Final Fantasy X story

The story of Final Fantasy X is told by Tidus, a sports star from the futuristic metropolis they call Zanarkand. During a match Tidus gets swept up into another world and joins summoner Yuna on her journey to save the world of Spira from a rampaging monster known as Sin. While making their way toward the mythical Zanarkand while running into the corrupt undercurrent of Spira's society, Tidus holds onto hope he will one day find his way back home.

Welcome to Spira
The party sits around a campfire in silence. Beyond the horizon is a ruined city, covered in pyreflies. Tidus begins to tell his story of how he reached this place.

Tidus's story begins in the metropolis of Zanarkand where he is signing autographs for fans, thinking it is a normal day as the star player for his blitzball team, the Zanarkand Abes. Amid the opening match of the Jecht Memorial Cup (organized to honor Tidus's father, Jecht, who vanished ten years ago), a gigantic wave enters the city destroying everything in its path. The only person undisturbed by this is Auron, a man who has acted as Tidus's mentor since Jecht's disappearance. Tidus meets up with Auron outside the blitzball stadium, but time stops and a boy in purple robes appears before him, and tells him, "It begins. Don't cry."

After the boy vanishes, Tidus continues after Auron who reveals the force destroying the city is called "Sin" and gives Tidus "a gift from Jecht", a longsword. The two fight their way through the invading monsters and when they reach Sin, Auron allows both himself and Tidus to be sucked up into its "maw". Tidus loses consciousness—but not before seeing a brief vision of his father.

When Tidus awakes he finds himself in a temple ruin where he sets up a camp. When a monster attacks him a group of strangers blows through the door and the leader helps Tidus with the battle. Tidus tries to thank his helpers, but they speak a language foreign to him. The people capture him and bring him to their ship where the group leader, a girl named Rikku, says they are Al Bhed, people who use the forbidden machina technology.

For Tidus to stay he must accompany Rikku on an underwater salvage operation on an ancient airship. Afterward Tidus tells Rikku about his life in Zanarkand, but Rikku is reluctant to believe him, asking if he breathed in Sin's toxin, which is known to induce amnesia. After Tidus claims he was telling the truth, Rikku decides to take his word, but not before telling him that Sin destroyed Zanarkand a thousand years ago, and since Zanarkand is a holy place it would be wise not to tell any Yevonites about his life there. Shortly after, Sin appears and knocks Tidus off the Salvage Ship.

Tidus wakes up on a sunny beach and is glad to see something familiar: a group of islanders playing blitzball. After showing off his skills the islanders flock around him and the leader of the group, Wakka, explains Tidus has arrived at Besaid Island. He is unnerved when Tidus mentions his home city is Zanarkand and chalks up Tidus's behavior to his recent encounters with Sin. Wakka explains Sin is a monster that rose a thousand years ago, destroying the machina cities, including Zanarkand, as a result of human crimes and use of machina.

Wakka leads Tidus to Besaid Village hoping to have him join his blitzball team, the Besaid Aurochs. The team has not won a game in twenty-three years, and need Tidus's help, even more so since Wakka is planning to leave the team to become a full-time guardian. Tidus agrees to join and later follows Wakka into Besaid Temple, a branch of the Spiran religion of Yevon. The apprentice summoner who had begun her trial in the temple the day before hasn't returned, and despite the priest's orders, Tidus goes through the temple's Cloister of Trials to rescue her. Encountering her guardians—the Ronso Kimahri, the black mage Lulu, and Wakka (who'd gone in after him)—Tidus makes it in time to see the summoner, Yuna, exit the Chamber of the Fayth.

Outside, Yuna summons her first aeon, Valefor. Aeons are the physical realization of the fayth's dreams, souls petrified in stone whose statues lie in every temple of Yevon. The fayth communicate with summoners who pray to them within the temples' Chamber of the Fayth, and establish a mental link between the fayth and the summoner. Using this link, the fayth gives their dream a physical form: an aeon. Aeons are powerful creatures only a summoner can use in battle.

