When Barry walks into The Beefcake Factory, he is hoping, with some shame, that High Yo will be a trembling mess ahead of his impending showdown with Retso and will need the support of his favorite sous chef. And indeed, High Yo’s not feeling great about things. In the deserted restaurant–I am choosing to believe the clientele all beat it because his sobbing into their ramen made it too salty–High Yo is fretting to Min Min, “I’ve got to beat Retso… But I don’t know if I can.” Given how their first battle went, this is a fair concern! Min Min, for her part, is confident her boss will get the job done. But before she can lay out the concrete reasons she surely has for her belief in High Yo, her coworker sprints in, relaying in a tizzy, “[High] Yo!!!! There’s someone who looks like a chef that’s here to see you!!!” Unless this lady is new to the job–and it would not stun me if High Yo has significant trouble retaining employees–she would know what Retso looks like, so obviously it’s not him or she would say so. High Yo is in the middle of freaking out that he’s not ready when the chef in question enters from the kitchen. And surprise! It’s not Retso but Lester, PUGGY!!!’s second-favorite creator of delicious creamy stews. Barry, even after meeting him and making out with him a bit, is still kind of in awe of PUGGY!!!: he had two chefs and neither one of them got him involved in a culinary mafia fight club. How did he do it? Was all his rage just so spent by dealing with Lepant and killing his own dad that nobody else dared raise drama in his presence?

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Lester, still in a fetching mint-green chef’s jacket and toque, asks if the flop sweat-drenched man before him is High Yo. High Yo, naturally, assumes Lester is “from the ‘Group'” and gets ready for another dramatic kitchen suicide. Lester looks puzzled–sorry, what I mean to say is a big text bubble with a question mark in it appears over his head–and explains. “Antonio asked me to come here and help you with your training. My name is Lester. I used to work with Antonio.” And now they are married! Shut up, it’s canon now. Lester gets right to it and says they need to have a cook-off so he can see what High Yo needs to work on, and desperate-for-something-to-apply-himself-to Barry quickly agrees.

Possibly realizing that this battle doesn’t have the pulse-spiking high stakes of others High Yo has competed in recently, Fukui-san doesn’t bother lining up all-star judges. “He left his family behind to make a living as a mercenary. He misses his wife’s fish cooking. It’s Gilbert!!!” Fukui-san announces. First of all, phew, Gilbert is still alive, that’s nice. Second of all, WIFE??? Wait, Barry has enough boyfriends, this is fine. Third of all, it’s outstanding trolling of poor frazzled High Yo to note at this exact moment that he is homesick because his wife’s cooking is better. Don’t cook any fish, High Yo! Next is Tenkou the window grandpa, who dislikes sweets but loves spicy rice crackers, leaving me completely turned around on whether he is a person I can trust. Fortunately for me he is fictional. Sitting to Tenkou’s left is motherfucking Tai Ho, whose “simple pleasures” include never eating anything but miso soup and rice for breakfast. I want to talk some shit about Tai Ho very badly, as this may literally be my last chance in a recap, but I have to admit that sounds like a delightful breakfast and I kind of want to try it out for a week. Still, fuck that asshole. Finally we have Hans the armorer, who’s been on the program before and still cannot spell salmon meunière.

Chef Lester comes out with no fancy titles and no meat cleavers glinting in the spotlight, so it is with much less drama than usual that everybody gets cooking. As High Yo and Barry are deliberating over the menu, I notice that Lester’s sous chef is in more of a pale blue ensemble than perfectly matching Lester’s sea green and it’s going to bug me for the rest of this competition. I assume this sartorial failure is Lester’s fault and implore him through my screen to get his act together. This can’t be a useful training exercise if High Yo’s opponent is slumming it this hard. But to at least hone himself, while High Yo doesn’t abandon the good old island salad or Georg’s panty-dropper cheesecake, he prepares a new dish, red curry, for his entrée. That’s just curry rice with red pepper, so don’t go thinking High Yo got himself down to the Thai grocery store while Barry was in Highland. I’m starting to think the Moon Bird Recipe is just a piece of paper that says “There are more than five spices, and mayonnaise doesn’t count.”

We begin the judging with Lester’s appetizer, a dark brown round mass on the plate that the game insists is “Senbei,” or rice crackers. It turns out in Suikoden II parlance this is pizza plus soy sauce, so take that for what it’s worth. Tenkou, supposed lover of rice crackers, gives this a score of 2, so I think we can trust that this frybread-sized burnt cracker is not delicious. High Yo’s usual salad gets middling scores that nonetheless give him a huge lead after one round. But Lester’s ace in the hole seems to be his entrée, sushi, which looks like some typical nigiri and a couple nori-wrapped rolls. These get him a near perfect score–Hans did not get salmon, I guess, so he pans it–and with his red curry not doing quite as well, now High Yo is sweating. He can’t lose a second time in a row! Not to a guy who doesn’t even properly dress his sous chef!

