Ten Things to do Before I Die

By: Wordsworth 13

Rating: T

Disclaimer: I do not own Chrono Crusade

Chronology: After Chapter 19 in the Manga timeline


Chapter 2: Thou Shall Have A Little Fishy

Rosette stood following the fish beast's every move with her gun, enraged at its actions. She hadn't known the person it had killed. In fact the corpse was so mangled she wasn't sure if it was a man or a woman, blood obscuring the clothes, torn sinews lying limp on the floor, half the face literally eaten off the skull.

"Rosette, I'll bet that creature's about as smart as a pretzel, but it looks pretty strong too." Chrono warned. Rosette nodded and continued to keep her eyes peeled for an opportune moment. Her eyes narrowed and she pulled the trigger. The demon leapt out of the line of fire with surprising agility, leaving the Sacred Spirit to hit the ground in a crucifix shaped spark. Rosette turned to the monster's new perch and wildly fired three more bullets at it, thankfully, one of them piercing its arm. The gargantuan fish cake squealed in pain in a strangely un-fish-like voice. Considering the roar they'd heard chasing it, Chrono had kind of been expecting it to be some king of huge lizard, like a dinosaur. "Azmaria, the cross barrier!" Rosette cried, turning her head.

Azmaria's eyes turned down to the four metal crucifixes in her hands. "Oh," she murmured to herself, barely remembering she had a part to play in the exorcisms. She began running towards a convenient place to put the first rod. The port was not an ideal place to be doing Azmaria's job. "Chrono! The weapon!" Rosette yelled, firing another off target bullet. Azmaria was at this point driving the second marker for the Cross Barrier into the ground. "Rosette, we only have four of those we've got to save them for the trip!"

"We don't have time for second thoughts, Chrono! Give me the bullet!" Rosette screamed at the purple haired demon.

"Done…" Azmaria breathed as she slammed the last crucifix into the ground. An azure glow began to rise from the ground in the shape of the holy cross, the creature suddenly ceasing its movements, in a rather uncomfortable position with one arm in the air. "Okay, never mind." Rosette murmured, raising her Government as the beast struggled to move from its spot. "May the lost lambs have peace," the nun began "may the wolves no longer bare their fangs," she continued "and may this demon feel the crushing blow of death!" She finished, pulling the trigger. A bloody wound opened in the creatures chest and it stopped struggling, falling limply to the floor. Rosette lowered the pistol, breathing heavily.

The fight was over. Chrono stepped forward "Wow," he said "nothing broke." Though, he spoke too soon, as after he finished the sentence, a mysterious groaning noise began droning from nearby. The wood of the pier, where the fish demon had fallen, was sagging, and then snapped, taking the rest of the patch of wood with it. Luckily, and unusually, it didn't have anyone standing on it, so only the piscine corpse fell into the water.

Sister Kate and Father Remington had, by this time caught up, just at the right moment to see the pier collapse. As usual, this did not put Sister Kate in a good frame of mind. Her hands were balling into fists, then unclenching again, then going to fists again. Rosette laughed nervously. "Oh look, there's our boat, gotta go! Come on Chrono!" She grabbed Chrono's wrist and dragged him off towards the bulky, military green boat.

Once Rosette had dragged the red coated demon and the young 'angle' aboard the ship she waved and hurriedly said "Bye-bye Sister Kate!" and slammed the door. Sister Kate rested her hand on her forehead and sighed

"Well, at least there gone for a couple of weeks." Her eyes suddenly widened in realisation as she saw the boat floating away, aided by its propulsion system, which was actually quite unusual, especially considering the purple glow, and practically yelled "Wait! Did they just take Azmaria with them?"

"Of course" Father Remington said, showing the unfortunate sister his everlasting smile. "She is Rosette's assistant."

"But there were only supposed to be three people on the trip!"

"Three?" the now befuddled priest asked.

"Elder! What are you doing here?" Rosette screamed as she faced the grinning old man whom she had come upon whilst entering the ship. "Sister Kate put me in charge of getting you from place to place." The elderly letch replied, smiling inanely. He brushed some dust off his lab coat and continued "After all, do you know how long it would take to just go to Britain on a normal boat? But with my new demon powered engine, it will only take two days!"

"Demon powered?" Chrono cried "Do you remember what happened the last time you invented something demon powered?" His mind turning to the bullets the crazy old man had invented about a month ago. That day he had almost broken his seal on his own.

"Don't worry; I've removed that minor fault." Elder announced proudly

"Minor fault? It nearly destroyed half the convent!" The vertically challenged demon protested. "Whatever, Chrono quit fussing," Rosette sighed "as long as it doesn't try to kill us a demon powered engine is fine."

"But that's the problem!" Chrono yelled "It probably is going to try to kill us!"

After quite a lot of grating, high pitched voices, at one point, Elder trying to lift up Rosette's skirt, everyone had retired to their quarters. Rosette wondered why there were only three rooms on the boat, but hers had a bunk bed, and she didn't mind sharing with Azmaria. Chrono meanwhile, was sprawled across his bed, merely thinking about the facts of life that seemed to elude everyone, such as; how do they make the little holes in buttons, and why the hell was Humpty Dumpty on the wall in the first place. Hardly seems an ideal place for an egg. His mind wandered about five minutes into the past when he and Rosette were still half way through their scuff over Elder's 'alternative' energy source and she had leaned in so close their foreheads were nearly touching. The only way his heart could have been beating any faster at the time would be if she hadn't been giving him a death glare. His eyes widened with an ingenious idea, which he quickly went to scrawling onto the next page in his notebook. He also began a small doodle, but stopped halfway through and began adapting what he had already drawn to a different picture.

