Ignoring the fact that–other than some prayer hands to statues here and there and, fine, Jessica’s entire spellbook–this group has never explicitly relied on Althena’s help or petitioned her for anything, Alex grits through the frown line that his mouth has become, “Our fate is in our hands…” As it has apparently been their entire lives! The real flaw of this grand plan, past however it went “wrong” and resulted in a powerless Dragonmaster and a baby goddess, is that it would only change the behavior of humans if they knew about it. How are people supposed to know they should stop begging their mommy for fruit snacks and buy their own if they think their mommy is still there and can better reach the box in the pantry? At best, this results in a few generations of people who keep praying to a goddess who doesn’t answer them, and then eventually their grandchildren have absorbed enough inherited disillusionment to stop believing in her. Which Althena could have pulled off by just continuing to be a goddess, just a more aloof, bitchier one. What Laike needed to do was put out a press release entitled “Goddess Is Dead” and just omit the part about there being a baby out there that would totally answer everybody’s prayers if they just complimented her singing effusively enough.
I ended that paragraph with the intent of moving on from this, but Sweet Blue-Haired Jesusette, this is so stupid, and I am not at all over it. In our real world–where one could fairly say there is no true consensus on whether God is alive and engaged with us or even one being or many or a tangle of sentient spaghetti, where in thousands of years we haven’t seen anything we could all point to as conclusive proof of the divine–there are people who don’t give their kids medicine for diabetes or cancer because God is totally on that shit on their behalf. How much worse would this be in a world where apparently people did know She was real and was, at one point at least, definitely answering people’s prayers? I guess what I’m saying is, Althena and Dyne are letting children with cancer die.
Obviously this story is just working backward from the thing the writers cared about, which was having a game about a deity who becomes mortal, and I should accept that. (I don’t! Just want to be really clear on this!) But back to the reason this conversation is happening in this specific place, which is not Althena but her Dragonmaster. Laike tells Alex, “The Dragonmaster isn’t just Althena’s protector, Alex…but a protector of all that Althena has created. If your love for [Gams] and for the world Althena created is strong enough… Unsheath the sword standing in your midst and claim your destiny!” With this command, I am in control of Alex again, though his friends are blocking the path back to town, so my options are limited. Squeak asks, “You mean the dirty old sword that’s been stuck in Dyne’s Monument since forever?” I’m guessing “since forever” is “for precisely 15 years,” but we’ve established Squeak struggles with basic story comprehension. Laike insists the sword is not dirty, though it clearly fucking is. There are barnacles on it. “It’s Althena’s Sword…the weapon I used long ago. Until the day when a man pure of spirit comes to claim it.” Fucking sexist pig. And we know there were women Dragonmasters! Laike is erasing Althena’s bisexuality and I’m not here for it.
And after fifteen years, five more people know about it! Why, in, say, 1000 more years, who knows how far this idea will spread!
As shown above, none of Alex’s friends have anything useful to say here, so Alex does as Squeak and Laike bid him and approaches the sword in the stone. If you remember waaaaaay back to my very first recap of these dumb kids, Alex was aware back then that this is the Sword of Althena, a blade whose legendary reputation I assume precedes it, but it took Laike effectively dragging him to its hilt for Alex to consider trying to take it post-Dragonmastering. He mutters Gams’s name to the stone, because DO YOU GET IT, HE’S DOING IT FOR HER, FUCK LUNAR, before his noodly arms pull him and us into another anime cutscene.
Close-up on the sword–which looks like Laike caked it in plaster of paris fifteen years ago–with Alex’s hands firmly gripping the hilt. And his long lost love is here to gently guide him! So romantic. Or it would be if Squeak and all his friends weren’t also standing there, ruining the mood. Alex keeps his eyes closed, though at least this time he doesn’t insult me by murmuring Gams’s name again. When he opens them, they are somehow even greener than before. I can’t believe they would juice his eye color just for DRAMA. With a bellowing grunt, Alex gives the hilt a mighty yank, and it rips free from the stone, the blade, unexposed to the elements, shiny as the last day Laike probably gave it a spirited polishing session. He rips the blade out so hard that inertia points it straight up at the sun. I expect it to gleam and twinkle in the sunlight, because this game is straight Vermont cheddar, but what’s of course an even cheesier option is a second Dragonmaster henshin sequence.
The Sword of Althena glows with a tie-dyed corona of white, blue, and indigo, kind of a match for that stomach-turning mess around Althena in the flashback. Alex chokes/screams manfully (kind of a low-pitched “Waaaaaaaaaaughughughugh”) until his entire body is encased in the glow-up aura. Then, starting at the very tip of the sword, Alex emerges from his glowing cocoon in full Dragonmaster regalia, still howling like a baby who’s somehow already in the middle of his puberty voice change. The ghosts of the dragons still stuck in THE GRINDERY, not that anyone cares about them anymore, flow around him for the final reveal of Alex posing and smiling, pointing his codpiece out at the world just as proudly as his new sword.
