Disclaimer- I don't own the Final Fantasy characters in this story. But I do own Trevor and his new friend. ;)

Author's note: Back in Chapter 9 A New Face, I introduced three new OC's into the story and had Trevor injected with a strange substance which led to several berserker moments for him in combat, as well as a loss of his control of his anger at certain times. That chapter was the beginning of everything for Trevor.

So what do you think happened to Trevor? Was he introduced to a new type of chemical which brought him to anger? Was it some sort of drug? And what's with the voice he's been hearing? Were the old men monitoring him or was someone else, unknown to everyone, stalking him? Or was the voice merely his own subconscious brought on by the injection he was given? And for that matter, what happened to him after he ran from Zidane and the others in the King Ed Plains? And why exactly is this story called Shattered Mind?

All those questions will be answered now…

Chapter 21- Kaiten

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A house caught on fire.

A field covered in blood.

Screaming.

That's all I could remember from my dream. Or rather, my nightmare. As I pushed myself off of the cold, wet ground, I got the distinct feeling that I had been at that house before, but it all became a blur as soon as I woke up, as dreams usually do. My head still hurt from earlier. It wasn't nearly as intense as before. I just had a dull ache everywhere. I brought my hands up to my temples and tried to subdue the headache, but that was about as successful as stopping a tank with a toothpick.

I slowly remembered what had happened earlier as I looked around.

Make it stop… MAKE IT STOP!!!

Trevor! Calm down! Tell us what's wrong!

Back off! Don't come any closer!

Trevor, what's wrong? Just talk to us.

GET AWAY FROM ME!!!

Then there was an explosion. I didn't remember anything else after that. My short swords were still by my sides, sheathed. I still had my canteen, my backpack and my pouch of money as well. Whatever happened to me now left me tired, cold and worse, alone.

The only thing that I could see around me was mist, mist and more mist. There weren't any landmarks in sight, and Zidane, Freya and Vivi were nowhere to be found.

"Zidane!" I called out, desperate for some human contact. "Freya! …Vivi?"

I was all alone in the plains. I didn't know where I was or how long it would take me to find anything. I didn't even know if I would ever catch up to the others and help them save the world. Although, at this point I was more concerned with being found and getting out of the mist.

Standing around and waiting to be found wasn't going to get me anywhere. If they were smart, Zidane and the others would have continued to Burmecia without me. I was as good as lost and they didn't have enough time to waste looking for me.

Okay, calm down. I told myself. Just concentrate and find the right way to go.

I closed my eyes and tried to get the best sense of direction that I could, but I was quickly brought out of my thoughts by an echoing burst of laughter.

…The same laugh from the voice that spoke to me in Lindblum.

"You cross-stitch?" the voice asked.

"What?" I asked, startled that it came back. "Who the hell are you!"

"And you tried to learn to dance? Pathetic."

"How do you know that?" I cried out.

The voice laughed before answering. "I can read your memories." it answered sinisterly.

What the voice had been saying was true. I was working on a cross-stitch for my girlfriend's birthday before I was sucked into Gaia, but we broke up before it was finished, so I just kept working on it for the hell of it. I also took a dance class a few years ago. It seemed like a good skill to have one day and it helped my footwork in combat. Useful in more than one way.

"Are you the one who dragged me away from the others?" I demanded.

Again, the voice laughed before answering. "Yeah. I tried to gain total control, but apparently I can only take over for a short period of time."

"What the hell is your problem?!? Why did you do that?"

"I was just bored, I guess."

I felt a surge of anger build up. This time however, I knew it wasn't because of the injection that I had been given. It was my own, natural anger reacting. I grabbed the hilts of my short swords and drew them quickly.

"If you're so bored, then why don't you come out and fight?" I offered everywhere around me. I held my blades defensively, unsure where the first attack was going to coming from. If this guy was really using telepathy to talk to me, he could come from anywhere.

"No, I don't think so." the voice said. "Even if we could fight, I have several more years of experience than you in combat. You wouldn't last five seconds."

