Disclaimer: This is fanfiction, guys. If I owned this, would I be posting on a fan website? Hmmm… I think not.
Reviewer Response: (Some people are saying this has been banned, but I've seen no proof of that. There is nothing that says that reviewer responses can't be done in the guidelines for story uploads. It does say that all updates have to be chapters and that author notes can't be separate updates. If it is proved to me that R.R.s are banned, I will stop, but as the author of this fanfic I want to thank those who take the time to read this and shall continue to do so.)
StrawberryEggs – Sheelos does tend to take a backseat because I can't write strictly romance fics. They tend to fizzle out on me… of course, there is also the fact that Sheena thinks Zelos is a major pervert and, though she sees him as a friend, she needs to see him as the adorable, lovable person I, a major Zelos fangirl, see and obsess over. :) Kratos and Yuan are out of character 'cause I'm still getting a feel for writing them. The Spanish language, however, is there because it makes a funny plot-point. Everyone is just dying to find out what the 'El Pollo' nickname comes from and it shall be revealed next chapter. (Laughs maniacally…)
Jiri-chan – Noishe is in the next chapter, don't worry. I hope that you enjoy Zelos' encounter with Sheena. I had sooooo much fun writing it. Hehehe…
SweetMisery430 – About my grammatical errors… I swear I've seen Microsoft Word change 'your' to 'you're.' It doesn't account for all my mess-ups or the fact that I didn't catch it… but… but… (Growls at computer and swats it.) Stupid Microsoft Word. Its spell-check is supposed to be my friend, not enemy…
Chapter 11
Zelos walked up the steps and onto the landing, disappearing around the corner towards where his room had been. The walls still radiated the smell of smoke, making it hard to breathe. The scent grew worse as he continued on and he came to the sickening conclusion that his room had been the source of the fire.
Whoever had started the fire either wanted to capture him or simply wanted him dead: it wasn't a pleasant picture but, unfortunately, Zelos knew it was very accurate.
He arrived at his room and stepped through the empty doorway. The door itself lay on the ground and creaked under his feet. "Hey, hunny, I'm home," he said softly, grinning at Sheena who was standing in the center of the room.
She whirled around and gave him an unreadable look. "You kissed me."
"Um… yeah… about that… can I do it again?"
Sheena marched up and slapped him, hard. "You… you perverted, egotistical, conceited, idiotic…"
Zelos interrupted her by leaning over and kissing her forehead softly. "Somewhere in there, I have to have good qualities. At least one, don't you think?"
"So now you know what I think?"
Zelos caught her wrist, his eyes seemingly icing over. "I would never do that, Sheena. That's why I hate having these abilities… people always jump to the wrong conclusions because it's me who has them. Just 'cause I'm irresponsible doesn't mean I'm immoral as well."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way," Sheena sighed and then pulled a green crystal out of her pocket. "I found this for you, I thought you might be needing it soon."
"I appreciate the thought," Zelos gazed at the crystal in an almost apprehensive manner. "I don't really want it, but you're right. I'll be needing it soon." He released her wrist as he unhappily took the Cruxis Crystal from her and slipped it into his own pocket. Forcing a smile to his face, he gestured to the room, "I doubt it survived the wrecking crew, but could you help me find my notebook?"
"Notebook?"
"Yeah, it's one of those super-sized ones with what was once a blue cover. I'm kinda hoping some of it managed to refrain from burning."
Sheena smiled and reached out, catching Zelos hand and pulling him over to a less ruined area. "Is that it?"
A blackened notebook lay in the debris, the edges crumbling as Zelos picked up. Most of the outside pages had been carbonized, but the inner pages were mostly intact. "Yes!" Zelos tugged Sheena out into the hallway and over to a window, opening the pages to some sketches of the gang from when they'd been on their quest to regenerate the worlds.
"Whoa, you drew these?" Sheena tentatively took the book and flipped through the undamaged section. "These are really good… who are these two?"
