Previously, Chris Lightfellow, despite her hair flowing free in the summer breeze, continued to be uptight and cranky as ever, up to and including participating in another plot-required death of another teenage Grasslander. The third chapters are all, apparently, about resolving each hero’s personal baggage, but the Silver Maiden has so many suitcases that it might take a bit longer for TSA to rummage through them all.

But for now Chris is not our concern, as we turn once more to Geddy, who was last seen backtalking and then backhanding the Mask. I wish I could tell you that his adventures will get even more exciting from here, but I can’t lie like that. We pick up with Geddy and the 12th Unit as they enter Ass Castle. Ace is telling Aila (who is in “disguise” in a puffy pink vest that looks like it came straight from Alison Hendrix’s closet), “Listen, Aila. Because of what happened back at Iksay Village, they might consider the Karaya Clan an enemy here. Try not to stand out too much.” I feel like this is a conversation that they not only should have had earlier, but probably did, given that they’ve already hit the Caleria Old Navy for Aila’s new wardrobe. Aila responds that her new threads are “hard to move around in,” and as she’s talking, the camera obligingly tilts to show the whole thing better, and I swear to god she’s wearing a lavender fanny pack. If that thing doesn’t contain a Shout stick, hand sanitizer, and orange slices, then I don’t know shit about shit.

The pig on the left is like, ‘Just fuck already.’ And the other is all, ‘Nooooo, girl, he’s gay.’

Ace tells her to stop bitching because her mom clothes are imported from Matilda. So that’s still the preppiest collection of white assholes in all of Suikoland, check. But Queen tells Aila she looks cute, which is true and at least a silver lining, and that, “Besides, this guy’s holding all our money. Better to have him spend it on you than some useless woman.” I will take this to mean he would normally blow all their money at Martha’s lottery booth. While Ace is throwing a sulky tantrum in Aila and Queen’s general direction, Joker, standing apart with Geddy, asks the boss what their business is in Zexen. Geddy will only say that he wants to see someone, but not who or why. Joker spends a moment staring daggers at Geddy’s back before following him into town. Ace, Aila, and Queen (and Jacques, behind as usual) follow after a moment, but not before Ace loudly overshares that he and Gazongas have not banged in at least “a couple of months” and Aila calls him a pig. Look, he is, but not because he banged Gazongas. Since, you know, he hasn’t. Let’s be real about this.

Good for her. Never having fun is the first rung on the Chris Lightfellow Ladder to Success.

Geddy is now free to roam the castle town, and walks easy as you please into the castle itself, despite his earlier concern that his fight with Borus would make him persona non grata around here. He even visits the bujutsu trainer stationed not 10 feet away from one of Borus’s favorite punching walls. I guess he is counting on Zexenites having short memories. When the party emerges from the castle to the west side of town, they watch, with the camera focusing on Aila, as Percival rides through the west gate with a retinue of knights. He’s in the middle of whining about how their Grasslander enemies are too pathetic to give them a fair fight, or some nonsense. I assume the group overhears none of this, but Aila narrows her eyes anyway. “That’s…a Zexen Ironhead!” she snarls. Hold the phone. She literally just walked through an entire town full of knights. Unless Ace made her wear a Matilda-imported blindfold up to this point, there is no way Percy is the first ironhead she’s seen today. Nor is Percy himself, to my recollection, a figure of particular interest to Aila.

Glad we’ve established off the bat how dumb this is. Aila crouches into an attack stance, but in a flash Jacques is behind her, a hand on her wrist. Every woman’s weakness! “Don’t do it, Aila,” he says. “I know what you’re thinking. Just don’t do it.” Aila protests that the ironheads are murderers and so on, but Jacques notes that even if she takes him out, it would mean her death in the bargain, and he’d rather she didn’t snuff it. Aww! Hot teens need to stick together! Joker agrees, telling her, “If you seek revenge, think of a better place to do it.” Well, this place has all the guys she wants to get revenge on, so I’m struggling to think of a better one that still suits her purpose. Geddy, for his part, tells Aila that she will need to “practice some tolerance” if she’s going to continue tagging along with them. That’s a pretty shitty thing to tell her in this context, but it’s nonetheless true. Thankfully, as they’re talking Aila off the ledge, Percy and his knights walk on and the moment passes.

Kidd tells his dad later that he met a pathological liar with big boobs and pink hair, and Phoenix runs screaming from the house.

After more rote-by-now dicking around at the capitalist paradise that is Buttfuck Castle, and laying out some more treasure bosses, the gang travels to Vinay del Sexay, presumably where Geddy’s hookup is waiting. Ace waxes rhapsodic about being home again, and even this harmless sentiment causes Joker to tell him he’s “full of it,” so I’m guessing these two haven’t boned down in at least a couple days and are pissy with each other again. Geddy tells Queen he’ll find out where his contact is tonight at the inn, prompting Queen to muse that they can “take it easy” until then. (Rough translation: SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS.) Once they get their rooms, Joker pointedly asks if they’re going to be here a while. You can’t see me, but I’m making the “drinky drinky” motion. Ace immediately gets his hackles up, especially after Queen piles on and says they’re going to “quench [their] thirst” while Ace, their gopher, gets them checked in. Joker gives Ace the bedroomiest of bedroom eyes, and Ace gives in just so they have a room to run off to together.

