onepassingnight | oo1 ❄ I've seen this somewhere before

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oo1 ❄ I've seen this somewhere before

The scenery within this new (perhaps not quite) foreign subconscious is a confused jumble, as if its unsuspecting creator cannot quite decide just where to be — a snowy mountainside has burst up from beneath the streets of a staircase city set into the rise of sheer, seaside cliff. The pieces are whole, details sharp and clear on narrow, towering buildings all crammed close together and rocky outcroppings with their blankets of heavy snow (still falling, as it is, in weird pockets only over corresponding ground).

But these little scenes are shattered among each other, shifting constantly, uncertain as the blank, white sky above, which reflects a dull grey in the ocean below. Where these two endless, colorless stretches of space reach to meet on the horizon, they blend seamlessly, as if meeting the edge of this conflicting reality might be as easy as setting sail for the fragile inner boundary of the eggshell shape it almost appears to be locked within.

Bright and cold, the silence falls as heavy as the inclement weather, in each vacuum of space that covers the mountainside, doing its best to muffle the staccato beat of his boots on uneven pavement broken over icy faces of stone and the competing race of his heart, now trying its hardest to burst clear out of his chest. (And in a dream, who's to say it mightn't?) With his rifle hugged tight against his back by its strap, where it beats a solid rap against his shoulder blades, a sharp reprimand for every stumble, a lone soldier in drab blue is fighting a very literal uphill battle.

The uniform he wears obscures all of him but the lower half of the pale, strained expression writ across his face, solemn as he barrels up the insurmountable slope in leaps and bounds, shadows chasing behind as he rounds a street corner onto another craggy patch of open ground. Snow kicks up in misty clouds around his ankles as he stumbles, but doesn't stop, always only one step ahead of his pursuers.

They're monsters, or maybe only the distant memory of a child's imagining of such, solid enough as they crumble up out of the earth in his wake. But they fade to dust as phantoms while he manages still to evade the catch of claws and snapping jaws at the heels of his badly scuffed black boots, the shirttail tucked under his belts. Shameful as it is not to stand and fight, outpacing them is this dream's objective, instead, and he can't seem to stop his feet from moving on, hands scrabbling at each new hold to pull himself higher.

At least not on his own.

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Kuja studies the creatures, but his study doesn't tell him what they are or why they're chasing this human. He supposes it doesn't matter, does it? The reasons why. Monsters often have a will to destroy. He knows that well. The proper thing to do is to assist.

Even if this is only a dream. Even if it doesn't matter in the least.

There was no need for haste on his part, yet he acts now. He reaches out a hand, and as he raises himself above the earth with his magic, he tries to do the same for Cloud, pulling him up with unseen force, even as that same power works to push back the beasts in pursuit of him. A small magic, and simple enough for a once-great mage.

"So bright and cold, the snow lies still and white
Unmarked by blood or track beneath our flight."

Flight has no positive associations in Cloud, who's only used to the sort taken by helicopter or airship or plane; all three of which tend to make him sicker than sick. So when his feet leave the ground for good, there's no peaceful sense of wonder or anything remotely so close to outright enjoyment.

It's utterly terrifying.

Perhaps not as much so as the thought of being chewed to bits by the monsters behind them, still, but more than enough so to land him looking profoundly undignified as he flounders through the sudden lack of gravity. This time, the look he turns on the strange intruder is pure bewilderment.

"Wh-What's going on!? Put me down!"

"In case you haven't noticed, I am attempting to deliver you from your pursuers," Kuja sighs. Such ingratitude. He isn't pleased by this lack of appreciation for his benevolent efforts. But to his credit, he doesn't drop Cloud. In the past, he wouldn't have helped him at all, or even have paid him the least mind.

The floundering Cloud is a trifle more annoying than he is amusing in his struggles, so Kuja doesn't smile. "If you will wait a moment or two, I will lift you up away from danger and set you down, quite safe."

He acknowledges Cloud's words with this response, but he doesn't put him down yet, instead raising him further up the slope. For added benefit, he casts Flare Star at the following monsters, with absolutely no self-awareness or any thought that this wave and then burst of light and fire might be at all alarming.

There's no proper response to that kind of thing, and so Cloud is forced to settle for enduring the treatment. It's maybe a little better than being left to the chase, at least, but he's only just begun to concede, to catch his breath, when that spectacular explosion throws him right back into horrified silence.

It's quite a spectacular sight, actually, and one he might've appreciated for its power, were he not hovering awkwardly just above it. He does the only sensible thing, thus, and throws his arms over his visor, the exposed half of his face - yes, he'd very much like to be put back down, now, monsters remaining or not (and it's a small fortune that there don't seem to be any reemerging, yet).

With the monsters devastated by that perhaps excessively powerful spell--not that Kuja's ever been one to shy away from overkill--there's no reason to keep Cloud floating above the earth, so Kuja sets him down and lands lightly beside him.

