A/N: Behold, my loyal readers who all deserve more cookies, the Utter Chaos that is Chapter Twenty-six AND…a brand new arc! What havoc will this new plot bring? What is this new plot anyway? Well, it becomes apparent in the fourth sentence of the chapter, so I guess you don't have long to wait to find out…
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX—LIONEL RAMPANT
This chapter begins with Della realizing that she has a problem. A big problem. Like, a problem the size of two different armies, two different worlds, and two different binary codes.
"FIRE EMBLEM SACRED STONES CHARACTERS!" she wailed, banging her head against the outside wall of the Random Castle. "Here! In Fire Emblem 7! Gaaah, this is a disaster!"
"What's a disaster?" asked Eliwood, coming up beside her. A big hill sloped below them, turning into a plain that stretched to the horizon. "I don't see anything disastrous……" The lord went pale. "Never mind."
"What is it, Eliwood?" asked Lyn, joining him.
"A whole…army…" Eliwood said weakly, gazing down the hill. Lyn looked, too.
"WOAH!" she yelled. "That's…impossible!"
"You have NO idea!" Della moaned.
But somehow it had happened. All of the Fire Emblem 8 characters were camped out in the middle of Rekka no Ken.
"Now what?" Eliwood asked his tactician. Della raised an eyebrow, as if to say I'm a tactician, not a graphic designer. How am I supposed to know?
"I know what to do!" said Lyn. "We go see if they're friends are enemies!" She marched down the hill in a very Lyn-like manner, immediately followed by Kent (who of course couldn't take the chance of his lady being harmed) and Sain (who of course couldn't take the chance of Kent having all the fun).
And pretty much everyone else followed those two, because Sain and Kent are just so dang cool.
Eliwood and Della sighed, finally following as well.
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The FE7 army walked into the camp of the FE8 army—and right into the middle of an argument. A young woman with aqua colored hair was in the process of being torn in two, with a red-haired knight yanking on one of her arms, and a purple-haired magic user yanking on the other.
"She'll never go with you!" cried the knight. "You have been corrupted, Lyon!"
"But I am her dearest friend, whereas you are only her knight, Seth!" the dark mage taunted.
"Villain!" yelled Seth.
"Lout!" Lyon yelled back.
"Whelp!"
"Cur!"
"Knave!"
"Heathen!"
"Vile fiend!"
"Callow oaf!"
"DASTARD!"
"Oh, come on," said Della. "You just can't argue with a word like 'dastard'! Seth totally wins."
"I'll never let that cad win!" cried a shifty-looking archer, grabbing the young woman's blue hair to try and yank her away from Lyon and Seth.
"Innes, you are NOT getting Eirika!" said another man exasperatedly. He looked a lot like Eirika, and he walked up and easily tore her away from the other three.
"Oooh…" said a Pegasus rider with her dark blue hair up in a ponytail. "Ephraim likes Eirika…"
"I do not, Tana!" cried Ephraim, tugging at his hair in a frenzy. "How many times do I have to tell you people that? She's my SISTER! That's just WRONG!"
"Hmm," said Sain with a very Sain-like glint in his eye, "If that one man doesn't want that woman, I shall be happy to—"
He was promptly cut off when Priscilla, Serra, Isadora, Lyn, Florina, Fiora, and Farina punched him at the same time. Louise added a punch too, just for good measure.
"OWW!" screamed Sain.
"Quiet, you," Lyn ordered her knight. "There is an entire army here, and we can't start our first impression badly! It is best if we become allies."
The blue-haired girl who had been rescued from the quarreling men was glaring at all four of them—as they were now busy commencing the yelling of medieval insults at each other—whilst rubbing one aching arm with another.
"Hello," said Lyn, approaching her. "My name is Lyn. Who are you?"
The girl looked at the Sacaean. "Oh, hello! My name is Eirika. I use swords, I'm a tomboy despite the fact I'm always wearing a skirt, and I'm so pathetic because I'm in love with my knight."
Sword-wielding-Skirt-wearing-Kent-loving Lyn's jaw dropped.
"That's just too creepy," said Karel and Marisa…at the same time. Both of them went pale and stared at each other, stuttering things in unison.
"Wait…did you just say what I just said? You did it again! There! STOP IT! You know that I'm more mysterious than you!" They each struck the same Mysterious Pose, before screeching "STOP DOING THAT!"
"Losers," snorted Colm, watching the sword-wielders.
"Totally," Matthew agreed.
Colm glared suspiciously at Matthew and raised an eyebrow. "You're a thief?"
"Actually I'm an Ostian sp—I mean…yeah, thief. Let's go with that." Matthew grinned disarmingly.
Colm shrugged. He turned his eyes back to the increasingly-freaked-out Karel and Marisa…then yelled "YOINK!" and snatched Matthew's coin purse.
Matthew had done the same thing at the same time.
The two stood staring at each other, holding the other's money and looking just a little confused.
"…You said 'yoink'…" said Colm weakly. "That proves you're a thief."
"Just like the fact that I have your money in my hand proves I'm a thief," Matthew added.
"Yeah, that too."
Matthew looked at Colm a moment longer. Finally he smiled, and slowly asked,
"Hey…do you know what a guitar is?"
