Out of the cutscene, Shion takes a fiver from feeling sorry for herself to ask a couple stupid questions. First, she wants to know where they are. For someone who’s worked in the RealDoll engineering industry for as long as she has, you’d think she would have inferred it’s the Yuriev Institute. Second, and Jesus Horseradish Christ, she really does ask this, “It feels strange, like time has stopped. The people here can’t see us?” Remember, this woman just showed up to handle the technical aspects of this Encephalon dive, elbowing out other actual professionals, because it was so important to her that her friends be in capable, experienced hands. Also remember, even if she weren’t supposedly an old hand at these dives, that she has already experienced people in these flashbacks not seeing or hearing her. Jailbait, CHAOS!!!, and Ziggy somehow refrain from yelling “DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH” in her stupid face. As for questions that actually need to be asked, Jailbait wonders how seeing all this will help MOMO, and Ziggy figures they should keep following the apparitions of the Yaoi Triplets and see where they lead. Probably to a secluded spot for pants shenanigans, but maybe they’ll still learn something useful!

I feel like the job maybe requires getting over this?

Oddly enough, Ziggy can talk to the various employees of the Yuriev Institute for exposition about the lab, the U.R.T.V.s, Sakura Mizrahi, or Daddy Dmitri. But it’s possible they’re just exposition geysers that regularly spew forth this information even if no one is around to hear it. One woman at a console has a theory that Sakura’s “mental wavelengths” respond well to Rubedo because she’s got a big old crush on him. Oh come on, they’ve met once! She’s right, of course, but pump the damn brakes. Some other boyclones dish a little about their special brothers: apparently 669 (Nigredo) doesn’t react to UUUUUUUUUU-DOOOOOOOOOO like the others do, and was also the last U.R.T.V. to be produced from Yuriev’s DNA. Meaning the Ménage-à-Frères are special advanced models, not prototypes. This isn’t especially interesting or relevant, but I feel like I should mention it. That’s just life recapping this series!

‘But goddamn, does he provide a good dental plan.’

Ziggy follows Huey, Dewey, and Louie all the way through the sprawling institute, through metal-paneled hallways and outdoor courtyards, and back into a hallway tube fitted with blue and orange light rings like a Pilotwings course. Finally, after a white flash, Jailbait and Shion end up watching Rubedo as he stares through a window into a building. Inside, Yuri is sitting with the flesh-and-blood Sakura, who is playing a melancholy melody (of course) on a baby grand piano. “Sakura… She really can’t talk in this world,” Rubedo says, like seeing someone play a musical instrument for five seconds is somehow proof they are mute. Now, I thought this was a sad monologue Rubedo was delivering to a pane of plexiglass, but from inside, Yuri answers him. “That’s right. The neural pathways that recognize the outside world and allow her to express herself have been completely severed. Her electric potential pulse control was determined to be instable, but neither medicine nor nanomachine-based Glilial supplements had any effect.” Huh, that’s odd, because I figured playing a fucking piano was expressing oneself. UUUUUUUU-DOOOOOO vomited on her vocal chords and they died. Just say that.

Rubedo, unlike me, understands all this technobabblish medical jargon and counters with, “It’s weird that restoring her membrane electrical potential didn’t do anything.” Uh…it sure is! I know this is probably not what the writers intended, but I’m picturing this poor kid in electroshock therapy because Mommy wants to hear her talk about her fucking seashell jewelry box. I mean, her dad at least seems crazy enough to do this. But, Dr. Yuri points out, Rubedo’s “waveform, the particular wavelength you possess, is making up for her deficiency.” That does not answer my earlier question about what this treatment is supposed to be accomplishing. What it does answer is, “How long can I watch a close-up of Rubedo’s guileless blue eyeball before it gets weird?” The answer is 0.5 seconds. It goes on a full second longer than that.

Another white flash returns us to Sakura’s imaginary farmhouse. She and Rubedo are sitting on the porch swing at sunset, being serenaded by an invisible woman in a language I don’t know. Kind of feels like rubbing it in for poor Sakura, putting vocals in her theme song. Anyway, she’s telling Rubedo that her dad, too, is “researching treatment” for her. Yeah, that’s totally what he’s doing! “He’s making a Realian that’s a lot like a human,” she explains, “and he’s gonna make it so my senses are always linked up with it.” It’s probably good that this never came to pass. Can you imagine Sakura and MOMO walking around together throughout life, with permanently 12-year-old MOMO acting as Sakura’s silence translator? How would that go on her wedding night? “That way, I won’t have to make my mom sad anymore,” Sakura says. Great! To pay it forward, she’ll just make MOMO sad forever. Xenosaga Episode II: Transitive Sadness.

“Sakura, you sure have nice parents,” Rubedo says, easily the most hilariously ironic statement of the series. Sakura wonders if Rubedo also has nice parents, and the look on his face is all the answer she should require. Even though he currently has the same expression MOMO does when her mom texts her that she won’t be taking her to the zoo this weekend, even though she promised to make it up when they didn’t go last weekend, Sakura presses on, “Don’t you have a mom?” Dang, girl. This is only acceptable because we know she doesn’t exactly get to talk to people much.

