Bunnie, suddenly antisocial, does not want to stick around to chat with Shion; the second it spots her, it runs back into its home and slams the door. I can’t blame it. But for whatever reason, it has suddenly become Shion’s lifelong desire to catch this rabbit and talk to it, so I have to figure out a way to lure it outside. Well, I don’t have to figure it out, because it’s obvious: Shion needs to bait our furry friend with some more carrot juice. The item, obtained from the same exploding carrot barrels that Bunnie blew up earlier, is labeled S. Carrot Juice. The strategy guide is no help in determining what that “S” might stand for, so I guess we’ll have to improvise.
Loading ...Armed with four cans of S. Carrot Juice, Shion returns to the tree stump table and sets down one of the cans. Then she retreats behind a fallen tree, and waits for her prey. When Bunnie hops out to inspect the can, Shion leaps out from her hiding place and runs for the burrow’s door, reaching the creature’s home before Bunnie can close the door in her face. Incidentally, this is also Shion’s strategy when pursuing men with six-figure salaries.
Inside the burrow, Bunnie admits defeat…then turns its back to Shion, exposing a second face in the back of its head. Bunnie!Voldemort introduces itself, adding, “You’re the first people to come into this room.” And the last, once others find out about the Dark Lord possessing small animals inside. “Forests these days are even more dangerous, so be careful!” it says. Shion loots a chest next to Bunnie!Voldemort to receive a decoder. I am not at all exaggerating when I say that I don’t even know what this item is for, and therefore I have no idea why I just wasted my time with this Bunnie-hunting garbage. I’m fairly sure, now, that I could have gone on without doing this. And I would have been spared the scary Voldemort face, too.
AAAAAHHHH!!!
As Shion is exiting the forest as fast as her pliable legs can get her away from Bunnie!Voldemort, we return to Jailbait, Ziggy and MOMO, the latter of whom is weeping on the ground as the My Puppy Daddy Died Orchestral Score weeps with her in the background. Jailbait puts a comforting hand on the girl’s shoulder as she sobs, and now he’s got that same glowing, I-love-you-let’s-hold-hands-after-school look on his face that MOMO gave him earlier. Ziggy, suddenly the odd man out in MOMO’s life, can do nothing but watch, and formulate a speech in his head for Jailbait about how important his little girl is to him, and what kind of skull-busting retribution will come down on little boys who break her heart. In his head, he’s probably polishing the blade in his arm as he says this.
Somewhere nearby, Shion, CHAOS!!! and Corey find a clearing outside the woods, where there is a small, dilapidated church. “Is that…a church…?” Shion burbles, reminding me how much I hate her, because I had almost forgotten. Turning, she spots Jailbait and pals off to the left. An “Are you guys all right?” or even a “This is so odd. What is going on?” would not be remiss at this point. Instead, Shion says, “How did you all get here…?”
Hello? Jiggletits? How did they get there? How did any of them get there, including the two guys you’ve been walking around with all this time? Why on earth would you expect Jailbait to know how they are there, when you don’t know, and this is your goddamn technology? Even if you’re so self-centered as to think this was your personal fantasy or daydream, were the CHAOS!!! and Corey you’ve been with for the past three fucking hours figments of your imagination? No? Then why not stick to some relevant fucking questions, for once in your useless life?
“Beats me,” Jailbait responds. I guess that was the polite answer.
The two groups, reunited, rehash what they’ve gone through. “Did we all get pulled into the Chief’s Encephalon dive?” Corey wonders aloud. That seems to be the only explanation, but Shion tuts, “That’s impossible. None of you were connected.” Yeah, well, here they all are, genius. So it’s not impossible, and Corey, the guy who is at least slightly competent at his job, explains: “If KOS-MOS’ oscillation pulse caused a counter-current to flow through the Dive Unit, it’s not inconceivable.” No, I don’t know what that means, either, but the point is, Corey thought of a way this could have happened. Shion is still skeptical, because she’s narrow-minded, and because it would mean some other energy source would have to be at work to take on that workload. Then she remembers her meeting with Red, like the little girl is a living battery that kept power running while they all ran around inside KOS-MOS’s brain. I guess there are weirder things. Like, for example, the fact that Shion and Corey had several hours to talk this phenomenon out, and are only even thinking about it now.
