To Your Eternity – S2 20 (Fin) – Peace Taking Root

Fushi, still borrowing Bon’s body until he gets all his vessels back, per Bon’s wishes, enjoys one final meal with his friends and comrades old and new. After everyone discusses their dreams going forward, he declares that Eko has died, and she soon joins Ghost Bon in ghost form. Fushi isn’t ready to bring her or others back until the world is free of Nokkers.

March is understandably upset to be losing her child once again, but Fushi cannot continue spreading his roots to every corner of the world and defeat all the Nokkers without ceasing to be an individual person during that time. March still won’t leave his side, and is ultimately euthanized, which seems damned extreme if you ask me!

That said, March was on borrowed time and was resurrected by accident in the first place. It’s also not goodbye if she passes here and now, because one day Fushi will be back and so will anyone or everyone he loved, if he so wishes.

Another who cannot live without the being he was literally bred to love is Kahaku, who manages to off himself by jumping into the Bennett equivalent of Mount Doom and kill the Nokker living within him, releasing the vessels it stole back to Fushi.

Some time passes, and Fushi’s roots continue to spread throughout the world, becoming an omnipresent part of everyday life. Then one day, without warning, Prince Bonchien Nikolai La Tasty Peach Uralis returns to his family, who immediately glom onto him and shower him with love. Then, one by one, the Beholder describes how all of Fushi’s immortal allies die, each of them for better or worse living the lives they wanted to live.

Time passes…a lot of time. The days of Prince Bon, Uralis, and Renril represented a high renaissance-like era. But when he finally awakens as the Boy (at his original age), he finds himself in a modern metroplolis of skyscrapers, cars, cafés…and his roots.

In this age, the Nokkers are (presumably) all gone, and Fushi is everywhere. His eyes turn from yellow to purple, likely for good. As for what he’ll do in this age, who (if anyone) he’ll bring back, and who he’ll meet, we’ll have to wait for a confirmed Season 3. Until then, mata ne, Pink Blood.

To Your Eternity – S2 19 – Old Dog, New Tricks

When Bon stabs himself and his blood spills on the Fushi orb, Fushi wakes up as Bon, which means now he can see ghosts, including the ghost of Bon, along with his two ever-present ghost buddies. Bon then presents Fushi with Tonari and Ligard, Gugu, Oniguma and March, telling him he can resurrect them all like he’s done with Kai, Hylo, and Messar (who are also present).

Having Fushi (albeit in Bon form) finally be reunited with old friends thought long dead is the highlight of an episode that will have a lot more positive developments come. Fushi almost calling March “Mama”, Gugu’s big bear hug, Horse pushing Tonari into the group hug, Messar freaking out over the actual giant white bear…it’s all great stuff.

Needless to say, it’s also great to see these folks alive and in the flesh (and indeed, the ED has been previewing the return of this particular group). Because they’re all back with their various skills and also immortal like the three warriors, they start to turn the tide of a battle that was quickly going sideways. Forget a gamble; if Bon hadn’t passed his ghost-seeing ability to Fushi, Renril would have surely fallen to the Nokkers.

I was a little confused by what was going on last week, but the Nokker in Eko’s arm (formerly in Kahaku’s arm) saved her from jumping off the tower so it could save itself. Kahaku tracks it down, and it sprouts Nokker flesh zombies of all of the vessels it stole from Fushi. After a brief tussle, Kahaku convinces the Nokker to return to his body, and he’ll promise to keep it alive by continuing the Guardians’ breeding program…only in isolation.

That necessarily means that Kahaku must part ways with his beloved Fushi, regretting that he and his descendants couldn’t do more for him in the past two hundred years. I think he’s selling himself short, as if nothing else, had his arm Nokker not taken all of Fushi’s remaining vessels, the circumstances might not have coalesced to allow Fushi to not only ressurect a bunch of his old friends and allies, but Renril’s soldiers and citizens as well.

Further realization of Fushi’s powers results in an accelerated expansion of his body, and the more people he resurrects, the further back the Nokkers are pushed, until by the time dawn arrives, not a single Nokker remains in the city or within Fushi’s senses. With the great battle won thanks to Fushi reaching more of his possibly boundless potential, the final episode can be about both celebration of victory, and those he brought back deciding how they’ll all move forward.

