She does indeed, and returns her dressphere to its physical form.

"So, how bi are you, exactly?" she muses in a soft voice.

Right now he's a little asleep. Or rather waking up.

He blinks at her, then asks, "Huh?"

"Today is a girl day and I'm wondering whether I should extricate myself from you fairly quickly or what."

"– No, it's fine," he replies, then smiles at her.

"Okay good." Snuggle.

Snuggle!

"How long until we keep moving?"

"We should probably have left already actually, but I do get a kick out of aggravating Auron."

"Yeah, he does inspire that a little."

"Hmm, but we probably should go anyway."

"We've probably annoyed him enough anyway…"

"Probably. I'm gonna crack that egg eventually."

Then she rolls on top of him and plants a kiss on his lips.

Kiss!

"Mmm you are very tempting," she says, and squirms a bit.

"Why thank you," he responds, smirking. "– But we should possibly go."

She sighs. "Yeah, probably." One more kiss and she gets up and finds her clothes, which turned back into girl clothes when she turned back into a girl.

Theo does likewise, and then noticing this, asks, "So can dresspheres be used for non-people stuff, then? Could you apply one to a house or something?"

"They can do people and clothes, and even doing people is a nonstandard use."

"– Is that just because they were designed to do people and clothes, or could you nonstandardly apply them to other things?"

"They were designed to do appearance. If you can twist the magic into understanding other things as relating to your appearance, it'll probably work."

"Oh, so they could do makeup or– possibly skin tone and hair?"

"I mean I am literally changing my gender here. Yes it could do skin tone and hair."

"– I meant, more trivially, how they were more typically designed to be used."

"Oh, no, they were typically designed to be used exclusively with clothing, and to imbue clothing with magic."

"Oh, they can–" Pause. "We should probably go, but– they can imbue clothing with magic? What sorts of limits are there, is it just somehow linking your other spells to the clothing?"

"Something like that, yeah," she says, getting "dressed." "I'm gonna hurry to my room to put clothes I didn't wear all day yesterday, see you in a bit."

Off she goes.

He'll stand outside the room with his key, then, and get out his phone.

She will soon exit her room, a couple of doors right of his, wearing a different but equally revealing not-quite-an-outfit.

"Let's go?"

So they go.

"This place has different clothing standards from most parts of the mortal world I'm familiar with."

She eyes his outfit with a raised eyebrow. "You think?"

"I could go around shirtless but then, see, I'm left with jeans…"

"Something wrong with jeans?"

"I'm not sure they're revealing enough, y'see."

She giggles. "Are you from a society of prudes or something?"

"I mean, most people go around dressed as I do?" he responds. "At least in the mortal world. So, uh – in comparison, yeah, pretty much."

She snorts. "Well, you won't see me complaining if you decide to do away with the shirt." Pause. "Or anything else, for that matter."

"Presumably somebody would take issue if I stripped to my underwear? Or am I too brainwashed by a prudish society?"

"Hmm... People would find it weird and unfashionable, probably, but not be offended," she says, gesturing at her own only-barely-not-underwear outfit. "The dominant style is sort of a variety of disjoint pieces covering a variety of body parts, nowadays."

"… Okay, so what would going around literally naked count as. Do you have laws against that, or is that just 'weird and unfashionable' too, or…?"

"I don't think there are any laws about it? It's just, you know, you wouldn't have the magical protections clothing usually has against the elements, and you might get dirt in places you don't want to get dirt in?"

He snorts. "So those wouldn't apply to me as much as they would to the rest of you, so I could literally go walk around naked if I wanted."

"Yeah, pretty much."

"I don't think I plan on that," he smirks. "I'll lose the top for now, though."

(He does.)

She beams and—

—they reach the agency's reception, into which Auron has just walked.

"The fiend's outside. Let's go."

And out he goes again.

"– Fiend?"

"People were talking about a Chocobo Eater fiend yesterday, they must've found it!"

And out she goes.

Whatever that means.

He follows.

And outside there is a squat fiend with two jaws and tongues and huge hands holding a yellow chicken, large enough to be ridden—presumably a chocobo—who kicks the and manages to run away. Go chocobo!

The others already have their weapons at the ready.

"– Does it have an element?"

"It is weakest to fire," Lulu says, demonstrating.

He will heat up the area around it, then!

"Yo! Do the melty earth thing!"

Sure. He'll do the melty earth thing too. Then he can make the melty earth climb up its body to try to encase it more thoroughly, woo, fun.

