Surprise: it really isn’t! Back in the “Haunted” Mansion, Saruman the Red is sitting in a high-backed chair, in front of a table that’s been smashed into pieces by two falling chandeliers. Must have knocked them down in their haste to get rid of the curtains. Ansem, aka Ziggy, né Billy Zane, enters, with his hood back up. “Why did you show him the train?” Ansem asks. God, I love that anyone would even wonder that. The incredibly sad answer? “Because he missed the trip to the beach.” Nothing soothes the hurt of having your life dismantled piece by horny piece like getting to watch a train go by! Selphie must be in on this conspiracy. Ansem calls that “almost kind” of Saruman, which…yeah, that’s accurate.

But Saruman wants to know how Ansem is doing, and if the “holes in his memory” are filling in. He has just the thing to fill them, if not. Wink. It turns out that anyone with ties to Junior had their memories fucked with also, and that’s why Ansem, I imagine, doesn’t remember turning into the Pop-o-Matic Muscle Car, or being deep inside a young boy. “Very soon,” Saruman says, “to them, he’ll be like a good friend who’s gone away for a year.” I feel like Ansem is not going to feel that way about him? I’m not even sure @%$#!!! will feel that way.

This is all well and good, but Ansem has one lingering question. I have several–chief among them “How is Ansem even sitting here?”–but his is a good one: “What is it that you want?” Why go to all this trouble of locking a little girl with weird powers in an abandoned house and creating the Hot Teen Boy Matrix just to fuck with Junior’s brain, which as it previously stood resembled a cartoon wallet with a moth flying out of it? Saruman considers this, and opens his one exposed, flame-orange Eye of Sauron to stare down his companion. “Revenge.” Oh. Well, nothing further.

Ansem just Shions this back at him, which is extra upsetting in Ziggy’s voice. Saruman moves on to other business. “Now, for the finishing touches,” he says. “First, we must dispose of Naminé. She did a splendid job with [Junior], but it’s high time she disappeared.” I hope this means she’s getting sent to a farm upstate where she can run and play with all the other tweens in white pajamas. (It does not.) And in case anybody has been slow to the uptake of this plot, such as it is (a mess), he adds with a growl, “Roxas isn’t the only one who was never meant to exist.” Whaaaaaaaaaaat? Are you saying Roxas and Naminé might have something essential in common?!?!

Saruman instructs Ansem to “take care” of their pale loose ends, and the scene dissolves into static. “Restoration at 97%,” I am told. God, he’s almost here, guys. I am not ready.

As if to cement how unprepared I am to have Junior back in my life, the ensuing montage of Junior’s memories is a roughly three-minute edit of the climactic events at the End of the World. Yes, this means more dubbing over Billy Zane with Ziggy, and yes, this means hearing “Kingdom Hearts…is light!” come once more out of the gummiverse’s least cool mouth. It’s honestly worse the second time, thanks to the added layer of knowing Roxas is being subjected to it for the first time. I know he’s asleep, but now that we know this is being done to him on purpose, it’s hard not to picture him strapped to a chair with his eyes pried open like in A Clockwork Orange.

If it seems like I’m glossing over this blast from the past, it’s because I am, because it sucks. But after the Mickey Mouse Club takes off through the grassy hills chasing Pluto as they did in the epilogue, the scene shifts to nighttime, and Junior is alone on the dirt road. Behind him is a man in a black hooded cloak. Junior gives chase, but the figure floats away and disappears into thin air. So now Junior is the one going crazy? Roxas must feel like he can’t get away from this, even when he’s someone else. A beat later, Junior, still alone, approaches a golden castle with green-roofed towers sprouting out of it at all angles, the very one from Naminé’s most recent art piece. This is Castle Oblivion, the setting of Chain of Memories, and it’s as far as we’re getting with Junior right now, as a wave of static cuts in and the monitor this is all playing out on shuts down. Yay! Junior’s dead! I’m free!

Even if he were, I’m still not. We’re back on the dark mystery beach from the opening cinematic. In fact, it’s the exact same scene, with one key difference: we can now hear Black Hoodie #1. The voice almost certainly belongs to Roxas, but I’m only saying that because it sounds like a whiny teenage boy and he is the only one we know of that has donned that goddamn druid getup. Character economy basically requires it to be him, but this is Kingdom Hearts II, the gold standard in cast inflation, so fuck if I know.

