Gavial, a Rhodes Island medic operator, hails from the Sargon jungle. One day, a letter arrives from home. The rite that elects a new Great Chief, 'Mahuijotia,' is being held again.
Gavial decides to take the opportunity to show the Doctor and Ceobe around her hometown. With Kal'tsit's permission, she's even borrowed a low-altitude aircraft β there was no more perfect vacation plan than this.
But the aircraft gets hit by an unidentified anti-air gun over the jungle and crashes. The homecoming of an old hero turned doctor was thrown wildly off course right from the start.
1. Crash Landing, and Miss Gavial!
The Doctor wakes from a strange dream, talking with an unknown voice. Opening their eyes reveals Gavial and Ceobe, and the middle of a desert.
The aircraft had been shot down and made a crash landing. Thankfully no one was seriously hurt, but the aircraft's engine had already been torn out and taken by someone.
Lancet-2, who'd been guarding the aircraft, nearly got dragged off as loot herself. Leaving behind her cry of "I'm just a piece of medical equipment!", Gavial steps in to block the thieves.
It's Gavial! Gavial's come back! Brothers, hurry and go tell Chief Eunectes!
β AdakrisA
Watching the thieves flee at the sound of a single name, the Doctor gets a real sense of just how heavy Gavial's name weighs in this jungle.
In truth, even getting Kal'tsit's permission for this trip had been quite an ordeal. To the question "why bring the Doctor along, of all people," Gavial had only mumbled evasively, and it was Blaze's pleading and cunning that finally got the stamp on the application.
"The low-altitude aircraft is a valuable piece of Rhodes Island transportation. Return it without any damage." Kal'tsit's request had, just now, been perfectly and thoroughly broken.
Right after, a familiar scream echoes from across the jungle. "Ga~~vi~~al~~ maaa'am~~!" It was Tomimi, the junior who'd grown up with eyes only for Gavial since childhood.
2. Acahualla, Shown on a Single Map
The moment Tomimi finishes her tearful, snot-streaked reunion greeting, she unfolds a map. She boasts that even her own tribe's name has changed β from 'Will of the Wilds' to 'Will of Gavial.'
The rite's format is simple. Knock down every challenger, and you're Great Chief from that day on. The strongest right now is the Eunectes tribe, settled near the mines β led by none other than Gavial's old friend, Zumama.
Walking along, they get into it with a group of Adakris, and the reason, unbelievably, is a debate over tail thickness. Gavial stakes the pride of the thin-tail faction and gives them all a beating.
"Huh? Wait, your tail's gotten thicker too." As Gavial teases her, Tomimi's eyes well up. "I want a thin tail like yours too, Miss Gavial..." Even after all these years, this tribe's biggest concern remains, without fail, tail thickness.
Nearing the temple, an unfamiliar tune drifts out. It's a trace left behind by AUS, a band that drifted in here a few years back and settled in for a while.
3. Great Chief Duel β Long Time No See, Zumama
Inside the temple, the rite is already in full swing. Gavial, once an orphan cast out as a child, still leaves the challengers no chance. Two punches usually settle it.
Just then, an unhinged Ceobe crashes onto the stage shouting "Give the Doctor back!" The crowd mistakes her for a new challenger, and Gavial decides to just watch for now.
Once the commotion settles, Zumama finally appears. Once a quiet friend who was only good at fighting, she now stands there wrapped in strange equipment, going by the name Eunectes.
"You solve too much with your fists, so you never even think to try anything else." Eunectes presses Gavial, telling her that's her limit β and all of their limits, too.
It's time to change. From now on, it's the age of machines.
β Eunectes
4. The Big Ugly Thing
To the sound of a chant, something enormous walks out of the forest. A weapon the Eunectes tribe spent years painstakingly building, named none other than 'the Big Ugly Thing.'
A single blast brings the temple down, and Gavial goes flying along with it. The rite ends right there, and as a result, Eunectes becomes the new Great Chief.
Waking up, Gavial is surprisingly calm about it. "If I lost, I lost." Her expression carries less frustration than sheer fascination that her old friend built something like that.
5. Pebble Sickness, and the Reason She Became a Doctor
But one of the injured looks serious. Originium crystals on the skin, difficulty breathing, blood-flecked phlegm. What Yota of the Eunectes tribe had come down with was Pebble Sickness β Oripathy, treated in this land as just another common local ailment.
Gavial's expression hardens. She guesses that Eunectes, in the name of building her weapon, had sent her people into dangerous mining.
"It wasn't until I left this place that I realized just how despised Oripathy really was." Gavial herself had caught the disease as a child, trying to save Tomimi. After that, the tribe wrapped her in cotton wool, letting her do nothing, and an angry Gavial beat up the whole village at the rite and left her home.
"I don't care about the age of machines or whatever. But if you treat human lives lightly, I'll knock some sense into you." Gavial decides to go see Eunectes, as a doctor this time.
6. Scattered Comrades, Reunited
On the way, they stop by the jungle marketplace. Yi Nam turns out to be an envoy the Sargon government had secretly planted in this no-man's-land. A Liberi whose hobbies are napping and gossip, but who takes his official role quite seriously.
There's also Croissant, who wraps up negotiations purely through gestures even when the language doesn't connect. She trades away ore for a few seashells and pebbles, then flashes a beaming smile the moment her counterpart turns their back.
Just then, an urgent message comes in β the village has been attacked. The culprit is Utage. She'd simply beaten up some passing Adakris and, before she knew it, somehow ended up the new chief of a massive tree-dwelling tribe.
