“Must be fun, being free to go where you please, and have lots of lesbian sex without a sad excuse for a husband dragging you down,” Lulu basically comments. Of course Yuna’s having fun! She’s let her hair down! She’s totally different! TOTALLY DIFFERENT, I SAID! “I’m not there, so you can spread your legs wings,” Lulu says. Yuna agrees, which causes Lulu to realize that Holy Crap, Yuna Is Totally Different. Lulu doesn’t seem to mind all that much that she’s been replaced with another leather-wearing young lady, and wishes Yuna luck. “But Yuna, never forget who you are.” Yuna gapes like a dead fish at this, for some reason. “You’re the high summoner that defeated Sin. There are those who would use that, Yuna,” Lulu warns. Lulu’s advice for dumbasses will never be obsolete. Yuna assures her that she won’t let anyone use her. She’d better follow through on that, because I don’t need any repeats of that pond scene.
The Tightassification continues.
Lulu appears to accept this assurance, though like as not Yuna will forget about it two seconds later. Before Lulu can voice any doubts, she suddenly grunts and bends over to display her boobs for the camera. It turns out that the evil WakkaBaby kicked, an event that is met with an obnoxious amount of enthusiasm from Rikku. She practically shoves her hand up into Lulu’s uterus to feel it herself. Christ. Luckily, the camera fades out before this can happen, although we see Paine walk over to the group right before the screen goes black. Don’t want to know, don’t want to know.
Fade back in on Besaid Village. “Since you’ve come all this way, why not stay the night?” Lulu offers. Bamp-chicka-chicka-bamp-bamp. And there’s no Wakka in sight. Lesb-o-rama! Oh, wait, there he is. Crap. Yuna quickly takes Lulu up on her offer to stay overnight, but the screen goes black before we get to see any lesbian shenanigans. Fanboys everywhere weep in despair.
The next morning, Yuna wakes up alone, only to find Lulu standing outside the hut. For some reason, Yuna wants to know where Wakka went. This is just an awkward way of setting up some shitty exposition. “He left at daybreak. He said something about a cave,” Lulu mentions. Because it hates me, my mind totally flashes back to the “secret place” from the Isle of Wankers. But Tightass is dead and this is a different game, so that can’t happen anyway. Whew.
This small remark is extremely exciting to Rikku and Yuna, who offer to track Wakka down to check on him. They want to help him out in case there happen to be fiends. Which there probably are, since there are fiends all over Besaid. Hello! Although this could be the beginning of a horrible, horrible fanfiction, Lulu sees right through this lamery, and points out that Wakka isn’t totally helpless, despite his morbid obesity. “Still, I’m a little worried. It’s not like Wakka to hide things,” Lulu states the obvious.
“That’s funny. I don’t remember there being any cave,” Yuna says. Of course, we’ve already determined that she doesn’t remember anything about her childhood home or friends. Also, Wakka could be totally hallucinating from the wacky tobaccy. In this case, though, it really is a secret cave, one that the game designers created after Final Fantasy X. Lulu suggests that Yuna and the others ask the village folk about this mysterious cave, since Lulu also conveniently doesn’t know anything about it.
The Mission Start screen comes up, displaying information for the “Where’s Wakka?” mission. It pretty much reiterates exactly what Lulu said about asking around for clues. It also points out that there may also be treasure! Really? Color me surprised. Although it would be totally funny if the mission screen were totally lying just to be a dick.
So we have a random cave which is basically unknown to Lulu and Yuna, but is familiar to Wakka. Since this cave is so very, very secret, it would seem that the other villagers would not have all that much knowledge of it, and that it would take a bit of time and effort to find the ones who did have a clue. But luckily and conveniently for Yuna, everyone in the whole God damn village knows about the cave and exactly how to access it. What are the odds?
In her exhaustive search for information, Yuna finds out that there are four hidden ciphers around the island. These ciphers allow access to the secret cave. But first Yuna has to learn the order of the ciphers, which the random village people just happen to possess. And of course, they learned all this information from random relatives a very, very long time ago and have never bothered to test this knowledge for themselves. These must be the dumbest, least curious people in the entire world.
Just in case Yuna in her dumbassitude forgets that she can jump and climb now, one of the Aurochs reminds her to use the circle button to do so. I get that Yuna’s a moron, but that doesn’t mean that I am, thank you very much. According to Keepa, one of the numbers is located on the prayer shrine just outside the village, the place where Tightass totally pretended to pray to Yevon. “Trust me, you can’t miss it,” Keepa finshes. Which is funny, because Yuna did miss it since it didn’t exist until this game.
