Finally, Nhadala arrives via hummer, shaking her head and muttering something in Al Bhed. Probably, “Oh Jesus, not the high summoner.” Nhadala, of course, is hot, skinny, and showing plenty of cleavage. No one in this world would ever have a weight problem or small boobs — those people probably get locked away by their shamed relatives or used for medical experiments or something. Plus, the fanboys can’t jack it to fat chicks.
Anyway, now that Nhadala is here, we can proceed with the digging. When Yuna speaks to her, Nhadala gets all pissy, bitching about how she has no one to help her dig. Well, apart from all those people who signed up at Djose temple, right? Right? Yuna shows her Gippal’s letter, which softens Nhadala up a bit. “Oh, so you’re the new guys!” Yuna and Rikku bow to her so we can get our obligatory ass shots. “Hmm, I guess the high summoner’s hard up, too,” Nhadala says wryly, like Yuna’s practically on food stamps. She informs Yuna that she should not expect any special treatment. Oh, come on, that’s like telling Legolas, “Don’t expect any fangirls to hump you.”
Heh, she said ‘hard.’
Yuna will ride a hummer out to an area which already has a group of Al Bhed digging their asses off. Oh, and one guy sitting on his ass. There’s one of those at every job. This contradicts Nhadala’s statement that there’s no one to dig, but whatever. The mission screen comes up, giving me my important objective: successfully digging up machina parts. I hope I can handle this.
When Yuna talks to the hummer pilot, he tells her not to let them down, like this is fucking crucial to their very existence. He also introduces them to their “partner,” which is Picket, the communication probe that found them earlier. I don’t know if Picket is a dude who talks through the device, or if the device has a personality of its own, and when it comes down to it, I don’t really care. Picket’s kind of an asshat who likes to hit on the girls. Like, get in line, Picket.
Okay, quick explanation of the digging game. Yuna has 60 seconds to go to the spot on the map with the yellow X (this marks the location of the parts) and then get back to the hummer. There are also white Xs that contain treasure or battles. Other Al Bhed may potentially beat Yuna to the punch on the white Xs. Oh, and there are random battles during all of this. God forbid there actually be a part of this game without random battles. That’s just crazy talk. However, the random battles don’t count toward the minute countdown. While this keeps my blood pressure in check, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Does the random Al Bhed undoubtedly standing there with a stopwatch just pause it during battles?
Most of the time, digging is a piece of cake. Sometimes, however, the yellow X is not located in the visible part of the map screen, so I have to walk around — hopefully in the right direction — until it shows up on the map. This would be one of those instances because the game designers are trying to stick it to me after I rolled my eyes at the difficulty level. Yuna manages to make it back to the hummer with nine seconds left. My pulse is racing.
Back at camp, Nhadala creams herself over Yuna’s digging talent. Because there’s no way that Yuna could be bad or even mediocre at something. “What did you expect?” Rikku squeaks. Nhadala snaps out of her euphoria, warning them not to get huge egos over their natural digging expertise. I don’t know — how could one not feel superior over something like digging? This is practically brain surgery! The girls get 100 gil for their efforts, which Thief Yuna can steal from even the shittiest monster. But they also get a new garment grid. So yay, sort of.
Now here’s the thing about digging — it’s one of the best ways to get gil and Sphere Break coins early in the game. However, if you spend any time at all digging before Chapter 5, you screw yourself out of completion points. And there’s no way any human being could figure this out without the strategy guide, because it’s fucking obscure. What I’m trying to say here is that Yuna will have to wait until much, much later to engage in her new digging obsession and the game designers are jerks.
Coincidentally, the huge incoming sandstorm has passed in the last ten minutes, enabling Yuna to board the airship again. Amazing how that worked out. On board El Celsioso, I now visit O’aka in the cabin, praying that my delay doesn’t cost me any fucking completion points. According to the strategy guide, O’aka is 100,000 gil in debt. And it’s my God damn job to pay that off before the Macalania Woods section in Chapter Three. Yuna is truly the biggest sucker ever. Luckily, I have followed the advice of the strat guide and pilfered gil from every God damn random battle monster I’ve run across, meaning that I currently have just over 30,000 gil in my possession. The only way to give the money to O’aka is to buy from his current supply of items — all the typical shite like potions and antidotes. They’re all slightly lower in price than at your average item shop, but I’m trying to spend money here, stupid game designers.
With that bit of irritating business out of the way and Yuna quite po’ again, Yuna heads to the next destination on the list: Bevelle. Her last visit, as you will recall, involved marrying Seymour Pedophile and getting sentenced to death. I don’t know about you, but that wouldn’t give me the best memories of the place. Even the location screen seems less than thrilled about a visit.
Our obligatory Wankese cut scene begins with a shot of some sort of aircraft flying over the city because Bevelle was always about the machina, however much they hypocritically lied about it. The camera pans down a humongous structure which is probably the place where all the shit went down last time, but I don’t really care enough to check. Yuna tells us, Bevelle remains at the heart of Spira, even today. It’s also the place where I was born. Well, obviously that’s why it’s the heart of Spira. Christ. I suppose that makes it my hometown, but I can’t say that I have a lot of fond memories here, she understates.
