Chapter 19 --- Such a Happy Couple (Kill Seymour, Volume 2)

            In the beautiful fluffy clouds over Bevelle a shiny and colorful machine was cruising toward the temple where many comically dressed priests were awaiting the political marriage of two big shots.  This was somehow supposed to make everyone happy, but the marriage really isn’t what’s important, as it will be gate crashed and ruined anyway.  What is important is that Bevelle’s guardian beast Evrae, a.k.a. the giant flying carpet, noticed the airship, decided it was hostile despite the innocent manner in which it was defying gravity, and defied gravity itself by flying up to meant it.

            “What an ugly carpet that is,” said Rikku, looking out one of the airship’s side windows.

            “What?  Where?” Wakka asked, joining her.  Auron followed with a suspicious look on his face, and everyone else followed because they had nothing better to do.

            “Over there.  That big reddish thing that’s making faces at us.”

            “The nerve!” said Tydus, “We must defend our honor!”

            “We have honor?” Lulu said with mock surprise.

            “Shut up,” Tydus muttered.

            “We have to fight it anyway,” said Auron, “because it’s the guardian of Bevelle, which is an important place for the Yevonites, who hate us.”

            “Okay, genius, and how do you suppose we do that?  We’re thousands of feet in the air.  And don’t say gun turrets, we can’t all magically learn good marksmanship in a few minutes.”

            “I don’t even know what gun turrets are—“

            “And definitely don’t say close combat on the roof.  That’s just stupid.  The gun turrets are better than that.”

            “Good news!” said Cid, looking up from some complicated instruments, “According to the sensors, we are low enough in the atmosphere that you can all breathe relatively comfortably outside!”

            “Er… yay?”

            “Get your asses out there and defend the ship!”

            This was answered with much grumbling, but the “heroes” trudged away nonetheless.  Tydus ran into Rin standing near the door to the bridge.

            “Hello,” said Rin, “Would you like to buy something useful before you fight to save us again?”

            “Shouldn’t you be supportive and give me things for free?”

“Like they would make it that easy.”

            “And who uses distillers?  Really?”

            “People scoffed at Hyper, too,” Rin said with a smug smile, and he walked into the nearest compartment to try to sell to the homeless Al Bhed.

            By the time they reached the door that led to the roof platform Tydus had had his second doubts and was, in fact, well into his fifth and sixth doubts.  “I hope no one’s afraid of heights,” he said as the door opened.  Decompression threw them onto the deck face first.  “Wow, it’s sunny up here.”

            “’Bout freaking time, bee-otches!” said Evrae, swooping closer.

            “How’s the air out there, cowpokes?” said Cid cheerfully over the intercom.  “No one’s getting the bends, are they?”

            “The what?” the group replied.  “Cowpokes?” thought Tydus.

            “Sound all right.  So, you guys can tell us on the bridge what to do, but only in Al Bhed, so just Rikku and Tydus.  Also, talking completely wastes a turn.  Have fun!”

            “Wait, he can speak English perfectly fine!” said Tydus, “What’s up with that?”

            “If you want to ask him it’ll cost you a turn,” Evrae said irratibly, “’cuz we are fighting now!”

“Oh, poo.”

            It started with Tydus casting Hastega on himself, Auron, and Kimahri, but within an annoying short amount of turns Evrae moved away from the ship and out of reach from their melee attacks.  Kimahri’s butterflies were not up to flying and the guardian beast was not close enough to get the full effect of Auron’s glare and Tydus’s hair flipping.

            “Maybe if I throw my sword at it…” Tydus started, but stopped at the stern looks from the others.  “Hey, Cid, pull up!”

            “Righto, just gotta wait ‘till I get a turn!”

            “To add to the annoyance,” Tydus grumbled.

            While they waited Tydus casted Haste on everyone else and let Wakka and Lulu go at it.  No sooner had he done this that Evrae casted Haste on itself.

            “What?!” said Tydus, “How uncool.”  After trying several times to slow it and missing, he yelled in frustration.

            Finally, it was Cid’s turn.  He did a beautiful slide right into the monster’s giant, ugly, plush face.  “Ew,” said everyone.

Evrae responded by swooping away, hitting them with it’s tail as it went.  Tydus yelled again.

            “Hey, Tydus, how about healing us, now that you have Cure?” Wakka suggested.  Tydus did so, and a 150 showed over Wakka.  “Wow.  Nevermind, then.”

            “Shut up,” said Tydus.

            Now it was Cid’s turn again.  “Let’s blow this sucker up!  Jypa!”  A barrage of missiles with the proven ability to level a city unleashed it’s firey doom on the guardian of Bevelle.

            “I’ll be back!” cried Evrae as it dissolved into thousands of pyreflies.

