//------------------------------// // The Fifth Night: Memento Mori // Story: To Live Again // by _No_One_Remains_ //------------------------------// From the Eyes of a Puppeteer …And so it came to pass that, by my blade, a few fragments of memory that gave life to my ambitions returned to me. A memory is such a powerful weapon, in and of itself. To use one as I have requires no concern for the humane and an all-consuming desire for power. The strength I’ve been given through the simple manipulation of memories and the emotions evoked therein is almost overwhelming. As the Mist of the puppet’s puppet returned to me, I felt a surge of energy that revitalized me to an almost-complete state of being. Even I am but a memory. Those of us that do not belong in this world are memories of the beings that choose to hold on to our hearts. Each of us in this world—be it the Black Mages, Kuja, or myself—share one common ground: we are all dead. We were either killed by another being or by fate. We do not exist any longer. We are but the dreams of those we knew before. It is through memories we are allowed to be. The Mist from the unfortunate figment of illusion entered my body and gave rise to an almost-complete feeling. With a smile on my face and my blade held high, I turned toward the puppet that had developed ambitions. Kuja looked on, amazed by the swiftness in my striking down of his only remaining ‘brother’. They were both puppets designed to kill, so naturally they found a brotherly bond in their similar circumstances. “B-but you said…” his voice was faint, almost sorrowful, “that if I brought the Elements, I could save him!” He fell to his knees, his heart beginning to break. I could feel it in my own body, how his heart was shattering. He had lost everything and been powerless to stop it. “’To save a brother for whom you care, or to silence a mage whose power is beyond compare’…” His voice trailed off, repeating the riddle I had taunted him with. His utterly-defeated expression filled me with a sick sense of joy. I couldn’t help but chuckle, “Did you honestly believe you could save him either way?” I sheathed my blade in a swift motion, planting my feet on the ground and beginning to approach the defeated monster. Despite the tears rolling down his face, I heard hope in his voice. He sighed, “No, I didn’t. In fact, I don’t honestly believe I’ll make it out of this alive, either.” He stood from the ground, suddenly regaining his composure. “Yet the tears continue to fall. You’ve grown soft in these last months, Kuja.” “And you’ve grown foolish, old man.” “Is that so? It seems you are the one who has walked into all of my nets thus far.” The Equestrian companions of my hateful creation rounded the corner of the gardenia hedge, the leader of the group being none other than the princess of the doomed kingdom. The fear in her eyes when mine met hers was enough to make my heart flutter. With the Mist extracted from the numbered toy, I was ready to finish my game. I was reaching to draw my sword again when laughter burst from my failure of a creation. It was almost too happy of a laugh. “Don’t you understand old man? In this world, a paradise nothing like our home, you are no more a threat to them than an insect is to you.” He held an arm over his face, hiding his lips from my view. I could see the smile growing on his face. It was my turn to be curious. While my riddle left me a few moments of fun, I was now the one without a clue. I scoffed, gripping the hilt of my blade firmly, “How do you mean? My sword is as real as the flowers in this garden. My magic is as mighty as that of a god.” Still he laughed, “But you see…” He manifested a small dagger in his hands and launched it at the princess of the kingdom. To my amazement, she simply stood in shock and waited for it to hit. But, beyond her lack of reaction rested the realization that she hadn’t needed to react! I watched as the dagger simply passed right through her, leaving no mark and losing no momentum. It simply continued to fly until it was lodged into one of the hedges! “…it really isn’t!” the Genome finally finished. I heard a gasp of shock escape the crowd of subject-ponies, while the princess simply stood her ground in unwavering confidence. I couldn’t help but growl, “Of course it is! If it weren’t, then how is it that your companion is dead?!” Something about what I’d just seen angered me, though I wasn’t quite certain what. “Only a reality can hurt another reality.” With a confident wave of his hand, Kuja began to approach me. His tears had dried, and his eyes were filled with a fiery determination. He tittered, “You were able to kill Mr. 111 because neither of you are real. I think I’ve finally figured it out…” “Figured what out?!” The purple unicorn cried out, painfully confused by what had just transpired. The white-haired man continued to approach me, his lips growing into an ever greater smile. He took a deep breath and began to explain, “As hard as it may be to accept, I am not real. Garland is not real. Vivi was not real. The manticores were not real. Nothing from Gaia or Terra has ever been real in this world.” He glanced back for only a moment to read their confused expressions. “We are but memories, drifting through the river of souls that connects all worlds. One such memory was powerful enough to physically manifest itself in this world, a world that contained a substance so closely related to Mist.” “Our magic?” Celestia sighed. With a large grin, my toy chuckled, “Correct.” After a moment of considering his words, he continued, “Garland was the first memory to reach this world and take a hold of the