Crono's Story

Crono's Story

Chapter 2

Triono

A roar, an unearthly scream of pure jubilation sprung forth from deep within, un-harnessed and uncontrollable, even by me. The moon, in all its elegance hung high above, its beautiful light flowed into my eyes, immersing my body in white radiance. My metamorphosis continued, undaunted by the tearing of my muscles, or the growth of my bones. I couldn't even make sense of my bellow; it had overpowered all my other senses. My muscles bulged, my clothes were torn off my body, the few hairs on body suddenly grew, getting darker, larger and more numerous with each second. I looked at Cris across from me, watched in delight as he grew smaller in smaller in my view, until I dwarfed him so severely that he was nothing, a tiny bug just waiting to be squished. I will never forget the horrified look on his face. All his training couldn't save him from me now; this fight, short of a miracle, was mine.

Then, the rage arrived. I found myself at eye level with the rooftops round me, my body taking up more than the width of the street; my transformation was complete. I was as prepared as I would ever be, then, to destroy Cris. As I realized this, the feeling overcame me. Later on I found out what it was like to witness a member of my species transform, how we unendingly rampage and tirade through our environment, until we've destroyed everything and everyone within our vicinity. People believe that when we transform, we lose control of every facet of our bodies, lose control of our very minds. That, in-fact, is not true. There is a peerless blood lust that rushes through our veins at all times, and when we transform, it is magnified, so much so that it overrides all other trains of thought. Unless there is something for us to focus on destroying, something to act as a center of attention, we will go on a crazy rampage, just to fulfill some sort of biological urge. Luckily for the surrounding people and buildings, Cris' ugly face was more than I needed to focus on him.

I suppose his face wasn't that ugly, I knew he'd had a girlfriend in the north somewhere, but the sight of it gave me a bad taste in my mouth. His mouth hung open, not daring to emit a sound, as I yelled like a banshee once again, and then began my assault. I walked over to him, crashing the street beneath my feet. He began to move, desperately trying to get away. He ran full speed away from me, but it was no use, my stride was too long for him to escape, a steady trot of mine was sufficient enough to catch up to him. Right before I was on him, he turned and shot at me with another of his ki-immersed jump kicks. I tried to catch him while he glided through the air, but he moved to quickly for my large arms to stop the attack. He struck my stomach, and in all honesty, I felt a twinge of pain, like an elephant would, whom a mosquito had bitten. He bounced right off my torso, and fell to the ground underneath me. With an immobile target such as that, how could I resist?

I rose my foot, ten metres in the air, and then brought my whole weight down on Cris' motionless body. A disturbingly familiar crunching sound snapped through the air, as a muffled scream came from under my foot. I skewered my foot into the ground, like I was putting out a cigarette, before lifting my paw off to the side of his body. To my surprise, he was alive, twitching with movement, his arms and legs twisted into deformed positions. I watched him with a coy playfulness, like a cat watches a mouse before it eats it. I saw him squirm onto his side and then with a great push, onto his stomach. I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't amazed beyond belief when he pushed himself up from the cracked street. The pain was clearly visible on his face, yet he fought through it and got up, using only his right arm, as his left was vastly disfigured.

A pang of guilt suddenly dawned on me, as though I felt sorry for taking advantage of my transformation. I studied Cris again; he was the only one on the planet who could challenge me. If he was gone, I'd have no one to fight, no one to compete with, and no one to hate. I would never again be able to get such huge increases in strength like I had after healing from one of Cris' beatings, at least not without physically training for hours upon hours, and just the thought of that churned my stomach. So for a very hesitant second I considered letting him live, of turning the blind eye and letting my unique brand of destruction loose on the city. Then he just had to open his big fat mouth.

His voice was small, barely audible, but he spoke his words with crystal clarity, "What's wrong monkey-boy? Not thinking of giving up are you? I expected more from you Triono." He then raised his good arm and fired a blue ki beam from it. I wasn't expecting an attack so daring, so I didn't even contemplate trying to stop it. He aimed it perfectly, as he always seemed to do, and it struck me in the throat. My huge voice box was slightly crushed, and as I keeled back in pain I tried to roar, only to find that I couldn't. I covered the slight wound with my hands as I heard Cris laughing beneath me. In pure anger I stamped with both my feet, cracking the ground beneath me and striking many of the apartments around my location. I then stepped forward, heavily, straight towards Cris. He astounded me once again by jumping back and narrowly dodging my attack. He was un-able to avoid the crash of foot meeting asphalt though, and the shock sent him flying a small distance. He landed softly on the ground, but didn't get up this time. I looked at his eyes to find them closed, I assumed he passed out from the pain. In any event, he was defenceless and the chance was mine. Looking back, if I'd succeeded in killing him, none of what we'd go through together would've happened.

I brought back my right hand from my throat, clenched it into a fist and brought it down onto Cris. I closed my eyes so I wouldn't see the blood and bone that would surely fly. Just a second before I made contact, a buzzing sound went by my right ear and suddenly my fist was stopped. I snapped open my eyes to find what had prevented my conquest, but found nothing. I pushed down on my fist with all my weight, but it didn't budge an inch. I then realized whatever was blocking my fist was small enough to hide behind my hand.

