Ah, my first multi-chapter story! It feels good.
The only thing I really have to say is, I own nothing, except for a few new characters that shall be appearing throughout the story…
…
At first, all that registered was that his head hurt. Bad.
Next was cold. The air around him was freezing. He could feel metal beneath him, even colder than the air.
As Lloyd slowly gained consciousness, he became aware of a few low voices not too far away. He tried to listen in, but the throbbing in his skull wasn't letting him concentrate. Something about Lord something, and a kid in red… He lost track of the conversation as a dull ache settled into his limbs. Where am I? He focused again on the voices, caught his name, then—wait, execution? They were going to executehim? What the hell?
"Shut up!" The voice was louder than before. Lloyd cringed as he felt something collide with his stomach, okay, so they were throwing things at him… Oh, maybe he had said that last part out loud…
Lloyd opened his eyes and pushed himself off the floor as the voices quieted again. He was in a metal cell, bars and all. Looking down the hallway outside, he saw two Desians pacing, keeping guard. Or at least keeping up appearances, because it looked like they were talking more than anything else.
"Hey," a voice called. Lloyd couldn't see who was talking, but it sounded like it was coming from next to him, another cell? "Yeah, you assholes out there! Mind getting me something to eat? I've kinda been freaking locked in here for a while, wouldn't kill you to make sure your prisoners don't die, would it?" Yeah, they're definitely in a cell, Lloyd concluded.
"Will you just can it?" a Desian yelled.
"What's that one even doing here?" muttered the other.
His companion shrugged. "Don't know, don't care."
"I'm gonna go ask Lord Botta about it, I'm not sure what we're supposed to be doing with him."
"You do that." He shrugged again before leaning against the wall. "I can handle this on my own for a few minutes."
Lloyd's stomach suddenly growled at him, and food didn't sound like a bad idea… He absently looked around for his packs. Not finding them, a sinking feeling filled his chest. He patted his shirt down, checked the pockets of his pants. Shit, they had taken his supplies! His swords were gone too, unhooked from his belts.
"Stu, what the hell did you do?" A new Desian sprinted up the hallway. "Man, Lord Botta is pissed! He wants to see you right away!"
"Oh crap, he found out? I'm dead, I'm dead, I am so freaking dead!" The Desian—Stu—glanced around nervously. "Roy, can't you tell him you couldn't find me or something?"
"No way, because if he can't find you and get this thing taken care of, then somehow Lord Old-and-Crabby's gonna find out, and trust me, whatever you've got coming now is nothing compared to hiswrath!"
"Ugh, I guess I gotta go then… Ash should be back in a minute, can you watch the prisoners 'til then?"
"Yeah, sure." Stu ran off in the direction Roy had come, while the latter took his friend's place by the wall.
Well, that whole weird exchange didn't really help Lloyd much. He searched his pockets again, double-checking for anything that could help him out. Suddenly, an idea struck. He held his hand up, looked at the ring on his finger, and chuckled…
Moments later, a badly singed Desian was running down the hallway for help, and Lloyd was realizing that having the guard gone didn't really help him out of the cell.
"Hey, there's a keypad on the wall between us," the smooth voice called from the next cell. "I can't reach it, can you try?"
"Uh, yeah, sure," Lloyd hesitantly replied. He reached his arm between the bars as far he could, feeling his fingers just brush a bit of raised metal. Grunting, he stretched a little farther. Come on, just a little more… His fingers found a button, and he pushed it in, pulling his arm out just in time as the bars retracted into the ceiling.
Stepping out into the hall, he turned to the cell adjoining his. Inside stood a man, maybe in his twenties, with white-blond hair. Bright red eyes met Lloyd's own russet gaze. "Mind getting me out too?"
Lloyd hit another button on the keypad, and once again the bars slid upwards. "Thanks, kid," he said as he followed Lloyd into the hallway. "Who are you, anyway? The way they were talking about you, you sounded pretty important."
Lloyd's eyes narrowed. "Give me your name, and I'll give you mine." While this guy had helped him out, he knew nothing about him, and in a place like this, survival instincts won out.
The man just laughed. "Egotistical. Not surprising in a kid your age." Ego-what now?He held out his hand. "Skah Labraid. And you?"
"Lloyd Irving." They shook hands, Lloyd glad that his exsphere was on his left instead of his right. "So, do you know where they put my stuff? They took it while I was unconscious..."
