Chapter Thirty-One: Past, Present and Future
With a whistle I summoned Rupee from where he had been waiting in the fields outside Alexandria. He knew exactly where I was and therefore was with me within minutes.
<Come Rupee, it’s time to go back home.> I thought to him, he nuzzled me and whinnied. I lifted the limp form of Doctor Tot up onto the Unipegs back and sat in front of him. Then tapping the neck of Rupee and motioning for him to lead on, we left Alexandria and headed back to the Twilight Forest.
I sat alone in my room, tapping Surrelus against my leg and running my thumb over the black satin robe which I had worn for what seemed like forever.
I blinked, dismissing that thought before it had a chance to grow into rebellion, then I gently placed the black two-handed sword of darkness on the bed next to me and stood up. Walking over to the window I took a moment to examine the hive of activity that was Oeilvert now, the small Terran research outpost set up by the very man I was now forced to work with. Set up all those years ago before the Borg came…my skin crawled at the thought of the mindless automatons…but strangely the genomes reminded me a lot of what little I had seen of the Borg themselves.
I turned away from the morning light outside and using telekinesis pulled Surrelus towards me and caught it by the hilt, swinging the blade down and into its scabbard I walked out of the room and into the corridor outside. The corridors in Oeilvert were always cold and sounds echoed throughout the stone walls, and always, always was the mournful sound of the wind whistling through.
It seemed very apt for the chapter of history I was beginning here.
I heard a footstep behind me, just one, and I turned to see who was there…the corridor was empty. Frowning I carried on walking, my senses now alerted and more acute. Again the soft footsteps continued and I let them, acting as though I had never heard them, I turned a corner and quickly darted up against the wall, waiting for my pursuer to turn. Someone in a cloak came around the corner and I grabbed them by the shoulder and slammed them against the wall with my sword blade by their throat.
Rather unsurprisingly it was Kitiara.
“You again,” I hissed “I thought I told you to keep out of my way.”
She said nothing, just stared at me sullenly, I looked at her, the way the red in her eyes glowed like fire, the angle of her face, the two long strands of black hair that fell down in front of her eyes. The way her chest rose and fell against…
I forced my eyes back up and tried to ignore the feelings.
Kitiara must have known something because, ignoring Surrelus, she reached up, grabbed me and pulled me close for a passionate kiss. For a moment I let myself be captivated by this woman and then I pushed her away.
“No dammit you harlot!” I yelled, pushing her at the wall.
She looked at me, a hurt look in her eyes.
“Don’t deny it Fury.” She softly said.
“No damn you, you can tempt me all you want…I have Yugami, that’s all I need.”
Kitiara ran her finger slowly across her lips.
“But can she give you what I can?” she asked
I stared at her disgustedly and sneered.
“Yes…and more.”
I turned away before she could comment and stalked off down the corridor, listening to hear if she followed me, but thankfully she didn’t.
Shaking my head vigorously I wondered what the hell had just gotten into me, had I really just let her control me like that? Was I really letting Yugami control me?
Why am I feeling like I am?
Why do I feel something for Kitiara, is it lust? It cannot be love, for I cannot love…it is a weakness…but then, what of Yugami?
I shook my head again, trying to focus my mind on what was important, of the upcoming attack on the Mist Continent I was planning.
“She will be the downfall of you Fury.” I muttered to myself, not to sure to which woman I was referring.
We wandered aimlessly around the corridors of the castle, completely lost but with nothing else to do. Occasionally we would sneak inside some of the more luxurious looking rooms and marvel at the décor. In one of these such rooms, Snikity sighed and sat down on the end of the four poster bed.
“I feel so helpless.” She said, curling a strand of blonde hair around her finger.
I nodded and leant against the wall.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I feel so in the way…like I’m not supposed to be here.” I said
“I guess it’s because we’re not…I mean, I was born on the Discworld and so were you, this isn’t Ankh-Morpork…I dunno, I guess I’m feeling a little homesick.”
“Of Ankh-Morpork?!” I chuckled
She smiled and laughed.
“Well, I originally came from Lancre but, yeah…of Ankh-Morpork, I guess it sounds a little strange.”
I shook my head
“Of course not, I know what you mean…it’s made me a little uneasy. I mean, I don’t know where Nagy, Xola and Kitiara have got to but…I just wish I was back at home right now, instead of being stuck on an alien world that’s in the middle of a war.”
“It doesn’t help that the war is being caused by our old friend does it?”
Sighing I agreed with her.
“I wonder if I could ever be like that…whether any of us could be like that?” I said after a moments pause.
“Like what? Evil?”
I nodded, flicking a stray piece of black hair out of the way as it fell down in front of my eyes.
“I guess it’s in all of us, isn’t it?” said Snikity, answering my question with another.”
