With that little loose end tied up to my immense dissatisfaction, Roxas heads through the next door. (Yeah, there ended up being more rooms in this place, but they’re all underground and therefore have no bearing on how it looked from the outside. Eat me.) In this hallway that seems perilously close to my dreaded fate, a number of more slender artichoke pods line the walls. In two of them are @%$#!!! and Goofy. I would really prefer to leave them here–or at least if we have to get @%$#!!! back, if we could tweak him to being the comics/Ducktales version that is a stressed single dad trying to get his life right, that would be so great.
Naturally, this means the next room is the resting place for Junior’s stasis chamber, the most special artichoke of them all. DiZ is waiting for Roxas here, and the vibe is that he’s standing in Roxas’s way, even though this is the thing he wants to happen, right? Unless Roxas is about to smash that fucking pod and stab Junior through the dick, the thing I want to happen. “At last, the Keyblade’s chosen one,” DiZ says. Roxas wants to know who he’s referring to, him or Junior. “I thought you were kind of following the plot at this point, dude,” DiZ fails to say. He instead has some talking points prepared about light and darkness, in case any of you are tasteless monsters and were missing that hot action. “You reside in darkness,” he says. “What I need is someone who can move about the realm of light and destroy Organization XIII.” It’s…pretty light in here, right now! And Roxas seems okay. Also, am I to truly believe this kid is Junior’s darkness made manifest? Come on. He looks like he’d cry if he stepped on a bug.
I’m ignoring the bigger reveal DiZ just laid out there, because it doesn’t mean much to us right now, and it will continue to not mean shit because DiZ refuses to tell Roxas who he really is. (I mean, he is clearly someone under the mummy bandages, and I applaud Roxas for cottoning to that right away.) DiZ only calls himself “a servant of the world” and labels Roxas, accordingly, “a tool, at best.” A sick burn in anyone’s mouth, but in Christopher Lee’s, we may need to call the fire department. “Was that… Was that supposed to be a joke? ‘Cause I’m not laughing!” Roxas replies through gritted teeth. It’s okay, man. You are out of your depth. We’ve all been there.
Roxas is so insecure that this old fucker is having a go at him that he summons the Keyblade. Just one this time–doubles are only for his closest foe-yay rivals. He swipes right at DiZ’s chest, but of course this is not really him, just a projection he stuck here to make Roxas feel dumb. Look, guy, he already found out he’s Junior, how much dumber does he need to feel? The poor thing is so frustrated at his imminent beJunioring that he yells at the ceiling and just starts wailing away on the fake DiZ like it’s his stupid computer. But it’s been a long day, and before long his sad little arms are tired from all that swinging.
Nate Silver approves?
DiZ continues to teleport around and taunt Roxas for no reason. I seriously don’t get why he’s being such a prick to this kid. Did Roxas once ask him if he’d met his good Organization XIII friend Bofa? “I hate you so much…” Roxas whines. He is in the sort of mood a five year old has immediately before crashing for a four-hour nap. DiZ replies, I shit you not, “You should share some of that hatred with [Junior]. He’s far too nice for his own good.” OH, FUCK YOU. Yeah, he’s a real sweetheart, abandoning Riku and Mickey to Death by DAAAAAAARKNESS and generally pouting his way through life until he gets everything he wants from everyone out of sheer pity. Like, even if Junior weren’t the actual worst, does that make him nice? Did I get a different game than other people?
I had all this venting stored up in the hopper about how Roxas is basically Junior without all the bad shit that sucks (all of it), but then he goes and pops my fucking balloon. He thumps his chest and declares with unmistakable familiarity, “My heart belongs to me!” AND IT IS LIGHT, DICKWEED! Christ. He caps off this display by charging DiZ again and swiping the Keyblade through nothing, again. I think being in the same room with Junior is making the symptoms worse. DiZ finally bails for good, and as Roxas has his Keyblade pointed out in front of him like a doofus, Junior’s artichoke pod begins to open. Did Roxas just open it by accident by thinking he was ramming Diz through the liver? Was DiZ provoking him into this?
