Chapter 7

Mikoto stared blankly over the dying city of Brahn Bal; thick brown roots reaching out from the ground and sucking the very life from the smiling humble shacks and the souls of those who lived inside them. There were very few black mages still left in the forest, the continent, and the world. The ones that weren't killed or joined Mikoto's side had fled with Vivi's youngest child to Treno. Mikoto smirked. Roan. Really Mr. 451. He wasn't Vivi's child at all. A few weeks after the battle for Gaia ended, a group of small confused black mages were brought to the village by a moogle from Madain Sari. He said they'd just shown up there from the Iifa Tree. Vivi, who was visiting his friends that day, had been so surprised to see others who looked more like him than the bigger mages. They said they'd been made just as the Mist shut down, so they were never completed. They were so helpless and insecure. He must have felt sorry for them; because they took his last name and he gave them their firsts, calling themselves his children. Mikoto remembered that day well. That day was a week before they all left for Alexandria, and brought back news of her brothers at the castle, and ruined everything. She explained to her brothers and sisters about Kuja, and about Zidane. She told them Zidane had saved Kuja for the purpose of killing the other Genomes. She explained how Zidane's power wouldn't work without Kuja, and about how hers wouldn't work unless they he was dead. She told them Zidane had realized his mistake- that he thought they were still mindless, and still stupid. At first her siblings were hesitant, but who else could they trust? Those two were given a choice, unlike everyone else. Weren't they good enough, they all wondered? Over the years, Mikoto had begun to envy Zidane, and even Kuja. Garland trusted them. He gave them power they could use at their will- the power to go on or give up, the power to regret, and the power to forget. But normal Genomes don't have much choice, even when they're free. They all remember the days on Terra, seeing new faces for the first time, and feeling an empty sadness as their world was destroyed. They weren't able to regret their bleak exsistance, or what they'd done to the people on Gaia. They just had to dwell on it until maybe one day they could forget. They were mistakes. Any mistakes, she convinced Genomes and mages alike, would be erased by the Powers if they didn't act. The struggle between the mages and Genomes lasted for days. An equally small percent had either joined her side or fled. The rest were killed. Mikoto remembered looking over the battlefield at a sea of faces with waves exactly the same. That's what Kuja must have hated the most, she couldn't help but thinking, we all look the same.

Zidane flung the heavy wood-and-iron doors open to the guard's hall and stood in the doorway, eyes filled with a terrible rage. Every man and woman stopped chatting and eating almost instantly and scrambled up from the tables, getting in line and standing up straight. Rows upon rows of neat little servants and tired soldiers waited anxiously and a little annoyed for their king to hurry up and let the meal continue.

"I'm looking for Charim." A pretty little soldier rolled her eyes as the tall blonde stepped out from behind a Knight of Pluto, looking completely shocked and confused as to why he would be called out by the king.

"Yes, your majesty?" Zidane cringed as the cheap and sleazy voice echoed in the tall stone hall.

"I need to speak with you."

Adam stirred as his sister flopped down at the end of his bed, hair strategically placed over her unusually small horn. He was still in bed, after fainting in his room not long after everyone had gone to search for Princess Garnet. The last thing he remembered seeing was that silver- haired man smiling at him with his cracked and bloody red-painted lips. His smell had never been stronger then. He could still feel it stinging the inside of his nose like needles. It must have stuck there. No, that's not it. It's too strong. Adam's eyes snapped open as he looked frantically around the room for the broken ghost. Dagger waved a chubby hand in front of his face. It was her. He pulled the covers up over his chin. She smells like that too.

"How come you smell funny?" He asked his sister, watching her every move with his glazed green eyes. Dagger gave a girly little laugh- the first one he'd ever heard her make, and looked down to see she was wearing a long blue dress with lace all along the top with cute little buckle shoes to match. He sat up, forgetting his suspicions and wondering more at why she was wearing something so lady-like.

"You think it's funny? Charim bought it for me while we were in the market. He said it reminded him of someone. It was probably a beautiful lady, like me."

"How come you're wearing a dress?" He continued, deciding to forget she'd just called herself a lady- the very thing she'd been protesting against for her entire life.

"Oh, you noticed!" Her tanned and for once clean cheeks turned red, and her big brown eyes lit up, tail flicking from side to side. "I just wanted to look pretty today, for Charim." Adam wrinkled his nose and backed up further against the headboard- he couldn't stand the lavender smell.

"Girls are so weird."

"What in God's name made you think you could take her somewhere without my permission?" Zidane hissed at Charim, nearly grabbing his throat and throwing him to the ground. "She is not permitted to leave this castle without a proper escort, and you know that! I don't even know where you took her!" The bodyguard rolled his eyes and sighed. He was bored with this lecture all ready.

"Well if you would take her places yourself, I wouldn't have to. Besides, I took her shopping and visited some friends of mine. It's really not a big deal." Zidane's eyes opened wide, a little vein in his forehead he didn't even know he had sticking out like a sore thumb. Charim giggled. He looked like Steiner. The two guards at the end of the hall outside the king's throne room shifted uncomfortably in their boots. Zidane was generally a good-natured person- it was rare to see him in such a bad mood. Two blondes stood face to face, one snarling, the other laughing. Two pairs of deep green eyes meeting each other for what might have been the first time, one suspicious and filled with blinding rage, the other smug and dancing with boyish laughter. Zidane's tail flicked from side to side as he thumbed the ornate dagger he still wore at his side.