That couldn’t be a more smoldering look if there were a judge and witness stationed between them.

A black screen transitions us to that evening. Joker asks Jacques where Ace is. I have a feeling he asks this whenever Ace is not in his immediate line of sight. He goes on, with cringe-inducing transparency, “He’s probably chasing women somewhere. He’s too much, that guy. Don’t you think?” Jacques basically responds, “I am not getting in the middle of this.” But Joker won’t give up on forming a stitch-and-bitch circle, and asks if Jacques would like a pint. Or five. That’ll loosen him up! FOR TALKING. Jacques knows what his game is and says he’ll stick to juice. Enter Ace, stage left: “Quit trying to turn everyone against me, old man.” Joker attempts to mask what he was just up to and asks Ace to join them. It doesn’t work, because Joker is bad at being Two Face (sorry). And anyway, Ace has to “tend to something” and literally runs out of the tavern. “Something, or someone?” Joker sighs the second the door closes. Has Frodo made any progress on recruiting a couples therapist to move to Buttfuck Castle?

Upstairs, Geddy is meeting with his contact in his dark room. “Well, the rest is up to you,” the mystery person says. “Do you know where to go?” Geddy replies with a nod, “A cave in the north, right? I’ve been there on a survey before.” And on a few treasure boss murder missions. Geddy notes that his mysterious friend is “careful.” Maybe even Geddy can’t see his contact’s face. Whoever this person is, they leave, and Geddy takes a hot bath in ellipses as he mulls over what he’s learned.

Elsewhere! Aila and Queen are walking around outside, and Queen is marveling at the amount of soda Aila just funneled into her stomach. I’m picturing keg stands, but with Fanta. Aila is like “BUT IT’S SO GOOD, LET’S GO HAVE MORE,” leading Queen to tell her, “I’ll pass. I’m not really into sweet stuff.” I like Queen fine, but I have a personal rule not to trust people who say those words. She’s on notice. But you know we’re not out here for an entire scene of Aila and Queen talking about sugar, so right on cue, Aila tenses up at the appearance of another ironhead. This time it’s Borus, who is expositing to an underling about their intel on the Grassland forces. Don’t these guys have cavernous meeting rooms for these sorts of conversations?

Queen places a tiny bit too much faith in Aila’s judgment and, rather than strong-arming her out of there, or even putting a couple fingers on the girl’s wrist like Jacques did, trusts her to walk calmly past Borus and the other knight without making a scene. You can imagine how well that goes, but I can also just tell you: not great. Aila shouts, “This is for my people!” and leaps at Borus’s passing back with her knife. Borus, for his part, disarms her with contemptuous ease. And to his credit, rather than succumbing to his bloodlust and gutting her in the street, he merely shoves her away. Look how everyone but Aila has grown! A moment later, Borus recognizes Queen, who gives him a wan smile and doesn’t try to pretend not to remember their last encounter. “Look, we’re not on a battlefield here, so how about we just go on our way?” she suggests. Borus is skeptical that Queen’s little friend will go along with this plan, causing Aila to get all huffy at being called a kid (I hear you, honey) and announce, “I’m not a kid! I’m Aila, of the Karaya Clan!” Oh, well, he’s totally going to let you go now.

But, despite the undeniable probable cause of her being a citizen of an enemy state who just tried to assassinate him, Borus declines to have Aila arrested. “Don’t be silly,” he says to his subordinate. “How’d it look for a Zexen Knight to arrest some little girl who tried to pick a fight with him?” I don’t know, how would it look for a Karayan to murder some Zexen citizens in the middle of the night, shortly after openly inciting violence and not being arrested? Not that Aila’s going to do that. She’s going to sugar crash any minute now.

Borus turns to leave, but pauses to tell the two of them, “It’s not my style to apologize for anything done in battle. But, I have bad memories of what happened that night. I regret my immaturity, getting carried away in that battle.” Pretty sure Borus just framed murdering Aila’s friends and neighbors as a “youthful indiscretion.” Murderous boys will be boys! But it’s still more of an apology than I was expecting. Aila flails impotently and screams “Butcher!” at his retreating back while Queen fantasizes about her next drink.

‘There, there. Let’s go make fun of Ace together.’

The next morning, the team, minus Ace, pointlessly discusses Geddy’s intel about the North Cavern, as if their next destination is remotely up for debate. Daddy always gets his way. Aila feels like she’s forgetting something, and let’s just put a pin in that since it’s not immediately obvious what she means. Once Geddy is under my control I steer him straight toward the city gates. I assume they’re meeting Ace there, but as they walk out without him, he runs down the dirt road after them, hollering that he’s being ditched. No one stops to correct him, so we can assume that’s exactly what they were doing. I guess Aila meant they were forgetting him? Would she even care?