"That's all the time I'd need to cut your throat open!" I yelled. "Now stop hiding and come out!"

"I'm not hiding."

"Then why can't I see you?!" I said, impatient to get our fight underway.

"Because to do that, you'd have to turn your eyes inside out."

I stopped as he said that. It didn't make any sense at first, until the thought of him literally being inside my head came to me. But that was impossible… right?

"What did you think the injection you got in Dali was?" the voice taunted. "Some 'angry juice' that pumped you up for combat? A simple drug? Don't make me laugh."

I had made a few guesses as to what that was. My best guess was that I was given a massive increase in testosterone, which caused my sudden outbursts of anger, but this was more twisted than I had ever imagined. "Then what did-"

"They injected my soul into you!" he interrupted. "We're both intertwined within your body! Haven't you figured that out yet?"

The new information hit me too hard. I had someone's soul stuck in my head. Of all the messed up things that could have happened to me, why did it have to be this? It all seemed too surreal to be true. I leaned forward and put my hands on my knees. It felt like I was going to throw up.

"What are you?" I asked desperately.

"I'm a Terran special forces soldier." the voice explained. "The last survivor of the Ckelen-te-Clu assault."

"Special forces?" I repeated. "I have the soul of a Terran soldier stuck in my head?"

"My name is Kaiten Saeis." the voice said. "First Lieutenant of the Special Tactics Squad of Olesta."

"Kaiten?" I said. The name seemed somehow familiar. I seemed to recall hearing it a few days prior in Dali.

Flashback

"He will work." the second voice repeated.

"Get off of me!" I yelled. One of my captors grabbed my hair and pulled it down, hard.

"Listen boy, we need you to get angrier."

"Only your rage is useful to us."

My rage? What?

"What are you talking about?" I asked. "Get the hell off me!"

My hair was pulled to the side, exposing the back of my neck.

"GET THE HELL OFF!!!" I yelled at the top of my lungs.

Something was pushed against the back of my neck. It felt like a plastic circle.

"Welcome to your new home Kaiten."

A second later, something that felt like a needle pierced the skin and pushed its way into my spine…

End Flashback

I didn't think anything of it at the time, but now it made perfect sense. This was all what the old men had planned. They only used me as a host to inject a soul into. But one thing still didn't make sense-

"The old men who did this said that they needed my rage." I said as I addressed the voice. "If all they did was inject a soul into me, then why have I been getting that way?"

"You mean those times you were going insane during that festival the other day?" Kaiten asked. "That was me, trying to take over."

"The other day!?" I asked, worried about yet another development. "How long was I running?"

"We were running the whole night." came the response. "We're one now. Remember that, partner."

"Partner?" I asked, disgusted by the word. "How are you my partner? You're stuck in my head and you possessed me into running away from my friends! How are you possibly my partner!?!"

"Think about how you've been fighting lately." the voice said calmly. "Do you think that was all you? …Don't be an idiot! I've been helping you ever since I was shot into the back of your neck."

I didn't like this guy. He was snide and his echoing voice sounded like an evil version of myself. Yet, I couldn't help but realize that he was right. It was sometime after the incident in Dali that I noticed my fighting style go into a rising spike. I thought I was just getting better at fighting, or maybe I was leveling up. The thought of benefiting from that event in that way didn't cross my mind.

"You should thank me for all I've done." the voice sneered.

I cocked an eyebrow at this. "Thank you? You've been freaking me out what with all your disembodied speech! And I'll bet you're the one who put those images of bloodlust in my head!"

"Some of my own memories did manage to get loose. Don't worry though, those were the lighter ones." he said, followed by a laugh. "But you've got to admit, some of them were pretty cool."

"You're insane." I pointed out.

"Come on. Don't be like that." Kaiten said. "We're in this together, so we might as well make the best of it." He gave another small laugh at the end of it.

"Hey, let's get one thing straight! This is my body, so I'm in charge."

"Fine by me." he said. "Just make sure to let me out to have some fun every once in a while."

"You really are insane, aren't you?" I asked. "You think I'll let you take over my body again after you made me freak out around the others and run off like that?"

