All I can say for Now is make sure to read the Authors Note at the bottom. To say it here would be a little spoilerish.
Blood, it was everywhere. On his hands, his face, his clothes...the surrounding ground for what seemed like miles had been stained red, no trace of it ever having been another color visible. Blood flowed in rivers from the dead bodies that were everywhere, brutally slain and without any sort of mercy. Blood was spattered everywhere on the surrounding buildings, like some sort of crude abstract painting. It was splattered on his face, few patches of skin showing, his once white hair now tinged with the color of red. There was a crazy look in his eyes, a crazed, blood thirsty look. He had a terrible grin on as well, one that promised nothing but insanity. He held his blade to his mouth and took great pleasure in liking the blood off of it. He surveyed the scene of his last master piece, silently wishing that the village had been bigger so that the fun could have continued. Oh well, he'd just have to make up for it being small by finding a second village to hit that day.
The sound of footsteps behind him sparked his excitement. Perhaps this wretched hole had more to offer after all...He turned around in mid lick of his weapon to greet who ever may have come. He was met with two people, one male, one female. One a decent height, one short. One had long blue hair pulled back in a ponytail while the other had short purple hair. They both seemed shocked, with a varying degree of horror and disbelief on their faces. The girl took a timid step forward, seemingly nervous before speaking.
"Lass?"
/
"I don't see how that could've been Lass, he's just not that insane!" Arme ranted as she paced back and forth in front of a blazing campfire. On the other side sat the blue haired knight Ronan. They were situated behind a tall hill to rest for the night after escaping from the seemingly insane thief. The attempts they had made to reason with him had all failed, instead receiving nothing but fierce attacks.
"I don't want to believe it any more then you do, Arme." Ronan said calmly, watching the mage. "But obviously something has happened and we need to figure this out calmly and rationally."
Arme sat down heavily, looking off to the side with a defiant look that was tinged with a hint of sadness. "It can't be him. It just can't." She muttered.
The knight sighed. "Why don't you get some sleep and we'll try to figure this out in the morning. I'll take first watch."
/
Back at the Grand Chase castle, deep down in its bowels laid the dungeon where prisoners were kept. It normally laid empty, for no one ever dared to break into such a place with so many powerful warriors lurking about. But tonight would be different; tonight there was indeed something residing in one of the many cells. Something...or someone. A groan echoed out from the cell nearest the door, a groan that of someone just waking up from a hard blow to the head. At closer inspection it would be revealed that a young boy was sitting on the floor, his hands chained above his head made of thick metal, but the darkness hid most of his features. The thing that could be made out the most, however, was the ever occasional flicking of a cat's tail.
"What happened?" Came the weak question, but nothing was there to answer, least of all hear it.
Come morning footsteps could be heard coming down the stairs, bringing with it much needed light. A figure emerged at the bottom, and attached a candle to a holder that was imbedded into the wall opposite from the cell where the boy was being kept. Once the light was in place, the figure turned back to the boy's cell and stepped up to it, the light from the candle casting just enough to see the prisoner inside.
"Well Lass, what do you have to say for yourself?" The new comer asked coldly.
"Ronan! It's about time somebody arrived to tell me what's going on!" Lass exclaimed. "Somebody just came out of nowhere and knocked me out and the next thing I know I'm here." When he received no answer from the knight, Lass took a closer look. "What happened to you?" He asked, surprised at his friend's appearance. Ronan's hair was short, cut roughly and uneven, as if it had been done spur of the moment and all at once, most likely done with some sort of sword. His face was colder then it was normally, and his left eye was closed, the scar of what must have been a deep gash going through it, starting at the top of the eye and ending right below it.
"Don't talk like you don't know." The knight spat out. "You know what you've done, how many lives you have ended."
"What are you talking about? I wouldn't do anything like that! I joined the chase just so that I could make up for what I did in the past!" Lass retaliated, offended. "If this is a joke, it's not a very good one!"
Ronan seemed as if he was about to say more, but a hand landed on the knight's shoulder. "Ronan, what do you think you are doing down here?" It was Sieghart.
"Interrogating him, what does it look like?" The knight replied. "But he doesn't seem to want to be very cooperative. He's pretending he doesn't know why we've locked him up."
