Welcome to Adventu, your final fantasy rp haven. adventu focuses on both canon and original characters from different worlds and timelines that have all been pulled to the world of zephon: a familiar final fantasy-styled land where all adventurers will fight, explore, and make new personal connections.
at adventu, we believe that colorful story and plots far outweigh the need for a battle system. rp should be about the writing, the fun, and the creativity. you will see that the only system on our site is the encouragement to create amazing adventures with other members. welcome to adventu... how will you arrive?
year 5, quarter 3
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”Do you hear them?” Okay, first of all, that was pretty damn rude of you! He was just about to enter the best part; something about bananas or whatever. But more importantly, the academician of ambiguous gender managed to accomplish a truly marvelous feat, a moment of private success but one that should not be discounted so readily, given the indelible nature of the feat: he got Gilgamesh to shut up.
At least, long enough to direct this idiot's focus on more immediate concerns, ”The dead. They’re rising from below.” Right on cue, the unmistakable stench of death rolls into the chamber from Hell's deepest bowels.
Chunks of rotting flesh drips from their forms as if made of liquid instead. They chatter and hiss like the animals — nay, the demons that they were — shambling, dragging, clawing, lumbering forward with purely mechanical interest. Most ominous of all were their hollow sockets that burned and smoldered red like hot coals, no doubt symptomatic of the foul magic what anchored their tortured souls to the world of the living. Zombies.
Gilgamesh remained firmly planted where he stood while his feathery friend (in the loosest possible sense of the term) wasted no time nor effort moving over to give the hulking warrior his much needed space, ”I’ve prepared my notes. Shall we witness this living legend?”
Internally, the armored swordsman wanted to jump on a chair and scream for help, much like how a common person might after seeing a spider crawl around on the floor. But he had an image to uphold, and by the powers that be, that's precisely what Gilgamesh was going to do! Just as quickly as it had filled his veins, all the fear washed away, replacing itself with an exhilarating rush of adrenaline and a delicate touch of his signature lunacy.
Ready to wreck shop, Gilgamesh throws out yet another bellowing laugh, five times louder than any other sound to have the unfortunate regret of leaving his lungs. ”Hark, thou contemptible fiends! From thy torturous fate, I shallrelease thee!!” he taunts with gratuitous emphasis, then performs a frenetic display of masterful precision and finesse using the crimson halberd in his grasp.
When his demonstration failed—unsurprisingly—to halt the advances of the walking dead, the armored buffoon merely chuckled, as if though this were all part of some half-baked plan to cook up a perfect win and the oven no longer worked the way it was supposed to. Perhaps even more concerning was the glint of certitude in Gilgamesh's empty white spaces for eyes. ”Fwahahaha! Have a taste of my forbidden technique!”
Delaying no further, Gilgamesh takes on what martial artists refer to as a 'horse stance', crouching low until his thighs hovered parallel above the temple's stone tile floors, back arched and his arms bent until the elbows touched both sides. In a burst of luminous sparks, the warrior's naginata vanishes; that was the signal to curl his right hand into the tightest fist he could muster, which Gilgamesh threw forward at the oncoming crowd of zombies with all the strength in his muscles and bones.
”Rocket Punch!”
Nothing happened, except a period of palpably awkward tension between Gilgamesh and the animated corpses paying absolutely no attention to his complete and utter idiocy. With a nervous blink, the swordsman sucks in a huge gulp of air, chest puffed up, then cocks his arm back for a second attempt and throws it forward. ”Rocket Punch!!”
Gee, there was sure a whole lot of nothing going on, wasn't there? What's the big deal here!? This isn't supposed to happen right now! Desperate for answers but unable to conjure up an explanation in the middle of all this anxiety, Gilgamesh begins throwing a flurry of jabs at the empty space in front of him, hoping for something to come of it, then finalizes his ineffectual assault with one last attempt. ”ROCKEEEET PUUUNCH!!!” Maybe shouting the attack's name out extra loud would help?
It didn't. If zombies could laugh, they would all have died a second time by now.
