Changing tactics, Galcian orders the Ass Pirates to hand over Fina. “I guarantee that your lives, as well as that of the girl, will be spared. Is it a deal?” Now I get to choose between, essentially, “No way, radish dick!” and “Okay, have at her with your undoubtedly gigantic penis!” Hmm, you’ll have to give me a minute here. I’m supposed to pick the best choice, and I just can’t imagine what the game designers want me to do here. I take a HUGE chance by choosing to save the Mary Sue, and to my extreme surprise, that was the correct choice. My gosh!
“Do you honestly think that after attacking the Valuan Armada you’ll be able to fly the skies freely?” Galcian threatens. Vyse is all, “Whatever! Whatever! I do what I want!” “Boss, it’s time to use your bad guy book again,” one of the zippo soldiers hisses in Galcian’s ear. “Oh. Right. Um….let’s see….That’s very disappointing. I’m afraid you leave me no choice… I must destroy you.” He hopes fervently that no one looks at the front of his tights.
The camera pans dramatically between the two groups. It’s very tense. Suddenly, a green blur flies past the window. “The Little Jack!” Vyse announces, obviously recognizing the blur. For those of you who are thinking, “How the fuck could an airship be flying inside a tunnel?” I hear you. But that’s exactly what’s happening. The camera shows the Little Jack, zipping along as happy as you please, right next to the train. Luckily the Valuans dug the tunnel big enough for the train and an airship to fit. I don’t recall that the tunnel was always that wide, but hey! Look over there! Boobies! Whoops, wrong game. Or is it?! (That’s foreshadowing.)
Anyway, the Little Jack fires one of its cannons directly into the train car. You might be thinking, “Hey, wait a minute! How did he know he wouldn’t hurt Vyse et al. in the process?” You are very sharp. Obviously, this does not make the least bit of sense, no matter how hard you fanwank it. But once again, the laws of physics are bent over a desk and forcibly sodomized as the cannon blast splits the train car neatly in half, with Vyse and his crew continuing along the track with the front half of the car, and Galcian and his buddies standing impotently on the back portion of the train. Pippi jumps up and down next to the perfectly straight broken edge, all “Yay!” There is much triumphant music and victory posing as the camera fades out. After all, the three of them have to get onto the Little Jack, and the game designers don’t want to animate that shit.
Drachma and the rescued Ass Pirates stand around the deck of the Little Jack as Vyse, Pippi, and Fina approach. “You were late, Vyse. We decided to come get you and from the looks of it, we were just in time. As for how we figured out your whereabouts, well…uh….a wizard did it! And don’t ask us why we thought you were late when you were only gone from us for twenty minutes!” Supposedly-Not-Gay Dyne says. He asks after Fina, because as we know, if we don’t know how the Mary Sue is doing at all times, the world will fall apart. Fina goes into her automatic asskissing thank-you mode until Pippi basically tells her to shut her yap. I love you, Pippi. Drachma points out that they’re not out of Valua yet, and they could die horribly at any minute.
On cue, Timmus the Gunner screeches, “Captain, emergency! They’re closing the gates!!!” The extra exclamation points are there to add urgency. The camera switches to a shot of the entrance gate which is, in fact, in the process of closing. I don’t know how they got from the train tunnel to the entrance, but they did. Drachma the rocket scientist points out that they’ll all die if the gates close. Just then, another airship shows up and shoots its load at them. Jeez, at least buy them dinner first.
Timmus the Gunner, also having gone through the necessary courses to obtain a degree in rocket science, yells, “We’re under attack! Valuan ships, dead ahead! They’re blocking the entrance!” Drachma thinks they should just give up and die. I’m kidding of course — he wants to destroy the blockade. Actually, he’s itching to use his new-and-improved, incredibly phallic Harpoon Cannon. Hey, wouldn’t you?
Apparently, “breaking through the blockade” translates into “fighting a ship battle against one piddly Valuan Cruiser.” As for what happened to the rest of them…well, a wizard took care of them, too, okay? To add some drama and tension into the scene, as well as give an idea of the Valuan Cruiser’s motivation, its captain (presumably) yells, “We got a warning about you [Ass] Pirates from the Coliseum guards. You’re not getting through here!” I’m glad that’s cleared up. For a moment there, I thought it might be a ship containing a crew of drag queens who used to perform with Drachma before he quit right in the middle of a big show and caused the club to go bankrupt, and now they’re after him for the money and revenge.
The ship battle mainly consists of me trying not to die while saving up enough spirit points to shoot the Harpoon Cannon. Conditions must be perfect to do so, and this is indicated by a tiny harpoon icon in the ship battle menu. That’s as much “technical” stuff as I’m going to describe for this battle. When the Harpoon Cannon finally fires, well, the giant phallic spike shoots directly out the front of the Little Jack and clear through the other ship. There’s also lots of glowing, as if Drachma were lighting up a cigarette. Predictably, this violent assault renders the Valuan Cruiser ouchied. The Ass Pirates are now free to leave the city. Aww, but the people there were so cool!
Take it all, bitch!
But oh no yet again! The gates, though completely open and unmoving throughout the entire battle, are now mostly closed. “Vyse! It’s closing! Hurry!!!” Pippi screeches. Vyse isn’t about to let her win the exclamation point battle, so he bellows, “Come on!!! Come on, Little Jack!!!!!” Unfortunately, the gates close and they all die. Oh, if only. The power of all those exclamation points propels them through at the very last second, in true action movie tradition. The left side (port?) gets clipped slightly and trails smoke through the black sky as they fly off into the distance. There are no other ships in the area. What a shitty, shitty, armada. There is one final shot of the gate closing, along with ominous music. But…well, nothing else happens to them.
