The Teams

Edgar & Sabin   Amarant & Lani     Final Fantasy 6 Edgar Roni Figaro (left) became the king of Figaro castle with the passing of his father. Only one could be king, so he and his twin brother, Sabin Rene Figaro (right) decided to settle it with a coin flip. Unbeknownst to Sabin, Edgar used a two-headed coin knowing Sabin couldn't handle the pressures of being king. Sabin left Figaro castle to study martial arts under Master Duncan.   Final Fantasy 9 Amarant Coral (right) and Lani (left) are both bounty hunters that were originally hired by Queen Brahne to find her daughter, Princess Garnet. They are both lone hunters and do not work well with others and their quest for Princess Garnet was no exception as both used their own methods to track her down.     Auron & Jecht   Shinra & Rufus     Final Fantasy 10 Auron (right) and Jecht (left) were both guardians to High Summoner Braska in a pilgrimage ten years prior to Final Fantasy 10 to defeat the creature known as Sin. Ten years later, Auron rejoined with Braska's daughter, Yuna, to once again attempt to defeat Sin.    Final Fantasy 7 President Shinra (left) runs the large electric company that powers the entire city of Midgar that essentially gives him total control of the giant city. His son, Rufus (right), is the heir to the company, despite the fact that he is rarely seen with his father.     Squall & Rinoa   Steiner & Beatrix     Final Fantasy 8 Squall Leonhart (left) is an agent of a special program known as SeeD operating out of Balamb Garden. He met Rinoa Heartilly (right) when he was assigned to a division of a resistance group known as the Forest Owls which was headed by Rinoa.   Final Fantasy 9 Adelbert Steiner (left) is the Captain of the Knights of Pluto: a small division of the Alexandrian Empire's military. General Beatrix (right) heads the main Alexandrian army. The two are Queen Brahne's head guardians, who after an allegiance struggle found themselves fighting for a common cause: defending Alexandria.     Sephiroth & Jenova   Strago & Relm     Final Fantasy 7 Sephiroth (center) was a First Class Soldier for Shin-Ra's army until on assignment he learned the origins of his birth as an experiment using cells from a crisis from the skies known as Jenova (technically unpictured; somewhere behind that metal angel thing). This experiment known as The Jenova Project drove him crazy.   Final Fantasy 6 Strago Magus (right) is a resident of a hidden magical town known as Thamasa. He lives with his adopted granddaughter, Relm Arrowny (left), whose parents were otherwise unable to raise her. Both are highly gifted despite their ages.     Yuna & Rikku   Fujin & Raijin     Final Fantasy 10-2 After bringing peace to their world, Yuna (left) and her cousin Rikku (right) teamed up with a group known as the Gullwings to search for spheres together. They had previously known each other when they were reunited on their quest to defeat Sin in Final Fantasy 10.   Final Fantasy 8 Fujin (left) and Raijin (right) became good friends while studying at Balamb Garden to become SeeDs with their mutual friend Seifer Almasy. They failed the test several times and eventually established themselves as the Discipline Committee founded by Seifer.     Tifa & Paine   The Hosts: Gippal, Nooj, & Baralai     Final Fantasy 7 & 10-2 Tifa Lockheart (left) is a member of a resistance group known as Avalanche that opposes Shin-Ra's methods to obtain power. Paine (right) is a member of a group of sphere hunters known as the Gullwings. They had never met but both paired up at the beginning of The Amazing Final Fantasy Race after learning they needed teams of two.    Final Fantasy 10-2 Formerly banded together with racer Paine, Gippal (middle), Nooj (right), and Baralai (left) were members of an elite squad of fighters known as the Crimson Squad. After a field exercise led to the deaths of almost all of the Crimson Squad, the four barely escaped with their lives, but later events led to their disbanding and joining of different factions.

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Episode Rewind

Episode 1

Featured Games/Worlds: Final Fantasy X & Final Fantasy VI (3 in U.S.) Episode Summary: "She's Sweetcheeks. You're Bitch." -Jecht The first season of The Amazing Final Fantasy Race began with the host, Gippal, introducing eleven teams who'd be setting off on a race around worlds for one-million gil. The teams came from many worlds in the Final Fantasy universe, and included: coworkers Amarant and Lani, "mother" and "son" Jenova and Sephiroth, dating couple Squall and Rinoa, father and son Shinra and Rufus, acquaintances Tifa and Paine, grandfather and granddaughter Strago and Relm, cousins Yuna and Rikku, friends Fujin and Raijin, dating knight and paladin Steiner and Beatrix, brothers Edgar and Sabin, and grizzled old guys Auron and Jecht. The eleven teams began the race from the starting line at Spira's Djose Temple and, on "Go!", set off for their first destination, Kohlingen in the World of Balance. To get to the World of Balance, the teams were tasked with driving to a spaceport in Luca on landspeeders. Auron and Jecht immediately kicked off the race with some dirty play, kicking up dust in the other teams' faces while riding ahead of them on their own landspeeder. Steiner and Beatrix totally missed the point of a landspeeder when Steiner carried theirs the whole way to the spaceport, losing them some time. And Edgar and Sabin went the wrong way right off the bat and quickly put themselves in last place. They were forced to rely on a shoopuf to get them to the spaceport. At the spaceport, the teams raced to book one of three flights, and the flights broke down as follows: Tifa and Paine, Auron and Jecht, Amarant and Lani, and Fujin and Raijin would be on the first flight arriving in Kohlingen. Shinra and Rufus, Strago and Relm, and Yuna and Rikku would be on the second flight there. Steiner and Beatrix, Squall and Rinoa, and Jenova and Sephiroth would be on the third and last flight. For getting so far behind, though, Edgar and Sabin missed the chance to get tickets for any flight when they finally got to the spaceport. Only Edgar charming a ticket girl got them onto the second flight... as stewards! Once in Kohlingen, the teams were faced with the first Detour of the race. It was a choice between Clock, which involved asking potentially-lying men in the town of Zozo for hints of what the current local time was, or Watch, which involved going to an opera house to see a long, improvised (and quite dreadful) play. Tifa and Paine, Auron and Jecht, and Jenova and Sephiroth all chose and completed Clock very quickly, while Amarant and Lani, Shinra and Rufus, Fujin and Raijin, Edgar and Sabin, Strago and Relm, Steiner and Beatrix, Squall and Rinoa, and Yuna and Rikku all chose and completed Watch, though not without some trouble on the part of Fujin and Raijin, who failed to stay quiet during the first show they watched and were kicked out and forced to wait till the second show to try again. The Roadblock saw teams bidding on the right item, Cherub Down, at an auction in the town of Jidoor, all the while making sure they didn't bid more than the accepted limit, 10,000 GP. Tifa, Jecht, Amarant, Shinra, Fujin, Edgar, Relm, Steiner, Squall, Rikku, and Jenova took the tasks for their teams. Smart racers found interesting ways to get the task done fast. Tifa just used her sex appeal to catch the auctioneer's eye and get ahead of Jecht, who'd led for most of the leg with Auron, Fujin bid the maximum amount of 10,000 GP immediately, and Edgar, Relm, and Rikku threw in extra incentives whenever they tied with the maximum bid. Squall and Jenova, however, struggled through the task, with Squall making lower bids after higher ones had previously been given and then bidding on the wrong item, and Jenova being completely clueless as to what was going on! The Pit Stop was just inside Jidoor's art house, home of art collector Owzer, and Tifa and Paine arrived there first, simply because of mistake-free racing (and Tifa's little trick at the Roadblock certainly didn't hurt!), and a trip for two to Luca and tickets to the opening blitzball games as their prize. Auron and Jecht finished very close behind the two women, clocking in at second place. And after stupidly falling for a lie that had them going clear across the continent and back looking for the Pit Stop, Yuna and Rikku found themselves in a dead heat with Jenova and Sephiroth, who'd fallen far behind the other teams thanks to Jenova's hours-long struggle at the Roadblock. The two girls barely emerged victorious, finishing in tenth place, leaving Jenova and Sephiroth to finish last and become the first team eliminated from the race. Back to Top