Visibly enraged by his own inability to recall one of his favorite attacks, Gilgamesh lets out a beastly snarl fitting of his buffoonish antics. ”If I cannot strike you down from afar, then I shall have you all taste it up close and personal!” In his signature brand of mind-numbing hypocrisy, the painted warrior summons the halberd once again and lunges forward until his enormous frame literally bowled into the cluster of zombies to great effect. Strike!
”Kwah! Haah! Fuu-ryaaah!” Redundant as all that shouting and screaming might have appeared to one who was not versed in the ancient fighting arts, Gilgamesh knew full well of the value behind projecting his own voice into each and every blow. This would increase his striking power, render his attacks that much deadlier, and this would reveal itself perfectly as the warrior's spear sliced, carved, stabbed, ripped and tore its way through the undead legions without any difficulty, scattering limbs in every direction and making heads roll in more than just the figurative sense.
Not that it would be of any consolation for the swordsman's ward, though. It was already embarrassing enough to suffer from performance issues, but Gilgamesh was just downright impotent by comparison.
At least he doesn't have any children...
Kuja ● IF HE DID, THEY'D PROBABLY BE SMARTER, LOL ● 888 words
MADE BY MIZO
Final Fantasy IX
27
YEARS
Agendered
Open
Pansexual
333 POSTS
Fin
Peace is but a shadow of death, desperate to forget its painful past.
One night when the twin moons of Gaia still hung high in the sky and the city of Alexandria had gone quiet, Queen Brahne had tried to seduce him.
Kuja hadn’t known quite known what to expect when he’d received the summons so late in the night. An echo had suspected. The louder voice of denial had shut it down. For his part, he’d kept his full composure once he’d found himself alone in a room covered in silks with a queen who was distressingly not. It had been the ultimate test of his charisma that he’d escaped untouched and unexecuted. Still, he would never strike that image from his memory -- the folds of mottled flesh, those piggy eyes bright with hunger, the smell of sour meat...
This was the only scale on which Kuja could measure his current pain.
To say that the buffoon’s performance was a disaster would have been an understatement. Normally Kuja would have taken pleasure in such impressive feats of failure, but the would-be knight was incapable of silence and simply refused to die. His laugh scraped against Kuja’s ears. His sickening hubris mocked fate itself. And oh, his fake affects! He spoke as though in some play, but he didn’t do it well. No, it was a mockery to the very concept of theater. Right down to his ’Rocket Punch.’
The timing was like something out of a comedy. The building over-confidence, the declaration of intent, and then utter defeat. Kuja wanted to laugh. In fact, he did quietly behind the back of his hand, but it had almost become like a kind of game. How long could Kuja keep the cracks from his mask? How long until he killed him?
Kuja simply stood by and watched and waited and winced as the imbecile decided to bellow his words like a cannon shot. All the while, the undead crept ever closer with their grasping, greedy hands. Kuja’s lips curled behind his hand as he anticipated the fall. How long would his armor withstand their blows? How long until he was torn apart into wailing, miserable pieces?
Except he wasn’t torn apart. Instead, he finally unsheathed his halberd and threw himself into the fray. Kuja felt his laughter die. The idiot had survived. Kuja closed his eyes and took a long breath that smelled of mold and corpse rot.
If the moron could escort him unscathed, it would be worth it. He would keep his composure as a matter of pride.
”Lovely.” Kuja's eyes landed on a disembodied head as it rolled to a stop at his feet. It gaped at him with a sagging jaw.
”Well, you’ve certainly proven yourself.” Kuja stifled a scowl as he touched at his cheek. ”I doubt we’ll have any trouble.”
From the undead that was. He suspected the so-called Mighty Gilgamesh would meet his own trouble in spades.
Kuja pushed his hair over his shoulder. ”Shall we?”
They met no further resistance as they continued through the upper halls -- Gilgamesh in front and Kuja offering direction from behind. Perhaps some prior adventurers had cleared the temple as they’d looted it? Regardless, Kuja had no doubts that the catacombs had gone untouched. His human shield would have ample opportunity to prove himself useful.
In time, Kuja brought them to an innocuous door on the temple’s west wing. It was plain and sturdy and almost certainly locked. Kuja looked it over with a mild interest. ”The archives are below,” he said. ”You’ll find your treasure there.”