In spite of the cold, he is dressed as he usually is, not what one would generally consider cold-weather gear, but he doesn't appear to mind the weather, even as flakes of snow land in his hair.

"You needn't fear now. Your pursuers are vanquished." And he bows, a slightly theatrical gesture smoothly executed, yet perhaps not quite in keeping with the act of blasting things with fire.

His legs threaten dangerously to wobble underneath him as he sets foot back on solid ground, but Cloud steels himself against the loss of that weird, floating feeling well enough. He doesn't do anything half as embarrassing as toppling over into the snow, but he does sway a little dizzily as he looks around.

It's quite a surprise to see that the stranger's words are true; even after that stunning burst of fire, a part of him has a hard time not imagining the monsters coming crawling back up out of the ground they'd seemed, in their strange in-between forms, to have been just as much a part of. The only sound that echoes over the artlessly arranged landscape is that of the empty wind, and his rather bewildered, "Um... Thanks.

"But- Who are you?"

"There is no need to thank me," says Kuja, with a wave of his hand. No amount of good can make up for the ill he's done, so why should he accept any praise? He surveys the field of battle, if it can truly be called battle. He's used to destroying things quickly and wholesale. He smiles at the desolation, as it suits him.

"I am Kuja." He studies Cloud's completely unfamiliar garb. Dressed like that, he looks nothing like a resident of Alexandria or Lindblum or anywhere Kuja is familiar with. "It's likely you have not heard of me." If he hasn't, that's probably for the best. He's much more infamous than famous.

"And may I ask the same of you?"

"My name's Cloud," he answers, half lifting his helmet just to get a better look at the stranger, after a quick shake of his head. No, he'd definitely never heard that name, before - or at least not in any memorable capacity.

(And this guy, well, he'd probably remember.)

"Do you know... What those things were?" Looking off toward the scorched patch of earth where his demons lie (if only temporarily) in rubble, he tugs the mask off the rest of the way. A breath of fresh air seems to settle his nerves by a fraction, but really it's just a relief whenever he has the chance to take off that suffocating thing.

"You again?" He raises his eyebrows as he hears Cloud's name and sees his face. It's the vaguely, oddly familiar man, who'd been so understanding, if not eloquent. Yet he looks younger and doesn't appear to recognize Kuja now. "I've met you before, but you were older, then. Perhaps time has gone backward in my absence, yet I remain as I ever was." Never any younger or any older; that is his fate.

He glances back to the shattered demons again as Cloud mentions them. He shakes his head. "No, I've never seen their like before. They were hounding you so eagerly, as if they knew you. Yet you don't know them?"

"Me... Again?" The look of recognition he receives is so utterly alien that Cloud is taken aback by it almost more than the nonsense that Kuja spouts along with it. He really doesn't mean to be too rude to someone who's just potentially saved his life (not to mention, somebody capable of such catastrophic magic), but he can't help the sharply skeptical expression that overtakes his uncertainty.

"You've got to be thinking of someone else," he clarifies cautiously, shaking his head. The monsters are a safer topic, and he sounds a little more sure of himself when he glances briefly back to their shattered disintegrating corpses. "No. I mean... They're just monsters, right?"

"Of course you wouldn't remember, if I'd met you in your future," says Kuja airily, as if he travels through time everyday--as someone who traveled through dreams constantly now, he does feel like that is the case at times.

He shrugs. "Yet even when I first met you, I had the oddest feeling that we had known each other somewhere before. Isn't that strange? Cloud. I wonder why I felt I knew that name." It does puzzle him, but there seems to be no answer to the mystery, not at hand. This younger Cloud seems utterly befuddled.

"Just monsters?" As a monster of sorts (or so he sees himself), perhaps Kuja should feel offended, but he doesn't. However, he can't let that remark stand. "Every monster is different, and they are of a wide variety of species, each with their own habits and habitats." He is perhaps a little more well-inclined toward monsters than most. He can usually control them, but he hadn't attempted it with these, as they are unknown to him.

But my future hasn't happened, yet, feels far too absurd to just blurt out, and so Cloud manages to bite his tongue. He has to wonder what sort of person makes up stories that preposterous, on the spot, but he does seem a little... Flamboyant, after all. From his dramatic speech to that blindingly brilliant burst of flame - a reminder that helps him hold back any more scathing skepticism than that duller brand in his quizzical silence.

"I guess so." But Cloud can't claim any empathy toward those enemies, himself. If he knows anything about monsters, it's only to better combat them. In his experience, while they may differ in shape and style of attack, all monsters have the same basic goal. And that's to kill him before he can so much as twitch his trigger finger.

"But it doesn't really matter, anymore."