It's not very quick.

"I really like using you to cheat," she says, grinning, and starts summoning Ifrit from the bowels of the earth.

(The fiend starts shaking and the earth around it starts cracking as it does. It is pretty strong.)

He grins back at her.

(It's okay, Theo can change the ground to fix it up, or– why is he using ground? He can try something stronger, metals are nice, let's try a metal.)

And now there is a huge fire dog hurling fireballs at the immobile fiend.

It does not take long to dissolve into pyreflies.

Woo!

Any spheres? He can clean up the metal and make the landscape slightly less cratered.

Yep! A couple, inside the crater.

A blond man with very clear green eyes and spiral irises walks out of the agency. "Thank you for your help. Have you any interest in renting some chocobos? As a token of our gratitude, the first time is free of charge."

Theo turns to Kaede: "Okay– I have no idea what you would use a chocobo for? Riding? Is it riding."

"It is indeed riding. Some people eat chocobo meat, but the chocobos raised here are all bred for riding."

"We might just take you up on your offer, Mister...?"

"My apologies. I am Rin, owner of this establishment and responsible for the chocobo rentals along the Mi'ihen Highroad."

"– Are they faster than people, then? Used for faster transportation, or just for entertainment…?"

"Some chocobos can reach eighty kilometres per hour."

"Okay, so, faster transportation then. How long can you rent them for, do you have other– pens or something we can deposit them in?"

"You rent them for as long as you need them for, so long as you do not leave the Highroad with them. You can find corrals here and at either end of the Highroad."

To Kaede: "I probably don't need a chocobo myself."

Wings are so convenient.

"You probably don't," she agrees.

"We will rent six chocobos."

"Very well."

He nods at the attendant, who makes her way to the chocobo corral to fetch them.

"– So you know other-Zanarkand?" asks Theo, seemingly out of nowhere. "I'm not clear on how much you've actually tried looking for it?"

"...not very much? It's apparently an island but it's not close enough our short-distance boats can make it. The only person we know reached it from here was Mr. Legendary Guardian, and you've seen how forthcoming he is with information."

"Do you know which direction it's in? Like, which shore Tidus-or-Guardian showed up on."

"Sir Jecht appeared near Bevelle, north of here, but Tidus appeared at the very south, in Besaid."

"Actually I showed up in some temple somewhere, first, then I ended up in Besaid again."

"Any distinguishing features about the temple, ones I might be able to spot from the air?"

"Sunken? It didn't really look like a temple from the outside, it was just a bunch of ruins far away from anywhere in the middle of the ocean."

"Oh, okay. I was thinking of going and looking for it, is all, seeing if I can make any progress between now and… sometime when we meet up later?"

"You won't find it."

"– Would you give any more of an explanation why?"

"Hmpf."

"Just ignore him."

"I keep hoping he'll for once give me information, like 'you'll get shot out of the sky' or 'it's invisible' or, like, even magic, I'd accept just magic as at least some more information."

She eyes Auron. "It's somewhere. We can't reach it because Sin won't let us. Sin sometimes disappears for weeks, even months, and who knows where it goes. Sin attacked the other Zanarkand, and Tidus ended up here." She looks at Theo. "And you're indestructible."

"That's true, and I'm also able to fly, and still have no idea of the capabilities Sin has! Does it have ranged attacks?"

"Almost everything it does is ranged. This incarnation specialises in gravity magic."

"Oh, that might be annoying if I encounter it – but it shouldn't be able to do me much harm, overall, and if it tries to attack me I can try to trap it in a box."

"Gravity magic's sustained, not even Sin can keep you in a gravity well forever—although it might look like it from your point of view."

"If it looks like the outside world is moving slowly to me – or if it looks black, depending on the dilation and how it interacts – I should just be able to change my body's shape to get progressively further out of it. Plus it might just mean I can put it in a box more quickly."

"I like the way you think."

"Thanks," he smiles. "So I can just go fly out ocean-wards and check in a really badly-done search pattern to try to find it, and probably sink a bunch of time into that and maybe not find it, so… plans for when we should meet up assuming I fail to find it?"

"I was thinking you could try and follow Sin around."

"To find the other Zanarkand? Or so I can try helping in the attacks?"

"To find the other Zanarkand. I'm thinking—it must know where it is, and maybe visit sometimes. And even if it doesn't, if you follow it you might find out where it goes when it's not attacking and that'd be information enough."