On that note, we get one more flashback, this time to the special endgame cinematic “Another Side, Another Story,” which you all know as “That one we all killed ourselves for to see Riku in a blindfold.” We already know the other hooded figure in this scene, battling with Riku in the rain and dual-wielding Keyblades, is Roxas, but I’ll forgive the repetition because Riku still looks just preposterously hot. The two of them trade blows on the city streets–quiet, pervs–until Roxas, still hooded, strikes Riku down. It’s, honestly, a pretty diva fight scene. Like Jin and Margulis, but with a lot less talking, and it makes me feel worse about myself. ANYWAY. The actual hero of this story shouts, “Why!? Why do you have the Keyblade?” Uh, ACTUALLY, he has two. Casual. Roxas just snits back, “Shut up!” and hits him with it again, whiting out the screen and maybe Riku’s frontal lobe. Okay, I know I’ve talked a big game about these assholes jerking around Roxas with this Friendship Simulator, but if it’s the penance he earned for murdering Riku in New Donk City, I’m fucking good with it.

Thus my conflicted feelings on rejoining Roxas, waking up in his bed on “The 6th Day.” As he swings his legs over the bedside and stands up, his body shimmers and is transposed with Junior’s, stupid fucking clown shoes and all. I was about to say at least Junior wouldn’t kill Riku, but…he kind of did! Fuck ’em both, and let Mickey Mouse sort it out.

If only slowly morphing into Junior were the worst thing to happen to Roxas today. He arrives at the Wankhouse, complaining of how poorly he slept (those Pop o’ Matic Muscle Car dreams he had were disturbing…ly arousing), but his friends don’t turn around or stop their own conversation. Guys, I know he’s been a bit much lately, but the silent treatment is a childish way to communicate your displeasure. But when Roxas reaches for Hayner’s back–an unnatural thing for him to do unless he’s either expecting this to happen or regularly greets Hayner with a backrub–his hand goes right through his buddy. Oh no! Hayner is a ghost!!!

I kid. The trio goes on talking like there is no one else in the room–in fact, Roxas can’t even hear whatever it is they’re saying, though I would guess it’s probably a joke in which Chumlee projects his own foolishness onto Rai. They run out of the Wankhouse, and though Roxas throws out his arms to stop them, all three of his friends run right through him. To confirm what reality has already told him, he picks up a photo previously of the four of them in front of the Haunted Mansion’s gates, only to find that he is no longer in it. Given who made this game, I am astounded that they didn’t go all the way with this reference and stick Olette in a Disneyland sweatshirt.

Poor Roxas barely even looks upset about this anymore, just resigned to his fate. He walks outside and continues to look more sad than surprised when Dusks surround him in the alleyway, and Axel emerges from a black void bubble. “Look at what it’s come to,” Axel sighs. “I’ve been given these icky orders to destroy you if you refuse to come back with me.” He says this last bit in a voice like caramel made audible, but I really wish he hadn’t led with the word “icky.” Really takes me out of my sad fantasy. Roxas plays the one card he has, thanks to Naminé: “We’re…best friends, right?” I love how he has no other context for his relationship with Axel and he still pauses before saying that. He knows. Axel is in the middle of saying that might be true but he’s not going to get turned into a Dusk for his “best friend,” when he blurts out, “Wait a sec! You remember now!?” Uhhhhh…yes! Not a thing forgotten! But if you’ve got some fanart lying around of the two of you doing “best friend” stuff, Roxas would still like to see it, so he can, er, reminisce!

Axel is extremely relieved that he no longer has to murder Roxas, but unfortunately he is a smart and thorough hooded robe dude, especially where his self-preservation is concerned. To make sure Roxas is really himself again, he gives him a pop quiz: “What’s our boss’s name?” I am very disappointed in Roxas that he doesn’t at least pull a name from his various Junior visions and say “Mickey Mouse” or “Riku” or something. He’d be wrong, but he’d go down trying. And Axel doesn’t wait for the pause to get too long and awkward before his shoulders slump in disappointment. Roxas, in turn, doesn’t wait long before summoning the Keyblade. Why does it always have to end in tears?!

The information window tells Roxas to “Defeat all of the strange enemies!” This, for the moment, does not include Axel, who stands by the alley gate watching placidly as his former VERY GOOD FRIEND wails on the Dusks. The last one turns itself into some kind of bird, stretching its weird limbs into stylized wings and a thin body, kind of like the legendary Pokémon Lugia. But if you were holding out hope that Axel would change his mind and opt for the peaceful path, Axel wastes no time, once his minions are dead, dispelling that notion. Frowning, he raises his chakram to strike, and waits, and waits. Roxas goes from his best teeth-bared game face for fighting his way out of this to a put-out eyeroll once he realizes Axel has been frozen in time. God, this shit again?

