Fic: rode a tank, held a general's rank (Final Fantasy 6, Kefka-centric, worksafe)
Another Final Fantasy Exchange fic! This one was written for magicgenetek, aka magicgentek.
rode a tank, held a general's rank
You want to be unique. You want to be unusual. You want everyone to know who you are, and when you pass by on the street, you want them to whisper your name with awe and reverence. You want to be someone.
Final Fantasy 6. Kefka-centric, plus Cid, Celes, Terra, Leo and Cait Sith. 4500 words, complete.
Spoilers. Worksafe. No specific warning, but implied creepiness aplenty.
part one: in his eyes a flaming glow
"What are the risks?"
"Well," Cid said with a crooked smile, "I'm not sure, because we haven't tried this on human beings yet. But in a trial of esper injection in rats, out of a hundred rats only two died. Those were the two who were injected with Catoblepas, so we won't be using that one. The others all survived, albeit without magic, but that was as expected. The archaeological record indicates that magic has a spoken component, and of course rats can't talk."
"I see."
"But there is some risk, of course. Should you want to think about it-"
"No," Kefka said slowly. He drummed his fingers on the desk. Local boy makes good, he thought. Palazzo kid first magic-user in a thousand years. "No. I'll do it."
"Are you sure? You should take your time thinking about such a major-"
"No," Kefka said. "I know what I want to do."
Of course, they couldn't perform the surgery right away. First he had to endure a two-day liquid diet, followed by a dose of noxious medicine intended to "prepare you physiologically for the injection." Then a day-long fast.
During all that time, Kefka was excused from his duties in the Twelfth Battalion, which left him at loose ends. He wandered first the areas of the Magitek Research Facility that were open to him, then the grounds of the army base, and finally back out into Vector.
Long walks proved difficult by the second day of the liquid diet, when his stomach rumbled, which was why he pushed on to do them anyway. He'd never gotten anywhere by giving up when things got difficult.
His walks took him down to the slums, up through the Dalemarket and Butcher's Row, through the stink of the slaughterhouses and the smoke-belching factory district and then-for contrast-through the sweeping avenues lined with flowershops and bakeries, where tailor's shingles swung in the breeze and people young and old sat out on wrought-iron furniture sipping coffee.
He felt distanced from them: not envious, not disdainful, just distanced. As if there was a pane of glass between him and the young couples flirting, the old men playing chess, the dogs tethered to outdoor seating and lolling happily in the sun. Once he might have sat down and tried to flirt a little himself, or wished he had the nerve to do so, but now he felt . . . nothing.
He was going to be different from them in a few days, after all. Really, genuinely different. And that was going to be wonderful. He didn't have to worry about being just one more face in the crowd.
On the beginning of the fourth day, Kefka reported to the Magitek facility, suffered the indignity of a cotton shift, and swung himself up onto the gurney. Not so much different than when he'd had his tonsils removed as a child, except that this gurney had leather straps at the sides and the foot of the bed.
He pointed this out to Cid, who nodded. "We've never done this to a human before, remember," he said. "You might have a seizure and do damage to yourself."
Or I might manifest the esper in a way you don't like, and attack you, Kefka thought. What he said was, "Well, I'm here, you might as well tie me down."
Cid raised an eyebrow, but took his proffered wrists and bound them to the edges of the bed, firm but not uncomfortably tight. And then his ankles, and then another band across his waist. "We're not using a general anesthetic because of possible interaction side-effects," he said briskly, "but if you feel any discomfort, I can give you something for the pain via IV."
"Which esper did you choose?"
Cid had his back to Kefka, rearranging things on a metal tray; Kefka heard each clink and clunk and slither of metal-on-metal distinctly. "Cait Sith," he said, and when he turned there was a hypodermic needle in his hands. "Now relax. This will pinch a bit."
It took three injections before Kefka felt anything besides the brief pinch of the needle, and even then all he felt was a curious feeling of chill in his veins, as though he had been injected with icewater. Three more and Cid said, "We're done." The whole of the procedure took no more than fifteen minutes.
"That's it?" Kefka asked, and was surprised to hear thickness in his voice, his tongue refusing to obey him.
"That's it. Rest there a while. I'll be monitoring your vitals for a bit longer."
"All right-" Kefka began, and then the icewater sensation in his veins turned suddenly to fire.
He arched and grimaced, but before he could even cry out the fire was gone, and in its place, hollowness, as if his blood had been burned out of him and left his veins empty. And in the hollowness, the voice of his own thoughts echoing down a long dark hallway.
He must have hated you very much, said the voice, to use me.
Kefka refused on principle to ask the clichéd question 'who are you?', so he locked his jaw and clenched his eyes against the darkness.
Or perhaps he didn't know what I was? No, that seems most likely. Who that knew us by our names, our natures, our personalities would bind us so? You are all ignorant. The voice sounded cheerful. No, gleeful. Why?
"I know that you're an esper," he whispered. "I know that with you I can become more powerful than any man living . . . ."
Is it the power you seek, truly? The voice drew closer, a soft shimmer near him, like the brush of fur. No, I don't think so, Kefka Palazzo.
"How do you-"
You think they can pour my essence into you without my knowing you, human creature? I see you from within. I know you. I will become you. I will wear you like a skin. You think you have won but you sought to cage the Stray Cat, and I will own you.
"I won't let you."
Oh, but you will. I know your secret, Palazzo-boy. I know what you truly want. It isn't power, is it?
"Shut up!"
You want to be unique. You want to be unusual. You want everyone to know who you are, and when you pass by on the street, you want them to whisper your name with awe and reverence. You want to be someone.
