Author's Notes: Considering I'll be leaving for Kentucky very soon, I have to get this done quickly.
Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of Symphonia.
Chapter 36: Return of the Bridge
"Let us out!" Lloyd screamed, fists pounding on the metal door. Lloyd barely noticed when they began to bleed.
"Lloyd, calm down," Kratos snapped, glaring at him. The harshness of his tone startled Lloyd. He stopped abruptly and turned to face the older man.
"Kratos?" he asked a bit unsurely, grasping his injured hand with the other.
Kratos shook his head and stepped toward him. "Just what do you think that would accomplish?" He admonished, tone softening just in the slightest. He grabbed both of the boy's hands with his own and examined them. No emotion was displayed in his eyes, and Lloyd felt as if he were less concerned about him than his physical wellbeing.
A quick healing spell stopped the blood flow and Kratos moved away. Lloyd refused to meet his eye. The man had been so… distant since he woke up, almost like… he wasn't the same person. Lloyd frowned at that thought.
"Ah, Lloyd, just how are we supposed to get out of this one?" Zelos questioned, drawing Lloyd's attention once more to their current situation.
They had been unceremoniously thrown into the basement of the Sybak research academy, a dark and dank place that smelled of must and… strange research projects. Truth be told it was very similar to the other labs in the building, aside from the dark shadows cast by the dismal lighting. Of course, they were not entirely alone down there either.
Several others milled about, working on experiments even in these horrendous conditions, many of which had long triangular ears, or otherwise distinctly elven features. Surely they couldn't all be elves, and why else would they be down here? "You're half-elves aren't you?" Lloyd asked, looking at one teal-haired woman in particular.
"What's your point?" the woman responded shortly. She wore a lab coat like all the others, and had a pair of thick, wire-framed glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were hidden quite well by them, but Lloyd could see they were a similar shade of teal as her hair. Her face was framed well by several scattered strands of her bangs, but the majority of her hair was pulled back into a simple bun.
Lloyd sighed at her curt reply. "Nothing I suppose. It's just… our friends are half-elves, and because of that, they're gonna be executed," he said forlornly. "That's so stupid!" Lloyd snapped smacking a clenched fist against his thigh. "Why should it matter whether or not someone's a half-elf?"
The woman's eyes narrowed into slits. "You don't mean that," she said, almost accusingly.
"Of course I do!" Lloyd refuted on impulse alone. "They're our friends, what else should matter?"
"Humans aren't friends with half-elves," she remained adamantly distrustful, and grew wary of them.
"Even if that were true, you'll get no where with that one," a voice called from the darkness. A shadowed figure had quite suddenly appeared in the room, and spoke directly to the woman. "He's a strange one raised by a dwarf," the figure spoke with a feminine tone. The darkened form stepped into the light and her features suddenly became quite clear. "Had to track you guys all around town before I finally caught up to you, and by then you got yourselves in trouble with the Papal Knights," Sheena grinned brightly, her amber eyes smiling along with her mouth.
"Sheena!" Lloyd and Colette exclaimed in unison.
"Hey guys!" she said in return.
"Sheena?" Kratos murmured quietly, staring at the girl in confusion. But a split second later it was wiped from his face and he turned to face the teal-haired woman again. No one had noticed his… slip-up. "Is there any way out of here?" He asked her, changing the subject abruptly.
"If there was, why would I tell you?" she said in response.
"Look, these people are trying to help there half-elven friends," Zelos began, slowly losing his patience with her. "Are you saying you're going to try and stop us Miss half-elf?" he questioned with a raised brow and added emphasis on 'half-elf'.
She seemed to consider this a moment. "We could get in trouble for this," another researcher spoke in her stead. Kratos looked as if he were about to respond, but the woman spoke instead.
"Presea, is that you?" She suddenly asked the pink-haired girl, as if just noticing her. The girl turned away and hid in the corner, though her face remained expressionless.
"How do you know Presea?" Lloyd questioned curiously.
"She was a test subject for an experiment we handled a while back," she responded matter-of-factly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"What?" Lloyd cried in outrage. "How could you experiment on people like that?"
"It's just the same way you treat half-elves!" the woman retorted vehemently.
"It doesn't matter!" Lloyd shouted. "Half-elves, dwarves, humans; they're all the same. They're just people. No person deserves to be treated like that!"
"Yeah!" Colette jumped in her eyes bright. "You can't treat people that way. Even if they did hurt you before, if you hurt them, they'll just hurt you back and it won't stop. Please, help us save our friends?" The girl the girl's tone was borderline pleading with the woman by this point.
"I make a deal with you," she said after a moment of consideration. "If you save your half-elf friends and bring them back here, I release Presea from the experiment," she stated.
"Of course!" Lloyd agreed without thinking. "Does that mean there is a way out?"
"There's a secret exit behind the cabinet back in the corner," she stated flatly, pointing back to the far corner away from the stairs. "If you leave now, we won't stop you."
"Thank you!" Colette said in gratitude, inclining her head slightly. "What's your name?" the girl asked softly, at the last minute.
"…Kate," Kate said after a moment's hesitation.
