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year 5, quarter 3
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Kuja raised a hand. His fingers sparked with deadly magic. He moved to strike the sandworm when suddenly there was a woman standing between them.
Kuja blinked slowly.
What?
Not only that, but it seemed that a cat had followed her. It sailed over her head, coming to a skidding stop beyond her and a little to his left. It turned with a feline grace, hackles raised and eyes sharp with the hunt. His eyes traveled from its bared fangs to its deadly claws to its overlong whiskers, heavy with an electric charge.
A coeurl. The woman must have thought him her savior. He wanted to laugh.
The coeurl had turned its attention to him -- perhaps considering him the less bothersome prey. The sandworm gave a gurgling roar, saliva dripping from its maw in odious streams. Kuja felt his patience waning. He brought magic to his fingertips, raised his hand, and brought it sharply down. ”Thundaga.”
The coeurl went first. It was faster and therefore the more immediate threat, and his spell seized it in a deadly grasp. He heard the cold static as the light engulfed it, the sand trembling with the force of his thunder. There was the smell of burning flesh and then it keeled over, stiff and trembling. The sandworm gathered itself to strike, heedless of the fate of such a lesser creature. Kuja swirled the magic around his hand, weaving it in a circular motion before swishing it aside.
”Blind.”
The white magic cast with a shimmering of white which quickly manifested itself in a dark miasma around the space where its eyes should have been. The blinding spell (or a properly cast one at any rate) was a curse upon all senses -- not merely sight. Even the eyeless creature depended on its sense of smell, and it was far less of an immediate threat if it lashed out blindly.
For him at least. He had no idea if the woman had the ability to avoid its eager maw.
He had expected some poor excuse of a spell while the fangs were thoroughly distracted with him. He had also expected that said spell might very well strike him by mistake. He’d prepared himself equally as well for the possibility that such a spell might never come and he’d waste some indeterminate amount of time toying with the things before swiftly putting them down and turning on her with a critical eye. He could imagine it just as well, and the thought of her dejected face brought him some flicker of amusement as he danced around the snapping jaws with a careless ease. Would she fail him entirely? How strangely satisfying.
But that was not what happened.
Instead, the girl snapped to attention, dashing forward with little regard for her own safety. A sword flashed in a metallic glint and she’d thrust herself in front of him, blade held confidently before her. There was a shimmer of magic. A protect spell?
He had not taught her the protect spell.
She used the combined force of magic and steel to thrust the fangs away. She followed it with a cast of fire magic far stronger than any he’d seen. Fueled by adrenaline, perhaps, or her body’s natural instincts finally kicking in. It was almost as though the girl had tranced without all of the flashy lights and colors that came with it. Her soul had responded with a violent passion.
Interesting.
The second fang ambushed her from the side, biting down hard on her arm. Mikoto merely took the attack, eyeing it without surprise before sliding into it, and pressing her hand against its snout. There was a harsh electric snap and lightning burst from her palm, coursing through the beast without mercy. She freed herself from its grasp, swaying on her feet before finally falling to her knees. Her strength was fading.
Kuja simply stood there, eyebrows raised.
’Please.’ Without the gasping breath to express herself, she resorted to psychic communication. ’Please don’t put yourself in harm’s way.’
Kuja’s eyebrows inched higher.
Mikoto staggered upright. ’I don’t want to see you hurt ever again. I will work harder.’
”What?” Kuja burst out in hard laughter. What was she talking about? ”I wasn’t in harm’s way.” Him? In danger from two fangs? Hilarious.
”Your reaction was unexpected however. Does seeing me ill-disposed really motivate you so?” He couldn’t help his almost scientific curiosity. He’d spent years recording, studying, and perfecting the default internal machinations of the black mages. He couldn’t alter her instinctual reactions by means of engineering, but he could exploit them. And there were always the more traditional methods of manipulation.
He was equally skilled in those.
Kuja laughed softly, bringing his fingers to his lips. ”Then it’s decided.” His eyes found hers, glinting bright with an almost mocking amusement. ”You’ll act as my guard from now on.” His lips twitched maliciously. ”When attacked, I won’t raise a finger to stop it. I think you’ve proven yourself more than capable of handling it yourself.”
This might have been the most effective strategy he could have tried lol
Why should the world exist without me?
Mikoto wasn’t doing well. Kuja wished he didn’t have to sense it, but he did. Even if he hadn’t possessed a direct line into her inner consciousness, it was obvious to see on her shoulders and tail and nascent expressions. She wasn’t doing well, and while he didn’t particularly care for her emotional wellbeing, he supposed it irked him a little.