To Your Eternity – S2 18 – Bringing Out the Deathless

March is just a hair too late to reunite with her “child”, as all of Fushi’s vessels are stolen from the Nokker in Kahaku’s arm. When he chops that arm off, it escapes and runs off, leaving a distraught Kahaku, March…and Horse. So what now? March gets on Horsey and rides to find a doctor.

Her path takes her through swarms of Nokkers overruning the city and its defenses, which are now crippled because there’s no Fushi to repair structures or replenish ammo. The three immortal warriors are also out of commission. All hell is breaking loose. But March does manage to attract Bon’s attention. He comes to Booze Man’s house, and is soon follow by Eko, who recovers Fushi in orb form, still attacked to the city.

Bon believes the only way to bring Fushi back is to remind him of the sights, sounds, and smells of the ones he absorbed, since there’s still something of them within him in that orb. He achieves this by stabbing himself, dying, and becoming one of the ghosts that once haunted him. Then he, Gugu, and all the other dead vessels place their ghost hands on the orb, in hopes of bringing him back.

That resurrection can’t come soon enough, as Renril has been all but lost to the relentless Nokkers, who as we know are determined to “free” every person on earth from their physical bodies. A desperate fight outside the hospital ends with Kamu getting smashed by a Nokker ball, then Sera getting arrows in the back from what appear to be Nokker-controlled metal puppets.

Eko, who has a Nokker infecting her arm, spends a good deal of the final third of the episode preparing to leap off the tower (a scene foretold in the OP), but that arm stops her fall, and from it emerges Fushi’s head, this time with those purple eyes Bon bestowed upon him way back when. I am not entirely sure what is going on, but it definitely was a lot, and I can only hope that the fortunes of Fushi, his friends, allies, and the people of Renril will improve when all’s said and done.

To Your Eternity – S2 17 – No Exit

When Fushi spots March’s tiny handprint on the wall, indicating that she’s alright, he recreates her body and disconnects it, just as he does for the three immortal warriors. The body doesn’t come to life because March is still alive somewhere in the city. Fushi just doesn’t know that. No one does.

Hylo faces a moral crisis of sorts when he encounters a thief breaking evac protocols. The old man doesn’t care about consequences, he was born and raised in prison and never had a roof of his own under his head. Hylo lets him go, but that same thief ends up killing a young boy when he robs a house. Is he damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t?

The biggest blow to the immortal allies, however, is Messar. He arrives at the palace to find Alme mourning the death of her father the king. Then she runs to the nearest balcony to jump off, and he catches her. He lifts her veil to reveal she’s become infected by Nokkers. He’s forced to kill her, then asks Fushi to bring her back to life. He produces a copy of Alme’s body, but there’s no sign of life.

Being asked to bring Alme back reinforces Fushi’s suspicion that Bon, who gathered the three allies, is keeping something from him (which is true!). That’s confirmed when Bon says he can’t discuss it until the battle is over and won. He won’t talk about it, just as he hasn’t brought it up ever, because he doesn’t want to shoulder Fushi with yet one more thing.

And yet, in the closing hours of this, just the fourth day of the Battle of Renril, the weight Fushi already carries threatens to crush him. His nose is almost always bleeding, forcing him to shift from one vessel to another constantly. Kahaku frees himself (by killing Kai), then accidentally kills the three when they resurrect at the Booze Man’s house for dinner.

Fushi initially says he wants “a breather”, but then confides in Kahaku that he wants this al to end. The constant death, pain, anxiety, and creeping  defeat as the Nokkers continue their relentless advance—it’s all too much. Kahaku says he’ll help Fushi, but then his left arm suddenly goes berserk, tearing and slashing at Fushi’s vessels one by one.

In the midst of this, the March he unknowingly resurrected bursts through the door, having been brought there by Horse. She scuffles with Kahaku and his arm, begging him not to kill Fu-chan. His mother, the one who named him two centuries ago, is finally here. Will she be able to save him not just from this assault, but his own feelings of despair and futility?

To Your Eternity – S2 16 – Cheat Code

Fueled by rage and his hatred of Nokkers, Fushi punches it into overdrive, constantly transforming into different vessels once he gets exhausted, which happens at different intervals with different vessels. Then, when the Nokkers have Fushi cornered, he is rescued … by Kai, Hylo, and Messar, who have been resurrected.

