Disclaimer: Final Fantasy IX and Dissidia are the property of Square Enix. The people who came together to make these characters and their worlds made their fans a home to which they will always return.

CHAPTER FOUR

"Everything I did was wrong. I've destroyed entire civilizations, thousands of years of knowledge and tradition. I've broken an entire planet's soul and I will never be able to replace what I've broken.

"And you don't even understand a single thing I'm saying, do you?"

The single manikin stared through me. Having taken on the form of the Warrior of Light, it carried a shield in one hand, sword in another, but it stood slack and defenseless, waiting.

Since it had no sense of self, it wouldn't know why it was the funniest thing I've seen all day.

A manikin of a manikin. The longer I thought about it, the more it lost its admittedly morbid humor. I've seen the manikins of myself, after all.

It looked as frail as a glass ornament, and fractured the weak sunlight in just the same way. It flinched when I touched its chiseled face, as if I were the one with slick, unforgiving skin.

I left the scarcest fingerprint. The manikin didn't breathe, didn't blink, and if my hand fell to its chest, it wouldn't be because of its armor that I would feel no heartbeat.

Stormclouds amassed over the far-off foothills as thunder stirred the electricity in the air. The clouds had been growing since midday, but they'd come no closer to this clearing, and there was no relief from the desolate heat.

"I would sooner spend the rest of my life surrounded by the survivors, despising me, wanting to inflict the same pain upon me that I've brought down on them," I confided.

It tilted his head. You brainless statue, I wasn't giving you a command. I gripped its sword arm by the wrist. I ran my opposite palm up the length of the blade until the crystal bit through my flesh and my blood streaked the weapon. I was giving it the first strike, but it refused to do what it was made to do.

I left the scent of my blood in the air. I let it seep into the silk and leather wrapped around my hand and drip down my fingers, over my knife-like nails.

"I'd rather suffer through all of that than die alone, with nothing but the memories of the person I once was. If I could just be remembered for something – for doing something worth admiring –"

My voice broke with sincerity.

"Aren't you listening to me?!" I snarled. Why didn't it attack me?

These stupid, faceless constructs. At least my black mages had souls. They knew evil when they saw it, and good, even if they hadn't fought back.

"I'm a traitor! I was one of Cosmos' champions! I want this pointless war to be over. I want to go home!"

The manikin didn't even raise its shield to defend itself before I shattered it to pieces.

When the light dissipated, I breathed into the satisfying ache of holy magic slipping back under my skin. I felt nothing of the echo that would have rocked me if the senseless thing had even a makeshift soul.

If nothing happened after a performance like that, then nothing was going to happen. Even with a manikin shaped after the Warrior of Light, there was no glimmer of a soul.

How they managed to copy us with such precision would still be a wonderful mystery to solve, but it would get me nowhere. It was inevitable: I would need to play with more powerful pieces.

The thought of opening myself to the souls of the Warriors of Chaos made me physically ill, but I wasn't strong enough to challenge Chaos on my own. The only warriors whose souls would be of any use to me were the ones with full possession of their memories. How else could their suffering have that sonorous resonance I require?

So, old man, even though I knew you recalled nearly every pitiful moment of your dual lives, I decided I would wait until last for you.

I'll take your warriors away from you one by one so that for once in this miserable world, you will remember defeat. You will recoil from the blinding light and I will be there, your faithful Angel of Death, to offer you the sheltering shade of oblivion.

The first one I took would need to be strong. Even if I was careful, those left alive would be suspicious. Exdeath would certainly be a good power boost, if nothing else. Nobody would miss him. But he didn't inspire me.

Golbez, on the other hand, has suffered so much already. He has condemned himself to Chaos' service, though he sowed it best when he struggled against his own restraints. It wouldn't be hard for me to talk him into giving himself to me. Cosmos was cruel, Golbez, but I'd be gentle.

Or I could reap the Emperor's soul.

"What could a manikin possibly ever do to offend you?" he said as he enters the clearing, his spear held in an indolent grip at his side.

With the instinct that bound the manikin together now broken, the crystal cracked readily under his boots. High time I collected my reward for enduring Kefka's friendship.

"I thought we'd seen the last of you when you left the Chaos Shrine," he continued. "I was sure of it when I was informed you set Bartz free under Garland's secret orders. Tell me it's not true you've allied yourself to him. Not after what he inflicted upon you for all those cycles past."

He laid richly into the deeper tones of his voice, as if he would be the world's confidant and tyrant both. I admit, his words trapped me better than any of his overcomplicated spells ever have.