He heard a quiet knock on his door and put the book down. "Hello?" Rosette opened the door a crack. "They're serving dinner on the next deck down." She told him. Chrono muttered a noncommittal response and dragged himself up from the stiff mattress. He wandered through the door telling Rosette he'd see her at the table and wandered towards the stairs. Rosette was about to shut the stereotypically boat style door when something she'd never seen before caught her eye. It was a small, reddish brown, ring-bound leather book with the word CHRONO printed on it in thick golden capitol letters. "What's that…" she murmured unintentionally. She turned around and began to close the door again, but, as is usually the case in any tale, curiosity got the better of her. Since it had his name on, and it was in his cabin, she guessed it was his.

She lifted it gently off the bed and slowly opened it. On the first page was her name. Spelt perfectly. Fifteen times. Her name, written in fifteen different fonts all over the page. One looked like Chrono's normal handwriting; another had hearts around it, which made hers jump. Another had a sword through it and was leaking extremely well shaded blood. She was almost afraid to turn to the next page. This one looked like the title page to a book and it read: 'Ten Things to do Before I Die'. Now she just couldn't resist looking at the next page. At the top was written:

#1: Learn to dance. Underneath it was a small stick figure with scruffy hair, an unfathomably long braid and pointed ears appeared to be ball dancing with a nondescript female stick figure. She had tiny ribbons in her hair, Rosette noted, and this was the only unusual or distinguishing thing about it. She turned a page. This one said:

#2: Find a four leaf clover and the gold at the end of the rainbow. This one had the same long haired stick man from before, but it had a four leaved clover tucked in a bandana around his forehead, and was jumping around jubilantly next to a crudely drawn cauldron full on money. Coming out of it was an excellently shaded a rainbow, using different greys as its seven colours. Rosette had to admit, Chrono was good at shading. The next page's task was.

#3: Eat 'haggis' and find out what it's made of. Rosette had heard it was comprised of revolting ingredients, but not exactly which ones. She couldn't believe her friend actually wanted to know what the stuff was made from. Then again, curiosity did kill the cat; she guessed that it disembowelled the demon as well. Underneath this one was a picture of the Chrono stick man reluctantly poking a stylised fork into a black lump. She flipped to the next page. Scribbled in the usual chicken scratch was:

#4: See the Loch Ness Monster. This made Rosette chuckle. Especially when she saw the doodle of the stick Chrono cowering in front of what appeared to be a cartoon plesiosaur. Chrono's art style actually had no consistency, she noted, it went from shading to stickmen to the kind of thing you expect in books for five year olds. She looked onto the next leaf of paper. As usual the writing was messy yet surprisingly legible. This fazed her slightly as she had read somewhere that if you can make out someone's really crappy handwriting the two of you are 'meant to be' but she didn't believe in that stuff. Well, she believed she didn't believe in that stuff anyway. It read;

#5 See the Crown Jewels. Rosette had very little knowledge on what this meant but she was fairly sure it had something to do with the king. Or queen. This was probably because of the fact that the cartoon showed the demon doodle marvelling at a well sketched crown. She also noticed that there was a check box the next to the '#5'. She flipped back to number one and saw that it had a checkbox too. Chrono had thought of everything. She turned to the next page and read the words:

#6: Get one of the English soldiers in the big hats to move. Now Chrono was just getting ridiculous. The picture beneath the writing was of the long haired doodle sticking his tongue out with one eye closed and one eyelid pulled down at a bored looking man in a big hat. The next page said:

#7: Go fishing. 'Not exactly a life changing experience.' She thought, but then it didn't really matter what she thought, this was Chrono's list. There was a picture of a relaxed looking Chrono sat at a pier edge in a funny hat. When she thought about it, she'd never seen Chrono fish, which might explain why he wanted to. She looked at the next page.

#8: Have a conversation with a cat. "What the…?" Rosette whispered to herself. Sure he was a demon but, he couldn't talk to cats could he? Nah, of course not. Besides, who wouldn't want to have a conversation with a cat, they were nicer than a lot of people. There was a picture of stick Chrono sat next to a plump looking cat with twiggy legs, talking to it about; the ocean if she could read the writing in the speech bubble properly, which she doubted she could. The flipped to the next page along. It had writing at the top which read:

#9: Get drunk. Considering they lived in America, the prohibition would make that difficult. She did however like the small doodle of a stumbling Chrono holding a frothy glass mug with red cheeks, arm in arm with the equally intoxicated looking girl from the first page with the ribbons in her hair. Rosette flipped to the next page and read the writing. Blushing, she slammed the book shut. Was what she just read terrifying or a dream come true? At the time she wasn't sure she'd read it right, and left the room, closing the door.

Walking down the corridor towards the lower deck stairs she thought. 'That was Chrono's list of things to do before he dies. I didn't even know he thought about death. So, are all those things the things he really wants to do? Chrono's always so kind and gentle, he deserves to have at least some of those things happen.' Then a devious smile spread over the nun's face. 'But, I can make them all happen, I bet I can.' And thus, Rosette had a side mission while she was in the United Kingdom, but she decided she'd do this secretly, probably just to make it more fun, though also partly so Chrono wouldn't know she'd looked in his notebook. And she set off for the dining room, anticipating the oncoming adventures in the land 'across the pond.'


Yes! Chappy two is completed. By the way, in the anime Chrono was shown fishing once, but that never happened in the manga, so it fits in with my manga timeline finfic. Please review, I'll like you if you do. (Maybe.)