Near the cat’s hiding place, Jailbait blasts a door open and heads outside to kill yet another larva doll with kindness. It was in front of another door, behind which is the son of the woman at Lavare’s. Before he runs off, he promises to listen to his mom from now on, like I have any investment whatsoever in this NPC’s relationship with his parents when he doesn’t even have a damn name.

This leaves one person. It should be obvious from reading this that the party simply needs to return to Lavare’s and rescue the mother of the runaway they just fucking found, but it somehow escapes me that this woman had not already been rescued, so I spend about 20 minutes wandering aimlessly around Sector 27 looking for green arrows on my minimap. Of course, the one place I do not bother checking is the front of the dry cleaner’s, because I already spent so much time in there killing larva dolls for extra tech points. The fact that there was a giant goddamn green arrow practically screaming “GO HERE, SHITHEAD” in my face was completely lost on me. At the time, I felt extremely stupid when I realized who I was missing. As penance, I will be nice to Shion for five whole paragraphs.

I blame you for this.

Back in Sector 26, the Mayor is now standing by the Gay Rendezvous Dumpster, which probably means there’s a boss by the exit. He thanks the group for saving all his citizens, and then–why not–he too prepares to make an appearance at the now-hopping party in Corey’s room on the Durandick.

For once in my life, I remember to read ahead enough in this godforsaken guide to be a little more prepared for this boss, and it’s a good thing, because it basically says–in a tiny sidebar box immediately before the boss section called, I shit you not, “Foresight Counts!”–that transferring Medica All to either MOMO or Jailbait is a requirement. Well, I could use Shion, but the Wang and KOS-MOS are also necessary, and if I use Shion as my third I won’t have anyone to steal items. Yes, I could transfer Jailbait’s Psycho Pocket to Shion, but we know my real reason is wanting, er, our very nice and intelligent female lead to sit this one out, since she worked so hard to rescue all these people, and we want her looking refreshed when Gaignun gives her a medal.

So: the party is KOS-MOS, CHAOS!!! and MOMO, or The All-Caps Squad. They are facing a Gnosis boss named Gigas, and if you guessed it looks like a dinosaur with a penis head, congratulations, you’ve been paying attention. Since this is Xenosaga, it of course has to be weirder than that, so there are also phallic horns, a phallic spear, and its penis head is also skeletal. Even KOS-MOS, who by now has R-CANNON, R-BLADE, and R-DRILL, is all, “Dude, ease up on the overcompensation.” As if all of that, plus the Wang, isn’t enough penis for one fight, the Gigas splits into two identical monsters on its first turn. Shion can’t help but look on and–dammit–probably be very scared that this Gnosis is going to hurt her friends! Hopefully the battle robot she designed for this exact situation, and not for pillow fighting, will save the day!

Hello, sailor.

KOS-MOS and CHAOS!!!’s roles in this fight should be obvious, between KOS-MOS’s array of phallic anti-Gnosis weaponry and CHAOS!!!’s ability to melt them with his appendages. Do you think he can use the Wang to do that? I bet he can, and that there’s fanart depicting it. MOMO, who now has Shion’s Medica All, is primarily here to steal Gigas’s rare item (an equippable trinket pretentiously named Soul) and to heal the fuck out of everyone, since having a pair of Gigases means they can both use its two all-enemies attacks pretty much whenever they feel like. And they love boosting. Awesome!

Someone out there has masturbated to this.

But before they can violate anybody, MOMO takes this chance to use Star Wind and turn into Cardcaptor Sakura!MOMO. (Yes, I realized after the fact how appropriate this nickname is. Accidental foreshadowing!) To be honest, guys, I mostly did this because I hadn’t yet and I figured the recaps wouldn’t be complete without at least one screencap of MOMO’s sparkly, PG nudity. The problem with CCS!MOMO is that she can only transform once per battle and it only lasts two turns, both of which she needs just to charge up and then use Magic Caster. The guide says I should be doing all this other cool shit while I have her transformed, like using a tech she won’t even learn until she levels up at the end of the fight. And even if the transformation lasted the entire battle, she barely has the time to steal before she’s relegated to the role of Medica All bitch. Maybe they thought I should shortcut Magic Caster so she could use it in one turn, but even then she’d only have one other ability she could use before returning to normal, so why even bring it up? Additionally, I think KOS-MOS’s Gnosis-eating tummy organs and CHAOS!!!’s magical dick have the killing stuff covered. Oh no, they need MOMO’s help to kill a boss! Please.

