Junior enters the parlor adjoining Yen Sid’s study and walks in on three little grannies arguing with each other. Obviously, these are the three “good fairies” of Sleeping Beauty, and less obviously, they shack up at Yen Sid’s place for some reason. Did Aurora leave them homeless when she decided to move to a cabana on Destiny Islands with Cinderella and Snow White and very much did not want chaperones around? The fairies don’t turn to greet Junior, so he keeps carrying on the very important conversation he was having earlier with his friends. “Me, you guys, Riku, and the King,” he says. “I don’t care who this Organization is or what it’s planning. With the five of us–I mean, six of us–there’s nothing to worry about. Right?” Wait, six? Is he including Jiminy in “you guys”? Yen Sid? Kairi? …Roxas?!

Junior gets a minute to explore this room, such as it is, since the fairies still seem oblivious to his presence. The room is dominated by mirrors, standing free or mounted on walls or dressers, that are all covered by gold-tasseled white sheets printed with golden stars. I assume at some point Yen Sid was incredibly vain, but went into a depressive funk and could no longer look at himself. Junior can interact with each of these mirrors, and yes that sounds like inane gamespeak for “look into them,” but he doesn’t remove the coverings so I can’t imagine that is what he’s doing. Each one, through its drape somehow, reveals some possibility of Junior’s future, such as “An image of you overcome by the power of darkness flows into your mind,” or “An image of the Keyblade unleashing its ultimate power flows into your mind.” I’m gonna have to object to the phrasing of that second one. Unless it’s Roxas, signaling to me that he’s still in some dark corner of Junior’s cavernous skull by making his usurper radiate horniness.

Even–gasp–literacy?

After grabbing some mythril out of a chest and confirming that I opened every single one in Twilight Town, which matters to me for reasons I don’t understand, Junior talks with the fairy in red, Flora, to get started on making him over. Flora fairysplains to her sisters that “[Junior], [@%$#!!!], and Goofy” are here, because they are, like, hella famous, and what barriers between worlds? Fuck those, there’s a celebrity teen to play dress-up on! Merryweather, the non-grayhair in blue, says, “Ooh, if you’re looking for clothes, you’ve come to the right place!” Uh, yeah, he was kind of explicitly told to come here. For clothes. Fauna, the green-clad middle sister nobody cares about, says she will handle the design, as her sisters lead Junior to the center of the room into the best light. Then maybe out of that light a little bit. Little darker. There we go.

Fauna points her wand at Junior and a shower of green sparks transform Junior’s look into a green palette-swap of what he was already wearing. It’s…drab. Merryweather negs this pretty hard, and throws her own spell at Junior, turning his outfit blue. We’re getting better, but that is still too small on him. Flora, and stop me if you’re sensing a pattern here, tells her younger sisters to calm the fuck down and adds her own twist, obviously a red version. Fauna’s like, no, and hits him with the green again. They bicker in this manner over Junior’s prone body for a minute or so, while he stands there looking put out about it. The camera pans up from the sparks flying around Junior’s clothes to a large window at the top of the tower room, where a raven with big purple eye bags is observing and cawing now and then. This is, duh, Maleficent’s bird. And if I remember correctly, Merryweather turned Diablo here into stone in the movie, so he probably has some bias against the blue version of the outfit. He flaps off the ledge, unnoticed by the people in the room. I’m sure it won’t come up again.

Back to Junior, who moans that they should just make up their minds already. The fact that this is his outfit he will be wearing every single day for the rest of this game, and that maybe his opinion about it should have some weight, is left unsaid. He’s gotta leave the clothes stuff to the girls!! The gals gasp at him in a very “Well, I NEVER” sort of way, but after a second they nod at each other and Flora tells them, “All right, then. Together now, dears. And no more squabbling!” She literally started the squabbling and now she’s acting like she’s above it–I’m just a sociopathic only child, but that does seem like peak oldest sibling shit. In unison, the fairies hit Junior with all their combined magics, and the screen whites out before we see Junior’s new look, because it isn’t a palette swap and can’t just change on his body without it looking like he’s being eaten by a white blob.

As the camera pans slowly up Junior’s new ensemble–black pants and cropped jacket, with accents of yellow, navy blue, and red, but not green, so I guess Fauna just got put in her place–the fairies comment admiringly on their handiwork, Merryweather noting that Junior looks “very dashing.” Look, it’s a better outfit and I believe I am on the record somewhere on the Internet as saying and genuinely meaning the words “Stupid sexy Junior,” but let’s pump the brakes, lady. Worse still, Junior’s Keyblade appears in hand just as Merryweather says this, and I think we all know where my mind went with this. It’s better to not put voice to it.

