When they reach a clearing at the end of the trail, after fighting entirely too many palette-swapped airbrushed eagle men and demon knights in purple armor, they find Tengaar and all of the kobolds who helped her pull off this farce. “Wow, you made it all the way here!” she praises Hix. “Running all around for my sake, crossing the woods safely… You’re already a great warrior.” Yeah, he was so great to take advantage of Barry’s hospitality (and Blinking Mirror) and come here when he thought Tengaar might die. I mean, yes, he was stupid to believe that, but here we all are. Hix finally realizes that this entire quest was just Tengaar tricking him into doing exactly what she wanted, and Barry gets to finish his thought, since Hix is stuttering again: “Was this all just a ruse?” Tengaar at least has enough grace to apologize, though I don’t think it’s nearly enough. Meanwhile, the chief explains why he was willing to help her in this scam. “The Holy Warrior Klift, who founded the Warriors’ Village, is a legend here,” he tells them. “When I heard you were from there, I offered to help this young lady.” Wait, that’s not really that good of a reason at all. Up yours, kobold.

Hix is still having a little trouble with this concept, because bless his heart, he actually thought that was a mystical Blue Stone he was buying at the South Window item shop. So the chief has to explain to him that the villagers planted those items, and that he hadn’t actually heard of the Test of the Unicorn since he was a pup. “It’s just an old, old fairy tale,” he finishes. And of course, this is the cue for a unicorn to pop out of the trees and go, “NOPE, WRONG.”

Careful! It might spray glitter at you!

A goddamn unicorn prances gaily out into the clearing. “A…a…u, u, unicorn!!!!” cries Hix, who is the only person present who was expecting to find a unicorn out here. The kobold Suikoclones all scream in fright and flee, but the unicorn ignores them and addresses Tengaar. It has weird little brackets around its dialogue, but I’m totally not typing that shit out. “Are you a ‘Maiden’?” it asks her. Whoa, that’s a bit of a personal question, buddy. Though yes, duh, look at her boyfriend. Tengaar hides behind Hix and replies, “Wh…what if I am?” The unicorn creeps, “I will take you…” Then he goes, “Just kidding!” high-fives Hix and Barry, and they ride off on him into the sunset.

Sadly, Barry’s not gonna get off that easy. Of course, Hix leaps to defend his lady, even as the unicorn rears up on its hind legs and sprays the clearing with fabulous green lightning bolts. As Tengaar shrieks and the unicorn advances, he stutters, “I…I probably can’t win…. I probably won’t ever be a warrior… But… But… But… I…I will protect Tengaar!!! I have sworn it!! On this sword!!” A lightning strike, a unicorn, and a straight guy, all in one place? This is one crazy afternoon. Barry should check behind that tree for a pot of gold or a low-calorie sweetener with no aftertaste.

As Hix advances further, ready to thrust his sword Tengaar into the unicorn’s ass in the most confusing scene in Suikoden history, it disappears. “Noble Warrior, Pure-Hearted Maiden,” the unicorn’s voice says, “I wish you both good fortune…. But Tengaar, girl, you need to stop being such a bitch. Farewell…” I may have made some of that up.

Back in the chief’s house, Tengaar understates, “Well, that was quite a surprise.” The chief chimes in, “I never thought the Unicorn would actually appear.” You don’t say! I thought you guys were leaving trinkets in item shops for Hix to find because you thought this whole thing was real. If I drew a picture of Jesus’s face on my grandma’s toast and she freaked out, obviously I would not be counting on the real Jesus materializing in her corn flakes. But the good news is, Hix is now officially a warrior because a snowy white unicorn said so. Yay! I guess! Hix says, “Yeah…now we can go back to the village.” But it seems that Tengaar has learned a little bit of a lesson about being considerate, and goes, “What do you mean? Sir Barry helped you so much, we have to repay that debt!” Fucking right! Though Barry can’t say he’d be sad if these two did go home and spare him the trouble of accommodating a heterosexual couple in his castle. Even though Hix goes, “Eh? Eh? Eh????” at this like a little asshole, Tengaar walks over to Barry and offers their services to the Yaoi Army in the name of their stupid straight village. And once more, she walks out, leaving Hix to run after her in a gay panic.