Kefka said nothing, because it was true, and the worst of it was that he could feel that Cait Sith knew it was true.
You're right that I'm your slave. I have to ride inside your body. I have to be reduced to nothing but-but disembodied power, at your bidding. But when you pour the otherworld into yourself, you must displace something of yourself. And-
And it was as though Kefka could feel something burning him from within and without, burning, tearing, breaking-
-and in the center of it, the loose-hipped swaying gait of an alleycat, an alleycat suddenly on hind legs and with intelligence in its eyes: intelligence as focused as a human's and yet cold, unforgiving, an alien mind within his own. Cait Sith. His esper.
And in the name of Kirin and Siren, said the cat, who you rode to their deaths and then discarded, in the name of Ramuh the Sage who you drove to exile, in the name of all my kin in your facility-Ifrit and Shiva and Maduin the Wise and Unicorn who never did anyone a day of harm, and more than I can count beyond that-that you torture to this day, in their name I will grant your wish, Kefka Palazzo, but I will grant it as you never desired. I will be you and change you, and the Stray Cat will scratch beneath your skin, and the faerie madness will take you, Kefka Palazzo, because you invited the enemy in and I am within you now, and when you pass by on the street they will whisper your name, they will whisper . . . .
And Kefka opened his mouth to scream, but the blackness swallowed him up, poured down his throat, stifled him so that all there was was a thin wheeze from his lungs like a laugh.
The white, white, white and echoing emptiness of the laboratory penetrated first through the fog; it was as though his whole head had been wrapped in gauze, muffling not only sight but sound and smell. Slowly the gauze unwrapped and he could hear someone saying, "Administer phenytoin serum, we need to stop the seizure." And then he drew a deep ragged breath, a long gasp that rasped air into his starving lungs, and felt hands holding him down.
Then Doctor Cid's voice, saying, "He's coming out of it. Kefka? Colonel Palazzo?"
Just a few hours ago he'd been Major Palazzo. Kefka smiled, and felt that his mouth was sore. From what?
Screaming, said a voice in his head. An echo, a faint fragment, but he could see behind his eyes the black-and-white cat, the tricky tracery of paws, the bright unforgiving yellow of his eyes.
"I'm all right," he said, though his voice was hoarse.
"You had a seizure. We didn't expect that. Your vitals seem to be stable now, but." He straightened to his full short height. "How are you?"
"I'm all right," he said. "I'm as well as can be expected, I suppose." And then he laughed.
But the laugh didn't come out quite right. It started high, eerily high, and descended through a serried range of donkey's brays that made Doctor Cid and his nurses step back.
Kefka kept from clapping a hand over his traitor mouth, but it was a close thing.
Welcome to the life you've invited, Cait Sith said.
part two: an extra turn upon the rack
Kefka had never loved sparring. He was always more clever than he was strong, and past a point with others in the military it always turns into strength against strength. He had always hated that.
But sometimes there was nothing else for it but to accept, when someone offered you a friendly (or "friendly") challenge.
Colonel Reytan was six inches taller than him and probably a good fifty pounds of muscle heavier, and he had a punch on him like being hit in the face with a lead weight. One punch. Two. Kefka stumbled back and saw the faint smile around Reytan's lips, felt his own lips split and trickle blood down to his chin.
And-
-then-
-Reytan's smile faded and he took a step back. Kefka could have followed for a punch of his own, but he didn't.
Do you enjoy what I've given you?
Reytan weaved on his feet briefly, like a drunk man, and sank to his knees. His hands came up to his chest and then his throat; his breathing sped up. Kefka watched with academic interest and wondered whether he should care.
Reytan's subordinates rushed over, between Kefka and Reytan, but Kefka could still see quite clearly. So he didn't bother to move.
Reytan began to froth about the lips. His eyes rolled back.
"You might get an antidote," Kefka said, but it was too late. Reytan shuddered into unconsciousness. Somehow, instictively, Kefka knew death would follow soon after.
The ancient scrolls had a name for it, but the best translation was simply 'poison.' Poison magic. Tested for the first time on another Imperial, albeit one who was arrogant, brash, stupid, no credit to his uniform.
He wondered if he should care.
She was a small thing, with enormous blue eyes and long hair the pale color of butter. She couldn't have been older than four years old, and she spent most of her time clinging to Doctor Cid's hand and looking around her with an expression of solemn curiosity.
"You're experimenting on children now?" Kefka said, in order to see Cid wince, and wasn't disappointed.
"Her parents gave her to the care of the Empire," Cid said, as though that explained anything. "And being young is a good thing." He looked down at her and smiled; the girl looked back up at him and then smiled herself, sweetly. "I think the injection might . . . take better with someone who was still young and malleable."
"Oh?" Kefka asked, and though he couldn't keep the edge of poison out of his voice, Cid didn't seem to notice.
Cid always had been dense in certain ways, hadn't he?
"I think your being post-adolescent may have-" Cid began, and faltered.
" . . . Explain why I went so wrong?" Kekfa asked, and now the poison was right there in the open and even slow Cid could see it.
"I didn't mean that."
"But it's what everyone thinks, isn't it?" Kefka watched Cid squirm, and then threw his head back and let out a long laugh, just for the pleasure of watching Cid's squirm turn into a jump. "I went wrong, didn't I?"
"Kefka-"
"It's all right," Kefka said, and then laughed again. He could see the way his forced laugh, a donkey's-bray waterfall of sound, made Cid uncomfortable, so he did it a third time. "I know the experiment didn't go as you planned with me." Somewhere in the back of his mind, Stray woke and stretched. Kefka leaned in, and watched the way Cid swayed back and then forced himself to hold his ground. "But it doesn't matter, does it? Because I've still got the power, either way."