Sheena pointed to a picture of two angels, a guy with dark wings and a woman with white. The guy's arm was slung around the woman's shoulders while the woman had her right hand flung outward in a peace sign. Both were grinning brightly, intelligence obvious in their eyes.
"Mara and Jess Nefirim… they were friends of mine when Cruxis first snapped me up a few years ago. They supposedly died while on mission, but I hacked the computer to find out for sure. Things had seemed… off when people mentioned them and I found out that they'd been summarily executed on Yggdrasill's orders for asking one too many pointed questions." Zelos stared at the picture for a moment, then added, "I'm glad that picture in particular is intact. They were good people. You'd have liked them… the whole gang would have."
"Zelos…"
"Well, I guess that about covers it. I sincerely doubt any of my other junk survived." Zelos started towards the stairs, the notebook still in Sheena's hands. "I'll need to arrange something for the people I had working here, but other than that, I think I'm pretty much done here. I'll have to thank Lloyd again for getting all the stuff that survived downstairs all packed up."
"What happened with Seles outside?" Sheena cut in.
"She… accidentally jumpstarted her psionic abilities. Looks like you're going to have to put up with two psychic, redheaded wackos now."
She put her hand on his arm and tilted her head, beaming at him. "You aren't a wacko… exactly. Just a bit odd."
"A bit?"
"Yep. Now, let's go. I bet you're looking forward to wrapping things up and getting out of town."
/o/
Lethian was not exactly pleased at the moment. Standing in the middle of a facsimile of the Triet desert at noon might've had something to do with it. If the real thing was as hot as the fake... the people living the the city of Triet were insane.That was all there was to it.
Set, his black wings, that appeared to be made out of obsidian, very noticeable against the pale, sandy backdrop, smiled pleasantly. "So, Lethian. How is my cousin?"
"Cousin? You mean… Ibis?" Lethian flushed, embarrassed at his sudden stammer. It was rather creepy and intimidating to be around a smiling Lord Set. The jokes about the man being a god out to control the world through tyranny weren't exactly baseless, after all.
"Yes, that would be him."
"He seemed well, sir." Lethian took a deep, controlling breath and forced his emotions and thoughts into line. It would not do for his friendship with Zelos to be noticed any more than they already had been.
True loyalty was turning into a seriously annoying liability.
"He's pledged himself to Zelos' aid by now, I'm sure," Set added, smirking. "I read you're report and what I'd like to here is your impressions of Ibis, not another reiteration of what you've written before. You needn't worry. You aren't in trouble; I'm simply curious."
"I read up on him," Lethian admitted. "The files call him a pacifist, but… I don't know about that. I came away from the encounter with the impression that he was hard-pressed not to have me relay a message to you that would've been summed up as 'go to Niflehiem.'"
Set chuckled, then gestured to the desert. "He grew up here, in this region, 3,000 years ago. It wasn't like this then. At the time, Efreet had a minor temple in the original city of Triet and concentrated the bulk of his power into a seal located in the savanna just below the Iselian Forest."
The holographic projectors, seemingly reacting to Set's words, changed to show the Triet Ruins and then shifted as the scenery returned to how it must have been before the disaster at Old Triet City.
"Tropical jungles… you can't find many areas like this anymore," Set spoke in a melancholy tone. "Lovely, wasn't it?"
"It's amazing," Lethian agreed, uncertain as to where the conversation was heading. Before, meeting with Set had meant dark chambers and a very disgruntled acting boss. Now… something had changed. Ever since Set had taken him off the search for the Firelight Mirror, things had been growing murkier.
"Lethian, I want you to try to find the Firelight Mirror again. I was… too harsh before," Set tapped a control attached to his belt and the holograms altered again. This time they were back in the familiar, dark room with a device displayed before them. "That is an approximation of what the Mirror looks like. Perhaps now the name shall make more sense."
Lethian walked forward, almost unaware of his own movements. There was a small podium-like device with a read-out screen and keyboard interface attached to the top with what could only be called a mirror attached to the back. The 'mirror' was seven feet tall, easily towering over the podium, and the reflective metal seemed to radiate with a seductive glow that moved from orange on the outside to red, purple, and finally blue in the very center. In fact, the glow seemed to pulse, flickering and dancing on the surface.
