Man, I am really sorry for being late on this one. You see, I get a used car if I get my grades up and I had to focus on that for a while. But now I'm stable, so heres another epic chapter! Enjoy:
Chapter 3: Surprise Attack
"Heh, that was way too easy!" Lloyd exclaimed as he watched the Desian guard run away. Lloyd had used the Sorcerer's Ring that he "borrowed" from the Iselia Temple to break out of the prision he was currently in. Conveniently hitting the guards cell control remote, Lloyd also happened to unlock the cell he was in.
The events after Lloyd's esteemed visitor had been very action packed for the young swordsman. When he went to see Colette, who in his mind "ditched" him, the Desians had attacked Iselia. It was then that Lloyd realized his dream had actually been a vision and that people were going to die. He also realized that Sheena would probably be here as well, but Lloyd was, in the literal sense, dragged away by Genis to the center of town, where Lloyd killed Marble, who had turned into a monster. If Lloyd's guilt had been soul-crushing, it didn't help that the villagers of Iselia, especially the mayor, had blamed him for the disaster. Lloyd couldn't really say they were at fault at banishing him afterwards. His mind was so lost in guilt that he didn't see the ninja in the crowd who eyed him with sympathy and cast an evil glare at the mayor as he had walked by her.
After that, Lloyd and his fellow banished friend Genis went off for the Chosen, which took them about three days. The swordsman liked to take in the new sights, but he wished that Genis would pick up on how to use an Exsphere faster so they could sprint down the countryside instead of going at a snail's pace. The duo had encountered a couple of monsters, which proved no threat for Lloyd as he slashed them with some new skills he picked up from observing Kratos. Genis was also learning a variety of new spells, which Lloyd took special interest in ("Thats awesome! Do it again!). A nearby figure who had passed them by also observed Genis' magic and muttered, "So THATS what that toy is for!".
Following clues from various people that they passed, Lloyd and Genis made their way to Triet, where the Chosen was said to have gone. Along the way, Genis could have sworn he had seen a purple blur pass them by at extrodinary speed, but Lloyd responded, "Genis, just shut up!". The desert heat had made Lloyd antsy.
The two had reached the town and heard that the Chosen's group had indeed passed by. They heard that the Chosen's group were heading to the Triet Ruins, which was supposedly the first seal. Unfortunately, they were stopped by town-occuping Desians, which Lloyd easily put into place. "Then I was knocked out by a huge lightning bolt and brought to their base." Lloyd thought, though exaggeratedly.
And now he was in the center of their base; Lloyd had to make his escape. Stepping out of his cell, Lloyd looked at his surroundings. The walls were a shiny white with lines of light coursing through them. "Wow...so shiny..." he though dumbly. "These Desians sure are high tech!"
Lloyd found his weapons on a nearby table and hurried to equip them. Instead of the wooden blades he had in Iselia, which he promply burned after using them to kill Marble, Lloyd bought a new pair of Knight's Sabers to weild. As he headed to where he thought the exit was, Lloyd glanced behind him to see there were more cells than his. If he was going to escape a Desian base, he figured he might as well save as many prisioners as he could. The swordman glanced at the second cell, but nothing lied in it. The third cell, however, put Lloyd into a bit of a shock; in it and on her side on a cement bed was Sheena Fujibayashi.
"Oh no! Those bastards!" Lloyd exclaimed. "Sheena! Hey, Sheena! Are you okay?!" The assassin groaned and whined, "Leave...melone...hurry...find Yuan..." Lloyd put on an amused face and reponded, "Yuan? Sheena, its me; Lloyd!". Sheena suddenly jumped up from her sleeping position and turned to view her visitor. It indeed was Lloyd! "Lloyd! What the-! How-!" she stammered, causing Lloyd to laugh outloud. After regaining her composure, Sheena asked, "What are you doing here?".
"Well, I actually got captured by these Desians, but I managed to break out!" Lloyd said with a smile. "Desians?" Sheena said. "These aren't..." "Oh crap thats right!" Sheena thought. The people in Sylvarant couldn't tell the difference between the Renegades and the Desians!
