After the hard rain started, we set up a night camp in a cave.

The cave systems in the Petrified Forest were long and complex, the terrain was uneven, and after feeling the power of mysterious explosions and seeing the devastation left behind by Rainwoman, the soldiers of the Bone Dune Station weren't in a hurry to follow us, especially in this weather.

Rainwoman sat on her Prince Charming's lap, holding on to the Vampire Rifle we brought to her. Sitting on Sorry Man's lap was something she did a lot in the anime.

Kimono poured a cup of warm tea for Rain and she drank it without questions. I guess it was obvious that poisoning her right after rescuing her would be illogical.

For a moment, when Rain pointed her revolver at me, I truly felt this run might end, but I should have been more worried about my kneecaps; in the anime, Rain's normal interrogation routine was to first ask a question and then, if the answer wasn't to her liking, shoot the victim's kneecaps and repeat the question.

“– Speedrun is a prophet of secret knowledge from the future, that's what I think. He knows everyone and everything, that's why his mind moves strangely sometimes, but we are always lucky when he guides us.” (Dancer)

“Thanks for vouching for me, Dancer.”

“...You said he was summoned from a painting. What does that mean?” (Rain)

Of course Rain would continue from that.

“Yes, it was something like a painting; a framed, square dimensional portal showing a scene from a another world. It's something I don't understand very well either. I know what happened and I can tell you what happened, but I don't understand why and how it happened. It's a Strangers mystery like the doors of Starfish Mansion. You'll see what I mean when we get there. It sounds weird, but I can only tell what I know... Crys knows what I'm saying, right?”

“You don't understand what 'summoned from a painting' means, but you know something like that happened.” (Crys)

“Yeah. I know this sounds crazy, but that is how Sorry Man came to this world. It's related to Strangers, obviously. Sorry Man is not a Stranger, but he was summoned by Strangers or their worshipers about hundred years ago.”

I glitched into this world through a different type of artificial portrayal of this world, so it's not completely unrelated to my own mystery. A game or anime is just a sequence of frames, after all; a chain of quickly rendered images, a stack of speed paintings.

“From a painting.” (Crys)

“...Hundred years ago?” (Rain)

“He doesn't look that old.” (Dancer)

“Well, Sorry Man doesn't age or change. Anyway, this all happened on an artificial star island called Raft Island, or Raft Dungeon, or Raft Mine, whatever you want to call it. It stands on five metal legs and it's located on the southern part of the Sea of Peace. Caliph Tze knows that place, as do some pirate lords like the captain of Fiery Ships, but it is too dangerous to approach it because there's a constant maelstrom of lightning and spiraling winds hanging over the place. I don't think there's anything to gain by going there, but Sorry Man was summoned into this world on that island and then he walked away from there himself.”

“Walked away?” (Rain)

“He can't walk on water, if that's what you're thinking. He dropped down from the island and walked at the bottom of the sea, I would assume.”

“How is that possible?” (Kimono)

“Strangers being Strangers, doing Strangers things.”

That was the Big Ancient Mystery of the Mu-Ur Quincunx series: Strangers, who were they? What did they look like? Where did they come from? Why did they come, why did they leave?

Their faces were never shown in the anime or game, you only saw their creations – traces of their grasp, craters of their boots; that's what was written in the introductory cutscene.

Some fans suggested that the animals left alive in this world contained hints of their appearance: since Strangers spared spiders, bats, rats, lizards, and so on, they probably saw some parts of themselves in these animals – like how humans see themselves in monkeys, or think that pandas and kittens look cute. Another clue supporting this hypothesis were the cumbersome vehicle controls – the Strangers must have had more than two arms to drive them around comfortably.

But then there was an obvious question to ask: if they didn't look like humans, why wasn't there any pictures of them anywhere? If Strangers looked like spider-lizards, why wasn't there any oral lore about their strange external appearance?

It seemed like the humans of this world had simply forgotten what Strangers looked like.