Episode 2

Featured Games/Worlds: Final Fantasy VI (3 in U.S.) Episode Summary: "Let's just say, it's amazing." -Relm Arrowny Fresh off the elimination of Jenova and Sephiroth, the ten remaining teams continued the race, setting off from the art house in Jidoor and making their way to the town of South Figaro. Alliances were quickly made, with grizzled old guys Auron and Jecht offering to join up with acquaintances Tifa and Paine. The two women accepted, at least for the time being. Additionally, father and son Shinra and Rufus, knowing brothers Edgar and Sabin would know South Figaro, joined up with them and were led to their castle, which tunneled underneath a mountain to get closer to the town, but were quickly ditched when Shinra made food his top priority and the Figaro brothers left the castle without them. Without anyone to lead them in the right direction, they headed off aimlessly into the desert. In South Figaro, the teams were faced with the first Roadblock of the race. It saw one member of each team finding a merchant --male or female-- to mug for their clothing, which they'd wear and get past a boy guarding an old man with a clue for them. Squall, Sabin, Raijin, Beatrix, Lani, Rufus, Relm, Rikku, Jecht, and Tifa took the task for their teams. Prior to starting the task, Tifa proposed a seven-team alliance with dating couple Squall and Rinoa, friends Fujin and Raijin, dating knight and paladin Steiner and Beatrix, coworkers Amarant and Lani, grandfather and granddaughter Strago and Relm, and Auron and Jecht to only look for the male merchants and leave as many female merchants behind for Shinra and Rufus. That way, if Rufus took the task, he'd feel too uneasy about getting dressed up as a woman. The teams all agreed. Some of them, such as Sabin and Rikku, got the task done pretty quickly on their own. Squall and Raijin worked together to complete the task. Beatrix fought Jecht for an easy merchant, with Beatrix winning out in the end with a clever trick. Lani, desperate to get the task over with, killed a female merchant by decapitating her, and then got her clothes. Relm simply tricked a merchant into giving up his clothes to her. However, Tifa and Jecht found the luck-based task difficult, not being able to find their own merchants until they were well behind most of the other teams. After getting to the Roadblock last, Rufus flat-out refused to do the task initially when the last merchant left did, indeed, turn out to be a woman. But he got over it, thanks to prompting from Shinra, and instead made a deal with the merchant that got them done fast. Following the Roadblock, the teams traveled on ferries to the town of Mobliz. Edgar and Sabin and Amarant and Lani were on the first ferry, Squall and Rinoa, Fujin and Raijin, Steiner and Beatrix, and Strago and Relm were on the second one, cousins Yuna and Rikku, Auron and Jecht, and Tifa and Paine were on the third one, and Shinra and Rufus were alone on the last one. And once in Mobliz, the teams were faced with the leg's Detour, which was a choice between Mail, which involved delivering and reading letters to wounded soldiers until they fell asleep, or Sail, which involved digging up underwater breathing devices to travel through a the Serpent Trench. Squall and Rinoa, Steiner and Beatrix, and Shinra and Rufus all chose and completed Mail, with Rinoa getting a good laugh when Squall wound up reading a very erotic letter that their soldier had written for himself, Steiner and Beatrix losing time when Steiner opted to train their soldier until he'd worn himself out rather than simply reading the letter to him, and Shinra and Rufus boring their soldier to sleep with Shinra reading their letter in a monotone-sounding voice. Meanwhile, Edgar and Sabin, Fujin and Raijin, Amarant and Lani, Strago and Relm, Yuna and Rikku, Tifa and Paine, and Auron and Jecht all chose and completed Sail. It was a wise enough choice for all the teams except for Strago and Relm, and that was proven when the rapids wound up being too much for Strago's heart, killing him during the trip and forcing Relm to drag his body for the rest of the leg, although not without at least a little bit of help from Steiner and Beatrix. The Pit Stop was at the entrance of the mines of the Narshe, and Amarant and Lani arrived their first after tearing through all of their tasks. But . . . they weren't checked in first because of Lani killing her merchant. They were penalized for forty-five minutes, allowing Squall and Rinoa to check in first, winning a trip for two to Alexandria and balcony seats to the premiere of Vivi Orunitia's I Want to Be Your Crow as their prize. Edgar and Sabin, Fujin and Raijin, and Steiner and Beatrix also checked in during Amarant and Lani's penalty, finishing second, third, and fourth, respectively, sticking them with fifth place. Shinra and Rufus, after seeming screwed throughout most of the leg, stayed in the race, as well, finishing in sixth place, and Strago and Relm, thanks to Strago dying, ended the leg in seventh place. And in the end, there was a three-team race to the finish among Yuna and Rikku, Auron and Jecht, and Tifa and Paine. Both of the all-female teams were poised to outrun the former guardians, who had a short lead on them, but Auron and Jecht, desperate to stay in the race, performed a last-second trick to guarantee their survival. They dropped their backpacks behind them and tripped Tifa and Paine. Yuna and Rikku still managed to pass them, though, and they landed in eighth place, with Auron and Jecht right behind them in ninth. This left a bruised Tifa and Paine to ultimately go from first place to last and become the second team eliminated from the race. The good news for the two women, though, was that they'd at least won an all-new friendship with one another. Back to Top

Episode 3

Featured Games/Worlds: Final Fantasy VI (3 in U.S.) & Chrono Trigger Episode Summary: "We're stupid, right?" -Rikku The nine remaining teams, fresh off Tifa and Paine's surprising elimination, resumed the race, leaving the mining city of Narshe, and the entire World of Balance, behind and heading for Medina Village in the year 1000 A.D. Coworkers Amarant and Lani (especially Lani) lamented how they weren't working well as a team, and grandfather and granddaughter Strago and Relm were as good as new and ready to roll, having used a phoenix down on Strago following his death on the previous leg. Cousins Yuna and Rikku, after being lied to as to why grizzled old guys Auron and Jecht had gotten Tifa and Paine eliminated, offered to form an alliance with them. Auron and Jecht accepted the offer, fully intending to break their alliance later. To get to Medina Village, the teams had to search the house of Narshe's elder for a Gate Key that they'd use to go through a portal leading into a house of startled imps. Then, in a nearby square, they found clues directing to the Millennial Fair and a bell called Leene's Bell. To get there, they had to go through the Heckran Cave and jump in a whirlpool therein. The whirlpool shot them from the new world's mystic side to its human side, and from there, they made their way to the fair. Of course, Auron and Jecht broke their alliance with Yuna and Rikku twice on this part of the journey, first concealing the clue box in the square from them, and then setting up a fake clue box with a phony Roadblock requiring one of them to do one-hundred pushups... and the two girls actually fell for it! At the Millennial Fair, the teams encountered the actual Roadblock. This one saw one member of each team downing eight cans of beer within two minutes to get their next clue. If they failed, they'd have to go to the back of the line and try again, this time downing seven cans. Then, six cans, if they failed again, and so on. Edgar, Shinra, Steiner, Amarant, Auron, Fujin, Relm, Rikku, and Rinoa took the task for their teams. Edgar drank his beer quickly and got himself and Sabin into a comfortable, commanding lead. Rinoa completed the task, but got so drunk from it, she passed out, forcing Squall to carry her for the rest of the leg. Amarant and Fujin failed the task initially (with Fujin actually failing the task twice!), while Shinra and Steiner found interesting ways to speed right through it. Relm shocked everyone by drinking all eight beers in spite of her young age! The next stop was the Bangor Dome in the year 2300 A.D., and the teams would have to get there by traveling through Guardia Forest to reach a time portal. Most teams made it there with no problems, the only exceptions being dating knight and paladin Steiner and Beatrix, who wound up going to the End of Time, at first, thanks to an attempt by Squall to keep himself and Rinoa out in front by throwing Rinoa and one of their backpacks into the portal with them, giving their party an extra person (only the two team members and their cameraman could go through the portals without them going wrong). They were forced to leave Rinoa behind in order to continue on, and it took till almost all of the teams had left Guardia Forest for Squall to get Rinoa back. He was forced to jump into Yuna and Rikku's portal and get them all sent to the End of Time. Since what he'd done would no doubt get him and Rinoa penalized, he promised to help them survive the rest of leg, as Auron and Jecht's tricks had lost them so much time on the other teams. This came after a quick pep talk from him, telling him to get back at Auron and Jecht for their trickery. Once the teams reached Bangor Dome, they were then directed to the Arris Dome, what which they encountered the next Detour. This time, it was a choice between Sewers, which involved navigating through a sewer without making a sound, and Rats, which involved catching a rat that could talk in order to get a clue. Only father and son Shinra and Rufus and grandfather and granddaughter Strago and Relm chose and completed Sewers (though not without two initial failures and two impromptu bathroom breaks, one before and one during the task, on the latter team's part), while brother Edgar and Sabin (who were still enjoying their lead), Steiner and Beatrix, Amarant and Lani (who were now working surprisingly well together thanks to Amarant's drunken stupor following the Roadblock), Auron and Jecht, friends Fujin and Raijin (who had Fujin dealing with her own drunken stupor after three tries at the Roadblock), Yuna and Rikku, and dating couple Squall and Rinoa all chose and completed Rats (although Yuna and Rikku originally wanted to choose Sewers, Squall forced them into choosing Rats). It was a difficult challenge for Edgar and Sabin and Steiner and Beatrix, but Auron and Jecht ended up slowing the rat down when they accidentally made it take a bad fall, and Amarant's rough grip on it tenderized it enough to stop it from running completely, making the task easier for Fujin and Raijin, Yuna and Rikku, and Squall and the still-unconscious Rinoa. The Pit Stop was at yet another Dome, Proto Dome. And there, first place went to Edgar and Sabin, who won lifetime tickets to the Gold Saucer as their prize. And after falling victim to Auron and Jecht's dirty tricks, Yuna and Rikku ended up racing to avoid elimination. That fate was cast on Squall and Rinoa, who became the second team in a row to go from first to last. This came as a huge shock to Rinoa, who found out just as they'd reached the Pit Stop mat, seconds after awakening from sleeping off the alcohol. They were declared the third team eliminated from the race, with Rinoa at least feeling proud of herself and Squall for having done their best. And Squall rightly proud of himself for actually just doing his best. Back to Top