Tengaar would have had to lay a golden egg on the carpet with about 200,000 potch inside to make that whole hassle worth the trouble, so Barry resigns himself to never getting those hours of his life back and leaves the chief’s house. Right outside, he finds another girl, though this one is so little that he doesn’t necessarily find her terrifying. Plus she’s decked out in hot pink, which Barry approves of. “Yuzu’s in big, big trouble… What should Yuzu do…?” the little girl asks. Her name, in case it wasn’t apparent, is Yuzu. Barry asks what happened, and she replies, “Well… (sniff)… Yuzu managed to escape with her granddaddy’s sheep… But… The sheep… They went into the woods… Now Yuzu’s in trouble…” It would have been nice if Barry could have helped her with her sheep while he was there the first time, but noooooo. But he’s a nice boy, so he offers to help her. Back to the Unicorn Woods!

Luckily, Yuzu is some sort of wizard, and teleports both of them to the same clearing where Barry and Hix met the unicorn. So all Barry has to do is run around and “collect” Yuzu’s three lost sheep by poking them in the butts. After he catches each one, Yuzu tells him how awesome he is, which makes him feel pretty good. Once all three sheep are back with her, she squees, “Yay! You’re the coolest! Thanks, Mister!” Barry is a sheep-wrangling god among men!

Back in the village, of course, Barry finds out that that’s not all Yuzu is upset about. It turns out that her sheep wandered off because they were hungry, and, heartbreakingly, “I don’t know where granddaddy is… And I need to take the sheep somewhere safe…” Now, he’s not going to tell Yuzu this part, but High Yo has been agitating for him to start a little free-range farm so he can feed some nice proteins to his Yaoi Army hotties. So since Yuzu is both non-threatening and way useful, he tells her, “Take them to my place.” She flips out, gushing about how great he is and how she doesn’t have to worry about her poor homeless sheep anymore. Let’s hope she’s still this happy when High Yo serves rack of lamb with mint jelly to him and Shu tomorrow night.

Everyone else does!

Barry returns home and gathers up some items and people for another round of recruiting, but instead of teleporting him to Radat, Viki blurts out, “Huh?” and he ends up…in the middle of the Cave of the Wind. Fan-fucking-tastic. So 15 minutes later, because I didn’t know what the fuck direction to go, Barry is back in daylight, teleports home again, and tries a second time to go to Radat. Of course, Barry didn’t realize that it was suddenly occupied by the Highland Army again. Crap! This is the worst day anyone has ever had.

Okay, fuck Radat–Barry next teleports to the Matilda-Greenhill border. Human pile of rags Badeaux is still hanging out here, and still refuses to do more than hurl ellipses at Barry. But this time, he brought along someone who knows how to talk to this dirty hippie–Shiro the wolfhound. Badeaux looks at Shiro and murmurs, “…a voice?” Shiro goes “Waoooohh!!” a few times, which must be Wolfese for “Hey, join the Yaoi Army, old man.” Badeaux gets from all this that Shiro “has a good master,” is fighting for what he believes in (right), and gets all the jerky treats and belly rubs he wants. “Barry… Do you see a better future…?” Badeaux asks. I mean, of course he does, but everyone keeps acting like Barry wants to invent a new world order, when really he just wants to end the war and retire in his castle with all his boyfriends. Also, Badeaux can talk all he wants about a better future, but Barry knows he refused to move from this spot or even talk until Barry brought him a fucking dog.

“Lord Barry…” he says, “I can hear, shining inside you…the voices of many. They have faith in you…” Turning to Shiro, he adds, “If so many place their faith in you, I might as well do the same.” So Badeaux joins the army, but way better than his actual presence is what he brings with him: “Lord Barry, I have here some ‘Hearing-Ear Crystals,'” he says. They are referred to as Listening Crystals from here on, presumably because they fired the translator who wrote that line. “They have the power to reveal the voices of the forest. I sense that they will help you; please take them.” And with that, he hands over two of these Listening Crystals and heads off on his own to HoYay Castle.

Since “reveal the voices of the forest” is a lame and opaque way to describe these items, what they actually do is let Barry talk to animals. Not flying squirrels, obviously, since he can magically already communicate with them, but big, badass animals. Randomly, Barry travels to Forest Village, sensing that there, he might be able to put these things to use. And in front of the trading post, he indeed finds a scene involving a large animal, in this case a wounded griffin. Standing between the beast and the Suikoclones, whom no one bothered to animate with torches or pitchforks, is a woman named Ayda. She’s wearing a lot of camo, has her hair in a braid, looks way self-serious, and is an archer, so she gets a new name. The villagers yell at Katniss to get out of the way, but she throws her hands out and refuses. One of them reminds her that her parents were killed by “those beasts,” which she tells them she has not forgotten. So why defend this one? “I can’t allow a weak, injured creature to be killed…” she insists. Once it comes back all healthy and vicious, she’ll fight it, so at least she’s not some asshole vegan PETA member. But, she maintains, “You cannot separate the world into ‘people’ and ‘monsters.’ Taking a life in battle may have meaning, but this is murder.” Basically, Realians Are People Too. Got it.

