Post by Al-Cid, Rakesh, Paloma, Mateo on Jul 2, 2012 6:36:06 GMT -5
Name: Mateo Milagros
Nicknames/Alias: Artair is the the name of the protagonist in a fable Mateo's mother used to read to him when he was little. Its a name Mateo may give when he doesn't want to give his real name.
FF: FF12
Age: He falls somewhere between 11 and 15
Height/build: 5’3” with a slender build that weighs in around 100 pounds.
DoB: 696 Old Valendian
Race: Hume-Viera-Something
Licence Board Specialization: Timespace Warmage
Weapon: Most proficient with the ranged Bowgun. He can also wield a sword, but he is self-taught and lacking in finesse. When in a pinch, throwing things at the monsters is also an option.
Armor: He’s too little to do so now, but when he grows older, he should be capable of wearing heavy armor.
Level: 25
→ Strength: 75
→ Physical: 15
→ Magical: 25
→ Agility: 35
Special Skill(s): In terms of physical power, Mateo isn’t at all strong. He is still just a child who is very wet behind the ears, and is a far cry from being an experienced fighter. Rather, his strength lies more toward his phenomenal skills as an arrogant smartass. However, this doesn’t mean that he isn’t at least mildly athletic. Being of vieran descent, he can be pretty acrobatic and dexterous when he wants to be, even if he tends to use those skills toward sneaking out, playing games, sleight-of-hand, and conducting acts of larceny. After all, he’s a weasely little hellion who’s always getting into stuff he shouldn’t be getting into.
But, aside from that, if he were to be dragged into a physical altercation, he would avoid direct confrontation like the plague, or run away. Mateo is a cheater who might try to utilize tricks and traps to gain an advantage. Or, otherwise, he may seek ways to outsmart his opponent. If the other can be put off guard, or angered to the point of distraction, by Mateo running his mouth, these too are fair game. Overall, Mateo would prefer to avoid fighting altogether. He might sneak, hide, or try to talk his way out of a situation. He doesn't want to enter into a fight unless he knows he can win. He may also think that only the stupid will blindly go up against a stronger opponent when they have little chance of winning, and without a plan. Unfortunately, the plans that Mateo comes up with are not always well thought out. Sometimes, they are more impulsively strung together than they ought to be. Other times, they tend to be extremely too childish in concept and execution. Thus, he too is one of the stupid ones.
That being said, he is not without some offensive skills. His mother, being the wise woman that she is, forced a proper understanding of marksmanship upon her son. She had even, on occasion, had her son join her on hunting parties. Due to this, he knows how to use ranged weaponry. His mother was stringent about his training in this area, due the amount of guns she owns. Also, she didn’t want her son to accidentally shoot his eye out--especially after she found that he’d gotten into her armory and took one of her guns with him to go play Sky Pirates. Thankfully, it was unloaded. During his time in the void and rift, he had to, by necessity, learn how to use a sword. However, since he is self taught, his sword technique is horribly unrefined. He tends to go through swords quickly, since he does not know how to properly care for them.
Licence List:
Licenced Techniques - Shear, Addle, Charge, Herology, Numerology, Poach, Stamp
Licenced Magicks (Before Merge) - Time Magic 1 (Slow and Immobilize), Time Magic 2 (Reflect and Disable), Time Magic 3 (Vanish and Balance), Time Magic 4 (Gravity and Haste), Time Magic 5 (Stop and Bleed)
Licenced Weapons: Bowguns 1 (Bowgun and Crossbow); Bowguns 2 (Paramina Crossbow and Recurve Crossbow), Bowguns 3( Hunting Crossbow and Penetrator), Bowguns 4 (Gastrophetes and Gastrophetes S), Swords 7 (Diamond Sword and Runeblade), Swords 8 (Deathbringer and Breakblade), and Swords 9 (Durandal and Durandal A). Probably a bit extensive for a small boy to have, but his mother is a weapons dealer. He got them from her.
Eye of the Void: Trapped within the nothingness of the void, there was a crystal that originated from one of those shattered fragments of deifacted nethicite. While in the void, crystal had started absorbing a small portion of that realm’s power. Yet, this was not all that the crystal had taken into itself, for trapped within, was the essence of an entity who once held the power to manipulate the space-time.
Who was this entity?
Although senscient to a point, the Spirit had become corrupted by the void. Be it originating from god or demon or esper or scion or mage, the Spirit retained no memory of that which it had once been part--only the originator's goal, and portion of its power, remained. However, within this prison, the Spirit had no ability to act on its own. At least, not without an avatar to serve as a conduit for its power.
