So many dumb references. But not one Motie joke! Yet…
Chapter 23 --- It’s Zanarkand! (Finally)
"-HELL!"
From the strategically placed exit
of
"Wow," said he, "Yet another ruin.”
“Fifteen minute coffee break!” said Auron. Everyone halted in the road and began putting on their Oxfords and ties. Lulu’s tie had black lace around it. Wakka fetched a collapsible table, a coffee pot, a bag of ground coffee, and a mug with “I heart Yevon” written on it, out of his overalls. The surrounding area was slowly immersed in Generic Coffee Smell, first engineered in 1934 to increase sales.
Auron sipped his coffee (pensively, of course) out of a solid black mug. “Ahh. A good cup of coffee is a direct aesthetic experience of the real, you know.”
“DoubleU Tee Eff, Auron,” said Tydus, “Drinking coffee doesn’t make you a mountain-top guru.”
“I learned that in college,” Auron replied coolly. He took a long sip. “You’d know it, too, if you’d had any thought for your education.”
“I would have gone to college if a certain someone hadn’t fed me to Sin!”
Yuna
looked up from her own mug, yellow with a picture of a stuffed giraffe. “Oh?
You were eaten by Sin? Just the
other day I was discussing with
“Those formations,” Rikku interjected, “are merely a large mass of barnacles caused by too many prolonged baths.”
“Baths?” said Tydus.
“In the ocean.” Rikku nodded wisely.
They sipped their coffee.
On the other side of the table, Wakka was talking at Lulu.
“Chappu was my brother, you know, so technically I should resemble him more than Tydus. Besides, Tydus is way too young for you, and you’re not Yuna. Face it, it’ll never work. Sooo… Doing anything tonight?”
“I thought you couldn’t say ‘technically’,” said Lulu.
“Er… Hey, look over there!”
“Oh my, what got into them?”
“Oh, Yuna!” Rikku cried shrilly, kneeling in front of Yuna, grabbing at her skirt and sobbing loudly. “I’ve failed you! I can’t manage to think of a way for you to not die; another failure in a long line of fancy scientists who also failed! Kill me now, end my misery!”
Yuna gently lifted Riku… and hugged her. For five minutes.
“Hey, I failed that, too,” Tydus muttered.
Finally, the cousins separated.
“Feel better?” Yuna asked.
“Uh huh,” said Rikku.
Auron coughed. “Erm, coffee break over.”
The group took a convenient path that jutted out of the ruined towers of Zanarkand, winding down until they were almost at the same level as the water. Amongst partially sunken ruins. Again. Directly in front of them was a sheltered fire pit walled on two sides by the path the group had just decended. Further off, beyond the small bay of water created by the curving road (no, I’m serious. This is the road Tydus was walking on at the beginning of the story. Just a little run-down.) was the gigantic glowing worm thing of pyreflies.
“Wait, why are we stopping? We just had a break!”
Auron gestured with his sword at the Scenic View. “But this is a cutscene to develop the plot. More importantly, it connects with the very first scene in the game that you probably skipped or forgot but if you hadn’t it would make you say ‘Oh, I get it, that’s clever’.”
“Curses,” said Rikku, “I can’t start this fire! Oh, for a lightbulb!”
Tydus observed the fire pit. There were a few rocks and an edition of the Zanarkand Times. The headline read “Blob Attacks Zanarkand! Zanarkand Times HQ only building left standing!”
“Of course it would,” Tydus muttered. To Rikku he said, “Stand back, I have just the key items for this.” And so it was that Tydus found a use for the Withered Flowers. Shortly there was a blazing fire that smelled faintly of broken dreams.
Yuna pulled out a ukulele. After strumming a chord, she led the group in a techno version of Kumbaya. After five seconds Tydus had to leave. He climbed onto the path that shielded the rest of the group from the dusk light, where the Scenic View was taking place. He sat on the bench placed there by Girl Scout Troop 345 and stared off into the distance aimlessly. He frowned; he could still hear Wakka’s grating treble.