♪ Hello darkness, my old friend ♪

Rubedo, sounding like he’d rather talk about anything, anything else, explains that they do have a biological mother. “Genetically speaking, anyway. She had a healthy ovum with a perfect set of chromosomes.” Oh baby. I bet you tell all the ladies they have a perfect set of chromosomes. But that’s all he really knows, since presumably they were made in a test tube. “How come you’re not looking for her? Don’t you wanna meet her?” Sakura asks. Read the fucking room, sister! Does he have to pitch a Shion-esque tantrum for her to pick up on this?

(It also occurs to me that Sakura and her post-death future self MOMO are the only people in this series who have a living mother in their lives. So, REAL NICE, bitch.)

“What’s the point?” Rubedo asks, with not a little scorn. “So I can say, ‘Hi! You’re the mother of a bunch of genetically engineered bioweapons’?” Well, even if this woman is alive and out there somewhere, if she were told about the hundreds of identical baby boys she now owes child support, she’d probably drop dead on the spot, anyway. Sakura puts a hand on Rubedo’s shoulder, looking like she still doesn’t get that she put her foot in her mouth, but wanting him to feel better nonetheless. “Don’t say that,” she says. “You’re not a weapon. You’re a wonderful boy.” Hahahahahaha. I am guessing Sakura’s definition of “wonderful boy” is “only boy I have ever been able to communicate with, oh god don’t leave meeeeeeeee.” And Rubedo is less than convinced that he’s good because of one desperate girl’s opinion. “The only time we can leave the Institute is when there’s a war going on,” he says, head firmly buried in his arm now. And even then they have to hold hands the whole time and aren’t allowed to get Cinnabon! So unfair.

Perhaps sensing that a change of subject is in order, at least five minutes too late, Sakura says she has a favor to ask of him. And…it’s a doozy, man. “My little sister is gonna be born soon,” she explains. No, this isn’t an FFX-2 situation where Dr. Yuri is pregnant despite not looking remotely pregnant. She means MOMO. “She’s kind of different from a normal sister, I mean, my mom won’t be giving birth to her, but…” Sakura is almost depressingly normal for this series. Rubedo just explained that he and his clone bros are all test tube babies, and Realians are already a thing, and CHAOS!!! is lurking out there somewhere, wang hidden until the perfect moment to strike, but here Sakura is all “Tee hee, it’s so hard to explain, my sister won’t be coming out of my mom!” I mean, it’s the year of our lord 60xx-minus-14. There are a lot of ways to have a sister!

“My mother and sister…” she goes on. “I want you to look after them for me, okay?” If Rubedo weren’t a pud, he would tell her she can do that herself because they’re going to cure her, or that she’s otherwise not going anywhere (it’s not like being unable to talk is a terminal illness). Instead, he smiles and says, “Okay!” Clearly, she’s only asking him this in the first place so he’ll feel like he has a purpose beyond being JUST A WEAPON, and can stop being emo and make out with her. At least, I hope this isn’t a serious, urgent request, because it took Rubedo 14 goddamn years to even meet MOMO, never mind how good of a job he’s done taking care of her since (mildly, not good at all). And unless he’s been supportive of Dr. Yuri behind the scenes–sending her nice emails, liking all of her rants about her fuckface ex-husband on U.M.N.Book, occasionally taking her and her new lady out for tapas–he hasn’t exactly kept up his promise on that front either.

But in the here and now, Rubedo holds his little fist to his little chest and tells Sakura, “If she’s your sister… I’ll look after her like she was my own!” Ooh. Ouch. I would say that just about does it for the Jailbait/MOMO ship, but then again, many, many doujinshi artists would argue that Jailbait only knows one way to take care of his siblings. Sakura, of course, has not seen any of the fanart, so when she’s extracted this promise from her wonderful boy, she plants a kiss on his stunned cheek and trots back into her digital living room. She turns back at the door and says, “Good night, Rubedo. See you tomorrow,” like she’s expecting balloons and roses to fall out of her locker at school the next day, and all her friends will just hate her. Rubedo, who remember is a dipshit and a half, is still waving after the door is closed. After entirely too long, he touches his waving hand to his cheek. God, this didn’t even happen! This is virtual reality! If this game wants to convince me Rubedo loves the ladies, it’s gonna have to do better than one chaste cheek kiss that did not take place in the real world, where real lips and cheeks are.

Girl is in her own imagination and could wear anything she wants, and she chooses a First Communion dress and pink crocs.