Nod. "Any easy ways to find it? I'm not sure how well I'll be able to do 'fly in the air and spot the recent destruction'…"

"I think the Operation Mi'ihen wants to attract it somehow..."

"Was that the Crusaders group?"

"Yes, with the Al Bhed's cursed machina."

And presently the girl has returned with six chocobos.

He smiles at her, then asks, "How can I find them, then?"

"We're going that way, they'll be up ahead on the Mushroom Rock."

Nod. "I'll just keep pace with you, then, to there."

So they get on the chocobos and start north.

(And no one seems to bat an eye at Theo's new shirtlessness.)

Of course they don't. Shirtlessness isn't extremely noteworthy at home, anyway.

Progress is much faster by chocobo. They don't reach 80km/h but they're not racing chocobos, anyway.

At one point, Auron hangs back a little and says, "Hey you," looking at Theo.

"… Hey."

He motions for Theo to come closer and away from the rest of the party.

He does so. Frowning slightly.

"There's a reason no one's been able to find Zanarkand."

"Right," he agrees.

"If you find it," he continues, "you must not let that stop Kaede from killing Sin."

Pause. "… I am not sure why these two things link up. Why do these two things link up."

He does not reply.

"Will it be clear why these things link up when I find it? Because if not, I have no idea why you chose to mention this."

"You'll see."

He pushes his chocobo forward, to meet up with the rest of the party.

Cryptic. As always.

Theo also catches up.

"What were you two up to back there?"

"Apparently no matter what I find you must still kill Sin."

She looks at Auron and says, "And does he realise that him saying this kind of thing makes me doubt more and more the wisdom of killing Sin?"

Theo shrugs. "Makes me wonder why finding this place would have any bearing on wanting to kill Sin, too."

"Me, too," she sighs. "Well, you'll tell me?"

"I mean, if I honestly expected you would rather not know – which I'm inclined to think is not going to be the case – then I probably wouldn't tell you, but I expect you'll want to know." Shrug. "If there would somehow be magical repercussions to me telling you and I don't think they'll be offset by the benefit from you knowing, I probably won't, but I expect I will."

"Well, if that's the case can you at least tell me as much as possible about the reasons why you can't tell me?"

"Yeah, I was planning on it."

"Thanks!"

Theo continues to fly alongside them.

Their trek is uneventful, for a value of 'uneventful' that includes occasionally fighting monsters. The chocobos make them reach the end of the Highroad much earlier than they otherwise would, and there they see Dona arguing with a Crusader, Barthello in tow.

That way he goes!

Can he discern anything about why she's arguing with one, or does she notice him and stop?

She does not immediately notice the party.

"How many times do I have to tell you?" she asks the Crusader. "I'm a summoner!"

"Sorry, ma'am!" he says. "No exceptions!"

"You dare impede a summoner's pilgrimage?"

"Sorry, ma'am! No exceptions!" he repeats.

"Useless!"

Well that's curious! He'll land and interrupt her since, y'know, that sounds like fun.

"Hey."

She turns around. "Oh, it's you. As you can see, not even summoners can pass. But they'll call on us in the end. Just wait and see."

"I have no idea what we're not allowed to pass, here!" responds Theo, smiling slightly.

She points at the Highroad Northern Gate, where a caravan seems to be stopped, blocking the way.

"… Okay and why are you not allowed to pass it, any idea?"

"Apparently no one is allowed through until this 'Operation Mi'ihen' is done with," she says with some scorn.

"...why?"

"You could try your luck at getting an actual explanation out of him."

So Theo turns to the guy! "… What's the issue with us going through? I mean, I have wings so I could just fly over, should I also not do that?"

The guy looks at him. "We would strongly recommend you not to do that while the Operation is under progress, sir!"

"– Would it be dangerous for me, or is there something you don't want me to see, or…?"

"It would be very dangerous!"

"I'm invulnerable, so probably not dangerous for me…"

The Crusader stops. "Please do not interfere with the Operation, then."

"Would I be interfering by going and looking or do you mean, don't go interrupt them?"

"Don't interrupt them," he agrees.

Theo looks like he's about to go, then– "Estimate for how long they'll be blocking the way for?"

"The Operation will take place tonight."

"… And be cleaned up by the morning or–?"

"We will celebrate Sin's destruction in the morning!"

Theo pauses. "Okay so I'm just gonna ask you a few more questions about this before leaving, I think. Why are you so confident it'll be destroyed and can I know what you're using?"

