Chapter 51 – Truth Be Told – Part II

"We're all here, X," Raven announced at his side. "We have a lot to talk about, don't we?"

Mega Man X, once Maverick Hunter, now Hero of Time, surveyed the sages and other friends with him in the conference room of the Dreamweaver, its silvers, creams, and pale blue hues setting a militaristic tone from a reploid standpoint. Raven found it quite comfortable, but X wanted everyone to feel at ease, no matter the urgency of the situation.

"Computer, white light," he said, and without argument or sound, the lights slowly switched to a standard white-yellow. Immediately the sensation of rigidity subsided, although his words took long to join the lax tone of the environment.

"We're all friends here," X went on. "Not just a bunch of sages ready for a fight. There's more to us than just that, I want to make sure we grow as much as we can together. We'll beat Zero and whomever else he's assimilated with the strength of our hearts, our fists, and our friendship."

Everyone watched intently. Raven, Zelda, Saria, Red XIII, and Tidus.

"I'm afraid I can't completely agree with that," Red said sternly, and the sages' glances were skeptically and unpleasantly drawn to his sudden and unexpected lack of enthusiasm. A grin showed his wolf-like teeth with warmth. He finished the joke.

"I can't make fists."

There was a short paused, then withheld chuckles until all laughed, some much harder than others. His elderly wisdom and perception had sensed the discomfort among everyone, and he fixed it with a simply. Saria had been right. The Sage of Fire was a strong leader, but Nanaki wasn't X's chief concern. He wanted to question Tidus, the newest of their entourage of sages.

"Fists and paws and flaming tails, then," Raven added with a smile.

Post-joke smirks and titters settled them into seriousness with much less tension than before. X used his gaze and gentle nods to thank them both. He was just as tense beforehand, and it had helped his semi-organic musculature to settle. In his new, shades-of-green Hylian-reploid armor, this had been the most relaxed and content he had felt thus far. It was something to get used to, he noted.

"Yes, we have quite a lot to talk about. A new sage that unfortunately I have to grill a bit," (he looked at Tidus as politely as he could), "some secrets that I've been hiding that need to come to the light, Zero of course, and our next destination after we release Terra back on Raven's Earth."

"I'm up first then," Tidus remarked with his palms pressed against the table. "I don't want to just sit here awkwardly before we talk about everything else. At this point, the only ones that even sort of know me are Zelda and Raven, so…"

"We'll help you," Zelda volunteered, placing a comforting arm on the water sage's slim but firm bicep, easing him a little bit with her familiarity and the soothing, gentle aura that typically flowed from her pleasant features.

X tapped the control panel in front of him built into the table itself. A cubic, holographic grid popped up at the center of the table, but it was quite blank. "I've set up the ship's computer to display an approximate image of what you're saying," he said. "There are a lot of unique visuals for all that we have to talk about, and I think that'll make it all seem more real to everybody. I've felt that's been lacking at many points in what we've done so far, the sensation that what's ahead and behind us feels so… unbelievable. I want everyone to understand what's at stake, here."

All of the sages and Zelda watched him seriously, unblinking, converging on his speech and sight.

"Now… enough of my rambling. Tidus, please fill us all in, and then we'll do the same for you."

Tidus sat up. X could tell he seemed nervous. Appearances were deceiving sometimes, but the blonde didn't look any older than Raven. Then again, most people wouldn't believe that Saria had celebrated her hundredth birthday, possibly much more. Mega Man considered that he had no idea how old the Sage of Forest was at all.

Suddenly she was staring at him sideways from the farthest seat. She then turned her attention to the Sage of Water.

"I…" began Tidus, but he was met with annoyance at himself despite his youthful fervor. "Man, there's no good place to start."

"Start with you," Zelda suggested from the seat adjacent to him.

"That's a great idea," X agreed. "I'm fine if you tell us you like sunsets and long walks on the beach. We've got several days until we reach Raven's Earth."

