There’s something big inside the tidal wave, but before we get to see much detail, we cut back to blitzball. The laws of physics and how they pertain to water does not seem to hold true in this universe. The ball travels through the water the same as it would anywhere else. Ah well, they wanted it to look cool.

But Jeanne, how can everyone stay underwater that long without any sort of artificial respiration, you ask. I don’t think they ever explain it. I’m pretty sure they’re holding their breath. The longest I ever could was for 45 seconds. Damn, I suck.

There’s all sorts of….naughty looking body contact in blitzball. Some guy wraps around Tightass from behind. Um…

Blah, blah, blitzball. Blah, blah, people running from tidal wave. Blah, blah, more blitzball. Tightass does some obnoxious show-off move where he jumps out of the sphere and into the air, and as he flips upside-down (in slow motion, of course) to kick the ball, the thing inside the tidal wave starts shooting fireballs. Tightass gets this “oh shit” look on his face, and the fireballs and tidal wave proceed to destroy the city. There is much footage of death and destruction, but “luckily”, Tightass manages to save himself by grabbing onto a ledge – and promptly falling.

The screen goes white, and then fades in on the ruined city, with a bunch of people running for their lives. Tightass is there. I guess he didn’t die from the fall. Oh well. Some urgent sounding music starts playing, and we see that red robe guy is standing over to the side. Tightass spots him. “Auron! What are you doing here?” Auron calmly replies, “I was waiting for you.” I wonder if Auron is Tightass’s sugar daddy. He’s quite a bit older than him, so I could see that. Except that Auron is cool and Tightass is a wanker.

“What are you talking about?” Tightass demands. Auron just walks away. I like him already. Tightass stands there, kind of stumbling around as people run past him. He’s making all sorts of wanky noises. Suddenly, the screen flashes and Mysterious Disappearing Kid is standing there. He has a wheel design on the back of his outfit. Not that I mentioned that for any reason. “Huh?” Tightass wanks, as he notices that everyone around him is frozen in place. “It begins,” MDK says. “Don’t cry.” Then the screen flashes again. MDK is gone, and everyone is running again. Tightass has a really wanky look on his face, like a dying fish or something. Then he runs off after Auron.

Tightass tells Auron not to go that way. “Look,” Auron says. Tightass looks. It’s a big floating ball of water with the giant monster inside it. “We called it ‘Sin’,” Auron explains. I suppose that line could be dirty, taken out of context, with the dictionary’s definition of the word “sin”. In this case, Sin is the sea monster.

Tightass stands there gaping like a fish some more as some huge tentacled thing embeds itself in the side of a building. Jeez, what is with Japanese people and tentacles? I don’t like where this is going. Tightass is mouthing something, but I guess they forgot to dub him. Whoops, game designers. There’s an FMV of little scales flying off the tentacled thing. These little scales land in front of Tightass and Auron and turn into monsters.

One of the monsters tries to attack Tightass as he flails around futilely, and makes some more wanky sounds. Apparently being a blitzball star does not prepare you to be a fighter. Tightass falls on his ass, and Auron sticks a sword in his face. “Take it,” he says. Those last two sentences could sound very dirty taken out of context.

Auron grabs Tightass by the wrist and pulls both him and the sword up with one hand. Tightass tries to lift the sword and falls on his ass. This little scene demonstrates how much cooler Auron is than Tightass. “A gift from Jecht,” Auron explains. “My old man?” Tightass asks. “No, the other Jecht. The one that hasn’t been mentioned ten times already,” Auron replies. Oh wait, that was me.

I guess it’s handy that Auron just happened to be carrying around this sword that Jecht gave him for ten years. I wonder if it got annoying at some point. I mean, Auron obviously had his own sword to carry around and stuff. I guess he put it the same place that the other 50 extra weapons are stored in RPGs.

“I hope you know how to use it,” Auron tells him. Auron is a badass. And the first battle against the sinscales demonstrates yet again just how much cooler he is than Tightass. He does twice as much damage. More importantly, he has a bigger sword. I like the guys with the big swords.

A bunch of sinscales attack as Tightass and Auron cut their way through and run down the street. Then it’s time to fight the big tentacled thing, or as us RPGers call it, the first boss. Luckily, a window pops up at the beginning of the battle to explain about overdrives, which are just another fancy name for limit breaks. Auron’s overdrive, in the “grand” tradition of Final Fantasy games, involves a button combo with a time limit. As I’ve mentioned in other recaps, I royally suck at button combos. I managed to nail this one, though. I feel cool. Auron’s attack manages to kill all the sinscales and now it’s just the giant tentacled thing.

