The moment they brought out the Empire’s new pride and joy was the moment Celes knew, at last, that she no longer wished to be part of this project. Because that triumph, that successful experiment, was a girl – a girl of Celes’ own age, forced into feeble, dehumanising servitude by a grotesque Magitek contraption. And she knew, then, that this was what her side did to living people for the sake of progress; it was what they would have done to her, if she had refused to be compliant; and that belated realisation was enough to convince her that she needed to turn away from them, and do all she could to bring them down.