Therefore, when Mateo had used his Quickening during the Merge, the Spirit locked inside the nethicite awakened. Was it in response to the presence of an impressionable child? Was it Mateo’s licensing of a weaker form of the very kind of magicks which the Spirit wielded? Or, had it sensed the boy’s descent from the Wood--and by extension, the Wood’s link to the void--however diluted as it was by hume blood? Regardless of the cause, the boy was an opportunity the Spirit would not let pass.
Therefore, this Spirit called out to Mateo. When the boy heard its word, and came to it, the Spirit merged itself with the boy, forming a symbiotic relationship. And although the crystal cannot control Mateo directly, it can, by power of suggestion, influence the child’s actions. It is not a direct communication, though. Not with words, at least. More like subconscious urgings that Mateo usually chooses to ignore.
Due to the symbiotic relationship, the crystal feeds off of Meteo’s life. However, in return, the crystal provides access to advanced level Time Magic abilities, by using the boy as a conduit for its power. Unfortunately, the use of such magic comes at a great price, since this kind of power is far stronger than that which a mortal child's body can sustain. Thus, the more Mateo uses magic, the more it will cost him--the toll, being his own health. With smaller spells, the cost is barely noticeable. But, if he is not careful, a powerful spell may mean his own death.
Through their bond, the Spirit provides Mateo with the following passive abilities.
Unlocked Augments (From Timespace Warmage Licence Board):
→ Channelling - Reduces MP Cost by 10%
→ Serenity - Increase magic power when health is full
→ Ether Lore 1/
→ Sellbound - Increase length of positive status effects
→ Swiftness - Decrease time required for commands by 10%
→ Magick Lore - Increases magic potency
→ HP+110/
→ Battle Lore - Increases potency of physical attacks
→ Headsman - Restore MP when an enemy is defeated
→ (Locked until Lv30)
→ (Locked until Lv40)
→ (Locked until Lv50)
→ (Locked until Lv60)
Dimensional Sight - An augmentation to the sight ability, it allows him to sense the location of time-space phenomena such as anomalies and Temporal Rifts. Using this ability, he was able to cross through Void and the Interdimensional Rift. His method of traveling dimensions can be described as a brutal one. This is because in order to make it from point A to B, he must slip through pre-existing tears in the fabric of space time. Time travel, however, is harder for him to do. Although he might have encountered Time Gates, he cannot use them and cannot access the Historia Crux. This is because the power to travel, safely, backward and forward through time via the Time Gates is a power that originates from Etro. Having no connection to Etro, nor artifacts, Mateo cannot use them. Therefore, his movement through time is mostly a linear one. If he were to make any jumps, it would have to be via Temporal Rifts. Unfortunately, even though Mateo has the sight to see such holes through space-time, he cannot tell where they go. Therefore, when he moves through them, he has no clue as to where the tears lead.
Time Sense - An augmentation of the libra/sense/scan ability, this power randomly provides Mateo with Too Much Information about a person, place, or thing. Taking the form of visions, there is no rhyme or reason to when this ability will activate--they are random at best. Rarely do they ever make sense, but when they do, how far he sees into the past or future is limited to a matter of hours--at most. Predominantly, it is a tactile sense. He touches something, and at random, he may or may not get a glimpses of its recent present, past, and future. Due to the way in which this power manifests, it is more of an annoyance than a gift. For example, hypothetically speaking, if he were to touch a bed at an inn, there’s a slight chance that he might get a vision of what transpired there the night before--a horror that results in him often wanting stab his brain.
Temporal Guard - Gives Mateo partial immunity to the effects of time magic. Due to this, he is able to notice the warping of reality, and in some instances, can be immune to resultant changes. For example, if someone were to stop the flow of time around him, there is a chance that he would remain unaffected. It would depend on the power of the one who caused the change. More powerful casters can probably affect him. If they were to make alterations to reality he may still be able to perceive that something has changed, but he would not know what. Being a child, though, he does not always understand what it is that he is sensing. It also protects Mateo from the bulk of the chaotic energy to which he is exposed while traveling through rifts.
Eye of the Void - Spell Level Tiers: The matter of spellcasting for Mateo is much like a game of Russian Roulette.
