Goooood evening, class! Yeah, I know, been a while since I've updated, but last month

I finally finished my exams! Let us now all pray to the Exam Gods. BIG hugs to all you reviewers out there, you guys keep on giving!

Enjoy!

Altamira, like the great prophet Zelos had said, was filled with sand and bunnygirls. Only Regal seemed to be allergic to women his own age, because he suddenly stopped by the gates.

"I will wait here." announced Regal.

"Huh? Why?" Lloyd asked, blinking. "Are you allergic to sand?"

Regal, instead of making up a plausible lie, merely decided to make himself look even more suspicious by not answering Lloyd at all.

"Not talkin', huh?" Zelos said, sounding suspiciously liked a jaded detective from a black-and-white film. "Oh well, let's just leave him here to brood, Lloyd. What's important is finding my hot intellectual eye-candy!"

"Sure." shrugged Lloyd, and off the party went, because nobody honestly gives a toss about Regal.

Genis promptly started running up to random people and saying,

"Excuse me, have you seen a lady with crazy silver hair like mine, a horribly unfashionable orange poncho and a scary face?"

"Oh, how cute!" giggled a bunnygirl, pinching Genis on the cheek. "A little shotocon!"

"Nevermind!" blushed Genis. He glanced at Presea, looking heartbroken. "PRESEA! I'M SO SORRY! SHE MEANS NOTHING TO ME! NOTHING!"

"..." replied Presea, while the bunnygirl looked confused.

Eventually, the group saw an old man standing next to a grave.

"Excuse us, have you seen-" began Genis, when the guy dressed like a butler turned around.

"Alicia!" he shouted, totally ignoring Genis and looking at Presea. "Is it really you?"

"You...know Alicia?" Presea whispered. I don't know why she was whispering, but whatever.

"If you're not Alicia, then who?" the old man asked.

"Alicia is my...sister."

"Oh, of course." George said, despite the fact he obviously had no idea. "Alicia died some time ago, so she couldn't possibly be standing here now."

"Unless she was a zombie!" butted in Lloyd. Because Raine wasn't there to do it, Sheena took over the job of Smacking Lloyd for His Stupidity.

"Passed away?" Presea said, still whispering for some reason.

"What happened?" Lloyd asked, because he was nosy.

"Alicia was working for the noble Bryant family, but was caught up in an unfortunate and mysterious incident that resulted in her death."

"She died?" cried Genis, as though he had never heard of such a thing. "How?"

"I dare not speak the details." said George gravely, despite the fact he had just told them half of it already. "Please forgive me. Alicia's grave is on the sky terrace of the Lezareno Company. Please stop by there if you want to advance the plot. Alicia would be surely glad to receive from her younger sister."

George then ran off. He was very busy being vague and annoying.

"Lezareno Company? What is that, a cough sweet?" snorted Zelos.

Okay, I might as well ask...If Alicia's grave is on the sky terrace, why is there one there?

"Younger sister? I thought Presea was the older one!" exclaimed Genis.

"That's strange. Presea said she had a younger sister." Zelos added. Suddenly, everyone was speaking as though Presea wasn't standing right there.

"Oh, I know-!" Colette started.

"This out to be good." muttered Genis.

"-Maybe there are three sisters in all!" she finished.

"Oh, come on!" cried Zelos, as though such a thing as having three children was completely ridiculous.

Everyone then ran off to go find the sky terrace of Cough Drop Company, which was located just a few streets from Gingerbread Lane. They had to get on some kind of boat/roller coaster cart to get there, where Colette nearly fell off after trying to catch her own reflection.

Using my MAGICAL STORY ADVANCING POWERS, they arrived at the top floor of the sky terrace.

"Alicia..." said Presea, actually sounding emotional for a change."What happened to you?"

"What's that?" Mithos asked, pointing.

"It's called a gravestone-" began Lloyd, before getting distracted. "HAY, IT'S AN EXSPHERE!"

Presea examined it. "Why is there an exsphere...?"

Suddenly, the translucent form of Alicia appeared! Like, oh my god!

...

Annnd...looking at her, Presea doesn't look like Alicia at all. The only SLIGHT resemblance is that they have pink hair, and it's not even in the same shade.

"PLOTHOLE 26!" yelled Plothole Girl, leaping unexpectedly from behind the gravestone.

"Sup." Zelos greeted her, calmly.

"Yo." replied Plothole Girl. She winked and vanished.

"Presea! Sis! It's you, isn't it?" cried Alicia. "I'm so happy I get to see you again before I disappear!"

"What's going on? Are you still alive?" Presea asked, numbly.

Does she LOOK alive to you?

"I...I only exist in the exsphere." Alicia replied, sadly. "Soon, even my consciousness will be gone."

"I can't believe you're a victim to the exsphere as well..." Presea whispered.