Later, Yuna wishes to hear more of Tidus's story and he overhears Lulu berating Wakka over his interest in Tidus, since she believes Wakka is only protecting him out of memories for his deceased brother, Chappu, whose face resembles Tidus's.

The pilgrimage begins
The guardians head out with Yuna on her pilgrimage, a sacred journey across Spira to defeat Sin. Wakka takes Tidus along out of hopes somebody will recognize him at the blitz tournament at Luca. They set out on the S.S. Liki to reach Kilika, and Tidus and Yuna get a chance to talk. Yuna believes Tidus's story, partly because ten years ago a man named Jecht worked as her father's guardian. Yuna is the daughter of high summoner Braska, the last person to destroy Sin. During the journey Sin appears and the party fights it, but fails to stop it from leveling Kilika Port.

In Kilika, Yuna performs the sending guiding the souls of the dead to the Farplane. Those who die in Spira can leave behind pyreflies, that, unless sent by a summoner, will become fiends, the primary monsters of Spira. The next day, the group enters Kilika Temple to gain the aeon Ifrit. Though Tidus was to stay out of the Cloister of Trials as he is not a guardian, he is tossed in by the guardian of the summoner Dona, who sees Yuna as a rival. Nonetheless, Yuna obtains Ifrit.

The pilgrimage moves to the city of Luca, the second-largest city in Spira, where a blitzball tournament is taking place. Maester Seymour Guado and the elder Grand Maester Yo Mika overlook the tournament, which is being held to honor Mika's 50th year as Grand Maester of Yevon. During the first match Yuna learns of Auron's presence in Luca—a legendary guardian to her father Braska. She has Tidus and Kimahri help her look for him. While Kimahri's rival Ronso, Biran and Yenke, appear to harass him, Yuna is kidnapped by the Al Bhed Psyches blitzball team to force the Aurochs into surrendering the match. While Wakka handles the game, Tidus goes with Lulu and Kimahri to rescue Yuna from the Al Bhed ship, and Tidus learns Yuna is half-Al Bhed. Lulu sends a signal to Wakka, who wins the game, ending a twenty-three-year losing streak without Tidus's help.

The next blitzball match is against the Spiran champions, the Luca Goers. After the match a group of fiends attacks the stadium. Tidus and Wakka fight the beasts, and are given the surprise aid of Auron. The rest of the fiends are dispatched by Seymour's aeon, Anima, and Yuna is among the spectators left in awe of the aeon's power. Auron explains that Jecht, Braska and him defeated Sin ten years ago and claims that Sin is Jecht. Dumbfounded by this apparent impossibility, Tidus refuses to accept it.

The pilgrimage continues up the Mi'ihen Highroad, now with two new guardians: Auron and Tidus. The party spends the night at Rin's Travel Agency and Yuna tells Tidus about the goal of the pilgrimage: to go to Zanarkand to obtain the Final Aeon, which can destroy Sin. At the highway's north gate the group is not let through because of Operation Mi'ihen, but Seymour gets the Crusaders to let Yuna and the party pass.

The Mushroom Rock Road is under occupation by the Crusaders, the military arm of Yevon's clergy. Under the command of Seymour and his fellow Maester, Auron's former friend Wen Kinoc, the Crusaders join forces with the Al Bhed to defeat Sin. Operation Mi'ihen involves using Sinspawn as bait to draw Sin to Djose, then attack it with a machina said to be as powerful as the aeons. Wakka, being orthodox to Yevon's teachings and resentful of the Al Bhed, is furious over the plan. Auron stands back, knowing the plan will fail. The operation is a disaster: hundreds of Crusaders are killed and Yuna must again perform the sending. Yevon covers its involvement by blaming the defeat on the Crusaders' heresy. Auron explains to Tidus the reason Sin (Jecht) came to the operation was to see his son.

