Gippal scratches his head, not exactly sure how to deal with this airhead. Finally, he says, “All right, follow me,” with the air that he’s pretty sure his fellow Machine Factionists are playing some evil prank on him by sending Yuna here, and he’s going to show them all by throwing the former high summoner into the river. Wishful thinking? Moi?
‘You’re kind of skanky in person.’
Gippal is, indeed, waiting for them on the bridge over the river, getting my hopes a lot higher than they needed to be, thanks. He creeps at Yuna for a minute, trying to “sweet-talk” her while standing in a ballerina position. Ooooookay. Yuna, suddenly deciding that she’d rather be a lesbian, gets Gippal to back off, so he turns to Rikku. “Well, if it isn’t Cid’s girl,” he says jovially. “How you been?” Rikku tells him, half-angrily, half-flirtatiously, that she has a name of her own. Gippal’s all, “Yeah, that’s nice, how’s Brother?” Rikku says Brother and Buddy are just fine, grinning like a horny little idiot.
Paine, meanwhile, is standing off to the side, ready to kill Yuna and Rikku for swaying so dangerously back toward heterosexuality. Or she’s just standing off to the side because she’s a brooding loner. Whatever. When Gippal sees her, though, he stammers, “You!” and gets all up in her face. Paine replies, “Paine. Nice to meet you,” as if she has no idea what he’s on about. Gippal gets really confused that Paine is acting like she doesn’t know him, and finally Paine barks, “We’re here for the interview.” Yes. This crucially important interview. Jesus.
Gippal snaps out of it and goes back to Yuna, asking her if she’s sure she and the other girls can handle the harsh elements and crude conditions involved in digging mechnical arms out of the sand. Yuna answers, “We’re sure,” and without any further interrogation Gippal welcomes them to the Machine Faction team. “Huh?” blurts Yuna, making sure she outdoes Gippal in the I Wanna Be Like Tightass competition. Gippal remembers that he needs to speak slowly and use small words with the high summoner, so he repeats: “You. Are. Hired.” Hee.
“Don’t know why a superstar like you would want to play in the sand,” he says again, so we get that Yuna is really, amazingly famous. Thanks for the hint, there, Gippal. With nothing ass-kissy left to say, he gives Yuna a letter of introduction, to show to a woman named Nhadala in the Bikanel Desert. And then he goes back to his hidey hole in Djose Temple, to wonder why that lesbian broad was hanging out with those other two lesbian broads, and if she pretended not to know him out of a desire to not look straight in front of her girlfriends.
Yuna now returns to El Celsioso. On the bridge, Rikku is all psyched to return to Bikanel and help her desert-impaired friends dig. Paine is less enthused: “Do we really have to go play in the sand? We’re supposed to be sphere hunters.” Yeah, well, Yuna isn’t going to be bound by what she’s “supposed” to do any longer! She’s free as a bird! She has totally changed! God, Paine, where have you been?
But Yuna isn’t going to Bikanel just yet. That would be out of our designated order, and we can’t have that. Instead, Yuna warps down from El Celsioso to the Moonflow. Hey, maybe she’ll fall in. But then the fanboys would just get all excited about her wet, braless, white-shirted body. Ew.
But before we get to any potential falling-in-the-river, Yuna has to wankover about this new location. Spira’s landscape really hasn’t changed much since then, she wanks, as if this is ten thousand, not three, years later. If anything’s changed, people seem to smile more often now… It’s as if they finally have time to notice the beauty around them. Look what you’ve done, Yuna. I’ve vomited all over my keyboard. Someone has to clean this up, young lady.
Paine’s enjoying a Yuna ass shot.
Ignoring me, Yuna, Rikku and Paine walk along the bank of the Moonflow. “Hey, this is nice out here,” Yuna suddenly says, looking around. Prompted by Rikku, Yuna elaborates, “People out enjoying nature–it’s very peaceful.” Yuna clasps her hands behind her back and thrusts her rack out, beaming. “Sure is,” Rikku agrees, taking in said rack.
“A lot of people are travelling these days, trying to learn more about Spira,” Rikku exposits for our benefit. Paine says that this is Yuna’s doing, what with killing Sin and all, because she hasn’t placed her lips on Yuna’s ass yet in this recap. And she missed it, you know. Yuna pretends to be modest, but Rikku insists that she give herself a “pat on the back” for helping all of Spira to be free of the constraints of fear and full-time employment.
