A/N: Thank you very much to the people who left reviews! They are appreciated :)
Well, its all uphill from here, as much as Magus may drag it downhill. Chapters will definitely be longer, although I am still arguing with myself as to how long they should be. I haven't won yet...
'Where… where is it?!'
Nothing but the snow covered, God-forsaken and illusive Earthbound wasteland met the pulsating question he held to. His jaw tightened, impatience and frustration finally sinking in. How much longer would he take this torture?
The layer of snow crunching underfoot of the three exhausted sojourners had become almost deafening to him. At least, it seemed that way when compared to the stubborn quiet that had lasted for hours now. How such a prolonged silence had managed to thrive among the likes of these people was beyond him. It was rare to get more than a minute of peace and quiet under normal circumstances, whatever normal could be called considering their present task and the hours they had spent roaming around every nook and corner of the frozen expanse of nothingness. In his week and a half of time spent with them, a silence had never long survived unless…
Fatigue, he knew was the answer. He didn't have to look over his shoulder to see their weary bodies dragging along in his wake, for even he was beginning to feel the string of ice, wind and hunger.
Still, his crimson gaze tore apart the rugged land with some measure of hope, searching ruthlessly for… whatever that strange familiarity was. It was like some sort of ghost floating through the air, making his nose twitch with dear and distant memories. And wherever it was, it was close; it was so close. It had been so close for days, like a word on the tip of his tongue. He could feel it, smell it, sense it so tangibly that he could practically reach out and take hold of it- if only he could find it.
'Where?!'
Though currently at the head of the group, the two following after Magus in fragile tow would never dare let the title of leader slip their lips; not with the wounds of losing their former still so fresh and raw. And besides, who could call a once renounced enemy anything nearly so intimate?
Said 'leader', having trudged for hours across the sleet-cursed ground of what had previously been Zeal finally turned his head- just enough to check if the two were still there.
"A problem?" quipped the deep and throaty voice of Frog, a tinge of impatience set aside especially for the sapphire-haired prince. He glared up impatiently, stuffing his shaking hands somewhere further into the fabric of his cape. For a cold blooded animal, he sure was doing well not to completely freeze over.
"If you're looking for one," Magus turned, brushing the layers of snow from his shoulders onto the already frozen amphibian behind him. Some hiss of annoyance was heard, and before Magus had gained a single step, the positions had changed; Frog stood threateningly before him, eyes set.
"I believe'th there to already be one in existence," Frog growled lowly, all patience gone. Fatigue be damned, that frog was a stubborn man. Or… whatever.
Magus decided to humor him. "Enlighten me, then."
Frog's lips pressed thin in attempts to restrain his temper, and it served him well. "Such a trip as this- tis' madness! Nary have a handful of frozen hours hath run us to the point of exhaustion, yet naught a trace of it hath brought us near'r to Crono nor this 'Time Guru' thou dost falsely speak of. Hath not thou prudence enough to turn back unto the village? We'll be spent at such a rate!"
Before he could retort that he could care less for their brainless friend or how another step might 'spend' them in the right direction, the last member of the party gave their own contribution to the conversation.
"Oof!" squawked the dazed and shivering girl, having walked blindly into the backside of the wizard in her focused trek. The thin cape around her shoulders caught underfoot and she awkwardly tripped on it. "W-Whoa!"
The first response he gave was a glare over his shoulder. "I would take more care of my step if I were you," he warned, watching her miserable attempt to fumble back to her feet. Marle's shivering quickly sharpened into a glare. Despite her own fatigue, taking his intimidating and vexing manner into one hand convinced her to toss her patient and weary composure from the other.
"I'm sick of wandering around this place!" She leaned forward, suddenly full of indignant flare and dizziness. "It's cold and all I want to do is sleep!"
"Perhaps if you wore proper clothing-"
"My clothes!" she interrupted furiously, blushing madly and throwing an accusing finger closer than he preferred. "We're in a frozen tundra! It doesn't matter what we wear! We're all going to freeze at this rate!"