Episode 4

Featured Games/Worlds: Chrono Trigger Episode Summary: "You're not getting my fat ass up a mountain. " -President Shinra Having just lost Squall and Rinoa to the third elimination, the eight remaining teams got back to the race, setting off from Proto Dome in the post-Apocolyptic future in the year 2300 A.D. Brothers Edgar and Sabin looked to keep their lead on the other teams, father and son Shinra and Rufus looked to catch up to Edgar and Sabin, both of whom Rufus hated for leaving them behind at their castle on the second leg, and coworkers Amarant and Lani were back to their old fighting ways now that Amarant had slept off the beer from the previous leg. Meanwhile, friends Fujin and Raijin were back in tiptop shape (except for Fujin having a hangover from the previous leg), grandfather and granddaughter Strago and Relm were finally ready to step up their game and got themselves "PUMPED UP" (in Relm's words) prior to leaving the third Pit Start, while cousins Yuna and Rikku knew they needed to start listening to the now-departed Squall and start racing better, making smarter choices, and picking easier Detours. Speaking of which, the teams encountered the next Detour right off the bat, as it was the first clue they got before leaving the Pit Start! On this leg, teams were to choose between Sun, a completely luck-based task that involved battling the Son of the Sun at the Sun Palace and trying to shoot at the flames surrounding its eyeball with paintball guns and hitting the right one to score seven points, and Snow, which involved teams climbing up Death Peak, a snowy mountain with powerful winds, to reach the top and get their next clue. Shinra and Rufus, Edgar and Sabin, Fujin and Raijin, grizzled old guys Auron and Jecht, and Strago and Relm all chose and completed Sun, while Amarant and Lani, dating knight and paladin Steiner and Beatrix, and Yuna and Rikku all chose and completed Snow, with Beatrix using Steiner's armor for cover from the winds and Yuna and Rikku sticking to the tops of trees to avoid the winds entirely. Following the Detour, the teams had to fly to the city of Enhasa in the magic kingdom of Zeal. Two flights carried the teams. Edgar and Sabin, due to their big lead at the beginning of the leg (and Edgar charming a very ugly ticket woman definitely didn't hurt), and Steiner and Beatrix, due to their swift Detour completion, made it to the airport just in time to catch the first flight to Enhasa. Yuna and Rikku, Shinra and Rufus, Amarant and Lani, Fujin and Raijin, grizzled old guys Auron and Jecht, and Strago and Relm, on the other hand, were stuck taking the second flight. Upon reaching Enhasa, something new came into play: the Yield. The Yield was a device used by one team to stop another team behind them from racing until an accompanying hourglass was empty. It would've been preferable to use on a stronger team with the hopes of knocking its members out of the race, or on a weaker team who was constantly trailing to provide a time buffer. At Fujin and Raijin's urging (because they had skipped it, thinking they wouldn't need), Yuna and Rikku Yielded Auron and Jecht to get revenge on them for the rotten stunts they'd pulled on them, though Fujin and Raijin just needed the time buffer for the task that followed the Yield. And while Auron and Jecht were waiting out their Yield, Relm, thinking they might not be able to beat them, made one of the dumbest decisions of the race. Rather than try and take the time buffer to get ahead of Auron and Jecht, whom they'd passed at the Yield, she instead chose to form an alliance with them, something Strago was against, but he quickly relented and allowed. Before long, they wound up being carried through most of the leg on Auron and Jecht's backs. The task following the Yield was the very first non-Detour/non-Roadblock task of the race, and it tested the teams' logic. They needed to open three magic books to solve this riddle: "Water summons wind, wind makes fire dance." All that had to be done was opening the magic books relating to their specific elements in the order they were named: water, wind, and fire. Edgar and Sabin and Steiner and Beatrix, eager to keep their lead on the other six teams, worked together to figure out the riddle, with Beatrix taking the lead in solving it. A few other teams figured that out on their own, like Amarant and Lani, who accidentally wound up trapped where they'd found the clue thanks to Rufus. Yuna and Rikku and Fujin and Raijin pretty much had everything handed to them when, after Edgar and Sabin and Steiner and Beatrix had found the clue ahead of everyone else, they'd forgotten to hide where they'd hidden it. The teams traveled across some cold, snowy plains to reach the city of Kajar. There, they found the next Roadblock, which involved one team member scratching the back of a Nu, a blubbery, blue-skinned creature with a tuft of green hair on its head, until they found the one spot that'd fully satisfy it. Yuna, Shinra, Sabin, Amarant, Beatrix, Raijin, Jecht, and Relm took the task for their teams. Yuna and Shinra got the task done fast enough to pass Sabin and Beatrix, whose teams had been more than two hours ahead! Beatrix, meanwhile, lost time by scratching a Nu on the side rather than the back, sexually arousing it and making it secrete its sexual juices onto her fingers, which made her momentarily ill. The Pit Stop was at the famous Blackbird, a large flying ship, and in a surprising turn of events, Yuna and Rikku, who'd spent the first three legs as bottom-feeders, arrived there first! They didn't win a prize, but they were happy to finally be at the top of the pack. Shinra and Rufus came in right behind them, finishing in second place, but they were penalized by twenty minutes for trapping Amarant and Lani where they'd found their clue in Enhasa. Still, it didn't affect their position, as no one checked in during their penalty. Edgar and Sabin, despite getting passed, finished in third place, and despite Beatrix getting sick, Steiner and Beatrix survived, as well, coming in fifth place. In the end, bad luck at the Roadblock left Fujin and Raijin racing against trailing teams Auron and Jecht and Strago and Relm, who were again on the old men's backs, for last place. Fujin and Raijin came very close to finishing in last, but . . . at the last possible second, Auron and Jecht made a decision that potentially beat Relm's alliance plan as the dumbest move of the race thus far. Yearning to have stronger teams competing against them rather than weaker ones, they deliberately jumped backward, and their momentum sent Strago and Relm flying right off their backs, giving Fujin and Raijin the opening they needed to pass both teams and check in sixth. Auron and Jecht hit the mat in seventh place and crowed about their success in keeping a team they considered competition around, and how much fun they found it to personally knock another team out of the race, though it was a decision they might regret soon. Alas, Strago and Relm, after three seventh-place finishes in a row, had finally run out of luck. They finished last and became the fourth team eliminated from the race. Strago, though sad to have been eliminated, was really proud of his granddaughter, and Relm was just excited at the prospect of getting to talk to Baralai on The Early Final Fantasy Show! Back to Top