Seriously, even with the Gnosis Wrecking Crew Duo, this is a difficult fight, and MOMO has her hands full keeping everybody alive. CHAOS!!! is even using an item called Double (Nut) Buster, which allows him to use two of his techs in one fully charged turn. I choose to set him up to consecutively use Angel Blow and Arctic Blast, which I will subsequently refer to as Snowballing. And since it’s been five paragraphs: Shion is taking careful notes on this technique.

Ewwww.

When the Gigas Twins are dead, the party returns to the shuttle area to catch up on the cutscenes they missed while they were busy. The Federation fleet is still getting bitchslapped by the Gnosis, and craaaaaazy Albedo even shows up in his white mech to attack humans and Gnosis alike. Because he’s craaaaaazy, remember. Back at the Foundation, Shion, aboard one of the shuttles, yells for MOMO to join her, but MOMO is too busy getting her Clara Barton on and tells Shion she’ll catch up once she’s healed literally everyone here. Shion’s all “Okay!” because whatever brain trauma she suffered that made her this way has also made it so she can barely feel the whacks of the Foreshadowing Bat. The shuttle leaves, and MOMO is alone with the injured, or so she thinks. As MOMO is closing someone’s wound “with some nanospray”–I choose to believe that it’s just Bactine–a shadow looms over her.

‘MOMO, that’s called a period!’

Back to Shion. She emerges from the shuttle and immediately turns around to take it back to the Kukai Foundation. So basically, Shion didn’t need to take the shuttle, and just did so to force the issue of MOMO being left alone. And sure enough, when she lands, MOMO is nowhere to be found. Shrugging, Shion heads directly back to the Durandick. Jesus, woman, make up your mind.

This time, Shion makes her way toward her room, all thought of MOMO forgotten completely. Or maybe she thinks MOMO will turn up in her inbox, like everything else. There are bloody spots all over the floor here, so I guess some Gnosis must have made it into the Durandick. No one seems especially concerned about it. On the way to Shion’s room, the group runs into Corey and asks if he’s seen MOMO. Corey basically says, “I’ve been having an orgy in my room, that’s no place for a little kid.” Ziggy and Jailbait are now very worried, while Shion stares into space like she saw a pretty balloon. Jailbait says he’ll put his MOMO clones on the case, since it should be easy to find one of their own. “Thanks,” Ziggy says. “We’ve eliminated the Gnosis within the colony, but there isn’t any guarantee they won’t be back.” Thank you, Ziggy. Since it’s not like Jailbait was there with you the whole time.

While I itch to reach through my monitor and slap Ziggy, we cut to MOMO, knocked out in an unfamiliar hallway. Wherever she is, it must be cold, because they go out of their way to show her breath misting in the air. After she comes to, she hugs herself and wonders what happened to her, prompting a flashback. MOMO is supposed to be getting on the last shuttle with everyone else, but she turns around for absolutely no reason and sees a man in the distance heading up the stairs. “Daddy!” she cries out, running after him. Now, this is either MOMO hallucinating or someone who looks like her dad. What we know for sure, and what MOMO should also fucking know, is that it’s not her dad, because that motherfucker is deader than Vanilla Ice’s career. After chasing after her daddy, MOMO ends up in a dark alleyway, with Albedo looming behind her. The flashback ends with MOMO gaping at him, her face frozen in this perfect “Derp!” expression.

Even though we just saw, via her own memory, Albedo absconding with her, MOMO says, “I…I…can’t remember…” She also smells something not to her liking, “coming from somewhere.” Thanks, MOMO. She finds the source of the smell soon enough, when she stumbles upon the corpse of one of Albedo’s Kirschwassers.

Out in space again, the Federation and the Gnosis are still blowing up all over each other. God, that’s still going on? Boring. The Gnosis start circling up around the Kukai Foundation, which convinces the bald asshole in command of the Federation forces that they were right all along to distrust Second Miltia and the Foundation. “Damn [Mace Windu]…” he says. “The phantoms of Miltia really do follow in his wake, don’t they…” That means nothing and is stupid. But based on this, that is to say, nothing, he orders all ships to fire on the Foundation, to “Destroy the source!!” In fairness to him, gathering up all those Golden Penis Plates in one place was probably a dumb idea on Jailbait’s part, but I doubt this guy with the unplucked eyebrows and overdone eyeliner knows about that.

