Previously on @%$#!!! and Goofy’s Adventures in Babysitting, our heroes harnessed the formidable power of friendship and teamwork and learned they can accomplish anything together, as long as Junior always takes the lead and does all the important hero stuff. And now the time has come to once again follow in Riku’s wake and lap up credit for anything heroic or helpful he’s done. This means finally using the Navi-G Cid installed on the Gummi Ship of Recapper Annoyance and flying to the world Cid warned them to avoid, which makes no sense when I put it that way.
After flying through the longest gummi asteroid-filled hellscape yet–complete with garish yellow-and-orange checked gummi castle walls and ramparts–the ship arrives at a dreary planet dominated on the northern hemisphere by a castle of pale, flesh-colored stone, with coppery steampunk smokestacks and widgets poking out at odd angles; and on the southern hemisphere by a glowing blue jellyfish. Tendrils of smoke, or lightning, or something, are flowing upward out of the jellyfish, because it didn’t look weird enough on its own. There are neither decorative tampons nor dead birds stuck to it, but otherwise this planet looks like Etsy threw up all over it.
Captain! Gummi penis obstruction straight ahead!
The name of this whimsical shitshow of a planet is Hollow Bastion. “More like Hollow…Butt…Station,” I just said aloud to myself, because I’m sad. I will continue calling it Hollow Bastion, but only because it’s easier to type and because Hollow Butt Station is probably only funny to me. Just know what I’m thinking every time the name appears.
The Wanker Trio disembarks somewhere in between the castle and the jellyfish-looking underbelly of the planet, amid a lot of flowing waterfalls and platforms of stone and ice. “Gawrsh, look at that!” Goofy says, pointing up at the castle and its phallic adornments in the distance. Junior adds, “I know this place…” which he actually does, but I’m amazed he can tell by looking at it from here. Goofy’s basically like, “You do not, you fucking liar,” but Junior insists. “I feel this warmth inside, right here,” he says, putting his hand over his tiny, undeveloped chest. @%$#!!! quips, “Aw, you’re just hungry,” and Junior’s about to get into it with him because he is super duper serious, when they’re cut off by a roar coming from up ahead.
On the way toward the sound, Junior and his cohorts naturally must navigate those platforms as well as a series of magic bubbles that transport them underwater to treasure chests. Thankfully, the chest with puppies in it is above the water, sparing me from having to contemplate drowned puppies, until I did anyway. Whoops. When Junior hops up closer to a platform with a stone arch, he runs idiot face first into a cutscene.
Riku is standing next to the arch, talking down to Beast–as in Beauty and the Beast–on the platform below. “No vessel, no help from the Heartless…” Riku muses. “So tell me, how’d you get here?” Beast growls a little before clutching his chest much like Junior just did, except he has one worth clutching. “I simply believed,” he tells Riku, while I barf. “Nothing more to it.” He has belief–who needs a spaceship, or oxygen? He goes on, filling in the story Maleficent already told Riku, “When our world fell into darkness, Belle was taken from me. I vowed I would find her again no matter what the cost. I believed I would find her.” And since he has the heart that belieeeeeeves, and it brought him here, she must be here. Q.E.D. Beast roars some more at Riku that he will get her back, and Riku replies evenly, “Take her if you can.” Riku doesn’t seem to give much of a shit about these other Mary Sues of Heart who aren’t Token, anyway. But as Beast leaps upward to take a swipe at Riku with his giant claws, he easily backflips out of harm’s way before lunging with his sword. The camera cuts away as Riku’s sword goes shink! but it looks like he stabbed Beast in the spleen.
Before we can get a load of all the blood Beast isn’t losing because this is a family-friendly game, Junior steps forward and asks Riku to stop. Riku, of course, doesn’t care. “So, you finally made it,” he says to Junior, ignoring the hulking monster he just spitted. “I’ve been waiting for you.” There is no rose petal-covered canopy bed up here, or even a boombox playing Boyz II Men, so Riku really could have prepared better. You think I’m kidding, but he goes on, “We’ve always been rivals, haven’t we? You’ve always pushed me, as I’ve always pushed you.” They pushed against each other so hard their wieners were sore! I mean, wow, you guys. I’m not a fan of any Junior-based pairing other than Junior/Dying Alone in a Nursing Home, but I can’t just sit here and ignore this. They’re addressing each other during a beautiful sunset, on opposite sides of an arch that may as well be inside a dank wedding chapel. Jesus Christ.
‘Riku has prepared his own vows…’
Junior has never been proposed to before so he’s just like, “Riku…” while his two groomsmen bridesmaids stand behind him gawking. But then Riku goes on, “But it all ends here. There can’t be two Keyblade masters.” Riku wants Junior to abandon his career and stay at home! And Junior has gotten too much of a taste for dicking around the universe with his gal pals to get on board with that. “What are you talking about?” Junior demands. To get back to what’s actually happening and not the deeply sad and gross subtext, it’s easy to see why Junior’s confused, since he hasn’t been privy to Riku whining at length that the Keyblade didn’t pick him–the obviously superior option–and instead chose some loser because his feet are bigger and she heard about what that means, the shallow bitch. But Riku is willing to give the Keyblade another chance to make the “right” choice. “Let the Keyblade choose…its true master,” he urges Junior, before throwing up a hand to receive it. And just like that, the shallow bitch struggles against Junior’s grip and eventually wriggles free in a shower of yellow light, only to reappear, free of any keychain adornments, in Riku’s eager grip. @%$#!!! and Goofy are agog–how quickly these two went from the precipice of matrimony to fighting over a magical dildo! Consider the honeymoon over.
