Chapter Text
The Falcon was never the most exciting place to hang out while the heroes waited for whatever gang of four that wanted to be on the surface in that given moment to return. While yes, the lower decks were pretty fancy; there wasn’t exactly that much you could do there. Sure, Setzer did buy a fair share of decks and dice sets a little while back, but the ship didn’t really have the full on casino that the Blackjack did. So, the heroes usually had to entertain themselves in whatever way they knew how. And for Mog, he liked to pass the time by singing and dancing for his friends, especially Relm, and Umaro. Unfortunately, Umaro was currently out adventuring in the outskirts of Narshe alongside Locke, Terra, and Edgar; so it was just Relm who watched him sing and dance to a traditional Moogle song, with Strago watching from the side as well.
“-Kupo kupo kupo-po, Kuuu po po poho. KUPO!!!” Mog sang as he jumped up in the air and spread his little arms out in order to emphasize the end of the song.
Once that song was over, Relm’s eyes lit up as she enthusiastically cheered and applauded for the Moogle. Strago, who wasn’t as excited by the song as his granddaughter was (he always preferred to listen to songs with lyrics he could actually understand), but he clapped just as hard because he knew it would make Relm (and, to a lesser extent, Mog) all the happier. Besides, he had to admit that the song was pretty catchy, anyway.
“Well done, whippersnapper.” the elderly Magi said to Mog.
“Yeah, that was really fucking good.” Relm added before she looked over to Strago, who was giving her the look. “I mean, freaking good.”
“Thank you, Thank you, kupo!” Mog replied with a bow. “Anyways, when do you think Umaro and the gang will come back, kupo?”
“I dunno.” Strago said as he looked out a nearby window. “I'm pretty sure Locke said that they’d all be back before sundown, but it’s getting pretty darn close to sundown already.”
“Eh, they’ll probably be fine out there.” Relm said. “They’re probably just spending a bit longer training than they thought. Besides, what kinda monsters are out there that those four can’t beat?”
“Wow, you really haven’t been out in the fields in a while, kiddo.” Strago snarked. “When was the last time you’ve done any monster-whooping again?”
Relm thought to herself for a bit.
“A month, give or take?”
“EXACTLY!”
“Both of you, cut it out, kupo!” Mog yelled, interrupting Strago and Relm’s argument. “I’m gonna wait out in the top deck, kupo.”
“Okay, you go do that then.” Strago said as Mog climbed up to the top deck.
Once Mog made it up to the top deck, he basked in the radiant dusk that painted the sky above. The airship was hovering a good 30 feet or so above the ground. Mog looked down for a second and saw what seemed to be large, black burn marks painted on the ground, presumably from the Light of Judgment. It was rather cold and extremely windy outside, which was fitting considering that they were near Narshe, or at least, what was Narshe before the world ended. A human probably wouldn’t be comfortable in this climate, but for Mog, it was just an abnormally windy Tuesday. The Moogle Cave was always really cold, that’s why the Moogles evolved their fur, which kept them insulated in those sorts of extreme temperatures.
As the Moogle took in the chilly air around him, it reminded him of home and the good old days, before that damned clown ruined everything. He remembered the days he spent hunting wild rats with his tribe as a small(er) child. He reminisced about the time he gave a scary-looking member of a species he had never seen before some of his food, which ultimately created a friendship with the creature (who Mog named Umaro) that has lasted to this day. As he looked at the little crystal amulet around his neck (if you could call it a neck), fond memories of meeting his beloved Molulu flooded Mog’s heart, mind, and soul; at least until he remembered that she, just like the rest of the Moogle tribe of the Caves, were gone; and that the amulet was the only remnant of her or any of his old pals left after the cataclysm.
Tears fell down from the Moogle’s eyes, even when he tried his damndest to hold them back.
“Stay happy, kupo.” Mog muttered to himself as he wiped away the tears. “Can’t be seen looking like this, kupo. Gotta lighten up the atmosphere, kupo.”
Mog tried to relax, took deep breaths, and tightly gripped the amulet. He needed to keep his mind off of… all of that. As he was doing that, he heard a voice hollering out to him from the surface below.
“Hey, can you let us back up?”
It was Edgar, who was standing next to Terra and Locke as they all looked up at the Airship. The three looked oddly bloodied and beaten up, as if they just got out of a really bad fight without healing afterwards. They were waiting for someone to let down the Falcon’s ladder so they could get up and regroup. This was far from the first time Mog had to do the honors of letting down the ladder, and he did so with ease (Mog was always pretty damn strong for a moogle). Once the ladder was down, the three adventurers quickly rushed to climb up. However, Mog could vaguely tell from the look on their faces that they were either scared, frustrated at each other, or both.
