A/N: Here's that follow-up I threatened to write. Some little birds told me to do it.

This story is part of my Phoenix Chronicles, so Trigger = canon and Cross = not so much, although I'm not afraid to borrow a few names and concepts. It takes place shortly after The Diary of Doctor LEA, but I'm gonna spoil the hell out of that for you in the preface so you don't have to torture yourself readin' it.

This time I'm not going to push the whole thing in first person—style-wise, it's going to be more like LEA's Diary set to Prince of Thieves. So, fair warning: violence, sex, crude discourse, gallows humor, small fluffy animals swearing... the works. Enjoy!

- Preface -

I am impeccably retarded.

At this rate, it's no wonder Jerad won't know my real name. I must have some prophetic tendency to shoot myself in the foot, because I burned the diary. Not on purpose, mind you! It's never on purpose, is it? I'm sure it's no surprise, either. 'Oh look, that crazy little fire starter blew up something else today. Amazing she hasn't burned her whole house down by now.' Not that anyone from town was watching this time, but that's what they'd say.

I don't even have a good story for it. I dropped it in the bathtub and thought I could dry it out with some magic. Brilliantly retarded (why do I have books in the bathroom, again? Don't ask me—my house is like the library of the damned, where lost books go to die.) I'm sure Magus could have done it without even breaking his perma-scowl, much less a sweat. I don't know why he always has to think he's better than everyone, just because he knows more magic tricks.

Pardon me, I'm on another tangent. If you read my other diary you'd know I do that a lot, except you can't because I burned the stupid thing.

Okay, that's enough self-flagellation for now. I have to think positive. Fortunately, it wasn't THE diary—I would have to go bashing some heads if anything ever happened to that one—but everything that happened with Ramezia, Free Bandwidth, Heckran and the gate shrines... poof, it's gone. I'll have to write it all over.

I'm so pissed at myself, I'm exhausted. I don't know if I have the stamina to recall the entire ordeal from scratch, and the sketchier the details get, the more it's going to look like I made it all up. Whenever I think back, it gets a little hard to believe, myself, so I know how it must look to a skeptic. Trust me, I'm a creative genius when it comes to machines, but not when it comes to storytelling. There is no way I could have fabricated those events—but what proof is my word alone? Therein lies the dilemma of this whole exercise. Still, I'm determined to keep a written record, even if the rest of the world will never believe it—or find it, if my luck with flammable bookkeeping holds up.

It was just easier to write when everything was fresh on my mind; what I really can't believe is that it's been two years, already. Well, here goes nothing: I'll give the abridged version for now. I'll try to make it brief, for my own sake.

My name is Lucca Elaine Ashtear, as you know, and I'm a mechanical engineer. I specialize in robots, although locally I'm more famous for my teleportation device—but I've already written a whole book on that little adventure (which has NOT been set on fire. Miraculously), so I won't rehash it. I learned not too long ago that in the far future, all the credit for my brilliant inventions goes to an unknown 'Dr. LEA,' which I found kind of cool once I stopped being bitter about it—adds a nice flair of mystique to my work. As long as the research itself is preserved, I can't really hold the future against its sources (or lack thereof.)

So it happened that one rainy summer three years after that Telepod incident, I got a surprise visit from Magus, perhaps the last person in history I ever wanted to see again. My life changed so drastically after that bizarre meeting, I almost can't wrap my head around it sometimes. Or maybe it really didn't change too much—that could be my problem.

I live by myself, now, in the same big old house I grew up in. I lost my parents to a gang of Mystics led by Lord Heckran, who was raiding our home for the Sun Stone we kept in the attic. The Mystics were working for a sorceress from the twenty-first century named Ramezia, who had restored the time gates with the help of a group of temporal distortion researchers called Free Bandwidth. Their leader was someone named Jerad, who was a nice enough guy, just horribly gullible for someone so intelligent (and a hell of a doormat.) Ramezia tricked both the Mystics and Free Bandwidth into setting up the annihilation of all land-based life on the planet via a devastating water magic spell called the Vitraevos. Magus got a little too close to her plot, and that's when the rest of our old time-traveling gang got dragged into the mess.

I'd like to say it was as fun as our last adventure, but it was only just as crazy. We stopped Ramezia from washing away humanity (naturally!) but there were casualties, some of them close. It's too much to think about, sometimes... so that's why I don't. Call it callous and unhealthy if you like, but I call it being practical. Magus was right about one thing: the dead have all the time in the world, and we don't. I know Mom and Dad would want me to make the most of the time I have left. I'm only sorry I couldn't... It doesn't matter now. I have to move on.

