After his defeat, Albedo drops daintily back to the floor of the Urethra, where Jailbait is panting and hunched over. This makes it look like Albedo won, which is kind of silly–you don’t level up from losing. Albedo taunts Jailbait about “getting closer to [his] old self,” and basically continues to dare him to go crazy and fight back, like that’s not what he was just doing, hello. After some more blather that I am frankly done transcribing, Albedo summons a black energy bubble to compete against Jailbait’s fiery red bubble. On the Durandick, Gaignun cries out, as can feel these two giant balls rubbing against each other. Hell, the chafing is so potent that even Chesty and Busty can feel it, and they don’t have any kind of testicular psychic link to Jailbait.
Albedo taunts, Jailbait grunts, everyone else tells him to stop, and round and round we go. On the nth circuit of this merry-go-round, MOMO wakes up and sees what’s going on. She also sees the Kirschwasser that choked Jailbait still lying on the ground and crawls over to it, because clearly that’s the thing most in need of her attention. The Kirschwasser is still alive, and tells MOMO she’s all jealous because Daddy Joachim loved her more than the shittier versions of her. Shocking. “The rest…of…us… We all…wished…we could be…you…” she tells MOMO, who doesn’t want to believe that she’s more special than her sisters. Not just a river in Egypt, guys.
Not even CHAOS!!!’s dick is that magical.
Somehow, hearing these words from her dying sissy-poo provides MOMO with some clarity and determination, so she walks over to where Jailbait and Albedo are still in the middle of their ball-slapping fight. I shouldn’t have to tell you that pretty much everything Albedo is saying at this point can be interpreted sexually, but I’m so exhausted by the effort of recapping his ramblings and so grossed out by the thought of him in general that all I can do is snicker feebly. Suddenly, though, his innuendo-laden monologuing at Jailbait is interrupted by a bright light separating their two raw balls. Of course, the source of this is MOMO. “You’ve…taken so much from me,” she understates to Albedo. “But…I…I was given a part of you too. A part of you is now within me!” Yeah, wasn’t that the entire problem? And now I’m picturing Albedo’s various appendages broken off down there. Please kill me.
“So, now…!” MOMO continues, and Albedo cuts her off with a sarcastic, “So, now…?” How dare he ridicule anyone else in the universe for not getting to the goddamn point. MOMO ignores this and asks why he would hurt all these people, like her poor sisters. “How…how can you desecrate their feelings–their hearts?!” she asks. Their hearts are LIGHT! Albedo laughs at this–and even though it was funny, I am in a place now where I question the humor in anything he laughs at, because his mirth has lost all meaning. It’s that bad. Nonetheless, he points to his pile of Kirschwassers and says, “Who’s the flower that blooms from those corpses? That’s right… It’s you…pêche. Everything is just as Mizrahi–your dear Daddy–wanted it to be.” MOMO goes “Daddy?” because she’s incapable of hearing any mention of him without doing that. Jailbait warns Albedo to shut up about Mizrahi, like hearing Albedo talk shit about her dad is really going to compare to what he’s already done to her. “You bastard…” he growls. “Say any more and you’re… You’re gonna…”
“…Pay for this!” Shion, of all fucking people, finishes for him. Harkening back to the good ol’ days on the Hoglinde and her Realians Are People Too tirade, our heroine hears the clarion call of the Moral Fucking Authority Alarm and heeds it with gusto. “Those girls weren’t toys for your enjoyment!” she shrieks at Albedo, who has this total “Bitch, what?” look on his face. “They were all individuals with wills of their own! Yet you…” I’m sure she would go on for at least an hour in this vein, but she is interrupted by a familiar voice that snarks, “Still spouting that self-righteous crap?” The best part is, he could be talking to Shion, Albedo, or both. My savior!
