Part 19

Okay, so we're in Scrap, we just recruited a few losers and Gen, and there's some jerkface here with a ring.

He's the little guy in the back with the impressive fedora/derby hat sort of thing going on. Not a lot of guys can pull that sort of wardrobe off.

I'm not going to go into the concept of the spanish language somehow existing in some sort of crazy multi-planet fantasy world like this.

Sex.

Sex.

White Knights Gen and Lute leap into action.

Riki, new to this world and unaware of its methods, has just enthusiastically whored out his best friend for jewelry.

I don't think a man with a hat like that could ever disappoint.

Back at the bar, our group plans their daring rescue. Hey wait, why is the drunk handing down orders?

Oh, Lute. Always checking out the back doors.

Lute and Riki sneak in through the back while Gen and T260G engage more enemies than they could possibly handle at this point in the game. Luckily, they manage to miraculously win while offscreen.

Mei-ling doesn't like short men, regardless of their choices in hats.

Oh, sure. Like Riki contributed anything to this rescue effort at all.

Riki is too young for where this conversation is going. :mmmhmm:

More important than Mei-ling, however, is this free money.

We head into the main part of the factory, though we check the side rooms first like a good RPG player (our rewards are more money and a crappy sword).

There are several snipers set up throughout the area, and if we get into a fight near one of them, they take potshots at us in each round of combat.

So we are forced to deal with them in various nifty ways...

The guy on the right's getting a box dropped on his head, in case you can't tell.

Along the way, Riki becomes some sort of flying axe creature.

I won't be documenting all of Riki's transformations, simply because there will be a lot of them, but I wanted to note this one since it was the first, and also because he has 1 damn Intelligence.

Caballero sends some robogoons after us.

Video: T260G's pretty much a one shot guy at this point.

We agree on a discount of sorts afterwards.

One down, Too Damn Many to go!

This one's the Merchant Ring, which is decent in battle and gives a Charm boost to whoever equips it.

This chick usually charges 100 credits, but the game takes pity on you for choosing Riki.

You can always find Mei-ling chilling over here in Riki's quest, she gives you leads on where the other rings are hidden.

Here's the list. "Missing guy" sounds ambiguous enough to be interesting.

Oh damn, don't want THAT one.

fuck

Yeah, yeah, we saw this scene in Blue's quest. Fast-forward a bit...

Mei-ling is a bit apprehensive after Fei-on shows up, so Riki decides to introduce himself.

Die in a fire, Riki!

Of course, they know each other. They're the only ones in the game with dashes in their names, after all.

Fei-on's ship was eaten when he was heading off to train, Mei-ling is needy and obsessive, blah blah.

After heading back to Fei-onville, Riki presses for ring info.

So we head off to Nomad's, who I'm sure will be very understanding and give us the ring immediately.

Surprisingly, she announces her desire to take our rings!

Riki calls her an old lady, and she sics numerous skeletons and emo-hair guys on us.

Several battles later, we reach her room and are forced into another mid-boss fight with that Platypus guy from Red's quest.

Nomad escapes down a hatch that apparently leads to the core of Tanzer or something.

Nomad has been swallowed by Tanzer's heart or something, though you can't really tell by looking at the screenshot.

Video: Yeah...can you tell I fought this battle a little early?

Despite disintegrating in the standard boss sprite death animation, Nomad is unhurt.

Considering how easy it seems to be to engage Tanzer's gag-reflex, I'm surprised these people have been trapped in here this long.

Fei-on arrives late, having gone off to save some children. Mei-ling was worried, while Riki appears to be falling asleep.

And the somehow fully intact ship gets spit out, leaving us one ring and one karate dude richer.

More to come tomorrow. I want to finish Riki by Sunday, which shouldn't be too hard.