Meanwhile, Frodo and Samwise are behind the stores of spears, totally eavesdropping to the best of their abilities. “They look like they’re talking about something pretty serious,” Samwise says. Okay, so maybe their eavesdropping abilities suck if they’re spying and can’t even hear the conversation. But before they can risk sneaking closer to hear better, a generic Zexen Knight spots them and throws them out into the corridor. The Black Screen of Censorship shows up just in the nick of time to save this game from an Adults Only rating. Dammit!
I suppose Frodo should get on with it and go see Tootie. And he certainly shouldn’t try getting back into the room where Percy and Borus are fucking talking, because he would just get thrown out again anyway. Not that I tried or anything. What do I look like, some yaoi-coveting 12-year-old pervert? I’m insulted.
In the second-floor hallway, Frodo and Samwise come across, who else, Chris the Ice Queen and her Boy. Well, we’ve met or are going to meet everybody else, so why not. Chris is telling Boy that they need to speed the recovery of their many injured men to even stand a chance against Well-Endowed Dupa and his Fancy Lizard Lads. Boy then basically smiles and nods while Chris bitches about the Council. Old hat for him, isn’t it?
As Chris and Boy walk past where Frodo and Samwise are standing, Chris suddenly goes into slow-mo mode, and we see Samwise gazing at Chris like other 13-year-old girls would gaze at Orlando Bloom wearing a quiver of arrows and a smile. She is clearly smitten. But this is no surprise–we’re talking about Chris, here. There are probably ficus plants that want to have sex with her. Samwise waits until Chris is out of earshot and then swoons. “T-That woman…. She’s beautiful. And a knight, even. It’s incredible.” Boy, that word is getting bandied about quite a bit in this recap, isn’t it? Frodo’s all, “She’s Chris, right?” causing Samwise to freak out further. “What?! You know her?” Frodo soothes her envy, saying–get this–that he just saw her in a parade once in Vinay del Sexay. Good thing he didn’t say this while Chris was still there, or she’d probably have his head on a pike outside by the save point.
Samwise apparently feels that Frodo needs to be educated in the finer points of Lady Chris’s total lickability, and so gives her own rundown: “Lady Chris is incredible! They say that she can charge into battle, defeat the enemy and get out without any blood on her. All without even breaking a sweat. I adore her.” And yet, she saw a lady in knight armor with silver hair walking around Ass Castle and didn’t make the connection to her poster girl on her own? Samwise is slipping in her fangirl rabidness. And Frodo tries to one-up her: “Come to think of it, I think I’ve heard people call her the ‘Silver Maiden.’ Sounds like quite the lady.” Holy crap, I can almost hear Chris grinding her teeth from here.
Tootie is hanging out in the conference room on the second floor, making Frodo and Samwise’s trip six for six on meeting important Zexen Knights. I wonder if they have little cards to check them off, like birdwatchers. Once Tootie and Frodo have introduced themselves, Frodo presents his letter of appointment, which Tootie was already expecting because he’s smart and well-connected and stuff. Bowl cut = brain power. I’m sure of it now.
Apparently handing over the letter was all Frodo really needed to do, but Tootie holds him back to ask who this young lady is with him. Samwise introduces herself as the guard commander at Buttfuck Castle. With a look of sudden realization, Tootie asks, “Did you take up the position when the old commander passed away a few years ago?” Samwise frowns and says that man was her dad. “So,” he says sternly, “you’re Commander [Gamgee]’s daughter, eh? You can’t just take his title; you have to be officially appointed.” Samwise protests that her Gaffer would have been fine with it, honest! Also, she has to be officially appointed? Zexen is more mired in red tape than my university. And that is really saying something, folks.
Samwise looks like she’s totally going to cry, so Tootie has pity on her and says he’ll make the arrangements for Frodo to appoint her as the guard commander. Samwise and Frodo go “OMG YAYZ” and look like they might hug the man. Glomp him, even. And being glomped by teenies is probably not something Tootie is used to. What with being cursed by the ooglies.
…That doesn’t seem right.
The new official commander of the Buttfuck Guard has a spring in her step when they leave–they came to get Frodo his promotion and she got one too! Why, if this weren’t a Suikoden game, the two of them might even celebrate with a wild night of sex! With each other! But obviously this is a Suikoden game, so they’ll have to settle for walking back to Buttfuck Castle in a totally platonic way. At least Frodo will get a smooch from Sugar Daddy Cogsworth when he gets home.
