Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.


Children are given orders. Adults take charge. This child did not take orders and this adult would not take charge. There is no purpose and no people. This is called a thing. These things would not be defined.

Chapter Three: Rope's End

"Unnnh… Mission… Re—" The rest of it was drowned out as I administered a potion down the Black Waltz's throat, correctly judging where his mouth was hidden in the fuzzy dark cloud of his face. He'd been repeating the same two phrases for over an hour, ever since he'd woken up and it was driving me crazy. Crazier. Well it was really an opinion based on your perspective of sanity, but that's really not important. His two phrases themselves were annoying enough after one repetition that I had decided I'd drown the little winged rat instead of listening to them anymore. The phrases, for justification's sake, were: Mission retrieve princess alive: and: Eliminate all: both of these being said at slow, stuttering paces that made me want to say them for the Waltz so that they could be out and done with in less than a minute's time instead of agonizingly drawn out as they were.

A hand scrabbled at my arm and I judiciously took the potion away, setting it on the floor where Rubyeyes immediately began to sniff it to see if it was anything he might want to drink himself. The hand didn't calm down at this, but started to thrash around in time with the rest of the black waltz's body, as if he were having some sort of seizure. I highly doubted such though. I'd bought that potion with good money and it had definitely not been poison. I knew because I'd meant to buy poison and had found when I tested it on the dying grass outside that it was actually a potion instead. It had done wonders for my lawn. Lawn care aside, it seemed to be fixing up the waltz too. Parts of his wings that had been at odd angles began to straighten out and his fingers slowly uncurled, one by one, from their tensed, clawed state. I think it even realigned his back, getting rid of a small bit of scoliosis he'd developed, no doubt from sneaking and skulking and general frowned upon things of the same category.

"W-what—!" The waltz managed to gasp after he'd calmed down a bit and I patted him on the head like I would my cat, if my cat wore a hat and had nearly flattened me that afternoon by falling out of the sky on me. It was a pat my cat had never experienced and was never likely to.

"Glad you're up. Are you sane?" I asked the black waltz, who managed to choke out a word I do not care to repeat. I did take the time to inform him though that I was in no way a type of dog and dearly hoped I did not resemble one.

Rubyeyes, who had found the potion not to his liking, mewed at me. He wanted his dinner and he didn't care about rude black waltzes or the remnants of a plan concocted by a long dead civilization that would never come to fruition; no, for him, the world at the moment revolved around cuts of chicken and how many there would be.

Standing up, I went to the cupboard and began rummaging around for the meat, which, admittedly, was probably bad too. I'd managed to find several things I'd thought I'd lost before I even came to Dali –an ugly green towel that looked as if it'd drown someone rather than dry them, a promotional packet of fortune color stones someone in Tantalus had given me, a dagger I think belonged to Zidane (it certainly wasn't mine), that fish from three months ago I meant to give to Rubyeyes because I hate fish and which had now changed into something that barely resembled an aquatic creature, one lonely pink rain boot (pink because people had at first automatically assumed I liked the color because I wore it and not because my other clothes had just happened to be destroyed with my planet, darn the luck), and a…voodoo doll? Oh wait, that was probably that doll Bakku used to explain that one heist I participated in—all these things I found before the potion bottle crashed against my back and shattered. I gave a yelp and jumped onto the counter, nearly toppling over the kettle and just missing burning my foot on the stove. Was I bleeding? I couldn't tell –my head didn't turn that far. Putting a hand to my back though, I hissed slightly when my fingers pressed into a cut.

"Who…are you?" My patient of a black waltz, who was also the red handed culprit of the potion bottle's new found ability to fly, demanded in a raspy voice.

I gritted my teeth slightly and slowly clambered down to huddled in the chair I kept by the stove, waiting for the pain rippling like lightning through my back to recede before I did anything. Luckily there had been some potion left in that bottle; my back was already starting to heal.

The black waltz gave a raspy sound, something that seemed indicative it was still waiting for an answer. I wanted to inform him that you threw things after you gained your answer, not before, and then only if the answer had been the wrong one (at least that's what Garland taught me), but instead I took a deep breath and said, "I'm Mikoto." After all, I hadn't killed the thing, so I might as well indulge it, though no more potions for Mr. Grumpy-Breeches-Can't-Be-Trusted-To-Act-My-Age.

For a while my answer seemed to allay him and he said nothing else so I set to picking up the shards of glass and dumping them in the lightweight crate I used for odds and ends. Maybe I'd need them later, I didn't know. Things happened and you sometimes needed the most strangest and commonplace of items. I liked to be prepared. Or at least that's what I told people. In reality I just couldn't be bothered to get rid of most things. Either they were there or they weren't.

"You're not a person you're a thing," the waltz said suddenly, watching me with his golden eyes like he would some bizarre new form of mashed potato, which obviously couldn't be very new or different, but certainly very strange.

"I'm a Genome. You probably don't know what that is, but that's what I am and no, I'm not a hallucination, if that's what you mean," I said, ready enough to agree, if in a roundabout way. Rubyeyes arched his body against my leg and I picked him up. He meowed at me and I could tell from his breath he'd eaten that three month old fish. I'd have to remember to keep him off my bed so he wasn't sick on it later, particularly when I was in it, or, I supposed, my new found companion.

