Feather Flight: Let Them Lead Me Home (part 28)

An AU Kuja fic, shonen-ai, language

Laro wasn't sure what he had been expecting when he had been told they were going to see 'Mikoto.' He had talked himself empty the night before, talked through dinner, answered questions until later still, even the Mentor had been gently grilled for information. The whole time Zidane had just stared at them, curious, almost a little in awe, at all they had recounted.

When at last there was nothing else to tell, Laro had watched him for a long minute, this man who looked so much like his absent lover, as he thought a moment. The queen had given up on them for fools and retired, her general had gone and comeback again, apparently too fascinated by the story to stay with her husband. Dr. Tot's stamina had been the strongest, barely showing any sign of exhaustion as he avidly studied them all. At length Zidane turned away from his study of the distant crystal shard, and just as bemused as when he started, declared that they needed to consult with Mikoto; that she would know what to do.

Laro still wasn't sure whether he felt relieved that Zidane was going to help, or furious that there wouldn't be some sort of immediate action. Rather than racing home to the rescue, he found himself escorted to a bedroom, and told they would make plans to leave in the morning, to see Mikoto. Apparently she was the one who held the answers, for good or ill. Certainly Masa had mentioned the name once or twice, but Zidane's help, he was able to fill in some of the blanks. Mikoto was a sister. Well, as much of one as Zidane might be seen as a brother. Zidane had wondered aloud about how Kuja hadn't just told him to seek her out in the first place, and then shook his head, wondering if his brother even knew that she survived. He left Laro with the confusing bit of information as he retired to his own rooms for the night, and while he didn't have nightmares, the dark man's dreams were full of the strange words tha Zidane had used to try and explain his heritage, Kuja's heritage.

Artificial inception, selective mutation, cloning, the words had little meaning for him. The idea that someone could assemble someone else as if baking a pie or building a house, was deeply disturbing. He had plenty of time to digest the concept as the airship bolted across the sky the following day. While Gaian society was markedly behind his own in terms of technology, it seemed like Kuja's birthplace was easily comparable to the Selwe. A race of people able to manipulate the forces of life itself, to create new species through science, it felt macabre.

Laro spent most of the trip on deck. Still not comfortable with the view of hundreds of feet of air beneath him, but still happier in the face of the elements, the certainty that he was /flying/ than to calmly sit in the stuffy cabin with a crew of feasting thieves, bored crewmen, and an alien who was the closest thing to a friend he could point to that wasn't just a star in the heavens.

They had left Alexandria late in the morning, Zidane kissing his wife goodbye as she watched them go. Laro had a hunch he hadn't made an ally with the young queen, and couldn't bring himself to care. With any luck he'd never see her or her charming city ever again. Homesickness was becoming an almost physical pain the longer he stayed away. He hadn't had the courage yet to ask Zidane if it was even possible to go home. He didn't want to hear the young man's answer if it wasn't. Home only made Laro look upwards again. Day had gone by fast as they sheered over mountains and now waves, leaving him alone with the moon, and a vast array of distant stars. The Mentor had tried to explain how each and every light was potentially someone else's sun, and that somewhere, out there, his own sun might be twinkling, or more likely, was too dim and far away to even see. On the one hand, Laro was awed that they even survived the trip, on the other it only magnified how impossible it would be to succeed in getting back again.

"You an astronomer, Laro?" Zidane invited himself out into the fresh air. Unlike Kuja, he made no effort to hide his tail, using it as a third hand to shut the door behind him while he fiddled with his coat. He wondered to himself if Kuja and his siblings were more monkey like than cats. Certainly he'd never seen his lover demonstrate any particular facility with his tail. It had always just seemed a tail. It also seemed something a bit to personal to ask about when just meeting someone. Zidane didn't notice his distraction, adjusting his scarf against the breeze.

"Bit cold when traveling as fast as we are. Isn't it? Crazy stuff, steam power."

"It was a staple back home." Laro murmured, looking back at the depressingly distant sky. "That and diesel, when we still had access to it, and bits of electromagnetic technology we cobbled together from things salvaged from the Selwe."

"What's diesel?" The man frowned, "All we have is steam, and that's pretty cutting edge right there… I know some guys in Lindblum who'd love to talk to you if you think you have a better idea."

"A flammable liquid that wells up from the earth sometimes." Laro wracked his memory. "It's refined and used to power engines." He shrugged, "I'm not the person to ask unfortunately. Try the bug. His people are centuries beyond anything mine might manage."

"No offence, Laro, but your bug creeps me out." Zidane smiled dryly. "I've spent years cleaning out nests of things that might have been his bigger, uglier brothers and sisters that Kuja left behind during the war. It's a little disorienting to talk to one that has a higher vocabulary than I do."

