Chapter 4 ---
The World is DOOMED
Tydus woke up face down in the water.
"Thank God for gills!" he thought. He looked at his new
surroundings. It was very sunny, probably on the same day. He was near
a golden beach lined with green trees and bushes. The water was
sparkling, blue and clear. It was a perfect place and Tydus
was just waiting for something freakish and bad to happen.
A blitzball hit his head.
"Oh, no! It's raining blitzballs!"
he exclaimed.
"Hey, brudda!" called a man standing on the
shore. He was wearing odd clothes, and there were five others wearing the
same thing and playing with blitzballs.
"Set up us the ball!"
"Blitzball is giving me no end of grief," Tydus muttered to himself, "But I guess I'm just gonna have to rely on meeting nice people. I should
probably keep quiet about the Zanarkand thing, or
people might think I'm crazy. If it really is true, what Rikku said…" He decided
that since it really wasn't raining blitzballs, then
he might as well have some fun. He threw the ball into the air and
performed the Jeckt Shot (arg,
irony), nearly taking the waving man's head off.
"Holy crap!" said the man. Tydus started
toward the beach. "That was spiffy! You clearly know how to
play blitzball. Also, you look like my dead
brother, so I will help you with whatever problem you might have. My name
is Wakka."
"I'm Tydus."
"Who you play for?"
"The Zanarkand Abes." Hushed silence
followed, then sparse chatting. Tydus
was wondering what the problem was. Then he remembered. "D'oh! I mean nothing! I said nothing! I
just got too close to Sin and, uh… Words…" he had extinguished his
knowledge of Spira, but it seemed to be enough for
them.
"Wow, that sucks!" said Wakka.
"Yes, so assume I know absolutely nothing about anything. Except blitzball, that
I know very well." Tydus's stomach growled
loudly. "Will it ever end?!"
"Heh. I'll take
you to
They left the rest of the team to practice as they headed toward the
village. Tydus didn’t think they looked very
skillful…
"So, do you know what happened one thousand years ago in Zanarkand?" he asked.
"Yeah," replied Wakka, "One thousand
years ago the people used machina to do all the work
for them, and Zanarkand was the biggest city.
Then Sin came and blasted their lazy butts. See all these
ruins?" "Yes," Tydus thought,
"do I ever." "It went on to attack other major cities, and
ever since then Sin has terrorized what's left of us. The teachings of
the old and mysterious Yevon say that we are paying
for our sins, but it's not like we were the ones who screwed up, ya? Still, people back then must have been pretty
soft, eh, haha!"
"Er, yeah, soft…" Kill Auron, kill Auron.
They had to swim through more piranha-infested water, and Wakka
was fighting with a blitzball. "Somebody's
passionate about the sport," Tydus
thought. They swam on.
"Hey, do you think you could go to Luca with our team? We haven't
won a game in years and you could help us pull our sorry butts into the
winner's circle. There's gonna be a huge
tournament, your blitzball team might be there."
"Since I have nothing better to do, sure!" and he thought, "Rikku wanted me to go there anyway." They
reached the end of the river and started walking again.
"So you guys have a motto?" Tydus asked.
"Ya, it's 'do your best,'" Wakka replied.
"But that's so lame! No wonder you've been losing!" said Tydus, laughing with the sadness of it, "Here's a
better one: Victory!"
"Isn't that kind of shallow?"
"Yes, but it's better than 'do your best,'
goodness!"
Wakka and Tydus caught up
with two men, Luzzu and Gatta,
the guide told him.
"Hello," said one of them. Wakka
glared at them and pulled Tydus away before he could
say hello back.
"What was that for?" Tydus asked.
"They are Crusaders. They think they can kill Sin without a high summoner, which is of course crazy. Chappu turned from teachings of Yevon
to join the Crusaders, and now he's dead."
"Who's Chappu?"
