We pick up with Barry and a hand-picked team–by which I mean a bunch of goobers he wouldn’t be caught dead with in a Taco Bell drive-thru at 3:30 in the morning–staring at the Highland royal palace across a bridge over the moat. “All we have to do now is take L’Renouille, Barry,” Apple says. Oh, is that all? And “we,” huh? You gonna start flinging your adding machine at bad guys at this late hour? Bear asks Barry to put a party together to storm the castle, and once he’s done so, he promptly strolls past Apple and Cocko and back out the front gates. Jowy and his fake dead wife and his two high-maintenance True Runes will have to wait! Barry has shit to do!
Apple….why don’t you fuck off.
The first order of business is, obviously, dealing with Clive’s stupid problems. Hoping that I did not take too long in the Battle of L’Renouille, but not daring to trek back to a save point to check, I steer Barry, Clive, and a party good enough to usher them through the wilds of Highland to Sajah Village, a tiny town tucked into the hills northwest of L’Renouille. This makes for, as far as I can tell, a grand total of three towns in all of Highland, one of them the capital, and one of them, Kyaro, a territory they did not own three decades ago. This place is basically Wyoming. Can’t wait for more mansplaining from Shu and Jowy about how these countries are too unwieldy to properly govern, but making them one even bigger country is somehow better.
Given that nobody lives here, and the few who do have probably been conscripted to die in the name of their totally legitimate king, it’s unsurprising that Elza is one of two people on the street when Barry and Clive enter. The Fight! Fight! Fight! theme is already blaring by the time Elza and Clive are standing before each other, and Elza says, “You came back, eh boy. Well, let’s finish this…..” Clive is all, “Yeah…..” What’s the matter, blondie? No enthusiasm for THE HUNT after climbing up Barry’s asshole for over 19 goddamn hours and shrieking that this is the only thing in the world that matters? What’s the fucking problem, man?
Elza seems to have no such problem, though she’s always been a bit more even keel than her adversary here and is maybe the last person in Suikoland who uses something approaching appropriate punctuation. She thus suggests, “Clive, my old friend… How about a duel between Gunners?” Clive takes a nice long pause to consider the exact thing he’s wanted this entire time, but finally agrees, with the caveat that “It looks like Storm won’t shoot you.” He drops the rifle to the ground. I was just about to talk some big shit about Clive thinking his gun is alive and has desires of its own because he can’t handle the idea of its jamming saying something about him, performance-wise, but this game has the Star Dragon Sword and I can just fuck off. Elza, in response, holds out her two pistols. “My gun, Stern or ‘Star’, represents trust in the Guild, and Mond or ‘Moon’, represents betrayal. Protection and Assasination [sic, sigh], the 2 faces of the Howling Voice Guild. Choose the one you prefer.” She may as well say, “Choose to keep being a gullible rube, or not.” Clive plucks Stern, the Cornball Rule-Loving Dork gun, out of her right hand, which is no surprise to Elza or to us.
Clive, I know you probably put a lot of stock in chivalry, but the old ‘No, after YOU, m’lady’ is probably not the best dueling tactic.
For the second time, the two gunners march to a distance from each other, with Barry watching from the nearest safe phallic structure, in this case a wholly inadequate wooden column supporting someone’s second-floor deck. Fortunately it, like the rest of the town, is deserted, so the following scene is not going to ruin anyone’s Royal Sacrifice Day barbecue. Once they’re in place and they’ve bantered “flirtatiously” about death like they have half a dozen times already, they take turns chanting a line from what I’m guessing is an ancient ceremonial dueling poem, all the while slowly lowering their weapons at each other: “Howling Voice, shadow upon the ground! Howling Voice, flash of thunder from the gods! Cursed Voice that separates Life from Death! Right here, right now, these Guns want to shed blood. They want to feast on souls! Listen you cursed Guns! We are it! The final blast to signal war!!!” This whole thing has some hilarious capitalization but the “Guns” really puts it over the top for me. Very Infowars.
Elza screams, “CLIVE!!!!!” and I’ll issue an exception to my punctuitis scare-mongering because she is definitely yelling, what with the caps-lock. Clive just steels himself by saying, “No hesitation!!!!” It feels like saying that is hesitating, but what do I know, because a split-second later he fires, plugging Elza square in the chest. I see what the problem was. Maybe if Clive had said the God Guns Grits and Gravy poem for Storm, that would have been enough foreplay for it to get in the mood for killing too. He’ll go to that trouble for some one-night stand pistol, but not his trusty rifle who’s been there for him all this time!!!