We later learn Bon did so by disconnecting the bodies from Fushi by cutting the rope. It’s Bon’s way of easing Fushi into the realization that he is capable of resurrecting dead people; the three warriors are a trial run. Fushi puts them to good use, but in cases where he transports them from one distant location to another, the fastest way to do so is for them to die.

As the logistics of defending Renril continue to grow in complexity as the battle rages on, the cycle of death and rebirth, and recycling of material (both rubble and corpses) takes on a nightmarish scale and level of efficiency. Fushi can pretty much infinitely conjure crossbow bolts, gun bullets, and the bodies of his three deathless allies.

This is the kind of shit that gives Kahaku pause, because the more Fushi takes on and creates with his expanding powers, the more he risks losing his humanity. You can see it in his relatively blank expression when the warriors decide to kill themselves as a shortcut.

When Kamu and the other citizen soldiers restrain Kahaku, they fear he’s a Nokker (he also cuts off Yuiss’ arm because she got infected, so he really saved her life). Kahaku, perhaps given unique perpective by his left arm, still sees “the black demon” as the ultimate puppet master and not someone deserving of loyalty.

Kahaku is on Fushi’s side; the only one looking after his well-being as a person. Everyone else considers that a luxury they can’t afford, they, including Bon, need him operating at peak efficiency and, where the Nokkers are concerned, peak lethality.

So it’s heartening as Fushi continues to get swept up in a maelstrom of death and destruction with no end in sight, he happens to spot March’s unmistakable calling card: a handprint that indicates she’s “doing great”. I wish I could say the same of Fushi!

To Your Eternity – S2 15 – The Enemy in Front of Us

The Nokkers’ initial attack is with massive trebuchets that can fire projectiles at Renril’s walls from many kilometers away. While well out of reach of the city’s trebuchets, Fushi has set roots well outside the walls, and sets to work demolishing the Nokkers. Seeing Fushi so exhausted so early in the battle does not bode well, but if he lets up to rest, the city will be overwhelmed.

He notices when March separates from her rope, but it’s something he doesn’t remember feeling before. Bon wonders if it’s because someone was just born, but we know he knows that Fushi’s vessels can resurrect. March is found by a kindly passerby who takes her home so he and his wife can feed her, but she soon escapes and heads off in search of Fushi.

After one of the female soldiers discovers that the Nokkers have poisoned themselves so that they would poison the main water supply when attacked, Fushi has to expend even more energy filling the city cisterns with clean water. His Sandel vessel collapses while defending the walls with Bon, Kai, Hylo and Messar. Then one of the projectiles fired from the Nokker trebuchets cracks open like an egg, revealing hundreds of Nokker cores.

The three warriors, Bon, Kahaku, and even Eko take up arms to protect the unconscious Fushi and the rope connecting him at all costs. And there are costs. Dozens have died early on, and Fushi is already devastated, but when he wakes up, he learns that Kai, Hylo, and Messar have all been killed. Eko uses her clay pot to show him how they all died valiantly defending him. Now that they’re all vessels of his, he reproduces their bodies to grieve…and fume.

Fushi has never hated Nokkers more than he has in this moment, and his rage is almost Eren Yeager-esque in its intensity. He conjures his Nameless Boy form and just goes out there and starts hacking away at any and all Nokkers and Nokker-infected people.

Renril still stands, and the majority of its people remain safe. He just has to keep it that way. And in the midst of all this death and the presence of Chekhov’s March, he is eventually going to learn that he can resurrect people.

To Your Eternity – S2 14 – The March Begins

Princess Alme couldn’t afford to take Fushi at his word, but now that she’s witnessed his sundry good words across Renril, she has decided to trust him with her kingdom, capital, and palace. She takes him to meet her father King Boldron, but he’s not in his room. Fushi then senses intense pain and finds him on the balcony.

The king appreciates this stranger’s kindness, but he considers himself a “walking corpse” for which nothing more can be done. In the ultimate gesture that she can now trust Fushi completely, Alme removes the veil covering her face, and gives him her blessing to complete the preparations by dismantling and rebuilding the palace.

One must suspend one’s disbelief in the logistics of such an undertaking; even if it were imploded, the sheer mass of the palace would cause widespread destruction to the surrounding buildings. It’s fine though, it’s Fushi, and this is basically magic anyway. What’s different is that unlike those other buildings, there’s no hiding the palace being torn down and build back up. Fortunately, Fushi now has the trust of the entire city. He doesn’t have to hide anymore.