Ret Gone Yokai was the name of the most widely accepted fan theory: according to the theory, Strangers were actually apparitions from another dimension and people simply forgot what they looked like when they disappeared – like people who forgot the existence of a certain starfish-carving girl in a classic visual novel.

Or if you wanted to use Asian folk tales as comparisons instead, Strangers were “Phantoms from a Floating World” or “Distorted Portrayals from Inverted Dream”.

Another popular fan theory was the God Game Theory: people never saw the Strangers in the first place because Strangers were existences without avatars – civilization-style god game players from a higher dimension or omnipresent ghosts clicking buttons, checking production graphs and giving orders to slavemasters who then micromanaged armies of faceless slaves.

According to this theory, people of this world used to simply follow the “telepathic” orders of Strangers without questioning why – just like real world religious maniacs who committed atrocities with a blissful smile on their face because they thougth gods whispered divine orders in their ears.

Well, many in-universe characters really thought the Strangers were gods, but thankfully our MC party was full of anti-theistic pagans. Gods or not, they were our enemies.

Strangers disappeared hundred years before the start of the series – around the same time Sorry Man came to this world – and it was heavily hinted in the last season that Caliph Tze was working on bringing the Strangers back to this world. And he probably succeeded after the end of the series.

In other words, what anime viewers saw was only the middle part of a bigger story; the short middle part where Strangers didn't exist.

The artificial Raft Island was not a real level or area in the game, just a background decoration. It looked like a star-shaped oil rig made of black crystal and black metal, and although it wasn't meant to be playable area, you could enter the island using a tedious airswim glitch starting from the swimming pool at the roof of Sultan's Palace. You just had to spend ten minutes in real time airswimming over the ocean.

I never tried it myself, but I watched a video of a fellow glitch hunter doing it.

Only the outside parts of the Raft Island were finished, the rest of the place was a mess of level geometry – floating blocks and unfinished textures with a bunch of faceless black-robed NPCs hanging in the air like puppets in a warehouse.

The atmosphere in the area was really creepy and claustrophobic. When you glitched inside, the background music disappeared and was replaced with a low, crackling loop of monotonous hum. All you could do inside was to push the faceless puppets around and collect them into piles, and the only way to get out was to log out from the game.

In the anime, the scene at Raft Island was a surreal, unexplained flashback where Sorry Man stepped out of a painting and Rukhkh-bird flew inside a painting; a mystery on top of a mystery. The opened portal paintings seemed to work like the doors of Starfish Mansion, but looked more like decorative slat curtains.

I wasn't sure what to do with all the creepy and unexplained parts of this world. Should I try to find out what they really are about? Should I visit the locations or just leave them alone? Are they good or bad? Should I prevent the strange things from happening, or try to make them happen?

Honestly, I didn't want to touch the weirdness going on in places like the Raft Island and Winter Forest at all. There were six silly places where I didn't want to go: Winter Forest, Deep Basement, Raft Island, Alphons room, Seitheargnagh, front lines of the war, and the eight floor of Bone Dune Station... Seven silly places to not to go to. Not six, and ten was out of the question... and the Sun City.

There were eight silly places – amongst all silly places there were such diverse elements as –

“To make a long story short, Caliph's men followed rumors about an undying dark ghost roaming the woods. Finally the knights found Sorry Man from a burned down opium den, where he was just staring into a broken mirror. Then he was taken to Bone Dune Station for experiments.”

“Opium den? What did they do to him?” (Rain)

“...Probably what you suspect.”

I heard a lightning hit a stone tree somewhere nearby. Pure rage flashed in Rainwoman's eyes.

“Rain, the men there have been dead for a long time already. Concentrate your anger at Caliph Tze for now, okay? We can raid some unrelated opium dens and kill some random drug dealers later. Right, Crys?”

“Sure.” (Crys)

“...What else?” (Rain)

“Well, that's Sorry Man's backstory as far as I know.”