"That makes two of us." Laro rubbed his face, feeling the cold for the first time. "Blame Kuja for the vocabulary too, if you like. I think it was his doing."

"Figures." The man didn't sound particularly upset.

Moonlight washed a great deal of the color out of Zidane's hair as he leaned over the railing to check on the sea below. For a moment it was almost silver-white as it hung around his face. Laro stared, mesmerized by the almost-familiarity of it. When the bangs were brushed back, Zidane giving a frustrated sigh as he tidied his mop behind his ears, the likeness was destroyed.

Laro tried not to sigh at the loss, and got a suspicious look for his efforts. Zidane studied him for a moment and then resume his study of the waves. "Still can't believe that it's only been a year or so for you. I have no idea how time works where you are, but that's really crazy. A year. Damn. And he's already saving the world, making friends, doing deeds." The blond shook his head. "You're like, his best friend, right? Never thought I'd see that. Not someone like you, anyway. I met one or two people here who knew him, before the war started. They were all either deluded, petty, or just shallow bastards. Users, you know? You don't strike me as that sort."

"I hope I'm none of those things." He laughed. "I'd like to think I'm a good person. And yes, I count him a very dear friend. He-" Not knowing particularly where to put his eyes so that they wouldn't betray him, he settled on the black smudge growing on the horizon, their destination apparently. "He's prickly sometimes, but he doesn't mean to be, I think. He can be incredibly attentive to those he cares about."

"Seven years for us, two for you." Zidane leaned on his arms, still amazed by the disparity. "Well, two for me too. But then I am apparently out of synch with everyone else with the years after the war."

The younger man shook his head. "It's not like I didn't think about him. I've actually thought about him a lot, since then. For several reasons. But there were so many other things going on. I had hoped he was happy, wherever he ended up. But it wasn't like I could change anything."

"Why did you do it?" Laro remembered to ask. He had wanted to as soon as he had heard the story, Zidane's abbreviated yet compelling account of the history of the war, and it's ending.

The question hadn't seemed politic at the time, not with an audience of strangers, and a very unhappy wife. It was a wonder she hadn't thrown crockery. He was pretty sure he saw her considering it. Laro only hoped that he hadn't done some sort of permanent damage to their relationship in bringing Kuja's name up after so long. Judging by her sour but more relaxed face earlier this morning, he was vaguely confident Zidane had things in hand. Laro saw that Kuja's brother was confused by the question and tried to frame it in a more sensible way.

"I mean, you could have rescued him and kept him here. Or even just have left him to die. Or done as Beatrix would have, and killed him, after all he had done to you, your country; it wouldn't have been out of the question. So why send him to us? Not that we're ungrateful, mind, but it seems a random thing to have done."

"You speak rather callously about your friend." Zidane glanced at him with a very Kuja-like smirk. "How do you think he'd feel if he heard you pondering his demise?"

"I'm sure he has wondered the same," Laro shrugged. "Kuja always considers his options; at least as long as I've know him. He lives his life with a very clear awareness of cause and effect."

"Yes, he did." The shorter man made a face. "Does still, by the sound of it."

He shifted to look Laro in the eye. "He thought too much. I think. That was half his problem. He felt things, just as much as I did, but he never acted on them. If he was convinced that escape was futile, he would never try to escape. If he was convinced that the only way to succeed in a plan was to destroy something he thought was precious, he'd destroy it. Mourn it later maybe, but still, it wouldn't stop him."

"Garland played him." Zidane gripped the rail harder than strictly necessary, obviously remembering something. "He played me too, but I've never been sensible, or logical, or reasonable. When I get mad I pick fights, when I love something I do crazy things to try and protect it. 'It ain't over until it's over' and all those great clichés, that's me."

Laro blinked, watching the play of emotions across the handsome face. Masa had rarely been so open, either too reserved, or too paranoid, to let his feelings loose. They were like night and day, the pair of them, a strange thing to see. "And so you won. But why spare him?"

"I won because I wouldn't take no for an answer." Zidane crammed his hands into his pockets. "And because he wanted me to, when all's said and done. And because Garland had fucked him over from day-one and he had nothing to fight that with, no backup plan for that sort of thing."

The young man smiled painfully. "His whole life he fought for someone he despised, lived with being humiliated, isolated, abused and neglected by the one person he felt he ought to measure himself by, because he thought that if he just got strong enough, he could beat the bastard at his own game, only to realize at the finish there was no game, and that Garland had planned all along that he was going to die anyway. That he had been designed to not 'out last his usefulness'. When I think about it that way, hell, I'd have been furious too. I'd have wanted to make people suffer just as much as he did."

