“Fiends!” Cid barks. “There’s nothing to do but–” Rikku pops up in front of him, imitating his accent, “But destroy the ship and all go down together!” Then she tells him to mellow out and quit with the overdramatic blowing up of shit. “If you crash the ship, we can’t go rescue Yunie!” she continues. Yeah, that’d be real tragic. I love how Rikku’s not concerned with her own life at all. “Leave the fiends to us professionals!” And who is in the foreground as she makes this proclamation? That’s right, she and Tightass. The two least professional people in the group. Wait, I forgot Wakka.

Tightass agrees with her, trying to look all studly. “Thanks!” Rikku chirps, like Tightass’s agreement means anything. Then Rin walks up and pointlessly comments, “Rikku, you’ve made some very good friends, I think.” I wish Cid would blow up the ship.

Since everyone is equipped, due to my wonderful predicting skills and not the strategy guide at all, the group heads out to do battle with the fiends that the stowaway pedophiles conveniently snuck on board. Everyone else, including GPM and his guardians, are standing around being completely useless. “We’ll leave the other compartments to you,” GPM helpfully says. “The other compartments” apparently means “all the compartments” because I run into fiends everywhere. Thanks, assholes.

Upon reaching the upper level, the view switches to Auron looking out the window at a large flying monster. It’s sinuous and dragony, but more apparent is its complete fruitiness. It’s all mincing with its gauzy iridescent wings, and it doesn’t look the least bit menacing. The only way this creature could be any less masculine is if it wore a fur-collared leather jacket and eyeliner.

Auron comments on the Squally dragon, saying that it is a “rare sight.” It turns out that it’s Evrae, the guardian wyrm of Bevelle. What, they couldn’t do any better than that? Lulu gets all dramatic about “the great sacred beast,” like it’s all impressive and shit. “The red carpet has teeth,” Auron comments. Yeah, itty bitty baby teeth.

“Wait, that means we’re close to Bevelle!” Tightass Einsteins. Before Auron has a chance to slap him like the little bitch he is (and no, I don’t need to read any erotic fanfiction about that), Cid’s voice blares out over the intercom. He announces that they’re going to fight the Squally Dragon, and that Rikku and her friends need to go up on deck and kick its ass. Now hold on a second. Cid has an airship equipped with enough deadly missiles to blow up an entire compound, but he needs these losers to hack away at it with their tiny (except for Auron) weapons? Rikku’s all, “That’s my dad for ya!” like he just asked them to go to the store and buy some damn Hi-Potions.

Auron dramatically comments, “The ferryman asks a high price.” Now, Auron is cool and all, don’t get me wrong. But what the hell kind of line is that? The group heads toward the elevator at the back of the ship, where Rin conveniently waits for them. Auron tells him to open the freaking hatch, but first Rin offers them some of his goods. No, not like that. Wakka pitches a hissy fit because Rin’s still charging them money. “If we lose, you’ll die too, buddy!” Wakka wanks, like it takes a lot of skill to go out there and hurl a stupid blitzball at a monster. “I have faith in your victory,” Rin replies, not giving a shit.

The party rides up the elevator and exits onto the deck. After Tightass makes what he thinks is a studly gesture, we get our first good look at the Squally Dragon. Remember how I said it couldn’t possibly be fruitier? Well, I was wrong. First of all, it’s pink. On top of that, the iridescent colors in its wings move in an animated pattern. Like disco lights. No, I’m really not kidding.

The dragon that makes Link look masculine.

The SD zooms right along with the airship as Cid opens up the sides of the ship to reveal the missiles. Well, that’ll be helpful, at least. Cid yells over the intercom again, and the group can magically hear him even though it’s probably pretty damn loud out there. Of course, they’re all standing up just fine, as if they’re not on top of a fast-moving airship, so I guess this is another one of those scenes where we conveniently ignore the laws of physics.

Cid says that they don’t want to let “her” get too far away. It appears that the Squally Dragon, like Poshul, is actually female. Well, color me surprised. I guess when I assume, I make and ASS out of U and ME. Now I know how random videogame fanboys feel when they find out that Kelly, Sam, and I are not gay men. But I digress.

The camera pans around dramatically for a while as the Dragon Formerly Known as the Squally Dragon rears its spiny head. Rikku covers her own head in fear, as if she’s never seen anything that ugly before. Hello, she’s been traveling with Tightass and Wakka this entire time.

There’s some more back and forth stuff between Cid and Rikku, where we learn the particular gimmick for this battle. Because it wouldn’t be an FFX boss battle without a God damn tutorial. Basically, Cid can move the airship away from the dragon, as long as either Rikku or Tightass tells him to. I’m not sure how this can be accomplished, unless Cid has the Biggest Fucking Microphone Ever attached to the outside of the airship, but whatever. The main point here is that Cid will only listen to Rikku or Tightass. I don’t think I need to explain what a bad situation this is. However, the advantage is that I can leave them out of the battle and switch them in quickly to give the command. Cid uses his turn to either pull away from the dragon, or, if the dragon is already far away, to bombard it with missiles. So the guy isn’t just sitting there with his thumb firmly ensconced in his ass — that’s good to know.

Now, TDFKATSD is a bit tougher than its effeminate appearance would indicate. That’s not saying much, but hear me out. The monster has one sucky attack — a poisonously poisonous venom attack that shall be the group’s undoing. This might seem quite daunting until you find out that Rikku can use her gigantic supply of Al Bhed potions to heal and un-poison the entire group. TDFKATSD also likes to turn characters to stone, but since it only does this to Tightass, I don’t really care.

