Theo skips sleep pretty often, so when he does actually sleep he tends to sleep for a while. Kaede will probably wake up before he does.
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."
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.
"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'."
"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…"
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!"
"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."
"… 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."