It felt good to be out of the desert. Like a bird in flight after months underground. Like the first breath of air after years of stagnation. Kuja had lost himself in his plots and experiments and machinations, and with hardly a thing to show for it but some extra gil and a few ideas without form or essence. If he hadn’t already scheduled this outing a month ago, he might not have ever emerged from his haven underground. How pitiful he’d be then. A slave to intellect. A prisoner to his own ambitions.

Ridiculous. He’d never let that happen.

It had been months since he’d last made a visit to the Crystalus Divider. Months he’d spent establishing new bases, recruiting new allies, and collecting the wealth necessary for both. Even so, he hadn’t forgotten the gate he’d once been drawn to or the way it reacted after his foray with the dragons. It was the most conspicuous landmark on this accursed planet, and was one worth his time and attention. Perhaps the inkling of power he’d felt here before would have faded by now or perhaps there would be no sign of change at all. Either way, he needed to test it. To examine it and record his findings. It was a taxing task, but one made far less time-consuming by his chosen medium of transportation.

’There.’ The word came slick on his tongue. Not in the vulgar tones of common Gaian, but in Terran -- a language more suited for psychic connections. ’Descend now. We’ll land shortly.’

His dragon gave a short huff of approval and angled her wings into a sloping decline. Kuja eyed the horizon, twirling feathers between his fingers to pass the time. Night had fallen some time before, but he rather enjoyed the mask of darkness and the silver light of the half-moon. It felt far more natural to him to slip between shadows -- as mysterious and unknowable as the starlit sky. This was a time for deception, and when the light of the sun meant nothing to him, he far preferred it to the pretenses of daylight.

His dragon landed about a quarter of a mile away from the Divider’s main compound. Crumbling ruins lined the road as he approached, but they were not what he was after. The main arch -- the one he’d seen react only months before -- was located at the very center of the campsite, crowded in idiot priests, wayward tourists, and travelers he had no reason to associate with. The place was known as a haven against the planet’s onslaught of monsters, and so his dragon kept her distance lest they set their human obstacles on guard. As it was, Kuja attracted only the usual number of eyes as he sauntered past insomniacs, patrolmen, and the easily woken. They watched him warily, but had no reason to obtrude upon his time. And so he moved on.

The air changed as Kuja approached the divider. It was charged with something. Tense. The fur on his tail bristled at the change, and he slowed his pace, eyeing the towering figure in the distance. Magic. He touched the arch when he reached it, but it didn’t react. Not like it had in those first weeks upon the release of the Dragon’s Gate. There were the same runes he’d already examined dozens of times. There was that same sense of dimensional anomaly, but there was nothing to explain the sheer energy he felt thick in the air and sharp on his tongue. He brought his own magic to his fingers and touched at the side of the arch itself. It glimmered a little. A small, green spark that traveled from his finger to the ruins’ midpoint twenty feet above him. But it did nothing else, he felt no further change.

Infuriating. His eyebrows furrowed with the cool narrowing of his eyes. Obtuse. He knew there was power here, so why couldn’t he find it?

Then he paused, hand still outstretched. 'Perhaps,' he thought. 'Perhaps it wasn’t the portal at all.' He glanced behind him, turning slowly on his heel. His eyes scanned the landscape around him, but there were too many ruins, too many crumbling walls, too many forms only a short way in the distance and the moonlight wasn’t nearly enough to examine them all. He kept his voice low as he called into the darkness, one hand raised in apprehension. ”Is someone there?”

ulla

A girl stepped from the shadows as though they’d engulfed her. She was small, poised weakly beneath her over-large cape, scarves, and bangles. She watched him apprehensively, one hand at her chest and the other clutched tightly at her side. She seemed cautious by nature. A girl rather than a woman without a strong will of her own. As she stepped forward, her hair slipped from its tie in thick coils -- emerald.