A lady in an assless dress (ironically, the same one that basically called Yuna a ho), says, “A cave, on this island? I always thought that was just a rumor. Over where the road forks, before you reach the beach, ya? There’s supposed to be some kinda contraption there.” I like how this “rumor” is so specific and so easily checkable. Again cementing my view that these villagers are all idiots.
Armed with the information that pretty much tells her exactly where to go, Yuna heads out of the village. In the first random battle, I decide to change Yuna out of her Songstress outfit and into her Thief outfit, just to mix things up a little. Unfortunately, she has to pass through Warrior on the way. I am subjected to the most horrifying sight this side of Final Fantasy X. Although Yuna wears a skintight leather outfit very unlike Tightass, her battle moves and…I can barely say it…limp water sword are exact copies of Tightass. In addition to being completely terrifying just because of the Yuna-as-Tightass effect, there is an extra level of wrongness because the whole thing brings to mind Tightass in a skintight leather outfit. Since no human being can endure recapping the entirety of FFX and dealing with such a mental image, I must change Yuna into her Thief outfit ASAP. Even though I have to look at her boobs in the new outfit. I can’t win.
Oh Jesus, not that sword!
Meanwhile, Rikku fulfills the Warrior role while wearing a similar skintight outfit — with leather underwear sticking about six inches out the top of some very lowcut leather shorts. Ah, fashion. Paine abandons her badass swordswoman image to be a pointy-hat-wearing Black Mage. Who, still, incidentally, bares some skin. Because if we don’t see tits and ass, something catastrophic might happen.
Yuna passes the prayer shrine on the hill, which is lit up pink on the map, in case I had a lobotomy in the last two minutes and forgot everything that Keepa said. Yuna picks up the number (4) from the shrine, continuing on to the more “difficult” ciphers to find. The second one (7) is on a pillar next to the path, also lit up pink on the map. After Yuna picks it up by climbing (what, Yuna can climb now?!) and jumps back onto the path, Brother asks, via the walkie-talkie or whatever the shit they use, “Any trouble?” Yuna looks up and assures him that they’re fine. Wait, why is she looking up in the sky if she’s communicating through some kind of intercom? Oh. Right. Stupid. Yuna asks how the guys are doing. “My heart…is aching…” Brother whines because he can’t go ten minutes without looking at Yuna’s boobs. Yuna continues to be totally oblivious to her cousin’s lust, as she Tightasses, “Huh?” “Ahh, nothing,” Brother quickly finishes. Well, that was pointless.
Continuing along the path through the ruins, Yuna reaches the bridge in front of the waterfall. She randomly takes a path next to the bridge that leads to a series of boulders at the base of the falls. There, she finds a treasure chest containing two Chocobo Wings, which is supposed to thrill me to no end, I suppose. Yuna retraces her steps to the main path and continues toward the beach. As she reaches the end of the path, the intercom sounds again. This time there’s no moaning or any other sound, which causes Yuna to comment on the strangeness. Yes, that’s the strangest thing you’ve encountered thus far, Yuna. Soon, Buddy’s voice assures Yuna that “it’s nothing.” I think the game designers may be trying to kill me with inanity here. I must stay on my guard.
Yuna backtracks a couple of steps to reveal a low cliff at the edge of the beach. In order to remind Yuna yet again that she can climb and shit, the game designers stuck in some kids playing around the area and on the cliff. Seriously, guys, this concept is not all that innovative. I think we’ve caught on by now. Yuna gets the neon sign hint and climbs up to find a ruined building atop the cliff. In addition to the pink square on the map, the cipher in question also sparkles. Somehow I still manage to find the cipher (8), making me like an ubergenius or something. Yuna also explores the ruins and the cliff, finding some goodies. The 1000 gil will make a certain irritating task a wee bit easier later.
Last and certainly least, the fourth cipher (7) is located in another ruined building up on another cliff at the end of the beach. I feel so accomplished, I think I’ll put a gold sticky star on my monitor. At the fork in the road between the path to the village and the path to the horrible lagoon where Wakka humped Tightass and grabbed his butt, Yuna miraculously finds the secret cave, which is blocked by a door. Wow, I sure can see why the village people couldn’t find that, what with it being right out in the open and all. When Yuna examines the door of the cave, it prompts her for the four ciphers. Since Yuna talked to the ten or so people in the village, getting all of the clues in the first place, the game automatically tells me the exact order of the four numbers. I still get to enter them all by myself. The door opens like a gaping maw, revealing a couple of corridors…and Wakka, sitting crosslegged on the ground, smoking a bowl.