Mushu fills them in: “Ping” is going to join the Imperial Army and is on “his” way to the recruits’ training camp. This does not seem like anything “Ping” would need assistance with, so “he” adds, “It’ll be easier to fit in if I’m with guys, like you.” This obviously confuses Junior, and not just because he finds the color of the sky, or the fact that touching fire hurts, confusing: “What do you mean, ‘fit in’?” Mushu jumps over Mulan’s words to tell them not to worry about that. I am choosing to believe he’s not blabbing Mulan’s secret to his best pals because he’s worried these three blabbermouths will blurt that shit out within five seconds of meeting another person, and not because he thinks they’d have some problem with helping, yuck, A GIRL. Unfortunately, Goofy pipes up, “You’re pretendin’ to be a boy, aren’t ya?” Well, balls.

If there’s ever a Kingdom Hearts attraction at Disneyland, it’d better include a Junior mascot I can pay $50 to just slap the shit out of for 20 minutes.

I do not need to tell you that Junior and @%$#!!! are shocked, SHOCKED, at this assertion. Mulan more or less tells them, but much more nicely, “Uh, no shit.” Mulan is encouraged by the fact that Junior, easily the dumbest motherfucker in the gummiverse entire, could not discern her gender after exchanging a couple of sentences with her. This totally ignores that Goofy sussed it out immediately, which is wild considering that Goofy lacks the cultural context to know why Mulan would even be doing this in the first place. But Junior was fooled! Well, this scheme is ironclad! Mushu, at least, makes sure she’s aware that Junior and @%$#!!! exist in a perpetual state of having just fallen head-first off a turnip truck. And with Junior at least being sharp enough, for now, to know when he’s been insulted, we reach the title card for THE LAND OF DRAGONS, which looks like the sign for a Chinese restaurant staffed entirely by white people.

I am shunted to the party menu, where “Ping” has been subbed in for Goofy. I don’t know why the menu is calling her Ping when even our heroes know that’s a front. But I do learn from this that now I can switch party members any old time I want, which is very welcome. What if I need Goofy so Junior can eat his soul in exchange for a temporary power-up? There’s also a handy Moogle hologram shop terminal, or it would be handy if Junior weren’t currently a broke-ass loser. Once he’s got all the treasure chests that Mulan and Mushu just left unopened for no reason, Junior leaves the thicket and enters the recruit camp.

Junior et al plow forward through the rows of tents and bamboo-constructed watchtowers, while Mushu holds Mulan back for a quick pep talk about being “man-ly,” to which she puffs her chest out. Girl, no, that’s not going to work the way you think! She then trails behind her new friends, throwing her arms out from her rooster chest, practically limping with her thighs together and her lower legs apart. That’s not even…where’s your fictional dick supposed to go? This is the opposite of manspreading. Junior gets in a line of recruits, only for a rough-voiced guy roughly @%$#!!!’s height to shove in front of him in this, apparently the chow line. “Hey, no cutting!” Junior, the guy who is not even in this army, snarls. The line-jumper responds by punching Junior in the face. Junior sits on the ground and tries not to cry as @%$#!!! leaps at my new favorite character, landing on his chest and instigating an undignified brawl while Mulan and Goofy watch, mortified. This gets broken up by another guy, this one medium-height but skinny, so he and his friend the size of a Fridge Heartless can take their space. Fridge wonders dreamily what’s for lunch. Because he’s fat, get it!! The short dude who cold-cocked Junior growls, “Knuckle sandwiches!” and abandons @%$#!!! to pick on someone eight times his size. This eventually devolves into Junior and @%$#!!! wrestling impotently with Short Stack and Beanpole while Fridge stands there oblivious and Goofy tries to get his friends to act less like the children they are. Mulan finally, extremely politely, shouts, “Please!” so they can all stop and make fun of her instead. “Uh…knock it off!” she tries again, in the Ping octave. Short Stack, who himself had a black eye before any of this even started, insists he didn’t do shit, to which Junior yells, “You punched me!” And? Still waiting to hear a crime. “Cutting in line!” @%$#!!! adds. Okay, closer. When Mulan has to literally shove Mushu into her bra to keep him from adding his two goddamn yuan, and tries in vain to make the peace with these dudes they’ll be risking their lives alongside, Junior basically sobs at her, “Whose side are you on? I just got slugged!” I am alive with pleasure.

Short Stack is about to pick another fight with Junior and fill my heart to bursting with glee, when a voice offscreen commands, “Soldiers! Get back in line!” This is the captain, apparently, so everybody hops to and stands at attention as a handsome young Disney prince with a square jaw and thick eyebrows emerges from his tent to do his inspection. Well, almost everybody: Junior is attempting to cock his bony little fist to, I guess, punch Short Stack, even though Fridge is standing between them and there’s no way Junior has that kind of reach. But his dreams of revenge that would have unfolded into realities of being handed his ass again are interrupted, as Heartless spawn in the middle of the camp. Suddenly, everyone has a useful outlet for all this male idiot energy, and line-cutting is forgotten. Junior says, “Ping, I hope you’re ready,” which I don’t think is a thing he’s ever said to any of their other temporary allies. This little shit. For all he knows, Ping is a contract killer!

