Maybe World

Title: Trial Run
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Characters: Terra, Kefka, Cid
Length: 2004 words
Notes: Terra's about 12 or 13 at this point. Uses theme #25, Armor, from 30_fantasies.


"Why do they call it armor?" Terra asked, and immediately wished she hadn't.

There was a moment's silence before he seemed to realize she'd spoken, and turned to look at her. "You said something?"

"It was nothing," she said. His face was powdered, his eyes outlined in dark kohl; already a light blue, they looked even more pale when shadowed this way. She thought he might have rouged his lips. She wished Celes had been able to come with her. "I mean, no sir." He was an officer, even if she wasn't under his direct command. It was rumored he'd be a general soon. He was even in uniform, sort of; it was cut like an officer's uniform, but it was all in red and yellow, and he was wearing a brightly colored feather on his chest like a boutonniere, or a medal.

"Oh, don't be so timid! If I want you scared, you'll know. What was it?"

"I... just wondered why they call it armor," she said in a rush. "It's not really like a suit of armor, more like a chocobo or something. I mean, you ride on it, not in it. Don't you?"

"It's marvelous, isn't it?" he said, running his hand over a joint of one of the suit's legs. "Some engineering foul-up, I suppose. The original plan was for a suit you wore like outsized mail. Idiots."

"The proper name is Magitek Armored Unit - we weren't really trying to create expectations of a suit of armor," a voice said. Terra turned to look at him; from the corner of her eye she saw that Kefka didn't. "You have to see that a larger unit is safer and more effective, and it is heavily armored, even though it's open at the top. You'll be well protected in the final battle model - we're developing a type of glass shield for the cockpit that will resist blows and arrow strikes, even gunfire, if we should ever invade Figaro."

"Is there another invasion planned?" Terra asked.

"He doesn't know," Kefka said scornfully.

"Quite true," Cid said easily. He pulled the hood of the shielding suit over his head - he was more careful than any of the other scientists, but then, he worked around magic more - and smiled at her through the mesh mask. "Shall we?" She turned, and saw Kefka climbing up into the suit - there were handholds she hadn't noticed until she saw him using them. "Kefka first," he said after a hesitation. "Come up to the observation booth with me."

She followed him up the steel steps. Through the glass - "shielded," he said, indicating it - they watched as the magitek suit lumbered into the middle of the large, empty room below. Even Kefka looked small in it, a speck of bright color in the dark metal giant. But he wasn't really much taller than she was, he just seemed that way sometimes.

"If you'll dispatch the first three targets with the fire beam, Kefka... On the north wall," Cid said, into a horn-shaped device. It didn't seem to amplify his voice in Terra's hearing, but Kefka turned toward the wall, and suddenly fire arced from the front of the suit. It splattered like liquid against the wall over one of the target dummies, but the second shot hit it and the fire spread over it quickly. He fired a third and fourth time, hitting the target each time, then a fifth that took out two of the dummies at once.

"Now let's see the bolt beam in action," Cid said into the horn, then turned to her to explain, "The targets won't conduct the electricity, but we can at least test his aim and the way the bolt behaves." Kefka just fired another stream of flame at one of the dummies that was already burning. "Kefka?" Cid repeated. The armored unit swivelled toward the observation window, and something like a concentrated beam of lightning streaked at them. Terra stepped back from the window as it hit the glass harmlessly; she thought she might have shrieked, at least made some noise, and Kefka was laughing in the magitek suit, she could see him. Cid looked shaken and he was sitting back in his chair. She could feel her heart beating.

Cid cleared his throat and leaned forward to speak into the horn again. "Kefka, that's enough," he said, and Kefka fired on another of the dummies. "Kefka, we want to see what Terra can do as well."

Another of the targets was hit, this time by a bolt of ice magic. Kefka walked the suit over to the target, its plaster limbs and stuffed body now encased in ice, and fired another bolt at it at close range; the magic played over all of it, and on the second blast, she saw smoke coming out of it. Another step and then he swiveled the suit again, knocking several of the damaged targets from the walls; on two of them, the body broke off while the head remained hanging.

"Dr. Marguez, that's..."

"I know," he said. "But it's not a human."

"Why are they even human-shaped? It's just for target practice, isn't it, and it's not like that would test the effects on a human, so...." She searched for a word, hoping he'd have an answer before she could finish the sentence. "So... why?"

"There was a rumor Kefka requested it, but... you know how rumors are. His behavior may be odd, but..." He shrugged. "I don't know. Most likely it was what we had on hand." Before she could say anything more, he leaned over the console to repeat "Kefka?"

