"Do the gender thing," he repeats. "Huh. Is there a sphere for that or something?"

"Yeah, there's a whole kind of sphere—"

"Stop right there, Goers!" Tidus says, into a megaphone (where did he even get one), standing on top of some crates. "You guys are smilin' now, but not for long! 'Cause this year, us Aurochs are takin' the cup!" And he starts cackling.

Pause. "You were saying?"

He sighs and laughs a little as Wakka gives Tidus a hard time for that. "I was saying there's this kind of sphere that can do a certain special kind of magic called dressphere, and I tweaked one to get me to change my body like that." The ground under him sparkles and engulfs him in light—

—and now she's holding a golden sphere in her hands, and her clothes look more like what she'd been wearing the previous day (notably, she's not shirtless).

"Oh," he says. "Huh." Pause. "So do you swap often or is this just a sometimes thing or am I being rude by asking about it?"

Glow and change—" Fairly often, yeah, I tend to spend, like, two or three days in any one gender, sometimes as long as seven days, before feeling like something else, and it's not rude to ask."

A man arrives from elsewhere and tells someone else, excitedly, "Maester Mika is here!"

"Already?!" she replies.

"The number 3 dock!" someone else says, and they start moving that-a-way.

"– Is a maester just like, a trainer and-or ex-player of Blitzball? I think Tidus might've explained this but I don't remember."

Kaede cracks up.

"A maester is one of the four high officers of Yevon, and Maester Mika is the leader of all the peoples of Spira. He's come all the way from Bevelle. The tournament is being held to honor his fifty years as maester."

"– Right, so he's a governmental figure."

"Nnnnot exactly. He's a spiritual leader, but his office holds no political power."

He nods. Social capital but not direct political power, okay. "Are you guys going to watch the Blitzball then? Is that starting, like, now-ish or in a few hours…?"

"The tournament starts in a few hours, and we're playing! But we're gonna go see Maester Mika, first," he says, and starts leading the way.

Theo follows. "All of you? Are all of you playing, that is?"

"Well, no, just the team and big boy here," he says, grabbing Tidus' head and giving him a noogie.

"Ow ow ow! Let me go!"

"Sounds fun," he says. "I'm kinda curious about actually doing it sometime."

He lets go of Tidus and rubs the back of his head.

"Well, I'm quittin' Blitz after the tournament. After today, I'm a full-time guardian."

"Completely, or will you still do it recreationally?"

"Not until the end of the pilgrimage."

"– That being when you complete the, uh, final summoning thing?"

"For most summoners that's the case, yes."