Chronicles of Gaia (RP)

The Eyeroll coming from the woman was Large and obvious when Ricardo scuttled off, "There are always those who don't hear what people say, the remaining three of you, well," she cracked her knuckles ominously to make her point, "Stay put, too many cooks spoil the broth and it's going to get dangerously overloaded over there if anyone else decides to try and play hero in something they know nothing about." tugging the Suit down from it's branch, Ama pulled a needle out from the towel, and then started tugging hairs from her head, clearly, that was how she planned on repairing her one article of clothing. -- Seyr finished inspecting the now cleansed statuette, not daring to touch it with her bare hand in case it triggered early, it remained on the rock she was on as her foot broke Bora's nose as she started moving, "... Oh that's right you were still there, huh, well that's your own problem, I need to go observe this." there was a far bigger crowd than she'd expected when she arrived at a distance, she wouldn't make herself known just yet, the Kistune wanted to study the Magic Rikazu was using, see if she couldn't reverse engineer for more... 'Practical' Use later down the line, "Hrm, what an interesting tune, carries well, wouldn't surprise me if it raised the dead though, tad loud."

"If Odin hadn't severed our pact, none of this would be happening in the first place", Kuja groaned, keeping a close eye on the area around them. They'd moved on to a place that strongly resembled the Iifa Tree, though it was only briefly. The silver-haired genome didn't care for places that Mizuki wasn't at right now. It was still strange though, how quickly they could move between places that were normally several days or weeks apart from each other. He was about to turn to head into another direction altogether when suddenly the area changed around them on its own, revealing the place he recognized as Gaia's place of memories; Memoria. There was some irony in a place of memories appearing inside a world that was created entirely out of memories itself. "Of all the places we could go..." he said quietly, looking around. Rikazu slowly dropped his own barrier when Victoria arrived, though not before making sure her magic would hold against Mizuki's explosions. "I didn't have much of a choice, without a barrier those explosions would have killed anyone nearby. ...Thank you, Victoria. You too, Ricardo", he wasn't sure if the latter would even hear him right now, but Rikazu recognized the song all too well. It hadn't been that long ago since he tried to use it to calm Mizuki down, after all. Though as powerful as it was now, he still wasn't too sure if it would reach his daughter right now. "Just be careful, Victoria...this probably isn't even half of her power yet, those explosions may get much worse", he spoke again. "The rest of her power will remain sealed for now", Rikazu could not believe his ears at the new, yet all too familiar female voice. Said female with long, charcoal-colored hair approached the ones near Mizuki slowly. Her footsteps, if one could even call them that, were silent and her body was transparent, as if she wasn't truly there. "Seth didn't have time to unseal all of her memories, and while there surely will be a domino effect, it won't happen right away." "What in the..." Rikazu started, at a loss for words. "Mel? How are you here?" A dream was one thing, but he was awake right now. Surely she looked like a ghost, but...He shook his head, now was not the time to get distracted. "This song", she mused in her usual sweet voice. "The way your skeleton friend over there plays it, the way the trees here resonate with it...it allowed me to tap into its magic, it always was my song after all." She moved closer to the blue-haired male, wrapping her ghostly arms around him, wishing she could actually feel the sense of touch right now. "That, and the magic of our pact, of course. It's giving me a foothold here, for now at least." "Can you help her?" Rikazu asked. His emotions were all over the place right now. "I intend to, but it will take some time...and even then, I cannot heal her mind. She's going to need you, Rikazu. Now that her memories have returned, she'll need you more than ever", Mel responded to him before pulling away from the male. Instead she knelt down next to Mizuki, placing a hand on the girl's chest. "I'm going to borrow my power for a while, sweetie."

Aislin's eyes went wide when she spotted the Iifa Tree, and then much wider when they walked into Memoria. "I remember this..." she breathed out, looking around and catching a glimpse of a ruined Alexandria. She then sharply shook her head, trying to get rid of the buzzing noise she could hear. ...No, wait, it wasn't buzzing, it was voices. Voices just on the edge of her hearing, but could she afford the distraction? Aislin looked around at the landscape as it changed and morphed in the air, showcasing several different scenes anywhere she looked. Perhaps this was as private as they were going to get. She toyed with the idea for a minute or so, and then stepped in front of Kuja, blocking him from continuing. "Kuja, there's a few too many scenes that don't make sense here. Plus, the area feels different than when it did in Cleyra. What exactly happened here?" She watched him with a slightly worried and concerned look. She didn't really want to stop walking either, but it was either stop walking for them or plunging into that rather painful-looking lava from Mt. Gulug over there...

