Since he’s back here anyway, Barry dumps Muku Ranger Red back at Leona’s in exchange for Oulan. He could bring Wakaba to Matilda, given that she thought her master was going to be there, but her master won’t join up yet anyway and Wakaba is a deceitful tomboy skank. And Flik needs time to get to know his new “wife.” So Oulan it is. With that, Viki teleports the group back to the goddamn checkpoint.

Other than being stopped every two seconds to fight more DoReMi Shitheels, the second trip through the woods passes uneventfully and Barry and pals make it to their Matilda Knight escort, led by Miklotov, captain of the blue knights. Miklotov’s unfortunate haircut and unplucked eyebrows make him the less good-looking of the two babes that accompanied Wart to Muse, but at this point Barry wouldn’t care if he had twelve bald spots and a raging case of gonorrhea. He is DTF.

Nanami immediately is all “We met you in Muse, remember me? I was the idiot who kept exclaiming at everything!” Miklotov, of course, doesn’t remember either of them, because in his words, “I apologize for that, but at that time I had no idea of the man Lord Barry would become.” He didn’t notice Barry because he wasn’t famous. That level of famewhore gold digging should be a turn-off for Barry, but it totally isn’t. Miklotov escorts Barry to Rockaxe Castle, the headquarters of the Matilda Knights. He’s ushered past the castle town and straight to Wart, and is barred from leaving by Miklotov until he talks to the big boss. No worries–it’s not like Rockaxe is going anywhere, right?

Barry finds Wart on a throne inside the castle’s reception hall, flanked by Camus, Miklotov’s hotter, existentialist butt buddy. Wart wastes no time in acting like a dick to Barry, calling him a “little boy” and accusing basically the entire world of lying about his accomplishments against the Highland Army. Barry, after fighting ten thousand motherfucking DoReMi Elves with a party half-full of girls, is not in the mood, and rises to Wart’s bait despite Nanami’s repeated warnings for him to watch his mouth. Wart gives no fucks, though, and keeps trash talking Barry and lying out his ass: “The Muse Army were such pathetic cowards. We sent troops to save them, but Muse fell before they even arrived! I say that because, like Muse, you’re a leader of a tiny army futilely battling Highland. You’ll probably meet the same fate. Probably.” Yeah, well…you smell like rotten turnips, and Mario is totally going to kill you! So there!

Barry has no real comebacks to all this, so he passively goes with Camus to his guest quarters, with the understanding that he will be escorted to the border in the morning. He would like to escort Camus to the border of his pants, but the captain of the red knights is apparently too busy to show his guest a good time. “Lord Barry, try not to let that upset you…” he says before he leaves. Oh, he means all that shit Wart said. Totally not what Barry is upset about. Nanami, oblivious to her brother’s frustrations, announces that she’s tired and drags him off to sleep in the same bed with her. Poor, poor blue-balled Barry.

Just to prove that things can always get worse, Barry gets a late-night visitor, and of course it’s not a stripper from the Knights of Rockaxe All-Male Revue. It’s our old buddy Leknaat, and she’s come to wake up Barry and troll him with incoherent ramblings about The Cold Truth of War™ because she was bored in the middle of the night. He rolls out of bed to greet her as she appears in her Glinda the Good Witch bubble. “Barry…” she drones at him. “You’ve become so strong… But the threat of battle is still nipping at our heels… Much blood and many tears have been shed… But you can’t turn your back on the fight. You mustn’t avert your eyes. In you… In you rests the hopes and dreams of so many.” Barry wants to be all, “Do you see me turning my back on war, given that I’m trying to recruit a bunch of goddamn knights right now?” Except Leknaat doesn’t let him get a word in edgewise. “You can’t throw that away,” she tells him, since he was just about to do that. “The Rune on your right hand will guide you to the final battle… And the results of that… Will create our future… Our destiny… Barry.” And with that, she disappears, and Nanami didn’t even wake up. Bitch. Barry crawls back into bed, trying to ignore Nanami’s snoring and wondering if Leknaat pays these obnoxious midnight visits to Jowy as well.

 Loading ...

