But then! Junior has to make it weird. Junior always has to make it weird. As he’s still smiling at Hayner, a single, extremely fat teardrop rolls down his cheek. The Roxas-less Roxas Gang gapes at him in stunned silence, and even Junior seems surprised that he’s crying. Olette asks, because I guess someone has to, “You okay?” When Junior insists he is totally fine, and even starts slapping at his dumb little cheeks to, I don’t know, knock some sense into his face, Hayner’s all, “Pull it together.” Seriously. The second his face is dry again and he thinks he can plaster on a smile, Junior goes, “Right. See ya!” and practically sprints onto the train. Nice to know this child might be capable of embarrassment. The door closes as he waves back at them one more time, and as the ghost train car pulls out of the station, Chumlee even walks beside it for a moment until his slow, casual trot is not sufficient to keep up. The three kids look at each other for a moment–Chumlee sad, Olette contemplative, Hayner, uh, smug?–and the scene fades out before one of them can say what they all have to be thinking: “God, what a fucking dork.”
It is a near certainty that I am the only one who will find this funny.
Inside the train car, @%$#!!! and Goofy are excitedly staring out the windows and watching Twilight Town go by–@%$#!!! kneeling on the back of the seat cushions so he can see, making me feel a rush of sympathy for him–and Junior is leaning against the door, seeming very Sad Teen Boy about something or other. Still lost in “thought,” he takes the cursed munny pouch out of his pocket and stares at it like it will cure his feelings. He then takes a look at the blue Struggle marble, holding it up to the light just like his better half once did, and then couldn’t because it was stolen from his giant pockets. Still examining it, Junior says “You know…” And the second he breaks the silence, Goofy and @%$#!!! turn fully toward him, @%$#!!! even hopping down from his perch to give Junior’s surely very important words the complete focus they require. It is the saddest I have ever been for anyone in any recap, and I watched a girl take an arrow to the chest to protect her baby brother and his boyfriend. So what does Junior have to say? “I’m sad.” OH WORD DUDE? I couldn’t tell, because sad music has definitely not been playing this entire time, and you didn’t burst into tears a minute ago, and then spend the ensuing time staring moodily into the distance. @%$#!!! says cheerily, “We’ll be back,” and Goofy chimes in with, “Yeah. We can visit Hayner and those guys again.” Bet Olette is real glad on several levels to be referred to by Junior’s self-diminishing sidekick as “those guys.” Junior smiles and nods, reassured again that he should only have happy thoughts, and as his head is a-bobblin’, the sky outside suddenly flashes and changes, the sunset of Twilight Town giving way to a dark sky full of stars. A view from outside shows the car on a ghostly green train track, riding through an aurora into the darkness. Toward Kingdom Hearts, I have to assume.
Back in Twilight Town, I believe on the hill where Roxas rode around on a dog in a sack, a figure in a black robe plants his hands on the wooden railing. Well, it’s Axel, because none of the others have that petite waistline. “Guess that’s that,” he says, possibly having just watched his boyfriend’s soul usurper disappear on a ghost train. Offscreen, Ansem says, “Let’s go.” A pan out shows Axel brooding with his hood off at the railing, while Ansem, hood on, looms over Naminé, who is sitting on a bench and looking at her sketchbook. Cheery little band right here! Axel wonders where they would go, reminding Ansem that they are homeless and furthermore, “We don’t exist, remember?” He seems to indicate all of them in this, though it’s safe to say it’s still unclear what Ansem’s whole deal is. Also, why is Axel even hanging out with these two? Has he defected to whatever DiZ’s cause is? Or did Ansem kidnap Naminé and defect from DiZ?
Forgive me. These questions are obviously dumb and unimportant. Let’s get to what matters, via Naminé: “Yes, it’s true. We may not have homes… But there IS someplace I want to go. And…someone I want to see.” She’s staring down at her sketch of Junior and Roxas holding hands as she says this. “Same here,” Axel agrees, and though they are in a very real way talking about the same person, it’s clear they are not talking about the same person. Or maybe they are. Who wants to see Junior?
Axel clears up my confusion by asking Ansem, “So, you think you might let us go? I know you’re here to get rid of us, but…” It’s still unclear how Axel landed himself in this mess, as the last we saw of him he was just failing to kill Roxas, not getting captured by anybody. But at least he knows the score. Naminé, meanwhile, is shocked to hear this: “DiZ? Wants to get rid of me?” Weird, it’s almost like he’s the kind of asshole who would kidnap two kids and use one to mindfuck the other! That guy wants to kill sweet Naminé?! Her big blue eyes are filled with hurt over this news, making me feel almost bad–almost–for making fun of her. “Go,” Ansem tells her. Axel asks him if he’s sure, when this seems like a “Take him at his word before he changes it” situation, but Ansem says, “I owe you both. Castle Oblivion. You helped us.” See, now I have questions, but Axel goes, “You don’t have to tell me twice,” despite the fact that he literally just did, and he opens a big black portal to the void for himself and his new traveling companion. Axel and Ansem stare with the barest patience at Naminé for what is only a couple of seconds but feels like an hour, until she says thanks to Ansem, hops off the bench, and disappears through the portal. Axel enters after her without another word. Those two are going to have so much to talk about! Like Roxas, and…other!