The Spirit has removed Mateo’s level cap for magic, thus giving him premature access to the Timespace Warmage Licence Board well before he’s leveled up enough to have the LP needed to purchase the licences. As a result, when casting Magick, rather than the spell not working due to lacking the proper MP, the spell will cast anyway. If Mateo does not have enough MP to cover the cost of the spell, the spell will draw upon the Spirit’s power, and channel the energy through Mateo’s body. The Spirit, in turn, will consume some of Meteo's life. As the level of the spell increases, the higher the consumption rate. If the cost of the spell his higher than Mateo's combined mp and available life, he will die. In a way, the Life-Cost functions similarly to that of a Dark Knight's power--in order for Mateo to perform stronger magick, he has to sacrifice his own Life. The lost of his life, however, cannot be regained like HP. It acts similarly to the Bleed status effect, and is thusly harder to recover once spent. If Mateo starts using too much magic, thus having too much of his Life consumed too quickly, he may suffer from a number of side effects including nosebleeds, nausea, headaches, vomiting, hallucinations, and unconsciousness.
Below, the percentages at each level indicate mount of Life it will cost Meteo to cast a spell from each tier.
Spell Level Tier (Life-Cost)
→ Lvs90-99 (100%) - Starfall
→ Lvs80-88 (90%) - Meteor
→ Lvs70-79 (80%) - Comet
→ Lvs60-69 (70%) - Banishga
→ Lvs50-59 (60%) - Gravija, Banishra, Vanishga, Reflectga, Countdown, Reverse, Teleport
→ Lvs40-49 (50%) - Graviga, Banish, Invisira, Hastega, Slowga, Stopga, Regenga, Raise
→ Lvs30-39 (40%) - Gravira, Break, Immobilizega, Bubble, Syphon, Cura
→ Lvs20-29 (5%) - Gravity, Vanish, Balance, Berserk, Bleed, Decoy, Oil, Drain
→ Lvs10-19 (1%) - Invisible, Quick, Reflect, Disable, Immobilize,
→ Lvs01-09 (1%) - Haste, Slow, Stop, Float, Regen
There a few spells whose effects are conditional, meaning, their Life-Cost is not based on the level tier, but on how they are used. Drain and Syphon have no Life-Cost when used sparingly, but can have negative effects if used too frequently. Teleport's Life-Cost, above that of the tier's cost, increases depending on distance and number of subjects being teleported.
In order to decrease the percentage of Life-Cost, Mateo could use both Drain and Syphon to absorb energy from another source, and temporarily give himself a boost in both health and magic. This allows him to also, very slightly, mitigate how much energy the Spirit would channel through him when casting a spell. However, this is risky. Consider it akin to someone taking steroids to increase athleticism or stimulants to increase cognition. Addiction may pose a threat if used too much, and he may run the risk of getting a negative effect similar that of intoxication, followed by a nasty hangover.
Therefore, the more advisable path would be for him simply take the slow road, and grind his levels. Once he reaches a new level tier, any spell he casts from that tier has a substantially decreased Life-Cost. Spells from below that tier are pretty safe to use, unless it is done in abundance.
Quickening:
Level 1 - Chronokinesis - (AoE) Time Manipulation. Temporarily places the immediate area within a temporal displacement bubble, where time within be stopped, hastened, or slowed. There is no discernment between friend or foe. All caught within the bubble, excluding Meteo, will be affected. Exceptions may be those who have a better control over Time Magicks than Mateo.
(Locked until Level 50)
(Locked until Level 70)
Summon: Valuria the Eternal (See Frosty's character Merideth)
Appearance: Mateo looks like a hume child--except that he has a pair of rather short vieran ears atop his head. He had a very dark complexion, giving him a slight resemblance to the rava viera. His height is slightly tall for a boy his age, and his build is rather lanky.
After Mateo merged with the crystal, some slight alterations to his appearance started to develop. The most prominent would be that his left eye now holds an otherworldly glow. This is because his left eye had been merged with the crystal, and it is through this eye that his augmented sight and sense work--hence, the phrasing, “Eye of the Void.”
Due to so much time in the darkness, he’s a bit paler than he was prior to the Merge. Also, because of the high amount of time-space energy that Mateo is exposed to, and similar to how a person’s hair color may turn white if they survive being struck by lighting, Mateo's his hair had started to grow in as amore ashen gray. It used to be a deeply rich brown.
