Squeak says, not exactly helping, “I know [Gams] is behind this door, Alex! I can feel it!” Oh, you can’t feel shit. Jess is in the middle of wondering if they can find another way inside–hey, I have an idea, how about FLYING IN FROM THE TOP?!–when Alex deploys his shout-face from out of nowhere, “There is no other way. This is the solitary path to the inner sanctum of the Magic Emperor…” Whoa, dial it back a few, Dragonmaster. Did he just get possessed by Dyne, or what?
A voice butts in to confirm Alex’s bullheaded assumptions. “Only by passing through this door will you confront your destiny.” A moment later the owner of the voice teleports in: it’s Fellatio, and judging by her Mary Suebonic plague face, she’s in a bad way. While Alex and Mia waste precious seconds of my life, to say nothing of hers, “realizing” who she is, Jess immediately moves to heal her. But Fellatio puts her off. “There’s no time for that, dear child,” she says. “There is only time for this…” And while Jess could literally be healing her as she does this–it’s not like she’s gotta light incense or anything–Fellatio walks toward the door and then chants, “Emena-Rena-Ena…Kofal-Rela-KURIDO!” Magic shoots from her hands toward the orbs, which glow green and open the door. “You know what lies before you,” Fellatio says. “I pray you are strong enough to face it…” I mean, they’d be even stronger if Fellatio would allow herself to be healed and fully get on Team Dragonmaster, but at least she’s done something helpful. Unlike fucking Squeak here. “I’m confused,” he says. Tell me something I don’t know! “Why are you helping us, [Fellatio]? And…why now?” HOW MANY TIMES. MUST SHE. EXPLAIN THIS.
But explain it she does, even as she’s apparently dying. “I believed in Ghaleon…I thought he would give us what we had always desired. A chance to leave our cold, dead world behind forever…and start anew in a place of hope and light.” Kyle characterizes this as being “seduced by Ghaleon’s promises,” but Fellatio is quick to shoot that down, saying he never actually promised them anything. “He merely approached the Vile Tribe and commanded us to do his bidding. We obeyed…” Yeah, that tracks. “You must understand,” she adds. “For all our existence, the Vile Tribe has been shunned and ignored. Althena herself exiled us to the edge of her world… For a man such as Ghaleon to acknowledge us, much less ask for our assistance… We were honored and humbled. We followed his commands without hesitation…” This is a cult. You are describing a cult. The only difference here is that the Slag Sisters, as far as I know, weren’t running away to stick it to their parents.
Alex just has ellipses for all of this–his Ghaleon-murdering hand is getting itchy, but he’s too nice to ask Fellatio to just die or get off the pot already. But she’s still at it. “And I started to imagine the Vile Tribe’s place in Ghaleon’s brave new world. But I was wrong…Ghaleon never intended to include us in anything.” Nooooooooo shit. “He simply used us. And now that his true aim is within reach…” Ooh, his true aim? What might that be? Did Squeak’s stupid fucking question inadvertently lead us to new information?
No, of course it did not, because right as Fellatio is about to tell Alex one goddamn thing he didn’t already know, Xeboobia and Royce teleport in to yell at her and presumably kill her for good. “Shame on you, sister!” Xeboobia says. “I can’t believe you’d sink so low as to betray your master AND your tribe!” Says a lot about Xeboobia that that was the order she put those in. Royce adds, “But then, you never WERE able to keep a secret…” I don’t know, she’s still managed to not divulge this one! And I feel like, given enough time–and I mean a LOT of time–Alex would have figured out the password to enter Ruid without her help. Fellatio pleads with Xeboobia to come to Jesus, but given that one of these two blondes is almost certainly the one who already put her halfway in the ground, it is no surprise that her argument for moral redemption falls on deaf ears. This part, especially, fails to land: “But you must listen! The only one who ever truly cared about us was…Althena. Don’t you see? That’s why she did what she did fifteen years ago?” AND WHAT WAS THAT, EXACTLY? COULD ONE OF YOU JUST FUCKING BLAB ALREADY?
Hey, I know these recaps have gotten longer, but that’s mean.