The experience wasn't a total loss, besides. We met a race from another world—two, actually. One of those aliens was a demi-dragon woman named Mishu (a highly improbable extra-terrestrial life form, but...) She taught my friends the gi'ira, or 'talent of the beast' in her alien language. It's similar to magic in execution, only it allows us to transform into a unique 'inner animal' that's supposed to represent a part of our souls. Mine is a bird—some type of heron, as far as I can discern. Marle calls me Pigeon, for the noise I make in that form. ...It's less stupid than it sounds. Funny, though; I used to think Daemonism was a load of bunk. Then again, I thought the same about magic.

If any of us benefited the most from the gi'ira, it was Frog—although I should call him Glenn now, since he's a human being again. That beast talent managed to lift the frog curse and give back his human body (alternately, he's a dog, not a smaller frog, as Marle was about to guess.) We were really happy for him, and I might add that he is, in fact, drop-dead gorgeous (his human self, not the dog. Just wanted to make that clear.) I think his new look will really turn his life around—not that he needed the help, right? Frog has the thickest skin of anybody I know (literally—hah! I'm a card.) I always admired the guy for being able to handle anything, even if he gets a little broody at times. I wonder what he's up to these days (or should I say 'those days'? Talking about the past in present tense always gets convoluted.) Really, I just wish I could have been there to see the look on Leene's face when he went back to her.

Anyway, it was great seeing everyone again, even if I missed a chance to visit Robo. I could shoot myself for that, although I was understandably distracted at the time. I hope you can forgive me, old friend. Of course, all things must come to an end, and once everyone went back to their home times, we demolished Ramezia's gate shrines. It's a pity that such a magnificent and enigmatic device had to be destroyed thanks to one genocidal maniac mucking around through time, but what can I say? This is why we can't have nice things.

As for me, I went back to this big empty house... although perhaps I lied about living alone.

I guess this is the part where I start to sound genuinely crazy...

- 1. Voices -

9/13/1005:

As of today, I've been working for Mr. Varg for exactly two years. I have the date circled on the calendar like some kind of perverse anniversary.

Curse you, Bobsled-o-Matic.

- 1 -

She practically lived in that shop.

She realized that one day when she tallied the time up, both on the clock and off: fifty-five to sixty hours a week, which is nearly a third of one. Considering an odd statistic she knew, that the average person spends a third of their life in bed (and that she would spend a hell of a lot more, if given too much opportunity), it wasn't a great logical leap to say that she spent the majority of her waking hours in that shop.

"...ey...awake...'ere?"

That damn shop. She might've felt better about it if she owned the place, but instead she toiled like an indentured servant under the heel of Thaddius L. Varg, the most wretched miser in the port town of Truce, if not the whole kingdom of Guardia. He was offensive at a competitive level, seeming to make sport of every negative quality he had. Had a foul mouth, tobacco-stained teeth, grizzled grey hair, a bad leg, a lecherous eye, a sour disposition, and a single-minded belief that females weren't fit to do any kind of man's work. She hated him passionately, nearly to the exclusion of all her former nemeses—including the ones that tried to eradicate mankind.

After spending enough time with Mr. Varg, she almost preferred mass extinction.

"Oi, Ash..."

Granted, many of the hours whittled away in that shop were of her own devising, ever since Mr. Varg let her close up at night. It was her fault that she lingered long after her boss took off, until the lights in town died down and the moon was peering through the back room's lonesome skylight. She hated working for Varg, but that didn't mean she hated working. There was always something to do, machines to fix, ideas to mold into reality—she loved making things. She was a creator, thriving off the caprices of her imagination, and with all the tools and scrap material that shop had to offer, she never ran out of clever inventions. She came from a long line of blacksmiths, after all, and her father taught her everything he knew.

Then he died, him and her mother... but that was two summers ago. She didn't like to count her losses. At least her inheritance didn't leave her homeless, but without any income she very shortly needed a job, something to keep the pantry from running dry. That's when Mr. Varg took her in, although it was more a matter of shame than of necessity. At the time her father died, he was paying off a debt that she had incurred with Varg thanks to one of her reckless devices (her written record of the incident only states, 'sleds were not made to fly.') It was only appropriate that she take up that misbegotten yolk in his stead, for her family's honor—if nothing else mattered.

"...Ashtear..."

Of course, getting cooped up a pawn shop between heaps of loaned tools and broken appliances while a cranky old man cracked a whip from the front counter wasn't her ideal recourse, nor was it her only one. She still had friends in good, high places—Guardia Castle, as a matter of fact. One of them was none other than Princess Nadia, and the other was engaged to said princess, so it wasn't hard to pull a royal string or two whenever she wished.