"I'm not pretending! Would somebody just tell me what the heck is going on already?" Lass exclaimed, struggling against the chains that were holding him to the wall. "I am not some sort of psycho killer!"
"Then tell that to the hundreds that you have already slaughtered!" Ronan shot back at the thief. "Don't you have any guilt?"
"No, because for the last time, I DIDN'T DO IT!" Lass yelled.
"Stop denying it, we know you did it! We've seen you in action! You are nothing but a traitor that's already killed most of our number off!" This phrase stopped the thief's struggling. He seemed to be frozen in mid-struggle. Slowly, after a few moments had passed, he looked over to the knight.
"What?" He said weakly. "You-you saw me do it?"
"Don't try that innocent act! It may have worked the first time, but it won't now! We know about your deceptions." Ronan said, glaring at Lass. He removed his spell sword from its sheath and pointed the tip in Lass' direction. "And now it's time for your execution." He made to open the cell, but Sieghart stopped him.
"Wait, Ronan. Don't jump to conclusions quite so fast. This might not be the right person. After all, do you remember Lass having himself a pair of cat ears?" The immortal stated.
"Who knows what he does to himself. But I'm telling you, that's him, and he doesn't have a right to keep on living! He needs to feel what it's like to be killed, to know the pain that he put his victims in."
Sieghart's grip on the knight's shoulder tightened. "If you do that, then you are no better than he is." With that said, the immortal dragged Ronan back up the stairs. "You need some time to calm down and clear your head." And then they were gone, leaving Lass by himself once again.
Sieghart had said, 'do you remember Lass having himself a pair of cat ears'. Of course he did, and a tail too. He had had them for a while now, and had actually gotten quite used to them. So what did the immortal mean when he had said that? How could they not remember him like this? It's not like it just happened yesterday. That wasn't the only thing that seemed amiss though; he had seen Ronan not too long ago, and he didn't look a thing like the Ronan he had just seen. How could everything be so terribly messed up?
The last thing he could remember before waking up in this cell was being out somewhere on Ellia with Arme and Ronan. The mage hadn't wanted to use the knight's dragon to fly back to the castle, and instead wanted to try out a new teleportation spell. Lass had thought that it had worked just fine, as he had found himself at the entrance way of the castle. But then the next thing he knew was that something very painful was colliding with his skull, the result of which causing him to pass out. When he had woken up, here was here.
/
"Ronan! I think you better come see this!" Arme was yelling at the knight from where she was standing at a window.
"Yes yes, what is it?" The knight responded, coming over to where the mage was, although still irritable from his encounter with Lass. "It better be something important. I'm in no mood for games."
"Of course it's important! It's actually really really weird!" Arme exclaimed. "Just look out there!" She pointed out the window. And so Ronan looked, and was highly surprised at what he saw. There were two people walking towards the castle, a girl and a boy. The boy had long blue hair kept back in a ponytail while the girl had short purple hair. "See! Doesn't it look like us?" The mage asked.
"But how can that be, we are right here. Besides, my hair isn't that long anymore." The knight said, shaking his head.
Arme rolled her eyes. "Fine, be picky! It looks like you six months ago!" She began to run off. "I don't know about you, but I'm going to go see them! I'm actually curious!"
Ronan sighed, exasperated. "Arme don't just go rushing off like that! What if it's dangerous?" He exclaimed, running after the mage. When he caught up it was just as the girl was opening the front doors, to be met by the duplicates.
"Hey! How come you look like me!" Both of the Arme's exclaimed at the same time. "Me? How would I know?" They spoke in perfect sync.
Ronan slowly made his way from his position at the bottom of the stairs to stand next to the mage that he knew. "That's what I would like to know." He stated, a cold look on his face as he observed the pair.
"Woah, Ronan what happened to you?" The second Arme asked her eyes wide. She looked between the two knights, their appearance different yet the same. On the one hand, you could definitely tell that they were both Ronan, they had the same face and the same hair. But on the other hand, they looked somewhat different then the other. One had short hair, a scarred eye, and wore a cold, almost angry seeming expression. While the other Ronan had long hair and while seeming surprised and confused, wore a much calmer look.