Episode 5

Featured Games/Worlds: Chrono Trigger & Secret of Evermore Episode Summary: "That starts with an R!" -Yuna The seven remaining teams, fresh off the elimination of Strago and Relm, continued on with their journey, leaving the middle ages of 12,000 B.C. behind and traveling to Nobilia in the simulated kingdom of Evermore. After claiming victory on the previous leg, cousins Yuna and Rikku hoped to remain as one of the frontrunners, friends Fujin and Raijin were glad to have barely been spared elimination, and grizzled old guys Auron and Jecht were, too late, beginning to doubt their decision of keeping Fujin and Raijin in the race at the expense of the weaker competition in Strago and Relm. All seven teams booked the same flight to the Roman-themed city of Nobilia, which took a whole day to fly to. Once they'd landed there, they were faced with the leg's Roadblock, which involved one member of each team shopping in a crowded market for a Ruby Heart -but only after obtaining all of the possible items for it. As a little trick, the chosen team members would either have to rely on finding one item (a Moxa Stick) or a combination of three items (a limestone tablet, a jeweled scarab, and a tapestry) to barter for the coveted Ruby Heart. Fujin, Lani, Beatrix, Auron, Rikku, Rufus, and Edgar took the tasks for their teams, with Fujin and Beatrix just going for the items needed to get the Moxa Stick, Auron, Rikku, Rufus, and Edgar purchasing the three-item combo, and Lani, after over an hour of frustration, just offering sexual favors to the merchant selling the Moxa Stick. The first of three Fast Forwards, tasks completed by teams looking to save their energy by being sent straight to the Pit Stop after their completion, came into play on this leg. Teams hoping to win it would have to trek through a desert to find an oasis with a man who teaches the alchemy spell Sting waiting there. Fujin and Raijin took the task, but they took a very long time to find it, even finding the wrong oasis at one point, and almost considered giving up and continuing on with the normal tasks of the race. They finally got it done, though, by using a fanning-out strategy to cover more ground in the desert and find the oasis. They were sent directly to the Pit Stop. The teams proceeding with the regular tasks of the leg took a floating boat, a boat rowed by the skeleton boatman, over the desert to the pirate city of Crustacia. Upon arrival, they found themselves tasked with the leg's Detour. On this leg, it was a choice between Guide, which involved one team member navigating through a maze of the Great Pyramid while the other team member opened and closed spear gates to guide them through it, or Glide, which involved searching one of four different paths in the Halls of Collosia for a set of spears to throw at a bridge control to extend a bridge toward the team so they could obtain their next clue. Dating knight and paladin Steiner and Beatrix, Yuna and Rikku, and father and son Shinra and Rufus all chose and completed Guide, with Steiner, Yuna, and Rufus navigating the maze while Beatrix, Rikku, and Shinra opened and closed the gates. All three team members in the maze had a problem they hadn't been alerted to, though. There skeleton buzzards all over the maze, and they attacked them as they tried to make their way through it. Steiner fought his way through with no huge struggle, but Yuna and Rufus had to team and blow the buzzards away using their guns. Meanwhile, coworkers Amarant and Lani, Auron and Jecht, and brothers Edgar and Sabin all chose and completed Glide. The former two teams completed it quickly, thanks to Amarant being a very good aim, and Auron and Jecht taking a risky gamble by hurling all of their spears at the same time, which paid off, but just barely. Edgar and Sabin, on the other hand, despite their confidence, perhaps were overconfident, as they took hours to hit their mark and didn't finally do so until they were in the back of the pack. The Pit Stop was at a camp called Horace's Camp, the camp of one of Evermore's founders, and Fujin and Raijin were the first team to arrive there, thanks entirely to the Fast Forward. They won no prize, but they were just glad to have found their way out of the desert without dehydrating. Steiner and Beatrix held the lead of the teams not taking the Fast Forward for most of the leg, but lost it when they got lost looking for the Pit Stop, allowing Amarant and Lani to sneak into second place, glad to find out the sexual favors Lani had offered at the Roadblock incurred them no penalty (though it would have if it'd been the merchant with the Ruby Heart and clue). Steiner and Beatrix finished in third place instead, happy to at least still be in the race. Auron and Jecht finished smack in the middle of the standings, checking in fourth, and Yuna and Rikku and Shinra and Rufus finished very close together, claiming fifth and sixth place, respectively. This meant, after their difficulties with the Glide Detour and failing to abandon it when it was clear the task was not for them, Edgar and Sabin finished last, hours after the other teams had finished, and in a very shocking turn of events, the strongest team in the race up to this point became the fifth team eliminated. 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Episode 6

Featured Games/Worlds: Secret of Evermore & Parasite Eve Episode Summary: "Only an idiot would not notice such obvious abbreviations!" -Captain Adelbert Steiner After reeling and recovering from the shock of Edgar and Sabin's elimination, the six remaining teams returned to the race, setting off from Horace's Camp in Evermore to find a way to the city of Podunk, USA. Little did any of the teams know, they could only get there through a floating space station known as Omnitopia. Friends Fujin and Raijin left the Pit Start first, but immediately got lost trying to find the place and wound up getting washed down and river and lost in a cave. Only an armored man working a well, who happened them, saved them, and he directed them to the tower of a man named Tinker, who sent them on a small shuttle up to Omnitopia, well ahead of the other five teams, who just relied on various forms of local help to find a firepit at which to wait for a flight up to Omnitopia. During this time, dating knight and paladin Steiner and Beatrix, despite knowing how shady grizzled old guys Auron and Jecht were, formed an alliance with them to get rid of the two potentially weakest teams left in the race -- cousins Yuna and Rikku and father and son Shinra and Rufus. Both teams, coincidentally, had joined up in an alliance of their own, having banded together to complete the previous leg's Guide Detour at the Great Pyramid. From Omnitopia, the teams took turns warping to Podunk with the help of a man named Professor Ruffleberg, whom everyone rudely snubbed except for coworkers Amarant and Lani. They all warped in groups. Fujin and Raijin were alone in the first group, Yuna and Rikku and Shinra and Rufus were in the second group, Auron and Jecht and Steiner and Beatrix were in the third group, and Amarant and Lani were alone in the fourth and last group. Once the teams had reached Podunk, they were instructed to fly to New York, New York. Fujin and Raijin, Yuna and Rikku, and Shinra and Rufus all managed to hop on the first flight there, while Auron and Jecht, Steiner and Beatrix, and Amarant and Lani were all stuck with the second flight. Once they'd landed in New York, the teams each had to drive one of six marked cars to Central Park to find their next clue. This clue was a Detour, which had teams choosing between Doing Time, which involved searching through paper-filled desks in an empty office of a police station to find a key to unlock a locker containing a clue, or Doing Broadway, which involved acting in a scene of a Broadway play to a director's satisfaction. Neither was physically demanding, so it didn't matter which Detour teams chose, for the most part. Still, Fujin and Raijin were the only team to choose and complete Doing Time, and did so quite methodically -- by shaking the drawers they pulled out and listening for a key. Yuna and Rikku, Shinra and Rufus, Steiner and Beatrix, and Amarant and Lani all chose and completed Doing Broadway, with none of them performing the scene perfectly, but all of them doing so in unique ways, and to the director's satisfaction (and Yuna and Rikku giving all who watched some girl-on-girl action when they, at Rufus's urging, kissed). The second of three Fast Forwards came into play on this leg. Teams hoping to get it simply had to find a horse and carriage in Central Park and ride it one time around the park. Auron and Jecht took the Fast Forward after unapologetically screwing over allies Steiner and Beatrix to take it, which made sense, as they were in the last group of teams, anyway (they'd arrived in New York two hours behind the three leading teams), and one of their teams would surely be last. However, the task wasn't as easy as they thought it'd be. A few minutes into the ride, their carriage driver caught fire from an unseen source and fell off their carriage, and so did the horses pulling their carriage. They surprisingly didn't panic, though there was much reason to. Still, they completed the whole ride around the park and got the Fast Forward, which directed them straight to the Pit Stop. The teams then headed for the Museum of Natural History, where they encountered the leg's Roadblock. For this one, a member of each team was tasked with searching the Museum of Natural History for the T-Rex exhibit, which they had no idea was moving. Fujin, Rikku, Shinra, Steiner, and Lani took the task for their teams. And while waiting for their partners, sparks flew between Yuna and Rufus, and the two racers grew closer. An attraction was clearly there. As for the actualy Roadblockers, Steiner finding the clue the fastest of all of them, and even then, only because he ran right into it upon entering the museum. Then, after the Roadblock, free maps of the city were offered to the teams. Fujin and Raijin and Steiner and Beatrix took one, but Yuna and Rikku, Shinra and Rufus, and Amarant and Lani didn't. The Pit Stop was at a gun shop in the New York borough of Soho, and Fujin and Raijin, Yuna and Rikku, and Shinra and Rufus all arrived there around the same time, and for that reason, Shinra suggested they all share first place. But before they all could jump onto the mat together, Fujin and Raijin made a stupid -- and not to mention mean and malicious -- maneuver by quickly stepping on before the other two teams, taking first place for themselves. They won no prize, just the accomplishment of having angered the teams behind them. Yuna and Rikku and Shinra and Rufus checked in second and third, respectively. Auron and Jecht's Fast Forward helped land them in fourth. It was then down to the two teams from Gaia, and only taking a map from the museum helped Steiner and Beatrix eke out the fifth-place finish ahead of Amarant and Lani, who wound up arriving in last place. It was their lucky day, though, as they weren't eliminated. It was the first of two non-elimination legs, which meant they were still in the race. However, they had to give up their money and all their possessions -- even the clothes on their backs. All they could keep was their passports. In addition, they'd get no money at the start of the next leg of the race, and they'd have to wear clothing the producers had provided -- two big, frilly pink dresses. They were officially down, but they planned to show the other teams that they certainly weren't out. Back to Top

