Finally, he grunts a lot and changes into something even less realistic and creepier than his regular form, if that’s possible. He becomes blue and floaty, and his hair turns into a big stone wall. Hey, don’t look at me, I’m just the recapper. Kimahri stares at Seymour, wondering if all of Wakka’s secondhand smoke has finally started to affect his senses, and then he tells everyone else to get the fuck out of there. Auron agrees with him, but Tightass is all, “But I wanna fight Seymour!” If I were Auron, I’d tell him to suit himself and then get my ass out of there. But no, Auron has to look out for Tightass again. He pulls out his big long sword and tells everyone to run. After another long pause in which everyone stands and looks at each other while Seymour floats happily nearby, they run. The screen goes black.
The next scene shows them running down the hallway. Tightass is screaming like a hyperactive child. Finally, Yuna stops and says, “I won’t leave Kimahri behind!” Instead of saying it with conviction, she breathily whines the line. Auron is all, “He’s protecting you, you stupid ass.” Yuna whines his name, about two seconds away from throwing a tantrum. Suddenly, Tightass pipes up with, “That’s right! We’re all guardians!” He goes on to tell Yuna that he’ll follow her anywhere. “Anywhere I go?” she breathlessly repeats. Tightass responds in the affirmative. “Well, then…” Yuna begins. “Let’s go!” they both say together. I shoot myself in the head.
The two of them run off, Tightass screaming at Kimahri to “leave some for [them].” Wakka and Rikku immediately follow. Meanwhile, Auron and Lulu wonder if someone slipped some Stupid Pills into the drinking water that morning. Lulu decides that she wants to be in the Wanker Gang, too. Auron makes a rather incredulous sound, and then reluctantly follows. After all, without him, everyone is pretty much toast.
When the scene fades back in, I have control of Tightass. There is a save point nearby, and somehow O’aka made his way into the hall as well. The guy must be a ninja. Kimahri and Seymour patiently wait for me to run around and build some levels, which is nice of them, I suppose. Nothing like having all the time in the world, is there?
After getting some new abilities for Yuna, the group avails themselves of O’aka’s services. And they buy some items, too. O’aka makes sure to explain that he’s on Yuna’s side, even though she’s a traitor. What a nice guy. The group makes it to Seymour and Kimahri just in time for the battle. Stonewall Seymour is accompanied by a little skeletal floating thing that makes no sense whatsoever. Before I get into the battle mechanics, however, I’ll go through the riveting conversations that take place during the trigger commands. Seymour asks if Tightass seeks release from his painful existence, to which Tightass responds, “You talk too much, Seymour.” The proper response would have been “Yes”, but it’s also true that Seymour talks too much. Auron says, “Although he was not the man I once knew…Kinoc was still my friend, Seymour. You will pay for his death!” He dramatically screams this last sentence, as if Kinoc were his long lost lover instead of some creepy friend from ten years ago. Dial it down a bit, Auron. Jesus.
Last and least, Seymour tells Yuna that she doesn’t seem pleased to see him. “I’ll only be pleased when you’re gone to the Farplane!” she insists, sounding a hell of a lot more convincing than any of her other lines in this recap. With all these pesky conversations out of the way, let’s get into the meat of the battle, shall we? Seymour — or Seymour Natus, as he’s pretentiously named in this incarnation — has about five bazillion HP. His little floating buddy has much less than that. The trick is to attack the floater, and when it comes back to life, it sucks HP from Seymour. Simple. Too bad I didn’t figure this out the first time through, when I constantly got turned to stone and then shattered. But let’s not dwell on the past.
Seymour disappears in an evil black cloud after the battle, which means he must be gone forever and ever, right? Yeah.
Of course this recap wouldn’t be complete without some Wankese. Over a black screen, Tightass wanks, “We escaped with our skins intact, but Yuna lost something.” I don’t even want to know what that was, if you catch my meaning. Tightass continues, “I could already tell, her faith was shaken. Yevon had betrayed her.” Now, I will admit that Yuna caught more shit in this Yevon deal than anyone else, but come on. Yevon betrayed everyone else, and they’re not throwing a big whiny mopey fit. Well, maybe Wakka is. “I felt like I should do or say something–anything…” That kind of thinking is only going to lead to trouble. Big, wanky trouble. Tightass yaps some more about not knowing what to do. “And then…”
The camera fades back in. Tightass, Wakka, Rikku, and Lulu are gathered around a pond in Macalania Forest. It’s nighttime. Auron and Kimahri have presumably left for greener pastures. Before I can do a happy dance for them, Auron shows up and announces that they’ve successfully escaped. He earns the No Fucking Shit award of the recap when he says, “We will have to avoid Bevelle in the future.” He asks about Yuna and Rikku informs him that Yuna went off by herself. So Yuna and Kimahri are conspicuously absent. Cue disturbing fanfic.
I regain control of Tightass. He talks to Lulu and Auron first, both of whom suggest that he go talk to Yuna. Knowing what is about to happen, I can’t help but put both of them on my shitlist. That makes me sad. Rikku decides that she isn’t going to stop Yuna if she wants to continue her pilgrimage, but she wonders if there’s a way to do the Final Summoning without dying. Then she adds, “I guess someone would’ve thought of it in the last thousand years, huh?” While she sort of has a point, I haven’t seen a lot of creative thinking from the people of Spira thus far, so nothing’s impossible. Then Rikku, too, suggests that Tightass talk to Yuna. Gah! I hate everyone! Only Wakka — Wakka, for Chrissakes — has anything non-wanky to say.
