Welcome to the tower of nonsense

Immediately after the battle, Yang is revealed to have been a filthy liar when he said the king was safely evacuated earlier.

The uninjured monks are off sulking about the fact that no high kick on Earth could have possibly kicked an airship out of the sky. They didn't even have a fighting chance in that siege.

The injured monks are very confused about Baron suddenly having monsters in their military.

And Yang's wife is very proud of how much ass she personally kicked during the battle. Truly, the real shame is that Cecil has to settle for Yang instead of taking her along. She'd have this war sorted out in an afternoon.

After taking stock of the damages, Cecil and the others retire to the inn to figure out what they're going to do from here.

EDWARD.

THAT IS NOT YOUR CONCERN.

YOUR PEOPLE NEED YOU.

EDWARD.

GO BE KING OF DAMCYAN

EDWARD.

The plan is to steal an airship from Baron so that Cecil can pursue Golbez and recover Rosa. Her kidnapping has completely flipped the script on the "Thwart Baron's aggression" plot and now defeating Baron is just a stepping stone to saving Cecil's girlfriend (again).

Fortunately, Baron suffers a critical weakness, and that's lack of a robust navy.

Cecil doesn't say this, but I choose to believe that Baron has no navy because they keep converting all of their warships into airships.

They have shipwrights out there like, "JUST ONE. Can we have JUST ONE warship you don't strap wings to!?"

And Cid's out there like, "Nope! Fire it up, boys!"

The bedridden king not only grants Cecil the use of a boat for sneaking back into Baron, but also sends Yang with him. Like Edward, this is a questionable decision.

Yang was the only experienced monk Fabul had left after the massacre on Mt. Hobs even before the Battle of Fabul. Do. Uh. Do they not need his expertise to train what's left of their students?

Why would the king send Yang away now of all times?

The king also offers some explanation for why Fabul has Dark Knight equipment lying around, though this doesn't explain why they're producing and selling his gear in their store.

Unless it's a full set of the same gear. In which case, uh... What happened to the Dark Knight?

Either they're making equipment to sell to a customer base of "Some guy we met years ago" and nobody else....

Or they mugged him, took all his stuff, and threw him naked out into the wilderness. Or buried him in an unmarked grave near the castle.

Third option, the king kept all of his stuff out of spite after they broke up.

In any case, the important thing is that Cecil has a ship and also some forewarning that, as a Dark Knight, he'll never actually be able to stand up to Golbez. He'll never be the man to undo Baron's stranglehold on the world so long as he is still the monster of Baron's making.

It's something for him to stew on as he finally makes his way homeward.

How about you take your frying pan and go with Cecil and Rydia, while Edward goes home and Yang stays here to train new monks. How about that? I think that would be a perfect division of duties.

I choose to believe she trained the next generation of monks in Frying Pan Fu. It made them 10x more formidable than ever before. A key focus of their training was studying how to throw the frying pan with enough force to knock an airship out of the sky.

Unfortunately, as the ship approaches Baron, things go awry in the worst possible way.

If the massacre of Mist and Cecil forsaking his people for Rydia can be considered the end of the prologue, then I think Leviathan attacking the ship can probably be considered the end of Part 1. Everything changes here.

What's really interesting about Final Fantasy IV in comparison to other RPGs is how unstable the core party is. Unlike other games where you slowly build out a stable roster of characters, people drop in and drop out of Cecil's party all the time.

The Battle of Fabul and subsequent Leviathan attack are a wake-up call not to get too comfortable with any particular cast of characters.

Rosa's been taken by Golbez and just when it seemed like a plan was underway to bring her back, an ancient sea monster of myth and legend showed up for seemingly (not quite) no reason and ruined everything.