For killerbunbun, who was the first to catch that I'd added a new chapter (even if it was an author's note – and yeah, sorry about that).
By the way, if this all sounds out of place or screwed up or just plain weird, please remember that I haven't worked on this in donkey's years and I am off school with head aches and random bouts of dizziness which makes it kind of hard to concentrate while writing this, okay? I would wait 'til later, but I don't want to keep you guys waiting any more! Also, I have had to take breaks, so while I promised this to be coming out on the same day as the last chapter, it hasn't. I'm so sorry!!
Zelos whimpered lamely as Presea bandaged his head again. He hadn't really been hurt there, but he was being such a drama queen that he refused to go anywhere until he was content that he had enough bandages so it was sure that he wasn't going to die. So, here they were, sat on the ground near the remains of a camp-fire, with Presea standing behind him loaded down with an array of first aid equipment. Why Kratos carried so much on him was a mystery nobody would be bothering to solve any time soon.
"I think I know how Raine feels when you go all pathetic now…" Presea sighed exasperatedly. Zelos turned his head to look at her, trying to make his best puppy eyes at the girl. Presea sighed and brandished a pair of scissors, ready to cut the bandages and tie it up so it wouldn't become loose. Zelos gasped and flinched, then jumped onto his feet and out of Presea's reach, while the same roll of bandages came undone and dangerously close to winding his feet up.
"Y'know, I'm thinking that I feel much better now, so there's no need for open surgery Presea!" he yelled, running out of the small girl's sight with several bandages trailing behind him. She sighed wearily, and decided that if Zelos wanted to run around with an entire roll of bandage dangling off his head and threatening to trip him up, he could feel free. And with his constant teasing of Lloyd and the whole spiders thing, he might need it sometime soon. Although him falling over was bound to be funny.
"No Presea. Thinking like that will only bring about another half an hour of bandaging Zelos' 'boo-boos' resulting from a less than graceful fall or Lloyd's fist. He's in such a foul mood this morning, who knows what he'll do... I hope Sheena can help him." she thought to herself, putting the scissors back in the small box Kratos had provided her. How all the equipment fitted, another mystery.
And, just within hearing range, Presea heard a yelp, a scream, a loud crash, and then a series of curses, which meant that she would need more bandages.
When Lloyd and Sheena had gotten up, Sheena avoided asking him directly what was wrong last night, and spent the morning trying to coax some information out of Lloyd. Kratos had told her about Lloyd's issue with the spiders when he was younger – and much to his dismay got asked if he was a pervert again – and so she realised she couldn't ask directly about that, as it would destroy whatever pride he had managed to salvage from last night.
The two of them has spent the entire morning sat on the floor just talking and admiring the view, or telling Zelos to go away whenever he tried to 'help Lloyd get over things'. It had been an awkward morning, as Lloyd fluctuated from not wanting to talk whatsoever and getting grumpy if Sheena tried to start another conversation, to suddenly becoming very nervous to speak his mind. Sheena was actually quite worried about Lloyd. He had mumbled so many things in his sleep, ranging from 'Get away from them' to something incomprehensible about Raine and cooking. She was worried he was having nightmares, especially if he was mentioning Raine's cooking, and had noticed him suddenly wake up from time to time in a panicked sweat, but pretended to remain asleep in case made him think he was keeping her up. In fact, whenever she noticed him wake up suddenly, she just tried to move closer to him to try and make him feel more comfortable. She really didn't want to upset Lloyd right now, or let anyone else upset him - especially Zelos, whose idea of cheering someone up was to let them have their pick of girls from Meltokio if they went back there any time soon.
Lloyd, meanwhile, was sat on the floor feeling very sorry for himself. Despite Sheena's attempts to cheer him up, he had suddenly realised quite how useless he had been last night, and all because of a damn spider. Well, O.K., it was a giant spider, but still, it was still no excuse. He had had so many dreams last night, or rather nightmares, where he would be sitting with all his friends around a camp-fire (while Raine was cooking, which was a rarity), then suddenly a little spider would come and eat them, and he couldn't do anything for fear. He felt pathetic, being the saviour of the worlds and letting spiders nearly devour his friends. However, he had found it incredibly reassuring to wake up finding Sheena cuddling up to him. A small part of him hoped that she wasn't cuddling him for warmth, rather just for wanting to be with him. But, knowing that something had sparked off between Sheena and Colette revolving around him, maybe he should keep his feelings for Sheena quiet for now.
"So, what was that little girl from last night like? I remember her looking like Presea." Lloyd asked suddenly, breaking the silence that had settled between him and Sheena.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, she did, actually. And those two got into a one-on-one fight, as well. Presea won quite skilfully, though." Sheena laughed suddenly. "And she had this weird little comment she stuck in almost every sentence she said. It's was 'like, completely' or something. She was talkative..."
"Unlike Presea." Lloyd replied. Sheena turned her head to look at him. He carried on staring ahead for a few seconds, then turned his head to face Sheena, then looked away at the ground. Although he didn't sad or angry any more, he still looked like something was bothering him.
"Hey Lloyd," Sheena said quietly, nervous as to not upset him any further, "are you feeling any better now?" Lloyd glanced up at her and smiled weakly. She frowned, confused as to what he was feeling like. Seeing that he had made her frown, Lloyd began to frown as well, then tried to lighten up the situation and pulled a funny face at her. Her expression changed to one of shock, but then started to giggle. Happy that he was successful in cheering Sheena up, Lloyd began to smile himself. And with the sudden burst of confidence that came with it, he grabbed Sheena around the waist and gave her a hug.
