Despite what the trio just saw, this part of town seems clear of Heartless, and Junior is free to roam about unharassed and pick up more crown glitter pieces, which are now the size of his head. He is too broke at the moment to do any shopping with the nephews, and as usual their dead eyes don’t even register Unca @%$#!!!’s presence. But as for why they’re here, it’s possible they made the journey with their other uncle. @%$#!!! discovers Scrooge McDuck, richest duck in Duckberg Hollow Bastion, presiding over a walk-in freezer across from Dewey’s item shop. Goofy explains to a puzzled Junior, “He’s [@%$#!!!]’s uncle–a business typhoon!” You got me, Goofy, I belly laughed at this. “Before the Heartless showed up, he traveled the worlds on a Gummi Ship with the King. He was helpin’ to set up a traffic system.” @%$#!!! corrects, “A transit system!” Those are close enough in meaning that I don’t know why he couldn’t let this one slide but said nothing about “business typhoon.” But beyond that, I thought there was no travel between worlds until this Heartless problem started! Junior’s had to hear about how interplanetary travel was forbidden this whole time and it turns out it was just because Scrooge wasn’t done monetizing it?
Scrooge turns around after @%$#!!! and Goofy have been talking about him for a solid five seconds five feet away from him. He’s sucking on one of the most unappetizing popsicles I’ve ever seen. It’s the color of a Chernobyl sunset. It looks like it would just say “DESPAIR” on the wrapper. After his initial happiness to see his nephew and his nephew’s husband, he sighs that he is not doing well because of this ice cream of the damned. “I canna seem to recreate my favorite old-time ice cream,” he explains. “I’d make millions if I just got it right…” Given that he refers to it was “old-time,” it’s possible this flavor would be bad even if he did perfect it. It might be a swirl of black licorice and lime rickey. Then he takes a couple more licks, because he is a deranged old billionaire, and declares it “Terrible…!” Yeah, you just said that and you’re still eating it! I thought Scrooge was smarter than the smarties!
DUDE STOP EATING IT
There’s nothing to be done about Scrooge’s problem at the moment, and even if there were it is the lowest stakes problem imaginable–I mean, sure, let’s workshop a popsicle flavor so an already obscenely wealthy miser can buy another planet–so the boys move on. Scrooge says Squally and the gang are at “Merlin’s house” in the next area, so after dumping off their synthesis supplies with a moogle, they charge down the steps. They are stopped short in the adjoining neighborhood by a series of blinking white light beams firing off around them. “That’s the town’s defense mechanism,” someone yells from above them, so I’m gonna guess it’s Yuffie, probably sitting casually on a rooftop or some shit. Okay, she’s standing casually, and it’s the top of a wall. Partial credit. Yuffie’s taken some of Squally’s leftover black leather scraps and fashioned herself a new biker teen outfit with a black floral tank underneath, and she’s also fashioned herself a new voice courtesy of Mae Whitman, possibly the only time in this series someone will get a more famous voice actor. (I’m sure this wasn’t the case back in 2004, but who cares?) Yuffie barely has time to say hi before she’s yelling, “Look out!” as a group of Nobodies surround Junior and friends. This defense mechanism isn’t very good, Yuffie! I’ve got some notes!
The Nobodies aren’t exactly a problem, mostly because I impulsively smash that Drive button and turn Junior into a whirling double-Keyblade death machine, but they wouldn’t have been hard even if I had self-control. Yuffie congratulates Junior on not having lost a step, and I know she was going to say this no matter what I did just now, but I do almost feel the need to correct her since this was Junior trying extra hard to look cool. Junior takes the compliment the only way he knows how–gracelessly, with a jock’s confidence–and @%$#!!! asks how the others are doing. “Great!” she replies. Well! Glad we’re all caught up. Junior asks if she’s seen Mickey and Riku, and not only has she not, but I am trying to puzzle out if she’s ever met either one. Like, if she’d asked “Who is Riku?” I wouldn’t have even blinked. She does add, making Junior smile and me roll my eyes, “But I had a feeling I’d see you guys again.” Junior is like a bad penny that way. This, naturally (???), makes Junior think of Squally’s last words to him, which he chooses to imitate with a hand held to his brow and the deepest voice he can summon, so, like, half an octave lower: “We may never meet again, but we’ll never forget each other.” Yuffie asks if that’s supposed to be a Squally impression, so that’s how you know it was good. Junior somehow takes this, too, as a compliment and looks proud of himself while @%$#!!! and Goofy openly snicker at him. Yuffie is clearly tired of having to shoulder the conversational burden that is Junior all by herself, so she tells them, “Everybody’s working on stuff over at Merlin’s house. C’mon!” Everyone! Stuff! Well, I have no questions. Maybe “everyone” is figuring out Scrooge’s ice cream dilemma.