            “Cid, what was that?” Tydus demanded, “Why didn’t you do that in the first place?!”

            “Sorry, this airship runs on Windows XP and, I might remind you, sand, so it tends to inconveniently malfunction.  But it’s a dream at hovering!  Great for sword-on-claw fighting, eh?”

            “Yeah…”

            “Anyway, we’re in Bevelle, so get ready for a stylishly late and totally impossible entrance.

On the high roofs of the Bevelle temple…

            “This is the creepiest wedding ever,” said Yuna.

            “Shhh,” said the many priests in ridiculous outfits who were dragging her toward the, er, “altar,” with as much grace and majesty as they could muster.  It was about as graceful as tripping over a rock into the Grand Canyon and as majestic as a homeless guy on the city sidewalk waving a sign reading “teh end is neer!”  Oh well.

            Then she caught sight of Seymour among all the priests and nearly fell over entirely.  “Wow, he makes the priests look normal,” Yuna thought.  Seymour was wearing huge robes of black and red with a fluffy white cravat.  He had stuffed his incredibly pointy blue hair into what looked like a party hat that matched his robes.  The hair was actually sticking out of the top of the hat.  “You have to wonder: do they know they look so stupid?”  She, fortunately, was wearing a sensible wedding dress, perhaps the only obvious clue that this was a wedding.

Seymour saw her stumbling down the aisle of priests and made a strained smile.  Yuna spared a hand from resisting the priests to give him the finger.  One would like to assume Seymour was initially worried that the dress was impeding his fiancé’s walking and was assuaged by Yuna’s evidence that she simply wanted to walk like that, but who really knows?

            As Yuna climbed the last few steps priests started losing their thought trains to stare at the sky.  Seymour frowned.  “Bored already?” he thought, even as the pyreflies fell like a cross between roman candles and snow.

            Then two enormous hooks on chains shot out of the clouds and sunk deep into a nearby building.  The people of the congregation followed the chains up to the airship that carried the party crashers.

Yuna’s guardians were sliding down the chains with an ease that suggested much practice, and indeed, many priests were fooled into thinking they knew what they were doing.  Those in the know knew it was just a cinema.

            “Is it safe to say?  C’mon C’mon!  Was it right to leave?  C’mon C’mon!  Will I never learn?  C’mon C’mon C’mon C’mon C’mon C’mon!” Tydus sang as he hopped the chains with his eyes closed.  He was chewing gum, too.

            Unfortunately, the cinema gave out too soon and the group ate concrete.  The people who had thought they knew what they were doing were very relieved that they had not made any actions based on that assumption, like run away.

            When Tydus lifted his face he was rewarded with the barrel of a gun up his nose.  “An ak47? Whad’s up wid dat?”  The gun was removed, but still held close.

            “Hey, guys!” said Kinoc from the steps near Seymour and Yuna, thankfully dressed in what could be called the normal fashion.  “Most of Yevon’s military is here, too!  Say hi to the new equipment!”

            “I’m starting to not feel so bad about being a traitor,” said Wakka grimly.

            “Good!” said Tydus, “You see?  Everything would work out this smoothly if people listened to me more often.”  The others looked at the guns with concern.  “Pfft!  Don’t worry!  I know about guns and I’m not worried.  These’ll do around 200 damage.  That’s piddly to our mighty HP and my new healing skills!”

            The others smirked.

            “So you wouldn’t mind a bullet up your nose?” Kinoc said in his irritatingly cheerful voice.

“Oh, poo.”

Seymour smiled evily.  “Woo!  I win!  Eat that, protagonists!”  He then made to kiss Yuna, but instead hit her staff.  “Where did that come from?”

            “That’s not the staff she’s been using…” said Tydus, “It’s that crappy one with no stat bonuses.”  The Playstation made a visible shrug.

            “So you only agreed to marry me to get a chance to send me?” Seymour asked sadly.

            “What?  No!  Get it straight!  I NEVER agreed to marry you.  And with the sending, the opportunity just kinda presented itself.”

            “Oh, well, if you insist; send me and they kill your friends.”

            “I repeat,” Tydus interrupted, “The guns are not in the least life-threatening.”  Everyone ignored him.

            “Oh, yeah?” said Yuna, dropping her staff and stepping near the edge of the roof, “If you kill them then I jump!”

            “Er…” said her guardians.

            “It’s okay, I can fly.”

            “If you’ll be okay then it’s really a moot point to jump,” said Seymour.

“Too late!” Yuna jumped.

            “Hey, did anyone else know she could fly?” Rikku asked.

            “What?” said Tydus, totally shocked, “I thought that was just one of those many things I didn’t know!”

            “I think she was planning to summon Valefor to fly for her,” said Auron.

            “But her staff is right there…” said Wakka, pointing near Tydus’s feet.