"Taste steel, wicked one!" A magnificent vaulting drop would terminate the final zombie's short tenure as its latest victim of immortal Gilgamesh the Matchless; wandering swordsman extraordinaire; collector of rare and priceless artifacts from across the furthest reaches of time and space themselves; undefeated master of the gratuitous-expository-bombastic-sesquipedalian-inner-monologue-technique™!
A visually alarming amount of moldy flesh and tattered clothes are pressed into the ground with a distressing splat by the armored warrior's sheer body weight, and like a record player stuck on skip, he jolts right into another irritating laugh. "Hark, for I hath triumphed over these inscrutably under-leveled scrubs!" Gilgamesh bowed several times, basking in all that sweet, sweet, glorious nothing. Even his 'feathery friend' (that's strike two, Gilgamesh) was justified in shrugging away the sheer stupidity that were his delusions of grandeur.
”Shall we?” The treasure hunter had his daydreams ruined by the miserable sting of bitter reality when the gynandromorphic figure in purple reminded Gilgamesh to follow his end of the bargain with a simple hint. It takes the bumbling man in red a while to parse that he needed to follow the scholar's directions and press on, giving him incentive to leave the pile of freshly-re-killed dead bodies to stay dead, hopefully forever this time.
As the duo pressed further into the winding passages, Metaia Temple's disarray became even more apparent: vines had begun to penetrate the walls of clay and tangle deep into the structure, some of which bore gorgeous velvet flowers of a most luxurious scarlet gradient. Side rooms lay empty and stripped of their contents, ransacked by other scavengers no doubt.
But Gilgamesh has been around the block, you see! Despite having the intellect of a boiled potato with irreversible brain damage, the self-professed 'Sword-seeker' took pride in his capacity to pull off the occasional stroke of good luck whenever he was desperate enough to lower his standards even further than they already were -- and it just so happens that the two of them were now faced with a door of strictly mundane character. ”The archives are below. You'll find your treasure there.”
"Hmm, if you say so..." Like the gullible ass he was, Gilgamesh took clumsy steps to reach the iron handle, giving the portal a healthy push. Instead of a room full of gold and weapons -- as he had expected -- a long, narrow corridor exuding an unmistakably claustrophobic aura peered back at the pair of explorers. "Something about this feels weirdly familiar, but I can't wrap my mind around why that may be..."
Gilgamesh took a nervous glance down the hall, which looked totally safe for all intents and purposes, but his instincts sensed something fishy about this part. Then, he glares with squinted blank eyes, scowling heavier than usual.
A revelation strikes the warrior like a bolt of lightning, and he gasps from the shock. "Wait, I've seen this before!" His blissful grin is the glowing image of terminal mental deficiency. "A most classic trap, this one is! I've got just the thing."
With a whirling scarlet flourish of his naginata, Gilgamesh lifts his arm into a ready posture and starts taking aim at the very end of the long hall that lay before him, putting all of his concentration into directing his energy into launching the weapon as hard as he can.
"Shaaa!" His body lurches into a powerful throw which results in Gilgamesh letting the weapon sail from his white sausage fingers as though he were a living bow and arrow, sending it piercing the space with speed so forceful, the pressure created from the sheer velocity at which his blade carved into the wind caused a hidden mechanism to activate within the temple walls the moment its pointed end digs itself into the wall with a distinctive thunk.
The solemn atmosphere of Metaia Temple is momentarily disrupted by the sudden but visually impressive activation of an incredible guillotine trap built into the crevices inlaid between the stone walls in evenly spaced increments. Each blade was its own work of art, etched with ornate carvings and painfully crafted frescoes of gruesome apocryphal scenes depicting the affliction of divine judgement upon those who sought to defile these hallowed grounds.
Ever ignorant to the finer things in life, or the deeper mysteries of the universe for that matter, Gilgamesh chuckled in his success. "What trifle! I half expected a boulder to come barreling down after us." Wait, that comes after he gets the treasure and does the clever statue swap thing. Duh. Here's hoping this stranger isn't looking to keep from handing him back the whip when the floor collapses.
Kuja ● FORESHADOWING, POP CULTURE STYLE ● 754 words
MADE BY MIZO
Final Fantasy IX
27
YEARS
Agendered
Open
Pansexual
333 POSTS
Fin
Peace is but a shadow of death, desperate to forget its painful past.
