The battle starts out with Seymour and his two pedophile guards. The guards are major dickweeds because they prevent anyone from hitting Seymour. They also like to cast Auto-Potion on themselves. Damn it. There are a few trigger commands, allowing characters to talk to Seymour. Wakka goes first. Of course he whines some more about fighting a maester, finishing with, “This can’t be happening!” Fucking hell. Oh well, it increases his magic defense, which I suppose is a good thing. On some level. Yuna reiterates her will to fight, in the same useless tone as before. “Your eyes, they burn with resolve…Beautiful.” The way Seymour says that last word makes me want to take a scalding hot shower and scrub myself with a wire brush. I’ll never be clean again. Tightass shows up for his one appearance in this battle, only to wank about how he knew Seymour was an ass as soon as they met. “Oh, my sincerest apologies,” Seymour replies. That pretty much makes no sense. Tightass’s strength increases, but since he won’t be doing any fighting in this battle, I pretty much wasted thirty seconds of my life.

After dispatching the Guado guards, Auron and Wakka pound on Seymour for a while. You may thank me for that mental image. When Seymour gets his ass beaten a bit, he summons Anima, the aeon that he called upon during the blitzball tournament. Yup, that big, ugly one. The hook comes down from the temple ceiling and everything. Its first move is to kill Auron. Well, that’s just great. Sure, the guy’s already dead, but that doesn’t mean he can’t die in battle. Just act like it makes sense. It makes it hurt less. After Auron is revived (but still dead), Yuna summons her newest aeon, from the ice temple. It’s the hottest ice woman ever, complete with blue skin, blue hair, and blue string bikini. No wonder she’s so cold. Even though everyone and their brother has seen this summon before in at least one Final Fantasy game, the game designers treat us like we’re all a bunch of morons, and only give the aeon’s name as “????”. So let’s just play along for now, even though we know this is Shiva. God damn game designers.

Uh, no thanks.

Despite the fact that Seymour is supposedly one of the strongest summoners ever, ???? pretty much kicks Anima’s ass. When it’s down to about 1,000 HP (from 18,000), Anima gets in its Overdrive. The game designers binged a little too much on the crack rocks before designing this sequence. ???? gets sucked down below the floor, where the other half of Anima awaits. It’s another body from the waist up, upside-down. It has a creepy horned skull with tassels on the horns, a weird-ass crown, and two arms chained at the wrists. It frees its hands and proceeds to punch the daylights out of poor ????. Of course, this would be enough for most people to get the point that this is a Really Powerful Attack. But not for us, apparently, as the game designers go crazy with blood effects, camera angles, explosions, and a weird glowing design in order to drive the point home. Needless to say, ???? is no more for this battle.

It only takes one hit from Wakka and one hit from Auron to finish off the big, crack-induced aeon. This prompts Seymour to proclaim, “That power that defeated Anima…It will be mine!” What — Auron? Um, I think our favorite guardian is a wee bit too old for Seymour. This is the part where Final Fantasy X actually becomes difficult. Now, I don’t need ten thousand fanboys writing to me and saying how easy FFX is. Here’s a cookie — congrats for being such a 1337 g4m3r d00d. I just thought this battle was difficult, what with Seymour casting spells that hit two people at once, often killing them in the process. I lied earlier — I ended up bringing Tightass into battle once more, only to cast Haste on Auron. That’s all he’s good for, if indeed Tightass can be considered good for anything. After a short while, Auron lays the final blow on Seymour, and I really regret typing that.

As Seymour falls to his knees, complete with nausea-inducing camera angles, Yuna rushes forward. She’s not all that smart. “Yuna…you would pity me now?” Seymour gasps. Yuna just stands there, looking vapid. Finally, Seymour falls backwards, and the camera pans up to show him in a Christ-like position. Oh, whatever, game designers. Yuna kneels down and closes Seymour’s eyes, just to make it perfectly clear that he’s dead. He’s dead as a doornail, deader than Auron, molested his last little boy, dead, dead, dead. Got it? Okay. Because you know this isn’t the last of Seymour, even though the game designers think they’re so crafty trying to trick us into thinking so.