And we’re back to the Yuriev Institute, with ghost boys running and Ziggy following after them, trying not to feel like a creep. He finds them again on the other side of the Pilotwings course tube. Rubedo throws a steel vibrator in the air, catches it, and admires it in the light. Okay, it’s a harmonica, and now I can see that it’s not even cylindrical, but let me have this. “So, you practice along with her piano,” Nigredo says, while Albedo sulks about the whole thing. “If you’re that interested in her, why don’t you just stay there in virtual space? I’m sure she’d like that, too.” These two could not be acting more “Why don’t you just MARRY HER, THEN” about Rubedo having a non-girlfriend. Rubedo insists it’s “not like that,” but it falls on deaf and jealous ears. Albedo cuts in, while literally hiding behind Nigredo’s shoulder, “Your concentration’s been slipping lately, Rubedo. It’s almost time for our training in the U-DO simulator. You know that, right?” Rubedo insists that he’s on top of it, reminding them in his best shithead Junior voice that he is the “link master.” I know this is supposed to be foreshadowing that he totally will not be on top of it, and will not fulfill the mission like he confidently says he will, but that has fuck-all to do with having an internet girlfriend, right? Albedo can stop pretending he’s concerned for professional reasons, he’s not fooling anyone. He drops his bitchface long enough to whine at his brother, “I can trust you, right? As long as you’re here, I don’t have to be afraid of U-DO, right?” WE GET IT. Rubedo is like, “Duh,” adding that as “variants,” they are superior to the cheap, mass-produced U.R.T.V.s. I don’t know if this is supposed to make Albedo feel better, but I also don’t know why it would make him sniffle and cry, as he is now doing. Rubedo looks deeply unimpressed with his twin, and hesitates before joining Nigredo in comforting him. Maybe he should try having a girlfriend–it can only be an improvement.

For our next conveniently delivered piece of backstory about Jailbait that’s somehow inside MOMO’s brain, Ziggy returns to the main institute building and enters the room where, previously, some other boyclones were talking shit about Nigredo. When he walks in this time, he finds the Twinklets in an uncomfortable staredown with another U.R.T.V. But I’m confused–this one looks a little different from the others. Let’s see, there’s a bouncy bob haircut, a narrower waist, the uniform is a mini-skirt and thigh-high boots and OH MY GOD IT’S A GIRL.

All three of them look offended by this girl’s very existence. She doesn’t look much more impressed with them, but she coolly says, “Pleased to meet you, number 666 Rubedo. I am U.R.T.V. number 668. You may call me Citrine.” They may, but they will call her “No thank you.” Rubedo sputters, “668? …I’ve never seen a female type before!” Now, hang on a minute, Red. Let’s assume that there was no talk at all in the institute of female U.R.T.V.s, though there have definitely been boy types puttering around and talking to themselves about the subject in Ziggy’s earshot, and Albedo himself says in a moment that he’d heard there was a “girls’ ward somewhere.” But even if it were this carefully guarded secret, she just said she’s number 668. So she was made in between the Codependent Conjoined Twins and poor third wheel Nigredo. Did they seriously never wonder about that number gap? Were they too busy playing grab-ass with each other in giant empty closets?

‘I…I knew vaginas existed in theory, but…’

Citrine, looking irritated she has to explain herself to these idiots, provides another reason they are stupid: “Don’t act so surprised. The original fertilized eggs had both X and Y stock. I am an X-type, designed to preserve the egg’s mtDNA. We’d be in trouble if the project hit a dead end with nothing but just you simple Y-types.” So…the implication here is that Yuriev made Citrine to breed with Rubedo, right? Hurk. Nigredo says, answering my earlier question, that he always thought the “missing number” was dead. Sounds like he would have found out otherwise if he’d bothered interacting with literally anyone other than Wingus and Dingus here.

“It’s certainly true that a lot of units were disposed of,” Citrine says, with all the emotion one would express while tossing out an empty pizza box. “Unlike you male types, we have only nine female types remaining. It’s a shame because, theoretically, we are superior.” Yeah! High-five! I mean, nobody with that haircut should be that proud of herself, but I have to express some lady solidarity. I expect the boys to get their dicks in a twist over this insinuation that boys are dumb and gross, but instead, Rubedo snits, “Disposed of? Who do you think you are?” Granted, Citrine wasn’t rending her clothing over it or anything, but these three seemed blissfully ignorant of all these female types being thrown in a dumpster until five seconds ago, so maybe sit the fuck down, kid. “And just who do you think you are, Rubedo?” Citrine asks, leveling an icy glare at him. “We aren’t normal children, you know. Even if we lost control of our waveform and died, we wouldn’t have the luxury of complaining about it.” I’ve spent at least five minutes trying, and failing, to parse this statement. Normal children also don’t have the luxury of complaining when they die! What are we even talking about right now?

I’m not sure what we were supposed to learn from that scene, let alone how it would help MOMO. That there was a lady U.R.T.V. variant, designed by Daddy to procreate with Rubedo and make little flippered second-gen babies? That she was kind of an ice queen to a bunch of ignorant, hostile, unwelcoming boys? It’s not like any of this will end up being relevant in the present day, or like Citrine herself will turn up in the future. That’s crazy talk.