Kuja waited for the idiot to grasp a basic understanding of the door. Then he waited as he seized the handle, shoved it open, and stood vaguely baffled at the edge of the descending corridor. ’Weirdly familiar?’ Had he never seen stairs before?
His white eyes narrowed. Rusted cogs creaked behind them. For a long moment, it looked like Gilgamesh was on the verge of his first ever thought before he straightened with a jerk, eyes wide. Kuja stared back at him.
”A trap?” His eyes drifted from the swordsman to the hallway. It was as mundane as an abandoned temple could prove itself. There was no magic here -- at least no more than any other forsaken corner of this tomb -- and there was nothing out of place. Kuja had explored the place himself after all, and the monks hadn’t been fond of traps.
”The dead must have light feet,” he said instead, hand at his turned lips. Even if something was here, wouldn’t the monsters have tripped it by now? Still, the idiot had a thick skull and defective ears. He kept about his show of performative competence, waving his blade about before taking aim and hurling it down the hallway like a javelin.
Its aim was true -- its course unwavering. It flew as steady as an arrow from his hand, and for a moment, even Kuja felt the faintest faux shadow of respect before it pierced the opposite wall and shuddered to a stop. How anticlimact-
There was a click and then the dropping whoosh of metal. A thin, hallway sized blade dropped from the ceiling and crunched into the proceeding floor. Kuja stared at it.
”What.”
The blade in front of him was ancient and reverently carved. It prosthelytized visions of ruin and warfare, gods and sacrifices, and finally the sickeningly familiar face of the Lich. Kuja didn’t know how the traps had stayed inactive for so long. He didn’t know how or why the monks had installed them into this hallway in particular, and he didn’t know how the idiot had known to check for them. Pacified, they had been nearly undetectable. Kuja’s eyes flit from the blades to his too-satisfied tormentor.
’I half expected a boulder to come barreling down after us!’
”A boulder.” Kuja stared at him uncomprehendingly before laughter rose to his lips. He ran a hand through the front of his hair, tilted back his head, and laughed. He couldn’t keep it contained any longer. This was absurd. This was impossible. This was…
”A comedy! This is a comedy!” Kuja lowered his hand, and his laughter ceased. Yes, that was all this was. Just another play written by another hack of a playwright set to place them at odds. He as the villain would be punished by the antics of his comic relief. The puns, the hubris, the eccentricity. How many times had he seen it on the stage? It was a character as classic as theater itself. The buffoon. The fool.
A comedy. All things considered equal, Kuja far preferred his own tragic end.
”After you.” His lips still shadowed with his laughter. He felt it catch hysterically in his throat. ”The curtain rises, and we have our roles to play.”
Diamonds are a kind of precious mineral formed through a combination of immense pressure and blistering heat across the stretch of hundreds of years, perhaps even thousands. Worthless by themselves, it is when they are cut and polished with a masterful touch that their inner beauty is permitted to shine.
But even a gemstone so flawless and sparkling as the androgynous 'scholar' could not withstand the all-consuming mercurial force of nature that was Gilgamesh; he was a black hole personified, a singularity burned into the tapestry of common sense itself, one capable of inflicting physical damage against a person's comprehension of what it meant to be truly intelligent.
The sheer ribaldry of it all proved too much for the clumsy idiot's charge. He lets forth a harried laughter that positively dripped with a kind of anguish, the kind felt only by clowns and prisoners. ”A comedy! This is a comedy!” Even these words carried a succinct sadness to them. After all, the feathery-haired fellow fancied himself a purveyor of the theater arts, and this was the moment he realized his bumbling, nonsensical excuse for a protector had no intentions of ever following the script as it was written.
Never the type to read a room before responding accordingly, Gilgamesh swiftly assumed that his companion by circumstance had an appreciation for the absurd -- what kind of monks and priests set up traps in a temple, anyway? -- and chortled like an obese farm hog. "Yes, it most certainly is one, is it not?" His commentary is both pointed and poignant in its verbal execution, a clear demonstration of the utter confusion Gilgamesh had the potential of causing for anyone with higher brain functions. "To think the dead can outfox the clever Gilgamesh! Hah!" Case in point.
