don’t resemble anything in particular) and attaching red balloons to people. This does nothing to most of my party members, but poor Muku Ranger Red is light enough that one balloon is enough to make him float away. But he must end up getting snagged on tree branches every time, because he’s back in the party for every successive battle. And the balloon matches his festive cape!
This monster is now called the Glory Hole.
Eventually the party finds a small cabin nestled in the trees. Nanami blurts out, “It’s gotta be the ghost’s haunted shack!” Oh my God, make her stop. Barry doesn’t have the chance to punch his sister in the face for her stupidity, however, as Shin emerges from the cabin to meet them. So this is his underage love shack. “I knew we’d be discovered eventually…” Shin says, stowing some handfuls of candy in his pockets and looking around furtively, “However, my lady requires a bit more time here.” Well, shit, never mind. Unless Teresa is into that, too.
Barry and Flik insist that they are Shin’s allies and mean him no harm, but he’s not listening–he wants to rumble. He announces, “With my blade, Tarantula, in hand, I have nothing to fear…from anyone.” He named his sword “Tarantula”? That sounds like a name a porno actor would give to his penis. And he has film titles to his name like Unleashing the Tarantula IV and Acocknophobia.
Swords are drawn as Shin and Flik try to settle the debate of who has the longer, more impressive blade, but Lassie is so scared by all the fighting and phallic weaponry that she starts crying like, well, a little girl. Shin takes a step back, all, “You brought children with you? Look, you can try to butter me up with presents all you want, but I’m not letting you pass!” In the middle of this awkward moment, Teresa exits the log cabin to greet the group and call off her dog. Flik clarifies who they are and why they’re here, as Shin is practically begging Teresa at this point to let him whip out Tarantula. And now, every time I think of Shin and his sword, I involuntarily picture the last scene in Boogie Nights with Dirk Diggler’s wang. Kill me.
A black screen ushers the party into the cabin, where Teresa says she will take Barry at his word about being the Yaoi Army’s leader. Shin thinks Barry’s a dirty liar, but Teresa admonishes him, “Even if they are from the Highland Army, we needn’t do such roundabout things, Shin.” I have no idea what she means by that, so moving on. Teresa wants to know why anyone from the Yaoi Army would want to come see her. Like it’s totally silly for the army defending their nation to want to lend aid to a leader in exile. Jesus, Barry, are your priorities screwed up or what? Flik summarizes the situation for the mayor, who appears to be less than a Rhodes scholar, finishing, “So, lady Teresa, we need your strength.” Of course, he means this figuratively, since Teresa is a skinny, wimpy woman with a bad haircut, but Teresa answers, “My strength? No, what you seek is Greenhill’s strength…” I’m sure I am holding back women’s lib by saying this, but lucky for Teresa her mayoral position is decided by family lines and not by merit or intelligence.
The long and short of this annoying conversation is that Teresa is not going to help and she does not want to be rescued. Barry, resisting the urge to reply, “Okay, it’s not like I wanted any more girls in the castle, later,” asks why Teresa won’t cooperate. “I abandoned my citizens, and escaped here alone…I am no longer acting mayor of Greenhill,” she drama queens. “And I…don’t want…anything like that battle to ever…” Say that statement out loud to yourself, including the pauses. It doesn’t sound right. Not only does this game overpunctuate, but it doesn’t even do it in appropriate places.
And look at that, it’s time for an overblown flashback sequence! How unexpected! “It became obvious that Highland was after Greenhill,” Teresa says, “and so the citizens were preparing to fight.” Ominous music leads us into the visual of a crowd of City-State soldiers running up the path to Greenhill and greeting the citizens, as Teresa explains, “Highland released the captured Muse soldiers, and they came to Greenhill. At first, everyone rejoiced, without knowing the true meaning of the soldiers’ arrival…” That’s right. They all had head lice. The epidemic took hold of Greenhill and took advantage of their lack of medicated combs and shampoos. Oh, the horror!
I like my version of events better, but let’s hear what really happened from Teresa: “Highland returned the weapons and armor they had confiscated from the Muse soldiers. There were skeptics, but most of the citizens assumed there must have been some Highland commander or other that wanted a fair fight.” Because we’ve seen so much evidence of that so far. They’ve basically used nothing but dirty tricks to sack every other city on the map! Why would anyone be dumb enough to believe that there wasn’t some catch to this “miraculous” return of the soldiers’ equipment? Every time I think, “Wow, this city must house the most idiotic collection of people in the entire game!” Barry visits a new city and I have to lower the bar a little more. “More than anything,” Teresa goes on as we see the soldiers training in the town square, “the increase in military power due to the Muse soldiers was invaluable to the morale of the dejected citizens.” Well, true enough. They must have been in a pretty happy place to seriously believe they were in for a straightforward battle with no deceptive tactics from their enemies. Jesus, these people.
