“He…cannot be trusted,” Baralai tells her. He’s going around telling people he didn’t need a perm to look like someone glued pubes to his head! Right. Rikku asks, “And you can be?” in her usual skeptical yell-tone. “Touche,” he replies. “Yes, I suppose Yevon has brought that distrust upon itself.” NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. He paces a bit, like the idea that people don’t trust Yevon is just so upsetting, but he turns back after a moment and insists again, “At any rate, you need not interfere. Leave [Greyskull] to me.” You know, the guy who is, by his own admission, not trustworthy! He’s got this. But Yuna finally snaps out of her naked Baralai reverie to ask, “What are you planning to do?” Sphere Recorder Bob lovingly pans over Baralai’s bod as he swishes his staff through the air and tells Yuna, “The only thing I can do: Keep those who would seek to harm [Greyskull] away. Please leave.” Well, when you put it that way, they’ll just be on their way! Nothing weird going on here!
Paine looks Baralai up and down and steps forward, brandishing her sword. “Yuna, Rikku,” she says. “I’m going.” Baralai wanks, “Paine!” like he’s horrified to be betrayed by his hair salon buddy. (Paine doesn’t hog the good magazines!) And with that, the boss fight is on. It’s important to mention right away that Baralai’s legs-spread battle stance is eerily similar to Tightass’s, which should make all of us feel just gross. Also like Tightass, he has high haste and attacks quickly with his little staff. Snerk. These similarities add up to Baralai being no match for a couple of Watergas and Paine motorboating his ass into the ground with Excalibur.
Heyyyyyyy
When Baralai is thoroughly beaten, he groans and gives the girls a Pearl Necklace. Yup.
Back in the hallway, post-battle, Baralai is suddenly nowhere to be found. Paine, ahead of the other two, looks back and says with a frown, “Sorry, I’m going ahead.” Yuna, who has no idea what’s going on, I’m sure, nevertheless tries to be cool and tells her, “You have your reasons.” Rikku needs that sweet gossip fix, but is mindful of her sexual favor tokens respect points and tones her eagerness down to, “Fill us in later, ‘kay?” Paine just goes, “Much later,” as she walks off. This exchange might make it seem like Paine’s about to do something on her own, but Rikku just runs after her immediately. Yuna would be hot on their heels, but she’s got some Wankese to squeeze in before the big climax. Okay, that came out wrong. With so many things woven together…what could be waiting where the threads meet? she wonders, staring at the ceiling like there’s a piece of candy stuck up there. At the risk of over-referencing Wheel of Time in my recaps: it would make so much sense if Yuna were a fucking ta’veren and that’s why people simply can’t resist tongue-bathing her wherever she goes. But in this game, the threads are just Nomura’s ejaculate.
Sorry. That was maybe the worst thing I’ve ever written. Let’s move on. Yuna continues down the hallway to find the large circular chamber from the broken sphere recording. Only Greyskull is very clearly not here–there’s only an empty room with a long walkway to nothing, and a lot of pyreflies flitting around in the empty air. But when Yuna reaches the end of the catwalk where Doppelwanker once stood, so she can better stare into the abyss where a grinning devil machina would have been, the girls get a hell of a surprise: fucking Bahamut zooms out of the darkness, spreads its wings, and glowers down at them. Only it’s not really Bahamut–it’s more like Goth Bahamut, with glowing blue outline, evil red eyes, and no vibrant gay plumage. As they stare up at it, a summoning rune flares neon under their feet. Paine doesn’t know what it is, so for once Rikku gets to be the informative one, as she cries out before peeing herself, “It’s an aeon!” Goth Bahamut thrusts its crotch at the ladies, giving them a taste of their own medicine, and roars menacingly. But Yuna is too dumb or in denial to really care–as the Tinkly Piano of Melancholy Sad-Sackness intrudes on the action, she walks slowly forward, spreads her arms wide, and shouts at it, “You must stop!” None of them even know what Goth Bahamut is doing here, and for all they know that’s just its way of saying hi. Regardless, Rikku and Paine rush forward to drag Yuna away from the edge, Paine screaming as she draws her sword, “You wanna get killed? We have no choice!”