Magus' voice was icy as the wind around them. "By we, you mean yourself. And him," he didn't bother gesturing at Frog.
Her eyes rolled. "What, you're telling me that you're not cold and worn out?"
"I'm not like you."
"Oh yeah?" Her fingers danced around angrily at her sides. "Let's just see about that!" Her breath grew visibly colder, and Magus knew there were ice crystals forming in her hands. Or maybe they had been there the whole time?
"I'd like to see you try," his eyes slit, daring her.
"Oh, you can watch alright!" she growled. "From inside of an ice block!"
Having been with the group for the fair stretch of a week now, Magus felt he had come to a full understanding of how much each one could annoy him before he had to hold himself back from turning them all into a walking zoo. Frog, of course, was the worst, mostly because he already was a walking zoo. But worse yet was his attitude. If he wasn't glaring at the wizard out of the corner of his eye constantly, then he was going off about honor and other such dry, knightly things, clearly directing the bulk of his comments at Magus' general lack of such qualities. And then, that stupid obsession with the princess- always at the jump to 'protect' her apparent virtuous qualities. Right.
Slowly, Magus had begun wishing he had turned him into an animal that didn't have a mouth, though that list proved a difficulty to name; he had been thinking about it. Some sort of sea animal, perhaps?
Then there were the two strange ones; cave woman and the metal man (the 'robot' as they called it) who were of equal disdain to him. Although they generally left him alone, both their broken tongues and strange quirks were enough to keep him at bay even more than usual. Besides, he wasn't sure if the cat woman would risk biting him.
Lucca by far was the only tolerably intelligent one of the group, and her quirks were a little more tolerable under his gaze, for she generally knew what she was talking about- although apparently she hadn't done very much talking as of late.
Marle, however, was a completely different story.
For someone so good natured, golden to anything that breathed and naive and pure from the evils in the world, it only seemed natural that she could have no issues with anyone ever. She was easily one of the kindest, happiest and most carefree people he ever had the misfortune of coming across, and it drove the wizard mad. There was no place for such ignorant silliness in the world unless it was at the forefront of the battlefield as a distraction. Thankfully, he had quickly picked up on her rather… short span of patience. In fact, he had quickly learnt that he had a certain knack for flipping her coin to a much angrier disposition- a much angrier disposition.
Magus, too, had initially been surprised to get such a rise from her of all people; he didn't think it possible for someone so innocent to have such a temper.
But it hadn't taken more than a day for their stubbornness to clash, and clash it did. A mere day of travelling together was all it had taken to spark arguments, and their fighting only seemed to become more and more heated as the days went on. Frog, although rather frazzled by the turn of events, had jumped in many a time in the name of defending Marle, especially at first. But with the fights growing in number through the days, he had mostly given up. Even he seemed taken aback by her surprisingly short graces towards the wizard.
But, perhaps it had something to do with what he had stated about it being very much Crono's own fault for the fate that had become him.
She hadn't liked that very much. In fact, he had come rather close to having his other ear pierced by a rogue ice needle.
Or maybe it was when he had deemed calling her an idiot not generous enough?
'Heartless!' she had dubbed him at both offences, the previous saddened look morphing into refined anger. Of course, she was right; she hadn't been the first to call it, and it didn't affect him any more than the previous dead men who had the gall to spend his last breath cursing him as such.
And that's what he told himself as he let a surge of balmy, hot magic seep from his hands, melting the snow between them. She didn't seem to notice, perhaps because her mind was more occupied with matters of strategic violence than safety, but Frog took it as his queue to step in.
"Enough of this," he warned, more so to Magus. Although he could not blame the princess, Frog drew the angry party apart and shifted their focus towards the small billow of smoke off in the distance. "Let us retreat to the village lest my weary mind also lead'th me to such violent dealings."
Marle turned away from the wizard with a huff and then a glare, and he snarled in return. All the same, she followed after Frog while wrapping the feeble layers of her cloak tighter around her bare shoulders and wobbling a bit.
Unfazed, Magus's eye gleaned the frozen grounds once more before following. Perhaps he would have to put his search on hold until Lavos had been dealt with and he was free of such ridiculous company.