"Why not?" Kaiten asked. "You've already started using my magic."

Magic? That was the second time someone told me that I had used magic. Dante told me once after we landed in the Business District. I didn't know what he was talking about then, and I didn't know what Kaiten was talking about now.

"What magic?" I asked. "You mean that time during the Festival? I just broke open a window."

"Nope." Kaiten corrected. "You used Pulse. That's one of my tricks."

I was about to ask him more about it, but a small gurgle sounded from a few feet away. I looked back and saw a Hedgehog Pie jumping up and down excitedly towards me. Its rounded pink body didn't make it seem that dangerous, but the purple quills on its back made it seem otherwise. It gnashed its teeth at me as it slowly came closer.

"Easier to show than to tell." Kaiten said. "Thrust your blade into that thing's chest. I'll explain it from there."

To say that I didn't trust Kaiten was an understatement. He came out of nowhere, somehow abducted me, and now tried to appeal to my good side. I had no idea who this guy was, but he seemed a little insane. Still, I was going to have to kill the Hedgehog Pie before it did the same to me, and being able to learn magic might have been useful. With it, I might not get so badly injured in combat as often.

"Fine." I agreed. "But like I said, this is my body, so I'm in control."

"Whatever. Just gather your energy in your chest."

"What? How do I do that?"

The Hedgehog Pie made the first move. It ran a short distance towards me, then jumped high into the air. It looked like it was trying to do a belly flop, so I just stepped back a few feet to get out of the way. My short swords were still in my hands from when I unsheathed them earlier, so I could've killed the monster at any time, but first I wanted to make sure that I did the move right.

"You used to do Tai Chi, right?" Kaiten asked. "From what I can get from your memories, it's the same feeling."

"Tai Chi?"

Even though I hadn't done it in a while, I could still remember the feeling I always got when I practiced my form. I took a deep breath and relaxed myself, calming my mind as best I could.

Chi, it turns out, is real, but it's not some mystical force like shooting lasers out of your palms, even though Kaiten's technique suggested otherwise. Chi is actually medical. It's the sensation of the blood vessels in one's body widening, allowing for more oxygen to flow to the muscles, giving strength. I wasn't sure how it worked, but I've seen some pretty amazing things done with it. If what Kaiten was telling me was the truth, then I basically knew how to gather the energy he was talking about. I held my arms at my sides and started swinging them lazily back and forth against my stomach and back…

The Hedgehog Pie, however, was getting impatient. It started another attack and rolled itself into a chubby ball covered in spikes. It rolled in place for a few seconds before spinning out down the field towards me. I caught it out of the corner of my eye at the last second and jumped over the monster's fat ball form. I landed softly and continued swinging my arms, relaxing further.

"Are you ready yet?" Kaiten asked impatiently.

"Almost." I told him. "Just a few more seconds to be safe."

The Hedgehog Pie stopped its roll and uncurled itself. It growled again and leapt high into the air, intent on doing another belly flop. I stopped swinging my arms and looked up at its gut heading down to me. In a fraction of a second, my short sword was up, pointing at the descending monster. Half a second later, it landed on the tip of my blade. The momentum of its attack drove it to the ground, but I managed to keep my blade in its stomach and pulled it down beside my feet, struggling to get back at me.

"Now what?"

"Send the energy down the sword and let it disperse at the tip."

I grunted in acknowledgement and gathered the Chi in my chest and willed it forward into my hands, where I pressed it into the blade resting inside the still struggling monster. I could feel the dull energy enter the blade, just like before in the air cab. It gathered into the tip in a collected point and I released it all at once. A small shockwave centered around the sword tip cut through the monster's insides, traveling outwards in a jagged circle, like a bent up buzz saw blade. Its two halves slid apart, revealing a gory cross-section of the little monster.

"Ugh. Gross."

"This coming from a guy who sliced open the still beating heart of a Zaghnol."

With the Hedgehog Pie dead, I flicked the blood off of my short swords and sheathed them. I turned away from the monster. Now that I could fight with magic somewhat and I knew what was going on with my head, survival seemed a little easier.