The blonde man appeared to loosen up at the shoulders, and he leaned forward with his arms onto the long, trapezoidal conference table.

"Ok, so… I'm Tidus. It's weird saying this, but I don't really know if I existed in this time period or a thousand years in the future. Maybe both. My dad was the same. Supposedly he gave birth to me, but I've also been told that he and I were created by the Fayth."

A few bewildered looks came his way. Raven and Zelda were the only ones more informed, so Tidus explained.

"I think you call it the Lifestream. That's what they said, anyways," he indicated the dark sorceress and the light princess.

Suddenly the grid in the center of the table filled with swirling green streams of light that flowed and ebbed like the ocean at one moment, then changed to the smooth, unnoticeable sway of the wind. Occasionally, multi-colored sparkles or individual sparks of emerald light would separate from the rest of the collective aura.

"From what we've seen," Raven added, particularly to X and the other confused faces, "the Lifestream manifests itself in different ways, but we're pretty sure that the Lifestream and the Fayth are one and the same. It felt very similar in this time and in the future."

X nodded with his chin in his hand in contemplation. "That only makes sense. It may have been a different time, but it was the same place."

"Right," Tidus agreed. "We have aeons and orbs that gave us power, too, but we just call 'em spheres, and you call them materia."

Simple enough, they all reflected. If only everything were that easy to grasp.

"Anyways, after I helped defeat Sin - that was a handful of years ago - the Fayth vanished, and I sorta did along with it, but after that I found out that the Fayth weren't really gone, just reduced, and pulled back from the surface where people could abuse its power. Not too long after that, I met Terra."

The display transitioned seamlessly - artistically even - as Terra's plain, slim figure appeared in a simple, standing position. From there, three other images sprouted diagonally, one of her dimly lit and frozen in stone in her current position, another riding a giant boulder in midair with other small glowing ones around her head, and the third depicted the youthful earth-wielder wearing mechanical armor, bandages, and a fearsome expression. The entire display slowly rotated to show the six clearly who was being discussed.

The Sage of Water's explanation froze for a moment as he watched the images of the slender girl with straight blonde hair in various poses. He shook his head, realizing that he was mostly mesmerized but also slightly disturbed by the final image, one that reflected her dark history.

Raven cleared her through conspicuously with a tactful amount of sarcasm and good humor to bring him back. "Terra is a Teen Titan, a group of youths who fight for good and peace including myself. She has the ability to manipulate pure earth and most any other thing attached to it. Controlling dirt, most rock types, and even soiled muck is within her power." The grid shifted to magnify the darker image of her wearing mechanical armor. Raven figured that X knew what was coming and manipulated it with the touch of a button. "Unfortunately," the dark sage continued, "she had difficulty with her emotions and being precise with her powers. Terra was coerced into working for Slade, one of the most notorious criminals on our planet. Our city and many around it were nearly destroyed by their combined strength."

"But then she saved everybody," Tidus interjected. "She fought off Slade and stopped a volcano from exploding by pushing her powers harder than she ever had before."

He was eyed awkwardly. The jump to defend Terra was particularly pronounced, and he had realized it afterward.

"If you could," X suggested, "tell us about you and Terra in the Lifestream. It could be helpful to know, if you don't mind."

Tidus hesitated for a brief moment with his eyes turned down. "Yeah, that's fine," he said. "Most of the Lifestream, as you guys call it... the best way to put it is that it's hard to understand. It's peaceful existing as a part of it, but at the same time when you try to make sense of all the life energies inside it, you don't really get anywhere. Sort of like talking to a whole stadium at the same time. You have to get really good at it just to understand people a few seats away." He scratched his head and then used his hand to prop up his face. "There are all kinds of people and living things that are drifting, and there's a consciousness inside, but there's also a group consciousness, like they can all be together and separate at the same time."