Besides, he was becoming certain that there was no hope of finding it here.
-v-
"Now where did I put that..."
Tearing open the top dresser drawer beside her bed, Lucca rummaged around her well versed collection of tools and trinkets, sub-consciously biting at the corner of her lip as she scanned. "I know I had it- hm?"
Her eyes flicked up to the dresser top where a book lay open, practically right under her nose. A series of connect-the-dot figures caught her eye with illustrated descriptions underneath. One hand still in the drawer, she used the other to push her overbearing glasses back into place on the bridge of her nose before flipping a page.
Diag. B – Space and Time:
"It has commonly been argued that time and space are not cognitive separates, but rather intertwined. Time is not merely a forward motion, but consists of pulling forces. The slowing of time, changes of mass with high velocity and length contraction are the commonly discussed outcomes of special relativity. The theory of relativity is backed by…"
She rubbed the streak of grease from her cheek, leaning into the book and missing the subtle tapping sound on her window.
"To the mass (= X) at a stationary position, time remains unaltered by both viewer (Obj. I) and the mass itself (Obj. X). Once X surpasses the speed of I-"
Tap tap.
"- X's speed becomes relative to I's speed and perception, thus allowing time to move at a different interval than-"
Tap tap tap!
"-does require separate intervals of-"
SSSSSMMASH!
Lucca jolted up, instinctively covering her face as hundreds of tiny shards of glass shattered and flew across the floor. Catching her breath, she looked about the room for the source of the explosion. Dead in the center of her window was a circular, ragged gap which had definitely not been there two minutes ago. She stepped closer to look through the broken glass and found who she instantly knew to be the culprit blinking up at her, blankly scratching his head.
Opps.
"Lucca, what was that?" She could hear her father jumping off the couch downstairs, no doubt intrigued. Leave it up to him get excited when her inventions broke something (who was the parent again?). At least, that was usually the case when it came to loud noises or smashing sounds in the Ashtear household. This time, however, her hands were clean.
It was almost a refreshing change…
Glaring back out the window, she found the culprit had vanished. "Seriously?" She took another step forwards and her toes made forceful contact with the hard rock that had been thrown into her room. "Mmrrrroooww!"
Well, it was almost refreshing.
"Say what?" called the voice at the bottom of the stairs. "Was that a cat up there?"
"Grrahh! What!?" Lucca hollered, more in agitation than actual inquisition.
"Lucca…" began her mother's stern tone from the living room. Oh yes; there's the parent.
"IT'S NOTHING!" she shot between grit teeth, hobbling on her good foot to awkwardly nurse the other in her hands. Parking herself on her bed, she sucked in a short breath and surveyed the damage.
On the other side of the broken window appeared the face of a guilty boy, hanging upside-down from the large oak tree's branch adjacent to the window. His big, emerald eyes bore a rare look of remorse which he was trying to unsuccessfully balance with the guilty smirk tugging at his lips.
Lucca glared at him through what was left of the window, but leaned over and opened it all the same. "Did you actually just throw that giant rock through my window?"
He shook his head thoroughly, making the stubborn red spikes he called hair sway a little.
She narrowed her eyes. "You stupid-"
"Lucca?" repeated the voice downstairs impatiently.
"Everything's fine," she hollered back, turning from the window angrily. "It was just… uhh… a really large pest." Said pest swung himself up and crawled skillfully through the wreckage, stepping around the broken glass to sit himself down next to her on the bed. He pointed at her foot, and she hoisted it up onto her knee.
"I think you broke my toe, you jerk."
He smiled sheepishly, laughing to himself. Before she could bash him, his hand shifted behind his back and re-emerged with the 'lost' screwdriver she had been searching for not minutes ago; before being distracted, that it. Hopeful, he held it out to her as a peace offering of sorts.
Only, it had the opposite effect he had hoped for.
"YOU!" she growled, lunging at him and swapping angrily with her fists. "I've been looking for that all week!" The words came out in choppy breaths and winces. "It's the only star bit piece I have! What would you of all people do with a screwdriver?!"
