Well, Barry is feeling thoroughly cheated now, since the game forced him back to his castle and now he has to walk all the way to Radat Town. The elevator is making our hero lazy already. So it’s back to Radat on foot. The first person Barry comes across is our old pal Dick, hanging around outside the appraisal shop. He and Barry make with the catching-up, which amounts to Barry nodding a lot, since Dick already knows what Barry’s been up to since they last saw each other. When Barry asks Dick to join the army–a private investigator being exactly what the Yaoi Army was lacking on its way to greatness–Dick says he’ll join up if Barry can call a coin toss correctly. Barry fails, again and again, to call heads or tails at the right time, and is starting to feel like a real dipshit, when I remember that I’ve played this damn game before. At the tavern, Barry locates the proper tattletale NPC, who laughingly hands over a different coin for Barry to make Dick use in the coin toss. But as soon as Barry requests the use of a different coin, Dick realizes he’s been caught. “Sorry for tricking you,” he says, probably not at all sorry. “But Barry, a leader has to learn to see through cheap tricks like that. Got it?” With that, Dick jumps eagerly into Barry’s pants Pokéball. See, it’s a lesson that Barry can apply to his new career as a military kingpin. I think this one thing might make Dick more useful than ninety percent of the current members of the Yaoi Army. And as Barry will see when he returns home, Dick also makes himself useful by spying on the hot guy of Barry’s choice and reporting gossip back to Barry for a small fee. And if there’s one thing Barry loves more than hot boys, it’s gossip about them. Dick is awesome!
For his next recruit, Barry skips across the street into someone’s yard, where a young woman is hanging the laundry. Barry speaks to her, hoping that she’ll go get her muscular, pro athlete husband, and he’ll immediately dump her to be with him. Instead, fucking Waylon Smithers, of all people, jumps out of the party to face his…his wife. You’ve gotta be kidding me. I mean, the next thing I know you’re going to be telling me they have a kid.
Wifey, named Yoshino, falls all over Waylon, telling him how worried she’s been since she found out about South Window being occupied and Granmeyer getting beheaded and all that. Waylon apologizes lamely, begging off that he was just too busy to take five minutes to tell his wife that he survived. I mean, we know this is a sham marriage, but clearly Yoshino doesn’t know, so maybe he could put a little more effort into keeping her happy so she doesn’t run off to find a man who actually wants to have sex with her. That is, if he even cares about having a beard anymore–maybe he’s out of the closet now, being in the Yaoi Army and all. Anyway, Waylon also admits that he’s not even in town to see her. “When our task is done, I have to leave again,” he says, not realizing that half the reason he and Barry are in Radat is to recruit his wife. Sucker.
Replace ‘fight’ with ‘have lots of buttsex.’
Waylon goes on to use the line that he’s probably used on her a million times: “Just wait a little longer…. This war will be over soon….” But Yoshino’s had quite enough of sitting at home doing laundry while her husband goes off and has fun with a bunch of male floozies. She turns to Barry. “Lord Barry…. Please take me along with you,” she says. “I’m pretty good with my naginata and I can do laundry too.” Barry doesn’t hear the rest about her wanting to fight alongside Waylon, because he’s just remembered that the naginata is quite the phallic weapon, and he may be able to borrow it from her in the future. For, uh, training exercises. Yeah. And that settles it. Barry grudgingly accepts this icky female into his boys’ club, earning some feeble protests from Waylon. But Waylon realizes that arguing with Barry isn’t going to get him anywhere in the lovin’ department (not that Barry is that desperate anyway), and he also figures that someone needs to do the laundry at HoYay Castle.
Recruiting Yoshino was actually a key step for Barry along the way to recruiting another person, loath as he is to actually do it. Back at Leona’s bar, Barry loads up his party with five, count ’em five, lovely young ladies. As he walks into Kuskus Town, with Eilie no doubt clinging to his legs and Nanami and Millie chattering like drunken chipmunks, he tells himself over and over that this is the only way he and Jowy will get to have their Happily Ever After. For Jowy. For Jowy.
‘Kill me.’