"Not a clue."
"Damn." Lloyd surveyed the area. "Well, we're not getting out of here 'til I find my swords, so… let's try this way." He strode down the hallway, hearing Skah chuckle, followed by his footsteps as he trailed the young swordsman.
After finding a few dead ends and checking a few empty rooms, the pair finally lucked out, finding their things stashed in what looked like a storage area. A badly organized storage area.
"Okay, here's my swords, but where'd they put my packs?" Lloyd frantically searched through piles of junk thrown haphazardly in a corner.
"This what you're looking for?" He turned to see Skah hefting his leather bags.
"Yes!" Lloyd snatched the bags from Skah's hands, digging in them until he pulled out some strips of jerky from a pocket. Happily chewing, he watched as Skah continued to root through the debris filling the space. The man smiled as he picked up a huge sword from the mess, attaching it to the leather belt that hung over his blue sleeveless trench coat.
"Woah, how can you even lift that thing? It's gigantic!"
"Practice," the older swordsman replied as he glanced around the room. "Here we go, those look useful." He hefted a case of gels and other supplies from its half-buried position and began sifting through it.
"You're just gonna take that stuff?"
"Why not? If it's gonna help us get out, then I think it's fair game. You expect me to leave it sitting here for the Desians to use?"
"I guess when you put it that way…" Still, Lloyd didn't take any of the offered provisions. It just didn't feel right. Besides, from what he had seen, these Desians didn't seem too bad, besides kidnapping him. They didn't act at all like the ones from Iselia, now that he thought about it.
"Come on, we're never gonna get out if we don't start moving." Lloyd jumped a little, shook the strange thoughts out of his head, and followed the tall blond back into the hallway.
"Do you know where we're going?"
"I think the entrance is this way," Skah replied as the younger man struggled to keep pace.
Lloyd opened his mouth to ask how he knew when a door in front of them slid open and two more Desians walked through.
"Who the hell are you two?" one of them asked, momentarily shocked.
"Umm… new recruits?" Lloyd answered, hoping they'd be dumb enough to believe him.
They weren't. "Prison bre—"
The guard's yell was cut off when Skah bashed the hilt of a knife into the man's head. Swiftly turning, he wrapped a hand around the back of the other Desian's neck and pressed his fingers into the soft flesh. Lloyd gasped as the man collapsed to the floor. "Did you just…?"
"Relax kid, they're only unconscious." Skah shrugged, tucked the knife into a sheath hidden in his black vest, and—stepping over the still figures on the floor—walked casually into the next room. "You coming?" he called over his shoulder.
"Uh, yeah, right." Lloyd followed, staring numbly at the man ahead of him. This guy was obviously good in a fight, which should have been reassuring, but only made Lloyd wonder once again if he could really trust him.
In the next room, his attention was caught by a weird-looking bowl thing sitting in the middle of the space. It had a bizarre glow around it, and Lloyd eagerly ran to look at it. "What do you think this does?"
"No time for that, hide!" A hand grabbed the back of his collar and roughly jerked him across the room and behind one of the huge machines. Skah clamped a hand over his mouth before he could protest, and a second later the door hissed open again.
"I don't know, I was just at the prison block, and the kid wasn't there! Neither was the blond guy, and when I asked Lord Botta about that one, he said there was only supposed to be one prisoner."
"I think you're looking too far into that one, Ash. Focus here, we're gonna be skewered if we don't find the kid in red."
"Does my outfit really stand out that much?" Lloyd whispered, annoyed.
"Shut up before they hear you."
"I'm telling you, we have to sound the alarm. Those chicks from Mizuho were just brought over; they can help look before they leave for their mission."
"Yeah, I guess. Man, I'm gonna be killedfor letting him get out in the first place…" Lloyd heard some tapping on a keypad, then a light flashed a few times, accompanied by a loud buzzing. "There, alarm's on, let's go help find him."
The Desians did a few more things—Lloyd couldn't see what because Skah kept pushing his head back down every time he tried to look—muttering curses and complaints, then left the room.
"Okay, coast is clear, let's move on." Skah straightened, strode to the door at the other end of the room, and swore loudly when it wouldn't open. "Why won't the damned door work?"
"I think we've gotta do something to these weird things on the floor." Lloyd was pointing to the purple squares on either side of the space. Skah swore again when he looked.
