Captain Labia–yes, I’m twelve–decides that it’s too much of a hassle to separate their various charges, so she instructs her men to detain them all in one room. This seems awfully convenient, and as it turns out, that is exactly the intent.
In Corey’s lonely hot tub room–no, I don’t know that it is, but it makes the scene funnier–our heroes discuss how quick and easy the siege was, and that this must have been part of U-GEE’s contingency plans all along. Corey even speculates, not unfairly, that U-GEE planned for MOMO to be “rescued” from Pleroma to set the siege of Second Miltia into motion, and that Dr. Yuri might be working with U-GEE. MOMO takes great offense to this slander of her mommy, and Shion chides Corey for being so mean, when he only slightly expanded upon what Jailbait and Ziggy had already said. Poor guy just can’t win. Maybe if they all join him in the hot tub and they empty out the honor bar, everyone will like him again!
Elsewhere, Captain Labia is walking, unguarded, with her last remaining charge, Gaignun. Abruptly, she turns to him and hands him a package to open. Inside is a ringing cell phone, with Mace Windu on the other end. Mace explains that Captain Labia is his spy within the military, keeping tabs on the U-GEE spies in the military. One has to wonder if there are any people within the military who aren’t there to spy on someone else. Anyway, Mace asks Gaignun to help Captain Labia get to the Durandick’s undoctored records so they can prove the Kukai Foundation is innocent. I know this won’t happen, but wouldn’t it be funny if they took a look at the Durandick’s archives and found that the footage from the news was accurate, and it turns out the Durandick did blow up the Hoglinde, in its crusade to rid the galaxy of lesser penises? Well, I would laugh.
Mace hangs up on Gaignun and takes an incoming call from Creepy Wilhelm, the CEO of Vector. They exchange pleasantries for a few moments before Wilhelm offers to speak with the Galactic Senate on Second Miltia’s behalf. Wilhelm is apparently quite concerned about the current situation–and he should be, given that Vector’s headquarters are located on Second Miltia. He’s concerned enough that he says he has dispatched “the Dämmerung,” a Vector-owned ship, to the Miltian star system. Well, it’s a spaceship of some importance in this game, which means it must be incredibly phallic, so let’s just start calling it the Dämmerhung now. Mace wonders what Wilhelm’s concerns are, to which Wilhelm basically responds, “Asshat, U-GEE is involved–we’ve provided exposition up the ass on this subject already.” So given that U-GEE is behind this, what do they want? Wilhelm and Mace both already know, but they talk about it so we can be in on the secret. “The [Golden Penis Plate] in stasis on Miltia,” Wilhelm says, “and…” Mace finishes his thought for him. “U-DO…” It’s still funny. UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! We see a shot of a planet glowing red with evil power as Mace shudders at the thought of UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO awakening again.
Wilhelm is also aware that KOS-MOS “and her staff”–what a generous term–are currently in the custody of the Kukai Foundation, and asks that Mace pass a message to Gaignun, to the effect that he can borrow KOS-MOS for a while and use her “as he sees fit.” I don’t think Gaignun will be too interested in most of her, um, attachments, but I’m sure a battle robot won’t go to waste in the current situation. This is more so we can dispense with Shion and Corey’s pesky work obligations and let them run rampant with the other characters through this stupid little adventure.
After some more useless bureaucratic babble Wilhelm and Mace end their call. As the scene blacks out, Mace stands up from his chair, stares out over the city, and ominously murmurs, “UUUUUUUUUUU-DOOOOOOO.” Motherfuckin’ U-DO ate me!
Back on the Durandick, Captain Labia enters the room where all our principal characters are being held, with one guard accompanying her. She tells them she’s there to begin the interrogation, but as soon as she is seated opposite Shion, she lays it out for the group: she works for Mace and she’s on their side. Shion looks at the guard, and Labia answers her unasked question: “He is also with us.” So what was the point of telling them they were about to be interrogated, if there was no need to keep up pretense for someone not in on the conspiracy? Whatever. Labia keeps addressing Shion, maybe taking her glasses as a sign that she is the most intelligent person in the room. Or maybe, as a big-boobed woman herself, she gravitated to the first rack she saw.