Laro tried to understand what it must have felt like, but really there was no comparison. The only synonym to Garland's position that came to mind was 'god', and that left a sour taste on his tongue. The man certainly hadn't acted like anything he would want to bow down to; a capricious and cold hearted deity. If Garland was a god, then what was Kuja but the servant used and cast away? The hurt and anger Kuja must have felt; one final betrayal on top of a lifetime of others. Little wonder why he was unbalanced by the end. All that rage and frustration, combined with his unbelievable magical gifts, yes that was a recipe for mayhem.

He remembered how Kuja had first stared at him, frightened, angry, distrustful, seeming bitterly amused by his first attempts at friendship. Maybe the long sleep after his arrival had healed his mind, for he hadn't seemed vicious or dangerous at all. Masa had just been quiet, and withdrawn, as if ashamed of enjoying the friendship they offered him.

Such a terrible secret for his little love to keep, Laro winced. If Masa had truly remembered everything, he must have felt horrified that anyone would discover his past. To be rejected and cast aside a second time, no wonder Kuja had clung to him so tightly, no wonder he lied about forgetfulness. His eyes, beautiful as they were in the beginning, had been the eyes of a man who had given up trusting anyone, loving anyone. He had expected nothing but the worst.

It was a small wonder he had managed to change that, even a little. A point of pride amongst his usual feelings of failure, Laro sighed. Masa's brother kept talking, more to himself, Laro thought, than to the question asked. He didn't dare interrupt however, knowing that he'd probably never get a chance to hear this point of view on his lover again.

"It was weird, when I found him there, at the end." Zidane bit his lip. "I mean, yeah I'm no great shakes at thinking things through. But he was tapped out, completely vulnerable. I'm not Beatrix, I don't really have it in me to strangle someone who can't fight back, especially not when they know they've lost, and probably only have a few months to live anyway."

"That's what Garland had said." He rubbed the back of his neck. "We all thought it meant Kuja was aging prematurely or something, that his heart would just give out one day. Should have asked, or something. Shouldn't have just taken him at his word. I mean shit, if I had even thought for a minute, I might have realized that it was probably cureable but I didn't. All I could think of was how bloody unfair it all was, you know? Here's me, by some freak chance –Kuja dumping me on Gaia to be rid of me, actually- I had a future, and friends, and I could walk away with barely a scratch on me."

"And there there's him. Stuck holding the bag, just because he did everything Garland ever asked of him. Sure he tried to rebel in his own way, but it wouldn't have mattered. He was either an embarrassing leftover, or an evil maniac or both, depending who would write the ballads later. The thing that just went over and over in my head as I sat with him there was 'that could have been me'. Not just hypothetically, not in that vague 'well we're all same' sort of way."

"No, literally. That would have been me." Zidane made a face. "If I had stayed in Brambala, if I had been raised by Garland, I would have turned out exactly the same. I'd have been just a glorified killing machine with a pulse, bitterly accepting my lot in life because I wouldn't know how to break free."

"So in a crazy, stupid, accidental way, Kuja saved me from all of that; selfishly, hell yes. The last thing he wanted when I came along was competition for the tiny slice of salvation he was aiming for. But at the end, we were waiting to be crushed to death by this 'thing', and he figured out how to escape, and told me. He said I deserved a happy ending, that heroes always got to go home."

"There he was laying there, fully planning on being left behind, and I told him no f'ing way, and dragged him along with me." Kuja's brother laughed a little at himself. "But then what could I do? We couldn't both have happy endings. He couldn't come home with me, they'd have killed him. Even leaving him with Mikoto, he'd have wished he was dead."

"So I asked the Crystal, how I could make things right. I figured, what have I got to loose, you know?"

"The one in the castle?" Laro wasn't sure how a piece of rock was supposed to give metaphysical advice, but both Kuja and now his brother spoke about crystals as if they were near sentient things.

"Nah, Kuja blitzed that one good. It was just a shard compared to the real thing." Zidane scratched his head. "The real crystal… it's like… Hell it's probably not a crystal at all, that's just how it looks to me."

"I guess you could call it 'god' but that's not really right either." He mused aloud.

"It just exists, you know, and it exists to create things. It is a source of life, all life, everywhere, maybe, I don't know. Ask Kuja, he'd be able to explain it better. Doesn't matter. But it likes me, you know? And I figured it'd forgive him since in a round about way, it was his source too."

"It was the Crystal that told me to send him away. That it'd be alright. That he would land someplace where nobody would hate him on sight."

