Our previous foray into the Grasslands was a far too little, too late exercise in transforming Hugo into a mature, noble hero with relatable motives and desires. But it was also an opportunity for me to lead the vanguard of Sarge/Hugo shipping, so that’s cool. I mean, it’s not. It’s so not. But since when has that ever stopped me?
Sadly, my fanfic will have to wait, because it’s time to catch up with one Chris Lightfellow, who was helping to defend Chisha Village in the last recap, but in her last chapter had only just set off on her viaje misterioso with creepster Nash, the worst spirit animal anyone could ever ask for.
Chris’s third chapter begins in Duck Village, where Chris, bless her, is already sick of Nash’s bullshit. She clearly had her icy glare snapped on and ready to go before the loading screen could even disappear. As they agreed before departing, their destination is Chisha, which was Nash’s goddamn idea, but they have stalled out at Duck Village because Nash doesn’t actually know where he’s going. Like Lilly before him, his idea is to hire a local guide. “That’s just great,” Chris sighs. “A guide needs a guide, eh?” I’m nodding, but also wondering why Chris doesn’t know where Chisha is. Unlike some other places we’ll get to later, it doesn’t seem like its location is any kind of secret.
Just as I gain control of Chris and take two steps in her cute new boots toward the village, I lose control again as Maximillian Knight Fred bustles out of the village toward our heroine, pausing briefly to call for Rico to catch up. Rico lets him and us know that Fred neglected to pay for their lodgings, to which Fred scoffs, flipping his perfect anime hair, “Forget it! Why should I pay when they were so rude?” Rico is like, “What the fuck, boss,” but this gets dropped entirely as Fred notices Chris staring at them.
Fred immediately wonders if they’ve met before, which forces me to flip through old recaps until I see that yes, they have. That meeting was so brief that it may as well have not happened, and in keeping with her being 1) in “disguise” and 2) kind of a dick, Chris says, “You mistake me for another.” Rico, of course, recognizes Chris immediately, but Fred ignores her as he goes “Hmmmmmmmm” like five times. Good lord. This is what I have to look forward to for the next several hours, isn’t it?
What indeed.
Our esteemed bishounen knight eventually decides it doesn’t matter where he’s seen Chris before, and instead wonders what she and Nash are doing in Duck Village, since they don’t look local and also nobody wants to be in Duck Village. Chris lies some more, and Fred is at least smart enough to know when someone is trying to give him the brush-off, so he leaves her to it. Rico, on her way past, says, “Excuse us, Lady Chris.” Ha. Chris has the grace not to act surprised by this.
Chris runs some errands around the village, eventually finding herself behind the inn, where once again Hortez VII is wandering around. He restates his incredulity about the size of Buttfuck Castle, i.e. the inn, like he’s never been here before. Chris tells him what’s what, and eventually has the choice to tell him where Buttfuck is, to not tell him, or a new third option, to lie to him about it. Clearly, given Hortez’s tendencies, lying is the right call. “From here, you can swim to Buttfuck in about four days,” Chris tells him, as I choke on my drink. Hortez is totally into these new instructions, and saunters into the back room of the inn while Chris stares at his ass. But even though this isn’t the right direction, either, the fact that he didn’t just teleport to Gregminster means that Hortez can finally rent out a strip mall location at Buttfuck. Hopefully his three wives have something to contribute to the economy, too.
Once Chris is ready, she finds Rhett and Wilder, Duck Village’s resident comedic duo, standing by a water wheel in the center of town. The two of them are in the middle of a nice stitch-and-bitch about how humans act like this but ducks act like thiiiiiis, and are clearly throwing shade both at Fred, whom they apparently just met, and Lilly, aka “the girl with the squeaky voice.” Rude. “Grak!” Rhett exclaims. I guess. “I don’t see how the Sergeant puts up with them. I couldn’t.” Sarge’s penis feels differently! Also, see, it’s funny because he and Wilder are about to be hella putting up with some humans. But if either of them hooks up with Nash I am shuttering this recap for good.