"Goodbye Kate," Lloyd said this time. "And thank you," he grinned at her as Kratos and Zelos prepared to move the cabinet out of the way. Sure enough there was a passage behind it, leading up at a slight incline.
"You're just going to let them go?" Another researcher asked Kate.
"What's the harm in giving them a chance?" was Kate's response.
After leaving the lab and stepping out in Sybak from what appeared to be manhole, the first thing on their minds was to find their weapons. This didn't prove overly difficult as, while they were technically 'traitors' Zelos still had quite a bit of sway over the common populace. The guards had evidently thought it best to store the weapons in an empty lab. With no one guarding it.
"I simply can't believe the incompetence of those so called 'knights'" Kratos scoffed as he picked up his sword. "Really, didn't they have the sense to take these with them?" he shook his head in disgust.
Lloyd shrugged. "Better for us if we're going to rescue Genis and Raine. Now come on guys! We have to get to the Tethe'alla bridge quickly," Lloyd urged now that everyone was armed once more.
The group left town quickly, not caring overly much as people turned to stare at them like they were insane. The race to the Tethe'alla Grand Bridge was long arduous, and on more than one occasion they were forced to slow down. Kratos at least realized the need to reserve their strength even as Lloyd pressed the issue to 'hurry up!'.
In this fashion, their rescue attempt was a rather pell-mell affair, and Kratos seemed to be the only one keeping his wits about him. He remained very calm the entire time, and one might even have called him stoic with the amount of emotion he showed. His face was as blank as a plain white sheet of paper.
The moment the reached the bridge, they were forced to slow down as they were nearly exhausted by this point. Lloyd outright collapsed to the ground, panting heavily as he held himself in a sitting position with his arm supporting most of his weight. Kratos rolled his eyes.
"Here," he handed Lloyd his canteen, and the boy accepted it gratefully. "You shouldn't overdo it like that Lloyd. You're wasting energy and by doing that, wasting time."
"I'm sorry," Lloyd muttered not meeting the man's eyes. That didn't sound like Kratos… Kratos would certainly be chiding him, but it would be more out of concern for his health. The way he said it now made it sound more of an inconvenience.
"Lloyd's just really worried about Genis and the professor, Mr. Kratos," Colette tried to explain as she felt the need to defend him.
"That may be so, but it is still reckless behavior. Overexerting yourself when you know you will need that energy later is foolish," Kratos responded sharply.
"Yeah, well you ran along with the rest of us," Zelos pointed out snidely.
Kratos abruptly turned to face Zelos his glare beyond anything they had ever seen before from him. It was so intense that Colette and Sheena flinched and looked away from him. Zelos stared him straight-on, defiant. "Yes, but only to get you to slow down, also," he added looking as if this next part were obvious yet he'd deign to speak it again for their sake, "I have far greater endurance than the rest of you."
Sheena scoffed. "Oh please, I was trained in Mizuho. I've done longer, more strenuous exercises before breakfast!"
Kratos snorted. "And you wouldn't be the only one," he murmured looking away, eyes distant and very dark.
"Come on guys, let's just go alright? I think I'm okay now," Lloyd spoke attempting to distill the unpleasant silence that had fallen among them "We have to rescue Genis and Raine before it's too late."
"It's too late!" Sheena exclaimed as the bridge began to rise to a position to let ships pass through. Except there was no ship.
"Just keep running!" Lloyd yelled as he charged forward head first.
"Lloyd!" Kratos shouted, adding on a burst of speed they didn't know he had in order to catch the boy and stop him from doing something foolish.
But at that point he began running up the bridge, already at a steep incline and at the last second, jumped to reach the other side. "This is crazy!" Zelos exclaimed, even as he did the same.
For a moment it seemed like they might make it, and Lloyd's fingers barely caught hold of the edge of the bridge before his weight carried him down, toward the crashing waves below. Lloyd was falling now and looking up. He saw a blue light flash from above and he abruptly stopped falling as strong arms wrapped around him at an awkward angle.
Lloyd looked and saw Kratos had caught him, a panicked look on his face. His wings were out and beating erratically to keep them aloft. Kratos rested his head against Lloyd's for a moment and breathed a sigh of relief. Something wet hit Lloyd's face.
Kratos didn't say anything but he attempted to move forward, quite strangely at first. It sort of did make sense, considering the man hadn't used his wings so very often. His movements in air weren't quite so fluid as he was on solid ground and he seemed a bit jerky at first. But eventually they reached the edge of the bridge and Kratos released Lloyd from the near death grip.
Lloyd turned instantly toward Kratos and was about to say something, but apparently the moment had passed. Kratos was stoic once more, none of the earlier emotion played on his face. Lloyd felt a small pang in his chest.
The others had devised another way of escaping a watery grave, and Sheena called on the power of Undine to save them before they even hit the water. The summon spirit caused a torrential wave burst upward pushing them back up and over the edge of the bridge. Most merely slid down the side of the bridge right away, but Zelos got stuck at the top. And he refused to come down…
"Ah man!" he exclaimed, refusing to look down. "Why do these things always happen to me?" he complained rather loudly, drawing the attention of the group of soldiers, and Raine and Genis, now staring at them incredulously.
The group promptly sighed in perfect unison.
Endnotes: Talk about anticlimactic; oh well, I like it that way.