However, when she was offered a position with the castle defense's research and development crew, she respectfully declined. She had nothing against working for the royal family, but... Supposing it was pride, that was something she wouldn't even admit to her diary, her closest confidant. Pride could be obstinate like that. Besides, she had to leave room on those pages for regret, even if she didn't like to dwell on all those pleasant 'what if''s, either. A robot once taught her better, and he ended up being a better friend than anyone she ever met in school. That was why she preferred the company of machines, really; people weren't as simple.

The work was stiff, dirty and stifling, but it was her best excuse and distraction—from everything. All told, when the day was over, why bother going home? She didn't have anything waiting for her there, except a bed that was often too cold in a draughty old house. Sleep was overrated, anyway.

...Except when it was on the clock, and then it was painfully underrated.

"Ashtear!"

The tip of her pencil snapped against the rough grain of the desk (it was more of a bench than a desk, tacked up against the wall with some roughshod nails) as Lucca jumped in her seat. She then slumped onto her elbows and rubbed her eyes as the bleary, rusty palette of the back room blotted out a vision of some fairer time and place, one she would only ever see again in her dreams. She was going to forget what the great outdoors looked like, at this rate.

She cast a dreary look at the notepaper she just smudged, searching for where her coherent string of thought tapered into a less-than-conscious one. Now awake and twice as miserable for it, she fixed her glasses on her nose, spun around on the creaky old barstool (the sorts of leftover furniture that found its home in the shop—in various stages of disrepair—was nothing short of amazing) and shot back with an acerbic bite that was most ladylike, "What."

Mr. Varg's voice was like a crow's song, ricocheting across the store and through the curtain hanging in the doorframe between the front and back rooms. "You fix that damn toaster yet, or are ya slackin' off again?"

Lucca glanced to the wreckage on her countertop that was once an electric toaster. It was hideous even in its original state, painted with black-and-yellow stripes and checkers. She dearly hoped there wasn't a kitchen out there to match it, but the laws of probability weren't doing her any favors lately. As it was, she pushed aside her sketchbook and dragged the heap of metal closer, making the effort to swear, "Cripes! I'm working on it..."

She could hear Mr. Varg uttering around his smoke pipe, "Well Mr. Yancy's coming back this afternoon, so you better get your shit together in time for 'im. I don't pay you to piss n' sleep sittin' down all day."

By its nature, a pawn shop dealt in collateral loans and used merchandise, and Varg's was no different—until he recognized the special skills of his new hire. That's when he expanded the shop's functions to include repairs, an odious task that fell to his young assistant, so long as watches and jewelry weren't involved. Even though she had small fingers and a knack for soldering, Lucca was forbidden to even look sideways at the jewelry. ('Get yer grubby monkey hands away from that showcase. Tampering with my shelves—what're you doing up front? I told you to stay in the back. Ain't no business the likes'a some girl meddling with fine gold. Gold is for proper ladies. Y'can't have any, so feck off,' he once rebuked, and she retreated behind the curtain in a huff.)

Such was their rapport; she was used to it. Lucca sighed and got back to work, resisting the urge to leave a note on Mr. Yancy's redemption slip with instructions for fixing it himself, starting with the line, Insert a fork...

'You'd have to pull it out of Varg's ass, first.'

Lucca snorted under her breath and then bit her tongue—she swore not to humor the voice cracking little black jokes in her head. There were two, actually, that she had distinguished from the ramblings of her own psyche, and sometimes she heard them when her mind was most vulnerable. She wasn't crazy—she refused to be weak in any mental capacity. Maybe it was stress, stirring up nightmares in the daylight... She thought too much, sometimes, about everything. It just didn't help that those creepy voices knew a little too much.

'When're you going to tell that old man to stuff it, anyway?'

"When I've paid him off..." she murmured into the jammed slot of the toaster, and then winced at the distraction. She would not be caught talking to thin air again, even if she was the only one around to catch it—then again, in the past few years she'd made that oath enough times to discourage a saint.

'You're full of crap, you know that? He's never going to quit docking your pay for that roof. I bet it's not even about the money anymore. Old man just wants to screw you.'

There was a screw behind the spring latch that didn't look like the right fit. She tried to wedge it free with a flat tip. "I wouldn't put it past him..." She stopped and bit her tongue again. She was going to get a welt if this kept up.

The voice took on a teasing, sultry ring. 'In more ways than one, if you know what I mean.'

Lucca had a hard time looking straight at Mr. Varg's hoary, gnarled figure under normal circumstances, so the onslaught of—extremely, hideously unwanted—imagery was so jarring that she wrenched the screw out of the socket and straight into her face. It bounced off her glasses with a sharp pingk. "Ah—damnit!"

