A great stone building with an arched stone tile roof rose over the horizon in front of Vargas. Its front wall had a large and beautiful stained glass window in the shape of a rose set into the stones, the dreary gray of the building a shocking contrast to the merry chaos that was ensuing inside.
“OH! Oh, oh, oh! This is terrible! A calamity of a fiasco wrapped in a disaster! Oh, woe is me and I am woe-ed! Is that how it goes?”
“Impresario, I hardly believe running out of coffee is a crisis. And woe is not a verb.”
The impresario was not deterred. “Well, can’t a man have some artistic liberty here, in an OPERA HOUSE of all places?!” He was a small but amplified man, his frail body seemingly held against daily stress by a blue silk shirt and an undershirt he that did not care whether it was revealed or not. He also wore frayed blue trousers, worn down by an accelerated amount of wear and tear, which covered his black, paint-stained shoes. “Egad! Is there any place in this building where a man can get some bloody caffeine into his system?”
“If anything, you should drink less caffeine. Here, I made you some tea.” The other man was standing on the opulently carpeted steps leading to the dressing room, delivering the tea. He was a tanned man with light gold hair, tall and solidly built, wearing a green and heavily collared coat that covered the length of his body. He carried a sword in a sheath at his side.
“TEA?! Of all things, fine!” He downed the scalding brew in one gulp, letting out a sigh of contentment. Well, that’s bloody better!”
“Sir, what do we still need to do for the production? We have a great stage crew that’s waiting around the clock for your guidance. That’s the only reason they aren’t working around the clock.”
“What the blazes is going on here? You mean to tell me the production is tomorrow and our set isn’t finished?” The little man dashed off to the stage and started barking orders to the poor crew.
“I feel sorry for them, Leo. I really do.” A gentle, yet feminine voice called out from behind him. “I wish the Impresario wouldn’t get so,”
A loud crash and shattering came from the stage, followed by the angry screams of a distressed Impresario.
“Angry?” Leo had finished her sentence for her. “I know. He has so much built up stress- (crash, boom, shriek) -and those stimulants cannot be helping him much. He could get a stroke one of these days if he’s not careful.”
The beautiful woman was clad in yellow, complimenting her dazzling hair and seductive features. It was a shame to see her frown. “Don’t say such things! He’s just,” she paused for a suitably semantic phrase to come to her, “a misunderstood artist. He just needs some space.”
“Oh, Maria,” Leo sighed. “You can be so optimistic sometimes. Maybe too much so. But, I must admit dear, you do look positively ravishing this afternoon.”
Maria blushed. “Oh, Leo! You are so nice to me? I love you sooooo much. Oh, sing me an aria, Leo! Won’t you?”
Leo laughed. “Of course, my sweet. Here, this is a favorite.

“Oh your eyes- they are crystal
Your fine lips carmine
I would not have any
Other woman as mine
Your face is a mirror
I truly adore
If I must, I will tell you
Again, just once more
You are the beauty that shines in my life
There is no other that could be my fine wi-”

Halfway through the last line, a small petal of the beautiful glass rose window was shattered by a small seed. Its trajectory led it straight into the mouth of the singer, and Leo unknowingly swallowed it when it went in.
“Dear! Honey! Are you okay?”
Leo’s fine tenor voice was ruined by the herb, now reduced to a low croak. “I- I think I swallowed something, somebody threw it through our window.”
“Shh! I think I know.” She looked up to the window and found the small hole left by the seed. She then looked into Leo’s mouth, and instantly detected the problem. “That seed somebody threw was from a silent herb.”
Leo croaked out a gasp. “No!”
“I’m afraid so. The only thing you can do now is wait it out.”
Surprisingly, the Impresario waited until he was close to begin screaming. “WHAT!? Who did this?”
Leo and Maria Chere were startled by the volume of the Impresario. “We don’t know. A silent herb was thrown through our stained glass window and it landed in poor Leo’s mouth! The only thing I can do for him now is give him some herbal tea very frequently. With all luck, his voice should be back in about a week.”