After leveling up on the Yaza Plains for an hour or so, Frodo and Samwise return to Buttfuck, Sweet Buttfuck. Samwise is jazzed to go back to her completely useless job after being away so long. Frodo admires her stamina and goes to his room to, as he puts it, rest his “weary bones.” Plural. Bones. Weary ones at that. I guess he managed to have a little off-camera meeting with Percy and Borus while Samwise wasn’t looking.
Samwise leaves the party so Frodo can go to bed and give Frodo Jr. (and Frodo III, apparently) a rest. When he reaches the manor he calls out for Cogsworth to dress him in his pajamas and tuck him in, but Cogs is nowhere to be found. Figuring he’s a little tired for that anyway tonight, he retires to his bedroom by his lonesome. And wanks to himself about being so very tired and how being a castle master is so very stressful. Oh my God, you had to walk to Ass Castle and talk to people. Shut up, Frodo.
The next morning, Frodo gets out of bed and yawns. He says to himself, “Whoa…I didn’t see Mr. [Cogsworth] this morning either.” Was he expecting Cogsworth to tiptoe in at 6:00 a.m. to spoon with him? Wait, yes, he probably was. Okay, something must be wrong.
Sure enough, when Frodo exits the manor, he finds Cogsworth in the middle of a heated confrontation with a female Suikoclone. She’s demanding to speak to the master of the castle, and for some reason Cogs is not being cooperative. Maybe he doesn’t want this broad sinking her claws into his new boy-toy. When Frodo asks the lady what the problem is, she whines that her baaaaaaby booooooy is lost, and that she thinks he’s around Buttfuck somewhere, because he “so enjoys playing here.” Maybe there’s something about her son she doesn’t know. The mom clone puts on her best Entitled Parent Face and asks if Frodo would get some of his “soldiers” to look for her son. Because finding the kid is so Frodo’s responsibility, and the mom shouldn’t have to do anything, even though this is her damn fault for not keeping a better eye on him. Anyway, Frodo says he’d love to help, but unfortunately, he has as many soldiers as Shion has brain cells.
But he’s still determined to do his “duty.” If I were Frodo, I would say I would find her son, go off somewhere and play cards for an hour, then return and tell the mom that tigers ate the kid. “What a tragedy, well, we’ll be seeing you,” I would say loudly, to drown out her sobbing. “Don’t forget to buy one of Martha’s fucking lottery tickets.” But instead of listening to me, Frodo summons together Muto, Martha, Piccolo, Cogsworth, and Samwise and asks them to help search the premises for the lost little boy. Samwise points out that there are so many holes in floors and cracks in walls and other signs of disrepair around here, that the kid could have fallen or gotten stuck somewhere. Cogs goes on the defensive immediately and whines about the lack of funds for upkeep. “The way things are at this castle,” Martha adds unhelpfully, “I’m making no money at all! Someone really ought to do something about it.” I’m starting to wish that the Zexen Knights had burned this place to the ground, lottery booth and all. Yeah, that’d mean that Lulu would still be alive, but at this rate I’d gladly take him back to cleanse this game of Martha and her 24/7 pity parade.
Oh, like you have friends.
Frodo hastily gets the subject back to the search for the missing boy. By the way, the kid’s name is also Frodo. Well, no, it’s Thomas, but the dialogue kind of falls apart if their names aren’t the same. Shut up. Samwise says she will stake her “title and reputation” on finding Wee Frodo (the kid, not Frodo’s penis), like this is some big deal. And Muto, who has been silent this whole time, points at Frodo and woofs, “Haven’t we already found you?” Oh, hardy har har. It is to laugh.
Samwise and Piccolo join Frodo for this fun romp around the grounds, while Muto and Martha basically go back to their normal posts and pick their asses. God, I hate this place. Samwise suggests that they check inside the manor first, making me hate her, because I’m sure this is just going to be another excuse to take the grand tour. Hey, game designers: half of the fucking game will be spent at this castle. I think I’ll get the hang of where everything is naturally. There is no need to force me to walk around and familiarize myself with the layout 20,000 goddamn times.
Jesus. This is Xenosaga all over again.