“You’re probably gonna piss off a lot of the crew with whatever the heck you just pulled off there, genius.” Locke snidely told Edgar as they were climbing up (a conversation Mog could hear).
“It was either that or we’d all become mantis food.” Edgar snapped back as he got onto the deck, with Locke and Terra following suit.
As the three got onto the deck, they were greeted by Mog looking about as pissed off as a Moogle could look. His arms were crossed, his face looked very stern, and he was glaring right at the king of Figaro. If Mog wasn’t an absurdly adorable Moogle, he probably would have scared Edgar.
“Oh, hey Mog.” Edgar greeted with a nervous look on his face as the Moogle slowly approached him. “How’s it going?”
“What happened, kupo?” Mog sternly asked Edgar. “Where the heck is Umaro, Kupo?”
“I told you so.” Locke whispered to Edgar.
“Answer my question, kupo!”
“No, let me explain.” Terra said, interrupting the argument between the two of them. “Wanna go to the Captain’s quarters so we could have this conversation away from those two?”
“Why not tell me here, kupo?”
“I don’t really want to cause too much strife right now.” Terra explained before pointing towards Locke and Edgar, who were still arguing.
“Kupo.” Mog said as he nodded his head.
The two then walked to the captain’s quarters (fortunately, Setzer wasn’t in it at the moment, for he was playing poker out in the lounge with Shadow and Sabin). Mog’s mind was clouded by the worries of where the hell Umaro went. Did someone screw something up so hard that Umaro lost his life in the process? Or did the three abandon Umaro? Or perhaps something even worse happened out in the fields. Whatever it was, rage was building up within Mog, and he felt like he was going to snap any time now. However, he still decided to keep all of those feelings bottled up inside. He saw every single one of the humans in the crew as his friends almost as much as he viewed Umaro as one, and that was especially true for Terra and Locke. And if he kept happy, maybe they would stay happy too, regardless of whatever the fuck he was going to learn.
Just before Terra and Mog entered the captain’s quarters, Mog noticed out of the corner of his eye and noticed that Strago and Relm were somehow already fast asleep, in spite of it not even being that late. They seemed to be hugging each other as they slept (NOT like that), and were smiling. As Terra sat down, Mog smiled back at the grandfather and grandaughter before following the Half-Esper.
“So, what happened, kupo?” Mog asked Terra with very obvious frustration and worry oozing from his tone.
Terra took a very long, very depth breath before she answered.
“While we were down on the surface training on some monsters, we ran into a Sprinter with two Greater Mantises behind it.”
Mog flinched a bit. He’s fought a Greater Mantis or two before and he only barely survived each time.
“Did Umaro die, kupo?” Mog panickedly blurted out. “Please don’t tell me he died, kupo.”
“I don’t think so?” Terra said as she looked down. “Your yeti fred got petrified by that Sprinter early on in the fight, and we were a bit too low on mana to use Esuna. I didn’t even know Sprinters could do that?”
“Why didn’t you just use a Gold Needle on him, kupo?”
“We would have, but the Greater Mantises stopped us from doing that. They nearly killed us and we would have died if Edgar didn’t pull out a teleport stone and bring us to safety.”
“YOU LEFT HIM BEHIND, KUPO?!” Mog shouted.
“If I were Edgar I wouldn’t have left him behind.” Terra said. “When we were teleported away, I said I wanted to find him but Edgar said we should rest at the nearest inn before we head back.”
“If everyone was out of mana, you guys could have just asked anyone else on this ship for some healing, kupo.” Mog said. “In fact, want me to heal you right now, kupo?”
“Yes, that would be good.”
Mog put his hands on his head, as if he was thinking really really hard. However, what Mog was actually doing was casting a spell, which was made very obvious by the fact that his hands started to glow a bright green. The Moogle then trusted his hands out in front of him, casting a Cura spell on Terra by firing the green healing energy at her. Once it landed, Terra could see her wounds slowly heal as that healing energy seemingly worked to stitch her skin back together until it was good as new.
“Thanks.” the green hair girl said softly.
“Do you have a Gold Needle on you, kupo?” Mog asked in a tone that was still oddly stern for the Moogle.
Terra rummaged through a pouch she had strapped to her belt. After a bit, she pulled out a Gold Needle and showed it to Mog.
“Here.” she said as Mog quickly snatched the needle out of her hand.
“I’m going to find him, kupo.” Mog said as he rushed out of the room.
“All by yourself?” Terra asked. “If you want, I could go with-.”
But it was too late, as Mog had already left before she could finish. The Moodgle rushed up to the top deck, where Edgar and Locke were still bickering over if Edgar screwed up or not (an argument Mog didn’t even entertain listening to). With his trust lance in one hand and the Gold Needle in the other, Mog lept off of the ship and landed on the ground with not that many injuries, yelling out a battle cry as he fell. Seeing that was enough to draw Locke and Edgar’s attention.
