Tales of Chaos I: Chaotic Beginnings
Disclaimer: If we really owned ToS and ToS 2, would we be writing a fan fiction?
Prologue: Here we go Again
'Life is not certain, so be positive and if that doesn't work; think of a big cookie!'
"Ok! Now, move her to the left! No, not that left! The other left!" The voice of seventeen-year-old Eliza Snow cut through the tense atmosphere.
"Oops! Sorry!" Sixteen year-old Serena Attwater cried out in response to her friend. Her fingers hastily moved the joystick of the Gamecube controller in the direction of Eliza's orders.
"Okay! Now have Raine cast Photon!!"
"All right Eliza!" the girl pressed the combination of buttons that she thought was the proper one for activating the Photon spell . . . only to be thrown for a loop when the silver-headed half-elf on the TV screen started to instead chant the incantation for Resurrection rather than the one used for Photon. "Oh for the love of beets, Raine! She said Photon, not Resurrection!"
Eliza growled, "Oh for–! Serena you pressed the wrong button! Again!"
"Eep! Sorry!"
"Don't worry! I think I–almost–got it!"
Back on the TV screen that the girl's eyes were glued to, Lloyd himself struck down the final Baby Dragon with a powerful Fierce Demon Fang. And as the screen moved from an empty battle field to the one for victories, Eliza jumped to her feet from her place on Serena's bed and did her own little victory dance.
"Booya! Those Dragons just got served!"
Serena's attitude, however, was the opposite of her excited friend's. "Aww. . . . The poor dragons." she lamented as the happy tune of the battle music rang in her ears.
Eliza halted her victory dance and dropped her gaze back down to the girl, a confused expression written over her face at the comment. "Uh, Serena they were trying to kill the characters. It was either them or us, in a weird way."
"Huh? Oh . . . right. Sorry."
At hearing the word 'sorry' Eliza's face melted over into one of annoyance, "Don't start with the 'sorry' stuff again. It's not your fault!"
Serena flinched at the tone of Eliza's voice. "I'm sorry!" she squeaked out timidly.
"S-Serena–! Don't sta–! Okay, you know what? Just forget it, and let's just get back to playing the game before you start going on a sorry rant." Eliza breathed out a sigh at Serena's little issue. "Man. . . . And you wonder why I think you're just like Colette," the girl quietly muttered to herself.
She lowered herself back onto the bed and went to go press the green A button on her black controller to continue the game's story . . . only to find that it wouldn't work. The TV stubbornly remained on the battle result screen.
"What the. . . ? Come on you silly little button. . . . Why won't you work already?!" she screamed, continuing to pummel the A button with her thumb as rapidly and as hard as she could out of frustration.
"Uh . . . um, E-Eliza I-I think that if you keep on hitting the controller like that, you'll break it. . . ." Serena spoke quietly, trying her best to calm her frustrated friend. "A-And maybe it isn't the controller? M-Maybe it's your Gamecube. Maybe?"
Eliza suddenly stopped the senseless button-abuse at Serena's suggestion. "Oh snap, I didn't think of that. I hope that isn't it," she said slightly crossed. All of a sudden, the TV screen attempted to move on with the game's story . . . But something was really, really wrong. A loud screech came from the device, the characters on the screen glitching like crazy.
"EEP!!" Serena yelped out, cringing over from shock while shoving her hands over her ears as fast as possible in a frantic attempt to block out the noise.
"Ack!! Loud!! Way too Loud!!!" Eliza's hands fumbled around desperately for the remote, and she shut off the TV promptly, ridding the room of the horrid noise. Both girls let out sighs of relief at the silence that followed. . . .
"Oh thank the beets of the world. . . !" Serena let out, Eliza nodded in agreement with the girl.
Their reprieve was cut short, although the TV had been the culprit in causing the screeching noise, the Gamecube that sat innocently on a shelf below it was now making the strangest noises that either girl had ever heard a machine make.
"Geez, that thing sounds worse than that blender that we stuck gravel in," Eliza muttered.
Serena's head tilted to the side, "I think that it's the Gamecube and not the controller after all. . . ."
Eliza looked at her friend with one of those looks that just screams, "No! You think?!"
"What. . . ? Eliza, did I say something weird again?"
Eliza cleared her throat as she looked away from the girl. "No comment," she said stoically. "Anyway, I just hope that thing doesn't decide to explode on me. There shouldn't be anything wrong with it. After all, it was working fine yesterday and the game disc is brand new, for Pete's sake!" the girl shouted.
Serena watched silently as her friend slowly and cautiously rose to her feet and made a movement toward the malfunctioning machine. "Eliza. . . ? What are you doing?"
Eliza turned and looked at the girl, "I'm going to turn that thing off before it explodes on us or something." While she said that, she was silently praying that she wouldn't suffer a game console-related burn or some other sort of injury.