This is really my fault for having expectations. Xeboobia threatens to “sever [their] family ties,” with, like, murder, if Fellatio doesn’t can it, as if Fellatio could do anything to save herself now. Also, again, she still hasn’t really said anything! Bringing that point home, Royce “predicts” suffering in Fellatio’s future and then immediately begins casting some vague shit in her direction. Fellatio runs forward to confront her sisters, saying over her shoulder, “Alex, you are the only one with the strength to defeat Ghaleon… But you must make your way to him in haste!!” I’ve never seen a less hasty group of people in my damn life. The world is doomed. Squeak mutters Fellatio’s name, since now that it’s pretty much too late he has to pretend he wants to save her, but she grunts, “My fate is of little consequence! Go! Quickly now!! Ghaleon’s strength grows with each moment…soon, he shall achieve invincibility!” This is enough to get the teens moving, but Alex pauses at the door to look sad and whisper her name as a “Zooooooom you’re in hell now” sound effect denotes Fellatio’s offscreen demise. Xeboobia and Royce can fucking teleport, but they still decided to let Alex pass so they could tag-team this sororicide. Either they just have that much enmity for Fellatio, they have no attention spans whatsoever, or as usual, Ghaleon is totally fine with being confronted and all these “efforts” to keep Alex away are complete theater.
I mean, it can be all three.
The stairs lead to an elaborate hexagonal platform laid with brown brick–one more bizarre design choice from your boy the Magic Emperor. Red orbs on white plinths stand in pairs to the left and right, and the red carpet from the floor below has continued up into a fancy red and gold pattern that looks like a depiction of a Mayan Olmec. Appropriate! There’s a bunch more foofaraw on the periphery of the platform, but it’s all so busy that I’m not even sure how to describe it. And anyway the main attraction is at the north end of the platform: the Magic Emperor himself, in all his purple resplendence, with the little balls hanging off his stupid jester hat. Remember, “Magic Emperor” is a title he made up, and all the trappings thereof were also created by him. This isn’t some hat that’s been passed down to him through the generations.
The teens approach the platform’s center for the big confrontation. “Ghaleon…” Alex says breathily, as we have entered a scene with voice-acted dialogue only, with no text boxes. Thanks for making me have to actually listen to Ghaleon, game. Appreciate you keeping me on my toes. “Well, well, well…” Ghaleon says. “It appears our little hero found the way at last.” Ghaleon is totally disappointed Alex didn’t fly in from the top. I may be projecting. “And I have just the thank-you you’ve deserved all along, dragonboy!” I don’t know what this means. Even sarcastically, Ghaleon has no need to thank Alex. What about congratulations, or accolades? This seems like nitpicking, except we know that Ghaleon practiced this speech in a mirror while he waited for Alex to arrive, so maybe he could have workshopped it a bit. I wish this had been Royce’s role in the game, to be Ghaleon’s actual advisor and possibly speechwriter, so she had a purpose other than being a less-developed version of Xeboobia whose entire personality is composed of one stupid hobby she’s bad at. Call me, Game Arts!
A full ten seconds of silence pass between Ghaleon’s last syllable and him swooping his cape back to commence the boss battle. Nobody else feels the need to speak up in that entire span, even though Ghaleon destroyed Mia’s home and gave her mom brain damage, helped turn Jess’s dad into a garden gnome, exploited the fact that Nash loved him like a dad(dy), and…well, Kyle doesn’t have a lot of motivation here, but maybe that’s what makes him the greatest hero of them all. I’m kidding–it’s his furry shorts.
The Magic Emperor may now be 15 feet tall, but his repertoire as a boss isn’t that far removed from the abilities he demonstrated when he was a tiny normal man barely pretending to be on the side of good. The only move he busts out other than his four elemental spells is a pair of metal-gauntleted backhands, the second of which, on the first round, Nash evades entirely. I’m choosing to believe he has years of experience with Ghaleon’s casual abuse and knows the signs. The Magic Emperor even attacks in sequence: he alternates his purple fistings with each Ow Elements attack, in order. The only spice he adds to the proceedings is his new boss battle theme, which is as much of a banger as a MIDI could ever hope to be. I’m ready to run my head through a brick wall, or at the very least to thunderbolt Shredder in the face.