As Labia puts it, the situation is pretty shitty: they are under military custody, and unless something drastic happens to change things MOMO will soon be turned over to U-GEE. “Soon after,” Labia says, “the Second Miltian government will be stripped of all its authority.” Nobody here really cares about that end of it, but their fate is tied to Second Miltia’s at this point, so Labia is currently concerned with finding “conclusive evidence” of their innocence. Shion, true to form, breathes, “Conclusive…evidence…” Haaaaaaaaaate.
The Hoglinde’s black box, as well as the Durandick’s records, are quickly ruled out: the Hoglinde’s recording of the attack has already been compromised, and according to Labia the type of computer database used by the Durandick is “too easily modified” to be used as proof. “If we had something that even the owner couldn’t change,” she goes on, “say, a system with a AAA class encryption, then maybe…” Jailbait interjects to let us know that a AAA encryption system is pretty rare, and only high-class government systems would have such a thing. Amazingly, Shion and Corey figure out the solution at exactly the same time. I didn’t know Shion could think of things.
“KOS-MOS!” Corey blurts out. Shion explains to the group that KOS-MOS has that level of encryption on her memory, and that she should have a recording of the Gnosis attacking the Hoglinde. Of course, KOS-MOS is already in the custody of the military on another part of the ship, and, Corey explains, they would need codes from Vector to even access the recording. Not so, says Shion, and this is where my soul dies a little bit. She suggests that they use Encephalon–the virtual reality system we saw at the beginning of the game–to “experience” KOS-MOS’s memory and make a copy of it. How convenient that that is a possibility. You’d think, if the encryption on KOS-MOS’s memory were so complex, it would rule out just logging onto her through a system used by monkeys like Shion and Corey and downloading the thing. But I’m just mad because I know this is going to lead to a disgustingly long and annoying dungeon. What other kind of dungeon is there in this game, though?
For once, Shion and I agree.
Corey whines for a few minutes about how much trouble he and Shion would get into over this, but Shion–ugh, am I really going to type this?–wisely points out that they have larger problems at the moment, like how to get to KOS-MOS. Captain Labia, who remained silent through Corey and Shion expositing like it was going out of style, unlocks the handcuffs on all her prisoners and tosses Shion a device that will open up any locked doors between them and KOS-MOS. Addressing Ziggy, she says they can pretend they just escaped by overpowering her, “But to make it look legitimate, you’ll need to knock me out.” Ziggy’s all, “You sure?” like he doesn’t at all have a problem with clocking this bitch on the head. While MOMO hides her head in Shion’s breasts, Ziggy takes out Labia and her guard, and the group heads out the unlocked door, Jailbait calling Labia “pretty cool” as he steps over her body.
Of course, everyone present was stripped of their weapons when they were arrested, so the first task is to get through to where their equipment is being held. How are they going to get past guards unarmed? Let’s just say CHAOS!!! bludgeons them all to death with The Serpent. I don’t really want to talk about it.
So after entirely too many battles with guards, the gang is rearmed and standing in KOS-MOS’s room aboard the Elsa. I guess I could have provided some more detail on that, but I was actually washing the dishes and doing laundry while that part of my video was running. I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss anything. Shion, the “expert” on this Encephalon procedure, hooks herself up to the equipment while Corey assists her with the typing of mysterious things onto their wrist computers.
I bet he will.
It seems that only Shion was going to enter into KOS-MOS’s robot brain for the required information, but as she is still getting ready the room goes all wonky around the group, and a second later, everyone appears to be sucked into the virtual world. Maybe they’ll get some cool digital monster pets while they’re in there. That’d be sweet.
