So Barry settles in for Annallee’s one song, the South Window theme fades to the background to let her have the stage, and…nothing. Like, literally nothing. Annallee’s mouth opens and closes like she’s singing, but there is only silence, like Ursula trapped her voice in a seashell. She “sings” like this for literally an entire minute. That doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re watching a sprite make blowjob faces in abject silence, it’s a creepy fucking eternity. Naturally, this bizarre glitch is yet another stroke of incompetence by the Konami of America team, but I prefer to think that Annallee is deeply crazy, like in that awful movie Sucker Punch, but instead of magical stripping powers we never see, she sings a song we never hear.
Loading ...Finally, finally, Annallee stops doing whatever the fuck that was, and thanks Barry for “listening until the end……” Uh, you’re welcome? Barry rather diplomatically says, “I’d like to…hear you sing some more,” which I guess is true, since he’d like to hear her sing at all, and not just stare at her horrifying, silently moving mouth again. His other option is to throw potch at her, run away, and hope she doesn’t have “WILL SING 4 FOOD, GOD BLESS” written on a piece of cardboard the next time he’s in town. And since he’s sparing her that fate, Annallee is so overcome by gratitude that she has to put it into song. Or, you know, lapse into silent ellipses. Hey, I just realized this game is a musical!
Now that he has a few more creeps under his belt, Barry returns to the Two River kobold district to see if creepy Bob is ready to join up yet. This time, without any hesitation, Bob replies to Barry’s request, “Hmm, very well. If you can capture the trust of so many, then you have mine as well. I’ll trust you.” He acts like Barry is going to take him on a magic carpet ride under the full moon. But that would be a rather large mistake, because it turns out Bob was hanging out in the kobold district for a reason: he’s a werewolf. He wants to show Barry his “true form and power,” and Barry is very interested–those Twilight werewolves are so hot!–but he decides he’d better wait until he can get his hands on a silver cock ring or something, just in case.
Finally, Barry returns home and dumps off all his new recruits. But there happens to be one more available, and he’s currently in Barry’s own inn, harassing one Lloyd Christmas. Barry finds Killey, the pimp cardinal from earlier, interrogating Lloyd about the Sindar ruins they all explored together back when Barry and Jowy were still deeply in love and not fractured beyond repair, sigh. As Hilda and little Pete rush over to see who is beating up their beloved, horribly lame patriarch, Killey demands, “What did you find in the ruins!!! Tell me or I’ll kill you!!” The chirpy default theme for HoYay Castle has not stopped this entire time, which makes this all the funnier. Hilda and Pete are now standing between Lloyd and Killey, because they are certainly more capable of defending him than he himself is. That’s not even in question. Killey whirls around as Barry enters with Bear, Flik, and Leona, all of whom are ready to pummel his face for threatening one of their own and, consequently, the good ending.
Killey, though he is way outnumbered at this point, is not deterred and asks again, albeit more politely, what Lloyd found in the Sindar ruins. Lloyd doesn’t want to answer, Barry is ready to intervene, and then all of a sudden Lloyd decides he does want to answer. This is stupid. “I don’t know what you wanna hear,” Lloyd cries, “but the treasure from the Sindar ruins is right in front of your eyes!” Just to make it absolutely clear, his sprite pivots between facing Pete and facing Hilda. “This is the treasure I found!!” he wanks some more. “You got a problem with that!!!!” There are not enough fart noises in the world for this. Also, the treasure he found was something that saved only his wife, not his son. If he’s going to wank poetic about OUR TREASURE, he should at least get it correct.
Once Killey is done making a dismissive wanking motion and aggressively rolling his eyes, he admits that that is too stupid to be a lie, apologizes for his rudeness, and walks out. Barry follows him and finds him standing in the same spot in South Window as before. Barry’s all, “The fuck was that about?” and Killey replies, “I can’t say much, but the relics that were left by the Sindar should not fall into the hands of normal men…….” It was a bundle of weed, fucking relax, dude. Barry next has to ask him three separate times to join the Yaoi Army. He does not like having to beg and is just starting to get pissed off when Killey tells him, “While I was here asking for rumors about the Sindar, a lot of people told me about you….. It seems that I was wrong about you…..” And with that vague burn, he joins up, though he warns Barry that he will bail as soon as he hears anything about the Sindar, which he will not ever. But before he leaves for the castle, he says, making me want to vomit, “Alex, he’s a luck [sic] man…. There aren’t many who got involved with the Sindar and found something so valuable….” Uggggggggggh. This is making me wish I could go back in time and let Hilda die.