"Celes isn't meant to be an insult to you," Cid said.
Kefka glanced back at the small girl. Celes? Interesting name. Celes celes celerity celestial. Though Cid had jumped and flinched, the girl hadn't moved, her hand steady in Cid's and her eyes calm. Kefka bent over until he was face to face with her, nose to nose, her round child's face filling his gaze like the moon. "Hello, Celes," he said. "I understand you're going to be like me."
"I guess so," said Celes, her voice diffident but her eyes still curious.
"I'm sure we'll be the best of friends," Kefka said.
The white powder was fine talc, from the workmen who used its smooth slipperyness to lubricate their workings.
Kefka mixed it with palm oil until both the oil and the talc moved smooth and luminous beneath his fingers. He spread it over his skin, from forehead to throat, across his collarbones, down his chest below where his shirt would reveal.
The red was carmine, crushed from the shells of insects, soaked in alcohol and vinegar, stiffened with wax.
He looked at his white face in the mirror and took his red fingertips-red as if with blood, massacre-red-and drew long shapes around his eyes, drew long lines down his cheeks.
Your mouth, said the Stray Cat. Color your mouth, blood-eater, kin-eater.
He drew his fingertips across his lips, and tasted wax and alcohol, and thought of the taste of gore.
Maybe it was her youth; maybe they'd refined the process of creating the esper essence to inject; maybe the blue-skinned and fair-haired esper they'd chosen for Celes was just more suited for the job than Stray had been. Kefka watched through a pane of glass as she lay still beneath the sheet. No thrashing. No calling out. None of what the cameras had recorded of Kefka's own injection.
Kefka had watched those recordings with great interest, so he had a basis for comparison.
No, Celes slept calmly, her long braid coiled under her head. But if you watched carefully, you could see Jack Frost traceries of sparkling white frost crawling up her skin from beneath the sheet, writing glittering words in an unreadable language on her fair skin.
Kefka smiled.
Terra was something else again, though. Though she was no older than Celes she came to them with the magic already in her. Or at least those were the stories in the barracks, that at age four she lit fires with her mind when she was frightened, that she could close her own wounds with a look and a thought when they tried to restrain her.
That she closed their wounds, too, when she had accidentally burnt them with her fires.
Fool girl.
Celes was a ward and Kefka was a volunteer, but Terra was a prisoner, an unpredictable child with powers even Cid couldn't account for. They kept her in a stone cell with nothing flammable in it but the mattress on the floor. She didn't light the mattress on fire. Kefka would have, and then he would have laughed in the ashes; it would have been worth sleeping on the floor to prove to them that he could, that he didn't need their small comforts.
But when he spied Terra through the bars of her cell, he could see only the shape of her small shoulders beneath the curly ends of her mint-leaf hair.
Celes had no seizures, and though Cid was concerned of the rime that crawled over her body and turned her skin to glittering ice, the ice retreated and she woke as any child would awaken: groggy, rubbing her eyes, asking first for water and then for hot chocolate and a blanket.
"No seizure for her," Cid said, relieved.
The Stray Cat that bristled beneath Kefka's skin sneered that of course there wasn't, because though humans might care so little for children as to torture them with experiments, the espers had more mercy. Celes' esper would not drive her mad. Celes' esper . . . .
She will be a better knight than you, Cait Sith's echo said, smug and soft.
You promised me-
You will be more famed than her, never fret, Kefka Palazzo, the fragment of Cait Sith said. I did not lie, though you often lie. You will be legendary beyond what you know. You will always be remembered. But she will be a better knight than you.
Celes sat with a blanket around her shoulders and breathing the smell of the hot chocolate, and when Kefka looked at her he could see something new and frozen behind her wide blue eyes.
Celes, at least, they could understand. Within a week of her injections she could turn water to ice with a touch, and when she cried in the night her tears froze on her cheeks and collected like icicles on the curves of her face. But that was as expected, and her control grew by measureable increments. By the time she was six, she froze water in the glass only when she wanted to, and had she wept she could have kept her tears liquid, although she rarely wept even at that young age. By the time she was eight, she could turn her ice outward to freeze the water in an enemy's body. By the time she was ten, she could heal her own wounds by instinct, though she couldn't turn the power outward to heal another.
Emperor Gestahl put her in training with Kefka, who had undergone the same initiation himself. But he put her there with an observer: Colonel Leo Christophe, a young man for his rank, who watched with great mistrust as Kefka bade Celes show him her tricks.
"They aren't tricks," Celes said. "They're magic. It's important." Ten years old, and she had more gravity than half of Gestahl's counselors.
Ten years old, Cait Sith's echo whispered in his ear, and you injected her with the spirit of an immortal ancient when she was four. What do you expect?
"I'd expect a little more wisdom from you, if you're an immortal ancient," he murmured.
"Who are you talking to?" Colonel Christophe unfolded his arms and straightened up, with the air of one not so much looking for a fight as ready for one should it come his way.
"No one," Kefka said, and laughed, the high-pitched bray that reliably made people cringe. But Leo just met his eyes, and Celes looked up at him with mild surprise but no alarm.
What spirit did she have inside her?
Do you think she got luckier than you? Whose idea was it to put the Stray Cat inside you? But I forgot, you people couldn't tell one esper from another . . . .
