Still pointing her gun with one eye squinted (pro tip, and I’ve never so much as held a real gun: don’t do this), Yuna says, “I don’t care about your defending or your punishing. I just don’t want to see Kimahri looking sad.” Welp, I need a paragraph break.
Really, Yuna?! REALLY?! Oh no, two races have wiped each other off the face of the planet in an orgy of rage and bloodshed, and now Kimahri just sits in his bedroom, listening to Adele with his blinds drawn! Couldn’t someone have thought of Kimahri?!
Rikku and Paine are pointedly looking anywhere BUT at Yuna right now.
SHUT UP, YUNA.
Yuna quickly adds that she also doesn’t want to see the Ronso or the Guado looking sad–SHE GUESSES–but if there was any chance that Garprick might listen to High Summoner Bubblehead, it has now evaporated. Seriously, Garprick has done nothing BUT make Kimahri sad, and he’s come this far. “Summoner not stop Gar[prick] with empty words,” he severely understates. And that just leaves her the guns option, which Garprick clearly finds so hilariously non-threatening that he swears “to mountain” to give up his crusade if Yuna can defeat him. Rikku just chuckles, “I figured it’d come to this,” but I’m sure she means because Garprick is, like, so stubborn, and not because of any fault in Queen Yuna. “At least he let us cut to the chase,” Paine adds. He did? I feel like this battle would have happened back in chapter 1 if that were the case. But no matter! Even though Yuna said she would stop him, and didn’t utter one word about ganging up on him with fucking Bess and George here, the two of them run forward and brandish their weapons in Garprick’s direction. Garprick, for his part, has one backup Ronso as well. I’m sure this dude with no name is gonna present a lot of problems.
There’s not much to say about the battle itself. Predictably, Garprick’s bro, sadly named Ronso Youth, doesn’t bring a lot to the table, and before long it’s three on one. Better still, since Yuna did such a great job convincing the Ronso to stand down in the last chapter…well, they still wanted to exterminate the Guado with Garprick, but it did weaken Garprick in this fight and keep him from casting Mighty Guard on himself. What’s that? Now I have one fewer opportunity for the girls to learn the Mighty Guard Blue Bullet? Fuck me. I guess I’ve learned my lesson about diffusing political tensions. Anyway, I don’t even bother taking the girls out of the dresspheres they’ve been leveling up, except to have Rikku fail to steal anything of substance. Britney Spira just keeps hitting him with Darkness Dance while Dark Knight Paine uses Darkness. I have a theme going! I adopted it in honor of the deep darkness in Kimahri’s sad blackened soul.
With my lazy non-strategy on lockdown, Garprick goes down after a few minutes. Yuna lowers her gun. Fists balled up, she says through gritted teeth, “Enough vengeance, Gar[prick].” That is to say, no vengeance, because he hadn’t actually done anything yet. But Garprick is a Ronso of his word, and he tells his witness Ronso Youth Chad that he will not be going into battle. Chad takes off without a word. Nice meeting you, Chad! Good talk!
Yuna thanks Garprick for doing the right thing, but he tells her he doesn’t need thanks. It turns out, Yuna was maybe less instrumental in this decision than she or Kimahri thought. “Mountain was right,” Garprick mutters. “Gar[prick] spoke to mountain of plan, but mountain silent.” What? The mountain didn’t talk? I cannot believe this. “Gagazet know,” he says. “Gar[prick] wrong.” But he does note he would have gone against “the mountain’s” wishes if Yuna hadn’t stopped him, and therefore, “Gar[prick] grateful to Yuna.” Just what Yuna needed: more people mouth-polishing her boots. I mean, everyone should be grateful to Yuna already, but that’s all the more reason we don’t need to reaffirm her sainthood every five fucking minutes, right? As Garprick walks off to contemplate what brought him this low, the mission is completed in a gnarly fashion, broheims! Shreddin’ licks, waves, and fiends! (Wait, not fiends.)