Worming out of the line of fire with a sly smile, his brow popped as he considered defending his handyman dignity. His arms became a make-shift square, flopping one hand back and forth within. He smiled proudly.
Cat door.
Her brow lulled, unimpressed. "You took my best screwdriver to make a lousy cat door?"
He lifted a finger to defend himself again, but though better of whole body defense when he realized the screwdriver was about to be used as lethal weapon.
-v-
Lucca had not been her usual self in the last week, Robo noticed.
Beyond the evidence of charred marks on the tips of her fingers and the seemingly permanent red cheeked appearance- the result of her unstable magic jumping off the deep end- there was a certain quality amiss in her usual air.
For one, she hadn't let anyone else drive the Epoch. She was always the first at the machine, jumping into the seat with a determination fierce enough to start a fire (which had, incidentally, happened a time or two). Having consulted his built-in library on the issue, Robo concluded that it was the result of some sort of human need for control over the safety in the group. She has also been exceedingly cautious of the fights they picked in coming across stray beasts. Before Frog could slice, or Marle cold ice, Lucca had thrown herself to the front of the line with a wild visage in her eyes; it was a fearsome thing to behold. Yet the irony of it all was that her driving was probably the most dangerous out of all of theirs, and her magic the most unpredictable.
He could make sense of the wild magic; Lucca had always seemed to struggle with mastering her magic over her mind. But the dangerous driving, he could not compute. She was usually a skilled and thoughtful driver, easily the most skilled out of the entire group, as would be expected of any inventor who wanted to not only create a wheeled machine but also operate it. Was it a matter of too much focus and not enough communication?
She hadn't spoken once in the last week.
A sharp jolt shook the Epoch in its flight, rocking the strained girl in the front seat and the wild one in the back, making the latter look a little green.
"No more ride," Ayla groaned, sinking back into her seat miserably.
"Lucca, perhaps we are looking in the wrong place?" Robo began. The machine glanced out the window at the ocean below them. "It may be best to search on land now, or rendezvous with the others."
Much to their despair, the last thing their search had been was fruitful. In fact, it seemed to be more of a herald of bad news than anything of a productive nature. After having a day of re-stocking at her house, Lucca had been dragging her team around on what seemed to be an aimless quest in which new issues in different time periods surfaced one upon another. Freezing climate in pre-history, wild mystic attacks in the Middle Ages... What other problems would they run into? While their initial directive had definitely become muddied in the water, Robo could not forget (literally) what Magus had told them about a Time Guru who could help them bring Crono back.
Was this what Lucca was searching for still? Or had she gone crazy?
"Lucca?" he repeated, attempting to give the tone of a question to his voice.
Said inventor slammed a button on the dashboard, only shaking her head in reply. Robo looked between the two girls, uncertain of whom exactly the head shake was meant for. He had no way of analyzing anything beyond what was clearly and intentionally communicated; nuance was not his specialty. All he knew was that by human standards, Lucca had been awake far too long to navigate anything properly.
"Go out now!" Ayla reinforced with a sudden, sharp bark. Seeming to not hear her, Lucca only looked up briefly to scan the windshield.
The cavewoman had been inside the Epoch for longer than she cared to be. If she wasn't the one driving, (and they had quickly learnt better than to let Ayla drive) then she was the antsy, jittery one in the back, which usually meant that everyone else stuck with her were subjected to the same sort of antsyness and jittery twitching. Thankfully, Robo was unaffected by such things, and Lucca had such a hard exterior placed up at the moment that nothing seemed to effect her, neither positive or negative.
Ayla waited patiently for an answer, but after about two seconds that patience was spent. "OUT!" she bellowed in her deep, primal voice, pounding at the glass over her head.
Unsure of what to do, Robo looked back out the window for something else to scan, but this time something other than the endless tossing of the ocean met him. Far down below, almost too small to see, he noticed a black, swirling mass had appeared in the middle of a desert, which he quickly recognized as the Porre continent of the Middle Ages. Yet his records held no data of a desert spanning anywhere between the continents during that time period... or ever, for that matter. From what his data told him, most of its interior geography was supposed to be forested. This was definitely not normal, he deduced. The strange mass resembled what could perhaps be called a vortex… but no, that wasn't right.
