The only remaining dungeon to go through was the final one, the challenging Temple of Fiends revisited. Before going there, however, I still needed to level up the Iron Fists to Level 50 where their stats would be fully maxed out. Sure, your "ordinary" group might be able to beat the game at Level 28 or so, but the Iron Fists need every level they can get just to increase their piddly damage output that much further. Since the best place I had found to do this was in the Sea Shrine, I returned to the trapped battle square down on the floor right above Kraken. Here's a picture of what it looks like:
Entering into that white square always causes a battle against GrSharks, who have low defense and give good experience. Take a look:
Look at that damage! The Iron Fists have come a long way, I tell you. 
Just don't mention to Rock that he had to get all the way to Level 49 in order to do this kind of damage, and a Fighter equipped with the Ice Sword could do just as much at, say, Level 17 or so.
Now the Iron Fists don't use weapons in their battles, of course, but only because they follow their hero Solo's example. That's not to say they don't know HOW to use weapons or anything. It's just a personal vow taken out of respect for the great Black Belt. Why, if they had a mind to do so, they could create scenes of carnage like this:
That's a Level 50 Rock equipped with the Masmune and FASTed there. I think the Wolf's comment kind of sums up the situation. 
This battle was just for fun, but it does emphasize just how much of a variant the Iron Fists are actually operating under. I equipped Fist with that Flame Sword I've been carrying around (for his attack graphic color) to test some more and was appalled to see his damage leap from the 150 range to 500+ on every attack. You get so used to the low damage numbers, you don't even realize how weak the offense really is. Much like the situation with Rogue Revival, he he.
As you can see from the above picture, the Iron Fists did reach Level 50 after much leveling. The following screens show their final stats. First, the overall screen:
Rock and Fist just barely made it to 999 hit points; they only reached that number on their very final level up! Rock had approximately 1010hp and Fist would have roughly 1005hp if the game could display more than three digits. While I'm on the same subject, look at Cure's hit point growth too. It's definitely higher than Fast, and by a wide margin. Few people seem to realize that the White Mage gets more hit points than both the Red Mage and Black Mage, and ends up with hit points roughly equal to the Thief. They're more sturdy than you might think. I'll also point out here that Rock and Fist have no spells, those spell charges on the menu are going unused.
A compilation shot of everyone's statistics. I've come a long way with my photo editing techniques since my first Final Fantasy report on the Four White Mages. The only thing that really jumps out here is that Fist ended up with 11 more points in Luck than Rock. How did that happen? Did he find a four-leaf clover or something? I think everything else is pretty self-explanatory. It's a shame that you can't get to Level 51 - the Fighters both only need one more level up to get 6 hits!
This compilation shot shows the weapon and armor screens, as well as the spells that Fast and Cure were toting in their spellbooks. As far as weapons go, Rock and Fist both have Light Axes, since that's going to be the weapon they use to kill Chaos. I also couldn't bring myself to get rid of the Masmune, so that's here as well (but strictly for ornamental purposes). Fast has nothing, and Cure has the Heal Staff (which is critically important) as well as the weapons the Iron Fists use to create the pretty colors on their attack graphics.
The armor screen has a lot more going on. Rock and Fist both have a setup that gives them the maximum possible Absorb while still wearing a Ribbon (67). Fast and Cure both have an empty armor spot, which they're using to carry the Heal Helmet (also extremely important) and the White Shirt (see Heal Helmet). Fast doesn't have a Ribbon simply because out of all the characters I have, he is the least important one to keep alive. Cure is the only one who can cast the LIFE spells, and she also has access to spells like CUR4 and WALL that Fast never learned. Rock and Fist do literally 99% of the damage output between them, and serve as meat shields to boot. It was always extremely noticeable when one of them would be paralyzed; my offense would literally be cut in half. Fast isn't really that important once he casts FAST, so he is the odd man out and doesn't get the Ribbon.
Looking at the spells that Fast and Cure have, you can also see why Fast was declining in importance as the game progressed. Red Mages are awesome at the game's start, but they really tail off at the end of the quest. The spells for Fast and Cure are virtually identical from 1st to 4th level, but at 5th level and afterwards, Cure simply jumps far out ahead of Fast. Whereas at the start of the game Fast had been an all-purpose superman, here at the end he was more of a crippled White Mage than anything else, long eclipsed by the other members of the team. Fast would cast his one saving grace spell in boss battles and then sit back to use the Heal Helmet endlessly. What a change. Keep this in mind when forming parties in Final Fantasy; those Red Mages are great for most of the game, but they will decline eventually, and in a big way.