Kefka rocked back to his heels, so that he could look at Celes eye-to-eye. In truth, she was his only equal, the only other one who knew what it was like for him. He would still be greater than her-Cait Sith had promised-but he would accept her as an honorable subordinate. "And how do you learn your magic, little Celes?"
Celes looked at him thoughtfully, and then said, "She teaches me."
"She who?"
"I don't know her name." Celes met his eyes seriously, and then said, "She's blue as the sky, and her hair is light gold."
"Like yours," Kefka said, and touched the long soft locks of her hair.
"Brighter," Celes said. "Like gold in sunlight. Almost white." She hummed a little in her throat and then said, "She helps me. She teaches me what I need to know."
Kefka backed up a few more steps and then muttered, beneath his breath, "You never helped me."
She is a helpless child. The esper protects her, because we, unlike you, are not monstrous. But you were an adult who wanted to enslave me. I give you what you deserve.
part three: someone is crazy and it's you
"We have tried introducing Celes and Terra to one another," Gestahl said. "They seem to get along."
"Pity," General Kefka said, and laughed his serrated laugh. "I was hoping to get a final conclusion as to which is stronger, fire or ice."
"They're children," Leo said, his voice both fierce and horrified.
Kefka shrugged.
The Emperor roused himself, his eyes sharp as chips of ice. "Celes has proved extremely loyal," he said. "Of course, we raised her, so we have relatively little concern there."
"She's very loyal," Cid said, and Kefka couldn't tell whether that was truth or simply defense.
"But Terra . . . there's more to her than what we put in her."
"That makes her dangerous," Kefka said.
"She's a child," Leo repeated, his face hatchet-sharp, shield-closed.
"I think you should give her to my care," Kefka said.
What do you plan to do with her? asked the echo of Cait Sith.
"What I want," Kefka murmured, because by now there was no one who questioned when he spoke to himself.
Though he was not tall himself, as a child Terra was still smaller than Kefka. Her eyes were wide and serious and frightened; her hair was the same color as the underside of an oak leaf.
Unlike Celes, she had not been injected. He didn't know how to predict her.
"Terra," he asked, as gently as he could. He could see her looking not at his eyes but at the marking around his eyes . Well. She'd learn about blood soon enough.
It's not blood, said Cait Sith's echo, the shudder of the cat. You're not a predator, you're just insane.
"Terra," Kefka repeated, ignoring the Stray Cat. "You can light things on fire. Why is that?"
"I don't know," Terra said. She wrung her hands, small fingers moving over small fingers. "I just, I always could."
"What esper is inside you that you can do that?"
Terra lowered her eyes. "I don't . . . I don't know what you mean."
"Is it Ifrit?" Kefka kept his voice as soft as he could.
"I don't know who that is."
"Is it Maduin, perhaps?"
And then, then, there, a flick of comprehension that filled him with hope. But what she said was, "You mean Daddy?"
I was a liar, despite myself, Cait Sith said. She will always be greater than you. She is Terra of Two Worlds, and she will always be better than you. And even though the cat was just an echo his voice rang with conviction and hope.
Kefka's response was immediate and total: he slapped Terra, hard, across the face.
His blow snapped her head back and knocked her small body back. She gasped at him, her eyes wide, uncomprehending. "I'm sorry!" she said. "I'm sorry! What did I say?"
"Nothing," he said, and caressed the side of her cheek, the place that was rushing with blood where his blow had landed. She flinched. That wouldn't do at all. "Nothing at all, dear Terra. You just confirmed something that I believed, and I was startled."
"You hit me because you were startled?" Her eyes had gone wide and suspicious.
"Oh, people will do a great deal worse to you out of surprise," Kefka said. "But not me. I have your best interests in mind, even when I hurt you."
If I could betray you, said Cait Sith's fragment, I would.
"You made me a madman," Kefka whispered.
And don't I regret it. Maduin forgive me, Maduin's daughter forgive me-
"Shut up," Kefka whispered, and he opened the box that the Emperor had given him.
The Slave Crown suited Terra. The dull, darkmetal ring made her new-leaf hair stand out; the total blankness brought out the color in her eyes.
Without her ethics, her powers were incredible. Cait Sith had been right about that.
Kefka watched her stand at one end of the room, her eyes empty and fixed. By now the "volunteers" from the conscripts had to be dragged in, fighting, to face her. To face the "witch," so they said.
"Terra," he said. "Kill them."
She stood still, her head cocked to one side so that the tail of her green hair fell over one shoulder. The soldiers on the other side of the room scrambled, cursed, shouted.
"With fire," Kefka said.
Terra spoke, the sleek words of magic falling from her lips even more easily than they did from Kefka's or Celes's. Once Kefka would have been jealous; not now. Not when he was the master of the Slave Crown.
Watching a human burn to death was a horrible thing. Kefka stayed for the whole of it, until the twitching ended and the room filled with the smell of barbecue.
Celes at eighteen had the eyes of a thirty-year veteran, and maybe that was why she was a General despite being younger than most of the men she commanded. And behind those old eyes was the color of frost, the color of the sky before snow.
Leo at thirty had the eyes of a father who had seen his children die, and Kefka didn't know why. Celes was his, and Celes was alive. Terra was alive, too. Technically.
Terra at eighteen was an empty vessel, as beautiful as a vase before it was filled with flowers, as potent as a sword before it was drawn from its sheath.
Kefka . . . .
What eyes do you have? the echo of Cait Sith asked, as it clawed at him from within, as it filled him with its faerie madness.
"I made them bloody myself," Kefka said, and dragged his fingers down through the carmine, lengthening the shape of the long red tears, and he laughed, and laughed, and laughed. "You can't take credit for that, cat."