Hadn’t she been the one who’d wanted to learn to defend herself? What had she thought that would entail? She could have at least saved him some time.
She did better for the second fight, he supposed. She bothered pacing around for the best angle at least. If she’d had any ounce of intelligence, she would have bothered moving quickly, but it was a start. She stalked around without any real urgency then stopped to cast. The spell took so hideously long that the flan had nearly cleared the distance between them before she’d finished. The fire spell was nothing of note. A little hotter than the last. Maybe.
The second flan struck her while she was distracted. Mikoto stumbled to get away, failing utterly. Kuja watched it all impassively. Learning to take a hit was almost as important as learning to deal them though she was quite frankly embarrassing him. Was this the natural strength of a genome?
There went any sense of inherent superiority.
She stabbed it in self-defense. The thin blade pierced it straight through. It was ineffective to say the least, and Kuja sighed, raising a hand to save her when she inevitably failed. Perhaps the experience would be enough to dissuade her from the pursuit entirely. It was of no matter to him. Still, she wasn’t quite out yet, and he felt the slightest tinge of magic on the air. A thunder spell. Conducted through her blade.
One could have thought it ingenious. He thought it accidental. The electricity shot through both the flan and herself, seeking its proper grounding. She had a natural resistance to magic. The flan didn’t. It melted around her.
”Hmph.” Kuja flipped back his bangs, tilting his head as he considered the sky. She was safe for now. Sort of. She was also injured, electrified, and coated with foul-smelling slime. He supposed that was punishment enough on its own.
”Cure.” The spell knit her back together, clearing her system of harmful magic and healing anything else that needed patching up. He hopped into the arena, landing lightly. He might have overestimated her abilities.
”That was...something.” She’d taken action at least. Congratulations on clearing the lowest of bars. ”Flan are slow and vulnerable to magic. You won’t stand a chance against anything more competent.”
He crossed his arms. ”I’ve gathered a few fangs from the depths of a desert cave. They’re weak but fast. Your greatest weakness.” Quick decisions. How impossibly insurmountable.
”I’ll draw their attention. You deal with them. Does that sound fair?”
It didn’t matter. He was doing it anyway.
”Stay back so they don’t notice you. And try to aim.” He smirked wryly then strode forward, standing past her and directly at the attention of any monsters with undue aggression. He didn’t give her time for any objections. He simply waved his hand, grasping the stone with his magic and setting it aside.
The fangs burst out of the space like a racing chocobo, snarling and charging for their prey. They were, as their name suggested, fanged with snapping jaws and wild eyes that quickly found him. He simply waited, almost bored, as the two of them darted towards him, attempting some kind of pack tactics on instinct.
He’d dodge them easily. Or raise his almost imperceptible magical shield at his fingertips. More concerning was the unstable magic at his back and the thought that Mikoto might miss her target and strike him by mistake. Still, her magic was weak. At worst, it might singe his hair.
For her part, Mikoto didn’t complain. She accepted his words and hesitated for only a moment before hopping dutifully into his makeshift arena. She was nervous. Even with her muted sense of expression, her fear was worn on her sleeve. Or rather, in her tail and her shoulders and her tight grip on her inexperienced sword. Maybe she should have had some training in the thing before throwing her to the literal wolves. Well Kuja certainly wasn’t the one to ask for that. She’d have to figure it out on her own.
The flan charged her with all the speed of cold molasses. Mikoto appeared to take the strategy of freezing like a startled Mu. Then she turned, looking up to him pleadingly. Kuja raised an eyebrow. She wanted his permission. As though he was in any position give it. As though he was just another overseer on another planet playing the lives of hollow dolls to his whims. Well he wasn’t (not currently anyway) and there was absolutely nothing stopping her from vaulting over the side and entirely changing her mind on the matter.
Nothing but his endless mockery. Perhaps that was enough.
She gave him an annoyed look as though this was his fault before turning around to face the monster. If it had been any faster than a dead snail then it likely would have jumped her while her back was turned. As it was, it had merely closed the distance. If she chose not to get out of the way then her inevitable maiming was entirely on her own hands.
She took so long with her spell that Kuja thought he’d be subjected to watching his own pathetic successor fall without raising a single finger. This one truly was perfect, wasn’t she? A perfect tool, that was, by Garland’s perspective. Her life was on the line (as far as she knew) and she’d hardly taken three steps. She had all the survival instincts of a dead slug, he thought, but then she did something which infinitely surprised him.
