The eyes were what he saw first. The rest of the man seemed to grow out of them: a thick forehead rimmed with raven-black hair, curved thin lips, a ghostly pale barrel chest whose red nipples stood out in stark contrast to the dark tattoo lines which engraved it with a circle wreathed with black flame. He didn't seem to mind the cold rain. As the man ran a hand through his wet hair, Crono saw rippling muscles tighten and loosen all along his arm, reminding Crono of the time he had observed one of Lucca's lifting machines at work. Here was a system of pulleys and counter weights meant for strength and endurance. This was a body at its peak of perfection. Crono experienced a stab of jealousy, noticing how out of breath he was and how thick his middle felt. The dagger in his shoulder seemed a sickeningly telling ornament. It spoke of weakness, that he'd slowed down. As if sensing his thoughts, the man's eyes shot towards the dagger. He raised a hand in a lazy indication of the wound.

"Looks painful," he said in a non-chalant voice that rumbled down the street towards Crono. When Crono didn't answer, the man went on. "It's been an interesting evening. Many spirits in the air tonight. This place will surely become a city of ghosts."

"What's your name?" Unsure of how to respond to this short soliloquy, Crono asked the first thing that came to his mind.

The man hesitated a moment before responding. "Some have called me Greco."

Crono remembered now where he'd felt this disturbing presence. "You were on the gallows with the others," he said. "But you don't look Trucian."

"You speak truth. I don't hail from these lands."

"Where do you hail from?"

"That is a long story. I have traveled much and wandered more and only occasionally stopped long enough to be remembered." He halted, as if thinking over what he had said, then he gave a dismissive wave of his hand. "You could say that I was from Choras and not be too wrong."

For some reason, Crono thought of asking him if he knew Bill, but the thought was so tangential that he discarded it. "Choras is a den for murderers and thieves," he said instead. "No offense meant."

"One can hardly expect to take offense at the truth."

"I saw you on the gallows with the others," Crono said again, eager to speed the conversation to its end. "Why didn't you come at me like the others?"

"It wasn't time, yet. I wanted to see what you would do first."

"Satisfied, then?"

"Yes."

There was a few seconds of awkward silence. Crono shuffled his feet, acutely aware of how heavy the Masamune felt in his hands and how badly his shoulder ached. The wound ached with an intensity that went beyond pain; it distracted and demanded all of his attention. If this man was going to attack him, he'd rather it be sooner than later. What would this Greco want from him and how best to figure out what that was? He tried to think like Nadia would have, but it hurt his head and his wound ached all the harder. He went for a more direct approach, instead.

"Are you planning on killing me?" Crono asked.

"When your long journey
reaches its end...
the heavy burden that
rests upon your shoulders
will be lifted at last."

Greco recited the lines as if they were poetry. "I've been waiting for someone to teach me the meaning of those words," the large man said, after a pause. "Are you the one to do it?"

Crono laughed, the sound echoing flatly off of the buildings around him. He had never been one for these dramatic speeches and besides... "You aren't serious," Crono said, more of a statement than a question. "I've got a swor-"

Grecco's fist was underneath his nose before he could finish speaking. Crono's face went numb and he knew dimly that his nose had been broken. His head snapped back with the impact, exposing his neck. A moment later, he felt a crushing pain as the side of Grecco's hand slammed into his throat. From experience, Crono knew to let the force of the blow knock him off of his feet. It was the only thing that kept his larynx from being crushed.

He fell backward, bloody water spraying in every direction as he crashed to the ground. He landed on his left shoulder, the one with the dagger sticking from it. The resulting jolt of pain pushed the contents of his stomache out onto the cold pavement. He found himself staring at the half-digested remains of a plate of turkey, one of the main dishes of the feast. It felt like ages ago that he'd eaten it. The smell of bile threatened to make him sick again and he swiftly turned his head to the other side.

