One of the many nice things about Beast, Junior discovers, is that he can call on him to smash in walls, facilitating their journey through this moldy pit. Beast performs this impressive feat with a mere swipe of his arm. The Wanker Trio couldn’t do that no matter how much they hump each other. Of course, when they reach a puzzle that involves sliding around countless thin metal wall panels, Beast doesn’t do Junior a solid and just flatten all of them, so clearly his usefulness is limited. Many of these panels are attached at perpendicular angles, so moving one wall into place moves another out of place, usually blocking Junior from moving backward. The primary reward for navigating this correctly–which takes me much longer than I care to admit–is a room with two chests, both of which contain Float-G, a gummi Junior maxed out long ago. Fun! I missed this!
OH NO!
I have to say, I feel really bad for the white-haired bishounen janitor the managers hired to clean down here. Are they forced to navigate these bubbles and wall puzzles just to run the shop-vac? As we will see later, people did actually live here, so I guess the architect just wanted laundry day to be an extra-fun adventure.
Eventually, Junior opens the final grate, lights up a crystal set into the wall, and he and Beast ride a platform up to another level. Here he finds another crystal switch set in another identical wall. This time, activating it sets some copper gears and pipes a-whirring and a-grinding. “It sounds like a door has opened,” a fabulous lavender text box tells him. “Head back to the castle gates.” I cannot think of a worse place to keep the garage door opener. Junior sighs and starts the long trek back whence he came, which includes undoing all the work he did to move those metal walls into place. Fuck.
A thousand years later in my mind, Junior and Beast have entered the first floor of the castle, but we leave them for now to check in on other events here in Hollow Bastion. Set into the walls of a dark chamber somewhere in the castle are six glowing blue pods, each containing one of the Mary Sues of Heart. (For the record, since we’ve only met two of them, the first six are Alice, Jasmine, Belle, Cinderella, Aurora, and Snow White. In other words, a little girl’s lunch box.) In the center of this room, Maleficent is pacing past the seventh, most special Mary Sue of Heart, imprisoned within a horizontal glowing blue pill casing. Token is still in her TurtleNinja coma, and her body is surrounded by pulses of both dark energy and sparkly golden glitter. Perfect. Maleficent steps into an adjoining room, which has all manner of steampunk pipes and machinery along the back wall and a conspicuous, ominous glowing black portal in the heart-like keyhole shape that symbolizes the Heartless. She turns around to face the Mary Sues, and intones, “O purest of hearts! Reveal to me the Keyhole!” Lady, I am betting it’s that giant fucking keyhole behind you, but what do I know? Sure enough, pink beams of light streak from the chests of the sleeping maidens and form into a golden ray that points right at the fucking portal in that room. Holy shit, is that keyhole thing the keyhole?!?! Did Mal seriously kidnap all these women because she couldn’t figure this out on her own?
DURRRRRRRRRR
Back to Junior. He and Beast saunter into the main foyer of the castle, and Beast unnecessarily tells him, “Be on your guard,” because he can sense Heartless nearby. Dude, no shit. Maybe save some time and only mention when a room isn’t teeming with Heartless. Junior basically ignores Beast and keeps moving forward, but Beast senses someone else in the room, turns around, and spots Belle in her yellow ball gown standing in the doorway. But at least we’re not insultingly expected to think for a moment that this might be the real Belle, since the mirage immediately drops and reveals a cute buggy Heartless quivering in its place. Beast growls with rage and leaps after it, the door closing behind him and leaving poor Junior all alone, again.