She took action.
Sort of. She still hadn’t moved. But a ball of fire had erupted from her hands, and that was something, he supposed. It wasn’t as strong as the one she’d summoned back at the gaudy play park, but it did the trick. The flan gave a little wiggle, mouth slack, before melting under the heat, its entire gelatinous form collapsing into a pool of foul-smelling ichor. Kuja was infinitely grateful that he wouldn’t be at risk of stepping in it.
”Congratulations. You’re alive.” His voice was a dry drawl. It wasn’t sarcastic, but it wasn’t exactly sincere either. ”Though might I suggest moving out of the way?”
He shook his head, thrusting his hair behind his shoulder. ”You’re using magic. You have to keep your distance. You can attack at range. They can’t.” Not in this case, anyway. It was trickier without that particular advantage. ”You have this whole space. Use it. Unless you’re still intent on succumbing to death.”
Kuja waved a lazy hand. Another stone slab moved aside. Four pairs of ogling eyes oozed their way from behind it and started towards Mikoto. Two flans this time. Truly an impossible foe.
”You’re fast. They’re slow. Try to actually do something this time.”
She didn’t say anything as he spoke. It was both refreshing and slightly irritating. On the one hand, she didn’t contradict him. On the other, it was like talking to a brick wall. Or a hollow genome as it were. He’d had enough of that in his first twelve years in Bran Bal.
Still, she at least listened which he couldn’t say for the worthless dolls that populated their home world. At his order, she plodded dutifully over to his weaponry, examining them in expressionless thought. Kuja crossed his arms, waiting. He felt his tail give an impatient flick. Then she made her choice, reaching for the rapier and testing it in her hand.
Well that was a surprise. He’d fully expected her to march dutifully in Zidane’s footsteps. Some small part of him echoed with something like respect. Though only a small part.
Kuja shrugged. ”The rapier is best suited for magic. It will give you some manner of defense close range, but you should treat it more like a staff. A magical focus in other words. It should channel your power like a conductor. Its charm is the strongest, after all.” Almost strong enough to sell though not quite given its nature. Once again, he had to remind himself that she was nothing more than a novice. A sharpened piece of metal hawked off a street corner would do more than she’d started with.
In answer to her second question, Kuja strode past, clearing the nearest wall of his self-made arena without much difficulty. His overseeing pillar would have done just as well, but he didn’t think it worth the effort of climbing it. Or the indignity of scrabbling up its side.
”It’s nothing special. A few flans. A fang or two.” Kuja’s eyes drifted towards the pens where he’d confined them. ”The flans will only respond to magic. Fire in particular. The fangs are wolves.” Highly aggressive wolves, but nothing more than that. ”I doubt you’ll have much trouble.”
Not more trouble than he’d gone through to round them up. Thankfully, he’d found a cave near the city where all manner of pests lurked. The hardest part in restraining them had been to not kill them in the process.
Kuja waited for Mikoto to climb inside and gave her a moment to ready herself. Then he touched at his chin, head tilted and smirking.
This had the potential to be highly cathartic.
After a moment, he waved a hand, lifting one of the pen’s walls with a telekinetic force. A single flan oozed its way out the space, setting its ogling eyes on Mikoto. It charged her. Slowly. It really was far too easy on her.
A dry wind ran through Kuja’s hair as he stood at the precipice of a pillared rock formation at least fifteen feet above the sands. From here, the desert panned out beneath him in rolling dunes, the maze of multicolored stones jutting in all directions like a cacophonous sunset. It was almost poetic, and in that moment, he couldn’t help but appreciate its harsh beauty. Even in this most oppressive of places, there was still life beneath the soil, lurking in dry caverns, or sprouting from determination alone. There was a reason he had always claimed the desert as his own. It was quiet, deadly, and far too stubborn to die.
There were growls below him, and Kuja sighed, waving a hand and rearranging one of the stone pillars he’d toppled into a rectangular formation. From it, he’d fashioned a kind of pen made of thick, unyielding slabs. Within it were various creatures he’d collected throughout the course of the morning, all separated out into quadrants of their own. The effort of submission and transport had been no small task, but it wasn’t as though he was unused to the process. His work in bioengineering had required all manner of live subjects that he’d kept subdued in the lower chambers of his Desert Palace until their disposal, and those had included monsters of a far grander scale than this.