"Like reflections of things that once were?" Mega Man suggested plainly, though his eyes gave passage to his multifaceted thoughts. He sensed Raven trying to dig without him knowing, and her attentive expression towards the conversation was a tribute to how effective their bond had become. How often, he considered, had she been doing it? And was she good enough to have picked out what she wanted with his defenses down?

"Yeah… yeah, that sounds right," he said.

"Aeons are like that as well," Raven said, a fact that she should not have known so confidently despite her bond with Rikku. X grinned hardily before giving Tidus a wave of his hand to continue.

"If you could tell us more about you and Terra in the Lifestream."

He leaned back in his seat and stiffened up. "Uh, what?" he stumbled awkwardly. He had begun to blush and then made it even more obvious by pressing his lips tightly together in far-too-firm a facial expression.

"Tidus," X frowned. The blonde held the lightly cushioned arms of the swiveling chair. "The long walks on the beach comment wasn't serious. I'm happy for you, but now's not the time."

"Yes of course, I'm sorry," he apologized.

X shook his head and put his smile back on. "Not necessary. We were talking about Terra… much to your enjoyment."

Everyone let out a short chuckle which slowly rose to fierce laughter from the embarrassed grin on Tidus's face, and even that had come out of growing comfort rather than the lack of it. Even Saria, who had sat rather stone faced at the farthest point from Mega Man, reacted to the somewhat adolescent presence that Tidus so comically added to their troupe.

X felt a twinge of discomfort coming ripple up his back and into the back of his head. It came from Raven at his side during the short but pleasant outburst, and he made a mental promise to deal with it when they were alone.

"Terra and I were both different from everything else in the Lifestream," said Tidus. "She wasn't dead, and I've never have been alive like the rest of you in the first place. It didn't take that long for us to find each other. Together we found ways to understand the Lifestream, and to even take temporary shapes, but it was pretty hard. We found out that trying to take shape in a time period that you didn't come from is much different. She tried, but the best she could manage in the future where I met Zelda and Raven was an outline made of Lifestream energy, which didn't last long. I had the same problem in her time, the time we're in now. Made things kinda tough," he said in regards to the relationship.

"But we started discovering little bits of history here and there and kept an eye on people who were important to us, like the Teen Titans for her, and the people of Spira for me. All we had to do was think hard enough about them, and with a bit of practice we went to that time and place. Of course, I'm in a permanent form again, so I can't travel through the Lifestream as I please all that easy. Once we get to her world and turn her back to normal, she probably won't be able to either."

"We never even thought to ask you," Zelda said with concern and humble shame. "Are you feeling alright? I can't imagine this all being easy even without that difficult transition."

Tidus smiled uneasily. "I'm ok," he lightly lied. "It feels really strange, but I'm getting used to it again. I just need some more time."

X made another mental note to spend time showing him around the ship when they were done as well as tend to whatever Raven's concern had been. He wanted to make sure that everyone was as content as possible during the journey between worlds. After all, it was rare that landfall brought them pleasantries for very long, if at all, with Zero at every corner.

"The Dreamweaver is well accommodated; I can show you around after we're finished here so you can at least be more comfortable," X added.

"Oh, no, you don't have to do that," he waved the offer away politely. "It's not like I didn't know that some of this was coming while I was with Terra."

"Do tell," Nanaki stared across at him, the glowing tip of his tail wagging as he sat upright like the great wolf he was. "It was short enough notice for me that I had to pitifully beg half the Canyon to look after my pups."

"You're a dad?" Tidus asked, surprised.

Red cocked his head with a wolf's toothy grin, but it was warm nonetheless. The ornamental braids jingled very softly with the metal feather-shape clips at the back of his head. Red XIII was proud of his children.

"You seem surprised," he said back to Tidus in his elegant, refined voice.