Obviously Riku is the mastermind behind this silly, obvious trap. With @%$#!!! and Goofy standing at his side, he implores Junior, “Quit while you can.” Dude, you just closed the door behind him! He can’t run back to his gummi ship crying if you lock him in! And of course Junior isn’t going to do that anyway, since he’s worked so hard to save Token and can’t leave without her. Riku acts like Junior didn’t even say anything, because he has some new powers to show off. As he magically dons a new, dark outfit with a molded rubber six-pack and criss-crossed belts that look like they’re forming a strapped-on cock ring, Riku anvils, “The darkness will destroy you.” But he’s fine, guys! Ignore the purple platform boots and the gaping black heart-shaped keyhole on his chest. Totally okay. Junior doesn’t even bat a cartoonishly long eyelash at this wardrobe change and just keeps wanking on. “You’re wrong, Riku,” he says. “The darkness may destroy my body, but it can’t touch my heart. My heart will stay with my friends. It’ll never die!” He clutches at his chest some more at these last words. Baaaaaaaarf. Riku’s like, “Yeah, okay,” and throws a dark blue ball of light straight at Junior’s chest.
And what’s with the butt-cape?
The bolt travels in slooooow motion toward Junior, and our hero even involuntarily sticks out his chest to receive it, as if he’s being pulled toward Riku’s load magnetically. Or toward that target on his crotch. And then, as if listening to Junior wax poetic about his immortal heart wasn’t bad enough, at the last second Goofy leaps in front of Riku’s attack and blocks it with his shield, retroactively tainting all that delicious schadenfreude. “[Junior] ain’t gonna go anywhere!” he declares. When Riku asks if this means he’s betraying his king, Goofy ups the nausea quotient in reply: “Not on your life! But I’m not gonna betray [Junior], either, ’cause he’s become one of my best buddies after all we’ve been through together!” He gives Junior a thumbs-up at this, or maybe he’s pantomiming what they can do later if Junior isn’t still mad at him. And then, kind of awesomely, he waves enthusiastically across the room and shouts, “See ya later, [@%$#!!!]! Can ya tell the king I’m really sorry?” But @%$#!!! is not about to be abandoned by his boyfriend. “Hold on, Goofy! We’ll tell him together!” he yells back, and quickly waddles across the room. To Junior, he says in an almost-apologetic tone, “Well, you know… All for one and one for all.” Goofy adds that Junior is stuck with them now, like it’s not totally the reverse situation. Junior, for his part, doesn’t do much but mope and stare at the ground, but at least he does thank them for coming back to his annoying ass.
Now that the Wanker Trio has kissed and made up, leave it to Riku to ask the pertinent question, albeit one that’s going to spur on a lot more lame discussion of hearts: “How will you fight without a weapon?” Junior replies, “I know now that I don’t need the Keyblade. I’ve got a better weapon. My more talented friends heart.” Riku rolls his eyes, which is the only acceptable response to Junior’s statement. “What good will that weak little thing do for you?” he asks. I totally get why he keeps mocking Junior’s bullshit, but all it’s doing is setting Junior up to speechify more, which I could really do without. And speechify he does: “Although my heart may be weak, it’s not alone. It’s grown with each new experience, and it’s found a home with all the friends I’ve made. I’ve become a part of their heart just as they’ve become a part of mine. And if they think of me now and then…if they don’t forget me…then our hearts will be one. I don’t need a weapon. My friends are my power!” This is really making me regret that I didn’t start subbing “heart” with “penis” a long time ago, because wow. It’s grown with each new experience!
It should come as no surprise that, after coating the universe in a thin candy shell of rainbow vomit with that nauseating toast to friendship, the universe has decided Junior–who just stated he no longer needs the Keyblade–can have the Keyblade back. Riku moans in surprise as it disappears from his hand and reappears in Junior’s, with its keychain already back on and everything. Maybe the Keyblade would have stayed with Riku if he had made it grow with each new experience. Now stuck with his creepy veined sword again, Riku has nothing else to say and attacks.
This first battle with Riku isn’t that tough, since 1) Junior actually listened to himself for once and didn’t demand that his friends sit it out, and 2) Riku isn’t filled with enough dark power yet, something he will remedy shortly. For now, upon defeat he reverts back to his yellow wetsuit getup, staggers, and runs away up the staircase. On cue, the door opens and Beast walks in, all, “Durrrrr, did I miss anything?” Actually, he says some more stuff about hearts, but we have so much more of that bullshit coming that I can’t bring myself to pile on.
