The next stop on the Rebellion of Still Nebulous Purpose recruitment tour is Iluya Island, recently leveled by the Cristo Redeathstar attack. In theory, anybody who survived a giant laser beam should be both motivated to beat Kooluk ass and demonstrably difficult to kill. If any of them are also hot men, that is Marvy’s three of three on Marvy’s checklist. Iluya turns out to be dreary and rainy in addition to being covered in debris and scorch marks, but its background music sounds like it would have been more appropriate for a sex scene in a Lethal Weapon movie. I mean, maybe before the devastation, everyone on Iluya had mullets and acid-washed jeans and made PG-rated love in the streets. But I doubt it.

I have so many questions.

A significant portion of the island is taken up by the Kooluk advance base. The Island Nations have been getting their asses handed to them in this conflict, haven’t they? The Kooluk basically had a permanent base in their territory, and the only reason they don’t now is that they decided to nuke it for no reason. Then again, if King Lido and Slowe’s dad are indicative of the brain trust running all the other islands, this is no surprise. But while the Kooluk base is deserted and certainly not in great shape, it’s pristine compared to the actual town, which is a monster-infested pile of rubble. I’m now thankful this was a half-assed PS2 game with the graphics budget sunk into Jeanne’s funbags. If Activision made this Iluya would feature shadows burned onto walls and realistic burnt corpses. Pass.

Standing in the shell of one ruined house is a young, serious-looking girl with a hat that looks like a burlap sack. “What am I doing, you ask?” she asks Marvy, who asked nothing. “I was remembering the window of the house that used to be here. The window that should still be here… The window that is no longer here…” I know people in Suikoland experience tragedy in all sorts of ways, from farmers mourning their burnt fields to homeless ladies singing the dreaded song of silence to dandies wailing about lost rose brooches. But there’s something hilarious about this little girl going, “Yeah, everyone I know is dead, but look at my broken fucking window.” The girl, named Nataly, gathers that Marvy is working against the Kooluk dickheads who robbed her of her windows, and possibly her parents and stuff, and asks to join his cause as, natch, the window person. Someone should tell her that ships have portholes, not windows. Totally different animal.

The center of the destroyed town has turned into a maze of rubble and wooden beams, and this maze is hiding a couple Stars of Destiny, as well as chests that somehow did not burn up when the houses around them did. Guess they’re all fireproof. And laserproof. In one dead end, Marvy finds–of course–another attractive woman. She’s got her very own metal bra already, so at least that’ll save some potch. The woman doesn’t trust Marvy and tells him to beat it, but before he can gleefully do as she asks, Mizuki pulls out of his asshole to say, “Big Sister Kate?” What, Kate is also a ninja? A lady named Kate is a ninja. “She will vanish into the mists like a ghost. Her name…is Kate.” Nope.

So Mizuki and Kate the Ninja catch up, which reveals that Kate was not privy to Mizuki and Akaghi’s current assignment with Ramada, let alone the situation with Marvy here or the Kooluk/Cray alliance, even though it turns out she too works for the Cray Trading Company. So Kate takes in all Mizuki’s exposition and goes, “Wow… Things are getting interesting. So it was the Kooluk who blew up this island. I had no idea…” How could she have no idea? Everyone fucking knows. Window girl back there could have told her. I’m guessing Kate the Ninja’s specialty is not intelligence gathering. And that’s a pity, because she says, “They ordered me to scout the island, then blew it up while I was there! If it was intentional, they’re gonna pay.” Yeah, they nuked Iluya just to get rid of their number one threat: a ninja named Kate. You solved the puzzle. But the info dump leaves Kate without allegiance or assignment, so she asks to come along with her sister. I think Marvy just found the perfect cub reporter for Perrault’s fledgling newsroom!

Thank goodness. This was going to keep Marvy up at night.

Finally, Marvy heads for the center of the rubble maze, where he finds a burly ginger man with a massive sword strapped to his back. Marvy likey. Ginger Brawny is named Izak, and while he has an unfortunate mustache and kind of looks like Lepant’s great-grandfather, beggars can’t be choosers. Izak laments, “People used to live here…until just a while ago.” Yeah, uh, we know. Seriously, it’s not a secret. Oleg put that shit up on YouTube, right after he uploaded his Marvy sex tape.

