Within a few seconds, the ship has landed outside of Zozo and the team is reunited at Twiggy’s bedside, including the Royal Mullet Twins, who hastily smooth their hair and clothes as Winona enters the room. And weren’t these two making out, I mean vigilantly watching the Sunflowardly Lion, in Narshe? God, I don’t care anymore. Winona affects a prayer-like stance next to Twiggy’s bed, and as he’s beseeching her to wake up, I guess, one of the Magicite candies the team acquired from the Empire floats out of him and whines in inscrutable gem speak. Twiggy pulses and glows in response, and finally rouses long enough to say, “Father…?” Oh sweet Jesus, her saying that to any of the men in this room is really the last thing we all need. Do not put your tiny hand in Edgar’s, Twiggy!

Thankfully, Twiggy utters this not because she’s delirious and vulnerable, but because she finally remembers her past. And for another reason we’ll tackle in a minute. “I was raised in the Esper’s world,” Twiggy tells her “friends.” And for the rest of her story, she gives everyone present a tab of LSD and invites them into her dreamy flashback haze to the Time of the Espers. Look, it’s more fun if they all get a little high. I bet they all wish they’d been high when they learned about Rachel!

The sky in the world of the Espers is dim, like, just spitballing, someone took the game’s normal backdrop and slammed the brightness setting all the way down. A shirtless blue Esper that looks like Beast from the X-Men paces back and forth on a ridge as the terrain trembles and Twiggy makes sure we know what’s up by narrating that this is “The Esper World…” Duh, lady. She has nothing further to add as we pick up with a different Esper inside his cave, sweet cave. This looks to be the Aquaman Esper that was in Cid’s tube, but now we can see he has a sweet high ponytail. Like someone else we know! Aquaman emerges from his cave and speaks to Beast, who says, “Emergency! Something’s coming through the gate!” And then he just starts pacing again. I guess it’s not that urgent! Aquaman proceeds without him toward the gate, where he finds a collapsed figure in a pretty red skirt. “Listen well, and think clearly!” Aquaman, now helpfully labeled Maduin, says to this maybe-dead person. Maduin was, indeed, one of the six Magicites that Kyan enveloped in his warm pecs earlier. So, bright future ahead for this guy!

Maduin and I are given a choice to either “Return together” or “Leave her here.” Maduin, of course, decides to drag this lady to shelter, and hopefully nothing creepy will happen. (We’re getting to it!) In a different cave than Maduin was in before, a Tinkerbell-looking Esper hovers over the woman, then reports to Maduin. “She’s pretty weak,” Tink says. “Better let her rest for a moment.” You mean he can’t just start fucking her right away? How will he manage?!

Maybe he should go see what Beast is up to. Wink.

While he’s waiting for this mystery lady to wake up, Maduin chats up the other Espers hanging in this tavern-like cave. A cavern! (I’m sorry.) Elder, a bull mastiff with giant angel wings who might just be an elder, but it’s the only name we get, asks, “Did I hear there was a human here?” That could read either as disgust or giddy excitement. Maduin reasons she probably “wandered in here by mistake,” like it’s the wrong conference room and not another dimension full of magical monsters. Elder doesn’t challenge this, so maybe the gate between the two worlds just really blends into the background.

Spoiler: They seem pretty compatible to me!

It’s been about 30 seconds, so it’s time for Sleeping Beauty to get the hell up and meet her furry Prince Phillip. “Did I awaken you?” he asks. Well, you walked up to the bed she was sleeping in and either nudged the frame until she got out of it or just stared at her like a creep until she noticed, so…no! You’re a perfect gentleman. The woman, of course labeled “GIRL” because who cares, fuck you, asks, “You’re…an Esper? What’s that pendant for?” THAT is the question she most wants answered here? If this seems like an exceptionally strange thing to focus on in her situation, Maduin casually rolls with it by…giving it to her! Sure. “It’s…yours now! It helps protect the Esper World.” That seems very important! Better give it to this human lady who fell through the gate five minutes ago, because she’s PRETTY. “Esper World…” she wonders. “Boy, did I take the low road or what?” Beats me, folks. This feels like something the spitfire heroine in a ’40s comedy would say, while drinking from a highball glass. At least that’s a personality!

