Penitentes

by trimurti

Inside the Deep Dungeon, there is a corridor that lures in those steeped in regret. Some of Ramza's finest warriors are trapped there, and the only person who can save them is...Mustadio?

6. 4: Savior

Penitentes

A Final Fantasy Tactics fanfic

By Tenshi no Ai

(C) Square Enix

Chapter 4: Savior

When Mustadio woke up, he was five years old again.

Light streamed out of the windows in his room, unhindered by the drawn curtains. He sat up on his bed, one bony shoulder poking out of the collar of his nightshirt as he blinked and looked around. After a moment a sneeze overtook him, and he tried really hard to keep his eyes open while he sneezed because one of the kids down the street had told him it was impossible. But he failed, and so he vowed that next time he would succeed! He sniffed really hard to make the snot go back up his nose, and while he did that he realized that he could kinda sorta smell fresh bread, which then made him realize that he was hungry. So, he jumped off the bed with a flying leap--even though he was told not to do that--and landed with a loud thump! that seemed to rock the whole house.

His parents were going to be sooo angry at him.

For a second a frown creased Mustadio's face, but he didn't know why because he didn't hurt himself like everyone said he would. Instead he tried to look very sheepish and bashful as he heard the footsteps stomp towards his room. The door swung open, revealing a rather perturbed young woman. She crossed her arms, her golden hair spilling over her shoulders at the movement. "Mustadio Bunanza! How many times have I told you not to jump off your bed?"

"Ahhh..." A look of deep thought crossed the boy's face before he rolled his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. "I dunno. A lot?"

"Very good," she said as she walked towards him. "Now, did it ever occur to you that means you don't jump off your bed?"

"Ummm...maybe?"

Crouching before him, the woman seemed almost resigned as she said quietly, "It's dangerous to jump around like that. You could break your leg. You don't want to break your leg, do you? That means you wouldn't be able to walk."

"So, like, um...that means you and Dad would carry me around like when I was a kid, right?"

"You're still a kid. And no, that means you'd have to have to stay in bed all day."

"...So like, that's a bad thing, right?"

She threw up her arms and stood up, raking one hand through her shoulder-length hair. "Wonderful, my child's a genius," she huffed.

Mustadio studied the woman before him. Lean and of average height, she wore the dark, durable clothes of a drift worker. Her pants were tucked into black rubber boots, the footwear of choice for those who worked in the submerged drifts. Pulling a strand of his chin-length hair, he compared its bright color with hers. To his eyes, they were identical. "Mommy?" he called

She glanced at him; noticing his somber look, she knelt down once again. "What is it, Musty?" With one gloved hand she patted down the lock that curled from his head.

Musty? His mind at this age understood the affectionate diminutive for what it was, but somehow it was both so right and so...not good? that the woman called him that. He had the feeling that it would be too hard to try to understand why, so instead he smiled and let himself feel his way through the situation. "Do you really think I'm a genius?"

Smiling, she took on a beauty that transcended her work clothes and disheveled hair. "Of course. After all, you're my son, aren't you?"

"Yeah," he agreed with a grin. A thought occurred to him as she stood up. "But I'm also Daddy's son too, right?"

Before she turned to leave, Mustadio saw the barest glimmer of a smirk on his mother's face. "Well, I suppose he does deserve some credit. Come on, child, you need to get some breakfast in you before Mommy and Daddy go to work." He followed obediently as they left his room, maneuvering through the narrow hallway lined with the guts of a mechanical beast or three. The smell of oil and metal was as strong as the scent of freshly baked bread, and the two distinct aromas melded together to form something not unpleasant to the young boy.

The first thing Mustadio noticed when he entered the small kitchen was his father sitting at the meal table, working with nimble fingers on a palm-sized bit of machinery. The up-and-coming meister held it against his chest as he worked, because the one rule of the house concerning such activities was 'don't mess up the tablecloth or else!' The boy smiled as he recalled some half-foggy memory about a time when Besrodio broke the rule, but he couldn't remember the actual punishment. It was water off a mind flayer's back as the young boy ran up to his father. "Daddy! Mommy said I was a genius!"

