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
Welcome one and all to our beautiful new skin! This marks the visual era of Adventu 4.0, our 4th and by far best design we've had. 3.0 suited our needs for a very long time, but as things are evolving around the site (and all for the better thanks to all of you), it was time for a new, sleek change. The Resource Site celebrity Pharaoh Leep was the amazing mastermind behind this with minor collaborations from your resident moogle. It's one-of-a-kind and suited specifically for Adventu. Click the image for a super easy new skin guide for a visual tour!
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Ever since the defeat of Kuja and Necron, Amarant simply couldn't get Zidane out of his mind. He had thought that he had started to understand that monkey, the polar-opposite of himself that would put everything that he was and more on the line in order to cater to others. He had thought his mind had begun to wrap around the worldview of Zidane, that he truly had a point when it came to doing things his way... But then Amarant discovered Kuja was still alive... and with that revelation, the red-headed-man was thrown right back into confusion. Did Zidane save him? He completely bailed on the rest of them to pursue Kuja into the Lifa-Tree, one of two who truly knew what had gone on down there. What a fool Zidane was, if this was the case. Amarant himself couldn't care less about the silver genome, just another obstacle with a bigger mouth and magic-reserve than most. However... To Zidane, he was supposed to be something more, right? He was supposed to be his antithesis, as far as Amarant was concerned, another bratty, over-confident monkey who thought himself better than everyone else... and would destroy everything to prove it. He couldn't begin to imagine what would be going through that golden monkey's mind to allow Kuja to live...
...But maybe Kuja himself would.
For all his manipulative tactics, Kuja wasn't exactly the hardest man in the world to track. His... flamboyant appearance made it easy to keep an eye on from a distance and he didn't exactly go out of his way to cover his movements. Amarant bounty-hunting skills came in handy here, able to trace... and approximate Kuja's movements... even allow him to make a shallow guess towards his intent! Magical artifacts seemed to be this monkey's goal, each of a particular theme and legend... at least as far as the red-headed-man could see. Old dolls filled with souls, statues of a more abstract nature, each of a different medium but possessing a similar style of carving...
For once, Amarant wasn't here to pick a fight. After all, he had fought Kuja enough times to know that even if he wanted one, he would lose. This was a genome with power beyond almost every creature on Gaia, after all. No, this time, he wanted information, information only the silver-haired wizard could provide. For all his annoying mannerisms, his over-the-top nature and grandiose attempts at appearing respectable, he was somewhat intelligent... or at the very least, possessed knowledge the warrior desired.
----------------------------------
Within a ruin, deep within the core of the woods, Amarant would wait. The center of the ruins contained a small alter in the center, cracked and coated with vines, dried and vital leaves curling along the floor around them, the lighting minimal as the folliage outside blocked out the sun, Amarant lay in wait, leaned against a wall with his arms folded across his chest. In his large hand, the Bandit King held a seemingly unremarkable amulet, one with various carvings depicting circles, cycles and so-on etched into its face. A fragile thing, old and decrepit clay upon raggedy rope... or at least, that's what one would think from a distance. Holding it in his hand, Amarant could feel the raw power inside of this object, the sheer, barely contained magical might of it attempting to worm its way into his mind. It commanded Amarant wear it, DEMAND that its desires be fulfilled... Noisy... but not at all compelling. Amarant had a feeling Kuja would show up here sooner or later to collect this "prize". Thievery was as much in Kuja's blood as much as Zidane's, he mused.
Final Fantasy IX
27
YEARS
Agendered
Open
Pansexual
333 POSTS
Fin
Peace is but a shadow of death, desperate to forget its painful past.
If he had to choose one word to describe the Wanderwood, it would be “enchanting.” It had a certain peace to it, walking along its bubbling brooks and cascades of flowering ivy. It was the kind of place that seemed that nothing ill might ever touch its borders -- a haven for those of sound mind and pure heart.
Kuja hated it.
He hated every softened step into its spring grass. He hated the fairy lights that hung about the trees in colorful wisps. He hated the quiet glens and the endless bird song and the persistent smell of dew. More than anything, however, he hated that he’d had to come here in the first place.