Nailed it

Scariest of all, Lester has an actual dessert course, baked mochi. Yes, in the game this is quiche with soy sauce, but baked mochi in a vacuum sounds a hell of a lot better as a dessert than a fucking omelet with ketchup on it. But the judges hate it enough to give High Yo a comfortable win. Afterward, Lester kind of laughs about his own futility: “Ha ha ha. I can see that you learned a lot from Antonio. You’re very good.” This is so backhanded and I love it. High Yo insists that Lester must have been “holding back,” an equally delectable veiled insult. These guys are going to passive-aggressive each other to death, right here in this dining room.

But then something weird happens, and by “something weird,” as always, I mean the translation. Lester asks why High Yo would think he was holding back, and High Yo replies to his face, “Just watch how Lester moves and you’ll understand.” I mean, his average-built sprite is putting a lot on my imagination, but I’m nonetheless picturing a muscular ass gyrating beneath a tight set of pale green pants. Still to my bafflement, Lester then says back, “Okay then. Do you remember how Retso moved when he was cooking?” Lester is the one who was puzzled about this entire line of conversation, but now he’s the one turning it back to the matter at hand. Don’t look at me. High Yo thinks on it and it suddenly dawns on him what happened in the last battle. “It couldn’t be…..” High Yo moans. “I can’t believe it….” And what is it that High Yo cannot bring himself to think of his old pal Retso? Well, Lester is not about to fucking tell us, not when he can instead divulge platitudes along with the secret to his sushi rolling technique. “You finally understand,” Lester says. “Your eyes may be open, but if your heart is closed, you cannot see the truth. You are already strong enough. You can defeat Retso if you try.” Yeah, High Yo, have you thought of trying? Idiot. More helpfully, along with the sushi recipe, Lester gives him one more tip: “Then go see a guy in Gregminster named Gremio. He’s not a chef, but he’s a talented cook anyway.” Barry will take that task on himself, High Yo! He’ll be sure to take a lot of tasting notes on the special stew. For the cause! You’re welcome!

Whatever chicanery Retso has been up to, however, is left a mystery. High Yo just mutters, “You don’t mean that Retso….” as Lester leaves, with Barry and his two staffers sighing in exasperation at him. Fucking spill it, man! Barry needs that tea!

With High Yo temporarily dealt with, Barry still needs something to occupy his mind while he subconsciously works up the courage to face his ex one more time. He tries a more zen approach, wandering around the green fields between Two River and Greenhill, just taking in the fresh air with the only companion he can tolerate at the moment, Muku Ranger Red. But even on this hour-long nature walk, punctuated by lengthy pauses to sit on the grass and just, like, be, man, he still feels restless. (He is also still without Maku Ranger Blue, unfortunately, which is what Barry is obviously actually doing out here. I thought I would have more patience to round up the whole squirrel family now that Clive is taken care of, but that was before Barry had to wander around one section of the world map for a goddamn hour for nothing. I tried! They’re all just palette swaps anyway!)

Next, Barry attempts to get his mind right with a different approach. He throws a real party back together and–gulp–teleports to Rockaxe. He and his burly companions–minus one obvious absentee, the same party Barry brought here last time–venture back through the castle, which is still beset with monsters and random battles with White Matilda Knights, who I thought were on our side again. Barry even runs through the very balcony where he held his dying sister in his arms as Jowy walked away from them. It’s a fun reunion tour! Nanami’s ghost is here! Anyway, why is Barry subjecting himself to this? It is not purely so he can relive those good fucking times, but so he can loot Wart’s office all the way at the end of the interminable Rockaxe corridors. For his trouble he discovers a set of Earth Armor, a recipe for a steak dinner that could maybe put High Yo over the top with Retso (spoiler: no, that’ll be something more…viscous), and a white knight standing guard at the door for no reason even hands him a Thunder Rune as thanks, I guess, for murdering his boss. Happy to oblige?

That unpleasant business concluded and his coffers full again for shopping after killing all those misguided ally knights, Barry makes a quick stop in Muse and discovers the full course recipe is there after all. This is great! High Yo is going to be so happy. But didn’t Barry promise his chef he would run one more errand? What was that, again?

