Geddy and the 12th Unit thank Luc for the invite by unsheathing their many phallic weapons. “You knew we were going to be here?” Luc asks. No, they thought they were rescuing a bunch of civilians from literally no one. Geddy ignores this. “I have a question to ask,” he says instead. “Why are you trying so hard to get the True Runes? What do you want with them? It should be easy for Holy Harmonia to get the runes simply by defeating the Grasslands and Zexen simultaneously.” That last bit isn’t really about why he wants them, and it’s also insane–the history of this very region seems to suggest that the people actually holding said True Runes can just melt away into obscurity even as there’s war around them. Did the war from 50 years ago smoke out any of those runes for Harmonia? Fuck and no. Also, Geddy is missing some information we have, which, however unfair it is to him, makes him look like a dumbass, but we’ll get to it.

“That is quite true, but the results would be completely different from what I intend,” Luc says. Uh, it’s not, but go on. “You should know, since you yourself bear a True Rune. Living an empty life, driven only by the Rune…” Geddy interrupts this, wondering if this means Luc is also a True Rune bearer, information that he absolutely already has, but Luc chooses to be a sport and answer him anyway. “Yes. I was born with it,” he says. “I have never in my life felt the real world with my own hands. Since I was born, I have only seen the empty and lifeless faces of others, mortals, the ephemeral…. How about you? Have you ever felt like you were part of the real world? Honestly, now.” Not to get too dark here, you know how abused kids can go through life thinking their abuse is normal and that everyone with parents must have had the same experiences? That is Luc and his fucking rune. Not everybody was born with theirs, dude! That probably made a difference! I’m sure Geddy felt plenty like he was in the real world when he was a sweaty flesh pretzel with Isaac and Wyatt behind Sana’s rose bushes. Geddy answers, “I don’t have time to talk about the past.” That’s what I’m here for! I got you, buddy.

Now that they’ve spent ten minutes talking past each other to no effect, Luc says it’s time for business: “I want your True Rune. Not for Harmonia, but for myself.” He wants to feel even emptier! He’s pretty sure he felt an emotion when a baby cried the other day, and he did not care for it at all! To this end, he summons a bunch of demons in ruby-red plate armor and some Dragonites, explaining he learned from his “mentor” how to connect worlds. Oh, we all know what a Gate Rune is, get over yourself. “I need to use it, because it is becoming difficult to deploy the army.” I imagine it is! He’s only been catfishing an entire country.

The boss fight is no different than the dozen other times Luc and/or Sarah has brought forth a bunch of chimeras and ghost ninjas from the ether: kill Sarah, stay alive, kill Luc. And this time, I even manage to do it on the first try! Novel! For once, though, the game acknowledges my victory by having Luc and Sarah be the ones kneeling and panting on the ground while Geddy looks smug. “Sorry, pal,” Geddy Gumshoe says. “I can’t let you have my rune. Now, you were saying something about your intentions…” I’m sure he wasn’t, but if he had been, it would have been something to the effect of freeing you from the prison of, like, yourself, man. Luc, fortunately for me and my keyboard, has had the gift of gab beaten out of him, and instead lashes out with his True Wind Rune. But Geddy raises his sword hand, now glowing blue, and blocks whatever The Shredding assholishness Luc was about to do. “Could it be…the True Lightning Rune?” Geddy actually says out loud. Don’t…don’t you know? Geddy takes this to mean that his and Luc’s runes are “equally powerful.” I would think they’re all equally powerful–plus or minus some elemental rochambeau hierarchy that’s not actually happening here–but I can accept these two are the most practiced at using theirs. I mean, Luc is so old now. 32 years old! He’s almost as old as I am! GROSS.

While Luc and Geddy seem to be admiring how well-matched their penises are, Sarah looks to break the stalemate. “Luc, let me help you,” she says, and without waiting for permission, she summons the True Earth Rune, floating in a fancy glass orb and shining with golden light. So I guess we know how that meeting with Sasarai ended! I hope nothing terrible happened like Nash perishing in an earthquake! I’d never get over it, truly. After Sarah calls on the rune’s power, the earth does indeed start shaking, knocking Geddy’s friends and then Geddy himself to the ground. Now it’s Luc’s turn to be smug, and he demands again that Geddy hand the rune over. “We have a special procedure for doing this in Harmonia,” he explains entirely for my nitpicky benefit. “It’s a particularly painful technique, or so I hear.” What exactly this technique entails is still not clear, but the True Earth Rune is still strobing like a disco ball and now Geddy is clutching his head. “I only need one of the other Five Elemental Runes–Fire, Water, Earth, or Lightning–to collect them all,” Luc explains, though not really. “The True Wind Rune that I bear will upset the balance when combined with the True Earth Rune, allowing me to seize your rune.” How he got the True Earth Rune without that particular requirement is, of course, unaddressed, though Luc does whine some more that he really wanted to save that one for last. Jesus, man, we get it–the epic final confrontation was supposed to have all those twincest undertones, and the mood is just ruined.

