"I have no reason to believe I am from this planet. We seem to both be human, which is more than nothing, but..."

"Another planet. Alright. Sure. Uh. Do you want the version with history or just the practicalities...?"

"I vote version with history."

"That sounds better to me, too."

Zei looks at Wakka.

"...oh, alright, alright," he grumbles, grabbing one fruit as he stands up. "Need to check on the boys anyway," he continues, walking off.

Azym lifts an eyebrow at Zei once Wakka's shut the door behind himself.

"He knows I'm going to get uncomfortably close if not outright cross into heretical stuff and we've reached an understanding about how we deal with our theological disagreements and that understanding includes him leaving when I'm going to get into them combined with me being less obnoxious about getting into them than when I was a kid."

"And you're... fine with it?" Azym asks Lulu.

"My understanding with Zei is not the same as Wakka's."

Such are the perils of faith, yes.

"I'm listening."

"Alright, so... I guess I'll start from the beginning.

"A thousand years ago, there was a great war between the two most powerful nations in the world, Zanarkand and Bevelle. They used terrible weapons, and developed even worse ones, machines that could take lives like nothing. So the story goes. I'm going to be vague, because there is very little all sources agree on, and I'll leave the speculation for the end. Something sources definitely don't agree on is why the war was happening in the first place.

"This war escalated, until eventually it got to the point where the weapons being built were risking destroying the world itself. Then Sin appeared and destroyed Zanarkand. The princess of Zanarkand, who survived this somehow, travelled all the way to Bevelle, and told them that Sin was our punishment for letting things get that far, but it's not clear who exactly is doing the punishing, and we can all probably agree that the people responsible for all of that are certainly no longer the ones being punished."

"Certainly."

Not that apocalypse monsters are a justifiable response to basically anything anyway.

"The person whose teachings that was from, according to Lady Yunalesca, was a man named Yu Yevon. No one really knows who he was. Some sources say he was the leader of Zanarkand, Lady Yunalesca's father; others say he was a powerful summoner, and Sin was summoned by him, but those are definitely heretical; others still say that he was merely a wise man, and Lady Yunalesca his messenger. It doesn't matter. Nowadays, 'Yevon' is his philosophy of diligence, agape, hard work, self-restraint, the joy in small things.

"Yevon is actually the teachings of summoning. You both might've seen Valefor? The winged creature who was fighting on our side? She is an aeon, one of the powerful beings I can summon to aid in my fight against Sin.

"Lady Yunalesca said that, once we had atoned for the sins we had committed, practised Yevon's teachings and lived it as a society and attained purity, we would be rid of Sin. Until then, it can only be temporarily defeated, and only by summoners."

"Eugh."

"Societal purity is a terrible idea," his sword contributes. "Almost universally. I really cannot recommend against it enough."

"Hmm."

Azym looks at Zei out of the corners of his eyes.

"Summoners go on a pilgrimage. We stop at as many temples of Yevon as we can, and we commune with the fayth—people who sacrificed their lives to keep their souls encased in stone and be used as aeons in the fight against Sin. We train, and we study, and we commune with as many fayth as we can and thus gain the ability to summon as many aeons as we can. This pilgrimage ends in the ruins of Zanarkand, where summoners learn—somehow—how to summon the Final Aeon. Unlike all other aeons, those are individual to each summoner, no two Final Aeons have been alike. And then we summon it in battle with Sin, and it and Sin and typically a very large area of land surrounding us are destroyed together."

"—that sounds a lot less survivable than you made it sound when you explained that to me."

He shrugs.

"I would like it on the record that I dislike this plan."

"I, also, dislike this plan." He looks at Lulu, then at Emil again. "Time for some heresies.

"Lady Yunalesca was the first summoner to defeat Sin, a thousand years ago. Since then, four other summoners succeeded. Four. In one thousand years. My father was the latest, ten years ago.

"I think I can do better than that. I think five is not a very large number of people, I think people haven't tried enough things, I think the fact that no one knows what the fuck happens in Zanarkand to give people their Final Aeon," another glance at Lulu, then back, "is insane. I cannot operate under this informational environment. But I am not planning on summoning the Final Aeon and pitting my life against Sin's. This happened five times, and failed five times, and I simply do not believe that the only way to get rid of Sin is to make sure literally everyone is pure. Sin is a monster. Sin is a creature. There was a point in Spira's past before it existed, and humanity was not pure then, and it began existing, and it makes no sense for the requisite criteria for it to stop existing to be the purity of heart of all peoples.

"And if it is, I'll find another way anyway. It is, quite simply, not that bad to be impure. There is no sin anyone could ever commit that would justify Sin, and we do not deserve Sin, and so I will make sure we are rid of Sin even if we are still 'not pure'."

"I'm with you on all points. It... might be time to tell you why I think I might be such a game-changer, here?"

"Please do, I'm all for game changers, let's cheat our way to the end."