"Your older self was much more respectful and courteous," says Kuja, who considers few people worth talking to and finds this Cloud comparatively lacking, though he has no way of telling what experiences or how many years separate the two of them.

He sighs. "Don't be so short-sighted. Things don't cease to matter because they are dead. And to understand them will assist you in the future, should more arrive." It was true that he couldn't empathize with a fear or even wariness of monster, as there was no monster as powerful as he.

"Where is it you're going now, wandering Cloud?" he asks, remembering that the other, too, was on a journey.

"He's not me," Cloud snaps, before he can stop himself. No, he doesn't believe it a bit - that there could be somebody out there who looks a lot like him, maybe. That that someone might also share his name, possibly. But that there's a stranger out there who is him?

No way.

Much as he spends an overabundance of time already comparing himself to others, when some presumptuous stranger comes and does it for him - it galls, and he's closed up again like a fan, just that quick. The neutrality in his voice is the same he might offer to the request of a less than favorable superior officer. He doesn't want to admit that the guy has a point - the same point as Cloud understands it, even if he's coming at the problem from the wrong angle - so he settles for answering the only direct question in all of that.

"...I don't know."

"There's no need for anger," says Kuja, regarding his long fingers, from which a burst of pale rose flame has sprung, like a bright flower, its color and warmth a contrast to the landscape surrounding them. "I meant no offense."

Well, maybe a little; he hadn't exactly been polite. "The other Cloud, let's say." He knows what it's like, all too well, to compare himself with others, and beneath his polished and lofty façade, he might have more in common with Cloud than he'd admit. His insecurities and feelings of inadequacy ate away at him over the years, his fear always at his heels.

"What use speaking of him if he is not here?" Kuja asks. In truth, he liked speaking to the other more, but there is truly no point in bringing it up.

"Then perhaps, like me, you are wandering." Kuja gazes up at the odd sky, which appears almost colorless from where he's standing. "I have no nation, no world, no destination." He remembers the other Cloud had spoken of a journey, nearing its end. "You must find a goal first, if you are to begin."

He takes that "apology" as it seems meant - as merely a token gesture of civility. It does nothing to assuage his (wholly justified) indignation, and he doesn't bother to respond as he shoves his helmet back on, the borderline offensive anti-fashion statement officially less bothersome than present company.

Kuja seems more invested in talking just for the sound of his own voice, rather than hearing any of Cloud's actual answers, anyway.

"Those are two different things," he replies, at length, hoping for indifferent and landing somewhere sullen, instead, with the slight shake of his head. Where he's going at this very moment, and where he wants to be someday are hardly comparable, however; he may be lost, but he isn't without a goal, a dream, whatever word fits best. But he doesn't want an answer, Cloud's already decided. Just any old excuse to deliver another snippet of monologue.

"So go wander wherever you want. I'm getting out of here." He's said his thanks; he won't feel guilty about going.

"I'm perfectly capable of mentioning two different things at the same time," says Kuja. "Of course they're different. That was my meaning." He feels annoyed. After all, all he'd done was assist. Why must people make it so difficult for him to help? It's much easier to dominate, to crush them, to murder them by the score.

That's what he was made to do, and that makes him dangerous, but he pushes that thought along with that desire from his head. He won't be what he was made to be.

"Is that what you want? To wander on forever here? You don't know where you're going, and those creatures might return." In truth, he is a little bored. Being dead (or so he believes), these dreams are all he has. He won't be left behind and return to the ashes of Terra, which always draw him near. "This place is empty, desolate. Things could be so much more beautiful."

With a wave of his hand, he casts an illusion, transforming the landscape into a green garden bright with flowers, with a glittering castle in the distance, its turrets as fine and delicate as spun glass. It might be made of glass, in fact, or crystal, for it seems one could almost see right through it. There are topiaries in the shapes of dragons and torama, and there's soft music in the air, as of a harp playing somewhere.

And Cloud had thanked him for that assistance, and assumed then that he'd be on his way. Or at least not such grating company.

If his increasingly belligerent attitude puts him in any danger, of course, he certainly doesn't sense it - wouldn't, even, were it staring him right in the face (as it well should be, after that first display of power). He's used to being the bottom of the food chain, though. Is missing entire whatever part of a person should make them more wary of some stranger who could squash them like a bug.

(I'll take my chances.)

-he thinks, opens his mouth to shoot back, just before the world changes a drastic measure, and it's all he can do just to round on the strange environment (unlike anything, green and alive as it is), gaping under the edge of his helmet.

"Wh-What did you do?" he demands, staggering backward as if he might find the edge of the illusion just by breaking its boundary. There should be snow drifting around his boots, permafrost ground beneath, and he can almost still feel it like an afterimage imprinted on the soles of his feet. "Just put me back. I didn't ask for any more of your help."

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oo1 ❄ I've seen this somewhere before

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