"You're a thing," my advocate of unconditional world love black waltz patient persisted in a throaty grumble. "You're a Mikoto-thing," he amended after a moment, thinking the whole problem through. "An ugly Mikoto-thing." This seemed to satisfy him and he closed his eyes.

The focus on the inane topic was understandable; one did not drink down an entire potion in under ten seconds and expect to be lucid in anyway. The medicine did wonders for helping a person focus though, even if the focus was usually one track. Again, the behavior was understandable. I'd seen Zidane's friends fixed up with dozens of potions after they'd saved Gaia and they hadn't exactly been talking sense either. Garnet raved for hours about the appropriate colors for the apple tart someone unwisely offered her when she said she was hungry.

Based on this reasoning I decided to let the insult go. At least, until the next comment followed; I think right about then I started loosing the fight to be the better person.

"Very ugly, I'm having nightmares," Black Waltz No. 3 rasped as I took the kettle off the stove. I threw a quick glare at him. He was lying on my bed, under my covers (actually Freya's, but she never knew I took them), eyes presumably closed though with black mages, or waltzes for that matter, it's sometimes hard to tell, and to all appearances sound asleep. Except for that cackle he was performing to perfection.

"Glad I could be of service," I snapped, throwing an extra blanket on the rude thing, taking no care for his broken rib, and bringing my tea outside where I could drink it in relative peace. A gasped foul word followed this and I slammed the door shut so I didn't hear the others that came after. If there is one thing I can not abide out of the many things I can not abide, which are very numerous indeed, it is foul language.

For a while after that it was just me and quiet and tea which is a very good way to be. There was a spectacular dusting of pure, angelic stars in the blue velvet sky, breath-taking to behold in the clean, rural country side. The moon was particularly full and luminous, shining like a celestial candle and shedding silver rays on thankful Gaia. It was a romantic sky portrait anyone would have loved to behold. I sipped my tea and managed to ignore it all without too much effort, in fact, no effort. It was perfectly disgusting and that was another of my goals when I died: to complain loudly, angrily and violently to whomever came up with the Gaian night sky. It was appallingly vast and ever changing and staring up at it for long periods of time tended to give one a headache. Very disgruntling and a perfect way to ruin a fine night.

The sky aside though, what I really needed was some inclination of what I should do next. There was a black waltz in my house, I was running out of all the money I had earned in Treno, my food supply was practically nil do to some kind of vendetta bacteria and fungus seemed to have against me and I needed to get myself to Alexandria sometime within the next month to oo and aah over the new baby for Zidane.

At least I didn't have to worry about rent money in Dali like I had in Burmecia. That had been particularly awful; sometimes it had felt as if the landlady knew a spell to suck out all my cash when I wasn't looking, spare or not. I'd had to steal a pretty penny a couple of times just to come up with the bare minimum for a room, let alone meals. Not that I'd ever admit any of this to anyone. As far as Zidane knew I was fairly well-off and finding my place in the world. If he knew I'd grown accustomed to eating acorns and the more mildly poisonous berries at times simply because I couldn't bring myself to ask him for some spare change I think he might just suffer a bout of apoplexy before he could get out the words of just what, if anything, was going through my mind. Amarant would probably laugh his backside off at that.

I took another sip of tea and stared at the sky with disgust as it persisted to be perfectly cheerful in the face of all my problems, the stars twinkling ecstatically as if there was a ball going on and no cloud with the nerve to block out a single part of it in the face of all the chipper celestial lights. Thanks for the sympathy sky, thanks a lot; next time you need the moral support of an ominous setting, you see what I do for you. You can be sure it won't involve putting out some mood candles and soulfully wailing the somber theme of I Want to Be Your Canary.

"What am I going to do? Something else happen and direct my life for me already," I whined like the little girl I sometimes thought I was, scuffing a booted foot in the dirt and staring at the picture it made as if it might spell out the answer. It would have been nice if it had, but instead it looked oddly like the face of Gumo the moogle; there was his suspicious little eyes, the whiskers, more on one side than the other for some unknown reason, that rock could be that red thing on top of his head. Was this supposed to mean something? Go ask Gumo for advice on life and hope he doesn't rant at you about friendly and conspiring Jeff again? If that was the sign given to direct my life, then I was in a lot of trouble.

"Well, I suppose cheers to you, puzzling sign from my foot," I murmured sarcastically, slightly tipping my cup to the dirt portrait of Gumo in mockery of a toast before finishing off the rest of my tea. Standing up, I raised my arms towards the heavens and stretched, feeling the kinks leave my back. It was time to go to sleep if I meant to figure out anything about all these dilemmas tomorrow. For while simply dropping and dying somewhere convenient was a plausible idea, I was so used to the motions of living, it'd certainly be hard to promptly stop on cue. I supposed I could give it a rallying attempt later if nothing else came to mind.

"You know, why is it we all come in threes?" I quietly asked my sleeping black waltz patient upon entering the house once more. The only answer I gained was a snore. That made me smile somewhat. Even black waltzes are people.