"I can't believe it's not butter!" cheeped Colette. Sheena put her hand over her mouth.

"Presea, before a disappear, please grant me my request. Please find my master...please find Master Bryant!"

"The noble you were working for?" Presea asked.

"Yes. By killing me, he-"

And then Alicia conveniently vanished.

"Lloyd. Please help me find Alicia's killer." Presea said darkly.

"Sure! We'll beat him to a pulp and drag his ass back here!" replied Lloyd, kind of too enthusiastically.

"And we'll not be very nice to him, either!" added Colette, which is probably the most threatening she can get.

"Yeah! I won't let him get away with killing your sister!" added Genis. Zelos snorted.

"What are you going to do, kid? Steal his lunch money?"

"Shut up!"

The group began to walk off, although Mithos was still standing around like a total bimbo.

"...Exsphere's are terrible things, aren't they?" he stated.

"Uh. Duh." replied Lloyd.

Downstairs, two private schoolboys were shouting about where the group was supposed to go next.

"LIKE, I TOTALLY HEARD THAT THE OTHERWORDLY GATE IS OPENING TONIGHT!" yelled one of them.

"OH YAH! WHERE WAS IT, AGAIN?"

"Subtle..." Zelos muttered under his breath.

And so! Off they went to the magical island of the east. Magically, because it was a magic island, it was suddenly dark when they arrived.

"Professor!" yelled Lloyd. They all ran up to Raine, who was standing in the middle of what looked like a circle of stone tikki masks.

"Everyone...why are you all here?" Raine asked, sounding remarkable calm.

"Why the hell do you think? We need you to kick Lloyd in the face when he's being stupid!" replied Genis. "You're my sister, dumbass!"

"It's dangerous to come here alone." Mithos stated mechanically, despite there being no monsters anyway. "As somebody pretending to be your bestest friend for everest, I can't let you do that, Star Fox!"

Everyone glanced at Mithos for a second, raised eyebrows all around (except Colette), then returned back to the scene.

"Why did you come to this place?" Colette asked.

"This is where Genis and I were abandoned."

"What'choo talkin' about, Professor?" Lloyd asked. "You two are from hick-world! Um, I mean, Sylvarant."

"No. I happened to catch sight of this place when we rescued Colette for the third time and it's been on my mind ever since. When I heard about the improbable story of the two poles, I became certain...The origin of my fetish...the ruin I've been searching for all my life...is this place."

"So you two were born in Tethe'alla?" Sheena asked. "That does explain why you two aren't retards."

"Uh, duh, that's exactly what she's saying." snorted Zelos. Sheena slapped at him.

"It can't be! All my memories are of getting beaten and eating your terrible cooking! I have no memory of this place at all!" yelled Genis, in denial.

"We were born and raised in the village of the incredibly paranoid elves, from which we were eventually ostracized-"

Colette and Lloyd looked really confused by the long word.

"- we were abandoned here because it was supposed to magically transport us to Sylvarant."

"The village of the elves? The one totally secret to everyone except elvenkind? What is this, Lord of the Rings?" complained Mithos.

"Yes. I don't know the details of what happened, but I'm fairly positive that I was left here along with Genis when he was just a newborn. And then we found up in Sylvarant..."

...What? How OLD was Raine when this happened? How did a teenager manage to get all the way to Iselia with a newborn baby in a world they didn't know, plus one full of monsters and stuff?

"Plothole 27! Um, sorry." Plothole Girl said, feeling bad she was questioning Raine's traumatic childhood. "Bye!"

"Then this time, let me send you to Hell instead!" yelled a new voice.

"Who's there?" shouted Lloyd.

"Kuchinawa! What'choo talkin' about?" Sheena yelled, answering Lloyd's question for him.

Kuchinawa was standing there with a bunch of Papal Knights.

"My chance to avenge my parent's deaths has finally arrived..." he announced, darkly.

"Avenge your parents?" repeated Sheena, because for some reason her memory failed her.

"You will die for killing my parents and countless others for failing to control Volt!" shouted Kuchinawa.

"Dude, several years too late much?" Lloyd said, being sensible for a change. "Besides, why are you doing this now? It was an accident, you prick!"

"Accident?" Kuchinawa yelled again.

"An accident!" chorused everyone, much to their confusion.

"I could have accepted things if she'd JUST failed to control Volt, but then she had to go and be a main character, to boot! And just look at her now! Making pacts like a motherfucking pact machine!"

"You have it all wrong!" yelled Colette.

"Do I?" sneered Kuchinawa. "I think she wasn't really trying during the first pact-making!"

"How can you 'not try' when making a pact?" mused Zelos.

"I did the best I could!" Sheena said, desperately. "I-"

"Enough excuses!" screamed Kuchinawa.