When it comes to how old Mateo looks, and how he ages, he is not exactly on a linear path. Due to existing slightly out of synch with time, his aging process is now veritable. A side effect to using the Spirit and its power is that it also slowly eats away at his Life, thus slightly accelerating his aging. To reverse the effect, or to at least slow it down, Mateo must steal time energy from an external source. Specifically, he targets creatures that are irradiated with time-space energy, such as monsters that roam the void and rifts. By defeating them, and absorbing some of the residual time energy, Mateo can replenish a small amount of his spent Life.
Personality: If anything, Mateo can be summarized as a brilliantly unwise child prodigy with far too much idle times on his hands. As a precocious child with an insatiable curiosity about the world around him, at even a young age, he had picked up many interests and hobbies. Some were of a nature that would leave his mother rather unpleased upon her discovering of them, due to the danger her son had gotten himself into, or the stupidity of his actions. Although Mateo considered himself to be a clever child, and in his arrogance he will tell you as much, he has a nasty habit of getting ahead of himself, underestimating others, overestimating himself, and often bites off more than he can chew.
He likes tinkering with doodads, whatchamacallits and thingamajigs, but half the time he doesn’t know what he’s doing, so he ends up breaking the week’s objects of interest when he gives it a good ol' kick in the nuts and bolts. Afterward, he would need to figure out how to fix the item before his mother (or worse yet, the moogles, because they will never let him near their stuff again) found out. He’s terribly reckless in his handling of things, so upon hearing word of his approach, moogle engineers everywhere try to hide their stuff.
He is good with his math, and has a knack for grasping probability, but its a skill he tends using not for boring academics, but to count cards and otherwise cheat at gambling. Playing games could be an easy way for him to make quick cash, rather than taking on hunts and quests. He’s not adept enough at combat to survive an encounter against the really lucrative marks, so gambling is the more reliable alternative. Since he’s too young to gamble in most casinos, he may strike a deal with one of the casino’s patrons, to use signals to communicate, and split the winnings.
Expanded History:
Child's Fable: Artair and the Djinn - “It was an old fable about a desert prince. The story goes that Artiar was not fond of doing the duties that came with being a prince, so he often snuck out to play. One of the times whilst out, galavanting, a sandstorm had overcome the desert. Artair hid himself away in a cave, and waited for the storm to pass. When he finally returned the palace, he found it to be empty. An evil djinn, who hating the humes that resided within the desert, had used its powers to send them away. Long story short, Artair went on a quest to seek out that evil djinn, and get revenge. When he finally found the djinn’s stronghold, he found his people to be frozen within a prison of crystal. Seeking to save his people, he tricked the djinn into entering a lamp; and for that, gained power over the djinn through the granting of three wishes. He was then able to use his first two wishes to free his people free from their prison, and have them returned to their palace. Then, Artair made his final wish: that the djinn would no longer be able to use its powers to do harm. But, as the saying goes, be careful of what you wish for, you might just get it. When djinn granted Artair’s wish, it, too, had a trick. The djinn removed itself of its powers, and gave them to Artair--turning the prince into a djinn. And so, Artair himself became trapped within the djinn’s lamp...” --Paloma Milagros, Tempestad de Arena
Before Merge
Mateo, as a baby, was peculiarly quiet. He rarely made any noises, and slept mostly through the night. His single mother, Paloma, was quite relieved that her son turned out to be such a pleasant baby. However, upon his first year, when he had yet to utter any babytalk, Paloma started to wonder. When he entered his second year, and had yet to say his first word, Paloma started to worry. She tried to urge her son to speak, to say mama at least, but he was more than content to ignore her and play with his blocks. When he reached his third year, Paloma concluded that her son must have been mute. At least, being mute seemed the more likely than being deaf, even if he was often unresponsive to her calls when he was busy with playing, for his little vieran ears were always alertly twitching about.
It was when she was cutting his dinner into smaller chunks, so that he could eat it more easily, that she heard his first words: “Move. I’ll do it.”
Paloma could only gape in shock as she turned to stare at her three-year-old son, who returned her gaze with hands akimbo and his little face face scrunched a pout of annoyance.
“I want triangles, Mama. Not squares.”
Afterward, it was as though a dam had broken, and his words started spewing forth like a flood. It was like he was done with being quiet, and had decided to make up for lost time. In the year that followed, curiosity grew as well, and he was constantly asking questions: “What makes color?” “How do we taste?” “What makes ships fly?” Those were the simpler ones, but then there were those embarrassingly awkward questions about things he’s observed, or conversations he’s overheard from the crewmen, but not understood, and seemed inclined to only grow curious about it when in public. Questions like, “What’s a bordello?” “Whats @*#& mean?” “Can I have a gun?” “Mama, why were you screaming last night? Did you have a bad dream?” “Have you ever offed someone. Also, what’s offed?”