Loading ...A golden portal forms in the air to usher in the owner of this voice, who is labeled by Albedo as “the new guy.” I am pretty sure this is his first appearance so far, and some skimming of former recaps seems to back me up. This man is wearing a hooded cloak and mask that are identical to the Man in Red’s, except they are a deep indigo. “Stop screwing around,” he tells Albedo. “Hurry up and get the job done. Don’t waste your time on these fools.” God, they are, aren’t they? Foolishly foolish fools. All of them. Albedo takes off for his mech in a snit, adding that the newcomer can give “him” a message: “It belongs to me!” Let’s just assume “it” is the Oscar he’s surely going to win for those scenes earlier.
Jailbait tries to run after him, but there’s now a force field keeping him back. “Where do you think you’re going?” the new guy asks. “Hey, why don’t you do me a favor and let him go for now.” As Albedo does indeed get away, he adds, “I’ll do my best to keep you entertained in the meantime.” I hope the Man in Indigo’s idea of entertainment isn’t monologuing, because I’ve had enough of that for five fucking lifetimes.
Out in space, Albedo takes a minute to mentally pore over what he “extracted” (ick) from MOMO. He sifts through more of MOMO’s memories and an image of a huge, flat structure in space, kind of like a round aircraft carrier, before finding what he’s looking for. “So this is the [MacGuffin] Data…” he says lovingly as he strokes it with his hand, uh, in his head. But his hand is rebuffed as KOS-MOS’s voice–what?–says, “I do not exist for your pleasure…” Yeah, she exists for Shion’s pleasure. Duh. And then KOS-MOS herself appears, apparently to “protect” the MacGuffin Data. Albedo is unimpressed, but then the image of KOS-MOS morphs into…
…
…
…naked Shion.
What? WHAT?
We’re all going to suffer together, as a family.
Okay, so Albedo is as bewildered and frightened as I am. “Wha…?! You…!!” he stammers at the image. While she is very, very nude, Shion is covering up the ESRB rating-destroying bits with her arms, and for some reason I hope I never understand, she is using the placement of her arms as an excuse to fondle her own face. Oh, and she’s still wearing her glasses, in case removing them along with her clothes would have ruined someone’s masturbatory fantasy. Even looking past how personally grossed out I am, because words fail me, why and how in the holy hell is a nude, adult Shion acting as a decade-and-a-half-old firewall for the data in a little girl’s brain? What the fuck? What in the motherfuck was that? You know what? I don’t want an answer. I want to pretend it never happened.
Guuuuuuuuuhhhhhh. Not enough bleach in the universe.
After a moment, Albedo says, “He really didn’t want anyone going in there…” HA! I still hate Albedo, but I would love to high-five him for that one.
Back to the Urethra of Nephilim. The Man in Indigo is just standing there, awaiting Jailbait’s pleasure. After double-checking that the three A.G.W.S. are properly equipped and healed, seeing Shion’s picture in the menu, running to the bathroom to vomit, crying and whimpering over the toilet, and taking several minutes to compose myself, we’re ready to proceed.
Shion asks the question that’s surely on everyone’s mind, “Who…are you?” Not “What the shit is going on here?” but I can understand that, since it’s probably a longer answer than anyone would want. “Who?” he replies. “What does it matter? Or…do you need a name to describe me?” Well, it would be nice. “A definition by words is merely a means to deceive oneself,” he drones on, intent on filling in for Albedo as completely as possible. “It’s meaningless before the truth. What matters is how you perceive things. The slightest shift, then life and death no longer have any meaning.” Shion just says “Huh?” to this, like Albedo wasn’t spouting the exact same platitudes right before this. Realizing that Shion is dumb, because it couldn’t just be that this rhetoric is tired and meaningless (it’s both), he sounds like he’s about to tell Shion who he is just to make her shut up, but Jailbait interrupts, screaming for the stranger to get out of the way so he can, I don’t know, yell at the hole in the ceiling Albedo escaped through. The Man in Indigo just laughs and dares Jailbait to make him move, since he’s a badass U.R.T.V. and all. “You’re damn right,” Jailbait responds adorably, and off we go into the boss battle.