"Sheena? They aren't...what?" Lloyd asked questioningly. "Um, never mind." Sheena said, biting her lip as she said it. The assassin didn't want to lie to him, but for the sake of her mission, she had to. And anyway, why had the Renegades captured Lloyd in the first place. The only reason she could think of was that Lloyd had to have been...the Chosen.
"Come on, we are getting out of here," Lloyd said as he opened her cell. Sheena merely stood there, even as the cell door had opened. "Well, are you coming?" Lloyd asked. "Uhh, yeah, sure. Sorry." Sheena replied, though she was blushing when she realized she was staring at the boy. The assassin prayed to Martel that this boy wasn't the Chosen she thought he was.
The two got down the hallway before Lloyd saw that Sheena was weaponless. "Hey Sheena...do you have any weapons on you?"
"No, but I don't need them." she replied confidently. "Really? How are you going to...," Lloyd started before they ran into two Desians.
"Its the prisioners!" one said to the other. "Prision break! Get them!" the other proclaimed as the guards ran towards them. Lloyd began to take out his swords, but before he could, Sheena had ran past him and roundhouse kicked the first guard, who quickly fell to the ground unconcious. The second guard tried making a grab for Sheena, but she took a firm grip of his arm and tossed him to the ground with a powerful trip followed by a swift Exsphere-powered kick in groin, not essentially knocking him out, but putting in intense pain.
Lloyd stood there, mouth agape, at the scene he had just witnessed. He had remembered how powerful Sheena was, as seen in his dream, but the lightning quick attack he had seen just now raised his respect for her to a whole new level. Sheena saw him staring at her, which made her feel slightly embarresed, slightly humbled. "Wha-what is it?" she asked with a slight blush. "That was amazing! How did you-that was-wow!" Lloyd exclaimed as he walked around the moaning guard and his knocked out partner. The two walked past them and continued to go through the base.
"Well, when you train to be a ninja, one is usually excelled in the martial arts." Sheena said proudly. "Whats a ninja?" Lloyd asked curiously, never hearing that word before but getting increasingly interested. "You don't know what a ninja is? Seriously?" Sheena questioned as Lloyd nodded. "Sigh..., a ninja is like a warrior who specializes in fighting in the shadows. We focus on speed and agility rather than brute strength, and out attacks are usually conducted...unannounced." she explained. "Oh, so you go around and surprise attack people for fun?" Lloyd asked, which earned a serious glare from Sheena. "Whats THAT supposed to mean?!"
"Well," Lloyd started, "how do you guys train to fight in the shadows without surprise attacking?". Sheena's stare turned into a dumbfounded look. Was he actually being serious? Although, when she did think about it, his question did have some meaning in it. "Actually, we practice by attacking the nearby monsters in the forest beside my village." Lloyd sighed in relief. "Thank goodness. I thought you were some kind of bandit or something.". "Oh no, of course not!" Sheena exclaimed.
"I know, I was kidding Sheena! Even though we don't know each other very well, I can tell that you are a good person." the swordsman said. This made the assassin feel a mix of guilt and joy. "I mean, I saw you take out those Desians back in Iselia!" Lloyd said with a grin. "Oh, well, thank you...wait!" Sheena exclaimed, now examining Lloyd. "How did you see that? Weren't you fighting that monster in the center of town?"
"Oh yeah, thats right," Lloyd thought. "Umm, I saw you from the corner of my eye." he lied. The ninja could tell there was some deception, or at least uncertainty, in his voice, but she decided to not press the matter.
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"Its over here! Come on, hurry up!" Genis said with a squeal to Colette, Kratos, and Raine, who were busy trying to keep up.
After Lloyd was captured, Lloyd's friend Genis was let off the hook by a surprisingly nice pair of Desians and left to find Colette's group. As soon as he found them outside the Triet Ruins, he told them about his story so far, and emphazised the fact that Lloyd was taken prisioner. This news had surprised and worried everyone, even the usually solemn Kratos Aurion, and the group began to rush towards the Desian base.