“...And you are going north where he goes?” (Rain)

“Yeah, the northern moors of Loönois. Our future home base is the Starfish Mansion and that's where Sorry Man is heading as well, if you leave him idle. He doesn't move much on his own, except when he's close to certain places like Starfish Mansion. If he's far away, it takes him a longer time to acquire his target, so to speak.”

“...Why that place?” (Rain)

“Now you're asking the right questions. This is the so-called Loönois Anomaly in Caliphs documents, if you've heard of that. It's because it rains all the time in that area. These Strangers anomalies are what Sorry Man mostly reacts to, he's kind of like a walking divining rod. Having him in the party lets us find stuff that would be otherwise hard or impossible to find. It's a big stroke of luck for us that Caliph Tze still doesn't know about this aspect of Sorry Man. Starfish Mansion is the strongest anomaly, so that is Sorry Man's main target, if smaller targets like Strangers Cube or Rukhkh-bird are not in immediate vicinity. For us, Starfish Mansion is a safe place because it cannot be seen normally. And that's obviously good for you, Rain, because you can hide inside the anomaly – hide a rain inside a bigger rain, hide a lake in the ocean.”

Rain nodded. She seemed to be done asking about Sorry Man's past for now. Crys, you didn't spike her tea with sedatives or anything? It's good that Crys lets me to do the talking here, but you just never know what he's plotting behind the scenes.

“Caliph Tze will keep sending groups of soldiers after you and Sorry Man, and they'll eventually find you by following the rainclouds, if you don't hide in the Loönois rains. It's clever, right? It was actually your own idea in the future, so just pat your own back for it. The Loönois Anomaly is large enough that your rain curse is just a drop in a lake. Winter Forest would also work because the heavy snowfall there hides your rainfall as well, but that place is too cold and too dangerous for long-term occupancy, and... well, there's weird stuff going on we don't want to trigger. But you should be able use the Winter Forest as an escape route in the worst case scenario. Just remember to follow the frozen river south and don't get caught by crazy forest tribes driving aerosanis.”

“...Why are you helping me? What's your end purpose?” (Rain)

“Well, because I know that in the future you are our friend and ally. It's good to help friends, right?”

Mu-Ur Quincunx was my favourite hang out series. I didn't speedrun it just because I liked the story or gameplay, I played it because I liked hanging out with my favorite characters. Good, bad, or ugly – these characters really felt like they were my friends.

“We have the same ultimate goal, killing Caliph Tze. After all these preparations, my dream ending for this run is to one-punch-kill the final boss, but since there's no quicksaves or anything, I probably have to settle for three hits at least.”

“...Your dream is to kill Caliph Tze with one hit?” (Rain)

“That would be the ideal ending, yes. If possible, I don't want to trigger Caliph's attacks at all. You know, sneak behind his back and get assassination bonus, or shoot him in the face when he sleeps or something, so that his monologue mode doesn't activate.”

In the game, Caliph Tze had long unskippable monologue segments before, during and after the final battle. I'd like to skip them for good this time.

Rain smiled slightly – or maybe it was just my imagination. Maybe she was just happy because she was sitting on Sorry Man's lap now; that was her happy place.

“...You wish to turn Caliph Tze into a frog and crush him under your boot like he's nothing.” (Rain)

“Well, that's one way to put it. And collect 100% secrets, if possible, haha...”

Crap. I'm going into nervous laughter mode just because she almost smiled. Rewind, rewind!

“Then... how will you continue, to be able to crush the frog in the well?” (Rain)

“First we need to collect enough manpower and matériel to make the run through his domain as smooth as possible. There's a deadline coming, so we need to start working on this immediately, as a team.”

“...What is the deadline?” (Rain)

“There's a certain cutscene– I mean, certain event that will happen in about half a year from now that will make Caliph Tze a lot harder to kill... no, impossible to kill. Like, his hitbox becomes the size of a peanut after that event.”

Kill him before the cutscene, go straight to end credits and skip the whole latter part of the campaign. It was impossible in the game because you couldn't unlock the Reignland area before his power-up and you couldn't put together enough gun to kill Caliph after his power-up, so the only ending you could get was the forced bad ending – just like the bad ending in the anime.

