To Live Again

by _No_One_Remains_

The Fourth Day: And So the Cookie Crumbles

From the Eyes of a Leader

They were all quite interesting creatures, the mages from the other world. Just by looking into the white-haired visitor’s eyes I could see a lifetime of pain and guilt. The things Twilight Sparkle had told me were all true. Our guests were most definitely not from our world, nor should they have ever hoped to belong. Creatures like them, no matter how kind or well-meaning, could ever hope to belong in a world so contradictory to theirs.

Yet I felt that the white-haired man understood that. I saw in his eyes an understanding of an ultimate fate that meant his actions would be pointless, but he still spoke to me with resolve. At the time, I never would have believed just what he would be willing to sacrifice to protect a world he could never call home. I’m still not certain he was out to protect our world. Given the events of the days following our meeting, I do not believe it was his desire to help that led him here.

Perhaps Kuja was just the Queen in His game of chess—the most powerful piece, yet so easy to manipulate into a trap. Whereas his little friend would be the King—to capture him was the ultimate goal—the larger mage would have been a simple Knight. And as the Knight, his fate was almost sealed from the beginning of the game. To think in such terms makes things seem less complex and dangerous. I still do not fully understand why the things that have come to pass have done so…

…

He truly was a kind friend. Despite being reassured multiple times of the security assigned to guard his friend’s room, he was still very hesitant to follow me. Upon my insistence, he finally caved. Kuja was his name; an exotic name, just like its owner. I can’t say the same for his larger companion, however. While Kuja seemed to have understanding of formalities and etiquette, the one called Mr. 111 was not as in-tune with proper protocols.

I can’t say I was upset. In fact, seeing two creatures so different in demeanor but similar in situation made me think of Twilight Sparkle. The way she had adapted to accept the ponies she calls friends, despite how different they were, was one of the saving graces of Equestria. Now it seems that it was time for a new group of friends to take the reins. Of course, neither was quite certain how to approach the situation at hand.

It was a silent walk from the little mage’s room to the chamber where we would be meeting. Our pony companions were quite disappointed when I insisted that we meet alone. I’m certain they were just as interested in our guests’ parts in current events, but it seemed only right that they meet with the one they had wanted to. So we finally sat together, just the two able-bodied foreigners, two cautious guards, and me. I was excited to finally learn more about the world they came from. I wanted to know why the monsters had so suddenly appeared all across my kingdom.

There was one other matter that I wanted to speak with them about, only I wasn’t certain if they could even help me understand it.

The first few minutes passed in awkward silence, none present really knowing how to begin our discussion. One of the castle servants brought us some tea and cookies, and I jumped on my chance to begin.

“I imagine, between your journeys and the monsters that have taken it upon themselves to attack you, you haven’t had much chance to enjoy classic Equestrian cuisine, have you?” I poured us each a moderate-sized cup of the steaming herbal concoction, trying to lighten the mood of the room.

Kuja accepted his tea gracefully, breaking the ice, “Not quite Your Highness. I seem to have found myself lying in beds, feeling like death for the majority of my stay in your world.” He accepted a cookie, dipping it in his drink as if he were accustomed to such civil conversation.

“Well, we Black Mages don’t really need to eat much, so…” As the much less graceful guest trailed off, he accepted a cookie with a crunch.

I noticed the white-haired guest grimace at the discourteous act. I felt he was going to say something to his companion until I jumped in. “You say you don’t need to eat much. Why exactly is that?” It was a genuine question, but it felt almost too personal to ask.

Kuja finished sipping his tea before replying bluntly, “Black Mages like Vivi and Mr. 111 are empty inside.” He consumed the last half of his cookie and set the cup down, shifting in his seat to a much more formal position. He sighed, “They only eat because they think they have to. Anything they consume gets recycled into Mist, which then feeds them the energy they need…or needed…to live.” Mr. 111 looked at him and then the cookie in his hand. If I could have seen his face, I’m certain it would have shown disappointment.