“A WEEK?!” The Impresario’s voice thundered through the Opera House due to the acoustics. “AARRGGHH! Whoever’s out there is going to feel this!” Removing a piece of magicite from his shirt he always kept hidden for these special occasions when he was very mad, he shouted out the spell and focused his energies outside to the slinger.
“QUAKE!”

Wedge and Aeris spotted Vargas easily as he threw something at the window.
“That jerk! Now he’s vandalizing some poor man’s window.” Aeris was appalled at the things he was doing.
“What? Vargas is causing more trouble?” Wedge told Aeris to stay a small distance away while he settled his score with Vargas. “Hey you! Stop that right now! Did you hear me?”
As he was about to throw the first punch, he stumbled and fell, causing Vargas to turn and face him. “Well, Wedge. I always figured we would meet again like this.” Wedge quickly tried to get up, but his head was held fast to the ground by Vargas’ boot. “Ha! You are so easy to beat.”
Wedge struggled to move, but then he felt why he had stumbled. The earth was starting to heave like gelatin, the same earth that his head was being smashed into. He stopped moving and thought of a plan.
“Ha, ha, ha, ha! What? Has the great Wedge Palmer given up already?” Vargas slowly lifted his foot, but brought it down hard on Wedge’s skull, causing his vision to blur. He tried to ignore the pain and finally made up his mind on a plan. He pretended to have a concussion.
Vargas was ignoring the unstable ground and relishing his victory over the man who had beat him before. He lifted his boot from the moaning Wedge and grabbed him by the neck. He lifted the broad man up by the throat, causing him to gag and grasp at his neck. He took a few blows to the body to stop him from groping his throat, and lifted him a full meter off the ground. “Oh, Wedge. This is going to feel so good, I want to savor the moment.” He kept beating him until he opened his eyes.
Wedge weakly replied, “Fine, you win.”
Vargas stopped, and Wedge was wondering why he hadn’t noticed that the rocks were hopping. No matter, he was about to act. “Prepare to be my punching bag.”
Suddenly, Wedge sprang into action. He broke Vargas’ wrist in one blow, and burned his face with the other hand’s fireball. He had just enough time to clean his face and neck with his bandanna before jumping to the roof of the building. Vargas now noticed the tremors, but was still reeling from Wedge’s attack. Wedge knew he only had to power up slightly. He cupped his palms behind him and started to focus his vast energy into one point. The ground started to crack under Vargas, who was only now starting to react to the situation. He quickly jumped up and prepared to hit Wedge with a wind slash, but Wedge let loose with his Aura Bolt when he was two feet away. The force of the beam drove Vargas back to the ground, which surprisingly shattered on impact. Vargas was swept into the hot and smoky crater, and Wedge had just enough time to watch him fall into the red world below before the quake subsided and the hole closed. Wedge waited until the ground stopped moving before he jumped down. Aeris was quickly running up to him and had seen what had happened.
“Oh, Wedge!’ She threw her arms around the large man, who was at a loss for what to do besides hug back. “I was so worried! He almost had you!”
“It was only Vargas,” Wedge tried to calm her down. “Take it easy.”
“Ah! You’re all dirty! Here,” she said, taking Wedge’s bandanna and wiping him again. “Did you really do that?”
“Do what?”
“Use quake? I didn’t think you had an Earth materia.”
“I don’t actually have much materia. I only kept one.”
“What? So if you didn’t do it, who did?”
“That’s not important right now. Come on, let’s go and apologize to the owner of the window.”
“Oh!”
“Yes?”
“What materia is it?”
“Uh, nothing important. It doesn’t even really do anything. Just forget I said it.”
Fortunately, a great shriek from the Impresario interrupted Aeris’s question.
“Ah, bloody heck! They’re still there?” He had come into the daylight and revealed himself to Wedge and Aeris. “You vandals!” With an exasperated sigh, he turned back to yell through the open door of his Opera House. “Maria! I need a buzz out here!” He turned back to the pair in the same motion and continued his rant. “You all think that you can just go around and smash people’s expensive windows and sabotage productions and survive my spells and be general all around pains in the rear do you?!”