Pocoa returns to Renril with knights from Uralis, as well as Iris and Chabo. Much of the final days of preparation are from Pocoa’s perspective as she is starved for attention, particularly from men. But she proves a useful rallying voice for the troops, and also gets Kahaku’s Nokker to admit it is scared about what might happen if it departed from Kahaku’s left arm.

When Bon asks Fushi to replicate some of the anesthetic gas he used on the church at his own execution, he ends up passing out himself, which was Bon’s intention. He gathers Kai, Hylo and Messar and summons “Mister Black”, whom he deeps the true “captain” of the ship upon which they’re about to embark.

The Beholder, who seems annoyed Bon and the others can see him, insists he’s only there to observe Fushi, his eventual replacement. When Messar stabs him, the Beholder throws him against a wall and turns his sword into a crumpled paperweight.

Yet even knowing what a dubious entity has been guiding Fushi so far, the three lads (not sure why a woman isn’t among them), like Bon, have made their choice. Even when Fushi tells them they can still flee and save themselves, they tell him they have no intention of dying in this battle. They’ve all come from places of regret, and their intent now is to restart their lives.

Speaking of restarting: Fushi strategically places the empty bodies of his other vessels throughout the city so he can quickly transfer himself if directly attacked. As long as they’re connected to him via rope. they’ll be fine, he says. But when the Nokkers appear right on time (Eko is their early warning system), the resulting tremors cause March’s body to slide off the top of the wall…and the rope to slide off her wrist.

She lands in a bed of flowers…and opens her eyes. What Fushi had done before will the ill girl without knowing it, he has now done to her—March is back! It’s a big city, and Fushi and his friends will have their hands full simply stemming the tide of Nokkers assaulting Renril. But I can’t wait to see what happens when Fushi notices March is alive.

To Your Eternity – S2 13 – Fushi for the People

With Fushi having to build quicker to make his daily quotas, he isn’t home a lot, so Eko decides to bring dinner she made to him. It tastes terrible, but it’s the thought that counts. While everyone else is keeping Fushi on task, Eko and Kahaku don’t want him to forget the little things that make us human. But while Fushi appears to be sleeping in his room, it’s just a dummy; the real Fushi is out rebuilding through the night.

One of Renril’s biggest remaining vulnerabilities is its underground water and sewer system, which has to be completely rebuilt to make it Nokker-proof. During this process, Eko notices the water is dirty, tracks down the source of the fouling, and alerts the proper channels, all without saying a word. She even pitches in with the demo work, one stone and plank at a time.

At this point Kahaku has taken on the role of house husband, keeping an Eye on Eko, cooking meals, and keeping the Booze Man’s house clean. He also continues to worry about how hard Fushi is working. Eko lures him home with a clay pot vision of a feast of all his favorites. While he’s initially disappointed to find hot pot instead, once he tastes it, he gives his complimnents to the chef—in this case Eko. It wasn’t her cooking that was bad, but the city water.

Eko’s hard work spurs Fushi to work even harder. Messar gets the princess to agree to extend Founding Day to a week to keep the bulk of the citizens in the festival area, allowing Fushi to rebuild the network of towering walls one by one. The more he builds, the more sensations—both good and bad—he feels. If he focuses too much on them, they overwhelm him. He realizes he can’t help anyone. There are too many people with too many problems big and small.

Fushi’s in a charitable mood the next day, when he agrees to take the fall for Cam in a fighting tournament so he can impress the girl he likes. However, stuff happens that attract the suspicions of the citizen soldiers and Fushi’s little favor to Cam nearly exposes him. That night, the soldiers decide to head out looking for the one doing all the building, wondering if its the Fushi demon the Church of Bennett condemned.

The soldiers end up catching Fushi in the act…of rebuilding a wall. Fushi accepts that he’s been caught with cool resignation—a kind of do your worst, ya ingrates stance. He also boasts that even if the church captures him again, he knows his way out of molten metal now, and will be free again in two days. But by shifting into various forms the soldiers all know, they realize it was Fushi who helped them and their loved ones all those times in the past days, weeks, and months.

The next day, an adamant Fushi decides to walk out onto the streets in his regular form, whatever slings and arrows come his way. But to his surprise, both royal knight and citizen soldier salute him, and he gets nods of approval and thanks from the other citizens. Bon and Messar flank him as he continues his walk, not of shame, but of honor. The people have spoken: if Fushi is a demon, he’s a demon on their side.