Apparently, without even knowing Yuna’s deep, creepy love of her former aeons, Paine still manages to intuit immediately that Yuna is reluctant to battle them, even if they’re, like, totally goth now, and don’t hang out with the same cliques anymore. At the beginning of the battle, Paine shouts out, “Fight! You have to!” But the Tinkly Piano of Tainted Lame Memories follows YRP into battle, underscoring how haaaaaard it is for Yuna to do this. Whatever, she’s in her White Mage outfit and is just going to spam Pray the entire battle anyway. The battle isn’t really that tough, even when Goth Bahamut starts chain-casting Impulse when it reaches low health. When the aeon “dies” again, I guess, it at least remembers to bring the fabulous and glows with rainbow iridescence before dissipating into pyreflies.
After the battle, Yuna drops to her knees so we all know how difficult this is for her. She had to kill her imaginary friend that she already thought was dead because of a thing she already did! Poooooor Yuna! Why is this happening? she wanks. I’m wondering the same thing, but not for the same reasons she is. I wish you were here with me. Yeah, definitely not thinking that. When Paine and Rikku come over to comfort her, Paine laying a hand on her shoulder, wink, she says, “Thank you Paine. You were right. We had to fight it, didn’t we?” Paine somehow doesn’t shout, “DUUUUUUUUUUUUUH” in her stupid face.
With Yuna’s angst out of the way, our heroines can address this Greyskull business. They stare into the void below the platform, which is filled with pyreflies and looks to be bottomless. “This hole was made recently,” Yuna pulls out of her ass, though it probably was. Rikku wants to know if it was Greyskull, like it was some other massive weapon that was supposed to be in this room. And as we will see later, it definitely has the, er, drilling power to make this happen. “Unreal… How deep do you think it goes?” Rikku asks. Paine does not follow up with, “As deep as you want,” but I guess it’s not a good time for innuendo. (Right.) Cue Lesbianc, Laurel, and Hardy barging in, Lesbianc demanding to know where Greyskull is. Oh, he just popped out for a smoke, he’ll be right back. Yuna just goes, “Not here,” which is awesome. Lesbianc replies, “It must have fled in terror, knowing I was coming,” which is the opposite of awesome. Shut up, Lesbianc.
Of course she doesn’t shut up, and tells the people in the room who care (i.e. no one), “I must report to Noojie-Woojie at once!” She adds to Laurel and Hardy, “Boys, record this. Don’t miss a single detail!” It’s an empty fucking room. I’m not sure what there is to miss other than the thing they all thought would be here and is not. But Hardy dutifully pulls out his spherecam, quickly erases the footage of him and Laurel tongue-wrestling in El Celsioso’s elevator, and gets to recording.
This isn’t how it was supposed to be, Yuna wanks some more, clutching at the awful Zanarkand Abes logo on her boobs. The Eternal Calm…I can feel it crumbling, falling away from beneath our feet. Does everyone get it yet? The Eternal Calm might not be so calm! Bad things might still happen! Yuna crying about the Eternal Calm is this universe’s version of the “Thanks, Obama!” meme. If she chips a nail at any point in her life, it’s gonna be Wankese about the lie of the Eternal Calm all the way down.
I never thought I would say this, but Brother is here and is yelling about “super doo-doo,” and thank God, because it makes Yuna’s inner Tightass shut the fuck up for a minute. Anyway. “Yuna!” he shouts over the comm. “We are in super doo-doo! Get back to [El Celsioso] on the double!” Yuna just stares at the ceiling some more, like, “Super doo-doo? Really?” And over Yuna’s confused face and a mess of background pyreflies, the mission screen indicates that chapter 2 is complete. God help me if I forgot to grope any moogles.
El Celsioso. Sirens and red lights are blaring yet again. Buddy rushes from his post to greet the girls, telling them, “Trouble, and I mean big time!” Well, it is super doo-doo, so my expectations are pretty high. He elaborates, “Fiends are pouring out of the temples!” It seems like there are still fiends everywhere anyway, Obama Calm or no, so this doesn’t seem like a big deal. But I suppose I should trust Buddy and Brother that this is not good. When Rikku asks which ones, Brother grabs her head and holds it to his crotch while he shouts at her, “Only all of them! It’s a freakin’ state of the emergency!” And I was complaining about incest between cousins! Consider the bar lowered.