Wedge was caught by surprise by his verbal assault. “Please, sir, let us explain. We didn’t break your window or do anything to your production, but we did stop the guy that was doing all that stuff.”
“Oh? Then where is he? And for the planet’s sake, will you at least get me a cola, Maria!?”
“He fell through during the quake.”
“Well, by my stage, isn’t that all bloody good and convenient?”
“It’s the truth! I swear on my favorite bandanna that it’s true.”
“Fine, then. Who was this phantom vandal?”
“We had met him before we came here, he was the son of my teacher-”
“Aha!” The small siren reached up and snatched the bandanna off Wedge’s head. “You know him! Well, then, you have to pay for the damages then, don’t you?”
“What? We didn’t do anything! And give me back my bandanna!”
Wedge tugged and pulled, but the tiny man was able to hang on for dear life until Wedge gave up. He was so determined not to hurt the man and complicate the situation further, so he let go and the Impresario promptly flopped onto his rear. A woman in a shining yellow dress rushed out to help him up, carrying a can of soda.
“Are you hurt?”
“No indeed. These are the brutes I’m holding personally responsible for ruining my masterpiece. Ay!”
“Look, we’re not brutes, and we’re not the ones that did this to your window, but if you promise to give me back my bandanna, I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
Wedge’s deep bass voice flew through the air like an arrow and struck Maria’s ear with a golden peal. She quickly wrested the rumpled and sweaty red cloth from the Impresario and presented it to Wedge. “Here. Do you promise to help us?”
“Maria! I-” The loud man started, but he calmed down as he felt the normalizing effects of the sugar and caffeine on his body. He was lost in his sea of fruit flavors and tingly bubbles, at least for now.
Wedge looked into Maria’s eyes, sensing great urgency behind them. He took the bandanna from her and agreed. “I’ll do what I can to help you. What is the problem?”
Maria quickly led Wedge and Aeris into the lobby, where Leo was patiently waiting on the red carpet. “You can save our performance. Wait, wait- I’m forgetting something. Let me start over.”
“Well, if we’re doing this from the beginning, names would nice to know.”
“Of course! How could I forget? I am Maria, that man sitting down is my husband, Leo, the really loud and angry man is the Impresario (don’t shorten it, it makes him very mad), and our other star is my sister-in-law, but you would swear that we were twins. Wait right here.”
Maria wasted no time in picking up her skirts and dashing off to unknown and curtained corners of the building, searching. While she was desperately looking, the woman she was looking for had materialized on the balcony above them. She had been watching, unseen by all of the crazy inhabitants of this Opera House but found herself drawn like a magnet toward the new arrival. From the moment he walked in, she could feel power radiating from him, fresh from a battle with a slight sweat, running his hands through his wet black hair, stretching his massive neck and mounding shoulders, his sturdy back, thickly built arms and legs, and large backpack calling out to her. He turned to face her, and his gaze surprised her.
“You’ve been watching me ever since I came in, but nobody could find you. You must be the so-called twin.”
It was true. Without the pearl colored jacket, the tight neon green top and the shrinking short silk skirt, she looked almost exactly like Maria. With all the daring her outfit possessed, she opted to vault to the floor in front of Wedge, landing perfectly on the carpet. He gave her his hand and she stood up to look at him closely. She was about eight inches taller than Wedge, and the sword Wedge saw on her back was not much shorter than he was.
“Hello.” Wedge told her, unwavering. “She’s not unlike Tifa,” he thought, “but that does count for something.”
“Hello. My name is Celes. Celes Chere is my full title.”
“Wedge Palmer. Nice to meet you, Miss Chere.”
“Please, call me Celes. Hmm. Wedge... That name seems so familiar.”
“It’s just a common name. I like your name too; it kind of flows from your mouth. Oh, I almost forgot, the girl standing over behind me is my traveling companion. Her name is Aeris Gainsborough.”
“Hello, Aeris. Nice to meet you.” Celes felt her hand once and almost took it away quickly; she had felt the same driving force between her and Wedge that she just felt.
“Hi. You do look an awful lot like Maria.”