Besrodio chuckled as he set the object he'd been working on onto his lap, abandoning his project in favor of patting his son on the head, smearing oil on the boy's cheek by accident. "Is that so? And here I thought she was going to tell you not to jump off your bed."

"I did," she said, carrying a plate of fresh pan bread to the table. Mustadio watched as she set down the bread before she glanced at him, but when he smiled at her she didn't smile back. Instead, she pulled out a handkerchief from one of the pockets of her uniform. "Besrodio, look what you've done! You've smeared oil all over his face!" The boy couldn't help but pout as she began to roughly wipe his cheek with the coarse cloth.

"Oh, that's no problem. He's a Bunanza, he's supposed to be caked in oil."

"Yeah!" Mustadio cheered, mostly because she had stopped scouring his face. "I'm supposed to be an oil cake!" His parents laughed and he was happy. Making people happy was a Good Thing.

After breakfast, the family left their small house in favor of work and school, the latter which consisted of a volunteering meister and a shack next to the drift foreman's building. The young boy happily walked in the middle of his parents, the central link who kept things light with his cheerful words and exuberant personality. He loved his parents' attention and strove to keep it centered on him.

"Besrodio!"

Mustadio peeked around his father's legs at the approaching man, who he vaguely recognized as a friend of his father's. Besrodio let go of his hand to turn and talk to the newcomer. Put out by this act of abandonment, Mustadio tried to go to his father, but he was pulled back. "Now now, let your daddy talk. It isn't nice to interrupt," his mother said.

"But Mommy--"

"No 'buts'," she scolded, and suddenly Mustadio was very, very sad. Even though he tried to make people happy like a good boy, he was still scolded like he was bad. That wasn't fair. That wasn't nice. "And don't give me that look," she added, so he pouted even harder and inflated his cheeks so he'd look intimidating, just like how a chocobo would flap its wings before attacking. Instead, his mother laughed and ruffled his hair and that just made him angry because she wasn't taking him seriously. Parents are meanies, he thought, just as his mother noticed a friend and waved her over. The two women began talking, pecking away at what was left of the boy's good mood. An' I'm a good boy but no one cares 'cause they're mean.

He'd show them. He wrenched his hand from his mother's grasp and took off. The cries and shouts from his parents drifted behind him as he sprinted through the wide street, dodging around the foot traffic with a tenacity only possessed by little kids. Goug was dotted with entrances to the drifts, glorified catacombs filled with ancient technology. Mustadio found himself at the entrance of one such drift moments later, a gaping maw fortified with wood supports that creaked ominously under the weight of solidified mud. It defined the term 'safety hazard', and it had a sign set up in front of it. He hadn't learned how to read letters yet, but that was okay because all drifts were given numbers to label their existence. With a little time he could puzzle his way through the meaning of the symbols written in dull red paint, and it helped that they were the same symbol: two curvy threes.

Drift 33.

A dull throb began in his head. Something was wrong here.

"Mustadio! Come back here right now!"

Too late did the young boy realize that what he had done was a Very Bad Thing. Now his parents were angry and running up to him and now they were going to be super big meanies and all he had wanted was a little attention but not this kind of attention! He didn't want to see their unhappy faces, so he did the only thing he could do: he dove into the abandoned drift.

Unlike the other drifts this one had no lighting whatsoever, and the boy ran into a wall after a minute of running. Groping around, he stifled his need to cry and tried to find a place to hide until his parents' anger melted away to something that didn't result in him getting a spanking. He found a crawl space a moment later, and he wiggled inside and kept worming his way through until he popped out into a lighted area after some time. Coughing from all the dust and dirt he had inhaled, he attempted to walk but lost his balance as a loud roar echoed off the walls. A miniature earthquake rumbled through the area, scaring the boy into believing that the ceiling was coming down on his head. Screaming when some loosened dirt pebbled onto his head and down his shirt, he sprinted through the drift until he caught sight of sunlight streaming through an exit. Jumping into the light, everything was better again. As he tried to catch his breath he realized that the right thing to do was to face his inevitable spanking like a man--a very, very young man.

