Act 1 - Concerning the Birth of a Messenger
Scene 1

My name is Kuja.

It was he who gave me that label, told me that it meant 'son of Terra'.

And a wretched failure like me was hardly deserving of such a name - or so he told me in a heated moment of total outrage, when I first challenged his authority and came away from the fray limping and considerably weaker than I had been when I had entered it.

To think this all started when my strong-willed soul was, by some deranged twist of fate, dragged screaming from Pandemonium and placed inside the body I now inhabit. A body he created with his clever hands and his malicious mind.

I was different to the others - that much I derived from the fact that they were soulless and empty, bereft of emotions and thoughts besides what they had to Learn next. But I possessed a soul, and for that I was shunned.

Oh, the pulsing Light of Gaia was nothing compared to such utter isolation! He tried to integrate me into the society of Bran Baal, but when the other Genomes did not understand me and couldn't accept me, he took it as a failure on my part. My part! I looked nothing like them and sounded nothing like them. Unlike them, I slept and ate and felt. It is the fate of any being that is different to be excluded from those who are alike.

I once questioned Garland's idea of making my appearance that of an adult, compared to the other childlike, expressionless Genomes.

"A Genome physically grows very little from birth to death," he informed me. "If you are to be convincing as an adult, then you must look like one. Hence," and he smiled, waving a hand to indicate my slender form, "you are as you appear."

"But, why is it necessary for me to look like an adult?"

Garland smiled. It was one of those secretive, patronising sneers that I came to hate so intensely.

"No child ever started a war," he said simply, and left it at that.

***

Damn Garland and his stupid cryptic comments!

I spent the first few years of my life trying to fathom my purpose in the assimilation of Gaia. Hours would fly by as I rested in the small room I called my own on the outskirts of Bran Baal, reading the few remaining texts that Garland owned, calling on the audio/visual references that stated Terra's methods of survival - absorbing other planets. Nothing seemed to fit together.

Sick of being left in the dark, I departed from Bran Baal and travelled a long and lonely way to what had once been Terra's last library. I stayed there for many days, greedily flicking my way through ancient tome after ancient tome, and then fixing the long-disused audio/visual references and viewing them in turn. It increased my knowledge of Terra tenfold, but I was still without a clue as to my role in the way of things.

I was 'special', that much was certain. Although Garland hated my guts, he needed me for something. Why else was I so dissimilar, so unique? The other Genomes sported loose, blond hair, while mine was a feathery silver. And they were built so differently - I was tall and slender, while they were shorter and stockier. But my duties so far were no different to those soulless Genomes': to learn the ways of Terra and prepare oneself for the acceptance of a soul. I had a soul already, and possessing one wasn't all it was cracked up to be. All it had succeeded in so far was creating antagonism between Garland and myself, and setting me apart from my fellow Genomes.

I returned, disheartened, but not for long. Garland was waiting for me, and he was not pleased. Running off into the wilderness and crawling back, he exclaimed, was not becoming of a Genome.

"But I am different!" I shrieked, finally losing my patience with my Maker. "What is my role in all of this? Why won't you tell me?"

"You are to be my angel of death, Kuja," Garland yelled. "You will go down to Gaia and you will disrupt the cycle of souls there! That . . . is . . . your . . . purpose!"

Each word of his last sentence was punctuated with a bout of physical violence. I might not have crawled from the library back to Bran Baal, but I certainly crawled to my bed and slept for a long, long time.

And then, the real work began.

***

My soul, it seemed, was highly attuned to magic. As soon as Garland had me learning the ways of battle and power, I was expanding my magical vocabulary, heightening my spiritual attributes, teaching myself the different energy patterns of the many spells of this universe and studying Garland's books. The only thing that kept me going was the hope that someday I would be powerful enough to beat that manipulating, self-proclaimed god. His constant abuse and the fact that he refused to accept that I was a living thing, not just a doll or puppet to be used as he saw fit, had made me hate him with all of my being. Nothing I did was good enough for him. Even when I adapted existing spells and made my own, and drew up blueprints to improve the ship, Invincible, and even implemented them, he looked down on me. I would never be anything but a failure in his eyes.

This only made me try harder. I became so determined to surpass Garland that I very nearly exhausted myself battling the monsters outside the village and acquiring new spells and weapons and armour from far-off locations in the old world. If I had to do as Garland deigned, then I would ravage the world of Gaia with such ferocity that even he would have to be impressed. And then, when my power reached its peak, I would take Garland down and prove to him that I was more than a vessel, more than a doll or puppet to be ordered and thrown around. I would make him see that I was a living thing, capable of choosing my own destiny!

End of Act 1: Scene 1