"Shit, security devices. Looks like we need some electricity to open the lock."
"Um, Skah?"
"What is it?" he snapped, stopping in his examination of the floor panels to shoot a glare at Lloyd.
"What're those things behind you?"
Even as Skah turned, the red nose on the floating hunk of metal began to glow. Skah dove to the side as a red beam of light shot out of it.
Lloyd quickly unsheathed his blades and swung at the offending raybit, while Skah darted past him to attack the second machine. His wooden swords didn't even dent the thing no matter how hard he hit, and as far as he could tell, even Skah's serrated blade did little more than scratch the metal armor.
Skah leapt to the side again as the machines attacked. Unfortunately, he bounded straight into Lloyd. The brunette stumbled sideways and crashed into the glowing device. His elbow smacked into the orb, and he felt a jolt of electricity shoot up his arm.
"Hey, a little help over here?"
Skah was trapped between both of the raybits; their proximity confined his movements, rendering his blade useless. Lloyd fired the Sorcerer's Ring at the one nearer to him; he remembered how the flames stunned the monsters in the Martel Temple back in Iselia. Therefore, when instead of fire the ring emitted a glowing sphere of lightning, he spluttered in surprise. "What the—?" The raybit froze in midair, steel shell crackling with electricity from the shock. Almost instantly, the panel beneath it began to glow, and electricity charged along a thin path on the floor.
"What the hell did you do, kid?" Skah yelled, before following with his eyes the charged conduit from its source to its destination: the locked door. "You're an accidental genius!" he crowed. "Here, let's get the other one now."
Together, they lured the second raybit across the room, shocking it with the Sorcerer's Ring when it reached the other panel. The current to the door completed, it slid open with a hiss.
"I'm really ready to get out of this place," Lloyd sighed as they stepped into the next room, seeing still more strange devices.
"Yeah, you and me both."
After much arguing, cursing, and electrocution—Lloyd now severely regretted firing the Sorcerer's Ring at Skah—they found the entrance, which of course was locked. "Looks like we've got to get to the control room," Skah stated after examining the door.
"We have to go back through there? It was hard enough getting in here, how are we gonna get back?"
"Quit whining." Skah marched back the way they had come, yelling for Lloyd to "get his ass in there and shoot the freaking columns". After much more fumbling and yelling, a different door slid open and the pair—now both extremely frustrated with the other—walked through the door and straight into another Desian.
"Woah, watch where you're go—wait, who are you?"
Skah shoved the soldier to the side and bolted down the hallway, Lloyd in pursuit. They dove through a random door, letting it slide shut behind them.
"Phew, that was close," Lloyd panted.
From across the room, he heard a dangerously calm voice hiss, "And just who the hell are you?"
The owner of the voice strode serenely towards him, summoning a crackling ball of electricity in one hand seemingly effortlessly. Long blue hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail, and his black cape swirled behind him as he walked.
"Give me your name, and I shall give you mine!" Okay, that was the second time he had used that line that day. He needed to find some more come-backs.
The man simply laughed. "You certainly have guts. But I'm afraid I don't see the need to introduce myself to a miserable little creature like you."
"What a coincidence, 'cause I don't see a need to introduce myself either to a moron who doesn't realize how pathetic he is." Okay, the guy wasn't really pathetic at all—heh, the Professor would be proud he remembered that word—but it sounded pretty cool.
"Why, you little—"
It was then Skah decided to join the conversation. "Dude, you seriously need to cut your hair."
"E-excuse me?" the man spluttered.
Skah shifted his weight into a defensive stance, and Lloyd quickly followed suit, because the blue-haired guy seemed ready to attack. The man's emerald-green eyes followed his movements, watched his hand move to the hilt of his sword, and then widened in something like shock. "Wait, an exsphere… You're Lloyd?"
"And if I am?"
The electricity in his hand fizzled out as the man stepped closer, eyes narrowing as he examined Lloyd's face. Lloyd fought the urge to step back.
"Hmm… I see the resemblance." The man chuckled.
"What are you talking about?" Lloyd narrowed his eyes when the man didn't answer, which only seemed to amuse him more.
"Ah, even the glare… It's uncanny!"
"I think you're senile or something, old man," Skah stated coolly, unfazed by the situation before him.
The man's head turned towards him when he spoke, blue hair whipping behind it. "Youshould shut the hell up." He turned back to Lloyd. "As for you, boy—" He was interrupted by a low siren. Red light flashed through the room.