Once he was old enough to think about more complex matters, and when he started notices things about himself that were different than other children he’d met, Mateo came under the vague notion that his father was probably not a hume. Therefore, the first time Mateo had ever seen a moogle, he’d gone right up to it and asked, “Are you my daddy?” Then, just as those words were spoken, another thought had occurred to him and his eyes widened in horror. His hands had quickly grasped the top of his head as he asked, quite distraughtly, “Where is my ball?!”
As he grew older, his questions became deeper: When he had been flipping through the pages of a picture book, “Mama...How do we know that we’re real, and not a story made up by somebody?” When they were in Dalmasca during the rains, “If plants need rain and sunlight to grow, and rainbows formed by light and water, does this mean that rainbows are meant to be food for plants?” At a funeral of a friend, “What’s the purpose of life, when the future only brings death?”
Eventually the flow of questions ebbed, as Mateo had taken to seeking the answers for himself. He’d grown frustrated with the fact that adults could often not answer his questions--at least not to his satisfaction. It was around this time that he really started reading--fiction for the most part. He especially like stories of swashbucklers and treasure hunters. It became an obsession that grew to the point in which he started to fancy himself a sky pirate, as well. It was something that made sense to his young mind, in that he was practically raised aboard an airship with no one place to call home, and what with his mum being in the business of acquisition and distribution.
During this phase, Mateo had taken to sneaking away from his home to mingle with streetkids while at port--making for himself a game of observing their actions and mimicking their methods. He mingled with them once he thought he could manage their crude manner of speech, though he often got parts wrong. Nonetheless, from them, he learned the art of pickpocketing and slight-of-hand. New skills attained, he decided to put them to test by stealing licenses from the magick shops. And during his bouts of pilfering, it was the time magicks that caught his attention. Eventually, though, he was caught, and his mum was forced to pay thrice the value of the licences, lust Mateo be turned in to the authorities. The scolding that followed signaled the conclusion his summer of sky-pirating.
So, he decided to play at being a spy instead, and spent a great deal of time sneaking into crates and eavesdropping. That got boring after awhile, so then he went on to playing magician, which went on to card tricks, which turned into card games.
The Merge
During the event of the Merge, Mateo and his mother were traveling by airship when they were suddenly overcome by a strong sandstorm . As though reacting to a Jagd, for it is possible that the sandstorm contained a large amount of mist and magicite, the airships skystone lost all power. The airship was headed toward a crash landing. It was during this time of terror and panic that Mateo's Quickening, Chronokinesis, awakened prematurely.
Now it was that Mateo had yet to actually gain this Quickening, and he would not for some time to come. However, Time itself is a tricky business, and when dealing with the matters of quantum mechanics, Effect has a habit of wanting to occur before Cause.
Elsewhen, trapped within the nothingness of the void, there was a crystal formed from a shattered fragment of deifacted nethicite. While in the void, the nethicite had started absorbing a small portion of that realm’s power. Yet, this was not all that the nethicite had taken into itself, for trapped within, was the Spirit of an entity who once held the power to manipulate the space-time. To a point, the Spirit was sentient; however, within this prison of crystal, it no longer had the power to act on its own. At least, not without a host. Therefore, when Mateo's Quicking, Chronokinesis, had awakened, so too did the Spirit. In need of a host to wield its power, the Spirit reached out to the boy.
Then, during the Merge, in that moment between old reality and new, between one second and the next, the Spirit connected with the boy. Using Mateo's Chronokinesis as a catalyst, the Spirit created a hiccup in the fabric of space-time. What resulted was a Paradox that trapped the ship within the moment between.
When awareness returned to young Mateo, the airship was eerily quiet. Gone were the shouts of the crew, the howling of the wind against the hull, the rattling of the cargo as they tumbled about in the hold below... Even the sound of his own footsteps seemed muffled. The interior of the ship was very dark, as though the ship had lost all power. Or rather, something was sucking all light from the air. He could see only as far out as his hands could reach. As he explored the airship, he called out for his mother and the crewmen. None replied. One by one, as stumbled through the airship, and managed to narrowly avoid hitting his head against objects that had somehow gotten suspended mid air, he found the crew and his mother. Everything, everyone, on the ship had Stopped--frozen in temporal stasis.