The Gullwings have one more stop before I am mercifully done with them for this recap, and it’d be really nice to try for a mission befitting their new mercenary purpose. Well, good news, because Zanarkand is a temple, and might have a fiend problem! “The fiends that attacked all the other temples seem to be leaving this place alone…” Buddy says on the mission screen. “The monkeys, on the other hand, are out of control!” Oh, fuck it.
At the entrance to the temple ruins, Gay Ponytail Man exposits nasally, “I’ve heard that fiends have been appearing at the temples. Do you know anything?” He genuinely sounds like he’s jealous of Yuna’s fiend-slaying, high-flying, limousine-riding lifestyle. Don’t worry, GPM, it’s not as fun as it looks. (There’s a back-of-the-box pull quote! Feel free to use!) Yuna tells him the source is the various Chambers of the Fayth, which “pains” him to hear, and is also news to him, since in Zanarkand, “There are fiends, as always. No more, no fewer.” This is puzzling, no? Zanarkand has a gaping fiend hole just like every other temple that had a fayth, doesn’t it? (Note from five minutes in the future: Nope! I’m dumb. Zaon’s empty fayth shell is still there, plugging the fiend dike.) But either way, no one present wastes one precious brain cell on pondering this, because there’s a way more pressing issue: monkey sex.
GPM doesn’t have fiends to worry about, but his tour guide business is still in the dumps. “The only things thriving here are the monkeys,” he says. “To make matters worse, Cid ran off a while ago and hasn’t come back.” What was Cid even doing, though? I’m pretty sure the only thing we’ve seen him do this entire game is cry because Yuna yelled at him. Turning to Yuna, GPM sighs, “I guess that makes me Zanarkand’s lone defender.” In that case, better get this guy a giant metaphor hammer and some butt floss. “Well, time to do some defending. Until next time.” To be clear, even though there are still fiends here, he is talking about poisoning tiny monkeys. Am I supposed to feel sorry for him?
Like I said a couple recaps ago, the gals can make this monkey infestation too overwhelming even for Zanarkand’s Lone Brave Defender by pairing them up and sending them off to multiply in the Yevon Dome’s various crawlspaces. These critters already have been boning down, by everyone’s account, but for whatever reason they still need Yuna to find them their single destined soulmate and push their little butts toward each other, like they’re reluctant wallflowers at a middle school dance. And not only are the monkeys monogamous and choosy, but Yuna can’t just grab the first monkey she sees and walk around with it until she finds its mate. She has to find monkeys, one at a time, that are receptive to genital mashing, signified by little swoony hearts floating above their heads, not unlike the hearts Yuna made appear when she lubed up and rubbed down Lesbianc. Again, every other temple in Spira is unleashing fiends on innocent, jobless civilians, and this is what the Gullwings are doing with their time. And yes, that’s because I’m making them procrastinate in the name of the Almighty One Hundred Percent, which requires Yuna to spend the entire game exercising bad judgment. But I’m sure that’s just a gameplay thing, and the perfect ending we’re working so hard for will not further Yuna’s terrible decision-making in any way.
The first lovesick monkey on Yuna’s list is all the way at the back of the ruins, which at least allows Yuna to raid all the restocked treasure chests. (Is GPM stocking these? Why would he do that, if the attraction is closed? Why would he do that even if it were open?) Up on Thongaladriel’s Sound Stage of Hope she finds a monkey named Birch, swaying from the effects of Spanish Fly. “Where is Birch‘s soul mate?” a text box asks. That’s a pretty heavy question. What if Birch’s soulmate is nowhere, because there’s no such thing? Or it happens to be a monkey on the other side of Spira, with no hope of them ever coming together? What if Birch’s soulmate was a dream monkey created by a monkey fayth who died 1000 years ago, and it faded from this realm, never to be seen again?!
Oh, wait, it’s in the fayth chamber. Everything is fine!