I felt like there were things about the Black Mages I would never know without having known the laws of their home world. I probed a little deeper, “What does it mean to be ‘empty inside’, Kuja? Or should I be asking your friend?” Looking back, I may have been a bit insensitive or snotty in asking that.

The thick-clothed mage decided it was his time to answer, “Exactly what it sounds like, Princess. We’re empty. All that’s under this coat and hat is Mist. Air. We don’t have anything else. Remove the cover, and we fade away.” I detected a hint of anger in his voice, obviously not quite comfortable speaking about himself.

And yet I carried on with my questions. I was so intrigued by what they were that I didn’t take time to consider how they felt about what they were. So I continued to probe, “Are you saying you don’t have mouths or stomachs? You don’t even have hearts? How can you speak and eat and feel?” Kuja turned his head away from the larger guest, assumedly wondering what kind of answer I would receive.

“I wish I knew, Princess.” His voice sounded scornful, as if cursing the thing that made them the way they were. “I’ll never know, really. I can only believe that it’s just ‘magic’ keeping me functional. In a world without Mist, I don’t know how I’m still ticking, or what makes me tick.” He finished the cookie in his hand, almost in spite of what Kuja had said earlier about not needing food.

I couldn’t begin to grasp the concept of an empty creature. How could anything live without a heart or blood? How could you walk without muscles, or talk without lungs? If what they said was true, then it would just be a few layers of fabric keeping them from becoming air. How could one live a life so close to death all their days? What if a knife stabbed them or sliced off an arm? They would simply die, rather than suffer the wound…

What kind of life can that be?

“I know what you’re thinking,” Kuja scoffed, “about how a life like theirs would be insufferable. But here’s the dirty little secret, Your Highness: they aren’t supposed to be alive.”

“What do you mean? If they’re alive, how can they not be meant to--?”

“We were manufactured in factories, Princess. Stitched together like dolls, we were programmed with only one purpose: to kill whatever our master told us to.” Mr. 111 gulped down his tea all at once before sighing, “We’re killing machines, plain and simple.”

I simply could not believe how he was speaking of himself. “Programmed?! You say that like you aren’t even real! You live and breathe and die, so you must be real!” I was starting to get worked up, my mind racing with so many more questions than when we started.

Kuja leaned forward to rest his head on his hands. “That’s the kicker, Princess. They are real. They weren’t supposed to be. I created them to kill people. But, after enough time passed, they became aware. They woke up.” He stopped for a moment to collect his thoughts. I could see the guilt in his eyes become even deeper. “And when they woke up, they knew nothing. The only thing they knew was what I had told them to do. They knew they were meant to kill others. Most of them couldn’t get past that.”

“You created them...” I sighed, trying to understand just who this mysterious man was meant to be, “…to kill innocent creatures? They were just supposed to be toys, but they found lives inside themselves. Is that it?”

“More than you could ever imagine, Princess Celestia. Imagine if you woke up one day and the only thing you knew was that you had to raise the sun, like the legends. If you didn’t know how or why you were meant to do it, would you still do it?” He presented a very serious hypothetical to me. If I knew nothing about my world or what I was, how could I bring myself to accept the consequences of any actions I took?

“I…would try.”

“Would you?”

“Of course! If I knew it was my job, I’d have to try!”

He started to chuckle, “So if you woke up one day with just the knowledge that you were meant to bring harm to the world around you, would you do that? If you didn’t know why you had to kill others, or what would happen if you did, would you be able to do it?” I began to see his point. I began to see just what kind of struggle his toys had to go through.

“I don’t think I would…”

“So what makes that different than raising the sun? You don’t know anything in either case, so why do one and not the other?” He began to raise his voice. The longer this went on, the more serious it seemed to get to him.

“I...” How could I answer that? “I don’t know.”

Mr. 111 shouted, “Of course you don’t! You never could!” I was caught off guard by his sudden outburst. One of the guards by the door drew his spear in preparation of hostility.

I snapped, “Stand down!” The guard resumed his original stance.