"My dead brother. Anyway, I also hate the
Al Bhed. If you know and care for any Al Bhed, you should make sure I never see them, for they shall
be ripped to pieces! Hey, you're not an Al Bhed,
are you?"
"What? NO! Definitely not!" said Tydus,
then thought, "If anyone on that Al Bhed ship
survived I hope Wakka
doesn't find out."
"By the way, since you said you don't know anything, I'm going to assume
you don’t remember the prayer."
"What prayer?"
"Uh-huh. Well, it goes like this: first you hold your arms out at
angles, makes it look like a "Y," ya?"
he showed Tydus, "Then you stick both arms and a
leg out to one side like an "E."" He did this.
"Next, you crouch down and hold your arms out at angles, like a
"V." And then you hold your arms above your head in a circle to
get an "O." Finally, you do this odd thing with your arms to
look like an "N,"" and he demonstrated these, too.
"That's kinda complicated…"
"Well at least it's just Yevon and not something
like Geosgaeno, but we do have a simplified
version," Wakka said, then showed Tydus by moving his arms in circles and then making a
circle with his cupped hands.
"Okay, I think I can do that…" said Tydus.
They had arrived at the village now, a small collection of brightly colored
huts overshadowed by a great temple. At least it's not a ruin," Tydus muttered, then said to Wakka,
"We get food now?"
"No, first we have to do several other lengthy tasks that involve lots of
fiend-fighting," Wakka replied.
"What?!" exclaimed Tydus, "Is there a
famine or something, that people are so disinclined to give a little
food?" His stomach concurred.
"Just kidding! Come on to my house,"
said Wakka, and he led Tydus
to one of the huts.
"Oh, look, a fan!" Tydus said
sarcastically.
"Yeah, pretty nice, eh? But I think it's
pushing it. I might have it removed."
"Why?"
"Machina is bad, goes against the teachings, and
more importantly, it's why Sin came in the first place."
"I see…" Tydus had had the best in
climate control in his now-ruined house. "Better than ruins, I
guess." KILL AURON! KILL AURON!
They ate and rested, and then went to the temple to see what they could do
about Tydus's "memory problem." When
they got there one of the priests walked up to Wakka
looking worried.
"What's the matter?" asked Wakka, "Are
Al Bhed
mooning the statues again?" He held his blitzball
menacingly.
"No, that was just a dream you had. The problem is that Lady Yuna still hasn't returned from the Cloister of Trials
yet. It's been days!"
"Cloister of Trials?" Tydus
asked.
"Place where summoners go to get aeons," explained Wakka,
"Not very dangerous, but they have the most annoying puzzles."
"Puzzles, eh?" Tydus thought, "With my
guide this should be easy!" He started up the stairs to the
Cloister.
"Hey! Where are you going?" asked Wakka,
"Only summoners and their guardians are allowed
in there!"
"Well, I have a player's guide and it says I should go in, so in I
go!"
"If this so called guide told you to jump off a bridge would you do
it?"
"If there were more pages after it, yes!"
"Well, since you look like Chappu I'll let you
go."
Tydus finished running up the stairs and into the
Cloister. Wakka fought off priests with his blitzball. Inside the Cloister of Trials the main
sources of light were glowing glyphs all over the walls. Tydus carefully followed the guide's instructions and was
almost to the end when Wakka caught up with him,
panting hard.
"I didn’t know priests could fight like that!" he said. Then
the platform they were standing on shuddered and went down. "You are
a very strange person, you know that?" said Wakka.
"Yeah, well, this is a very strange place," Tydus
countered.
They reached the bottom, and it was gloomy.
They heard a woman's voice, "Wakka, what are you
doing here? Didn't think we could handle it?" She approached
them as they stepped off the platform. She wore a dress that defied
gravity and involved lots of belts, and she was carrying a doll.
"Speaking of strange…" thought Tydus.
"Hello, Lulu!" said Wakka, "This is Tydus."
"You look like Chappu!" said Lulu.