Fin.
Posted on LJ and DW, reply here or there. Currently there are
comments at DW.
rode a tank, held a general's rank
You want to be unique. You want to be unusual. You want everyone to know who you are, and when you pass by on the street, you want them to whisper your name with awe and reverence. You want to be someone.
Final Fantasy 6. Kefka-centric, plus Cid, Celes, Terra, Leo and Cait Sith. 4500 words, complete.
Spoilers. Worksafe. No specific warning, but implied creepiness aplenty.
part one: in his eyes a flaming glow
"What are the risks?"
"Well," Cid said with a crooked smile, "I'm not sure, because we haven't tried this on human beings yet. But in a trial of esper injection in rats, out of a hundred rats only two died. Those were the two who were injected with Catoblepas, so we won't be using that one. The others all survived, albeit without magic, but that was as expected. The archaeological record indicates that magic has a spoken component, and of course rats can't talk."
"I see."
"But there is some risk, of course. Should you want to think about it-"
"No," Kefka said slowly. He drummed his fingers on the desk. Local boy makes good, he thought. Palazzo kid first magic-user in a thousand years. "No. I'll do it."
"Are you sure? You should take your time thinking about such a major-"
"No," Kefka said. "I know what I want to do."
Of course, they couldn't perform the surgery right away. First he had to endure a two-day liquid diet, followed by a dose of noxious medicine intended to "prepare you physiologically for the injection." Then a day-long fast.
During all that time, Kefka was excused from his duties in the Twelfth Battalion, which left him at loose ends. He wandered first the areas of the Magitek Research Facility that were open to him, then the grounds of the army base, and finally back out into Vector.
Long walks proved difficult by the second day of the liquid diet, when his stomach rumbled, which was why he pushed on to do them anyway. He'd never gotten anywhere by giving up when things got difficult.
His walks took him down to the slums, up through the Dalemarket and Butcher's Row, through the stink of the slaughterhouses and the smoke-belching factory district and then-for contrast-through the sweeping avenues lined with flowershops and bakeries, where tailor's shingles swung in the breeze and people young and old sat out on wrought-iron furniture sipping coffee.
He felt distanced from them: not envious, not disdainful, just distanced. As if there was a pane of glass between him and the young couples flirting, the old men playing chess, the dogs tethered to outdoor seating and lolling happily in the sun. Once he might have sat down and tried to flirt a little himself, or wished he had the nerve to do so, but now he felt . . . nothing.
He was going to be different from them in a few days, after all. Really, genuinely different. And that was going to be wonderful. He didn't have to worry about being just one more face in the crowd.
On the beginning of the fourth day, Kefka reported to the Magitek facility, suffered the indignity of a cotton shift, and swung himself up onto the gurney. Not so much different than when he'd had his tonsils removed as a child, except that this gurney had leather straps at the sides and the foot of the bed.
He pointed this out to Cid, who nodded. "We've never done this to a human before, remember," he said. "You might have a seizure and do damage to yourself."
Or I might manifest the esper in a way you don't like, and attack you, Kefka thought. What he said was, "Well, I'm here, you might as well tie me down."
Cid raised an eyebrow, but took his proffered wrists and bound them to the edges of the bed, firm but not uncomfortably tight. And then his ankles, and then another band across his waist. "We're not using a general anesthetic because of possible interaction side-effects," he said briskly, "but if you feel any discomfort, I can give you something for the pain via IV."
"Which esper did you choose?"
Cid had his back to Kefka, rearranging things on a metal tray; Kefka heard each clink and clunk and slither of metal-on-metal distinctly. "Cait Sith," he said, and when he turned there was a hypodermic needle in his hands. "Now relax. This will pinch a bit."
It took three injections before Kefka felt anything besides the brief pinch of the needle, and even then all he felt was a curious feeling of chill in his veins, as though he had been injected with icewater. Three more and Cid said, "We're done." The whole of the procedure took no more than fifteen minutes.
"That's it?" Kefka asked, and was surprised to hear thickness in his voice, his tongue refusing to obey him.
"That's it. Rest there a while. I'll be monitoring your vitals for a bit longer."
"All right-" Kefka began, and then the icewater sensation in his veins turned suddenly to fire.
He arched and grimaced, but before he could even cry out the fire was gone, and in its place, hollowness, as if his blood had been burned out of him and left his veins empty. And in the hollowness, the voice of his own thoughts echoing down a long dark hallway.
He must have hated you very much, said the voice, to use me.
Kefka refused on principle to ask the clichéd question 'who are you?', so he locked his jaw and clenched his eyes against the darkness.
Or perhaps he didn't know what I was? No, that seems most likely. Who that knew us by our names, our natures, our personalities would bind us so? You are all ignorant. The voice sounded cheerful. No, gleeful. Why?
"I know that you're an esper," he whispered. "I know that with you I can become more powerful than any man living . . . ."
Is it the power you seek, truly? The voice drew closer, a soft shimmer near him, like the brush of fur. No, I don't think so, Kefka Palazzo.
"How do you-"
You think they can pour my essence into you without my knowing you, human creature? I see you from within. I know you. I will become you. I will wear you like a skin. You think you have won but you sought to cage the Stray Cat, and I will own you.
"I won't let you."
Oh, but you will. I know your secret, Palazzo-boy. I know what you truly want. It isn't power, is it?
"Shut up!"
You want to be unique. You want to be unusual. You want everyone to know who you are, and when you pass by on the street, you want them to whisper your name with awe and reverence. You want to be someone.