It was a sinkhole.
"Lucca," he began, "There seems to be a change to the-"
"RARAAAA!" In its ever timely way, Ayla's patience had snapped. Resembling the resilience of a bouncy ball, she began jumping about the cabin, yelling and screaming as though she were being physically tortured. "GOGOGOGOGOGO!"
Lucca's knuckles flushed white as her grip tightened on the wheel. Despite a slight ringing disturbance that Ayla's screaming was causing in his hearing receptor, Robo also noticed that the pressure in the cabin was changing; he was slowly being pressed back into his seat; they were picking up speed. Interrupted by the great, blaring noise of the engine blasting at full capacity and the sudden catch of the Epoch's velocity, Alya was caught mid-air and abruptly plastered to the back of the glass cabin in surprised silence, wide-eyed and startled. This lasted no more than a moment, however, before she began yelling excitedly that they were finally going fast.
The land below them melted away into the familiar blackened space of the End of Time.
-v-
"Wow… look at this place." Marle's frown deepened as they walked through the commons area. "I can't believe this is all that's left."
In the wizard's opinion, the village was a disgrace.
Between the handfuls of 'Enlightened' and 'Earthbound' survivors there was now no distinction, save for the clothing. The camp itself felt pitifully lifeless; it was sparse of supplies, cold and dreary as everything else on the disheveled continent. Most people stood talking in quiet huddles, shooting startled glances at the foreign travelers and speaking in low voices among themselves. Frog nodded kindly to the wide eyes watching him as they walked past, and Marle tried a faint smile that really looked more like a grimace.
Magus had deemed it unnecessary to go beyond the mouth of the commons, and so was fairly content to wait behind and bat off the prying eyes of his people. However, there was one pair of eyes watching him that kept his attention. A boy, no more than eight or nine, peered out from behind the legs of an older man, watching Magus with what he could assume to be frightened curiosity. Magus fixed his eyes on him, casting a deeper scowl than normal. He recognized this boy.
'When's Schala coming back to play with us?' he remembered the little urchin whining. 'I miss her, Janus. Tell her I miss her. Bring her with you next time.'
But he never had told Schala about the boy. All those years ago, he had turned his back and ran through the hardened snow of the Earthbound land, back into the skywalk, across the bridges and up to the silent comfort of Schala's room. But he hadn't told her.
Gaining some sort of delusional courage, which was clearly ignorant of the fire in the stranger's eyes, the little boy took a timid step towards Magus. A sharp snap of wind from the wizard's cape finally startled the boy enough to stop his forward motion, although he kept watching the mysterious man. Finally, Magus turned his miserable self away from the general direction of people, and the boy guessed well enough to leave him alone.
On the other side of the commons, Don made up for the lack of general cheerfulness upon seeing the two familiar faces of Frog and Marle, for he was overwhelmingly glad to see them. Somehow, he seemed overwhelmingly glad of everything at the moment. In fact, he seemed to be the only bright component of the whole place. He grabbed their hands and rambled on and on about how they were rebuilding and restoring what had been lost, all with the bright hope of a new future free from class distinctions.
Frog nodded, waiting for an opportunity where he could bring up the possibility of their staying the night, but it didn't seem as though a beat would surface for a while. He wondered, momentarily, if the old man had breathed more than once between his seemingly unending sentences.
Marle seemed fully content to distance herself from the long conversation and wrap herself up in whatever she could find to keep warm, which really wasn't much of anything. The commons held only a few people and some of them smelt… strange.
Frog's protective eye watched her wander off, wishing he could do the same but being too polite to attempt, he remained stationary and counted the opportunity as a test of patience.
"… and if that's not enough, we're going to try this 'plant' thing…" Don's voice was slowly lost on both.