Maduin lets her know, now that she’s barely conscious and therefore ready to hit the road, that the other Espers aren’t too keen on her presence here. She ignores this and asks if he is the one who saved her, and he ignores this and introduces himself as Maduin, adding, “I tired of living in the human world…” JOIN THE CLUB. “That world is filled with desire, greed, and loathing. It’s highly infectious…” Yeah, but we have ice cream and you don’t, so fuck off. (Maybe they do have ice cream, but I bet it is lowfat and gritty.) But then he goes on, “Are humans and Espers truly…so different?” I had to rewind this scene twice to make sure I was attributing all of this properly, but that’s really all Maduin. He must really miss ice cream. “GIRL” finally becomes “MADONNA” as she asks, “So…I’m an example of the evil in this world, huh?” She must be remembering what some ripped Jesus figure said in one of her music videos, because Maduin absolutely did not say anything like that. Have either of these two actually responded to anything the other has said? Maduin attempts to backpedal from the words she imagined coming out of his mouth, but no matter: Madonna says she’ll return to her world tomorrow, and Maduin agrees to escort her. Elder, watching them gaze at each other from around the corner, says nothing, but his sprite body language could not be more clearly communicating “These two are going to fuck, and it is going to ruin everything.”

The next morning, Maduin gets out of his twin bed, alone. Outside, Elder asks, “Everything all right? WHAT? The human’s gone?” So Maduin was going to see her out, but slept in, but still knew she was leaving, and the Espers milling around outside did not see her go? Sometimes I swear half the text attribution tags in this game are wrong. Anyway, Maduin brushes past Beast to enter the cave where the gate is located. There he finds Madonna, across a bridge, staring at the cave’s other opening. So many bridges inside caves in this game! He tells her, unprompted, “If you don’t want to return to your world, you may stay here.” Seems like she was fine with leaving, as SHE WAS LEAVING. Whatever. “But humans and Espers can never coexist…!” Madonna objects. Maduin is like, “But if we move in together and have a baby that will surely fix the relationship.” Light paraphrase. To really sell her on the pitch, Maduin dims the lights in the cave and soars above her head, sparkles dripping from his ass. (Hey, you tell me where else they’re coming from.) “How do we know…” he asks, grabbing her and sky-dancing with her mid-sentence, “unless we…observe for ourselves…?”

Wow, this Twilight game’s graphics are terrible.

By the time he’s done talking–and I assume he’s panting heavily from the effort of flinging her through the air in a waltz routine–they’re both suffering from glittery anal leakage. Together, they zoom upward and offscreen, each leaving a single twinkling point of starlight in their wake. The two sparkles enjoin, and in a flash of Stork Logic, leave behind a tiny sprite baby, already swaddled in a white blanket. I really hope there was at least one kid out there in the ’90s who spent years thinking this is where babies come from. “I mean, I lay my glitter and leave and you release your starlight fertilizer?”

With the newborn still hovering in darkness, Maduin announces, “We’ve given her a name…” Madonna’s all, “What?” because apparently “We” doesn’t mean the two parents, but some other “we”! I guess Wolfman had to be consulted. It takes a village, right? “It’s TWIGGY. Not bad, huh?” WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT? There’s someone else in this world named Twiggy?!?! What a wild coincidence!

I’ll stop…right after I note that this miracle baby has a shock of brown hair, which is neither Twiggy’s current green, nor her Amano-issued blonde, nor her Esper-form pink. So either this really is a different Twiggy or this baby is going to spend a lot of her childhood in an over-chlorinated pool. Anyway! Another text cue indicates that two years pass in Esper Town. So thankfully we get to skip the portion of the flashback where Twiggy shits and cries constantly and Wolfman and Tinkerbell keep bringing over casseroles and fun onesies and don’t receive so much as a thank-you from the proud parents. Anyway, Beast collapses in front of the gateway cave. “Humans!!! The nexus between our worlds has opened again!! The wind…so odd…just like 2 years ago…” I have no idea who actually says this. Whoever it is, they continue, as an Imperial soldier emerges from the cave and inspects Beast’s prone body, “But something’s different now… Troops have come seeking our magical power.” And just like that the soldier drags poor Beast by his legs back into the cave and presumably back to the human world, while a second soldier physically prevents Tink from getting to her friend and then, for the hell of it, grabs her too. Elsewhere, someone shouts that soldiers have made it to the Elder’s house. These Imperials are going to be pissed when they realize they went to all the trouble of invading the world of the Espers and only five of the fuckers even live here.