God, who cares, nothing matters. With a sad piano theme matching my mood, Roxas watches the pod open, and beholds Junior’s comatose, still-awful face. When the camera pulls out to show his full body in profile, it becomes clear that this year in stasis has not delayed Junior’s aging process, and it came at a SENSITIVE TIME. He has gone from modern NBA shorts to ’80s NBA shorts in an eyeblink!
Where is the deleted scene of DiZ coming in here and applying Latisse to Junior’s eyelids, because COME ON.
“You’re lucky,” Roxas tells the sleeping Junior. “Looks like my summer vacation is…over.” He looks for all the world like he’s about to blow his own brains out, or at least stab himself in the chest with the Keyblade, and I CANNOT HANDLE IT. Don’t take Roxas away and leave me with Junior! I’ll be nice! I know I ragged on him a lot for his throbbing pants feelings, but only because it’s relatable! And those black robes look SUPER COOL, GUYS, I swear! Just fucking put them on everybody!
The game ignores my pleas as the screen flashes white. And three and a half hours in, we have the Kingdom Hearts II title card. Hahaha, did you think you had started the real game? Only Junior, the real hero, gets to be in the real game! Fuck you!
Sigh.
Back in Twilight Town–the real one, because DiZ is a lazy programmer and based his fantasy town on the real deal and copied all its data, with wizard hacking or some shit–a train arrives in the station. The ghost train, to be precise. The bright purple train rolls to a stop, and its lone passenger disembarks: a black cloak-wearing motherfucking Mickey Mouse. No. Nonono. The deal was, you spare Roxas, shitheads, and then you stick everybody in the stupid black Snuggies. What is this garbage.
I’ve got SOME QUESTIONS about how that hood works.
Leaving King Goth Ears for the moment, we return to Roxas, for five brief seconds of standing in a black abyss and looking sad and constipated. “[Junior]?” he asks the void, and the void stirs. HOORAY.
The void blinks his big guileless eyes open as his friends, already out of their pods, beseech him to wake up already. Junior’s artichoke is closed again–entirely, I’m sure, for dramatic effect–and as it opens, Junior stretches and yawns and just makes the most peak Junior face. It’s like he was subconsciously worried if he looked at all cool in addition to having grown a foot, @%$#!!! and Goofy wouldn’t recognize him anymore. On that puberty tip, his companions can’t help but snicker. If he also had a wispy mustache I don’t think @%$#!!! would ever stop laughing.
Welcome back, doofus!
Junior, this one time being the good friend everyone pretends he is, is so overcome with joy to see his pals that he ignores their mirth at his expense and leaps out of the pod, tackle-hugging them both. It’s almost sweet, and then I remember Roxas killed himself right there. Junior shouts, “[@%$#!!!]! Goofy!” in the baritone adult man voice he suddenly has, and the three of them join hands and hop around in a circle, laughing with glee. Jiminy fucking Cricket even crawls out of Junior’s ass, yawning and stretching too. “That was some nap!” he drawls. Everyone is here! Friendship! Live together, die alone!
Sigh again.
Junior, who just fucking woke up himself and was also yawning and shit, wonders, “You mean, we were asleep?” No shit, Tiny Tim, look at yourself. That didn’t happen in five minutes! Jiminy’s like, “Do you have no memory of ever waking up before?” Wait, that was me. Goofy wonders when exactly they all went down for their naps, as naked a pretense as I’ve ever seen for them to recap what they remember doing beforehand. Which would be fine if I hadn’t spent THREE FUCKING HOURS RELIVING IT. Remember when Kingdom Hearts II was a fun game about one teenage boy going crazy, with hormones? That game wasn’t half bad.
Also, among Junior’s bullet points of their very busy day a year ago, he notes they “found Kairi” and “went to look for Riku.” SUCK SHIT, JUNIOR. Please tell me I also get to vanish into oblivion and some lamer version of me is going to recap the rest of this game. I can handle it, and I promise not to beat my keyboard with a monkey wrench before leaving.