Now it’s time for triumph! Vyse and Pippi hump each other’s legs using even more exclamation points, while everyone else joins in kissing Vyse’s ass, including his dad. This goes on for a while. Finally, Vyse announces, “Let’s go back home to Pirate Isle!” Yes, that’s right. Even after that entire incident, the fuckers are still calling their home “Pirate Isle.” Have I taught them nothing?
Cut to a completely pointless — though hilarious — shot of Galcian standing alone and limp in his amputated train car, which has stalled in the middle of the tunnel. Wow. I don’t think I could have come up with a better metaphor for Galcian himself. Bravo, game designers. Bravo. Sometimes I think they might be in on the joke.
The good news is, I’m teleported directly back to Pirate Isle. The bad news is, Fina insists on more obnoxious gratitude. Only she can’t come right out and fucking say it. It’s all, “Oh….I…..I just want to…..say……” Finally, Vyse shuts her up by saying, “Heh…don’t worry about it. The Valuans went through a lot of trouble to capture you. We just like making them mad.” Pippi ruins everything by saying that Vyse was just kidding. They rescued Fina because she’s their friend. I’m glad they told us that again, because I’m a gigantic drooling dumbass.
The two Ass Pirates argue a bit over whether or not they should have stolen more shit while they were in Valua. What, like the silver toilet? The three young people start laughing at their own silliness while Drachma stands in the background, wondering if he should stick his metal hook through his own neck. Finally, Vyse puts an end to the pointless banter by wondering, “Say, Fina, we haven’t had any juicy exposition in a while, so how about telling us — preferably in detail — what exactly they wanted with you. And tell us about your undoubtedly exciting mission as well. Even though the player has heard all of this already.”
Fina obliges like she’s freaking getting paid. She starts out by explaining that she is a Silvite, which is “a descendant of the Silver Civilization.” This doesn’t clear things up for anyone there, so Fina clarifies. A really fucking long time ago, there were six distinct civilizations, one for each moon in the sky. As she relates all of this, the scene changes to show a still picture of giant phallic towers. Kind of like a pornographic storybook. The moons obviously correspond to the different Moon Stones that Vyse and the others use on their weapons: Green, Red, Blue, Purple, Yellow, and the one they don’t have yet, Silver. The civilizations all learned to use Moon Stones as an energy source. In a completely unconventional bit of backstory, the technological revolution happened faster than people could keep up with it, so Bad Shit Happened. The morally corrupt leaders of the six lands created the Gigas, obscenely huge and powerful weapons of mass destruction, as we learned from our buddy, Empress Saddam. The background scene changes to a not-so-jolly green giant wreathed in flames. Pippi has heard of these Gigas, but, as has never before happened in a video game or fantasy book, thought these horrible things were simply tales told by parents to scare children. But no. They’re real.
The six Ancient Civilizations unleashed their six Gigas on each other, killing and maiming innocent people. But that’s not all! This killin’ pissed off the gods or excited them or something, because soon the Rains of Destruction — lots and lots of falling Moon Stones — finished the job. We see a still shot of these Moon Stones destroying assloads of phallic towers. No! Not the penises! So blah, blah, blah, millions died, and soon there were only a few survivors and possibly two of each kind of animal. So between the Gigas and the Rains of Destruction, the people were pretty much screwed either way, as Fina points out.
“Now, there are people who are trying to reawaken the Gigas,” she announces. “You mean…The Valuan Empire?” Vyse guesses, since he wasn’t privy to that earlier conversation. And even if he had been, he probably would still ask. Fina affirms this. But not just anyone can control these giant minions of death. Nope, it requires the most creative of all items, the Moon Crystals, to activate them. “A Moon Crystal is a highly concentrated form of Moon Stone,” Fina explains for those of us who were born without brains. And of course the location of these Moon Crystals is not known, but they’re all in different places. “Valua is searching for those Crystals so they can reawaken the Gigas!” Fina finishes. Oh, so that’s why they want the crystals.
Pippi realizes that the Valuans want Fina to find the Moon Crystals for them. “Yes. I was sent here to gather the Crystals before the Valuans could find them and put them somewhere where they can never be used again. Like in Tidus’s pants,” Fina explains. Those Silvites must be really short on help these days. Now that she has exposited the crap out of everyone, she has one last favor to ask. “You see, I’m totally fucking helpless in battle, and I have no survival skills, so I need someone to be my brain and bodyguard,” she giggles. In other words, she wants them to fly all over creation in order to help her find these Crystals.
‘No, that was the sound of Jeanne disemboweling herself with an icepick.’
This is the equivalent of asking Seymour to babysit your 3-year-old. Still, I have to make Vyse choose whether or not to go. Let’s see…this is another brain buster….um…….somebody help me here. Finally, I eeny meeny miny moe my way to “Duh, I spend all my free time jizzing myself over the possibility of exploring the world, so sign me up, yo!” Oh, that was the right choice. Pippi helpfully points out to Vyse, “I guess this is your chance to see what lies beyond the sunset!” Vyse is all, “Oh, yeah, I totally didn’t fucking get that. Thanks, Pippi, for pointing that out to me, since I’m a brain-damaged moron and all.”
Fina gushes some more about being honored and grateful, etc. etc. etc. I would be so happy if she said, “Okay, stop talking and let’s go, bitches.” But no. A sound like a chirping car alarm causes Pippi to wonder if Vyse’s stomach made that noise. Yes, that sounded exactly like a stomach. God damn. The source of the noise is from, of all places, Fina’s wrist. Something emerges and forms into the silver sperm Pokemon from the opening movie. Despite these disturbing resemblances, the creature is actually very cute. I’m a huge sucker for cute things.