"We're bringing Sinspawn from all over Spira here to lure it into a trap! This operation is a joint effort between Crusaders and Al Bhed. We'll lure Sin in, and the Al Bhed will strike it down with powerful ancient machina!"

"… Right but how powerful is the ancient machina, because it sounds like Sin is relatively tough."

"They say the machina are as powerful as the aeons!"

"Are there people I can talk to who know more about the project who are hopefully not busy right now…?"

"No, and more information than this is confidential."

"… In case we, what, spread it to Sin? Use it for weapons for some other purpose?"

"Can't say."

"You can't say why it's confidential?"

"Yeah."

"Be back shortly then," he says, and flies up to go survey the area.

"See you."

North of the Highroad is the Mushroom Rock: a large expanse of dull flat rocks supported by thin pillars with lots of spaces between them, almost like an overlarge anthill. There are some Crusaders to be seen guarding the way along the rock road to the southern shore.

If he goes that way and doesn't actually speak to any of them, just sort of flaps about with his wings, does anyone talk to him…?

He's curious and surveying, not actively interrupting. (Plus that guy didn't give him much information and this feels like the sort of thing that will go horribly wrong, though at least these people hopefully know something about technology.)

Well the foot soldiers on the way to the main operation HQ all react pretty much the same as the one on the Highroad, with a side of "is this guy a fiend?"

… Oh ugh now he's gonna feel like he lied.

He waves and backs away slowly.

Well they won't attack him if he backs away slowly, fiends aren't known for that.

Oh that's nice.

Then he can keep observing from slightly further away. Is there anything useful he can get from watching them?

He can find out where HQ is, with a large array of advanced-looking cannons and other weapons pointed at the sea, plus a large metal cage with a huge ugly fiend inside.

Ugh.

He'll fly back to Kaede, report this.

He might be surprised to find that Kaede and the rest of the party have been let through the gate and seem to be making their way to the HQ themselves!

… Well okay, he'll make his way over there instead! "How come you got let through?"

"Seymour has the hots for me and let me through."

"Whoa whoa! That's no way to talk about a Maester of Yevon!"

Eyeroll. "Are you gonna interrupt them? I went over to them, some of them eyed me a bit, I came back."

"Maester Seymour for some reason wants us with them."

"Still can't believe he's letting them use these accursed machina."

"Technology continues not to be cursed," sighs Theo.

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."

"Oh! Yes, you should talk to the engineers at the laser." He gestures out towards the shore, where a twenty-metre-tall pointy thing can be discerned.

He goes towards the twenty-meter-tall pointy thing. Looks for engineers.

There are engineers swarming it!

Any who don't look super busy right now, or who look less busy than the others? Ones he could possibly interrupt?

No, not really, all of them look pretty busy.

Sigh.

He'll drop on one and– "Hi! I have the magical ability to change materials, not including magical ones, is there any chance I can help out somehow and I do apologize for the interruption."

The woman stops and looks at him. "Materials? Like what?"

"Like I can do a bunch of metals just fine and so long as I know what I'm making and it's non-magical I can probably do it just fine?"

"We don't need new materials, we need to get the machina finished up and charged in time!"

"What do you need to get the machina finished? If you need bits of metal reshaped I can do that, if you need them melted or solidified quicker I can do that, if you need me to turn it from whatever metal it is into some other metal so it's stronger I can do that, if you need me to cool down the surrounding area or something I can also do that."

"—you can affect temperatures? Can you make whatever kind of energy this machine uses?"

"Depends on what energy it uses!" responds Theo. "If it uses steam power then I can help heat up some water, if it uses electricity then– you're probably out of luck on that one if you need me to send it in some specific voltage or charge a battery directly or something."

"We don't know what kind of energy it uses," she confesses. "Still, come with me, you can be useful."

He follows. "Unfortunately I don't know all that much about the components of technology but it's not religiously banned where I'm from."

She starts leading the way but she looks at him over her shoulder, perhaps in envy though it's hard to tell with the goggles and gas mask. "That's very lucky. Where are you from?"

"No idea how it relates to here, but I can be summoned from where I live to the mortal world, and for some reason or another came here this once, having never heard of here or this magic or Sin ever before."

"Not having heard of Sin sounds great," she says vehemently.

They reach a tent near the machina where a chief engineer is giving people orders and receiving reports. The woman informs him of this and explains to him what Theo can do, and he takes Theo to see the battery. It is very old but restored and seems to be completely unlike anything he's ever seen.