”I apologize if you were meaning to be alone sir,” she started quietly. ”I just happened to be here attempting to find something and there… is just something about this place. Something that drew me here.”

There was something about that voice that he didn't like. Something weak and tragic, and worst of all apologetic. He hadn’t shown her so much as a critical word, and already she was asking his forgiveness simply for existing. And yet, he found something almost pleasant about her presence. Something...alluring.

”You needn’t apologize.” He cast her a polite smile, slipping into his nobleman’s guise as easily as a silk robe. ”I was merely taken aback. It isn’t the most common waking hour, is it?” He swept his hand from her to the arch, looking up to it in interest as she brought attention to it. ”I, too, could hardly stay away. So much so that I came in the middle of the night.” He shook his head. ”Such is the curse of curiosity.”

But she’d moved past him now, reaching for the ruins as though to touch an old friend. As her hand finally met the stone, a spark burst from her fingertips much as it had from his own. Kuja paused, his eyes raptly on hers as she recoiled and pulled back, clutching at her own chest in fear. This girl had a power of her own, and what’s more, she couldn’t control it.

The magic. It had come from her.

”Sorry about that,” the words stumbled over themselves in a rush of nerves. ”I usually control myself better than that.”

Control. Then it was something she hadn’t mastered. Something that she could barely contain. His eyes flicked from the arch to the girl once again before he slowly shook his head.

What kind of astounding fortune had he stumbled into?

”Please, don’t apologize.” He tilted his head and fixed her with a look that he hoped carried some manner of concern. ”I’m a mage myself, you see. I know how difficult it can be to wield such power. To carry the wrath of the elements at your fingertips? It’s a heavy burden and one too often overlooked.” He brought his hand before him and willed his own magic to his fingers. It sparked a purple current between his nails, humming with latent power put to too weak a use.

”Have you studied magic or were you merely born with it?” Kuja let out a soft and almost tragic sigh. ”It ran naturally through my blood, but took countless years of practice to bring under my command. It’s a destructive force, but also a natural one.” His eyes caught on hers. Purple. How very odd. ”With the proper will, there's nothing to fear.”

ulla

”I was born with this power. In a world far away from here.” The girl’s eyes had lost their focus. Her mind was somewhere else. ”Then I was taken and turned into a mindless soldier who knew nothing but battle and war. Controlled underneath a madman’s command.” Kuja paused, eyes darting to her in interest. A mindless soldier. Controlled by a madman. There was too much to consider. Too many possibilities. What were her powers then? Could they be removed? Perhaps controlled again? But as she continued, going on about her freedom and subsequent struggle against her captors, Kuja couldn’t help the feeling of unease that twinged at his soul.

A mindless soldier controlled by a madman. It was familiar. Far too familiar in that horrible way he’d almost grown accustomed to now.

Did he know this girl?

”As for fearing my power, it is not a fear for myself. I fear what it is that I could do to people. As…” The girl trailed off, glancing over her shoulder suddenly as though they were being watched. Kuja looked there as well, but there was nothing but the two of them alone in the darkness. His eyes darted back to her again, cold with interest and the answers he quietly demanded. What was she talking about? And who was she? The questions burned within him so forcefully that it was almost painful. How did he know her?

“I will just show you why it is I know that others would fear me,” she said, and he blinked in surprise. Show him? They’d hardly spoken, and here she was apparently ready to spill her secrets to him. At first, he wasn’t quite sure what she meant to do as nothing seemed to change, but then he noticed the subtle tension of the air, a slight spark across her fingertips -- purple.

”What exactly do you mean to-?” he started, but didn’t need to finish. It happened in almost the blink of an eye.

Where there had once been a timid and unassuming girl, there now stood a monster.

She was unmistakably feminine in form, but entirely inhuman with her lavender fur, clawed limbs, and angled face. Her fur struck out at odd angles tinted with magic like an aurora. Her eyes glinted with that same magic, and Kuja winced as they met his. A trance. He was all too familiar with the sight of it. With the taste of that magic and of its effects, but there was something else that struck him then along side it. Something painful that sent his heart racing.