At that moment, Tromell Guado makes his entrance along with two more creepy Guado, and needless to say, he’s less than thrilled. He demands to know what happened, causing Wakka to stammer, “What…what have I done?” Right, Wakka, because it’s all about you. Tool. Tightass tries to explain that Seymour’s the “bad guy,” making the whole deal sound really sketchy. Note to self: don’t let Tightass be the group spokesman anymore. “You did this?” Tromell whines, as if he even has to ask. Of course, it may not be apparent that a large battle just took place between Seymour and Yuna & pals, since no one looks the least bit bloody or exhausted or anything, but come on — there’s no one else in the God damn room. Get a clue, Tromell. Auron commands Yuna to send the pedophile, but Tromell shrills, “Stay away from him, traitors!” You don’t have to tell me twice. The two creepy Guado drag Seymour out of the room. As soon as Tromell waddles out, Yuna falls to her knees dramatically and breathes, “Traitors?” Wakka whines some more, and then Tightass takes charge again. Good lord. He thinks that if they just explain what happened that everything will be okay. “It won’t be that easy…” Auron says. “Let’s get out of here.”

I finally get to the name of the new aeon…it’s Shiva! Good golly, what a surprise! I keep the default name once again. The group heads out of the chamber and back through the snow tunnel. But it can’t be as easy as going from point A to point B. The snow tunnel disappears just as Tightass starts running through it. Sadly, though, he doesn’t fall to his death — he backflips onto the starting platform. There’s a lower level to the area, and just my luck, it’s the Cloister of Trials that I got to skip before. Apparently the party has all the time in the world to fuck around in here, even though they just murdered a maester, because no one enters the room to accost them. Whatever. I use the strategy guide to get through this area because I’m lazy. The first time I played through this, I accidentally went through the wrong door and had to do the whole godforsaken thing again. I blame Tightass. This time, however, Tightass doesn’t get in my way. I do everything correctly; I rebuild the stupid snow tunnel, and proceed back to the main chamber of the temple.

Of course, the group should have been smart and snuck out the back door. As it stands, Tromell and a bunch of Guado guards are waiting for them at the entrance. Uh-oh. Auron asks for a chance to explain. “No need, I already know what I’ll tell the other maesters,” Tromell creeps. He says that before Seymour was a maester, he was the Guado leader. “You’re not letting us go,” Tightass surmises. Whoa, wait a second — when did Tightass grow half a brain? He actually…figured something out on his own? Holy crap. “Let you go? Lord Seymour would never forgive us if we did,” Tromell replies, upping his creepiness to a whole new level. Again, color me surprised — I didn’t know such a thing was even possible. Rikku announces that they can just use Jyscal’s sphere as proof. But oh no! Tromell says, “You mean this?” and holds up the sphere. He crushes it, and I am sad for a moment as I wish that it could have been Tightass’s head instead. “The Guado take care of Guado affairs,” he announces, like we didn’t already know they were part of a huge cover-up involving underage children. At this, Auron tells the group to run. They do. I can’t say I blame him — I would have been running long before that point. Even though I’m well above the age where the Guado would be interested in molesting my ass, I’m still protective of it, you know? O’aka, who has been hanging around this whole time, follows the group outside. Like I’m really going to avail myself of his services — there’s no time to buy items when the pedophile Guado patrol is on the loose.

Tightass runs back up the spirally pathway, pursued by Guado guards. Unfortunately for me, Tightass is a slow piece of shit, and the Guado catch up to him, forcing me into numerous battles. Thanks a bunch, Tightass. The Guado only summon creatures that I’ve fought before in this area, coincidentally. I mean, I’d be really screwed if they called up, say, something from an area I haven’t even been to yet. But no, they’re completely stupid. During one of the battles, Wakka uncertainly says, “Are we supposed to run?” making me hate him even more. If he wasn’t so useful in battle, I’d send him the way of Tightass.

Oh no, Guado assrape! Nonononono!

When the party reaches Lake Macalania, three Guado guards can clearly be seen pursuing them. On the battle screen, however, there are only two. Either the game designers fucked up, or the other Guado saw Tightass and ran away to vomit. Whatever the case may be, I’m just glad I only have to fight two. I’m lazy like that. Suddenly, a big, hairy blue monster (not Kimahri) jumps over a nearby snowdrift, landing on the ice and causing the ground to shake. Wait, didn’t I just fight a boss? Since the game designers are dickholes, I guess I have no choice but to fight another one. The Guado serve the same purpose as they did in the Seymour battle — casting protective spells and using Auto-Potion. Obviously, I get rid of them first. Now, you might expect a big-ass blue monster to be slightly powerful, and perhaps it is. However, between Wakka’s Sleep Attack and Yuna’s aeons, the thing only gets two hits total on my party. Plus, it has the ever-so-scary move, “Put Fists Up in the Air.” I’m sure this is supposed to be followed by something truly frightful…only it isn’t on this particular playthrough. At all. So much for that jerk.