Yup, Kuja's arrived. Oh boy… Want to know what happens with him, and how I, Squall, and Zell react to it? Read on to find out! Woohoo!
Chapter 2: Kuja Just Wants To Have Fun
October 23rd, 2005, 8:03AM
Kuja's POV
It was a crisp chilly morning as he stepped outside of his exquisite hotel room, onto the balcony. Kuja had discovered on the previous night that his magical abilities were still fully available, so it wouldn't matter no matter what world he'd end up falling into. Yes, falling. A hole had opened up in the middle of a gravel pathway in Lindblum, and he ended up in unfamiliar surroundings. So, Kuja Tribal made the best of it by just exploring in his own way.
Through the internet on Kuja's new toy, the laptop he found on his day on the arrival to Earth, he searched for the fanciest and most expensive hotel room in Maine (where he resided for the night), complete with a view of a nearby ocean. Didn't even have to pay for it. With ease, he manipulated each of the hotel staff, putting in the suggestions that Kuja was paying for the room, to which was absolutely false.
His white dragon was hiding under the hotel balconies, using the night's shadow to hide from any unwanted guests while it slept. Now it was morning, and as soon as Kuja leaped down from three stories high onto the street unharmed and on his feet, the genome witnessed his beloved pet getting so much attention from a few very young children. They looked startled to see him, to make such a dramatic entrance. It was a hobby.
"So, when do I get scratched behind the ears?" he scoffed in partial annoyance at the little boys and girls, two of each gender. It wasn't that he didn't allow the big reptile to make some friends, and he certainly was not jealous. Kuja just wanted to go for a ride, without having to kill anyone in the process. Especially with children. It would be a nasty mess if the authorities decided to try to track him down, which wasn't going to be easy for them, but still... It was just easier to just go without having to do anything so rash.
"Is this dragon yours!" asked the oldest of the children, an eight year old boy. Nosy little human, isn't he? "Yes," Kuja said with confidence. "Now, go on home to your mothers." "But can't we stay with him for just a few more minutes?" whined one of the little girls. ...Filthy little urchins! "SCRAM!," his voice boomed and echoed as the brats scattered like the insects they were. What Kuja didn't realize was the change of colors to his silver feathered hair and blue eyes, which both turned to red when he yelled at the kids. He was seconds away from going into full Trance mode by that sudden outburst. When the children were gone, the hair and eye color returned to their normal colors.
Walking up White Dragon's right feathered wing, Kuja commanded it to take off to the sky. The silver-white shiny giant obeyed, having to flap its wings through the cold air. Knowing White Dragon well, Kuja knew he preferred soaring over thermals than flapping its wings constantly. ...It seemed like they were in the sky for a very long time. What felt like hours had passed by. Everything below looked like a child's fantasy.
Thwok-thwok-thwok-thwok-thwok-thwok... Kuja heard a sound. As he looked behind him, he saw a flying machine. A helicopter, as it was known on this planet called Earth. For a while during the night, before finding he had speedily read through on the internet about the different types of transportation machines on Earth. So it was true: the spinning rotors on the 'copter's roof and tail were all that was to keep the thing hovering in mid-air. Fascinating. This helicopter was painted to be mostly black, except for a touch of blue on its body. Kuja saw the white number and letters, which read, "9 NEWS". And it had found him. A door on the side slid open as a man with some kind of device looked at Kuja. A device he'd have to do some research on soon.
I wonder how fast and how much of a flexible flyer a helicopter is, Kuja thought as he smirked at the man. Then he turned, moving up on his dragon's back to whisper in one of its large pointy ears. "Let's have a little fun," Kuja lightly suggested, a part of himself anticipating for something to do. "See if you can out fly and out maneuver this flying machine." He knew that his pet understood his speech and braced himself, diving and wrapping his arms and legs around the silver white scaly neck before the wild flying began.
