Ignoring this, Anus changes the subject back to the demon shasks. We discover that Maya is already in possession of the third shask, which means she now has two out of the three, compared to Anus’s measly one. Not bad for a mere woman eh, Anus? He wisely admits that the odds are against him and his bottoms today, being flanked by angry vaginas and all, but vows that he’s still in the running to claim the Eternal Sparkle. He then reveals its location to be a tower called “Ka Dingel” to the southwest of Claiborne and turns to leave, raising his hand to click his fingers in the doorway. There’s an ominous rumbling sound as he states he’s “just buying time”. He’s probably booked in for a manicure before heading to the tower.

Of course, Vagina doesn’t want to let him leave quietly. She runs after him in slow-mo, just as a huge chunk of the ceiling falls down from right above her head. Jet, of all people, snatches her out of its path as Anus, Dario and Romero take their leave. So, we’re supposed to believe that Anus can now make ceilings cave in with one flick of his wrist, but is still unable to win a fight with Vagina and the others? Right.

Despite almost being crushed to death, Vagina is still determined to go after Anus, only to be stopped in her tracks by a slap from Maya. Vagina’s all “WTF, bitch? They’re getting away!” Realizing she isn’t yet getting the message, Maya gets up in Vagina’s grill and grabs her by the front of her dress. Yuri fanfic writers across the globe start furiously tapping away at their keyboards. Maya yells at Vagina for acting recklessly and putting one of her comrades in danger (girl, it was only Jet), declaring that she has no right to call the Three Cocketeers “the bad guys” when she’s acting so rashly. “By being so imprudent and risking the lives of others, doesn’t that make you a bad guy, too?” she says. “This is exactly the kind of thing that makes me think you’re just pretending to be a Drifter!” Well, I can see her point, but to be fair to Vagina she had no idea Anus had a trick like that up his sleeve. A lavender-scented handkerchief, maybe.

I never had Vagina down as a cunning linguist.

With Maya’s criticism hitting home, Vagina sinks to her knees in despair, complete with an awkward choice of camera angle that only serves to add fuel to the burgeoning Les Yay fire. As her words sink in, Maya turns to leave, and Vagina screams “No, wait! You’re not going to that tower, are you? It’s a trap, I know it!” Dogs know it’s a trap, but I guess she’s learning. Maya laughs “Of course it’s a trap. It’s so obvious!” Utilizing the ASK system to expand on that pesky green text prompts Maya to reveal her reasons for walking into what she knows is a trap — if she follows Anus there, all three shasks will be in the same place, and the lock on the Eternal Sparkle will be released. That, or she has to move the plot along. Potato, potahto.

Vagina has a mini-breakdown, wailing that she isn’t sure what she wants to accomplish as a Drifter anymore. Almost as if she’s trying to piss me off, she whines “My wings are in place, yet I have nowhere to fly” (VARC: 7). Ugh, wankst really doesn’t become her. “This is a hurdle people face when they wander into the wasteland with some romantic idea in mind,” Maya tells her, then, to Vagina’s surprise, drops the red shask at her feet. Seeing her confusion, Maya elaborates “just bring the [shask] and head southwest to Ka Dingel. There you’ll find neither good nor bad — only the truth about Drifters.” This truth being that they’re all flaming? Of course, we all know said truth is going to be something along the lines of “all Drifters inhabit a morally grey area, and if you can’t handle that you’ll realize you have no place in the wasteland”, but I like my theory better.

Vagina is unsure, but Maya tells her this is the only way to find the answers she’s looking for. “Are you sure, m’lady?” AfSam asks her as an aside, not convinced that this little exercise will have the desired effect. “She’ll be fine,” Maya replies dismissively. “Once she faces the truth, I’m sure she’ll stop pretending to be a Drifter.” With that, the Schlongtinglers finally make an exit, leaving Vagina to be slowly swallowed up by a Black Screen of Angst and Uncertainty.