The next morning, Barry must look like shit, because Nanami asks him what’s wrong. But she obviously doesn’t care that much because she just shrugs off his lack of answer as they head downstairs. At the entrance to the reception hall, Miklotov bumps into Barry and says “Sorry, but we’re in a rush.” Nicely done, translation team. Barry follows Miklotov inside to see what “they” are in such a rush about. Wart, flanked by Camus as before, is wondering the same thing–he was dragged out of his bed of onions pretty early so this had better be important. “The Highland Army has appeared at the Matilda-Muse border,” Miklotov tells them. Camus is all excited that they get to “prove [their] valor,” because that’s the dumb kind of shit knights say. Wart is surprised that his strict adherence to assholish neutrality has not kept Highland from wanting to conquer the most powerful military City-State. Yeah, what could they be thinking?

Miklotov clarifies that the army is chasing down some refugees from Muse who are trying to get to safe territory. Wart reluctantly agrees to mobilize, though he says nothing about saving the refugees. Miklotov, not noticing this, goes “Yes SIR!!!” and awkwardly runs off with a giant boner. Barry agrees to take his tiny party into battle as well, mostly so he can see the knights swinging those big swords around.

Don’t worry, Clive will be fine.

This battle apparently isn’t even a big enough deal to warrant The Cold Truth of War™ Orchestral Score, which makes me sad because it’s one of my favorite tracks. Five Matilda cavalry units hang out with Barry’s piddly little infantry unit behind the wall, while three civilian Muse units run for the border. They shout a bunch of confusing stuff at each other that makes them sound both like refugees and soldiers trying to help the refugees. The point is, as usual, that there are a lot of exclamation points. And that’s before Prince Adolf even gets there.

As Barry and all the Matilda units stand there with their thumbs up their asses, Prince Adolf, Jowy, Jowy’s bitches, Kiba, and Klaus show up to round up their escaped prisoners. Barry could go help, but none of the Matilda units, not even Miklotov’s, will move past the wall, so he’d be walking into a very nonconsensual ass pounding. And even if it’s Jowy and Klaus out there, he has no interest in that. So they watch as the Muse refugees get totally destroyed in two turns. Once they’re already mostly dead, Miklotov decides to ask if they can, like, help. “We will do no such thing,” Wart replies. “Hold your position, Miklotov.” And now I’m picturing Miklotov in an Eiffel Tower position with Camus and Barry. There has to be doujinshi of that, or the fandom has failed catastrophically.

“What are you saying!?” Miklotov cries. “They’re being slaughtered in front of us! It would sully our reputation as knights if we just sit idly by!” Oh, is that why it’s bad? Not because letting innocents die is wrong, but because they would look bad if they didn’t do anything. That’s the ticket. Wart spouts some more bullshit about bolstering their defenses and not getting involved, and dares Miklotov to disobey his direct order. To Barry’s dismay, Miklotov pusses out and stays behind the wall with the rest of them. He’s going to have to get some backbone into this one. And he has some fairly graphic ideas for doing so. Once all the refugees are dead, Prince Adolf orders them to “round up the pigs!” I guess all those deaths we just witnessed were just gentle taps. Miklotov uses about twenty tons of ellipses as the battle ends.

Back in Rockaxe, Wart is still being a smug asshole. “Ultimately, Highland did not invade,” he says. “It seems even the great [Prince Adolf] has not the courage to face the Knights of Matilda.” Is it time to kill this pile of shit yet? It seems past time. He orders Miklotov and Camus to “stand down,” like they were ready to gut him, and the two knights leave, Miklotov’s sprite walking a little more sulkily than his boyfriend’s. Wart bodily pushes Barry and his entourage out of the way as he, too, leaves the room.

Out in the hallway, Miklotov is spilling all his plans for insubordination to Camus. I hope he waited until Wart had at least gotten out of earshot, but he’s so hot for battle that clearly he’s not thinking with the right head. Camus basically tells him this and counsels him against running off to Muse alone like a dumbfuck. “But…!!!” Miklotov cries, breaking my brain into many pieces. “I have to see with my own eyes! I have to see what those Highland bastards are doing in Muse! Don’t try to stop me, Camus.” Camus, ever the bottom, reluctantly agrees to let him go kill himself. But he’s really a power-bottom, since he cleverly waits for Miklotov to leave and then asks Barry to follow and keep an eye on his silly man for him. We know who’s really in charge here.