He’d seen this before. Where had he seen this before?

“And this is the reason why I try to stay in control.” She gave him an almost sad smile. ”Most of those here… Would recoil in fear just from my simple appearance let alone the magic I have coursing through me while I look like this.” She raised a hand and cradled a flame in her palm -- much as he had. His eyes shot from the flame to her eyes.

Shut up!

He wanted to scream it at her, to strike that familiar voice from his mind so he could finally think and perhaps even remember. But she hadn’t moved and attacking her would do nothing. So instead he touched at the bridge of his nose, took a steadying breath, and collected himself.

He was better than this. Better than lashing out in crude and unimaginative violence. He had no idea why she’d shown him this or why she thought he might react in anything but horror, but that was beside the point now. If he laid bare his hostility…

Why, then he’d never learn anything.

”My apologies. I was merely…shocked.” By something far different than her actual form, but the excuse would stand. ”Where I’m from, such powers are not…uncommon. We call it the power of trance, and my brother-” His tongue nearly soured on the word. ”Has a tranced form not entirely dissimilar from yours.”

Yes, he’d had plenty of time to become acquainted with Zidane’s trance. It seemed Kuja couldn’t toss a single mistspawn his way without the boy bursting in a ball of pink fluff. Kuja willed the darkness from his eyes before tossing back his hair and angling his chin to look at her closer.

”Have we...met before?” His eyes flicked from the flame in her palm to her yellowed eyes. His stomach churned with the a hideous sense of deja vu. ”If I may be frank, something about you strikes a chord with my hazy memories. Like most here, I’ve lost my fair share. But you…” His eyes flicked over her again. ”I wonder if this is truly our first conversation.”

ulla

She didn’t give him any meaningful answers. Useless. Completely useless. Whatever memories might have flickered in the back of Kuja’s mind were at least twice as strong as hers. Kuja touched at his temple before pushing back a handful of his hair. Whatever he’d expected from her, he wasn’t going to get it, and she wasn’t exactly going to help him in the process either.

Still, there remained that lingering question that filled him unease. ”Do you have a state like this one?” He would have scowled at that if she wasn’t watching him so closely. Did he have a trance? Oh, how we would have loved to have said yes.

”I’m afraid not,” he admitted instead. ”It isn’t quite in my range, I suppose.” Not that he needed it. A trance was nothing more than a rush of power from the soul -- one that was apparently barred from him once Garland denounced his soul as defective. How delusional. Perhaps Kuja couldn’t trance, but it hardly mattered for the results he’d wrought. Even with his trance, Zidane was nothing more than a naive idiot running about with knives and a magic he was too stupid to understand. Intelligence was far more dangerous than raw power, and charisma was the deadliest toolset of all. Kuja had irreparably altered the world by his own merits and with barely a spell needed for any of it.

Trancing was beneath him.

She shifted back in stages. First simply losing her ethereal glow before the fur receded and fell away from her in waves of light. In a moment, she was just another girl -- confused, fragile, and hopelessly weak. Gullible, he thought, and writhe with power.

Kuja didn’t need that kind of raw magic, but it was certainly useful to stumble upon potential puppets who did.

”Like dew upon the morning sun,” he repeated with a sad smile before crossing his arms and considering the moon thoughtfully. ”How tragic, and yet, I’m certain that we’ve met before. In a formless place I can hardly remember.” He shook his head as though to rid himself of the thought. In truth, nothing good had ever come from considering that era of his amnesia. ”Tell me, do you have any ambitions of your own? Or are you merely a leaf upon the wind, drawn to places of power without direction?” His eyes shifted to hers and sought to catch lavender in brilliant blue. ”I don’t believe our meeting here to be chance,” he said. ”Perhaps we could help each other.”

ulla