To Your Eternity – S2 12 – Biting Down Hard

Last week gave us insight into Kai’s past and why he wants to help Fushi. This week we get the same with his other two new allies, Messar and Hylo. Turns out Messar is casual with Princess Alme because they once played that reversi-type game together as kids. Alme promised to give him anything he wanted if he beat her, but he never got to as he was shooed away as a servant’s son.

When Booze Man!Fushi rebuilds the waterwheel building, he gets offers from impressed and amazed citizens hoping he’ll rebuild their houses as well. Because both the new building and Booze Man’s house are extensions of Fushi, eventually the whole of Renril will be of Fushi as well, and thus far easier to defend from Nokkers.

Fushi finds Hylo sparring with the citizen soldiers in order to gain their trust, and Fushi can sense he’s taking and concealing a huge amount of physical punishment. Hylo tells Fushi that as a child he had his teeth pulled and was isolated from the rest of the world, with only his adoptive mother as a companion. The reason for this is that the church believed he was possessed by a demon.

Due to having complete control over his life and upbringing, the Supreme Pontiff made Hylo a holy soldier, but Hylo vowed to free himself from that charge at the nearest convenience, which is why he’s now with Fushi. One of the citizen soldiers, Cam, listens in, and is brought into the fold. He doesn’t like Fushi’s insistence that no one but him fight. The people want to fight and protect what they love.

Fushi now understands Kai and Hylo better, but what of Messar? To Fushi it looks like he just lazes around playing games. But Bon tells Fushi that Messar must have ties to the royal family, as they met and became friends at a gathering of nobles twenty years ago.

The reason Messar is so focused on playing the game (and having Kai teach him how to win) is that he remembered Alme’s promise, and decides to cash it in now. He doesn’t want the throne, he only wants the princess’s trust. So they play. For her part, Alme is happy Messar remembered the promise, and to be able to play with him again.

Messar ends up beating Alme, and she grants him her “trust”, which translates to the crown convincing the population and coordinating demolition so Fushi can rebuild at a faster pace. Still, Alme insists that real trust only comes with time and actions, not won or lost bets. To this, Messar walks up to her and blows her veil away, revealing her beautiful face, much to her chagrin.

Messar then reveals to Bon that he’ll never be king, because he and Alme are half-siblings and he’s the king’s bastard son. He’ll never tell Alme this, so Alme may continue to harbor romantic feelings, but if their brother and father die, he’s determined to be the one to protect her, hence his alliance with Fushi. Less than three months remain until the Nokker attack, but preparations are progressing smoothly.

To Your Eternity – S2 11 – New Pieces On the Board

Fushi arrives in Renril with Eko, Kahaku, and Horse to survey and make preparations to protect it from the Nokkers, who will attack in less than half a year. It’s the biggest settlement yet he’s visited, and Eko clearly gets a kick out of the size, complexity, and vibrance of the place. Fushi, who was looking very inhuman last week when he became one with the vines, feels a lot more human now that he’s in the big city.

Back in Uralis, Bon has his brother Torta ask the elite soldiers assembled a series of questions intended to give them an honorable out from what may be a one-way trip. Only one walks out, but not because he doesn’t intend to join Bon’s cause. On the contrary, the soldier later reveals himself to be an acquaintence: Kai Renald Roulle. He, along with the former Church of Bennett soldier Hylo Rich, accompany Bon to Renril.

The third ally, Messar, they meet in the city. The triad have loyalty, apostasy, and cunning, and Bon believes that not only are they worthy of his and Fushi’s trust, but are the best people to make into the new batch of Immortals. Fushi is upset to hear that the allies Bon gathered are still human, as he has always found using people’s bodies distasteful.

Even so, Bon believes this is the only way to win the battle before them. They all appear before Renril’s Princess Alme, and Fushi, who is in a bad mood, doesn’t mince words about her fate should she refuse their help. Alme doesn’t challenge Fushi’s assertions, but ask that rather be handed the things they need—the trust and cooperation of the people, the castle, the entire city—that they go out and obtain those things for themselves.

Fushi remains skeptical and bitter towards Bon—their first fight, if you will—and the ever-smitten Kahaku even offers to re-take his place as Fushi’s eternal companion in Bon’s place. Fushi is in a hurry, but Messar tells him not to cross the princess, and that there’s a proper way to do things in Renril.