"It chose the destination. I just pushed." The cat man caught his tail, and smoothed over the fur, distracting himself with the commonplace. "I just wanted him to have some peace and quiet, not shove him into another war."

"Maybe it sent him where he was needed." Laro shrugged. "Who's to say? Whatever the reason, we have been very glad to have him. I didn't come here to tell you to take him back, I- we- just want him healthy again. We didn't know where else to turn."

"We'll see what Mikoto says." Zidane let go of his tail and pointed down at the fast-approaching coast. Moonlight caught on tiny beaches as the breakers rolled in.

"She's going to be pissed as hell to hear that I lied about him being dead, but once she gets over that, there's nobody smarter when it comes to genomes. If it's fixable, she'll know what to do."

They slid down ropes into the small square at the center of the village. Laro would have seen nothing at all of the settlement if not for the lantern light showing from under the trees. He couldn't blame the airship's pilot for not wanting to attempt a landing in the dark. The old trees were silent towers all around and he was very happy to set both feet on land once again. His alien fluttered to ground under its own power, looking around at the tall thatched buildings with interest. Various doors opened, people peering around them and out windows as their sudden arrival. Half of the curious eyes glowed in the flickering light, much to Laro's dismay. It wasn't until a set of them clattered closer holding a lantern aloft that their owners were recognizable.

Staring at the small crowd of podgy little men with gloves and tall straw hats, Laro didn't wonder that they seemed familiar. Instead he tried his best to figure out how to tell them all apart. With general variations in color, cut and style, every single one of them looked rather like the odd little fellow he had met on his way to Alexandria.

"Who goes there?" One of them raised his lantern to peer owlishly up at the insect while others flexed their fingers in a way that managed to be both cute and vaguely threatening.

Zidane abandoned his rope halfway down to land with a deft back-flip and "Tadah!"

Their welcome changed from worried to delighted in the span of a moment, the group of roly-poly people gathering around the young man with happy noises. "Zidane! Why do you come in the nighttime? Why do you bring others?"

"Yes yes I know. There's nothing wrong, let me explain! They're guests, do you think you can find us all rooms for the night?" The man laughingly placated them, patting them here and there as he directed the crowd back towards the light of one of the porches.

As the cry went around others emerged from the little houses, both with hats and without. Laro caught sight of the first of Zidane's kind out of the corner of his eye, sprinting along a rooftop path before dropping behind a building out of sight. Two more emerged from around a corner, observing them with interest. They were all dressed in a variation on what the crowd was wearing, but were otherwise uniformly blond haired and long tailed. They hung towards the back as if shy of their welcome.

His staring did not go unnoticed, and Laro turned with a tug on his arm. Zidane was grinning merrily. "What, you thought Kuja and I were the only ones?"

Of course he had decider there must be others. But somehow Laro couldn't do more than make nonsense words as he was pulled into a large lodge style building, and came face to face with even more genomes. They were just so adorable, he couldn't explain why the sight of them made him so happy. They sat on the rafters and in groups on the floor. Boy genomes and girl genomes and more strange little men all gathered around a fire and modest platform where three more of them sat. With Zidane one of the tallest in the room, and him still towering over the man, Laro felt a veritable giant. Looking over at the Mentor, he reminded himself on the relative nature of scale, the alien was peering down around at the crowd with equal fascination. Looking taller than ever by comparison.

"So many like Kuja!" It murmured happily. "We have found his hive-home. It is good."

"Apparently so," he agreed.

They must have interrupted some sort of town meeting, Laro decided as he turned to see the startled looks from the three elders sitting on the platform. Only one of the three who sat apart looked anything like Zidane. She stood immediately on his arrival. "Older Brother? You were just here a few weeks ago what's happened? I thought you were going to the west?"

"Something's come up, Mikoto. Come down here a second, I want to introduce you." Zidane waved her close, and when she complied Laro was struck with how they weren't just similar, they were near identical.

He wondered if his eyes were tired, or this place really was strangely homogenous. Looking back and forth, he was grateful that while waif thin, her gender set her apart. If they had both been boys, it would have been hopeless. He would have had to memorize the color of their shirts or something. Slender, and of a height with Kuja – shorter than Zidane- she smoothed her homespun dress free of creases before offering her hand to him in greeting.

Laro must have murmured something appropriate because she promptly ignored him in favor of meeting the rest of the group. He continued to watch her, bemused at how her movements, her personality was again, completely different. She was like neither of her brothers in manner, although there was something of Kuja's shrewdness and calculation in her eyes. But where Kuja's manner was grace and elegance, Mikoto gave the impression of intense focus, not just meeting you, but studying you as well. He almost laughed at the way she fearlessly poked at the Selwe, trying to identify it probably.