The party enters the Djose Temple to gain the aeon Ixion where they meet fellow summoner Isaaru. There is a rumor that summoners on pilgrimages are disappearing. The party continues to the Moonflow, and while crossing the river on a shoopuf, Wakka points to the sunken ruins of a city as an example of what happens to people who use machina. An Al Bhed abducts Yuna into the water, but she is rescued by Tidus and Wakka who destroy the machina holding her captive. Reaching the other side of the river, they run into Rikku, Yuna's cousin who was the pilot of the destroyed machina. Not wanting to upset Wakka, Tidus and Lulu keep him in the dark about Rikku and Yuna's lineage. Rikku joins the party as Yuna's sixth guardian, with Auron's blessing, who is also aware of her race.

The party moves to Guadosalam, the city of the Guado of which Seymour is the leader, as he is half-Guado half-human. He invites the party to his mansion where he tries to woo Yuna and shows them a sphere recording of what appears to be Tidus's Zanarkand: a glittering metropolis from a thousand years ago. Within the vision is the first summoner to defeat Sin, Lady Yunalesca, and her husband Lord Zaon. Seymour proposes marriage to Yuna, but she avoids answering and instead takes her group to visit the Farplane, the land of the dead that exists on the inside of Spira where pyreflies gather to form images of the dead from the visitors' memories.

Rikku believes it to be nothing but an illusion and chooses not to enter. Auron stays behind as well, though he does not give a reason. Inside, Tidus finds Jecht does not appear, meaning he may still be alive as Sin. Tidus accidentally summons the image of his mother, who, as Yuna explains, must have accepted death and entered the Farplane without needing a sending. One of the reasons Tidus resents his father is that his mother had lost the will to live after he went missing.

Seymour's father, Jyscal Guado, leaves the Farplane as an "unsent", a ghost created from a person who dies "an unclean death". Yuna sends Jyscal, and during the ceremony, Auron falls upon his knees, greatly weakened. A sphere recording appears from the unsent, which Yuna snatches up. While Yuna enters the Guado manor intending to discuss Jyscal, Seymour has already left for Macalania, where the group heads next.

Rikku panics when the group reaches the Thunder Plains, and halfway across they stay at a Rin's Travel Agency to calm her. Rikku has severe astraphobia—a fear of thunderstorms—left over from a past mishap when her brother aimed a Thunder spell at an attacking fiend, except it missed and hit her instead. While staying at the agency Yuna privately views the contents of Jyscal's sphere recording. Before the group enters the Macalania Woods Yuna announces she will accept Seymour's offer of matrimony. Auron guesses Yuna is hoping to negotiate something with Seymour, and that she doesn't want the others involved.

The true face of Yevon
While passing through the Macalania Woods, Auron hacks his way through an overgrown sidepath to reveal a spring whose pyrefly-infused water is used to create spheres. After fighting the Spherimorph a movie sphere from Jecht is left behind that shows snippets of Braska's pilgrimage. It includes a sentimental message from Jecht to Tidus. Auron explains Jecht had accepted his fate to remain in Spira and assist Braska in defeating Sin, and later tells Tidus that Jecht loved his son, but didn't know how to express it.

After leaving the woods the group is met by Tromell, Seymour's butler, who leads Yuna into the Macalania Temple to prepare for the wedding. They are ambushed by Al Bhed with Rikku's brother among them who try to stop the pilgrimage by unleashing the powerful Crawler, which Yuna's guardians destroy. Wakka learns Rikku is an Al Bhed, and expresses his disgust at the "heathen". Angry that no one is taking his side, Wakka heads to Macalania Temple on foot, while the others ride on machina sleds. (Depending on the affection levels Tidus will either ride with Rikku, Lulu, Auron, or Kimahri.)

If Tidus rides with Rikku, he will learn Rikku and Yuna are cousins, and Rikku explains why the Al Bhed want to protect the summoners during the pilgrimage, disagreeing with the summoners sacrificing themselves to bring happiness to Spira. If he rides with Lulu, Tidus will come to understand Wakka's hatred towards the Al Bhed, which stems from the way Wakka's brother Chappu died: while wielding a forbidden machina weapon of Al Bhed make. He asks Lulu if a human can become Sin and she finally believes Tidus comes from another world.

