Up ahead, Sarah arrives at the ritual site, where a storm-gray orb nestled within a cradle of ice is crackling with lightning (???). I don’t know how anyone is supposed to fit this thing on their hand, to be honest. Albert and Yuber are standing over a body, and Yuber is awesomely kicking at it to see if it’s still alive. It is, and it is also Jimba! Sarah ignores this and instead walks over to the side, where the Mask is sitting on the ground, clutching his head. She kneels down to check on him, and he insists that he’s fine, though his mask is now gone. Of course the mask itself wasn’t the thing keeping our antagonist’s identity from us, but now that it’s off I guess Sarah feels free to just say the damn thing, spurred on by her FEELINGS: “Luc! Master Luc, I can’t live without you…”
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!?!?!?!
Why can’t I stop comparing Luc to the Flash?
Yes, the Mask is really Luc, keeper of the Stone Tablets of Promise, apprentice of the still-missing Leknaat, master of using wind magic to summon earth golems, and all-time resting bitchface champion. Are you surprised? You’re totally surprised, right? I mean, there were no clues!
I will have to wrestle with this DEVASTATING PLOT TWIST on the run, as the action returns to Hugo and his race to catch up with Sarah. It turns out he’s a good three screens back of the spot Jimba is maybe dying and Luc has been unmasked. Sarah can run really fucking fast in that hoop skirt. And by the time Hugo arrives at the True Water Rune hot zone, Team Luc has vacated the premises, leaving Jimba to freeze to death. He’s in a sleeveless top and sandals! His gloves are fingerless! He was not prepared for this at all.
Lucia holds Jimba in her arms and kind of rolls his body around until he rouses. The second he opens his eyes, he tells her, “You’re not going to believe this, Chief Lucia. I’ve screwed things up! I can’t even repay you for what you’ve done for me.” Lucia ignores this–I do not, but I’ll save my thoughts for the moment–and just asks him what happened. Jimba instead looks at the faces of each person surrounding him. His eyes move right over Geddy, his former GOOD FRIEND, and Chris, his fucking long-lost daughter, to focus on Hugo, who in fairness seems to idolize him and probably harbors the hope that Jimba is his secret daddy, too. Jimba seems pleased that Hugo is the Flame Champion now, to which Hugo can only say Jimba’s name a few more times and he definitely doesn’t respond, “Are you really, though?” (That’s me.)
Finally, Jimba focuses on what’s important here, which is not remotely Hugo. It’s also not Geddy and an end-of-life marriage proposal, to my eternal disappointment. “I’m running out of time,” he gasps. “Chris, will you come over here please?” Chris asks, “What are you going to do with me?” like Jimba just asked her to come behind the boathouse where he keeps his rusty meat hook collection. But she walks over to him anyway, and he lays it on her: “Chris, listen to me. The True Water Rune is kept sealed here. Before it gets taken away, I’ve been trying to put it back into my right hand. I failed. The Rune was partially released…. If you keep it like this, its power will go out of control–just like 50 years ago….”
While the game is insulting all of us with yet another flashback to Isaac incinerating the Grasslands, let’s talk about Jimba, né, obviously, Wyatt Lightfellow. What exactly is his fucking deal? We know the True Rune Power Trio broke up around 50 years ago, after Isaac murdered a bunch of people and they helped establish Buttfuck Castle as his sovereign citizen libertopia. Then Isaac fucked off to a cave, and Geddy I guess fucked off to the east to become a mercenary and hoped nobody noticed he was immortal, but Wyatt must have gone back to his old life, right? Because Chris is 22 and we also know he was around for at least some of her childhood. Did he live as a public figure and hero in Zexen, then, also hoping nobody would notice he wasn’t aging, for the better part of four decades? Because regardless of when he sealed the rune here–though AT THE EARLIEST I’m guessing he did so after he fled to the Grasslands For Reasons–it was still keeping him young, right? He looks exactly the fucking same. And my shoddy, back-of-the-napkin math would put that happening at near the exact time Lucia became the Karaya Chief after her dad was assassinated. It’s kind of amazing, given how untrusting we know Lucia was back then, that she took this powerful Zexen Knight showing up at her door at his word and sheltered him when two other powerful adversaries had just conspired to murder her father and destabilize her clan. And here’s Captain Blond and Handsome Ironhead swooping in just in time to–JUST ASKING THE QUESTION–give her a son and heir and get his hooks in the Karayan power structure?
I have completely lost track of what I was even questioning. The point is, Jimba is Hugo’s dad, don’t ever ship Chris and Hugo, thanks in advance.
So, the True Water Rune is still making scary noises, and something needs to be done about that. Jimba is on it, telling Chris as she now kneels beside him, “Contain the force of this True Water Rune. That possessed girl from Alma Kinan [Uh, she was?] showed you the power you have within you. You were chosen by the Rune, so you can do this. Hurry up….” I appreciate that Jimba is still being kind of a dick about this, to his daughter, when every word he says to her might be the last. Chris icily stares into the middle distance for what feels like 10 minutes before she asks, “Me?” No, the other Chris here. Hey, Caesar, what are your feelings on True Rune immortality, milkmaid braids, clanking when you walk, and frowning all the time?