"Only I'm not dead," Tydus pointed out.
"I suppose not…" Lulu said.
"Who's the furry blue guy over there?" asked Tydus,
pointing at a moody Ronso with a broken horn who was
leaning on a wall near a fancy-looking door at the rear of the room.
"Oh, him?" said Lulu, "That's Kimahri.
He showed up one day and has been following us ever since. He hasn't said
a word, very creepy. We think of we ignore him he might go away."
"How nice," Tydus remarked.
"Not really."
"So, what are we standing around for?"
"Lady Yuna is beyond that door asking for the aeon's help. If she succeeds, then she will
officially be a summoner, and will start a pilgrimage
to receive the final aeon, which she will use to
defeat Sin," Lulu explained.
"This final aeon, we get that from someone
called Lady Yunalesca?" Tydus
asked.
"I suppose so, why?"
"Do people usually have to fight to get an aeon?"
"Noooo…"
"I don’t think Yuna's gonna
get the final aeon. The guide says we do
something to piss Lady Yunalesca off and we have to
fight her, and if we win, then she's dead, and-"
"Shut up!" said Wakka, "Geez, brudda. That makes
less sense than everything else you've said so far put together! Why in
the world would we fight Lady Yunalesca,
anyway?! And what do you mean 'we,' we're dropping you off in Luca!
More to the point, what's this guide thing you keep talking about?"
Tydus sighed, "You sound like me talking to Auron, but I wont answer anyway, not because I'm a jerk,
but because I suppose it doesn't matter…" he paused, "By the way, Maester Seymour, is he a bad guy?"
"Just shut up," implored Wakka.
"'Cuz we kill him, like, five times!"
Tydus continued.
"Shut up!" said everyone but Kimahri,
though he did look quite ruffled.
"Okay then," said Tydus.
The door at the back of the room made a noise like an elevator, and then
opened. A very tired young woman wearing big black boots, a purple skirt,
and a strange sheet as a top walked down the stairs. She looked a Kimahri.
"Aw, is he still here?" she asked, "I was hoping to bore him to
death." Then she looked at Wakka and Tydus.
"Hello, Yuna!" said Wakka.
"Hi, Wakka. Who's
this?" She looked a Tydus. Tydus looked at her. She had on blue eye and one
green eye.
"You're the most beautiful freak I've ever seen!" said Tydus.
"Brudda, you're gonna
make life so hard on yourself if you keep making such horrible first
impressions," said Wakka.
"I'm sorry," he said, and put away his guide, "My name is Tydus, and I am not on the blitzball
team called the Zanarkand Abes,
and I am certainly not the star player of said team."
"Okay…" said Yuna, "Let's go outside
so I can summon the aeon!" They left the
Cloister of Trials. All the preists were
glaring at them. Wakka had an embarrassed grin. A closer look at the priests
revealed many bumps and some had the word "
Once they were outside people from the village made a circle around Yuna. When everyone was there Yuna
struck a pose and waved her rod. The sky exploded with light and out of
it came the aeon. It was all bright reds,
purples, and yellows and had two clawed wings, a silver beak, and a great wad
of hair. It flew down and landed in front of Yuna.
It was at least twice her size.
"It's so cute!" said Yuna, "I want to
hug it!" And she did. The fierce aeon
purred.
"I'll call you Ifrit!" said Tydus. A loud buzzer sounded. "What?! Fine then, you can just be Valefor." The aeon
sniffed at him and then flew away.
"Let's hit the sack!" said Wakka. And
they did. Tydus had to sleep on the couch
because Wakka wouldn't let him stay at the Crusader's
inn.
In the morning they went to the dock. A small group of villagers was ther to see them off. Tydus
talked to them and they asked him to deliver some gifts to Yuna.
"Yeah, I'll give them to Yuna, sure,"
thought Tydus.
When the summoner, her guardians, and the village's
loser blitzball team were all on board the S.S. Liki, it set sail.