Speak for yourself.

So, the stage is set for a three-way confrontation at Ka Dingel, with the coveted Eternal Sparkle at stake. But before that unimportant fluff, time for a drawn-out cutscene! Inside Claiborne’s saloon, Clive and Jet are lounging at a table as Gallows slowly walks down the stairs. He declares that Vagina is “pretty bummed out”. Well, she still has her life, one of the shasks, and a nubile new frenemy, so cry me a fucking river. “All we can do is lend a helping hand,” Clive sighs. “If she cannot get back on her feet herself, then this is it for her.” Gallows gripes about Maya not taking them seriously, regardless of the fact that Vagina was pretty much the sole target of her scorn. Christ, Gallows, one pity party is enough for one recap — you don’t need to add to my misery. On a completely unrelated note, Miss Gulch is conspicuous by her absence in the scene, which makes me think she’s, like, taken Martina’s puppy to be put down or something.

Oh, I don’t know…into the sun?

We cut to a bedroom of the saloon, where Vagina is still in her depressive funk. “I’m doing the best I can…and I’m taking this seriously…but I feel like I’m getting nowhere” she thinks, her thoughts sounding a lot like mine when I try to recap this game. After moping awhile over what she lacks as a Drifter, she gets out the torn photo of her dad and starts reminiscing. In the space of two text boxes, she somehow gets from “Dad, why did you abandon me, you negligent fuck?” to “Dad, there must be something out there in the wasteland, and that’s why you left town to became a Drifter”. Maybe he just really didn’t want to pay child support? She suddenly bolts up off the bed, exclaiming “But still…I have to fly” (VARC: 8). She decides to go and apologize to everyone for being such a Self-Pity Sally now that she’s apparently found her purpose in the wilderness.

Heartwarming music kicks in as Vagina heads downstairs and sheepishly says she’s sorry for keeping the guys waiting. See, as much as I dislike self-pitying asswipes who wallow in their own wank in order to get attention from their sycophantic friends, I get that Vagina was legitimately feeling lost, and at least she’s making an effort to push herself forward. Still, she feels the need to shoehorn a speech in here: “I became a Drifter, thinking maybe my PENISes could help people in need…[snicker]…but I didn’t have a purpose or goal…that’s why she said I was pretending. How I put everyone in danger. Please forgive me…” Jesus, Vagina, just move on and say no more about it.

Clive asks if she’s figured out what she wants to accomplish as a Drifter. “Yep…ah, well…maybe not,” she replies hesitantly. “Which is it?!” Jet snits, and as much as Vagina has irritated me during the past hour, she still has a LONG way to go before reaching the dizzying heights of his wankery. So shut up, Jet. She clarifies that she doesn’t know what exactly she’s looking for, but she does know why she needs to carry on traversing the wasteland. Well, that’s clear as mud. Gallows then remarks that they were all spared a sob story, a remark I would usually interpret as sarcasm, but as this is freaking Gallows we’re talking about I just assume he’s a fucking moron who hasn’t been paying attention.

Again, speak for yourself.

Blah blah teamwork blah blah Eternal Sparkle blah blah let’s go. Vagina announces that it’s time to head to Ka Dingel, now renamed Ka Dongel. Come on, it’s a tower — the thing’s bound to look like a penis. Before leaving town, I make use of a sombrero-wearing save drone, just in case the party gets wiped out in a freak accident and I have to sit through all that wank again. Of course, knowing my luck, there’ll be a power surge and my memory card will get wiped or something.

Mounting the horses they bought earlier — wait, I’ll rephrase that. Riding the horses they bought earlier, the party head towards their next destination. Majestically rising into the sky from the plains to the southwest, Ka Dongel promises to be an impressive erection for Vagina to climb. From the outside, at least — in reality, it’s probably the most boring dungeon in the game so far. If you’ve stuck with this recap until now, then you’ll know that’s no small feat.

Penis!