The Suikoclones ignore both Katniss and Barry’s pleas to leave the griffin alone, but they are stopped in their attack–which surely would have ended well–by some perfectly healthy griffins swooping in. But Katniss doesn’t think they are here to rescue their buddy, but to eat its carcass. Katniss jumps forward like one of her boring boyfriends is gripped in their sharp talons, but the lead griffin knocks her on her ass with ease. Thus, it’s up to Barry to save the day, along with his awesome party of…Shiro and Tengaar? What the fuck?

Clearly I should not be allowed to visit Leona without adult supervision. Nonetheless, this amazing trio manages to clear out the griffins in relatively short order. Barry, Katniss, and the mockingjay griffin all stand together in a triangle, like they’re two more friends away from bumping their power rings together to summon Captain Planet. As the griffin squawks thankfully, one of Badeaux’s Listening Crystals starts shining, filling the whole screen with its “Duuuude, that animal is talking…*puff*” magical light. Barry chooses to use the crystal, and the griffin tells them, “Thank you… Kind boy… Kind girl… My name is Feather… I will lend you my power…” And Katniss basically goes, “Whoa, you made this bird talk? Neat. See you at HoYay Castle.”

So Katniss is basically Tidus?

After doing some peddling at the trading post, Barry steps into an unmarked house in the same village. Inside, Barry comes across two kids who don’t seem to have any parents around. The little girl remarks that her older brother, Connell, studied as a phonologist in Crystal Valley. “What?” she says at the look on Barry’s face, like he can’t figure this out. “It means he works with sounds.” Thanks, little girl! Barry is insulted. Of course, he immediately forgets this when he enters the master bedroom and meets Connell himself, a very cute young man. Too young for Barry, but he can wait it out. It’s not like he’s lacking for hot guys at this point. Connell also manages to be fabulously dressed without crossing the line into horrendously tacky, with his black beret with a white feather, white sleeveless blouse, and black slacks. He looks like a cute little sommelier. Connell notices that Barry is carrying a sound set, and pointlessly informs him, “We phonologists use them to create sounds, you know.” DO YOU? Honestly. Barry asks him to join the group, waving the sound set in front of him like a tasty piece of taffy. After some thought, Connell says, “Okay. I’ll join you. The sound of your heart… It is very clear.” Barry spins around to pump his fist, but more to hide his furious blushing. Bad thoughts! “With you,” Connell goes on, “I think I’ll be able to hear many new sounds…the sounds of people’s hearts…” Barry totally hears Shu’s heart when he’s lying on top of him on Tetsu’s bath house floor.

DUDE, BRO.

Since I’m sure you’re all wondering why the other member of Barry’s party is fucking Tengaar, I decided it was appropriate to use her–a lovely maiden, hurf durf–to lure out the second recipient of a Listening Crystal. Barry returns to Kobold Village and treks all the way through the forest until he enters the clearing for the third time today. When he approaches the lone tree in the center, his other Listening Crystal starts humming away. After a white flash, the unicorn, who we can see now is named Sigfried, asks, “Who was it that called me…. Was it you…maiden……” Of course, it’s not like the game recognizes that I brought the same maiden the unicorn already met, so Tengaar just goes, “Uh, I guess,” like she has no memory of her scary unicorn encounter. “In that case,” Sigfried says in his stupid bracket accent, “in the name of the Gods of the Forest, I betroth myself to you……” Whoa, does that mean Hix is off the hook? Nice. Tengaar asks Barry what she should say. Barry’s all, “PUT A RING ON IT, TENGAAR,” like he can’t wait to break the “bad” news to Hix that he got dumped for that fucking unicorn. Sigfried recites a bunch of nonsense that I’m sure is very moving and meaningful to other unicorns, and there’s probably some other unicorn off in the trees crying about always being a bridesmaid and never a bride. “I lend my power to you thru the vessel of this holy maiden…..” Sigfried finishes. And now I’m picturing a unicorn horn poking at enemies through the holy vessel of Tengaar’s vagina. Wonderful.