Out in Space! we are treated to a wide shot of the glorious, twin-penised, cockring-powered Dämmerhung, which means it’s time to hang out with Shion again. I am overjoyed. Shion is standing alone in her spacious quarters within the First R&D Division, looking out the window into the futuristic city that is housed within the ship. It’s actually pretty cool, so of course Shion is sighing and slumping her body at her terrible misfortune and, in the offing, being a snot to Miyuki via videophone. Miyuki has just told her former boss about some grand innovation she’s working on, and then stops herself. “Hey Shion, are you even listening to me?” Shion snaps back, defensive about having to lie this hard, “I’m listening!” She gives Miyuki a brief moment to reply, and when the poor girl does not, and also does not end the call, she uses the opportunity to berate her for being stupid. “Miyuki, do you even know what’s going on?” she asks, with a clear tone that suggests she knows the answer. “We’re on high-security alert because of that phase distortion.” God, this turd Miyuki, not knowing what’s happening around her. Not like Shion. Miyuki insists she does in fact know, and she also knows the distortion in question is actually the twin butthole path to Old Miltia. “The observation teams are going nuts!” she says of this. Translation: there are people here on the Dämmerhung doing actual work to make an actual difference, and Miyuki, the person who’s been here and a part of it much longer, knows that and is not losing her head! “Well then,” Shion, who is literally standing around in her bedroom, replies, “now’s not the best time to be chatting like this, is it?” YOU GUYS. SHE IS SUCH A BITCH.
“That’s not very nice!” Miyuki severely understates. “What about you? The director still hasn’t received the KOS-MOS real-world operation data report.” Ha! Listen, Miyuki, Shion is very busy, what with her obligations to foment family drama, visit a curry shop, hang up pageant posters, and undermine another division by stealing their assigned work. Where in all of this is she supposed to fit in sitting at her keyboard and noting “Hair glossiness levels exceeded expectations” and “Abdominal vagina requires further testing”? Shion’s just about to rip a strip off Miyuki for daring to call her on her bullshit, but before she can, the room goes dark around her, and she notices a glowing figure standing behind her. Surprise, it’s Red, née Nephilim, looking more or less the same as before, but maybe a little more frowny. It’s kind of the same face I made when starting this recap, so I guess being reunited with Shion just has that effect on people. “N…Nephilim?” Shion blurts out, but the little girl vanishes, and Shion realizes Miyuki’s been trying to get her attention for at least 10 seconds. At least this time she doesn’t pretend she was listening, and so Miyuki repeats that she should write her fucking report already. “Is something wrong with you?” Miyuki adds. “Are you feelin’ okay?” I’m not sure what of Shion’s behavior here–irritability, spaceyness, generally being shitty at her job–is out of the ordinary, but what do I know, I’m just the woman who’s had this awful shrew in my life for 15 years. Shion insists that she is fine, just tired, from all the nothing she’s been doing, and ends the call to get some rest, even as Miyuki is protesting at her not to hang up. Miyuki. She is doing you a favor. Now you can socialize with people who are nice to you!
Once she’s off the horn with Miyuki, Shion takes a moment to process what’s going on with Nephilim. Amazingly, she still wonders if she was “an illusion,” though you’d think the ship had sailed on that with all the other crazy shit she’s seen. But more importantly, she wonders, “Why…why was she… Why did she have such a sad face?” WHY WON’T THE DEAD GIRL SMILE MORE??? Also, I covered this a paragraph ago, Shion, try to keep up. This latest appearance of one of her many imaginary friends leaves Shion feeling more confused than ever, not one minute after she was sassing Miyuki for not being informed. That’s my girl.
This is true of everyone in this game, and of all of us as well, but I’m still going to make fun of her.
Out of the cutscene, and for the first time in this recap, I am in control of Shion. She notes to herself that Corey “had some sedatives on him” and she’d better go find him so she can ride that sweet fucking Ambien train to some ghost-free sleep, and definitely not so she can make a blackout ass of herself on the Dämmerhung social network. But while we’re here, this is the future and all–does she really need to go score some sleeping pills from Corey to cure her insomnia? Isn’t there some AI personal assistant who will beam some to her bluetooth-connected medicine cabinet? HAVE WE STILL NOT FIXED HEALTHCARE IN 60XX???
After the first hours of this game were a pretty big departure from the format of the first, we are back on familiar ground: Shion wandering around a ship for a completely contrived reason, either to get me familiar with the layout or to assist Shion into stumbling tits-first into some plot stuff. Assuming it’s the latter, I have Shion make use of the save point right outside her room. I picture Corey also doing this whenever he goes into Shion’s room, in the event he fucks up what he wants to say to her and needs to try again. Surprise, Corey, there is never a right way to talk to Shion. A guy named Russel, which feels like a spelling deliberately designed to annoy me, tells Shion all about the Dämmerhung’s amenities, as it “not only houses corporate facilities, but also everything from residential areas to entertainment districts.” First of all, WOW, it’s like a city, but IN SPACE? I’ve never heard of such a thing! Second of all, Shion lives here and is probably this dude’s boss, so what the hell.
Most of the people Shion runs into, like Russel, are Vector employees taking an extremely long coffee break because this high-security alert is keeping them from doing much of anything else. They are, of course, peeved about this–one woman is mad she can’t go “on a shopping spree” on Second Miltia like she was planning. I don’t know what kind of shopping is on the table when you are only allowed to wear one hideous outfit and the leases for living quarters here on the Dämmerhung seem to prohibit displays of personal effects of any kind. Maybe she was just going to eat a shitload of curry. Just so I don’t get the crazy idea that I can see more than one tiny floor of this massive space metropolis, all the elevators are also currently locked down. Though the largest one–per a Realian standing near it, to the “Restricted Area, where all research materials, data, and weapons of security level A or higher are stored”–is merely under repairs. HINT HINT. I can’t imagine why Shion would need to go down there, though. She never meddles in shit above her pay grade!