It reminded Laro of the old duke, her sharp way of taking in everything about a person all at once. He sighed, not for the first time wishing for Riquoi's council in this mad place. The old politician always knew how to play a situation to his own benefit. Lately Laro felt more and more like a leaf in the wind. Just as soon as he learned a place's name, he was off again, told to go here, there, somewhere else. So far it seemed he was making progress, but who was to say? All his hopes rested on Zidane, and despite the man's friendly persona, he didn't know him well enough to feel entirely confident.

"Oi, you alright?"

He looked down and recognized Blank tugging his arm. If the young thief had noticed he was looking overwhelmed, Laro realized he must be tired. Usually he was better at keeping his anxieties to himself. "I- I think I'd like to rest a while, if possible."

"Yeah? Yeah you look like you're about to fall over. That's what happens when you stand on deck all day in the cold, you know. The mages here have a little crap hotel that they usually let us crash at for free when we visit. I'll take you there and you can sack out for the night." The spiky haired thief waved to get Zidane's attention as they shuffled through the crowd. "You know where to find him, right?"

"Sure." Kuja's brother offered him a frazzled smile. "Get some rest, Laro, I don't think you need to be around for the first part of this conversation anyway."

"Probably means you don't want to get caught in the crossfire." The thief sniggered as they stumbled out into the less claustrophobic air outdoors. "I don't think Mikoto's going to be too pleased with him to find out that Kuja is still alive."

"Because she wanted him dead, or because she wanted him not-dead?" Laro wondered aloud.

Blank grunted at the question and guided him down two little walkways, advising him to duck as he enter a quaint little building full of bunk beds. "Hard to say with her. But probably she'll be interested that he's alive, she grew up with him I guess, not that I can ever picture her as a kid." The thief made a face. "She kind of creeps me out. Not as much as she used to at the beginning, but still, creepy."

"Why?" Laro was relieved to see some bunks at the back of the room built for taller people and sat down on one to remove his shoes. "Does she remind you of Kuja or something?"

"Huh? Hell no. Kuja at least had a personality. You could insult him and he'd get mad. Or apparently he used to give presents to theater companies in Treno that were really outrageous when he liked a play. Wish we had known that before the war, we could have cleaned up."

"I can't see you as an actor."

"Well it was more of a blind than an actual profession." Blank cheerfully agreed. "Great way of being invited to a swank party as a group, plenty of time to steal things during the acts when we're not on stage."

"That does seem clever." Laro laughed. "But about Mikoto, you find her too reserved?"

"Emotionless, I think it the best word." The thief shrugged. "In the beginning they all were, the genomes, that is. The black mages were too, now that you mention it. But they got over it pretty quick, were sorta cute back when they were first figuring things out."

"It's something to do with Terra, I'm told. Or how Mikoto and the others were made, it sorta suppresses the personality right out of a person. Scary. Most of them are really funny now, like watching little kids, but Mikoto took a lot longer to thaw than the others. Maybe she just decided her 'personality' was going to be frigid, who knows. It's funny watching her yell at Zidane, but yeah. Otherwise count me out."

Laro digested the tidbit as he lay back, letting his escort claim the lamp and retreat back to the town's hall. Tucking himself in his blanket, he rolled up against the wall and tried to block out the sounds of distant chatter. Something tickled his memory about the idea, something Masa had once said about the city he was born in. He had referred to it as a place full of drones, Laro suddenly remembered. How eerie it must have been, to be the only 'personality' in a place where nobody felt anything, no one was individual from anyone else.

"Laro, tell me something." Warm fingers touching his face in the darkness, a lover curled close in the almost-privacy of his tent.

He sighed, tilting his head to get more of the touch, sore and tired from the day of fighting. All he wanted was to sleep, lay in bed forever with his arms around Masa and wake up somewhere to find this whole war had been a strange dream. The cat-man kissed his jawline playfully, not content to be ignored. "What do you want, kitten?"

"Talk to me, we had all of four words of conversation this morning before you had to go deal with the assault, and you're too busy during the day."

"I'm sorry," telling his lover that they were at war and didn't have time for leisurely conversations was a cheap shot. Masa knew that. Knew it as well as anyone in the camp, it didn't change the fact that the silver haired man wanted to spend a little time with him. If he was honest with himself he wanted the same. Exhausted or not, Laro stretched and kissed a bit of his lover in easy reach, a shoulder as it turned out. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Doesn't matter really." Masa laughed against his hair, cuddling him close. "Something idle and unimportant, I guess, distract us both for a little while."