A short time later, Auron lays the smackdown on TDFKATSD, and it goes down in the obligatory Overdone Death Scene. Then, the scene switches to the bridge, where Brother is having mechanical issues with the airship, of course. Cid yells (as if he has any other vocal style), “I see Bevelle!” One would expect a flashy FMV to follow these two statements, but instead, there’s the little after-battle experience screen. Those game designers sure know how to lay out these scenes.

Following the experience screen is, of course, said flashy FMV. The airship, trailing a cloud of smoke as black as my heart, zooms away from the camera, does a 180, and zooms straight into the camera and through the clouds. Meanwhile, we see Tightass (and the others in the background) holding onto the airship as it careens downward. This is yet another instance of the laws of physics getting brutally assraped. Then again, I’m just bitter because Tightass should be hurtling through the sky towards a very painful death and he’s not.

Speaking of painful, the next scene shows Yuna and Seymour’s separate walks up the aisle, accompanied by a bunch of robed guys in cylindrical hats who look like bottles of water. There’s a slow pan up Yuna’s front so the 2,643,754,352,549 Yuna cosplayers can see every detail of the dress. What looks like a rather traditional — if feathery — white dress is horribly marred by the fact that the front of the skirt is missing and Yuna is wearing white lace-up go-go boots. I can only assume that Seymour was responsible for this dress — or maybe Nomura just wanted to see a bunch of young girls wearing it at conventions.

We see a brief flash of armed guards — to warn us that we will soon be fighting battles — and then ten freaking minutes of Yuna and Seymour walking up the center aisle. Yuna doesn’t look happy, so perhaps the whole wedding night concept finally sunk in. Um, so to speak. As soon as the two of them reach the end of the aisle, the camera pans up to show us all the creepy pyreflies floating in the air. Now that’s festive.

Maester Kinoc, who of course is attending this “joyous” event, stares up at all the pyreflies. At his command, a bunch of warrior monks pull out their weapons. I just realized how wrong that sounds, and now I have an image in my head of a much more disturbing wedding scene. Suddenly, the airship comes barreling through the clouds — even though it already did this — and Kinoc shrieks, “Fire!” All the puny little guys fire their guns at the ginormous airship, not doing the least bit of damage. But it’s all dramatic and stuff.

Speaking of dramatic, at that point the airship sends out two giant cables with grappling hooks at the ends that imbed themselves in the walkway. That’s going to cost the Yevonites a lot of money to fix. Meanwhile, Yuna’s guardians surf down the cables onto the platform. Yes, you read that correctly — they mofoing surf down the mofoing cables. Again, this is supposed to be all cool. I suppose it is rather cool as long as you ignore the fact that it makes not one bit of sense, not to mention the fact that the entire scene focuses on Tightass. The game designers even tease me by having the non-Tightass cable almost decapitate him, and then they cop out by making Tightass do a fucking side flip onto it. This makes Baby Jesus cry. We briefly see flashes of the other characters…except for Lulu. That’s right — we’re just supposed to believe, without any proof, that a woman wearing a floor-length leather dress with fifty gazillion belts on the front and high heels is going to surf down a big cable. What-the-fucking-fuck-ever. [Note: After I originally posted this, several readers kindly pointed out to me that Kimahri is actually carrying Lulu in this scene. I must have briefly blacked out while recapping.]

Back in regular gameplay mode, Yuna is concerned about her guardians, but Seymour holds her back. At this point, it becomes very obvious that Yuna does not look good with her hair up. In fact, she looks quite manly. Manlier than Tightass anyway, like that’s saying anything. The camera switches to show Tightass, still in drama mode, running forward and shrieking, “Yuna!”

I get control of Tightass again, and make my way up the aisle. The obstacle here is, of course, the guards and their stupid battle machina. Some of the guards must have pissed off their superiors, because they have these piddly little guns that do shit for damage. However, the guys who did a lot of “special favors” for their bosses got these giant flame throwers that give me bad ouchies. Regardless, all of these guys are rather unintelligent. They’ve got guns and flamethrowers and missiles and robots that kick people out of battle, yet they don’t think to gang up on Tightass and the others. Nope, they attack in groups of three. Also, Seymour just stands there in the background instead of unleashing a devastating magical attack or summoning Anima. Of course, that makes it a lot easier for me gameplay-wise, but then Tightass doesn’t die horribly and I’m sad.

I think I want to marry this robot.

Now, the following scene has to be one of the most nonsensical, poorly plotted scenes in videogame history. Not to mention disturbing. Tightass and the others arrive at the base of the stairs, complete with overly dramatic Tightass feet slide. Tightass looks up to see Kinoc’s gun pointed squarely at his face. Despite how wrong that sentence sounds, I am rooting for Kinoc. Tightass, stupid wanker that he is, tries to lunge forward, but Auron stops him with his body. I am suddenly very angry with Auron, not only for stopping what could have potentially been the greatest scene ever, but also for forcing me to see the two of them with their bodies pressed together. It hurts like burning. At this point, Yuna’s guardians look around only to find that they are now surrounded by armed guards. I guess the guards finally wised up.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Next, we see Yuna, holding her staff behind her back, as if to conceal it. The only problem with this is that we’ve already seen her from all directions, with her hands in front of her no less, and there was no staff. I can only assume that she’s been hiding it up her butt, because that makes more sense than any other possible explanation. She slowly starts to bring the staff forward.

Meanwhile, since Auron has moved away from him (thank God), Tightass tries to lunge forward again. I don’t know what he expected to happen, but unsurprisingly, he ends up with the muzzle of Kinoc’s gun right in his face. He stares at Yuna, mouth agape like an idiot. By this time, Yuna stands with her staff out in front of her, facing Seymour. “You would play at marriage just for a chance to send me?” he creeps, as if this in any way could be considered a shock. “Your resolve is admirable. All the more fitting to be my lovely wife.” God is there anything that doesn’t turn him on? Besides adults, I mean.