Isn’t that kind of a personal thing to be asking on your first mission?

Inside the vehicle, Squally sits across from Seifer and next to Zell. He looks all depressed, staring at the floor with his elbows on his knees. Seifer is leaning back in his seat. I realize that with some creative Photoshopping, I could make a very dirty-looking picture. Zell adds to the effect as he says, “Yo, Squally. Show me your gunblade, will ya?” This line, incidentally, is one of my very favorites, and it inspired my AIM screenname that I gave up after being IMed too much. Squally says nothing to this request. If he’s going to show his “gunblade” to anyone, it will be Seifer. “C’mon man,” Zell presses. Squally still says nothing. “Just a peek!” Zell tries again. Oh, this is too good. When Squally continues to daydream about Seifer and ignore Zell, he (Zell) gets pissy. “Why you bein’ so selfish!? Scrooooge!” Zell whines. God dang, no means no, you little fruitcake. Incidentally, I am surprised that our own classic literature has found its way into the Final Fantasy universe, allowing for the word “Scrooge” to mean stingy. Squally? Well, he’s still silent. Zell is totally clueless and keeps on pestering him. I could have written this entire paragraph in two sentences, but you would have missed out on my wonderful innuendos.

When Squally finally speaks, Quistis speaks his sentence with him. God, do these people have no character development whatsoever? If I were Squally, I wouldn’t say anything either, if my damn instructor always mimicked me. I admire his self-control as well, since I would likely have whipped out my gunblade long before this point and told everyone to shut the fuck up. Then again, Squally has enough self-control to hold back his raging hormones around Seifer, so anything else is cake.

At this point, Zell gets up and randomly starts punching the air. Get it? He’s the slightly rowdy, loudmouthed sidekick with the heart of gold. If I were Quistis, I would kick him in the crotch. He’s like two feet away from her. Seifer voices my thoughts: “Stop that…It’s annoying.” He then ruins the effect by calling Zell “Chicken-wuss”. Huh? You’re supposed to be a bad badass, and the worst insult you can think of is “Chicken-wuss”? I bet even Squally’s urges were dampened because of that. Apparently “Chicken-wuss” is the worst insult ever in Final Fantasy VIII Land, because Zell screams, “WHAT DID YOU CALL ME!?” Yup, it’s all in caps like that. I wonder if Zell would be one of those people on message boards who type in all caps. Seifer just laughs. Quistis finally stands up and tells them to knock it off. I know exactly how Quistis feels, since I am an admin of a message board and deal with immature shit all the time.

…

There is silence for a while. I wonder why this car ride is taking so long. Hell, Squally could have run from one end of the island to the other half a dozen times by now. At last, Squally speaks. “…Instructor…,” he says, “Who was that girl in the infirmary this morning?” He’s speaking of Mysterious Disappearing Girl, of course. Why he would choose this point in the game to bring it up, I don’t know. Quistis replies that she didn’t see anyone. This prompts Seifer to snidely remark, “This is great…I have Chicken-wuss and a guy who just reached puberty in my squad…” At this point, I open up my e-mail program and draft a letter to the people at Squaresoft, wondering why they tease me like this. And why they make my job so very easy. Here I am, trying to find subtext, and they give me supertext. Squally doesn’t even react, but he is so turned on, he’s having a hard time hiding it. No pun intended.

At last I am given control of the vehicle, which is right outside Garden. Huh? Yes, it was supposed to be moving throughout that entire last scene, not just idling outside the gates, as we saw by the camera movement. Apparently the car travels at 1 MPH. Except when I’m driving it, because I reach my destination – the town of Balamb – in ten seconds. I only get a few short glimpses of the seaside town before the vehicle reaches the docks. Squally and Seifer have a mini-moment where one of them asks if the other is scared, too. They don’t attach a name to the line, which causes me to assume that it’s a continuation of Seifer’s line – although it’s not a very Seifery thing to say. But who am I to complain?

Squally, Seifer, Zell, and Quistis board one of the attack boats or whatever the hell they are. We see a view of the boat in regular gameplay mode, and it looks like it’s moving pretty fast – the other continent is visible on the horizon. However, the boat travels in the same way as the car, as we’ll see in a moment.

Inside the vessel, another female SeeD named Xu greets Quistis. Quistis introduces everyone. Squally actually has a moment where he is not rude, and says “Pleased to meet you.” No handshake, though, just the dorky Garden salute. Seifer remains seated. Xu makes a snide remark to Seifer about him already taking the exam numerous times. That’s supposed to tell us something about Seifer. Since we already know he’s a gunblade master or whatever, surely he is held back by his own assholish behavior….or something. I don’t know. I’m sure there’s something about following orders in there somewhere.

