By the way, through this entire exchange, Alex, Gams and Squeak just sit there, silent and open-mouthed. Really? Nothing to say? Not even you, Squeak?
When Ghaleon hears Quark’s “revelation,” his face lights up with that evil smirk again. “Surely you understand why Dyne kept this from you…” Quark starts to say, but Ghaleon is no longer interested in mundane dialogue boxes. He’s also no longer interested in pretending to be a good guy. Not that he’s done a particularly good job of that.
We switch to voice acting, and Ghaleon laughs for about an hour. Seriously, it goes on forever. And keeps getting louder and crazier. I have to imagine this bit of voice acting took quite a few takes, since if I were the guy playing Ghaleon, I’d keep lapsing into real laughter while trying to do the fake villainous laughter. When he’s done, he gasps out, “Oh, then the time has FINALLY come…. My…coming-out party can begin. Send in…the clowns.” No, I am not making that up. He really says that. Quark has this look on his face like “Well, dogs knew that about you.” The room flashes white, and when we can see again, Ghaleon is now giant and not normal-person-sprite-sized. From the back, he kind of looks like Shredder.
‘Ghaleon! What have you done with Master Splinter?!’
Quark asks, “By Althena, what have you done, Ghaleon?” taking us into a full-blown anime of Ghaleon’s “coming-out party.” That is so not going to get old. The music gets all crazy-dramatic as Ghaleon seemingly unfolds from his massive black cloak and becomes about fifteen feet tall. Standing up straight, he says in an obvious emulation of the Darth Vader voice, “Not Ghaleon, dear Quark…Magic Emperor Ghaleon!” Alex, with Squeak on his shoulder, blurts out in disbelief, “Magic Emperor?” like Ghaleon hasn’t been dropping anvils on his head since the day they met. Gams, standing a bit to the side, cries, “Ghaleon…no…” It’s hard for me to put into words how ridiculous this is, because they are both, via voice-acting, so astoundingly shocked by this. Putting aside my recapper mantle for a moment, I know this is supposed to be a stunning reveal and everything, but hell, Alex and Squeak have basically loathed Ghaleon from the start, preferring their poster boy for everything that is good, Dyne. And Squeak himself has hinted multiple times up to this point that he thinks Ghaleon is a slimy asshole. I can almost get behind Gams being shocked, because she’s naïve, but Alex and Squeak? Come on.
Meanwhile, Ghaleon is chuckling at their feeble protests, because even he knows how dumb they are for not realizing the truth before now. As he chuckles, and eyes Quark, he’s also charging up a big black beam of energy in his hand. “Someday people may rue this day,” he says, “but my glorious rule can only begin with your enslavement.” And so he unleashes his magic at Quark, encasing him in what looks to be–yes–a magical fishing net. Squeak is screaming and Quark is making old man noises and there’s a lot of light. There’s also a close-up on Quark’s thick, hentai-tentacle-like tail. I didn’t need that.
Oh, and Ghaleon is still laughing. He has to be a little bit out of breath by now.
Quark, inside the now-globular magical fishing net, shrinks down to a speck and lands in Ghaleon’s palm. Well, that’s done. Now he can ignore these two shrieking teenagers and get out of here! Of course, he’s not going to do that. “Quark shall be the cornerstone of a new order,” he lectures. “My world order.” nWo for life! “But,” he goes on, and now we can see that he has Gams in his sights, “who shall be my queen?” But isn’t he the Magic Emperor? Making Gams his Empress? Whatever. The anime ends on Gams with this “Who, me? The Mary Sue?” look on her face. Bless her.
So by now Ghaleon has moved his Shredder sprite to where Quark was, until a moment ago, standing. Gams screams as Ghaleon warps her on over to his side. Alex screams for her too, trying to sound convincing. “Now I know the truth…” Ghaleon says, refusing to clue in the other people in the room, “the world shall be mine on a delicious half-shell!” Wait…heroes in a half-shell? Ghaleon is Shredder! It’s all coming together. While I’m getting started on my Lunar/Ninja Turtles crossover fanfiction (with Gams as Turtleninja) Ghaleon blasts Alex and Squeak with a bolt of energy, knocking them the fuck out, and blinks out with Gams, her screaming echoing in the room behind her.