SETTLE DOWN, FAUNA

“Now, those aren’t ordinary garments,” Flora says. Well, bowl me over with a feather, because I was sure a wad of chunky zippers and pleather that got summoned into existence by three fairies waving magic wands would be available at J. Crew. To demonstrate the “special powers” of his new duds, Flora summons a glowing golden orb and tells Junior to take it. When he does, he’s surrounded by a polyhedral forcefield and his outfit flashes into a red palette swap, with added flourishes of fleur-de-lis and, no big, a second Keyblade in his left hand. @%$#!!! just quacks, “Wow,” and Goofy helpfully says, “Two Keyblades!” Thanks, bud. Merryweather indicates these Keyblades that are, like, double Keyblades will be necessary on this journey that will be “twice as difficult” as their prior one. Listen, Merryweather probably doesn’t know shit about their last journey, or what she does know, at best, came from one-sentence chapters about doors of light and darkness in one of Yen Sid’s fucking plot primers. And yet Junior makes a big show of slumping his shoulders, like he just cannot deal with these ladies giving him free shit but noting he’ll need the free shit to accomplish difficult tasks. God, what a little asshole. Flora says the clothes can do other things too, “but you will have to discover what they are as you continue on your journey.” Counterpoint: you can tell me right now! And I mean me, the player, not this ungrateful turd being showered in gifts. What am I supposed to do, consult some kind of document outside the game? Did you just fucking assign me homework, lady?

Only after Flora’s like, “Figure out this shit we invented on your own time” does Junior thank them for it and promise to do his best. Has he ever reacted to something in a normal way? I, an incredibly normal person who regularly yells at videogame characters in an empty room, say no. Finally, Fauna says Junior is also getting a gift from Yen Sid, to which @%$#!!! hops in the air and yells, “Oh boy!” Nerd. I don’t know what this gift is, because the Disembodied Item Describer butts in to give me the details on Junior’s new second Keyblade, Starseeker–namely, that it increases combos while in midair (fucking nice). DID also lays out Valor Form (aka Red Junior) as a command action he can use “with Goofy’s help.” In practice, this means he subsumes Goofy into himself for sick combos, and on one hand that’s extremely fucked up, and on the other hand TWO KEYBLADES, BAYBEEEEEEE. Once Junior’s out of DID’s domain he learns about the Drive gauge, which gives him a handy progress bar to temporarily suck Goofy’s soul into his clothing.

This is a good sentence!

Junior is about to go back to Yen Sid, hopefully for more presents, when a glittering golden something falls out of his ass. Or his jumpsuit pockets, what am I, a scientist? Goofy points this out, and the three of them stare at the object: a glowing crown symbol just like the one on Junior’s Hot Topic chain necklace. One of them wonders if it’s “part of a picture,” and I don’t know how that would be the first guess anyone sane would make, but that is in fact what it is, just in an abstract sense. The fairies plead ignorance on Junior’s crown-shitting problem, though Flora says, “But if you found it in your pocket, it must have something to do with your adventure.” Sure! That’s very normal! Merryweather unnecessarily adds that if he finds any more things like this he should keep them. Bitch, please, even Junior knows an Easter egg hunt when he sees one. Just to make sure we all get that that’s what’s happening here, Jiminy hops down to it (at no point has anyone picked this thing up) and says he’ll keep track of them in his journal. In there, by the way, these things transform from tiny Pandora charms into puzzle pieces depicting artwork of Junior and all his poor unfortunate friends. DID chimes in to let me know these things are “all over the world,” a hilariously poor choice of words for this specific game, but whatever, I get what it means.

When the Mouseketeers reenter Yen Sid’s office, he beckons them over to the window, where the gummi ship floats up to meet them. OH GOODY. @%$#!!! and Goofy are genuinely excited about this, for some reason. If this is Yen Sid’s present, that is bullshit. For one thing, it was already theirs, and for another, it sucks. JUNIOR DEMANDS BETTER PRESENTS FOR EXISTING.

Junior asks the other two if they’re ready to go, and all three of them stand at attention in front of Yen Sid like he’s their drill sergeant, but he tells them to wait a second, and they all slump their shoulders again. BOOOOOORING, OLD MAN. Remember how eager they were to learn from this guy like ten minutes ago? Yen Sid says to his uninterested students, “Because of your previous endeavors, the worlds have returned to their original states. That means the pathways between them have disappeared.” What do I keep saying? Not a reset. Yen Sid assures them that there will be new pathways they can travel between worlds, and that this is mostly that the worlds aren’t in the same geographical order anymore. Which, who cares? Oh no, Halloween Town isn’t neighbors with Neverland anymore? What will I doooooo? Blah blah, there are also gates, yadda yadda, they will have to figure them out along their journey, beep bork this is the same shit on a different day and I don’t know why we are making a huge honking deal out of it.

“However,” Yen Sid finishes, “the Keyblade will serve as your guide. When a beam of light radiates from the Keyblade, return to the Gummi Ship.” Don’t worry, Junior uses the Keyblade blasting a load as his guiding light at all times and does not need these instructions. Yen Sid reminds them, saying his words through his teeth in a way I just noticed but now cannot unsee, that the worlds are all connected by the invisible ties of their hearts. “Our hearts are connected,” Junior repeats like no one’s ever said it before. Unfortunately, the non-hearts of the Nobodies and the Heartless also are connected, I guess, so they too will have their own “corridors of darkness” to travel from world to world and connect them up to each other. I have no idea why any of this needs to be said. The worlds will have Heartless on them? Whoa, weird!