It had also included any intrepid explorers unfortunate enough to stumble into the wrong antlion pit. But that was, at the moment, irrelevant.
He felt her approach before he saw her. He didn’t even bother to turn his head. He merely felt and he listened and he sensed that dull, infant soul gravitate towards him with all the passion of a dead flan. He still had no idea why she insisted on following him. By all accounts, she should have hated him like all the rest of existence.
He flicked his wrist and telekinetically shifted the final slab into place. That would hold, he thought. If not, he’d quickly put an end to whatever chaos ensued.
”I don’t know how you’re alive,” Kuja said as she drew closer to his vantage point. ”I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to come this far alone. You have no idea the kind of monsters that lurk beneath the sand. I’m surprised you weren’t skewered by a cactuar. Or an antlion.”
Kuja swept back his hair, pushing it over a shoulder with a haughty flourish. ”But I suppose it saves me the effort of finding you. I just finished.” He looked over his work, eyes scanning it for weaknesses. The makeshift battle arena wasn’t exactly polished nor was it anything near the construction of the same on Terra. Still, he thought it would do. Well enough, anyway. ”You insisted on learning magic. I’d rather not waste my time.”
Kuja waved a hand, trailing a glimmer of magic around himself before he hopped off the pillar, his float spell bringing him gracefully down. He landed lightly, his hair and skirt settling behind him as he finally turned to look at her. She was windswept and dirty and coated in sand. He couldn’t help but smirk at the state of her fur. There was more than one reason that he kept his tail safely sheltered away.
”Let’s see how you do under pressure,” he said. ”I scrounged up a few weapons that you might find useful. Better than that worthless dagger, anyway.” He gestured to a mat he’d unfolded at the base of the rock formation. On it were three blades, each set carefully apart. It was mediocre work at best, the kind that he’d never let see an esteemed marketplace for fear of his reputation. He’d have tossed them eventually, he thought, if he couldn’t find some lowly merchant to pawn them off on before then. Still, their charms were nothing to scoff at for a beginner. Not perfect. Not his best. But it would do.
”There’s a rapier for precision, a shortsword for offense, and a set of daggers if you prefer agility. Like Zidane.” He scoffed. ”That one’s already genome approved. Though really any would do.”
Kuja glanced to her in surprise. She seemed, as always, deathly seriously. He could have laughed. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for Kuja to find himself holding the strings of some pawn or another, led along by whispers of promises he didn’t intend to keep. It was another thing entirely for a puppet to come so willingly to his grasp. He couldn’t imagine what she thought he’d done to deserve it. Maybe she merely had an instinct for subjugation.
”You? Protect me?” Kuja’s lips flickered with the shadow of his unvoiced laughter. ”I don’t think that will be necessary.”
In truth, he could kill every one of the park’s pathetic security in seconds if he wanted to. But he didn’t. Such pointless destruction wasn’t really his style.
A strange trait for an angel of death. Perhaps even a defect. He waved it away.
Kuja looked to the skies, waiting. He felt his dragon draw ever closer. He hoped she came in time to awe the masses into submission. Even sweet lies to the owners of this establishment felt like far too much effort.
”It was fascinating,” the girl went on. She paused before adding, ”And tiresome.”
And noisy and crowded and interesting and beautiful. It was alive. An intimidating prospect until one grew accustomed to it. He couldn’t say for certain that he was even still. So often, he found himself revelling in the dry heat of the desert, in the harsh bite of the wind, in the invigorating shower of rain. A Gaian would have found such things mundane. Idiots.
”To the east,” Kuja answered without bothering to comment about the city. ”I have a place of residence there. Well, two. One in the city and the other buried among the sands when I’d rather go unbothered.” His room in Aljana was really nothing more than that -- a room. It was rented, however, and not often in use. The day’s travel between the city and the heart of the desert was an annoyance even as the crow flies.
Or the dragon as it happened. The utter chaos he’d sewn to acquire her had been entirely worth the effort.
”There will be plenty of plays,” Kuja went on. ”And I’d rather not rustle any more feathers.” As though on cue, a few silver feathers drifted from the sky, and he looked up in mild interest. There was his dragon, casting her far above the city. Torensten was wary of dragons, he knew, and it really wasn’t safe to bring her to the heart of it. Still, she knew better than to descend into the range of fire until the last moment. That moment being now.