Of course we’re not just fighting the Man in Indigo as a normal person, because this is Xenosaga and everything must be run through five crack filters first. So he changes into a Gnosis named Ein Rugel. Despite looking like it should mean something in German, it doesn’t, but I’m guessing from looking at this thing that it roughly translates to “Shiva with devil horns.” Shion and the Wang hop into their A.G.W.S. right away, while Jailbait takes three freaking attempts to steal a rare item. Ein Rugel employs a number of status effects that require a pretty specific array of A.G.W.S. accessories to avoid, but I’m not really complaining because it would have been easy enough, thanks to the activated elevators in the Phallus, to go back and buy them even if I hadn’t read ahead. Plus, this guy only has 3600 HP, which is such a pitifully small number at this stage of the game that even Corey would probably mock its size.
However, as soon as Ein Rugel “dies,” he transforms into a second, slightly harder Gnosis named Doppelwogel, which translates to “Cute thing one of the writers’ toddlers said after waking up from a nap.” Of course since this boss is technically different, Jailbait has to hop out of his A.G.W.S. and steal from it. God, there’s one dungeon left after this–why do I give a shit about the Gemini Clock, yet another pretentiously named item? I bet I’ll forget I even have this thing within an hour of getting it. Doppelwogel has wings and can only be attacked at range, which makes Jailbait and the two phallic swords I gave his A.G.W.S. more or less useless. And since it has wings, it adds a stereotypical angelic holy light beam attack and a Cupid-like arrow attack to its repertoire. But otherwise, it’s just another fight with a shitload of status effects that I carefully immunized my A.G.W.S. against. Boooring.
Back to the Man in Indigo, who like Albedo, is being retconned as the winner of the battle and looks to be totally unharmed (and is also not a Gnosis anymore). “It’s useless,” he tells them as they pant and heave from all that effort they put into sitting in their mechs and pressing buttons. “The laws by which we are governed are just too different.” And to CHAOS!!!, he adds, “Isn’t that right, boss?” The Wang, for his part, doesn’t respond, and absolutely no one remembers this or asks about it at any future point. It is practically an aside directed at the fourth wall.
The Man in Indigo, now that he’s stalled for Albedo, thinks it’s time to leave, but Shion begs him to wait and answer her stupid questions about what he’s planning, like she would understand anyway. I sure as fuck don’t, so she has no chance. “You wanna know?” he asks her. “Then come to that time, to that place… You know what I mean…” She says “Huh?” again because life is cruel and pointless, but at least she has clothes on now. He finishes, “I’ll be waiting for you, Shion.” Oh my God, he knows her! That narrows him down to the entire heterosexual male population of the universe.
Join the club, woman.
No one is going to ask Shion about this bizarre statement either, so let’s just move on. KOS-MOS announces that the Phallus of Nephilim is now impotent, and that the Rhine Maiden is getting rid of the last of the Gnosis outside. Once Shion has established that Jailbait has not replaced MOMO as the catatonic party member, the two of them wonder who the Man in Indigo was and what the hell is going on in general. CHAOS!!!, who seems to know perfectly well what the hell is going on, just says, “Let’s go back, Shion.” He doesn’t say where “back” is, but he’s probably pointing with his dick and it’s just offscreen so I can’t see.
Shion gets in a round of Talk to Everyone, but the only person who says anything useful is Jailbait, who wonders why the Phallus just stopped working and wants to return to his sweet Durandick and explode the bejesus out of this horrible place. That is the best goddamn idea I have ever heard.
Back on the Durandick, tinkly happy music plays as Shion and MOMO return to the bridge, and Jailbait gives MOMO the dopiest look ever. “Are you okay?” he asks her. Did he not ask this question while they were returning from the Phallus? Whatever. MOMO is indeed okay, even though she’s bothered by the idea that Albedo got what he wanted out of her. Jailbait puts his cute little hand on MOMO’s cute little face and tells her it’s not her fault even if he did, still giving her his googliest puppy dog eyes. “Oh!” she says, rummaging in her pocket for her magic bullet. “This charm! Maybe I have this to thank for my safe return.” That is a sublimely silly thing for her to think, but she says it in such a precious way that I can’t even make fun of it. And now, as Busty announces on the intercom, it’s time to blow up the scene of Albedo’s sex crime. Whoo hoo!