Anyway. Lesbianc blows a kiss to her bronzed pubic hair god and turns around, a scowl already in place. “I’m waiting,” she says to Yuna. She stalks off-camera while Yuna watches in bewilderment, but don’t worry, a text box is all ready to clear things up for her. “Give [Lesbianc] the massage of a lifetime!” it implores Yuna. “Watch her reaction and adjust your technique accordingly for peak pleasure!” Silver lining to this hellish scenario: Lesbianc is lying on her stomach, not her back, and is still fully clothed, so this is not the baby-oil-on-her-tits brand of massage. But still: Jesus Christ. Is there a single surface at Square-Enix headquarters that hasn’t had game designer semen splattered all over it at some point?
I do not want to ‘jack’ anything of Lesbianc’s.
At least this is not what I’d call a realistic, immersive lesbian massage simulator: I am in charge of moving Yuna’s expert hands across Lesbianc’s back in a three-by-three grid, trying to find the perfect spot that will make her cry way too orgasmically, “Oooh!” or “Oh, there!” or “Ooh, you’re good!” The sound effects in use here–woozy, wobbly sounds for Lesbianc’s pleasure and over-the-top cracking noises for her pain–are just the icing on the fan service cake. I’ve witnessed a lot of terrible things in my time as a recapper, and I don’t want to say this is the worst, but it’s in the conversation with naked Shion, even if both end up as a runner-up to MOMO’s Oscar-winning rape. But that does not, in any way, take away from how mind-blowingly gratuitous and bizarre this is.
Ever the sport, Yuna dutifully straddles Lesbianc and kneads, knuckles, and prods her back and shoulders until Lesbianc is fully satisfied. Was I just saying I wanted her to live up to her nickname? I am such an asshole. Lesbianc keeps moaning as Yuna grinds on her, and asks with a sigh, “When did you get so good at this?” Yuna doesn’t answer, “My cousin taught me everything I know,” though that’s probably the truth. Instead, she stammers, “I dunno,” but Lesbianc isn’t really listening, anyway, and after several more intolerable seconds of her making sex noises, she dives even deeper into my nightmares and asks her masseuse, “Noojie-Woojie is such a manly man, don’t you think?” Yuna is too dumbstruck to answer, or maybe she’s trying to hold in her laughter, so Lesbianc keeps talking herself into Pathetic Town: “He can be blunt, but that makes the occasional smile all the more irresistible! That godly smile… That’s the whole reason I became a sphere hunter.” I would like to go back to her making O-faces and chafing herself raw against the mattress, please. It has to be better than this.
“Oh, if only there were some miracle sphere…” she groans, “something that could make him truly happy. What I wouldn’t give!” And with that final, deeply sad statement, she starts snoring. “She fell asleep!” Yuna duhs at herself. Examining her hands, she wonders aloud, “I’m that good?” Yuna is good at something?! For the first time ever! Just fucking kill me.
Laurel and Hardy barge in to check on Yuna’s progress. “The boss fell asleep again?” Laurel asks unnecessarily. With a scoff, he adds, “One massage and she’s out like a light.” Hardy mentions that they’d been waiting outside because she was going to tell them something important, but now they’re going to have to wait while the boss sleeps off the effects of Yuna’s magic hands. “In the meantime,” Laurel tells her, “you, go make sure the switch panel is working.” They find nothing suspicious about Yuna not knowing what that is, and just treat her like an idiot who needs everything spelled out for her. Oh, wait. The switch is in the back of the living room downstairs, so Yuna bolts from the room before they ask her to spoon Lesbianc during her nap.