At the south end of town, Barry and his female entourage cross a bridge and run across a group of male Suikoclones. “Hey there, buddy,” one of them says. “You must be rich, surrounding yourself with beautiful women like that.” Barry starts to voice his disagreement, with his Tai Ho-depleted financial resources as proof, but he doesn’t get a chance, because the guys start accosting his bevy of ladies. And even though Barry has no interest in these girls sexually, he’s not about to let them be assaulted. Unfortunately, our hero–the boy who has defeated hordes of undead, Salon Jhee, and countless squirrels in red capes–is overpowered by these three random guys in a fishing village. Oh, what are the ladies to do? Because Lord knows none of them can stand up and fight, either. But before they get their boobies fondled or whatever, a muscle-bound broad with a saucy red bob shows up and kicks all the thugs’ asses. When Barry comes to, all the hoods are gone and he’s left standing with his female savior. He thanks her for doing what he somehow could not. “It might be tough at your size,” the woman, named Oulan, tells him, “but you’ve got to protect women. Aren’t I right?” Yeah, whatever, lady. Anyway, she introduces herself and exposits, for no reason at all, that she’s a bodyguard but she’s out of work at the moment. Oh, if only she could apply her skills to a good cause! Predictably, Barry asks Oulan to join up, Oulan asks him what the hell he means by that, and once the Black Screen of Exposition has come and gone, Oulan understands. “I thought you were just a kid, but I guess I was wrong…” Oulan says of the kid she had to save from three random thugs in an alleyway. “It looks like you’ve got a good reason to look for protection,” she adds, after agreeing to join the Yaoi Army. Insert your own joke about Barry’s need for “protection” here. Mine involves sailors.
And speaking of sailors…there are still two more people Barry has to recruit before he goes to Two River, and as I put them off this long, I’m sure you can guess who they are. With a palpable air of sadness and despair, Barry begins his slow death march to the north end of Kuskus, where he finds Tai Ho and Yam Koo standing together at the docks. God, two lady recruits in a row–one of whom required Barry to spend time completely out of the company of men–and now Tai Ho. Barry is suddenly not having a very good day. “What’s wrong, kid?” Tai Ho asks him, no doubt noticing the tortured scowl on Barry’s face. Mentally kicking himself, he asks them to join his group. Tai Ho hems and haws about it, before coming to his inevitable conclusion: that Barry must best him at The Game That Shall Not Be Named. But it’s actually even worse than that. “If you win 5000 potch or more, I’ll join up with you!!!!” Tai Ho exclaims, like his presence in the Yaoi Army is a big treat for Barry and not just a horrible means to a happy end.
What this monetary requirement means is that Barry can’t just beat Tai Ho once and call it good. Since he can’t bet more than 3000 potch on one play, he must beat Tai Ho at least twice. To Barry’s enormous surprise, he actually manages to do this. On his first try! Tai Ho sits back, stunned to his blackened core, and immediately starts inspecting his dice and bowl to make sure Barry didn’t switch them out for non-rigged ones. When no cheating (other than his own) is apparent, Tai Ho informs his brother that they’ll be moving into HoYay Castle. The cool part is, they hang out on the docks, so Barry doesn’t even have to provide these vagrant assholes a spare bedroom.
Ready to get on with the story already, Barry boards a boat in Kuskus and, after a quick stop at the homestead to change his party so it has some penises in it, returns to Lakewest. Oh, but wait, I’m still not done recruiting. You are very excited.
In the house in the northwest corner of town, Barry makes the acquaintance of a little old lady in a hot pink granny dress. Granny, named Taki, dispenses information on recruiting people to Barry like she’s the game’s Magic 8-Ball or something. She gets one strike by mentioning Oulan and her crusade to rid Kuskus Town of catcallers and skirt-lifters, but her other two recruitment tips are for people Barry has yet to throw a Pokéball at (people we’ll get to in a later recap, however), so Barry is sold. Plus, her eye for color is simply on. Hoping he’ll get both help in completing his “army” and maybe a few hand-knitted day-glo items, he lets Granny Taki invite herself to HoYay Castle. Yeah, another woman, I know, but like Yoshino, she has those handy domestic skills that are truly necessary in a castle full of dudes.
At long last, it’s time for Barry to get his butt in gear and finally proceed to Two River City. But I’m a horrible tease, so I’m going to cut off here in Lakewest after spending this entire recap teasing you with tantalizing tastes of the ongoing plot. Will Barry ever make it to Two River? Will he meet dozens more useless buttholes who’ll freeload off him at HoYay Castle? All this and more in the next recap…right now!