Junior doesn’t have to wait long to see what Yuffie means, as Merlin’s new digs are just around the corner, and therefore only three Heartless battles away. So I don’t know why every single non-duck resident of Traverse Town has to be holed up in this one tiny house when they had all of Hollow Bastion to colonize for their own, but Squally, Aeris, Cid, and Yuffie have apparently decided being roommates with Merlin is the only thing that makes sense in this apparently cripplingly expensive metropolis. Junior finds the former three inside, Aeris and Squally hovering over Cid’s shoulder as he types some stuff into an ancient-looking gummi computer. They seem more or less unchanged, though Aeris has upgraded her outfit to some kind of prairie-skirt-under-a-negligée situation, and obviously David Boreanaz and Mandy Moore have fled the premises. Yuffie ushers our boys in with the declaration, “Meet the Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee!” Of course they made a fucking committee. They have the one undefeated tool at their disposal for getting rid of unwanted intruders: gentrification! Aeris goes, “We missed you!” with all the sincerity and emotion of a peanut butter sandwich, while Cid echoes Yuffie’s compliments to Junior while not moving his mouth and keeping his insanely long toothpick motionless in his teeth. Between this and his, uh, “improved” face, it’s a bit unnerving. Squally just smirks, “I knew it,” and seeing even a tiny smile on his face is the most unnerving thing of all. When Junior asks what he knew, Squally explains, “A while back, everyone suddenly remembered you guys, all at the same time.” That must have been a terrible few hours. Imagine being blissfully ignorant of this jerkoff and not only being suddenly flooded with thoughts of him, but realizing you had been friends. Thoughts and prayers to the whole gummiverse on this one. Junior is, of course, mad that Squally broke his promise to never forget their immutable fucking bond. Because he’s King of the Promise Keepers, right?
Cid looks like he’s been hit in the face with a frying pan.
Yuffie ignores their huffiness at being rightfully forgotten and asks where the hell they’ve been, and does not add a question as to whether they can go back there, like, immediately. “We were sleepin’,” Goofy underexplains. Cid asks if it was in “cold storage,” which, yes? Kind of nailed it? Aeris insists this does not matter–hi, girl, miss me with that shit when I had to spent several hours on it!–because “Everyone’s together again!” Guys. Aeris is kind of a dipshit. (I know, late breaking news here.)
Junior poses his Riku and Mickey question to these three as well, though you’d think if they’d seen Superior Team Keyblade, Yuffie would have known and mentioned it, and sure enough they have not seen them either. Aeris issues a “Sorry” at this that sounds so Canadian I have to look up if Mena Suvari is one of the good northern people (nope), but Cid and Squally blow past Junior’s bullshit to focus the conversation on their own problems here in Hollow Bastion. Junior correctly guesses those problems amount to Heartless and Sexy Whitewashed Heartless, and also that his services are required. Squally says they were “hoping” to get a helping hand from these three who just happened to show up here out of nowhere. He smiles again at Junior’s easy agreement to this. It’s weird! Is this because he found out about Seifer disciplining tween choads on another world and is rekindling inappropriate hope in his heart?
I found the new Dreamworks Face
Squally heads for the door and gestures for Junior to follow him to the bailey, as there is something there he needs to see. Again, is the “something” Heartless? We get the fucking point! As Squally exits, Merlin enters via a cloud of white smoke and tiny fireworks. You could have used the door, dude. If he is annoyed that there are even more people in his house when there are perfectly functional residences all over this fucking planet, he does not show it. Instead he’s happy, to my continued bafflement, to see Junior, who he deems “Right on time.” Maybe right on time to tell Merlin he’s a cosmic redundancy now that Yen Sid got added to the broader gummiverse, though somehow no one goes there. Merlin is delighted to hear Junior is on their monster-slaying case, but adds, “Did you give them the cards, dear?” Aeris acts surprised as well as she acts anything else, and then digs into her pocket. So help me God, if Aeris is about to hand Junior some deck of bullshit that amounts to playing Chain of Memories as a mini-game I will unplug my PS3 and put it out on the sidewalk.
So that doesn’t happen, which is good, but I can’t say I have much enthusiasm for what it turns out to be. “Here…they’re presents for you,” Aeris says, handing Junior a purple card. “[Squally] thought you might like to have them.” No, they are not Jamba Juice gift cards, or spares of Squally’s AmEx Platinum with the 500,000 munny credit limit, so then, what kind of shitty gift is this? The front has a golden silhouette of the Hollow Bastion skyline that is, in miniature, really hard to distinguish from the Disneyland silhouette in the Disney logo. On the back, well, I’ll just let Junior read it aloud like the pud he is: “Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee Honorary Member!” It has his name handwritten underneath on the signature strip, so this isn’t even a custom card they punched. “Membership cards!” @%$#!!! says a little too enthusiastically as he and Goofy examine their own copies, so I think @%$#!!! at least understands that this gift blows. “Kinda cool, huh?” Goofy says, unsurprisingly ending up on the other side of that coin. Junior turns around to thank Squally for this fuckin’ rad present that he gave a ton of thought to and didn’t just have sitting around for the first asshole to visit him after he got his Vistaprint shipment, but as I mentioned because he was definitely gone before Merlin even appeared, Squally is at the goddamn bailey.