”After you. The curtains rise, and we have our roles to play.” Yes, yes, there were ruins to raid and mountains of swag just waiting to be swiped! It was all the motivation Gilgamesh would ever need to continue acting the part of a hired bodyguard for this self-opinionated excuse of a thespian.
Carefully, the hulking warrior pushes his colorful armored form past the guillotine that now lay inert and useless, a mere decoration to be admired and studied. Mere moments later, he would clasp his fingers around his halberd and yanked the weapon out from the rather impressive wound its blade created within the temple's ancient stone walls. Gilgamesh whistles, satisfied with the results. "If only Enkidu could see this for himself!" Perhaps even more troubling than his unpredictability, was the idea that Gilgamesh actually had friends.
How long would this farce be permitted to last?
Kuja ● IT WOULD SEEM DIAMOND IS NOT, IN FACT, UNBREAKABLE ● 443 words
MADE BY MIZO
Final Fantasy IX
27
YEARS
Agendered
Open
Pansexual
333 POSTS
Fin
Peace is but a shadow of death, desperate to forget its painful past.
Kuja had almost grown used to the idiocy. Had it not taken him months to stop wincing at the Meltigemini’s insistence on speaking in anastrophe? The jesters had been likewise incompetent though they’d been aware of it at least. Self-aware and submissive -- two traits that went a long way for Kuja’s patience. Traits that this moron lacked.
Still, he seemed the type to stumble over victory out of sheer existential spite. Kuja would do best to avoid violence for now.
He started down the hall without waiting. The walls were layered with cobwebs. His steps scattered clouds of dust. This place had been abandoned long before the catastrophe that took the upper floors. It was a place that few had reason to visit, and to which even fewer were granted the honor. Now that privilege belonged only to monsters and the dead.
In the end, Kuja had seized what had been unrightfully denied him. Such an honor indeed.
He glanced within cracked doors and opened archways. There were empty studies. Archives littered with ripped scrolls and scattered pages. These halls were untouched by looters (why else would the traps still be in place?) but the dead had taken their toll. Their stumbling feet knew nothing but destruction.
Kuja paused. A door stood open. Inside there was a flickering light. Kuja’s brow furrowed faintly as he gave the door a careful push. Inside was another office, but this one was different. The shelves were still stocked. The quills were untouched, and the air reeked of magic.
Kuja peered around the edge to see a ghoul charred and rotting on the ground. Around it were markings that glowed in ethereal blue. Kuja glanced from the monster to the sigils and then to the scrolls beyond. Mounted behind the desk was a gleaming golden sword. Kuja’s eyes pricked with caution.
”There’s magic here,” he said. ”Don’t try anything.”
The oxygen of this place had a dry, dusty flavor to it. Cobwebs stretched above the halls, long since abandoned by the spiders that once occupied them, and in much the same hurried fashion that tore the rest of the temple interior asunder. It was difficult for Gilgamesh to appreciate the subtle quietude, since he had the attention span of a gnat with severe brain damage, but the thought of discovering a holy relic tucked away within these walls kept him from reneging on his agreement with the effeminate-looking scholar at his side.
Lagging behind his charge, the eccentric swordsman took a moment to study the person's features, unsure of the practicality behind wearing such flimsy silken garments. The only ones who garbed themselves like this were either practitioners of the magical arts, or they were a part of the world's oldest profession. Gilgamesh torqued a painted brow; the erudite certainly looked the provocative sort...
Here's hoping there would be no funny business, the wanderer thought, pursing his lips into a bemused frown.
When the feathery fellow ceased all forward movement, Gilgamesh also paused, squinting his vacuous eyes to get a better look at the contents of the room that lie before the pair. Lacking sensibility, he hadn't thought of opening the grand doors that sat slightly ajar until his ward took the initiative and opened them wide, causing the great slabs to swing open with a low groan.
A wave of curiosity fell over the giant warrior's armored body upon being greeted by a majestic archive of scrolls and books, seemingly undisturbed and left alone in spite of the chaos that befell Metaia Temple proper. That in itself was rather unusual, considering the fact that Gilgamesh couldn't read, but such details were trivial compared to the lingering arcane static that resonated within the dank and musty air. ”There's magic here. Don't try anything.”