'Gwahahahaha!'

She recoiled from the bench and checked the scratched lens—fortunately, it wasn't cracked. "Son of a—why don't you go pester your brother?" she snapped, louder than intended, and then threw a rueful glance at the curtain. Varg either hadn't noticed the outburst or hadn't cared.

The two voices had distinct personalities that she learned to recognize over time (the other brother had a cooler, more serious disposition and a smoother voice, if a little unctuous at times), yet the sibling tidbit was the only personal identifier she'd come to know—she had been refused their names. Lucca had been tempted to ask if they were really related, but delving into the family history of a couple of aural hallucinations felt like swimming a little too far off the deep end.

'He's out. Why, my company isn't good enough for you?'

Even after several years, Lucca still suffered from the hope that ignoring the black voices would make them go away. She was only lucky that this time it worked; after a determined minute of silence on her part, the intruding voice departed.

It hardly took an hour to patch up Mr. Yancy's toaster, and the man of interest picked it up after lunch (peanut butter and jelly sandwich, again. If asked, Lucca would say that one can't go wrong with the classics. Nobody asked, anyway.) Afterward, she picked up her notes and found her latest idea: a schematic for a toaster robot. She had built one before, but that model met a tragic end, and Lucca had always wanted to try another. There was a toy piano collecting termites on the 'broken' shelf in the back whose ceramic keys would make perfect feet...

("Wha...think?")

Engrossed in her latest project, Lucca wasn't paying much attention to her surroundings when she heard it: indistinct scuffling with a hollow pitch. The noise trickled into the room like water down a storm drain, and if she didn't know any better, she'd swear it was coming from the wall.

("...eah...gonna be our...crash pad, word.")

It was a human voice. She was haplessly familiar with inhuman voices, so the process of elimination helped. These new voices were—as far as she could tell—detached from psychotic speculation. She climbed onto the bench (if it could handle a couple hundred pounds of engine parts it could support a scrawny girl, although she cursed when that vagrant screw stuck her thigh—at least she found where it went), took off her helmet and held her ear to the brick wall.

("Nice. This is better than Rick's.")
("I know it. More shade, less open, closer to the street—it's tight.")

Higher? No, lower, to the left... It had a tin twang that she followed off the bench and into a corner, where a sheet of plywood was tacked to the wall with the same snaggle-toothed finesse as the bench. It snapped away with one tug, revealing a cubby hole with a... stovepipe?

("Real tight.")
("Just hope we don't get run outta here too, haha.")

It was just the pipe, no stove, although a lighter circle of dust on the floor suggested there might have been one, once upon a time. The metal shaft scaled the wall up to the ceiling and then abruptly turned into the bricks, vanishing at some point on the outside. The voices leaked out the open end like a dripping tap.

("Shit, nobody cares. All that's back here is garbage and rats.")

It was coming from the alley next to the shop, then. Once in a great while she heard cats fighting out there, but this was the first time human beings invaded the lot. Rather than covering the hole back up, Lucca shrugged and decided to make the best of it. It was a cheap novelty, like listening through two cans on a string, and heavens forbid Mr. Varg let her listen to a real radio, so this might be the closest thing to entertainment she was going to get.

("Hey com'on man, gimme some chalk.")
("What? Wha'do I look like I carry fuckin' chalk on me for?")
("Gonna write up this wall, man! Gotta mark our territory.")

It couldn't get worse; as Lucca sat back down and looked for her smallest screwdriver, she realized—to her chagrin—that she recognized these people.

("Whatever, man. You're just gonna hike your leg and put your name on every damn thing, and then Gary's gonna come around when you're not looking and write 'swings both ways' after 'em.")
Gary indeed found that suggestion amusing. ("'Charlie Laydel swings both ways,' hahaha.")

It had to be the gang of shiftless street punks who used to loiter outside the cafe on Truce Pier and peddle contraband. She couldn't forget their names if she tried—she grew up with most of them, being friends of Crono's, but that never meant she had to like them. In fact, she couldn't recall a single conversation with the lot that didn't revolve around crass invective (They liked to call her Booger. It wasn't a term of endearment.) "Great, I'm picking up the doofus station..." Lucca muttered. She reconsidered plugging that pipe.

("Okay, so when's Keffer coming by with the package? I wanna get this shit rollin', yo.")

With a long-suffering reflex she checked the antique clock nailed over the door, watching the dust weigh down its tarnished hands. It was a quarter 'til two.

("When he's done rollin' your mother.")
("Ohhhhh, ice cold.")

It was going to be a long afternoon.