The view wasn't much better. He was staring into the dead face of the blonde man whose visage had begun to consume him with some forgotten memory. From some cold, logical, place in his mind Crono conjured up the man's name. This was Fritz. This was someone he had once saved from a torturous death at the hands of a false chancellor. Crono found himself mourning the memory more than the man. He remembered how young he had been back then. Even after having spent three nights in a jail cell, he had still been able to escape the towers of Guardia Castle. Those same towers he had later had converted into semi-luxurious bedrooms for the castle servants and their families. It had pleased him, at the time, to think that a wife and husband could be making love in the same place where he had once dreaded his impending execution. He wondered now why he had wasted the money on the conversion. Especially when those dungeons could have soon been so useful.

Despite having been taken by surprise and feeling like his throat had been ripped out, Crono was far from beaten. Every muscle in his body was tensed, waiting for Grecco to try and finish him off. The minute the larger man came close, Crono would be on his feet, the Masamune swinging towards his foe's neck with enough force to sever the head from the body and shut those dark eyes forever. But the follow up attack didn't come. Crono lifted his head a bit and saw, to his confusion, that Grecco was casually leaning against a doorway a healthy twenty feet away. The man seemed to blend into the shadows. Crono would've had a hard time spotting him except that something about the man drew his eye inexorably to where he was. There was an aura about Grecco that he'd never felt before, not even when dealing with the likes of Janus and the other Zealians. They had radiated an undeniable power, true, but Grecco emanated something else; a power that was more primal. The rain still fell, feeling ice-cold on Crono's exposed face, but Grecco barely seemed to notice it. The tattoo on his bare chest shimmered with the wet touch of the rain and his sides rose evenly with each breath he took. He wasn't doing anything except watching Crono out of those dark pools that passed for eyes.

Crono had no illusions about his own abilities. While five years of sitting on a throne had definitely left it's mark on him, he was still the man who had saved his future, defeating a near-omnipotent being in order to do so. In the last few months he had fought every day with Bill, urging the man to never hold back. He'd even had Bill switch to using a sharpened blade during their practice sessions, though he would never tell Nadia this. He was slower, yes, then he had been five years ago, but his arms had lost none of their strength nor his will any of its vigor. He had only moments ago channeled enough power to lay waste to a street's worth of attackers. Though he did not remember doing the deed, he sensed that same power still coursing through him. Yet, despite all of this, he had just been knocked halfway senseless by an unarmed opponent without a shirt. That made him cautious.

Determined not to show his pain, Crono forced himself to his feet. He rose slowly, but deliberately; not wincing when he put his weight on his bad leg and forcing his numb hands to lift the Masamune so that it didn't scrape the ground as he stood. Then, in one smooth motion, he reached up and drew the dagger from his shoulder. Grecco didn't move as Crono flipped the dagger around and whipped it forward, sending it flying like a dart towards the larger man's exposed chest. Without waiting to see whether the dagger hit, Crono started to run towards the doorway where his opponent stood. He had the Masamune hoisted for a decapitating blow.

The man shifted his weight and leaned barely a foot to his right. Where his head had been, the dagger now quivered in the wood of a door. Grecco shifted his weight again and dropped to the ground, balancing most of his weight on his hands. He kicked out before Crono could halt his charge, targeting Crono's injured leg. Crono crashed against the doorway, knocked off balance by the maneuver. The Masamune fell from his hand and Grecco kicked it away into the street. Almost as an after thought, Grecco pulled the dagger from the door and stabbed it back into Crono's shoulder.

Crono face was like that of a wild animal. His lips were drawn back and his mouth open. The scream that poured forth from that dark portal was full of defiance and frustration. Red phlegm flecked out from between his teeth, leaving crimson spots against Grecco's bare chest. Grecco darted away from Crono's reaching hands and flailing swings. He leapt backwards from the doorway, knowing that he'd disabled Crono's leg and the man couldn't follow him.

So he was reasonably surprised when Crono leapt to his feet and struck him a blow across the head that left his world spinning.