Right on cue, Maria rushed back into the lobby out of breath. “Oh my. Here you are, Celes. I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“Try looking in a mirror.” Celes couldn’t hide her brief moment of contempt for her counterpart.
Wedge was shocked by the insult. The poor woman was now off the positive track she was on just a moment before, and gave a frown. “That wasn’t very nice, Celes! She tried very hard to find you while you were hiding from everyone and spying on me!” Maria was obviously very sensitive and she let out a small whimper she couldn’t hide very well. “Apologize to the poor woman right now!”
Celes was speechless. She had felt drawn to this brooding, powerful man and here he was, a few minutes later, looking silly and trying to comfort that child of a woman because of something she said. “You idiot!” Celes thought to herself. “Now you’ve just made him hate you, you blockhead. He was such a fine specimen too.. Wait! Maybe if I make up quickly, I won’t look so bad to him after all!”
She quickly pushed her way into the small circle that Wedge, Aeris, Leo and Maria had formed to comfort her. “Look, Maria, I’m really sorry I said that. I didn’t mean it. We both look unique.”
Wedge was wiping away her tears with his bandanna when she suddenly slowed her sobs. “Do you really mean that, Celes?”
“Yes. You know we all care about you.”
Wedge was knocked over as Maria jumped up from her down mood with all of her previous energy. He slowly got to his feet and rubbed his head, smarting from hitting the floor and being knocked around several times in the past hour. “Oww... Good. Stay positive. It’s a good thing these floors are carpeted...”

“According to this map, we were ambushed there.” Wedge, Elena, and Biggs were huddled together in the sunset on the face of the mountain. They had spent a few hours searching the map and the island for a trail that would lead them to their flags. “He should be here.”
“What makes you say that, Wedge?” Elena was somewhat skeptical of his stop here on the side of the rock.
“I think we’re really close to him, that’s all.”
“Yeah, I know that. But why could he possibly be here? He didn’t leave a decent trail or anything.”
“Um, I don’t know.” Wedge was caught there. He had just gone on instinct. “I just have this...feeling that he’s here, waiting for us.”
Biggs walked away from the group and started thinking. “Hmm. Maybe the big guy’s right, Elena.” He walked over to the stone face of the mountain and looked at it closely.
“What are you looking for now, Biggs?” Wedge was curious about what clue he had found.
“Aha! Here it is!” Biggs had grasped a small discolored stone and started to turn it. “I was looking for the handle, but it won’t turn.”
“That’s just a rock, Biggs. What are you trying to do?”
“It’s a trigger.” He backed away from the stone and traced a long crack around a large area of the rock face with his hand. “Doesn’t that look suspiciously like a door to you?”
“Yeah, it kinda does. But how do we even if it is?”
Biggs walked back over to his large friend and told him, “Well, we’ll find out if I can get more muscle to help me turn the knob.”
Wedge got the message. “All right, I’ll see what I can do.”
Leaving Biggs behind, he grabbed the small round stone and tried to turn it. There was some motion, but not enough. He shifted his weight and pulled from the side unsuccessfully. He then tried the other way, but couldn’t budge it. Wedge tugged and pulled, straining his wrists, but to no avail. “It’s not working.”
“It has to, Wedge! We’re counting on you, big guy!”
Wedge sighed and turned back to his work, examining the stone, looking for something Biggs missed. “Maybe it’s not a handle, Biggs.”
“What are you talking about?”
Wedge had noticed that the stone seemed to be only partially out of the rock. “Maybe we need to pull it out.” He wiped his hands together, got a solid grip on the stubby rock, and pulled. When he didn’t get any results, he put his whole weight behind his pull, grinding the heels of his boots into the earth. All of his strength couldn’t move that rock one inch.
Wedge let out a frustrated growl. “Stupid rock! This thing is stuck!”
“Whoa, that’s okay, Wedge. Maybe I was wrong about the rock.”
“Argh! You’re usually right about these things, Biggs! It’s just.. I was so sure too. Stupid ROCK!” As Wedge yelled the last word, he gave the stubborn stone an earth-shaking punch in exasperation, driving it into the mountain. The cracks around it yawned, and the stone slab Biggs was taking about suddenly swung ajar, grinding to a stop at a right angle.
