THE GRINDERY’s second floor is more of the same, though at least Ghaleon put a Silver Light in the first chest, I guess as a reward for making it past the Red Dragon’s ankle cuffs without crying or vomiting. I bet he thought that was totally going to fuck Alex up, and he didn’t even notice. Further south on this level, a pair of catwalks cross a pit filled with green radioactive goo and purple tentacles. Now, this one is just baffling, since despite Ghaleon’s Magic Emperor Shredder look I don’t think the dragons are Ninja Turtles, and also I am definitely sure none of them have tentacles. Unless they do now, because Ghaleon sprayed them with the ooze. Oh no! If this ends with our heroes dancing to a Vanilla Ice song, that…will be extremely on-brand for Working Designs.
Okay, that might be the Blue Dragon’s tail, actually. I still stand by my digression into Ninja Turtles crossover fic.
Next floor! The elevator tube leads directly to another set of catwalks, these providing a view of some kind of pulsing black and white flesh, trapped under metal plates embedded with fancy glowing fuchsia gems and connected to more matching tubes. So Ghaleon was fully in his brief Miles Edgeworth phase when he was setting up this floor. The best I can guess is that this is the Black Dragon’s underbelly, though I wonder why Alex has this top-down view here and can’t see down to the Blue Dragon’s tentacle tail, even though he just came straight upstairs from that. Maybe the elevator tube took him to the other side of the floor? Let’s go with that. I shouldn’t think about this stuff more than Ghaleon did. I mean, how many Silver Lights do you think these teens need, dude? They’re set, I promise.
Past some more tube trips and the same monsters as below, Alex finds a Stone Bracelet that Ghaleon was clearly intending to give Nash as a “Thanks for narcing on your friends for no discernible purpose” present, and, well, given how it looks, he might have meant it as a hint at, uh, deepening their relationship. You tell me.
Will we ever stop seeing Goatse in everything? No. We will not.
It’s not much farther to the elevator to the fourth floor, though the party does have to fight through one new creation (?) of Ghaleon’s, the Tank Golem. For once, they are what they sound like–bulky creatures in knight armor with yellow mohawks, mounted on rolling tank treads and wielding two pointy swords each. What is this obsession with tanks, Ghaleon? We’re walking around inside one giant tank, and it’s filled with other, smaller tanks. This is like how my brother-in-law desperately wanted a Power Wheels as a kid and never got one, so he ended up buying a Jay Leno-sized fleet of them for his kids. Except Ghaleon has no kids, and is treating himself, and also all these Power Wheels are either holding phallic objects or are themselves phallic objects. The fourth floor passes uneventfully, until Alex hops inside one last tube and he and his friends slowly approach a large aquarium in their path. Inside this tank, hooked up to more fuchsia tubes, is the head of Quark.
It takes seeing the actual head of a dragon in this state–as opposed to the dragon body parts that have been strewn about everywhere–for our heroes to face the fucked-up reality that is THE GRINDERY. Squeak hovers around Quark’s unresponsive face for a bit before floating back down to Alex. “Alex! It’s…horrible…” Yeah, Alex can see it, pal. Jess, aghast, says, “I thought the White Dragon was dead… Alex…what as Ghaleon DONE to him?” At no point has it ever been confirmed that any of the dragons were killed, and in fact the Black Dragon more or less made it clear that this was not the case. And again, DRAGON BODY PARTS ALL UP IN THIS BITCH. As if he’s now aware of me and his sudden and only life’s mission is to piss me off, Nash adds, “I’m sure he’s done this to all the Dragons…” OH YEAH? SHOW ME ONE PIECE OF HARD EVIDENCE, PROSECUTOR. YOU CAN’T, CAN YOU.
Sigh. Mia finally puts it into words: “Ghaleon is drawing upon the power of the Dragons to fuel the Grindery. He’s sucking the life out of them…it’s unbearable to even look at this…” Kyle calls Ghaleon a “sick little bastard” because, thank God, all the dumbest responses to this sight were taken already. Jess takes Mia’s conclusions one step further: “Ghaleon has turned the Dragons born to protect Althena against her. How can we possibly fight an evil drawing in this kind of power?” This is a shaky supposition, and they knew how powerful Ghaleon was before they set foot in THE GRINDERY, but…good question! Didn’t Nash kind of ask that a while ago, before blowing up your airship?