It was when he first lifted his head that he had an inkling that something had gone horribly wrong. People were running through the streets, heading towards one location. He followed them, trying as hard as he could not to get stampeded. With his small frame and even smaller height, he managed to squeeze through the mounds of human flesh until he was near the front, and then he pushed through the last line of defense.

The first thing he saw was the masses of drift workers frantically shoveling away the closed jaw of the collapsed drift. His father was lying in front of the dirt, one leg exposed and bleeding, the other one surrounded by dirt. Blood pooled around the man's head. There was a white mage as well, her lips moving as a green glow sparked from an outstretched hand.

His mother was nowhere to be found.

All around the boy people were talking, their words a drone that he couldn't stop hearing. He covered his ears, but they kept talking and talking. Even when he curled up in a ball, they wouldn't stop talking.

"That poor man. I heard his son ran in there, and his wife chased right after. He was lucky to have only one leg buried."

"Losing a wife and a son in one day...it's a tragedy."

"Bunanza, isn't he? One of the youngest meisters of the machinist society. A shame. May God grant mercy on his soul."

"Indeed."

"No..." Mustadio rasped, his voice now matching that of his adult self. "That's not right..." Even as he said this, his thoughts overruled his voice.

That day, I lost my mom...I lost my faith.

"It isn't..."

Dad can't walk five steps without his cane. He's only in his early forties, and yet he gets around like the old-timers to the drifts do. They worked the drifts for thirty, forty years, but Dad didn't even get the chance to stay for that long.

"I...I swear this didn't happen. It couldn't have...I wasn't that great of a kid, but still...I didn't..."

I caused my mom's death, but not in the way I claim I did. I just didn't want to remember it that way...

"No, I didn't...it wasn't my fault! I'm not lying about Mom...I didn't...don't make me remember!"

I just hide behind a smile...

He was cold. Ice slapped his skin, his soul, marking intricate patterns just like the whirling steps of the ice guardian. Shiva danced, and he shivered in her wake. It was so wrong, everything was so wrong, but all he could do was to curl up in the fetal position and try desperately not to believe himself. But he was so persuasive, and it took too much energy to break away, to rise up, to stand strong in the face of...in the face of...

The truth?

"No."

What is the truth?

Breathing in, breathing out, that most essential act of life left him winded. Not that he had an answer, he just liked to talk. Talking meant he could understand, he could share and get people to share. But there were no words for him.

Is there a truth?

He didn't know. Not anymore. Maybe.

If there is no truth, then why struggle?

He didn't know, though it felt as if he should. The cold was sapping him, numbing him, making him feel as if he was not himself anymore. It wasn't supposed to be this way. There was something wrong, something intrinsically Not Right with the memory that infected him. Her. Numbers.

Yes. That was it.

Light poured onto him, warming the chill that had pierced his soul. It was the light of realization, the light of truth. With it, he could destroy the presence that had buried itself into him. He could free himself from the evil forever. Purity was a vicious weapon in the right hands. In this moment, he could destroy just as easily as any elite knight.

Instead, he smiled.

-0-

At fourteen years of age, Mustadio Bunanza was a boy with the lean muscle tone of a drift worker, though with his baggy clothes he was apt to look scrawny. His normal gait was comical, though how much of that was him trying to get used to his rapid height growth as opposed to him just trying to get a laugh was unknown to all but himself. However, right now he walked like a normal boy as he stumbled through the junk piled in the narrow hallway, where he already had a disadvantage without the added effect of it being nighttime. In the front room he could hear his father mumbling as a loud clang sounded. He stifled a smile as he picked out some interesting curses, because by then he had reached the room. The only lights in the room were centered on Besrodio's latest project, a giant box with a large glass screen taking up most of the space on one side. His father sat in front of it, delicately trying to pry out its inner workings. "Hey Dad, need any help?" he asked as he approached the man's chair.

"No, this thing's useless. I'm going to salvage it for parts," Besrodio muttered without looking up. "Don't you have the morning shift tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I do. I just kinda wanted to talk to you for a moment," Mustadio replied, sighing inwardly as he realized what he had just said. Damn, guess I'm gonna have to go through with it.

The meister turned to face him, and Mustadio was struck by how his father's gaze seemed to go right through him. "Yes?" his father prompted after a moment of silence.

