Since Shion is here anyway, another GS quest is available, over at Lavare’s cleaners, the mom-and-pop laundromat beset by ABC Family-esque melodrama. Sheila, the Lavare matriarch I avoided for no reason during the Gnosis invasion, tells Shion the cleaner’s has a mice problem in the attic, even though she’s sure there’s nothing up there that could be attracting them. And Shion totally looks like a pest exterminator, what with those sharp boot heels, so she is obviously the person for the job. Godawful Sidequest Campaign START!!
I did it! I found the saddest person in the world!
I have been a spoiled little child up to this point, because as much as I’ve made fun of these little errands, none of them have really been a burden. But what we’ve been missing from the GS campaign to take it to the next level of face-clawing dipshittery is, in a word, mini-games. But not anymore, fuckos! After talking to the rest of the Lavare family and establishing that no, Sheila’s doofus little son totally wasn’t keeping pet mice in a shoebox and totally didn’t lose them, Shion climbs the ladder (sigh) into the attic, where the Lavare grandma basically tells Shion to use her boomstick, or rather her martial arts skills (double sigh), to blow up the squeaking little plague carriers. That is pretty dark. I know I actually joked about Shion having the right shoes on to exterminate pests, but I wasn’t prepared for her literally kicking innocent little (pet!) mice to death.
I spoke too soon!
Of course, some of the mice are too fast and clever for our Shion–SURPRISE–so it’s a good thing this attic is set up as a sort of rat maze, including random objects like oddly placed picture frames that can function as trap doors to wall off the critters if Shion smacks them with her cell phone or boot or whatever she’s even doing anymore. Once a disembodied, disturbingly Jin-like voice announces, “Ready…GO!” Shion has a minute and a half to take out all of them, which is sadly harder than it sounds. It’s necessary to follow a fairly specific order of operations to catch all the mice, triggering the traps at the right time and in the right order to make sure Shion is not caught in an infinite loop of chasing the last mouse upstairs, only for it to disappear into a hole and appear on the floor below. (Yes, this is a multi-level attic. Don’t you all have those?)
It takes me three tries to get this routine down and render all the mice “unconscious,” as Granny Lavare insists they are. Granny also hands Shion a “Secret Box” to give to Sheila downstairs. I’m not going to joke about Shion’s secret box, because hers is not a secret. Sheila’s reward to her is Secret Key 6, which opens up the skill Rare +10, and hopefully it’s obvious that this ups a character’s chances to steal rare items. I know, this game and its jargon again. “Hey, wait a minute!” Sheila says, right as Shion’s about to speed out the door with her abstract loot. “Isn’t that box you’re holding Dominic’s? What? It has a receipt for pet mice inside? That means… … … … …” WHAT DOES IT MEAN? TELL ME. Sheila doesn’t spell it out, but promises Shion she’s going to give her son a good “scolding.” With a switch, surely. But before I forget: how does she know the box is Dominic’s? Did this random shoebox have his name on it? And why did Dominic keep the fucking receipt for the mice in the box with the mice? And why did he even have a paper receipt in 60xx? I don’t even get those now.
CHICKS
After returning to Sikes (who has nothing of interest to say, but gives Shion Secret Key 2, for the genuinely inscrutable skill Break B10), Shion wanders back to Sector Two and enters Area 40. (That is a terrible name for an ad agency, by the way. I’m barely feeling any branding penetrate my consciousness!) In the back, behind boxes that Shion has to blow up to even move into the room, she finds an ad exec named Miguel, who has a problem. Miguel should consider not hiding in a storage closet if he needs assistance. “The Miss Miltia Contest is going to take place very soon and our company is handling the promotion!” he says. Oh dear. But if you, like me, are dreading that this is going to end with Shion becoming the beautiful girl genius face of the Miss Miltia ad campaign, fear not! “Hey, are you listening?!” Miguel goes on. Clearly, Shion herself is fantasizing about her future in modeling. “So, now that we’ve made posters, we have to put them up around the city. But we’re really short on people! I’m looking for someone that can do the job. Want to give it a try?” Ha! I would actually be pleased that someone is valuing Shion as a worker and not as a stick bundle with tits and ass, but the job in question is hanging posters. Despite what Miguel says about having to carefully find the perfect areas to put them up, it is not rocket science. Or sexbot engineering.