Xu goes to the front of the room which is, handily, equipped with some sort of high-tech monitor thingy. As she speaks, it shows maps and coordinates and military-type stuff. Long explanation short: The Galbadian Army (G-Army) attacked the Dollet Dukedom, which in turn requested help from SeeD. Headmaster Cid said “Yeah, sure, we’ll send you nine SeeDs, and a bunch of wannabes that may or may not screw up the entire mission.” Dollet abandoned the city and retreated into the mountains, much like Osama bin Laden and his dumbasses, except that the Dollet army are the good guys here. The mission is to get rid of the G-Army within the city and liberate it. These must be some damn amazing kids. When I was in high school, most of my classmates just hung out with friends and bitched about homework. I did, too, don’t get me wrong. I doubt any of us could have liberated ourselves from our parents, let alone an entire city from an army. But I digress.

Advice we all can benefit from.

Seifer shows how much of a badass he is by complaining that the mission is boring. He doesn’t want to be stuck doing the dirty work. He’d rather do Squally. Xu reminds them that the order to withdraw takes priority. Those last two sentences weren’t related. Xu leaves the room, and Squally has the option of talking to his fellow squad members. Of course I choose Seifer first, who says nothing of importance. He does, however, say something about the other “boys” having to take orders from him. Zell and Seifer get into another little tiff. Finally, Seifer tells Squally to see what’s going on outside. I make Squally say, “……….Ok.” Seifer replies with, “Good. Because it’s MY order.” Squally hurries outside before Seifer can see how excited he is.

Yeah, he’s pretty — we get it.

We then get a gorgeous FMV of all the boats speeding through the water at sunset (even though they still haven’t reached Dollet) and Squally looking out at the impending battle where people are getting blown up and stuff. He looks really hot…..for a videogame character, that is. ::ahem::

One of the boats jumps over and through a wall, and they finally reach shore. FMV blends into regular gameplay mode here, but you can’t miss the big ugly jpeg artifacts in the corner. Unless you aren’t a nitpicky little bitch like me, but now you’re going to look for them, aren’t you?

Squally, Seifer, and Zell run onto the shore. Quistis tells them to secure the [Central Square], and reminds them to equip their GFs.

The three of them enter the city, passing by other SeeD candidates whose job it is to secure the edge of the city. They are attacked by G-Army soldiers right away. Squall and Seifer both fight with gunblades, obviously, but Zell fights with his fists. The G-Army uses swords as well, which is one of those nonsensical things about futuristic RPGs. Anyway, I now have to learn how to work two different gunblades because Seifer’s is slightly different than Squall’s. …….You sickos just interpreted that the wrong way, didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU? You know what that means. A freebie Squall-and-Seifer-are-gay reference at the end. Hey, it’s your own damn fault.

Squally, Seifer, and Zell run through the streets. The architecture of Dollet is a mix of the old and new. Cobblestone streets, architecture that looks vaguely Old English or French or something (I’m not an architecture expert, leave me alone), but with neon signs and lights and stuff. The buildings are packed together on either side of the street, giving it an alleyway appearance. I’m just trying to be thorough.

Random battles, running through streets, random battles, running through streets, and finally our heroes reach the Central Square. Seifer tells Squally and Zell to scout the area for any more G-Army soldiers. Surprise, surprise, there are some hiding behind a car. The guys defeat them easily, once again. Then, the Urgent Mission Music stops, leaving only eerie silence.

Seifer says that they’re on standby until the enemy comes. Then, there’s some dialogue where Seifer says he’s bored and wants to fight REAL battles, just in case we didn’t get it the first twenty times he mentioned it. There’s a dog walking around the Central Square. Poor thing. Seifer yells at it. This is to show us how much of an asshole he is – he even yells at innocent little puppies. Next, he’ll be killing babies or something because Square thinks we are a bunch of blithering idiots who need to be beaten over the head with character traits in order to get what’s going on. Then Seifer randomly starts yelling for Galbadian soldiers to come out and fight him. In the immortal words of Zell, “What an idiot.”

The camera angle changes, to show us that some time has passed. Zell paces, Seifer stands in place, tapping his foot impatiently (for those of you who haven’t been paying attention, he’s bored). This is funny because he’s holding his gunblade on his shoulder and it’s bobbing up and down. Take that how you want.

Alone for two seconds and they can’t keep their hands off of each other.

The dog suddenly runs over to the other side of the square and starts howling. Squall, Seifer, and Zell watch as some G-Army soldiers sneak down the street, looking quite mincing, if I do say so myself. Once they are out of sight, Zell wonders where they are going. The camera pans up to show us some tower way off in the distance. Seifer, with his psychic powers, concludes that the enemy is going there. I should call him “Psyfer”. Hehe! Seifer announces that the tower is their next destination. Zell gets all in a tizzy about it being against orders. Squally, being all over Seifer, says “I stand by the captain’s decision.” This prompts Seifer to walk over to him and get all touchy-feely. I giggle in delight. Hey, I have to spend the rest of this damn game watching Rinoa fling herself all over Squally, so give me a few moments of happiness, okay?