While Storm is throwing all Clive’s shit out of the streetside apartment window in my sad imagination, Elza is lying crumpled on the ground, groaning. The music instantly pivots from EXCITING LONG-BARRELED ACTION to ANOTHER LADY IS DYING. After how much trouble this entire ordeal has been for him, Barry wouldn’t piss on this lady if she were on fire, but this still seems like an uncool thing to subject him to at the moment, Clive. Clive is like, “Rad, I did it,” and Elza tells him, graciously, “Yeah….you’re right….. You….you won…….” Oh shit, she is very much dying. To make sure he realizes she’s still superior to him, though, she goes on, “Did you…really think…I could shoot you….? Boy…..there are no bullets in this gun…..” Just as I’m starting to wonder if this is an homage to Vizzini overthinking his poisoned drink scenario in The Princess Bride, Elza saves me the trouble and explains her thinking: “The day I shot Kelley….. It was me who should have died… Died with pride as a Gunner…. That’s why, boy…. That’s why I’ve got more regrets than I care to count…..” If she felt so bad about not dying years ago, why has she been running from Clive this whole time? Why, unless she’s just lying to make Clive feel good, but that can’t be it.
Neither Clive nor Barry has taken one step toward this woman bleeding out on the cobblestones, so I imagine she’s near-shouting her dying thoughts at Clive. She tells him she was born here in Sajah, but her entire family is gone and forgotten. “But even so, this is the place where my heart always returns.” This is probably not the time to tell her not only that her hometown seems like a dump but that it’s about to be incorporated into the larger Jowston City-States sovereignty and the transition is going to be rough on a remote place like this. Of course, neither of the men is saying anything to her, so this is not an issue. “Poor Clive…..” dying Elza goes on. “He was born in the Guild, raised in the Guild… Pretty sad, don’t you think, boy?” Is she asking Barry’s opinion? Barry doesn’t care, lady. Barry is counting the minutes until he can foist Clive back at Leona and never look at him again. She adds, “And then….he lost Kelley…… Give him Storm……” I assume this is a translation error, because finally, Clive does something other than stand there silently, walking over to where he dropped his rifle, picking it up, and placing it in Elza’s outstretched hand. Then she shoots him with it and they both die. Shakespearean!
Just kidding. Elza got to deliver death monologues to Clive and even to Barry, so why not to the fucking gun, too? “Storm….the only Gun in the world with a soul inside it…” she says. Not hard to see why. It’s probably a hard process cramming a soul all the way down the barrels! But Elza finally lets Barry in on what the fuck even happened at the Howling Voice Guild back then, a duty Clive should have taken upon himself ages ago. See, Storm was going to be Kelley’s gun, but Storm has a will of its own and chose Elza to lovingly stroke it instead, perhaps being a gun that prefers ladies and was therefore sick of being passed from sweaty male hand to sweaty male hand. The HVG decided to settle the problem with a duel between Kelley and Elza so they weren’t directly telling Storm and its wishes to fuck off. I don’t see how it would have helped if Elza had lost this duel–did the gun sign some sort of contract to honor the outcome and go with whoever won?
This whole thing is more fun if you assume they’re talking about playing Yu-Gi-Oh.
The guns used in the duel were, obviously, the very same guns used here. “And just like today,” Elza says, “only Stern was loaded with bullets. Kelley knew that…and so, he chose Mond…..” This is damn near a perfect clone of the story of Han and Genkaku’s ill-fated swordfight, if poison were bullets and the guy with the poison bullets had just refused to use them instead of handing them to the other person. When I put it like that it doesn’t sound the same at all, but you guys are with me on this. Clive, who I guess is just hearing this story for the first time (which: REALLY?????), sputters, “The Guild…those fools…” Yeah, they don’t come off great in this story! Even if their scheme had gone as they’d planned, it’s very easy to see a scenario where the gun still wouldn’t cooperate with Kelley, possibly because he wouldn’t turn it to face the wall when he had late night company (yes, I 1000 percent mean Clive). Storm doesn’t need that baggage, man. Elza tells Clive she regrets shooting Kelley and running off, but “Now, my soul can return home….” Again, she could have paid the piper at any point in this story. If she just wanted to have a little walkabout before turning herself in, fine, but she should just admit it.