Kuja raised an eyebrow as he heard Aislin speak. "What do you mean, you remember this? Back when we ran into Seth, too...you said you knew everything that happened." He looked past Aislin when she stopped him, noticing the lava as well. "What you see here are the memories Memoria showed Mizuki when we entered this place back in our world. It's the place that holds the planet's memory, after all", he spoke. The silver-haired genome looked around, taking in the memories. He remembered the things he saw, most of it was his own fault after all. "There's the destruction of Alexandria, Lindblum and Cleyra, each was a place where I forced Mizuki to summon an Eidolon. Gulug, though you've probably heard about that by now since you were with Mizuki and Rikazu when they had their fight. And then there's..." He fell silent, shaking his head. Why would those memories even matter right now? "I kept Mizuki with me at all times during our time in our own world, at least until Lady Hilda took her away after the events of Mount Gulug. We reunited after I destroyed my home world, however...and I brought her here. Shortly after we entered this place, Mizuki lost control too...after all, most of her memories of her childhood had been sealed, but Memoria would still show her those memories. Rikazu immediately knocked her out and sealed the memories of what she saw, and she didn't regain consciousness until we arrived at the Crystal World." The memories after that were vague to him as well, probably from that Jester's meddling. "I was followed there by people Mizuki considered her friends, and she was torn between fighting them, or fighting me."

Aislin went quiet for a minute, mulling it over before finally nodding and speaking. "First things first. When I said I knew everything earlier, I meant the whole deal between Seth, Rikazu, and Mizuki. Secondly..." She took a deep breath and let it out, showing him an almost pained smile. "Secondly, what I can see in the air above you denotes a few things you haven't mentioned yet. So... how about we both skip the omissions and just go for the straight truth?" She was dead now. She was so dead now, the only way this could get worse was if everyone else was listening too. However she may feel about this, she got caught in the lie and now she had to fess up. "You tell me what happened here; I promise not to get mad or cut you off or anything like that. If you'll extend the same courtesy to me, I'll explain what I meant by that 'I remember' statement and maybe a couple questions in the process." Guilt and fear still written in her eyes, she carefully extended a hand an asked, "Do we have a deal?" She knew they had to hurry, and yet... This had to happen sooner or later. She suddenly wished she did write the rest of that letter.

Kuja shot a glare at Aislin when she said he hadn't mentioned a few things yet. He didn't exactly want to talk about those things to begin with. Were they even important in any way? Then again...if it meant she'd tell him what she meant with her statement, perhaps it was worth telling her. Giving her hand a shake, he sighed. "I suppose we have a deal. But I have to warn you that there are things I don't entirely remember about that time." Taking another look around, he took a moment before speaking. "Before Mizuki's friends arrived, she and I talked for a while. Despite wanting to use her abilities in the past, I had started to care about her, and by using our pact I forced her to stay out of the fight between her friends and myself. Rikazu showed up after our fight had already started, and Mizuki kept him away from our fight when he did. Perhaps she was afraid of what he would do if she let him join us. Rikazu of course didn't want to hurt her, so he stayed out of the fight the entire time as well." He let out another sigh. "I was defeated in the end, though the details are blurry. In the end, despite me having teleported them all to safety, Mizuki returned to find me. The last thing that happened there was that the roots of the Iifa Tree came crashing down on us."

