[gentoo-user] grub 0.97-r18 fails sanity check, stage2 larger than 1MB

[Skippy]

I think emerge wants to rebuild grub because of a changed USE flag.

[ebuild   R    ] sys-boot/grub-0.97-r18::Skippy  USE="ncurses 
-custom-cflags -netboot -static" KERNEL="(-linux%*)" 0 KiB

When doing so it fails.

  * Sanity check failed: stage2 
(/var/tmp/portage/sys-boot/grub-0.97-r18/work/grub-0.97/stage2/stage2) 
is larger than 1MB (268959736 bytes)!
  * Please check your CFLAGS and/or file a bug report at 
https://bugs.gentoo.org.
  * ERROR: sys-boot/grub-0.97-r18::Skippy failed (install phase):
  *   stage2 sanity check failed

I've done some googling about and found nothing that helps me out.

Here is the full emerge output:

https://pastebin.com/XAjAiQFp

Suggestions please and thank you!
Skippy