"Urgh..."
The thoughts and voices swam around the tan-skinned man like frantic dolphins, setting his mind awash in an incomprehensible haze. Names of places and people, memories of sights and sounds - none were spared from the chaotic aura that enveloped the man's brain, and the result was a splitting headache that throbbed painfully as he tried to move. An attempt to open his eyes and sit up found itself quickly shut down as his senses were overloaded, and he collapsed again into the heap of scraggly black hair about his scalp.
"Oh-! Are you okay, kupo-?"
He grumbled in annoyance as one of the voices in his ears took priority above all else. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," came the man's response as he blindly tried to wave off the worrywart fawning over him, "Quit whining, jeez..."
With some effort, the burly figure managed to lift himself into a sitting position, vocally straining all the way. Not faced with the sun anymore, his eyes were able to adjust to the light and gaze upon the environment he found himself in. He was quickly able to discern the lively swathes of green composed a set of nature-dominated plains. Almost immediately after, the man identified what appeared to be several other humanoids among the backdrop of the landscape, most occupied with their own personal attentions.
But never mind those people- what about himself?
"Thank goodness you're awake, kupo! It would've been terrible if you just-"
"Pipe down, will ya?" The man spoke back, perhaps a bit more gruffly than he meant to. "I can't hear myself think." Indeed, he couldn't bring himself to recall anything definite; there was something about someone important... a child? Was it his child? Who did he even have a child with? It had to be a pretty woman, surely, but what made him so sure? There had to be something attractive about himself... he did have a pretty well-toned body, he observed. But then he remembered that he was famous- for what, though? Who even was he?
"Jecht."
"Kupo?"
"That's my name, I know it," Jecht half-replied, half-thought out loud. "One of the most well-known names in... damn, what was that place? I know it was a big city- or is that something else?" The burly man furiously racked his brain for answers and was only rewarded with names and terms he couldn't piece together. Too many questions and not a single answer to be found among them- the strain gave Jecht another headache. This was starting to really piss him off. Growling in frustration, he lamented out loud, "Son of a- I can't remember a damn thing right! Everything's all fuzzy... what's going on here, anyway?!"
Invigorated in the spur of the moment, Jecht scrambled to his feet and looked to the other people going about their own business. Something about this whole situation felt familiar, but these sights he was witnessing were not. A sly and stern-looking woman, an aloof young man in bardic clothing, some weird midget-like thing - none of them struck a bell in Jecht's and the confusion aggravated him even more. "Hey, you bunch!" The tawny strongman called out to the other people in the immediate area, being rewarded with a few doubtful looks, "Yeah, you heard me! Do any of you, any one of you, know what the hell is going on here?!"
"Yes, kupo!"
Caught with his arms raised out to the side in confrontation, Jecht quietly turned his head back to discover the source of the noise that had been plaguing his patience for the last few minutes. It was a tiny white creature about the size and shape of a stuffed doll, complete with slotted eyes, a comically small satchel around its shoulder, cartoon-ish bat wings jutting from its back, and a yellow pom-pom dangling from the single antenna on its head. The creature had clamored onto the hilt of a large sword planted in the ground in order to better stand up to Jecht's size, and was waving its little stub arms in order to grant itself attention.
"Alright," Jecht turned back with a reprisal of his words, "So, anyone besides the- uh..." He quickly and awkwardly turned back to the creature, his voice turned drastically quiet in a futile attempt to mask his embarrassment, "What even are you, again?"
"Mogolia!" The creature announced at its full volume, oblivious or possibly uncaring as to Jecht's moment of humiliation. "I'm a moogle, and I'm here to help you, kupo!"
A moment of stunned silence followed, the tan-skinned man scrunching his face as he attempted to comprehend the strange being's intentions. "Uh-huh. Say, are you using that?" Jecht changed the subject to the blade the moogle was standing upon.
"Huh? Oh, well, this isn't mine, if that's what you're asking-"
"Then I'm borrowing it," the tough-spoken man declared, his right hand decisively clamping around the wrapped handle of the weapon. A high-pitched yelp escaped from Mogolia as he was forced to escape from his perch, wings flapping furiously to bring his body aloft while Jecht yanked the sword from where it rested. The long blade and proportionally long hilt gave the impression that it was built as a two-handed weapon, but Jecht felt confident he could wield it in just one hand given his strength. Though he did not recognize the work of the blade itself, the heft felt strangely familiar in his hands- was he meant to use this kind of tool?
"Now, then- Hey, HEY! Don't ignore me, I'm not done yet!" Jecht called back to the fleeting mass of individuals among him, some of them clearly wanting to go their own way. Jecht, however- he wasn't going to budge until he could get himself some answers to this predicament.
Ariamis