”Pfft, magic, schmagic. I've danced with far clumsier foes!” coolly boasted Gilgamesh, completely unaware of the irony behind his attempt at bravado. Once he saw the mystic sigils etched into the ancient bricks, he chuffed out another laugh, ”It'll take more than some fancy runes and festering flesh to—” His voice trails into a dopey stammer at the unmistakable sight of a resplendent golden sword hanging mere meters away, eyes and heart both filled with an avarice that was all too familiar.
It's here! Of all the places for it to be stashed away, and here it was! That radiant glow, that elaborate scrollwork etched into its fuller, that magnificent guard and pommel which evoked all the passions of the world into a single, peerless, artistic shape! Even a complete novice to the craft of smithery had no room to err in recognizing this single, perfect weapon! Gilgamesh reached for the artifact of legend with outstretched hands like an infant babe yearning for candy, unable to contain the excitement within his chest.
It was too late. Greed had taken its hold, and not even the cautious scholar would be able to quell his bumbling bodyguard's primitive impulses. Against all rationality and common sense, Gilgamesh charged into the magic-infused archives, leaped over the desk with the grace of an acrobat, and lifted the glittering blade from its mount so that he might hoist it on high.
”Blessed be the Gods! Excalibur is mine at last!!!”
Gilgamesh, you utter fucking moron. What have you done?
Kuja ● YOU HAD ONE JOB, GILGAMESH, JUST THE ONE ● 567 words
MADE BY MIZO
Final Fantasy IX
27
YEARS
Agendered
Open
Pansexual
333 POSTS
Fin
Peace is but a shadow of death, desperate to forget its painful past.
Kuja should have expected what came next. He supposed he did, really, but that didn’t mean the buffoon’s reaction didn’t startle him. He was like a child to a toy. A particularly excitable child towards a toy of legend. He pushed past Kuja like a barrelling bull, and Kuja staggered with the weight. He was practically thrown into the room, forced to throw out his arms to keep his balance. He felt his tail swish its assistance and then beat harder with his own agitation.
The moron! If he murdered him now then no one would ever have to know. They were alone and vulnerable and-
The air cracked. Kuja’s eyes widened. Then electricity struck him like cold water.
He cried out, teeth grit against the magic. He saw it dancing before him in flashing patterns like broken glass. The sigils pulsed an ethereal blue. They were powered beyond a single spell. How long would the magic last? Kuja’s eyes darted towards the door. The magic ended there -- exactly at the border of where he’d been standing. And now he’d been thrown into the very trap he’d taken such caution against.
A comedy. If karma existed then this was his punishment.
”You idiot!” Kuja hissed the words between his teeth as he weaved his own magic around him. 'Shell,' but there was only so much good that protection could do him against magic already in motion. His eyes landed furiously on the bumbling buffoon.
How he’d like to see him fry. Brought to slaughter of his own volition! Such satisfaction for such terrible foreshadowing! But no. If the swordsman died then Kuja’s life would end all the same.
He would never let that happen.
Kuja spun his magic to his hand, gathering it until it sparkled with blue-violet light. His eyes set on the sigil. If it wanted magic, he would return every blow in turn.
He cast in rapidfire succession. ”Reflect.” The lightning glinted against him, shooting out brighter than ever. ”Dispel.” The sigil glittered as some shadow of magic dispersed around it. ”Silence.”
Finally it ended. The sigils faded back to quiet stone, the last of the spell crackled into static, and Kuja grasped at his chest, leaning forward and breathing hard. His eyes burned as they landed on the swordsman.
He could not fully express the depths of his hatred.
Cackling like the witless maniac he was, Gilgamesh had completely failed to take his companion's scrutiny with a serious lean, and he wound up paying the price for the swordsman's all-encompassing insanity. A flurry of arcane lightning sprouts from the temple floors and strikes the androgynous academician with a terrible vengeance, inciting this same wrath in equal measure. ”You idiot!”