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"This is…incredible," said Eliwood, staring at Ephraim.
Ephraim gazed back. "You look just like me…but with red hair!"
"And you show every ounce of justice, chivalry, story-line talent, and filial piety that I do!" Eliwood exclaimed.
Della looked back and forth between the two. "Well, if you really want to go into huge character depth comparisons you can draw out the differences that Ephraim does not express love as bluntly as Eliwood, plus he actually prefers to fight and is obviously more competitive."
"Obviously," snorted Innes, walking to her side.
Della glared at him. "You're one to talk! And you call yourself a tactician…HA!" She sniffed haughtily. "If you're such a good tactician, how did you ever get to be stuck with Gerik and Tethys in a ruin surrounded by enemies with Eirika as your only hope, anyway?"
"Who do you think you are?" Innes snapped at her. "How dare you talk to a prince of Frelia in such a manner!"
"I'll talk however I feel like talkin', dawg!"
"Doggie?" Nils and Ewan both asked eagerly, running towards Della and accidentally colliding into each other.
"Hello," said Ewan to Nils, not the least bit dazed.
"Hello," Nils said back, also not the least bit dazed.
"I like fire!"
"I like music!"
"Let's be friends!"
"Okay!"
Kent stared at the two children from a distance in confusion. In fact, Kent was staring at everybody in confusion. It was mass chaos—everywhere people were finding people just like them, colliding in a multi-colored-hair mess of soldiers, yelling at each other and laughing at each other. People he knew blended right in with people he didn't know.
Kent decided it was utter havoc.
"This is utter havoc," a voice muttered.
Kent turned to find…a very thorough (and rather good-looking, I simply must add) mix of himself and Marcus.
"You…" the Crimson Shield whispered in disbelief. "You're the complementary paladin…the Marcus…the Jeigan…"
"I am General Seth of Renais," the man introduced himself.
"You're another redhead!" Kent accused in awe.
"It is very nice to meet you."
Kent smiled, deciding this new—and quite remarkably Kent-like—knight was in fact quite sane. For ONCE, Kent met someone sane. "It is…very nice to meet you, too."
"Hello, Kent…" Eliwood said, stepping up to the two knights. "Ah, I see you've met General Seth! Yes, he is highly commended by Prince Ephraim and Princess Eirika."
"As a general…" Kent reasoned with a slow smile, "You certainly must know how to use swords…and obey the laws of chivalry…"
"But of course," said Seth.
Eliwood and Kent looked at each other and grinned.
From a distance, the Pegasus Sisters watched the three men talk.
"Egad!" Farina screeched, pointing to where Eliwood, Kent, and Seth were clustered in a circle. "This is a disaster! That man with the blood-colored hair…he can't talk to Lord Eliwood and Kent!"
"W-why not?" asked Florina.
"Because now there are THREE chivalrous sword-wielding redheads!"
"OooooohILOVEchivarlrousswordweildingredheads!" Fiora screeched, running over to join the group of men.
"Eeeeevil vixen," Della seethed, closing her eyes so she could "accidentally" not see that bandit over in yonder bush and watch Fiora die a gruesome, axe-y death. Unbeknownst to the tactician, Ninian and Lyn and Eirika were also doing the same thing.
Yet somehow Fiora survived, for just as the bandit was about to dive for her with his axe raised, an arrow imbedded itself in his eye and he fell to the ground, dead.
"Boom!" said Karel from a ways away. "Headshot."
Della looked around, trying to find who had made such an accurate shot. Innes walked towards her with a smirk on his face.
"Who is the tactician now?" he asked triumphantly. "You did not even see that enemy! One of your own might have died!"
Before Della could tell them that was sort of the point, Louise walked up with her bow in her hand.
"That was an amazing shot!" she said to Innes. "You must be a sniper!"
Innes eyed Louise's bow, which was…pretty much as big as she was. "You must be a sniper as well."
"Indeed." Louise smiled. "Would you like to train together sometime?"
As Innes agreed and the two walked away, Della stared after them in horror.
"Oh crap…a sniper cult…this is NOT GOOD."
"It's so foreboding, isn't it?" asked Karel, mysteriously popping up beside her. "I like foreboding things!"
"And I like keeping you on parole," Wallace snapped, grabbing Karel's arm. The swordsmaster scowled.
"I wonder how these Sacred Stones characters got here?" Della mused to herself. "It's so mysterious…"
"Foreboding AND foreshadowing!" Karel exclaimed in the sick "yay death" happy exclamation only Karel was capable of.
And the chaos continued to run rampant.
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A/N: Indeed, Seth is hawt:-P…hehehe. Yeah, umm…therapy. I'll go find some of that…
Anyway, this begins the newest line of chaos. Hope it sounds appealing to y'all, I know this chapter was a bit short but I have quite a lot of ideas for later…
Anyway, I coined this chapter's title more symbolically than usual…the "rampant" part comes from the book titled Lioness Rampant, by Tamora Pierce, but I changed "Lioness" to "Lionel" in honor of the knight of the round table…since we have a bunch more knights in the story now. Yay knights!
And…I suppose that's it for now. Reviews make me feel all fuzzy inside…:-D