melodiesofeternity | [Closed] Retrieval of Expensive Works of Engineering

Kuja snorts. "In my defense, I was more than slightly distraught at the time. Regardless, I shall endeavor to remain as close as possible to the group." Outside, the faint light of the cloud is drawing ever nearer.

"I suppose we'd best get ready."

In response to that, Ashelia adjusts her fingerless gloves and sword belt, adjusting the potion pouch at her left hip. "Think of it this way; the likelihood of it being worse than Bahamut destroying the world is quite slim."

It could be on the same exact level, more or less, but definitely not worse.

Frisk's eyes flit between the other three on board the ship, and they arch an eyebrow. Okay, there was clearly something more to this than they knew. "I feel like I'm missing something here. Anybody want to fill me in?"

Kuja stands. "When I went to retrieve Opalescence, it was... not a pleasant time. The destruction of Alexandria is not among my happier memories, largely for my... hand in it."

The airship's pilot offers a harness each to Frisk, Ashe, Snow, and lastly Kuja. "Same arrangement as before, ladies and gents. If you're not back in fifteen, I'm pulling you back. Got a tow hook if it's too big for the cargo hold. Be careful out there."

Kuja nods, steps up to the railing... and, waiting for the others to strap in and join him, steps off the edge and into the Cloud.

It wasn't his story to tell. Snow White looked between Kuja and Frisk, but he didn't have to wait long before Kuja spoke up himself. It was a strange relief that Frisk should know. If things went badly again, they needed to be able to work together. Snow White let out the breath he'd been holding and nodded. Things would, and did, get ugly around here. But at least Ashe was likely right -- it couldn't get much worse.

Snow fastened his safety harness snugly. As Kuja departs, Snow follows, not wanting to be last.

That... didn't exactly sound good. Frisk does their best not to grimace, but they can't help but wince a little at "my hand in it." They just nod, strap on their harness, say, "Got it," and plunge into the Dream Width.

Not having anything else to add to the conversation, Ashelia instead opts to give Frisk a nod of encouragement. They're so young. Too young to be on an obviously dangerous expedition like this one, but it's not Ashelia's expedition, so she keeps her mouth shut. She fastens her harness tightly and steps out into the Dream Width, all too happy to bring up the rear.

Kuja, perhaps, has a skewed view on what age someone becomes capable of entering dangerous situations. He was, after all, more or less killed by a group that contained people aged fifteen, six, and one.

As he falls through the mist, there's something out there, a shape too murky to make out, only the merest sense of size, of something as large as a house- and Kuja feels, once again, faint, as the cloud becomes almost too thick to see through.

"Stay close," he calls, as the sense of vertigo takes over. "Something's happ-"
His feet touch down on stone, and the vertigo fades. Kuja is left staring off into the distance, pale and- frightened.

It is a beautiful world, at first glance. Clear blue skies that stretch as far as the eye can see, massive azure fungi dotting the landscape, cerulean stone pathways and cobalt-tinted soil... of course, when one actually takes the time to look at the beauty around them... one realizes that this world is almost entirely barren, devoid of life. The world is silent, with only the wind to break the peace.

Welcome to Terra.

Snow White grit his teeth at the uncomfortable sensation. He didn't think he'd get used to it. But hearing Kuja's tense voice was enough to focus him.

"What is it?" Snow stared at the mage once he landed, uneasy. At least there wasn't fire this time, but Kuja still looked distinctly disturbed. He reached gently for Kuja's elbow to remind the man that he wasn't alone here.

Frisk can't help but to gawk at the beautiful, alien vista laid out all around them. They'd seen some sights on Vaikuntha, but nothing outside the Dream Width could possibly compare to what they were seeing right now. "Woah... what is this place?" they ask in an awed, hushed tone. Realizing Kuja isn't looking too good himself, Frisk also places a hand on Kuja's other arm. "You good?"

A smile pulls at the corners of Ashelia's lips at the display of support from Frisk and Snow White. It disappears a second later though, as she slowly starts to realize how much he'll need it. Terra is certainly beautiful in a quietly alien way, but it really is too quiet. What happened here?

"We need to know what's about to happen," Ashelia interjects gently. "We can't be taken by surprise again."

Kuja draws a shaking breath, steadying as he feels the touch on either side. “Terra,” he says, quietly. “It’s a world that hasn’t seen life for eons. There’s monsters, and not much else. I was… created, here.”