Shortly Yuna joined him on the bench. Back at the campfire, Auron, who had been drinking heavily from his suspicious keg, had picked up the ukulele. He was singing some nonsense about a cake…
“MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark,
All
the sweet, green icing flowing down!
Someone left the cake out in
the rain.
I don't think that I can take
it,
'Cause it took so long to bake
it,
And
I'll never have that recipe again!
Oh, noooooooo—
Ow! Hey, the
sky’s falling! Hic! Never would have guessed it was made of
bricks…”
“Wow,” Tydus said to Yuna, “We should be recording this.”
“Nuh-uh, movie spheres cost 50,000 a pop.”
“That reminds me… Do you think someone in Luca is… spying on us?”
“I think we’re getting off topic…”
“Hey, you’re right! This is an impressive view, and needs some impressive narrative to go with it. And lets not forget that this is my— Ow!” At this moment yet another brick made contact with Tydus’s head.
“Shut up, Tydus!” Auron called from the campfire. “It is not!”
“Just don’t ever claim it’s yours or I swear to God I will kill you.”
“Now that’s all kinds of ironic.”
“Kingdom Hearts 2 doesn’t count! You don’t even have sunglasses!”
“It’s very dark in the Underworld.”
“It’s very dark here.”
“So what? You want a gander at my lazy eye, do you? Do you?!”
“Er… no…”
“I thought not.”
They had almost reached what they assumed was their destination, the only building whose roof and walls had not become the floor, when Tydus stopped and turned around.
“Hold on, we can’t leave the area yet.”
“Of course we can!” said Yuna, waving her arms, “There’s the exit, right there! All we have to do is go through and for the love of Yevon get this pilgrimage over with!”
“I didn’t know you were in such a hurry to die, but death wishes aside, I’ve been looking ahead with the guide, and… ah, I believe I mentioned this before, but we do fight Yunalesca—“
Tydus paused and put up his guard in case anyone decided to throw anything at him.
“Right… and she does shitloads of status effects, including Confusion. As you all know, almost any of us can kill any of the others with one blow, so this is really bad. So we need to steal TONS of Musks from the bat things in this area in order to add Confuseproof to our armor.”
The group glared at him, but didn’t protest. They had all done some rather embarrassing things while under the influence and weren’t keen to bring them up.
“Er,
incidentally, we’ll also need to avoid being turned into zombies, which means
stealing Candles of Life form the zombies inside this temple-dealy here.”
“Zombies again?!” said Rikku, “What the cracker are there zombies here for? Are they gonna try to eat our brains, or mob us, or—“
Lulu tossed a doll at her. “I’m thinking no. But it’s a good bet that they will try to kill us, as has everything else we’ve run into thus far.”
“Then let’s get this busy work over with while I still have a young and beautiful corpse to leave behind!” said Yuna.
“Um, yeah, I don’t think there’s gonna be a body left…” said Auron
“…”
“Oh, and Rikku,” said Tydus, “you’re the one who’s going to have to pick the zombies’ pockets.”
“What?!”
Five hours later, Rikku finally acquired enough Musk to customize three pieces of armor with Confuseproof and some kickass stylin’ spoilers.
“Look on the bright side, ya?” said Wakka, “We’ve all gained more than 30 moves on the sphere grid!”
“Whoopee,” the group mumbled in response.
And so the group approached the temple. As they reached the bottom step of the entrance, the ghosts of Riff Raff, Magenta, and various suspiciously dressed people appeared on the top step.
Each group stared at the other for a few seconds, then the ghosts suddenly broke into song and dance.
“It’s just a jump to the left. And then a step to the ri-iii-iight! With your hands on your hips, you bring your knees in tiii-iight! But it’s the pelvic thruuust that really drives you insaaaaane!”
Tydus tried to get Yuna to dance along with him, and she whacked him with her rod.
“Let’s do the Time Warp agaaaain!”
The ghosts froze, then popped out of existance.