Understandably concerned for his ward's safety, yet entirely clueless as to why this reaction was properly justified in this situation, Gilgamesh yelped with panic, intent on fixing this mistake with his newly acquired treasure of myth. Before he could even so much as twitch his fingers, however, the scholar quickly revealed a proficiency in the sorcerous arts that left the swordsman in red speechless, casting a retinue of spells in swift succession against the mystical trap until the last of its power faded from existence.
Then, there was that look he gave. Such fire, such visible rage, how it festered like a virulent cancer behind those eyes... It was potent enough to disarm the warrior, figuratively speaking; if such expressions could kill, then Gilgamesh certainly would have died a thousand times over, with plenty of fury to spare.
Alas, even this mighty mage could not fully penetrate the impregnable wall of incalculable stupidity that was Gilgamesh, who produced yet another disgusting laugh that echoed throughout the library with grating discord. ”What resplendence! Color me impressed, I've never seen such a marvelous talent for magic!” he complimented the fellow, shouldering Excalibur as though he were a child proudly displaying a trophy earned simply for participating.
As soon as he issued the statement, a thought crossed the oaf's clumsy, addled mind. ”Come to think about it,” Gilgamesh pondered aloud, grimacing contemplatively, trying to summon the mental acumen he needed to articulate his reflections more clearly, ”this seemed far too easy.” No shit, Sherlock. ”You appear quite accomplished for a practitioner of the mystical arts. My role here seems rather redundant, considering how swift your reactions were.”
While it could have easily been chalked up as a matter of common sense, Gilgamesh nevertheless had a point; his experience as a fighter was undoubtedly the real deal, even if they were about as consistent as a bowl of liquidized tofu, and he could recognize a seasoned veteran from a mile away, regardless of what sort of combat they happened to specialize in. Given the ease at which the delicate-looking person had tackled the issue, it made the collector begin to wonder about the underlying reasons behind why he was hired in the first place.
But he had Excalibur, at least! That was the true prize here.
Kuja ● GILGAMESH, YOU'RE AN IDIOT SANDWICH ● 442 words
MADE BY MIZO
Final Fantasy IX
27
YEARS
Agendered
Open
Pansexual
333 POSTS
Fin
Peace is but a shadow of death, desperate to forget its painful past.
Gilgamesh lived. In fact, he seemed entirely unharmed by the ordeal. Why magical protections for a sword would not extend to the sword itself was entirely beyond him, but Kuja could have laughed at the turn of events. Of course it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t because Gilgamesh was a creature riding on nothing but an inexplicable wave of good fortune. His skills, work, and intellect meant absolutely nothing.
As did Kuja’s in the face of it. Oh how he loathed him.
A thought crossed the madman’s eye. A look of which Kuja hadn’t seen yet and likely wouldn’t see again. Logical reasoning. My but Kuja had thought him entirely deficient of it. And it had only taken him within the hour.
’You appear quite accomplished for a practitioner of the mystical arts. My role here seems rather redundant, considering how swift your reactions were.’
Only now did he question it? Had not a single suspicion crossed his mind? Had he not stopped for a single breath to consider the ramifications of Kuja’s presence? A gullibility that would usually bring Kuja satisfaction was nothing less than sad in its resolution. Not that Kuja pitied it. He quite thought that it needed to be put out of its misery.
”A brilliant observation.” Kuja made no effort to hide his contempt. Whatever should come of it, he hardly cared. If they parted ways then they parted ways. And if they fought to death than even better. ”The temple rests in the depths of a wasteland. How did you think I made it this far?” He laughed. ”Of course I could do it myself, but you have a sword and I’d rather preserve my magic than waste it on zombies. You have your precious plaything. If you would return the favor, I’ll give you one command. Watch the door. Even you couldn’t fail that.”
But he could. Oh he most certainly could. Kuja had no expectations of him whatsoever. Gilgamesh existed on a separate planet from the very concept of competence.
Kuja trailed to the shelves of scrolls and archives. He had little hope of finding the temple’s secrets so easily, but he had to start somewhere and here was as fine a place as any. He pulled a book from its dusty alcove and opened it, scanning over the contents with a careless eye.
Kuja would achieve his goals the same as he always had -- by forging a path inch by clawing inch. Luck had nothing to do with his success, and he wouldn’t have it anyway. There was only himself, his will, and his own ambition. He and that idiot were nothing alike.