"Ok so who are you clowns? If you two are just sent here by Lass to mess with our heads you can just go back where you came from." The shorter haired Ronan said harshly.
"You've seen Lass? Do you know what's happened to him?" The second Arme exclaimed excitedly.
"What's happened to him? He's always been that way, there's nothing to explain." The colder knight replied.
"No he hasn't! He was just fine yesterday and now something's made him go all crazy!"
"What's all the commotion over here?" Came Sieghart's voice. He came up to stand behind the knight and mage. "What is this? Arme, have you decided to go and make copies of yourselves?"
"We don't know how they got here!" The mage that had been spoken to replied.
"Interesting...tell me, how did you get here?" Sieghart asked to the other Arme and Ronan.
"I wouldn't be able to really say." The second Ronan replied calmly. "It's rather a mystery, actually. But you see Arme was tying out this new transport spell to take us back to the castle. I don't think it quite worked, as nothing had seemed to really have happened."
"Except for Lass. He got moved back farther in the village. The next we came across him, he wasn't himself." The second mage supplied a frown on her face.
"And I'm guessing that even your names are the same. You go by Arme and Ronan, do you not?" Sieghart asked, and the two nodded. "Well, until we get this all figured out, perhaps its best you stay here. Although, we cannot go about calling the four of you by the same names, that would be too confusing. I suggest one of you pick some sort of nickname to go by."
"I know! We can call this one Rown!" The Arme closest to Sieghart said happily.
"Don't." The shorter haired Ronan said, venom clear in his voice as he glared daggers at the one who had made the suggestion, causing the mage to flinch slightly.
Sieghart shook his head. "Alright I can see that this is going nowhere fast. We'll just call you" he placed a hand on top of the colder Ronan's head, "Roan, and you" he placed his other hand atop the girl standing next to the cold hearted boy, "we'll call Mera, ok? Ok. Glad that's settled." He said it in such a way that you could just tell that there was no arguing. "Now if my hunch is correct, which it usually is, you two," he motioned to the newcomers, "would know more about why there is boy called Lass that has certain cat features down in the dungeon."
"Wait so then are you saying you have Lass stuck down there?" The immortal nodded. "Well then let's go!" Arme said, rushing off in the detection of the dungeons.
Roan rolled his eyes before walking off to other parts of the castle muttering, "fools, don't know what they are getting themselves into. Sieghart should've just let me run him through..."
Anybody confused yet? lol
So just to clarify:
Roan (gotten by taking out one of the 'n's in the boy's name): Ronan's cold hearted alter self
Mera (gotten by mixing up the letters in the mage's name): Arme's alter self
And then there is Insane! Lass and Cat boy! Lass. Things with these two will happen later on.
NOTE: I WON'T be udating this till I get OHTC completed. If I had this, OHTC and KTK going on that would be suicide for me and would equal even longer in taking for something to get an update. It's just that I've had this sitting on my flash drive for awhile thinking for it to be the next multi-chapter story that I do. However, considering it's concept of being two of Arme/Lass/Ronan I've been starting to doubt how well this story's idea is. SO I'm posting the first chapter now to see how well it goes over before I really make it too final. As generally in my flash drive I have all the fics I do in their own folders. There's one where all the one shots are stored with a sub folder for the finished ones, one for Striker, which are all sub folders in the Fanfiction folder which is a sub folder of the GC folder...although I'm a little strange. With whatever current mult-chapter I am working on, it doesn't actually have a folder, it's just sitting in the fanfiction folder. For example, with OHTC, it won't have it's own special folder till it's finished and I move on to the next multi-chapter fic. To get to OHTC, you just go to GC-Fanfiction and then underneath all the other folders in there are the OHTC files, simply named ch1 ch2 ch3 ch4(i promise i am workin on ch4) etc. since they are the only files w/o a special folder it means to me that it must be OHTC files. But there's more then just ch1-4 there. I have half of the 2nd to last chapter written and half of the last chapter written, along with another file called 'The Reason', which I blame for ch4 giving me such grief. I can't decided if it fits in or not. I don't even have the how Lass quite got himself in that situation in the first place. All I know is he did something. Esh. And I should stop rambling now ^^;
Anywho, please tell me what you think of this idea! Thanks,
-Xire