"Not too bad, I think." I gloated, mostly at myself.

"No, that was pretty bad." he said. "You were barely able to cut him apart! Work on your form next time."

"Geez, sorry." I said with a roll of my eyes.

Now the next thing I had to worry about was finding a way back to the others. Unfortunately, none of the sights around me really helped. There was mist, grass, mist, mist, bleeding corpse of a very dead Hedgehop Pie, mist. Not a forest or river or anything I could use to identify location.

"Any idea where to go?" I asked Kaiten hopefully.

"How should I know? I'm from Olesta."

"Olesta? I thought you were from Terra."

"Olesta is a country on Terra, dumbass. Did you think it was all one unified place?"

"Well how was I supposed to know that?" I asked indignantly. "It's not like I've ever been there!"

"And I've never been to Gaia, so we're lost. Deal with it." he snapped.

Sighing in defeat, I just started walking in no particular direction. If I headed in a straight line long enough, I might be able to find something to identify my location. I'd either hit mountains or the ocean, but I'd be able to tell where I was from that. As I stepped, a question formed in my head about Kaiten.

"Kaiten, you can read any of my memories about me, right?" I asked.

"Yeah." he responded.

"Then you know a lot about me, right?"

"Bits and pieces. I can't read everything in a single day."

"Well why not tell me about yourself?" I suggested a little harshly. "I'd like to know about the guy who's living in my head without my consent."

"I have no reason to tell you anything." he argued.

"Sure you do." I told him. "You're living in my head and you're reading my memories without my permission."

"Well you're just going to have to deal with it." he said arrogantly.

I was getting impatient with him. "Either tell me about yourself or I'll torture you."

"You? Torture someone else? Gimme a break! You're probably the softest guy I've ever seen."

I wasn't sure if I really could get back at him at all. Since he was stuck in my head, there wasn't much I could do. Going after him by physical means would just be masochism, so that was out. I didn't know anything about him and he clearly wasn't sensitive, so using psych warfare would be too hard. My last resort counted on whether or not he could hear my thoughts.

Can you hear this? I thought.

"Yeah, why?" Kaiten asked.

I grinned with pride, knowing that my plan would work out. If he could hear my thoughts, then we could talk around the others and they wouldn't have to know about him. It seemed best that they didn't since it risked messing up the storyline even more than it already had been.

Well, I know some really, really annoying songs, so if you don't start talking about yourself, I'm going to start singing them in my head as loudly as I can.

"Hey, I've seen more combat and death than you could imagine." Kaiten defended. "I've put up with more annoying imbeciles and rejects than I can count. What makes you think an annoying song is going to make me talk?"

Alright. If you say so.

Then, to support my threat, I started playing the most annoying song I knew in my head.

Celebrate good times, come on!

It's a celebration.

Celebrate good times, come on!

Let's celebrate.

We're going to have a good-

"Oh god! Stop! Enough already!!!"

I couldn't help the laugh that escaped me. Disco was always enough to drive anyone mad nowadays.

"Fine." Kaiten said angrily. "What do you want to know?"

A few questions presented themselves in my mind that I wanted to ask. What was Olesta like? What did he do in the Special Forces? How could his magic help me? What exactly was his type of magic? All of them were important in one way or another, but my curiosity laid in one other question.

"How did you wind up getting injected into my head?" I asked. "Why was I chosen as your host?"

There were a few seconds of silence. At first, I wasn't sure if Kaiten was going to answer.

"Kaiten-"

"I don't know why you were picked." he interrupted. "You were probably just compatible. Souls can't just mix because you want them to."

That made no progress in helping me figure everything out. I wondered if I would ever figure out why they chose me and how they found me. It might have had something to do with why I was sent to Gaia in the first place.

"As for how I became encapsulated…" Kaiten began. He paused before continuing. "I was the leader of the strongest Special Forces division in Olesta's military. My men and I were sent to eliminate a man who was conducting sick experiments with people's souls. Terra was in a decline and he claimed to have a way to restore the planet, but sacrificed hundreds to no avail. We were ordered by the government of Olesta to eliminate him."