With Birch and his lover Sequoia canoodling on Zaon’s empty grave, Yuna can now find a second pair of monkeys in need of the kind of meddling only the Gullwings can provide. The next monkey, Spring, is in the room to the north. Yuna carries him–arms extended, like he’s a baby with a full diaper–back toward the first cloister puzzle room, where she introduces him to Autumn. (I haven’t been paying attention to which ones are male and which ones are female, but I think it’s fair to assume the male monkeys are the ones sitting around visibly pining in the hope that someone else literally couriers them to sex, and the females are the ones who are seemingly fine and going about their business until suddenly there’s a man requiring all their attention.)
In her underwear drawer, carefully hidden under her socks?
Yuna similarly sets up Dusky with Dawne, Rosemary with Thyme (sorry, Sage and Parsley, Yuna doesn’t care about your love), and Terran with Skye, while I fret about some dorky pregnant woman using this mission as a baby name guide. You know someone has. She next picks up Minni, and I’m immediately concerned her paramour is going to be named Maxi, and the ladies are going to have a hilarious and messy case of mistaken identity, but he’s actually called Maxx. (But not Maxxx, because despite the music and the lesbian hot spring threesomes, this game is not a porno.) Summer gets paired up with Winter–Jesus, game, think we get the theme here–and then Peke with Valli. And yes, Peke is the male monkey here. Obviously. Canis and Felina fall in love despite, you’d think, fighting all the time. Arroh is mated with Quivrr (again, yes, Arroh is the male–the next pair are probably named Penis and Vagina). But these names. God, these names. Was there something wrong with just Arrow and Quiver? Were they not edgy enough? Do they need quirky dye jobs and “Damaged” tattooed on their foreheads? And once Golde and Sylva (sigh) are brought together, Yuna has just one couple left to hook up from the opposite sides of the Yevon Dome, Luna and Sol. I wonder if Luna has an angelic monkey choir of backup singers.
As Sol gets down to putting his tiny dick in Luna and she pretends to be way into it, the Mission Complete! guitar riff keys up. The screen fades to black, and text tells us, “Their world was veiled in darkness. But now, as monkey love blossoms and grows, a monkey-full future surely lies ahead. This is their home. They will protect it. Now, and always.” Leaving aside the fact that the game basically penned me some choice greeting card copy in honor of a pack of monkeys getting it in, what does this even mean? Will the monkeys do this by…pickpocketing tourists who don’t want to do anything but take selfies in the spot where Yuna abandoned false hope? By making GPM give up in exasperation and driving him back into his brother’s loving arms? By simply multiplying until Zanarkand smells so terrible no one would ever want to come here? What did I even accomplish just now?
The ladies score the Soul of Thamasa accessory as a reward…somehow. Maybe Sol was hoarding it and now is too busy fucking to notice them taking it. So, we’re done, right? Not so fast. The guide is very clear that, after Yuna is done acting as a monkey matchmaking service, she needs to speak with GPM. Except GPM left the dome earlier after their first conversation and is now nowhere to be found. I realize it’s entirely likely that it doesn’t matter when Yuna speaks with him, just that that scene plays out, but now I can’t help but think I screwed the pooch, and Felina is going to get really obsessive about it and call my ass out on Facebook. So guess what! I’m making monkey banging my business all over again! What is worse: that I’m completing this incredibly fun mission a second time, or that I’m doing so just so I don’t miss out on talking with fucking GPM, who has the conversational acumen of a bowl of oatmeal?
At least the monkey-infested area doesn’t have any random battles. It could be worse.
Because it is, other than the way I fucked it up, impossible to fuck up, my second attempt at monkey breeding goes without incident. And of course, the dialogue with GPM plays out exactly as it did before, so as far as I know, these 20 minutes of my life were spent fixing something that was not broken. Amazing! I love this game!
Time to walk into the ocean and let the waves claim me. But Sin isn’t even here anymore to murder me, so I’ll sadly be back for chapter 4. Next time, Jeanne takes us through the end of chapter 3, in which the Gullwings finally remember there are some fiend-infested temples to deal with. I know! If we’re lucky, they might even remember to charge money once or twice. Until part 13!