He decided to take a look outside the airship, to see where it was they might have landed. It took some work for him to push the airship’s door open, but finally he managed. He was about to bound outside, but was stilled in his steps. Outside the ship, there was nothing but blackness. He could see not ground nor sky--only a void.
And for a while, Mateo had worried that he'd somehow broken the universe with his magick--like he tended to break his toys. But that was silly--how can a kid break the universe?
It was then that he spotted a distant light, beaming like a lighthouse through the darkness. HE wondered, was there someone out there? Mateo called out into the darkness, hoping to get a response. Again, nothing.
He thought about leaving the ship, to head over to the light. He wondered if there was another person out there. He wondered if there might be someone who could help unstop the ship. But, he could not see the ground. If he were to just leap out of the ship, would he end up falling forever? If so, then was was keeping the airship from falling, now? Maybe there was a ground, but it was so dark that he could not see it. Mateo decided to test and see if there was a ground there, and how far down it was. He'd read about something like this in an adventure book once, when the hero of the story had found himself stuck in a dark cavern. The hero would test the ground before him, by throwing stones and waiting until they hit bottom. The sooner the sound, the closer the ground.
Mateo retreated back into the ship to find something to throw. He search through his cabin, throwing his toys out of their box as he looked. He finally came across his bag of marbles and thought that they would do fine. When he returned to the door, he fished out a marble and tossed it out the ship. He could hear it clacking against something almost immediately. So the ground was near, after all.
Mateo thought about leaving the airship, and heading toward the light. However, he was a little scared to do so. Although he was never one to be afraid of the dark since he was really little, this total pitch blackness was a different matter. There was no telling what could be out there. Yet, the longer Mateo remained on the ship, the more anxious he became. He had to find a way to fix everything. The longer he sat in this darkness, the more he was becoming convinced that this entire situation was his fault. He tried casting his haste spell to get things moving again, but it seemed to have no effect.
With no other options, Mateo decided to head toward that light. Since it looked to be very far away, he decided bring supplies just in case he needed to camp out in the darkness. He searched the airship for what provisions he could think to grab (rations, water, blanket, knife), and packed him into his satchel. He packed the marbles too, just in case he needed them to test the ground. Next Mateo gathered his gunbow from his mama's armory, and as many bolts as he could find. He was about to leave, when he noticed a sword. He'd never really learned to use them, but he decided that he might want to take one of those as well. If he were to use all his bolts, he didn't think he would he able retrieve them in the darkness. He would need a backup. The sword was a bit heavy for his small frame, so he found a strap that would allow him to carry it on his back. He made one last stop before exiting the ship. Going to the cargo hold, he gathered another satchel, and gathered into it as many flairs as he could find--he recalled the character in the story had lit torches to navigate the caverns. Once ready, Mateo left the airship, and set out into the void.
He lit one flair and left it just outside the airship. The rest, he would use to make a path through the darkness--like a trail of breadcrumbs. Because he didn't want to run out, he waited as long as he could before placing each flair.
Mateo traveled for what felt like many hours, perhaps days, before he reached the light. Yet, instead of finding a lighthouse, or even a camp, what Mateo found instead was a crystal.
As it floated there in the darkness, its form reminded Mateo of the large teleport crystals to be found across Ivalice. Yet, while those shone with a warm orange light, this one seemed to have a colder glow to it--more purple-like. Mateo neared the crystal, and was a bit disappointed that there was no people to be found here. Still, if this was a teleport stone, perhaps it would transport him somewhere to find help? Unfortunately, he didn't have any teleport stones on him--and he didn't know if his mother kept any back on the ship. When one lives on an airship, who has need for teleport stones?
But now...
Mateo stomped around the crystal in his frustration, making quite a ruckus in his upset. He was at a loss about what to do, and now panic was really starting to set in. He took to pacing back in forth in front of the crystal in agitation. What a fix he had gotten himself into! Here he was, trapped out in the middle of nowhere with just a Stopped ship and a stupid crystal he could not use.
Mateo glared at the crystal, and kicked it for good measure, as if him not having a teleport stone was somehow the crystal’s fault.
"Piece o' junk!"
The crystal seemed to take exception to Mateo's abuse, for as soon as the boy kicked it, it started to ring. Startled, Mateo let out a shout as he leaped back from the stone and covered his ears with his hands. Ringing only grow louder, and the crystal started to shake. Mateo's eyes widened and he took a step back, and then another. Had he broken the crystal, too?