Shion is standing alone in the rain on a grimy street. Looming large above her, against a technicolor sky like the one we saw in Jerkinov’s druggie flashbacks, is a tall, formidable penis of a building. Shion looks completely petrified of this building–which is weird, as it’s so very phallic–and if she was going to keep her fear in check before, that goes out the window when lightning forks across the sky. She hides her head in her hands, but when she opens her eyes again she is standing, not in front of the phallic building which so distressed her, but in a deserted playground. Well, deserted except for Shion and the little kid version of her sitting in one of the swings. Yeah. Mini-Shion has a bad haircut and a frumpy little church dress rather than a skanky miniskirt–I’m not complaining–and sits there, humming tunelessly, as her adult self looks on. Then, abruptly, she gets up and runs past where the current Shion is standing, crying, “Daddy!” And yup, there’s Shion’s dad, waiting for his daughter. If you didn’t already guess by now that the first utterance out of the adult Shion’s mouth at this point was “Daddy…?” then you have not been paying attention.
Shion’s dad takes his daughter’s hand and tells her they’re going home. “We’re not…going to see Mom?” Mini-Shion asks in a high-pitched, annoying voice. Mr. Uzuki rolls his eyes at his kid. “No…not today…. We’ll visit her tomorrow, okay?” he says. Mini-Shion is as dumb as her adult self, so she’s all, “Okay! I bet you’ll keep that promise, too!” And they walk off, hand in hand.
The adult Shion moans at their backs, “Wait…. Don’t go…” And from behind her, a different voice says, “You cannot go…” Wigging, Shion looks around until she finds the source of the voice: it’s Red, sitting at the bottom of the slide. Oh, how I treasure these scenes where people don’t talk sense just for the sake of souding deep. Wait, that’s every scene in this game. Still, Red makes it worse.
Red’s creepy theme cues up in the background as she unnecessarily tells Shion, “That’s right. This was the last day you spent together with your father.” I’m just thrilled to hear that Shion has daddy issues on top of everything else. I hope she angsts over them in a future scene so someone can ask her what’s wrong and she can say, “Nothing.” But moving on. Red isn’t here to talk about Shion’s dad. She actually wants to talk with Shion about the mountain of things she doesn’t yet know.
But before I drown in exposition and bad voice acting, let’s see what Jailbait is up to! Some creepy, unearthly music is playing in the background as he, MOMO and Ziggy sit in an unknown location in the darkness, and the music is giving Jailbait one hell of a migraine. Agitated, he gets up to look around and the other two follow suit. Aircraft are roaming the skies with searchlights. And nearby, soldiers are marching somewhere. Upon closer inspection, they are dead-eyed, blond Jailbaits, every damn one of them. This must be the army the game designers built to take me down. Those cunning bastards.
“No doubt about it,” Jailbait says to no one. “They’re U.R.T.V.” We don’t know, yet, what that means (except that Albedo is one), and neither, apparently, does Ziggy, the one person I can usually count on to be both well-informed and not totally annoying about it. Damn him. Jailbait gets a little on the snippy side with his elder when Ziggy asks him if he recognizes this place, but he eventually answers, “If this isn’t an illusion, and my memory’s correct, this is…Miltia. From fourteen years ago.” Before he can account for how he knows this, given that he’s supposed to be twelve years old, he leaps over a car and runs off after the battalion of Jailbait clones. “I wonder what’s troubling him?” MOMO says sadly. Maybe he’s freaked out because you guys are stuck in a warzone on a decade-long lost planet, and he just saw twenty of his identical twins march down the street? Nah, that’s crazy talk. Confused, MOMO and Ziggy take off after him.
Back to Shion and Red. Shion is “helpfully” reminding us of what Red said at the end of their last scene, by repeating it with added ellipses and question marks. Corey and the Wang are also present now–they had apparently been making out behind the swing set–and Corey, for one, is feeling just as lost and wrong-footed as Shion is. They both would like to know who Red really is. Red grasps Shion’s hand, as if for reassurance (for which of them, I don’t know) and says, “I am…Nephilim. That’s what I have been called. Ever since I existed in this form…” So this Song of Nephilim, then, whatever it is, is dedicated to a creepy little girl. And Albedo was talking about it like it was his sex toy? This is getting more screwed up by the minute.