Cool, so now that we’re all friends and Yuna is complicit in this child’s delusions, Marnela gets to the matter at hand. “A strange wind has been blowing through the desert,” she says. “You, too, may have felt the sands trembling beneath your feet. A fearsome fiend that rests deep beneath the earth has begun to stir.” Yeah, but that’s just another boss fight that I don’t have to worry about until chapter 5. Who cares. Marnela is convinced that the Cactuar Nation will be the first with their spiny backs against the wall when this monster shows itself, because they were the ones who first imprisoned it under the sand. Sure sounds like a you problem, plant lady! But you problems are YuNA problems, of course. (I’m sorry.) Marnela tells her, “We must summon the Great Haboob and prepare ourselves for the coming menace.” THE GREAT HABOOB. Is that ha’boob, like a ha’penny? Is it just half a tit, looming over the desert and being floppy and unattractive?

(I looked this up and apparently “haboob” is an Arabic word for a major sandstorm in arid regions, and though I’ve lived in areas where these occur, I did not know this. The meaning actually tracks with what’s going down here on Bikanel, and makes me feel bad for mocking a real word in a language I don’t know, like some sort of Trump voter. But I’m not going to go back and edit out my initial take just to look like less of a dingus.)

To summon the Great Haboob, Marnela requires the presence of the “Ten Gatekeepers,” cactuar who can seal the fiend again. “But they are out training in every corner of Spira,” she says. Training for what? Sealing a fiend they don’t even know is coming, or they would be here? “I need your help to seek them out and bring them back.” Jesus Christ, she could have just told Benzo, “This is a fetch quest,” and saved us all a lot of time. And just to make it even more unnecessarily complicated, Marnela won’t just tell Yuna where they all are–she says, “The Cactuar Mothers know where they have gone.” And the Mission Time! screen adds, “Think you can unravel the Cactuar Mothers’ clues and sniff them out?” So the Cactuar Moms also aren’t just going to come out and say, “My kid is at the Luca blitzball stadium, trying to catch a Staryu.” Though that is almost certainly where they all are. Yuna’s just going to find 10 cactuar in one spot, staring at their phones and occasionally swiping upward.

Yuna finds the first cactus nearby that will talk to her, and through Benzo she says, “I am Lobivia‘s mother. Lobivia was supposed to head north from the Oasis with his friends. But I haven’t heard a thing from him since.” Stupid fucking cactuar teenagers. You’re only going to find Magikarps in that tiny pond. After Nameless Cactuar Mom bitches, wiggling and swaying some more, about her kid’s shiftlessness and inability to get a goddamn job, she releases Yuna to drag his ass home. So YRP’s latest job is basically a hybrid of Dogg the Bounty Hunter and Nanny 911? Is this already a show? Should I call TLC?

At the oasis, the girls find an odd scene: a small herd of shoopuf bathing in the pond, their Hypello minder having a smoke break, and a very obvious cactuar dancing in place stage left. “What’s a shoopuf doing in the middle of the desert?” Rikku wonders. I don’t know, what were you all doing in this very spot when you’d been in Macalania Lake five minutes before? Maybe Sin brought them here, dingus. Yuna can buy items from the Hypello, but ignores that non-tempting offer in favor of talking to the cactuar, obviously named Lobivia.

And joy of joys, it is also not as simple as telling Lobivia that he is needed back home and sending him on his way. No, Lobivia is not interested in accompanying Yuna home, only to listen to his mother gush to him that his older brother got promoted at the water retention plant again. He instead wants to demonstrate the powers he’s received while “training,” for his lifelong dream of running a mini-game for girls in denim hot pants. His mom says that is a dead-end career, but she doesn’t know his life.

This game is stupid and I hate it. I guess so I can at least say that Yuna is uniquely suited to carrying out this task for Marnela, the mini-game utilizes her pistols. She must shoot at Lobivia until either his HP is reduced to zero or she runs out of ammo, while dodging his spine-shooting attacks that can magically, somehow, deplete her bullets. Lobivia appears all over the screen in rapid-fire succession with his new buddies, Hypello Frank and his shoopuf band. Obviously, if Yuna puts one between Frank’s eyes instead of Lobivia’s, that’s a miss, and also a felony. Speaking of crimes, this setup has one more to perpetrate on me, in the form of a description of Yuna’s mark. “Free spirit, lover of detours, and average in every possible way!” the game screen says. That last part was absolutely written by his mother.

Frank seems to have something of a fetish for being shot in the chest.

Extremely shortened version: Yuna needs to shoot Lobivia 10 times. She has 25 bullets. That seems doable. And in fact, it is, since this is the introductory difficulty to this game Yuna will have to play nine more times. Life is wonderful! Now that he has been riddled with bullets by this contract killer hired by his mother and her insane friends, Lobivia is for some reason willing to go home. But before leaving the oasis, Yuna kneels at the water one more time, where she spots a dolphin. “A lost dolphin?” she wonders, as it leaps out of the water and laughs. I have no idea if this scene is important to the Almighty One Hundred Percent, but it feels like a Touching the Moogle scenario so I have to mention it.