Alright, so down into the Temple of Fiends we go. Since I have the Masmune, you know that the Iron Fists have already made it down to the next-to-last floor before (I was doing test runs to practice), but this was the real deal and I would have to be more stingy with the spell charges this time. The first boss (of six) was the Phantom:
Now this guy is a joke for most parties, but it meant another drawn-out struggle for the Iron Fists. His Absorb 60 was about the limit of what Rock and Fist can do with their Damage of 34; most hits would do one damage, but one or two would do an extra point of damage, result in amusing printouts that read 10Hits!/12 Damage and the like. Anyway, the strategy for the Phantom was to have Cure cast WALL on Fast during the first round, while Fast used "his spell" on Rock. Then Fast would use the Heal Helmet continuously while Cure used the White Shirt six times in a row to make all the Iron Fists unhitable. The Phantom has a nasty attack too, 120-240 damage before Absorb is figured in. Once he couldn't hurt us, it was simply a long time beating down the boss' hit points. With 3 Ribbons and a WALL on Fast, his death spells similarly couldn't kill anyone. The one spell the Phantom cast that WAS dangerous was XFER, which removes the Ribbon/WALL defenses of a character. I simply countered that with another WALL from Cure, and that was that. The "Terminated" picture you see above was caused by another critical hit, as Rock certainly couldn't do that much damage otherwise. And yes, everyone has full hit points at the time the Phantom died, thanks to the Heal Staff/Helmet combo.
Down to the Earth floor (the random battles were a joke with this group's defense), and on to face Lich. The Iron Fists were going to have to use a somewhat different strategy against Lich, simply because his NUKE spell can fry them if the battle goes on for too long. Take a look:
Yeoch, that hurts. See, the real problem with Lich is that the spell NUKE is non-elemental; the damage can't be reduced with spells like WALL or the Ribbon. This is also the reason I never tried to take on WarMech with this group; his non-elemental Nuclear attack would have cut them to pieces (and he has Absorb 80 and 1000 hit points, both the same as Tiamat). Fortunately for this battle, Lich only has 500 hit points and a relatively low Absorb of 50, which Rock and Fist (now doing 34-68 damage per hit) can punch through. So Cure starts the battle by casting WALL on Fast (to protect from Lich's other spells) and Fast juiced up Rock and Fist. After that, Fast and Cure healed the group with the Heal item combo while the Fighters mindlessly attacked as usual. I wasn't worried about Lich's attack; come on, please attack me! It's one more round saved before you get through your spell progression to NUKE again. Fortunately, the Iron Fists managed to kill Lich before he could get off NUKE a second time. They could have survived it, of course (I was hit by it 3 times in a previous dungeon run and lived) but it was nice to avoid that kind of damage if I could.
The random monsters on the fire floor just let the Iron Fists restore their hit points. Kary had been beefed up a bit in terms of stats for this second encounter, but gained nothing as devastating as Lich's NUKE. A similar plan was used for this battle: WALL on Fast, FAST on Rock (but not Fist, because there were only 9 charges of FAST), and then a whole lot of uses of INV2/White Shirt, followed by repeated uses of the Heal Staff/Helmet combo. After the setup phase, Kary couldn't hit the Iron Fists, and all the damage done by her FIR3 spell was easily healed with the items. The battle was then long and boring, but eventually she hit the floor. The only other thing I'll mention is that the damage shown above is a good example of how Rock could "almost" get through Kary's defense; she had the same Absorb (60) as the Phantom.
No such luck on the attack against Kraken; his 70 Absorb was simply too high, and it was nothing but "5Hits!/5 Damage" for this boss. Unlike the other Fiends, Kraken here for the second time was actually dangerous before the Iron Fists got their defenses set. He still gets 8 hits here, and his Damage stat is MUCH higher than in the Sea Shrine; I got a textbook example of this when he attacked Fast on the first round of combat and did "8Hits!/540 Damage"! Yikes, that's a lot of damage! If Fast hadn't been Level 50 with a boatload of hit points, he would have been one-hit killed. As it was, Cure hastily popped a CUR4 on him the next round. No picture, my heart skipped a beat when I saw that attack.
Against Kraken, therefore, it was imperative to focus first on defense. I had Fast cast INV2 on the first round of battle and Cure use the White Shirt, ignoring the spell FAST for the moment. On the second round, Cure healed the mauling Fast had taken, while the aforementioned Red Mage used INV2 again. They both cast the spell again on round three, and Cure used the White Shirt in round four to take the team to unhitable status. Whew. Fast could then cast FAST on Rock (but not Fist, again to save spell charges) and Cure cast WALL on Fast as per the usual plan, followed by massive healing with the item combo. The only way Kraken could touch the Iron Fists was through use of LIT2, which was laughed off and healed with the Staff/Helmet combo. Once everyone had full hit points, Fast and Cure would join in the attacking (hey, nothing else to do). That led to this picture:
WHAT?! Cure killed Kraken!?! I kid you not, I love this girl. 
That was also on a critical hit, of course, but how often has YOUR white mage killed one of the Four Fiends - with bare fists, no less? I rest my case. (Btw, the hit points in this picture aren't at max because Kraken had just gone first and cast LIT2.)
On to Tiamat, and the Iron Fists certain't weren't getting through HIS defense, as demonstrated above. Tiamat can cast a lot of nasty elemental spells, but with each character shielded behind the protection of Ribbon/WALL, I wasn't exactly worried. The only dangerous thing Tiamat could do is cast the instant-death spell BANE before Cure cast WALL on Fast and gave him protection from it. So the battle starts out, Fist attacks, here comes Tiamat who uses BANE, and... NO! Please miss Fast! PLEASE!
