With that stupid thing finally out of the way, I can now proceed into the temple proper. The main chamber, which Tightass conveniently missed on his first time through this place if I’m remembering properly, contains six statues and an enormous glowy glyph barrier at the far end. The glyph barrier informs me that to proceed into the Chamber of the Fayth, I have to open every chest in each Cloister of Trials. I mentioned this before, but I’m reminding you because it’s been a while. Of course, I’ve been a good girl, so I’ve gotten each and every treasure already, preventing a lot of annoyance on my part. Or so I think. As I walk around to each statue in the room, its glowy, colored sphere lights up, with an effect to indicate which temple it represents. To my chagrin, one of the spheres does not light up, meaning that I fucked up somewhere along the line. Jesus Christ, nothing can ever be easy. And of course, since I’m a huge idiot, I don’t realize that I can easily figure out which sphere I missed, so I start back at the beginning. I’m dumber than Tightass sometimes.

To my credit, however, I do remember that I always used the strategy guide for the later temples, meaning that the treasure I missed was likely from one of the earlier temples. Yup, the fire temple in Kilika, as I find out after I go through the one at Besaid. Still, I only spent a few minutes backtracking, so I didn’t have to rend my clothing or gnash my teeth.

I return to Baaj temple and re-activate all the spheres, causing the glyph barrier to go bye-bye. Inside the Chamber of the Fayth, Yuna prays as the game designers play around with the camera. A trained mezzo-soprano voice sings the Hymn at the same time a familiar woman appears above the Anima statue. It’s…Seymour’s mom! Fortunately for my sanity, Yuna recognizes the woman from the flashback as well. In an echo-y voice, Mother Seymour intones, “So you know. Yet still you seek my aid?” “No shit — your aeon fucking rules,” Yuna would respond if she were cool. “My son…Do you not hate him?” MS wonders. Yuna and Tightass stand there, tactfully silent for once. MS earns my respect for basically saying, “Yeah, he’s an asshat.” Then she takes the blame for his pedophilia and all-around psychosis, just like Seymour’s dad did. On cue, a ghostly young Seymour appears in the room, crying. I think we’re supposed to feel sympathy for him because he’s just a chyyyyyld and chyyyyldren are sooooooo pwecious. Whatever, he’s fucking creepy.

Seymour’s mom takes this chance to tell Yuna Seymour’s life story, like she cares. Really, just hand over the God damn aeon already. Because Seymour always felt alone, his mom thought the best thing to do was become a fayth, leaving him with one less supportive person in his life in order to toughen him up. Way to go, mom. As expected, this backfired, and having such a kickass aeon turned Seymour into the power-hungry pedo he is today. During this entire sequence, we get to watch young Seymour standing in his bedchamber as the camera shows us every freaking nook and cranny of the room. As if this scene weren’t disturbing enough, as soon as it fades out, Tightass wanks, “And he found Sin.”

MS affirms this, as if it were some form of rocket science, and finally gets around to the giving out of “The Dark Aeon, Anima.” She wants Yuna to defeat Sin so that Seymour will no longer have an object of obsession. WAIT, HE’S DEAD ISN’T HE? HE WON’T BE COMING BACK, RIGHT? MS disappears, whining some more about how she wronged her kid. Now I get to rename Anima, which I don’t. I’m curious as to how this woman, who died maybe twenty years ago, managed to end up as the fayth in this rather ancient-looking temple. Please, send me lots of e-mail fanwanking this into making sense.

WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?

Only one aeon left to go. Unfortunately, this one takes a bit of effort. Once again, we’re dealing with a hidden temple, one that has been mentioned by Leia during the first visit to the Calm Lands: Remiem Temple. To get there, I need a chocobo. Consulting the strategy guide, I find out that I need to talk to a person standing in the northern area of the Calm Lands and go through a series of mind-shatteringly irritating chocobo time trials in order to earn the right to ride a chocobo. However, the truth is slightly different — I need to talk to someone at the entrance to the Calm Lands and rent a chocobo. Sadly for me, I do a lot of running around and fighting random battles to find this out. God damn strategy guide. You’re not worth the heat you create while burning.

After wandering aimlessly about the Calm Lands astride a chocobo, I finally figure out that the spot I’m looking for is a few steps away from where I rented the damn bird. I am not having much luck here. Using Tightass in battle has severely fucked up my karma. I jump off the cliff in a strategic spot (marked by a random chocobo feather), only to find myself on a hidden path amidst the eastern wall of the Calm Lands. I follow the path to find the biggest fucking temple ever, nestled in this hidden valley. Lots of pointy phallic towers surround the gigantic structure, which sits atop an enormous phallic column of rock, almost as if the builders had just a few size issues. Speaking of long and disturbing, a catwalk connects the temple to the main path. Tightass heads straight for the front door, stopping only to avail himself of the conveniently-located save sphere.

The huge door sports three flowery glyphs, which, as we will find out later, are Very Meaningful. They light up, allowing Tightass entry to the secret temple. That sentence should never appear in a romance novel ever. As expected, Leia awaits the party in the center of the main chamber, since this is her love shack and all. Yuna asks what is up with this place. “Once a great religious center in the Calm Lands, lost after the battle with Sin.” Those have got to be some extraordinarily dumb people if they can just “lose” a huge-ass temple like that. Tightass gets all in her face, wondering if she’s just an antisocial bitch for choosing to live away from civilization. As an answer, Leia begins glowing with pyreflies. Tightass is all, “Holy crap, you’re dead?!” even though she told us as much earlier and every NPC in this game is dead.