"I don't know if I'm good at idle and unimportant." He smiled, enjoying the quiet, and the company. "Can't talk about the weather, it's been the same for a month straight."

"Hmmm…" His mage shifted until he could rest his chin on his arms, his arms on Laro's chest. "Well, maybe we can take an opportunity to ask eachother stupid questions."

Laro was saved from laughing by a yawn. "Define a stupid question?"

"Like, what's your favorite color?"

"Um. Blue, I guess." He chuckled softly, surprised by the random query. No one had asked him that since he was a child, it seemed. "Yours is purple, I bet."

"Knave." Masa bumped his shoulder with his head. "Fine, you have to think of your own silly question then."

"Oh." Laro found it was actually harder than expected to come up with an idle sort of question. In the end, he settled for, "What's your favorite food?"

"Clams casino." Masa grinned down at him. "Very tasty.

"How do you make them?"

Seeeming surprised that he didn't known, his lover wiggled a finger to demonstrate as he explained. "It's where you open them and serve the clam in half the shell, and then you cover it with butter, garlic, breadcrumbs, maybe some tart cheese, and roast them so that the top is all crispy brown and good, and you can eat just one or two as an appetizer, or get a whole plateful and eat until you're sick of them."

"That does sound good." Laro confessed. That was one problem with fighting an endless land battle. He hadn't had decent seafood since they had left the coast all those months ago. "That and a platter of glazed sea bass, and I'd be a very happy man."

"I'll put it on the menu for the victory celebration." Masa gave up on perching in favor of less innocent pursuits, it wasn't until Laro was obliged to catch his breath that he was cornered again. "If you be anywhere right now, where would you be?"

He grinned, getting the hang of the game. "On the ocean. Sailing. Preferably with you of course."

"I should hope so."

Laro received a kiss on the nose for his answer, and then remembered he had to ask the next one. "What… what do you miss the most, about leaving your home?"

Masa made a face. "That sounds like a serious question, to me."

"I didn't mean it to be." He winced. "I was just curious." Pressing his face up against his lover's hair he was relieved to feel the man was still as relaxed as before. "I'll think of something else."

"No, it's quite alright…" Masa disagreed with a chuckle, "It's harmless enough. Let's see. Something I actually miss. Something I probably could never do here." Settling himself snuggly against his shoulder, the cat-man hmmed to himself. "Dragons, I guess."

"Dragons?" Laro blinked, and turned to see if he was being teased. "Your old world had dragons? Like, giant flying lizards?"

"They were beautiful." His lover agreed. "I used to watch them flying, just for fun. Most of them were very dangerous, but some could be tamed as pets of a sort. If you had the patience for it."

"I've only heard of dragons in mythology. I always thought they were made-up things." He chuckled, feeling incredibly drowsy despite his best efforts.

Masa only sighed, wrapping his arms around his neck as he curled close, also half-asleep. "Nothing in the world can compare to flying dragon-back."

"Land flashing by beneath you as it glides on the wind."

"I had one of bright silver…"

"…with feathers on its wings."

"Mr. Nazer."

Laro came awake confused, at the gentle hand on his arm. He shook his head, feeling for a moment as if he had just gone to sleep. "… do dragons have feathers?"

The young woman sitting on the edge of his bed raised an eyebrow at the unusual question. "Sometimes. But it is quite rare." She shifted back a little bit, allowing him to sit up and get his bearings. "Good morning, Mr. Nazer."

"Please call me Laro," he rubbed his face and looked around, trying to remember where he was. The sight and sound of a room full of bunk beds strewn with thieves gave him a clue. "This… this is the Black Mage Village?"

"Yes." The young woman stood up, smoothing her dress in much the same way she had the night before. Her tail curled sedately behind her as she waited for him. "You came here last night along with Zidane and his friends from Tantalus. He explained many things to me, but I wanted to talk to you personally before I make any decision."

"You're Mikoto." Laro felt stupid at how slow his brain was at producing the name. Seeing her in daylight, she truly did look like a female version of Masa. Remembering him brought back the dream he had woken with, and he fought the urge to blush. "I beg your pardon for not explaining everything personally, but…"

"You've traveled a very long way. And you were tired." She gave him a grave look. "You still are, I think. This place must be very exhausting to you, with its strangeness, and its constant changes."

"I- Yes. It is." Feeling strangely humbled by her comprehension of his situation, he meekly followed her past the sleepers and into the morning. They quietly walked past several of the round little men that the village was named for, and several genomes carrying buckets of water. The later turned to stare at him with innocent interest. Mikoto paid them no mind, guiding him towards a little house built back into the trees.