“Ummm, You saw Mog just jump down there, right?” Edgar asked the “treasure hunter” besides him. “Do you think he’s going to be safe out there all by himself?”
“If you’re worried about his safety, MAYBE YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE LEFT UMARO’S PETRIFIED BODY BEHIND!” Locke responded with a look of anger on his face that looked a bit uncharacteristic for the kind of bickering that Locke and Edgar tended to have. “This crap is your fault!”
“I…I… I’m sorry.” Edgar said as he took a step back from Locke.
It might have taken a while, but remorse had finally fully sunk in. Edgar admittedly didn’t know Umaro very well. He was hanging out on the Falcon when the Yeti got recruited, and the longest amount of time he spent with Umaro was when they explored the Ancient Castle together alongside Sabin and Cyan. To Edgar, Umaro came off as very well-intentioned, but equally as stupid and reckless. There was an incident there where Edgar tried to use his Noiseblaster in order to confuse the powerful samurai who lived in the Ancient Castle into destroying itself, only for Umaro to punch the samurai and snap him out of the confusion every single time Edgar tried. The whole battle was a clusterfuck, with Edgar even casting Stop on Umaro at one point just to get him to stay put, but even that didn’t work (Edgar was aware that that was a dick move in hindsight as well). They survived (although a few Phoenix Downs needed to be given to Sabin and Cyan afterwards) , mainly because the fight lasted so long that Umaro was able to basically punch the Samurai to death all by himself.
That incident definitely colored the way the King of Figaro viewed the Yeti, and that is why Edgar decided to leave Umaro behind in the heat of the moment where there was no time to think. Now that he has been given time to reflect, he wanted to punch himself in the face for how he treated the poor guy. However, instead of letting all of those emotions out, he just stood there as he looked at Locke.
“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to.” Locke said softly as he turned away from the king and left so he could go find Celes down in the lower deck.
30 minutes later, Mog was still on the ground trying to find his petrified friend in the outskirts of what was formerly Narshe. While he did get a fair bit of Leap Frog blood splattered onto his fur, the vast majority of monsters he saw straight up didn’t notice him due to the charm on his necklace.
“Umaro’s gotta be somewhere, kupo.” the Moogle muttered to himself as he tried to not attract the attention of a duo of Lycaons that he was walking past.
After another 5 minutes of searching, Mog finally found Umaro. The Moogle’s petrified friend was “standing” on top of a small hill with a determined look on his face. If Mog didn’t recognize Umaro, he probably would have confused him for a mundane statue; or possibly some idol to an obscure deity. Unfortunately for Mog, he could barely see Umaro because there seemed to be a circle of eight Hill Gigas that were encircling the hill Umaro was on and seemingly doing some sort of prayer. While Mog knew jack all about Giant culture (he didn’t even know that there were any giants outside of Zozo), it looked as if the Hill Gigas were worshipping the petrified Umaro.
Mog looked at the Gold Needle in his hand and tried to formulate a plan to get to Umaro. He couldn’t really sneak in and rely on Molulu’s charm, as the giants were all huddled together in such a way that he almost certainly would come into contact with one of them and get them all to notice them. Trying to reason with the giants was also out of the question for pretty obvious reasons. With no practical non-violent options, Mog decided to do what he did best: Dance.
“Kuuuppo…Kuuuuuupppo.” he sang as he moved his arms with nearly as much fluidity as the wind.
While the singing was enough to get the group of Hill Gigas to notice Mog, a bolt of Plasma came down from the sky and zapped one of the giants to a crisp before any of them could react. Now that Mog’s cover was blown and the giants were able to process what the hell was happening, they all charged towards the Moogle. Mog was a slippery fella, however, and was able to weave through most of the punches the Gigas tried to throw at him.
Once Mog made it to the foot of the little hill, he leapt all the way up there (the Dragoon Boots he wore didn’t come in handy that often, but whenever they did come in handy, they really did). Before any of the Gigas could react, Mog then quickly pricked the “statue” with the Gold Needle, which disintegrated once it was used up. Umaro’s petrified body then started to crack like an eggshell, revealing the Yeti’s blue skin and white fur beneath. A few moments later, Umaro was able to move again, and he let out a roar that he seemed to have been in the middle of when he got petrified in the first place.
“Wait, where Umaro right now?” the Yeti said once he was done with that battle cry and started looking around, having no idea where he was or what the heck was going on. “Where are Umaro’s friends? And what are big guys right there doing?”
“Right here, kupo!” Mog said as he hugged the Yeti’s leg, smiling at seeing his friend once again.
Once Umaro noticed Mog, he smiled back.