"I don't have a precise count, but… yeah, about that?"

"So they're fine, then. That was a very stupid idea. These Al Bhed... Too smart for their own damn good."

"It didn't do much damage? – I was a bit busy, couldn't survey how well it worked."

"It did some damage. And if they try it again, Sin will kill them and destroy their machina."

"… Do you have any idea how Sin comes back? Any useful information we could use against it?"

"The Final Aeon. It becomes Sin, after killing it. And guess who the fayth for Braska's Final Aeon was?" He points a thumb to himself. "Killing Sin with the Final Aeon just makes it come back."

"… This all continues to sound so wonderful," he comments. "Any pointers for how to kill it without the Final Aeon, by any chance?"

He shrugs. "Auron was supposed to figure that one out. I was never the brains."

"He has been rather quiet on the subject," responds Theo. "So– you were a fayth? … How were you a fayth and also Tidus's dad and know Auron?"

He looks up at the sky and closes his eyes, putting both hands behind his head. "I washed up in Spira ten years ago. Don't know how. Was training in the sea, maybe got a bit too far, the waves took me. Next thing I knew I was in Bevelle. Then I met Braska and Auron." He smiles a little. "We were a mess. A drunkard, a renegade ex-Crusader, and a summoner who'd married an Al Bhed." He sighs, then looks at Theo again. "We reached Zanarkand. Thought we were gonna get this juiced up aeon, right? Some super powerful fayth. But there's no fayth, there. There's Lady Yunalesca, and she told us she'd turn one of us—Auron or me—into the Final Aeon."

Pause. "Wasn't she around, uh, thousands of years ago?"

"Like a thousand, yeah. You wouldn't know it by looking at her."

"Do you know why she's doing that? Does she know that you then turn into Sin, do you know– anything about her motivations?"

"I don't know. She didn't tell, and we didn't ask. Guessed we coulda figured it out, somehow. Fixed things. Heh. Didn't quite work out."

Pause. "Would Sin die if you did, do you think?"

"Probably. But then it'd just find some other poor sod to be."

"– Even if there's no fayth, from the Final Summoning?"

"I don't really know. Way above my pay grade."

"I'll make sure to let Tidus know," he says. "When I'm out of here."

"Thanks. And tell him—" Pause. "Nah, never mind."

Headtilt. "No? Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Should—just tell him when I see him."

"… I'm not sure when you're expecting that to happen? In the Farplane?"

"Maybe there. But I think I'll see him before."

"While you're Sin?"