CHAOS!!! returns them all to the present. “Regardless of how we got here, this is KOS-MOS’ mainframe,” he says. “Our memories found a common resonance within her, and resulted in the creation of this world… That’s what it feels like to me.” CHAOS!!! is better at fanwanking than most fans. Corey notes that he’s never seen any of this before, so that’s kind of bullshit, but CHAOS!!! is ready for that. “I wonder if perhaps memories–in other words, events that occurred in the past–become stronger, more selective, and gain a higher priority when they resonate with others that share identical axes in time and space. If you think about it in those terms, it isn’t quite so odd that both my memories and those of [Corey] are not reflected here.” Seriously, I haven’t seen off-base speculation like this since those guys on the GameFAQs boards who were trying to convince themselves that Joachim Valentine isn’t gay.
The others manage to talk themselves into CHAOS!!!’s ridiculous explanation, which I suppose I can understand–if I were stuck in this hellish virtual world with crazy Bible-thumping grandpas and rabbit Dark Lords, I’d probably seize on the first explanation offered to me, too. Shion remembers what Red said, about all of them accepting their memories, the good and the bad. The short of this is, this dungeon has been one big annoying couch session for our more neurotic characters. And I got to be the psychiatrist who sits and listens and says, “Yes, and how did you feel about that?” Only I wasn’t paid by the hour to do it.
Once I’m back in control, Shion heads toward the church. Inside, a woman with silver hair is kneeling at the altar. In the low light of the church, it’s difficult to see, but the woman is probably praying to an statue of CHAOS!!! nailed to a crucifix. Corey determines, from the woman’s appearance and dress, that she is a Realian, and MOMO confirms, though there’s something else about the woman she can’t figure out. Corey turns to Shion and asks if this place, too, is based on their memories, but Shion seems dumbstruck and doesn’t answer. Thank God for small favors. Ziggy, ever the pragmatic one, quits with the dicking around and asks the woman directly, “Are you…a Realian?”
When she stands up to address the question, I see that her eyes are extremely creepy, and wonder if this was the face in the back of Bunnie’s head. “Yes,” she tells them. “My name is Febronia.” Yes, this is Virgil’s Feb, and I’m just as surprised as you are that the game designers have enough brain cells left to remember that detail and tie back to it here. “I came to take care of this church because I longed for a place where Realians could find peace.” If this girl was pals with Virgil, I wonder if helping Realians find peace meant gnawing their brains out of their heads.
Shion, meanwhile, obviously knows this person. She has a flashback of something violent happening in the dark. When she regains some sense–I know, but it’s just a figure of speech–she sputters, “I…I know you…” Febronia says nothing, and waits for Shion to keep babbling on, as she is wont to do. “But…no…” Shion moans into her hands. “I don’t want to remember… It’s…it’s…” The flashback is clearer this time, and we can see three humanoid figures, probably Realians, eating another figure on the ground. There are way too many brain-eaters in this game. Febronia smiles at Shion, a smile that says “I know what you’re thinking, and it amuses me that you’re suffering,” and beckons her to follow. She pauses at a door in the back of the room. And now Red’s in the room, spewing nonsense at Shion again. “The instant you open that door…you will come face to face with yourselves. It will be an experience full of sorrow and pain… But it is, both to you and to us, a very, very important experience.” Shion closes her eyes and smiles, like she is filled with inner joy at the thought of experiencing herself. I suppose, when so, so many others have “experienced” her, she’s bound to think it’s a pleasurable encounter.