Granted, there were several different endings in the game, depending on if you managed to trap Caliph, or how you trapped him, but all those endings were bad in various ways as well.

The least bad ending was the Uncertainty ending where immortal Caliph Tze was in the same time freeze trap with immortal Sorry Man, but in that timeline all other characters were dead. The good old power fantasy of shooting the dictator in the face and solving everything neatly didn't happen. You were just left wondering how many decades or centuries it takes for Caliph to escape when the trap runs out of juice.

By the way, the trap was colloquially known as TSADAM combo – Time Stop And Delay Attack Magic – because of certain overpowered sorcerer strat in a different fantasy game. Mu-Ur didn't have magic, but you could use Strangers overtech item called Petrification Circle to do something similar in the final boss fight against Caliph: trap him in a low-power circle and take your time aiming at his tiny hit box when it was static.

Of course, you couldn't damage him when he stood still inside the circle because the bullet was instantly petrified when it entered the circle as well, but you could shoot immediately after the circle deactivated. Spamming this cycle was the fastest way to get through the first phase of the last boss fight, and then quickly lose the second phase to end the speedrun.

“...What is a hit box?” (Rain)

“It's the small, weak point you need to hit to kill him. The Heel of Achilles, or the forehead of the goat, so to speak. If Caliph Tze gets his power-up at Rukhkh Mountain, his only vulnerable point is his mouth when he speaks. Aim every shot for his open mouth, if that happens. Also, just in case, if you ever see these circular, black, metallic platforms with glowing white crystals on side, don't let Sorry Man step onto them. It freezes him completely like statue. In fact, everyone here should avoid those time stop platforms, though you are likely see them only in Reignland... Anyway, we should kill Caliph Tze before his power-up so that we don't have to worry about any of this hitbox crap.”

“...And you know this how?” (Rain)

Sigh.

“As I've already explained, I'm a special kind of time traveler. I saw the future and I came back in time to prevent bad future from happening again. I traveled from tomorrow to yesterday, instead of other way around, understand? I mean, you're kind of a time traveler yourself, you know.”

“...What?” (Rain)

“True story. You don't remember it, but you can find historical documents from the Green Monastery of Lauticaa in Fireland about eighty years in the past, written by a weird monk named Massy Okka. I mean, you've certainly wondered how you instinctively know all this stuff about guns, tactics and close quarters combat, right? The reason is that you were sent to the past as an old woman, and then you came back to the future as a teenager inside the Strangers sarcophagus. You've lost these memories of your life in the past, just like your past self lost the memories you acquired in the future, but your body and your subconsciousness still knows the skills you acquired in both of those timelines.”

“Haa...” (Rain)

I keep blabbering stuff she doesn't understand. I should probably change the subject before she gets so confused she starts breaking stuff.

Rainwoman's overall character arc in the anime was messed up because of the time travel subplot, and she was the wrong person to comprehend her own time travel hijinks.

She wasn't stupid or ignorant, mind you, she just suffered from constant brain fog and kept taking battle drugs to alleviate her condition in the future – not the best combo when you want to keep detailed info in your head.

There were several fan theories about how Rain's time travel subplot changed history and how she caused some of the tragic events in the anime timeline herself. One fan theory went far enough to suggest that Rainwoman was the grandmother to the twins, which made certain scenes in the anime quite disturbing.

The only confirmed future-influencing time travel event was her pregnancy, but that was one of the plot strands left unresolved after the series ended. I won't tell her about that stuff.

“...What did you say about my sister?” (Rain)

“Yes, your little sister Mirim is alive at Wineep Dungeon. And no, she's not a time traveler. Oh, and speaking of Mirim, I have good news and bad news. Good news is that I know how your sister can double or triple her power, so overkilling Caliph becomes even easier. She just needs a good weapon and some encouragement.”

”What do you mean?” (Rain)

“Mirim's codename in the future is Death Machine. Now, the bad news, well...”

Should I just come out and say that she needs to die?