Disclaimer: Don't own anything.
Author's Note: Got struck by this idea while I was working on Photographs of Freedom. Been playing Arc Rise Fantasia (insert spazzy dance here). I'm loving the game. It's got…something…that Baten Kaitos was missing for me.
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"It is not our abilities that define who we truly are. It is our choices."—Albus Dumbledore (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)
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They're not sure why they follow him. Mithos is a decade younger than either of them (At least because it was difficult to tell with those of elven blood). While they're not sure they can fight him and win alone, together they're certainly more than enough to do it.
Why then, did they agree that terrible day when the madness finally made its way into the visible spectrum? When Mithos proposed the terrible plan that would rewrite the fabric of history? Would destroy thousands of lives for thousands of years and no one ever stopped to question it?
Now that their heads are a little more clear of Derris-Kharlan's emptiness and of the slow rush of Time, Kratos and Yuan realize that they needed to agree, needed to believe that there was an answer to discrimination. Needed to believe that there was some way to make Martel's dream come true.
But why follow Mithos even after the haze of grief and war was gone from their minds? Mithos was quick-thinking, intelligent, creative; all of that was true, certainly. But most everyone possessed that to some degree.
Kratos, despite anything he tries to remember, is from a noble family whose roots go back to times ancient when he was a child. Why then, would he follow an orphaned, mad half-elf? Yuan, who saw the madness, felt some part of it, and felt Martel's death, but he'd always had a powerful sense of right and wrong, would, and technically had, followed Mithos to Hell and back, despite what he'd thought when he realized what they'd done.
They've wondered about it for centuries, millennia, and they can't come up with a solid answer until the end has come and they're watching the Tower of Salvation collapse and the two angels of the new generation are soaring up to bring the Great Seed back to ground.
They'd followed Mithos for the same reason that the others followed Lloyd, had followed him through high water and impossible odds.
Because Mithos, like Lloyd, had listened to his feelings. He had never suppressed them, like Kratos did, or masked them like Yuan. Mithos had realized that a leader had to think with his heart sometimes, not his head.
Realizing that drove the differences deeper. Because the only difference that mattered between Lloyd Aurion Irving and Mithos Yggdrasill was their choices.