Lulu never felt so hollow. Every time she reached for magic, a small part of her ripped away. Every burst of fire burned her, and every water spell sucked life. It disrupted her head and made her feel like a young mage again, trying and failing to master the chaotic beat of black magic that gave their planet life.
"That's just cheating!" Wakka said before silencing Vidina's distressed cries with a roll of jerky. "It's not fair, ya?"
"We didn't sign up for fair. I believe we should be more worried about missing the Celsius and Fahrenheit."
Commotion sounded outside and Lulu left their tent to find villagers rushing toward the shore. The evacuees arrived.
"We'll worry about these ones, instead," Lulu said.
Wakka grumbled under his breath and fetched Vidina before leaving to help the relief effort. The child grew in mind without maturing in habits and they couldn't leave him alone without risking broken things.
Lulu watched villagers move supplies around. This looked to triple their occupancy and that increased strain on food and shelter. Food wasn't a problem as she could just put the new hands to work fishing, but she didn't know where they'd find the materials to build enough roofs to keep everyone covered and happy. Conditions would be tight until they made enough space for the new bodies. And they couldn't live off fish forever—they needed to seed more crops.
One of the newcomers caught her eye—a man with spiky yellow hair and a fashion not native to anywhere she knew on Spira. Not to mention the abnormally large sword he kept on his back. He looked about him with frantic eyes that contrasted the harried and deadened looks of those about him, like he saw something they didn't.
Lulu approached him and asked, "You came from Luca?"
"Luca." The man looked at her, suspicious. "Who are you?"
"The mayor of this town. You realize you just got off a boat from Luca? Or is the Farplane poisoning survivors?"
"Poison. Mako." The man grunted and gripped his temples. "It took Tifa."
"You're from another planet, aren't you?"
"… Yes."
"Good. I'd like to know how this thing interacts with those of our world versus yours. Let's talk somewhere quieter." She turned to leave and stopped when he took her arm.
"Wait," he said. "We need to go back."
"No one's going back. We've lost contact with every station outside ours and I can only assume they were taken."
"Denzel and Marlene—my—there are children out there."
"More than a few, I presume." Lulu regarded this man and the way he breathed hard, moved in sudden, jerky motions, and inched away from the crowd. The way something glowed beneath his skin in greenish, splotchy areas. "This thing touched you, didn't it?"
"How are we supposed to save them?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out." Lulu moved toward her tent. "Come. I imagine you'll prove more helpful than the rest of the arrivals."
He pulled spheres out of his pocket and picked out a glowing, white-ish one before sucking energy from it.
Lulu settled him into her tent with a cup of water and fruit to calm him down. He took too long to calm, insistent on leaving and finding this "Tifa," but he wasn't stupid enough to rush out on his own. He called himself "Cloud" and barely spoke straight through the shock. When Wakka joined them, Lulu let him work with this Cloud and use that warm energy of his to help break Cloud out of his stupor.
"You have spheres," Lulu said during a lull in the conversation. "Why is that?"
"It's materia."
"And you keep some in your weapon?"
"Why would you know that?"
"I saw similar colors in the hilt. How does it work?"
"It… holds magic. And you use it. The ancients didn't leave behind information on the mechanics of it, we just—use it."
Lulu held out a hand. "May I?"
Cloud handed her one and Lulu rolled it in her hands, admiring the glint of it. "And those dull ones are broken?"
"Thanks to the mist, yes."
"If the mist breaks them, I wonder if we could reverse the process…"
"That would be too easy," Wakka said.
Lulu stared at the white materia and closed her fist around it. It reacted to her touch and vibrated with unseen energy. The smooth edges fit perfectly between her fingers and her insides thrummed with magic desperate to break free. White magic ghosted at her fingertips, calming and cool and reaching for the part of her that she buried as a child.
"Do you have any way to study these ancients?" Wakka asked. Cloud shook his head.
Magic inside her. Magic in her hand. This spell didn't hold the corrupted influence of the planet, but it stung her to touch it. Not enough to cause lasting damage, but enough that threatened something more dire with extended use.
Lulu tasted the white magic and shuddered at the slimy tumble in her insides that searched for damage. The unnatural strengthening of muscle and bone that faded again with time. The power that wasn't meant for minor injuries, but to keep fatal ones from doing their job.
"Looks like we can work something out between us." Lulu released the materia and handed it back to Cloud. "I assume you arrived with wounded?"
"Yes."
"Then we'll borrow that materia of yours to heal those injured during travel. Once we've cleared the threshold of possible collapse of our refugees, I'll help you find your friends."
"How?" Wakka asked. "Do you intend to walk into that swirling smoke of death?"
"No. I intend to push it back. Yuna's still in there, after all, and that's unacceptable."
Cloud pocketed the materia and asked, "How do you plan to do that?"
"By finding what this thing is weak to and forcing it to bow to me. Even gods cannot resist the natural laws that govern these planets."
"I think this one might."
"Then we'll find what it can't resist and use that. Unless you two plan on giving up and letting it win, then I suggest you help."
Cloud agreed, though Wakka hesitated. "Promise you'll make it back, Lu?"
"Do I need to?"
"I'd feel better hearing it, ya?"
"Of course, I'll make it back."
"Then I'll help with the injured, but I'm not taking our son near the shores, ya?"
"Good." Lulu left with them and found the healing space designated in the shade of the grove just outside the village. Cloud remained distracted, barely able to use the materia to heal. Lulu would do it instead, but she couldn't shake that sickening sensation of artificial healing that mocked her power.
"How old are your children?" Lulu asked. She meant it to focus him, but Cloud's motions turned shakier at the question. Not that she could blame him—the thought of anything happening to Vidina left a sickly feeling in her chest that made her want to burn the trees down and scorch the sand.
"Ten, I think. And… seven."
"You must be older than you look."
"They're not mine."
"Adopted?"
"They're… not mine."
"And yet you talk and act like they're yours."
He slumped and Lulu lost him to thought, but that was good. He wavered, but he thought. And he kept working. They earned odd looks for it, but Lulu would explain later. She could use this man.