The switch in question is right behind where Hardy was standing earlier. As Rikku and Paine crawl out of her anal cavity, where they’ve probably been having a pillow fight, Yuna finds the secret panel and presses the sphere-shaped switch, but activating the switch only makes a runic symbol on the wall disappear. Rikku, disappointed, kicks at the wall in frustration, and just to punish her for being a dumbass the wall panel opens to let her fall down the hidden flight of stairs behind it. After Rikku’s done stumbling ass-over-teakettle to the bottom, she complains about whatever loutish oaf interrupted her perfectly good tantrum with a secret door. “Take it up with the boss,” Paine answers, and after a moment, disgusted with herself, she adds, “I’ve had this thing on too long. Let’s change.” At least she’s not the one who had to dry-hump Lesbianc. A black screen later, they’re back in their “normal” clothes (ha, good one) and Yuna and Paine head off down the secret corridor, with Rikku following them as soon as she giddily hops in place a little.
The corridor, like Lesbianc’s bedroom, is decked out in her heart symbols, because it totally makes tons of sense that they’d take on massive remodeling for the secret tunnel and one private room but not the whole public face of their headquarters. As the girls sneak ever so quietly further into the tunnel, Rikku’s comm unit crackles like a bolt of lightning and Brother’s voice booms, “This is Brother! How’s it going?” It would have been all kinds of amusing if this happened during Lesbianc’s massage. Rikku tells him to be quiet since they are trying to not get caught, thanks, but of course Brother is Brother and that’s not going to work. “Rikku!” he screams. “How dare you speak to your leader like that!” Now, it should come as no surprise that this ruckus, plus the fact that they left the secret wall-door open, means they are about to be discovered. And right on cue, Hardy comes barreling in, all, “Durrrrrrrrrr, it’s the Gullwings!” The ensuing fight is so easy I can barely even bring myself to comment on it. Hardy scampers away again, and the girls are free to keep exploring, with only occasional interruptions from Lesbianc’s goons.
For reasons I can’t say I understand, the (separate!) bedrooms of Laurel and Hardy are in this secret area. Are there really no spare bedrooms in the Lovenasium? Or has Lesbianc filled all of them with Nooj statues? In Hardy’s, Yuna opens a chest to find the Heady Perfume accessory, rather than the Gold Hairpin she would have received if she’d managed to satisfy Lesbianc’s needs on her first try. But the better accessory hardly seemed worth resetting repeatedly and listening to her grunt and scream in ecstasy until I did better. More important than that, why would a hairpin or a bottle of perfume be in a locked chest next to Hardy’s bed? Do we even want to know?
I’m guessing that’s Laurel’s mom, because it sure fucking isn’t his girlfriend.
In Laurel’s bedroom, they find two modestly phallic pistols hanging above the bed, and a conspicuous sphere sitting on his bedside table. Rikku can immediately tell this is not the stolen sphere because, duh, this one is not broken. Yuna says they should watch it anyway, and Rikku nods eagerly. The sphere itself starts out as a recording the girls have already seen: it’s the Crimson Sphere 9 or Crimson Record 1 or Crimson Exposition Omega sphere they acquired at the Den of Woe. Again, Hardy describes the piles of bodies lying around the dark area and Laurel admonishes him for being reckless with the one fucking job they were given. But where the other sphere left off, this one keeps going, as Laurel tells Hardy, “There should be three more candidates and their recorder.” Hardy ain’t care about this small detail, but Laurel pedantically points out that these three candidates, plus their one hanger-on, equal four, and not zero. Another man adds, in a much more sinister tone, “Four still live. Fix it.” Eek, tone it down a little. Hardy mouths off to him under his breath, but Laurel immediately apologizes for his boyfriend forgetting his manners, so he’s clearly afraid of the guy, whoever he is. And speaking of hidden identities, what’s the deal with these three candidates and one recorder? Whoever they are, I’m sure we don’t know them. That would be crazy.
If it’s their favorite, that means it’s a pair of pasties, right?
This one turns out to be Crimson Sphere 10, like that fucking means anything. Paine ponders what they’ve seen and comes to the conclusion, “It’s a dud.” Like fun it’s a dud, girl. Yuna and Rikku don’t even have the chance to give Paine side-eye over this, though, because Laurel and Hardy choose this exact moment to barge into, uh, one of their own bedrooms. “Only naughty girls would scrounge through other people’s bedrooms,” Laurel snits at them. Someone doesn’t want YRP finding what’s under his mattress! Rikku asks, fairly, “What about you? You’re the ones who broke into our airship!” Laurel basically goes, “Yeah, but MOM SAID,” and that’s the cue for another battle that lasts two rounds. I’d make some kind of three-pump chump joke, but what do you expect, putting these two in front of three half-naked girls?