"… I'm afraid I have no idea how this battery was made so I'm likely to be of no use with it."

Well. That's a shame. Could he perhaps learn...? If not there are other things he can do to help.

He can learn if they know how it was made! He has a basic idea of how batteries work, at least the ones he's familiar with.

But if they don't, no, unfortunately he has no special information-gathering powers.

They don't really have any idea, all they know is that it produces some form of energy that feeds the giant laser.

So it's probably some kind of electricity but unfortunately he does not have anything handy with which to find out how it's made unless he cares to destroy it carefully. Which, uh, no.

Anything else he can do instead?

Yeah, lots of work, actually, he can help speed it all up by a lot.

He does so. Tries to get information on what they do know about it as he does so.

It was found underwater about a month ago, curated and explored and tested, there were instruction manuals in the computers near it, it's meant to be really powerful.

… Do they have any of the instruction manuals? 'Cause they might have useful things like composition of the battery or something, but he's sort of hoping they already checked for that?

The computers do have instruction manuals! Maybe he could figure it out, those diagrams are gibberish to even the best engineers amongst them (if they weren't the Al Bhed would be able to just build the thing themselves).

He'll have a look at them! He has a decent high-school-plus-a-bit level of education in chemistry and physics and a passing acquaintance with how lots of this stuff works from general summons where they didn't require the angel to be perfectly knowledgeable about such things.

Is it more comprehensible to him?

Mmmore or less! If he knows any quantum physics it'll be easier to follow the diagrams and then understand that the basic principle behind this battery is very similar to how transistors work, back in his world. If he doesn't then it's gibberish.

He knows some about transistors because he has looked into computers a bit before, and he knows bits and pieces about quantum physics, so he can probably pick up bits of it… but unfortunately he does not understand it all.

He tells the engineers what he can, anyway, and hopes they will be sensible with the knowledge.

They have never heard of quantum physics and would definitely like to learn sometime, but if his knowledge is not sufficient to help with energising the machina they will enlist his help for other things.

Other things he will do.

And eventually they're done.

"Thank you very much for your help. The Al Bhed—and, if this works, the people of Spira—are in your debt."

"No problem," he responds, then he goes to find Kaede.

He really really doubts it'll work and he really really hopes he hasn't made anything worse.

The party's in HQ, sort of standing around, not doing much.

"They are apparently done!" he reports. "I have no idea about some of the stuff they were using, though."

"What about it?"

"I don't know how it works, though it seems similar to some stuff I have seen at home, and they are just sort of blindly using the operator manual. Ish."

"Yeah. That's kinda all we can do, a lot of knowledge has been lost."

"For a reason!"

"The reason being 'using it to build technological things causes Sin to be attacked', right? Or does it attack places that merely hold such knowledge and do nothing about it?"

"I don't think it attacks places that hold knowledge for any other reason than the fact that they also usually hold machina."

"Well maybe we'll get lucky some day and manage to summon a nice Maker and get some of that back."

"They can do that? Wow that'd be cool."

"No! It'll only make things worse!"

"… If we do it very carefully away from mainland Spira then it'd probably mean Sin would attack us and not you?" suggests Theo.

He doesn't seem to have an answer to that.

"I'm gonna need to make out with you later for that," she tells him.

He smirks. "Hopefully we'll get a chance to actually put my idea into practice."

A Crusader approaches them. "The Operation is about to commence. You should make sure you're ready. We won't be able to keep fields from attacking HQ while we're occupied with Sin, you should be able to defend yourselves."

– Theo grabs another speed sphere and sees if he can use it yet.

He totally can!

Theo picks agility, again.

It works! And the others do the same.

"I think we're all ready."

Theo nods.

"Very well."

The Crusader goes inform other people of the impending start of the operation.

"Well, this is going to be fun," says Theo. "Or not, but at least I can follow Sin after – so this might soon be goodbye."

She sighs. "It feels mean to think it won't work. These people—are giving it their all."

"It feels mean but they didn't seem to know all that much about the devices, so…" He shrugs.

"Not knowing about it is a good sign, though. If they did know that'd mean it wasn't good enough."

He shrugs. "The fact they know enough to put it together suggests that it might not be good enough anyway."

"Ain't that a sweet deal."

"But maybe it didn't predict my help and maybe I helped enough to make it work, or maybe it's just not infallible anyway."

"Nothing is infallible. And we should hope your help, well, helps."