Further undermining the technical expertise requirements of this job, the goal of the Miss Miltia marketing blitz is not, shall we say, tasteful and considered poster placement. Shion is only done with the quest once she papers every empty surface in the two sectors (not literally, these are digital posters, but Dominic got a fucking receipt for mice). And not just outdoors–she even puts them up inside people’s private residences and businesses. There’s a lady in Sector One trying to nap and Shion throws two posters of half-naked women up in her loft. Her wanton disregard for discretion or concern of oversaturation leads to placement like the screencap below. If Draftkings and Fanduel exist in 60xx, I bet their advertising looks like this.
Appalling. Shion totally could have spaced these to fit at least three more.
Once Shion is done spamming her hometown with adverts for God-Emperor Donald Trump XXXIII’s Miss Miltia Contest, Miguel tells her she is “Amazing!” for managing to put up all the posters. At least he doesn’t call her the Flower of Area 40. Her “pay” for this job is three Skill Upgrade D. That is not pay, sir. She is not your kid, and you can’t pay her for actual labor with candy. But that’s not nearly as insulting as his bonus offer: “Whoops, I almost forgot to give you this! They’re campaign promotional goods and we got some left over. Go ahead and take them!” And he hands over swimsuits…for MOMO and Jailbait. Miguel is promoting Miss Miltia with swimsuits for children. Shion, please call the goddamn police. This is important.
The Miss Miltia posters disappear as soon as the sidequest is over, which strikes me as an issue for their marketing team. Not Shion’s problem now! Next, she heads down to the lower level of Sector Two, where a burly man puzzlingly named Lizzy is having trouble with surges in the town’s power grid. “I understand what needs to be done, but I’m no good at doing the actual work!” he moans. Well, since Shion usually has no idea what she’s doing but magically manages to do it anyway, he can count on her! Lizzy tells Shion there’s a switch “along the northern side of the room down there,” like she’s going to be navigating a large broom closet. This is not the case.
After Lizzy also explains that she has a five-minute time limit and that there is electricity “leaking” down there–holy shit, is this a lawsuit waiting to happen–Shion opens a futuristic door only to have to descend a ladder to the power facility. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but where is the elevator? And once she’s down the ladder, she finds herself in a massive multilevel facility that looks like Tron: The Ride at Disneyworld. Shion arrives at some futuristic saloon doors blocking her path, and a text box asks her if she wants to “attempt the power distribution repair job.” If the time limit, and the Disembodied Jin Voice saying, “Ready…GO!” again, didn’t give it away, then this seals the deal: it’s another fucking mini-game.
It’s more like a rudimentary obstacle course, with moving walkways, pointless-looking devices that send purple jolts of lightning across corridors, moving walkways with even more rogue lightning, destructible storage crates blocking the path forward, and best of all, ladders! So much ass wiggle. I hope it’s clear from my half-assed description of this place that it makes absolutely no sense as a municipal power facility that theoretically needs to be accessible to city employees. And it mostly fails as a mini-game, to boot. Doesn’t it just figure that, when failure at a mini-game means watching Shion get struck by lightning over and over, it’s so easy that she is barely singed at all?
‘Where can these giant tasers discharge their electricity most safely?’
‘How about on the walkways our employees will have to use?’
‘Brilliant. I don’t know why more people don’t drink at work.’
Shion throws the lever on the GPP-like console on the north wall–hilariously emblazoned with a “WARNING” sign when nothing else in here is–which restores the power levels to their normal values. And all someone had to do was risk electrocution in like 20 different spots to do it! These people need to hook this system up to VPN or something. The capper on this tedious and illogical chore is that Shion now has to walk all the way back to the beginning. WALL-E led me to believe the future would bring hovering Rascal scooters with onboard Slurpee machines, so what the fuck is with all this walking and ladder-climbing? Lizzy and his massive shoulders, as thanks, give Shion access to Burst Veil, a double attack for Shion and MOMO. OHHHHHH GOODY.