Holding the door open, she bid him to sit on a bench by the table. He ducked his head to avoid a clump of herbs hanging to dry, and looked around, seeing more bundles hanging everywhere. The house was almost prim in its simplicity, a pair of little beds in one nook, bookcases lined two walls. The little kitchen he was seated in had a long counter and two pump-sinks looking more like a workshop than anything.

"When I first came here, I felt much the same." Laro could only watch as she set a plate in front of him and then supplied him with toast, jam, mug, and a bowl of fruit before settling herself. "Everything was so different from what I knew, and I felt all alone. For a long time I was very unhappy, and everything I did made me tired. All I wanted to do was to go home again. Go back to where everything made sense, and I had some control over my life. But Terra was gone, and so here I stayed."

"What did you do?" He asked gently, sipping on his drink. The tea was definitely some sort of herbal concoction, but it didn't taste bad at all, and went a long way towards waking him up and soothing his nerves.

"Endured. I suppose." She smiled faintly. "After a while, I became accustomed to this place, its people. Things no longer seemed so strange and complex. I undertook to study the plants of the region for medicinal properties, and continued my duties as teacher to the other genomes, although Vivi and Mr. Fifty-one know far more than I do."

"Mr. Fifty-one?" Laro could guess that she must be referring to one of the hat-wearing little men by the name alone. It seemed they all went by numbers.

"One of the elders. In general, anyone with a number below 100 is considered to be wise in this village. They are first generation, and so there aren't many of them left." She explained. "Well, and Vivi, but he's special."

"Vivi is the other elder?" He tried to remember who else was standing on stage the night before. "How come he doesn't have a number?"

"I think it was because he was raised by an outsider. I suppose his true name would be Mr. One. It's hard to say. Everyone calls him Vivi."

"And all the others were born and raised here? And decided to go by numbers."

"The initial black mages were created, Mr. Laro, not born. Just like me." She poured them both more tea. "Just like Zidane, and Kuja, and the rest of the genomes. We were all manufactured, in the beginning."

"How is it you all came to be here?" He looked around in amazement. "I've seen children, haven't I? Both among the black mages and your people too."

"Yes." This time Mikoto smiled with genuine pleasure. "I always knew it was possible for us, but one of my first tasks to repay the black mages for their hospitality was to enable them in some capacity as well. Kuja did well enough in their basic implantation, but he left them sadly unfinished in several ways. It was affecting their ability to create a society."

"Wait, the black mages were made by Kuja?" The conversation was getting more surreal by the moment. Laro stared at his tea, wondering if maybe it was more than just inert flavors.

"Kuja was very clever." She murmured. "Is there something wrong with your tea?"

He set it down and shook his head. "No, it's just, what you're saying seems impossible to me. How can someone possibly create a living thing? I mean, other than the usual way." He smiled sheepishly.

"Terran civilization had progressed through an understanding of how to manipulate and shape life." Mikoto folded her hands in front of her. "It was this knowledge that allowed Garland to construct us, and it was this knowledge, perhaps incompletely understood, that allowed Kuja to create them" She pointed out the window as a little man in a straw hat trotted by.

"I too know of the process, enough at least to correct or finish those things that Kuja started."

Laro could only laugh at the calm way she talked about it, struck by the bizarreness of it all. "I don't mean to be lewd lady, but pray tell me. If the black mages are all of one gender, how can they possibly reproduce?"

"It did pose something of a challenge." She almost-smiled at his bafflement. "I found I needed to introduce an external input into the equation. So I engineered a special tree that could produce pods. Two or more mages can mix a small amount of their energies and feed them to the tree, and given a year or so their input will be magnified and molded, a fruit will grow and hatch from the tree, and produce them an offspring."

Clearing the table, as if her creation was nothing extraordinary, she piled the empty dishes in a small sink. "If you are interested we can go and see it. It's rare that anyone shows interest in my work other than Zidane. At the moment there is an issue with capacity, so I have been undertaking to grow a second tree, but it won't be ready for many years yet."

"That's incredible." Laro freely admitted. "I would like to see it. It would be quite a story to share with the people from my homeland. We have no ability to create as you do."

"Maybe Kuja will show you how someday." She wiped her hands on a towel and looked at him considering, "Zidane says that Kuja is alive, that he's been living among your people since he left here."

Laro sighed, realizing that their entertaining discussion was over. "Yes. We found him and nursed him to health, but then he fell sick again, beyond our ability to cure by ourselves."

"A blood disease." Mikoto's face was impassive. "His body fails to produce new elements to replace those that would naturally fade and die."