Kefka said nothing, because it was true, and the worst of it was that he could feel that Cait Sith knew it was true.
You're right that I'm your slave. I have to ride inside your body. I have to be reduced to nothing but-but disembodied power, at your bidding. But when you pour the otherworld into yourself, you must displace something of yourself. And-
And it was as though Kefka could feel something burning him from within and without, burning, tearing, breaking-
-and in the center of it, the loose-hipped swaying gait of an alleycat, an alleycat suddenly on hind legs and with intelligence in its eyes: intelligence as focused as a human's and yet cold, unforgiving, an alien mind within his own. Cait Sith. His esper.
And in the name of Kirin and Siren, said the cat, who you rode to their deaths and then discarded, in the name of Ramuh the Sage who you drove to exile, in the name of all my kin in your facility-Ifrit and Shiva and Maduin the Wise and Unicorn who never did anyone a day of harm, and more than I can count beyond that-that you torture to this day, in their name I will grant your wish, Kefka Palazzo, but I will grant it as you never desired. I will be you and change you, and the Stray Cat will scratch beneath your skin, and the faerie madness will take you, Kefka Palazzo, because you invited the enemy in and I am within you now, and when you pass by on the street they will whisper your name, they will whisper . . . .
And Kefka opened his mouth to scream, but the blackness swallowed him up, poured down his throat, stifled him so that all there was was a thin wheeze from his lungs like a laugh.
The white, white, white and echoing emptiness of the laboratory penetrated first through the fog; it was as though his whole head had been wrapped in gauze, muffling not only sight but sound and smell. Slowly the gauze unwrapped and he could hear someone saying, "Administer phenytoin serum, we need to stop the seizure." And then he drew a deep ragged breath, a long gasp that rasped air into his starving lungs, and felt hands holding him down.
Then Doctor Cid's voice, saying, "He's coming out of it. Kefka? Colonel Palazzo?"
Just a few hours ago he'd been Major Palazzo. Kefka smiled, and felt that his mouth was sore. From what?
Screaming, said a voice in his head. An echo, a faint fragment, but he could see behind his eyes the black-and-white cat, the tricky tracery of paws, the bright unforgiving yellow of his eyes.
"I'm all right," he said, though his voice was hoarse.
"You had a seizure. We didn't expect that. Your vitals seem to be stable now, but." He straightened to his full short height. "How are you?"
"I'm all right," he said. "I'm as well as can be expected, I suppose." And then he laughed.
But the laugh didn't come out quite right. It started high, eerily high, and descended through a serried range of donkey's brays that made Doctor Cid and his nurses step back.
Kefka kept from clapping a hand over his traitor mouth, but it was a close thing.
Welcome to the life you've invited, Cait Sith said.
part two: an extra turn upon the rack
Kefka had never loved sparring. He was always more clever than he was strong, and past a point with others in the military it always turns into strength against strength. He had always hated that.
But sometimes there was nothing else for it but to accept, when someone offered you a friendly (or "friendly") challenge.
Colonel Reytan was six inches taller than him and probably a good fifty pounds of muscle heavier, and he had a punch on him like being hit in the face with a lead weight. One punch. Two. Kefka stumbled back and saw the faint smile around Reytan's lips, felt his own lips split and trickle blood down to his chin.
And-
-then-
-Reytan's smile faded and he took a step back. Kefka could have followed for a punch of his own, but he didn't.
Do you enjoy what I've given you?
Reytan weaved on his feet briefly, like a drunk man, and sank to his knees. His hands came up to his chest and then his throat; his breathing sped up. Kefka watched with academic interest and wondered whether he should care.
Reytan's subordinates rushed over, between Kefka and Reytan, but Kefka could still see quite clearly. So he didn't bother to move.
Reytan began to froth about the lips. His eyes rolled back.
"You might get an antidote," Kefka said, but it was too late. Reytan shuddered into unconsciousness. Somehow, instictively, Kefka knew death would follow soon after.
The ancient scrolls had a name for it, but the best translation was simply 'poison.' Poison magic. Tested for the first time on another Imperial, albeit one who was arrogant, brash, stupid, no credit to his uniform.
He wondered if he should care.
She was a small thing, with enormous blue eyes and long hair the pale color of butter. She couldn't have been older than four years old, and she spent most of her time clinging to Doctor Cid's hand and looking around her with an expression of solemn curiosity.
"You're experimenting on children now?" Kefka said, in order to see Cid wince, and wasn't disappointed.
"Her parents gave her to the care of the Empire," Cid said, as though that explained anything. "And being young is a good thing." He looked down at her and smiled; the girl looked back up at him and then smiled herself, sweetly. "I think the injection might . . . take better with someone who was still young and malleable."
"Oh?" Kefka asked, and though he couldn't keep the edge of poison out of his voice, Cid didn't seem to notice.
Cid always had been dense in certain ways, hadn't he?
"I think your being post-adolescent may have-" Cid began, and faltered.
" . . . Explain why I went so wrong?" Kekfa asked, and now the poison was right there in the open and even slow Cid could see it.
"I didn't mean that."
"But it's what everyone thinks, isn't it?" Kefka watched Cid squirm, and then threw his head back and let out a long laugh, just for the pleasure of watching Cid's squirm turn into a jump. "I went wrong, didn't I?"
"Kefka-"
"It's all right," Kefka said, and then laughed again. He could see the way his forced laugh, a donkey's-bray waterfall of sound, made Cid uncomfortable, so he did it a third time. "I know the experiment didn't go as you planned with me." Somewhere in the back of his mind, Stray woke and stretched. Kefka leaned in, and watched the way Cid swayed back and then forced himself to hold his ground. "But it doesn't matter, does it? Because I've still got the power, either way."
