Hee!

In the midst of all this dramatic music and fire, Lloyd and Penis decide to engage in another skit. Cripes, can I go for five fucking minutes without another of these? This one is called “Desians Attack” and contains very crucial dialogue about how the Desians are total dickfaces and it’s up to the two of them to save the village. They conveniently fail to mention how they’re responsible for the attack in the first place, although it’s very possible that they’re too stupid to even realize this. On their way to the village plaza, the two boys run past Penis’s burning house. I can’t really blame Penis for taking a moment to reflect on how much of a bummer this is for him. Of course, his main concern is what to tell Raine after she returns from the journey. How about telling her that the house was burned down by Desians? I mean, this isn’t exactly rocket science here. “And this village looked like it might finally be a place we could have called home…” Penis comments. When Lloyd asks what he just said, Penis tries the old “It’s nothing!” lie. So we just found out that Raine and Penis have done some wandering about in their time, and that Penis wants to keep this information from Lloyd. If Penis was old enough to remember living in those other places, then that must mean he hasn’t lived in Iselia for all that many years. Wouldn’t Lloyd already know that he’s lived elsewhere? Why is this such a secret?

At the moment, I’m just glad I don’t have to recap any backstory confessions, so I’ll stop complaining about this particular exchange. Another cutscene is triggered as soon as Lloyd and Penis leave the screen. In the village plaza, a group of Desian clones surround a group of four townspeople, including Mayor Hitler. I guess it’s not fair to call them clones, because even though they’re dressed in uniforms, a couple of them are carrying crossbows instead of whips. A Desian wearing an ornate helmet and wielding a fancy staff calls out, “Lloyd Irving! Come forth!” I would probably pretend to be someone else if I were Lloyd, but he complies, moving to the front of the group of villagers so that he’s standing between them and the Desians. Or at least the Desians directly in front of them. At this point, you might think that Lloyd’s most logical reaction would be something along the lines of “Crap, this must be related to the My Human Ranch incident” or even “Hey, how did they know it was me?” But no. It hasn’t occurred to Lloyd to connect any of that shit. Instead, he’s all pissy, yelling, “You’ve come to attack the village again?! I’ve had enough of this!” Dumbass. I’m not even going to give him credit for remembering that the village was attacked the previous day.

We’ve already had a few hints that the first attack wasn’t carried out by Desians, and this is confirmed after one of the Desians wonders what the fuck this lame human is going on about. This is the cue for Captain Dildo to make his onscreen appearance, telling his underling to ignore the ravings of the village idiot. I wish I could ignore Lloyd. From the front, we can now see that Captain Dildo wears a fancy gold breastplate under his red Tidus top, his black pants are skintight, and he has an eyepatch. This last item makes him totally rugged and butch. “Listen up, inferior beings! I am [Captain Dildo], one of the Five Desian Grand Cardinals,” he announces. “I am a superior half-elf who rules over the farm where we cultivate you pathetic humans.” And now we know he also has a tiny penis. That bulge in his tights is probably a pair of socks. The villagers look on, less than impressed with this guy’s declaration of awesomeness. The camera suddenly focuses on Penis as he stage-whispers, “…Half-elf…” Oh, for crying out loud. This guy said a bazillion douchey things in the last five seconds, and you’ve decided to have a personal racial crisis?

Captain Dildo, like all others of this character type, is not done talking. He announces that Lloyd has violated the non-aggression treaty, and now he and the village will pay. His arm-dong is very prominent as he says all this. Penis accuses the Desians of violating the treaty first by “[trying] to murder the Chosen.” Captain Dildo and Fancy Helmet look at each other in confusion before Fancy Helmet starts to laugh. “Us, kill the Chosen?” he says in the same tone as Edgeworth might say, “Me, have sex with women?” He adds that “they” must be after Suelette, but naturally doesn’t see fit to tell us who “they” are. By now, every one of us and any dogs in the vicinity know that the Desians at My Human Ranch had nothing to do with Satan Beard and the attack on the temple. I feel like I’m insulting you just by typing that because, come on. But Lloyd’s sluggish brain waves have not caught up to the rest of us, as he responds, “They? Are you saying you aren’t the ones that attacked [Suelette]?” Captain Dildo could, by all rights, use his giant sex toy to beat Lloyd to a bloody pulp over this question, but he has more self-control than I do. He refuses to answer the question, choosing instead to announce Lloyd’s specific crimes against the ranch. We can tell he’s a bad person because he refers to Marble as “host body F192” instead of by her actual name. He’s denying her value as a person!