"How did you-" Laro blinked, realizing he hadn't mentioned the particulars to Zidane. He didn't even fully understand them himself, outside what the doctors had coached him through. She waved off his worried exclamation.

"I was Garland's principle servant. There was little he wrought that I am unaware of." She looked out the window a moment. "I knew of the limiter before anyone else did, probably. But I had thought he had died, and so that it didn't matter."

Laro noticed her hands were clenched tightly in her skirt. "Is there a way to heal him? The doctors of my world are confident that if they could just find a healthy source, they could somehow revitalize him."

"If you have sufficient technology? If he isn't too damaged to save?" Mikoto gave him a strange look. "He might yet live."

"Will you help?" He couldn't keep his urgency out of his voice, "Please, I've come so far."

"He-" She turned away, upset, "He sounds as if he is much changed, since I saw him last."

"I know he's done evil in this world." Laro whispered. "But you must believe me, he is precious to us. We would give anything to repay our debt to him."

"I doubt if he would approve, your seeking help from me." She laughed softly and turned back, staring at him sadly.

"After all, I'm partly to blame for his current condition."

Laro found himself left much to his own devices after the disquieting breakfast. He found his way to the grassy meadow just behind the village with the help of several of the black mages giving directions. On the one side, was a tiny sort of cemetery, the other side was dwarfed by an enormous looking sort of tree decorated with buntings and potted flowers. How strange, he wondered, to have both the start and end of life so conveniently located side by side. Even as he relaxed in the sunshine and watched, pairs of prospective parents wandered out to the tree to carefully look over some of the odd shaped fruits hanging from the low branches. One trio carefully wheeled a straw lined basket out and with much discussion and repositioning, got it into position under a particularly ripe looking golden pod.

He wondered if he ought to offer them congratulations on their eminent arrival. Laro was so taken by their antics that he almost didn't notice the sound of someone settling next to him. Turning, he tried not to be surprised by yet another of the little mages close up. For a moment he wondered if it was a child.

"You are Mr. Laro, yes? Mr. Kuja's friend from a far off shore."

"Yes." Laro blinked. The mage didn't speak like a child. "And you are?"

"Oh, forgive me! I forget that we must all look alike to outsiders." The short man laughed. "I am Vivi. I am a friend to Miss Mikoto."

"You're one of the village elders." Saying it, Laro realized that the mage did look a little familiar, not that he wanted to be tested on his ability to pick him out of a crowd of his people. "I am honored."

"As am I. It was quite shocking, to hear Kuja was still alive, after all this time."

"I'm sorry if the news upsets you." Laro had no idea how to read the little mage's expression. "I didn't expect the news to cause such a shock to everyone."

"Mikoto is very distressed." Vivi sighed. "I think she had come to terms with the fact that she had lost him. And now to find that she hasn't, has really upset her equilibrium."

"Is she angry that he's still alive?" He asked. "Queen Garnet was definitely unhappy."

"No. I think what Mikoto feels is a little more complicated." The little mage shrugged. "I myself am surprised at my feelings. I thought I would be angry that he lived, but after hearing how he has lived, I think Zidane made the right decision."

"Was he so bad?" Laro winced. "Will she help, do you think?"

The little mage adjusted his hat and looked up at the sky with a sigh. "I think perhaps she must. She needs to, to lay old ghosts to rest once and for all. It is understandable that people are troubled though. Kuja… he is difficult for us, black mages, to come to terms with."

"Yes he created us, but not as 'people' we were only tools to him. It wasn't until we rebelled against him that we understood the gift of life we were given went beyond anything he could have planed for us." Vivi looked unhappy. "Many of us died, doing his bidding. Many of us died after we rebelled, because he never bothered to correct some problems with our design. It is only thanks to Mikoto that there are any of us left at all."

"He seems to have had a knack of doing great things by accident, and terrible things by design." Laro shook his head. "But what part of that was Garland's fault, and what was his own?"

"I firmly believe that how a person is raised, contributes importantly to how they treat others." Vivi raised his hands to study them. "I was shown great love by someone when I was young. And so I grew up caring for others. Zidane too, understands that he is a product of his environment. If it is true, that Kuja was able to demonstrate something other than what he was here, to you. If he was free of garland, and chose friendship and sacrifice over personal gain, then that would truly be remarkable."

"That's what I think." The little mage murmured. "If it is as you say. Then I think he deserves a chance."

"Thank you." Laro rested his hands on his knees, strangely absolved by Vivi's words. "I think it's pretty remarkable too."

In this chapter, on this day, nothing happened.

I thank you.

Lunar