Lobivia’s return gets another Cactuar Mom lathered up about her shitty kid, who “always dreamed of seeing waters vaster than our little Oasis.” She goes on, “And now he’s finally getting his wish. Sands whiter than the desert, a gentle breeze, glistening sunlight…and more water than can be imagined.” So: a location in Spira with sun, beaches, and water. Glad we’ve narrowed it down! Fuck you, Cactuar Breeder. I’m almost glad the game places so little value on you as your own character and not just a cactuar uterus that you don’t even have a name.

Man, Buddy was right: that could have been put off. But let’s see what he has for Yuna to do now, hmm? Hilariously, now that we know exactly how dumb Nhadala’s problem was, Buddy has now labeled Bikanel a hotspot. Friendly Neighborhood Buddy has some screwy priorities. But this time, he actually has a lead that may involve fiends attacking people: “Distress call from the cave down in the gorge!” he tells Yuna when she selects the Calm Lands. “Say, a fayth used to be down there…maybe this has something to do with the temple fiends?” Of course, he doesn’t have this labeled as a hotspot, since it’s way too on-task for any of the Gullwings to want to do it. Nonetheless, it’s next on the Spira Reminiscence Tour, so after backtracking yet again to the Thunder Plains and Macalania to catch some chocobos and pimp out Argent Inc. and Fanboy Bachelor–I play this game very efficiently, as you can see–YRP head down to the Calm Lands.

There are actually two “missions” available here. The first was just outlined by Buddy, but the second is, shall we say, less urgent. “Clasko settled down at last,” Buddy says. Well, let’s send him a crystal punch bowl and a card and move on with our lives. (This joke operates on the assumption it’s legal in Spira for a human to marry a chocobo. Which…I’m gonna say probably.) Buddy sadly adds, “About time, too. Wanna go check in on him?” No. No, I do not. But the Almighty One Hundred Percent thinks it’s a good idea, so Yuna goes along with it. Those people being eaten alive by fiends will just have to wait.

Clasko is fine–in fact, he’s so fine that there isn’t even a scene with him fretting about his quarter-life crisis or why he keeps getting downvoted for his very nice comments on Sphereddit’s Lady Yuna sub. He’s just minding his chocobos and waiting around for Yuna to…send his trained birds on missions. Wait, what? Yuna has a goddamn airship, but she needs Clasko to dedicate his entire life to training flightless birds to pick up her dry cleaning? As I sit here, I realize I don’t even know what the purpose of these missions is, so I decide to consult a FAQ. I scroll through a surprising amount of detail–creating the perfect artisanal blend of farmer’s market gysahl greens for perfect regular artisanal shits, what percentage of a chocobo’s personality must be “timid” for it to travel to Besaid without eating Wakka’s future baby–but all I can find re: the whole point of this is that the chocobos “find items” when on their missions. WOW, ITEMS. For starters, probably 99 percent of these “items” will be mice and cockroaches they present to Clasko for the household food supply. And whatever is in that remaining one percent cannot possibly be good enough to make navigating Clasko’s byzantine command menu worth my time. I randomly dispatch the two chocobos I’ve caught to destinations that disappear before I even notice what they were, since I was going through these motions as fast as humanly possible. “Make me proud!” Clasko cries as each chocobo scurries away. “Be a good chocobo and don’t run off!” It is literally running off, because Clasko and Yuna ordered it to. Is there some kind of contest going on for dumbest mini-game? Is this another Rin promotion?

I wouldn’t be this concerned about a greens ratio for MYSELF.

The short version is that this whole enterprise is Touching the Moogle, except it’s Clasko clumsily feeling up a chocobo on their wedding night. I’m extremely sure that I’m doing a bad job explaining it, and were I to take some time to figure this out, I’d find even more ridiculous nuances to this tacked-on, yet daunting sidequest. But even the prospect of goofing on shitty mini-games can’t lure me in. I’ve done what I came to do.

Okay, ONE funny thing: the FAQ has a section that is titled, “What makes Clasko so important?” How many paragraphs of “NOTHING!” would suffice as an answer here? Four? Five?

She’s not going to fuck you!

With that, and Shinra’s commspheres at the chocobo ranch and the travel agency in place, it’s time to maybe kill some fiends? Shooo exshiting! Yuna lazily teleports from the agency to the ship just to teleport down to the gorge. A number of people are milling about outside the cave, which is not unusual in itself, because unemployment, but several of them are also Rikku-style dog-paddling in agitation. “Open Air was all set to kick off their new attraction, Cavern Crawler. You should see the crowd they drew!” one man tells Yuna. “Then, fiends started appearing out of nowhere! Some of the visitors are still trapped inside!” I think, regardless of Yuna’s choice of which Calm Lands Dave and Busters to shill for, Open Air is still responsible for this Jurassic Park scenario. Fucking Open Air! They were clearly so desperate for their Yelp score to catch up to Argent Inc. that they went too far! More Spirans mutter non-urgently to the ladies about the fiends and the people trapped inside the cave. To be clear, it’s not like there was a rockslide. These people just haven’t walked out yet. Staying where they are might get them just as killed by fiends as running. “There’s nothing we can do to help them…” one man says, sounding like he’s mostly trying to convince himself of this. Absolutely nothing the Friendly Neighborhood Busybodies are about to do would be impossible or even difficult for normal people.