Buttsex?

As soon as Barry enters the town proper, he catches a glimpse of Miklotov talking to two of his blue knight subordinates. Like Camus, they’re concerned that Miklotov is in way over his head, and should have a large group of men accompany him on the journey, wink. But Miklotov still ain’t care, and leaves the city alone. After this fiftieth reminder in five minutes that It’s Dangerous to Go Alone, Barry can explore the town. The first thing he notices is that the trading post is closed, so he can’t buy up their whole supply of musk. Shu totally goes crazy for that stuff (Jowy is more of an Old Spice man). But he won’t let a minor cosmetics setback keep him from a shopping spree. Barry wanders around the other shops in town, picking up some runes he’ll forget to put on weapons later, and gearing out Viki, who basically was carrying a ring and a lunchbox full of tempura. Barry’s just thankful that she didn’t show up literally naked.

Errands completed, Barry heads over to the inn. Clive has been totally up his ass about coming to Rockaxe ever since he found out Elza would be here, but–surprise!–he’s missed her again. A couple beefy Suikoclones near the door think they saw a woman who matched her description, even though Clive fails to mention her more distinctive features like “giant fucking facial scar,” but she’s long gone. “That’s right, some woman I’d never seen before came in here…” one says. “Great butt, I’ll say. But when I tried to talk to her…” Okay, this story is already all kinds of unbelievable. This Suikoclone was looking at a woman’s ass? I don’t think so. His friend continues with this fairy tale: “Yeah, she just suddenly kicked us down, then whipped out this magic object and blew off my beautiful mustache! No way I’d forget that!” No, I did not insert mad libs for any part of that statement. That is actually what he said. Even though I know “magic object” is their ham-handed way of telling us she had a gun, all I can picture is Elza pulling out a dildo and smacking this guy in the mouth with it. Clive takes no notice of the ridiculousness of their story and only wants to know where she went. It seems very silly that Elza would bother telling these guys she just assaulted with her magic dildo about her travel plans, but either she did, or they’re lying to Clive to get him to leave them alone. According to them, she went to Radat. “Let’s go back to Radat, Barry,” he says, like our hero is at his fucking beck and call. Barry will take Clive to Radat later, of course, but only if he can call dibs on Elza’s magical, mustache-destroying dildo.

Clive is kind of a slut.

The only other person of note at the inn is a Portrait Person named L.C. Chan, short for Long Chan Chan. I’m not sure why you’d abbreviate one Chan and spell out the other, but that hardly cracks the top 50 of strange translation issues in this game. Also, hee. Long. Long Cock Chan, a muscular fellow with a shaved head except for a high ponytail and a child molester mustache, is chowing down on a bowl of rice, but he pauses between shovelfuls to tell Barry, “A strong body is the root of any great fighter. And the root of a great body is eating great food.” God, I wish that were true, without all the exercise and stuff. Anyway, this is Wakaba’s master, and Barry is cautiously optimistic about recruiting a guy who, unlike his apprentice, clearly is not a chick in disguise. But Long Cock won’t join up for now, so we’ll just have to catch up with him later.

Miklotov is obviously making for the Matilda-Muse border checkpoint. And Camus did ask, while batting his eyelashes just so, if Barry would make sure nothing bad happens to him. But even though Miklotov has a pretty big head start, I don’t see why the party can’t stop in this charming little village on the way and do a little shopping. It’s not like it’s going to turn into a longer diversion, right? Right.

The creatively named Highway Village looks like every shitty little Route 66 town that is long past its heyday and only has a couple of shops, a bar, and a motel if you’re lucky. This town also has a trading post, because according to a lady Suikoclone, Grasslanders heading to Muse usually stop here on the way. Consulting a fan-made map (here, if you’re interested), I see that the only reasonable way anyone would get from the Grasslands to Muse via Matilda is to come through Highland, and I imagine that’s not happening right now. And yeah, that means Matilda and Highland apparently share a border, something I would have known if I’d played through those text adventure games that never got translated from that weird moon language. So why would they bother invading Matilda through Muse? Stupid.