“Yeah…I suppose so…but we never do the things he’s done.”
Snikity put her hands together on her lap and rocked slowly backwards and forwards.
“Only because we know what’s right and what’s wrong…with Th…with Fury, he doesn’t…he cannot see that what he is doing is wrong. I can only presume this is because of that poison Rei was talking about.”
“I suppose when Jara made that poison she was hoping to influence his behaviour…somehow, teach him evil.” I replied.
“I know how he feels then.” Said someone from the door, I looked up to see a blonde genome with a pink ribbon tied around her tail, there was something familiar about her, my memory rewound to last year, to the occupation of Ankh-Morpork…and the leader of the genomes, who was a genome herself...and a friend of that Zidane and Domino.
“Mikoto?” I tentatively asked.
She nodded
“If I remember correctly you are Mizrah, and you are Snikity.” She replied with a slight bow. “I must take this chance to thank you for your hospitality after the liberation of your city…I must have created a few enemies while I was being controlled by Jara.”
I smiled and shook her hand.
“That’s ok, forgiveness is easier to give than it is to hold a grudge.”
Mikoto nodded and pushed her bangs away from her eyes.
“Wise words.”
“What were you saying a minute ago… ‘You know how he feels’?” asked Snikity
Mikoto nodded again, her tail swishing from side to side.
“Yes, I do. When I was still a servant of Garland, he taught me to obey him completely and follow his every word. I did some dark things in my time under his control…it’s easy to be mislead when you have the conscience of a child,” she sighed “And then Kuja came along and changed everything.”
“How so?” I asked, leaning back against the wall again.
“He proved that there was life outside the box, that obedience wasn’t necessary to live. By defying, and ultimately destroying Garland, he opened our eyes to freedom…but still, sometimes I wonder.” She lowered her head.
“Wonder what?” prompted Snikity
“Sometimes I wonder if Garland was such a bad person…well…robot…after all. You understand, he was like a father figure to us. I remember one time I broke my arm, I cried because it hurt so much. He picked me up and put me in the regeneration chamber and told me it would take away the pain…he may have told us to do some evil things…but evil is in the eye of the beholder. What we did seemed normal to us, and I guess, to him. He did care for us, but he ruled us.”
“And you don’t know which outweighs the other?” said Snikity
Mikoto shook her head.
“No I don’t…I mean, it was alright for Kuja, he spent a lot of time doing stuff within his own will, he did a lot of stuff for Lawrence and, of course, Garland couldn’t complain because Lawrence created him. Zidane was never there, thanks to Kuja’s jealousy. I don’t know…sometimes I miss the old days.”
“When there was someone there to care for you?”
She nodded, a slight tear running down her eye.
“Yes…I never had a parent, but Garland was the closest thing I had. Kuja may have freed us…but in a way he killed us too. He took away our guidance, forced us into thinking and caring for ourselves, and I don’t know if we were ready for it.”
Snikity leaned forward.
“Sometimes, the parent has to leave the young to survive for themselves…Zidane managed to do alright, and I’m sure you will too…all of you.”
Mikoto sighed
“When we’re not being misled and abused…innocence is a burden.”
“I guess the Shepard can’t lead the same flock forever.” I said.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that at some point you guys had to grow up, had to break away from the stifled life you had with Garland and find out life for yourselves.” Said Snikity
Mikoto nodded and wiped away the tear.
“Yeah, but from what I’ve seen so far, it scares me…huh, a former Angel of Death and I’m scared of life…how stupid.” She muttered crossly to herself.
“Hey, Mikoto, life is full of scary things…hell, I’ve been in a few…but that’s the point, you have to experience the bad things to fully appreciate the good things in life, and they far outweigh the bad things, trust me.” I said
She smiled and nodded
“You’re right…thank you.”
Snikity smiled too and stood up.
“No worries.” She said.
“Anyway, this isn’t what I came to speak to you about,” said the genome “Beatrix wants to speak to you…Regent Cid is there too.”
My ears pricked up at the mention of the Regent, it had to be important if he was involved.
“Any idea what it’s about?” I asked Mikoto as I followed her through the corridors, Snikity walking behind me.
The blonde genome shook her head.
“No…but I think it’s something to do with military forces…I’ve noticed the number of airships around Alexandria has doubled within the last hour.”
As I looked out of a window as we passed, I saw she was right, I could see two airships in the distance and one nearby, moored to the ground outside the castle. I presumed it was the Regents ship.
“Well, something’s definitely going on.” Said Snikity.
Despite Fury ordering otherwise, Garnet and Zidane had been placed in a cell with myself and Xola. She sat and wept for a long time, it seemed a little odd, the girl that had come through the Eidolon wars to break down like this but when she spoke I could see why she was so upset.
