Ultimecia - FF8

"Reflect on your...Childhood...Your sensation...Your words...Your emotions...Time...It will not wait...No matter...how hard you hold on. It escapes you...And...I...can't...disappear yet." —Ultimecia

Ultimecia (Arutimishia in Japanese, Artemisia in Italian, and Artemisa in Spanish) is the primary antagonist of Final Fantasy VIII. A Sorceress from a future many generations ahead of the game's time, Ultimecia intended to compress time into one single moment. She used the Junction Machine Ellone to transfer her mind into a Sorceress of the past--Edea Kramer--and controlled the said Sorceress to enact her plan. In the final battle, she is involved in phases one, three and four, in phase two Squall and the party fight her Guardian Force, Griever.

Ultimecia's history is not explicitly described throughout the course of the game, and her motivations are unclear, as are the reasons for her seemingly pathological hatred of all SeeDs. For this reason, many fans do not hold Ultimecia in high regard, seeing her as little more than a stereotypical foil for the main characters of the game. Many have also ridiculed her vocal mannerisms: in the English language localization of the game, Ultimecia speaks words normally spelled with a hard "C" with a "K," which seems to hint at an accent.

Story
Ultimecia spends the entirety of the first disk within Edea, manipulating her from the distant future to achieve her goal of Time Compression. Having possessed Edea at an uncertain date before the beginning of the game, Ultimecia then used Edea to infiltrate the Galbadian government, quickly rising through the bureaucracy until she was appointed Ambassador of Galbadia by President Vinzer Deling himself.

Once she became the Ambassador of Galbadia, Deling went to Timber to make a live broadcast across the globe announcing her appointment thereof. At Timber, however, Deling was taken hostage and nearly killed by Seifer Almasy, a renegade SeeD cadet. Due to a slip of the tongue by Zell Dincht, which revealed in front of the still-rolling cameras that Seifer was from Garden, Seifer was unable to finish off Deling, and was forced to make a break for it instead.

At this moment, however, Ultimecia (still in Edea's body) emerged from the shadows of the room due to a magical teleportation. Wearing a mask that concealed her face, she spoke to Seifer, using her powers to prevent first Quistis Trepe, then Squall and Zell from approaching them. She charmed Seifer, making the effort to win him over by offering him her assistance in saving him from the "predicament" he now found himself in; by the time she was done, Seifer was completely on her side, and willingly allowed her to teleport him away back to Galbadia.

Although it was publicly announced that Seifer would be executed for attempting to kill the President, this did not happen. Instead, Ultimecia made Seifer into her Sorceress Knight, making him into her personal guardian. It is unknown whether Deling knew about this, as he continued to publicize having Edea/Ultimecia as his ambassador, planning a glittering parade in Deling City in her honor not long after the attempt on his life.

Ultimecia had her own plans for the parade, however. Just before it began, Rinoa Heartilly attempted to trick Edea/Ultimecia into taking an Odine bangle that would seal away her Sorceress Power. Ultimecia, recognizing the bangle for what it was (and possibly even recognizing Rinoa as one of the people destined to defeat her), telekinetically beat Rinoa senseless and then took control of her body with her powers. Leading Rinoa behind her like a senseless marionette, Ultimecia ascended the podium to give her introductory speech to Galbadia--a speech of hatred for the people who would create the generations that in the future would condemn Ultimecia herself--and ended it by stabbing Vinzer Deling through the chest with her bare hand.

Throwing Deling's motionless corpse carelessly behind her, Edea/Ultimecia then brought two Iguion statues on the side of the Arch of Triumph to life and ordered them to devour Rinoa as a sacrifice for the celebration. Leaving Rinoa to her fate, Edea/Ultimecia then boarded her glowing parade float and glided out into the street parade.

As she passed beneath the Arch of Triumph, however, the Sorceress found herself in the middle of a second trick, this one not an attempt on her powers, but on her life. Only moments later, the sniper Irvine Kinneas shot a bullet at her from the top of the Galbadian clock tower. Ultimecia blocked the bullet with a kinetic forcefield, then confronted Squall, Irvine, and Rinoa--who had been rescued from her near-certain death by the other two--herself. When she found herself defeated, Ultimecia tapped into Edea's powers of ice and used her Ice Strike Limit Break to stab Squall through the chest, nearly killing him as well.

However, instead of finishing the job then and there, Ultimecia allowed Seifer to take Squall in for questioning about SeeD's goals and plans, and pronounced herself ruler of Galbadia. As Galbadia's new dictator, she declared Garden to be her enemy for their attempt on her life, and ordered that missiles be aimed at both Balamb and Trabia Garden. Although Balamb Garden was able to avoid the missiles thanks to Squall, who had managed to escape from imprisonment, Trabia Garden was not so lucky.