But Gestahl can experience this disappointment personally, as he himself arrives on the scene to revel in his, ahem, success. “Aha! We’ve finally found it!” he shouts in triumph and I believe his first spoken lines in the game. “Those ancient writings told us of this world, and described the awesome magical properties of these beasts!” Basically, Gestahl is an Esper World supernerd who read all the books about it and then discovered it was real. This is the plot of The Magicians. He tells another soldier who’s come through the gate, “Grab them! Riches to any man who captures an Esper! GO!” There are only three left to take! Chop chop!

I can’t remember if Gestahl has already been described, but assuming he has not, the Emperor has long white hair, a bushy white beard that is more of a fumanchu in his sprite form, and long red robes. So, Santa Claus. (In his artwork he also has a cool wrestling title belt, which I assume he won by giving his dad a Tornado DDT.) This doesn’t feel like the time for an entire paragraph about this man’s appearance–even though he is obviously the game’s primary antagonist and very very important!–except for the matter of his age. In my normal due diligence for cast bios I learned that Gestahl is officially 50 years old. That is, 50 in the present day, which would make him 34 in this flashback, in which he looks like Kung Fu Santa. (The man looking like Kung Fu Santa at either age is absurd, and I know he’s near death at 34 anyway, but come on!) But apparently in one guide book he is listed as a much more appropriate 72. His VGR bio will, of course, list him as 50 because it makes me laugh and that’s all I need for something to be canon, but I did want to shout out that one writer from back in 1994 who at least tried to make this timeline reasonable. Good for you!

As more soldiers pour out of the cave opening, we check back in on Maduin and his happy family. Madonna assures him their darling Twiggy is perfectly fine, as the baby lounges on the very bed to which Madonna was first dragged two years ago. That sounded more sinister than I intended it. Maduin joins Wolfman and the Elder (a really niche morning drive-time talk radio show), the latter of whom says they must use their nuclear option, something Maduin calls “the Magic barrier.” I don’t know why I’m acting like that’s cryptic–we can pretty much figure out what it is. “Here’s the plan,” the Elder says. “We’ll cause a tempest that’ll sweep all the nasty creatures out of our realm. Then we’ll seal the gate… I am the last of our kind able to cast this magical seal.” It does not bode well for the Elder’s chances of surviving this when he puts it that way. Maduin objects that the Elder’s “state” might make this too difficult for him, so either he already got roughed up by humans or he’s really, really old, like 34. The Elder is fine with this being his final act if it keeps them all safe. So Maduin, for reasons I don’t really understand, pleads to his, uh, wife? Do Espers get married? I feel like Twiggy might get hung up on this detail. Anyway, as they all turn to her like she’s the most important person here, Madonna says, “I, for one, will not miss the other side…” So I guess they were worried about that? She’s lived on this side for two years and had a fucking baby with an Esper. Did anyone think she wanted to pop back home and visit her parents?

Madonna’s blessing secured, they get ready to do the thing. The Elder leaves, Madonna goes back to standing next to her baby as is her only job, and Wolfman goes back to sitting at the table and not being important. He does decide this is the moment to tell Maduin, “This is all because of that human girl!” I mean, it is both fair to wonder if her showing up here led others to the gate and totally irrelevant at the moment. Wolfman of course goes one step further and outright suggests she is a spy. Lot of that going around in this recap! Maduin tells him to get a damn grip. “No! She’s one of them!” Wolfman insists, probably stomping his furry feet. “Soon she’ll be wearing our hides!” I can’t help but feel like Wolfman’s fear of this is particular to his own appearance. But he was apparently shouting all of this loudly enough for Madonna to hear, and a beat later she’s bolting out the door, and she has Twiggy with her. Everyone present realizes she’s headed for the gate. Good going, Jacob! Now how are you going to imprint on that baby?!

This was totally impossible to predict, but by the time Maduin reaches the gate, the Elder tells him it’s too late to pull Madonna and Twiggy back, as he’s already setting up the barrier. “That fool…” Maduin mutters, and it’s unclear if he means Wolfman or Madonna. Maybe he means Twiggy. Stupid fucking baby! Maduin charges ahead, heedless of what it will mean for him. When he enters the cave, Gestahl and the soldiers are initially delighted that one more Esper has surrendered himself, but they are soon sucked like toast crumbs through the vacuum on the other side of the gate. “Shriek!!!” cries Gestahl. Is he Kefka’s dad? I feel like he might be Kefka’s dad. “Just when we were in reach of a veritable bonanza…!” You really weren’t. You basically got them all.