“He…he betrayed us! We had made him so welcome here, we were about to give him command of Alexandria’s flagship. Why has he done this?”
Zidane cuddled her.
“He’s not Thunderchild anymore, he’s Fury…he was poisoned by Jara, the poison never left his body…it’s re-emerged now.” He said as he stroked her hair.
Garnet shook her head.
“This is bringing back too many bad memories of the war…it was bad enough seeing Kuja, and now so much betrayal and destruction. Is it true what happened to Treno?” she asked
I nodded.
“We were forced to watch from the Invincible.” I said sombrely.
Garnet shook her head again and started sobbing.
“What has this world come to?”
“If Fury gets his way, probably an end.” Said Xola darkly.
Sam’s POV
I hanged onto Jara’s waist for dear life as we thundered through the air, the
only sounds I could hear over the beating of my heart was the whistling of the
wind and the beating of the dragons wings.
“This is incredible!” I shouted, feeling an adrenaline rush, despite my fears.
“It is isn’t it!” she replied
“So…where are we going?!!” I asked
She turned to look at me, shifting slightly around.
“Some place called…Oeilvert?”
I nodded
“I remember it well…I used to work there.”
Jara raised an eyebrow.
“So that’s where you got transferred to.” She said
I nodded
“Yeah, Lawrence Verdion’s eidolon laboratory. We spent time there trying to fuse an eidolon with a genome. When our tests failed, we sent the genome back up to you to see if you could stabilise it.”
Jara chuckled.
“And in the end I landed up giving it my conscience, my memories and my life.”
I chuckled too, seeing the humorous side of it.
“I guess nothing turned out like we thought it was going to.” I said
“Probably just as well too…” she said, turning away again.
I frowned
“What do you mean? Don’t you wish the Borg hadn’t destroyed Terra?”
She shrugged
“Well…if they hadn’t we would have. Couldn’t you see what we were doing Sam? We were creating a whole new race, it was wrong.”
She turned around to look at me when I didn’t reply.
“Don’t look like that Sam, you know just as well as I do that the Terran race was destroying itself, imagine what it would have been like for the genomes, if you think Lawrence is bad. We would have treated them like dirt.”
“No we wouldn’t have!” I protested.
“Yeah right Sammo,” said Jara with a chuckle “They would have done all sorts of horrible jobs, I can see it now, Sewer cleaners, target practice…hell, even prostitutes I should imagine.”
I couldn’t argue with her, because seeing how well the Terrans had subjugated the Ocampans over the years, I could see she was right.
“After a time, there would have been a genome like Kuja, maybe one that had been given a conscience, they would have created an uprising and before you knew it there would have been total war, a war of extermination of the Terran race. The genomes would have won Sam, we built them to win.”
“They wouldn’t have turned against us! They weren’t designed to!”
“Like Kuja wasn’t designed to turn against Garland?”
I wondered how she had found out about that.
“Well…Kuja was different, he had a soul.”
“How can we define what is a soul? How can we give these creatures a soul? The only difference between him and the other genomes was that he was self-aware. You can’t give someone a soul Sam, you should know that.”
I sighed, admitting defeat.
“I guess we had it coming, one way or another.”
She nodded
“At least now, we have a chance to reshape history.” She said
I quirked my head on one side.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that I’m not just going to sit back and see this world ruined, Terra blew its chance, I want to make sure that Gaia doesn’t do the same thing.”
I nodded, agreeing with what she said. Although I might not have been born on Gaia, it was my home now and that was what mattered, and I didn’t want to see my home destroyed.
As the sun rose higher in the sky, I saw a line of brown on the western horizon, signalling our approach to the Forgotten Continent.
“The device is ready Fury.” Said Lawrence, breaking my solitude on the highest tower of Oeilvert.
Without turning to acknowledge his presence I merely replied.
“Good. We shall begin.”
I then turned around and took off my cloak, underneath it I was now wearing some new armour, made mainly of metal and a leather trench coat.
“I am ready,” I said “Are you?”
Lawrence just smiled and walked down the stairwell into the tower. I stood, watching the milling army below and then followed him.
“Rhiana!!” I yelled when I reached the bottom of the stairwell and emerged into the entrance chamber, the yellow and purple glass mosaic on the wall behind me glowing with the sunlight.
The silver haired genome quickly arrived.
“Prepare the army for departure, it’s time to go.”
She nodded and ran to issue the orders.
I walked outside, the noise of the army overwhelmed me slightly at first, a few of the monsters at the front recognised me and stood stock still. I smiled and nodded at them, letting my black robe with red inside flow in the wind. Rhiana arrived at my side again moments later.