Frodo and the other two first stop at a busted up set of double doors near the stairwell. Samwise explains that behind these doors is an amazing device known as an “elevator.” LIKE OHMIGOD, WHAT’S AN ELEVATOR??? Samwise goes on, “In the old days, a great inventor from the south named [Professor Shaftley] installed it. It’s like a room that moves up and down.” Apparently it isn’t working anymore–I didn’t get that from the clearly broken look of it or anything–so there’s no way the kid could have used it. So the only purpose of this scene was for Samwise to name-drop at me. Rage.
Samwise/Elevator OTP
Once Samwise and Piccolo establish for the nth time that this place is old and run down and that they’re quite poor, by the way, we can move on. Next stop is the library. Lurch is nowhere to be found. Frodo thinks on this. “That reminds me. Who was that man in the library? Could the boy be with him somewhere?” Not that I haven’t made fun of Lurch for being creepy myself, but way to be a dick, Frodo. You’ve interacted with the guy for all of five minutes since you moved in and now you’re accusing him of abducting little boys? That’s just cold. Samwise frowns and says she hasn’t seen Lurch, or Juan, for that matter, even though she looked for them to help out with the search. “Let’s hope they’re not missing, too,” Frodo says, like he doesn’t think Lurch is keeping the kid in a muddy pit, shouting “PUT THE LOTION IN THE FUCKING BASKET!!!”
Downstairs, the three of them engage in some gratuitous exposition about the shipwreck. Samwise says it just crashed into the castle one day. And here I was, thinking it had crashed somewhere else and a wizard teleported the wreckage here. Shows what I know. “You could hear it being wrecked miles away,” Samwise adds. So it wasn’t one of those whisper-quiet shipwrecks, I guess. Piccolo contributes that it was probably a smuggling vessel, since the crew ran off like bitches after the crash. Frodo complains, “But we can’t leave it like that.” Piccolo doesn’t see why not, since it’s so badly damaged that it’ll never sail again. Samwise pipes up, “Why not leave it as a landmark? No other castle has anything remotely like it.” I guess the ship just knew what it was doing when it rammed the ass end of a place called Buttfuck Castle.
Finally, they go outside to see if they can find Juan. Well, Samwise apparently didn’t do a very good job looking, because Juan is right there at his usual post, snoring away. After he reluctantly wakes up, he’s all, “Oh, that kid. I told him to cover himself in lamb’s blood and go to Mount Hei-Tou to play with tigers.” Everyone gapes at him, but Juan still doesn’t see what the big deal is. His whole attitude screams, “What? It’s just a kid, his mom can just pop out another one.” However, he does agree to come along to Hei-Tou since this whole thing is sort of his fault. Frodo leaves Martha and Muto in charge of the castle–it’s going to be a crater in the ground when they return–and then they take off to save Wee Frodo.
Fast forward past lots of battles on the Yaza Plains to Mount Hei-Tou, which is as non-mountainous as ever. The four of them discuss whether this place will really be dangerous, and Samwise and Piccolo assure Frodo that they’re there to protect their limp-armed castle master. Juan says no such thing, which is refreshing. Frodo somehow instinctively knows where to go and ignores all the tempting side paths, choosing instead to run along the river bank until he reaches a dead end. There he and his comrades find Wee Frodo, cowering from a vicious boar with large phallic tusks. I’m trying to play up this monster as impressive, because I think it’s technically a boss battle, but it’s the same kind of boar that shows up randomly on the plains. The party fought two of these things five minutes ago without any problems. But just for gusto I have the party members pull out all the stops anyway. Somehow I’d forgotten in my absence from the game that Piccolo…well, he’s lame. Like, he makes Lulu, Tuta, Kuromimi, and any other useless wads you can think of from the other games seem useful in battle. For that extra “Could this guy be any worse?” flavor, I even have him use his Mallet Rune. I have no idea why it’s called this, because there is no mallet involved, other than the Piccolo Sucks Elk Balls Mallet. It should really be called the Piccolo Rips off Apache Chief and Then Does One Fucking Damage Rune.
Enuch Chuck!
Long story short, Samwise and Juan beat the snot out of the boar before Piccolo’s high-level lightning spell can go off. Bummer, there were only 783 more rounds of casting time to go! Seriously, watching Piccolo cast spells at this level is like watching a BitTorrent download bar on a 28.8 modem connection. Following the boar’s demise, Wee Frodo, wearing his full-on hysterical sobbing face (of course, it looks like a blowjob face), buries himself in Juan’s arms. There’s a wrinkle of Juan’s personality that I would rather not have discovered. Wee Frodo also cries that he was “so lost.” Because running along a river that has no forks in it is really confusing.