Episode 7

Featured Games/Worlds: Parasite Eve & Kingdom Hearts Episode Summary: "WIMP." -Fujin Having no team eliminated on the previous leg, all six of the remaining teams left New York, New York, and headed for the world -- or, rather, worlds -- of Kingdom Hearts. Friends Fujin and Raijin were on edge, having finally realized just how much they might've ticked off cousins Yuna and Rikku and father and son Shinra and Rufus at the end of the previous leg (although the latter team wouldn't ever get the chance to show just how much, though the former team would). Dating knight and paladin Steiner and Beatrix hoped to get no tasks related to cars or any such technology, and relieved to have none, at least so far. Coworkers Amarant and Lani were feeling much embarrassment, having to leave the Pit Start in their dresses. Especially Amarant, who was left with his legs openly exposed. The teams reached the small town of Traverse Town through a magical doorway in a Soho pharmacy. There, they were surprised by a small moogle named Kuklux before obtaining the clue for the Roadblock, which saw one team member building a gummi ship with his or her own hands using parts provided, supervised by a man named Cid Highwind. The ships didn't need to be perfect, but they did need to look okay enough to fly. Shinra, Amarant, Rikku, Jecht, and Raijin took the tasks for their teams, with Rikku acing it due to her knowledge with machinery and building a perfect gummi ship. Amarant and Raijin also built fairly solid ships. Shinra and Jecht's weren't as good, especially Shinra's, but they were still passable. And during this time, Lani showed some smarts of her own by begging for money from a local while Amarant was doing the task, since they'd gotten none of their own at the start of the leg. The second non-Detour/non-Roadblock task of the entire race appeared at the teams' next destination, Wonderland. There, they had to figure out how to find and get through a hidden door to reach a clue in the Queen's Courtyard. It proved to be quite challenging for Yuna and Rikku to find, to the point where they eventually needed the help of a talking door to find the way through -- it was through a hole in a wall that was hidden behind a bed. Fujin and Raijin didn't have any trouble with the task, since they just watched Yuna and Rikku find the hole. It was then that Yuna and Rikku's hatred for Fujin and Raijin bubbled to the surface -- they first stole first place on the last leg, and then just mooched off what they'd done! Raijin offered them the chance to mooch off the next puzzle they solved, but the girls weren't buying it. They just focused on getting through the door by using provided bottles to either grow or shrink. They all shrank down to go through the door, got their clues, and then grew back up to normal size after getting out of there. Later on, grizzled old guys Auron and Jecht arrived at Wonderland, but they didn't even bother shrinking to go through the door. Jecht just reached through the small hole (that Yuna and Rikku and Fujin and Raijin had left uncovered) and pulled their still-small clue out of it. Amarant just kicked down the talking door rather than look through the hole, and he and Lani shrank down to go through it. And Shinra almost flattened Rufus and the entire room outside of the Queen's Courtyard, the Bizarre Room, when he drank from the growth bottle right away instead of the shrinking one. Nevertheless, all of the teams got their clues and quickly moved on to the next task. That next task was the Detour, and it had teams choosing between tasks in two different worlds -- and because both tasks were in both worlds, switching would be very costly. Barrels, which involved flying to Olympus Coliseum and completing two obstacle courses in which they had to break a number of barrels in a limited amount of time, and Branches, which involved flying to the Deep Jungle and sliding down a series of branches while avoiding low branches on the way, and then swinging across several vines to a small platform to get their next clue. Shinra and Rufus and Yuna and Rikku chose and completed Barrels, and both teams did so in great time. It was also there that Rikku, who'd noticed Yuna and Rufus's growing feelings for each other, repaired the Shinras' slow-moving gummi ship to make it fly better, just before they left the Detour. Meanwhile, Amarant and Lani, Auron and Jecht, and Fujin and Raijin all chose and completed Branches. None of their teams did the task perfectly, as Lani, Jecht, and Raijin all had their share of problems (Jecht and Raijin having the biggest problem of all -- falling at the vine portion of the task and losing time having to climb all the way back up and start the swinging again). But . . . where were Steiner and Beatrix during all this? Well, the third and last of three Fast Forwards came into play on this leg, and teams going for it had to find ten postcards hidden in various places throughout Traverse Town. Steiner and Beatrix decided to go for it, and they got the moogle who'd startled most of the teams, Kuklux, to help them in exchange for Superslick, an oil moogles drink to make their fur shiny. But they hit a major snag when Kuklux made a fatal attempt to stiff them by stealing the Superslick from Steiner's backpack while he wasn't looking (but he ended up killing himself, as it wasn't really Superslick he'd stolen and drinken, but a juice made from berries that were poisonous to moogles). And then, even more bad luck struck them when, after finding nine postcards, the tenth became too difficult to find. They started to get really frustrated, and Beatrix's once-determined attitude began to turn into a defeatist one, but when they realized they hadn't searched the highest points of the town, they quickly did so and found their final postcard, completing the task and getting them on their way to the Pit Stop in a luxurious, limousine-like gummi ship. The Pit Stop was inside a castle in the world Hollow Bastion, and Steiner and Beatrix wound up racing Shinra and Rufus, who'd passed all the leading teams thanks to Shinra spotting a lucky shortcut, for first place. In the end, the former team just edged out the latter for first place and won one-thousand gil each for a total of two-thousand gil! Shinra and Rufus barely finished second, now getting along better than they ever had been since the start of the race, though neither was willing to admit it. Amarant and Lani bounced from losing everything on the previous leg, going from last to third. And Yuna and Rikku dealt some well-deserved payback to Fujin and Raijin for their previous trickery by thinking they'd let them get on a moving platform with them that'd carry them up near the Pit Stop, but actually didn't, leaving them free to get to the Pit Stop in fourth place while the two friends were stuck in a dead heat with Auron and Jecht. The race to the finish between the teams was very, very close, and during it, Jecht and Fujin collided, each of them hurting their legs. They each charged on regardless, but in the end, just a few feet from the Pit Stop, Fujin had a horrific accident that left her knee injured (largely from colliding with Jecht), and because of it, Auron and Jecht finished fifth, though reluctantly, having witnessed her get hurt. Sadly for Fujin and Raijin, this meant they would be finishing last. They became the sixth team eliminated, as well as the third team so far to go from first place to last. It was a hard blow for them, especially since they'd won the last two legs, but with Fujin hurt, Raijin knew it was their time to go. They both left the race really proud of each other, and with some congratulatory hugs for Auron and Jecht on the great race they'd run so far before they went. Back to Top