I walk around the only areas available, trying to make Tightass go anywhere but to Yuna. Unfortunately, the game designers have given me no choice. Tightass finds Kimahri standing guard near a pond. The camera pans up, showing the crystally forest and starry sky. Fireflies (not pyreflies, I think) float around. It’s all romantic and shit. My intuition is screaming at me to turn the game off right this second, but I’m committed to recapping this for you, so I press on.
Yuna stands boob deep in the pond. The pond is completely clear, so Yuna’s entire form is visible. Of course, the game designers didn’t feel like wasting their precious animation on mere gameplay mode, so all her clothing that is underwater looks exactly as it would out of the water. That is to say, not moving or billowing about at all. Yuna faces away from Tightass, but somehow she detects his presence on the shore. I’m guessing it’s because of his smell.
“I always thought this would be easier somehow,” she says. She goes on to explain her happy little expectations of the pilgrimage, with everyone helping her along the way and bunnies and assorted other woodland creatures frolicking through fields of flowers. “I’ve been trying so hard,” she finishes. Tightass, against all my hopes, joins her in the water. He suggests that she might be trying too hard. Wisdom…from Tightass? Along with Auron and Lulu annoying me? And Wakka not annoying me? Holy freaking shit, I’m in Bizarro World.
Tightass informs Yuna that he knows about her upcoming death. She seems a bit sad, and then Tightass apologizes for all the stupid shit he said to her before he knew. I know this is difficult to believe — it certainly is for me — but he actually doesn’t sound wanky. Even the usual whiny tone of voice has been replaced with one that sounds halfway decent. I’m…speechless. What is there to believe in anymore?
Tightass hopes that all his earlier wanking didn’t make her sad. “I wasn’t sad,” Yuna replies. “I was happy.” Because when someone talks about a time that you won’t see because you’re freaking dead, what could you be but happy? Stupid Yuna.
Suddenly, Tightass takes a big breath and plunges underwater. I become scared for a moment, but luckily, he swims away from Yuna, and not up her skirt. Whew. Yuna looks around like she doesn’t know where he is, even though the water is clear, and then looks all surprised when he pops up. There’s no point in him doing any swimming at all, but I guess the game designers finally stopped being lazy and wanted to animate this scene a little bit. “Yuna. Just don’t do it,” Tightass tells her. “The pilgrimage?” she wonders. Hell, there are a lot of things she just shouldn’t do. Tightass responds in the affirmative. He goes on to say, in a longwinded way, that Yuna should just forget about all that defeating Sin bullhonkey and just lead “a normal life.” Yuna looks down for a bit, and then says, “Maybe I will.” Well, if it’s a “normal” life, and not a horrific life, then obviously said life won’t be with Tightass. So hey, I’m all for it.
Yuna wonders if everyone will be surprised. Tightass assures her that Rikku, Lulu, and Wakka would be okay with it. Yuna figures that Kimahri will, too. “But Sir Auron…” she trails off. “I’ll make him understand, Yuna. It’s the least I can do for you,” Tightass insists. Okay, first of all, I doubt Auron would give a shit if Yuna decided not to go through with the pilgrimage. He’s only along because he promised her dad, not because he has any personal investment in her. Second, even if Auron did throw a giant hissy over it, how in the hell could Tightass make any difference? Yuna decides she’ll tell Auron herself, since “he deserves it.”
The camera swoops about prettily, and then slowly zooms in on Yuna, who floats on her back in the pond. She wonders aloud what she will do if she doesn’t continue her pilgrimage. Tightass suggests that the two of them go to Zanarkand. But not the crappy, ruined Zanarkand — his stupid Zanarkand. The one that, last we saw, was also destroyed by Sin. Oops. Tightass continues his little fantasy, saying that Yuna and all her buddies can fly to Zanarkand, and they’ll have a “big party at [his] place.” As long as they don’t play spin the bottle, I’m happy. Yuna’s all excited at the prospect of seeing Tightass’s shitty team play blitzball. “I’d cheer and cheer till I couldn’t cheer anymore!” Yuna lobotomizes.
They continue in this vein for a while, because Zanarkand is OMG TEH SOOPER, and then Tightass tries to get all poetic about the sea and the sunrise. The camera keeps swooping around, and some romantic music starts up. Bile rises in the back of my throat. And this is only the beginning. Offscreen, Yuna tells Tightass that she’d “like to see it someday.” I hope “it” refers to the Zanarkand sunrise.
After Tightass assures Yuna that she can, indeed, see it, a single tear dramatically falls into the water. We see that Yuna is crying. Well Jesus, the poor girl was hit on by Tightass. What did you expect? Actually, it turns out that she’s sad because no matter what, she can’t give up her pilgrimage. They pointlessly show her crying for an excruciatingly long time. And in light of what happens next, I wish the crying would go on forever.
At this point, I feel that it would be responsible of me to issue a warning. The next scene that I am about to describe is, thus far, the most horrifying scene in gaming history. And yes, I am counting all survival horror games and Final Fantasy VIII. It will most likely cause feelings of nausea, and extreme vomiting. Please do not read this if you just ate, or if you enjoy life at all. Please do not try to be brave. Leave now if you must.
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