For this battle, and other battles to come on this world, the Heartless still explode into candy-colored balls when defeated, but rather than munny or HP, these are “Morale” balls with Mushu’s stylized grimacing face on them. A Morale meter in the top left slowly bleeds down as the battle progresses, and Junior can thus help keep morale up by collecting these from his own kills. This first time, the battle lasts roughly 35 seconds so all the soldiers defecting and running into the hills is not really a concern. Afterward, the captain, who is named Li Shang but may as well be named Mulan’s Pointless Love Interest, asks for the names of these three obviously foreign weirdos. Did I mention there is not even an attempt at planet-themed disguises going on here? Let’s be real, that is probably for the best–I don’t even want to think about what @%$#!!!’s would have been–but it means everyone here is just acting like the Mouseketeers look like normal soldiers despite all visual evidence to the contrary. ANYWAY. They give their names, and Shang is impressed enough with their battle skills that he welcomes them to the battalion that they were trying to pretend they were already in. “I am the son of Fa Zhou–” Mulan starts, but Shang cuts her off. “You should return home,” he says. @%$#!!! wasn’t even in the last battle, and he’s still being put above poor Ping. Harsh. Shang says it would “dishonor [his] troops” to allow Ping to stay, and Mulan understandably gets her back up about this, so it’s Junior’s turn to play peacemaker. “If Ping trains hard and does his best, he’ll get stronger in no time,” he tells the captain, and asks for an assignment for all of them so Ping can show his stuff. No, not that stuff. Shang exposits for all of our benefit that his unit is supposed to ambush Shan-Yu’s Huns, but because the four specimens before him are sad and shitty, but at least seem nimble, he’ll send them to scout ahead in the mountain pass. Mulan looks nervous at the assignment even as Junior tries to reassure her it’s easy. He’s literally never done anything of this kind before, but since when has that stopped this idiot from having a high opinion of himself?

The Confidence of a Mediocre White Man: A Tableau

Junior’s now free to wander the camp until he’s ready to take Shang’s assignment. This amounts to looting some treasure around the perimeter and trying in vain to grab a couple crown Pandora charms that are just out of reach, because why not make me come back here later for no reason but completionism? Knowing this is exactly why they’re there does not stop me from doing this for at least five minutes before talking to Shang again. Suddenly Captain Jawline has three missions, all of which amount to “go here and kill some Heartless.” One of Junior’s two skills, and really, superhuman obliviousness to reality does not count as a skill.

You’re not just supposed to come out and say it like that.

As before, Junior is charged with keeping the morale meter from running out as he murders the lost souls of innocent people turned into monsters, a task that should not increase morale, especially when nobody else in the company is here except his stupid friends who seem pathologically immune to being demoralized, and Mulan who seems like low morale is her resting state. Also like before the meter never really seems in danger of running out, despite the fact that I suck shit at this game.

This guy might be overestimating the abilities of a bird.

“Rah!” Mulan growls in a sad attempt at masculine grunting every few seconds of this battle. Atta girl! Nobody suspects a thing. Hell, it’s likely Junior and @%$#!!! have already forgotten!

Shang congratulates the Mouseketeers on “a passable job.” Always nice when one of these planetbound rubes doesn’t blow smoke up Junior’s ass. His next available mission is in the same checkpoint area as the last one, and only differs in one type of Heartless, a purple centaur in a yellow neckerchief with an impressively long spear. Not only does this dandy have a real HP bar, but it’s difficult to attack in melee thanks to the reach of said impressively long spear, so Junior has to use–gross–magic. My reluctance to just do this easier thing does mean Junior gets the shit kicked out of him and fills that Drive meter up real good. If the game doesn’t want Junior to get curb-stomped, why does it keep rewarding me for letting it happen? Q.E.D.

Someone needs to let Nomura know there’s a third dimension.

The final assignment from Shang is back among the tents. “It seems the enemy has invaded the camp,” he says, pretty calmly given these circumstances. “Defeat every enemy you encounter!” The actual logline asks Junior to defeat the “hidden Heartless,” so I guess he’s going to have to go poking through all the tents and interrupting all of Ping’s fellow conscripts going to town on each other during their brief respite from war. Or discovering and then blurting out to the treetops that every single one of them is also a girl in disguise, like the little narc he is. Junior sucks, is and will always be my point. For invading the privacy of the Heartless and everyone else, Shang gives Junior an AP Boost. Maybe he can put it into the Mind Your Fucking Business skill.

With all the assignments completed, Junior is exactly as cocksure as he was before they did anything–this tracks–and Mulan is still desperate for Shang to validate her the tiniest bit. “I suppose you’ve made a little progress…” he says, and at least her new friend @%$#!!! sticks up for her and says she’s way less shitty now than she was 15 minutes ago. Yeah! But Mulan agrees with Shang. “No. You’re right, Captain,” she says. “Please give me one more assignment. This time I’ll show you what I’m truly made of!” If she truly acquits herself well for this one assignment after looking like a chump for the first three, he’s just going to accuse her of dogging it and kick her out anyway. Unless he’s fated to be her husband! Then it will work out great!!

Sigh.

Shang does have one more chance in his tight-assed little heart for stupid, mortifyingly incompetent Ping. He assures the foursome that this is an important mission despite him using it as a testing ground for someone he thinks is unfit for duty. Maybe someone else should go home! “Your mission is to secure the path over the summit so our company can pass,” Shang says. Well, that does seem important. Better stand here with your dick in my hand while four brand-new recruits take care of it! “I’ve authorized you to be let through to the summit. Don’t let me down!” At first I figure Shang means the very locked, very imposing gate attached to miles of five-foot-tall wooden fencing, an obstacle that would have stymied poor Junior for the rest of his hopefully short life, but Shang is actually referring to a second exit from the checkpoint area into the mountain pass, which has no gate at all. I’m thinking Shang’s authorization counts for as much as his judgment.