"What the—" the man gasped as the door to the room burst open. Lloyd grinned as he glimpsed his oldest friends rush in.
"Hey guys, nice timing!"
"Lloyd, are you all right?" Colette sounded worried, as usual.
Genis had followed Colette in, trailed by Kratos, who froze just beyond the doorway, eyes locked on the caped man before him. "Yuan?"
"Kratos, what are you doing here?"
The caped man, Yuan, seemed unnerved by the appearance of Kratos, though Lloyd could hardly blame him; Kratos had a way of creeping the hell out of you without even trying; when he glared at you, it felt like you might melt or something. However, Kratos did not seem to be trying; actually, he looked as unnerved as Yuan did.
Something was very wrong here.
Kratos' eyes narrowed. "Shouldn't I be asking you the same question?"
"Wait, what's going on here? You guys know each other?" Lloyd looked back and forth between the two older males, thoroughly confused.
"I suppose you could say that," Kratos replied.
"I don't really think it matters right now," Genis snapped. "Look!"
The small half-elf pointed to the door as two Desians ran into the room, led by a familiar white-robed man, who stopped as he saw the group before him.
"You! You're the Desian that attacked us in Iselia!"
Botta's eyebrow rose. "So you're Lloyd? This isamusing… No matter, I'll take care of all of you at once!" He pulled out a gleaming red sword; the metal looked as if it had morphed from its original shape and taken on a life of its own. Lloyd gulped, but unsheathed his weapons as his friends did the same.
"Chosen, Genis, stay out of range," Kratos barked. "Look out for his spells. You," he shot at Skah, "take out the foot soldiers, then take the left flank. And as for you," he grabbed Lloyd's sleeve as he moved to attack. "Stay out of the way."
"Like hell I will!" Lloyd wrenched his arm from the mercenary's grip and charged the Desian nearest him. Kratos followed.
"You're not going to do any damage with those toys, boy," he grunted as he blocked a hit from their enemy.
"Oh yeah? Just watch me." Lloyd rammed his shoulder into the Desian's chest, then as he fell, bashed the hilt of his sword across the man's head. His exsphere glittered as the man collapsed.
Skah had already dispatched his assigned target— from what Lloyd saw before turning away, not very neatly—and had moved on to Botta, the two swordsmen locked in combat, the two large swords countering each other move for move.
From the corner of his gaze he saw Yuan, who had been standing aside through the battle, heave a sigh. Conjuring another orb of electricity in his hands, he strode forward, approaching Botta from behind. Suddenly, the crackling power raced outwards from his hands to strike Botta in the center of the back. The man crumpled under the hit.
Skah's blade slammed into his opponent's; shattering the deformed steel on contact. The fallen man grunted in pain, clutching his chest. "It seems… I underestimated you." Staggering, the man pushed himself off the ground and to the door. "Until next we meet…" He lurched through the doorway.
"Well, that was fun, now wasn't it?" Skah wiped his blade on the back of one of the fallen Desians, stooping to grab something off the ground before looking at the rest of the group. "How about we get the hell out now?"
"Yeah, I've had enough of this place," Lloyd agreed, turning to face his friends.
His friends' attention was focused elsewhere. "Who are you?" Colette bobbed up to Skah, smiling widely. "I'm Colette. How did you get here? Where—" Her question ended in a small squeak as the tumbled forward, having tripped on seemingly nothing. She fell into Skah's arms.
"Easy there, girl." He helped her to her feet, Colette blushing and stammering apologies.
"Yeah, who are you, anyway?" Genis asked.
"Introductions later, after we get out."
"I've activated the escape route." Yuan appeared in the doorway. Lloyd started; he hadn't noticed him leave.
Genis and Colette ran to Lloyd's side. "Are you okay? The Professor's outside with Noishe, she can help heal you when we get out."
"Lloyd, I'm sorry. It's my fault you're in here in the first place…"
"Jeez, you sound like Colette. It's not your fault; I dragged you into all of this, so I'm taking the blame. Now let's get out of here" He glanced over his shoulder. "Skah, Kratos, you coming?"
"Right behind you, kid."
As the younger group pulled ahead, Kratos turned to face Yuan. "What's going on here?" he hissed.
"I'll explain it all later, when we won't be… overheard."
"You had better, Yuan, you had damn better."