Mustadio Bunanza had always considered himself to be a reasonable person, and only secretive when there were lives at stake, like when he had hidden the true nature of Bart Rudvich's pursuit of himself and his father. But there was one thing he never told anyone.
He never knew his mother.
He had heard stories about her from his father, Besrodio. Things that she did, things that she hoped she'd do, things she did with him, stuff like that. Once his father told him about the time he had lost his dog. It was raining that day, and Mustadio was about six years old. His mother had taken him aside, and told him that she would go out and look for him in the rain. Mustadio remembered that she went out in the rain, in the dead of the night, and brought back his little doggy to him. His memories of her were few and fading, but that one stood out like Bull Demon in a herd of Chocobo.
His father had told him that his mother had gone away on a trip for a few weeks, and then he just decided to say that his mother was 'on permanent vacation' to supplement the term his father had used when he was eight. He did, however, find out about his mother later on in life, when he was a gangly youth of about fourteen.
"Ah yes, those were good times," a sinister voice that Mustadio recognized to be his father's old friend and ex-Shrine Knight Balk Fezol. The middle-aged man walked out of the shadows to reveal his standard silly pompadour haircut, his golden armor draped with a black cloth, and a sour expression on his aged face. Balk Fezol was never one of Mustadio's favorite people, and his view of him had worsened ever since he tried to poison Ramza and the others. Then, Balk had traded in his soul for the chance to become a 'perfect being', devoid of all feeling and emotion and humanity. It was very creepy, and Mustadio usually avoided the whole issue of this pathetic excuse for a 'human life' altogether.
"Balk," Mustadio spat at his father's old friend. "It's so nice to see you again. Did you decide that you weren't going to die again? Like you did in Bed Desert?"
"Nope, I'm dead as a doornail, and for good this time," Balk said. He had a thin red line around his neck that Mustadio recognized as the place where Ramza must have beheaded him to make sure he wouldn't come back again. "And it's a good thing too, because if I was alive and being tortured in Hell for selling my soul to Lucavi, then I wouldn't have been around for some random higher power to come and get you out of limbo and back into Ivalice where you belong. You see, you are one of the most important people ever born Mustadio."
Mustadio was confused. "What are you talking about?" Mustadio replied skeptically. After all, he didn't even trust Balk when he was alive, and now this shady story of some higher power dragging him out of 'limbo' didn't help the believability of this traitor.
"Haven't you ever thought it was strange Mustadio?" Balk said, taking a few steps towards him. "Agrias, Orlandu, Meliadoul, and Beowulf are all knights of a fairly high order, Rafa and Malak are ex-assassins, Reis is a dragon, or at least she was, the Byblos is an ancient creature created by magic, Cloud is a hero from another dimension, Worker 8 is a machine, Alma is the host of the most powerful Zodiac Brave, Strawberry is pretty much the most powerful magic user on the face of the earth since the death of Elibidis, Masahiro's family is ungodly rich, Ophelia has mastered most if not all of the job classes, Kylie is well known throughout the face of Ivalice and has many connections and friends in high places, and Ramza, well, you'll find out why he's special soon enough. Did you ever wonder how you got thrown in with such phenomenal people?"
Mustadio shrugged. "Luck?" He still didn't see what all this had to do with all these flashback thoughts in his mind about his mother and his part in her death.
"Luck?" Balk covered his eyes and slowly dragged his hand down his face, groaning all the while in an extremely annoyed fashion. "How can you possibly still believe in luck? Even after all the impossible things you've seen? Luck does not exist. There is only destiny. Luck is a weak invention of a weak race, and like most other things humans dreamt up, luck doesn't exist. Humans are such a disgusting race, with all their feelings and emotions. Repulsive."
"Uh, Balk," Mustadio pointed out. "Weren't you a human once upon a time?"
"Long ago," Balk replied. "Then I wised up. I am now a 'higher being' Mustadio. I am not human anymore. But the true question is, are you?"
"What?" Mustadio yelled, completely insulted, like someone had just called his mother a whore. "How could you possibly say something like that? Of course I'm human! What a stupid question."
"Your father never did tell you about your mother's true nature did he?" Balk asked, and Mustadio just stared at him like he had a third eye growing out of his nose. Then Balk squealed with excitement like a little schoolgirl. "Ooo, I'm gonna enjoy this. Here, watch this."
The scenery around the two men changed to a dreary street in a dreary town where busy people hurried down the streets. All of them were blank faced, and their clothes were drab and clean. But suddenly, out of nowhere, a young man staggered through the cookie cutter crowd. His face and clothes were all greasy, and he looked like he worked in the docks, working on machines. He looked like he could bench press a couple hundred pounds. He had long, thick blonde hair that fell around his chiseled face. He was dressed in a rubber suit because of the lightning storms around the Goug Docks. Furthermore, the machinery sometimes sparked.
"Is that my father?" Mustadio asked, excited about this new image of his father.
"Um, not exactly," Balk said, holding back what appeared to be a thunderous roar of laughter. After the muscular man ran a scraggly, scrawny young man of about twenty. He had dirty blonde hair, and was also all greasy, but he wore blue jean overalls over a yellow long-sleeve shirt and his hair was tied back in a ponytail. "That's your father."
"Wow," Mustadio marveled. "He looks just like me. Just a little skinnier."