“What formation do you want them in?” she asked
“A ‘my lord’ would not amiss Rhiana, remember who I am,” I cautioned her, before proceeding “We’ll have the genomes on the front line, mages behind them and the heavy stuff behind them, put the artillery and archers, anything ballistic right at the back and a rearguard behind them. I doubt Lindblum and the other cities will put up much of a fight but you can never underestimate the enemy without suffering a bad defeat.”
“Yes my lord.”
She ran over to the genomes at the beginning of the army, they ran forward into the army and began spreading the word. Within minutes the army began to move into some kind of shape.
Reiganna’s POV
”Jara?!!”
“JARA?!!!”
No matter how loud I yelled, the Terran was gone. Eventually I found a small note written in Terran, left near the ‘library’ as I had come to call it, a repository of all the knowledge of Gaia, I cursed, knowing that she had read it and now knew more than nearly every person on Gaia did about the planet they lived on.
Reiganna
I’ve gone to put right the wrongs I did. Thank you for everything.
Jara
“Oh Miss Gedyen, what am I to do with you?” I asked no-one, as I placed Doctor Tot on a crystal table which glowed from within.
A Unipeg’s nose and mouth appeared in my field of view, I turned and followed the head back to the body which I saw was Galleon.
<Galleon my friend!> I thought, giving the Unipeg a hug.
<It’s good to see you back Reiganna.>
<Not as good as it is to see that you’re alright!> I returned.
The Unipeg looked at Doctor Tot.
<I see you brought company.>
<Yes, I thought he’d be able to help Jara come up with a cure for Thunderchilds poison, but she’s gone now.>
The Unipeg nodded her head up and down.
<Yes, she had a long conversation with some of our Silver Dragons after viewing the library and then left on one.>
<Did you ask them what it was about?> I asked her
<Yes…but they wouldn’t tell me…they said it was to do with the dragons, and the forest.>
I sighed and sat on the edge of another crystal table.
<Strange creatures dragons.> I thought
<Yes…but older and wiser than all of us. They’ve been in the forest for longer than I can remember…and they keep themselves to themselves, especially the Silver Dragons…I don’t know Reiganna, I think they know things we don’t.>
<I think they know a lot we don’t. Which doesn’t take much at the moment.> I thought with a sigh.
He crept closer to Oeilvert, his two companions in tow. A short while ago, the massive army which have detected his presence had formed up and headed west out into the plains, and now he could move towards the giant stone structure in relative safety.
Suddenly something clouded his mind, a memory, something of his past came back to him.
As a teenager, a feeling of resentment against a small
blonde genome who constantly harassed him.
“What you doing Kuja?” he would ask.
“Leave me alone with your constant twittering!” he insisted.
The blonde genome had gone away, skipping merrily down
the corridor…but Kuja was resentful of the genome for all the extra attention
that had been placed on his shoulders.
“Don’t worry my little Zidane, soon you’ll grow up to be
just like Uncle Kuja.” He had heard the old man say.
“But I wanna be better than Kuja!” the genome boy had
replied.
“And you will be…We’ve made sure of that…you’ll be better
than Kuja.”
Hatred
Anger
Fear
And Jealousy had clouded the silver haired genomes
mind. Hating the younger genome for his superiority, anger at his creator
Lawrence and his mentor Garland for relegating him to second place, Fear at his
future, which now seemed uncertain and jealousy of Zidane, jealousy at his
special treatment.
And so, using the ship Garland let him use occasionally,
he took the blonde genome and left him on the planet of Gaia, stranding him on
the mistiest and murkiest part of the planet he could find.
“What are you doing Uncle Kuja?” he had asked as the
Invincible had touched down.
“You’re going on a little trip.” He replied with a smile.
“But I don’t wanna go out there, it’s horrible out
there.” Said the child.
“Good, all the better.” Kuja said, turning and pushing
him towards the teleporter.
Fear and confusion had played across the genomes face.
“But I don’t wanna go Kuja, please! Please don’t make me
go! I promise to leave you alone!”
“Oh my dear child, you will leave me alone, because I’m
going to leave you where no-one will find you, where you will never bother me
again.”
He had started crying, wrapping himself around Kuja’s leg
but he had merely picked the child up by the tail and thrown him in the
teleporter. The last view he had of Zidane was a small boy, crying in fear as
the teleporter shimmered him away to his prison.
And it felt so wrong, but Kuja knew it to be the right choice.
Shaking his head to put the new found memory to one side, he moved forward.
“Are you alright Kuja?” asked Meowth.
“I will be, just as soon as we’re inside that castle.” He replied
“Ka! Pika! Pikachu!”
Meowth nodded at the small yellow and brown electrical mouse.
“Pikachu feels the same way.”
Kuja nodded and smiled.
“I doubt it is for the same reasons though.” He said, walking across the flat expanse towards Oeilvert.