magical auras of its residents. He is a memory belonging to Zidane, another puppet created by him. The memory was powerful enough to give him life.” I had heard enough to know he understood how the world worked. I silenced him with a threatening swing of my blade before I took over the explanation. I began with a groan, “Despite grabbing on to the magical auras, I was still barely a being.” Kuja stepped aside so his companions could see me as I spoke. “I needed more Mist—actual Mist—in order to fully manifest.” “So what did he do? He used his own memories to give life to creatures of the Mist, ones that he could harvest to gain strength.” With a smug grin, my puppet continued to advance. “Even though he could use the fabricated Mist to gain a body, he didn’t have enough to survive off of. That’s where we came in…” I scoffed, “Correct. I decided to give life to you, so that you could bring Mist to me. Through your magics and Trances, Mist began to pool in from the other world. I slowly fed off of that Mist, and here we are tonight.” I’d had enough of talking. It was time to win my little game. I lunged forward, my blade arced back to swing. I was fully prepared to snuff out the light of the puppet that had so callously betrayed me so many months back. As I brought my sword around in perfect alignment with his head, some outside force threw me off course, and I stopped dead in my tracks. Kuja had taken the sudden hesitation as a chance to move, and all the ponies flinched. To them, it would be a few more moments before they could begin to realize I hadn’t completed my strike. I heard a loud chirping noise call out from behind me, and as I turned to find its source, a small yellow blur fluttered into the air and delivered a kick with enough force to shove me back a few steps. A tiny yellow bird, no larger than a melon, managed to hold enough force to actually make me move! Kuja’s jaw dropped at the sight of the animal. For only a moment, he stammered, “B-Boco? But…how?” As soon as he managed to finish his question, his eyes lit up with fear. He screamed, “Boco, get away from him!” I was just about fed up with annoyances and inconveniences. I wasn’t certain where the pest had come from, but I swatted him away with the side of my blade. At least…I tried to swat him away. And failed…Somehow… I swung again, and for a second time my blade simply passed right through. I couldn’t begin to comprehend it! How could such a miniscule creature defy my power?! Each swing only brought me closer to rage, as the bird gleefully chirped at each failure! Kuja ran a hand through his hair in the same way he used to. With smug understanding in his voice, he sighed, “It seems memories have so much more power than even you could comprehend, Garland…” A cyclone of white light engulfed his hand and took the shape of a long blade. Holding it with confidence, he scoffed, “For all the memories you summoned to give you Mist, it seems someone wasn’t quite ready to let go!” He smiled brightly at the yellow bird, who seemingly chirped in understanding before darting away from me. The white-haired nuisance launched toward me, sword tearing through the air. I barely had time to react before our blades met with a ‘clank’. There, not two feet from me, he stood with a large grin on his face. “You are but a memory! How can you defy your owner?!” “You are but a memory yourself. As such, you could never hope to harm this world. All the plotting and scheming you’ve done, and it was all for naught.” I tossed him away with a wave of my blade, trying to recover my stance and concentration. How could it be that things were falling apart in the final stages of my plan?! Why was I so suddenly being beaten by a memory I created? I darted toward him, rage in my eyes, ready to end his resistance and draw him back into me. There was no place in a world such as that for a memory’s memory. But it was no simple task to bring him down. While his companion had stood in shock, he retaliated with overwhelming speed. My blade caught the air by his head, missing its mark, while his blade pierced my gut. I felt the cold magical mythril rip through my body, sending pain and heat through my veins. He simply stood with his blade inside me and waited for me to speak. “…How is this possible?!” I ripped myself from the sword and darted back toward the statue of the Demon of Chaos. “Why am I losing?!” Kuja brought the blade covered in my blood to his lips. He ran his tongue over the tip of the blood-drenched metal, smiling deviously as he did so. With a burst of maniacal laughter, he cheered, “How the mighty have fallen, Father! You were once calm and collected, but death has corrupted you!” He swung the blade toward the ground and let my blood stain the grass of the garden. “Is it possible that you really are nothing but a memory? Have you not developed your own being in all this time?” he finished with a pitying sigh. The ponies simply watched on in shock and awe, unable to put thoughts together coherent enough to reach an understanding of the events transpiring in front of them. The only equine that seemed to remotely understand anything was the princess, and even she looked as if she were a mindless infant. With every second that passed, the cold of the mythril spread through my body. I began to fall numb as my vision blurred. A poisoned blade…is such a dirty trick! I let out an angry roar and sent my body flying with whatever force I could muster. Again I was parried by my puppet. The blade in my hand shattered, the Mist used to give it life returning to me in the hopes of saving mine. I was on my knees before him, staring up at the creature