CHAOS!!! and Jailbait first clear this action with MOMO, since the bodies of her creepy sisters are still on board. But I like to think they’re asking the victim if she’s sure she wants closure, like they think they’re on Law and Order: SVU. MOMO is of course fine with obliterating that shithole. “[CHAOS!!!]…” Jailbait asks, “do you think this’ll put the Kirschwassers to rest?” I can’t think of anything that would do it better. CHAOS!!! responds that their “thoughts and feelings now exist within MOMO. Their wish…finally came true…” Their wish was to be collectively absorbed into the sister that Daddy always liked better? Really? I’m sure MOMO would just burst into tears if she knew this, but they probably sat around on the Phallus of Nephilim cattily gossiping about how Daddy’s Little Princess was going to get mind herpes from Albedo.

Jailbait wanksts a little bit about Albedo as he walks up to his testicular control panel, since maybe, just maybe, Albedo was trying to do something good for the Kirschwassers, because that’s totally what I got out of those scenes. Obviously Little Master is just upset that his “dark half” is so, uh, dark. With a heavy heart, he orders the Durandick to fire.

Perhaps in an effort to show up that big swinging dick Dämmerhung, the entire Kukai Foundation fires an array of laser beams at the Phallus of Nephilim. But if Jailbait is expecting everybody to be impressed with his even larger weaponry, he’s about to be disappointed, because some kind of force field is still protecting the Phallus and diverts all of the fire. Worse still, as the Phallus glows with a blue light, the remaining Gnosis streak toward it like moths to a bug zapper. But given that this is the Phallus of Nephilim, the visual effect is more like a money shot played in reverse.

Wow.

The star of this pornographic show is standing on top of the Phallus in his mech, eager to talk my head off some more. Oh, and giggle insanely. That isn’t old yet. “I wanted to have more fun, so I came back for a visit,” he tells the gang as they stand there with their mouths open. Jailbait basically shakes his fist at him, but Albedo asks that he hold his empty outrage until the end of the performance. With that, he summons a gigantic fireball around himself, which quickly engulfs the Phallus and knocks the entire Kukai Foundation out of its orbit. Even Mace Windu can feel this in his office on nearby Second Miltia. And poor Jailbait gets big-timed in the size contest again.

Below the Phallus, a giant, flat-topped space station materializes into being–the same one Albedo saw when he was sifting through his ill-gotten MacGuffin Data. There are quick cuts to Mace, the Jedi Council, and their leader Dr. Yuri, who says, “That was supposed to be destroyed…” But it’s MOMO who fills us in on what this thing is: “Proto Merkabah… The place where…I was born…” Sweet Jiffy Jesus, how many fucking buildings did Joachim Mizrahi need?

Some distance away, the Man in Indigo is standing on the hood of his spaceship–yup–watching this spectacle. “That bastard! Summoning needless toys…” he spits in Albedo’s general direction. “You’ve forgotten your duties, haven’t you…” What, exactly, are his duties? I figured the list was something like:

1) Raping MOMO
2) Talking a lot
3) See 1 and 2

Anyway. A voice, ostensibly belonging to the Man in Red who’s seriously not Kevin, tells the Man in Indigo, “Never mind that. Come back, Virgil.” And just so we don’t think it’s a different guy with the same name for the first time in RPG history, his Spy vs. Spy mask disappears to reveal his face. Virgil responds, “What’s your problem? I don’t take orders from you. And stop talking inside my head like that! I’m not used to it yet!” I guess that was for my benefit, so I don’t wonder if Virgil’s identity was just broadcast on loudspeaker for the entire star system. The Man in Red snits that he’d better get used to it, and shows him the same image of KOS-MOS Albedo saw, along with another image I am trying to pretend doesn’t exist so I can sleep tonight. I’m not sure why this means Virgil needs to get used to having voices in his head, but I’ll speculate that, having seen it, he will soon go insane and the voices will start speaking up more regularly. Of course, Virgil is also disgusted by this slideshow of terror, but it makes something apparent to him, because he says, “So that’s what this is all about… You’re quite the cunning little bastard…” So all it took for him to get on board with Albedo’s plan, whatever the fuck that is, was seeing Shion naked? I really don’t think that was worth me having to see it again. After promising that next time things will be done his way–meaning there will be a buffet service of Realian brains available–Virgil and his spaceship disappear.