"If I had hired you."

"But you didn't, so let's drop the whole thing."

".I know what you are."

"I won't deny it."

"Why are you here?" Charim's laughter died off as he scoped his mind for a quick answer to his king's question.

"Hm. Well you know, life in the village wasn't exciting enough." He shrugged it off- a commonplace thing for any normal person. But not for a Genome, and Zidane knew it. They were all linked together by brother and sisterhood, afraid to leave for the outside world for fear of finding out how cruel real people could be. A Genome was something different. A Genome traveled with groups.

"Well you won't find anything exciting in Alexandria."

It didn't bother him that his sister had disappeared. It didn't bother him when his father told him to stay away from his own bodyguard. It didn't even bother him when he was shoved out of the way now that the meetings had started. What bothered Adam the most was the smell of the castle. All around him he could smell the cold, death, and most of all, sadness. His father was the worst. Only a few places smelled any different nowadays, though. The library was one of them. It smelled like must and dried flowers- like people sitting quietly, lost in thought and ancient books. Adam had grown to like the library. It had the most wonderful things. His mother's room smelled different, too, but not in the same way. It smelled like stagnant air and roses. Even in the winter, when there were no roses. Adam never went in there, though. He didn't like to see his normally vibrant mother lying dead and breathing like that. His father did, though. He spent most of his time in her room, sitting at the side of the bed, stroking her amber brown hair. It used to be their room, until his mother got sick. Then dad sort of moved out. Adam wasn't sure where he slept, if he did at all. Everyone sees the dark circles under their decaying king's eyes. The night before, when Adam couldn't sleep, he crawled out of bed and out into the hall towards the kitchen for a glass of water and maybe something to eat. It was the most frightening thing for the tired boy. He hadn't seen it for months. The man with the blankets and the silver hair, coming straight for him, eyes fixed on the wall past his head. Adam almost ran, until he noticed his mistake. The man didn't have silver hair at all. It was blonde. He stared, mouth open, as Zidane seemingly floated down the hall past him, covered in blankets, and without a light. The castle wall was just as cold as when he saw the silver-haired man. A shiver ran up his spine. It wasn't right, he thought, that they should look so much alike.

Charim thumped his head against the hard red wooden door outside Garnet's room. "Yes, your majesty." He whispered, the memory of princess Dagger combing her hair away from her horn, trying on dresses and shoes instead of overalls and boots still fresh in his mind from last month. "Yes. I. no your majesty." The horn was so wonderful when he first saw it. It was Terra days, minds roaming outside their bodies, protected and naïve. It was days in Brahn Bal, with Luca and Ziedis, waiting for the next lunch hour, or watching the twinkling stars provide comfort and friendship to the desert outside. It was what he'd always wanted. "No, he won't. Not as long as you're here." Charim thought of Adam, too, with the energy they could all feel overshadowing his sister's. Should he obey orders? ".I haven't heard." He came looking for a summoner, and he had found one- his ivory hope set with dreams and love in a crown of innocence; his ever after. But the Genome mind inside him had come for the glorious power in Prince Adam, the next Kuja, a supposedly summoning Genome. He had no horn, but Mikoto wanted him regardless. It was frustrating, like leaving Luca bleeding in broken brush and bones on the battlefield near Conde Peti, tears streaming down his cheeks like bursts of sun and ash and everything human eyes have ever strayed from, or keeping a straight face and pushing down the new emotion- the sense of triumph he could feel as he watched outsiders stray into their glossy mindless town for the first time. It was betraying his emotions that Charim found so frustrating. "I. I suppose so." He could hear the clicking of little girl's feet against the bitter marble floor, beating against his head and inside his ears. He could pick her up. Oh, he could pick her up right now and carry her away from the only home she had ever known to his sister, and she would be happy and he would be praised. He could take her tiny little hand and run to Treno- the sleepless city, the last safe house for people like him, like black mages and criminals and nobles alike. Dagger looked up at him, her pretty little smile fading into a worried frown as she watched him chew his lower lip- a nervous habit he'd recently picked up.

"Who were you talking to?"

"The queen."

"She can't hear you. She can't hear anybody. I don't know why dad talks to her."

"She can hear me." Dagger looked up at him confused. Hadn't she just said her mother couldn't hear anyone? It was true, too; Dr. Tot had told her so. Charim must have been lying, she thought, but why would he lie about something like that?

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Frown."

"Why not?"

"Gives you wrinkles."

"It does not."

"Yes it does."

"Then how come you're doing it?"

"I was thinking. And talking about serious stuff."

"'Bout what?"

"Nothing for little girls to think about."

"I am not a little girl!" Dagger pouted, forgetting her lady-like attitude and stomping her foot on the floor, fuzzy brown tail wrapped around her leg. Charim smiled warmly and ran a giant's hand through her neatly combed hair, thumbing her horn as he did. The memories of warm days and lazy afternoons surged through his body, tingling the ends of his finger tips and raising the tiny hairs on the back of his neck. Royal brown eyes glared up into his, her face trying to keep from turning red. She looked so much like the queen: beautiful and mysteriously alone. She was an innocent. He couldn't take a flower like Dagger and plant it in the Soulless City, or she would wilt away into a fragile shell like her father.

"I'm sorry princess Garnet." He gave a short bow and scooped her up over his shoulder just as she began to protest the name. ".but the castle is no longer safe." Charim tried to drown out the sounds of her frantic complaints and the beating of her tiny fists against his back as he ran.