Emphasizing how little she cares about Alex’s opinion, Jessica continues to argue that Blue Beard was mean to her and is therefore undeserving of life, but eventually she relents and casts something or other on him. As soon as she does so, Blue Beard disappears and Damon, who was obviously just in disguise, appears behind them. He starts to tell them how impressed he is with their actions, but is cut off by Jessica, who is decidedly not impressed with his. Her sprite comically blows up to triple size as she dresses down the old man. “I don’t wanna hear any excuses!” she screeches in his face. “I just wanna tell you not to pull something like this again!” Damon flees up the stairs in fright. Kyle mutters that her mood swings “are more violent than a hurricane,” but doesn’t dare repeat it louder for her to hear. The rest of the group meekly follows Jess up the stairs, hoping that Damon has some Midol in his medicine cabinet.
The fourth floor of this character development shoehorn-a-thon contains yet another variety of one-eyed monster, this one capable of petrifying enemies with an, ahem, penetrating stare. The One-Eyed Cousin is neither weak nor resistant to any particular type of damage, but if you think that foreshadows this floor as straightforward and means there will not be any more nonsense tests from Damon, you’re sadly wrong. The treasure chests on the way to the next challenge contain–you guessed it–another Star Light, an Ice Pendant, and a Spirit Bandanna for Nash. The Disembodied Item Describer, maybe hoping to encourage Nash to jack it into this thing when he’s rejected by Mia again, refers to it as “spiritual and silky.”
The gang proceeds into a large room to find Damon standing in between some marble columns. Risking Jessica’s wrath, he tells them, “If you wish to proceed further, you must make a decision… In making your way through the Spire, who was the least helpful? He or she must admit their weakness and leave, immediately.” He adds after Kyle’s had the chance to express his outrage, “Either you shall surrender your weakest member or you shall all perish.” Says the guy who just got shouted down by Jessica. Mia sums up their feelings: “We can’t decide, because none of us was the ‘least helpful’!” I don’t know, can they get rid of Squeak? Or does he not count because he’s basically Alex’s furry, winged Metatron?
Loading ...One by one, Alex is forced to go through the party and determine how important each person is, and one by one, he decides that none of them can leave. Amusingly, when he reaches Nash, he declares, “I won’t give up Nash!” like they’re in prison and Nash is the last carton of cigarettes. When he finally reaches himself–since, sigh, Squeak is not an option–he instead says, “We won’t make anyone leave!” Putting on his Earflap Hat of Gumdrops, Rainbows, and Unicorns, he wanks, “This is impossible! None of us were less important than the other in getting this far.” Alex doesn’t care if they can’t move on if they can’t move on together. Gag me. Nash looks sad at this naïve display of friendship–foreshadowing!–he murmurs, “…Well said, Alex.” Damon agrees that they needed to realize their importance as a group and as individuals in order to “overcome the many obstacles that lie ahead.” I hope he isn’t just referring to the obstacles remaining in the Spire, because spoiler alert: there’s one left, and it’s stupid.
Damon conjures a staircase out of the stone behind him and disappears again, leaving Jessica to wonder if the “old fart” enjoys screwing with them like this. Clearly he does, or he wouldn’t be doing it, would he? Speaking of, on the fifth floor, the group is perturbed by the lack of monsters, magic, traps, magic traps, or anything else. Squeak thinks Damon has given up on stopping them, because Squeak is stupid, but nobody else thinks that’s likely. Alex runs around like a spaz hitting the floor panels until he can reach the room immediately to the right of the stairs. Inside this large chamber, they find a lump of clay sitting in the middle of the room. Damon shows up to explain: “You will sculpt the clay into an image of what you consider to be a priceless treasure. However, if your creation fails to impress me, you shan’t be allowed to enter my private chamber…” First of all, “shan’t”? Really? These kids already think Damon is a pompous tool, and that is not helping. Second, “private chamber”? I just got a wildly different notion of the sort of books Damon is keeping up there. If there’s a casting couch or anything in leopard print, Alex is leaving.
The ladies determine that the lump of clay is big enough that they all need to get their hands in there, with one person directing whose hands should go where. Kyle volunteers to be the orgy ringmaster due to his status as “treasure expert,” because I’m totally sure Damon meant “treasure” literally. Meanwhile, Nash argues that Kyle is unfit. “Whereas I live in [Vein], the most beautiful city in the world…I’m bursting with precious, artistic sensibility!” He’s bursting with something, all right. Nash is this close to declaring Vein as a more European city, like Paris or Milan, and sniffing his own farts out of a wine glass. And while the girls managed to quickly figure out how this effort should be organized, neither of them have enough confidence to declare themselves the best fit. Instead, Mia suggests taking turns. Dang, guys, at least buy the clay dinner first.
Each of these vignettes is more or less the same: the orgy ringmaster provides directions, encouragements, and insults to the others, who have no idea what they’re making until it’s finished. This entire tower is starting to feel like a corporate retreat, except Damon hasn’t yet required them to pair up and fall backward into each other’s arms as a trust-building exercise.
Be fair, Jess. He also thinks leather daddies are ‘beautiful.’
Kyle goes first. The writers or the translators–sometimes it’s hard to tell who is responsible for the silliness that is this game’s dialogue–clearly want us to think Kyle is making something other than what he is making. He instructs Alex to “make that part bigger and longer,” says to Jessica that she has no idea what she’s doing with this object and is “bad at this,” growls that Nash is being too rough with his hands and twisting it (of course he is), and says with a grin that Mia just needs to adjust her touch “a little to the left.” So Kyle is making a dildo, right? Right. God, if we weren’t this far into the proceedings I would rename Kyle Tobias Fünke.