"Oh, yeah, sorry. I was, uh, I've been thinking lately, y'know, down in the drifts when it's just me digging something out and there's no one to talk to..." In the light of the lanterns, the young man saw that he was wearing down his father's patience, so he hastened to get to the point. "Okay, okay, I mean...like, what did Mom look like?"

Though Besrodio never seemed to be surprised anymore, considering all the stunts his son had pulled and would probably continue to pull, the question affected him. He looked down at the exposed guts of the machine he'd been working on. "Well," he started, closing his eyes, "that's sudden. Something wrong?"

Mustadio frowned at the response. "Nah, nothing's wrong, unless there's something wrong with me wanting to know and all. I mean, you got to see her and stuff, and I..." He half-turned away, his shoulders sagging when he realized that maybe he was going too fast with this subject. It wasn't exactly a dinnertime topic. "Ah, sorry. I guess I'm just too curious and stuff."

"No, no, you have every right to know." Besrodio sat up in his chair, and his son could see the glimmer of pain in his eyes as he twisted his hip too far in order to face the boy. "You should've had the chance to be raised by your mother."

"It's not like you did a bad job of it or anything," the young drift worker retorted. His father raised an eyebrow.

"That isn't pertinent. Now, what would you like to know?"

"Um...how'd she look? Was she pretty, or what?"

"I don't know how to describe her. She wasn't the most beautiful woman in the world, but she was very pretty."

"Um...do I look more like her, or you?"

"Like her, I suppose."

"Oh." Mustadio thought he had so many questions to ask his father, but now that he was actually asking them there didn't seem to be very many after all. They just dwindled away as he continued to look at the man before him. "That's...great. Um, I guess that's it. Thanks, Dad."

"It's nothing. Get some sleep, alright?"

He tried to look like he wasn't fleeing, but he could feel his father's eyes on him as he disappeared into the hallway. At his age, he thought he had all the answers; now, he realized that he didn't even have all the questions.

The next morning, he rolled out of bed as the first fingers of dawn stealthily worked at his window. Stretching in ridiculous poses, he managed to hop over to his door and jerk it open, stubbing a toe in the process. As he fell to the floor and began massaging his injured toe, he noticed a piece of drafting paper just outside his door. He picked it up with one hand and glanced at it. It appeared to be a drawing, but he couldn't see it too well. He gingerly walked to his window, where more light was stealing in, and looked at the picture again.

It consisted of messily applied lines, a series of broad strokes and thin scratches, not at all precise like the meister's usual diagrams. Yet somehow it still formed the image of a woman, her distinct characteristics well detailed. She had shoulder-length hair parted in the middle, large eyes and a wide smile. Her figure was hidden with the bulky clothes she wore, and big boots covered her pants from the knee down. She didn't wear gloves in the picture, her fingers long as one hand tried to sweep back her hair, much of her other arm hidden behind her back. It was a cute pose for a cute woman, and yet he felt nothing.

I mean, I should feel something, right? It's the image of my mom. I'm never gonna know her beyond this picture and Dad's words. She died because I was born, so I have to feel something...right?

But no matter how much he tried, he couldn't make himself feel anything for the picture of his mother. He didn't know enough about her to really care, and it was that knowledge that stung the most. But as he continued to look at the picture, a smile crept onto his face. Her smile, so wide and cheerful, was infectious. Even just to see a drawing of it made him feel happy.

And maybe that was all he needed to feel.

The light from the window swallowed up the room, leaving the adult Mustadio standing in the middle of endless white with the picture still in his hands. "And that's the truth," he said, his old energy surging back into his voice. "Your illusion's good, but you messed up. I've got the truth on my side." For a few moments he waited, looking around curiously. "So, uh, aren't you supposed to pop up now or something?"

"Let go."

The words chilled him, especially when he realized they had come from the picture. He let it drift down until it touched the light, where it then burned to a crisp. Thick, acrid clouds of black smoke rose, reforming into the image of the woman in the picture. But where there had been a sunny smile on her face there was now an ugly scowl. Mustadio wasn't feeling that great himself as he glared at the perverted image of his mother. "You know, that's really sick. I didn't get to know her or anything, but that's seriously messed up."