Maduin finds Madonna on the other side of the bridge, right in front of the portal. She makes sure he knows she’s not a spy, which he didn’t believe in the first place, and maybe Winona could take notes on how to seem like you have faith in someone you supposedly care about. Who am I kidding, he’s probably fallen asleep during this story. Madonna seems confident she can make it back to safety in Maduin’s studly vampire arms, but as he’s pulling her back over the bridge, the little Twiggy egg flies away from them and through the gate. Maybe should have put her in a sling or something! I know, not helping. Madonna’s body follows suit, and Maduin races on foot after them both just as the cave seals shut. At least they’re all going to be together, right? That is surely how this ends!

Maduin, Madonna, and Gestahl are all facedown in a forest glade beyond the gate. Gestahl comes to first and examines Madonna. He’s just wondering who this human woman is when she passes him the wee Twiggy bundle. “Please…take care…of my baby…” she pants at him. It’s possible she’s so out of it that she thinks he’s some random rubbernecker and not the man who just ruined her life, but Gestahl has never even heard the word “subtle” before and has no interest in keeping up any pretense just so this woman will die ignorant of what she’s done. Once he’s quickly pieced together the story of Twiggy’s parentage, based on more or less nothing (maybe there was some human dude over there, too, how would he know?), he says, “How absolutely fascinating! Mwa, ha, ha… She will help us realize our dream faster than we ever imagined!” When Madonna hears this she cries, “N…noooo!!!” and tries to get Twiggy back, but Gestahl–impressively given that he’s holding a baby–punches her, fatally, in the back of the head. Cool adoption situation Twiggy has landed in. Her new dad seems great. (I should really stop giving her shit for being constantly sad, shouldn’t I?) The stone gates seal in the foreground over the sight of Gestahl cackling evilly over Madonna’s corpse and Maduin’s presumably barely alive body.

‘…the calories!’

And we’re back in Zozo, where there is not a dry eye in the house. Just kidding, they’ve all been texting nudes to each other on their phones the whole time Twiggy’s been talking. Speaking of Twiggy, she is back to her normal self. Winona, still standing at her bedside, holds up Maduin’s Magicite again, and it pulses in synchronicity with Twiggy. “That was my father…?” Twiggy wonders. “I’m the product of an Esper and a human… That’s where I got my powers…” I thought Twiggy said she remembered everything when she started speaking, but now it seems like she’s discovering these truths, Phoenix Wright-style, as they spill out of her mouth. But the good news is, she thinks this knowledge will help her control her powers, uh, somehow. Look over there!

Edgar, meanwhile, puts to use his amazing giant brain and careful attention to detail and deduces, “So Gestahl must’ve known the secret of the Espers’ power back then.” Okay, first of all, the “secret,” as it were, is that the Espers true power is in their Magicite, and given that Gestahl let Cid fuck around and not kill them for years, he clearly didn’t know that. And even if we’re just talking about the larger “secret” that Espers are fucking magical, NO SHIT, YOU IDIOT. Winona adds, “And those Espers at the facility were grabbed during that expedition! That means CELES’s power came… …at the expense of an Esper…” Aaaaaand there’s the embolism. It’s been real, everybody!

Sadly, I am still here–Winona’s stupidity has not claimed yet another woman’s life. Yet. Guile announces they should fight back, like they weren’t kind of trying to do that already, but Twiggy wonders what’s going on in Narshe and if they should go check on whoever is stuck watching Paw Patrol with the Sunflowardly Lion. Setzer, who has no real reason to be faithful to this cause now that Celes has disappeared, and still has not even been told what happened to her, opens his arms magnanimously and says the airship is ready to go. Once they’re in the air above Zozo, he even offers Winona the controls and a brief explainer on how to steer, because he doesn’t value his life anymore. I can relate!

As eager as I am to see the fucking Sunflowardly Lion and Baron von Oldentimer again, we’ll leave the journey to Narshe for next time. In part 9, the Rebels will hatch a cunning plan using all the knowledge and tools they have available to take down Gestahl, and it will of course go tits-up immediately. But their incompetency is my bread and butter, so we’ll have fun. Until then!