Disturbingly, we fade back in on the same shot of Tightass, only Auron is turned away from him. Why did they blank out the screen? What ungodly thing happened here that they couldn’t show us? “Auron…” Tightass says quietly. “Will I ever go home? Back to Zanarkand?” Note how he still doesn’t ask Auron how one gets from Spira to Zanarkand. “That’s up to Jecht,” Auron replies, giving us a tiny inkling of how Tightass could potentially return. “I’m going to offer my services to Yuna,” Auron says, walking away. First he offers his “services” to Braska and Jecht, and now Yuna. The dude gets around, that’s for sure. At last, the scene ends.
Tightass and Auron make their way over to where the others are. Just before they get there, we have another cutscene with Yuna and pals. Wakka asks about Tightass. “Do you think he’s gonna stay here?” There’s almost a hopeful note in his voice, or maybe that’s just projection on my part. Lulu says that Wakka was right — Tightass did find someone he knew in Luca. Yuna’s concerned about Tightass finding his way back to Zanarkand, and Wakka says he’ll miss having Tightass around. I guess that’s what happens when you get a little too blitzed on the blitzbong. Yuna wants to go see Tightass, and, as if on cue, Tightass shows up right at that moment, walking several steps behind Auron and pouting. Auron’s Theme of Ambiguously Gay Guardian Porn starts up again. Wakka and Yuna are almost speechless in the awesome presence of Sir Auron. In unison, Yuna, Wakka, and Lulu bow to the coolest guardian ever. Meanwhile, Tightass, the wankiest guardian ever, stands there, scuffing his feet on the ground like a loser.
“Yuna, I wish to become your guardian. Do you accept?” Auron says. He doesn’t waste any time, does he? When Yuna makes a sound of surprise, Auron asks her if she refuses. “No, no!” Yuna quickly replies. “We accept! Right, everyone?” Damn right, they accept. Lulu asks why he wants to become Yuna’s guardian. “I promised Braska,” Auron says. “You promised my father?” Yuna repeats. Auron silently wonders if Yuna is as stupid as Tightass, but in a less screechy way. She thanks him, and Auron roughly grabs the still pouting Tightass by the arm and drags him forward. “And…he comes too.” Auron’s voice drips with disgust. It’s time for Tightass to look stupid again. “Hi…guys. Eh…howdy!” Howdy? Ugh. “This one I promised Jecht,” Auron says in an even more disgusted tone, wanting to make sure everyone knows that this is not his idea. Yuna asks if Jecht is alive, and Auron responds, “Can’t say. Haven’t seen him in ten years. You’ll meet eventually.” Can you tell I love recapping Auron’s lines? Well, I do.
Yuna says she’s looking forward to meeting Jecht again, and this is supposed to be ironic because Jecht is the very thing she hates and has sworn to defeat. Get it? Isn’t that all ironic and stuff? Auron looks around at everyone, apparently trying to figure out who is the least airheaded of the entire bunch. He settles on Lulu. Good choice. “What’s our itinerary? Where are we headed?” he asks.
Yuna takes this opportunity to invite Tightass away from the others. He takes his sweet time walking over to her (because I have control of him now, and I’m trying to avoid the next scene). I keep hoping that she’ll throw him over the railing and onto the rocks below, but she doesn’t. Instead, she initiates what ends up being one of the scariest scenes in the game. Share my pain.
Yuna reveals her reason for luring him away from the others. She can whistle now! Isn’t that great? Tightass tries to sound happy for her, but he’s still being a whiny little wanker and feeling sorry for himself. Yuna picks up on this, only she’s concerned rather than annoyed. “Wanna scream?” she asks in a joking manner. “I really don’t think that’s gonna help this time.” It’s time for Yuna to give Tightass a little lecture on how not to be a mopey asshole. This could take all day, folks.
Add that one to the list of things I did not need to know.
The sappy Yuna Theme plays in the background as Yuna explains her outlook to Tightass. “It’s embarrassing to say this myself…But summoners and their guardians are kind of like Spira’s ray of light.” That means that Tightass is somehow a ray of light for Spira. Poor, poor Spira. Yuna says that she’s learned to look happy on the outside even when she’s feeling sad, for Spira’s sake. Tightass says he understands. But does he? Probably not. “Right. Let’s see what you can do,” Yuna says, prompting Tightass’s catchphrase, “Huh?” She waits, tilting her head to the side like she’s speaking to a small child. She’s not far off in this case. Tightass spends the next few seconds or so attempting to smile. It’s a pitiful, pitiful effort, full of grunts and groans, and the visual results are beyond ghastly. How could Yuna watch that and ever want to have sex with him?