It had been exhausting work tracking down ancient artifacts and legends lost to all but ruins and half-disintegrated scrolls of parchment. He’d started at the Metaia Temple -- once a scholar’s haven and now a scholar’s tomb. The quest and the company had nearly broken him, but it had proven useful in its own way. He’d found a list of lost shrines among the outer reaches of the country. And now he was the most useless of scavenger hunts.
Kuja slowed to a stop, touching at his temple. He should have reached the shrine by now. There was supposedly some artifact or another buried deep within the forest’s heart. He’d felt its magic as soon as he’d set foot here, and it hadn’t been hard to track. Still, with nearly an hour behind him, he felt no closer than he’d started. And wasn’t that rock familiar…?
Kuja tilted back his head and laughed. ”I’ve been going in circles.” Hot rage clenched his throat, and he scowled, throwing his hand aside. ”How? I’ve followed it exactly! How could it-?”
”Kupopo!”
Kuja stopped and glanced behind him. He caught pink fur and a red pom-pom. He turned to face it, fingers clenched. ”Can I help you?”
It blinked back at him stupidly. ”Kupo?”
”Yes. Kupo. Now what do you want?”
It bobbed in place, wings fluttering as it squeaked. Kuja closed his eyes and counted to ten. A moogle. Of course he’d found a moogle. Where weren’t they, really?
He opened his eyes, and the moogle was right in front of him, head tilted with its paw at its cheek. ”Kupopo?”
Kuja turned away. It bobbed around him, squeaking its exclamations until it was back in his face. ”Kupo!”
”Could you not?” Kuja swatted at the thing, batting it away as he walked past, trying to think. He touched his bottom lip. If he was going in circles then what did that mean? He wasn’t mistaken about the artifact’s magical signature. How could it have led him astray?
”Kupopo…” The thing sounded like a dejected puppy. Good. Maybe now it would leave him alo-
The magic shifted. Kuja looked up in time to see the moogle fluttering away through the trees. It had opened something. Some kind of barrier, perhaps? He raised a hand. ”Wait!”
The moogle paused, hovering where it stood. Kuja cleared his expression. ”I’m lost,” he said. ”Perhaps you could be of some hel-?”
The moogle gave an ecstatic ”Kupo!” and bulleted towards him so fast that Kuja struggled not to take a step back. It was in his face. It smelled offensive.
”The Shrine of the Sun,” he said. ”Do you know where it is?”
It looked confused. He saw a single thought churn through its rusted mind and then shudder to a stop.
”An old ruin.” He said, pronunciating to the point of farce. ”It would be centuries old. There’s magic inside it. Some kind of artifact?” Nothing. His eye twitched. ”Stone with a sun on it.”
There was a moment’s pause and then the moogle jumped into the air with an excitable squeak. It streaked towards the forest, bobbing up and down in time with its wing beats. Kuja blinked and then followed.
Putting his faith in the competence of a moogle? He really had lost all hope, hadn’t he?
A short and irritable journey later, and the moogle brought him to a cheerful glen. As Kuja emerged from the trees, the moogle stopped and turned to look back at him expectantly. ”Kupopo!”
Kuja passed it wordlessly, taking in the sight. To one side, a shimmering waterfall. On the other, a patch of wildflowers, and in the center of it all was a shrine reaching up towards the sun in a pointed spire. Kuja smirked. Well, it seemed the moogle had been good for something after all.
”At the heart of mage’s sleep
A ray of light from spirits deep
The sun that glints upon the spire
Betrays itself and magic’s fire.”
Kuja approached it carefully, eyes locked on the ruin before him. There at its front face was the faded insignia of the sun. Below it, crumbling columns supporting an ivy-laden staircase. He stepped lightly, hand ready to deal with any traps its guardian might have set. He had experience with ancient shrines, after all. None of them pleasant.
The stairs led to a shadowed hall, diminished by the forces of nature and time. At its end was an altar inset below the mosaic of some nondescript goddess. He started towards the altar, reached about halfway, then stopped.
”Empty?”