The most exciting thing in the place is a “puzzle” which involves pushing three stone blocks to form a bridge. The other fuckteen trillion floors in the place are comprised of winding staircases, side rooms containing crappy treasure, and platforms which have to be raised by turning valves (taking around five minutes at a time, natch). “Monotonous” isn’t even the word.

Looks like somebody swallowed a chemistry textbook.

However! There’s a tinge of excitement when Vagina tries to cross a completely empty room and is dragged into a surprise boss fight. More surprisingly, Anus and his cronies aren’t involved in any way. Instead, the party’s latest roadblock is a huge dinosaur-looking creature named “Trask”. From what I can vaguely remember, Trask is a recurring boss in the WA series (along with several others we’ll be meeting in due course), but I can’t recall if it looks like an eldritch fusion of Bahamut and a packet of shelled almonds in the other games, too. Trask has incredibly high defence, but the trick to defeating it, courtesy of the ever-helpful Strategy Guardian, Gamefaquon, is to first roast its shell with the Cremate arcana before immediately casting Refrigerate. This combo, according to the Phantom Text God, shatters the shell with “a thunderous noise like a boulder cracking open.” Allowing himself to be carried away with excitement, the PTG then goes off on a multiple text-box spanning tangent about the effects of rapidly heating and cooling a hard substance. Well, if there was ever a fitting dungeon for a sleep-inducing lecture, it was this one.

One turn later, Trask is toast, and to my relief the PTG doesn’t pop up and start describing what’ll happen to its corpse once decomposition begins to set in. Mainly because it doesn’t even leave a corpse behind. What does appear in its place, however, is a red glowing orb inside a series of revolving rings, looking not unlike an armillary sphere. When Vagina examines it, the PTG shrieks “A powerful and wicked presence emanates from the holographic archive [WTF?]. You sense something moving towards you from the darkness!” Such “holographic archives” actually house optional superbosses, which won’t be available to fight until much later, so for now let’s all pretend they don’t exist. La la la, there’s nothing there!

So wait…is this a movie sphere of the pond scene?

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A few floors up from the thing we definitely didn’t see, Vagina stumbles into another puzzle, but it’s so insultingly easy I’m not going to recount it in detail. Let’s just say Gallows’s Jizzer Doll was heavily featured, and I most definitely did not have to leave and re-enter the room several times to reset the puzzle when I messed up. Certainly not. A few floors up from that, there’s a momentary cutscene break to show the ceiling shaking. Thankfully (or perhaps not), it doesn’t fall down this time. Everyone stares up at the ceiling like dumbasses, spouting generic “What the hell was that?” dialogue, before I regain control and guide them like Lemmings toward the source of the disturbance — the roof of the tower. Or the tip of the penis, if you prefer.

For what — a gay Western strip show?

We arrive just in time to see Maya hit the floor, joining the apparently-lifeless bodies of the other Schlongtinglers. Of course, the source of the carnage is Anus and his butt buddies. “How did you like our Trinity Avenger?” he cries, bayonet standing to attention. Wait, how is the Trinity Avenger different to the vanilla Trinity Threesome attack? Is there more weaponplay involved, or do all three members of the Ambiguously Gay Trio perform stinkfaces on the enemy, as opposed to just Dario? These are the kinds of questions I have a duty to ask as a recapper. Also, now it’s clear both rival Drifter groups got here before Vagina and her man pals, I’m wondering how the hell they managed to get past Trask.

Maya sits up, complaining “Th-that name is even more ridiculous than the attack! How can I be so disgraced and humiliated…?” Before Anus can answer, the camera pans to the left to show Vagina, Clive, Gallows and Jet looking on. “Maya!” Vagina screams, horrified at the sight of her new lesbian rival being subjugated by a filthy male. We get an extended long shot of the entire roof, showing off a number of phallic constructions, as Anus observes “Looks like the stage is set”. I just knew there was a passion for musical theatre in there somewhere.