Speaking of Caesar, he has pulled the short straw in the “Point out that we’re running out of time even as saying so takes up precious time” drawing. “But do we have enough time? We have to contain the Rune immediately, or it’ll go out of control!” What alternative to Chris taking the rune is even on the table, let alone one that would take less time than this? Not helping my argument, Chris stares at the oversized marble again and more or less repeats, “Was I really chosen by the Rune?” I don’t know, lady! There’s one way to find out, isn’t there?
Chris, shockingly enough, agrees with me! Without another word from anyone, she marches up to the base of the True Water Rune globe, which seems like it’s getting more and more critical, what with the denser lightning encircling it and the high-pitched feedback noises and the controller rumble and so on. But as quickly as all that began, the globe disappears and calm is restored. The symbol of the True Water Rune–an arrangement of three blue concentric ovals that seems like a step down, design-wise, from the normal Water Rune–hovers in its place. That seemed easy!
Caesar and Frodo need to have an etiquette talk with this lady.
The effort of calming down the rune exhausts Chris, and not just physically. Jimba tries to turn around and look at her, because he can tell that her eyes are narrowed and her teeth gritted in a new level of icy rage. “So, you….” she sneers. The game doesn’t bother making this explicit, but communing with the True Water Rune just now showed Chris some stuff about its prior bearer, just like the True Fire Rune did for Hugo. It is perfectly Chris that she sees a barrage of memories of her dad and is just incensed about it all. This deadbeat motherfucker, just letting his stupid rune do his emotional labor for him!
Speaking of this deadbeat motherfucker, he has decided it’s time to go, and by go I mean die. “Well– It’s time….” he says, still in Lucia’s arms. “I must pay the price for failing. My tie with the Water Rune–my attachment to this land and this world–is over. Old heroes should die eventually. To wish to have an eternal life…is unnatural, after all.” I am still deeply unclear on how long this rune has been here and how it is tied to Jimba even when it’s off his body. But more importantly, I know this scene is supposed to be about Chris, but why even HAVE Geddy present if the camera isn’t at least going to peek at him for half a second so he can make a face at his dying ex taking a potshot at his life choices?
Just so there’s no mistaking that Chris has finally gotten a clue, her eyes soften a little and she says, “Father…” In something of an understatement, Jimba replies, “Goodbye, Chris. I was not a good father to you….” But he was a good father “figure” to Hugo! That has to count for something, right? His head slumps forward, blue sparkles fly upward out of his body as Hugo looks and sounds way more upset about all this than Chris is (which is understandable), and finally Jimba disappears, Lucia’s hands still formed around the air his body just occupied. The True Water Rune symbol still hangs in the air above them all, almost mockingly. All three of these people (and Geddy, out of frame but not out of mind, still) just wanted this man in their lives, but hey, his fucking rune is still here! It needs love too!
No one has anything to say–it’s just a lot of icy sighing all around, really. Lucia looks like she wants to punch someone but doesn’t know who, and her first instinct of Chris probably feels inappropriate. So without another word, as the stupid spare tire of her dead dad floats above her head and pulses needily at her, Chris raises her right hand and allows it to glom on. It nestles into her gauntleted fist with a flashy blue laser light show. “True Water is now yours,” Chris is told. Sorry for your loss, though!
“I never wanted this to happen!” Chris finally wails. It would have been difficult for her to want this when she probably didn’t realize it was a possibility until just now, even with Yun’s vague premonitions and knowing that her dad was the bearer of the rune. “Your dad will die five seconds after you realize who he is, and then his rune will pass to you because it doesn’t value democracy” was something Yun was unable to prepare her for, unfortunately.
Geddy tells Apple and Caesar, aka the only people not too busy mourning, “The three True Runes that once belonged to the Fire Bringer have now emerged. This is….” It really feels like Geddy is about to say “bad,” or “ominous,” or “pretty shitty for me given that my two GOOD FRIENDS are dead now.” But Caesar finishes for him, “This could foreshadow another possible victory over Holy Harmonia.” I am sure that’s what he meant! A victory over the empire he still kind of works for! Everything’s coming up Geddy!
Caesar claps his hands to snap everyone to and get them moving. “It is not good to be away from the Buttfuck Castle too long,” he tells them. If you say so, boss! Chapter four ends on this bizarre note, skipping over the tedious character development and minimal entertainment value of Hugo, Chris, and Geddy having the world’s most awkward travel conversation now that the former two have True Rune memories of sloppy makeout sessions with the latter. Fanfiction shouldn’t have to do everything, Konami!
Next time, chapter five! Who’s this Luc fellow, and what is he up to? I’m sure we’ll get a full and satisfying explanation, and require no followup questions. Until then!