Kai can tell Fushi is restless, so he invites him to play a Reversi-type game with him. While they play, Kai regales Fushi with the details of his background, in which their city was attacked by Nokkers, but he, his father and grandmother all survived.

Kai joined Bon’s army, and eventually his remaining family members passed, but he remained determined to live a life of purpose as long as he could. That’s why he finds the promise of Fushi’s abilities so attractive. If Fushi acquired him, he could live, and serve, forever. Fushi has lost many vessels, but Kai, Hylo, and Messar are offering themselves willingly as new pieces on the game board.

Thanks to Eko, who is very sensitive to change, Fushi notices a collapsed water wheel building on the edge of town, and sees his first opportunity to gain the trust of the citizens of Renril. He restores the building in a single day, and also builds Booze Man’s house behind it, to serve as a base of operations. With the people in awe of his feats, winning over the castle and princess can’t be far behind.

To Your Eternity – S2 10 – Eko From the Beyond

Fushi has been hard at work training on the beached galleon, but is running into problems replicating something so big and complex. He’s able to summon forth each and every part of the ship, but not the ship in its entirety. The Beholder advises him to develop better “awareness” that the objects he creates “belong to him.”

Prince Bon and Kahaku are also hard at work, defeating Nokkers and warning the crown princess of Renril that a Nokker attack is coming. While the masked, obscured princess refuses to abandon the castle or town, she does agree to an alliance. Taking a break from training, Fushi discovers a town.

There he finds new fruits and vegetables at the market, and pays for them with money. He then finds poor and starving people and gives them the food he bought, but when he tries to give money to a woman and her kid he’s met with resentment and suspicion. The woman won’t let him “control” them with his money.

Fushi then senses intense pain coming from a filthy girl with big eyes who is trapped in a cage in a circus tent. He breaks her and her little brother out in the middle of the night and rides back to his galleon base, but on the way the boy dies and he buries him.

Back aboard the ship, Fushi ensures the girl doesn’t meet the same fate, as he feeds her, shows her his menagerie, sews her a dress, bathes her, and cuts her hair. Since the only word she says is “-eko” in response to the presence of a cat (neko), Fushi decides to address her as “Eko.” She stays aboard while he continues his training.

When she senses her falling after trying to plug a leak, he transforms into her brother, and is able to communicate with her through her clay pot, which is apparently a particular ability of her people. This experience helps him to better understand the Beholder’s advice, and he rejects the idea that he “controls” anyone or anything.

Rather, he has to look at things as having always been a part of him. Everything he sees or has ever seen is not merely a collection of possessions, but his very existence itself. He surrounds the ship with an elaborate tangle of vines from his body, and from his spot below deck is able to achieve a number of tasks remotely.

After a while without any contact, Kahaku and Bon decide to return to the beach to check on Fushi, and find that he’s essentially created his own little mini-world. His face covered and body constrained by vines, Fushi confirms that everything within a 3km radius of him…is him. 

He’s also able to teleport, after a fashion, by creating an ambulatory copy of himself through the network of vines. He prepares tea and pastries for his friends and introduces them to Eko, whose people Kahaku is aware of. Fushi communicates with her again as her brother, and learns she has no home to return to, so she’ll be accompanying him on their mission to protect Renril. She seems fine with that!

Bon heads to Uralis to try to find “Immortal allies” that will help them, while Fushi, Eko, Kahaku and Horse head to the beautiful and imposing palace city of Renril, where they’ll likely meet with the crown princess and some of her trusted officers.

Considering her prominent presence in the ED, I was looking forward to Eko’s introduction, and was not disappointed. She rivals March and Rynn for cutest character in TyE, and I feel both we and Fushi have only just scratched the surface of her clay pot abilities.

To Your Eternity – S2 09 – A Horse of Course

The Nokkers attack the city, but as usual TYE has presentation issues when it comes to capturing the scale and complexity of the ensuing chaos. Events come down to Fushi in his various forms warning townsfolk to flee “east”, which seems somewhat arbitrary. People crowd and convene in the head church, only for that to be the location where the Nokkers appear. As Fushi battles, he loses his vessels one after the other.

By the time the sun rises and the dust clears, the Nokkers have been defeated, but untold people have been killed, while Fushi has lost Parona, Gugu, Uroy, Shin, and Ligurd. Bon and Kahaku are rightfully concerned: if he can lose five of his precious vessels in just one battle, he can scarcely afford to lose many more in the next. A kindly holy knight gives Fushi his blessing, but it’s not enough.