“Okay… perfectly normal, I’m sure,” said Tydus. He looked to Auron for confirmation.
Auron shrugged. “I have no idea what just happened, but I might just know what it was about…”
It was even darker inside the temple-dealy. They were on a walkway suspended above a darker darkness. The only light came from the occasional drunken pyrefly floating past. Both Auron and Rikku steadfastly refused to remove their sunglasses. So the ambient noise consisted of crickets, faint pyrefly bar songs, and stubbed-toe curses.
Oh, and the place was severely haunted.
“Although these are actually projections of touchy-feely events and not ghosts of the dead,” Auron explained, “These people are probably dead anyway. Damnit, my toe!”
“That’s really great, Auron,” said Tydus.
At a junction in the path something
noteworthy happened. The ghost of a little boy, who looked exactly like
“Mommy, the other boys always pick on me at school. They called me a freak!”
“That’s because you are, honey. A thoroughly creepy-looking freak. But don’t worry. I’ll become your fayth, and you can use the resulting aeon to smite them all for being judgemental!”
“Sounds a bit ironic, to me, Mommy.”
“Even better.”
“But I don’t want to be a summoner. I want to be… a cowboy!”
“Tough cookies.”
The ghosts faded back into pyreflies. The group was silent in thoughtful contemplation. At least, some of them were. The really fast ones had done their contemplation during the display and were wondering if they could accurately recall what a bed looked like. Others, well…
“Was that… Seymour and his mother?!” said Rikku, shocked.
“What?!” exclaimed Yuna, “No one answer that!”
Auron
shuffled uneasily. “
“Oh, yeah,” said Tydus. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you, Auron! How about enlightening us?”
“Er… Hey, look over there! An embarrassing display of the immaturity of my youth!”
Sure enough, the ghost of young Auron, along with ghost-Braska and ghost-Jeckt, was walking along the exact same path.
“I don’t want you to die, Braska!” ghost-Auron whined. The young one.
“Suck it up, Auron,” said ghost-Jeckt.
“Enough of the though-guy act, Jeckt. We all know you have feelings and you’re going to admit it before the end.”
“Auron,” said ghost-Braska, “I have a physical need to make people happy. Like a suicidal comedian.”
“But you’re too young too die!”
“Best not to wait until you’re too
decrepit to summon a piece of cheese,” said Jeckt.
Ghost-Braska
nodded. His hat bobbed
precariously. “Seriously, Auron, you’ve been saying that every five minutes since
The ghosts walked off, but didn’t disappear.
“What a treat,” Auron mumbled, “We get to watch this whole drama play out twice. At least we can prevent ourselves from repeating anything.”
“Braska, I loooove you!” said ghost-Auron.
“Jesus Christ, I hate myself.”
They made their way along a path that seemed long for the purpose of containing as many fiends and embarrassing outbursts by young Auron as it could. Finally, they reached the Cloister of Trials. Tydus was already thumbing through his guide.
“Oh, YES! It’s Tetris! We get to play—wait, no we don’t…”
On the floor of the Cloister was a grid of colored dots. The Spectral Keeper, a small-headed, orange, spindly thing, was sitting at the other end of the room with a spinner. “Today, kiddies, it’s Twister. Because I’m crazy like that. Left foot blue!”
“I cannot believe this,” said Auron, watching his old posse walk further into the Cloister to enjoy some relatively normal Trials.
“Come on, kiddies, I’m not getting any younger. Left foot green.”
Ten minutes later they managed to get decently tangled up.
“Right hand green.”
“Yes!” said Wakka, “Hello there, Lulu.”
“Enough, Wakka!”
The Keeper looked up. “Wakka, your face is getting a little too intimate with the floor. You’re out.”
Ten more minutes later Tydus managed to “accidentally” knock Yuna into Kimahri, who had enough weight and random limbs to take down everyone else. Rikku had been attempting to maneuver away from her dangerous position directly beneath him at the time, but was too late.
“Ah, my ankle!”