Episode 8

Featured Games/Worlds: Kingdom Hearts & Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars Episode Summary: "That's creepy as peanut butter." -Lani Fresh off Fujin and Raijin's elimination, the five remaining teams left Hollow Bastion to briefly continue their jaunt through the worlds of Kingdom Hearts by racing to Halloween Town. Dating knight and paladin Steiner and Beatrix hatched a plan immediately upon leaving the Pit Start. The plan was to join up with father and son Shinra and Rufus to combine their efforts to get rid of two teams that were not only stronger, but mainly in thorn in both teams' sides -- coworkers Amarant and Lani and grizzled old guys Auron and Jecht. When they presented their offer to Shinra and Rufus, the Shinras accepted it. On other fronts, Amarant and Lani, now with more money on hand, had swapped out their dresses for bib overalls resembling those worn by farmers. Cousins Yuna and Rikku, excited about going to a Halloween-themed world, decided to dress for the occasion, and so, they did, with Yuna dressing up like an angel and Rikku like a devil. Auron and Jecht were in a dour mood now that Jecht's leg was hurt following his run-in with Fujin near the end of the previous leg. It had to be bandaged up. The teams had to take and direct one of five provided gummi taxi cabs to Halloween Town using a provided map of the galaxy, and right away, the first mistake of the leg was made. Shinra and Rufus, after sensing their first driver wasn't particularly competent, changed to another cab . . . but they took the map from the first cab with them, and didn't notice it till they were about halfway to the first Halloween Town. Awaiting the teams at Halloween Town was the Roadblock, which saw one team member bringing two remaining ingredients to the lab doctor of Halloween Town -- Memory and Surprise. For Memory, the team members were shown a blurry picture of The Nightmare Before Christmas's Sally and faced with the task of searching the town and correctly identifying her simply by asking her for a Forget-Me-Not. For the Surprise, they were tasked with going to the graveyard and finding the mayor, who gave them a short memorization task before giving them the Surprise. Yuna, Beatrix, Lani, Rufus, and Auron took the task for their teams, and it was here that Shinra and Rufus made another mistake. He had Shinra go back to Hollow Bastion and return their extra map to whatever team was left behind wondering where their map was (that team was Auron and Jecht). Meanwhile, Beatrix worked with Rufus to complete the Roadblock, but she didn't really care for the way he practically manhandled her initially, snapping at him harshly. She calmed down and apologized for her behavior after they'd completed the Memory half of the Roadblock, though, and the two were on their way to the Surprise half. Yuna, meanwhile, got help from a small, green creature to finish both halves of the task. Meanwhile, Lani, having completed the Surprise half very easily, got very lucky by spotting them leaving the place in which they'd found Sally and was able to complete that same part of the task quickly enough to grab the lead for herself and Amarant. Upon completion of the Roadblock, Steiner got into a fight with Beatrix over how long she'd taken to do the task with Rufus. He basically thought she'd cheated on him with the younger Shinra. Beatrix rightly defended herself, but just as angrily as Steiner had railed at her. They wound up leaving Halloween Town furious with one another, though they at least gained a second team as their allies -- Yuna and Rikku, who'd joined their alliance at Shinra and Rufus's suggestion. One by one, the teams got to the Culex Travel Agency at the End of the World to travel to the next world, the Mushroom Kingdom, and find Monstro Town. The portal to the Mushroom Kingdom was through a magical door, and the teams passed through it one at a time. They found a clue through the door telling them to find the Pipe Vault. The teams would have to pass through three different regions to get there. Or would they? Well, three of the teams sure did -- Steiner and Beatrix, Amarant and Lani, and Auron and Jecht. But Shinra and Rufus, with Yuna and Rikku joining them, took a very dangerous, very calculated risk, climbing up a beanstalk into a cloud kingdom and assuming the identities of royalty (and friends of royalty) to take a shortcut that involved traveling by air on a bus made of clouds to bypass the long path on foot. In the end, it paid off nicely, as they found themselves being the first two teams to reach the Pipe Vault. The teams reached the Pipe Vault and found the next Detour, which had teams choosing between Crash, which had them simply going on a long mining cart ride, or Splash, which had them going to a river course to fall down a waterfall and travel down the river on spinning barrels, all the while collecting forty coins, and having to start all over again if forty coins weren't collected by the time both courses were completed. Steiner and Beatrix and Auron and Jecht chose and completed Crash, with Steiner and Beatrix only making one mistake (their cart fell off the track once and injured their cameraman), and Auron and Jecht making several, making the task take a very long time for them. Yuna and Rikku, Amarant and Lani, and Shinra and Rufus all chose and completed Splash, completely aware of the risks involved. The risk paid off for all of their teams, as they all completed the task on their first tries. Amarant and Lani needed to complete that task on their first try, because the second and last Yield came into play on this leg, and with so few teams left, this was the right time to use it to try and knock a stronger team out of the race. Shinra and Rufus knew this, and thus knew they needed to use it correctly, especially with a penalty they knew they'd be hit with. So they used the Yield on Amarant and Lani, which put them back in last place and at serious risk for elimination. The Pit Stop was at the center of Tadpole Pond, and Shinra and Rufus arrived there first. They weren't checked in, however, because of their mistake with taking the map from Auron and Jecht's cab. That alone incurred them a twenty-seven-minute penalty for the time they were forced to wait. An additional fifteen minutes were added due to Shinra leaving the waiting area for the Roadblock to return the map to them, so they were stuck waiting out a forty-two-minute penalty. During this time, Yuna and Rikku and Steiner and Beatrix, who'd taken their injured cameraman to a nearby inn and waited for a new one to join them, wound up racing it out to reach the Pit Stop to see who'd get their first. Yuna and Rikku ultimately beat out the knight and paladin, claimed first place, and won a trip for two to the Nimbus Land Resort. Steiner and Beatrix came in second, though both were slightly bummed. Amarant and Lani bounced back from their Yield and finished third, very much relieved to still be in it. Auron and Jecht, after the latter had the spent most of the leg limping from place to place, arrived last at the Pit Stop, and while Gippal initially gave them hope that they'd made it in during the Shinras' penalty . . . they'd actually arrived thirty-six seconds after it'd ended and they'd officially been checked in fourth. This meant that Auron and Jecht, their bad move in keeping Fujin and Raijin in the race over Strago and Relm having come back to bite them, had finished last. The villains of the race were finally out of it, the seventh team eliminated. Back to Top

Episode 9

Featured Games/Worlds: Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars Episode Summary: "Me So Fatty. " -Rufus Shinra Things were now down to the final four as the four remaining teams, fresh off Auron and Jecht's elimination, resumed their journey through the Mushroom Kingdom. All four teams knew there was a chance that the leg they were starting could be a race for the final three, so it was time for each of them to step things up. Right off the bat, the teams received a non-Detour/non-Roadblock task as they had to compose a short, original melody using singing tadpoles to appease a great composer, Toadofsky. The teams that mostly excelled at this were teams with an aesthetic ear for music. Only dating knight and paladin Steiner and Beatrix fit this bill, as they were the only team that managed to pass the leading team, cousins Yuna and Rikku, in doing this task. Only the girls had to do the task twice. Getting to the next stop, the marriage-themed town of Marrymore, actually showed that while father and son Shinra and Rufus and Yuna and Rikku had gained an advantage on the last leg by taking the bus made of clouds, it turned out to be a disadvantage on this leg, as they had no clue that they'd actually gone by it. This is where traveling by land on the last leg proved to be a slight advantage for coworkers Amarant and Lani and Steiner and Beatrix, as their teams had passed through Marrymore ahead of time and knew where to go to find it. All four teams rode to the small town on Yoshis, and Yuna and Rikku quickly got lost by going in the complete opposite direction of the town. They realized their mistake, however, and turned back around. In Marrymore, the teams faced the next Roadblock, which had one team member searching a church for three pieces of a Marrymore bride's wedding gear: shoes, a ring, and a brooch. The one catch in the task was that the chosen team member had to stay quiet at all times, as the church had round-the-clock weddings going on, or else he or she would be thrown out of the church and be forced to start all over again. Amarant, Rufus, Yuna, and Steiner took the task for their teams, and only affected Steiner got kicked out of the church when he accidentally made a loud noise. While waiting the one minute necessary for trying again, he thought of a smart way to avoid making a sound that must be commended -- by removing the noisy chest plate of his armor. After Amarant and Steiner had finished the task and left with Lani and Beatrix, Shinra and Rikku lamented their teams being in the bottom two, thinking they'd be racing against one another for last place for sure. En route to the next destination, Land's End, navigational problems plagued Amarant and Lani and Steiner and Beatrix, both of whom had the bad luck of getting bad maps from a young Toad that were completely backwards except for the text on them, which meant the maps were basically sending the teams that had them the wrong way. However, Amarant and Lani picked up on this discrepancy and turned around quickly, while Steiner and Beatrix, thinking they'd turned around because they'd reached a clue box, kept going, heading for a clue box that just wasn't there. Additionally, Amarant and Lani turning around helped Yuna and Rikku, who were about to head the wrong way themselves, head in the right direction right behind the bounty hunters. Both of those teams were both behind Shinra and Rufus, though, who were the only team to go the right way after the Roadblock and reached Land's End first because of it. At that location was the Detour for the leg, and it had teams choosing between Cross, which had them crossing a bridge made of a material known as "donuts" that were susceptible to dropping (and, as a twist, having Bullet Bills fired at them while they were trying to cross), and Fire, which had them using a cannon to fire a Spiny up a mountain and into a small hole. Amarant and Lani and Yuna and Rikku chose and completed Cross, with Amarant and Lani completing it on their first attempt, but it took Yuna and Rikku eighteen attempts to get it done. Meanwhile, Shinra and Rufus and Steiner and Beatrix, who finally turned themselves around after going the wrong way for quite some time, chose and completed Fire, which Shinra and Rufus struggled at for a long time, but Steiner and Beatrix nailed the very first time they tried it, thanks to Steiner's great aim. The teams finally had to abandon their Yoshis upon completing the Detour and take cloud taxis to Nimbus Land, where they could find the Pit Stop. Through a surprising comeback after their map mishap, Amarant and Lani arrived first, before Gippal even got there, finally claiming a victory after nine legs in the race! They won a day of relaxation in some hot springs as their prize . . . as well as the first spot in the final three! Shinra and Rufus came in second (at which point Gippal was now at the mat) after spending so much of the leg thinking they were in last (not that they had any reason to think as much) and took the second spot in the final three. In the end, things came down Yuna and Rikku and Steiner and Beatrix. A team that made several mistakes throughout the whole leg and a team that only made one mistake were battling it out. In the end, several mistakes astonishingly trumped just one mistake as Yuna and Rikku finished third, taking the last spot in the final three. Which meant that Steiner and Beatrix finished last, hours after the first three teams had arrived, and became the eighth and final team eliminated. They'd lost their chance at the million gil, but the loving couple was happy to be walking away with an even better prize: each other. Back to Top