While Fushi has gotten a lot better at fighitng the Nokkers, we’ve arrived at a point where they’re a step ahead, hiding in quicksand and capitalizing on his lack of muscle (March can’t really fire arrows, for instance). The Beholder ends up bailing Fushi out with a Horse he created from a piece of Fushi’s flesh. The horse has a mind of its own, and keeps Fushi from rushing back into battle too soon.

While Kahaku shows that he can still fight the Nokkers off with his left arm, that arm Nokker relays a message from its fellow Nokkers who regard it as a traitor: they’ll be launching an attack on the largest human city in a year’s time. If Fushi wants his vessels back, he’ll go to that city and “play the game.”

Kahaku, Bon, and the forces of Uralis will aid the city in preparation and evacuation, while Fushi stays aboard a beached galleon from Uralis that Bon has designated his new base. There, he must learn how to create larger objects in order to gain a new advantage against the biggest Nokker threat yet.

To Your Eternity – S2 08 – Baron Spring Roll

Bishop Cylira is on the ground, as is the entire assembled crowd for the execution. But Bon lies dead, his bloody severed head next to his body, so Ligurd!Fushi was too late, right? Wrong. Bon wakes up in the brick shelter Fushi built, flanked by his dead companions, but he himself is still quite alive, thanks to Fushi.

Appearing as Rynn, Fushi explains that she studied Tonari’s journal and developed an easily-replicated poison that knocked out the execution crowd and gave her time to rescue Bon and replace him with a dead copy. Fushi makes clear that he wasn’t clever enough to come up with such a plan, but his vessels’ assembled knowledge (not to mention wings) aided him.

While the Uralis royal family initially believes their son dead, and Bon watches from on high (a bit like Huck Finn at his own funeral) Rynn!Fushi presents them with the still-alive Bon, and they gang-tackle him with elation and relief. That said, now that the church believes him to be dead, he can no longer carry on as Prince Bonchein.

That’s fine with him, as he cuts his hair and shaves to hide his past identity. He now realizes that he’s happy just to be with his family, and no longer thirsts for the throne. Todo is also reported to have died serving his prince, so the now skinny-from-malnourishment Iris sees no further need to hide her true self.

Meeting Iris, the girl he met at the palace who gave him the flower handkerchief, briefly breaks Bon, due in part to how he treated her when she was Todo. After meeting with Chabo, he sulks in his bedchamber, then chews Iris out, as he can’t believe she and Todo were the same person.

This leads Iris to run to the tea table to scarf down enough food to get fat again, but Bon stops her, apologizes for his harsh words, and asks her to stay at the castle with him and his family.

Fireworks memorializing Prince Bon light the skies, Iris agrees, and the two commit to taking care of Chabo; a new found family of three. It’s a beautiful, fairy tale ending for Bon, now known as Baron Spring Roll, Iris, FKA Todo, and Chabo. All thanks to Fushi.

As Rynn!Fushi prepares to depart for her next destination, Bon mentions how he said he’d reward her for her service. Bon probes her by asking how she’d feel if all her lost friends were immortal. But after asking this, Fushi feels a pang of pain—it’s Kahaku.

Distraught over the fact the Guardians are disbanding due to Fushi’s condemnation as a heretic and how he was rejected by the woman he loved (Parona!Fushi), Kahaku got ruinously drunk in the stables and tried to cut his Nokker arm off, but failed. The Nokker arm then grabs a knife, not to hurt anyone, but to communicate with Fushi.

It tells her that the Nokker are simply trying to “help everyone”, including their brethren imprisoned by the Beholder. Nokkers are souls, and wish to free the souls of humans from their bodies. “In death you can be free,” etc.  It also says that Fushi can revive the dead, but Bon erases those words from the dirt before they sink in for Fushi.

Finally, the Nokker arm reports that the next target for the Nokkers will be the head church of the Church of Bennett. That means the church’s only hope is the one they just executed for being a servant of the devil. Fushi heads to the church regardless; humans are humans, and they need his help.

Bon prepares to leave the palace for a while, perhaps to help Fushi, and Iris tells him she’ll wait as long as it takes for his return, which is hopefully before Chabo gets lonely. Bon also says that Fushi said he’d be happy if all his lost friends were immortal. If only he knew he could bring them all back if he wanted…