“Tydus, congratulations, you win,” said the Keeper. The spinner and dot grid disappeared in whiffs of smoke.
“And then?”
“The Chamber of the Fayth is that way.” The Keeper pointed.
“What?! Any of us could have won… You mean you’re not going to fight us?”
“Did you want to? It’s kinda late at night for that, but if you insist…”
Yuna jumped Tydus before he could say anything about experience points. “Ah, no, that’s quite peachy with us. Take care!”
“Stop by some time, eh? If you’re not dead!”
The room beyond contained an elevator
with a sign over it that read “To Your Doom the Fayth”. Yuna stepped in and
it decended.
Five seconds later she returned.
“What are you all standing around for?”
“We’re not supposed to follow.”
“Never stopped you before.”
They all crammed in the elevator, which was not constructed with six guardians in mind. They were joined by the Braska’s ghost party. Old Auron made attempts to strangle young Auron across Wakka while Tydus had a good laugh.
At the bottom they stumbled out and gathered around the fayth in the floor.
Yuna tapped it with her rod. “It’s broken.”
Suddenly, a ghost of an old man walked through the wall behind her. “Yeah, his soul got stolen or something, a long time ago…”
“Aeon’s Soul, huh?” said Tydus, “We certainly haven’t seen anything like that around…”
“So much for your metaphors, Tydus,” said Yuna.
“I don’t suppose anyone’s tried giving his soul back?”
Auron shoved him through the door the old man had just disappeared through. “No. We’re going to get through this the bullheaded way: kill everyone.”
“WHYYYY?!” Wakka moaned.
The group entered a circular room with a high ceiling and a grand entrance at the other end from which arrived Lady Yunalesca. Wearing just about nothing.
“That old man must love this job,” Tydus whispered.
“You guys are hear for the Final Summoning, right? I had one guy show up asking if we delivered pizza to his area. I turned him into a fayth to get back at him, and there’s the origins of Ixion.” Yunalesca’s hair hissed a bit.
“Uh… huh,” said Tydus.
“My, but you do have a lot of guardians. Like a small army. Not compensating for anything, are we?”
“What?” said Yuna.
“You’re going to have to chose which one gets to die and become the Final Summoning. It’s really very nice being dead. And if you don’t want to go away, you can always hang around, eh, Auron? Nice bunny ears.” Yunalesca gave him a wink.
“That’s a blatant lie!” said Tydus, “The Final Aeon becomes the next Sin! How is that in any way a good thing?!”
“Ah… you’ve got me there… Boy, you guardians aren’t usually so well informed, but I suppose you’re not usually such a convention of weirdos. I’m thinking… Auron, and you too, Tydus, can’t be the Final Summoning. Dead people don’t count and clearly people who don’t even exist make for temperamental, troublesome Sins. Anyone else is fine, but they must have a really strong bond with you. I’ll be waiting in the next room, it’s more dramatic in there.” Yunalesca turned and exited, knocking a bust of some old guy off its stand with part of her runaway hair.
“I’ll do it, Yuna!” said Lulu.
“She said a strong bond, Lulu,” said Tydus, “When have you ever bonded with anyone in this group, you moody goth?”
“Oh, all sorts of things happened in the dark of the Via Purifico,” Lulu replied coolly.
Auron snorted. “Shut you up, didn’t she!”
“Ahhhh!” said Tydus.
“Look,” said Yuna firmly, “No one is going to do it. This is the dumbest idea ever. Who determined a Final Summoning was the only way to kill Sin? It just provides fodder for a new Sin! Let’s just go have a nice peaceful talk with Yunalesca.”
Tydus flipped his hair in annoyance. “Yeah, I’m sure nothing bad will come of it.”
Before they could enter the next room, the ghost party ran ahead to share similar sentiments on the stairs.
“There goes what’s left of Auron’s manliness,” Tydus remarked.
Auron
stabbed at the transparent figures.
Ghost-Jeckt stepped forward through old Auron. “I’m going to throw my life away for a cause I don’t understand at all in a land that’s completely different from my own with definitely no paths back to my own little world because I have the IQ of a gopher!”