Absentmindedly, Serena tugged on a dark brown strand of hair, "Maybe we shouldn't touch it Eliza."
"Yeah and then what should we do? It's either turn the thing off, or risk it exploding on us."
The seventeen-year-old stood in front of the machine and moved her hand toward the round, grey power button when something caught her eye. . . . Left in its slot unharmed was none other than the memory card that had the data from Eliza and Serena's gaming endeavors.
Eliza felt something overcome her common sense, something that she couldn't explain or understand. All she knew was that she had to save the memory card. And instead of doing what a regular teenager would, which would naturally be to turn the machine off, her hand trailed downward to the small grey square. Almost completely, Eliza stopped moving and started to act as if she was underneath some sort of . . . spell or strange enchantment.
Although she had a grip on the memory card, she wasn't making any attempt to pull it out of its slot.
The strange grinding sound inside of the Gamecube grew louder, and Serena was well aware of this as she noticed Eliza's sudden lack of movement when she made contact with the malfunctioning machine. . . . She came to notice that her friend had not pressed the grey round button off, and instead had opted for the memory card under it. As the noise level deep inside the gaming console grew louder, Serena's eyes widened, though Eliza seemed blissfully unaware of the impending doom the horrid noise bespoke of.
As the noise grew worse, Serena grabbed a nearby Frog Shaped pillow to use as a shield of sorts to protect herself. Serena looked wide-eyed at the brunette girl who, with a dull expression, was still gripping the memory card.
Serena squeaked, "Eliza!!" and, forgetting her own safety, the girl threw the pillow she held to the ground as she tore up and toward Eliza. In her mind she thought that Eliza was being electrocuted, so she reached for her. As valiant as Serena's efforts may've seemed . . . the girl had some issues with her balance and in the middle of her almost heroic scene, the girl's foot slid on the slippery cover of a discarded 'Tales of Symphonia' information booklet, and she tumbled backwards. She panicked as she went down and clutched at Eliza's arm, accidently pulling the girl to the floor with her. Eliza snapped out of her trance-like state as soon as she felt gravity's effects on her rear.
But unseen by both girls as they went down, as Eliza had pulled out the memory card from its slot, strange blue and red sparks were let out as the little piece of plastic was suddenly disconnected from its home. . . .
Meanwhile, the machine in question finally lost its battle to the strange grinding noise in it and let off a mini explosion. And the simple as that, the machine the two girls had put so much time into was ruined.
Eliza groaned, not only had she fell to the ground without so much as a warning, but during the trip downward she had swung and twisted so that she hit the ground first, and now served as an object that broke the fall of Serena. It just so happened that the other girl was a few inches taller than she was, meaning that breaking her fall was rather . . . painful to say the very least.
Serena was unaware of who or what she had landed on, only knowing that something had broken her tumble backwards.
She pulled her head up off of her floor, wondering where Eliza had vanished to, unaware that her friend was under her and unable to breathe. "Eliza? Eliza where'd you go?" she said curiously.
The girl squeaked loudly when she heard a loud groan radiate from underneath her, "Ugh, Serena . . . could you please get off of me. . . ?" Eliza moaned.
Serena screamed, quickly pulled herself off of her friend and dropped down at her side.
"Eliza I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to make you fall over too, or fall on you! T-Talk to me! Are you okay?!"
Eliza set a hand on her pounding head as she sat up, finding that a pillow with a smiling frog's face on it had broken her own fall slightly. She found that she was pretty much fine.
"Serena, I'm ok. But for the love of Pete that was totally weird I'm telling you, in the morning the Nintendo company is getting a very, very strong call from one very unhappy camper!!!" She let out a sigh, "Oh well, at least it wasn't the Wii. . . ."
Serena was of course concerned for her friend, but her orchid-colored eyes couldn't help but wander over to what was left of the Gamecube. . . . "Eep!" she suddenly cried out, almost falling over backwards yet again.
Eliza looked over to the girl in confusion, "Serena?"
"Um, uh Eliza? The Gamecube's on fire!!" she shouted.
Eliza glanced over to the black, flaming machine. "Oh crap! Serena go grab the sack of flour from under your sink!!! Hurry!!"
Some time after the Gamecube had been put out with flour. . . .
The whole lower half of Serena's TV stand was covered with white powder, and her whole room smelled of melted plastic and smoke.
"And I used to be a pyro? Geez, what was wrong with me?!" Eliza shouted. "Oh well, I guess that it was a good thing we made s'mores earlier, otherwise we wouldn't have taken the batteries out of the smoke detectors, and they would've gone off. Last thing we need is the landlord breathing down our necks. We already have enough trouble on our plates!"
She plopped down onto Serena's bed and stared at the ruined Gamecube which had once been hers. What had led up to this whole ordeal was nothing more than a typical day . . . which may not exactly be typical in the case of most people.