“I must admit, Wedge, you are a very handy man to have around.” Elena was impressed by Wedge’s show of brute force, and gave him a pat on the back as she stepped inside.
“Thanks, Elena.” Wedge had suddenly noticed he had cooled off from his burst of anger.
“That’s what I thought.” Biggs put the map into Wedge’s sweaty hand and pointed to a dot near the peak of the mountain. “This was a hidden tunnel through the mountain. According to this map, there is a supply cache about fifty yards into the cave.”
“And he figured that if we ever got out of the ropes, we would need to get our packs back. Biggs, you’re a genius!” Wedge gave Biggs a giant bear hug, almost crushing him.
“Don’t mention it, Wedge.” Biggs was gasping for air. “You’re the one that opened the door, you big lug. Just...stop squeezing me so hard, okay?”

“Now, back to the business at hand.” Maria had swept Wedge into her dressing room with Leo and Celes in tow. “We need you, Wedge! We really need you!”
“He already knows that, dear.” By then, Leo had regained his speaking voice, but was not about to start singing anytime soon. “We’re terribly sorry for the inconvenience, but you have a wonderful voice, Mr. Palmer.”
“I do? Really?”
“Oh, it’s golden! It’s the perfect replacement for my honey’s golden voice!”
Celes was careful to groan under her breath. “Oh please...”
“What she’s trying to say is that your bass tone can fit my role in the play tomorrow, which is fortunate because the man that attacked me made me lose my voice. The only problem is that, well, you don’t know the part.”
“How long do I have to memorize the lines?”
Leo looked up at a clock on the wall. “It’s about three o’ clock now. The first performance is supposed to be at nine tomorrow night. This is really bad timing, I admit.”
“You got that right. Wait, have you tried any Echo Screen?”
“We already called in an order from Jidoor, but it’s being couriered from Maranda by chocobo because they’re fresh out. It looks like you’ll have to pull off at least one show.”
“Okay. I’ll do it. But, you’ll have to fill me in on the details while I study the script.”
Maria almost jumped. “The script! I completely forgot!” She dashed out of the room.
“Anyway, it’s a musical drama about two women and a soldier. You’re lucky, because you don’t really have too much to sing until the end of the play.”
“I have to sing these lines?!”
“Yes. It isn’t too hard, you only have to do the song at the end when you die.”
“Deja vu, I see.”
“It is terribly ironic for you, I take it, but try to bear with me. I, or now, you, play the soldier, Doyle. Doyle doesn’t have many speaking parts because he goes off to war at the beginning of the first act.”
“War?”
“Yes, he gives a short speech about how terrible war is and how he has to do his duty, and leaves the two women in his life behind in his castle. Celes plays the part of Fiona, a hot headed princess that wants Doyle for herself. Maria plays the part of Lucca, her twin sister. Lucca is sweet and a bit naive, and longs to be together with Doyle.”
“That sounds like a good romance.”
“It does, doesn’t it? Except that the two sisters divide their kingdom up and eventually go to war over Doyle.”
“What?!”
“Yeah, very tragic, I know.”
Maria came dashing back with a stapled stack of papers. “Here you go, Wedge. Oh, you look like you’re roasting in here!”
Wedge was feeling a little hot. “How did you know?”
“You’re sweating, you poor thing! I’ll get you some iced tea.” Maria left as quickly as she burst in.
“Here we go, there it is. Page seventeen. ‘The two sisters then go against each other for their one love.’ See?”
Wedge read through the lines. “Wow. They get a bit violent.”
“But the best part for me, anyway, is when I, or you, as Doyle, get back from the war and find the two women fighting. You then make a speech, sing a sad song, and jump off the balcony.”
“This just gets weirder and weirder.”
“No, I like that part. He is so sad because they are fighting over him that he scolds them both for making an unneeded war and runs away from them. They give chase through the castle, and when Doyle is trapped on the balcony, he commits suicide in a mad rage. A very honorable way for a character to die.”
“Just make sure there’s a safety net for me to land on, okay?”
 

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