A/N: Sorry for repetition of facts in this chapter, but it's pretty much necessary when two Chaos-serving warriors pool their information in order to report to their God of Discord. Worry not; Terra's much-anticipated confrontation with Kefka is inching ever closer...

How's this? (attack, Ultimecia using charged Knight's Arrow)

Chaos would be immensely pleased to hear what news I would bear.

As would the soldier Sephiroth.

In going to the Order's Sanctuary to recover the recipe book that the monkey-tailed thief Zidane Tribal had stolen from me, I had learned something of great importance. I was now able to verify what nearly the entire Old Chaos Shrine suspected, having heard confirming testament from the soldiers of Cosmos. The insane harlequin, Kefka Palazzo (infernal irritant that he was), was very definitely guilty of the treasonous attack that had wounded Sephiroth to incapacitation.

Of course, it was doubtful that the silver-haired swordsman had been the real target…

Several hours before it was known that there had been a disturbance, Sephiroth had approached me with a request for a potion that would induce lust, stating that he intended to use it to seduce the girl who was Kefka's enemy, the Cosmos-serving red mage Terra Branford. Although he had not explicitly stated the reason for his scheme of seduction, I perceived that he intended either to sway the young ingénue willingly back to the side of Chaos, or to empower her through carnal pleasures so that she could remove her annoyance of an enemy from the discord-god's ranks. Both results would have been beneficial, although they were mutually exclusive; therefore I felt perfectly right in honoring Sephiroth's request.

Perhaps, then, upon catching up once the silver-haired swordsman had captured the girl and spirited her to seclusion, Kefka felt distinctly threatened to overhear the plying manipulation with which Sephiroth would overpower the last of Terra's resistance: the promise to pour some measure of his power into her so that she would easily defeat the insane clown. If that was the case, Kefka had obviously thwarted such a plan by striking Sephiroth and Terra both with his powerful "Light of Judgment" while the two were verily distracted with one another and did not notice his presence. Or did he intend that any other Chaos-serving man who set eyes on Terra Branford ought to rape the girl, if not to relinquish her to his imprisonment? He must have been angered to learn the hard way, then, that even among Chaos's ranks, not all men's tastes run to rape—therefore if Sephiroth would not make Terra suffer, then he, Kefka, would try to destroy them both.

It was fortunate that the irritant clown had failed on both counts; it would have been a great pity if a certain one of Emperor Mateus's plans failed because Terra had died and was therefore unable to fulfill her part in it, and I had no more wish of seeing Sephiroth fall than Chaos had.

So matters stood when I had finally flown all the way back to my domain and stepped through my mirror, entering the Old Chaos Shrine through my room in the warriors' quarters.

And speak of the devil! I was barely three steps up the hall when Sephiroth waylaid me. "A moment of your time, if you will," he bade, indicating with a glance behind me that he would follow me back to my room and we would talk there. "I have some information that you might consider significant."

"Interesting, because I too have information that I think you want to hear," I replied, "and what's more, Chaos himself is also keenly interested, no doubt. What say you that we both report?"

"As you wish."

Sure enough, as if he sensed that not one but two of his chosen lieutenants possessed important knowledge to pass along, Chaos was seated expectantly on his throne when Sephiroth and I entered the great throne room. "I understand that one or both of you possesses information that you would like to share," the discord-god stated. "By all means, do share what you know."

"Very well," Sephiroth began. "First of all, though—Ultimecia, when I approached you with my request for a potion to induce lust, and you happened to be brewing precisely such a draught, didn't you say that you were doing so because your bottle of lust-inducing potion had been stolen from you?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I did," I admitted. Did he know who had stolen it?

I did not even need to ask. "Well, you should know that the most recent of Kefka Palazzo's attempts at petty provocation involved him shattering a glass bottle over me that contained what I originally thought was cherry soda," the silver-haired swordsman recanted. "Only when I lay in my quarters-room recovering from severe injury did I remember that the lust-inducing potion that you gave me, when I'd asked for it so that I could seduce Terra Branford, was also a cherry-like shade of dark red."

"Are you saying that you suspect Kefka Palazzo of setting you on the trail of his adversary, the young Miss Branford, through the use of a stolen lust-inducing potion?" Chaos inquired in summary.

"Yes," Sephiroth stated, "for he beat a hasty retreat as soon as he had sprayed me with glass and potion. Having had it up to here with the irritant clown's antics, I gave chase; however, he outran me due to his generous head start. As I cleaned myself up and tended to the broken-glass scratches covering me afterward, I recalled that Terra Branford was the soldier of Cosmos who is slated to oppose Kefka, and that, I believe, is when the lust potion started to take effect."