And we’re back with MOMO, since the director is under orders to shift the action to another scene as soon as the current scene becomes interesting. “No. 0097…” MOMO murmurs, kneeling in front of the Kirschwasser. “My sister…” Yes, while MOMO is a prototype for all of Jailbait’s little MOMO clones, the Kirschwassers were all built before her. This becomes important later. “That’s it, isn’t it?” she asks. “This is Daddy’s place…” It seems like every building in this game was built by MOMO’s dad. “I finally get to meet you,” she goes on, “and we can’t even talk…” And this is the greatest tragedy to MOMO, because her fondest wish is that she could pry someone with questions about skydiving enthusiast Joachim Mizrahi. At the fiftieth or so mention of “Daddy,” the Kirschwasser moves a little bit, leading MOMO to ask who did this to her. In response, the Kirschwasser touches her hand to MOMO’s face, sharing another flashback with her. This one features Labyrinthos, the non-labyrinthine U-GEE headquarters built by Mizrahi. Presumably inside, Mizrahi looks at a hologram of the unborn MOMO in a test tube. Around them are holograms of the Golden Penis Plates. No, even now I don’t know why. “Soon…” Mizrahi tells her. “Soon you will be born into this world… And once you arrive, you must do many good deeds… If you do…you can become human… You can become my Sakura…” This probably answers my earlier question about who is supposed to be Pinocchio out of KOS-MOS or MOMO. Also, it’s odd that he wanted MOMO to be like his dead daughter, but the Kirschwassers are the ones who seem to be named, in a way, after her. But she’s the one who has a henshin sequence and spontaneously grows cute outfits.

Be right back, Chris Hansen’s at the door.

This is heartwarming and all, but the love-fest is interrupted by a vision of Albedo slapping this particular Kirschwasser to the turf. He’s totally stoic and reserved while he does this, too. Kidding–he laughs like a hyena after a visit to the dentist. MOMO demonstrates that she’s been spending too much time with Shion, asking the now-dead Kirschwasser, “Was that…your memory…?” She thanks the corpse for the glimpse into the most fucked-up family album ever. “He’s here, right?” she goes on. “Through that door…?” I hope she means Albedo, because if she still thinks her daddy is here after that, I don’t even know what to say. As MOMO walks off to what I’m sure will be a mild confrontation, the Kirschwasser’s hand moves, thumping against the floor. Dun dun dun!

Man. As soon as we get the promise of a Zombie Kirschwasser, the “action” returns to the Durandick. Chesty and Busty are like, “Oh shit, this again,” as the Federation fleet surrounds them. Busty repeats what we already heard about the movements of the Gnosis, but Chesty tells Gaignun that the reason is not the GPPs, as they’re not doing shit right now. Jailbait decides that the source must be the song they’ve been hearing. Or, the Song they’ve been hearing. Jailbait clearly pronounces that capital letter. “Indeed,” Gaignun replies. “It’s faint, but there’s no mistaking it. No one else seems able to hear it, though…” Right on cue, Shion goes, “Hey, do you guys hear something? It sounds…like a…song?” Bitch, you did not just do that. “Oh, were you guys talking about a song no one can hear unless they’re SPECIAL? Because now I just happen to be able to hear one, tee hee!” Gaignun is not going to fuck you.

HERP DERP, I’M IMPORTANT

Don’t get me wrong. I know Shion can hear it, and if I were interested in spoiling my personal favorite moment in this entire series, I could even explain why. But her timing here is ludicrous. Everyone else who can hear it said so hours ago. She just wants to jump on that attention whore gravy train. Choo choo!

Jailbait and Gaignun tell each other telepathically that Shion is a raging cunt and they hate her. Not really, but leave me to my delusions. After they verbally abuse her some more in the version of the game that I wrote, they discuss the bad feeling they’re getting from the Song. “This darkness…” Jailbait thinks. “I feel…like I’m being dragged down into an abyss…” That’s how Shion makes everybody feel.