"For all your varied roles throughout the years, I have never once seen you so aimless. I've heard that your gift fails you against Cosmos' champions… to say nothing of your resolve."

Who didn't learn about my fight with Zidane? Why were all my comrades such insufferable gossips?

"Of course your magic isn't doing well, considering your brush with such a toxic element. You know very well I'm also a devoted scholar of such arts. Let me help you regain focus," he said, his hand outstretched.

I examined it coldly. "I keep forgetting you've survived since you've been summoned."

The blood from my palm dripped from my nails. "I suppose it's something I take for granted by now."

I sent out a weak and invisible pulse to see if it brushed against anything that I would find inconvenient. Here and there were artful little iris-shaped snares, intricate as mandalas, precise as poetry. One by one, I crushed them like dried flowers.

"A distinction we share," he replied. "We have been together in this world for quite some time. Some of our comrades tend to forget that when they underestimate you."

Behind my smile, I swallowed my revulsion. I hated it when they tried to flatter me, even if I'd done everything to cultivate a reputation for vanity. It made it so easy to tell when the others wanted something from me.

"Garland has betrayed you before and will betray you again," he continued, obviously done with formalities. "He has failed all of us. I want to end this cycle of battle forever. I would challenge Chaos myself, only I see little point in charging in headlong without some knowledge of my opponent beforehand."

"Now you want Chaos off the board?" I asked.

He had the grace to hesitate. "I do see the humor in this situation, yes."

I laughed. "All right, this was lovely. I do enjoy your audacity, but I'll only allow myself to be insulted so many times in a single conversation."

I tore a portal into the air behind me. I didn't know where it led, but any fragment would be better than here.

"Insulted? No one has survived challenging him except for you."

So he remembered me before I was Garland's Angel of Death. At least Kefka was honest about what he wanted from me. The Emperor was less obvious. I decided to let him think he's convinced me to hear him out. Reluctantly, I faced him once more.

"You've always had a tactician's mind. You must have gone over that fight again and again. I'm interested in knowing what you would do... if you had the others under your command."

"The others?" I repeated as if I were a fool.

"My apologies. By the others, I mean our…"

Just shut up; you weren't sorry.

"Ultimecia," I answered immediately. She was already his ally; it wouldn't insult him to discuss a strategy he must have at least partially considered already. "Her gift with time magic would give you the only chance to make the fullest use of your own. There are no tricks once you stand before him. There is only the strength of your resolve."

That, and there was Cosmos' blessing; there was nothing the Emperor or any other Warrior could do without it.

I imagined what it would look like for the hubris in his eyes to die.

A swelling quiet filled the space between the Emperor and myself.

"I've always wanted to ask you why you challenged him."

What's this talk of 'always'? We were never even half so close as he insinuated. This is the work of an amateur. He's never had to persuade anyone with anything subtler than sheer force before, has he?

The lie waited on my tongue. The same reason I challenged Garland before we were brought to this world. I imagine Garland had enough of my disobedience after that. I would then laugh, to let the Emperor know he should, as well.

"You're trembling," he pointed out.

Thank you, I already noticed. Now I had to play along with it.

I gave him the hand I'd cut open on the manikin's sword. I steeled myself; his healing magic was less like a balm and more like cauterization. I had endured far worse at his hands, but when it was over, my sigh of relief was genuine enough.

I laughed it off. "Does Ultimecia know you've come for me? What would your empress say if she saw us like this?"

"Ultimecia's beauty has its rivals even here, and I confess, others who may be a much better partner to have by my side in times of war. True war, not this mockery we engage ourselves in."

He traced the path his magic seared across my palm. "I never told you. I did have an empress, once. She was low-born. But I loved her, and for my love, my people loved her as well."

"I also had a daughter. When she was in her mother's womb I prayed she would take after her, but as she grew she looked more and more like me. Fair-haired, her noble lineage apparent for all to see.

"When she came of age there were many contenders for her hand. Not just for her beauty, but for the magical prowess she inherited and for the crown that would one day belong to her. I gave her rooms in the highest tower in Palamecia and surrounded her with my most loyal soldiers. But even so, she was stolen from me."

When he paused, I replied, "I have a hard time believing you allowed that to be the end of the story."

This made him smile. "My spies found her in the castle of a small neighboring kingdom, held captive by the prince. I remembered him; he had come to court, but had nothing to offer her. When he refused to return her to me, I decided to take her back myself."

"He led his kingdom's defense himself; my ships killed him in the assault. When the walls fell, I learned that they had slain my daughter and then placed the weapon in her own hands as a cruel joke. I leveled the castle and the city around it. My empress withstood the loss of our daughter, but when she walked upon the smoldering ground, she collapsed and died several days later. She knew I had found something I loved more than her."