"That other man is your father's employer, Boq Fiyero," Balk explained. "He was not exactly the smartest cookie in the jar, which is why he hired Besrodio. He wasn't exactly the nicest person either, so poor Besrodio always came back to our apartment with bruises and scrapes all over his body. He told me he got them working on some random machine, the subject of the excuse changed every time he made it, but I always knew.
"I once asked him why he put up with it," Balk continued. "And he told me about this girl they rescued on one of his salvage missions. They found a shipwreck off the coast of the island best known as the Murond Holy Place. When your father read the ship's log, the last entry was dated long before they found the girl. That means it had been stranded there for three months. And she was still alive. I worked for Fiyero too, and I searched the ship myself, and there was no food or fresh water on the ship anywhere."
"Wow," Mustadio said curtly. "She survived all that time with no food and no water?"
Balk nodded. "It was a miracle. We were all spellbound. Your father, however, was fascinated by this gorgeous creature we found off the coast of Murond. They got together famously. Well, don't take my word for it. Watch this."
The scene switched again. Now it was in Mustadio's apartment he shared with Balk. This time it showed the young Besrodio talking to a young girl with baby blue hair, dressed in a strapless dress the color of her hair and eyes. The dress opened up at the waist and continued opening down to the feet to reveal a dark blue slip. The girl was intensely beautiful, but in a different in strange way. Mustadio couldn't take his eyes off her.
"Huh," Balk grunted, breaking Mustadio's concentration. "Must be a Bunanza thing."
"But I found my mother's obituary in the papers when I was fourteen," Mustadio said, still partially focused on the freeze frame picture of the blue haired woman with his father. "She didn't look like that."
"Musty," Balk called. "Incest is not the way." Mustadio looked insulted, but he finally stopped staring at the girl. "Just keep watching."
"You are quite the young woman," the Besrodio in the now continuing vision below Mustadio said, smiling. "Living all that time in the shipwreck. How'd you do it?"
"One can live forever on faith alone," the girl said. "That's all I need to survive. So I can carry on my holy mission."
"Oh, so you worked for the church?" Besrodio asked. He appeared to already know the answer to the question, but just wanted to hear her voice again. It was what Mustadio thought an angel would sound like.
"Well, I suppose you could say that," the girl replied. "I'm something of a Pagan Examiner. Perhaps you could help me."
"How could I possibly help a Pagan Examiner?" Besrodio replied. "I'm just a simple engineer."
"Will you help me continue my cause?" the mysterious blue haired girl asked.
"Well, of course," Besrodio replied, somewhat bewildered. "I'll help in any way I-"
She interrupted him by planting a huge kiss right on his lips. He was very surprised. And then the scene just stopped.
"And I would imagine the rest just continues on like a porno moive," Balk speculated. "And you don't need to see that much of your father."
"How do I know that all of this isn't just a hoax?" Mustadio asked. "Hell, for all I know, I'm in a coma and you're pumping me with drugs."
"Are you really that blind?" Balk yelled. "This is your mother here! How could you think anything else. Stupid, worthless human."
"So in nine months I popped out," Mustadio said, still not completely believing Balk.
"Actually, in three months you popped out," Balk said. "That's one of the reasons you're so special."
"And what exactly is the reason I'm so damn special," Mustadio inquired.
"All good things in time, my dear boy," Balk condescended. "But for now, watch your father fall apart." Balk laughed a little when he said that last part.
The scene now switched again to the young Besrodio standing on his doorstep next to a baby in a basket. Mustadio assumed that the baby was him.
"He was destroyed," Balk said, smiling. "Why did I make nice with that man? He disgusts me. Anyway, he spent months looking for that mysterious, nameless girl who had sweaty pig sex with him in his apartment so she could make herself an heir. Personally, I wouldn't have bothered, but he was determined. And then, while looking for her, he wound up in Zigolis Swamp, and got his leg stuck in the muck. You would not believe those swamps, they suck better than a-"
"Please, dear god," Mustadio interrupted him. "Don't finish that metaphor."
"Fine," Balk conceded. "The point is he lost his leg to that swamp. Well, not literally, I mean it was still attached, but it doesn't work right anymore. And because of that, he couldn't teach you the things he knew about fixing things and such. Not that you needed it.
"It took Besrodio and I years and years to learn how to use a gun," Balk continued. "But you picked it up in less than a month. When you were eight. You never were like other children, and you are now not like other men. Although I can't tell you your purpose in life, I can tell you that you are sorely needed back in the real world. And that you're getting there right away."
"Wait," Mustadio said, extending an arm out towards Balk. "Tell me about my adopted mother."
"Sorry son," Balk replied. "Not part of the job description. Besides, that's something that you should discuss with your dad anyway."
Balk grinned and everything glowed white.
A/N: This chapter was a little longer than I expected. About twice the size. That excites me. Like I said, once I get all these wonderful characters back together, the length of the chapters will pick up at least to this length if not longer.
That aside, Mustadio has been one of my favorite characters. He was pretty much the only character I liked the first time I played the game. It took my time to warm up to the others, but I liked Mustadio from the get go. The honesty, the knowledge, being so naïve, being the only one who can use a gun, until you get to Goug anyway. No one else can do that. As for this mysterious destiny of his, well, that will all be made clear in time. Just be patient and don't forget about it. Next is another character I liked from the get go: Agrias Oaks.