GET A JOB!
The girls wander around for a minute or two, until they come across a tiny man with thick goggles and a beak, like the Sphere Break tutorial guy. This Bird Beak has surrounded himself with Hypello servants. Hypello must be on the lowest rung of Spira’s society ladder, if they’re reduced to working for a dwarf with a beak. Upon talking to the Hypello slave master, I realize that he has the most annoying voice I’ve heard yet in this game, which is really saying something. “On this spot, I’ll be sponsoring an extraordinary show! Do, do come! Oh, and I’m Tobli,” the little person says in one breath. “Yup-yup!” Tobli continues without any encouragement from anyone. “It will be splendid indeed! Mark my words! People here and there, and merriment everywhere!” I know he’s fictional, but I really think I want to kill this guy.
Rikku’s all, “Yeah, awesome, byeeee,” and the girls turn to leave, but Tobli was actually telling them all that stupid shit for a reason. “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! I have a favor to ask of you!” he calls after them. Paine is having none of this crap, and tells Yuna to move her ass, like, now. Yuna is reluctant, but agrees, unconvincingly echoing Paine’s sentiment that they’re sphere hunters, not random asshole helpers.
Of course, no sooner does Yuna say this than turn around and run back to Tobli to see what he wants. Rikku thinks it’s funny, but Paine sighs in disgust, right along with me. I mean, Jesus, girl, let someone else do it. Yuna seems to have this idea in her head that she’s the only person on the entire planet who will lend a hand to people in need such as Tobli the Evil Hypello Slave Master. It’s really kind of conceited of her, since she’s basically saying with every decision like this, “But without me, the world will totally fall apart! Me! Meeeeeeee!”
So anyway, we’re now stuck doing Tobli’s bidding, just like the poor Hypello under his tyranny. His problem is that one of his workers went to Luca to buy supplies for the big shindig, but he hasn’t come back yet. “Go check on him, right?” Rikku says in a poor, but funny, imitation of Tobli’s voice. When Tobli says that’s exactly what he wants, Paine gripes, “Why ask us?” It turns out Tobli is quite on Paine’s wavelength: “Because you are sphere hunters and sphere hunters hunt spheres!” And with that he reveals a sphere he’d been concealing in his oversized sleeve. Gotta give the guy credit: he’s a midget with a beak and an irritating voice, but he still knows how to make a girl say yes.
‘I got five more kilos in the van. 100,000 Gil–small, unmarked bills.’
Of course, the girls are all excited about getting a new sphere, and Rikku dog paddles the air to show it. “It’s yours to keep if you return my assistant safely back to safety,” Tobli tells them. “I’m thinking he must be over in the general vicinity of Djose Temple. Oh, and he’s a Hypello.” So in one sentence he goes from exposition that he probably shouldn’t even know, given that his assistant is missing, to exposition that is the height of fucking obvious, given what all his other assistants are. This guy is just all over the place.
Eager to get their hands on that sphere, the girls run south, away from the Moonflow and back toward Djose Temple. Yuna quickly discovers that this particular road has had a bandit problem as of late. Of course, while she’s told this, she runs into no actual bandits herself. And that’s a shame, because Paine is just dying to hurt rim-job all of them.
‘Oh noes, Daddy ish going too chokes me?’
Toward the end of the path, Yuna hears a frightened Hypello shout, “Oh, I am in trubbable.” I know it’s a Hypello, without even seeing him, because they all have the same voice actor and the same wacky vernacular. Thanks, stereotypes! Several yards further, the girls do indeed meet a Hypello with a wagon pulled by a Chocobo. Yuna actually bothers to ask if he’s Tobli’s assistant, because “Hypello with a big freight wagon near Djose Temple” just isn’t quite enough evidence for her. The Hypello, who is now called Dwayne, answers that he is. “Are yoo friends of the chief?” he asks them, trying to match YRP for stupid questions.
Rikku tells Dwayne that they’ll get him back safe and sound to the Moonflow, where Tobli is waiting for his final bitch. Dwayne thanks them as the Chocobo squees. And now, at last, the girls get their official mission, titled “Shave the Hypello?” Get it? ‘Cause they talk funny? Anyway, the glamorous ladies must get Dwayne and his cargo all the way back up the road without bandits making off with any of the cargo. “You’ll lose the cargo if they get away,” the Mission Screen duhs at me. Simple mission, right?