Episode 10

Featured Games/Worlds: Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars & Final Fantasy IX Episode Summary: "I love second place." -Rufus Shinra The final three teams, fresh off Steiner and Beatrix's emotional elimination, set off from Nimbus Land in the Mushroom Kingdom on the penultimate leg of the race and headed for Chocobo Air Garden in the world of Gaia. Even though the eliminations were now over, all three teams knew that they still had to worry about jockeying for position to simply put themselves in the best possible position going into the final leg of the race. Because of this, coworkers Amarant and Lani nearly regretted leaving their place in line in front of a bus station to get clean after their day in the hot springs had left them even stinkier than before. Father and son Shinra and Rufus let them slide one time, but they wouldn't be so generous again. Meanwhile, cousins Yuna and Rikku, having barely dodged elimination for the first time in six legs, were eager to see how chocobos were grown in a garden (don't ask). The three teams all caught the same cloud bus to Chocobo Air Garden, and during the ride, the bond between Yuna and Rufus grew even stronger, which Rikku thought was cute, but Shinra was a bit disturbed by. Amarant and Lani, on the other hand, just ignored it all and focused on themselves. Once at Chocobo Air Garden, the three teams faced the Roadblock, which saw a member of each team playing a game of Chocobo Hot and Cold. To complete the task, the chosen team member had to ride gold chocobos around a marked area and use their utterances of 'kweh' to determine how close they were to a buried item before digging it up. If the item was a valuable Chocograph, the task would be complete. Simply put, it was a luck-based task that required patience and the most methodical approach possible. Yuna, Lani, and Rufus took the task for their teams, with Yuna completing the task the fastest due to her doing the best job working with her chocobo. Lani and Rufus (especially Lani) had a bit of trouble their chocobos, though. In the meantime, Shinra annoyed and grossed out Rikku and Amarant over how he regularly feasted on chocobos. After the Roadblock was complete, the teams had to use their Chocographs to locate the pictured spot (which turned out to be the Ice Cavern) and go right to it on their gold chocobos. Once at the pictured location, the teams had to have their chocobos dig up a treasure chest with their next clue. Since Yuna and Rikku and Shinra and Rufus weren't exactly native to Gaia, finding local help seemed like the obvious way to get there. Yuna and Rikku did just that, finding a local soldier after getting lost and winding up in the rainy city of Burmecia, to help them out, and they thrived from it. Amarant and Lani, who were native to Gaia, knew just where to go to find the Ice Cavern. Shinra and Rufus simply used a map Shinra had purchased while Rufus had been doing the Roadblock. The teams then faced a task that required much stealth: slipping into the home of the Dali mayor, which contained his always-sleeping son, to get to a clue box without waking him up. Getting in and out without waking him up didn't seem to matter, just getting the clue before he woke up did. Still, any source of noise created problems for the teams, such as the wind blowing the door closed, so they had to do anything possible to avoid making noise. Yuna and Rikku did wake up the boy, but because they'd already gotten their clue, it probably didn't matter. They still finished the task. Amarant and Lani and Shinra and Rufus finished the task with no trouble at all. After the task, Yuna and Rikku were greeted with a whole new problem. Their Burmecian guide had stolen their golden chocobo to sell for cash, leaving them with no chocobo at all! They were forced to wait for production to bring them a new gold chocobo, but unfortunately for them, their replacement wasn't as nice as their first one. Still, their problem gave Amarant and Lani and Shinra and Rufus just the chance they needed to pass them. The Detour was the next, and it had teams choosing between Frogs, which had teams catching fifteen frogs in a marsh and presenting to a supervising Qu named Quale, and Duck, which had them collecting two of Gaia's thirteen Stellazzio coins in different parts of the world for a ducklike lady, Queen Stella of Treno. Amarant and Lani chose and completed Frogs, and had a bit of trouble with them, as they were very fast and hard to catch. But they caught fourteen of them in a trap made from some of Lani's clothes, and then, Amarant caught the last one himself. Meanwhile, Yuna and Rikku and Shinra and Rufus chose and completed Duck, and Yuna and Rikku got it done mainly through a large bit of help from Rufus, who let them know that one of the Stellazzio coins was right where they'd found the clue in Dali, much to Shinra's great dismay. They found the other one quickly, too, as their deceitful guide had accidentally left it behind when he stole their first gold chocobo, so they were already done with the task! Shinra and Rufus, on the other hand, had trouble looking for their two Stellazzio coins and required the help of Treno locals to help them. He even offered to pay a little girl one-hundred gil to show them where to find one, and almost stiffed her by paying her less when she helped her find it! His conscience kicked in, though, and he paid her the full amount. The Pit Stop was at the harbor of Lindblum Castle, and Yuna and Rikku arrived first! They won a prize that'd be given to them later. Amarant and Lani arrived second, having completed the Detour closer ot the Pit Stop. Shinra and Rufus, thanks largely to Rufus giving their slight advantage away to the girls at the Detour, finished last. They weren't eliminated, as it was the second and last non-elimination leg, but they still would be paying a heavy price. Gippal brought all Yuna and Rikku and Amarant and Lani out and sprang a twist on them that'd never been seen on the show before. The eight eliminated teams, save for Jenova, whose "voice" couldn't be picked up by cameras, and Strago, who was having problems staying alive, were brought back to help the final three teams run the final leg. Each team would receive help from two eliminated contestants that didn't have to be on the same original team. Each contestant chosen to rejoin the game would be given an incentive of ten-thousand gil if the team that chose him or her went on to win the race. As the first team to arrive at the Pit Stop, Yuna and Rikku's prize was the right to choose both people who'd be helping them from among Sephiroth, Tifa, Paine, Squall, Rinoa, Relm, Edgar, Sabin, Fujin, Raijin, Auron, Jecht, Steiner, and Beatrix. Wanting to keep their loyalty to the YRP and the Gullwings, they chose Paine first, and then followed it up with Squall. As the second team to arrive, Amarant and Lani could only choose one person to help, but then have the other chosen by Yuna and Rikku. They chose Jecht to help them, while Yuna and Rikku, at Squall's urging, added Rinoa to the bounty hunters' team. As the last team to arrive, Shinra and Rufus would have both people chosen for their team by Amarant and Lani. Their choices were Relm and Edgar, two potential hindrances to them, indeed. With the new teams formed, Gippal sent the racers not chosen back to where they were sequestered, the settlement of Cleyra, and then sent the ones still in the race -- or back in it -- off to rest up for the final leg. With the race for the million gil coming up, the three teams would need all the rest they could get. Back to Top