"We created the mirror to give quick immortality to the angels of Lord Yggdrasill's legions, but only a few off us understood it's true potential…" Set's voice pierced Lethian's thoughts, drawing the young half-elf's mind back to the precarious predicament he was in. "Lord Yggdrasill was one of them. He had a brilliant plan to have the Anubian Warriors study and exploit the device to its fullest extent. His two… friends, his fellow Seraphim, did not like the device's secondary abilities. They didn't want to create what they termed monsters."
"The Firelight Mirror was then sent away from Derris-Kharlan and down to Symphonia to a place where, after careful subterfuge, my brother and I could study it. Unfortunately, the device was lost in transit to its final destination. Since Yggdrasill refused to disclose that particular coordinates, I have been at a loss to retrieve it for over 2,000 years." Set turned off the hologenerators completely. "It has sentience that is not entirely artificial in origin. If any non-telepath is capable of locating it, that person is you."
"Thank you for your faith, my Lord Set. I have failed you before. I will not do so again." Lethian bowed his head, praying with all his might that his shields were tight enough to keep Set from discovering exactly how much of a lie those words were.
"No, you will not. I have foreseen it."
/o/
"Let me get this straight," Zelos said softly, his smile looking incredibly fixed. "You sent a hologram into my room in my house in order to torment the psyche of an insane psycho who just happened to set my house on fire."
"Yeah, that's about it," Ra agreed nervously.
Zelos burst out laughing, startling the others crowded around him. "Please take the time to note that I happened to hate that house greatly."
Isis snickered and muttered, "now who was it that was afraid of losing everything from the neck up?"
"I was reminiscing on Morphia's temper, okay… just… shut up," Ra mumbled, reaching out to thwack Isis over the head. She ducked, laughing maniacally.
"Sir? Zelos, is that you?" Merete, the 'leader' of the of Zelos' staff, walked up from the direction of the cathederal. "Oh, good. It is you."
"You know, I have the strangest feeling the house wasn't that color when I left…"
Merete grinned, "well… you know, I could devise the renovation plan. You always complained about wasting the space…" she pulled out a pad and a pen, seemingly from nowhere, and began sketching designs.
"Now you see why she got hired after a thirty-second conversation," Zelos muttered conspiratorially to Lloyd. "Over achiever who can actually over-achieve properly."
Lloyd and Colette exchanged amused looks and then started towards the Coliseum. "We're gonna get Raine and the short ones," Lloyd called. "We'll met up at the palace, okay?"
"Thirty minutes," Kratos yelled back.
"Okay, Mr. Kratos!" Colette shouted in reply.
Merete, oblivious to everyone, started babbling about the brilliant ideas she had for the construction of the house, most of it going over everyone else's heads. Zelos walked up and tapped her shoulder. "Uh… Merete?"
"Yes?"
"You can build a giant boat right here for all I care. Just have fun making it, mmkay?"
"Are you serious?" Merete's smile widened. "I can have free reign on rebuilding the house. This is sooooo cool. Maybe now those twits at the Sybak Academy will admit I'm a qualified architect." Bouncing up and down, she raced up to and inside of the burned house.
"I don't know about the rest of you," Kratos remarked, "but that woman disturbingly acts a great deal like Raine."
"Well… she's the only person I could find who can honestly call the people at Sybak nitwits and be telling the truth from her point of view. So, yeah... I can see how she'd remind you of Raine." Zelos shrugged. "Anyway, let's go check up on Seles and Yuan."
/o/
Seles peeked out from under her eyelids as she attempted to meditate. Attempted being the keyword in the previous statement.
"You aren't very good at being sneaky, Miss Wilder," Yuan informed her regally. "I can see your eyes. You need to clear your mind and focus in order to gain control over your newfound abilities. I doubt you'd like it if the opposite were to occur."
"I've been trying for hours…"
"We've been in here for all of forty-five minutes."
