Author's Note: Sorry, Pied Flycatcher, but its more dialogue driven chapters for now. This one should make up for some of your disappointment, though; I haven't added in much description yet, but you do finally get some answers. The action will begin again soon, trust me.

Chapter 23

Kuja shuddered. The process had not been kind to him, whatever that process was. He no longer knew where he was; from his surroundings, he almost wondered if when was a more appropriate question. The castle seemed old and worn, something of ancient construction. None of Gaia's castles were this run down…perhaps this was the future of Alexandria?

The blond eyed him suspiciously, but Kuja didn't care. He was in trance, and he would stay that way as long as he could. They had mentioned something to him about redemption, but he didn't trust them. Who were they, and what did they know?

"You are a hard man to track down, Kuja," the woman said, sitting down. "I had wanted you here sooner."

"Why?" Kuja demanded. "What do you want with me?"

"I want your help," she said simply. She was neither asking nor demanding, simply stating facts. She went to explain more, but Kuja cut her off.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"I am Ultimecia."

Kuja's mind raced. He had heard the name before, or at least read it somewhere…

"The sorceress," he concluded. "Before the worlds were fused, you tried to compress time." She nodded. "Common theory once held that you were responsible for the fusion of the worlds…"

"Hardly," she scoffed. "I see no need for the worlds to kome together. That was the will of another being."

"Who?"

"I don't know. He appeared to me once, kurious about my attempts to kompress time. I believe he used a similar method to ensure the worlds would merge."

"Do you know why?"

"She told me that his world didn't exist any more," the blond said. "I'm guessing that he needed a world to survive in."

Ultimecia nodded. "How he survived at all is a complete mystery."

Kuja closed his eyes in thought. Something still didn't fit…

"How did he get to the future?" he asked. Time had always been a complicated issue, one that interested him greatly, but with other worlds involved, it became a headache. "Why wouldn't he have simply arrived in the present?"

"This isn't the future," Ultimecia said grimly. "I only exist between time."

"Between? How is that possible?"

"I am not the only one who should not exist. How I can exist is as much of a mystery as Sephiroth."

The blond involuntarily twitched at the mention of Sephiroth, and Kuja could feel the anger emanating from him. Apparently, Sephiroth had wronged the man. Perhaps that's why he was here…wherever 'here' was.

"So we are between time right now…" Kuja said, his voice full of wonder.

"In a sense, this place does not even exist," she explained. I found this pocket of time and managed to maintain my powers by staying here rather than passing away."

"Do you ever wonder what damage you're doing to the time stream by existing here?"

"There are bigger things to worry about. The one who kame to me spoke of the end…I fear that he will attempt to destroy everything."

"I can't see you being noble enough to stop him…"

"True, there is a katch. By defeating him, I hope to obtain the power I need to fully return to existence."

"Where you will again attempt your experiments at time," Kuja finished. "Why, then, should I help you?"

"Bekause if you do not, I will kill you." Her wings flared dangerously, and Kuja could almost see the magic flowing through her.

Kuja was not ready to end this, however. Killing her would mean that he was stuck here. He couldn't kill her until he had a way back. "Why me? Why not him?" he added, gesturing to the blond.

"A sorceress' knight is for her own protection. This is different, though…the man we will konfront is a sorcerer. Only sorcerers kan truly defeat sorcerers."

"So the two of us, then?"

"One is not enough."

"Is he that powerful?"

"You know, I hate being talked about like this," a new voice interrupted.

"Who are you?" the three asked in unison.

The man laughed maniacally. "As if I would tell you! I'm not here for introductions, I'm here on business."

"What business?" the blond growled.

A hand appeared in the air, pointing towards the blond. "It seems that you are supposed to be dead. Somebody interfered where she wasn't supposed to, and now Sephiroth is quite upset."

"Then let Sephiroth do his damn job!" the blond demanded. "Let me kill that son of a bitch!"

"Temper, temper," the voice chuckled. "Sephiroth may be powerful, but he can't walk the time stream, foolish boy!"

"Neither can you," Kuja interrupted. "You aren't entirely here. Is it because you are afraid?" He hoped Ultimecia would catch on; the idea was to goad the sorcerer into appearing in this time pocket so he could be sealed away.