Meanwhile, our heroes are still watching as the Phallus of Nephilim inserts itself into a sphincter-shaped hole on top of Proto Merkabah, which flips the switch for a fabulous, blood-red light show on its surface. I think the space station is celebrating losing its butt virginity. MOMO confirms again that she was born in this place, adding, “Daddy gathered together the data he needed to create me on Miltia, and then he sent it to Proto Merkabah.” Why he needed something that size just to grow a test tube baby and run some data analysis is beyond me. Jailbait seems to be wondering the same thing and asks if the entire purpose of the station was to create MOMO. Dr. Yuri, who’s creepily been listening in on their whole conversation, answers, “That wasn’t its original purpose. It was created to discover the true form of the universe…the form we ourselves were meant to have.” Are we going to find out that the true form of the universe is Shion’s tits? Because if that’s the case, I would like to know now, so I can start mixing phenobarbitol and Koolaid and inviting all my friends over for a party.

Dr. Yuri and the Jedi Council blab a bit about the “lunatic” and what could happen if Proto Merkabah, the Phallus of Nephilim, and the Golden Penis Plates all link together. I believe the term for that is “bukkake,” gentlemen. “That’s exactly why we dropped it into the Abyss after we recovered the 100-Series!” Jedi Clean exposits. “How is it that it has returned again?” I’ll take “Narrative Advancing Wizard” for 1000. Also known as “Albedo.” Anyway, Dr. Yuri says that it’s still no big deal because the original GPP is still on Miltia, which is still floating around in a black hole or something. She says, “With only Proto Merkabah, he can’t…” Naturally, she trails off just as Proto Merkabah tilts sideways, points its bottom just to the left of the Kukai Foundation, and obliterates the entire Federation fleet in one blast of orgasmic purple light. You were saying, Dr. Yuri? “Well, Rubedo?” Albedo asks with a shit-eating grin on his face. “What do you think of my new toy? And that was using the minute amount of energy remaining in this thing!” Nice humblebrag, Albedo. Jailbait is raging–bad enough that he was upstaged yet again, but by his creepy albino brother? Oh hell no.

That’s a euphemism.

But Albedo is not done–he has other jizz-like laser beams at his disposal. The next ones he employs zap all the remaining Gnosis in the area and suck them in like KOS-MOS’s tummy vagina. Even Shion notices the similarity, but then again, KOS-MOS’s lady bits are the one thing on which she can claim expertise. Albedo explains for no reason, “Originally, this thing, the [Phallus] of Nephilim, and the [GPPs] were a single apparatus. The Gnosis which seek the [GPPs] are responding to the faint waves that emanate from the sealed off Miltia.” So the bug zapper analogy I used earlier is probably the correct one. “This thing uses the Gnosis as a medium to collect the waves from the [GPPs],” he continues, prompting Jailbait to ask how he knows all this stuff. “Oh, I looked it up on the wiki,” Albedo does not respond. Rather, he says he gathered both the exposition and the user’s manual for Proto Merkabah from MOMO’s juicy brain. I guess that’s kind of like reading the wiki.

“Let’s see then…” he tells Jailbait, as Proto Merkabah warms up for another impressive purple money shot. “I wonder how long it’ll take to charge? Five minutes? Or perhaps ten?” My money is on “However long it takes me to run around and do sidequests.” As if to prove me right, Albedo continues to chatter inanely at Jailbait–who, for his part, does nothing but yell back ineffectually–before retargeting the weapon at the capital of Second Miltia. Oh no! I bet he’ll totally manage to fire it before our heroes can stop him, too! The suspense is killing me!

Jailbait should win some kind of award for unintentional hilarity, because he yells, while weirdly motioning like he’s pantomiming firing a bow, “I won’t let you do this! Listen to me, Albedo! You stay right where you are! It’s time for you and me to settle this!” The sad thing is Albedo’s totally going to do that. Yeah, he laughs in Jailbait’s face at the suggestion, but he’s not going anywhere. He’s going to sit there with his finger on the button and wait for Jailbait to stop him just so they can have another boring standoff.