He turned his head as the 'copter gave chase. The thrill! It tilted and sped after them, giving Kuja an eyeful as to how it moved. But as White Dragon went into a full dive, the people inside of the flying machine couldn't manage to keep up with them any longer. Kuja laughed, and laughed in the sheer joy of the game he had spontaneously thought up. A lovely and exciting game of chase it was. There was something he learned: helicopters were just as fast as the airships on Gaia were.
By now, they were a couple several feet above the ground, in a city, due to the high steel and window buildings to which Kuja seen before somewhere else, but the trees here looked different. Skinny looking trunks. Curious, he gave the orders to White Dragon as to where to land, so he could slip off the handled strong fabric bag worn on his back. He found that and the laptop inside of it abandoned in an alley someplace, in that other city when he first arrived on Earth. Kuja had the curiosity to look up on the internet do a search on where he was now...
Marianne's POV
It was about 1:05PM when she saw Squall and Zell in the distance on the wide gravel path, walking towards the bookstore she worked in, Wordman Used Books. Yes, Marianne had the FF8 strategy guide in the plastic bag with the money pouch and some CDs, but she brought along the FF9 strategy guide too. Before she and her mom left the house in her car, they had seen the guy on the huge magnificent white dragon on a small news update on the Fox Channel. She bit her tongue before she could just curse or say something. That man, no, genome, was none other than Kuja Tribal! She clearly recognized him from the CGI cut screens on the FF9 game. There had been a news chopper that found him, and they caught very little footage of him. She saw Kuja smirk at the camera, and walk up to one of the dragon's ears, to talk to it. They took off, and the dragon began to dive, fast like a bullet. Not only were the FF8 characters real, but FF9's as well. At least one, the villain.
This worried Marianne a lot. She had no freakin' clue as to how in the HELL Kuja existed. For all she knew about him, Earth was in some seriously, life threateningly BIG trouble. She silently hoped Squall and Zell saw the news too. They'd have to help her to bring Kuja Tribal under control. But one thing was for sure: no one could mess with Kuja without getting hurt in the process. He was, and possibly still as demented and twisted as he was in the game.
Wait, if KUJA TRIBAL was in the same planet she was, then the black mage puppets he made could be...! No, Marianne wasn't GOING to think like that. On the more positive side, maybe Zidane, Garnet, Vivi, Steiner, Blank, Amarant, or Freya could be roaming somewhere too!
She stood up, her insides trembling as Squall and Zell came inside the store. "Did you guys watch the news this morning?" Marianne asked them urgently. Squall nodded, and reading his awareness, he could read how she was acting to be wanting to tell them something VERY important on the guy they saw on TV. "What about it? Is something wrong?" asked Squall, the tension rising in his voice. Zell sounded concerned. "Yo, Marianne. You alright? You're looking a bit pale there..." "That guy on the dragon..."she began to say, her voice shaky, "is known as Kuja Tribal. ...I know him as a character from the Final Fantasy Nine game. He's a twisted sort of character, really..."
"You know of him?" Leonhart questioned, as Marianne nodded her head quickly in response. "Very demented kind of guy, and not exactly human. He's got a long tail, but he hides it. He doesn't like what he is." "Is he dangerous?" Squall asked, obviously reading over her terror. Marianne wouldn't be able to hide the fear, no matter how hard she tried. "Oh yeah, very," she breathed. "Since he has his pet dragon, he could be anywhere by now."
"How the hell did he get on Earth then? Did he find another portal somewhere?" Zell Dincht quirked. "Probably," Squall said, and looked like he was deep in thought. "So, what are we gonna do?" Zell said in concern. "We have to talk to him," Marianne replied almost immediately. "Maybe he has a journal on Blurty, like we do. Maybe-" "How can you be sure about that?" Squall asked, cutting her off. Marianne shrugged. "From how you're acting, you're afraid of him," he added in looking at her. "Yeah, because any Final Fantasy Nine fan knows not to mess with Kuja Tribal. He can create a black mage army to unleash on you if you rub him the wrong way."