"Spare me your whiny complaints," the demon growled as it stormed up to the young man. Panicking, he held up his arms in front of his face, but the demon grabbed his wrists with a bone-crunching strength that belied the slim woman's image and wrenched them away from his face. "How were you able to break my illusion? How!" It flung him away, and he landed some distance away with a thud.

With some pain, Mustadio sat up, his innate friendliness masked by disgust. "Trust me, you aren't as smart as you think you are. Drift 33 didn't exist by the time I was born. Dad worked there when he was my age with some guy named Fezol, but stuff happened and the drift got closed down. That's when he met Mom and decided to settle down and go into research. Plus, his leg got wrecked by then anyway." He stood up and brushed down his knees. "Think whatever you want about me, but I do notice things."

The demon said nothing for a long while, hatred marring the image's pretty features. "I'd figured that you would've accepted a false memory. In over a thousand years I have never had the displeasure of trying to consume a soul without regret. You know yourself almost too well."

"What?"

"I much prefer to take a warrior's soul. Knights, magicians, all those fighters have such delicious souls and no mental defenses whatsoever." A tight-lipped smile appeared on the demon's face. "All they know is how to hide their emotions. Nothing else matters to them but the fight." The words were familiar to the engineer, but he wasn't sure why.

-As a knight, I've been taught to suppress my emotions while in the middle of a battle, or while dealing with a sensitive situation. That's how all knights learn to deal with their lives-

"Melly," he whispered. When he glanced at the demon, he had to suppress a shudder at the grin it was displaying, a monster's bared fangs ready to rip and tear superimposed on his mother's pretty face.

"That woman was a bit harder than most," the demon casually said. "Faith gives me indigestion, you understand. But even the strongest faith can crumble easily."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, she was rather surprised to see her father. I must admit that she broke apart in a most satisfying manner."

Mustadio waved a hand in defiance, distrust plain on his face. "Nuh-uh. See, we figured you weren't strong enough to mimic living people. Let's try that again, shall we?"

The demon's eyes flared bright gold before it calmed down. "Vormav Tingel's body may be alive, but a Lucavi owns that body now. His soul died a long time ago." Like a crack on ice, a smile broke through the image's face. "You're not the only one with truth on their side."

"Oh?" The mechanic ran a hand over his hair, pulling at the tail of hair as anxiety coursed through him. "What about Aggie? How long have you been possessing her?"

"Ever since I lured her into my dwelling." The crack widened. "She was easy."

"What about that thing with Lavian and Alicia? If she was already possessed by then, why go through with that whole thing?"

"Because it was a fun little farce." It pointed at him, wicked pleasure lining its face. "And you fell for it. You believed that she was so damn simple-minded. Is that what you think of your friends? Really, that's so sad."

"Yeah, it was pretty stupid of me to believe." Mustadio shrugged, scratching the back of his neck. "But I thought that, as long as she was okay, it's all good. I'm not gonna intrude on her beliefs or anything like that." But I can't believe I got suckered like that, he thought to himself as he kicked at the ground. "What about Cid?"

"A lie. I am a demon, after all."

"Yeah, I noticed. So, what's the truth then?"

"You want the truth?" In a burst of smoke and sparks it disappeared, only to smother the engineer in thick plumes of noxious smoke. As he struggled, clawing the fumes in a desperate attempt to part the air, he could feel the soft forearms of a woman wrapping around his neck, brutally closing off his windpipe. That he was currently nothing more than thought reimaged never occurred to him as he began to choke, his face turning blue. "Here's your cherished 'truth'," a hoarse whisper hissed in his ear before his face was shoved down, breaking through the plane of thought like it was thin ice. Bitter water greeted him, and as he gasped he inhaled a mouthful of the liquid and--

-thelegacyoftheOrlandunameistoserveGoltanawhyhaveyouforsakenmewhyamIpowerlessssss--

he screamed even though he had no air left. Bubbles rose from his gaping mouth as he bucked and squirmed, reduced to struggling like a common beast as dark spots gathered at the corners of his vision. Hands pushed his head down deeper before yanking him out by his bound length of hair and throwing him away. He rolled over to one side and began coughing up putrid water, his hacks wracking through his frame. Somehow he managed to get on his hands and knees while still coughing away, expelling every breath even as he continued to force himself to breathe.