Once Albedo has left for his union-mandated coffee break, Dr. Yuri appears onscreen to provide the gang with some details. “The target is a giant experimental facility that was long abandoned before its completion,” she says. “A network of tunnels runs through the facility, and the reactor core is located at the nexus where they all meet.” How nice of Joachim Mizrahi to design his summer house for ease of access to the large, dangerous power source that he never thought would need to be tampered with. Jailbait asks if they just have to take out the reactor, and Dr. Yuri confirms that doing so will “shut down Proto Merkabah completely.” Yeah, shutting the power off tends to do that. God. Dr. Yuri even gives Jailbait a map that I’ll probably ignore in favor of bumbling around the corridors, lost, for five hours. As she stares at the likes of Shion, Corey, the Wang, her daughter, and the cyborg hired to babysit her, Dr. Yuri says solemnly, “Right now, you are our only hope.” Isn’t that the saddest thing anyone has ever said?

Holy shit, the cutscenes are over! No more Albedo talking! No more naked Shion holograms! I really should have prepared for this with some balloons and confetti, but I will have to settle for doing the Snoopy dance. Yaaaaaaaay!

Shion leaves the bridge and makes a beeline for the nearest save point, but naturally she is interrupted in this endeavor by the buzzing of her inbox. This happens three times before she even reaches the Durandick’s shuttle, but I’m so goddamn happy to be done with Albedo until the next recap that I don’t even give a fuck anymore. The first email unlocks a new tech for KOS-MOS called R-DRAGON, which I am betting is crazy phallic. Call it a hunch. The second informs Shion that she can now visit the Phallus of Nephilim any old time she pleases. Clearly, she is going to drop everything and do that right now. Right after she designs a non-sexy KOS-MOS and joins a convent.

The third and final email is regarding the hacker. Of course it is! Why wouldn’t Shion be interested in that at a time like this? The email is from someone named “FNM,” which he spells out as “Faith No Man, or a man without faith.” Thanks for the apposition, there. Really necessary. He was also known, once upon a time, as Panspelmia, the amazingly dangerous A.I. with the needlessly censored name. Faith No Sperm, throughout his adventures in Shion’s inbox, has been very impressed with Bunnie, Shion’s A.I. Bunnie is apparently like FNS in that they are both super special A.I. with feelings and dreams, and they are both incredibly fucking unimportant and a waste of my time and energy.

Come on. Shion doesn’t understand things.

FNS takes about a million paragraphs to explain that this entire hacking adventure began because he wanted to meet Bunnie and asked Snake Charmer to break into Vector’s servers to set him up on a play date. Both Snake Charmers were acting at his direction and are also both alive–I’m not sure what it accomplished to lie to Shion about their fates, but I’ve long since given up on making heads or tails of this stupid little side plot. Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that, as a reward for suffering through all these motherfucking emails, FNS gives Shion 200,000 Space Bucks. Um…that’s probably fair compensation. “Please use it to fight Gnosis,” FNS adds. Can you kill Gnosis by making it rain? I’m sure as shit going to try.

After reading this email, Shion stares into Bunnie’s dead eyes with her own dead eyes. “…So, it looks like you’ve discovered who I really am,” Bunnie says. Wait, she did? “Yeah,” Shion replies. “Knowing that [FNS] is an enhanced A.I. helped me acknowledge the fact that you are still alive.” At the risk of becoming everything I hate: huh? What the hell are these two talking about? Who the fuck is Bunnie? The Internet is not helping me with this at all, because I’m fairly certain I’m the only person in the universe who has any reason to ask these questions. Seriously, I will even tolerate smug comments or emails about this, since my utter contempt for this hacker bullshit has clearly caused me to miss something. Though I am more or less willing to accept that this just makes no sense, because 200,000 Space Bucks goes a long way toward making me not care.

And with that, we have finally reached the end of this recap! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! In part 13, join me for Proto Merkabah, the completion of Voltron, optional bosses, and the wanky, maddening, lesbian-tastic end to this sci-fi circus act. Until then!