"What? What the heck are black mages, Marianne?" Zell asked. "Beings in robes who do magic attacks. They would hardly ever tire," she simply explained. Squall had a hand on his forehead in a "Oh man..." expression, then brought the same hand to his side again. "Nothing good," he said. "Not at all," Marianne agreed.
Squall took the FF9 strategy guide mag off the table by where she'd usually sit, and began to flip the booklet open.
Squall's POV
Squall sat in Marianne's seat as she told him, "Turn to the starting page about the main characters." He did and saw a picture of a guy with a chestnut brown monkey tail. "Zidane Tribal..." He read the name out loud, then looked to the Earth girl who knew who Kuja Tribal. She explained, "He's the younger brother of Kuja, but not a psychopath. One of the good guys, along with his friends, mentioned throughout the character section." Leonhart understood and read some of the other descriptions about Princess Garnet Alexandrios (also known as Dagger), Adelbert Steiner, Vivi, and Freya Crescent. Only looked over some of their brief descriptions.
"But you know more than what that magazine has," Zell said, to which Marianne had nodded, looking at him in worry. Squall closed the magazine, and placed it back on the table, where it previously was. "At least a little more," Marianne said. "We'll need to know this information then," Leonhart told her, leaning forward in the white plastic chair...
Marianne's POV
"Okay, I think I'll just explain on Kuja and Zidane Tribal. That way so you'd know a little more about Kuja," Marianne decided. Squall nodded, and seemed okay with that, saying, "That'll do for now." She looked from him to Zell, wondering about Seifer and if they've heard anything from him lately, but knew that could wait.
"Alright," she began, trying to relax and clear her head. "Zidane was dropped off on the world Gaia when he was about four or five years old, by Kuja. He was jealous of the attention his little brother was getting, and probably still hates him now." "WHOA, that's not nice at all!" Zell interrupted, surprised to hear about it. "Yeah, because in Terra, this plance that has to survive by devouring other planets..." Marianne drifted off, suddenly thinking up a most terrifying possibility: Earth could be Terra's next meal! Kuja might hand it over to...
"WHAT!" Zell yelled, not liking the sound of this grim tale of woe so far. "You're thinking about your world being a target," Squall spoke, bringing Marianne out of her moment of shock. She nodded, eyes big as they could be, and forced to continue explaining about what Kuja did and how he felt back then, but before she could do so, Squall pointed out the door to signal that someone was coming.
A middle aged blonde woman came up the stairs. "Is this place all books?" "Yeah," Marianne and Squall said at the same time, Marianne trying to calm down the adrenaline rush, and Squall being blank and emotionless. After she left, Marianne continued, the words leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. "The head of Terra is known as Garland, and old man in charge of Terra. He created Kuja and Zidane Tribal, and they weren't born out of someone's womb I guess. I don't really know much about how that is, and I guess it's better for all of us for that to be unknown...
"Well, Garland was the one to think that Zidane was perfect in the creator's own way to hand over Gaia to Terra, and Kuja was ignored. He began to loathe Garland and as payback, he did what he did with Zidane. But Zidane grew up okay, raised by the leader of a gang of thieves known as Tantalus, whose cover was a theatre company. By the age of seventeen, Zidane was part of this important plan to capture Princess Garnet. It was supposed to go easy come, easy go, but then the queen who's not Garnet's birth mom threw a fit and destroyed Tantalus's theatre airship. Kuja became a weapons dealer, making the black mages as a distraction to gain control over what you would call Guardian Forces, part of his own chaotic plans to hand over Gaia to Terra, I think?"
Before she finished, she looked down at the floor, feeling like a nervous wreck. "Though, I think Kuja was supposed to have died, but I haven't even finished the...you know. So, I dunno." Squall stood up, and calmly told her, "Sit down. I think you've said enough." She nodded, and sat in her chair by the door, the bitter aftertaste feeling still on her tongue's taste buds.