Only a few days ago both Eliza and Serena had gone out to buy a cheap game to play while both of their mothers were off on an extended vacation in Hawaii. Every game store they visited had resulted in the same incident, a Tales of Symphonia game case falling off of a high shelf and hitting either Eliza or Serena on top of the head, so finally after going to five different game stores with the same game falling and hitting them, they finally just bought the thing.
Though, only after Eliza screamed to the sky, "Geez! You want us to buy this thing so badly, we'll buy it! Just stop making it fall on our heads!"
Needless to say, the girls received some very odd stares after that. As far as they could figure though, if the same game fell on their heads at five different places then there had to be some weird reason for them to buy it. But . . . what they were not expecting, especially after being forced into buying it because inanimate objects had been stalking them, was that they would absolutely love that game. And this morning had been like the past few, Eliza coming over to Serena's with Tales of Symphonia and her Gamecube in tow. And the two playing the game until they were ready to fall asleep.
But now, that routine from the last three days was broken. Eliza's Gamecube had glitched with the game disc inside of it and it had made the machine blow up, the only working remnant being the small grey card that Eliza still had gripped in her hand. And the thing was; Eliza hadn't meant to the grab the card at all. Some strange feeling had overcome her and she'd grabbed instead of turning the gaming console off.
Serena took the chance to speak up, "Oh well, right? At least we put it out." She lowered her gaze to see what Eliza was fiddling with in her hand. "Hmm. . . ? Eliza you saved the memory card? Why'd you do that?"
Eliza gave an unsure smile as she held the device up, "Yeah I saved it. I don't know why, if I had just shut the Gamecube off instead we wouldn't have had an explosion on our hands." Her grip on the square tightened. "What was I thinking?" she murmured quietly.
"You got me," Serena shrugged.
Eliza sighed and let her hand drop, "Aw man . . . I was not expecting anything like this today. Hey, Serena? What time is it?"
Serena glanced over to the ticking cat clock that hung on her wall, "Um, it's almost midnight."
Eliza let out one more sigh and reluctantly stood up, pocketing the memory card. "I think it's time I headed back to my apartment. I'm tired after this whole mess."
Serena gave her friend an unsteady smile, "Yeah the excitement from the explosion is wearing off and I'm starting to get sleepy too. I'll walk you out, Eliza."
Eliza's amber eyes glanced over to Serena and the girl couldn't help but give a small smile. "Thanks."
Serena let Eliza walk ahead of her on their way out, and on the way to the front door Serena couldn't help but ask her friend a question, "Eliza, why do you think that the Gamecube exploded?"
"Ehh, heck as if I know. I'll figure it out in the morning." This time, it was Eliza's turn to shrug.
The metal door of Serena's apartment swung open as the two teenagers stepped out into the dimly lit hallway, Eliza pulled out a small key ring out of her back pocket, which had only two keys on it. The girl stepped over to the door that was right smack next to Serena's. Luckily for the two best friends, they lived right next to one another. After she unlocked her door and set her hand on the knob she looked back over to Serena who just gave her a big smile.
"Good morning, Sunshine!"
"And good night, Moonbeam!" Eliza laughed.
This was a tradition for the two: their way of saying good-nights and good-byes to one another.
Serena smiled even bigger at seeing Eliza let out a laugh. "I'll see you in the morning Serena."
"Okay, sleep well Eliza!" the girl said as she retreated into her apartment to prepare for bed.
Eliza followed suit into her own domicile, both girls locked their doors as soon as they were inside. Currently, both Serena and Eliza were living on their own, both of their mothers had taken a 'business trip' to Hawaii for the next month, but both girls knew that it was really a vacation, though they did have the option of going if they wanted to.
A sigh escaped from Eliza's lips as she walked back to her bedroom, shoving a hand into her pocket and pulling out the grey square that had been poking her side ever since she'd stuck it in there. She quietly set the only survivor of the earlier carnage on her dresser, which was set near the head of her bed. She grabbed hold of her Nintendo DS and set the internal alarm on it for 9:00 AM, since there was no doubt in her mind that Serena wouldn't be up then. She slid off of her black flip-flops and in her jeans and T-shirt she slipped until the covers of the mattresses that served as a bed for her.
A long breath escaped the girl's lips as she drifted off into a dreamless sleep . . . but what escaped the girl's knowledge as she slept, was that the memory card on her dresser letting out strange, yet harmless, red and blue sparks as it had before. . . .
In the Morning. . . .
Eliza let out a loud whine, as the DS began to beep loudly, interrupting her sleep. Without looking, her hand shot out from under the covers of her bed and went to strike the portable game console. But, instead of turning the DS off, the girl instead felt another person's hand in its place. She suddenly became wide awake. . . . Her eyes opened as wide as humanly possible when the hand she'd touched suddenly moved. . . .
A/N: Well? How was it? Any good?
-End of the Prologue
-Through the twists and turns, may our paths cross once more. . . .