After taking a second to breathe, the mage continued, “If you knew your job was to kill people, but you didn’t want to, and at the same time you didn’t know there was anything else to do, how would you know what you should do?” He leaned forward to stare at the ground. His voice fell ever quieter as he continued, “Us Black Mages had to suffer those kinds of thoughts every day of our lives. We searched desperately for something to distract us from the doubts. And when one came around, we grasped it firmly and never let go.”

Kuja continued for him, “Because that’s the way I programmed them. I gave them a life they could never hope to live.” I heard him let out a sigh before reaching for another cookie. Rather than biting into it, he snapped it in half. “Imagine a Black Mage as this cookie. I had the power to consume it, break it, or put it back. I chose to break it.” He shook his left hand, “This is knowledge.” The right hand followed, “And this is power.”

“Like a cookie, both halves together make the whole. Half of a cookie can never be as good as a whole one. Knowledge without power to manifest it is useless. Power without knowledge is deadly.” He tightened his grip on the left half of the cookie, grinding it into a fine powder in his palm. “Pay attention, Princess. See how much cookie you can see hit the table,” he scoffed. He released the crumbs, and most of them were caught in the breeze from an open window, missing the table and hitting the floor.

“It wasn’t much, was it? That breeze was perfect…” he sighed. He put the intact half of the cookie beside what remained of its counterpart. “I gave them power, but almost no knowledge. They knew enough to question their programming, but not enough to figure out how to let go of it.”

I understood what he meant. He tried to make them nothing but dolls, but instead he ended up with frightened children who could barely think. He cursed all of them to suffer such a fate… That’s why guilt filled his heart.

He groaned, “Even here, I’ve done nothing but hurt them! I let Mr. 33 die outside that godforsaken forest! Even Vivi, the one mage who managed to deny his destiny in its entirety, was cursed when I made contact with him. He was forced to suffer the same fate for a second time. A fate I cursed him with!” He sat back in the chair, his body relaxing as he finished his explanation.

Mr. 111 sighed, “That’s what we are. We’re mostly-failed experiments. Mostly.”

“So you believe that saving Equestria can redeem you of your atrocities against your children?” I put the pieces of the puzzle together. I thought I could finally understand his motives.

“No,” he snapped. Before I could question him, he elaborated, “I can never make up for what I put the Black Mages through. Never in a million lifetimes will I ever be able to give them the lives they should have had to live. Most of them are gone for good. The mages have nothing to do with why I want to protect this world.”

Well, I can honestly say that it surprised me to hear that. If he wasn’t seeking redemption for what he’d done to them, what else could it have been? It is true he stated that he built the Black Mages to be ‘killing machines’, but… He just doesn’t seem like the type of person to have done something so bad to seek this level of forgiveness.

Mr. 111 sighed, “There are so many things you simply can’t understand, Princess. Our world was almost the exact opposite of yours. Very few people got to live in peace, and even they had their baggage.” I watched him get up from his seat and stretch. He so quickly went from scornful to sad to accepting. Could that have been a result of such underdeveloped emotional understanding?

Suddenly, the way Twilight talked about the little mage made sense. She made him sound one day like a mature worker and the next a scared child. I could suddenly see why that’s even possible. The Black Mages were just children. And, in the case of complete memory loss, scared and confused children.

Kuja stood from his seat and sighed, “The reason I want to save your world is to make up for destroying Terra and trying to do the same to Gaia.” He left it at that. He didn’t bother to explain what either place was or how they related to one another. He just stopped talking.

Mr. 111 chuckled sadly, “May I ask you something, Your Highness?” I met his suddenly formal approach with an accepting nod. He hesitated before asking, “Why did you summon us here?”

I imagined one of them would ask me. I giggled emptily, “I summoned Twilight Sparkle and the other Elements of Harmony. You simply tagged along.”

“That’s a lie if I’ve ever heard one,” he retorted. “I mean, you knew we’d show up. Twilight even told you we wanted to meet! Not to mention this private audience.”