He didn't want to let her torture herself by telling more than she needed to say about this Kuja Tribal, who sounded like a serious threat to the world they were all in right now. We need to stop him then. It was freaky enough for him that Marianne knew all about who he and Zell were, but a deadly, psychotic, and sadistic bastard like Kuja? It would be sort of an advantage to them, making Marianne the negotiator to Kuja, but he had a feeling that she shouldn't be left alone with the "genome" as she had said. The information she knew might make him even more dangerous than he already seemed to be through her words.
"Damn," Marianne said, with a shudder. Some of her curly brown hair broke free from behind her ears and covered them. "Complete chaos..." "Yeah, man... Already, I'm starting to hate that Kuja bastard," Zell agreed in his own expressive way. He hit a clenched fist into the palm of his other hand. "We can't let anything happen to Earth." He walked stood up to be closer to her and Leonhart. "Nobody's gonna die. Not on my watch."
"We'll need to get a hold of Kuja, and soon," Squall said, dread consuming his heart. If he doesn't listen to any of us, we might have to kill him if absolutely necessary. He felt troubled for Marianne, who was definitely worried and scared if Kuja tried to do anything.
Everyone in the whole entire bookstore fell quiet, but Marianne forced on a smile and asked the next two customers if they needed help with anything. "No, we're just wandering around. Never been this way before," the young woman of the couple said. They marveled about as Squall decided to take a look at the Final Fantasy Eight strategy guide, just to see how the "game" was, out his own damn curiosity.
But as he skimmed through the characters, he didn't see anything on Seifer's younger sister, Sophia Almasy. "All clear man," Zell said, as Squall spoke to Marianne on this oddity. "How come Sophia isn't mentioned in here?" She raised an eyebrow. "Who...?" "Seifer's sister," Zell provided in helping her understand. They saw her flinch and take a few steps back. "Oh...my...God..."
Leonhart saw the same look in her eyes she had when she first met him and Zell yesterday morning. "Oh mannn, now what?" Dincht moaned in frustration. Marianne broke her gaze from them and looked down at her sneakers as if she'd never seen them before. "I thought..." She looked to Squall. "You remember my online friend, Crystal, right?" Squall felt an eyebrow raised. "Yeah, but what's she got to do with Sophia Almasy?" "This just keeps getting freakier by the hour," Marianne commented, and stared at Leonhart. "See, I thought Sophia only existed in Crystal's imagination." "What...the...hell?" Zell slowly said, really freaked out by now.
Squall sighed, wondering why this shit was happening to all of them. Seifer is going to love this...
One of Kuja's journal entries, the one mentioning about the little game he played with the news chopper…
October 23rd, 2005. 10:30AM
Subject: I'm in a new, unexplored state of the "United States of America"
Mood: contemplative
music: No music, but a small breeze that doesn't affect anything
Well, that's what the maps of this interesting and large world read. Found them on...Yahoo Maps, was it?
The roof of this tall, box shaped, and highly built steel and window building has a lovely view of this city named Miami. The skinny looking trees that tilted in the gray paved streets are called "palm trees." Quite puny looking trees in my opinion. It's also very humid and warm down here.
Just a while ago, I was flying on my dragon to see one of those helicopters, to which I had a little fun with. They couldn't keep up with the magnificent White Dragon as he steered us into a dive. They're not really fast. If only the chase would have lasted a little bit longer. It was enthralling. I think I've discovered something to do for a hobby on this planet I've found.
Yes, I'm not alone. There are at least two others from some other world. I wouldn't know really, but I've found this information from a friend I've made through this "blog service": inasweetdream. I'd like to find her, my newfound canary friend, one day, but there's no rush. I think I could get used to Earth, for I like it very much. These advanced machines called computers! The "internet" has been so helpful to me ever since I had that little incident with a hole in the ground...
Now that I'm on solid ground, I'll look up as to whatever device that one human in the helicopter was holding...and then I'm off to find breakfast.
The following replies were posted much later on at night. I posted as everyone. Squall, Kuja, and me. Note that Squall and Zell were staying over at my place for the night, and Squall and I had to share the computer I'm using to update with. That's why there's only one reply from Squall.