Throughout this threatening spiel, the villagers stand in place, showing no reaction whatsoever. But as soon as Captain Dildo finishes his monologue, Mayor Hitler runs in front of Lloyd, madder than a hornet. “What have you done?! How many times have we told you to stay away from [My Human Ranch]?!” he yells in Lloyd’s face. Come on, you can’t expect Lloyd to remember something you told him after five seconds have passed. Plus, the real guilty party here is Penis. As far as I can tell, Lloyd wouldn’t ever have gone near My Human Ranch if not for the little fucker and his damn sammiches. Also, this isn’t important, but from the side, Mayor Hitler’s haircut looks more like some weird combed-forward Elvis thing, complete with sideburns. It kind of undercuts the seriousness of anything he has to say. Lloyd just hangs his head and apologizes, refraining from throwing Penis under the bus. Wow, the list of favors Penis owes him is growing exponentially.

But Captain Dildo still isn’t finished. Burning down the village was not enough for him — he has a very special punishment in mind for Lloyd. It’s not as dirty as I make it sound, fortunately. Nope, it’s just your average deathmatch against, as Captain Dildo puts it, “an appropriate opponent.” I’m wondering what an appropriate opponent for Lloyd would be. A book? Through the gate lumbers a giant green monster with a pickle-esque head, arms that drag on the ground, and a pair of deformed legs. A pair of red spikes protrude from each of its elbows. The fact that it has no facial features except for a single red bump in the center of its, um, head make the penis comparison impossible to avoid. Worth noting is the beige dress that the monster wears. It’s very similar to the prison garb worn by the female prisoners in My Human Ranch. Only it can’t be related because this creature is at least twice as large as a human and the dress appears to fit the monster perfectly with no ripping or puckering at all. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

Nasty!

The green schlongmonster swings its arm at Lloyd, who blocks it. Somehow, this causes Mayor Hitler, now several feet to the right of Penis, to fall on his ass. Penis offers to help Lloyd fight the oversized nightmarish pickle, and with that, it’s battle time! On the battle screen, the entire village square is visible but the Desians and the villagers have magically disappeared. Who wants to bet they’ll all be in their original positions as soon as the battle is over? The pickle monster is slow, but its creepy arm swings do a lot of damage. Even so, I get through the battle without anyone dying. I would make a comment here about the non-threatening nature of Desian vengeance, but it turns out that the punishment that Captain Dildo had in mind was more of a psychological one. I’ll get to that in a moment. First, Fancy Helmet announces to Captain Dildo that Lloyd indeed has an Extesticle. Well, so much for keeping it secret. “…It must be the one from the Angelus Project that we’ve been searching for!” Captain Dildo says loud enough for the whole village to hear. That line earned one of the biggest eyerolls from me thus far. It’s the perfect blend of exposition and pretension, with a little bit of magically correct assumption thrown in for good measure. “Give it to me!” Captain Dildo demands of Lloyd. I’m sure he’s used to saying that phrase quite a lot. Both Lloyd and Penis back away from him, although you can tell Penis is a little bit intrigued.

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Just in case Lloyd hadn’t given away enough information about himself already, he yells back, “No! This is a memento of my mom’s, who you Desians murdered!” Well, at least he’s back to the shitty grammar instead of using an uncharacteristically large vocabulary. “What are you talking about?” Captain Dildo wonders. “Your mother was…” And once again we are prevented from finding out any important information, this time by the pickle monster of all things. Regaining consciousness offscreen, it latches onto Captain Dildo from behind like a ReDead. Marble’s voice, run through a very creepy reverb filter, moans, “Run…away…[Penis]…Lloyd…” Hey, wait a minute! Marble is the pickle monster! That’s why it was wearing her (apparently spandex) beige dress! Turning her into that thing is pretty gross. I don’t even want to know what other kind of sick experiments they’re performing on people. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re responsible for Squall’s brutal rape and the resulting six kids. It doesn’t take long, miraculously, for Lloyd and Penis to catch on to Marble’s fate. Just for the record, the villagers are still standing around in the background, completely non-responsive. Even Lloyd and Penis are just chillin’ there. I’m not feeling a lot of tension in this scene.