I remembered the decline of Terra when it was revealed in Oeilvert. The game never revealed much about what exactly happened. Kaiten was the perfect chance I had to find out the events leading up to the planet's fall.

"As soon as all ten of us made it inside, we were ambushed." Kaiten continued. "We were all either knocked out or killed. I'm not sure what happened to the others since I woke up hanging in a dungeon with a dozen hooks stuck in each of my arms, holding me in place. Soon after, the madman we were sent to kill showed up. He told me a little about his plan to save Terra and showed me some of the things he had done to my troops. DON'T EVEN THINK about asking what happened to them."

Kaiten took a deep breath before continuing.

"After I saw what happened to them, I was sent into a fury. I tried to kill the bastard before he could do any of them same to me, but one of his assistants shot me with a dart and paralyzed me. The last thing I saw was the bastard approaching me with a really big syringe. He stuck it into the back of my neck and I could feel him pulling my soul from my body. The next thing I knew, I was inside another body, looking at some production facility."

"That must have been the underground factory in Dali." I explained. Being as sympathetic as I was, I wanted to do something to help Kaiten feel better. He gave a pretty enraged tale there. Even if he was kind of an ass, I could tell that he was definitely a good person at heart. With no better option in sight, I decided to encourage him the best way that I could see for someone in his position. Vengeance.

"Hey, cheer up!" I told him. "You're alive right? There's probably a way to get revenge on the guy, isn't there?"

"Not much that I can see." he said. "First off, we'd need to find a way back to Terra. Then we'd have to find him and I'm not sure if he's still alive."

"Well, I know that we're going to end up back on Terra eventually, so don't worry about that."

"Back to Terra?" Kaiten asked in a disbelieving tone. "How do you intend to do that?"

Kaiten wasn't going to be as friendly as I preferred until he knew he could trust me, and the only way that would happen would be if he knew the truth about Final Fantasy IX.

"We're going to unlock the seals at the Wind, Water, Earth and Fire Temples on Gaia and ride the current from the Shimmering Isle to Terra." I explained. "I know because I'm not from Gaia."

"That sounds like an elaborate hoax." Kaiten scoffed. "How do I know you're telling the truth?"

"Just read another one of my memories." I told him. "You'll see that this is all a video game where I come from."

I walked along in silence as Kaiten presumably went to check my memories to see if I was telling the truth. I took solace in the momentary silence, somewhat surprised that I had already told someone about myself truthfully. At least Kaiten wasn't going to assume that I was a preppy, upper class student from Alexandria University.

"This is impossible." he said after a minute. "Are you saying that I don't really exist?"

"Well, you obviously do." I said. "I'm not even supposed to be here and no one in the game had a soul injected into their spine, so I think something's going on. Whatever it is, it's very real."

"So you think you know everything that's going to happen, don't you?"

"Unless something comes along and drastically changes the storyline for everyone else, yeah, I do."

"…What are you going to do now?"

"Find my friends and save the world. What else?" I answered light-heartedly. I always wanted to be a hero.

"Are you going to tell them about me?" Kaiten asked in a serious tone. I stopped walking for a moment before answering him.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but no, I'm not." I said. "The story's going to get pretty bad, so the less they have to worry about, the better."

"I see."

"Sorry Kaiten, but it's not personal. I just don't want them worrying about me. My problems are my problems."

"No, that's the smart thing to do." Kaiten said, regaining his composure. "There are enough loose pieces as it is. Don't worry about it."

There was another gap of silence before either one of us talked. The mist just rolled on through the plains as I kept pressing forward towards wherever we were going.

"So, this is all going to happen?" Kaiten asked. "We're going to make it to Terra?"

"I'm going to be spinning like a top when we jump into the current over the Shimmering Isle." I joked with a smile.

"Alright." Kaiten sighed. "I'll help you survive the trip there and you help me kill the bastard who did this to me."

"Sounds good." I said, glad that Kaiten was becoming friendlier. "Who are you looking for?"