He hurried forward, all caution forgotten. Sure enough, what had once been the resting place of some great treasure was now only a forgotten and dusty dais. He stared at it without comprehension. ”It should be here. Why isn’t it-?”
A shadowed form caught his eye. He swiveled towards it, eyes narrowed. A dark figure supporting the wall, arms crossed. It didn’t look human in proportion, exactly, but it was close enough. Kuja gave a short, chiming laugh and tilted his head, finger at his lips.
”I believe you have something of mine,” he said. Something he would take by force.
How predictable Kuja was, following Amarant's predictions as faithfully the bandit had followed him. The silver-haired Genome would enter the chamber that had once housed the amulet, the red-headed man watching with muted amusement as the creature bore witness to, what seemed to be, a failure of his own tracking abilities. Confusion, frustration, these emotions befitting of a gentleman of his caliber flashing across his face and infected his voice. For all the facades of pride, ability and confidence Kuja liked to portray, it seemed that this monkey was just the same as any other man-child with a power complex: Easily enraged at the very thought of his own incompetence. Amarant himself had came here on a bet, a whim, a gamble on what he knew (what little that may be) of Kuja's nature. He had been prepared to lose that bet, restart his search should his target fail to arrive... hell, even if his target's OWN target hadn't been where it was supposed to. The Bandit King knew from experience that sometimes, not matter how hard you train, luck just doesn't ally with you, that luck doesn't always favor the prepared...
...But Kuja...?
It was a brief, perhaps even shallow insight into the creature that hid beneath the serene, angelic features of the genome, but it was enough for Amarant's concern to fade away as he did into the shadow. This being wasn't some all-powerful genius, a creature of true composure and patience willing to wait any amount of time, to mount over any obstacle to get what he needed. One small problem was enough for his composure to crack, for his nobility to melt off him and reveal the petulance underneath. ...It was hard to believe that Zidane needed Amarant's help in defeating this guy... that AMARANT HIMSELF needed help from him and his friends in order to put Kuja in his place. For the briefest of moments, all the cards had rested in Kuja's hand, allowing him to wear his mask and dance his dance without significant disruption. It took Kuja falling into an existential collapse for his facade to shatter... Now all it took was an inconvenience.
"Hmph."
Amarant wasn't dealing with a harbinger of destruction. Not really. No, Kuja was a child with super-powers... And man did Amarant hate kids.
It seemed that the Bandit's grunt had finally drawn the attention of the self-aggrandized genome, that flash of surprise seeming to AMPLIFY as he whirled to face the noise... only for his hungry little eyes to fall upon the object he sought... held in Amarant's palm. In an instant, Kuja's confidence would come flooding back, his mask slipping firmly into place. No, he couldn't let his image slip for a second, could he...? After all, what would he do if the truth got out...? Ever so rooted in licking his own boots, Kuja would declare with the UTMOST ENTITLEMENT that the bandit-king held something of his... and in response, Amarant's massive fingers would DIG into the material, threatening to crush it to dust with a mere twitch! He wasn't taking chances. As much as Kuja loved the witty repartee, trading barbs as if it meant something, Amarant didn't play that way. With a simple gesture, the Red-headed man would make his intentions known... and hopefully, Kuja didn't have his head so far up his own barely-fitting pants that he'd be able to understand what it was.
"I have some questions." Amarant rumbled softly, gesturing absently with the amulet he held almost carelessly swinging it about in an effort to emphasize his position. "...And you're gonna answer them."
Final Fantasy IX
27
YEARS
Agendered
Open
Pansexual
333 POSTS
Fin
Peace is but a shadow of death, desperate to forget its painful past.
The thief grunted, finally stepping from the shadows. What emerged was a hideous, hulking thing that soured Kuja’s lips in disgust. It was slouched over, shoulders hunched, muscles bulging. Its head looked almost misshapen under the weight of an absurd mass of what he could only assume to be hair. It was his skin that caught Kuja’s disdainful eye, however. Blue. It carried too many nauseating memories. He wondered if this creature was the same race as Queen Brahne.