At the temple the party comes upon the sphere Yuna had retrieved from the unsent Jyscal, which shows Seymour murdered his father to succeed him as Maester and the leader of the Guado. The party confronts Seymour outside the Chamber of the Fayth and, with the new aeon Shiva, are forced to kill him when he turns on the party. An angered Tromell appears and takes away Seymour's body before Yuna can send him, and breaks the sphere that proves Seymour's crimes. Now dubbed traitors, the party flees the temple with Guado soldiers in pursuit. They escape when a yeti-like fiend sends them plummeting through the ice of the frozen Lake Macalania.

They land atop a underground mass of land near the bottom of the temple. Yuna reveals that in exchange for marriage, she was hoping to have Seymour turn himself in for his crimes. Auron reminds her the pilgrimage is more important, saying that the fayth are the ones that give power to the summoners, not the temples or the teachings. The ground begins to shake, and the party realizes they had landed atop a docile Sin, which knocks the party unconscious as it begins to stir. Tidus accepts that Sin really is his father.

Awaking on Bikanel Island, Tidus finds himself alone by an oasis. He rounds up his fellow guardians, but cannot find Yuna. Rikku leads the group to the Al Bhed city of Home, which is under siege by Guado forces. Fighting through the invasion, the party finds the summoners Dona and Isaaru taken by the Al Bhed to the Summoners' Sanctum. Tidus suffers an emotional breakdown after he discovers the truth behind the pilgrimage: summoning the Final Aeon will kill the summoner, and Yuna will meet the same fate if she completes her journey.

The group makes its way to the Al Bhed airship, the Fahrenheit (which was the airship Tidus and Rikku salvaged upon their first meeting), captained by Rikku's father and Yuna's uncle, Cid. The ship takes off with Tidus's group and most of the Al Bhed on board. Cid blows up Home with the airship's missile system to take out the invading forces. The party learns Yuna has been taken by the Guado to the now-unsent Seymour to be married.

The party finds Yuna at the capital city of Bevelle where she is in a wedding gown to be joined with Seymour. Tidus and his group crash the wedding and force their way through, and Yuna tries to send Seymour. Grand Maester Mika stops her, and Tidus and co. are held at gunpoint by warrior monks and Wen Kinoc. After the ceremony Yuna threatens to dive off the tower if Seymour won't release her guardians. She lets herself fall off the tower, but midair summons Valefor and is safely taken to the Cloister of Trials.

Rikku throws a flash bomb to distract the guards, allowing Yuna's guardians to escape. Along the way to Bevelle's Chamber of the Fayth they discover several machina inside; Auron confirms that this is the "true face of Yevon: they betray their own teachings". Yuna gains the aeon Bahamut, but the group is arrested. Yuna and her guardians are put on trial by the Maesters of Yevon, where they press their case, claiming Seymour should be sent to the Farplane. Grand Maester Mika reveals he is also an unsent, and it seems they are without allies except for the Ronso Maester, Kelk Ronso, who leaves Yevon troubled by Jyscal's murder.

While imprisoned Auron tells Tidus about the "spiral of death" that traps Spira: the summoners sacrifice themselves to defeat Sin, but Sin will always return. Yuna and her guardians are deemed traitors and sentenced to the Via Purifico, a dungeon said to be inescapable. After reuniting with her guardians and making her way to the exit, Yuna is confronted by Isaaru, who places his loyalty to Yevon above his friendship to Yuna. The two duel with their aeons and Isaaru is soundly beaten. Making their way to Bevelle's exit, the party finds Seymour with Kinoc's corpse. Seymour reveals his true plan is to "save" Spira from its cycle of death by becoming Sin and destroying all life. This is why he had wanted to marry Yuna: he knows the truth behind the Final Summoning. Seymour absorbs the pyreflies from Maester Kinoc's body, which he is able to do now that he is an unsent, and transforms into Seymour Natus, but is defeated.