A black screen later, Alex and Squeak are asleep in Alex’s bedroom in Burg. See, after Gams was kidnapped they went on a bender in celebration and are now sleeping off hangovers. I kid. Squeak wakes up, and by the time Alex is awake too Squeak remembers what happened. Alex’s dad walks in at this point to fill in the gaps in the story: after these two frail ladies passed out in the White Dragon Cave, Laike of all people showed up to whisk them to safety. Laike is hanging out at Dyne’s Monument now, so Alex and Squeak head up there to thank him for saving their dumb little lives. But before Alex can get out the door, his dad offers him this bit of fatherly wisdom: “Alex, you and [Gams] have grown up together. Your mother and I have watched a bond form between you…and we have watched that bond turn from friendship into love.” I like how the writers felt we had to be told this. Just in case we’d been making any cracks up to this point about Alex not being into his lady. Not that we would do that. “I don’t know if you’ve told her how you feel, Alex,” Dad goes on. “Perhaps she already knows…but you must tell her now. Save her from Ghaleon…” Awkward relationship advice and statements of the obvious! Now that’s a realistic parent.
Translation: She was no good for you anyway, honey.
As promised, Laike is enjoying the fresh spring breeze at Dyne’s Monument. He accepts their thanks for saving their skins, but won’t tell them what the hell he was doing in the White Dragon Cave in the first place. Hell, I think even when he comes clean later in the game, we still never get an explanation for that. For all we know it’s his special “private time” place. But he brushes off these questions by asking Alex what he’s going to do. The two options are essentially the same: “I’m going to defeat Ghaleon!” and “I’m going to save [Gams]!” I go with “I’m going to defeat Ghaleon!” just to be contrarian to what the game has been pushing me to say. Of course it makes no difference. “Ghaleon now fancies himself the ‘Magic Emperor’…” Laike tells us unnecessarily. “He rules over the Vile Tribe of the Frontier. Now that he has assumed the role of Magic Emperor, his power must be immense.” Maybe I’ve missed something, but I don’t understand what this “Magic Emperor” business even means. Does he get power just from having that title? Everyone is acting like that’s exactly what this means, but would he be any less powerful if he decided to call himself the Magic Albino Clown? Well, whatever. Laike wants to be sure that Alex is ready to fight Ghaleon, given all this “new” power, and Alex so is.
“Dragonmaster Dyne would be proud of your bravery, Alex,” Laike says as clouds form overhead and anvils rain from the sky. “He would marvel at the strength that you have nurtured in your heart.” Alex hasn’t started vomiting yet, so Laike goes on. “Alex, do you know what killed Dyne?” Alex doesn’t know, but he suspects Dyne may have died from boredom after everyone he knew kept talking about their feelings and the strength he nurtured in his heart. “As with many,” Laike says, “Dyne fell victim to love. He swore to her that he would do anything for the woman he fancied. When the time came to protect her heart, he used all the power he had.” Beyond this suspicious use of “her” without knowing who “she” was, I’d like to point out that that’s the second time in this scene that Laike has used a variant of “fancy.”
Alex is starting to zone out, so Laike wraps up his love speech and gets to the good stuff. “But you say you want to help [Gams]…so you must become the Dragonmaster. Because to save her, you will fight a stronger opponent than Dyne ever faced…” Now Alex is listening and has a dorky smile on his face. Screw saving the chick! Dragonmaster! With the cool hat! Laike says he’s got a present to cheer up Alex –like telling him he’s going to fulfill his dream didn’t do the trick–and hands him something he “found” in the White Dragon Cave, a gift he promises Squeak will like (hint!): the White Dragon Wings. And he takes off, without a word about what these wings are used for or how to use them. For the record, the White Dragon Wings are a wand with little white wings attached to the end. Stylin’.