Clive finally seems to be buying into Elza’s worldview, and mutters her name, only for her to laugh in his dumb face. “Ha… Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!! You’re too soft, boy….. You didn’t really believe that sob story, did you…..” Instead of telling him exactly how he’s dumb, she shows him, pointing Mond skyward and firing off the bullet it very much had in the chamber. “Go back to the guild, boy….” she says, clearly pitying the HVG’s very gullible large adult son. “It’s the only place for you…. I won’t steal that from you…” She returns Storm to him and bids him to take care of it, and then says, “Farewell…..forever… Farewell, gunslinger…..” And with that goodbye, she expires.
Just kidding again! When people actually say goodbye as they’re dying in videogames, those are never their last words. That would be too emotionally powerful, and we can’t have that! Instead, as Clive is crying with his little hood off his face for once and everything, she hangs on a little longer to praise him for his valiant efforts in tracking her down, but says, “But, remember…. You still couldn’t do it… You couldn’t catch me…..” And those are her last words. I see. She couldn’t end on her bittersweet farewell because she had to troll me first. Couldn’t catch her? Uh, he found her and she’s dead, right? Does he have to follow her into hell, too, or it doesn’t count? You don’t just get to say shit like that, Elza. He hella caught you. Deal with it.
A black screen allows Clive to grieve a little longer and collect himself, and when we fade back in he’s got his hood back up and his stoic mask back in place. He says to his infinitely patient boss, “Barry….. My job as executioner is over… I think….I’ll eventually return to the Guild soon…… But for the time being, I’ll stay with the Yaoi Army. I’m not quite ready to leave this land yet…….” Uh, bad news, Clive, the Yaoi Army is pretty close to being disbanded, dude. Have you been paying attention to the sociopolitical situation? I don’t know how he couldn’t, Barry brings him fucking everywhere.
And so ends the tale of Clive and Elza, two people with nothing better to do than jetset around a vast continent sniping at each other, and one sad mute boy who had to pay all Clive’s travel expenses. I note from a bit of Googling that some sources seem to take it as fact that Elza did not load her gun. Which, it would be one thing if she had simply said she loaded both guns and I guess Clive was too lazy to fact-check her, but she fired Mond! It was definitely loaded! Was it a blank? What was the point of loading it just to shoot a fucking blank? Yes, it’s possible she never intended to shoot Clive, and that she loaded both guns anyway to fuck with him and preserve his belief that he did the right thing. But even if that were the case, and deep in her HEART THAT BELIEVED (IN GUNS) she loved this grouchy rube too much to ever fire upon him, that doesn’t mean Mond was unloaded! Am I going crazy? What is real?
I’m only placing this here to remind myself of reality.
Shockingly, this town has a couple other minor points of interest and does not solely exist for the purpose of being Elza’s eternal resting place. Barry can also buy lovely Crimson Capes here! Nice. No, Clive, you don’t fucking get one. Even better, the bowtied, thickset, Hitler-mustachioed Suikoclone running this item shop also has a great rare find, the Golden Hammer. Makes me feel less great about all the potch Barry just spent on Crimson Capes, but he can go home and strip some of his B-team of their possessions to pay that dick Tessai.
Cutting it a little fine!
As for the other citizens of Sajah uninterested in aiding and abetting the Yaoi Army, which is all of them, they are mostly shell-shocked about WHERE THEIR COUNTRY GONE. Beyond general bitterness at those City-State wads destroying their “venerable” nation (uh huh), they are more specifically aghast at the reign of one King Jowy Blight. “The two previous kings both lost their lives through Jowy Blight’s treachery… It’s just horrible…” one woman says, and though her hands are at her sides she still probably has strings of pearls clutched in her fingers. Lady, Agares probably and Adolf certainly couldn’t have found this place on a map. A man in a rather anachronistic fedora is pacing the only road in town, muttering, “How could such a thing have happened…? How could King Jowy…” How could King Jowy be such a cold-hearted snake to his true love since childhood? IT’S TRULY A MYSTERY, MY GOOD MAN.
Sir, that is simply a crazy hypothetical.
Barry returns home to banish Clive from his sight once and for all, do some inventory housekeeping, and spend all his potch now that Tessai has a shiny new hammer made of a metal too soft to be an effective bludgeon. But now what? All those people in Sajah yelling about him just laid bare to Barry yet again that he is not emotionally ready to deal with The Jowy Situation. Hmm. What Barry needs is a distraction. But what? What can the leader of the Yaoi Army possibly do to waste a little time and dwell on someone else’s problems rather than his own? I mean, he solved Clive for good, who else is there?!