”Do I know you?” Kuja tilted his head to the side, eyebrows raised. He did know him, didn’t he? That wasn’t a face that he would forget, after all. After a moment, the connection clicked and he laughed softly behind his hand. ”Oh, you again. Zidane’s boorish friend. Ah, but my mistake. You’re not really friends, are you?”
The silent ogre had already made that plainly clear. Why, oh why, do you pick the worst of company, Zidane?
The man (if he could be called that) raised his hand revealing the object of Kuja’s search. The Amulet of Dawn. It was an ancient thing carved from onyx and jade. Kuja could sense the power from it and see the inscriptions set within. He glanced to it but made no other expression. The ogre thought to threaten him. Hilarious.
”I have some questions,” the man said. He swung the amulet around, clutching it tightly in his club-like hand. ”And you’re gonna answer them.”
”You’re not after revenge?” Kuja’s eyebrow raised. It seemed absurd, really. Why else would he have tracked him so far for so little? He’d expected some trite speech about protecting the innocent, quelling evil, and all that nonsense. Apparently he’d been mistaken.
”Why Zidane collected you, I’ll never understand.” He flipped his hair out of his eyes before crossing his arms, sleeves sweeping out like curtains. ”If it’s information you want then maybe I’ll answer. Then again, maybe not.” He smirked. ”Go ahead. That little trinket means nothing to me.”
A lie, but not the most blatant he’d ever cast. If the ogre thought he had power over him then he was dreadfully mistaken. Kuja wasn’t about to submit over something so trivial as an enchanted necklace.
”Well? Don’t waste my time.” If it was a battle of wits the oaf wanted then he’d be more than happy to oblige. This was Kuja’s specialty, and he held every odd in his favor. It wasn’t even a contest.
For all Kuja's smarts, for all his self-proclaimed immense intellect, the Genome seemed to have a faulty understanding of Amarant. Revenge...? Against him? For what? He was beaten, defeated. He should be dead by all accounts! The only one the red-headed man had any sort of animosity towards was that other monkey for failing to finish the job he started. Kuja was merely a result of this failure, his presence having lost the shining, chrome omnipotence he had sought to craft for himself. For all intents and purposes, this was just a man talking to another, a figure trying to wring information out of the product of a lucky mistake. Of course, Kuja failed to recognize this truth in himself, another addition to the long list of impurities that stained the record of the self-proclaimed "Perfect Being". Instead, as if to hide his mistake, Kuja would attempt to cover it with disdain, remarking how it was beyond his comprehension how Zidane could ever choose Amarant as his party member.
*Snort*
As Amarant recalled, it wasn't really his choice. After his defeat, he followed Zidane, with his consent and without it, watching him from the sidelines in an effort to understand his power. While, indeed, a good bit of it came from within, he could soon come to discover that he focused that might through others, channeled it from his friends in order to power himself. ...He was such a cheesy, sentimental monkey and it was something Amarant himself had considered using. Lani, his old partner, had grown rather attached to him and, in turn, Amarant attempted to reciprocate. Ever since the defeat of Kuja and his return to Alexandria Castle, he and Lani had worked side-by-side for the benefit of the kingdom... and yet, he always found himself protecting Lani... It was frustrating to say the least, always jumping to her defense, never being able to complete his missions with the same levels of efficiency and accomplishment that he had in the past.
...She was always in the way. Not just in the field, but in his mind. It was bloody frustrating.
...Regardless, that whole "friendship" nonsense, Kuja threw it at him like it was some kind of weapon, a the club of sarcasm coming down like it was a weapon of precision. He would have thought that such a... nobleman would favor wit rather than the lowest form of social interaction... He supposed this was on account of the poor little genome beginning to feel his timer starting to wind down again. ...Probably why he was collecting these things, these trinkets.
Amarant's expression changed not as Kuja attempted to flex his position here, remarking how he may or may not answer based on his will. His defiance only showed his weakness, a facade attempting to play off his reputation from a time long passed.
"Please. Acting stupid only wastes your time. You'd have left before I had said anything if this wasn't what you wanted." There was a cold edge of smugness to Amarant's voice, a conclusive flatness as if he were stating a matter of fact. "What happened when you fell into the Lifa-Tree after you were defeated?"