Nash, in his rambling way, asks them if they can act as guides to Chisha. “It’s said that Duck Clan men are brave and often hired as guards by traveling merchants,” he adds. Nash has to be sucking up, because there is no fucking way that’s true. But Rhett goes, “That’s right.” Who the hell would hire a duck? As a guard? Or as anything other than the star of a curry? Nonetheless, Wilder tells them they’re grounded by orders of their chief because of the “recent skirmishes.” Apparently this doesn’t apply to Sarge, but maybe that’s because the chief is a believer in true love and can’t bear to separate him from his beau. Chris, then, must ask the chief’s permission for their services, which troubles her and Nash because all these fucking ducks look the same. “Yes, the chief’s the one sporting the finest tail feather,” Wilder says. “He should be around here someplace.” Okay! The camera pans out to a dozen-odd identical Duckclones, should the point that we’re all duck racists not be well and truly made.
Girl, you are in time out.
If I were playing Hugo right now this would be a grand opportunity to scope out every juicy duck derrière in town, driving Sarge wild with jealousy in the process, but Chris is not into that. Her lack of tolerance for bullshit magically leads her to the exact right duck, who is loitering in front of the trading post, dressed in the Woodchucks uniform half the ducks in town like to wear. He’s not even wearing a sash! So lazy. A black screen later, Chris has acquired permission to hire Rhett and Wilder, so she talks to them again. Once the chief’s pristine ass plumage has been given its due by all present, Wilder agrees to escort them for the price of 2000 potch. Nash gasps, “2000!” and I genuinely wonder if he’s shocked by the reasonable price, until Chris replies, all icy glares, “That’s highway robbery, but…I’ll pay it.” At last count, Chris has over a hundred times that amount on her person. I’m now certain Chris is the kind of person who objects to the automatic 15 percent gratuity when taking her knights out to the Ass Castle Olive Garden. Nash goes, “Woo-eee! How easily the upper class parts with money.” Oh, what the fuck ever. He probably has 2000 potch in his asscrack right now. Peggi won’t even make change in increments that small. It is a nothing amount. I hate these two.
The ducks join the party, and I see that while Wilder has a reasonable, if sparse, array of equipment, Rhett has “outfitted” himself with fried ice cream, mashed potatoes, and butter cake. Because he’s fat! And also my soulmate. Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate, et cetera. Chris stealthily moves Rhett’s snack hoard to her knapsack and the four of them leave Duck Village.
But, obviously, we’re not going straight to Chisha, because that would be boring. Chris has some other boring stuff to do first. Chris, like Hugo, now has access to most of the map, including Caleria, but her first stop will be…Ass Castle? Is she that sick of Nash already? (Because I am!) Actually, she’s only here to stopgap outfit the ducks for combat, because it only takes one random battle against a superpowered blue Dragonite on the Amur Plain for her to realize they are not really prepared for this. After equipping the ducks, Chris goes on a walking tour of the Grasslands, including strolling into the Great Hollow like a boss. Naturally, all of her Grasslander enemies teeter on the edge of recognizing the most recognizable person in the game, but fall just short due to plot-mandated lobotomies. Clearly, the only people allowed to recognize her are those who have neither the desire nor the ability to kill her on sight.
OH COME ON
Of course, I realize after many mind-numbing minutes of watching Chris buy things and sharpen things and icily glare at things that she will do absolutely nothing of substance before traversing Kuput Forest. And even her party’s journey through the woods passes without event–she doesn’t even pick up any vagrant wingers. So let’s skip the shopping, treasure boss-killing, and endless walking, and catch up with the foursome as they enter Chisha Village.
Extra! Extra! Intrepid reporter has terrible instincts!