In the comms room for the observation team, she finds Corey, and also Miyuki, who I thought was not on her team anymore, but whatever. “Oh, Shion!” Miyuki says to the woman she was on the phone with less than five minutes ago. “What happened to your glasses? Weren’t those glasses a present from Chief Kevin? I thought those were really important to you! Why did you take them off?” WHAT. WHAT.
Jesus Christ, Miyuki, have some self-respect.
What kind of fucking sociopath buys PRESCRIPTION EYEGLASSES as a gift? I gotta wear these things every day, ain’t nobody but yours truly picking them out. I mean, “They’re not prescription, they were just a signifier to nerds that Shion is a nerd girl they could feel good about masturbating to because she’s not some DUMB WHORE who doesn’t like NICE GUYS” has been the implication from the jump, but STILL. Glasses! As a gift! Even if there weren’t lenses in there, that’s an insane and bad present. Good thing Kevin is hella dead, because he probably wasn’t a great boyfriend in the first place.
Also, while I’m fucking here talking about Shion’s stupid glasses like the sad asshole I am, you may recall Corey knocked them off her face and broke them under his stupid clumsy boot. I only mention this because Corey and Miyuki have apparently been hanging out, and there’s no way the first thing Corey said to Miyuki was not, “Ohhhhhh, I broke the Chief’s glaaaaaaasses, and now she’s maaaaaaaaaad at me.”
Lord. I am suddenly so tired.
None of the other flunkies on Shion’s team have anything to tell her that wasn’t communicated via her own narrated montage, so she finally talks to her head flunky, who is slouching and rubbing at his head near one of the comms consoles. I don’t even know why I’m making a note of that, he literally looks that way all the time. If Corey had anything to say to Shion, he’s brought up short by her sedative request. He gives over the pills, adding, “You don’t look well. Maybe you should go to your room and get some rest.” THAT’S WHAT THE PILLS ARE FOR, MY MAN. I fully expect Shion to yell this exactly as I did–I talk big shit about her being a terrible person, while I am also a mean bitch–but instead she says, “Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry, I think I’ll go do that.” A “you’re right” AND an “I’m sorry” from Shion to Corey? IN THE SAME BREATH? She really is feeling unwell.
As soon as Shion reaches her room again, she notes that she’s already feeling sleepy from Corey’s sedatives. I didn’t realize she just downed that shit the second he gave it to her. What a pro. I allow her to climb into her blanketless future bed for a little nap, where the drugs she’s on certainly won’t lead her to have a weird fucking ghost dream, which she will then impulsively act on, without once wondering, “I wonder if this was the drugs.” None of that will happen. It is a big joke, by me.
As Shion snoozes in her future bed–the display on the headboard indicates the bed is 28 degrees Celsius, which for us dumbass Americans is a TOASTY 82 degrees Fahrenheit–she has some brief visions of some stuff that’s a bit too dark to make out, though once she sees the golden glow of the original GPP, it’s clear she’s dreaming about Old Miltia. “It’s…the [GPP]?” Shion wonders in her sleep, in a perfect demonstration of Shioning form. It’s really her in there after all. In front of the GPP floats Febronia, or a hologram of her, at least–you can see the GPP’s rigid shaft through her. Shion is also here in person, and once she’s asked Febronia twice if it’s really her (it is, and Feb looks exactly like she did in the first game, to boot), she asks her, “Feb, what in the world’s going on? What is this place? Why are you here?” Only that first question needed to be asked, but it would be shitty of me to act like Shion shouldn’t be overwhelmingly bewildered by all of this.
Feb kind of goes over what she told Shion in the KOS-MOS Encephalon dive a million years ago: her “sisters,” Cecily and Cathe, are being held here, For Reasons having to do with the GPP. Shion looks around this astral projection/Ambien dream for these sisters, not spotting them anywhere. Feb ignores the unspoken question. “Shion. Set them free from this cage,” she asks again. “Please, I want you to lift the curse that mankind has placed upon them.” Shion doesn’t know how she is supposed to do that if she doesn’t know how to get to them, and while I want to yell “THEY’RE ON OLD MILTIA YOU HAG,” if someone in the game told her that, I’d have good reason to then ask how an entire planet is a narrow enough search parameter. Fuck me, is the point. Helpfully (???), Feb assures her, “Soon… You will visit this place. Please, Shion…save Cecily and Cathe.” And despite Shion’s protests, Feb peaces out of her dream. That was like three whole minutes in Shion’s company. She was at her limit.
I have to keep petty screencapping every instance of this just so you people never think for a moment I’m above it.
Shion wakes up, though not with a gasp and a start, because this game isn’t built for that kind of abrupt body animation. Then she remembers: “I have to send the data.” Right, her job! I am pretty sure this was referred to as a report she had yet to actually write, but now it’s probably just some raw data and a kissy face emoji. Listen, Shion is VERY TIRED, okay? I am given back control of this woman I hate as she frets that the director is going to tan her ass for her procrastination. She thus basically tells me to steer her back to the comms room so she can send off her report. I hope the ban on personal communications means that all she can do is send the data (which you’d think she could do from her little personal device, but whatever) and that she cannot spin that off into another screaming tirade at the guy.