Revelations
Leaving Bevelle for the Macalania Woods, Yuna, her faith in Yevon shaken, goes off into the woods to be alone. Tidus follows and finds Yuna in the spring. He reveals he knows the truth behind the Final Summoning and apologizes for talking about life "after" defeating Sin, believing he had only depressed Yuna. Yuna says his words had made her happy. Tidus tries to persuade Yuna to quit the pilgrimage and stay with him, and though tempted, Yuna cannot simply allow Sin to run rampant across Spira. She breaks down in tears and Tidus comforts her, and they embrace and share a kiss under the full moon. They return to the party to continue their journey into the Calm Lands and onward to Mt. Gagazet.

Before crossing Gagazet, Kelk and his tribe of Ronso give Yuna their blessing after witnessing her resolve and courage. Tidus and Rikku are intent on finding a way to save her. A pursuing Seymour attacks the Ronso and many are slaughtered, including Kelk, Biran, and Yenke. The party struggles through the frigid mountain before they run into Seymour who transforms into Seymour Flux. Despite Seymour's growing powers, he is again defeated. After the battle, Yuna and the guardians learn of Sin's identity as Jecht.

Near the mountain peak the group comes across a fountain of fayth lost in dreams. Tidus is struck by a dream of his home in Zanarkand and while there, meets the boy in purple robes he saw in the beginning of his journey—the fayth of Bahamut, a soul in stasis whose physical body is petrified in the Chamber of the Fayth in Bevelle, but whose spirit is free to wander. The fayth reveals Sin was created to leave Spira forever backward so Tidus's Zanarkand could exist eternally without being detected, and that the Zanarkand Tidus hails from is only a dream created by the fayth. Tidus, Jecht, and everybody else from the city are nothing but dreams who will cease to exist once Sin is truly defeated.

As Jecht and Tidus have both been "touched by Sin" they have been made real and have a chance of destroying it. The fayth asks Tidus to defeat Sin so the fayth can be freed of the burden of sustaining "Dream Zanarkand". Tidus accepts, even while knowing doing so will mean he will disappear. After he returns to consciousness, Tidus keeps what he learned to himself.

After passing through Mt. Gagazet the party comes to the original Zanarkand, which lies in ruins. This is where the pilgrimage is to terminate and Tidus's retelling of the events that led him here ends. The party enters the ruins where the pyreflies are so numerous they display visions of past summoners who came through to defeat Sin. The party witnesses a vision of a young Seymour, whose mother had given up her life to become the fayth of Anima.

They meet Lady Yunalesca in Zanarkand Dome, now an unsent after her battle with Sin a thousand years ago. They learn that to create the Final Aeon a guardian must be sacrificed as its fayth. They glimpse into the past into Braska's pilgrimage where Jecht became the fayth for the Final Aeon. The Final Aeon can only defeat Sin for a short time, for after the old Sin is destroyed the Final Aeon is transformed into a new Sin, and thus whoever becomes the Final Aeon will later become Sin, continuing the spiral of death.

Yuna refuses to partake in what she calls a "false tradition" as she does not wish to sacrifice any of her guardians. Yunalesca believes that without faith in the Final Summoning, and the hope it's meant to bring, Yuna will succumb to despair, and decides to kill her and free her from such a fate. The party sees a vision of young Auron from the past; distraught about Braska's death and Jecht's transformation, Auron went to confront Yunalesca, but was killed, making him an unsent.

In the present time Auron rallies his team to attack Yunalesca. Though Yunalesca is powerful the party prevails and destroys her, forever ending the practice of Final Summoning, as Yunalesca is the only one who can make the fayth for the Final Aeon. Before she fades, Yunalesca mentions that "even if there was another way... even if you did destroy Sin... Yu Yevon the immortal will only create Sin anew".