Meanwhile, Blaze, who'd jumped into the jungle late, has a showdown with a strange girl, Flint. The result is a total win for Blaze. Once she comes to her senses, Flint declares on the spot that she's now Blaze's disciple.
With comrades gathered one by one like this, Gavial's group sets off once more, toward the Eunectes tribe.
7. Will of Gavial
Meanwhile, at that very hour, the other tribal chiefs are gathered in secret. The owner of the voice is, surprisingly, Tomimi. She reveals that she's the one who organized this entire rite herself.
"Miss Gavial will surely be able to beat Zumama's giant machine. When that happens, I'll become Great Chief, and I'll make Miss Gavial stay here for good." The chiefs stir at her words, but in the end nod their agreement.
Everything, for Gavial's sake!
β the other chiefs
8. At the Waterfall, Misunderstanding and Reconciliation
Deep in the jungle, at a great waterfall, the group takes a moment to catch their breath. Utage excitedly shows off her swimsuit, Croissant insists her waterproof gear counts as a swimsuit too, and Ceobe splashes around half out of her mind.
Tomimi, who joins them late, seems oddly restless. Even when Gavial asks, she just brushes it off with "I have some things to prepare." No one else notices anything off β except for one person.
Arriving at Eunectes's settlement, Gavial confronts her bluntly. Did you force your people into dangerous mining?
But the truth was the exact opposite. Yota, sick as he was, had gone deep into the mine on his own β a place he'd been told never to enter β just to impress the Great Chief. "You idiot, I told you never to go in there!" Eunectes was the one who got angry first.
Gavial apologizes readily. The misunderstanding is cleared up, but the matter of the engine's return is a separate issue. "I'm not giving it back." "Then I'll have to make you." "That was my plan all along."
9. That Day, She Saw a Nomadic City
Before the duel, Eunectes brings up something from the past. One day when they were children, one of Sargon's massive nomadic cities had passed through this area.
The sight that was, to Gavial, nothing more than a "wow, that's big," had been, to Zumama, a shock that turned her whole world upside down. From that day, she began teaching herself machinery and the Sargon language instead of fighting.
"You've always been like this, Gavial. As long as someone as strong as you exists, people will always believe fists are the only answer." Eunectes confesses she built the giant weapon to shatter that very belief.
10. The Final Battle, and the End of the Big Ugly
The rematch begins. The High Priest climbs back into the cockpit and pushes the weapon into maximum output mode. There's even a moment where Gavial's fists start to lose ground.
But suddenly, the overheated weapon starts to run wild. The High Priest is thrown clear, and Eunectes desperately tells Gavial's group to fall back β but Gavial only smiles and steps forward. "Gotta help out, right, Doctor?"
In the end, everyone joins forces to bring the weapon down. Eunectes calmly accepts her defeat, and hands Gavial back the engine β broken, but still usable.
The people hail Gavial, who felled the weapon, as their new Great Chief. After a moment's thought, Gavial declares, "While I'm gone, Tomimi will stand in for me!" The expression on Tomimi's face, now an accidental acting Great Chief, freezes in a strange way.
11. Tomimi's Rebellion, and a Tearful Tail-Spanking
When Gavial says she'll return to Rhodes Island to treat Eunectes, Tomimi does a complete about-face. "No. I can't let you go!"
She confesses that this entire rite was her own scheme, all along. To keep Gavial here, she'd spent years rallying the tribes using methods she'd learned only from books. "If Miss Gavial doesn't stay, I won't stop!"
She even resorts to taking hostages to press her point, but in truth, Dylan and Lancet-2 had been in on the act from the very start. The Doctor had already caught on to Tomimi's plan.
"Doctor, don't tell me you knew all along?" Gavial asks in surprise, and the Doctor lays out the clues gathered along the way, one by one β how Tomimi's words trailed off whenever Eunectes came up, how oddly flustered she got every time Gavial acted on impulse, and finally, the bazooka Dylan had secretly brought along.
That very bazooka turned out to be the one that had shot down the aircraft in the first place β an item found in Tomimi's village. From beginning to end, this whole affair had unfolded entirely within the palm of Tomimi's hand.
"You're not someone who gets cornered this easily, Tomimi." Gavial quietly approaches and makes her kneel. "A troublemaker who won't listen naturally deserves a tail-spanking!" Tomimi's crying echoes through the jungle for a good long while.
Back to Rhodes Island Once More
Once the commotion settles, Eunectes comes face to face for the first time with a talking machine, Lancet-2. After studying her intricate joints and smooth lines for a while, she blurts out, "Can I give you a hug?"
Eunectes makes an unexpected proposal to Gavial upon her return. She wants to learn machine engineering at Rhodes Island. Not to be outdone, Tomimi and Flint both tag along too.
The High Priest steps up to settle any worries about the tribe. "Tradition is just a ritual that brings people together β life doesn't collapse just because one custom disappears." The Adakris, meanwhile, have already moved on to arguing over 'who can build the cooler machine.'
Kal'tsit, receiving the return report, threatens to dock the repair costs from her pay, but in the end offers a short greeting.
Welcome back.
β Kal'tsit
Gavial smiles and returns to her everyday life. She still doesn't regret the choice she made to become a doctor.
Whether leaving or returning, Acahualla was, to Gavial, simply home. A home that doesn't need to hold on to her, a home she can always come back to, whenever she likes.