Episode 11

Featured Games/Worlds: Final Fantasy IX & Final Fantasy X Episode Summary: "See you at the finish line." -Rufus Shinra Ten legs ago, eleven teams set off from the Djose Temple in Spira and raced all the way to the harbor of Lindblum. After several grueling challenges and brushes with luck, good or bad, eight teams -- Jenova and Sephiroth, Tifa and Paine, Squall and Rinoa, Strago and Relm, Edgar and Sabin, Fujin and Raijin, Auron and Jecht, and Steiner and Beatrix -- were eliminated along the way, leaving three teams -- father and son Shinra and Rufus, cousins Yuna and Rikku, and coworkers Amarant and Lani -- to race it out for the one-million gil prize. Each team would be setting off the tenth and final Pit Start with their new teams, Relm and Edgar helping Shinra and Rufus, Paine and Squall helping Yuna and Rikku, and Rinoa and Jecht helping Amarant and Lani. The three teams and their chosen assistants set off from Lindblum Castle and were immediately tasked with flying airships to their next clue at Alexandria Castle, the core of the kingdom of Alexandria. With their assistants helping them, they needed to delegate four jobs among the team -- one person being the pilot, one person navigating, and the remaining two people shoveling coal to power the engine. The teams really had to play to their strengths and delegate correctly if they hoped to get things done right, as long as one member of the actual team piloted the ship. Yuna and Rikku made a bad choice putting Yuna in the navigator's spot, as she'd been pretty bad at navigating throughout the race, and nearly suffered for it when they came close to crashing into a mountain! Once in Alexandria, the teams uncovered the final Detour of the race, which was a choice between Fight, which had the teams staging a fight as part of a small play for a bunch of snobbish nobles, and Knight, which saw them searching a castle for eight knights -- Alexandria Castle's Knights of Pluto, who were were led by fourth-place-finisher Steiner. Shinra and Rufus's team was the only one to choose and complete Fight and put a decent play together pretty quickly, while Yuna and Rikku and Amarant and Lani's teams chose and completed Knight. Yuna, Rikku, Paine, and Squall all worked very well together to find the Knights of Pluto and finished the task in almost no time at all. And for the first time in the entire race, Rinoa proved herself useful when she demonstrated a good strategy in getting a knight to come to her team: feigning a distress call. It was a trick that which saved them a bit of time, although not much, as most of the other knights were too hard for them to find. The teams then flew to Ipsen's Castle, which they had to search for their next clue. Well, that, and battle a giant monster guarding the clue in a room at the top of the castle. The task was extremely physical and required the teams to be on their toes the entire time. Any battle strategy was necessary to beat the monster, and the teams used all the best moves they had at their disposal. Shinra, Rufus, and Edgar were left surprisingly powerless against the monster in their fight, and only Relm donning a fake mustache helped them defeat it, as she manipulated the monster to strike itself and knock itself out. Yuna and Rikku couldn't do much in their fight, having to rely on Paine and Squall to strike the finishing blow. Finally, Amarant and Lani pretty much had to rely on their own wits, as Rinoa and Jecht (mainly Rinoa) just weren't strong enough to face the monster. After the battle, the teams then faced an all-new racing mechanic called the Stop Sign. This would stop one of their assistants from racing with them before they continued on with only the other assistant to help them. Right there in Ipsen's Castle, each team stopped the member whom they thought would either help them the least, or whom they felt they didn't work all that well with -- Relm for Shinra and Rufus, Squall for Yuna and Rikku, and Rinoa for Amarant and Lani. The race moved on from Ipsen's Castle in Gaia to Macalania Temple in Spira, but only after the teams and their remaining assistants got back on their airships, flew out to the middle of the ocean, and jumped off their airships to land on a place called the Shimmering Island, which warped them right from Gaia to the Spira temple. Once inside the temple, the teams had to complete its Cloister of Trials to find a Destruction Sphere that would open the way to a treasure chest containing their next clue. This task required the teams to be careful, logical, and methodical in their search. And then, once found, use the right method to obtain it. Yuna and Rikku, with Paine assisting them, found it without much effort, since they'd been to the temple before, and took the lead. Shinra and Rufus (now only with Edgar helping them), who'd had the lead since arriving at the Detour but had now lost it, and Amarant and Lani (with only Jecht assisting them) essentially ended up lucking into finding them, although Amarant and Lani took a very long time to find it, which was a pity for them, as that was probably their last chance to get back in it after falling behind at the Detour. Battling machina was the next challenge after the temple. Much like battling the giant monster in the castle, not much was required except for a good battle strategy going in. Yuna, Rikku, and Paine had an expert in taking down machina and thrived for it. Shinra, Rufus, and Edgar struggled as a result of not having Thunder magic to easily fry the machina's circuits, but Edgar's special tools more than made up for it, nearly tearing the machina apart and killing the Al Bhed driving it. Not shown could be seen of Amarant and Lani's battle, possibly because they were well out of it. Still, the second and last Stop Sign came up after this task, and when their respective teams completed the task, Edgar, Paine, and Jecht were forced to say goodbye and let the actual teams continue their final tasks. What followed the machina battle was a trek through Macalania Woods and a run across the Thunder Plains to the town of Guadosalam. There, the teams faced the final Roadblock. It saw one member per team matching cardboard cutouts of the eliminated teams with cards of the greeters who stood with Gippal at each Pit Stop when that team was eliminated. (Those eight greeters were Owzer for Jenova and Sephiroth, Arvis for Tifa and Paine, Johnny for Squall and Rinoa, Dalton for Strago and Relm, Evil Robot Horace for Edgar and Sabin, the Beast for Fujin and Raijin, Frogfucius for Auron and Jecht, and Mallow for Steiner and Beatrix.) But as an added twist, cards of the greeters who stood at the Pit Stops for the two non-elimination legs were also included, and teams had to remember not to use them. (Those two greeters were Maeda for Amarant and Lani and Regent Cid for Shinra and Rufus.) Rufus and Yuna took the tasks for their teams. This task basically required a good memory to get it done, and Rufus helped his team regain the lead by having a slightly better memory, but Yuna wasn't far behind him, and she and Rikku were still easily in it. The final task was a quick search around the Thunder Plains for one of several rocks with a cactuar pictured on it. Behind each one was a clue. This task made all the difference, as where the teams found their final clues pretty much determined the final results. Shinra and Rufus, desperate to stay in the lead, made a bluff to get Yuna and Rikku to go after a cactuar rock in a spot they thought wasn't there while they took the opportunity to grab a clue from a cactuar rock in a place they had seen one -- right at the north entrance to the plains. But they had to move fast -- there actually was a cactuar rock where'd they thought they'd bluffed about it being, and Yuna and Rikku had found it and were now on their tails! It was a race between friends and allies for the big prize! In the end, it all came down to the final run to the finish line in the middle of the Calm Lands, where Gippal was waiting, along with Jenova and Sephiroth, Tifa and Paine, Squall and Rinoa, Strago and Relm, Edgar and Sabin, Fujin and Raijin, Auron and Jecht, and Steiner and Beatrix. But by the time it was all over, the winning team was decided after crossing the finish line first. After traveling across eight galaxies, seventeen worlds, and countless miles, Shinra and Rufus were declared the official winners of The Amazing Final Fantasy Race and would be taking home the one-million-gil prize! (And Relm and Edgar would each be taking home ten-thousand gil for their troubles.) The two shocked Shinras wound up in a tight, clenched hug out of pure happiness and shock at their victory and gave each other their dues for their respective parts in their victories. Yuna and Rikku crossed the finish line in second place two minutes later, disappointed, but not bitter about their loss in the slightest, and Yuna finally gave into her growing feelings for Rufus and made him blush when she kissed him on the cheek. Meanwhile, Amarant and Lani, who'd officially finished in a distant third place, had sat down in the middle of the Thunder Plains to stew over their loss. It'd been a thrilling race and an exciting season of The Amazing Final Fantasy Race, and one not soon to be forgotten. Back to Top