Have we discussed the Magic Emperor’s codpiece yet? It’s like a penis mudflap.
Since Ghaleon’s not bringing much new to the table, there’s not a lot to say about this battle. The teens go through their usual regimen of power-ups before unloading their best single-target attacks. This leaves me room for my favorite hobby: getting myself worked up over retrograde politics in ancient videogames! So Jess being pigeonholed into healer duty, no matter how bad of a student-priestess she was, is the most obvious hand of the patriarchy at work here, but an underrated piece of business is how Mia, absolutely a better magician than her boyfriend, has to hold off on lobbing Flame Bombs into Ghaleon’s hair in order to buff Alex and Kyle, while Nash has one button to hit the entire fight. Couldn’t we have spread those spells out a bit? This seems like a really helpful time to suggest changes, I know. Anyway! I have Alex use Blue Dragon Healing once just to mix it up, but the Magic Emperor is felled before the Dragonmaster even needs a second Star Light. “What a letdown!” I would say, if I were a moron like Squeak and couldn’t smell a rat here.
After Kyle deals the killing blow, the Magic Emperor’s body disappears on the battle screen and on THE GRINDERY’s platform, red flag number two. There is no way Ghaleon is flouncing from this mortal coil without a grandiose WHY I’M LEAVING LIFE monologue. “Alex, I think you did it…” Squeak, who is so dumb, says. Kyle corrects him that they all did it. “Although that’s not what I’ll be telling the gang when we get back to Nanza… You don’t mind if I take most of the credit, do you, Alex? Heh, heh, heh!” Oh, please do take all the credit for this particular achievement. All your bros will be so impressed. But most important of all is how impressed Nash Jess is: “Kyle, you big blowhard… You came through! You were wonderful! I’ve never been so proud of you!” That last part is almost certainly true.
Mia, the Smart One, starts out promisingly but disappoints me: “I don’t think we should celebrate until [we make sure he’s dead, right?] everyone is here to do it with us…[dammit]” Squeak agrees that it’s time to find Gams, who shockingly has not rushed through the now-open door at the other end of the platform. Maybe Ghaleon has her in a cage! That must be it. Also, as everyone forms up the conga line to march into the end of the game together, surely, Nash alone is silent. I am taking this to mean he, for once, has realized something no one else has, and it’s something to do with his exacting familiarity with Ghaleon’s bod.
The weird brick motif ends ahead, in a stair leading up to an ornate white platform with a view of the whole valley. That’s right, we’re outside now, meaning there could have been exactly one door between our heroes and Ghaleon, and better still, NO DOORS between them and Gams, who is standing on the platform. I’m never going to stop being mad about this. Gams is very normally staring out toward Althena’s Tower in the distance, and not, I dunno, waiting by the door to hear any sign of her captor’s defeat at the hands of her true love. That’s not important! Check out this view! When Alex says her name, she doesn’t turn around, which nobody thinks is weird. Also nobody seems all that worried about, or even cognizant of, how Gams was behaving the last time they saw her. Because they’re all so smart they have already thought through all these problems and have rationally concluded everything is fine! Not a dummy in this bunch!
Laughing to keep from crying.
Everybody has some last words for Alex, most of them having to do with his love for Gams that is as deep as the ocean, though Nash dashes my last hopes for one smart party member by saying, “It appears that our big adventure is about to draw to a happy conclusion, guys! And that’s not a thought I savor. I’ve truly enjoyed our time together…” Siiiiiiiiiigh. Why do the ones we love hurt us like this?
‘Do you have a machete, Alex? Give me one. I’m frightened.’
SPEAKING OF THAT. Alex talks to everyone one more time before ascending the stairs, which his friends take to mean he’s just so nervous about, per Jess, telling his lady how he feels about her. Are Alex and Gams not an established couple all of a sudden? Or is Jess just massively projecting, like usual? Answered my own question, moving on. Alex walks toward Gams and says her name a couple more times before she turns around and acknowledges him. “Alex…?” she says, eyes downcast, but then shouts, “Alex!” more happily. OMG, everything is amazing! They’re going to have six kids!!!