Vivi's home is a cave hidden in a little valley near Treno. Inside we find hot springs, the remains of a giant egg, and a child's height chart scribbled on the wall with the note "Still too small to eat." We also find Vivi standing on a ledge outside overlooking the water, where he tells us about how his "grandpa," a Qu, caught him while fishing for mist in an attempt to prove his theory of nourishment without eating. Knowing what he does now, Vivi guesses Quan must have snagged him off a passing cargo ship by chance.
Returning to Treno, we head down to the card stadium to register for the tournament. I haven't bothered actually playing the card game at all during this playthrough, but we've racked up a fair deck just from random encounters and a few treasure chests, and whether we win or not doesn't actually matter, so off we go. We have to win at least two matches to challenge the champion, and our first is against "Attic Man Wake." Must be Alleyway Jack's cousin. We lose to him narrowly the first try, but then win a perfect game on the second.
While we're doing the important, plot-relevant work of playing children's card games, Freya is wasting time on frivolities like trying to gather information on Kuja. There are rumors that Kuja may be the real identity of the auction house's owner, but while Kuja has been seen on the premises before, there's no hard evidence linking them. She considers confronting the auctioneer about it, but Amarant tells her it'll be a dead end. Amarant used to be a guard for the auction house until Zidane robbed the place and pinned it on him. Amarant has been after him ever since, but for Zidane, it was Tuesday. He's not after revenge, though; Amarant only took the guard job to fight a Worthy Opponent. When Zidane defeated him without lifting a finger, Amarant had to understand how he did it.
Back to the card games. Our second round is against someone called Cardona Bishop, and there's a joke in there about the Catholic Church and playing games with little boys, but it's about ten years too late to make it, so on with the card game. It's not as neat a win as the last game, but at least we beat him on the first go.
Eiko, meanwhile, returns to Tot's tower, where she asks him if he can teach her to be a graceful lady like Garnet. The conversation inevitably turns to Madain Sari again, though, and Tot comes to the realization that the three crystals Brahne was collecting from the nations of Alexandria are all quarters of one larger crystal, along with the one that was almost stolen from Madain Sari. Eiko suddenly has a bad feeling, though, and runs off back into the city.
The card champion is a cute airship pilot named Erin, but in reality she's just the Yugi Moto to Regent Cid's Pharaoh, minus the part where Cid possesses her body, since he can't compete as an overgrown ladybug. Playing for Cid, she uses an entire deck of oglop cards, but isn't significantly tougher than the other players. We win a Rebirth Ring for our trouble, and the revelation that Cid finally got the Hilde Gard 2, the airship that doesn't need mist, to work. Come to think of it, why did Brahne want it so bad before if it didn't work yet?
Anyway, Eiko rushes onto the scene to inform us that Kuja is attacking Alexandria, having learned this from the moogles. Again, why do they need me to deliver their mail if they can communicate this fast?
Under Kuja's command, Bahamut is laying waste to the city. Oh, if only the castle was covered in chain-harpoon-shooting cannons designed specifically to bring flying targets to the ground! Curse you, hindsight!
You may remember me having a gripe with the introduction of the Knights of Pluto back at the beginning of the game, and it's finally time to find out why. Garnet needs to give orders to the knights, sending them off in pairs for specific tasks. Which pair of knights is best suited to each task was hinted at when they were introduced, but we haven't had any chance to interact with them again since, and even allowing for all the time we spent playing Chocobo Hot and Cold, it's been about 22 hours of game time since then. How the heck is anyone supposed to have remembered those hints that long, especially when there was no apparent reason to need to remember them when they were given?
Alternatively, there's trial and error through Save Scumming, though it means having to play cards with Cid again each time. It also rather ruins the tension of the attack. On the plus side, we won a perfect game against him this time, and with a little help from Google, we impress Beatrix enough to win a pair of Angel Earrings from her before she and Steiner head out to wave their swords in the air menacingly at the flying tank. Actually, more of Kuja's armored maggots are swarming the streets, so we deal with those.
This is the first time we've had control of Steiner since escaping the castle back on Disc 2, so it's a good idea to take a moment to reequip him with new gear before we get started. We have the option to change Beatrix's equipment, too, though more likely we're just going to strip her of all her gear, since this is sadly the last time we ever get to control her.
With only Beatrix and Steiner fighting the monsters, the two are getting overwhelmed, despite being able to cleave through these things like cold butter. Where are all the Alexandrian soldiers during all of this, though? It's not like they all died with Brahne at the end of Disc 2, because we've seen them around continuing to serve under Beatrix even after Garnet took charge. For that matter, we specifically ordered two of the Pluto Knights to protect the citizens, so where are they? And why weren't any of the Alexandrian soldiers there when we were giving the Pluto Knights their orders, especially considering that the female soldiers are generally held to be far more competent than the Pluto Knights?
Anyway, Beatrix recommends falling back to the castle, but Steiner won't hear of it, swearing to protect everyone from Garnet to Beatrix herself. As in, Beatrix, the most legendary warrior on the continent, who already kicked his butt the last time they fought when it was four on one to his advantage. And she doesn't call him out on this.