Before Mateo could take a third step, it exploded with a bright light that flooded the void. The shockwave sent Mateo hurdling backward through the darkness. Energy surrounded the boy and flooded his sense. Sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. All became overwhelming, and he felt as though his body was burning from the intensity of it all. It was painful. So very painful that he wanted to die. Perhaps his wish was heard, for soon everything went numb as darkness consumed him.
When Mateo awakened, it was too the sound of a distant roar of what sounded like fiends. When he opened his eyes, there was a strange light above. Where there should have been a sky, or the total darkness that he had seen earlier, he now saw a tapestry of stars and nebulous colors. It seem to undulate above him, stretching and compressing, almost like ocean waves.
Mateo hear another roar, and he quickly sprung to his feet. He staggered for a moment, then, dizzy at the sudden movement. Looking around, the crystal from before was nowhere to be seen. Instead, it seemed as though he could see everything else. For a moment, he thought that maybe the crystal had teleported him somewhere. But then, he noticed the flairs that he had used to make a path back toward the airship. He could now see through the darkness, almost as plain as day, as the airship sat against the undulating horizon.
Mato blinked. Had the crystal been stucking up all the light, before he kicked it, and apparently shattered it?
That was his best guess at the time, for not only could he see the airship and the path he made, but now he could see the ground on which he stood. It was rocky and vast, like a barren wasteland. Spread across the wasteland were what look to be twisting dust devils--or vortexes that seemed to have an inner glow to them. He could also see strange creatures roaming the plane. So numerous were they, that Mateo did not know how he had managed to avoid them earlier.
There was a third roar, and Mateo turned to see what looked like a big dog-lizard-thing charging toward him. Just as he could now see them, it appeared that the monster could see Mateo as well.
Frighted, Mateo took off running toward the airship. Yet, when he passed one of the flairs that he had set out, he noticed that the monster did not follow. Rather, it kept its distance just out of range of the flair's illuminating light, and roared.
Mateo blinked, and wondered if the monsters were scared of the light. Was this how he managed to miss them before? Did the flairs keep them away?
Mateo smirked at the realization. And standing, he laughed as he threw a few rude gestures and naughty words at the monster, taunting it.
The monster roared, stomped viciously in response, and stormed forward. Mateo screamed like a little girl, and took off running down his path of flairs.
Just as he thought he was going to make it to the safety of his airship, the ground around him started shaking. Then, a giant worm monster burst forth and gobbled up the monster that had been chasing Mateo. The boy only had one moment to breath a sigh of relief, before the giant worm turned on him.
Mateo soon found himself having to face this giant worm mostly in battle, as he found that it seemed quite intent on gobbling him up, too. The spent the first part of the battle just running and dodging while trying desperately not to get eaten. He kept his distance, and when he could get in a moment to do so, he cast spells he knew to widdle down at the monster's health--Bleed, Slow, and Gravity. Haste and float for himself, to avoid getting felled as the worm crashed through the ground. The fight seemed to drag on far longer than Mateo would have liked, and he was starting to get really tired. But, it seemed so too was the worm, as its wiggling grew more sluggish. Taking a gamble, Mateo pulled out his bowgun, took aim, and fired. The dart shot right through the worm's mouth... and only seemed to make it agrier. The work reared its head back, before it started charging foreword toward Mateo after than ever, as though it had broken free of the Slow spell. Mateo had no time to dodge out of the way.
But then, everything around the boy seemed to slow as a heady feeling washed through his mind. Just then, in the worm's mouth, Mateo noticed something that seemed to glow. As if by instinct, he picked up his bowgun, loaded a new bolt, took aim once again, and fired. The bolt struck, and the work reared back with a writhing pain, before collapsing to the side. Its squirming grew still, and then it started to disintegrate into dust and shadows as a ghastly exhale escaped in its death. The worm vanished from sight, but it its place, remained a small crystallized stone.
Mateo blinked, quite surprised that the second hit had felled the monsters. He was not quite sure what to think about it's rather anticlimactic end. Still in a bit of a daze, he stepped over to where the worm had fallen, and look down at the stone it left behind. Kneeling down, he hesitated a moment before reaching foreword to poke it with the tip of his finger. It moved a little with his touch, but otherwise did nothing. A little more confident, he picked it up and grasped it in his hands. It felt warm to the touch. And then grew a little warmer, before it suddenly disintegrated in a burst of light--light that was absorbed into Mateo's hands and sent a tingling sensation through him. It when then follows by an acute dizziness, and Meteo fell to his needs, catching himself on his hands.