He sighs, placing one hand against his forehead. “My formative years were spent here, and I visited on numerous occasions. I have many memories of this place, and none of them were pleasant. What to expect… it could be as benign as my first attempts at spellcasting, or the first time I summoned Opalescence. It could be unpleasant but relatively safe, like the night I was banished. Or…”

He sighs. “We could be looking for a means to leave the planet. Before… Before I completely take leave of my senses and try my hand at world-killing.”

Frisk nods along with Kuja's explanation, although they keep on stealing furtive glances at their surroundings. It was all so... beautiful, albeit in an incredibly unsettling, alien way. Their eyes widen when Kuja reaches the end of his exposition. "Wait, what? 'World-killing?' I thiiiink you owe us a more thorough explanation than that, mister."

Kuja sighs again. "It's a very long story, Frisk. One that starts long before I was created. I've... told you before, that I was, not to put too fine a point on it, a monster." Still am, in most respects. I've only got better at hiding it.

"I'm afraid in any respect we may lack the time to cover my life's history. Depending on where, exactly, this memory begins, we may have minutes to escape, or we may not have a time limit at all-"
He pauses, listening as the low thrum of an airship's engines approach. "An airship. That is... not the Invincible. Where-"

He finds his attention drawn to it. Flying low in the sky, more solid and more real than anything else here, an airship, too far away to see the deck, but he knows, in the pit of his gut, who the pilot is, and that there was only one time that the Hilda Garde appeared on Terra.

"The short version is that we need to get to that airship, and we have, perhaps, half an hour to do so. I'm told that you don't die, strictly speaking, in the Dream Width, but even so I'd greatly prefer to avoid the experience of it."

Snow White vaguely remembered being trapped in the Dream Width before. Back when Dylas and Selphie had been the ones to help him escape. He'd relived that memory countless times. Perhaps instead of death, that was what awaited those in the Dream Width.

Either way, he didn't want to do that again.

"Where you were created..." Snow White didn't entirely understand how that worked and he wasn't sure if he wanted to know. But it was important to Kuja. He nodded.

"Half an hour. Okay. Well, let's get going. You can tell us the rest on the way."

Ashelia's mouth is set in a thin line, her jaw clenched. Father above. Nothing like working with a tight deadline.

As if in answer, she extends a hand, casting Hastega on the group. This is precisely why she enjoys going on missions to the Dream Width - having her full arsenal of magick at her beck and call is no small comfort.

"Lead the way, Kuja." Her voice is terse, but neutral overall. She's focused on getting out of here without being lost in the Dream Width before anything else.

Edited 2018-11-25 20:36 (UTC)

"Thirty minutes. Okay, we can do this in thirty minutes." Frisk takes a deep breath, their red scarf fluttering in the stale wind. "Let's get--" Wait, scarf? Frisk looks down, and finds that they're dressed in entirely different attire: simple, functional plate mail armor, a tattered green cape, and a red scarf. "Okay, this... this is new." At least it feels like they can still move-- holy shit a sword.

A ruby longsword forms in Frisk's hand, which changes to a floating shield with a gesture. "That's... okay," Frisk says, shaking their head to clear away the confusion. "Alright, whatever. Like Ash said, we need to get a move on, so let's mosey."

Kuja does, indeed, take notice of the change in attire, but he doesn't comment on it. The idiosyncrasies of the Dream Width are quite beyond him. He's moving now, at any rate, running across the barren terrain and down the ancient path. Bran Bal is this way, he knows that much. "The rest of the story... fine. Terra has been dead for... I'm not certain of the exact timescale. Many millennia. The ancient Terrans knew they were going extinct, so they took great pains to ensure that they were preserved in spirit, and created... well, I suppose you'd call him a golem. Garland. Immortal, powerful, and focused on the singular goal of eventually restoring Terra to its former glory. Garland found another planet, much younger, which was inhabited by a living Crystal, and so thought to parasitize that planet's Crystal and, in doing so, corrupt the planet's cycle of souls in order to inject Terran souls and, thus, create a Terra reborn."

He passes a pool of water, surface still as glass, turning to look back at the three following. "He wasn't pleased with the slow rate of conversion, however, and decided the cycle needed an extra... push. A major event to speed the process and disrupt the cycle as much as possible." Kuja sighs. "He needed an agent to act on Gaia and return as many souls to Gaia as possible. A 'Reaper', so to speak. None of you are stupid, so I hazard you can guess where this leads."

"So he created you to artificially recycle those souls," Snow White guessed. "Flood them back so new ones would come out."