I brought my arm back, and found something, or rather someone, standing in its vacancy. An extremely short man stood in place of my fist. He didn't so much stand as he hung in the air, a motionless pillar unaffected by the likes of gravity. I slowly looked him over; he was bald, short, with a large, round head, a strange orange martial arts gi, and a muscular build. His face was masked as he had turned his head to look at Cris, who was un-conscious behind my newfound adversary. At an almost tantalizingly slow pace, this new arrival turned around to confront me once again. I saw his face, which struck me as kind of strange to tell the truth. His forehead had six dots almost inscribed within his skull, like some sort of birthmark, although they were obviously artificially created burn marks. Besides that though, something else struck me as missing on his face, something that wasn't right. Before long, it occurred to me that he had no nose, just a small patch of bumpy skin where it should've been. Though my senses were slightly diminished by the overwhelming power of my transformation, I sensed his aura wasn't all that powerful, and sure as hell not powerful enough to stop my blow like he did.

He examined me, slowly at first, before quickly staring into my eyes and grinning at me. I was half humoured, half enraged that this stocky little man thought he could really fight me. I was bringing up my left foot to kick him with, when suddenly he vanished. He didn't outright disappear, just sort of blurred out of vision as I lost all sense of his aura. Then suddenly, not a split second after he had left, he appeared again, right in front of my chest. I didn't have time to react; just time enough to see him hit me. He needed only one fist, one measly punch to send me flying. I must've gone nearly a whole block from this one little punch. My whole body smacked into the ground at suicidal speeds, whip lashing my neck and leaving me immobilized on my back.

I roared weakly, barely managing to get the sound out of my throat, and glanced around, nervously looking for my attacker. To my left, a squadron of police cars were heading towards me, their sirens wailing, they're guns ready. I snapped open my mouth and let fly a beam that incinerated the vehicles and all their occupants, leaving only charred metal and the smell of charred flesh in the air. I re-directed my attention to my more worthwhile opponent, and slowly pushed myself up from the ground. My top pair of ribs were insinuated in pain, until the sensation overcame my mind, and movement itself became a test of endurance. Through some sort of miracle, I rose from the ground, and began my hurried search for the bald man.

It wasn't very hard to find him, he wasn't even attempting to hide, he was just confidently striding towards me, keeping a constant, slow pace, as to annoy me all the further. I was completely un-prepared for this; I'd never been beaten in my transformed state before, in fact, in each of the three times I'd changed in the past, I had been uncontested. I tilted my head slightly to the side before opening my mouth once again, and firing another ki beam. I didn't see if it hit him or not, my jaw was so massive that it blocked my tunnel of vision. The explosion was amazing though, creating a giant crater in the street and hurling Cris' limp body even farther.

I didn't feel the shrimp's ki anywhere near me, so I assumed I'd hit him. It didn't take me long to find out just how badly I had assumed. Some sort of sharp object suddenly struck me in the side of the head, and I turned my neck to see what threw it at me. My enemy stood on top of a roof, hands on his hips, laughing almost uncontrollably at me.

I roared in disgust, and swung a wild fist at him. He didn't move to avoid it this time; instead, he blocked my fist with his forearm. My mind refused to believe that my fist, the size of a Buick, was stopped by this runt, and as such, I did absolutely nothing in my own defence. Suddenly he brought up his other arm and fired a small ki blast from it.

The orange ball of energy struck me in my already damaged sternum. Again I went for a little ride, this time straight into an apartment building, directly opposite the one my enemy was perched atop. My huge frame tore right through the bricks, mortar and steel of the building, leaving me in a sort of bed of debris. I lay on my back once again, clutching my enormous chest with my equally large palms, and I writhed in unbearable pain. My mind was perplexed as to how this little man could be so strong, far stronger than anything, or anyone, I'd ever met before.

I knew one thing though, there was no way this little midget was going to beat me. I rose from the rubble of the building, moaning loudly as my body, racked with pain, told me to simply lie back down. I stared straight into the now expressionless face of my attacker, and I caught the sight of Cris off to my left, struggling to his feet; simply amazing. I roared a battle cry and charged at the baldy, fists raised high. I brought them crushing down on the roof of his building, but half a second before I made contact, he blurred out of view again.

My hands crashed through the corner of roof, sending shrapnel in all directions. I didn't have time to look for my assailant when suddenly, I sensed an incredibly powerful surge of energy just above me. As I turned to face it, a yell emanated from seemingly all around me.

"Destructo Disc!!" The booming voice yelled, and I saw my attacker once again. He was hovering above and behind me, with a cylinder of energy floating above his right, outstretched palm.

He hurled the attack with such force that I couldn't even see it's movement towards me. Suddenly pain shot through my spine, and blood began to pour from out my rear end. A dread I never again wanted to feel came over me, and as I looked back sure enough, my worst fears were confirmed. The blast had cut straight through the base of my tail, and as the shaft of the furry little appendage fell to the ground, I began shrinking, back into my humanoid form. It was then that I suddenly grew very tired.

It'd been nearly five years since my mom had died. I didn't know why she came to my dream until it was all over; her message was just a part of the script to something that had happened far too long ago for me to remember. She came up to me, her waist length black hair blowing behind her, pushed by some invisible force, her blue eyes giving off her infamous dark glow, the black dress she always wore was clean and looked to be brand new. She stood above me, looking at me with those penetrating eyes, and then she knelt in front of me, leaned in beside my ear and whispered softly in her calm and knowing voice. "I told you didn't I? Now go and do it." A sob emitted from my throat and she passed her hand through my hair. Then suddenly I found myself watching from the view of a spectator; and I saw myself the way I was the night I found her dead in the street; naked, curled in a ball, and crying violently. And all the while she just knelt there, a worried look on her face and her hand in my hair.