“To be honest, I’d had enough,” Yuna wankovers. “I wanted to blame them for turning a place like this into a tourist attraction.” Oh, Yuna. You can help them and blame them! Then you can be a scold and a heroine! The dream. Just to soften up this eternally limp noodle, a pathetic, hunched old woman begs, “Please, won’t you help us rescue the people left behind?” Knowing what is to come–and past that, sick of Yuna never saying no to anyone–I desperately wish I could shoot this old bat down. But no, that will not do. “You are most kind,” Sad Granny says in relief. Whew, the biggest pushover in Spira agreed to help! On cue, Buddy jogs up to the cave entrance. “Your Friendly Neighborhood Gullwings, open for business!” he tells the crowd. The ladies leave Buddy to negotiate their fee and charge into the Cavern of the Stolen Fayth.

The Mission Time! screen is a real head-scratcher this time. On its face, this is a simple mission to kill some fiends and bail out people too weak to do the deed on their own, but it reads, “Rescue the tourists who didn’t make it out of the cave! They hold the key to unlocking its secrets.” What secrets? Yuna has been here before. Did a popup supper club open down here, and each tourist has one letter of the password? Will Yuna’s life be forever changed by their free-range chocobo molé pupusas?

Beyond the “secrets” about the cave these people do in fact literally hold the keys to–and yes, that will end up being dumb–they also hold information regarding how they should be rescued. “What do you mean?” I can hear you, the hypothetical person who’s never played this game but reads the recaps, asking. “Just find them and take them to the entrance!” Oh, if only, imaginary reader. But the customers Open Air invited to experience this Cavern Crawler adventure are used to a certain level of deference and pampering, even when waiting uselessly for skinny girls in ugly clothes to rescue them. Thus, Yuna must rescue them in the proper order befitting their needs, or they’ll go cry in their Tumblrs about it, and every purple prose paragraph they write about their marginalization takes .01 percent off my completion score.

Because I am not insane, I have a guide handy for this task, and to that end Yuna blows past the first person in an offshoot corridor and instead talks to the second person she finds. After he yells at her for basically not inventing time travel just to prevent him from ever ending up here in the first place, the game provides a list of this man’s, ahem, “Eccentricities.” God help me. So this dude–who I need to note now might be one of the easiest-going bitchy princesses down here–apparently cannot abide being in a group of three or more, but as long as he is first or second in line, he will hold his nose and deal with the hot, smelly press of the crowd. Yuna asks Head of the Line Hal to follow her and moves further in.

Yes. ‘Before.’

Oh, and I can’t just do the logical thing and take Hal outside now, before I pick up anybody else, because the girls have to rescue all of the tourists in one shot. Even though the entrance is right there, and Hal is probably already whining about his bad ankles. Cool! I’m very happy about how logical this is turning out to be. Happily, it doesn’t take long to find Hal’s soulmate, Second in Line Sheila, who also hates crowds but also will deal if she’s one of the first two people Yuna rescues. Do these two have some kind of issue with walking behind others and not being able to see Yuna’s ass hanging out, or do they have such a pathological need to be treated like they’re more important than other people that they can’t abide Yuna tending to others first? It can be both, right?

Down the hall to the right, Yuna first “scores” a White Ring out of a chest and then pointedly ignores the three people waiting in this dead end, two of whom are curled up in a fetal position on the ground. They seem fine! Down the other branch, after ignoring a Gatta lookalike running the other way, scoring a Blue Ring and ignoring some more lazy asses, and then nearly tripping over two children running deeper into the cave, for fuck’s sake, Yuna barely spots a person hiding in a corner. “Alas, they have found me!” he moans. “So long, cruel world!” So many chill, level-headed people down here. I’m starting to think Open Air advertised this attraction exclusively to the casting agency in charge of Shelinda’s new reality show, The Bachelorette: Spira. I don’t have to tell you who the titular bachelorette is, do I? No. You know. Anyway, Dramatic Daniel is apparently spooked by groups larger than three and will not deign to join them, but once he’s in a group he doesn’t care how big it is. Sure! Why the fuck not! Backtracking some, Yuna also nabs Daniel’s destined life partner, who doesn’t like groups of more than four, but also magically only cares about this at the time she’s found. But I won’t call her Dramatic Danielle, because while she begins, “You’re here to rescue me? How do I know I can trust you?” she quickly adds, “Who am I kidding, I’ll take my chances. Let’s go!” Pragmatic Priscilla is my new favorite. That she doesn’t trust the nebulous motives behind Your Friendly Neighborhood Derpwings is hardly a mark against her.