"The truth is never pretty, is it?" the demon lazily called. The response it received was a series of subsiding coughs, and, when Mustadio was finally up to it, a very ugly glare. "You can't handle the truth, can you?"

"You think you're so damn strong when you prey on people's weaknesses like that?" Incredulous, he did the only thing he could do.

He laughed.

"What are you laughing about?" Clearly not amused by the engineer's hysterics, the demon screamed, "Tell me!"

Mustadio was rolling on the ground, immersed in laughter. His throat, already so raw from the recent lack of air and subsequent coughing attack, protested vehemently and he had another coughing fit. "Hahaha...whooo, that's great," he finally managed to giggle out.

Its face a blank mask, the demon began to stalk towards the young man. "Tell me," it repeated.

He grinned, propping up his upper body with his forearms. "You know what you remind me of? A neighborhood bully. Y'know, 'cause you both're all bark and no bite--" Before he could finish his sentence, the demon had jumped onto him, the image of his mother throttling him with taloned fingers.

"You and that damn dragoner!" It slammed his head against the ground once, twice, three times before it began to shred his neck. "She's needed, but you're just another warm body. I'll just use you to crack open your friends' shells so I get at their souls proper. Where should I shoot them, where does it hurt the most?" Once again, it slammed his head down.

Blood poured out of Mustadio's numerous neck wounds and his head throbbed something awful, but he still smiled.

Red splotches of anger blossomed on the demon's face in response. In front of his face it raised a hand, where long, needle-like claws sprouted from the tip of each finger. Forcing his head up with its other hand, it forced him to watch as it placed the points of its talons against his chest. "Normally I dislike to feast on a living being's soul. I like them as dead as me. But in this case, I'll make an exception just for you." It smiled, madness shining in its eyes. Then, it frowned. "Wha--"

The demon disintegrated, and in its wake Mustadio could hear something howling in fury. It sounded like the echo of a dragon's roar. As it grew louder, the white of the area brightened until even his image was glowing.

And then he was gone.

-0-

Mustadio groaned as life began to tingle in his extremities. As much as he wanted to fall asleep, he forced himself to open his eyes and to keep them open. Then he set to work at wriggling his fingers and toes until they responded to his commands. After a minute he was able to push himself up, propping himself up until he felt comfortable enough in kneeling. It was then when he finally got his first glimpse of the area he was in.

The corridor had to end somewhere, and this was the place. Wisps of pale mist drifted over his thighs, with an odd hissing noise catching his attention. As he looked around, he saw the white smoke curl around an essence, dissipating it. The area was growing darker, but there seemed to be some light coming from somewhere. With another sizzle, the last essence of the area faded into nothingness. Yet, he could see the still bodies of the friends he came to save all around him. That doesn't make sense, he thought reasonably. So, he looked up.

To his knowledge, demons didn't really come in all shapes and sizes. The only thing that separated archaic demons from ultima demons were their color schemes. At Limberry Castle, there had been apandas, which looked like the cousins of the former demons. The Lucavi were all different physically, but Mustadio had the feeling it was because they were important. Average demons didn't scare him anymore.

What hovered before him wasn't a demon. It was an atrocity to his eyes.

Somehow, it seemed to be neither a completely physical being nor a ghostly figure. It was a glutinous, vaguely transparent mass that expanded and decompressed in a steady beat. Inside its mass was a light the same color as the essences that once lined the corridor, though it was vastly duller in luminescence compared to the brightness of the quintessences. Veins pulsed along the sac in time with the beat, crossing through each other until they were implanted into the rock ceiling and walls, though whether they were needed to attach itself or if it was just an illusion was something that Mustadio didn't really want to find out.

That...bitch, it gurgled within his mind, giving him the feeling that a slug was slithering along the exposed skin at the back of his neck. After studying it for another second, he pulled his gaze away and reached for his gun.

"Yeah, well, I bet you started it," he mumbled, checking the muzzle of his beloved Blast Gun.

What...do you think...you are doing? A toy...like that could never...hope to damage me.