The reaction was instant. What had once been curiosity and irritation gave way to panic and concern. The bystanders were shouting, some running to keep their distance, others scrambling backwards and staring in awe. The park’s employees were desperately flagging security. They must have thought they were under attack. Hilarious.
Kuja waited for his dragon’s landing then wasted no time in vaulting onto her back. He found his bearings between her shoulder blades then reached out a hand for her. He didn’t have time for her graceless scrabbling.
Once she was secured, he willed the dragon ascend, not bothering with another round of instructions. The dragon thrust herself higher with heavy wingbeats that brought them towards the sky in jerking gasps. Kuja wasn’t bothered. He knew how to keep his balance.
”It’s three days to Aljana,” he said, the chaos on the ground already well forgotten. ”We’ll have to stop along the way.” And grow quite sore and restless from the flight. He supposed she was likely used to waiting.
”Well?” he asked as the city faded away. ”Did you learn anything?” It was a test, he supposed. ’Have you found some semblance of individuality today?’ She would be insufferable if she hadn’t.
"I'll make you weapons, but it's not like I care about you, baca."
Why should the world exist without me?
”I don’t mind trying it in action.”
She didn’t mind. For some reason, that struck him. It felt strange, he thought, to stand on the other end of this kind of training. To be the instructor rather than the obedient pupil. He’d never really considered it -- why would he ever have a need to teach, after all? -- but there was a kind of familiarity to it. A perverse familiarity. He wondered if he should adopt a more unforgiving, calculating demeanor.
But that just wasn’t him, was it?
The girl looked up at him. Her hollow eyes were imploring. ”The bag.” It was her first command since they’d met. He raised an eyebrow.
’And if I say no?’ The words danced at his lips, preparing for the kind of mocking smirk that guaranteed power over a lesser being. But that would have been pointless, and he didn’t particularly want her bag anyway. He magicked it back and tossed it her way with a flick of his wrist. She caught it. Oh good.
”When we first met,” she droned on. ”You said you had magic and weapons. Do you know what would best fit?”
He looked at her plainly and then laughed. ”To fight with, you mean?” It made sense that she’d want something on her side if she would be at the mercy of whatever trials he thought up, but the image still struck him as funny. This girl -- this genome -- still fresh from her soulless husk and gripping weaponry in her hands. It was a stance of power. That, he thought, was what made it so absurd.
Genomes were tools. Utterly powerless. At least they were when they had her eyes. Still, he was a weapons dealer at heart. He couldn’t help his own professional interest. Something that would suit her…
”That depends on what you’re looking for,” he said with a wave of his hand. ”Genomes are built in equal parts for agility and magical prowess. One from our souls. The other from-”Our vessels.”Our build. Zidane takes advantage of the former, but can access the latter in situations of raw desperation. I far prefer the latter, but my reactions are above that of any Gaian.” Enough to escape the fire of Bahamut’s mega-flare at least. Or to almost escape it. ”I wouldn’t recommend anything that requires raw strength. That is beyond our particular capacities.”
He didn’t think they were even capable of building muscle mass. They were created as they were and would forever be. Even Zidane had his limitations -- aging aside.
”So it depends,” he concluded. ”There are rods to channel magic or blades to, well, stab.” It was crude, he thought, and without elegance. He far preferred to keep his distance without any of the sweat or blood or calluses to ruin his nails. It was an art that wasn’t an art and which required absolutely no intelligence or thought.
Still, Mikoto had only begun growing into her own self. Maybe she’d turn out as stupid as their faux brother.
”Or blades which can channel magic,” he added. ”I suppose that wouldn’t be a terrible place to start.”
He could craft them if given the proper materials. He was a dealer of magical weaponry and equipment. He knew his way around synthesizing his wares.
Until now, Kuja had blatantly ignored the gawking onlookers who had slowly gathered around them. They whispered about rampant destruction and vandalism. Kuja had expected it, he supposed, though it irked him nonetheless. They had finally stopped merely witnessing the carnage of machinery, but had started taking action. That action being to ask someone else to handle it.
”They’ll ask us to pay for the damages,” Kuja said. ”But I’d rather not cause a scene.”A scene, in this case meaning mass murder. He walked past her, not bothering to wait, until they came across the next trial. It was a field of multiple targets, all set up to be struck in rapid succession. It would do.
”Come to me, silver dragon.” He raised a hand and extended his will into the space beyond them. He felt his dragon roosting nearby as he’d instructed. She came to attention at his command, and he felt her taking flight. It wouldn’t be long before they made their rather dramatic escape.
