Since the hunt for the Bloody Hawk is well afoot and its trail hot, let’s keep our noses to the ground.
Huzzah for the police. They discovered an old paper business card, burned almost in its entirety, on which ‘Regency Health Clinic’ was decipherable. It seems weird to me this card was somehow burned, as I’ve not seen any trace of fire in the apartment, and I wonder if it did not simply belong to Voss himself. But no, Shrike assures me; she asked Voss—or rather his projection—and he denied ever seeing it before.
This card sounds like the most painfully obvious bait, methinks, and Shrike is of a like mind. But she knows the clinic, knows it is not a good place in which to spring an ambush, and knows the people operating it, who belong to the Three Moons cult and help victims of the crasher virus.
Off we go, closely following Shrike, trying not to be too distracted by the suggestive contours delineated by her bodysuit.
Once at the clinic:
And Isutyr to add:
Right. More civilised. Like that syndicate guy who, holding to the old ways, wanted to literally feast on human flesh.
And now we have the pleasure to briefly meet someone new:
Hello Anashe, my dark sun. You have a stethoscope, I have an irregular heartbeat… wanna see how fast the latter can get?
She welcomes us to the clinic, but unfortunately I don’t have the opportunity to talk to her before Shrike asks to see a doctor Weiyuan.
Hey, Tanka is still around! Tanka being Kaywin’s former boss, whom I helped escape from the Saint Gorfu district on my very first day of work, while the cops were searching for him after putting the area under lock. At the time, he told me his reasons for trafficking were nobler than might seem; and now I guess I have the proof.
Damn it. Surely this won’t lead us to a dead end? But at this point Anashe, via the internal speaker system, starts broadcasting—only to our room—her conversation with people back at the reception booth.
His name is, I kid not, Captain Harlock. Next, in Golgo’s sordid little surgical shop, I’ll find someone having recently changed gender, and named Saotome Ranma.
That’s funny; the other night I heard that exact sentence spoken in the brothel.
The tread of heavy boots precedes the arrival of Captain Harlock and his troops, who are not at all in search of such llegal Narsum cache as can surely be found in this clinic, but quest after a man, Gushanese, in his thirties. “I will,” Harlock says, “need copies of your security footage and intake records.”
Drinking deep from the fount of loquacious eloquence, doctor Weiyuan answers:
Citing the confidentiality of patient records as protected by the NOCA Act, the good doctor refuses to cooperate. A detective, Jafesson (him with a red cap, who resembles a Pokémon trainer), strides forward and strikes her across the face, thereafter barely facing a reprimand from his superior. Tempers rise; spit flies by the globful; insults are hurled with utmost vehemence. Zafra speaks for all on our side when to one of the cops she says:
Still, a fight here and now does not seem the wisest. More than anything, I don’t want the doctor, my one potential source of information anent the Bloody Hawk, to be hurt.
Alas the hot-headed and addle-brained detective from before reminds Captain Harlock that the people having ordered this raid on the clinic vastly surpass his meager authority. And so we have to defend ourselves in a fight.
A fight from which we easily emerge victorious. This being a good opportunity to mention the fact that, since the beginning of the game, I have not bought nor equipped a single found weapon or item of any kind. Each character still uses the starter gear, down to their plain everyday clothes; and there is not a hint of struggle during fights. But it’s fine, as the game obviously is more interested in a strong narrative.
So then, we emerge victorious as I said. But cop reinforcements barge in, fingers on triggers; and mazedly I observe while events take a weird, at once dream- and nightmare-like turn.
The guns fire butterflies, of all things. After which a wave of something washes over all that is.
Hey… are you by extension calling me a rabbit? Not cool.
Turning to Jafesson, and tracing arcane symbols in the air with his hands, the man continues:
“When I was young, they said this was the way of the world. The fierce eat the weak. That the actions of good men are lost like sands in the desert. And I’ve pondered this. But I’m no longer young. And I’m not a grain of sand. My will shall be the way of the world. And my will is to carry justice for those who cannot.”
Reaching out to Jafesson with an open palm, the man then deliberately closes his hand into a fist, causing Jafesson’s body to jerk like a doll on strings, to the hideous, muted cracking sounds of his bones.
In turn, all other officers save Harlock suffer a like fate.
Talking directly to Shrike, the man then restores her ability to speak and, with difficulty, she expresses great surprise, eventually asking, “Aren’t you supposed to be dead? You’re also skinnier than I imagined.” To which he replies, “History usually lies.”
Xai Revel. That’s exactly the kind of names we’d find in The Clone Wars, like Savage Opress, Kinash Lock, or Cad Bane.
And just like that, it’s ruined. 
Tyranicon, let me try and put it this way, and hopefully I’ll manage to well convey my meaning: so far, who this guy is was perfectly clear. Or more precisely: perfectly clear and unclear at the same time. From what I’ve read in-game about MoonFall’s history, from what little I’ve learned about the cults, and from Xai’s own quasi-monologue and actions a minute ago, I understood the following: he is a figure of eld, likely coeval with historical figures since then enshrined in legendry; his power as a Shaper at least rivals but possibly far exceeds that of anyone alive or dead; and the return of such a god-like figure as his will doubtlessly beget a great emotional tumult in certain cults, tumult that will then ripple along the fabric of MoonFall, possibly tearing at it in place.
So then, after the unavoidable and patronisingly insulting, “Please, remind the room who he is again?” what does Shrike explain to me? That. That, which I had already understood, but in different terms.
Don’t take what I’m about to say as a straight insult, given there’s an important caveat afterwards.
What you just did is something Brandon Sanderson—god, even just mentioning his name annoys me—does all the fucking time; and while he is monstruously successfull, I’ll forever defend the notion he’s one of the worst writers in existence.
In his books, he will systematically leave a trail of obvious crumbs, starting from page one then wasting ink over however many chapters his bloated books ramble on. Then at the end of said trail, he will summarise everything learned so far; sometimes in the form of a barely-disguised list, and conveyed via a straight internal monologue, or via one character spouting recapitulotary inthoughts at another character.
In doing this, he his basically saying to the reader, “And now I’ll spell it out for you, moron, in case you didn’t pay attention.” I hate that man.
The caveat—the extenuating circumstances if you will—being this: that entire scene in the clinic, limned by the backlight of various little prior elements peppered throughout the game, was great.
So why then immediately diminish its effect, its accomplishment, with the wholly redundant and patronising explanations of Shrike? You did the work. You did it well. Trust your readers to understand it; and if they don’t… fuck ’em?
Comments are closed