That’s it for the recruitment drive for now, so after a little more shopping and trading, Barry returns to Kuskus and walks conspicuously in front of the two Suikoclones in the street. They’re all, “Hey, who’s that boy waving his dick at us? Oh, it’s Lord Barry,” and inform him that a Highland ship has just arrived in the port. Barry and Nanami follow them to the waterfront, where the Suikoclones are simultaneously delighted to see Barry–and recognize him on sight, unlike those dicks in Radat–and eager to “rough up” this Highlander who claims to be delivering a message. It turns out to be Richard Gere and his diabolically perfect cheekbones. Nanami leaps between him and Barry like that would even be a contest at this point, but Richard obviously didn’t walk right up to him in broad daylight in front of a shitload of witnesses just to pick a fight. Richard introduces himself, since I guess they’ve never actually spoken to each other before. “I work under Commander Jowy Blight,” he’s sure to add. Nanami, of course, sputters, “Jowy Blight? …… Could that be our Jowy???” No, it’s some other commander in the Highland Army with that name, I’m sure. I wonder if this totally unrelated Jowy also has five hundred different avatars. Richard ruins my fun: “Lady Jillia, the sole surviving heir to the Blight family, has officially wed Lord Jowy. Jowy has now become King Jowy, successor to the Blight Royal Family and King of Highland.” And may I say, even if he was required to by royal conventions, how progressive of Jowy to take his new wife’s last name. I mean, it’d be even better if he didn’t just marry some girl he barely knows as a power grab and break his true love’s heart in the process, but still.
She’s just saying what Barry’s been screaming in his sleep.
Richard says that Jowy wished his “friends” could attend the ceremony, but what with them being at war with each other, the logistics were just out of reach. Nanami, the light of my life for moments like these, wonders aloud if Richard came all this way because Jowy is expecting “some kind of wedding gift.” Barry considers ripping his heart out and mailing it to L’Renouille, but it’s probably not on the registry. Richard is like, “Uh, no,” and explains that he’s here to start peace negotiations, which will go perfectly. Barry and Jowy will agree to end the war and also to be Just Friends. This is actually the last recap of this game. Surprise!
Even though Barry is standing right here and even though Richard has a letter addressed to Barry on his person, Richard asks to be escorted to HoYay Castle to deliver the letter in a more official fashion. Barry knows the code for “Let me talk to the dude who’s really in charge,” and he can respect it in this case because he is just not neutral on this whole Jowy situation. Like good errand children, Barry and Nanami fold Richard’s beautiful angular face into their party and return home.
Once they’ve emerged from the Blinking Mirror, Richard takes a moment to be duly impressed with the renovation job Barry’s done on this dilapidated shithole. There are still not nearly enough tapestries and fresh-cut flowers for Barry, but he knows it looks good. They head to the war room, which Nanami diplomatically calls the “great hall” since this is about peace and stuff. But inside, since Barry couldn’t exactly call ahead, Kiba, Flik, and Bear freak out that the enemy is in their special room, breathing all over their fearless leader. Richard assures them of his good intentions and re-explains the entire King Jowy thing to this group as well. “We should be signing the peace treaty with the mayor of the capital city of Muse, but it’s not possible now,” Richard explains. And, hmm, why is that not possible? Oh right, because King Jowy, first of his name, long may he reign, murdered her ass. Bad stroke of luck, there! “For that reason,” Richard goes on like I’m not even in the room, “I request that Lord Barry and Teresa, acting mayor of Greenhill accompany me to Muse.” With that, he hands Barry the no-doubt incredibly steamy, cockteasing letter from Jowy, asks them to come to Muse, and leaves. I thought he was supposed to accompany them there! Whatever.
Maybe we can trade you to Highland!