"But you devised a plan," I interjected. "Even though you knew not why you lusted, you thought of a way in which you could use your lust for Terra to your advantage."

Chaos considered Sephiroth carefully. "You believed that if you could not sway the girl willingly back to my ranks through your beguilement, then seducing her would still be an excellent means of antagonizing your own enemy, Cloud Strife," he surmised aloud. "Or perhaps you considered it advantageous to allow Terra Branford the illusion of victory against her foe, that it would place us all one step closer to our final victory over Cosmos. But in any case, you considered it far more profitable to take Miss Branford by trickery than by force; hence your visit to Ultimecia with the request for a lust-inducing potion. And hence she, who enjoys the idea of seduction taking place, was only too disposed to honor a reasonably simple request."

I nodded in agreement.

"What went wrong, then?" Chaos surprised us both momentarily with his inquiry. "What was the cause of disturbance in the World of Darkness, the one that called for immediate investigation by Garland and the Cloud of Darkness?"

"As I was unaware at that point that a disturbance had taken place," I began, "I will only recant what has happened and what I know. Shortly before your summons to the throne room for interrogation, Your Lordship, I met the monkey-tailed thief Zidane Tribal in my domain. His presence there indicated that he knew me to be responsible, in part, for some ill fate that had befallen Terra, who has the distinction of being the only woman among the soldiers of Cosmos in this cycle of conflict…"

"I sensed that this might be the cause of your angry state at the time of interrogation," Chaos interrupted. "Your own nemesis, Squall Leonhart, interfered in such a way as gave Tribal the cover that he had needed to steal something from you."

I nodded with an annoyed sigh. "When I discovered my copy of 100 Potions for the Grand Sorceress to be missing," I went on, "I endeavored to retrieve it at once. I made my way toward the Order's Sanctuary, prepared to bargain for the return of my recipe book, and there I learned the truth of what everyone thus far suspects: Kefka Palazzo is indeed responsible for the disturbance, the magic-blast that, among other consequences, wounded Sephiroth to incapacitation."

"And you heard this directly from whichever of Terra's allies rescued her?" Sephiroth cut in.

"As a matter of fact, yes, I did manage to draw it out of them eventually," I replied. "I made a passing mention of the manipulation that you doubtless used to overcome the last of Terra's resistance," I explained to him, "the offer to pour your power into her so that she could strike the clown so much harder—and Terra herself replied, and I quote: 'And it might have worked, if only Kefka hadn't lashed out with his Light of Judgment.' The hot-blooded rebel Firion then added a statement to the effect that the mad clown-mage's blast had drawn his attention, and after a brief skirmish, Kefka had made some taunt about Terra being in trouble just before he vanished."

"That would explain why one in the patrolling party—either Garland or the Cloud of Darkness—left one of Firion's hand-axes, picked up as evidence from the scene, on my nightstand," Sephiroth added. "It proves that Firion was Terra's rescuer, just as Garland's account evidently proved that the child Luneth had predictably run to Cloud for help when I made a point of capturing Terra on his watch."

"For even if your intention toward Terra was seduction instead of rape, you wanted for Cloud Strife to immediately fear the worst on her account when he learned of her being kidnapped," I reasoned aloud.

Chaos tsked audibly to recapture our attention. "So the summary of your combined report is that Kefka Palazzo is definitely responsible for the treasonous attack on Sephiroth," he stated. "You have reason to suspect that Kefka's original ploy was a rape-by-proxy with Terra Branford as the target; hence the use of a lust-inducing potion to set the intended proxy on the trail of the target. But when Sephiroth devised his own plan, one to which seduction was far more conducive than rape, you believe that Kefka then tried to destroy both the target and the ally of his who failed to cooperate."

"Why else would that clown be making himself scarce right now," Sephiroth pointed out, "if not because he is attempting to escape punishment for his actions in the World of Darkness?"

"Very well," Chaos answered. "Sephiroth, you may, if you are feeling recovered enough to do so, start your own search-and-capture pursuit of Kefka Palazzo. I will wait here, and will interrogate him when he is brought in." As the silver swordsman turned to depart, the discord-god added, "And if you happen to cross the path of Emperor Mateus, tell him that I have sent for him with a special request."

I turned to leave a moment after Sephiroth was out of earshot, but Chaos rose from his throne and stopped me with a hand upon my shoulder. "You will remain here at least until Mateus reports," he admonished, "for you, as well, are needed to honor this 'special request' of mine."

Was it wrong of me that Chaos's words, in spite of the look in his eyes when he said them, only gave me the barest hint of foreboding?