Someone has jacked it to this.

Suddenly Marble’s filtered voice starts moaning and warning the boys to run away quickly. They don’t. They wait around for Marble to tell Penis that she considers him her gay elven grandson, to thank him, and then to say goodbye. Captain Dildo, wrapped in the embrace of the pickle monster, makes no attempt to escape. I don’t even want to think about the connotations of that. Suddenly, Monster!Marble starts glowing in an ominous way. The camera switches to Penis and Lloyd, still standing there casually, as we hear — but don’t see — an explosion. A very clean orange Extesticle flies in from offscreen, bouncing to a stop at Penis’s feet. There’s no spraying blood or monster guts to accompany the glowing orb. As Penis bends down to pick it up, Captain Dildo makes a gagging sound. Color me surprised. I expect that after experiencing a monster explosion, Captain Dildo should be burnt, bloody, and full of monster bodily fluids. But no, he’s completely clean. His only sign of injury is the fact that he’s kneeling down, head bent. With him, that position might not necessarily mean he’s wounded. But his men freak out like a bunch of drama queens, proclaiming their desire to protect their teal-haired lord. This protection consists of all the Desians running forward to stand closer to Captain Dildo. I’m sure he feels very safe. “…Lloyd. We will always come after you as long as you possess that [Extesticle]. Always!” Captain Dildo proclaims.

I swear to God, Lloyd has not changed position at all. He’s still in the Squally stance, looking like he’s waiting in line at the item shop. Meanwhile, Penis has actually started to display some emotion. He’s kneeling on the ground, clutching Marble’s Extesticle, screaming “NOOOOOOOOOO!” like Darth Vader with a chipmunk voice. The camera zooms out dramatically as the scene fades to black. When it fades back in — now try to hide your shock — Lloyd is still in the Squally stance in the village plaza. The Desians are gone, but more villagers have arrived to stare at Lloyd in an accusing manner. I just made up that last part to make things more interesting — it’s just people standing around staring blankly again. The music has turned a bit ominous, so I’m thinking that maybe this little incident isn’t going to go away as easily as others in this game so far.

Hopefully by peeing on him.

Mayor Hitler, livid, reams out Lloyd over what happened to the village. The camera does a slideshow of several burning houses just to remind us of recent events. Is it kind of sad that I’m impressed that they didn’t immediately restore the village to its pre-attack state? Talk about low expectations. “I’m sorry…” Lloyd mutters for the second time. To his credit, he does actually sound sorry. But apologies don’t fix burned houses and they certainly don’t make the Desians stop chasing your ass…or your Extesticle, rather. Mayor Hitler basically agrees with that last sentence. Now that the Desians have targeted Lloyd, he’s a danger to the village and all that. You know, pretty much everyone is a dick, no matter how you look at it. The Desians are dicks for imprisoning and torturing humans (even though I will reiterate that some of them probably deserve it), Lloyd and Penis are dicks for getting their village burned down, and Mayor Hitler and the villagers are dicks for turning on one of their own as well as ignoring the mistreatment of their fellow humans. Some might call this “shades of gray” but that’s too complicated a concept for this game, so I’m going to call it “everyone’s a dick” instead.

Penis sees where this is going, and he runs his prepubescent legs over to Lloyd, shielding him from the angry villagers with their pitchforks. You can tell he’s seriously wanting to rub up against Lloyd, but now is not the time. He defends Lloyd in his strident girl voice, saying that Lloyd is a good guy who tried to save an innocent old lady. But Mayor Hitler is not going to budge. Among the silent, statue-like villagers is this one random guy dressed exactly like Frodo Baggins, except he’s wearing shoes. Oh, and he has a rather prominent package. I couldn’t not point that out. “So it’s okay to let people die at [My Human Ranch] as long as the village is safe?!” Penis demands. The camera focuses on a profile view of Frodo and…well, it turns out Frodo is actually a woman. I guess she just returned from crossplaying at a Lord of the Rings convention. Nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately, she’s a bitch. “The people at the ranch are just going to rot there, anyway,” she snits. While she kind of has a point about the futility of helping the humans, she says it in this snide voice, like she’s not even going to pretend to give a crap. Mayor Hitler agrees, pointing out that Lloyd got even more people killed by acting like a dumbass. “You humans are all the same…” Penis comments. Everyone’s a little bit racist!