Final Fantasy IX
27
YEARS
Agendered
Open
Pansexual
333 POSTS
Fin
Peace is but a shadow of death, desperate to forget its painful past.
Lol oh hey. End of the game ambiguity. What's my answer? -vague indiscriminate noises-
Why should the world exist without me?
The ogre laughed. Or snorted more accurately in his hideous play at laughter. It made Kuja’s eyes tint with even greater disdain -- something he hadn’t previously thought possible. The creature in front of him was blunt and boorish and lacking any sense of aesthetic whatsoever. At least Zidane had bathed every now and then.
And then the creature spoke. "Please. Acting stupid only wastes your time. You'd have left before I had said anything if this wasn't what you wanted."
Acting stupid? Kuja raised an eyebrow. Truly this ogre had no sense of complex thought. The fact that he could string a full sentence together astonished Kuja to no end.
”It’s of some value,” Kuja admitted with a wave of his hand. ”But I have no real use for it. There are enough artifacts scattered about the country to sate my curiosity. It would hardly pain me to lose it.” In fact, he thought he wouldn’t mind at all. It was the perfect provocation to end this assault on his senses once and for all.
But for now he would listen. As much as he was loath to admit, the ogre’s intentions had caught his curiosity nearly as much as the amulet.
The man spoke with a strange kind of authority. It was the tone of someone who considered a battle already won. My dear, sweet idiot. You have no idea what you’re dealing with.
The ogre raised his eyes. "What happened when you fell into the Iifa Tree after you were defeated?" he asked, and for a moment, Kuja could only blink. What happened after he’d…?
Kuja burst out laughing, pressing a palm to his forehead as he tilted his head to the sky. ”That’s what you wanted to know?” How stupid could he be? ”You came all this way for the Iifa Tree?”
His laughter ended, but his smirk remained. After everything that the man had witnessed, after everything that Kuja had done, and all he cared about was what happened between himself and Zidane. He hadn’t exactly overestimated the man’s intelligence, but this…?
Kuja lowered his hand, crossing his arms again. If that was all it took to earn his amulet then he considered it done. ”After I landed here, my memories of it have been foggy at best. An effect of the dimensional portal, I assume.” An irritable effect. One that he had worked to rectify. ”But as you’re likely aware, I chose to teleport you from the heart of the planet where you would have otherwise been trapped. I’d say you owe me your lives.” His lips touched with a hint of laughter. Oh the irony.
”Zidane chose to be an idiot and run into an enraged Terran ruin. What he hoped to accomplish is beyond me, but we spoke. I wasn’t exactly in my right state of mind.” Not a state that he could appreciate now at least. The shadows of memory felt distant and detached. If the ogre hoped to see some significant change in his character then he would be sorely disappointed.
”The tree...attacked…” Kuja’s eyebrows twitched into a furrow. He hadn’t considered the next part implicitly. What had happened next? He touched his lip in thought. ”I...used the last of my magic. A teleportation spell.” And then what? He remembered the dizzying motion then hard ground beneath his back. Was there anything else? Was that where he’d...died?
”I assume Zidane survived, but beyond that, I can’t say.” He lowered his hand again, and gave the man a cool look. ”Now the amulet if you wouldn’t mind.”
Kuja was posturing so much and for such an uninterested audience, he might as well have been preforming a shoddily constructed dance-routine during half-time at a major sporting event. His laugh, his stance, his entire damn hair-do was so artificially constructed, he might as well have been a knock-off of those black mages he so lovingly pushed around- Oh. Wait. He was. How appropriate. In fact, Amarant could find no real fault in the character of Kuja as he is doing only as his pathetically constructed self was designed to do. A fake little doll on tender, weakening strings, always about to fall from the grips of the puppet-master. He does himself no favors by resisting the hand of his maker and soon he is in freefall, his doom inevitable. Somehow, he was still alive, able to reattach his strings to his own hand, it seemed but that didn't change the inevitable. This was a man dying, a pathetic excuse of a life-form that couldn't even begin to imagine life without himself. Even now after touching the face of death, he hasn't changed, monster too big for his own good and too small at the same time. Amarant couldn't help but wonder, that without all that magic protecting him... How long would he survive? How far would that ego take Kuja before someone took a knife to his back? How long would his confidence take him before he is butchered behind an alley...?