"Oh… I've been trying for forty-five minutes! Can't I have a break?"
Yuan chuckled softly. "Sure. Then you can suffer the headaches for nor trying hard enough later on."
"Ugh… fine… I'll try again."
Yuan nodded sagely and returned to reading his book, but his mind kept wandering to a conversation so similar to this one…
"I'm just supposed to clear my mind and meditate? I've never had to do that before and I've been just fine so far," Zelos whined.
Yuan quirked an eyebrow, snickering internally. "I suppose that the intense headache you suffered around Yggdrasill doesn't count, eh?"
"Ugh… fine. I'll give this meditation thing a try."
He shook his head slightly, marveling on how alike and yet intensely dissimilar the Wilder siblings were. It was at that moment, however, that Wilder sibling number two reentered the room.
"Hey, sis! You're awake and okay!" Zelos swept in and over to Seles' side, pulling her into a hug. "You doing better now?"
"I guess." She pushed him away, unused to his treatment. "It was loud at first. Now all I feel is a faint… buzz."
"That goes away once you've learnt to shield your mind," Zelos promised.
Kratos, Sheena, Ra, Isis, and Ibis walked in together. The latter four picked spots on or nearthe bed to sit on while the former stood by the door, looking imposing. Then again, he was Kratos so he might not have been appearing that way on purpose.
"Where's the others?" Seles asked after a moment of silence.
"Lloyd and Colette went to retrieve Raine, the brat, and Presea," Kratos answered from his place by the far wall.
"Poor Genis," Seles murmured softly, "why does everyone call him a brat?"
"'Cause he is one," Zelos muttered back.
Princess Hilda appeared at the door, giving the half-elves within a disdainful look. Her eyes landed on Zelos and she perked up. "Will anyone else be joining you, Chosen One?"
"Yes, Princess," he replied in a somewhat cold tone. "Lloyd Irving, Colette Brunel, Raine and Genis Sage, and Presea Combatir. I believe you remember them. Oh… and do try to remember that there is no more Chosen title."
"O-of course, Z-Zelos. N-no offense intended," she stammered, flushing.
Seles gave the princess and evil smirk. "Princes Hilda, I'm sure that having all of us of half-elven descent in the castle under your invitation will do wonders for the half-elven rights campaign Zelos started. It's so generous of you to show support like this. I know I appreciate it."
The look on Hilda's face tried valiantly not to sour, but died a quick and ignominious death anyway. "Half-elven rights campaign…" she repeated numbly.
"Yes, you are a dear one aren't you," Yuan mocked, sarcasm lacing his voice. "Then again, perhaps you aren't very politically minded after all," he added as the teen began to visibly pale.
"I should be going," she said hastily, backing up towards the door. "I've just remembered a… an important, um, meeting. Yes, that's right. An important meeting that is in just a few minutes…" Hilda fled, Lloyd, Colette, Raine, Genis, and Presea filing after she vacated the door.
Genis collapsed onto the bench at the end of the bed, giggling helplessly. "That was incredibly mean to her… but she deserved it…"
Raine just rolled her eyes, coming to stand a few feet away from Kratos. "I thought it was rather childish."
"The childish things in life are often the most fun," Yuan replied in a monotone.
"I agree," Presea added, seating herself next to Genis. "I have found that being a child is far preferable to being an adult in many cases, though Zelos seems to have retained the best of both worlds." A pillow arced through the air towards the pink-haired girl from the redhead. She merely caught it, turned to Zelos, and nodded. "Thank you for that demonstration."
"No problem," he replied with a mock salute.
"So, now what?" Ibis asked from his place beside Ra. His innocuous presence surprising those who hadn't noticed him. (Which happens a lot… not many people pay attention to him when they should.)
"Um…" Lloyd glanced about somewhat nervously. "Can we stop by Dad's? He's watching over Noishe and…" he trailed off uncertainly. "I think it would be best to visit… Noishe."
"Noishe? That green and white monstrosity that I adore so much?" Isis grinned evilly. "That fluff-ball and I used to go around tackling people just for the heck of it. I vote for Noishe!"