His daughter had obviously fallen in love with the prince when he came to court and used her magic to elope with him, just as she had obviously taken her own life when she learned her beloved had been killed at her father's command. Didn't he ever read?

The Emperor's eyes lit up with a strange, patient bloodlust. He hadn't wanted to share with me his memories of loss. He wanted to assure me that he had set his path to Chaos' throne long ago.

I tilted my head. "And how does one seduce a battlefield?"

"By force," he responded, a joke shared between two kindred souls. But we weren't, and it wasn't.

"You do know I can't simply drop everything and join your cause," I said to him.

"So Garland is holding something over you," the Emperor concluded.

"I don't need any more help from you, thanks."

"Kuja—" he began. I seemed to have thrown him, but not for long. In my upturned palm, pinpricks of violet light twisted like fibers into thread. He left the complete glyph in my hand like an invitation.

The beauty, the craftsmanship, the formality – he knew I appreciated such things. I valued them for their care, not for their lack of it. He made it a point to remind me of my place, of my mistakes, and he made such a show of putting all that aside in the name of a common goal.

"For my daughter I burned a kingdom to the ground. What I found in those fires, I see within you. Will your pride protect you better than I will?" he said to me.

Then he turned away and left the clearing, the remains of the Warrior of Light-formed manikin crunching under his gilded heels.

His possessive words twisted inside me; he had been watching me since I found the manikin.

Through his eyes, it must have looked like I was baiting it for a different reason. Which I wasn't; there was no point anymore. He'd seen to that. What I had thought was an invitation was now a threat.

I curled my palm. I pressed harder, steadying myself through the pressure. The glyph dissolved.

I still had it, though; he would know if his magic were snuffed out. It would be unwise to refuse his offer so bluntly.

'What I saw within those fires, I see within you.' What a line. One would think he was trying to recruit me, not shame me into compliance. He worked so hard, too. He's never chattered half so much in one conversation.

Clutching my hand close to my chest, I looked up at the sky. Thunder rolled in the distance, too many seconds after the lightning. The air was heavy and still. I wanted rain.

No, that wasn't what I wanted. I didn't want anything this land or the people trapped here could give me.

In the beginning, I knew two things: I must never allow the others to see my tail, and I was out of my element.

My appearance upset the hierarchy. Garland said I had to convince them my interests lay outside rising in rank, that I was concerned with the efforts of Chaos as a whole.

This naturally made some people suspicious. Some people disregarded me outright, some sought to turn my momentary lack of allies to their advantage. Imagine me, a team player.

It took me a few moments to adjust my charms. Here there were no court intrigues, no enchantments of boredom and lore, no luxury. In order to become more palatable to this crowd, I sharpened my tongue, hardened my gaze. I had to let a little more of my true self slip through, or at least what I knew of it at the time. Sacrifices had to be made for the greater good. For Garland's greater good.

Under his command, I gathered their opinions of him. I played it as anyone else would. After all, we all knew we were suspicious of anyone who presumed to order our kind around. It was a flawless way for me to discover what they thought of him.

Garland was too cautious, was not exercising the might under his control.

Garland was but a figurehead for the darkness, an avatar granted to us to lead the way.

Garland was the most prudent, the only one capable of keeping us under control enough to assure victory instead of mutual destruction.

Garland was a fool and his days were numbered. Guess which gilded despot confided that to me.

It was impossible to ignore the desire. It manifested in multiple forms: lust, power, authority, a draw to the darkness, and, oddly enough, for commiseration. For understanding, for a silence that could never be anything more.

There were whispers, touches that were not what they seemed - and whispers and touches that were only what they were. In an empty world, there was the curious fixation with and denial of the urges that made us belong here.

I was an object of early fascination to the Cloud of Darkness and Exdeath. I may not have remembered the reservoir of vengeful souls I had invited into my body, but there was no disguising the damage from them.

"The one Garland was so loath to summon," the Cloud of Darkness mused.

Exdeath was a wall behind me. The Cloud's limbs wrapped around mine. I was cornered, but I was curious.

"Relax," one of them said to me. "We harbor little of the ill will or intent you suspect of us. Save it for your other comrades."

There were no words, intimate or downright carnal to describe what we had done. What I, fascinated, had permitted them to do with me. I did not feel them on my skin but under it. What I felt was not flesh or armor, but a call.

"I understand you a little more," said Exdeath. "It was not so long ago... I too had monster hordes, powerful magical armaments at my disposal. When I thought I still needed them."