Shivering and near delusional from lack of sleep and cold, Marle began walking in circles to keep herself awake. Upon finding herself in such a place, she would have naturally kept herself busy by talking to anyone and everyone in sight, but her lips merely quivered. She tried to keep her focus away from how exhausted she was, but it was slowly and certainly consuming her every thought and feeling. Even her vision was becoming blurred. Her feet grew heavy, and so did her eyes. The concerned faces, the snow, the trees- everything looked like a messy painting now, so much so that she took no notice of the small purple spot in her path until she had-
"Oof!" …tripped over something and landed face first in a soft, plushy body of fur. The familiar scent of magic tabs and elixirs tickled her nose.
"Hey…" she rubbed her eyes curiously. Pushing herself from the cold snow and the tiny creature, she was met by the glimmering eyes of a sleek, purple furred cat; a strikingly familiar cat, at that. "I remember you. You lived up in Zeal!"
His ears perked at that, as did another set across the commons.
"You're… Alfred…" the cat blinked its dark and waxy eyes at her. "No… uhh… Alvin? Alpacheno… Alfredo… no. Darn it!" Marle frowned to herself, trying very hard to reconcile with the name dancing on the tip of her tongue. The cat looked up patiently like a lost child waiting to be reclaimed by their parent.
"Alfador!" she cried suddenly, seeming to surprise herself more than anything. Excited, the cat jumped up and mewed happily, but Marle had only a moment to share in that happiness before she felt a daunting shadow fall on her.
As though she had called his name instead, she found Magus very suddenly at her back and nearly fell over herself trying to stay clear of his condescending stance.
"How do you know his name?" he demanded roughly.
"W-What?" she stammered, somewhat scared and confused.
"Alfador," he clarified as he scooped up the little feline into his arms- perhaps the gentlest motion she had him ever bestow- then glared down at her with polar ferocity. "Where did you hear that?"
"I, er, we've seen him… before." Gathering herself enough to meet his glare, she grew a little bolder with the realization that she had done no wrong. "Actually, you told me. Remember, Janus?"
If Magus's face could become any more white, it would have at that moment. It had been countless moons since he had been called by that name. How did she-
His eyes closed.
Yes. He remembered. He had seen them as a child back in Zeal, long before he had come back disguised as the prophet. They had been the strange looking group of outsiders he had met at Enhasa, the ones he had told of the black wind as he ran down the stairs like the wind itself, taciturn over the sea. No wonder there had been some vague familiarity he felt towards their group when they had stumbled into his castle once upon a different time.
But he had been right, of course. The black wind had taken one of them- that crazy-haired leader they were searching for now.
And Schala, too.
"Pray tell, tis-!" Frog seemed to come out of nowhere, interrupting characteristically well. He startled a little at seeing the cat held in the wizard's arms. "A new addition to our party?" he asked, curiously observing the purple cat. He seemed bothered at the strange sight, but decidedly said nothing of it. "Very well. To-night we resign here. Come Marle; it hath been a terrible length of day and thou'rt in dire need of rest. We shall return to the others at Time's End in the morn'."
With thoughts of warmth and sleep as motivation, Marle forgot all transgressions and ran after the promise of sleep. Alfador, who had not settled quite so well into his master's arms, looked up very seriously at him, but Magus' mind was preoccupied with the retreating backs of the two. He nudged him a little with his head, but it was to no avail. Seeing he would get no response, Alfador jumped down and followed after the others.
Surprisingly, it hadn't taken him long to catch up to Marle. There was no missing the purple creature's sharp contrast to the white snow it trudged through at her side. Seeing this, Marle's heart did the only thing it possibly could; it broke.
"Awe…" she cooed affectionately, extending her arms. "Here Alfador, let me help you."
"Don't bother, he…" Magus blinked, watching the cat allow itself into the girl's open arms.
Although drained, she looked back at him with a sly smile. "Now haven't I heard that somewhere before?"
A 'humph' was his only reply, and so they returned to the silence of the snow crunching under their feet; Frog's making leaps and bounds, Marle's freezing and slipping this way and that, and Magus's floating just enough off the ground to remain unaffected.