"Celes isn't meant to be an insult to you," Cid said.
Kefka glanced back at the small girl. Celes? Interesting name. Celes celes celerity celestial. Though Cid had jumped and flinched, the girl hadn't moved, her hand steady in Cid's and her eyes calm. Kefka bent over until he was face to face with her, nose to nose, her round child's face filling his gaze like the moon. "Hello, Celes," he said. "I understand you're going to be like me."
"I guess so," said Celes, her voice diffident but her eyes still curious.
"I'm sure we'll be the best of friends," Kefka said.
The white powder was fine talc, from the workmen who used its smooth slipperyness to lubricate their workings.
Kefka mixed it with palm oil until both the oil and the talc moved smooth and luminous beneath his fingers. He spread it over his skin, from forehead to throat, across his collarbones, down his chest below where his shirt would reveal.
The red was carmine, crushed from the shells of insects, soaked in alcohol and vinegar, stiffened with wax.
He looked at his white face in the mirror and took his red fingertips-red as if with blood, massacre-red-and drew long shapes around his eyes, drew long lines down his cheeks.
Your mouth, said the Stray Cat. Color your mouth, blood-eater, kin-eater.
He drew his fingertips across his lips, and tasted wax and alcohol, and thought of the taste of gore.
Maybe it was her youth; maybe they'd refined the process of creating the esper essence to inject; maybe the blue-skinned and fair-haired esper they'd chosen for Celes was just more suited for the job than Stray had been. Kefka watched through a pane of glass as she lay still beneath the sheet. No thrashing. No calling out. None of what the cameras had recorded of Kefka's own injection.
Kefka had watched those recordings with great interest, so he had a basis for comparison.
No, Celes slept calmly, her long braid coiled under her head. But if you watched carefully, you could see Jack Frost traceries of sparkling white frost crawling up her skin from beneath the sheet, writing glittering words in an unreadable language on her fair skin.
Kefka smiled.
Terra was something else again, though. Though she was no older than Celes she came to them with the magic already in her. Or at least those were the stories in the barracks, that at age four she lit fires with her mind when she was frightened, that she could close her own wounds with a look and a thought when they tried to restrain her.
That she closed their wounds, too, when she had accidentally burnt them with her fires.
Fool girl.
Celes was a ward and Kefka was a volunteer, but Terra was a prisoner, an unpredictable child with powers even Cid couldn't account for. They kept her in a stone cell with nothing flammable in it but the mattress on the floor. She didn't light the mattress on fire. Kefka would have, and then he would have laughed in the ashes; it would have been worth sleeping on the floor to prove to them that he could, that he didn't need their small comforts.
But when he spied Terra through the bars of her cell, he could see only the shape of her small shoulders beneath the curly ends of her mint-leaf hair.
Celes had no seizures, and though Cid was concerned of the rime that crawled over her body and turned her skin to glittering ice, the ice retreated and she woke as any child would awaken: groggy, rubbing her eyes, asking first for water and then for hot chocolate and a blanket.
"No seizure for her," Cid said, relieved.
The Stray Cat that bristled beneath Kefka's skin sneered that of course there wasn't, because though humans might care so little for children as to torture them with experiments, the espers had more mercy. Celes' esper would not drive her mad. Celes' esper . . . .
She will be a better knight than you, Cait Sith's echo said, smug and soft.
You promised me-
You will be more famed than her, never fret, Kefka Palazzo, the fragment of Cait Sith said. I did not lie, though you often lie. You will be legendary beyond what you know. You will always be remembered. But she will be a better knight than you.
Celes sat with a blanket around her shoulders and breathing the smell of the hot chocolate, and when Kefka looked at her he could see something new and frozen behind her wide blue eyes.
Celes, at least, they could understand. Within a week of her injections she could turn water to ice with a touch, and when she cried in the night her tears froze on her cheeks and collected like icicles on the curves of her face. But that was as expected, and her control grew by measureable increments. By the time she was six, she froze water in the glass only when she wanted to, and had she wept she could have kept her tears liquid, although she rarely wept even at that young age. By the time she was eight, she could turn her ice outward to freeze the water in an enemy's body. By the time she was ten, she could heal her own wounds by instinct, though she couldn't turn the power outward to heal another.
Emperor Gestahl put her in training with Kefka, who had undergone the same initiation himself. But he put her there with an observer: Colonel Leo Christophe, a young man for his rank, who watched with great mistrust as Kefka bade Celes show him her tricks.
"They aren't tricks," Celes said. "They're magic. It's important." Ten years old, and she had more gravity than half of Gestahl's counselors.
Ten years old, Cait Sith's echo whispered in his ear, and you injected her with the spirit of an immortal ancient when she was four. What do you expect?
"I'd expect a little more wisdom from you, if you're an immortal ancient," he murmured.
"Who are you talking to?" Colonel Christophe unfolded his arms and straightened up, with the air of one not so much looking for a fight as ready for one should it come his way.
"No one," Kefka said, and laughed, the high-pitched bray that reliably made people cringe. But Leo just met his eyes, and Celes looked up at him with mild surprise but no alarm.
What spirit did she have inside her?
Do you think she got luckier than you? Whose idea was it to put the Stray Cat inside you? But I forgot, you people couldn't tell one esper from another . . . .
Kefka rocked back to his heels, so that he could look at Celes eye-to-eye. In truth, she was his only equal, the only other one who knew what it was like for him. He would still be greater than her-Cait Sith had promised-but he would accept her as an honorable subordinate. "And how do you learn your magic, little Celes?"