Leia isn’t ready to go to the Farplane just yet. She gets a little too full of herself, telling Yuna that she, Leia, holds the key to helping Yuna defeat Sin. Also, if Yuna can’t defeat her in the next battle of aeons, she sucks and should not even bother trying to beat Sin. I think someone is overestimating her importance in the whole scheme of things. Still, I need the last aeon and I want to resolve this storyline, so I go ahead with the battle.

This time I get to pick from a list of aeons. At this point, there is only one aeon on the list — Valefor. Hmm, which of my overpowerful aeons should I pick to wipe the floor with that wussy thing? Ah, Bahamut. One overdrive later, the battle ends. Now Leia’s List O’ Aeons has a second item — Ifrit. Basically she keeps adding an aeon after every battle, in the order in which they were received. Or, rather, in the order the game designers think I should have received them. This task is pathetically easy, given how much Yuna’s aeons kick ass at this time. If the game designers didn’t insist on showing the entire aeon summoning animation for every damn battle, I might be able to cut the time for this task by 75%. Alas.

After Yuna uses Anima to beat Leia’s weak Bahamut, Leia gives her a special item — a Flower Scepter. This — along with the equally-fruity-named Blossom Crown that I received from the Monster Arena Dude for capturing all the fiends on Mt. Gagazet — allows me to get the third and final optional aeon. For that, I only have to go to the back of the main chamber. A glowy field around a door seals off the Chamber of the Fayth. The door asks if I’d like to use the Blossom Crown. Um…sure. That removes part of the glowy thing. The door then asks if I’d like to use the Flower Scepter. Alrighty. Hey! I broke the seal! Yuna goes inside the Chamber to retrieve the aeon, and thank God I’m not subjected to another talkative fayth. Nope, Yuna just comes right back out, bowing in the Yevon fashion to indicate that she Caught ‘Em Allâ„¢.

This aeon — or set of three aeons rather, making it clear why the temple entrance had three symbols — is the Magus Sisters: Sandy, Cindy, and Mindy. You might recognize these three from Final Fantasy IV as one of the bosses. It’s been a while since I played that game, so I don’t remember if the three sisters had a penchant for dressing up as insects, but that’s what they do here. And giving them commands proves to be somewhat…well, unpredictable. Sometimes they just ignore Yuna and sit around on their asses instead. Kind of like me. But when they unleash their attacks, particularly the 17-hit Passado, holy freaking shit.

So Magus Sisters = teh r0x0rz, for the most part. Of course now that I have them, as well as the other optional aeons, I can fight Leia’s versions of them. I take great pleasure in beating the shit out of Hojimbo a second time. And if I weren’t trying to keep this footage as short as possible, I would probably keep on doing so, laughing manically the entire time, of course.

Holy crap, an overweight female character who’s not a villain!

Anyway, I easily beat all of Leia’s aeons, including the Magus Sisters. Afterward, Yuna thanks Leia for her help, and wonders if Leia will “teach her” some more at some point. As much as I’m sure Leia would enjoy teaching Yuna all her secrets, if you follow me, Yuna doesn’t need any more aeon help. Leia tries to be all big and important about it, but the truth is, her aeons fucking suck. According to Leia, Yuna is an even better summoner than her dad. Of course she is. Now that Leia has fulfilled her purpose in life, which of course was aaaaall about Yuna, she’s ready to go to the Farplane. Yuna sends Leia, receiving the Moon Sigil for all her efforts.

Now. I need to make a decision. Although I have completed the three items on my Side Quest Checklist, I now have in my possession two of the items necessary for Yuna to unlock the special features of her ultimate weapon — the Moon Crest (which is the “pointless item” mentioned here) and the Moon Sigil. Getting the weapon itself, as well as the item that activates the weapon, would not require that much extra effort. I said I wasn’t going to deal with the ultimate weapons, but hell. I may as well drag this out even longer, right?

This is where things get a tad confusing. The game designers figured it wasn’t annoying enough to find each person’s weapon as well as each crest and sigil. So, as I mentioned in the last paragraph, there is also an item required to activate the weapons. It’s called the Celestial Mirror. But again, the game designers couldn’t give us the mirror outright. Nope, the mirror itself has to be activated as well. This is bullshit, to put it politely. I understand that the ultimate weapons shouldn’t be easy to obtain, but there’s a point where it crosses the threshold of ridiculousness, and we’ve passed that point long ago.

Let’s get this over with. To receive the Cloudy Mirror, I must mount (ew) a racing chocobo that hangs out on the right-hand side of Remiem Temple and then race against another chocobo to a platform in the center of a bizarre multi-level racetrack under the temple. By this point I have recapped almost 22 pages in Word, consisting of nearly five hours of footage. This, in turn, took me ten hours to tape, thanks to all the extra leveling and shit. I am very much not in the mood for cracked-out crap like a fucking chocobo racetrack underneath an enormous hidden temple. It’s safe to say that I have reached the end of my rope here.

Whoa, there. This isn’t Clasko.

But I must press on, irritation and all. The things I do for you people. Thankfully for what remains of my sanity, I beat the chocobo race in one try. My prize is, of course, the Cloudy Mirror. A helpful text box informs me that this is the key to opening ancient seals once I “restore its power.” Next step: restoring the power.

This occurs in Macalania Forest, of all places. Once again, this can’t be straightforward, or I might start to think that the game designers don’t totally despise me. I have to perform an extraneous and retarded fetch quest. Well, that’s kind of redundant, but this is even more extraneous and retarded than usual.