Izak, like Nataly, intuits that Marvy is fighting the Kooluk, but he plays a little harder to get, though he is clearly eager to join the cause. “Sorry if this seems like a test, but will you bring me a Flower Seed?” It seems like a test because it is one. Thankfully, it just so happens that Marvy purchased a flower seed back on Nay and held onto it in case a strapping redheaded lumberjack asked him for a favor. Izak accepts Marvy’s seed–hee hee–and in a cutscene, plants it in the very center of Iluya’s town square, while Marvy and his girl squad watch. “There was a little girl who used to live here…” Izak tells them. And thank god he does not sound like Shiramine. “She loved flowers… I will lend you my strength as I promised… And I shall part with this place…until the day flowers bloom here once again.” Dude, this place is fucking Chernobyl, ain’t nothing blooming here for a long time. Unless you count second heads on fish and small wildlife.

Marvy is going to have to implement a New York Yankees-style ‘No facial hair’ policy.

Marvy has one more recruit to find before sailing for the Nest of Pirates. On one of many trips to Nay to dick around at the trading post, Marvy stumbles upon a message in a bottle on the beach. It reads, in ham-handed cryptic fashion, “Coral…donuts…small island…” This small island, now that I have a note vaguely referencing it, is located northeast of Obel, and it only takes me 22 minutes of sailing and random battles to find it. If I ever become important enough to write a memoir, there is going to be a chapter entitled, “Contemplations of mortality: sailing in Suikoden IV.” On the plus side, Kate and Izak are pretty much leveled up by the time I get there. This tiny dot on the map is called Donut Island, and I am disappointed to discover that this is due to its ring shape (with a shallow, coral-studded pond in the donut hole center), and not due to it raining crullers and maple bars here.

Standing in the middle of the pond is a young blonde woman in a green jacket that looks like it came from her Fullmetal Alchemist cosplay, shorts so short they’re barely visible under her Leprechaun Roy Mustang coat, and knee socks. In her official artwork, she’s got this “I’m so innocent, what am I doing in this tentacle anal scene” hentai frowny face, and her knees are together and her calves are apart, Shion-style, so consider this a Jailbait Alert. Rene here tells Marvy, “Someone has finally passed the test… Uh, um… Congratulations!” Marvy is all “what test” because all he did was trip over a beer bottle and pick it up in the hopes he could pass it off as a crystal ball to a cat person. “You saw my bottled letter, didn’t you?” Rene asks. “You’re amazing, since you were able to find this place with that.” I will concede that finding an island in this game is a feat worth congratulating.

So why is Rene hanging out on Butthole Island? (There are no donuts. It doesn’t deserve its real name.) “The truth is…” she says, “I sense an incredible energy coming from the ground on this island… There is definitely something good buried here. That’s why I came here…” But she adds that she realized after her arrival that she would not be able to get this treasure home herself, either because it’s fucking massive, or because she teleported here and has no boat. I don’t know. “So, I’ve been recruiting people who will work with me. You were able to make it here, so you passed,” she finishes. No, honey. That is Marvy’s bit. So yes, Rene is a treasure hunter, and her function in Marvy’s crew will be to decipher treasure maps, like the one she hands Marvy now. Oh, but isn’t being the snotty map person Haruto’s job, you may ask? Well, yes, but these are special treasure maps, and also Rene has these needle-dick dowsing rods she holds that will help her locate sweet loot using hand-wave magic. Totally different!

Then why isn’t the split 100/0?

Rene goes ahead to the ship, leaving Marvy alone on what the chyron says is “Doughnut Isle,” which makes me irrationally angry, both at the borderline hipster spelling of “donut” and the fact that every other mention of the place in the game spells it the other way. And there are still no fucking donuts! I haven’t eaten yet today. Marvy returns to the ship and finds Rene hanging out with Haruto on deck four, so at least both the map people are in the same room. Marvy hands her all the maps he’s collected, including the one he just got from her, and wouldn’t you know it, that map is for a treasure on Butthole Island! After she “focuses her spirit” on analyzing the maps–Jesus–she tells Marvy they should return to Butthole Island and check it out. This bitch.

Hee hee hee

When Marvy arrives on the island again, he has ceded control to Rene. After providing a ridiculously long tutorial Marvy and I did not ask for, she releases Marvy to do some treasure hunting, except she’s still the one traipsing around ankle-deep in the water, waving her silly rods around. And she already knows how to do this shit, so why tell Marvy how? Is this model change just so forever alone male gamers could stare at some skinny thighs that aren’t Marvy’s for a change? Sigh. The tutorial could have been boiled down to “Follow the beeping and then hit X,” by the way. I have Rene play hot and cold until she finds the treasure that, remember, would have been too large for her to remove herself: a rage rune. Don’t be fooled, it’s heavier than it looks!

And now that Rene is safely aboard the ship where no demonic hentai high school teachers can get to her, it’s time to get on with the plot, and with the next recap! In part 7, Marvy will check out Kika’s digs, reunite with two horrible assholes from his past, and gain a drunken aunt he never asked for yet somehow always wanted. Read on!