Celes looked at him thoughtfully, and then said, "She teaches me."
"She who?"
"I don't know her name." Celes met his eyes seriously, and then said, "She's blue as the sky, and her hair is light gold."
"Like yours," Kefka said, and touched the long soft locks of her hair.
"Brighter," Celes said. "Like gold in sunlight. Almost white." She hummed a little in her throat and then said, "She helps me. She teaches me what I need to know."
Kefka backed up a few more steps and then muttered, beneath his breath, "You never helped me."
She is a helpless child. The esper protects her, because we, unlike you, are not monstrous. But you were an adult who wanted to enslave me. I give you what you deserve.
part three: someone is crazy and it's you
"We have tried introducing Celes and Terra to one another," Gestahl said. "They seem to get along."
"Pity," General Kefka said, and laughed his serrated laugh. "I was hoping to get a final conclusion as to which is stronger, fire or ice."
"They're children," Leo said, his voice both fierce and horrified.
Kefka shrugged.
The Emperor roused himself, his eyes sharp as chips of ice. "Celes has proved extremely loyal," he said. "Of course, we raised her, so we have relatively little concern there."
"She's very loyal," Cid said, and Kefka couldn't tell whether that was truth or simply defense.
"But Terra . . . there's more to her than what we put in her."
"That makes her dangerous," Kefka said.
"She's a child," Leo repeated, his face hatchet-sharp, shield-closed.
"I think you should give her to my care," Kefka said.
What do you plan to do with her? asked the echo of Cait Sith.
"What I want," Kefka murmured, because by now there was no one who questioned when he spoke to himself.
Though he was not tall himself, as a child Terra was still smaller than Kefka. Her eyes were wide and serious and frightened; her hair was the same color as the underside of an oak leaf.
Unlike Celes, she had not been injected. He didn't know how to predict her.
"Terra," he asked, as gently as he could. He could see her looking not at his eyes but at the marking around his eyes . Well. She'd learn about blood soon enough.
It's not blood, said Cait Sith's echo, the shudder of the cat. You're not a predator, you're just insane.
"Terra," Kefka repeated, ignoring the Stray Cat. "You can light things on fire. Why is that?"
"I don't know," Terra said. She wrung her hands, small fingers moving over small fingers. "I just, I always could."
"What esper is inside you that you can do that?"
Terra lowered her eyes. "I don't . . . I don't know what you mean."
"Is it Ifrit?" Kefka kept his voice as soft as he could.
"I don't know who that is."
"Is it Maduin, perhaps?"
And then, then, there, a flick of comprehension that filled him with hope. But what she said was, "You mean Daddy?"
I was a liar, despite myself, Cait Sith said. She will always be greater than you. She is Terra of Two Worlds, and she will always be better than you. And even though the cat was just an echo his voice rang with conviction and hope.
Kefka's response was immediate and total: he slapped Terra, hard, across the face.
His blow snapped her head back and knocked her small body back. She gasped at him, her eyes wide, uncomprehending. "I'm sorry!" she said. "I'm sorry! What did I say?"
"Nothing," he said, and caressed the side of her cheek, the place that was rushing with blood where his blow had landed. She flinched. That wouldn't do at all. "Nothing at all, dear Terra. You just confirmed something that I believed, and I was startled."
"You hit me because you were startled?" Her eyes had gone wide and suspicious.
"Oh, people will do a great deal worse to you out of surprise," Kefka said. "But not me. I have your best interests in mind, even when I hurt you."
If I could betray you, said Cait Sith's fragment, I would.
"You made me a madman," Kefka whispered.
And don't I regret it. Maduin forgive me, Maduin's daughter forgive me-
"Shut up," Kefka whispered, and he opened the box that the Emperor had given him.
The Slave Crown suited Terra. The dull, darkmetal ring made her new-leaf hair stand out; the total blankness brought out the color in her eyes.
Without her ethics, her powers were incredible. Cait Sith had been right about that.
Kefka watched her stand at one end of the room, her eyes empty and fixed. By now the "volunteers" from the conscripts had to be dragged in, fighting, to face her. To face the "witch," so they said.
"Terra," he said. "Kill them."
She stood still, her head cocked to one side so that the tail of her green hair fell over one shoulder. The soldiers on the other side of the room scrambled, cursed, shouted.
"With fire," Kefka said.
Terra spoke, the sleek words of magic falling from her lips even more easily than they did from Kefka's or Celes's. Once Kefka would have been jealous; not now. Not when he was the master of the Slave Crown.
Watching a human burn to death was a horrible thing. Kefka stayed for the whole of it, until the twitching ended and the room filled with the smell of barbecue.
Celes at eighteen had the eyes of a thirty-year veteran, and maybe that was why she was a General despite being younger than most of the men she commanded. And behind those old eyes was the color of frost, the color of the sky before snow.
Leo at thirty had the eyes of a father who had seen his children die, and Kefka didn't know why. Celes was his, and Celes was alive. Terra was alive, too. Technically.
Terra at eighteen was an empty vessel, as beautiful as a vase before it was filled with flowers, as potent as a sword before it was drawn from its sheath.
Kefka . . . .
What eyes do you have? the echo of Cait Sith asked, as it clawed at him from within, as it filled him with its faerie madness.
"I made them bloody myself," Kefka said, and dragged his fingers down through the carmine, lengthening the shape of the long red tears, and he laughed, and laughed, and laughed. "You can't take credit for that, cat."
Fin.
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