Goofy actually has a good idea–I mean, amazingly, he is the smartest person in this room–and asks Jiminy what he may have written in his journal about this. Jiminy whips out the tiny book that will ruin my life going forward and takes a look at the last entry. “Gee, there’s only one sentence…’Thank Naminé.'” None of them have the slightest idea what that’s about, and their lives are richer for it. I hate all four of them so much right now. But especially Jiminy, who had the chance to write something of mnemonic value here and this was what he came up with. Good job, numbnuts. Unless DiZ and Ansem tore out his other pages and wrote this in their place, in a journal that’s the size of their thumbnail, in Jiminy’s Comic Sans-ass handwriting. Sounds reasonable. “Some journal that is,” @%$#!!! grumbles. Just you wait, bud!
Jiminy changes the subject before he and his shitty diary get thrown out of the Superfriends, and says they should figure out where they are. This sends me straight to the game menu, to deal with setting the Mouseketeers’ abilities and equipment and to get my first gander at Jiminy’s new and “improved” journal. We’ll take a closer look at that horror show next time, but once I’m done making sure Junior can see health bars and auto-load potions, the game has dumped the gang all the way outside the Haunted Mansion. In the middle of reacquainting me with how the game normally works, the Disembodied Insulting Tutor lets me know, “All Roxas’s abilities and munny have been passed on to [Junior].” Well, that’s fucking dark. And what munny? Wasn’t that all fake Matrix cash? Is munny actually bitcoin?
UH HUH
Further letting the A-Team ease into things, when Junior leaves the mansion’s grounds, instead of having to navigate the woods and the town itself, he and his sidekicks wind up wandering into the Wankhouse. What would lead them to this random alleyway? Well, Junior says, “You know, I think I’ve been to this town.” But when @%$#!!! asks him the town’s name, his soft, tiny brain once again fails him, and he bails on the entire idea. It’s a wonder he didn’t already get hit by a train on the way here.
Inside the Wankhouse, Hayner, Chumlee, and Olette are slumped in their usual spots in abject boredom–so full of sloth that they haven’t even gone for ice cream. They look up when an even lamer trio than them wanders into their territory, and Hayner immediately gets his hackles up. “What do you want!?” he demands. Junior puts his hands out in a placating gesture. “Uh, nothing. Just wondering what was back here,” he replies. He does not add, “I’M NOT A COP,” but it’s all over his dumb face. Hayner informs them this is their turf, and it does probably have his DNA all over it. Chum stares impolitely at these strangers for a moment before introducing himself. Hayner follows suit but subsequently bails because they’ve “got stuff to do.” Now that some dude who never existed is out of the way, Seifer is ALL HIS. Peace! Olette gives them her name and adds, “Hey, did you finish up the summer homework yet? Independent studies are the worst, huh?” Junior looks to his friends, all, “WHAT IS HOMEWORK.” But we know there is school on the Island of Wankers! Maybe Junior was homeschooled. It would answer a lot about him, I have to admit.
Goofy does the work of introducing their little band, and even leaves himself for last, placing Junior at the center of his universe. It’s a bummer to see unfold. But when Chumlee and Olette hear their names, they give each other A Look. “[Junior], [@%$#!!!], Goofy,” Olette says, “we just met someone who was looking for you.” Chum adds, “He sure seemed in a hurry. He had a black coat on so I couldn’t see his face, but he had these big round ears.” He pantomimes giant circles up high on his own head, because describing this stranger as looking “like Mickey fucking Mouse” would be an anachronism. It takes all three members of this brain trust fully 1.5 seconds to drop their jaws and realize who he means. Like, Goofy taps his finger to his temple and everything. With age comes wisdom, right?
Chumlee says they saw Mickey at the train station, before he and Olette ditch these weird chumps in their own hideout so they can go watch Hayner and Seifer make out through their binoculars. And though @%$#!!! is over the moon that the king is looking for them and is raring to get their search for him underway, it is here I will leave our heroes, so I can lie down in a dark room and think hard about the life choices that led me to this moment. In part four, we’ll see what further madness this game and Jiminy’s goddamn journal have in store for me. Toodles!