”This city has become rather droll, would you say?” Kuja didn’t turn to look at her, but he knew she was listening. ”I think it’s time we took our leave.”
Kuja still couldn’t answer -- not at the forest, not at the city, and certainly not now that he stood at the edge of Aljana watching the shifting sands. He’d never minded the desert. In fact, he found the dry heat nearly as pleasurable as rain, yet he couldn’t deny the irritation beginning to prick his lips into a scowl. It came not from the biting wind or the merciless sun, but rather from the task itself. Why was he here? Why, to round up monsters of course. As to why he'd bothered, he had no idea.
He heard a strange kind of popping noise behind him and shot a disinterested glance over his shoulder. He saw green. Hopping, staring green with quivering needles and hollowed eyes stuck in a constant mockery of surprise. A cactuar.
It was too strong to fight. Not for him, of course, but for a certain someone else that he had inexplicably brought along on his dragon and left to wait in the city. And this was all about her, wasn't it?
He waved his hand. ”Fira.” The cactuar never had a chance to send its trademark needles shooting towards him by the thousand. Instead, his magic burst around it, lighting it ablaze with enough force to send the air rippling around it. It continued its mad hop heedless of the flames before some reaction traveled from its spines to the collection of dulled neurons it called a brain. Only then did it give a screech of pain and fall over dead. Kuja watched its green flesh smolder and blacken. Then he laughed to himself. It was as dry as the desert air.
”A pity,” he said. ”There must be a nest somewhere.”
Not that it would help him. He needed something distinctly less deadly. What was it that novices could handle again? Wolves? Goblins? It had been so long that Kuja could hardly remember.
He took a few steps down the road, arms crossed. ”Perhaps the desert is too harsh,” he said, smirking. ”Forged by the unforgiving earth, only the strong survive.” He touched at his forehead before flipping his bangs aside. ”Yet there's always the weak to prey upon. If only they’d come to me!”
For the sake of a genome. For the sake of Mikoto. For the sake of his sister as Zidane would have called her, but Zidane was an idiot, and Kuja knew better.
So why should Kuja care if she learned magic or not? Why should he bother to throw her to the wolves as he’d promised? Perhaps he was merely bored. Or desperate. He'd been known to be both.
The sands shifted below his feet. That shifting turned into a rumble and then a kind of dune which burst open with an explosion of dirt and debris. He was faced first with an open, gaping maw. It was rimmed with a perfect sphere of teeth which smoothed into tan flesh, thick and eyeless as it emerged from the sand and gathered itself ever higher.
In seconds, the sandworm was swaying above him, and he was caught in its gargantuan shadow.
Kuja watched it gather itself, unimpressed, before he burst into laughter, a finger at his lips. ”You must be joking.” Perhaps it had been hunting the cactuar. The weak would give way to the strong, and nothing here stood a chance against him.
”Well, if you’re so eager to die…” He raised a hand almost carelessly. ”Then I suppose I’ll have to oblige.”
”We could build better,” Mikoto agreed, and Kuja hummed. They could have. Easily. They both knew more about engineering than all of their mechanics combined, but such a thing would require effort. Effort and time and interest that Kuja simply didn’t have. This was a test and a quick one at that. Any further magical training would have to be done on her own time. Though he was happy to throw her at a few monsters if she insisted.
For the third time, Mikoto readied her stance. For the third time, she closed her eyes in concentration. Kuja waited, arms crossed as the seconds went by. After a long moment, she raised her hand, waved it, and there was a spark.
Of static. Around herself. It crackled and then faded, leaving her a puffy mess.
Kuja laughed. He couldn’t help it. Not when her hair stood on end and her tail made her look like a spooked cat. He touched at his cheek, smiling at her. ”How impressive.”
It felt stuck. As though that wasn’t self-evident.
”It seems I gave you too much credit.” He lowered his hand, recrossing his arms again. ”Then again, I suppose you’ve never felt that kind of calculated malice. You won’t even denounce me.” Or Garland. Funny how she could defend both their creator and Zidane while not turning against the man who plotted the destruction of them both.
Funny. Maybe naive. Maybe simply stupid.
”You have the logic of it, but it has no outwards momentum. For thunder, you need both premeditation and desire. Or to act on reflex. Either way, there’s an implicit intent to do harm.”
Kuja tilted his head. ”We can skip ahead if you’d rather learn it in action. It can be far easier to wish something dead when actively provoked.” He waved a hand. ”It’s up to you.”