For using teamwork and heart power to bully Riku into hiding in the bathroom, the Wanker Trio learns how to activate white trinity marks. There was one in the fountain right by the entrance, but do I remember to go back for it? Nooooope.
Junior’s tongue, if they’re electrical sockets.
At the top of the stairs, the first thing Junior finds is a large door with lovely pink and purple trim and a glowing blue Heartless symbol in the center. The symbol is actually a puzzle, because of course it is, and Junior must find the four pieces of the heart to open it. But first things first–there’s a chest on a ledge high above Junior’s head in the door alcove, and he has to spend the next 10 minutes attempting to jump just right and grab a wall sconce to reach it. Thank God the chest contains a Power Up, because if there were another Float-G in there I might have had to spend 10 more minutes figuring out how to jump off a building.
With that important piece of business out of the way, Junior can go about looking for these pieces. He first enters a door on the west side of the room, which leads to a very large library, spread out over two split floors and splashed with sunlight from the tall windows. Yes, it’s the same library from the Mini Token flashback, so if it was not obvious yet, this world was her original home. Naturally, the library itself is a puzzle–to reach all the goodies hidden in the room and proceed to the exit, Junior must find out-of-place books on the shelves and replace them in the conspicuous holes in the shelving where they belong. The columns in the room also have built-in lazy susans, something for which I have tried and failed to think of a purpose, and so not only do our heroes get to go around poring over books they won’t read, but Beast and Goofy get to stare vacantly at Junior as he spins a lazy susan for five solid minutes before accessing a chest with a Mythril in it.
As for solving the puzzle in this room, I won’t even pretend I manage it without my nose in the strategy guide. The books Junior must pick up are volumes, and he has to reunite them with their matching sets. Each different set has a name like Theon or Salegg, and other than how they specifically and vaguely sound like Game of Thrones characters, respectively, I don’t think there’s anything important about them. I’m sure someone out there has written a manifesto outlining how each book name is an anagram for one of the ten thousand bishounen characters in later games I haven’t gotten around to, but I swear I Googled and everything, so they need to do a better job advertising it.
Junior already found and shelved Khama volume 8 near the entrance, but upstairs he finds another book, a yellow tome called Azal volume 7, on top of a bookshelf, and though it’s not that high, it is only accessible via a Trinity Tightass mark on the ground. We knew the Wanker Trio was not going to truly make up without some neck humping, so at least it’s out of the way. Theon volume 6 is on a nearby desk, and that immediately gets shelved with its family to reveal a red switch that opens the door on the second floor. Junior grabs Mava volume 6 from the spot with the Theon books, where it was getting in between Theon volumes 5 and 7 like a lime-green incest cockblock. After Junior loots some more lazy susans and chests on top of the ceiling-high bookcases, he drops down to place Mava volume 6 with its kind–no color mixing!–and only stares at the set like a moron for a couple of minutes, and then at the blue set with a missing book for a couple of minutes, before realizing there is a blue book “hidden” with the green ones. And it only takes him a couple more minutes to properly target the blue book, Salegg volume 6, and not just keep removing Mava volume 6 over and over. Junior obviously missed his calling as a librarian. Junior also puts Azal volume 3 back on the shelf near the entrance to move another bookcase into a position that is not remotely helpful. From there, it’s a simple 15 minutes of running around like a colorblind, illiterate buffoon in search of one of the two remaining missing books. Jesus, Junior, get your shit together. But he does eventually find Nahara volume 5, which reveals a bookcase hidden directly behind that one holding Mava volume 3. That opens up a tiny alcove with a desk and Hafet volume 4, the pretty lavender book that belongs in the hole where Mava volume 3 originally was. Good lord, why did I recount all this so precisely, when the only interesting thing about it was how badly I did it? Oh, right, that’s this whole game.