And then promptly stood around and let his knight minions get effortlessly owned by the group. You'd think if he was so angry, he would have gotten off his ass and done something more about it. After they killed those knights, like four more showed up.

"Damn! There's too many of them!" Sheena shouted, possibly because she couldn't be bothered to count. "Kuchinawa, please! Don't drag them into this, despite the fact it's sorta their fault Mizuho is in danger! I'm the one you despite, right? Then I'm the only one you need to kill!"

"Sheena, stop talking like a depressed anime character!" Lloyd said, sternly.

"It's okay!" Sheena said. "Kuchinawa, please!"

"Fine." Kuchinawa nodded, sounding a good deal less enthusiastic then before.

Suddenly, however, the Deus Ex Machina appeared, taking the form of the moon, that shone rather lazily onto the rocks and a magical teleporting puddle appeared between them. Abruptly, Zelos' eyes went all slanty and he looked pissed.

"You gotta be kidding me!" he yelled. "Enough of this, Sheena!"

He grabbed Sheena's arm, which apparently hurt, since Sheena went, "Aaagh!". "Lloyd! Come on!" Zelos yelled, unusually commandingly.

He then dragged Sheena through the portal.

"Everybody! Into the gate!" hollered Lloyd, because the group needs his permission to do everything. So they did. And the magical puddle closed up.

"Damn!" cried Kuchinawa, stomping his foot like a petulant little child. "They've escaped into Sylvarant!"

He looked around.

"...Now what?"

Everyone promptly landed on their asses back in Sylvarant.

"Owww, my butt." whined Lloyd.

"Where are we?" asked Regal.

"Probably on the outskirts of Palmacosta." announced Raine.

Which seems really odd to me. If it's two poles between the worlds, why didn't they land anywhere like the island they were on in Tethe'alla? It seems weird that "a pole between two worlds" equates to, "a tiny island with mystic rocks you can only visit once, and...um...then a random spot near the capital city." It just doesn't make sense. If they're dimensional poles that need to be activated by the moon, what would the group do if they needed to get back to Tethe'alla and didn't have Rheaird's? Just stand around outside Palmacosta and hope to god that would work?

"PLOTHOLE 28!" shrieked Plothole Girl, leaping from a tree triumphantly.

"Okay, now that's just silly. How did you get here so fast?" demanded Genis.

"I'm Plothole Girl, haven't you caught on to that by now?" she replied, shrugging. "Away!"

And she vanished, like the television remote down the back of a cushion. Sheena ran over to Zelos, looking pissed.

"Zelos! Why did you sabotage my suicide attempt!" she yelled.

"Excuuuuse me?" Zelos said, indignantly. "You actually WANTED to die?"

"Well, no, but I wasn't really planning ahead-" began Sheena.

"-anyway, they would have killed us regardless of whether you died. Pope's orders and all."

"Are you saying Kuchinawa is connected to the Pope?" Sheena asked, which was a desperate attempt to change the subject if ever I saw one.

"Well, yeah. Those knights work for the Pope." Raine pointed out.

"I'm certain of it!" added Regal, like his confirmation was really important.

"Sheena, please don't try to do that again! Being self-sacrificing and stupid is my thing!" added Colette, clasping her hands together.

"Yeah, you should thank Zelos, Sheena." said Lloyd, kind of bossily.

"Who are you, my dad?" Sheena shot back, annoyed. She glanced at Zelos. "Th-thanks." she muttered in his general direction. Zelos smirked.

"Come on, you could at least give me a kiss...or maybe even a b-"

"Zelos. You're horrible, and also sexually deranged douchebag." announced Presea. Sheena gagged.

"Ouch..." muttered Zelos.

Zelos totally earned the title, "Sexually deranged douchebag!"

"Well, what are we going to do now? Like, I'm totally getting grass stains on my outfit." complained Mithos.

Lloyd thought. Scarily enough.

"Since we're back in Sylvarant, why don't we go stick it to the Desians?"

"What about Mithos? We can't expose him to those bondage pirates!" Genis suddenly proclaimed.

"Why not palm him off on the Palmacosta government?" suggested Raine.

"I wanna fight too!" Mithos protested.

"What are you gonna do, give bad guys a makeover?" snorted Lloyd.

"And you don't even have an exsphere." Genis reminded him. "Don't worry; Neil's hair isn't quite as nice as yours."

Mithos pouted.

"Okay, fine, whatever."

Getting to Palmacosta, absolutely nothing had changed about it whatsoever, except for Zelos running around hitting on everything in the skirt. They got to what was previously known as Dorr's Pad, but is now Neil's Pad.

"Oh, Chosen One!" Neil said, delighted. "How is your journey of regeneration going?"

"Oh, it was really, really fun! ...Except for the part when it turned out I was a sacrificial lamb for a crazy race of half-elves..." Colette replied, proud at using a big word like 'sacrificial', despite not knowing what it meant. Neil stared.