"I would also like to see Noishe," Kratos agreed slowly, giving the suddenly sniggering Raine a suspicious look. "And what, pray tell, is so funny?"
"Nothing." Raine snickered again. "I think it would do us all some good to visit Noishe, who must be truly missing journeying with us by now."
Suspicious by nature, it didn't really help Kratos' sense of paranoia when Yuan started smirking and Zelos Wilder buried his face against a pillow to smother his laughter. Something Was Up and it was occurring at the auburn-haired man's expense. It was times like this when Kratos would abruptly remember how much he hated not being in on the joke.
It was, after all, far more satisfying to do the pranking instead of being pranked.
"Is there something wrong with Noishe?"
"Wrong?" Colette shook her head in surprise, genuine surprise and innocence on her face. "Nope. You've just… you have to see Noishe to believe it."
"I hate to tell you this, Chosen, but that does not inspire me with confidence."
This time, after Zelos whispered something in his sister's ear, both the Wilders burst out laughing along with Sheena and Raine.
Definitely not comforting at all.
-------
Lethian spun dizzily and grabbed the nearest tree to steady himself, mentally berating himself all the while. He knew that he shouldn't have taken the personal portal device, they had all sorts of bugs in the programming because they weren't of Renegade design and were well known for materializing people within inanimate objects.
He'd known he'd be safe, though. Set had foreseen Lethian delivering the Firelight Mirror, after all. That had to happen before the brunette could die… or, more likely, would die.
Delivering the Mirror, after all, would mean completely betraying Zelos… it would mean that Lethian had voluntarily given his soul to the Anubian Warriors in its entirety… it would mean that the brunette had signed his own death sentence.
He had a grace period of an undefined amount of time that seemed to become infinitely shorter every second that went by. It was attenuated by the fact that Lethian could, in this new location, hear the faint echo of a non-sentient (and yet very much self-aware) device capable of psionic contact not far from where he now stood.
If only he knew where that was.
Looking around, he came to the conclusion that he was in a clearing somewhere in the Gaorrachia Forest. The dark, twisted trees that he stood next made it glaringly obvious that the forest could be no other. The clearing itself proved to be an enigma of sorts.
There were well-trodden roads that crisscrossed the clearing along with indentions where a fence or a thin, wooden, wall might have stood and larger places that formed multiple rectangles that dotted the grid-like landscape. Clearly it had been a village of sorts and had moved fairly recently. It was also clear that someone of importance had lived in whatever building had been at the heart of the village. A small moat, which was clearly man-made, surrounded the plot and there was evidence of a small footbridge having once stood in that place.
Lethian had never heard of a village existing in the Gaorrachia Forest, and for good reason, too. The forest was dangerous for people to live near. Long ago, according to the records of the Anubian Warrior's computer mainframe, a sorcerer, having stolen a great treasure of the Goddess Martel, had arrived in the forest and unleashed his powers. The results of his dark magic had contorted the landscape and the creatures that had lived within. Spirits were called forth from death and left to wander; the only release available to them being a second death at the hands of the pure.
"The sorcerer must've taken the Firelight Mirror here," Lethian mused. "To somewhere in this forest and that caused the changes in the myth." Then, having decided that his incredible leap of logic was plenty of work for him to have accomplished, for the time being, leaned against a tree and slide to the ground. He pulled out his computer interface and brought up his pinball game.
Unfortunately, the very first round was a dud. The ball bounced around for a moment or so and then slid between the flippers and out of range at just the perfect (or imperfect, depending on one's point of view) angle that neither flipper was capable of hitting it or even barely scratching it.
"Figures…"
A/N Next time, on Firelight Quest, Set will discover Ma'at's current state (which is the last we'll hear of her), Kratos will find out what is up with Noishe, and Apophis may or may not be showing up again. It depends on the amount of space the rest of the chapter takes up. If he does appear, expect a cliffhanger… 'cause I'm an evil authoress who likes cliffhangers whether or not I'm reading or writing them.