A save point materializes behind Red, thank God, so once the group is ready, they head through the back door for a little masturbation self-awareness. Through the door is a dark corridor with ringing thunder and lightning lighting the gloom. “This…is inside of the Chief’s soul?” Corey says, afraid. I’m not sure where anyone said that Shion’s soul was in this room, but all the same, I’d more imagined her soul as an empty meadow where Realians ride around on unicorns, and all conversations are just people repeating in a questioning tone what has just been said to them. I didn’t expect something so emo, though I suppose I should have known better, given that she’s been more emo than a Weezer album this entire recap. The gang walks down the hallway, past bloodstains and other signs of struggle, to a door at the opposite end. Shion knows the place, but Red tells us what it is: “The Acute Neurosis Treatment Facility. A place you know well.” Well, she is neurotic. Shion murmurs that this room is where her mother was hospitalized, and Red points out that it’s not a place Shion has happy recollections of. I’d think not, given that this is supposed to be her memory, and it’s all darkness and lightning and wrist-slitting agony.
Inside the room, Shion’s dad is dead, slumped against a bloody wall. Shion’s mom is in the bed, dead or sleeping, no clue. And for some reason, a familiar-looking redheaded boy is motionless on the ground as well. Gnosis zombies wander into the room and start merging with each other as Shion and Jailbait, agog, back away from the sight. Jailbait, though, is seeing something else. In front of him, on that girdered structure we saw before, White Hair is giggling like a maniac. “Al…bedo…” Jailbait murmurs, disbelieving. I’m in shock, too–that kid is Albedo?! No way. Albedo is now laughing so hard that he’s choking, and he tries to get some words out: “The Song…the Song is…I… Mirror, mirror, on the wall…show me…define me! I am the infinite telomerase!” For a second I thought he was going to proclaim himself the walrus, or perhaps Iron Man. “I am not an anti-existence!” he shrieks on. “I am the perfect chain!!!” As Shion is watching the Gnosis in her mom’s room morph into a monster, Jailbait sees Albedo do the same. The massive Gnosis they can all now see, naturally, is a boss.
I am the walrus! Goo goo g’joob!
The boss is named Tiamat, which makes me think there must be some law of RPGs that requires at least one Tiamat per game. Shion and Jailbat, since this is their inner demon or some bullshit, are forced into this battle, and CHAOS!!! makes the third. The gimmick with this battle is that Tiamat must be slain by both Shion and Jailbait. If someone else does it for them, then they haven’t gained anything at all from this valuable therapy session! It even says on the screen, “Shion and [Jailbait]… Only the two of them can defeat their past.” Now, seems to me that the point of coming in here was to get some recorded evidence of an attack on a spaceship, not to deal with our main characters’ traumatic pasts, but if we have to do the latter to accomplish the former, me complaining isn’t going to help matters. And as it happens, it’s not that hard to time the turns and kill the thing properly, since its remaining hit points are right there on the screen for all to see. Basically, don’t listen to me–I’m making a mountain out of a molehill.
Foreground: Shion’s brain. Background: A representation of Shion’s brain.
Back in Cutscene Land, Tiamat disperses, releasing purple Gnosis beams, not unlike the ones that turned Jerkinov into a Gnosis back on Cathedral Ship, that flit around Shion and Jailbait and make them scream and shout for no reason. From here we cut to the group standing in a pretty close approximation of what I thought Shion’s soul would look like: an empty meadow with a single tree, under which Febronia is sitting with two other Realian girls. The young girls are chasing each other around the tree while Febronia sits there and looks serene and slightly evil. Another Febronia, standing next to Shion, apologizes to her for the massive ordeal she just endured. True to form, Shion just says, “There are…two of you…” Nice observational skills, Girl Genius. Febronia explains that the one under the tree is not her, but an image conjured up for the two little girls. Given that this is all more or less an illusion, I’d say we’re splitting hairs here. But Febronia goes on to say that the meadow and tree are also created for these girls, named Cecily and Cathe. “I am using KOS-MOS’ Encephalon construction abilities to show it to all of you,” she adds. I give up on this making sense. KOS-MOS is a wizard, and I’m leaving it at that.