Squall: ...We need to talk. As soon as possible.
Kuja: To talk? What about? Seeing me on "TV", hmm?
Interesting, to just watch yourself on a box shaped device that showed moving pictures. Don't you think so?
Marianne: Kuja, where are you?
Yeah, it's me... I guess you must've found my blurty through interests. In a way, I'm glad you did.
Where are you? My friends and I would appreciate it if you wouldn't mind seeing us ASAP.
Kuja: Marianne, how nice to hear back from you. How are you? Yes, I found out we have a bit in common, so I added you to my journal's "friends list."
Meet you? In Maryland? If you tell me specifically where you'll be, I could fit our first meeting into my to do list. ...I know where that state is. Very far north from me, aren't you? You saw me on the television too, didn't you? I'd like your honest opinion: what did you think of my performance, hm?
Marianne: ...I'm fine, um, thanks.
Yeah, I think a lot of people saw you. That's sort of what I need to talk to you about, and possibly ask a few questions. Something rather important.
How does...tomorrow sound? Well, if you can look up your location on any map and figure it out from there...I'm somewhere in Southern Maryland. Um, we'll meet...Hey, fly over a distance away from Prince Frederick, it's surrounded by other towns such as St. Leonard, Lusby, and my neighborhood, around Broomes Island. Be sure to fly out of attention and hide your dragon somplace good. Land it someplace on highway Route 4, within a little woodsy area closest to Prince Frederick. From there, walk. I'll be waiting out front with my friends Squall and Zell in front of the Wal-Mart. Time? By...10AM?
...I hope that was specific enough.
Kuja: Tomorrow? The sooner the better, I'd say. We could talk all about it at this Wal-Mart place you speak of. Very specific directions, so I shouldn't have trouble finding you...
I'm really look forward to seeing your pretty face, my canary. But, how will I really know it'll be you? Hm... Oh, I have an idea. I'll say the first line of the song lyrics you've displayed in your journal's profile. You probably wish you were anywhere but here. You say the next line. Yes, I think that could work.
From there, we'll go someplace much less public. I get distracted in crowds, Marianne.
Marianne: Fair enough. Yeah, that code should work fine. I know all the words to that song in memory.
Heh, you'd probably be surprised when you'll see me. I'm probably not what you'll expect. I'm pretty average looking among all the other girls I know.
Where less public? I can't be gone for too long, because I'll eventually have to get back home.
I think I understand what you mean, about crowds. Being the center of attention and all after what you did yesterday? (Heh, yesterday, since it's morning already) I'd get real distracted too. It'd be annoying with the press. You might want to go in disguise. Get a change of clothing, shoes... Bring a hat, too. My friends and I would rather keep a low profile. Lately things have been going really weird...and more attention from the local reporters would just make things spin out of control for my friends and I. There's at least one more from another world, different from yours. I think it would be a lot easier if we'd keep it on the down low.
Kuja: The lyrics you put down...could you perhaps sing them to me when we meet, sometime? I believe you can sing, if you like that song for a theme for your journal, yes?
Oh come on now. there's no need to be modest, dearest! I'm sure you're very pretty. Your name is pretty. From your replies, you seem like a fascinating woman. Hm...I'll also get a little something for you, precious.
Ah, smart thinking Marianne. I shall look into getting a disguise... MY, look at the time! We should get some rest. I know I should... Sweet dreams.
Marianne: I don't know if I'll sing, but I might. It'll just depend on how the whole thing will go, y'know?
My friend Squall wants me to give you a message: that you'd better not be playing any games.
Don't mind him though. He's just a bit too serious.
Yeah, I'm getting a bit tired myself... G'night Kuja.
And that about concludes this chapter! I'll ask Crystal if I can put up Seifer's first journal entry, since she role plays as him. It's pretty amusing, and she has a kickass interpretation of him. Oh, and there's exciting action post from him too. I'll ask her this week, because I'm hoping to put all that stuff up next.