Kefka started laughing again, loud enough that they could hear him this time, but he climbed down from the suit without further prompting when he'd settled down. Terra hesitated, not sure she wanted to encounter him on his way back, but she'd have to pass him at some point, so she drew a deep breath, headed down the stairs quickly, and paused at the bottom to wipe her palms on the skirt of her cadet uniform where she thought Cid and especially Kefka couldn't see her.

He came out of the large door he'd piloted the suit through, and she walked past him quickly, head down. He didn't say anything as she passed, and she slowed as she entered the huge room, walking toward the suit - it looked like a stilled monster, as if it could come alive, but that was just her imagination.

She knew what to do. She'd worked with simulations for the past two years, had even piloted an unarmed prototype a few times - the first time, it belched smoke and gave off a singed smell - but this was the first she'd ever even been near that had fully-operational weapons. Knowing that the only observers were safe from her was some comfort, but the target dummies that lined the walls counteracted that. Up close she could see that they were mannequins, the faces on the unharmed ones realistic enough that at a glance she might take one for real. Not as they were now, hanging grotesquely from hooks on the walls, but they were detailed, not just faceless forms; why? For practice with weapons or magic, they used targets of straw or wood, or sometimes, rarely, faceless but human-shaped leather dummies.

They weren't real, though, obviously. They didn't even really look real, with their sexless bodies and dangling limbs. The torsos were made of burlap or leather, something brown and stuffed, with plaster arms and legs, like a child's doll. She climbed into the magitek suit, the seat still warm where Kefka had been sitting. On the edge of the seat, it seemed, since that was the only part that retained his body heat. She settled further back on the leather-upholstered cushions, positioned her right hand over the buttons, the left on the steering stick, and pushed one of the pedals to start the suit in motion. She tried to back it up without success, then turned it and moved it away from the wall; there was a crunch as it stepped on one of the damaged mannequins.

"Let's go through this in the same order Kefka used," Cid said. "Fire, first, then bolt and then ice."

She saluted to show she'd heard, and then aimed the suit at one of the undamaged targets. The primary weaponry was all in the front of the machine's chest, though there would be secondary armament on the sides. The attack was a matter of channeling her own power into the machine, she'd been told, a bit like casting a spell. She focused, closing her eyes and then hastily opening them again in case she needed to aim; there was an odd feeling as if a spell had completed itself without her, her own reserves of power untouched by shaping of the magic, and suddenly, fire was sweeping over the mannequins, a whole row of them, as she moved the steering stick in an arc to swivel the suit's torso.

More than three. Far more, and one of them seemed to have been cut in two by the flame; next to it, one of them was missing below the shoulders, the one she must have hit first. Charred legs lay on the ground below it. "Oops," she said out loud. She felt strangely hollow inside, but the tips of her fingers were tingling, and her face.

"Do that again!" Kefka's voice demanded, eagerly; she turned to look, and saw Cid trying to coax him away from the speech horn.

"Go on, Terra," he said. "We'd all like to see that again."

All? Were there other watchers? "Okay," she said, even though she knew they couldn't hear, and the machine lumbered back to life, marching thunderously over to an untouched wall of target dummies. She practiced, with occasional encouragement from Cid; short blasts for single targets, long cascades of liquid flame that could take out around a dozen at a time.

"Bolt, now, I think," he said, and she heard Kefka, more faintly, saying "No! Fire! Burn them!"

They still burned, even under a bolt spell. Their painted faces blistered and peeled, and smoke rose from their stuffed bodies. Ice on a burning dummy extinguished it and froze it instantly; fire on top of that reduced it to vapor and a handful of dust. When Cid finally decided to call a halt for Kefka's continued demands for fire, she climbed down from the suit, a bit shakily, and hurried out of the training room. The acrid burnt smell of the mannequins or the magic followed her out, and she suspected it would be in her hair for days.

"That was... very impressive," Cid said; Kefka's avid face told her that even more eloquently. She tried not to look at him. "You'd had no prior training?" Cid continued.

"No sir. I didn't even see the exhibit of the prototype weapons, I had a medical exam that day."

"You have to teach me how to do that!" Kefka said, his voice still high-pitched with excitement.

"I... don't know how. It just came to me automatically, it wasn't anything conscious at all."

"That's a pity," Cid said. "If only we could train all our troops to do that..."

"There has to be a way," Kefka protested. "Make sure she trains more! She'll figure it out."

"I could try..." Terra said, but reluctantly. She couldn't help resisting the idea of tutoring Kefka in better use of these armored giants. She wasn't sure she wanted to pilot one again herself.

"No, you'll do it!" She hesitated. "You will," he repeated.

"Yes, sir," she said, doing her best not to look away from his eyes. She might as well teach him, once she knew how, and she'd have to learn. She'd be a Magitek pilot once she left the academy. It wasn't as if she had much choice about that.