Back to Junior and the ghost train, which has just gated out in, I don’t know, the ghost dimension, and is rolling to the end of its line at a grassy island floating in gummi space. The game still treats this area as part of Twilight Town, but who fucking knows? Not this gal. This grassy knoll is dominated by what I can only describe as a wizard’s tower, since that’s what it is. The various steeple points coming off it are covered in green shingles and the building itself is a yellowy beige, making it blend in with the colors of the landscape. The structure itself is way too prominent for me to call this camouflage, and yet I don’t know why else anyone would pick these colors. And standing in front of the wooden double doors is a person unfamiliar to Junior, but (speaking for y’all) instantly recognizable to us: maybe as a steamboat captain who was punked once upon a time by an asshole mouse, or maybe as Ebenezer Scrooge McDuck’s Ghost of Christmas Future. Either way, the rotund anthropomorphic black cat (???) known as Pete.
Are those…gilded squirrels?
The ghost train disappears after its passengers have disembarked, which perturbs Junior but seems beneath the notice of his friends. Shrugging, Junior goes along with their casual attitude and explores his new environs, popping all the treasure chests around the tower before approaching the door. Pete is facing away from them, his large ass wagging comically in the air as he attempts to peek through the crack between the doors. These three, as they are always wont to do, saunter right up to this person clearly up to no good, and @%$#!!! asks him “What’s going on?” Pete chuckles conspiratorially, not bothering to turn around at the very ducky voice we’ll soon see he would absolutely recognize. But as we’ll also soon see, Pete is fucking stupid. “I sent some of my lackeys inside to see if the master of this here tower’s as big and tough as they say,” he tells them. “Word is, he’s a real powerful sorcerer. Which would make him the perfect bodyguard for me. See, it don’t matter how tough he is–once he’s a Heartless, he’ll do as I say!” This is such thorough explaining of one’s plans that I have to consider it lampshading. When the Dork Squad hears the word “Heartless,” they square up, though I should note that Pete is basically dressed like a Heartless already, in skintight black overalls with chunky zippers and grommets, and blue and purple armguards and gloves. That he himself has black fur and pointy ears is not helping either–he absolutely looks like Evil Riku’s comedy relief Heartless sidekick. But Pete takes @%$#!!! shrieking “A Heartless?” at his back as a request for further information and not as an objection, so he keeps explaining: “That’s right. They’re those things that come outta the darkness in folks’ hearts.” This strikes me as an explanation someone would give to a child about how Heartless work, the equivalent of telling a young boy, “Yes, that’s, uh, the ghost that comes out of your peehole when you, er, are really happy to see someone you like. Yes, ghosts are sticky, that’s called ectoplasm.”
As it turns out, I may be exactly right about this, as Pete’s relationship to the Heartless bureaucratic structure is about to be explained too. “Why, with all those Heartless at her side,” Pete says, wagging a finger in the air but still not fucking turning around, “my dear friend Maleficent is gonna conquer everything!” I am 100 percent sure he has called Maleficent “Mommy” at least once. At the mention of Maleficent, our heroes actually relax a little. Pete is going on about how he’s indebted to Maleficent and thus going around the gummiverse getting her new Heartless minions. This is objectively bad, but I guess at least now they know he’s, uh, killing people for nothing. After Pete’s done telling the “pip-squeaks” to get lost and leave him alone, STILL WITHOUT TURNING AROUND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, Goofy tells him he should find something “nicer” to do with his time, and fucking finally he turns around and of course immediately recognizes @%$#!!! and Goofy. And they both go, “Pete!” because, as I just realized, THEY ALSO DID NOT RECOGNIZE HIM UNTIL JUST NOW. Sweet jumping Jesus. Who else is a giant blobby black cat with that voice? At least Pete hadn’t seen them yet, and is also supposed to be an idiot!
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Pete asks the “nimrods” what they’re doing here, and @%$#!!! is all, “What are YOU doing here?” I laughed. Goofy explains to Junior that “Pete’s been causin’ trouble for ages!” and, oof, “His Majesty banished him to another dimension a long time ago. I wonder how he escaped.” I need to know what sort of “trouble” my dude here was up to in order to get banished to another dimension, because it had better be more than “Was mad that the King stole my boat.” As for Goofy’s question, the answer is pretty obvious, but that won’t stop Pete from saying it anyway: “You wanna know how, eh? Well, Maleficent busted me out, that’s how! And now your world–no, no, no, all the worlds–are gonna belong to yours truly.” Like, maybe he was this evil before being banished, or maybe he just had to get hard when he was living in a fucking shadow dimension! King Mickey is the real villain here. I am not a crackpot.
This declaration of “his” grand scheme, of course, leads Pete to wax sycophantic about the great Maleficent, whose power will make all this possible. These three are as subtle as a hammer blow and thus cannot help but lapse into laughter, clutching their stomachs and everything. “She’s toast,” Junior explains between giggles to Pete. “Sorry, but Maleficent can’t help ya now,” Goofy adds. It’s hilarious, she’s fucking dead! From murder! That they did! Not that she didn’t deserve it, but their complete glee at being the ones who killed her is borderline disturbing.