I’d created, not once but twice. Kuja tittered, “So this is it, then? If I kill you, all of the evils you plagued this world with will vanish as well. The violent manticores and cockatrii, the Black Mages, and even I will all cease to exist. Your memory will return to you, and the memory of you will return to whomever it belongs.” His gaze lowered to the ground, and his voice fell much quieter. He moaned, “It’s quite cruel, isn’t it? Here I thought I had the chance to redeem my mistakes of the past life… Yet, I’ve only been the pawn in a losing game of chess.” By that point my breath was heavy. I could feel the warmth of my blood draining and billows of Mist fleeing my body. It was returning back to where it belonged, wherever that may have been. My vision was almost gone, my body completely numb. How things had gone so wrong so quickly I couldn’t begin to imagine. So I simply asked, “How did you figure out we were memories?” “We share a bond that can’t be broken. Both in the past life and in this one, we are forever tied together. In both cases, I was a puppet you created to help you achieve your ambitions. It didn’t take much for me to consider how impossible our time in this world has been.” He placed the edge of his blade against my neck, readying for a final slash. “The fact that so many bizarre things have happened has led me to the conclusion that none of it was real.” The princess stepped forward in objection. She asked in an almost antagonistic tone, “Yet I was informed it was your entourage that settled the matter of the stolen deliveries between Appleloosa and Ponyville. If you are not real—as you say you aren’t—then how is it that you were able to deal with the issue?” I remembered hearing word of some strange creatures dealing with a ‘Diamond Dog’ problem near a place called ‘Ghastly Gorge’. Kuja sighed, “A memory can only hurt another memory. But…that’s the question, isn’t it?” The blade in his hand simply vanished, the cold steel leaving my flesh. I looked up in confusion. “I’m not sure why we were able to deal with the problem. It’s possible I’ll never know.” “What about all that damage to Applejack’s barn and Fluttershy’s tree?” The blue Pegasus spoke up. She was obviously unwilling to believe that the ‘hostile manticores and cockatrii’ weren’t real. I had to agree with her. With a smug scoff, the understanding puppet explained, “I encountered a single manticore in the Everfree Forest on my way to Ponyville with the Black Mages. That one was real, without a doubt. It attacked us because we were in its territory.” He stopped to give his thoughts meaning. “After that first encounter, the manticore became a memory. A hostile memory.” I was beginning to understand. The power of a memory goes beyond the limits of the logical. I groaned, “Because you were nothing but a memory, your memories were given life in the form of the manticores that attacked while you were ill.” I felt the wave of pain in my gut vanish suddenly, the releasing Mist coming back to me. Standing up cautiously, I continued, “And as with the barn, it became your memory when you looked upon it from the edge of the forest. That’s why your memory was able to damage it and not the ponies within.” I glanced over to see the ponies sharing lost expressions. Kuja laughed, “It’s the same with Fluttershy’s home. The only difference is that the manticore was a product of my memory, not Vivi’s. While the house was his memory, the monster was mine.” Again a blade of mythril appeared in his hands, this one longer and thinner than the last. He scanned it proudly and sighed, “Even this blade is a memory, though I can’t tell where in my life it’s from. It carries Mist with it…just as all of our memories do.” “A memory is quite powerful, is it not?” A large spear manifested in my hand, and without hesitation I darted toward my puppet. That strike ended just the same as the last, sadly. He parried my blow and sent his weapon thrusting through me. Only this time, I was void of any will to flee. I simply knelt in front of him, blood and Mist running down the shiny silver of the blade. Running a hand through his hair, he chuckled, “But that tiny bird defies everything I know to be true. Bobby Corwen truly is a special animal, wouldn’t you agree?” He looked behind him, almost as if expecting there to be someone there. The only item worth noting was the corpse of the Black Mage I had killed. At least, that’s what I thought. Kuja ripped his sword from my body and stepped to the side, waving a hand at a cloud of Mist just opposite of us. It took me a moment, but I soon realized just who he’d been asking the question to… It was…unbelievable, honestly. Of all the things I’d seen in my centuries of life, protecting and restoring Terra through the destruction of Gaia, and the time I spent manipulating my memories, this single event fazed me more than any other. I’d felt his life leave him. I was almost certain his Mist had returned to me. I was…utterly frightened by the meaning of the cloud’s existence… It began to take shape. Humanoid, short, with bright yellow eyes. It became a Black Mage. The remains of the recently-deceased Mr. 111 exploded into Mist and joined the humanoid mass. Colors began to form. Blue for a coat, green stripes for pants, brown for boots, red for gloves, and a yellow hat that drooped down in front of the figure’s face. The ponies let out a harmonized, “Vivi?!” A thin trail of Mist extended from the still-forming figure. My eyes traced its path as it entered the castle proper. I could only imagine that it was the Mist from the remnants of the deceased memory, the very Mist I thought I’d collected. If