Wow.
When Brother is done scarring me for life, he wants to know what they should do, and in a softer tone, he asks Yuna imploringly, “Is it Gullwing time?” He even flaps his arms like wings a little, which is sad in a way I can’t put my finger on. But as for Gullwing time, Shinra–remember him? I didn’t–pops up over the back of his chair and points out, “Not exactly sphere hunter work.” Yeah, but neither is about 90 percent of what the Gullwings have spent or will spend their time doing, including but not limited to: giving soft focus television interviews, yelling at Rikku’s dad, catching chocobos, playing monkey matchmaker, serving as Kimahri’s unlicensed therapist, digging up salvage for a desert chop shop, playing shitty math-based card games, poking Lulu’s nonexistent pregnant belly and Wakka’s nonexistent love handles, running the Gunner’s fucking Gauntlet, saving the LSD addicts of Macalania forest, rescuing O’aka from debtor’s prison, putting on impromptu Mary Sue concerts, and of course having hot spring lesbian threesomes.
“True,” Buddy concedes this laughably worthless point. “But seeing Yuna out there could calm people down.” Because people are stupid. And, as Paine notes, “They’ll expect her to do the dirty work.” Again, not that they don’t now. It’s like we’re talking about this magical, alt-universe version of Yuna that hasn’t been hovering over Spira like a helicopter parent. Rikku protests, “Yeah, but Yunie wants to help. Don’t you?” At this last bit, Yuna slumps her shoulders and frowns at the floor. She wants to nanny Spira to death, but she could do without Paine giving her all this sass about it. WHAT TO DO?
Two seconds later, Rikku grins, for she has come up with the perfect solution. By that, I mean she says something meaningless that everyone else nonetheless seizes on like it will cure cancer and end global warming. “We can be ‘Your Friendly Neighborhood Gullwings’!” she announces. This is the dumbest non-idea in history, which is saying something in this fucking game. But Buddy at least fleshes it out to mean, “You mean taking out fiends and charging for it?” That’s not even kind of what she said, but okay, we’re brainstorming. Brother says in Al Bhed that he likes it, I think. And even Paine must think it’s acceptable, since she doesn’t roll her eyes and tell them they’re all morons. Instead, she asks Yuna, “What do you think?”
“Well, why not!” Yuna agrees, suddenly cheerful again. “If that means we can help out people who are in trouble, then sure!” I get the distinct feeling they’re not going to end up actually charging anyone. It’s not like they keep a Thief dressphere around because they have a really good business model. Rikku declares that sphere hunting is “on hold,” in the same way I declare myself on a “temporary break” from dieting after I’ve already eaten a whole bag of Oreos. Rikku raises her arm in the air triumphantly, and Yuna joins her, giddily cheering, “Your Friendly Neighborhood Gullwings!” It’s decided! They will continue being useless!
DUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRR
But before they can decide where to head first, Buddy gets some strange news. “What could this mean?” he wonders. “Meyvn Nooj of the Youth League…and Baralai, praetor of New Yevon…gone. They’ve disappeared!” They finally booked that couples cruise! Good for them. Brother’s like, “Whooooooo caaaaaares,” and turns to the girls to ask, “Now, Friendly Neighboring Gullwings… Where to?” Well, Buddy has marked Besaid, Kilika, and Mushroom Rock Road as hotspots, but still more red lights and sirens interrupt to indicate that O’aka, now debt-free through no real effort of his own, has jumped ship and is headed for the Macalania travel agency. Good riddance, I would say if I didn’t know better. Sigh.
As much as I would be so delighted to see what girl-on-girl action is just around the corner, that will have to do it for this recap. Join Jeanne next time as she and the Friendly Neighborhood Gullwings work hard to make Spira a safer place. Or, more likely, they do nothing and Yuna gets complimented for it. I’ll be back for part 11!