I rolled my eyes and smiled weakly. “Oh dear, you saw right through me. You’re quite bright, Mr. 111.” He would have scowled at me if he had the ability to do so. I decided to stop dodging the inevitable explanation. “The truth is, I’ve been having strange dreams every night for the last week or so.”

“How does this involve us?” Kuja sprung to life again. It seems that ‘dream’ was the keyword.

“Each night it’s the exact same vision. A tall figure in dark black armor with an ominous red light in the center of its chest appears before me. It speaks to me each night, warning me of an impending disaster.” They sat forward in attention; intrigued by the figure I spoke of. “In a deep, threatening voice he speaks to me. When he gets close enough, I can make out a silver beard and balding head.

“He always says the same things. ‘To find peace in your world, you must destroy the remnants of mine.’ ‘If you wish to restore your world, deny those of foreign make.’ ‘The puppets are being pulled by the strings of fate.’ ‘Fate is not in favor of your world.’ It’s always those same lines each night. Sometimes he speaks each more than once before vanishing.”

As I finished quoting the figure in my visions, the two guests shared uncertain looks. Kuja turned to me as if to suggest something, but he didn’t have time to do so.

The castle began to shake horrendously, sending our teacups tottering over and throwing my guards to the ground. A loud roar followed the earthquake, the familiarity of the voice despite never once hearing it rattling my bones. I felt a chill run down my spine. Almost the instant it was safe to stand, my guests were rushing from the room into the halls of the castle.

Against my guard’s recommendations, I followed swiftly after them. They looked worried, as if they knew what was happening. I was on their heels the entire time, until I was finally led to the entrance of the castle. Just outside the now-busted down doors sat two injured soldiers. And in the sky, suspended like a ball on water, a giant black sphere spun wildly around, emitting an energy I’d never felt before. It wasn’t magic in the standard sense.

It didn’t even feel real. It couldn’t have been real.

But Kuja and Mr. 111 fell to their knees, a sudden wave of dread pouring over us. I can’t even explain why, but I was filled with fear over what the sphere was meant to be. It looked oddly harmless, despite its looming over my home. It itself felt almost calming. So why then did I suddenly find my heart racing in fear?

Twilight Sparkle and her friends met us at the gates a few minutes later. They carried a message that made my stomach start to churn. “Vivi’s gone missing!” Twilight had told me. Why was it that I suddenly felt so sick? I barely knew the mage, and yet I felt as if the world would crumble around my hooves.

With a loud roar, the black sphere suddenly exploded. Four figures were sent plummeting to the ground on the bridge connecting the castle to the town. Three of them looked almost like demons, giant black wings and feathered gowns adorning their bodies. Eyes of crimson met mine through the dust stirred up by the impact. The fourth figure…was Vivi.

Only…he was surrounded by this intriguing pink light. He looked stronger than before, almost as if he’d gained a sudden surge of courage. He wasn’t the scared child I had seen sleeping deafly in his room. But…how could he have changed so much in such little time?

Two of the demon-like monsters vaporized into the air, disappearing as if they never existed. The third cried out in fear as Vivi approached him. I waited for the child to deliver a final attack, but it never came. Instead, the demon ceased its squirming and adopted a calmer demeanor. Vivi stopped in his tracks, and a horrendous voice called out.

It sounded like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It had to have been in my head…and yet the others around me seemed to take notice of it. Kuja seemed especially disturbed by it, trying ever harder to find the source in the immediate area. But…what it had to say was much more chilling than how it sounded.

“A memory can never be real. A memory is the past. No matter what changes, the memory can never exist again. If it does, the memory is lost. When it becomes a memory, the reality is shattered. By forgetting a reality and gaining a memory, a monster is born. One who feeds on the emotions housed in memories that aren’t real.”