“Whaddaya mean!?” Pete asks first, uncomprehending, but then blurts out, “You! So you’re the ones that did it!” Okay, did he know she was dead or didn’t he? And if he was spending any time at all in Maleficent’s company, how could he not have known about these three meddling little wankers? I doubt very much Maleficent could have named @%$#!!! or Goofy with a gun to her head, but certainly she had some shit to say about Junior. “Well…we mighta had something to do with it,” Junior straight-up fucking gloats, folding his arms behind his head again. Kingdom Hearts is a little light murder!
This little shit.
Pete has had enough of these jerks who killed Mommy, and yells, “Heartless Squad! Round up!” That’s, like, this close to being cool. Unfortunately Pete has already been thoroughly undermined as a villain, and also his Heartless are nothing but the wee cute baby bug variety, and the music is a fun little bop that makes it sound like they’re bouncing around Rabbit’s carrot patch with fucking Tigger. The trio readies their weapons anyway, taking out the Heartless Squad with laughable ease.
Pete groans impotently some more, then shakes his fist very hard in their direction. “You just wait!” he says. “Nobody, and I mean nobody, messes with the mighty Pete!” Well, I mean, King Mickey did. Just saying. I’m still not sure how okay that was. But Junior senses someone who’s even more of a hapless loser than he is, and pounces to claim alpha status. “So, ‘mighty’ Pete,” he says as scornfully as he can manage, “who lives in this tower, anyway?” Oh, Junior. You were so close, buddy. Pete at least gets the satisfaction of not being the most ignorant person here. “Oh, ya don’t know, eh? Well, it’s old Yen Sid. ‘Course, he’s probably a Heartless by now!” I’m sure. But @%$#!!! freaks out at this news, asking with buggy eyes, “Master Yen Sid lives here!?” No, it’s just his office. @%$#!!! takes off without another word, leaving Junior and Goofy behind to deal with Pete. Goofy explains that Yen Sid was Mickey’s teacher, which I guess is one way to explain the relationship between a wizard and his shithead apprentice who makes all his brooms come to life. “Wow. Sounds powerful!” Junior replies, as Pete glowers at them in the background, steam practically coming out of his ears. They run off after @%$#!!!, and Pete, left behind as too unimportant to even kill off, can do nothing but grunt and stomp his feet in frustration, each stomp making the sound of a timpani drum. Steam coming out of his ears would not have been out of place, is all I’m saying.
The interior of Yen Sid’s office tower is, like the outside, mostly beige and unremarkable. A lavender spiral staircase leads upward into a glowing green portal, like Junior and pals need to round up seven to 17 of their fiercest comrades and go raid Hellfire Citadel. But past the portal they just find more stairs, now in ocean blue and dotted with Heartless waiting in ambush. At the top is a blue wooden door decorated with a single Kirby-esque star, and past this door is a tiny room with another wooden, green, door, this one with a helpful glowing up arrow on it. Well, I would certainly hope so, game. This room seems to serve no purpose other than to be a break in the endless stairs that keeps the processor from bogging down, but there are also some Heartless to distract me from this obvious fact. On that note: I do not remember if the first game did this, because I am senile, but this game has an irritating tic that appears in setting the stage for canned fights like this one (e.g., when the Disembodied Narrator tells me to “Defeat all of the Heartless!”). The game mode briefly bounces into a first-person camera mode and, shaky-cam style, examines the enemies as if from Junior’s point of view, as if I need to be taking up residence in that empty skull to feel immersion in the game. I do not!
Once the camera turns around, I notice the door the boys came in from has a down arrow on it. So these were to keep my dumb ass from getting turned around and using the wrong door. I still wouldn’t have, as they are different colors, but I retract my bitchiness about it. The Heartless defeated, Junior stares silently at the green up arrow door, just making extremely sure I know where to fucking go. Okay, guys, I’m coming back around to being insulted.
The stairs, now green, go up to another green door, emblazoned with a moon. All this color coding feels highly unnecessary when nothing in the middle of this tower actually matters. This door leads to yet another empty, windowless room with arrows on the doors and a round of Heartless to kill. I can only assume Yen Sid normally has bumper pool tables, dartboards, and karaoke machines in these rooms, and the Heartless shoved them out of the way in their haste to capture him. Team Keyblade easily handles these Heartless as well, but @%$#!!! has had enough of this repetitive bullshit. “Heartless, Heartless, Heartless!” he quacks, uh, wingtips on his hips. “Things haven’t changed one bit!” Goofy just figures that means it’s good they’re out of their comas and on the job again, but Junior is stuck on What It All Means. “So the worlds aren’t at peace after all?” he wonders. No, Mickey just shoved you on a train leaving town like you robbed a bank because everything is really good. Meanwhile, Yen Sid is probably a Heartless now because these three had to stand around yakking in his spare man cave.