At the North Cavern, Ace wonders aloud who they could possibly be meeting here, and since Geddy is mum on the subject, Joker interjects, staring daggers at Ace, “It looks like some kind of rendezvous, but I doubt it’s with some beautiful sorceress.” If I had some kind of seismograph for measuring insecurity, it would have just spiked so hard the machine would have fallen on the floor. Ace obliviously sighs that he’d be “first in line” for such a meeting, setting off my adjacent hypothetical tryhard meter. Queen wonders why men “have such one-track minds,” ha, and Aila asks if these men who are totally obsessed with ladies and their totally sexy vaginas include Jacques in their number. Jacques answers, “……..No…” At least someone here is being honest.

At no point will the journey through the North Cavern ever be interesting, so let’s skip ahead to the 12th Unit approaching the dead end that leads to the lakeside cavern opening. Everyone but Aila tenses up, turns around, and gets into battle formation. Aila has barely even turned around, all “WHUH,” when Queen announces to the empty air, “We know you’re there. Quit hiding and come out here.” Ace refers to the spies as “whoever you are,” but Joker lets him know he’s the only one who hasn’t figured out who it is–obvs, Duke and the 14th Unit. The foursome approaches from the opening above, as Duke tells them they weren’t exactly trying to hide. I’m not sure that’s true. But Gazongas implies that they just seem sneaky because they’re not constantly engaging in loud lovers’ quarrel histrionics like SOME OTHER units of the Southern Frontier Defense Force.

Wait, that’s a valid reason? *ends half my recaps immediately*

As for what they’re doing here, let’s follow along. Duke says, “That’s rather rude of you, [Geddy]. We’re just working. Doing our job.” And Gau notes that that job doesn’t entail following them around, but then it…kind of does? Duke knows that Geddy “received an order to get back to Caleria,” thanks to, you know, beating Bishop the Mask’s face into a pulp. Ace, at this point, looks at the wall like he’s never seen such an interesting wall in his life, and faux-casually says, “Oh, that.” So either Ace informed his companions of this communique off-camera, or he never informed anybody. Actually: “I thought it was a joke, so I threw it away.” Oh, Ace. At prompting from the incredulous Gazongas and Gau, Ace then proceeds to tell a massive fucking whopper: that they are on a “special mission,” one so secret that clearly these low-level scrubs wouldn’t know about it. “To scout and stir up a riot in the High East. The goal was to revive the Highland Kingdom, but it didn’t go very well.” Nobody is fooled by this, obviously, though Ace admirably sticks to his guns. I’m almost impressed that he wove that lie out of whole cloth on the fly, as bad of a lie as it is.

Geddy doesn’t blow up Ace’s spot, but merely says they’re late for a meeting and asks Duke, “What do I have to do to make you give up?” Naturally, what Duke wants is a duel, because this has never been anything but a penis-measuring contest. Geddy is fully aware of this and agrees–yes, this will waste more time, but anything else would be delaying the inevitable. And he’s seen enough of that with Ace and Joker pretending they’re not soulmates.

‘I love you, too.’

It shouldn’t surprise you to hear that Duke isn’t that great at dueling, and he’s even less great at disguising his desire to, um, cross swords with his totally platonic rival. Geddy takes him out in three hits, and the camera comes in tight on Gazongas’s chest as she bounces over to Duke’s side to see if he’s hurt. Subtle. She also says, “You’re pushing yourself too hard,” and I’m waiting with an eyeroll at the ready for her to announce Duke’s been riding for three straight days. Anyway, Duke slinks off (with Gau supporting him) with a modicum of grace, and with a warning: “I’ll tell you one thing. This ‘hunt for the Fire Bringer’ is not part of Harmonia’s plans but is apparently part of that man’s scheme. I’m not really sure what he’s up to.” This is actually pretty stand-up of Duke to tell them, so leave it to Ace to gloat that getting his ass handed to him is what he deserves. For his cheek, he gets Gau’s spear leveled between his eyes. “How dare you insult our leader like that!” he growls. “Just because he didn’t come out on top today doesn’t mean I won’t take you on myself.” Ace says nothing, because he is probably wetting himself and hoping no one notices, and the 14th Unit walks away. Once they’re out of earshot, he finally says, “Oooooh, I’m so scared!” Yes, you are. Shut up, Ace.

Screencaps like these are why I get up in the morning.

Amazingly the group is free to move on after this–I was expecting a long follow-up scene of Joker and Queen kicking Ace in the shins for not keeping them in the loop on their orders from HQ, but really for staring at Gazongas’s chest melons a fraction of a second too long for their tastes. So instead, we pick up at the back of the cavern, with Aila gasping with delight at the pretty view and Ace wondering what the deal is with the sunken ship across the lake. But who cares about that nonsense–Geddy’s contact is here, and SURPRISE, it’s Tootie! (And Boy, who is likely here to take minutes of their criminal fucking conspiracy.) Queen, at least, recognizes him, and obviously Aila has to go, “You’re an ironhead!” Glad we’re all keeping up. Aila bumrushes him but stops when Jacques holds out his arm in front of her. He has this look on his face like he’s meeting his dad for the first time and doesn’t want Aila making it weird.