The cage with the huge fiend gets lifted by a crane and is suspended above the water.

Yay, bait is… prepped or whatever.

"Did you get any information about how long they expect it to take Sin to attack? … Or why they expect it to attack only now-onwards and not at some inconvenient point before, or was that just a hope? It was probably a hope, wasn't it."

"It was a hope, yeah. Well, kinda, Sin usually takes a few days to return for its spawn, they're hoping by smashing enough spawn together it'll come sooner."

"So we might be settled in to wait a bit," he nods.

"Theoretically if you poke Sinspawn enough without killing it Sin comes sooner. Some distress signal, maybe."

"… Weird."

An electrical current is discharged into the cage, strong enough for sparks to be visible.

"No one pretends to understand what goes on, there."

Theo just shrugs. "You want to look stuff up on my phone in the meantime?"

"Ooh!"

He hands it over to her.

Eeeee!

He'll watch the crane and machinery and the scenery.

Maybe go flying if Sin takes longer than five minutes.

Yep, Sin does take longer than five minutes.

Flying it is!

That cage sure is shaking a lot, though.

Well he isn't flying very far away, but that's a little worrying so he returns to Kaede and co and asks, "Does anybody know what elemental type that fiend was? If any?"

"It does not have any elemental weaknesses."

Did the fiend have wings?

Nope.

Oh it just looks like a weird scorpion, okay.

… He'll just go fix the box.

Well the box isn't broken per se but it sure does look like that might only be a matter of time—there are some dents.

Un-dent it. He'll un-dent it and make it thicker.

That causes the poor fiend to be unable to leave its cage. Rude, Theo.

He feels just terrible about that.

The cage continues swinging but significantly less wildly and dangerously than it was doing.

That's very nice of the cage.

Theo is less bored. He can wait around a bit more.

After about an hour of poking the Sinspawn, they can notice a suspicious amount of deep sea activity.

Okay, so Theo thinks he will go sea-wards. And scout. Unless there are any objections.

Black tendrils start to extend right under the water's surface, and a growing bump appears in the distance, like a giant wave. Everyone is too busy getting ready for battle to object.

That is unfortunately too far for him to affect.

He thinks he'll go closer. It's a good thing Kaede has his phone.

It's not too far for too long. The bump reaches the shore in a few more seconds and then—

—bursts—

—and Theo finally gets a good look of Sin.

Can't change it directly, can he?

Nope!

There seems to be a black rippling forcefield enveloping its body; through it he can see some nonmagical things that ended up sticking to its carapace. Maybe he can affect those?

If he finds the time, of course. The Al Bhed start firing cannons at it, and small waterborne crustacean fiends start dropping from its skin as the shots find their target. The Crusaders charge into the water to fight these fiends, and the giant Al Bhed laser starts visibly charging.

It's messy.

He tries to change some of the nonmagical things attached. What does it do if he ramps up the temperature, as quickly as he can, on some of those nonmagical things?

(He can't do it ridiculously quickly, but he can do it reasonably so – it takes a couple of seconds to get water to boiling in kitchen quantities.)

Nothing. The nonmagical things are coral.

Sin sheds its "skintight" black forcefield and creates another one, spherical, purple, around its body—

And if he tries heating up the air a lot? Tries turning the forcefield to air? Tries turning air above it into water in case it's really weak?

—and it shoots some of its forcefield out towards the people fighting finds in the water, turning them to dust.

(None of that works, no.)

Well fuck.

If he systematically goes through the internals of its body, starting from the head and working over every cubic meter, trying to turn it to hot air?

He does not seem to be able to actually affect anything on or in the monster (coral excepted).

Well that is fucking awful and kinda the only way he has to damage it, he thinks. He doesn't really have any way to protect people from the weird dust forcefield, only he is indestructible and he doesn't have a convenient way to extend it to others.

Time to try brute force with his indestructibility, perhaps.

He flies towards it.

It does not react to the tiny winged humanoid less than a hundredth of its volume flying towards it.

The Al Bhed charge their machina.

Theo can make quite a sharp blade. He is not averse to making a sharp blade that is attached to him and technically part of him and therefore less breakable.

So he gets close, his tiny self with his very low volume and his very sharp blades that are indestructible, intending to start carving a small hole through Sin in case this distracts it.

Theo can go through the forcefield. His clothes can't. It feels like electricity and fire and hurt and it damages him exactly to the extent he can be damaged.