I gain control of Yuna at the end of a very long open-air hallway, which I think is the same hallway where Kimahri waited in suspended animation while I fought enough random battles to help him fight Seymour. There’s a hover — not to be confused with a hummer — available so I don’t have to waste my valuable time running from Point A to Point B. But stupid me thinks there might be something interesting to recap on the way there, perhaps a silly NPC or two, so I hoof it.
The only dialogue that could be considered of any note whatsoever involves the New Yevon guards — who are dressed exactly like the Old Yevon guards — talking about how much the Youth League sucks. While they have a point, I doubt New Yevon is much better. Some other guards at the end of the walkway — wait for it — kiss Yuna’s ass and invite her to visit the New Yevon headquarters. Well, I’m not here to pick my ass.
What about my extended finger?
Through a doorway, Yuna finds herself close to said HQ. It appears to be a building made up of several vaguely penis-shaped towers. Yuna is not into those anymore. A nearby NPC informs us that they rebuilt the city after Sin took a nosedive into it two years ago. I kind of figured that out when I didn’t see a Sin-shaped hole in the middle of Bevelle.
As Yuna approaches the front entrance, a reused Yevon priest character model runs up to her, jizzing himself over her arrival. “I see you’ve finally decided to join New Yevon! You do us much honor, my lady. Lord Braska — may he rest in peace — would be proud.” I think her dad would be a lot prouder of the fact that she ended up assembling her own Ambiguously Lesbian Trio, but maybe that’s just me. After this remarkably premature celebration, Random Priest goes off to summon the praetor. It looks like the Machine Faction is the only group that doesn’t have a fancy-sounding name for its leader.
After Random Priest leaves, Yuna starts acting shiftier than a dog that got into the Thanksgiving turkey. She wants to leave. I’m assuming that this is where we find out that she and the praetor had a drunken one night stand back in the day, and she never got around to calling him. Actually, I’m not that far off. In response to Rikku’s concern, Yuna explains, “Well, you see, there was this arrangement…with the son of the chairman of New Yevon. I turned the offer down, but I thought it’d be kind of awkward,” she frets. This is, of course, referring to the dumb exchange from Another Story, even though they never came right out and said it was a marriage proposal. I love how Yuna is all stressed about some throwaway plot point involving some guy she’s never met, but she has no problem getting chummy with a pedophile who tried to get her ass arrested.
Rikku gets a little too excited over Yuna’s non-romance with this unknown dude, but Paine doesn’t want anything to do with this icky straight shit. She turns to go, while a reluctant Rikku whines all the way to the fade-out. But oh no! The girls weren’t quick enough in their escape, and the double doors of the building open — complete with awed music — to reveal…well, he’s not some 80-year-old priest, that’s for sure. The praetor of New Yevon is quite hot. And his dress sense is slightly better than Gippal’s, as it involves no ’80s shoulder pads. But I could really do without the leather thong over the baggy pants — that kind of ruins the look. He also has white hair held up with a blue headband, which is a lot hotter than Wakka’s similar ‘do. As the praetor does the full Yevon bow to Yuna — and let me tell you, I missed that God damn thing a whole bunch — she looks at him, openmouthed, as if she’s never seen a man before. Rikku makes an audible sound of lust. Once again, poor Paine has to sulk in the background, plotting ways to bring the ladies back to her team later.
The praetor introduces himself as Baralai. Rikku bends over to look at his penis, asking if he’s the chairman’s son. Baralai explains that no, he’s a character they thought up after that little part in Another Story, so the game designers had to find some way to get the chairman and his son out of the story ASAP. “They were trying to take too much power. We had to ask them to leave,” Baralai explains vaguely, like wow, a religious order trying to take power. Now the younger members run the party instead of the fogies — we wouldn’t want to deal with any old people in this game.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Yuna grins weirdly. “So you see, Lady Yuna…It is not I that was meant to marry the high summoner,” Baralai says. “Besides, look at my character design — do I look like I’m into the ladies?” For some reason, Yuna gets all shocked at this, raising her hand to her mouth and breathing, “My!” I’m not sure what’s going on here, since everyone’s acting like they’re getting simultaneous enemas, but I think Yuna’s supposed to be all atwitter because this guy’s hot. I started to point out how this was ridiculous, since she managed to carry on her flirtation with Tightass without getting all flustered and jumpy, but then I remembered that it’s Tightass. Yuna’s never been around a hot non-father-figure before, save for Gippal.
Baralai, his voice actor sounding like he’s reading the grocery list, tells Yuna she’s welcome to join the party, even though her experiences with Yevon branding her as a traitor and attempting to execute her have made her feel less than favorable toward the group. He spouts some more boring stuff about how New Yevon is all about helping people find their way in these post-Sin times and taking out their garbage and doing their laundry and stuff. His spiel over, he tells Yuna that there are pressing matters that he must attend to, so byeeee! He turns back briefly to request that Yuna let him know if they find any old spheres. I think there are only two spheres that Yuna’s interested in at the moment, if you catch my drift, and they don’t belong to Paine or Rikku. Baralai bows again and returns to whatever crucial duties belong to someone with the title of “praetor.” Paine, during this sequence, stands with her back turned. Obviously, this is an effective disguise — if Baralai happened to know her from some past incident or something crazy like that, he would never recognize that silver hair and lesbian leather get-up from the back. Jesus.