Whew! It might seem silly, but that was by far the most dangerous moment in the battle. Cure then cast WALL on Fast, and that was that. Safe from all death spells. (Note: the ProRing doesn't protect against BANE or BRAK because they are considered Poison-element attacks. This is why a character with a Ribbon will never be killed by BANE, but one with just the ProRing can be.) I'm pretty sure that the Iron Fists could have beaten Tiamat even without Fast, but it would have been considerably longer and more dangerous without the increased damage from FAST and the constant healing from his Heal Helmet. After that first round, the battle was already over, it just remained for the drama to be played out. FAST, INV2, Heal Helmet/Staff... you get the idea. 40 or so rounds later, Tiamat dies.
The Iron Fists' journey was now rapidly coming to a close. There remained only one more foe to defeat, but Chaos presented a special case. Because he has the spell CUR4 in his arsenal, the Iron Fists simply can't whack him with their hands and wear him down over time. This is unfortunate, because it would be really entertaining to try and take out all 2000 of his hit points in 10 point chunks, all the while defending against his deadly elemental spells. Similarly, since both TMPR and SABR don't work, the only way to increase Damage is to equip weapons, and without those weapons, there's no way Rock and Fist can get through Chaos' 100 Absorb. Due to the rather unusual nature of this battle, I don't think it was against the spirit of the variant rules to use a weapon here.
I had chosen the Light Axe as the weapon to use quite a bit earlier, for a couple of reasons. First of all, there are two of them, so both Rock and Fist can have one. Secondly, the Light Axes increase Damage by 28, which is exactly the same as two casts of TMPR (if the spell worked). In other words, I would be creating the situation that would take place if the game actually worked the way it was supposed to. Finally, there's some nice symbolism in using the "Light" Axe against the boss Chaos. With the Axes, Rock and Fist would have their Damage increased to 62-124, which would be just enough to get through Chaos' 100 Absorb. Let's see how this works in practice.
The first time I fought Chaos, I forgot to equip the Light Axes. D'oh! 
This proved what I had expected would happen, that I could fight Chaos to a standstill but not do enough damage to kill him before he wiped it all out with CUR4. That meant I had to run the whole Temple of Fiends again. Skipping all those details, I made it back to Chaos again and this time actually equipped the Light Axes. Now look at the damage output:
Umm, wow, that's... better than I expected. By my estimate, Rock and Fist should have been doing something like 50-60 damage per attack. But I didn't factor in the critical hits (which you can't predict); here, two of Rock's nine hits have gone critical and together they've done 248 damage (the other seven hits have done a total of 36 damage). The surprising thing was that Rock and Fist kept getting critical hits, over and over again. I don't know why that was the case; I don't know what causes you to get critical hits more often at some times than others. Cure and Fast were setting up the WALL/INV2 shield, and I wasn't really paying attention to the damage Rock and Fist were doing. Any turn now, Chaos was going to cast CUR4 and wipe it all out anyway; I was only having the Fighters attack because there wasn't anything else for them to do. And... Chaos, umm, died. Before casting CUR4. I was so surprised, I didn't even get a picture of it.
There he is disintegrating after the deathblow. I totally missed the ball on this one, but I just didn't expect Chaos to go down so fast. He was killed on maybe round 8-10 of the battle; perhaps I was lulled into sleep by all those other boss battles. Wow, what a difference weapons can make!
So, final impressions. It's amazing how far you can go in this game with very little offense. To be honest, I could have beaten the Four Fiends with even LESS offensive power than this, although I might have died from boredom before the battle ended. High Absorb + an elemental shield with Ribbon/WALL + constant healing with the Heal Staff/Helmet literally made the Iron Fists all but invulnerable. CUR4 was the only reason why Chaos couldn't be killed. Astos... he's somewhat of a special case, mostly because his Absorb is so high for that point in time in the game and he possesses instant death attacks long before your characters can defend against them. Astos could have been killed without weapons, but it would have required a lot of luck on not getting killed by RUB and slowed with SLOW (or getting a ton of critical hits). Alternately, if TMPR actually worked, Astos could be killed easily with fists using it to increase Damage. Looking back, I'm not really upset with how I handled the situation. It too was kind of an unusual case.
I'm very proud of the makeup of the team too. Each character carved out a niche for him or herself and was vital to the overall success of the team. I don't think any other combo of characters would have been as effective at the end of the game, at least using the variant rules I picked. The Iron Fists were almost never in any danger at all, and though it took a while to kill anything, they always got the job done. Their only deaths were to Astos (a reset I took), the first battle with the Eye, a random battle with a Ghost pack in the Sea Shrine (when I just tried to run the first two rounds, not realizing you can't run from that battle - and I believe their high attack is due to a programming error), and the first battle with Chaos (if you consider stalemate a death). A very sturdy group on the whole.
Anyone who would like to try this variant or something similar is welcome to do so. It's a lot of fun, but be prepared to bring an ample supply of patience as well, because the going is awfully SLOOOOW at some times. The Iron Fists gave me an idea for another Final Fantasy variant, so expect to see another story here before too long...