"Oh, okay, I'll just listen to you and put away my gun like a good little boy." He aimed at the pulsating mass. "Y'know, you're really disgusting-looking. I mean, couldn't you have looked like a proper demon instead of that?"

Wa-wait! We...share a common enemy. The cursed...Lucavi...if you destroy me, you will never...have a chance against the one...who seeks to make this place...his haven.

Intrigued, Mustadio lowered his gun. "Y'know, you're seriously gonna have to speak faster than that. Anyway, what Lucavi?"

One...with a human with...a slippery mind. He is at...the very bottom of this...place. I have been merely...gathering my strength in order to...destroy him.

The engineer could only raise an eyebrow.

You look at me...with distrust. But it is...the truth. Demons of...different tribes cannot...abide each other. Lucavi are...soul hunters...in coming here, they have...encroached upon my...territory.

"So, like, you want me to leave you alone and go and kill the Lucavi so...you can keep twisting the minds of humans and absorb their souls?" He frowned. "Seems like it'd be better to off the both of you."

Fool...to kill me and the Lucavi...all that will happen...is a power vacuum that...other demons will immediately...seek to fill. Killing me...killing Lucavi...changes nothing.

Raising his gun again, Mustadio pursed his lips. "It's something," he murmured. "My friends aren't commodities so you can win out on your turf war. I won't allow it."

You speak...as if you were a...killer. Yet, you could've...killed a part of me before...when you broke my illusion. Why not then?

"Because my job's to fix things, and I kinda happen to like my mind without some crap thrown in to screw me over." He closed his eyes. "And now I see something else that needs to be fixed."

He fired.

As a boy, Mustadio had often been forced to travel through Zigolis Swamp while he worked at securing funds for the maintenance of the drifts. Although his father had abhorred them, he had been given a gun in order to protect himself as well as to show off the ancient technology of Goug as a sales pitch. During his trips, he found that ghouls and skeletons bothered him the most, as they had no reason to fear death. To counteract this, he found that thinking of the happiest things right before firing had an adverse effect upon the undead, and thus his skillset was completed with the attack he named Seal Evil. It was a skill only he could use, though he didn't know why.

The bullet pierced through the bulbous sac, smashing into the light in the center of the demon. The soul eater spasmed, and the engineer worried that the demon wasn't the undead it had hinted itself to be. He closed his eyes just as the sound of a crackling wave of stone broke through the muggy air, petrifying the demon. For a long time all the engineer could do was bask in his victory, before finally opening his eyes. As could be expected from Mustadio, he made a comment that summed up all his feelings at that moment.

"Oh, wow, it's really dark in here. Um...how're we supposed to get out now?"

-End to Chapter Four-

I'm sorry this chapter is a day late. It was a combination of too much Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tunerand tests that did it. Oh, and I accidently erased part of the chapter. Whoops. And yes, the demon is in fact an undead slime. Or to use FF terms, an undead flan. Yep, a zombie dessert. Tasty.

To all those interested in the contest: I'm so happy to see there's so many of you interested enough to consider entering! It would be awesome if you all did, since it'd definitely keep to the high standards of the best of the FFT section!

Oh, and I don't normally do this, but I simply must. If you want good Delita-centric fanfiction, then you must read Delita, the King by Nistelle. I find that most Delita fics tend to focus on an aspect of the guy. This story is Delita. So, go read it. (As said by a person who thinks he's one of the most overrated characters ever.)

Reviewers!

TruebornChaos, please take a look at your review. See the response to my comments to you from last time? See that note you have to Evil Mina? Now see that review for the actual chapter? Great, because I almost didn't. I realize that most of the review is artificially inflated with one or two-liners, but it looks like the review part was thrown in as an afterthought. Thanks for the actual review.

Hello, Viktor Mayrin. Thanks for telling me about what you thought about Ch. 3 as well as the interlude. It doesn't take skill to include bits of other stories...well, when the stories are your own.

Yo, TobyKikami. Glad you liked the Worker 8 part. The technobabble was weird but fun to write. What spot does it get stuck on in Bariaus Valley? That sounds like an interesting glitch.
Yeah, the demon gets lessons on being nastily nice from Dycedarg. Or Vormav. Or Draclau. And Reis is awesome.