Shion Uzuki: Girl Genius, Unlicensed Therapist, and City Utility Inspector!
In the five seconds since Shion saved Second Miltia from a blackout, word has apparently gotten around that she is The Fixer for all the city’s infrastructure issues. Down on the lower level on the east side of Sector Two, where Shion just had her showdown with Bonny the “Master Thief,” a man in an orange jumpsuit tells her of yet another city utility crisis. What did these people do before the Godawful Sidequest Campaign? Do their own work? Anyway, this time it is the water purification system, which is run by nanomachines that are now malfunctioning. I had better fucking not find out this was Snake Charmer’s second cousin or some goddamn thing. Though I would almost prefer Shion’s high-stakes email multiple choice quizzes to what she’s about to do. Jumpsuit tells her the task at hand is to destroy the broken nanomachine dispensers, but to leave the unaffected ones alone. “Water Works personnel are down there already,” Jumpsuit says, “but would you be interested in giving us a hand?” Like she’s going to say no. How can she get attention from everyone for being a saintly little helper bee if she doesn’t actually help anybody? The helper bee dutifully hops down a giant, Durandick-sized manhole into the Second Miltia sewers.
There is indeed already another man in a jumpsuit down here, but it seems like his main “job” is to tell Shion how to actually do everything. “There are 84 [GULP] water conditioning nanomachine dispenser units in this room and several of them have gone haywire,” Jumpsuit #2 says. These things are apparently supposed to self-destruct if they stop working, but I guess their self-destruct function has also stopped working, for Reasons. Jumpsuit #2 then tells her she can distinguish between the broken and functional dispensers by going around to consoles all over the facility and making the units light up either green (yay!) or red (sorry, you’re drinking pee).
This all sounds fine, right? Two things. First, Shion must destroy the dispensers (which look like large land mines) with her Boomstick of Sudden Martial Arts Proficiency, and sometimes it’s easy to go a little nuts with that square button and accidentally kick one thing too many. And destroying any of the working dispensers auto-fails the mission. Second, the consoles are irregularly spaced, and while it is possible to check all the dispensers from any one console (the dispensers are separated into distinct areas), there are dispensers that are far enough from any console that it’s not as simple as checking them and knocking out the right ones immediately. So Shion must both keep the knowledge of which dispensers are which in that colander she calls her brain, and run back and forth across a massive facility. Yes, this continues to be the most poorly managed major city in videogame history.
And I haven’t even mentioned how this plan requires Shion to walk through the city’s drinking water, spreading god knows what straight from her miniskirt to the citizens of Second Miltia, and that some of the consoles are even in standing water. Did Crazy Joachim design this place too? Is nobody in this series allowed to work in a normal fucking facility?
At least there’s not a time limit. Especially because literally every time Shion kicks a dispenser into oblivion (and at least half of them are broken), a text box tells her, “Target destroyed!” For this reason alone this takes twice as long as the last mission. So Shion gets to work, first knocking out the faulty dispensers closest to the entrance while I try to keep my itchy trigger finger at bay. It’s actually not as bad as I make it out to be, but boy, do I still not understand how this city has not sunken into powerless, plague-ridden anarchy by now. Our heroes shouldn’t even worry about the Gnosis–just put all these superpowered geniuses to work on some sensible city planning and things will be okay. Unfortunately, the Jumpsuits are ignoring my suggestions, and to make Shion go away, they give her Secret Key 11, unlocking ST Resist 20. Are these things on flash drives or what?
BLECH, get her boot feet out of there!