Because Balamb Garden still remained intact, Ultimecia took control of Galbadia Garden and attacked Balamb directly, resulting in the Battle of the Gardens. Unfortunately for her, Squall led his allies into Galbadia Garden and confronted Edea/Ultimecia in the Garden Auditorium. When Edea was defeated for a second time, she managed to fight free of Ultimecia's control and banish her from her body.

With Edea freed of her control, Ultimecia was forced to possess another Sorceress. She chose Rinoa, who had received Edea's powers following her defeat, and used her to revive Seifer; with this accomplished, Ultimecia then forced her new host into a coma. Her reasons for doing this are unclear, but most likely she wanted to ensure that she could remain in Rinoa until she could achieve her true goal: reaching the mysterious girl Ellone, who had the power to send another's consciousness back into the past. Ellone's power had been used to create the Junction Machine Ellone, which Ultimecia was using in her time in order to reach back to Squall and Edea's time, but the Junction Machine could only go back so far. Ultimecia needed Ellone in order to go back farther still and cast the spell that would cause Time Compression at last.

Ultimecia lay low in the comatose Rinoa until the opportunity came for her to release the Sorceress Adel from her prison up in space, at which point she abandoned Rinoa and possessed Adel instead. Her faithful confederate, Seifer, took control of the Lunatic Pandora and caused the Lunar Cry that brought Adel's Tomb down to earth, and then managed to find and capture Ellone and bring her to the Pandora for Ultimecia's use.
Squall and his teammates managed to defeat Adel, and, knowing that Ultimecia had Ellone within her grasp, quickly hatched a plan with the scientist Dr. Odine. Rinoa had just received Adel's Sorceress Power, leaving Rinoa as the only Sorceress of this era. Ultimecia would therefore be forced to repossess Rinoa in order to get at Ellone. Ellone could then send Rinoa/Ultimecia back into the past, allowing Ultimecia to cast Time Compression, and then bring their consciousnesses back immediately, halting the spell partway.

Although time would then begin to compress, Squall could use this partial compression to enter Ultimecia's future and defeat her once and for all.

The plan worked perfectly, and Squall and Rinoa managed to broach Ultimecia Castle and confront the evil Sorceress. Upon her defeat, time began to uncompress, and Ultimecia fell through the time warp she had created, reappearing in Edea's Orphanage thirteen years before Final Fantasy VIII had begun. She tried vainly to live, but she was too weak; all she could do was pass her Power to the Edea of the past, just before her death.

Ultimecia's Abilities
Ultimecia is one of the most powerful Sorceresses in the game. As possibly the last remaining Sorceress of her time, she bears the combined Sorceress Power of every Sorceress to ever exist, meaning that within her body she holds the entire half of the Great Hyne that he granted to mankind at the beginning of the universe. Because of this, she has an inconceivable amount of magical power.

Although Ultimecia has the Power of every Sorceress that has ever lived, her own personal Sorceress Power seems to focus on space and time. She is prone to casting spells that involve bending space, such as Bio, Quake, and Meteor; she can absorb fallen party members into time in the battle against her; and of course, her goal revolves around the casting of Time Compression, which naturally involves the bending of all time and space. She furthermore seems able to manipulate either time or space so that she can summon a Guardian Force permanently to the battlefield, as opposed to temporarily as every other character in Final Fantasy VIII must do. When she summons Griever at the end of the game, she is able to keep him there long enough for him to be fought like a normal boss, as opposed to just summoning him long enough for one Shockwave Pulsar (his ultimate attack).

Mentioning Griever also brings up another incredible power of Ultimecia's; she actually has the ability to create Guardian Forces. She pulled Griever from Squall's own mind, finding him to be Squall's conception of the most powerful force that could exist and thus bringing him to life to battle against Squall himself; Griever did not exist as a Guardian Force until that moment, when he was given life by Ultimecia's powers. This brings up the question as to whether or not all GFs were indeed created by Sorceresses at some point in time.

Ultimecia is also able to Junction people as if they were Guardian Forces, an ability she shares with no other character in the game. While possessing Adel, she Junctions Rinoa to Adel's body in order to use her as a human shield and a power source for Adel's spells; at the end of the game, after Griever has been defeated, she Junctions herself to him, instead of the other way around, resulting in a bizarre hybrid between the two. This presumably falls under the category of a spatial bending, which would certainly be within the scope of her powers if they do indeed involve space and time.

On top of all this, Ultimecia has the most sophisticated mind-reading ability of any Sorceress in the game. Presumably this also stems from her power over space, allowing her to "reach" inside another person's brain to steal thoughts, knowledge, and even magic. When battling Ultimecia, she has the ability to completely destroy one character's stock of magic; a further demonstration of her power.