But speaking of Nash…ugh. He replies, “How can we? Don’t you mean how CAN’T we?! You’ve all seen the horrors that Ghaleon has inflicted on our world! Viewing this latest atrocity should only strengthen your resolve to defeat him!” Surely this is the logic that led Nash to strengthen his resolve after he personally watched Ghaleon mind-control Gams, and then use her to control the Black Dragon and nearly kill his two lady friends! That’s how that went, right? I’m sure it was. Somehow, nobody slaps Nash off this highest of high horses. Instead, fucking Kyle goes, “You’re right, Nash, for once!” Come on, man. You’re going to desert me now?
Nah, Alex is good out here.
Past the Quark Tank is a chest containing an Insane Shield for Kyle–this feels deliberate, like Ghaleon was thinking, “They will be driven insane by my evil, and this shield will really drive the theme home!” It’s Ghaleon, don’t tell me he wouldn’t think like this. And just to make it a little more ham-fisted, the gang takes the next elevator tube and emerges in…a beautiful garden filled with fairies. Whoooooaaaa. It’s, like, the opposite of the last room! The non-Euclidean geometry, I can’t look at it!
That might be because it’s a park!
Everybody spills out of Alex to examine this oddity. Kyle and Jess wonder if it’s a trap of some kind, like anybody with even a barely functional quarter of a brain would fight through four floors of tank monsters and cables siphoning life energy from dragons, only to reach a patch of grass and totally let their guards down. (That said, if the Althena statue here explodes when they try to use it, I’ll tip my cap to the Magic Emperor. Good one, dude!) Short version: it’s less of a trap than it is a bit of last-minute character shading for Ghaleon, whom we haven’t been reminded in some time is a sensitive soul that also happens to be a megalomaniacal monster. “I love flowers, plants and trees,” one little Tinkerbell tells them. “I care for them here to please Emperor Ghaleon.” Mia and Jessica are both puzzled that their evil mortal foe Ghaleon is into flowers, but not one minute later, when the gang chats up the Vile Tribe gardener in charge of this little Eden, Mia goes, “I remember Ghaleon giving me flowers when I was just a little girl.” Did…did she actually remember that within the last minute? Or did she always think Ghaleon hated flowers and gave them to her just to banish them from his presence? Did he toss them in her face and run away screaming?
*extremely dumbass chud voice* ‘I try to stay out of politics.’
The other fairies, of course, have little tidbits about Ghaleon and life here in THE GRINDERY to share: one tells them that Gams was “one of the nicest girls” captured by Ghaleon, which gets a hearty eyeroll out of yours truly; one calls Xeboobia cruel and says they “chafe” at her wickedness but praises Fellatio for being, like, way nice; one cheerfully greets them as Ghaleon’s “guests” and talks about what a compassionate soul Ghaleon is, giving Squeak yet another opportunity to condescend to someone else he deems a cranially compromised dingbat; and thankfully one, at least, is sensible enough to realize this pleasant park is still a prison–or, at best, a zoo–they were captured to inhabit.
Before Alex returns inside I have to note that up here, removed from the road grime it accrued on its journey, THE GRINDERY is painted a lovely shade of fuchsia matching the cables attached to all those poor comatose dragons. There’s even a gold ricrac stripe of accent paint on the runner! I guess Ghaleon’s Edgeworth phase lasted longer than I thought. ANYWAY, standing in front of the door to the upper levels of the structure is a purple Vile Triber who is, shall we say, more on the message wavelength of the Magic Emperor than the fairies or his gardener compatriot. It therefore makes no sense that all of the former are totally oblivious to their boss/captor’s global conflicts and campaign of conquest and hatred, if this dude is standing here spouting talking points. Which he does: he asks Alex et al if they are here “to beg Ghaleon to spare [their] miserable lives,” since it’s only a matter of time before the entirety of Lunar is under Ghaleon’s control, with this big fuchsia vibrator as the world capitol. Sounds great, bud! Kyle makes their intentions clear: “We’re here to bring this monstrosity crashing down around Ghaleon’s ugly mug!” Kyle. Come on. He is a lot of things, but Ghaleon is an all-time top-10 beautiful man. It’s fine to admit this. Nash won’t be upset with you–he surely agrees!