Seriously, that is a package on that hobbit.

Lloyd puts a hand on Penis’s shoulder, which Penis is so going to write about in his diary tonight. He takes all the blame upon himself once again and agrees to leave the village. I like how he acts like this is such a huge sacrifice, when he’s been trying to leave the village pretty much since the game began. It’s like when my parents used to send me to my room as punishment and all my books and toys were in there. Some dumb NPC woman whines, “Mayor, surely you don’t have to be so strict on a child…” Won’t someone please think of the children?!?!?! Because it’s okay to banish an adult who gets the village burned down, but a teenager who gets the village burned down is just acting out and expressing himself or something. A nearby guy asks if the woman is smoking crack. “Do you realize how many people died here because of him?” he demands. Actually, I don’t. It’s not as if they showed any corpses or people reacting as if they’d lost loved ones. Until this point, I had kind of assumed that there had only been property damage and no casualties. Way to go, game designers.

Penis is not done sticking up for his boyfriend, and you can take that statement however you like. Getting all up in Mayor Hitler’s face, he confesses that the whole thing was his fault and not Lloyd’s, since he’s the one who took Lloyd to My Human Ranch. Mayor Hitler points out that the Desians are after Lloyd, so he’s the one they need to get rid of. This makes me wonder why Penis was never captured on tape all the times he passed by the front gate. Even if he doesn’t have an Extesticle for the Desians to drool over, he still violated the dumb treaty. Mayor Hitler shows even more of his true colors when he adds, “And besides, Lloyd isn’t from this village to begin with. He’s an outsider, raised by a dwarf.” Oh no, more racism and xenophobia! What small village stereotype will he display next? Note that he conveniently forgets that Penis is also an outsider and non-human.

Having witnessed the utter dickishness of the villagers, Penis decides that he’s out of there as well, since he’s also responsible for the current flaming condition of the village. Mayor Hitler’s all, “Okay, then. You can both get the fuck out.” Only he says it way more pretentiously than that, starting with “By the rights vested in me as mayor.” Like being in charge of a podunk shithole means they have to listen to him. I’m sure the mayor couldn’t really stop them if they wanted to stay. The mayor and surviving villagers stroll back to their flaming houses without bothering to wait until Lloyd and Penis actually leave. Lloyd tries again to apologize for what happened, like everyone will suddenly forgive him if he says “sorry” enough times. Only Phaidra and Frank stay behind. Grandma Phaidra encourages Lloyd to catch up to the Magical Mary Sue traveling party and protect Suelette. This makes me think that Phaidra must hate her granddaughter, as the last person who should protect her is the dumbass who got his village burned down. “If in doing so, the world is saved, surely everyone will change their minds about you,” she pulls out of her ass. Right. I’m sure all the homeless people with dead families will welcome him back with open arms.

I just bet you do.

Now Lloyd gets all dramatic, declaring that he will make up for his stupid actions and all the people he got killed by protecting Suelette. Penis vows to go with him, since he is also responsible. “I promise to stick by you, always,” he finishes, wondering if he and Lloyd will have any alone time in the wilderness before they catch up with the others. This is all so romantic. Now that he’s fulfilled his moron quotient for the moment, Lloyd goes through another transformation, showing another glimmer of uncharacteristic intelligence. Maybe he has multiple personalities or something. Anyway, he tells Penis that he should attach Marble’s Extesticle, because she would have wanted it that way. Conveniently, Lloyd’s dad made him that Wizard Crest too, so they’re all set. “I’ll explain to you on how use the [Wizard] Crest later,” Lloyd promises. Penis hopes this will involve a lot of hands-on training.

Just outside the gate, Noishe is waiting for Lloyd. Suelette’s relatives bid the boys farewell and hope the two underage dipsticks don’t get themselves killed. And on that uplifting note, it’s time for Lloyd and Penis to set out on their coming-of-age journey. How exciting! Unfortunately, the excitement will have to wait — I’m just too worn out from the monumental display of stupidity from just about every character in the game. At least there was some fire, which was somewhat therapeutic. Next time, Lloyd and Penis either catch up to the Magical Mary Sue entourage or hole up in a cozy forest retreat to wait for the regeneration of the world. See you in Part 5!