To make a long recap less long — I beat it.

More running along the road. Tightass pauses long enough to say something snotty to the Jecht billboard. Auron stops and says “We’re expected.” I wish I knew what was going on, because none of this makes sense yet.

A huge number of sinscales, or more accurately, a buttload of sinscales, attacks. Auron gets the brilliant idea to knock down this big tanker nearby. I only know it’s a tanker because on the attack screen it says “tanker”. It falls down, explodes dramatically, and the Jecht billboard comes crashing down. I never want to see Jecht that big or that close up…..ever. Tightass goes running through all the fiery explosions in the street, and – I kid you not – ends up jumping off the edge in slo-mo, with flames all around him. It’s so Hollywood.

He grabs onto another ledge, and we go into FMV mode. Tightass hangs onto the edge, squirming around, grunting and humping it, while shrieking “Auron!” Auron just looks down at him, big sphere of Sin in the background, contemplating whether or not he should step on Tightass’s hands. At least that’s what I would be contemplating.

Tightass squirms and screams some more, and then there is a big hole in the sky that is sucking everything up. It’s Sin, I think. Auron looks up at it and says “You are sure.” I guess he speaks Sin-ese. Finally, he reaches down and lifts Tightass up by the front of his coat. With one hand, no less. I was kind of hoping he wouldn’t. Ah well. “This is it. This is your story. It all begins here,” Auron says. That makes two counts of someone saying it’s Tightass’s story. (TSC: 2) I wonder if this is a recurring theme.

The ledge they are standing on gets sucked into Sin’s giant ass or whatever that is, and so do Auron and Tightass. But not before the most annoyingly shrill scream from Tightass, and the most frightening close-up. Ever. I’m going to have nightmares.

Someone was smoking crack when they wrote the next scene. The screen is all white, and a voice is calling, “Hey! Hey!” It’s Tightass’s old man. We know this because Tightass says “My…old man?” There’s a big flaming symbol suspended over the city and what looks like the ruins of a stadium. This is all underwater. Tightass is swimming, and once I get him onto the floor of the “stadium”, he starts voiceovering again. “I…thought about a lot of things, like where I was, what I’d got myself into.” This voiceover stuff shall now be dubbed “Wankese”. A kid is standing in the center of the floor. Tightass continues in Wankese, “I started to feel light-headed…and then, sleepy.” The screen goes white again. Gee, that wasn’t the most pointless scene ever or anything.

Oh God, there’s more. Tightass wanks on about having a dream and not wanting to feel alone anymore. The camerawork looks like when my dad would videotape stuff and would forget to turn the camera off. Then the screen goes white again.

Fade back in on a bunch of ruins in the middle of the sea. The sky is black and stormy. Tightass wanks up….I mean wakes up on a rock. He’s moaning and grunting, but not in a sexual way. He starts crying out for Auron. Um….also not in a sexual way. I think. Auron is not there. Nor is anyone else. The camera pans over to a tower with a bunch of black birds flying around it. I get control of the game again and make Tightass swim over to the tower. There’s a little map in the corner with a blinking red arrow as if to say “Hey, dumbass! Go this way!” I oblige.

As Tightass approaches the building, he ends up on an ancient stone walkway. Of course, it collapses and sends him falling into the water. It’s funny how many times Tightass has fallen already in the game. And we’re less than an hour in. Tightass treads water and looks around for what seems like an eternity. Then, some fish attack him. This is the first time I get to hear the battle music. It’s disco-y. After fighting for a couple of easy rounds, a big fish shows up and eats the smaller fish. Then the big fish tries to attack Tightass. But this doesn’t happen in an instant. Nope, there’s a bunch of Tightass-looking-around shots and camera-through-the-water shots before the damn big fish even shows up. This is dragging on and on.

You know, Tightass’s hometown was just destroyed, he got sucked into some giant ass warp thingy, and now he’s stranded in the middle of nowhere. Am I the only one who wants to know what the hell is going on with the story? Could they possibly drag out this pointless scene any more? The answer is yes.

Now Tightass slips back into some bad Wankese: “I had made it out of the frying pan and into the freezer. I thought I was going to die in this place.” Nope, not yet, Tightass. Sorry to disappoint me.

Tightass emerges into a giant chamber, complete with creepy statues, falling water, and somber music. He’s cold. No, we don’t know this because he’s nipping out or anything (thank God), but because he says he’s cold about a million times. The first fetch quest of the game involves finding flint and tinder. This is easy, considering there are only three rooms to explore, plus, they give me a giant map. I’m getting cold just watching this…but then I realize it’s just f’ing cold in my house.