            “…”

            “Well crap,” said Yuna, arms crossed as she plummeted head first from the temple.  Suddenly, a deus ex machina that looked suspiciously like Valefor flew out of the sky to catch her, then it dropped her off in roughly the same spot she had jumped from.

            “That was really moot, wasn’t it,” Seymour said, amused.

            “Shut up.”

            “And now you can’t even send me!”

“Oh, poo.”

            “So, arrest all of them, and my new wife because now that I have her I don’t want her.”  Seymour turned and went through a door.

            “When did we get married?”

            “Hey, take note,” said Tydus as they were dragged off by robots, “I’m not the one who screwed up this time.”

            “Well, I got a new aeon, which balances that horrible negotiation strategy.”

            “When did you do that?”

            “Earlier,” she said vaguely.

            Lulu had a coughing fit that sounded oddly like “plot hole.”

            “It should be called Waffles,” said Tydus.

            “What?  Why?” said the others.

“Because he looks like waffles.”

            “How do you know?”

“Player’s guide!” Tydus made a big smile and flapped his guide, though he knew it would just look like an odd hand gesture.  Everyone shook their heads.

            “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt,” said Yuna, “Not like Prissy…”

            “Woo!”  Tydus did his performance and POOF, they had an aeon named Waffles.

A while later they were separated and put in pairs into weird suspended cells to await trial.  “Gosh, how nice of them,” Tydus said bitterly, in a cell with Auron.  He sighed.  “So, who’s up for waffles?”

            A few hours later Kinoc came by in time for cold leftover waffles.  Slightly hurt, he decided to take it out on Auron.  “Betcha never thought we’d be in this situation, eh, Auron?”

            “Get over it, chubby,” said Tydus, “You just hate him ‘cuz everyone knows he’s better than you.”

            “I do not—“

            “Yes, you do.  Go away now.”  He waved his hand belittlingly.

Kinoc looked like he was going to cry, but instead he ran out the way he came in.  Auron stared at Tydus.  “Zanarkand must have been a freaky place.”

            “Yes,” Tydus said thoughtfully, “Yes it is.”

“Was.”

            “Whatever.” Then he thought, “So now Zanarkand is weirder than Spira… how backwards.”  He proceeded to say many things that sounded insightful, but were really just big words strung together and said in a meaningful way.

            Soon after, an ak47-weilding guard came in and opened all their cells.  “Hey,” he said, sounding slightly nervous and embarrassed, “You’re all cordially invited to your trial.  Maester Kinoc was supposed to take you, but apparently there was a problem…”

            “He and Dona should start a support group, the wusses,” Tydus muttered.

            They followed the guard into a mysterious courtroom that was mostly copper curves framing the night sky and dimly lit by magic.  “This would make a cool law show,” said Lulu.

“Arg!” Tydus shouted, savagely chucking bricks at Lulu.

            “Mal syb!” said someone we can only assume was in the position to say it, because many Al Bhed mobbed Tydus.

            “Not again!” Tydus grumbled as he was completely overtaken by Al Bhed for the third time.

            “Riiight,” said Mika from his position of power.  “So.  Yuna, you can speak in defense of you and your guardians, but I’ll be honest, this is merely a formality as we are not in the mood to listen to people tell us we’re wrong.  By the way, Auron, nice ears…”  Many people in the court snickered.  The braver ones outright laughed.  Auron made a mental note to kill all of them regardless.

Yuna shook her head.  “Yeah…  Okay, well, I just want to say you’re a bunch of dickheads!  Yeah, we killed Seymour, but besides the fact that he’s obviously evil and killed his father to boot, he was constantly trying to get me to marry him to the point that he forced me!  Furthermore, he’s dead!  Why the hell don’t you care?!”

            “Uh-huh, see, most of us are dead,” at this Maester Kelk Ronso fainted and Mika puffed a few pyreflies out of agitation, “Kelk’s not too far behind, either.”

            “Shucks,” said Wakka, “There goes the only noble one.”

            “Right, just so we’re all on the same page, the Maesters are evil and you are traitors of Yevon.  Just be thankful that you guys are the protagonists, or we’d just behead you or something.  As it is, you’re all going to the Via Purifico where you will either die a horrible death or come out enlightened and totally loyal to Yevon.  ‘Bye  now!”  The robot audience clapped and cheered.

            “… Yay?”

            “So get in the water!” said a guard behind Tydus.  Upon  the discovery that three of the group could swim, Maester Mika decided it would be cool to try out the new water style Via Purifico with them, and so here they were.

            “What, no cement shoes?”  They pushed him in, unamused, and went away.

Tydus swam over to Wakka and Rikku.  “So… This is fun…”

            And Yuna was shoved into the ancient and crumbling original Via Purifico, where, apparently, they had hidden the rest of her guardians like easter eggs.