I couldn’t even begin to understand its meaning, but it filled me with a dread much worse than the sphere had. As it spoke, I began to recognize it. It was, unmistakably, the voice from my dreams. Whatever had been speaking to me was doing so again at that moment through the demon Vivi had defeated. And once the voice finished its speech, the demon vanished just like its companions. Left in its stead was a tiny red ruby. Even it vanished before our eyes, shattering into dust.

The glow around Vivi died down, and he collapsed instantly. With a cry of utter fear, Kuja darted from where he sat to his friend’s side. The rest of us followed in a hurry, Mr. 111 at the front. None of us dared utter a word.

The white-haired mage dropped to the ground by the kid’s side and cried, “Vivi!”

I couldn’t stop myself from speaking, “What was that just now?!” The fear and curiosity in my gut wouldn’t settle until I did.

Mr. 111 approached the child from the opposite side. “Vivi?” he mumbled.

“S-Say something, dammit!” Kuja cried out, anger flooding his voice.

Twilight Sparkle walked up beside me and asked, “What were those things?”

“Who cares!?” the now-desperate foreigner snapped at her. “Vivi, wake up!” He slid the mage onto his arms and attempted to elevate him.

The larger mage simply sighed, “Vivi, what’s wrong?”

“…” a faint breath left the child’s mouth.

“Vivi?” Kuja asked as tears began to stream down his face.

It was a long few seconds of silence, but we finally heard his reply. “…Ku…ja…”

I watched his body fall limp in his friend’s arms. Limp, as the life left his body. Kuja smiled happily for only a moment, having heard his name, before it dawned on him what had just happened. The golden glow of the child’s eyes faded, color fading from his clothes. What he lacked in a body, the shell made up for, it seemed.

“Vi…vi?” Kuja asked numbly. “Vivi?”

Just as would be expected from somepony who had just lost a friend unexpectedly…he began to sob. Kuja, who had acted so cold and tough during our meeting, was now sobbing openly, cradling the mage’s body in his arms.

“Dammit! Don’t do this, Vivi!” I could hear anger and sorrow in his sobs. He set the body down gently on the ground and pressed his palms against its chest. He cried out, “Dammit! I won’t let this happen! Curaga!” A bright green light danced down his arms, through his hands and into the shell.

“Curaga!” he screamed again, and again the light danced. “Life! Curaga! Life! Dammit, Vivi, wake up!” He flailed an arm to the side and a chunk of stone from the bridge launched into the air. He stood up from the ground, falling silent in place of his sobs.

The silence seemed to fill the air. Not even the monsters’ roars from above the town could penetrate it. He began to walk back toward the castle, towards us. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. His expression was flooded with sorrow. And as he passed by me, he stopped.

And I can never forget what he said. He whispered it in one swift breath and continued on his way. I felt the color drain from my features. And for the rest of the day, none of us spoke to one another. It was a silent evening in the castle. I can never forget how much scorn he shoved into the final thing spoken between us.

“My guards will protect him, right?”

Comments

[Mother3Forever]

Vivi......no.....

[Dirty Bit]

So we know that Garland has a role in this...I'm guessing Ozma the supposed giant sphere?

Damn, poor Vivi...

[_No_One_Remains_]

3006406 Uh...the giant sphere was Vivi casting Ultima.
No, I'm afraid Ozma would completely break the world.

[Dirty Bit]

3006526 good point I keep forgetting that these chapters are often repeated actions from different points of view

[_No_One_Remains_]

3007084 If by 'often' you mean 'just this once', then you are correct, good sir!

[Icarus Crimsonhoof]

well this is wack. Kuja destroy.

[_No_One_Remains_]

3012058 Aren't you reading? It was all just a 'vision' of sorts.
At least, that's what Kuja thinks, anyway.

[UseFistNotMouth]

Darn. FF related things get so freakin conceptual and meta towards the ends.

[_No_One_Remains_]

3014961 Ya ever see one that ain't been so "all the characters suddenly understand what they've been fighting for/the motives involved in all the villains' actions"...y?
They all do it, and it's time to give the tale a little bit of that *repeat aforementioned quote* feel to the story!