So I know I'm gonna forget about this unless I say it now.

Caius' dialogue and actions in Oerba match up well with the Caiusbot's dialogue and actions in Academia but not with what we see of the real Caius. He doesn't give a trout about Noel or Serah changing history so far as I can tell. The only thing that would annoy him about this is the fact they can ruin his plans and if this was really a problem for him, he wouldn't have waited so long to do something about it. He could have stopped them both in Oerba.

Yeul's personality is also really different. I said this before but Oerba 200 AF Yeul is creepy as trout and you almost get the feeling she's the one in charge and leading Caius. This doesn't match up at all with Miss Pure Goodness Yeul we see in almost every other timeline.

Either it's all a really badly red herring or they just were flying by the seat of their pants and solidifed these two's characterization later on.

I had a read of someof the Fragments I've been collecting. Some are pretty interesting, like the fact Caius has indeed been around for centuries, although I'm still unclear of the whole Chicken and Egg thing. Noel's little segment did not clarify if Caius had always been present or if his going off and meddling in things is what made him go back in time and be around for all those centuries. If he's always been Yeul's Guardian, it's kinda weird it took him this long to finally decide enough is enough. He didn't even do it when the Yeuls started dying super-fast ie. around the Fall of Cocoon, he waited another 700 years.

Still, kinda neat about him taking his last name from a warrior who almost killed him in the past.

I liked the Fragments that wee from Vanille's POV and I think Fang's as well. One of them was spot on about Lightning wasting her time protecting Etro because Etro frickin' sucks and is awful.

Welp that was a fun night of trivia.... And yes I did cheat and look up the answers to some of Captain Cryptic's BS Questions. What flower did Yeul have in 200 AF? She had a flower? As you might have noticed, observation is not my strong suit.

I also went back and got the 3 Fragments I missed from Dream New Bodhum.

That equals 148/160. The only other Fragments I can get before the end of the game are the last two map ones but I think I'll just leave that for postgame. I realize it's always been an option ot just halt the story and dive into the Historia Crux whenever you feel like it but I've never done that. Time travel games already have a severe blow dealt to their urgency. It was really hard to fear Lavos when we could literally do anything we wanted and Lavos was not in any way a threat to us. Same rule applies here. If I start Academia 500 AF and then abandon it to go hand in the map crap, it would completely destroy the atmosphere that the endgame is going to have.

But that is that for side stuff... Tomorrow will be the exciting conclusion. Followed by more side stuff. But at least then new and interesting things will be hapening because of Battlemania and Paradox Scope. Revisiting Dying World and Noel's dream and all that helped remind me how emotional all the buildup was for the grand finale. I've been doing sidequests for, what, 30 or 40 hours now and I needed that nice little shot in the arm of Plot. I am ready and excited to see what happens and how Serah dies and how Caius does not die.

Tomorrow. Right now, I'm going to bed.