I'm not saying this is sexist... I'm just saying.
Steiner auto-Trances against the next pair of monsters, but his mojo is given the kibosh when their first move is to put him to sleep and then kill Beatrix before she gets her turn.
And then immediately kill her again as soon as we revive her.
Three times.
Okay, now we're bordering misogyny.
We switch back to Garnet who is waking up after passing out for some unexplained reason right after Steiner and Beatrix left (...goddammit, writers) and hears music coming from somewhere upstairs. This is also the first time we've had control of Garnet this disc, so we take a moment to change her equipment too, then head up. Magic barriers prevent us from going anywhere but up one of the towers, where we exit to discover that the castle is actually a Transformer, but it gets stuck halfway through forms. Garnet eventually finds her way up to a platform with nowhere else to go, and no idea what to do. She starts to ask her mother and Zidane for help, but stops herself, determined that as queen, she has to protect her kingdom herself.
So she starts praying. *facepalm*
Meanwhile, Zidane's group is flying back to Alexandria aboard the Hilde Gard 2. From the sound of things, though, it might have been faster taking the gargant again. The pendant Garnet gave to Eiko starts to glow, and she thinks she hears Garnet's voice, so she runs out onto the bow of the airship saying something cryptic about Alexander's holy judgement, then jumps off. Apparently we were already directly over Alexandria Castle at this point, though, because sh drop straight down to where Garnet is on the platform, and the magical glow of both their pendants catches her before the six year old goes splat on the stonework.
Eiko explains that the light coming from their pendants is the light created by the four jewels when a holy eidolon calls to its summoner. The two girls join hands and pray, causing a pillar of light to burst from the castle's central crystal spire, and a moment later a massive pair of angelic wings envelops the city, shielding it from Bahamut's attacks. When the wings open again, they are attached to a massive construct that dwarfs the castle, and opens up a can of divine whoop-ass on the dragon king in the form of a Magic Missile Storm that blows Bahamut back to kingdom come. This is Alexander, and, naturally, exactly what Kuja wanted us to do.
The giant eye, called Invincible, comes down from the sky again, but this time, we get to see inside of it. We witness an imposing man in black armor monologing about how Kuja has overstepped his freedom, and has no idea who he's dealing with. This is Garland, the man Kuja was looking for the power to defeat, and more ominously, Garland says that the same goes for Zidane. When the eyeball doesn't enslave Alexander as he commanded, Kuja realizes that Garland is responsible, and that he must be onto his plans.
We rejoin Zidane's group as they enter the castle from the ground, the Hilde Gard 2 having apparently come to an unfortunate end, and start evacuating the castle, because... it's safer outside with the armored maggot monsters? We also get a second chance to fight that optional book boss that we didn't have time to kill during the rescue plot earlier.
This boss is supremely annoying because it only has three attacks: casting Doom, which puts a non-removable 10 point countdown on one of our party members at the end of which it instantly kills them; Paper Storm, which hits the entire party for random damage anywhere between 100 and 1200; and Edge, which hits a single target for upwards of 1000 damage. And, since we have no dedicated healers in the party at this point, all we can do is use Phoenix Downs, which revive people with under 10 health, and we have no group healing abilities other that Reis's Wind, which is a gradual effect. The only way to win against this thing is to hit it until it reveals the blue bubble-devil-head that is its true form, at which point all it will do is cast Poison until it retreats. This gives us a chance to get everyone standing again, but the boss's sheer damage output is so ridiculous that it's impossible to keep the entire party alive once he goes back to book form. A single Paper Storm can wipe out the entire party at full HP if we're unlucky enough.
In short, this boss is complete fucking bullshit.
Geez, I spent so much time getting pissed off at that thing that I almost forgot what we were actually here for.
After killing the book boss on the fourth try (and after throwing the controller once), we get back to finding Garnet and Eiko. When we get near the platform, though, Zidane tells everyone else to escape while he goes on ahead. Vivi protests, but Zidane insists that Kuja could destroy the castle at any moment, and he needs to do this for the one he loves, which doesn't make any sense, unless we missed a scene where he fell for Vivi over Garnet. This somehow convinces everyone not to follow Zidane the remaining 200 feet of distance to the girls, so they head back and Zidane presses on alone.
This turns out to have been a good idea, however, as the Invincible fires a series of halos down over Alexander, destroying his wings and causing the castle to start collapsing. The platform with Garnet and Eiko breaks apart with Garnet on the falling piece, but Zidane arrives just in time to grab her and swing away to safety on a callback to the last time they fell off a tower in Alexandria Castle, with Eiko looking on disapprovingly.
Garland isn't done, though, and fires another blast from Invincible, utterly annihilating Alexander, the castle, and most of the surrounding city. Aboard the ship, Garland notes that the ancient process of souls circulating between Gaia and someplace else is still continuing, and that his goal is to stop that circulation. He laments the loss of Kuja, who was an effective agent, even if he went rogue at the end. Of course, we didn't actually see Kuja at any point since Zidane's group arrived on the ground, let alone his death, so there isn't a chance in hell that he's actually dead.
That does raise the question of how we survived, though.