So I’m not exactly wrong–Kyle was using his helpers’ hands to create a crowbar, “or what we in the trade commonly call a jimmy!” Calling it a jimmy is not swaying me out of my opinion, Kyle. Everyone else, of course, thinks it’s really just a generous recreation of Kyle’s penis, and Jess in particular is not inclined to think that is a priceless treasure. She goes on for what feels like an hour, explaining to Kyle in the most condescending possible tone that neither crowbars nor penises are truly priceless treasures, no matter how much he values his. Damon isn’t impressed either and asks them, to my irritation, to “redouble” their efforts in their next attempt. Say “doubling” or “quadrupling,” Damon. “Redoubling” is not a thing.
Well, since Jessica ran her mouth off about how shitty Kyle’s attempt was, it’s her turn to put up or shut up. Jess will only tell them before they begin that this has been important to her since her childhood, and given how it turns out, that’s more than a little inappropriate. She is a little more supportive than Kyle was of her friends’ efforts, meaning that she’s nice to Alex and Mia but shitty and irritable with Kyle and Nash. Surprise! She tells Squeak that he is “too slow,” a declaration that should have been made many hours ago. When they’re done, well, I’ll just let Kyle say it: “Hey Jess! It looks like you had us make some kind of giant IUD!” Indeed it does.
It should be obvious why Jess treasures her IUD, Kyle.
Jess is mightily offended by this accurate assessment. “No, moron!” she snaps at Kyle. “It’s a necklace that my mother bought for me when I was a little girl!” Kyle maintains that her mom must have given her an IUD to wear as jewelry. “Don’t you remember the time you told me how beautiful this necklace looked on me, Kyle?” she asks. “I remember when you used to give me compliments like that all the time…” And Jess is now Lindsay Bluth. The only missing parallel is the daughter they barely pay attention to, but they have so far dodged that bullet. Probably because Jess has an IUD. Now Kyle feels bad that he hurt her feelings, though it seems like she’s more upset about his lack of compliments than his jokes about the necklace she got from her dead mother. So why was the necklace so precious? Because it reminds her of the late Mrs. de Alkirk, or because Kyle told her it looked pretty on her once when he was drunk? Damon can’t figure that part out either, and tells them to try again.
Now that we’ve suffered through Kyle and Jessica’s couples counseling, it’s time to see what Mia can do. Squeak, of course, thinks she is the obvious choice to lead them, even though she basically has no self-esteem (see: actually valuing Nash’s friendship). After thinking for a moment about something she considers a treasure, she decides on something and the others get to work. Her first direction? “Alex, make that prettier…” Oh, this is going to go great.
Since Mia is a wet noodle, she isn’t really mean or all that critical to anyone. When the group is finished, they are standing before a sculpture of, per Mia, “Gorgon Ghidra,” the mouth-eyes monster from Meryod Forest and recipient of a dozen geography-based palette swaps. “Isn’t he just the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen?!” she asks. “I LOVE little ‘Gon!” Mia Ausa: secret Pokémon enthusiast? Nash falls all over himself trying to be nice about this, but his efforts are ruined by Kyle’s bluntness: “If this thing were any uglier, it’d be my butt!” Nash leaps over to Kyle to cover his mouth, lest any more insults of precious Gorgon Ghidra escape from it, but Kyle doesn’t like being touched by other men, or so he pretends. “The next time you cover my mouth like that, Nash, I’m gonna gnaw your fingers off!” Oh wait–that just means he really liked it. Nash snarls that he shouldn’t be rude to Mia, but Mia is only upset that they’re fighting “in front of cute little ‘Gon!”
Finally, Mia compliments Nash on his appearance.
Astoundingly, Damon does not consider “cute little ‘Gon” a sufficient treasure to pass his trial. That means it’s Nash’s turn. “What about you, Nash?” Alex asks. “You seem confident that Damon will be impressed by your treasure…” Is there anything about which Nash is not confident? He promises everyone that they will be agog at his genius, and tells Mia, “I think you’ll be especially surprised by my insight!” Whatever it ends up being, we can all agree that it may as well be Nash’s penis. The only reason he wouldn’t literally do that is that Kyle already did and he wouldn’t want to be seen as derivative. Case in point: “Alex, that section needs to be much more detailed!” We need to see every vein and pubic hair! He also says Jessica requires “a lighter touch”–Nash is very sensitive, you know!
After Nash is done shrilly criticizing everyone except Mia, the group steps back to reveal a replica of the Magic City of Vein. There are even two tiny penis towers, so we know where Nash required Jessica to paw at it less forcefully. Nash says nothing is more important to him than his home, but Damon knows that’s total bullshit and asks to see his “real treasure.” Again, we already saw Kyle’s penis, so I don’t know why Nash’s would be any more impressive or convincing. But Kyle and Jessica, to Nash’s mortified embarrassment, think that he should have done a sculpture of Mia, his lady love. Mia, for her part, just sits there smiling serenely, so she’s either fine with this or selectively deaf. As for Nash being in love with her: yes, of course he is. I mean, her goddamn bromide is subtitled “Nash’s treasure.” Even I can’t deny his mushy heterosexual feelings. But I do take issue with Kyle saying, “There’s nothing more important to you than she is!” To get down to brass tacks, the thing most important to Nash is himself. Nash is Nash’s treasure.