When Barry rolls up to the McDohl household in Gregminster, it’s like he never left: Pahn and Cleo are still puttering around with no actual duties and talking about shopping around a screenplay based on their memoirs, PUGGY!!! is in his childhood bedroom wondering what the kind of god would give him everlasting life with a twin fucking bed, and Gremio is hovering over his stewpot in the kitchen. Just as PUGGY!!! once did when his life was carefree and simple and this was the most important decision he would make all day, Barry can approach Gremio from behind and choose to “Pull his ears” or “Tickle him,” with the same delightful “Boing!” sound. I have been writing about Barry’s rampant horniness for 16 years and this still feels like the freshest he has ever gotten with a person. Gremio squirms under his hands. “Wha…s-stop, please. Hee hee. Ha ha. Young Master! Ha ha… Stop! Pl… huh?” Finally, he turns away from his dinner preparations and realizes it has been Barry harassing him this entire time, and not his eerily similar permanently sad immortal husband! Awkward! He gets over this quickly enough, possibly because he knows there’s some weird Sense8 mindmeld shit between Barry and PUGGY!!! going on here. He assumes Barry is here to see PUGGY!!!, and who could blame him? How often does a person come to this house to talk to Gremio? Do creditors count?

Um

To cover for how flummoxed he is by Barry’s extremely inappropriate attentions, Gremio turns to, pardon, gushing about his most beloved thing in all the world other than the Young Master, his “Special Stew!!” He is all too happy to provide Barry with a copy of the recipe, without Barry so much as mentioning Lester or Antonio’s names, let alone High Yo’s. He notes that he doesn’t need the recipe because he knows it by heart, as if he couldn’t just write down a second copy for our boy even if he did need it. The point is, Barry now has the silver bullet. The creamy, salty silver bullet. After going ahead and putting PUGGY!!! in the party while he’s here anyway, Barry returns to High Yo with his bounties.

Thanks to Barry’s failed attempt to make a new animal friend, more than enough time has passed to trigger the next battle in HoYay Kitchen Stadium. And indeed, by the time Barry arrives, Retso and High Yo are already face to face, surrounded by a crowd of Yaoi Army gawkers. How dare High Yo get this ultimate foeyay confrontation underway without his wingman! HOW DARE HE. Retso is ready to get this cookoff underway, but High Yo says, “Retso…..I can’t fight you!” This is some major foreshadowing, friends, but along with Barry we are leaving matters of A Certain Ponytailed Man at the door to this restaurant. Retso flips out. “Coward!!!!! Have you chickened out!!!” I mean, dude, he didn’t want to do this in the first place. Or so he claims. Barry has long wondered if he’s getting off on the drama of it all. Barry wonders that about a lot of people.

But High Yo has a specific reason for refusing to fight, and HOO BOY: “I saw the way you use your wok and cleaver and I figured it out! ‘Hypnosis’! How could you use such a trick!” HOW INDEED. From the back of the crowd, Bear blurts out, “‘Hypnosis’???? What’s that!!!” Bear, the guy who has spent half his life chasing after this game’s answer to fucking Dracula. I have nothing. Flik, next to him, replies, “I’ve heard of it. With the sound of the wok and the flash of the knife, he makes people think the food has ‘the perfect taste’. But I didn’t believe that it was really possible…..” Oh, I’ve totally heard of a specific kind of hypnosis that convinces people the dogshit they’re eating tastes like Beluga caviar, but I THOUGHT IT WAS A MYTH. Hey Flik, check out the entirety of my ass, it also has the perfect taste.

I have pinpointed the exact moment Luc decided to destroy the world.

Now that Statler and Waldorf over there have caught everybody up on LITERAL GODDAMN WOK HYPNOSIS, for crying out loud, High Yo wants to know why Retso, a respected chef, would resort to such a thing, especially given the extremely clear and sky-high stakes of the motherfucking Moon Bird Recipe. “But you must know what Jinkai is planning to do!!!” he cries. “How can you…..” But if High Yo was expecting this tactic to win Retso over, he is in for the cruelest twist of all. “Yes, I should know….” Retso says. “It was myself and Jinkai who conceived of the ‘Dragon Plan’.” NO! NOT THE DRAGON PLAN!!!

The following from Retso is the most explanation I think we ever receive for what the hell has even been going on during this entire side story: “We had a dream….. A dream that people would learn the true beauty of cooking… Nothing could make a chef happier. But when Shun Min learned that the plan was just to fulfill Jinkai’s lust for power, she…she died for it….” Okay, we all got the thread now? No follow-up questions? Good. I know I’m satisfied.

Given that his daughter actually fucking died, for real, over this nonsense–and was probably murdered BY HIS BOSS, the way this is all worded–Retso understandably has some regrets, and seems to think a final showdown with High Yo will put his mind at ease. “I promise I won’t use any tricks,” he says. “I want to see for myself whether Shun Min’s feelings were right or whether Jinkai’s ideal was right. Please [High] Yo, help me to figure out the truth.” High Yo of course will do this, but only with Barry’s permission. “REACH OUT TO THE TRUTH WITH YOUR SPATULAS, HIGH YO,” Barry practically screams across the dining room.