Snow White wasn't sure how Garland could control which souls were born, but perhaps it didn't matter. Perhaps with enough extra souls in the system, Terran ones would statistically start popping out. Perhaps it wasn't Garland's power at all, but whatever the Terrans had done in preparation.

They reminded Snow of the way the Grimm brothers had cheated death with their magic and his nose wrinkled with disgust. "They should have faced their mortality with dignity."

"That's a terribly diplomatic way of putting it," Kuja replies, with distaste. "But yes. Expedite the return of Gaian souls so that Terran ones could be inserted in their place, through the most efficient means possible. Manipulating a power-hungry queen into starting a war, for instance."
He crests a hill and... has to stop. Not far away, a very small settlement, another airship, looming overhead, one that Snow and Ashe, at least, have seen before. His attention, however, is focused more closely on the fortress in the distance, a monument of black stone. "Ah. And there it is."

Frisk is uncharacteristically silent while they run along with the party as Kuja relates his tale. No quips, no attempts to lighten the mood. Their eyes are shadowed as they ponder the implications of what their friend is saying. They'd known that Kuja had a rough past, but... they didn't pry, and Kuja didn't pry back. Now they regretted that.

They wanted to say it was hard to reconcile the Kuja they knew with... that. But it was all too easy to imagine. They finally do speak up, albeit in an oddly quiet voice. "...so. What does that have to do with this place blowing up?"

Ashelia's uncomfortable squirming at the mention of a 'power-hungry queen,' is interrupted when she spots the Invincible. She looks from the ship to Kuja and back again. That's not what he's looking at. But surely, the airship is how we are to escape... She follows his gaze to the fortress, eyebrows furrowed, before noticing Frisk's uncharacteristic silence.

Taking into account what bread crumbs Kuja had let out about his past previously, it wasn't a huge jump in logic for Ashelia to get to the conclusion of the sad tale herself. "It would seem to me, that perhaps the Reaper has something to do with that. No?" She fixes Kuja in her gaze, jaw clenched. Now's not the time to be pulling any punches. Ashelia may have come here of her own free will, but she's clearly not going to let sentiment get in the way of her escaping. It's hard to think about anything else, faced with tragedy on such a grand scale.

Snow White wasn't angry the way Ashe was. He was simply resigned. This was the past, after all. Being angry about it wasn't going to change anything. Besides... they were ~~just humans~~ unknown to him, personally.

"That's Kuja's ship," he explained to Frisk instead, pointing it out. "In the memory. So... you can assume it probably isn't here just for a visit."

Kuja stares at the Invincible, drifting over the black fortress. Like so much else here, there’s a faint, ethereal sense to it, as though it’s not quite there. “The Reaper, no. Just a Doll with delusions of competence and more power than sense.”
He starts walking, again, at a brisk pace. There’s a glance back at Frisk, and a sigh. “The short version is that I spent over a decade playing along with Garland to avoid my own destruction, in an effort to obtain a weapon strong enough to challenge him. I’m not going to pretend there was any noble goal to stop him from wiping Gaia clean of life aside from the extreme inconvenience that would have been,” he sneers, coming to a stop as the path branches, one leading in the direction of the village and another up to a platform. “Here,” he says, climbing the steps. Carved into the stone is a circle, inlaid with runes in Terran. “We don’t need to walk the whole way, at least.”
This is where it ends, I suppose. It was never going to last forever, anyway.
Kuja waits for the others to catch up, arms crossed. “Today, I find out that my life’s work has been for nothing, that I’ve been outwitted at every turn, and that Garland, fully expecting me to turn traitor to his cause, built in an expiration date. That my days, such as they are, were numbered. I didn’t… take it gracefully.”

Edited 2018-11-30 02:14 (UTC)

...at least Kuja was being honest. Frisk could give him that, at least. He wasn't trying to hide what he did, at least not anymore. They continue to listen to his tale, expression flat, as the group traverses the ethereal ruins of Terra.

Frisk could sympathize with Kuja, though. The choice (it always came back to choices, didn't it?) to leave was there, true, but considering how many times Garland had apparently pulled one over him... they couldn't blame him for staying. Frisk could blame Kuja for all the lives he took, though. Regardless of who gave the order, the blood was on his hands.

They could guess where his story was going to go next. "So when you realized you were about to die, you had a tantrum and destroyed this place," they say in a flat voice. At least it sounded like it was a victimless crime.

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just realized i can get all deltarune up in this shit to match the rpg aesthetic

does that make kuja the susie of this group

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realized I’ve misremembered things so pretend the location of the Invincible isn’t horribly wron

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