Finally, Yen Sid has nothing else to tell them, and dismisses them to start adventuring already. They attempt to salute him again in thanks and leave the tower. To their retreating backsides, Yen Sid smiles in a vaguely sinister way, or maybe just his normal nice way, and then disappears in a white, glittery flash. What am I supposed to think this is? Is he a Nobody? Was he astral projecting into this tower the entire time? Does it matter? And where is Junior’s fucking present?!

It is with regret that I inform you I no longer respect the troops.

While Yen Sid has been filling our heroes’ heads with what passes for knowledge in this game, his good fairy roommates have been dealing with their own problems. We check back in on them with Merryweather saying, “My goodness! What’s that?” As the music takes a turn for the, uh, daaaaaark, we see the source of her consternation: Diablo the raven sitting on their windowsill, clutching a high-collared black robe that could only have belonged to Maleficent. He flaps into the room and deposits the garment on the floor. “Haven’t we seen this somewhere before?” Merryweather asks, as they all lean over it. I’m sure you’ll remember if it’s important! Fauna even adds, “I wonder whose it was…” Suddenly, the name occurs to Merryweather, who gets halfway through blurting it out when she covers her mouth and Flora warns her that they “mustn’t remember her name!” Maleficent didn’t die because everyone forgot about her–Junior beat her to death after Riku turned her into a fucking dragon. What is this retcon shit? In lieu of saying her name out loud, Merryweather understates that the big M was a “mean ol’ witch” but then moans that her memories of said mean ol’ witch are returning. Did these three also have their memories wiped in Castle Oblivion?

As thoughts of their former nemesis come crashing back into the fairies’ brains, the cloak begins to float upward and fill out, the witch’s body reanimating because these three dummies mentally clapped three times and chose to believe in her again. They decide to go get Yen Sid and make it his problem too, but on their way out the door, Merryweather seemingly can’t help herself and cries, “Maleficent!” at the fully formed witch in their dressing room before blinking out of there in a cloud of fairy dust. Left alone, Maleficent has a good, long, evil laugh. She also has her staff with her again, though I don’t think Diablo carried that into the room. Is it a part of her body?

Who even fucking knows what’s happening here? Not your girl! In one of the weirdest tonal shifts in a game that is entirely weird tonal shifts, we cut straight from Maleficent’s mad cackling to the tiny engineering deck of the Gummi Ship of Recapper Annoyance, where Chip and Dale give Junior a hearty hello. So…what have these two been doing for the past year? Catching up on their Netflix queue? Boning? Whatever it is, they’re not saying–they just tell Junior, “Happy flying!” and make themselves available for some gummi ship tutorials and customizations. Pass and pass! In the cockpit, Junior moans that only one world is reachable from Twilight Town, but Goofy points out that it’s a world they’ve visited before: Hollow Bastion. Thankfully without having to fly through any candy asteroids for this particular trip, Junior steers his way over to the place where Riku made him eat shit in front of God and Beast and everyone.

Before Team Junior even lands at Hollow Bastion, it becomes clear that we will not be seeing Traverse Town return in this game, because it has more or less been grafted onto this world like some gears glued to a top hat, as if its copper faux-steampunk vibe weren’t in your face enough before. The process isn’t even complete, as there are cranes and lumber and construction detritus everywhere. I don’t know when they would have had time to literally break off pieces of Traverse Town and cart them over here, but that kind of seems like what happened. The castle portion of the planet is confined to the underside, and as we’ll see, is pretty much completely segregated from New Traverse Town.

But first, let’s check in with Pete, who has also made his way to Hollow Bastion. A thing I would have never questioned his ability to do, so I am still puzzled as to why Yen Sid had to explain it. Anyway, Pete sneaks into one of the abandoned castle’s towers, calling for Maleficent. Ears pressed back and shoulders slumped, Pete wonders, “Maybe they did really finish her off.” God dammit, does he know what happened to her or doesn’t he? Nearby, Diablo is flapping his way toward Pete’s location, but Pete is now wandering around this glowing purple chamber, bitching about how unimpressive it is and worrying that the boss’s absence is going to ruin their plan to, I don’t know, make the whole world DARK or whatever. Eventually, Pete notices the bird sitting on the ledge outside, and shakes his head in disbelief with a flapping sawblade wobble sound. A raven? In this economy?

My first impressions of Hollow Bastion are confirmed with a quick pan around the town. Buildings of stone and timber are clustered around a cement town square, moogles are flapping around among the humans, and all three of @%$#!!!’s nephews seem to have opened storefronts. I guess Disney Castle was just too boring without their uncle around to bully. Junior, @%$#!!!, and Goofy run into view and take in the ruins of the castle’s towers, which are also bristling with cranes and scaffolding, so the construction effort is not just to settle New Traverse Town here. “It’s Hollow Bastion!” Junior says. Uh…yeah, man. “Gawrsh, it looks kinda different now,” Goofy, who was the one to note that this place looked familiar, adds. Christ. @%$#!!! wonders how the Final Fantasy Throwback Crew are faring in their new old home, but the answer appears to be “lazily,” because the question is barely out of @%$#!!!’s mouth when Goofy spots some Heartless prancing around on a nearby rooftop. Jesus, get your house in order, Squally.