Finally, now that Alex has reached THE GRINDERY’s upper floors, he finds that Ghaleon has ditched the warehouse bondage club (for non-consenting dragons) look of the lower half. Up here he’s gone for more of a white marble sunroom motif, with views of the fairy garden below through glass floors in some of the rooms. I’m astounded enough by my own description as it is, but additionally the dark blue carpets all have glowing green runners, like a casino floor. Dude has lost the plot entirely, and if Alex weren’t just going to kill him anyway, he’d be in sore need of a frank talk about having a clear design vision. And that talk would definitely have to extend to his monster design, starting with the very first thing Alex encounters up here, something called an Arrow Fish. The idea here, if I had to guess, is–wait for it–a fish holding a bow and arrow. “But! Fish don’t have hands! How could they possibly–” I hear you. Which is why, instead of fins, these metal (?) fish have some kind of vice screw that attaches them to a bow that, the more I look at it, the more it resembles two swords that have been melted into a bow shape. Also, this makes the fish itself both the arrow and the body aiming it. Is everyone okay? Should I get the Aleve?
Once I’m watching these floating kludges in action, I notice the point of the bow apparatus actually has a little brass arrow at its center. “Ah! THAT is the arrow,” I, a naïve child, say with relief. Nope! Fuck all of us. This device, instead, shoots a little bolt of golden energy in Kyle’s confused, but possibly excited, face. Its weird metal beak of a face also opens up and fires a red afterburn after shooting, which I can only assume is the Arrow Fish lighting a cigarette.
And did I mention? Vagina beaks.
Look, if I don’t go in deep (sorry) on these loony monsters, what am I gonna talk about? Everyone in the party being dumb and thinking they’re about to rescue Gams? We’ll get to it. Focused on that soon-to-be-successful mission, the teens proceed to the next floor, which dumps the underfoot view of the garden and immediately renders the overall aesthetic about 60 percent more cohesive. In a corner suite on this floor Alex finds an Insane Helmet for Kyle, making him look, like, so insane, bro, sick. In the opposite corner room, Nash nets a Holy Bandanna. That is some pointless symmetry, aka shipper’s catnip. They must be soulmates, Ghaleon left them similar presents just so! What, do I have to roll out my chalkboard?
This floor and the next one, which are wholly boring otherwise, also add a couple more monsters: a silver palette swap of the Sonic the Hedgehog knockoffs from the Blue Dragon Cave, and a creature labeled Bomb Angel, which looks like one of those ice-blue hamsters from Tamur Pass learned to walk upright and then float, and was rewarded for that evolutionary gumption with red Mega Man armor and a bazooka. This is all fine. Relatively tame, even. Next to one more treasure chest containing a Phantom Ribbon for Mia (and sorry Jess/Mia shippers, there is no perfectly juxtaposed chest with a tiara on this floor), Alex finds a set of stairs leading up, ominously flanked by ancient, cracked stone tablets. These tablets have what look like hieroglyphs, or this game’s equivalent thereof, and they seem pretty important. Does anyone stop to read them? Can they even be read? No, and no! Well, fine. And it’s not like these were just part of the fucking architecture when he bought the place–Ghaleon commissioned this entire phallic, incoherent, tank-filled nightmare. These tablets–probably containing some goddamn prophecy about a blue-haired girl and the two men who pretend to fight over her–are, by definition, here on purpose. Hell, they might read “Save your game” for all we know. As I should, and do.
Past the stairs, a long red carpet leads to a wooden door flanked by two colorless crystal orbs on marble pedestals. Squeak stares at this very clear, albeit very closed door. “Alex, it’s a dead end!” he cries. Lord have mercy on me, this fucking cat is going to be my end. Kyle pushes past Alex and Squeak to take a look at the door. “I’ll just use the patented Thieves’ Guild method to…huh? There’s no keyhole!” Hey, at least Kyle realizes it’s a door. Mia finally says, “It’s been sealed by a magic more powerful than any mechanical lock.” Like basically every closed door they’ve found in the last however many hours? I don’t know why we have to have this conversation every time. Kyle goes from surprise that he can’t jimmy Ghaleon’s bedroom door open to acknowledging he never gets to: “Isn’t there ANYTHING around here we can break through with brute force?” I’m still hoping I can add “Kyle and Jessica’s denial about the viability of their relationship” to that list, but I am prepared for disappointment.