"Slow down Genis!" Raine yelled to her brother, who slowed down to a light jog. Being the only one without an Exsphere, or any sort of what she called "performance enhancers", her stamina was much lower than that of the others in her group. "Lloyds not going anywhere, and I doubt they would capture him only to kill him," she explained, although slightly unsure. "But what if something bad happens!" Genis and Colette said in unison, looking at the Professor with tear-filled eyes.
"Something bad has already occured." Kratos said to the youth. "He is captured by your direct enemy. Is that not the worse that could occur? By this action of capturing, they have successfully lured you away from regenerating the world." The two youth now looked to the ground with sorrow in their eyes, despirited by this short lecture. Giving Kratos a short glare, Raine went over to console the children. Kratos merely shrugged and stared ahead, the "Desian" base being only a few leagues ahead. How did he get himself into these situations?
Scanning the nearby area, which had become second nature to the cautious mercenary, he spotted a set of small footprints to his right. The desert usually blew away footprints of such detail in little time, so Kratos assumed these were fresh. "Interesting..." he thought as he followed them without straying too far from the group. The prints lead in the area of Triet, which was only a dozen or so miles from their current position. Kratos didn't walk far to reach his destination, as he approached a large spiral staircase that decended into the ocean of sand. Strangely enough, Kratos saw that the hole was meant to be covered by a wooded door, else be flooded by endless debris, but a strange looking shape had broken what was left of the door, as if somebody had fallen in. By Kratos' guess, the accidental person in question was a woman who likely fell into the hole by accident. "She had to have moved at a high speed in order to make such a...defined outline." Kratos thought with the side of his mind.
"Hmmm, this seems to be an emergency exit for the Desians." Raine said to Kratos as she walked up beside him with the children behind her.
"Indeed. This seems to be the best way to enter without encountering the full force of the guards." Kratos said as he opened the wooden gate. He looked behind to see the determined looks of Colette and Genis as they knew they were going to fight.
"Are you ready?" he asked them.
They replied, "Lets do it!"
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Lloyd saw the strange machine fire a flash of bright light at him, which he sidestepped before jumping on top of the machine to impale it with his sword. "That must have been the twentith metal clunky machine thing I've fought today." he thought as he watched Sheena take on a Desian guard by herself. For whatever reason, Sheena asked Lloyd to not literally kill anybody that they encounter and instead stick with the "robots", as she called them. When asked why, Sheena said she had her reasons before sweetly asking "Please?" with a girlish-look. Lloyd laughed at that and promised, as long as she wasn't in direct danger, which raised a smile between the pair. Although the pair had barely met, they had time between fighting and navigating to gather in conversation. Surprisingly, the Desians were scarce and rarely a problem for the two, who were way stonger than their enemies.
Even with getting a new close friend, Lloyd still felt uneasy around her, although he barely showed it. "Why doesn't she want us to kill any of them? We could strike them where it hurts." he thought. Also, there was the case that Sheena had literally slaughtered those Desians that attacked Iselia, so why was she showing these ones any mercy?
Lloyd cast these thoughts aside as he and Sheena approached a strange looking machine with a colored cube revolving in the center. "Whats that!?" Lloyd asked Sheena, who seemed to know how every contraption in the facility worked. "That, Lloyd, is an advanced guard system for locking the remaining doors in this facility." Sheena explained to Lloyd matter-of-factly. "The only way to get through it is to use that small computer board over there to defragment the locking mechanism, which is held by the electric fields holding the cube in place. To do that takes much in the manner of computer hacking unless a five-code password is inputted, which is changed every twenty-five minutes and sent to the leader of this establishment to be relayed to the commanders of this sector, who lie on the other side of the door we need to unlock, so..."