"His name is Hart Innural." Kaiten explained. "If he's still alive, I want to be the one to drive a sword through his neck."

"Got it." I agreed. At least I had someone to talk to while I tried to find our way back to the others. I still didn't really trust Kaiten, but I was wiling to be friendly in order to make our forced time together bearable.

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It was another hour of walking before we found anything close to a landmark. Kaiten and I spent the time talking about small things, like where we were from. Olesta sounded like an odd version of Earth. There were more airships and magic was prominent, but it was basically the same society. Kaiten described his home as a house set along a river in a forest, away from most people. He lived alone so that he could practice training in peace and solitude. I made a joke about how he had to put up with a roommate now and he swore he'd kill me as soon as he got a new body.

Fortunately, our hopes paid off when a few trees became clearer in the distance. As we came closer, the trees seemed to clear away the mist around them, revealing a small forest. I still didn't know exactly where we were, but it was better than nothing.

"Well, it's a start, right?"

"You have no idea where we are, do you?"

"No, not really."

Although this was the first sign of anything we came across, it didn't do much to help out. There was too much mist outside of the forest to identify anything well enough, meaning we were still just as lost as we were before.

"Well, let's go in anyway." I suggested. "I'm getting pretty hungry and there might be a fruit tree somewhere around here."

"Ever the hopeful one, aren't you?"

"Hey, it's that or I starve. I didn't get much to eat yesterday aside from breakfast and a bread roll." I explained. "And if I die, you die."

"What a grim assessment." Kaiten said sarcastically. "If that happened, then I wouldn't be able to find out how you managed to embarrass yourself on your first date."

"Stay out of my private memories!!!"

"No. I'm bored."

The trees in the forest stretched high above me. There weren't any paths to speak of, so I spent my time hurdling over bushes and tree roots, nearly falling over on several occasions. There wasn't much in the way of fruit around, so my stomach just growled as I walked along. If it wasn't for that one bread roll I had the other night, I would have been crawling by now. After walking through the trees for a while, I eventually found a small clearing.

"Bloody hell I'm hungry." I complained when I stepped into the clearing. I rubbed my stomach, trying to keep the hunger pains down.

"Maybe you should ask the people around here for help." Kaiten said.

"People?" I asked, looking back and forth over the area. "Who are you talking about? I don't see anyone."

"Look down."

I gazed down, somehow expecting to see something ridiculous, like a family of helpful ants or something. Unfortunately, there was only grass.

"I don't get it." I told him.

"Geez you're unobservant." Kaiten pointed out. "The grass is compacted and short. Someone's been walking around here, and recently. We just need to find them and ask for help."

"…Oh." I said, surprised that he knew something like that. "Good job."

"When you've been in military training since you were ten, you tend to pick things like this up."

"That reminds me," I started. "How old are you supposed to be? You sound like you're my age, but you were a lieutenant in a military group, so it doesn't really make sense to me."

"If you must know, I'm twenty." he replied. "And with my unique brand of magic, it wasn't hard to get that many promotions."

"Remind me to join the military when this is all done." I joked. "I've always wanted to be a colonel or a lieutenant."

Suddenly, there was a voice behind me. "Trevor? Is that you?"

My breath got caught in my throat as I heard the familiar voice. I had all but given up the idea of being found by any of my friends, so actually being found was somewhat like a miracle. I turned around and faced the person talking to me.

"Dagger?"

The Alexandrian princess was standing on the other side of the clearing. Steiner was standing right behind her, watching over her protectively.

Kaiten, I said in my thoughts. I know where we are.

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That was a fun chapter for me. I changed my writing style a little bit, but I think it's for the better. Let me know if you agree.

Also, the song I used in the middle of the chapter was 'Celebration' by Kool and the Gang. I just thought I'd say that since I don't want to get sued.

Kaiten does have a full and complete history and will get to tell his story someday. It'll be a lot more in depth than what you saw here, so wait for it. It'll be good, I swear. I hope he goes over well enough with everyone. In the meantime, leave a review if you if you enjoy him and his witty/insane banter.