...He would've given him a month. Maybe two. Kuja was a resourceful monkey but, like with everything else in his life, based on what Amarant knew of him, his ego would be the thing that broke his pretty-princess back.
It would be these things Amarant thought about as Kuja blathered on, continuing to posture like a ballerina in front of a mirror, his laugh like that of a mad dictator in a hostage situation, a psychotic snicker so intense and insane... it was hard to tell if it was a bluff or not. Whatever Kuja told him that wasn't related to his question, Amarant simply wrote off as the epitome of "look at me, I'm still important!". What Kuja would give for Amarant to get down and kiss his boots. What that monkey would do to have the entire world bow to him like he deserved any of it. Designed from birth to be a failure, a discount, a prototype of what would become a higher purpose, a false idol, Kuja would attempt to usurp his own role once again and, like the terrible dancer he was, his posture elicited no reaction from the mercenary.
Kuja's response... was the biggest non-answer Amarant had ever heard. It was like he had asked a child-kuja if they were a boy or girl and he stated that he was a kid! Holding his hands out like a dumb little runt expecting his treat, Kuja would, with more cockiness than a rooster in mating season, ask for the amulet... And Amarant would hold his ground. He looked at Kuja, almost in amazement (almost).
"What did Zidane say to you?" The Bandit-King questioned, completely ignoring Kuja's statement. "You can have your toy back when I get my answer."
Final Fantasy IX
27
YEARS
Agendered
Open
Pansexual
333 POSTS
Fin
Peace is but a shadow of death, desperate to forget its painful past.
-more indiscriminate "what happened after the game" noises-
Why should the world exist without me?
The ogre did not give him the amulet. In fact, from his expression Kuja guessed that he had never intended to give it to him at all -- a wise choice, honestly. Whatever nefarious purposes did Kuja have in mind? What power could he gain through a seemingly useless magical necklace? In truth, Kuja had no idea. Most artifacts returned nothing for the effort, but the search was as necessary as it was tedious. One could never know exactly what would reveal far more than intended. The writings of Madain Sari, for instance.
Here, he had heard mention of gods and monsters. What did it mean, and where was their power stored? What were the mechanics of this planet so dissimilar to his own? Questions lost to time and the shrines that held them.
The ogre looked at him. For some reason, he seemed dissatisfied. ”What did Zidane say to you?” he asked, and Kuja resisted the urge to roll his eyes. ”You can have your toy back when I get my answer.”
Zidane. Why was it that everything always came back to him?
”How should I know?” Kuja tilted his head, hardly bothering to mask his irritation. ”I told you my memories were lacking. It’s not as though we had much to say to each other.”
Yet there had been something there, hadn’t there? Something important. Kuja couldn’t imagine as to what. Zidane had always been a nuisance at the best of times.
”Something about redemption,” Kuja said. ”He came back to help me. I didn’t understand...”
The words came before the memories did. He nearly surprised himself. Clearly it had imprinted on him in some subconscious way. He paused, speaking slowly. ”He told me that you’d survived. Not you specifically, but...all of you.” He stopped, eyebrows furrowed. What was this strange feeling? ”He said I wasn’t useless,” he said. ”He didn’t want me to die.”
For a long time, he was silent. He couldn’t remember what he’d said himself, but Zidane’s voice echoed in some distant place he couldn’t recognize. ’Hey! Don’t go dying on me, alright?’
Why had Zidane come back? Why had he risked everything he had? His friends? His life? His future? In some great irony, Zidane had accomplished far more than Kuja ever had.
Was Kuja envious? No, that was ridiculous. What was there to envy from such a base, naive, idiotic little-...?
”That’s all.” Kuja uncrossed his arms, lowering them to his sides. ”I lost consciousness. If anything happened after…”After he'd died?”Then I don’t remember it.”