“That’s very kind of you, Jeckt,” said ghost-Braska. The two of them went ahead to the room beyond.
Young Auron dropped to his knees. “NOOOOOO!”
“Beats Vader’s,” Tydus whispered to Rikku. “But what wouldn’t?”
The group strode past the weeping Auron, up the steps and into… SPACE! It was like a reverse Farplane. The small platform of ruin floated in a black void of stars, nebulas, and random debris. Yunalesca floated at the other end. Her hair looked more animated than had been previously observed.
The projection of young Auron burst forward suddenly. “I’m so pissed off I dragged myself here to avenge my buddies, who died just like you said they would!”
Ghost-Yunalesca tossed ghost-Auron like a ghost-salad. He hit the ground hard. Twice. His sword stuck itself in the ground, directly in the spot where a sword was already sticking out of the ground.
Yunalesca shook her head. “I need to hire a janitor. Good thing Auron managed to drag himself out of here, or it’d start to smell…”
“Hey, Yunalesca!” said Yuna.
“What?!”
“I think your Finally Summoning is a stupid idea!”
“Oh yeah?!”
“Yeah!”
“Want to fight about it?!”
“Yeah!”
“Step outside!”
“Undead wusses first! Charge!”
With that, the entire of the group ran forward and shoved Yunalesca over the edge. Floating debris whacked her on the way down.
She managed some final words on the way down to… whatever was at the bottom: “That wasn’t in the scriiiiipt!”
“That went smooth,” said Tydus.
“Way to avoid bringing up that we never used that confuseproof, Tydus,” said Auron.
“We did use it! She was trying to confuse us the entire time with metaphors and religious garbage!”
“Hey, check it out!” Rikku called from a set of broken-off stairs. “Teleport stairs! I’m here,” she stepped up and disappeared, “and now I’m here!” She appeared at the bottom of another set of steps.
“Nifty!” said Tydus.
“Guys, can we get the hell out of here?” said Yuna, “It’s not like Yunalesca can’t float.”
“Oh, right.”
As they exited, Yunalesca reached the bottom, which looped to the top. Shortly after, she hit the platform. “Ow…”
“Wow, we’re just pissing off everyone, aren’t we?” said Wakka as they ran for it through the temple.
Auron grabbed Tydus’s hood as he ran past. “Gak!” said Tydus. “What do you want?!”
“We have to talk.”
“About you? It’s always about you, huh? Your story, eh? Dingbat.”
“I’m dead.”
“And I don’t exist. Boo hoo.”
“So I grabbed you using Sin.”
“Why me?”
“Because I can! Bwahahaha!”
“You laugh funny.”
“No, seriously, I have just the flashback for this.” Auron moved to the center of the room and started pulling out a mini-theater and sock puppets. “Okay, this is Jeckt, and this is me.”
“Auron, I want you to watch after my son. He’s a crybaby,” said Jeckt-puppet.
“Godsdamnit!” said Tydus.
“And just how am I supposed to do that, Jeckt? Didn’t you sign up for this because you thought there was no way to get back to him and your life is meaningless without him?” said Auron-puppet.
“… Um… Aw, shits.”
“The end!” said Auron.
“Wow,” said Tydus, “Thanks a lot Auron.”
By the time Tydus reached the exit it was dawn and everyone else had already left… except Sin. He lumbered, huge and dirt-colored, around the side of the building. His slow head turned as if to say “Oh, fancy seeing you here.”
“Oh yeah, totally innocent!” Tydus shouted at him. “Stop following me! We’ll kill you when we kill you!”
The monster lifted its gigantic claws and wiggled them in what looked like sign language. “Don’t… cry… crybaby?! Right! That’s it! We’re having it out, right here, one on one!”
Before Tydus could get himself killed, Sin turned again and lumbered off somewhere, presumably to destroy a civilization or two, and the airship, of all things, floated right past.
“Genius flying,
there. Pick me up!”