Before using this crazy, somewhat phallic contraption, Alex and Squeak return to the house and root around in the basement for supplies. Since they already did that before they left home the first time, they don’t find anything but a picture of Gams stuffed into a bookcase, aka Gams’s Bromide 2. This one is subtitled “The Playful Wind,” which sounds like it could be inappropriate for this game’s Teen rating, but since this bromide is of Gams the Pure and True, the wind doesn’t even provide a panty shot. Instead the bromide depicts Gams in the midst of dropping a basket of fruit as she struggles to keep her skirt from flying over her head. If the scene had been more risqué than that we would have no picture, as Alex would have dropped his camera and run for the hills, screaming about girl cooties.
So, the Wings. Squeak wonders aloud where Ghaleon has gone, and decides from nowhere that using the Wings might help them figure it out. I will choose to believe that–SPOILER!–Squeak’s obvious connection to this magical item makes him intuitively know what to do. Since the other explanation is terrible writing and I don’t want to be all negative. Or it’s possible that Squeak is really Wizard Cat.
The menu describes the wings as a “magical traveling tool” and activating them provides a list of locations to visit. For kicks, Alex chooses Saith, and like that he and Squeak are magically transported to Burg’s backwoods sister city. Squeak, despite his statement seconds ago that the Wings would help them with this exact kind of thing, is overcome with feelings of shock and awe, and a desire to state the obvious, over the teleportation. But Saith is hardly an interesting place to go, so Alex uses the Wings again and decides to pay a visit to Jessica and Mel in Meribia.
The bouncy “Something beyond the ordinary is happening” music keys us in that all is not as it should be in Meribia. Ghaleon apparently has coordinated a monster assault on the city to go with his coming-out party, though you’d think he would have dressed the monsters in fabulous purple robes and given them sparklers for the occasion. Jessica is at the city entrance when the boys warp in, and given that she’s little more than a squishy healer, she’s happy to have some assistance in dispatching the demons.
One fight with a Gargoyle and a Shadow Lord later, and Alex and Jessica have a moment to catch up. Jessica explains that she came back from a “trip” to Althena’s Shrine–does this girl ever attend class?–and found Meribia overrun. Oh, and she’s wondering where Gams and Ghaleon are. Alex has nothing but a frowny face and some ellipses to contribute, so Squeak gives Jessica the lowdown. He also says, “[Ghaleon] commanded these beasts to attack Meribia,” even though he was just asking her what was going on. Yeah, he’s right, but still. Jessica is all kinds of shocked at this news, but I’ll cut her some slack since she hasn’t been around Ghaleon as much as the others. But she goes up a few points in my book when she, without needing to be led by the nose, realizes that these monsters are just a distraction so Ghaleon can go after his real target: Mel, the last standing of the Four Heroes.
Alex could take a moment to visit the (inexplicably monster-free) Black Rose street, or chat up Ram-It, but not only does that reset all the monsters he kills in the Meribia streets, but it sounds boring as hell and, at most, I’ll miss out on an Apollo 13 reference or two. So, Alex, Jessica, and Squeak wind their way toward Mel’s place, between stacks of crates and debris that surely weren’t there before. Why, it’s almost like they put these boxes here just to make it harder for Alex to get to the mansion! Ghaleon must have also told his monster minions to wreck up the joint while they were here. He’s going to kill Mel and leave a mess to clean up! Diabolical.
The good news is you can lure the beasts into the crates, and if they’re charging full pelt they’ll destroy the crates and open up the path. So it really doesn’t take that long to get to the mansion. As I’m sure you guys are aware, I just love to complain. It makes me feel good about myself.
Inside, we learn from Mel’s lickspittle that Mel is fighting the leader of the Vile Tribe. “She’s strong, and so are her minions!” he tells us, like this is news. He doesn’t seem too eager to run up there and help, nor do the guards stationed at every door, one of whom saying that he’s been afflicted with a “paralysis spell.” Ass.
So upstairs, in Mel’s gym, Mel is facing off against Xeboobia and some random Vile Tribe creatures. “As long as I draw breath, the Vile Tribe will NEVER take control of Meribia!” Mel sneers at them, and, as Xeboobia explains, that’s really not a problem since she’s merely here to kill him anyway. She name-drops Ghaleon as well, which gives Mel pause, since Ghaleon is, I guess, his dear friend. I have to imagine Ghaleon’s always been evil and creepy, so I suppose if Mel never thought so before, he wouldn’t have had any reason to change his mind recently.