The sorcerer, insane as he sounded, was smarter than Kuja gave him credit for. "I'm here enough," he sniffed, his floating hand lobbing a fireball at Kuja.

Kuja lazily batted it away with his tail. He felt his body charging as he readied for what was about to happen. The sorcerer was not powerful enough to kill them through the time stream; that was the most probable reason that Ultimecia was still alive. If he wanted them dead, he would return them to the present and kill them in person. Kuja, however, intended on being the last one standing.

"So, who gets the honor?" the voice asked playfully, like a small child taunting a jar full of crickets.

The blonde charged at the hand, but before he could make it, he was thrown across the room. Ultimecia, too, soon found herself thrown, matched by the voice's taunting.

"You're lucky I let you live this long," he laughed. "You were supposed to be my secret weapon, my path around obstacles, but you chose to use the power I crave against me, and for that you must pay."

Kuja stood helpless as Ultimecia was thrown again and again, hitting the stone walls of her castle harder each time.

"I don't know why you chose to rebel against me," he chuckled, tossing her again. Her body flew like a rag doll, and Kuja could see the life starting to leave her eyes. Perhaps he was wrong about the power of this sorcerer. "Time compression would have ended much more than I will."

Ultimecia tried to fire a spell against the sorcerer, but instead she was tossed into the air. "Enough!" Kuja demanded. If nothing else, he knew the distraction would keep Ultimecia alive for a little longer. She hadn't said all that she knew, and if she lived, he could get the rest out of her.

The hand pointed at Kuja, and suddenly he felt a painful wave of magical energy wash over him. He wasn't expected something so powerful, and he soon found himself flying as well. He landed just shy of the wall and stood quickly, ready for anything. Kuja repelled the next wave that came over him, and the hand shriveled into oblivion.

Before he could acknowledge his victory, however, he felt himself being choked. There was no magical source to be found, but another hand had appeared from behind him and was attempting to strangle him. He cast a powerful thunder spell behind it, and the voice yelped in pain as the hand shriveled away.

"Nobody hurts me," the voice growled in his ear. "You will pay for that."

Kuja felt himself being pulled away from the castle, but found himself without fear. This sorcerer was powerful, but he had never faced the true power of trance. Trance was the power that allowed Zidane and his friends win in battle; Trance was the power that turned a helpless Moogle into a terrifying Eidolon; Trance would bring this menace to his knees. His body shook with power as he charged his Ultima spell, ready for its second most devastating use.

Ultimecia stood, though how she was not sure. She had received a thorough beating from the sorcerer. He was not only powerful, but fast and unpredictable. She only knew of one other that powerful…

"It seems he made it here first…"

Ultimecia tensed up. He truly was angry; she could tell by his tone of voice. He had yet to make his physical appearance, and something about that unsettled her more than if he had been there with a gun pointed at her face. At least then she would know what to expect.

"And it seems that he made it away with Kuja…"

"Kuja baited him, sir," she tried to explain.

"I know exactly what Kuja did. Kuja did what he always has done and always will do; he tried to think, but his arrogance got in his way. If he lives, it is by the 'mercy' of that sorcerer." The last words were almost spat. There was a contempt about them, as though the two had been long standing enemies.

"You have no faith in Kuja?"

"Not on his own. Had you been able to convince him to work with us, we might have stood a chance, but now it seems that I must resort to means I had not yet considered."

Ultimecia hesitated before asking, "Sir, why did we not try to kapture him here the first time he kame?"

"An oversight," he admitted. His honesty shocked Ultimecia thoroughly. Her boss had never been one to admit mistakes. "In retrospect, it is indeed what we should've done. We should have conspired to trap him in this time bubble. Instead, he used this pocket of existence to cross into reality. Something will have to be done about him now…"

"Who the hell are you?" Seifer demanded as he stood, though pain and fear kept him from sounding confident.

The man went to respond, but Ultimecia interrupted. "Seifer is my knight," she said. "It is fine for him to know."

"Then suffice it to say that I am Ultimecia's 'boss'. All she does is done because I desire it, most especially time compression."