“Maleficent was right,” Riku says breathlessly as he stares at his new phallic life partner. “You don’t have what it takes to save [Token]. It’s up to me.” Well, um, duh. I thought that had already been made painstakingly clear. But being snotty about Token is just the prelude to Riku getting all messianic. “Only the Keyblade Master can open the secret door…and change the world,” he says, staring rapturously at its hard length some more. Well, if he wanted to open a certain secret door I’m sure all he had to do was ask politely.
Meanwhile, Junior still doesn’t get what’s going on, not that that’s new. “But that’s impossible,” he whines, staring at where the Keyblade just disappeared from his hand. “How did this happen? I’m the one who fought my way here with the Keyblade!” He found Token, you guys! He can do anything! Ugh. Riku replies with the most awesome slam ever: “You were just the delivery boy.” Fucking nice. He doesn’t want to know what the delivery boy has been doing with that thing, though. “Sorry, your part’s over now,” Riku tells him, and then tosses him a wooden sword, adding, “Here, go play hero with this.” Man, Riku is on fire. He just had to get that running-off-in-wedded-bliss-with-Junior fantasy out of his system. The wooden sword clatters on the cobblestones in front of Junior and he drops to his knees, suddenly weak and flaccid without the Keyblade.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Okay, I don’t even know how this manages to get more awesome, but it does. As Riku walks away and Junior stares at the ground in numb disbelief, Goofy and @%$#!!! step past their BFF, barely even looking at him. “Goofy,” @%$#!!! says. “Let’s go. We have to remember our mission.” Fucking double nice. Goofy recounts that their mission is to “follow the key,” according to King Mickey, but he still feels a tiny bit bad about leaving Junior here to die or whatever. But he only hesitates for a moment before following his boyfriend. @%$#!!!, for his part, briefly turns around to tell Junior “Sorry,” and he might even kind of mean it. A little. Maybe.
If I could, I would totally have a boner right now. That was so great.
So the whole time Riku and Junior were working out their buffet of sexual issues, Beast was still lying prone on the ground. But he now sees that everyone else is trying to get away from Junior like he has the black plague, so he forces himself to his feet and starts lurching toward the castle. Unfortunately, he can only make it a few steps and is probably stuck with Clown Shoes here. Junior stops feeling sorry for himself long enough to come to the big guy’s aid. “Why… Why did you…you come here?” Beast asks him. It’s just as awkward spoken as it is written. To make sure we’re absolutely clear on Beast’s motivation, he states again, “I came to fight for Belle.” If he doesn’t get her back and make her see how he’s chaaaaaanged, he’s gonna be a gross hairy fug for life, after all.
But of course, we don’t really care about what Beast is doing, since he is at best a furry Aesop, providing the lesson Junior needs to learn at this precise moment: “And though I am on my own,” he tells his tiny, badly dressed new friend, “I will fight. I won’t leave without her. That’s why I’m here.” But that’s what Junior needs to do, too! It’s so poignant! Junior smiles as Beast keeps trying to escape from him, and eventually he picks up the wooden sword Riku threw at him. “Me too,” he says. “I’m not gonna give up now. I came here to find someone very important to me.” Beast just sighs and wonders what he did to deserve this.
The menu pops up at this point and demands that I form a party with the myriad of options Junior has available to him. But it does underscore that Junior just got ditched by all his friends and is a loser, so it’s okay. Plus, Beast is a badass. After backtracking through the waterfall area to open the chests he missed–more gummis!–Junior leads Beast to the final platform and they take a teleport together up to the castle gates.
The castle, with its ostentatious shimmering crystals and pale marble motif, has a distinct Final Fantasy feel to it, which should be a giant clue regarding its rightful inhabitants, but for now its only denizens are douchenozzle Heartless who probably wouldn’t be so bad if Junior had his fucking Keyblade. As it is, we’re stuck with Junior as evolution made him, and the result is not pretty. He would be a stain on the pink walls if not for 1) Gravira and 2) Beast charging around and slapping all the Heartless with his dick. After the first round of depressingly difficult Heartless, Junior finds that the front door is locked because his friends all hate him and are pretending they’re not home, so he taps a crystal switch to take a lift down toward the waterlogged castle basement. Down here, along with some giant Bomb-resembling Heartless that Junior barely dents with his shitty wooden sword, they find several more bubbles that will transport them to random areas around and within the basement. It’s easy to lose track of where exactly Junior is because of this, and it also doesn’t remotely matter, so let’s just say he opens some chests, hops around on some platforms with his stupid clown shoes, and eventually ends up inside the basement waterway.