"What?"

"It's going great!" Lloyd yelled. "It's not a conspiracy theory!"

"Oh, okay then."

"Anyway, can you look after our friend here?" Lloyd added. "He's pretty much useless and his shemale looks are getting annoying."

"Well, he is very pretty, so okay." shrugged Neil. "Oh yeah, are you guys going to the Palmacosta Ranch?"

"What are you talking about? Raine went all hacker-terrorist on it." Genis asked.

"Oh, well, some shady people were reported hanging around there, so I thought I'd just take advantage of your inability to ignore gossip and go check it out."

"Sounds awesome! Let's go!" Lloyd cried, happy at the prospect of more stabbity.

Just as everyone was leaving, Mithos turned to Genis.

"Genis, take this!"

Genis stared at his palm, where there was nothing there.

"Um, what's this?"

"It's your hand." Mithos stated, blinking. Then he remembered people in this game like to hand each other invisible objects. "It's a flute!"

"Great! I can't play the flute." Genis pointed out.

"It's a memento of my sister's, who died. I don't know what it does, but maybe it will come in useful?"

"Probably. Oh, I mean, oh no! I can't possibly accept this!" Genis cried, putting up some token resistance.

"Take it." Mithos said.

"Yeah, okay then."

When they got to the Palmacosta Ranch, there was Botta and his hideous hair!

"We've been waiting for you." Botta announced, trying to seem cool. It didn't work.

"Are you saying you were expecting us to come here?" Regal countered.

Botta stared at him.

"Uh, yes, you retard." Botta stated, flatly.

"Oh."

"Anyway, we have more important things to tell you to do, such as joining forces with us." Continued Botta.

"Unbefuckinglievable." Raine said coldly. "You actually expect us to trust you after all you've done to dumb and dumber over here?"

"The circumstances have changed." Announced Yuan, also showing up.
"Yuan!" yelled Sheena, rather randomly.

"What?" he said, looking at her.

"Oh, nothing."

"Okay then."

Seriously, in the game, she just shouts, "Yuan!" like that. I know he just turned up, but still.

"Do you know of the Great Kharlan tree?" Yuan went on.

"I know about the Muffin Man!" Lloyd announced. Yuan raised his eyebrows.

"The Muffin Man?"

"The Muffin Man." Nodded Lloyd.

"Who lives on Drury Lane?" questioned Yuan.

Lloyd nodded again.

"She's married to the Muffin Man."

"The Muffin Man?"

"The Muffin Man!" yelled Lloyd.

"ANYWAY!" shouted Zelos. "The tree of life that is said to produce infinite mana?"

"Yes. Blah blah, Kharlan War, blah blah, Great Seed, blah blah blah." Said Yuan, because this is really boring. "The Great Seed is absolutely vital in reuniting the two worlds."

"Reunite the two worlds?" shouted Lloyd.

"Yes, I just said that. I told you before Yggdrasill created the two worlds. What I actually meant was that it used to be one, then Yggdrasill ripped it in two, because he's an effeminate ass like that."

"He did have a girly ass." Agreed Lloyd. Raine groaned in distress.

"It wasn't as nice as mine, was it?" Zelos asked, anxiously.

"Nah." reassured Lloyd. Zelos swept his hair back in relief.

"Blah blah blah, supply of mana, blah blah, germinate the Great Seed, blah blah, Summon Spirits, blah blah, mana cannon."

"So you're s double agents trying to stop the revival of Martel and germinate the Great Seed to put the world back together and you need us because we have Sheena, a summoner?" Raine filled in for the benefit of the reader, because this scene is boring.

"So in other words, you're a traitor." Zelos said, which was ignored, except for Yuan glaring at him pointedly.

"Exactly. And we want you to go kill Rodyle and stop that ridiculous, cartoony mana cannon" Nodded Yuan. "So we're teaming up, hooray. Talk to Botta when you want to go kick some ass. I have a lot of mysterious things to be doing."

And Yuan went off. Lloyd did indeed talk to Botta, and it was on the way to the Remote Human Ranch!

"Okay, just before you go in, no smoking, no flash photography, and no blowing the ranch up." Botta told them, outside the Human Ranch. "We need the mana generator to germinate the Great Seed, so try to restrain yourselves from imitating every action movie ever."

"Hear that, Raine?" Sheena said, looking at her.

"I'm not gonna lie- I do enjoy it." Agreed Raine.

"You need to go to the Control room to stop Rodyle." Added Botta.

"Great! Farthest room, tallest tower!" shouted Lloyd, proud that he'd remembered. "Let's go, bitches!"

"I did want to blow it up..." sighed Raine, reminiscing.

Raine gained the title, "Demolition expert!"