Defeating Sin
With Yunalesca gone, the party needs to find a new way to defeat Sin. Cid arrives in the Fahrenheit to pick them up and they brainstorm a strategy. Yevon is in disarray with the deaths of so many Maesters, and Tidus and his party land in Bevelle during the crisis to confront Yo Mika. When Mika learns they have not gained the Final Aeon, and have eliminated it for all eternity, he believes Spira is doomed to be destroyed by Yu Yevon's spiral of destruction and the despair it engenders. Mika willingly departs for the Farplane and his body dissolves into pyreflies.

The party comes up with a plan to beat Sin: they will distract Sin by having all of Spira sing Jecht's favorite song, the "Hymn of the Fayth", and while Sin is subdued, the party will attack on the airship. The attack begins as planned, and eventually the monster opens up its mouth to suck in the airship. Inside Sin they find Seymour whose pyreflies Sin had absorbed from the atmosphere, and battle him a final time. Despite yet another powerful form, Seymour Omnis, he is defeated. With nowhere for him to run, Yuna sends the rogue Maester. Before disappearing, Seymour says he is glad it was Yuna who would send him, but even if they defeated Sin, Spira's sorrow would continue.

At Sin's Core, in a place similar to the blitzball stadium from Dream Zanarkand, Tidus is reunited with his father who only has a short time left before his mind fully becomes Sin's. Jecht turns into Braska's Final Aeon, Sin's true form, but the party kills Jecht and saves him from the nightmare of being Sin. Jecht says goodbye to Tidus and scolds him for crying, but the battle is not won yet.

Yu Yevon is an ancient summoner hailing from the original Zanarkand of 1,000 years ago, and Yunalesca's father. When he saw Zanarkand was going to be destroyed in the Machina War, he had performed a summoning so immense he had lost his humanity: he had transformed the remaining citizens of Zanarkand into fayth and used their collective dream to summon Dream Zanarkand so that the memory of the city would be preserved forever. To ensure the summoning would never be halted, he had clad himself in living armor made out of pyreflies Sin would collect from the atmosphere, which became known as the monster Sin. Its purpose is to stop Spira's technological advancement in machina use and to make sure Dream Zanarkand—which was summoned far out to sea—would never be discovered my mortals. Whenever a Final Aeon pierces Yu Yevon's armor, Sin, Yu Yevon will possess the Final Aeon and mold it into a new Sin. The time Yu Yevon spends remaking Sin after the old one's demise is known to the Spirans as the Calm, and the Yevon Temple arose to deify the phenomenon, all the while knowing the Final Summoning will never defeat Sin permanently.

Yu Yevon is but a husk of his former self, and what remains of him requires an aeon to inhabit. After Braska's Final Aeon is killed, Yu Yevon takes over Yuna's aeons one by one. The party destroys each aeon as Yu Yevon possesses them, and with nowhere left to hide, Yu Yevon himself appears, revealed to be little more than a floating bug-like creature. The party destroys Yu Yevon, and thus defeats Sin.

Auron, his mission complete, requests that Yuna send him. With the fayth retiring from their thousand-year dream, Tidus bids farewell as he fades from existence. Though Yuna tries to stop him from leaving, she falls right through him. Yuna proclaims her love for him (in the original Japanese version, she thanks him instead) and Tidus embraces her. He jumps off the edge of Cid's airship, falling through the clouds, where he sees Braska, Auron, and Jecht waiting for him on the Farplane and high-fives Jecht, symbolizing that he has reconciled with his father.

Epilogue
Now a high summoner, Yuna gives a speech at the Luca blitzball stadium about Spira's future: Sin is finally dead, and Spira is theirs again after 1,000 years of terror. The Eternal Calm has begun, and Yuna resolves to aid in the world's reconstruction, and concludes with, "The people and friends that we have lost, and the dreams that have faded... never forget them."

In the depths of the ocean, Tidus wakes up and swims toward the surface with a smile on his face.