"Think harder." Amarant insisted as Kuja attempted to double-down on his weaseling! Likely the only thing that was keeping Amarant from an ultimately futile fight for his life was the fact that this genome preferred to leave his hands unsullied. He seemed like the type and, from what he'd seen of him, he was much more of a puppet master than the gun that fires the bullet. Kuja would insist that he didn't know anything, that there wasn't even much to say had he known... and Amarant didn't buy it. Oh, he was content to believe that Kuja would sooner choke on his own blood than try to own up to anything, to try and grow some excuse for a heart (as useless as it was) in his final moments. He could buy that KUJA had nothing to say... But not Zidane. That idiot didn't throw himself off a bloody airship while the Lifa-tree was actively trying to pound him to a fine, red mush just to sit there and say NOTHING. Amarant hadn't know that fool to be short of jibes and things to say except for the one moment his entire identity was being uprooted in a matter of moments. There was some reason that he was willing to almost die one more time in order to get in a room with a certainly dying Kuja.
...And with that dead-man walking finally spilling the beans (at least to some degree), Amarant would find out what it was.
"That's it?" Amarant questioned, though not because he didn't believe it. It's because he could. Zidane... almost killed himself... in order to try and redeem this guy... This was Kuja, he who killed Garnet's mother but not before brainwashing her into a psychotic, but well-paying warpath. This was Kuja who aided in the destruction of Alexandria and his own home world, threatening his entire race on top of that. This was Kuja who was willing to burn everything to dust in order to satisfy his own overinflated ego, unwilling to allow a world without his wretched influence.
...And Zidane almost died... Just to save him.
"Tch. Whatever."
If this was all Kuja was content in telling him, Amarant too was content with it. This sounded just like what Zidane would do, damn him. Letting them all believe he was dead just to try and wring some kind of regret out of someone who was dying anyway. He couldn't help but wonder if it was worth it, considering that somehow Kuja had survived what surely was his death. Would Zidane have done it if he knew he was going to live...? Well... Amarant had even more of a reason to find him now. He was going to have to answer for his selfishness...
With a quick flick of his wrist, Amarant would toss the amulet at Kuja before walking right past him out the way he had come.
"Damn it." Amarant cursed, his jaw tightening. "Zidane, you moron."
Final Fantasy IX
27
YEARS
Agendered
Open
Pansexual
333 POSTS
Fin
Peace is but a shadow of death, desperate to forget its painful past.
I wanted to close this out, but Kuja said otherwise
Why should the world exist without me?
”That’s it?”
Kuja felt his fur bristling. ’That’s it?’ He’d shared more of the truth than he’d likely ever done in his life, and it wasn’t enough? The simple-minded ogre. What in all of Gaia did he want from him then? To share a heartbreaking farewell he couldn’t remember? To crawl on his knees while he was at it? ’That’s it?’
Kuja bit back words as sharp as his nails. How he longed to take them across blue-tinted skin.
”Tch. Whatever.” The ogre held up the amulet, hardly looking at it before tossing it carelessly in Kuja’s direction. Kuja blinked his surprise, waving his hand to catch it in a glitter of blue-violet magic. Was he really just going to…?
”You’re giving it to me?” The moron. Did he have any idea who he was dealing with? Did he even care? Kuja’s tail gave a shrouded lash across the time-worn stone. He touched at his forehead and laughed.
Words fluttered behind his lips. ’That’s it?’ The sentiment was very much shared.
The ogre walked past him without so much as checking his back, and Kuja turned to watch him go. ”Damn it,” the man said. ”Zidane, you moron.”
”On that, we agree.” A funny thing to connect them. Did this ogre have the same disdain? The same irritation? The same…?
Well, Kuja wasn’t exactly fond of his starry-eyed counterpart, but their threads did have a way of winding together, didn’t they? It was infuriating, the way that Zidane so often intruded upon his thoughts.
”Out of curiosity,” Kuja said. ”Why go through all of this trouble? Why should you care?” If it had been the princess that would have been one thing. He’d even have accepted the puppet or the knight, but the bounty hunter? They clearly had no special connection, and he had anything but apathy for Kuja, he had a strange way of showing it. In fact, Kuja had the impression that he didn’t care much for anything at all. So why this?