Aislin put a few fingers on the side of and under her chin, tilting her head the slightest bit, thinking. Adding that info to what she had learned all throughout this journey... "I see. It does indeed makes sense, though I can think of a couple of reasonings behind Rikazu and Mizuki's actions during the fight." She waved a hand, dismissing that statement, and then the fear began to lurk in her eyes again as she then continued, "Thank you for explaining, Kuja. Now it's my turn." Aislin forced herself to keep eye contact, though it was very hard to not just stare at her feet the entire time. "There's a type of technology on my world that allows us to view planets out of our current reach. Once we learned how to twist time a bit, we used that in conjunction with this technology to view past events on those other planets. Thus, I know about other worlds and things that if well-known would probably get me killed by about half the group now." A wry grin had surfaced during the last sentence, but disappeared swiftly at the next. "The stuff we used wasn't perfect though; the version of the events on your world that I've heard from you doesn't match up with what I watched." Another wry grin and a nod. "Yup, I viewed your world. Celere's universe, Kudret's world, even some of the legends in that book Kudret carries, I've seen historical events from all of them." She shook her head to dismiss the matter once again. "Er, sorry, got off track. In the events I saw of your world, it followed Zidane and his group with one major difference: there was no Mizuki. No Mizuki, no Rikazu, no Rockna, and Zidane was the one who saved you from the Iifa Tree's collapse, not her. There's a really big difference between the Kuja I saw then and the Kuja before me, and I have to say I'm grateful about that. I doubt that version of you would have listened to all this." She finally looked down, biting her lip as she tried to think of what to say next. Oh, right. "I'm... sorry for keeping it from everyone, I just didn't know how to say it. You don't really learn how to say that sort of thing. Well, to be utterly truthful I'm sorry for getting caught; I wasn't expecting you to hear me say that. It's... been a really big fear of mine lately; everyone learning about what I've been holding back and... kind of hating me or leaving me behind. Killing me would be a relief at that point, you know?" By this point, her voice had gone quieter, though the buzzing in the back of her mind continued. Was there something going on outside? She had begun to cringe a little, clearly expecting the exact scenario she had outlined to happen. If that kept up she'd work herself into a full-blown meltdown or something.

"Your world must be rather advanced to have technology like that", Kuja mused, trying to process what Aislin told him. She'd seen events from their world? No, not exactly...a world without Mizuki could never be his world. "I don't think you need to be afraid. I don't see any reason to hate you or leave you behind, and the other people in the group are simply said better people than I am", the silver-haired genome himself wasn't entirely certain why he was feeling this calm about the situation. Should he have been more upset or angry about it? He didn't see a reason why. "You are a kind person, Aislin. Rather than use any of the information you have on us against us, you chose to help us instead." He took a moment to try and find the right words, these kind of things weren't exactly something he was good at, yet somehow he'd found himself caring enough to try. "For some reason, despite what you've seen of me in that...well, other history, you still chose to become my ally. You've seen Mizuki's memories here, and still you don't seem to hate me. Even when Seth tried to get Mizuki to hate me, you tried to ease my mind right away. I don't quite understand it, but I am grateful for it." Another scene playing out in the area caught his attention meanwhile, reminding him of something. His own palace...could that really have been where Mizuki was right now? Was that place significant enough to her? "Now, will you help me find Mizuki?" This time, it was the genome extending his hand to Aislin.

Aislin was trying desperately not to let herself be distracted by her own thoughts while she waited for Kuja's response. She had started up a bit of music in her own mind to calm down when he began to speak. Wait... he didn't hate her? Hope rose as she listened, lifting her head again to watch him. That was... that was huge. Even despite how much she enjoyed traveling with all of them, she could not deny that Kuja was near the top of her list of 'people most likely to kill someone keeping secrets'. To know he would acknowledge what she had done to help them, even to the extent of being grateful for it... She was almost in tears, it was such a relief. Aislin blinked them back and grinned up at him, shaking his hand firmly. "Of course, Kuja. Ready when you are!"

"Good, let us move on then", Kuja responded. "This place gave me an idea of where she might be." As if on cue, the scenery around them changed once more, the area they arrived at giving him an uneasy feeling. This was where she's at, he was certain of it, but...of all the rooms in his palace, Mizuki's mind had brought her to the dungeons? He grimaced; facing his past actions would be the only way to find her now. "If she's behind that door, she'll no doubt hate me right now. I locked her in that place before...before I started to care for her, that is. I didn't think this would be where her mind would bring her though..." Kuja sighed, but then took a step towards the door. The magic behind it felt powerful, even from where he was standing, but he pushed onward anyway. Kuja soon spotted the blue-haired girl, curled up in the corner of the room, hands placed over both her ears as she cried. Magic lashed out from her here as well, similar to how it did before they entered her mind. "Mizuki--", Kuja didn't get a chance to walk closer to her or say anything else as Mizuki looked up at him, eyes wide in fear and panic when she saw him. "Stay away from me!" she yelled before a magic blast knocked him backwards against a wall. "You...you left me here...again...even though you promised...Just...just go away! Leave me alone!"