Maybe a white background that washes out the sword that was the entire point of this exercise was not the greatest choice.
“Alex…you look great!” Squeak says. If it wasn’t already clear, let me explicitly state that Alex looks exactly the same as he did before, only now he has the sword that goes with the rest of the outfit. And his goddamn sprite still doesn’t have the goddamn earflap hat but still does have the goddamn nonexistent cape, and I will absolutely die mad about this, thank you for asking. Kyle adds, “And you look ten times stronger…no, make that a hundred times! So are we ready to beat the hell out of Ghaleon or what?” That’s some fucking sword, I guess. We probably were due some justification of why this second attempt on Ghaleon would go any differently from the first, and “The Sword of Althena is the Dragonmaster’s superpowered penis” is as good as any.
The others chime in their agreement with Kyle, Mia making sure we get the last-second coda of the entire game: “We have to believe in the power of humanity…the power that Althena placed in every one of us!” Which she apparently only did so a) humanity would stop banging on her door at all hours of the night and b) she could fall in love with the baby who stole her old boyfriend’s powers. I mean, whatever humanity has to tell itself to be okay with this.
Nash finally raises the question that originally brought them here: “But how are we going to get to Althena’s Fortress? Not even the airship can fly high enough to reach it. It’s impossible…” Oh, look who’s an expert on aeronautical engineering all of a sudden! I’d love to know exactly when he did his calculations. I guess on the back of a bar napkin as he was holding back Kyle’s hair in the bathroom. Laying it on mighty thick here, Mia says, “The legends spoke of the Dragonmaster commanding the flight of a great dragon.” WHOA THEY DID?! Jess takes the anvil handoff from Mia: “But there aren’t any more Dragons…” But–and stop me if I’m going too fast here–what if there were another dragon? I mean, hypothetically. Obviously that’s ridiculous.
“Ho, hah, hah!” Laike cackles. I mean, I speak from experience: this shit is hilarious if you know what these idiots somehow do not. “The dragon Alex can ride is already here! Isn’t that right, [Squeak]?” Oh shit! Has Squeak met this mystery dragon?!
It’s not healthy to be this disappointed in fictional characters.
The girls are shocked at this revelation, but for once, Squeak surprises me by not being the last person to the party. “Alex…” he says, grinning, “I understand now, Alex! After all this time, I finally know what I am… There’s an incredible power within me, Alex…and it’s burning to be released!” Gross. Do that on your own time. But before their 40 percent-ish disbelieving eyes, Squeak’s flying ferret sprite transforms into a medium-sized white dragon, probably how Quark looked as a surly teenager. Nobody will give Squeak the satisfaction of agreeing with him that he looks cool, Kyle only deigning to admit he is now “bigger” and somehow not understanding that Squeak did not just “turn into” a dragon, but has been one this whole time. Only Nash has not opened his mouth about this whole Dragonsqueak situation, but I learned last time it is unwise to assume the people who aren’t talking are the smart ones.
Okay, slow down, turbo.
“Hurry, [Squeak]! [Gams] is waiting for us!” Alex says, like he totally expected this to happen. I don’t know, maybe the sword has been whispering Althena’s secrets through his peehole or something for the last few minutes. Everyone but Laike crowds around Squeak’s new ample form, grabs onto some…fur, I guess, and climbs aboard. Oh, Laike caused this entire catastrophe by giving Ghaleon the excuse he needed to become a full-on supervillain–and also, I assume, never admitting Ghaleon was right about the potential danger of it–but he’ll be staying here, thanks. It looks cold on that flying castle and his fake beard isn’t as warm as it seems! But Alex seems unruffled by Laike staying behind–it’s possible these revelations have cured Alex of his Dragonmaster-specific necrophilia phase. He faked his own death, and it was in service of an elaborate ploy so he could accidentally turn a goddess into Alex’s sister-wife? Thanks for nothing, old man.
Also, as Squeak’s new dragonbod sprite is flying on the world map toward Althena’s Fortress, it occurs to me to wonder how he came out of all this. We know Laike delivered both Gams and Squeak in the world’s worst combo pack to Casa Alex. We also know Quark knew about the whole thing, though apparently he wasn’t actually there? I didn’t see any dark corners in which he could be hiding and/or jacking it. And it’s not like Quark was also transformed into a baby version of himself, as he was very much alive for a good long while there. Is Squeak just Quark’s son, and Quark couldn’t handle all that responsibility? Did Laike pitch him on this? “Hey, those two dopes in Burg are already taking in babies, no questions asked, wanna see if they’re good for one more?”