not his, then whose did I absorb? Could it have been the feeble energy of the Black Waltzes? How could a mistake so huge be made? A childlike voice called from the face of the figure. It sounded almost like a yawn, yet full of energy and…anger… “A memory or not, my name is Vivi Ornitier! I’m as real as the next person, and I won’t let you tell me I’m not!” The golden of his eyes brightened, and I watched as the Mist that had yet to be absorbed surged around him, creating some sort of barrier. Kuja cheered, “A memory that refuses its fate can do so much more than simply exist! While you accepted the inevitability of your nonexistence, I searched for a purpose! We searched for a purpose! And that search gave us true life!” The long blade in his hand burst into Mist, reforming around him in a ring. The child’s voice roared, “We may only be memories, but we’re not your memories anymore! Our friends remember us, and that’s all we need! You have no power over us any more, Garland!” A bright flame surrounded his hands as if preparing to attack me. At that point, I didn’t even care to retaliate. “Even knowing what I do, there’s still so much that doesn’t make sense. But that’s the fate of a mortal, isn’t it? There are some things that we can never know.” The white-haired man served as the perfect complement to the shadowy child. Like an older brother, he placed a hand on his companion’s shoulder. With a chuckle, he exclaimed, “We were blessed with new lives, even if those lives were never meant to exist. I’ve always tried to defy fate, and I’d say this ordeal counts!” The younger brother nodded happily, extinguishing the flames of one hand and joining it with his companion’s. “Lives aren’t yours to play with. Even if you create them, you have no right to use them! So…maybe we’ll disappear with you, and maybe we won’t. But it doesn’t matter, because at least we’re real!” The Mist around the both of them exploded, engulfing them in an aura of magic that sent shivers down my numb body. I looked on in fear… The aura shot toward me at an alarming speed, almost guaranteed to completely swallow me. I heard an ear-wrenchingly loud explosion, and my vision faded. My ears were ringing oh-so-painfully. The numbness that had consumed me faded, and I felt myself floating in midair. I couldn’t see or hear, nor could I consciously move. I felt like I was being dragged through a void, until my sight finally popped back to life. Things were blurry at first, but quickly came to focus. I was up higher than before, looking out over most of the garden. Just in front of me sat the creatures who defied fate, the memories that gained life, kneeling as if exhausted with a slowly-thinning barrier of Mist surrounding them. Off to the side, barely in my immovable range of view, the ponies sat with fear and confusion on their faces. I noticed the Mist barrier begin to draw closer toward me, its inhabitants recovering from whatever had transpired while I was out of commission. The feeling slowly returned to my body. My skin was crawling, and I was unbearably cold! I felt as if my limbs were contorted in unnatural ways, my back full of sharp pains and bruises. Everything about my body felt wrong, right down to my organs. I couldn’t hear my pulse or feel the blood rushing through my veins. What had happened to me was something beyond even my expectations. My hearing returned as I examined my inward condition. I heard the princess cry out, “You two must do something! Whatever the ‘Mist’ is, it can only react negatively with the statue!” My two opponents looked up in unison, noticing the Mist drawing toward me. And then it dawned on me what had happened. When a being of Mist is killed, the Mist is released back into the world. On Gaia, my Iifa Tree cycled the Mist to Terra, where it was fed to the ancients I tried to resurrect. In this world with no process to cycle the Mist, it must have hunted for the nearest place to take refuge. With a cloud already engulfing the other beings of Mist, it must have taken refuge in an inanimate object… And the nearest inanimate object had been the statue of the Demon of Chaos. In essence, my soul—memory or not—had fused with the statue. I had become the statue. Slowly, almost unnoticeably, the cold irritation on my skin began to melt away. I could feel the air slowly reaching my body. A cracking sound preceded each and every new surge of warmth. My heartbeat became obvious. In a painfully slow process, I was coming back to life… As the Demon of Chaos, that is. I was in its body, with its shape, with knowledge of its powers slowly fusing with my mind. Just the same, memories from its past began to probe my own, sending a sharp stinging through my skull. The being was scanning me, wondering if I was worthy of being in control. It was fighting me for power! Kuja looked on in terror. Vivi turned toward the ponies with sorrow beaming from his eyes. They’d heard the stories of the demon Discord, and they knew just how unstoppable he was without the power of the Elements of Harmony… That was without the Mist to give him extra power! If the Elements had trouble defeating him without Mist, then I would be invincible with it! I didn’t have time to bask in the glory of the fear they shared amongst themselves. The stone surrounding my face shattered and the world came to life more vivid than ever before. But before I could even take in a breath of the Equestrian air, a white light swallowed me, and the entire garden vanished before my eyes. A voice echoed in my head as the pain continued to intensify. “You realize that this can only end one way, right stranger? Memento Mori, as they say!”