Loading ...Junior realizes that Squally is probably impatiently tapping a foot right now, one hip jutted out to perfection, but Merlin continues to prevent him from leaving. “What about your magic?” he asks. What about it? He’s bad at it! I would think Merlin of all people would remember this! Yuffie helpfully offers, “Maybe you forgot it while you were asleep!” Oh no! Better never have magic again, in case DiZ erases it! Just too much trouble, right? Gotta keep this tight focus on slapping fuckers silly with Keyblades instead, as much as it pains me! But they had to have some reason for Merlin to still exist in this universe, so he sighs and says he will “lend” Junior a few spells. Is…is that how spells work? Oh. Well, does it have to be? Anyway, Junior now has Blizzard. It could have at least been Cure!
This demeans both of us, DID.
Since Squally is probably already mad at him, Junior takes his time getting over to the bailey, grabbing some chests and crown glitter pieces around the area first. (One of the latter is gotten by bouncing on Merlin’s bed, an inspection of which notes the “long strands of beard” on his sheets. I could have happily died without reading that.) There’s one particular puzzle piece on top of a chimney that I spend about 20 minutes trying to grab, and it is only as I write this that I realize I probably need to use Super Junior form to have the jump height necessary to get it. You know, the charge I blew just to make one fight against three Nobodies take seven seconds instead of 10. I’m great at this.
As promised, Squally is hanging out in the bailey, looking out a large window in the stone walls with his arms crossed and his lips pouted. Typical Squally stuff. He instructs the boys to take a look too, at what turns out to be a literal moat of writhing, yellow-eyed Heartless bugs surrounding Hollow Bastion’s castle. It’s undeniably gross and I understand Squally’s sense of urgency, but this is also entirely beyond Junior’s abilities. Remember when these three saw a bunch of Heartless behind the Kingdom Hearts door and slammed it shut with Riku and Mickey inside? That was, like, a third this amount. I don’t know what Squally thinks Junior and his sometimes two Keyblades are going to do about this.
My backyard in the summer
Squally explains that their goals of restoring Hollow Bastion, which I guess Junior has inadvertently signed up as a backer for because of this stupid Hollow Bastion Rewards Zone card, are understandably being stymied by this. “There’s still a lot to do,” he goes on, “but I’m sure we can handle everything– Except…for that…” Oh, well, if it’s just this one thing! As if this is not enough, Squally points at something else and says, “And that.” The second thing is two Dusks slinking (sexily, natch) down the road toward the castle. I mean, unless there’s a big orgiastic pile of those fuckers somewhere too, that seems like less of an issue, dude. Junior steps back from the ledge and tells Squally with confidence, “We’ll handle ’em.” I assume he means the Nobodies. Unless his Drive gauge can turn him into a sentient can of Raid, I don’t think he’s got the first problem covered at all.
Junior attempts to explain what’s been going on to Squally, though it would help if he had any sort of handle on it himself. “There’s this guy, Pete, who’s been going around plotting with the Heartless. But he’s not smart enough to tie his own shoes.” Glass houses, my boy. He therefore reasons that the real problem is the Nobodies. I mean, sure, that’s the rub of this particular game, but if I were Squally and I had just shown Junior fifty fucktillion Heartless and two Nobodies, and he said I should sweat the latter and not the former, on the sole premise that one guy I’ve never heard of, described by Junior as an idiot, is the lead Heartless wrangler, I would laugh in his dumb face and then throw him off this balcony.
Goofy is trying to augment Junior’s extremely bad explanation by mentioning the problem of Organization XIII, when a deep voice offscreen rumbles, “You called?” Junior rushes out to meet the fuckers as they taunt him out of view, but they just summon more Dusks instead. The gates back to town close, maybe thanks to Cid’s automated defenses, but that’s just me trying to come up with one useful thing those have accomplished. @%$#!!! and Goofy run off to handle the Nobodies elsewhere, leaving Junior and Squally to keep the Nobodies from threatening the town. Uh, it’s too late for my criticism to matter, but that is not how I would have split up the team!
Speaking of Cid’s light beams, they do actually buzz around the bailey zapping the Dusks for mild damage here and there, so I should stop being a bitch. I have Junior spend almost all his time standing directly in front of the gates so I don’t lose track of where they are and fuck this all up. I therefore don’t know what the hell Squally is doing this entire time, though there’s a lot of manly groaning from the other end of the bailey, so either he’s taking care of business or Seifer from ten years in the future just walked in through a time travel portal and they are getting reacquainted. Wherever they are, the indicators for @%$#!!! and Goofy gaining levels pop up on the screen, so it is possible they are doing the same. Good for them. I hope they’re not waiting around saving themselves for Mickey.
“Having Drive maxed sure would be nice right now!” I think to myself for the second time in five minutes.