Speaking of Laike, he’s having himself a nice monologue now that Alex and gang have departed to fix everything he fucked up. “Ghaleon never understood why Althena gave up her power. He never believed that humans could lead themselves… And I suspect he always planned to fill the void created when Althena became human.” Maybe a good reason to not go through with the plan, or to do something about him if you did! Just troubleshooting for some way you could have prevented the apocalypse instead of sitting around with your thumb up your ass FOR FIFTEEN FUCKING YEARS, don’t mind me. “Alex…be careful,” Laike finally says. “You are about to engage in the fight of your life.” This fucking guy, honestly. He can’t even deliver his non-helpful “advice” when the guy is standing here!
In what I think is a unique framing device for this game, we are returned to Squeak soaring through the skies in a sprite-rendered side view, with teeny tiny heroes on his back. Either the proportions are just wack because fuck it, the game’s almost over, or Squeak has doubled in size since his transformation in Burg, because all five of our heroes are sitting on his neck. “There it is! Althena’s Tower!” Kyle shouts, likely unnecessarily. It’s a hard thing to miss. Alex is silent in reply, as is everyone else, but Alex is the one with ellipses to hand. And then the scene fades to black and makes way for some more anime. That was it? How many artist hours were logged on that unique backdrop and rendering for 15 seconds in which Kyle reads a billboard on the highway like your dad and everyone else ignores him?
Now in anime, an ’80s-action-movie-esque lick on a synthesizer accompanies Squeak flying toward the hovering death dreidel that is Althena’s Fortress. “Look at that thing!” Kyle shouts some more, when it’s taking up almost the entire screen. Uh, on it, hoss. “The Fortress of Althena is huge!” Maybe he should have continued pickling himself in Meribia, if this is all he has to contribute. Mia says, “I wonder why this was hidden beneath the Goddess Tower for all this time…” This is actually a good question. The place Althena was chillin’ in the flashback to her rebirth, we will see, is the very top of this structure. I’m perfectly willing to assume that was also the top of the Goddess Tower (though I don’t know if they’ve ever said how people got to the top of that, either) and it is fair to assume this thing has been hidden for much longer than fifteen years, but the fact is that Ghaleon did know about this place. How did he know, and, say, Lemia didn’t? Has Ghaleon spent the entirety of Gams’s life in the Magic Guild equivalent of a Wikipedia rabbit hole, trying to figure this out in secret? Jess confirms that she, a learned Priestess of Althena, has never heard of the place, leading Kyle to gently tease, “That’s because you always ditched class, honeypie!” This is both true and relatively kindly meant, by Kyle standards, so of course Jess goes way over the top in retorting, “At least I’ve set foot in a school, you dumb bastard!” Yeah! You don’t know about this because you’re illiterate, man I’m going to have children with one day! Unlike me, who had the opportunity to learn about it and just didn’t because I was off having sex! With you!
Nash yells at them both for “acting like children,” which I think I have established is a bit unfair to Kyle, but if he’s being hard on his can’t-yet-admit-it-boyfriend, it’s because he’s having a mild panic attack at what’s happening below. “A desert of death is spreading below us!” Indeed, the view the teens get as they round the other side of the tower is of barren moon craters and not the usual verdant paradise. Mia, in her saddest high pitch, explains what we already learned on Black Rose Street: “The Fortress of Althena appears to be sucking the very life from the ground.” To confirm this we get a close-up of the anus at the structure’s base vacuuming up glowing blue glitter from the atmosphere, an effect that erases the vegetation from the land as they watch. “If this continues,” Mia says, “our whole world will soon be as desolate as the Frontier.” At the pace this is currently happening, it is already way too late to do anything about this. Kyle goes one step further, somehow, from this, noting that Ghaleon doesn’t just want desolation, but “total destruction.” Unless Kyle thinks Ghaleon is about to blow up the moon, I’m not sure how much further he could take this! Alex hears those last two words and screws up his face. “I’ll never let that happen!” Doing a great job so far, isn’t he?
The hot trend with the teens that’s causing concern with parents: reverse glitter enemas! Our report at 11!
Squeak swoops around the middle of the tower looking for a landing spot as the anime ends, apparently successfully, because a black screen later the kids and their dragon are on a perfect adult-Squeak-sized platform with an open doorway. This is a nice gesture from their demigod supervillain nemesis. “Sorry if the ride was a little bumpy, everyone…” Squeak humblebrags. “I’m still getting used to these new wings! Heh, heh!” I’m still getting used to Squeak’s new haircut, which looks like a brown moth has permanently perched on his forehead. Jess congratulates Squeak on being their first aerial craft that neither crashed nor exploded. I’m willing to be patient, Jess. Then Squeak, rather than remaining a full-grown dragon that could maybe be persuaded to bite Ghaleon’s tiny head off his giant shoulders, flashes for a few moments before returning to his winged cat form. Absolutely no one comments on this. Who among us can’t turn back into a baby at will?