When he makes contact, he causes more damage than Sin has ever suffered at the hands of anything other than aeons. Inasmuch as it can react, it does, by turning its body slightly towards Theo and trying to swat him away with one of its huge fins.

He grits his teeth as he goes through the forcefield, and he is unfortunately able to be swatted. He tries to damage the fin as he is so, then goes quite a distance quite dazed but not going unconscious and trying to get himself under control and then he will be on his way back.

He makes the blade bigger. It doesn't need to be particularly heavy if it's really sharp and indestructible, though he doesn't make it too low density because he wants to still have momentum.

It can get really sharp, when indestructible.

That it can. The second time he makes contact, Sin reacts quite violently, turning its whole body much more quickly than it by rights ought to be able to, probably swatting Theo away again. Its purple forcefield winks out, and the black rippling one enveloping its body returns.

Again, he can't screw with his velocity directly, though he can – once less dazed – try to screw around with his environment to speed up his recovery.

It is really painful getting swatted, but he's on his way back because at least he has a limit to how damaged he can get here, and he's apparently getting a reaction.

He is!

The black forcefield does not burn him, though. It is in fact pretty solid—much more solid than Sin itself.

Not that Theo can't cut it, it's just—less immediate. There's some resistance.

Even with the really sharp blade? It is really sharp, he can keep making it sharper, he does keep making it sharper to counteract wear and tear because despite his indestructibility it is not totally invulnerable and can be weakened; he is actively changing it and maintaining the edge as he cuts.

The black forcefield is apparently doing something other than just "being durable" because no matter how sharp he makes the blade it has the same resistance.

Sin generates a purple sphere of energy in front of its "mouth" and shoots an energy beam towards the big (the meaning of the word 'huge' will probably never be the same for Theo again) Sinspawn in the cage, turning it and its cage to dust. Then it starts actually turning away.

Theo manages to cut through the forcefield at the same time the Al Bhed machina finishes charging, so now the monster is being hurt on two different fronts.

He keeps going, trying to force his own way through the forcefield if he can, too – if he can grab onto it, if he can slice a hole and it doesn't just reappear, if he can insert himself in the way then hopefully it won't be able to regenerate and he'll be able to cut even more of it.

It takes a while to regenerate, and he can get through the field before it does.

Sin finishes turning and starts accelerating away and into the ocean, suffering grievous wounds from the machina and an angel that won't. Stay. Gone.

The angel conveniently has a blade stuck in the huge creature. And is attacking the forcefield from being inserted through it which is much more convenient and hopefully he's able to stick attached to the freaking thing.

The freaking thing is starting to move really fast.

Underwater.

… Theo doesn't need to breathe.

Water resistance at over a hundred kilometres per hour might be a problem, though.

He's past the forcefield and digging his way in so he's not totally in the path of the water. It might be, but he has a hold on Sin with his blades and is digging in.

Plus he can crouch in, make himself flatter against Sin and hold on better, being annoyingly indestructible and getting out of the path of the water resistance.

Yep, that he can do.

And after digging in enough, the resistance is suddenly gone. As if Sin is—hollow.

– Okay he has no idea why that'd be but he wants to know what is inside if not more of Sin, so he keeps digging to enlarge the hole and narrows himself down somewhat to get in.

Sky.

It's the first thing he notices. The inside of Sin contains the sky. Clouds, beautiful clouds, blue skies, and pyreflies, flying in all directions.

The inside is definitely bigger than the outside.

… He's really not used to this magic system yet.

Is there anything like civilization? Presumably there is a ground. Is he somehow back outside Sin just a bit displaced, does the sky have a sun, is it raining anywhere in sight, can he still see walls or have they disappeared, what.

There isn't anything like a sun—just a vague glow present everywhere, possibly coming from the pyreflies. There is not a ground anywhere that he can see, but the clouds are occluding enough that that doesn't mean much—there is a carpet of them extending in all directions below him.

Behind him, there is a glowing ball of light, marking the exact spot through which he came. It's not embedded on anything, certainly nothing like a wall, and in fact walls don't seem to be present at all, either.

He can put his hand over to the side of the glowing ball? How big is it, can he put his arm around it? Because. That's weird.

It is exactly as large as the hole he made into Sin.

It is, in fact, the hole he made into Sin. Or its representation in this weird place.

He thinks, at the risk of getting himself trapped in here for a while, that he will leave this hole.