The dizziness passed, and he noticed there were a few droplets of wetness on the ground below his hand. He touched it, and found it to be sticky between his fingers. Lifting his hand to his face, he found his nose to be bleeding.
"What..."
Another roar erupted behind him, and Mateo swiftly turned around expecting to see another monster on his tail, "What the heck? Not again!"
Yet, to his surprise, there was no monster at all. Rather, it was the airship. Time had returned to it.
"Oh... Oh!"
Mateo scrambled to his feet and ran back toward the airship as fast as he could. But just as he made a leap for doorway, he seemed to pass right through it, and tumbled across the ground. Righting himself, he turned back around to find that the airship had gone all see-through. It was disappearing before his eyes.
Mateo hollered, "No! Wait for me!"
But the airship, his mother, Griogair and the crew were gone.
The Void and the Interdimensional Rift in Space-Time
When Mateo entered the void, he was but ten years old. How long he spent wandering the void, Mateo does not know. Could be days, months, years, centuries... All he knows is that it felt like forever--but then again, we all know that time flows much slower for small children than it does for grown-ups.
His time in this limbo was a constant struggle for survival. He ran out of bolts fairly early, and with no other weapon but the sword he did not know how to use. By necessity, trial, and error, he had to learn quickly, or be gobbled up.
Eventually, he learned that the glowing vortexes twisting across the landscape were actually portals to other lands. He had accidentally gotten caught up in one, while running from a fiend that was just too powerful to beat. Soon, he was using them to jump from plane to plane, in an effort to find his way back to his mama. He came across many strange lands in his journey. Some were barren like the land in which he started, while some were lush like forests. There were lands populated with people, and other lands that only seemed to possess echoes of humes who would only disappear as he drew near. At one point, he had thought that he had found Ivalice, but, it turned out not to be the Ivalice that he knew. Some even seemed to be placed upside down or inside out--but those latter two might have been dreams. The longer he spent wandering these strange worlds, the harder it was becoming to tell his dreams apart from when he was awake.
BELOW: Is subject to being totally discarded.
One time, he found this lady dressed as a chocobo, standing out in the middle of nowhere, waiting for her friends. Why a person would wait around for anyone in a place like this, Mateo did not know. But, she did seem a little lost and scared, so he sat with her for a while. He was feeling a little lost and scared, too; though being a boy, he didn't want to admit it. While waiting, Mateo looked through her items, and bought some supplies with the gill that he had managed to poach off some of the monsters. He bought a Deathbringer, mostly because he thought the name sounded cool, but also because his Runeblade was getting rather worse for ware. He also upgraded to a newer bowgun, a Recurve Crossbow that seemed to come equipped with a sight, and bought the arrows to go with it. When the chocobo women's friends seem to be making their way over, he bid farewell, and left her to them.
Although not the strangest place that he had encountered, the most distracting was one called Serendipity--a delightful ream of fun and games that seemed to exist in the middle of Nothingness. How such place came to exist, Mateo did not know. But, it seems that the Goddess of Luck decided pity the child, and give him some much needed respite after his harsh travels. Or maybe, it was this Goddess of Luck who been with him this entire time; it is not often that one would expect a little boy to be able to brave such a voyage on his lonesome, and survive. The card games and the chocobo races proves to be a delightful distraction, and Mateo was rather surprised that they would allow a child to play, at all. But casino seemed to have a special place for children, all the same. He played the games he loved, and it was a lot of fun. Eventually, he began to forget about being lost and about his mother and about finding his way back to Ivalice. He was content to remain in Serendipity for eternity. Here, there were no monsters to fight. There was no loneliness to endure.
But then he met an even littler boy named Dajh who spoke so fondly of his Daddy, that Mateo was reminded of his own Mama whom he had forgotten.
It looked like his time in Serendipity had come to an end. For as much as he liked playing the games, he could not remain there forever. He had a home, and a family, to return to. His mama must have been worried to death about him, by now. He needed to find a way back to her, and let her know that he's okay. He spoke with the Mystic, and she told him where he might be able to find the path he needed to take, but then gave him a parting warning that his journey was far from over. After Mateo was able to find a portal, he left Serendipity behind.
Post Merge
After Merge