Seifer rubbed his aching head, part lost in thought, part hoping that the pain would fade away. It had been a long time since he had received a thrashing that thorough. "Why would you want something like that?"

"To see if it could be done," the man said simply. "Besides, Ultimecia was already dabbling in the magic of time. I was hoping the methods of time compression, if they worked, could be applied to whole worlds."

"Then you…?"

"Not as much as I'd like to be," the man admitted, clearly annoyed. "I was attempting to save three ravaged worlds. This was the only way I saw to do it."

Ultimecia snorted. "And since when have you kared for the worlds?"

The man sighed as he materialized in the chair that Ultimecia had once been sitting in. "I told you before, Ultimecia. I had a rather humbling experience. It gave me time to comprehend the grand picture. I soon saw that my world was not the only world that needed saving, and that the end of the other worlds would affect all of them adversely.

"These three worlds had been ravaged so thoroughly that their structure was near collapse. Your world was suffering from time compression, both the effects of entering it and from returning to normal. The world from which Sephiroth was wrought had recently suffered a trio of catastrophes. My own world perhaps could have survived on its own, but the disruption that Kuja had caused threatened to destroy that world, much as he destroyed Terra, his moon home."

"So you know that fruit?" Seifer asked. Ultimecia nearly slapped him. The more Seifer spoke without thinking, the more danger he was putting them in.

"Know him?" the man chuckled. "I created him!"

There was a brief moment where the only sound that could be heard was the chuckling of the man. Ultimecia decided that Seifer had learned enough, and certainly there was more important business on hand. "So what do we do now that Kuja has been kaught?"

The man thought for a moment, his expression suddenly solemn and pensive. "If we are lucky," he said, "Kuja will live. It's hard to say what the most likely outcome is; that sorcerer is too hard to predict."

"Who is he?" Seifer wondered out loud.

"Nobody truly knows," the man told him. Seifer seemed shocked; either he did not expect an answer or he thought that the man would know. "He doesn't belong here. His world no longer exists. He is one of the few remnants that remain. He, too, was working on the fusion of the worlds, though he did so without my knowledge. As I tried to mend the worlds, he sought to destroy. When his goals could not be met, he infused the shattered pieces of his world to ensure that he would survive the ordeal."

The man closed his eyes and continued to think. "Does Kuja yet know our true motive?"

Ultimecia hesitated, and the man sighed.

"You attempted to suede him from your own angle," he sighed. "He wants redemption, and we have the perfect opportunity to offer it to him, a chance for him to save a world he once tried to destroy…"

"He still has a chance, Garland…"

"The sorcerer will win, that much is a guarantee. Trance may be a powerful magic, but it is not enough against his power. Even if Kuja does manage to gain the upper hand, Sephiroth and Genesis are both ever present with him…"

"Genesis…that man that Sephiroth was saving…" Seifer thought. "Are they connected?"

"Not in any way you would conceive."

"Is Genesis a Remnant?" Seifer asked pointedly, annoyed that Garland was avoiding his question.

"No," Garland said. "Their connection is different than that of Sephiroth to his Remnants; while Sephiroth is corrupted with the cells of Jenova, Genesis is corrupted by the G-Substance, a stagnation of the Lifestream."

Garland seemed satisfied with his explanation that was intended to go over Seifer's head, but Seifer was annoyed by the explanation at all. "Then all I need to worry about is Sephiroth."

A quizzical look from Garland demanded an explanation. "A promise I made to him," Ultimecia said. "I told him that if he aided me, I would help him kill Sephiroth."

Garland smiled. A new piece to the puzzle had just been laid in his lap, and it brought sense and order to this troubling puzzle. "Perhaps it is time to make good on your deal," Garland said, the smile still plastered on his face. "Kill Sephiroth. Even attempting may prove enough of a distraction for our purposes…Go, young knight. Attract the attention of Sephiroth to give Kuja a greater chance of survival, or at least escape."

"And how the hell do I get his attention?"

Garland's smile grew wider. "Leave that to me."

Next Time on Mad World: While the crew is stuck in the crater, the quest for Eiko continues, and we realize that Odine may be more twisted than anyone imagined...