I frowned. "I don't recall—"

"The residue lingers," he answered me.

They enveloped me, then found me wanting. I embraced the abyss and it was with ecstatic terror I realized that it was not something I was encountering for the first time, but returning to. My moans changed from exhilaration to fear. I had no recollection of it.

My unforgivably human reaction repelled them.

"Something is troubling you," said Garland upon my return. "I advised you to keep your distance from the battlefield. Your constitution is not one inclined for the mud of warfare."

There was no mud, no warfare. And even so, I hardly thought I would succumb to such conditions. But I kept that to myself. Interesting that he seemed the authority on my apparently delicate constitution.

I did not know what to ask Garland. My missing memories were not a hole, but a thing that my mind could not see.

"Exdeath and the Cloud of Darkness," I began. "They were some of the first?"

"They were," said Garland. "They told you?"

I shook my head. "It was a guess. They seemed drawn to a more simplistic principle than some of the others. Not to disparage them—a purity of purpose. Odd that they thought they would find kinship in me."

Garland frowned. He hated it when I took longer than two sentences to get to the point. Too bad. "Are they loyal?"

That's what he asked me? "Yes," I snapped. "Worry not. They're quite loyal."

Even Garland couldn't pretend to ignore that tone. "I apologize, he said, to my surprise. "Please, explain how you came to this question. Did they hurt you?"

I laughed. "Did they hurt me? Please. It was just idle curiosity."

"Kuja," he called out to me. But I'd already told him all he cared to know.

I left after that. I went out. Out to the battlefield, to those horrible mud pits he tried so hard to dissuade me from. I saw fragments of worlds I could have never dreamed of, each as dead as this one. Then one day, I saw a boy with a tail.

I had never before seen another Warrior with a tail. He wasn't one of ours, but I didn't care. He didn't even hide his. Why?

"What are you doing? Oh," Kefka said as he surveyed the field below. "Garland's got you spying on the enemy? That's weird."

"Who is that boy?" I asked him.

"I'm going to assume you're talking about monkey-tail. His name's Zidane. Don't know much else about him, though. Probably because he doesn't know anything about himself."

The both of us stood in silence. Kefka's appearance alarmed me, or perhaps offended me, so I returned my gaze to this Zidane.

"He doesn't know where you are, does he?" asked Kefka after a while. Then he laughed. "I do wonder about what the hell he was thinking. You can't cancel out one mistake with another."

For some reason, his half-mad chatter rang true. "What mistake," I asked.

He cackled. "Better make sure Daddy doesn't catch you out here."

I didn't think I'd heard him right. When I turned to him, he was gone.

Garland had warned me not to become true friends with any of them. He warned me they would discover my power, exploit my limited knowledge of this world, and abuse me as their own tool of war.

I'd had the brains to ask him who he was exactly, but not the luck for him to tell me the truth. "I'm the poor fool who has to keep them in line," he said to me.

I remembered when I was oblivious. A new experience, rather unique to this world.

A mile or so into the sparse forest, I came across a doorway that likely hadn't been used in ages. I braced myself against the pull of a sunny castle fragment: where it wanted to take me. Instead I gave it the chance to recognize me. Take me back to the beginning, I told it. Take me to my end.

The door obliged and swallowed me whole.

Warriors of Cosmos and Chaos alike found it jarring to look behind the curtain. Not that there was much to see: milky translucent rubble formed in the hues of a weakly setting sun, a disappointing dark sky, and an unsettling sense of unfulfilled waiting charged in the stale air.

It was sad and barren, and the memory of the Crystal floating in the gap only made it more pathetic.

When the other Warriors of Chaos described this place to me, they found themselves recounting moments of their own weakness and despair. When they became aware of themselves, they snapped back into their usual selves and condemned the area as some twisted creation of Cosmos', proof that the goddess of order was no better than her counterpart.

Garland had his shrine, and the Emperor, his castle. This was the fragment I brought with me.

My mind wandered to the recesses and hiding places that surrounded me. I listened and I heard nothing, but there were spells for that. I began to weave a barrier of protection in my head when I stopped myself. The condolence of isolation was secure.

With no need to maintain any semblance of composure, I sat, and then stretched out on the ground. My middle laid flat against the same reflective stone where I stood not so long ago, my wretched self raw with desperation.

While the others were forced to face the parts of themselves they hated the most when they trespassed upon my territory, I oddly cherished this place. It reminded me that no matter what the instruments of this world might do, my decisions alone shaped my future. Chaos himself said that to me, so it must be true.