Sheena stopped when she saw Lloyd aim a strange ring at a power generator for the machine. "Uhh, what are you.." she started before Lloyd shot an electric blast at it, which surprisingly caused the cube to spin...exactly in the position needed to open the door to the control room. The assassin only stared in dumb-found shock. "Sorry Sheena, I thought this might be quicker than all of that!" Lloyd said with a grin. Sheena only continued to stare. "Sheena? Are you okay?" the swordsman asked, worried now. Lloyd now put a hand on her forehead to see if she had some sort of petrifiying fever. Lloyd's physical touch knocked Sheena out of her spell and put her on a shy defense; "Ye-yeah...I'm fine....good job."
Lloyd sighed in relief, "Good. Lets hope this control room has some sort of emergency exit." Sheena tensed up after hearing that word. She didn't want to remember how she got in this position.
They both walked into the hallway, where they saw a large group of Desians straight ahead. "Oh oh! Lets go Sheena!" Lloyd exclaimed. He grabbed Sheena's hand, giving her another blush, and pulled her into a nearby room. "Why do I keep blushing?" she thought. "Whew! That was close..." he said to her softly.
"And just who the hell are you?" said a blue-haired man standing a few feet from the duo, who they obviously didn't see apon entering, charging a spell towards their direction.
Sheena stared at the man, shocked. This was Yuan, her superior, the head of the Renegades known only to the Mizuho village that had actually debriefed her on the assassination of the Chosen. Apon seeing him, she knew that she, and Lloyd, were royally screwed. "Lloyd, please don't say anything..."
"Give me your name and I'll give you mine!" Lloyd said stubbornly with his hands spread out as if to challenge him.
"Hahaha! You certainly have guts! But I don't see the need to introduce myself to a miserable little creature like you." Yuan said in his usual smug attitude.
"What a coincidence," Lloyd said with equal smug, "cause I don't see a need to introduce myself either to a moron who doesn't realize how pathetic he is."
"Why you little-" Yuan spat as he prepared to attack Lloyd before Sheena stood before him, arms spread as if to protect Lloyd. "Sheena?! What are you doing?!" Lloyd yelled to her. "Sheena?" Yuan said as he took a look at the woman who stood before his supposed target. "What the hell are you doing?! Out of the way!"
"No Yuan! This boy isn't the Chosen! Leave him alone!" Sheena yelled, not sure why she was doing this for somebody she only just met. Yuan and Sheena glared at each other for a time, both not hesitating in their stance. "Sheena," Yuan started, "why do you stick up for this human? What purpose could he have in saving our world?" The assassin only shook her head before replying, "I'm sticking up for him because he is...my friend. As for a purpose, he doesn't deserve to die for our cause!"
"Argh! You are so naive! You were hired by us for one reason and one reason only, or have you forgotten? You are the messenger of death for Sylvarant, and yet you stand here defending one of her people!" Yuan scolded. Sheena continued to stand their, eyes darkening on his words. She knew that if she continued to stand here, Yuan might just attack her to get to Lloyd, for whatever importance he might be. And the assassin could tell by the tense atmosphere of this situation that the boy was perhaps more important than she once thought. There was no way...could he be the...
Just then, Yuan's right hand man Botta ran into the room, taking Sheena's guard off long enough for Yuan to attack her with a toned-down lightning shock, knocking the assassin out and causing her to fall to the ground. "Sheena!" Lloyd exclaimed as he tried to reach her, but Botta had blocked the way and allowed Yuan to pick Sheena up. "Botta," Yuan started, "i'm leaving for now. Our plans will be ruined if he sees me." "Like hell you are!" Lloyd yelled as he tried to strike Yuan, only to be blown back by a Stalagmite, courtesy of Botta. Yuan then took leave, leaving a furious Lloyd behind.
"Sheena!" Lloyd yelled with a blood-curling scream as the door shut behind the blue haired man and the girl of his dreams.
Hey, hope you guys like this chapter. Please review; I really wanna get better at this whole writing thing. Also, I'll try to have the next chapter up by next week. Comments might make me write faster...