Tightass stops trying to fake it and giggles a little. “This is weird,” he says. Yeah, because faking a smile is akin to performing open heart surgery in its difficulty. Jeebus, most of us can manage to fake a smile for the average picture without having to use our hands, and definitely without grunting. “Next, try laughing out loud,” Yuna tells him. And here’s where it all goes horribly wrong. Tightass grunts a little, takes a few deep breaths (involving several horrific close-ups of his chest), and then makes a sound that could only be considered laughing if the definition of laughing was “a loud, obnoxious, repetitive shouting sound that causes small children and everyone else in the entire universe to run away in fear.” The closest written approximation is, “AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA,” but that doesn’t come close to describing the wankiness of the sound. While he does this repeatedly, the camera pans over the stunned faces of Auron, Wakka, and Lulu. Auron and Lulu are actively contemplating homicide, whereas Wakka doesn’t know if he should vomit, hump Tightass, or run away. The dangers of drugs, kids.
*scream of horror*
Even Yuna is scared. “You probably shouldn’t laugh any more,” she says in a concerned tone. But he doesn’t stop. God help me, he doesn’t stop. As the horror continues, the sky turns black, blood starts raining down from the heavens, and Baby Jesus cries. And yet it continues to worsen. Yuna, drawn in by the evil powers of the Laugh of Wankosity, joins in. We are then subjected to not just one, but two soul-sucking demonic howls. Finally, the two of them collapse in real laughter, which is less frightening, but almost as wanky. I guess the moral that we’re supposed to get out of this is that if you ever have to fake being happy, just scare the ever-loving shit out of everyone around you.
“Thank you,” Yuna says suddenly. Tightass looks at her. “I want my journey to be full of laughter,” she finishes. I hope she doesn’t mean the kind that we just witnessed, because I’d like to keep my eardrums intact and not stab them with an icepick. If she’s talking about the normal kind of laughter, well, as long as Tightass gets hurt a lot, I’m sure everyone will be laughing. Or at least I will, and that’s what counts.
“If we should get separated, just whistle. I’ll come running. I promise,” Yuna randomly says, in case we are all idiots who totally missed it when Tightass said the same thing to her. Note to game designers: Just because you repeat it doesn’t make it any less of a Final Fantasy VIII ripoff. They stare at each other and giggle stupidly for a while, and then it’s time to go.
As the two of them turn around, they notice the others staring at them. Wakka says, “We were just worried that you guys might’ve gone crazy!” I was worried that I was going to go crazy. Yuna apologizes, but I think she owes them more than just a simple apology. “Now, we will go to the temple at Djose,” Yuna tells them. “And guardians? Don’t forget to smile.” I’m sure they’ll be smiling as they drive a stake through Tightass’s heart.
From now until the end of the recap, the party is walking down a big dirt road with a bunch of mostly-buried ruins. That’s it. Walking, a big dirt road, and ruins. Oh, and random battles. Now that you know what’s going on, I will only recap the events of note along the way.
The first event is a bad and nightmare-inducing one — Tightass running up the stairs from Luca to said dirt road and stretching, grunting the entire way. Honestly, can the guy do anything without making some stupid sound? Saving at the nearby save point reveals that our favorite restorative spheres can now be used to teleport Tightass to the blitzball stadium! So now Tightass can take breaks from the stupid pilgrimage and play blitzball. You know what else? Wakka can play, too! You see where I’m going with this, don’t you? Remember that drawn-out scene, fifteen minutes past, where Wakka retired from blitzball and told Yuna he was going to be a full-time guardian? Whoops, game designers.
Tightass takes this opportunity to practice the ‘gay RPG male lead stance’.
There’s an old guy with a pointy hat standing next to a statue. He is Maechen, a scholar, and his job is to provide all the exposition that doesn’t come up during the course of the story. His new name is “Exposition!Man” (or E!M for short). “This is a statue of Lord Mi’ihen,” he explains. He goes on to tell about how Lord Mi’ihen formed the Crusaders, whose ranks became so large, that the maesters of Yevon felt threatened. Go fig. Mi’ihen walked along the big dirt road to face the maesters, and they ended up making the Crusaders a part of the church. Now the big dirt road is called the “Mi’ihen Highroad” as if that is supposed to make it cooler. Maybe they should pave it.
All the random people along the Mi’ihen Dirtroad like giving healing items and other such gifts to summoners. Hey, I’m not going to argue.
The first random battle along the way brings us a pleasant surprise — a tutorial about Auron’s battle strengths. The scene is presented in such a way as to make Tightass look like a total choad. The creature that attacks them resembles an armored mole. “Hah! That one looks slow,” Tightass says, trying to seem cool. “It’s also tough. Let me handle this,” Auron replies contemptuously. But why would Tightass listen to someone who actually has experience with battling creatures in Spira, who also happens to be the most kickassingest guardian ever? “No way! I can take it!” Tightass arrogantly wanks. Of course he does a piddly amount of damage to it…and is surprised. Idiot. Auron just scoffs at him, and proceeds to do approximately 4.5 times the damage that Tightass did, killing the creature in one hit. Wakka becomes my hero for a moment by saying “Told ya, Sir Auron’s the best!” Oh, but that’s not good enough for Tightass. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he wanks, “Hmph. I could’ve done that.” No, you couldn’t. Wanker.