*gasp* THE SICKNESS

Once Luc summons his rune along with Sarah’s and the two are merrily pumping out rave lasers, Geddy’s whole body begins pulsing with lightning. “What an awesome array of effects!” I’d say if this were the only PS2-era-or-later game I’d ever played. Ace and Queen scream helplessly for Daddy, but a white screen later it’s all over, and the True Lightning Rune is in its own little gas lamp orb. Christ, I got to use the thing, what, three times? This fucking sucks. Luc does, on the way out, comfort the one person more upset about this than me, and with better reason to be, I GUESS. “Since you bore the rune for so long,” Luc says, almost certainly making this shit up as he goes, “its power hasn’t left you entirely. So you will live on for now, but eventually you will die. Perhaps you will see this as a blessing, Geddoe?” He clearly has no idea who he’s talking to. If Geddy thought death would take him anywhere good, let alone to the great bonfire threesome in the sky, he would have ripped that rune off himself the second he saw he’d be shacking up with a teenage dolt, the Frown Princess of Zexen, and a hobbit with daddy issues.

Luc also mentions that he’s left “a little present” outside for Geddy and friends. “I’d like you to extend your stay here a little longer,” he says. This sounds for all the world like he’s a concierge who’s upgraded them to the platinum package suite, where you get to keep the slippers and bathrobe and there’s a shower big enough for everybody but Franz. Either way, I am informed, “You’ve lost True Lightning,” and unless Luc’s present is some other kickass True Rune, he can kiss my dependent-on-OP-characters ass.

But guess who is perfectly happy because he got what he wanted out of this? If you guessed Franz, you are wrong, as he is incapable of being happy. That said, he seems as close to it as he’ll ever get, and certainly unconcerned with the fact that an incredibly powerful weapon just fell into a megalomaniac’s hands. He and Iku approach each other, the forcefield keeping them apart gone, I suppose because the hostages’ function as bait in a trap Geddy would have walked into with no bait at all has already sprung. The perfect plan, Luc! Iku has the very faintest smile on her face, and looks into Franz’s eyes. Oh my god, is she going to tell him she loves him and his very tight ass? Will I have to walk into traffic right here and now? “Thank god,” she tells him, “that weird thing is finally gone.” God, the sincere heterosexual love is blasting through my screen so hard my face might melt. The heat! Franz laments he couldn’t “protect” Iku, a thing she definitely asked for and needed, and she’s all, “That’s all right, Franz…” No prizes for guessing why. Before these two lust-crazed nymphos can tear each other’s clothes off in front of Jacques and everyone, Joker tells them to get moving. I mean, to him, the above dialogue has to genuinely rate as disgusting PDA. They don’t seem like they completely hate each other at this moment! Ew!

The other Le Buque civilians seem unsure if they’ve actually been rescued–with Franz involved, it’s a hair ambiguous, I’ll agree–and Ace tells them, unhelpfully, “We’re not sure! It depends on what kind of ‘present’ Luc left for us.” When he puts it like that, it’s 100 percent a deuce he laid in the corridor, right? I can picture no other possibility now. The camera even pulls in ominously on the gaping black exit, as if setting up a blind and bumbling Geddy to put his boot right in it.

Speaking of poor, kneecapped Geddy, he’s back in control–of the party, if not this situation, at all–and promptly heads out the way he came. It doesn’t take long for Geddy to find what Luc left for him, and it’s actually much more pleasant and also more boring than I was fearing: a bunch more conjured monsters. Man, who gives a shit? Oh no, the only thing he seems to do anymore, not that! “Gaudy and tasteless,” Jacques concurs. “I was hoping for a new scarf.” Is this the most words he’s ever said in one text box? I think it is!

1) My dudes are taking the metaphor too far; 2) it really feels like this is in fact about shit.

The fights come in waves, with the team (okay, mostly Ace and Joker) exchanging pithy quips in between each, trying to hide how tired they are under several layers of ironic hostility/attraction. The only new or interesting monster Luc has gifted them is a Poop Golem Ghost Armor, which sounds about like what it is, but it has a neat trick of taking itself apart so each of its armor pieces can smack a different person in the mouth. Listen, I’m just trying to be grateful it’s not another Dragonite, furry, or feral hog.

The third wave has a Dragonite. Well, fuck.