For no reason, we open with the foursome slowly and noisily waddling all the way from the edge of the screen to Chisha’s front gate. I bet 50 percent of this game’s cutscenes are just people walking. With a dramatic sweep of his left wing, Wilder indicates that they have arrived at their destination. Rhett adds, “The Chisha Clan is one of the Six Clans. These villagers don’t have warrior ancestors like the Duck and Lizard Clans, but they are some of the nicest folks around.” Excuse me, I just need an hour or so to stop laughing at Rhett’s implication that the ducks are even fit to hold the lizards’ XXL jockstraps.
Okay, better. As the ducks wrap up their exposition, the group is approached by Fred and Rico, who are exiting the village. Wilder is basically like, “Ugh, not YOU,” and Fred replies, “Nice to see you too. Hmpf! I was here first.” And then they, with interjections from Rico, argue pointlessly about who has the right to be snitty here, based on who arrived in Chisha first. What is even happening right now? Fred offers to show them around the village, though per Rico, they just arrived and he doesn’t actually know anything about the place. And if they just arrived, why did they just look like they were leaving? Again, what is happening. This baffling conversation is enough preamble not only for Fred and Rico to join the party, but the 108 Stars. But Chris hasn’t even mentioned the pyramid scheme once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity available at Buttfuck Castle!
‘This is news to me.’
Temporarily free to explore, and to not waste her life indulging the five people she is stuck with who literally never shut up, Chris jogs down the hill to the village. There are two very obvious Portrait People standing in the middle of the road, and given Chris’s luck they are probably endless prattlers too, so she takes a wide berth around them and makes sure to get in her shopping and exploring first. But Chisha holds no new secrets for Chris–the recruitable Portrait People have already been snatched up by Hugo, temporal logistics be damned–so she shortly returns to the vineyard-covered hill to speak to the two conspicuous teenage girls in her path. They both have dark hair and are dressed in slightly different green beermaiden outfits with knee-high boots, miniskirts, and fur-lined collars.
The younger one, with cute loops in her hairstyle and a red headband, addresses the group first. “Welcome, welcome to you all,” the girl, named Yun, says. “I’ve been expecting you. Please, introduce yourselves.” Clearly something weird is afoot, since Chris did not even expect herself here. Chris is given three options in response: to be cool and introduce herself, to tersely ask what Yun means by “expecting” them, or to say, “I am Schtolteheim Reinbach III.” Obviously. Chris has an icy frown on her face, so it’s only right to choose, “Expecting us?” Yun barely bats an eye at this. “Yes, of course we’ve been expecting you,” she says, like Chris might be on the slow side. “You came to our village to look for your father, right?” Okay, I know I’ve been making fun of Chris’s daddy issues, but they can’t be THAT obvious.
I expect Chris to get her hackles all the way up at this, but she’s so caught off-guard that she forgets to be frigid. “Uh…well…yes, I did,” she says. “But how did you know?” Cold-reading? Nash sent a telegram ahead? In Grassland, only ladies with paternal abandonment complexes wear that color of green after Labor Day? Yun only says, “I know because it’s my job to know.” Yeah, it was Nash for sure. What a fucking gossip.
Yun’s companion, who is older and has some saucy curves and a more matchy headband in her rockabilly hair, senses that Yun is maybe not explaining herself well and steps in to help. “How do you do? I am Yumi,” she says. “And this is Yun. She knew you were coming because she is a ‘gifted’ child.” These girls must be from Grassland’s Odyssey of the Mind clan. The camera focuses on Rhett and Wilder, who look gobsmacked by this statement, so I’m probably onto something with my lame joke. “You mean she’s a seer?” Wilder asks. Yumi more or less confirms this, and adds that they are from a place called Alma Kinan. Cue another smash cut of Rhett looking shocked and frightened. Fred is like, “I’m an ignorant man! Everyone, go out of your way to educate me!” But Rhett snaps at him, “Guard your thoughts, fool! What you don’t know could hurt you.” I have read this statement a dozen times now and it still doesn’t make sense. Fred is with me on this, but Rico just asks again, risking Rhett’s wrath, “What’s so special about Alma Kinan, anyway?” Quiet! Those girls are feeding off your thought waves!!!