Abandoning all pretense that this place is real, Saruman’s voice booms out over some town-wide loudspeaker. “Roxas, to the mansion! The time has come!” Tick tock! We are on a killing-you schedule, son! Roxas has a good long pout at this. And he tries the trick that kind of worked before: he shouts to the heavens, which are probably a domed TV screen, “Hayner! [Chumlee]! Olette!” But no such luck now: time remains stopped, and Roxas’s life remains a fiasco. He flees the scene toward the sandlot. Once he’s got enough of a head start, Saruman, I suppose, gets the clock running again, and Axel realizes he’s been had. “The Roxas that I know is long gone,” he sighs. “Fine, I see how it is…” He got himself all cut to fill out that robe for his reunion with his man, FOR NOTHING. Fuck this, it’s grilled-cheese-sandwich-and-bingeing-The Crown-o’clock.

It speaks volumes about Roxas that he immediately obeys Saruman’s directive–imagine being so alone and so out of options that you would willingly head off to be subsumed, body and soul, by a wanker in red pleather overalls. So Roxas runs toward the Haunted Mansion, though he has to fight Nobodies all the way there. (The ones in the woods like to use their special ability, No Collision Detection, to disappear three-quarters of the way into the ground and attack Roxas while he can’t hit them back. Fun!)

It’s a familiar scene at the Haunted Mansion’s gates: Roxas is cornered by Dusks, the gate locked and chained. This time he has the Keyblade, so I don’t see what his problem is, but he does snap at Saruman’s disembodied voice, “Don’t call me and then lock me out…” Fair point! The answer is, of course, right in his hand, or at least at his hand’s call, but having Roxas realize this on his own would be smart, unexpected, and a little funny. So instead, he has to have a flash in his brain of Junior, with deadpan dipshit seriousness, standing in a darkened sound studio and pointing his Keyblade, about to shoot its jizz laser into some unseen keyhole. From three different angles! Jesus Christ.

Thoroughly insulted, Roxas steps back, summons the Keyblade, and gets the gate’s padlock hella pregnant. Even in this he manages to look cooler than Junior, like I’m not dreading what’s to come enough. The lock and chains disappear and leave the way to the house open, and Roxas bolts, leaving the Dusks in his wake. But they could easily follow him, you say? Not so fast. A MYSTERIOUS HOODED FIGURE appears, brandishes Riku’s batwing scimitar, and squares up on these sexy buttcheek monsters. Eeeee!

I’m a thirsty-ass rube, and I’m at least a little sorry about it.

Unaware of his beautiful savior outside, Roxas finds himself in the foyer of the mansion. It is, kindly put, a mess. The massive room has been cleared of furniture, leaving behind an assortment of curios and curtain rods scattered on the dusty floor. There are still paintings on the walls, and even a couple of displays of knight armor. One of each of those items is piled up against the eastern door, like a hasty barricade, and now I fear the zombie outbreak is that-a-way. Sadly, it seems Riku may be out there working up a glistening sweat on his beautiful brow for nothing, because there are Dusks in here too. But Roxas makes quick work of them, and only stops for a moment to admire a golden collection of buttplugs and an anatomically perfect golden dildo in a glass display case (which the game wants me to believe is anything else, but no dice) before moving through the western door.

Let’s just cut my word count a bit at this stage and note that Roxas will be fighting Nobodies in damn near every room of this mansion, and I’ll just let you know of any exceptions to that, or if any of them decide on any fun phallic shapes. Cool? Cool. Once he’s dealt with the ones in here, I realize this is the room where Saruman and Ansem had their meeting over a broken table. Before adjourning they were sure to leave an “Elven Bandanna” and a potion in a couple of chests for their intruders to find. Or they’re making sure Junior has his little pockets stuffed and accessory slots equipped when he emerges from his chrysalis, but I’m trying not to bring down the mood any more than necessary, okay?

Up the grand dual staircase, Roxas finds only two doors, which, unless they are attached to hallways with many more doors, seems like not nearly enough for a manse this size. The door on the west side leads him back to Naminé’s white pad. At risk of belaboring my point, that means the entire west side of this building is comprised of two rooms that aren’t even that large. This mansion is a reverse TARDIS. Naminé isn’t here–which feels like a deliberate choice to make Roxas think she still might not really exist–so in her absence Roxas strolls through her gallery of Juniorverse fanart. Now he won’t feel pressured to buy anything!

Roxas pauses at one particular drawing: a new addition, which vaguely looks like Junior, in a black hoodie himself, wandering through–best guess here–the underbelly of Hollow Bastion. I don’t even know if that’s supposed to be Junior, but if it’s anyone else it’s a pretty shitty rendering. The sight of this image sends a high-pitched whine of pain through his head, and clutching at his temples, he falls into another memory, one which…doesn’t have this place, or Junior, at all? Man, I don’t fucking know.