At long last, it is time for Shion to sack up and go to her brother’s house. The Uzuki residence is on the outskirts of the city, separately marked on the map as if it’s a major location. So maybe Jin’s house has as many romantic callers as Shion’s cabin on the Hoglinde. I understand. As Shion, Jailbait, and CHAOS!!! approach Jin’s anachronistically Japanese-style home, Jailbait is once again overcome with fanboy glee. “Wow, [CHAOS!!!]!” he practically screams. “This house is made of wood!” And now, so is Jailbait. CHAOS!!! also points out, even though saying so risks Jailbait literally exploding like a jizz supernova, “It’s amazing. This place is a bookstore.” Indeed it is. Jailbait excitedly describes the place as “so antique” (in a way that makes me react like Doc Brown to Marty McFly saying “heavy”) and actually clutches his chest like he’s gonna keel over and die from the greatness of Jin’s fucking used bookstore. If he starts sniffing old paper like a fetishist and bitching at me for having a Kindle, I might have to go on a break with this kid.
Meanwhile, this is confirming some suspicion from the back of Shion’s tiny mind. “I knew it,” she says through gritted teeth as she walks in and takes in the shelves. “Hang on, Jin. What is this? I thought you opened a doctor’s office.” At least three different NPCs have mentioned to Shion over the last hour that Jin stopped his doctor’s practice, so she can spare me with the unpleasantly surprised routine. Jin crosses his arms and glares right back. I think his books are the hill he’s going to die on, guys. “What’s with you?” he asks. “What happened to, ‘It’s good to be back home, big brother’?” She definitely never said that, and frankly I can’t imagine why Jin would think she ever would. Her shoulders have been up around her ears since the moment he walked into Moby Dick’s. “Sure, if this were a normal home!” Shion retorts. I mean, maybe he converted her bedroom into the “Over 21 only” section of the store, but Jesus, Shion, they’re just books. She acts like Jin is selling meth out of here.
But this isn’t really about the books, even though Shion still thinks they’re a total waste of space and energy. (I swear, there is a middle ground between Shion going “EGGHEAD LIKES HIS BOOKY-BOOK” like a bitch and Jailbait dry-humping a first edition of As I Lay Dying. This game.) Shion, rather, is concerned that Jin has abandoned his medical practice for his hobby shop because he “got bored and changed professions again.” She shakes her head and mutters at him, “Honestly, you’ve never kept a job for more than six months!” It’s pretty clear at this point that Shion doesn’t know about her brother’s past as a heroic military badass, since I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be constantly calling him a layabout bum if she did. (Maybe she still would. It is Shion.) So between this new round of bickering and Jin pretending not to know CHAOS!!! earlier, I guess all we’re left with is that Jin wants his little sister who’s failed or fucked upward for her entire short career to look down on him and nag him constantly. Not proving me wrong, Jin impatiently explains that thanks to THE FUTURE, doctors really don’t do anything anymore other than hospice and counseling for the elderly, and he doesn’t think professionally talking to people is worth the trouble or expense. “I can do that in any business,” he says, “and if I could sell some stuff, that’d just be a bonus.” Seems reasonable enough! “Oh, please,” Shion sighs. “You just wanted to use your hobby to cut yourself a tax break.” That also seems reasonable enough, Shion! Why does she even care about this? Unless she is using her fat Flower of First Division salary to fund her brother’s deviant bookworm lifestyle, this is none of her fucking business.
Christ, Shion, it’s a bookstore, not a Nazi memorabilia emporium.
During this somewhat tense sibling confrontation, I should note, the music is boppy and upbeat, since Jailbait is rubbing musty paper and fading ink on his crotch in the background. And once Jin has decided he’s had enough of arguing with Shion about line items in his own goddamn book budget, he asks if they should “attend to [their] guests.” Shion calls for them to come inside, because she somehow hadn’t noticed they came in when she did, and trails off when she sees Jailbait cradling stacks of books that tower past his head. Oh, that wacky Jailbait! He is going to do unspeakable things to these. I hope he isn’t actually planning on reading any of them, since the pages are going to be stuck together after tonight. The scene ends with Jailbait complaining as CHAOS!!! says he can buy his fetish supplies later.