            “Well, Waffles, let’s get to it,” she said with a sigh.  Tydus had told her before they had been split up that there were impending aeon battles, so she decided to beef up her aeons.  Besides, physically attacking fiends was laughable and healing them might make them die of laughter, but she doubted it.  Until she found Lulu, Auron, and Kimahri she would use Waffles’s buffness and super pointy blue nose to decimate all the fiends that just happened to be in the Via Purifico.

            “It’s awfully fortunate that we are such capable fighters,” Yuna said to Waffles.

            Waffles grunted in agreement.

            “And I don’t see how fiends are supposed to subjugate people for Yevon.”

            Waffles made a skeptic grunt.

            “You know what I think?  I think they don’t expect people to come out of here.”

            Waffles rolled his eyes.

            Eventually, Yuna did find Lulu and Kimahri, and found Auron near an important-looking tunnel.

            “There must be an exit somewhere,” Auron said with frustration.  Waffles beat his flat forehead on the wall.  “Nice aeon, by the way.  Is beating his head against the wall part of some super attack?”

            “No idea.  Let’s go look for that exit.”  Thirty minutes later they finally tried the important-looking tunnel.  Waffles’s forehead was very sore by this time, but the others still had a high opinion of him due to his ability to whoop ass.

            At the other end of the tunnel was Isaaru.  He looked slightly nervous.  “Uh, in the name of Yevon, drop dead?” he said, like he was pleading with them.

Yuna summoned the rest of her aeons, even Prissy.  “Please don’t hurt me!  Seymour made me do it!”  Isaaru ran off.

            “So owhat now?” Lulu asked.

            “It’s time to make myself a widow,” Yuna said dangerously.

            “Technically, you are already a widow, as Seymour is already dead,” said Auron.

            “I hope I’m in his will…”

            “Well, there’s a sign over there.  It says ‘to Seymour’ going that way, and ‘to man-eating kittens’ going the other way.”

            “Which one did Isaaru go down?”

            “The man-eatting kittens one,” said Lulu with a shudder.

            The pilgrims heard a horrible and unmanly screech.

            “Guess he didn’t see the sign.”  Auron led them down the passage that led to Seymour, looking nonchalant.

            Back with the rest of the group Tydus was swimming.  And swimming.  And swimming.  God, Tydus, could you swim any slower?!  Anyway, they shortly ran into Evrae.  That is, Evrae Altana, who was a zombie swimming carpet as opposed to the red flying carpet it had once been.

            “I’m back, bee-otches!” it roared, “Surprised?”

            “No,” said Tydus.

            The zombie-fied Evrae deflated considerably.  “Why not?”

            “For one, it’s in my guide.  For two, you said you would.”

            “Ah,.  Well… DIE!”

Tydus chucked several Phoenix Downs at it and it died before it got five feet.  He thought he saw a tear before the beast disappeared.

            “That’s the last we’ll see of him,” he said confidently.

            “You really shouldn’t say that,” said Rikku.

            “Why not?  I am one hundred percent sure of it.”

            “Uh-huh.”

            “Yes.”

            “Okay.”

            “I am positive.”

            “Shut up, Tydus.”

            A long swim later and they were reunited with the rest of the group, plus Seymour and Kinoc’s corpse.

            “Oh, hello there,” Tydus said brightly.

            “Oh my god!  He killed Kinoc!” said Auron, looking aghast.  He took an exceptionally large brick to the head for that.

            “My gift to him,” said Seymour, “Death is great!  Everyone die!  It’s the ‘in’ thing.”

            “I’m not sure about your choice of husband, Yuna.”

            “Ha ha, Tydus.”

            “Hey, harken unto this.”  Tydus climbed onto a bench.  “This will be the second time we kill Seymour.  It won’t be the last.  This is fact.”

            “What if we don’t kill him, eh?”

            “Then it’s game over.  Press reset and try again.”

            “Your constant belief that our lives are run by an imaginary book are getting on my nerves.”

            “Let’s just kill Seymour, we can’t get anywhere ‘till we do.”

            Long story short, they defeated Seymour, and it was NOT THAT HARD.  “That’s the last we’ll see of him,” said Rikku.

            “Actually—“

            “Shut up, Tydus.”

            In the end they were driven out of Bevelle by angry mobs and were once again in Macalania Woods.  What horrors await them in the forest of shinies this time?!

--------------------------------------------

My hands hurt…

C’mon C’mon is by The Von Bondies, I thought it was a good beat to go chain surfing to

Windows XP is copyright you-know-who, and no, I do not mean Mr. Huddleston

And hey, I made a prophecy: in FFXII there is a race of people with bunny ears!  I am so awesome.