He will, however, try to create something to place around the weird ball, and to place through it, in case this means it won't disappear. Something red, and green, and why not chartreuse, let's make it hopefully searingly bright and also glow-in-the-dark in places so he won't lose it if all the lights go out.

Can he attach stuff to the ball? He really hopes he can.

It's... not a ball. It's a hole. He cannot attach things to a lack of a thing.

(The facts that the hole is emitting light and that he can go through it no matter which direction he's coming from are immaterial.)

He can poke something through it and presumably get back to where he was going through Sin, right? So he can spend time digging another route through and hopefully get another hole in midair somewhere else nearby and then thread something through it.

Or does this not work for some reason?

It is not super easy to do. Sin is thick and pretty durable.

But it works. Except the inside is much larger than the outside, and so is the distance between the holes' respective glowing balls of light.

Can he see the other glowing ball? Because so long as it's not literal miles away he can do a really huge hoop between it and then conveniently he can make two visible random things in midair.

If it's literal miles then he might have a problem.

It... might be about one literal mile? Bit more maybe?

… Can he dig a hole closer? He will be very careful and try not to collapse his two current holes together.

Yes he can.

Presumably it is not 'a few feet' in terms of how close it is, is it?

He's just gonna attach the thing through Sin's flesh on the other side of the first hole. That sounds easier.

Not 'a few feet,' no. Attaching something hook-like to Sin's skin works, though.

Wonderful. Then he gets the ugly bright fluorescent tapestry thing or whatever and attaches it all together and he has a nice little bright colorful hole in the sky.

Nothing conveniently interesting has appeared while he's been doing this, has it?

It has probably been a few hours, at this point, but no, actually, the sky is still sky-like with lots of pretty pyreflies and nothing at all seems to be going on there.

Do the pyreflies do much if he goes to touch them?

They react to his presence by twirling around his hand a bit and glowing pretty rainbow colours before moving on.

He looks around himself at the distance he'd have to traverse to cover this whole space – that is, he cannot see walls and walls don't seem to be around for where Sin's edge is – and decides it is ridiculous.

He'll fly upwards a bit, keeping track of where he came in, and try looking for– well, anything that is not clouds or pyreflies or produced by him.

The clouds extend quite a-ways in all directions.

… He might be better off trying to go back and report this information rather than getting lost for potentially a century or something stupid like that.

The cloud beneath him, though, being all carpety and whatever. He's gonna check that first, move back over to his original spot with the glowing 'ball' of 'light', then go downwards from there through and into the cloud.

Cloud cloud cloud cloud—

—water! With mist rolling around it and various symbols (reminiscent of those he's seen in Yevonite temples) glowing on its surface.

And, in the distance: something that looks like the ruins of a temple.

– Is the cloud magical, by any chance? How about the water?

They're magical, yep.

Any convenient landmarks nearby?

Other than the ruins? Not really.

So he's just going to make a balloon here. From the air. Very red. Have it a good density so it can probably float for a while. Then one over there. And a third over here.

The ruins aren't too far but he wants to know what direction he should go in. This solution should be better than losing track of here totally. Probably.

Then he sets off for the temple.

...distance is weird. The temple gets closer, but not as fast as it by rights ought to. There is a set of stairs up into it, and it's strangely difficult to understand how many steps it has.

Well. He is not super happy about this but so long as he can see his balloons if he looks back when he's about a third, a half of the way there, he will continue onwards.

He's going to fly up the steps unless there is some other issue with that.

Doesn't seem to but then his vision gets—

—weird—

—and it's not a temple anymore, the stairs lead to a platform, beyond which there is a city.

He stops.

Is there still a set of steps to walk back down, should he so choose? Because he will if so. Just to check it's two-way.

There is!

...it seems to break off into the untold depths, from where he's standing.

Okay, well, he will land and walk back down. He can drop into the untold depths if in fact present and not just an illusion and then he can fly back up.

—weird vision—

—steps down from the temple.

Okay, well, back up and to the city it is.

He doesn't like the weird vision effect. It's annoying.

The city also extends as far as the eye can see. There are lights, but no people. Looking at it is also weird, and feels like looking into a mirage, or the water, or hot air, with occasional ripples the eye can't really see when he focuses.

He sorta likes the color scheme? But he's a bit confused by the lack of people.

Can he go up to one of the buildings and poke it? He dislikes the mirage feeling.

Yeah it's all pretty solid.

And pretty tall. From the ground up, the tallest buildings are skyscraper-height.