A black screen ushers Teresa into the room, since she’s finally relevant again. Over the Theme of Skulduggery and Treacherous Ex-Boyfriends, the generals discuss Jowy’s true intentions and whether this could be a trap for them. The answer is YES, FUCKING OBVIOUSLY, but Nanami is still too hung up on Jowy being the nice boy who didn’t dump the fuck out of her brother. And, Klaus adds, “Jowy Blight has Leon Silverburg as his strategist. You mustn’t underestimate him.” They argue, with plenty of exclamation points of rage from Ridley, about whether this is a trap and whether they should even be pursuing peace in their position, but Teresa settles it by asking for Barry’s opinion on the matter. And there is no fucking way, trap or no trap, that Barry is turning down the opportunity to look Jowy in the face one more time. Muse it is. Shu is uncharacteristically silent during this discussion, but voices no opposition once Barry has made his decision. He only asks, after a long, ominous string of ellipses, for Cocko, the First Sergeant of Shady Shenanigans, to come along and offer his assistance. With Teresa and Nanami also along for the ride, Barry fills up his remaining slots with beefcake knights and Luc to compensate. Another black screen whisks the lot of them, plus the usual gang of cheerleaders and well-wishers, to the harbor, where Shu offers Barry a quick kiss on the cheek and asks him to not get killed or anything. But as they get on the boat, Shu turns around, spews even more ominous ellipses, and says, “[Bear], Flik…. I have a favor to ask.” He waited until Barry was gone to ask this, so either a) he’s got something unethical in mind, duh, b) he’s planning a special surprise to jump naked out of Barry’s birthday cake, or c) he has been craving big muscle men and is going to have a ménage-à-trois with Bear and Flik. Oh no!
Wow, I feel better!
Coronet, the town across the lake, is still boring as fuck and there’s no one to recruit there at the moment, so let’s just skip ahead to the still-empty and still-creepy city of Muse. At the gates, while the Highland guard stares uncomfortably, Nanami reminisces about that time they waited for Jowy to come back to them at this spot, which was mostly really boring, but it’s the height of nostalgia for poor Nanami. Once the guard is done yelling at her for being weird in front of him, he instructs the visitors to head up to Jowston Hill where King Jowy is waiting. Yay, Barry will get to visit the penis pillars again!
Inside the city, Cocko reverts to his useless shitsack self and takes off to explore the empty city. Knowing Shu, Cocko was totally put up to this separation from the group, but the rest of them trudge up Jowston Hill for this surely sincere and well-intended peace negotiation. The building on top of the hill is crawling with Highland soldiers, and though Barry isn’t afraid of them in the slightest, he is regretting that he didn’t march his own company of Suikoclones up here. Wouldn’t that have been a better showing of strength? Is Jowy going to think he’s too flaccid and weak to negotiate with now? Fuck!
‘WHERE ARE THE MINIATURE FLAGS, FUCKERS?!’
Barry and his entourage find King Jowy and Leon Silverberg in the meeting room that was once filled with the impotent table-pounders representing the City-States. Jowy is all cool about seeing Barry and Nanami again, and Barry is silent as always, but Nanami is clearly ready to throw herself on her old friend and bear hug him to death. And then she could marry Jillia and be the King of Highland! That’s how this works, right? “Yeah, fine,” Jowy responds to her heavily punctuated demands about his well-being. “But my name has changed. It’s ‘Jowy Blight’ now….” Dude, we’ve heard. From fucking everyone. If he breaks out a slideshow carousel of his wedding photos, Barry is going to puke all over the conference table. Jowy finally asks how Barry is doing, and Barry puts every ounce of sarcasm in his scrawny frame into answering, “Oh pretty good.”
Teresa, oh so astute, wants to know why they’re just hanging out in an empty conference room if this is supposed to be a legitimate peace negotiation, but Leon coolly explains to her, accompanied by the Theme of NO SHIT, “Well, this place was built to host peace conferences, but in this case, your side is going to surrender unconditionally.” Teresa sputters at this, like they didn’t all discuss the extremely likely possibility of this being a trap. Of course it was a fucking trap! You doofus.