Over a shot of Richard Gere and Julia Roberts stationed with their men outside the city gates, Teresa explains that the Highland Army eventually showed up and put the town under siege, but did not attack. “The addition of the Muse soldiers had nearly doubled Greenhill’s army, and the food supply was now decreasing with alarming speed,” Teresa says over images of squabbling soldiers and civilians. “Soon enough, the soldiers and the citizens were at odds over the dwindling provisions. The Greenhill citizens thought, ‘This is food for Greenhill,’ but the Muse soldiers considered it food for fighting.” But what about the Greenhill soldiers? It sounds like it wasn’t about “food for fighting,” it was about “welcoming” and enlisting all these guys from Muse and then refusing to feed them because they were outsiders, but expecting them to fight to the death for Greenhill. I’d be pissed off, too. According to Teresa, these ill feelings eventually came to a head (heh, I said “came” and “head”) and the Muse soldiers took the food supply for themselves, using the weapons they’d handily been provided by Highland. “It seems obvious now that Highland must have given the Muse soldiers back their weapons for just this purpose,” Teresa says. To non-stupid people, it would have seemed obvious at the time, too. “Hey, here come these prisoners that were released by the enemy army! And they have their swords, too! How awesome for us! Boy, are those Highland soldiers’ faces going to be red!” These people don’t deserve to be saved from Highland. Let’s just go somewhere else.
Teresa finishes that they were “defeated without even having fought,” since they couldn’t stop killing each other over food long enough to keep the Highland soldiers from waltzing in and setting up shop. “All that remained was our distrust for each other…” she mopes, “And…I, as acting mayor of Greenhill, could not prevent this…” Well, you could have kept your gates closed instead of being stupid and gullible, but really, once the Muse soldiers were there this was inevitable. No one could have stopped it if they were going to take up arms and revolt. But Teresa cannot comprehend this, because that would mean the universe doesn’t revolve around her. This happened because she has to be, like, the worst mayor ever, and everyone must hate her! Wah! The party leaves before Teresa can pull out a tattered diary and start reciting some of her recently written emo poetry.
Back outside, Shin basically tells the group that they should get the hell out of Greenhill and that he will fuck them up old-school if they let slip Teresa’s whereabouts to anyone. Flik is not impressed–maybe because the guy saying this stuff is wearing a bright yellow turban and slutty hoop earrings. Flik points out to Shin that Teresa can hardly hide forever, especially since, assuming the Highland soldiers hunting for her are smart enough to walk behind the damn school, there is a wide and clearly marked path leading straight to her hiding place. Shin answers that his brain-damaged lady in waiting wants to keep hiding, so that’s good enough for him. After all, how can she be put up on the cross if she gets rescued first? As Shin walks off, Flik sighs and says they’ll leave Greenhill the next day, as no one present is all that keen on twisting Teresa’s arm to join up.
The next morning, the best thing Nanami can say regarding their Greenhill visit is that “it was fun…kind of.” I am going to take that as meta-game commentary. The party goes outside to meet with Flik, who asks Barry if he is really, truly ready to leave. When he says he is more than ready to go back to HoYay Castle to party with his beefcakes and leave this insipid little burg far behind, Luc interrupts with a pointed question for Flik: “That girl…you’re going to leave without saying anything to her?” Rather than the immediate “YES!” that I was expecting, Flik just tells Luc not to be a silly goose, adding, “…Now that you mention it, I haven’t seen her since this morning. Well, it has nothing to do with me.” Now, I’m sure someone out there read that as, “I do kinda care about her, but I can’t show it in front of everyone! Sniff!” But let me assure you, from the sprite body language, he absolutely meant, “Jesus Christ, let’s get a move on before she pops out from behind a tree and sees me! Go! Move your ass, you tubby little squirrel!” That said, it’s time to leave! I’m sure Barry’s exeunt from Greenhill will be very uneventful.
Oh, look at that, something is happening in the town square! I guess Barry has a little time to check it out before leaving. The citizens of Greenhill are gathered around Captain Prick and his guards as he delivers an announcement courtesy of Prince Adolf. “20,000 Potch and the right of Highland citizenship will be awarded to whomever captures Teresa, former acting mayor!!” The gathered townsfolk aren’t inclined to believe him, since the Highlanders are evil, scheming liars. It would have helped if they had figured this out a few weeks ago instead of right now, but at least they’re catching on.
As the Greenhill citizens are demanding proof that the Prick’s claims are true, Flik doubts it matters, since the promised reward is so great that someone would eventually come forward anyway. And then Lassie sees something of interest and wanders off into the crowd. Nanami wonders what’s into her and then looks up to see…
OH MY GOD IT’S JOWY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GASP!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry, I was channeling Nanami there for a moment. Jowy comes sauntering up, in his Highland uniform, to inform those present that the offer is no joke. Further, he’s there to apologize for the Prick living up to his nickname and getting violent with the populace. The Prick doesn’t look too happy about that, but then again he’s now an underling of some kid that used to be in his Boy Scout troop, so he doesn’t have a lot to be happy about in general. Jowy does make it clear, though, that Teresa must be delivered alive. “No reward will be given for a corpse,” he says. I’d say the young officers of the Highland Army must prefer their ladies alive, but we know they don’t prefer ladies at all.
Lassie, with nary a thought in her head of the consequences, starts running for Jowy. Nanami, similarly, follows after her. Echoing me, Flik yells, “Damn it, you brat!!” Given the choice, Barry immediately chooses to follow them into the crowd. He just can’t resist Jowy’s sweet siren song. Maybe if he had been informed beforehand that seeing Jowy was a possibility, Fitcher, he would have been a little more mentally prepared for dealing with this. But now he’s going to be an emotional wreck and ruin his eyeliner.