Well, Evil Mina, if all goes to plan this time you'll be missing Thursday morning's bus! Variety is the spice of life, after all. :)
I don't quite understand your question, but I'll try to give an answer. As of the interlude, everyone with the exception of Reis, Mustadio and Worker 8 are completely mind-fried. Even though everyone keeps dissing the demon, it is actually more than capable at possessing multiple people while asserting their personalities.
You know, I've accepted that Reis isn't going to have a very big fanbase ever. She's got one line in the course of the normal game, and then she has a dragon dismissal, a dragon attempt at changing her name, a human dismissal and human high faith/low brave quotes to add to that. Now that's personality. But I'll just keep chugging on, because it only takes one person to bring attention to any one character.
I'm not the only nitpicker around here, I don't think. :P
I don't worry about showing bad qualities or unpopular characters. I do get mildly anxious about the former, though I've only ever gotten one flame in my entire stint here at FFN. WHW showed me that I could do the latter, even though for the first five chapters I was barely matching the chapter count with reviews. Bah, I feel like I'm gloating. Hm, I think I'll stay away from talking about bad fanfics, only because I find I'm in the minority when it comes to my opinion.
And finally, I don't speak Japanese, but I can read it. Not to the level of kern, of course, after all he's fluent, but to the level that I don't mind hopping Japanese websites for research and fanart.

I'm sorry, gleenthefrog. Having a well-written chapter doesn't matter if it can't be understood, and therefore I completely failed. I'd love to help you understand. Here's a short synopsis, and you can tell me if I covered everything that I failed to get across:
Reis has issues regarding her draconic nature, which also happens to be the regret that the demon can latch onto in order to get into her mind. It does so, trying to affect her by wearing the image of Buremonda, who had used the spell she had protected Beowulf from. After she realizes that the demon has forced itself into her mind, she tries to find out how to break its hold on her, mistakenly believing that it has trapped her soul (for lack of a better word) from fully connecting with her body. Meanwhile, the two converse, with the demon trying to manipulate her, but she sees through it. When the area of her mind is affected by her flash of anger at one of the demon's comments, she realizes that she isn't trapped from accessing her body (when trying to probe the surroundings she hadn't realized that she was merely reflecting herself) and contacts the dragon hanging around her. Meanwhile, Worker 8 kills starving monsters.
Back to Reis, who tricks the demon into using its power to access the deepest, most private part of her mind. It proceeds to cause excessive property damage, culminating in destroying one of her memories, and Reis gets pissed off. She steadies her holy breath through using the dragon's lifeforce and blasts all of the essences in the corridor, then realizes what she has done and angsts. And the moral of the story is don't piss off dragons, even if they look like Barbie dolls, and especially if you are a demon who is vulnerable to holy elemental attacks. Hope that helps!

Hi, Toastyann! The Deep Dungeon is okay, more because of the items found as opposed to the battles fought. You didn't miss too much by not playing it. Anyway, Mustadio is truly one of those characters that no one really thinks about but they keep him anyway just to get the secret characters. Since that's a sad existence, I thought some pro-Mustadio fic was needed.
As for Agrias...I really wouldn't know. She rarely says something that's not about the princess, and isn't a knight's duty his life? Then again, we haven't seen her not possessed in this story.
Don't envy me, I have so many ideas running around in my head that I can't not write a chapter of something every week. I thought you had already given up on The Journey, since that's what your profile says. It's a shame, but I can totally understand. Just do well in school!

Luna! Yay! I thought you were dead or trapped in school, which I suppose is the same thing. I'm surprised your school dumps work onto seniors; most schools slack off the work once you suffer through three years.
I can only name two other Mustadio-centric fanfiction. One of them is a shounen-ai/yaoi angst deathfic, and the other is a shounen-ai comedy. There are extremes, and then there is that. And yes, I am proud to say that this is B-list plot right here.
It looks like I won't be going to Otakon this year. Fall semester starts the week it ends and I actually want to see Sakamoto Maaya at AX.
And yay to your having only one month of high school left!

Epilogue: Jubilee: "Will there ever be a time when people can live free of regret?"