As Laurel and Hardy flee from their own love nest, red lights flash, sirens wail, and a text box informs me that booby traps have been armed. Booby Traps was also an alternate name during development for the Lesbianc Syndicate. True story. Down a fork in the path, the angels find another, split-level corridor. Climbing up to the top level, Yuna drops into the gaps in the floor to find a couple of “Security Override” switches. At the back of the hallway, though, a wall of spikes drops down from the ceiling and chases them back the way they came. So the girls are missing one more switch to deactivate the trap, right? Well, conveniently enough, if I allow the spikes to skewer YRP from behind–sorry–a black screen will carry them to a small alcove set high in the wall, where that final switch happens to be. Unfortunately, when I have a controller in my hands and lack the benefit of a rewind button, I am a weapons-grade idiot and fail entirely to notice the incredibly obvious glowing switch. Yuna zooms past it, oblivious, and hops out of the alcove, where I have her waste at least 10 minutes trying to find the final switch before I come to my fucking senses. I feel like such a Yuna right now.
DURRRRRRRRRRRR
Finally, Yuna can activate the door, which emerges from a false wall on the left side of the corridor. After some more not-boring-at-all hallway running, they find a circular door bearing Lesbianc’s heart. It looks like the entryway to the world’s gayest Hobbit hole. Inside, Rikku asks, “It’s gotta be in here, right?” Yes, it simply must be in this room that you more or less stumbled upon at random. There is no other possibility. Paine suggests they split up and look around this room that is maybe 10 square feet. Even better, while Rikku and Paine actually look around the room, Yuna just stares, entranced, at the communications sphere on a pedestal in the middle of the room. After a moment, Rikku and Paine both go, “Found it!” and Yuna makes like her forever-dead boyfriend and answers, “Huh?”
Not only do they find their half a sphere, but they find another matching half with it. “I was wondering why they’d bother stealing half a broken sphere,” Paine says. I thought we were just assuming it was because they are assholes. But no, it’s because, as Rikku spells out laboriously, they had a half, too. Before Yuna can shove them together, because she’s still just staring dumbly, Lesbianc’s voice says from the doorway, “Very good, loves.” They found two halves of a broken sphere together, one of which they knew was theirs, and they get congratulated for figuring anything out? No. They deserve no accolades or four-foot trophies.
Lesbianc is peering at them through the gay Hobbit door, backed up by Laurel and Hardy. Did they have to wake her up from her nap? Do any of them even realize how the Gullwings got in, or that Yuna disguised herself and groped Lesbianc? We’ll never know, so let’s just say they never figure it out, because it’s funnier. Lesbianc is probably going to be looking for that femme-goon with the magic hands for months. Anyway, she tells the girls, “I went through a lot of trouble gathering those pieces–all for Noojie-Woojie.” Ugh, has she done anything in her entire life that wasn’t for a man who is not going to fuck her? But even though Yuna’s already holding the damn thing, she goes on, “So don’t you lay a finger on it! Let’s get ’em, boys!”
At the beginning of this battle, Yuna quips, “Let’s clobber the robber,” which is just about the least witty thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I kind of want to reset the game just so she can have the chance to not say that. But by the time it occurs to me to do this, the battle is already over because these three are so shitty, and I’m not going to do it again just to make Yuna look like less of a buffoon.
Rikku asks Lesbianc, post-battle, “Well? Want another helping of your just desserts?” Pretty much everything Rikku says sounds like a come-on to me now, but this especially. Piling on, Paine “warns” her, “No one’s gonna hear you scream from down here.” Are Rikku and Paine mad that they didn’t get to massage Lesbianc? Maybe! Lesbianc freaks out and says they can look at the sphere if they want, like they weren’t going to do that anyway.