"It's my life, and Colette should just be happy for me rather than jealous. I'm not some kind of prize to be fought over." Lloyd thought to himself.
And all Sheena could manage was, "Oh, I guess you are then."
Elsewhere, in an unknown location, a young girl with pink hair was getting her comeuppance for failing to capture her intended target.
"Well, Aese, if you were trying to look stupid, you certainly succeeded in that."
"You only managed to escape on their mercy. It's pitiable. And, you also revealed part of our secret as to what we really are."
"Well you two can like, completely shut up. Maybe, Anee, if you were so busy thinking up like, completely nasty comments about me, and if Sole stopped boring people to death, you two could actually try to do this. Since when did I get dumped with all the like, completely dumb grunt work?" Aese snapped.
The chamber the small group were in was tall, long and thin. It was cold and mossy, and almost completely overrun by various plants. Trees arched over in the middle to form a sort of lower down ceiling, and shrubs lined the walls while flowers haphazardly decorated the grassy ground. At one end of the chamber there were large doors, made out of strong oak, with pictures of forests and flowers carved in delicate patterns. At the other end, there was a throne formed from a tree, which had grown around the section that had been turned into a seat, cloaking the throne in branches. Sat in the throne was a woman, and standing to her left was a man. In front of the throne was Aese, who was talking to the two people.
"Because you're the youngest. Wasn't it obvious to you?" a monotonous male voice replied calmly.
"Sole, it's getting increasingly hard to like, completely believe who you originally were. You're now like, completely Mr. Boooooring..." Anee chanted, following it with several rounds of 'boring, boring, like, completely Mr. Boring!' in a sing-song voice.
"Well, at least I don't repeat some random little phrase all the time like a stupid child." Sole replied.
Sole was quite a tall man, with medium length orange hair that constantly teased his shoulders, held in place by a dull white head band that was tied up with a fat knot at the back of his head, that covered some of his hair as well as his fore head. He had small greyish blue eyes, mostly hidden by his hair. He wore a black shirt with the top most buttons undone, and sleeves that reached his elbows. Over his shirt, he wore a small pink jacket, with a zip up the front that was never done up. On his hands he wore peachy pink fingerless gloves, decorated with golden lines and sections of black on the palms. He wore white trousers, the same colour as his bandanna, that were slightly puffy towards the bottom, and white boots with golden circle decoration.
"But don't you see, that's what sets her apart from her original self, and, quite honestly, I prefer Aese. She's so much easier to wind up..." Anee said rudely.
Anee was sat on the throne with her legs crossed casually, and she was also quite tall. Although she wasn't as tall as Sole, she was still tall enough to make Aese feel constantly very small. She had long black hair, loosely plaited and tied with a long, fraying pink ribbon. What she didn't tie up, she tucked behind her ears so that it wasn't obscuring her face. She wore a black strapless top, and over that, she wore a long pale purple, kimono style top with long sweeping sleeves that hid her gloves, that were the same colour. She also wore a pair a black shorts that ended a couple of inches short of her knees, and a couple of inches below that, long boots covered her knees, the same blueish purple as the rest of her outfit, with small blue and blue decorations over it.
"Wow, a nice comment for like, completely me, from Anee. Sole was like, completely right, a snowball is surviving somewhere in Hell." Aese snickered. Anee rolled her eyes, and turned to Sole.
"Anyway... What's our next plan of action, then?"
"We need to capture Lloyd." Sole stated.
"Yeah, we like, completely know that, Captain Obvious." Aese sighed. "Try telling us something we like, completely don't know."
Sole cleared his throat. "Well, we have tried to use his fear to capture him, but that hasn't worked quite as planned. Whether that was due to Aese's incompetence or the fact Lloyd's friends protected him so well is unclear." Aese yelped in annoyance. "Regardless, Lloyd is our top priority. But we must not forget why we need him so much, ladies."
"To start The Revolution. We need him, but the power of the Eternal Sword comes as a useful extra. A very useful extra, that will make The Revolution so much easier. Maybe sending a stupid little girl to capture him was a stupid idea. Maybe we need to send some more... fire power" Anee sneered, clicking her fingers. Upon her command, a figure shot up from the grassy floor, slowly forming into something that resembled a long slender dragon. "Now the question is, do we send Aese again, leaving us the probability of the whole operation getting screwed up again, or do all three of us go?"
"Anee, that was like, completely uncalled for! I didn't like, completely screw it up by myself. That giant spider you made was like, completely crap. You couldn't summon a decent banana if you like, completely needed to." Aese replied sharply, waving her arms in the air angrily.
"Besides, what was with the 'fire power' comment? Did you forget that we would probably incinerate ourselves if we used fire?" Sole asked slowly, emphasising the incinerating part."
"No, I used it as an expression. Jeez, I can never get anything right with you two. Anyway, here's my plan. Now, according to our spy, the group are headed for Sybak to find the two half-elves that went there for a lecture or something. They aren't exactly sure if they're going in the right direction, and they're all a bit edgy from Aese's attack last night, even if that all ended in a big flop. What we would do is..."
Well, several days late, and I'm very sorry. Iternet access has been a bit of an issue, not to mention arguements with my spell check, so feel free to pick out any spelling or grammar errors you pick up.
Please don't hate me because this is so late! I'm going to try and start up a time plan, updating this story by at least one chapter every fornight, if not more. I hope to have the next chapter up by next Sunday at the latest, and then I'm going to start the whole 'one a fornight' thing.
Please R&R. I do appreciate, and again, I'm sorry I haven't updated in like, ages. TTTT I'll be better behaved from now on.
