She grins. "Well, who knows, maybe these ancient machina will be able to destroy Sin and my plans will all have been for naught. Ain't that a cheerful thought."

"Then hopefully it'll be a reproducible feat."

"Yeah," she sighs.

They're probably there pretty shortly.

Yep! It's not a long trek, though it's long enough for more fiends to appear, and eventually they reach the lift up to HQ, where two Crusaders seem to be arguing with each other about whether the younger one is allowed to fight.

"Orders are orders. To your post, Crusader," says the redhead. The younger one runs past the party and up the lift, and the redhead notices them. "They let you through, huh? And who's this?" he asks, looking at Theo.

"Conveniently appearing new arrival."

"It's a pleasure. I'm Luzzu, and that was Gatta. We both come from Besaid, and have known Kaede since she was a child."

"Oh, cool!" he responds. "Nice to meet you too."

"Why do you need to fight anyway? Aren't those Al Bhed machina so good and powerful?"

"– I mean, technology is not infallible as I know it, but I have no idea what the standards are around here for 'ancient tech'."

"These ancient machina are from before the Machina War and Sin, so they should be very powerful, but the Al Bhed need some time to get them ready. Our job is to keep Sin at bay until they are."

Wakka grunts and glares at Luzzu.

"Depending on what they're doing to get the devices ready, I could be helpful? I have the ability to alter things in an area, like the material or turning air into something, removing pieces, changing temperatures… things like that…"

"That... could be helpful, yes. I am not sure, the Al Bhed are best equipped to answer these questions."

"Should I go interrupt one of them, then?"

"That might be welcome, yes."

So he goes to look for an Al Bhed to interrupt!

Up the lift to the top of the mushroom rocks where HQ is, there are several Al Bhed fussing around with the machina and making sure everything's ready.

Well that cannon doesn't look like it's going to do much but okay!

He goes towards them, lands, says, "Hi there!"

The two Al Bhed around one of those cannons look at him. "You speak Al Bhed?"

"I'm magic, it's one of the convenient perks. I can change things in an area! Melt stuff, turn stuff into air and vice versa, duplicate or shrink things, might be of help in– all this."

"Can you do it against Sin?"

"Limitations on magical constructs, unfortunately. So no."

"Then it's no use, you should let the machina do the work."

"… Yes, I was planning on that, but the question was whether I could help you out with setting up the machina, depending on what they require to get properly functional or whatever."