The water sage shook his head and explained. "Not really. I mean, I just thought that…"

"I didn't want to leave them without me," he smiled, "and some might think I'm neglecting them selfishly, but the truth is that I am doing this more for them than anyone else. If the situation is as dire on other worlds as it is in ours," he glanced at X with a worried calm, "then finding the remaining sages and putting an end to Zero is a much a benefit to my children and my world as it is every other great, foreign place I travel to. That is more than worth the effort to find a long term guardian for them."

Tidus nodded and listened while Nanaki spoke. The old wolf, partially as a result of his polished speech, had moved everyone to reflect on the people that waited for them to return on different planets or even different times.

"That reminds me," Zelda said when she noticed Tidus's deep thought about the world and time that he came from. "When Raven and I traveled to the future, strange things started happening."

"My God, of course, the changes in the timeline," Raven almost jumped.

X stared, almost angry. "You didn't mention that before."

"I'm sorry X," she said. "There was so much going on at Midgar. I still can't believe we forgot."

"Never mind that now," X sighed. "Please, explain."

Raven stood up and addressed them with great importance. "When we were traveling with a man called Baralai to the future city of Zanarkand, he suddenly began twisting and changing right before our eyes."

Zelda also stood. "People we had met before drastically changed, and the landscape altered itself. Even Rikku, Raven's aeon, is not the same Rikku we originally met on Spira."

"Whoa, what?" X held up a hand to each of them in complete astonishment. "Ok, when we're done with the timeline conversation, you're going to explain how a person you met is now a hunk of red materia. For now, time changes."

"Right," Raven nodded. "We weren't affected by the changes in the timeline at all. If we were, we wouldn't have realized that anything was changing. We think that somehow Zero is behind it, but we don't know how."

The sound of a feminine presence clearing its throat turned their attention to the back of the room. "I believe I can answer that," Saria spoke for the first time.

X gave her a firm nod.

"Zero is in control of part of the Lifestream. The Lifestream, as Tidus already stated, is timeless. Hence, Zero has been attempting to alter time through his demonic Deathflow."

"Why?" Mega Man X asked simply, not sure why he knew that Saria had the answer, but his instincts compelled him to wait for her answer.

"We have a theory about that," Raven responded instead at his side, but X kept a firm eye on Saria. "We've noticed that we seem to be immune to the changes in the timeline, and we think that the rest of us are as well. If Zero were to change time everywhere else but now, and since now is the only time that's immune… well, it's hard to explain."

Saria's long, wavy green hair covered half of her face as she spoke gravely. "Think of a fishing pole. You can bend it a great deal to try to change the natural path of a fish, but if you pull too hard..."

Her expression was dire.

"Snap."

"And just what the hell does that mean?" X gritted his teeth.

Saria attempted a sallow grin. "I couldn't even begin to answer that, but it would likely result in the destruction of existence as we know it, or perhaps all time being crushed together, or who knows what. To speak plainly, it would be very bad. The good news is that as long as you exist in this time, X, that will never happen."

Mega Man narrowed his eyes at the Kokiri Forest woman. She returned his glance plainly, encouraging the answer out of him.

"Of course," said the reploid. "The Triforce."

At the very mention of it, Mega Man's Triforce sign appeared on the back of his hand, and it was followed by everyone else's; Raven, Nanaki, Tidus, Saria, and even a weak, faded one on the back of Zelda's remained. The room had become gold with the glow of the triangular symbols, each on the back of the sages' hands. The holographic display followed suit, rotating the three enlarged triangles as it perceived them to be. Of them all, Mega Man's shined the brightest. The mark of their unity and what they stood for was also a defense that they hadn't understood until now.

X chuckled. "That's part of why I'm called the Hero of Time, isn't it?"

Zelda recognized him with newfound awe. "The ability to protect yourself from time is something that has never occurred to me before, but I can't say I'm entirely surprised, Mega Man X. As if traveling through time and manipulating it weren't enough?"

The reploid smiled. "We all have this protection," he stared at the Triforce. "And we still don't even entirely understand what we've been branded with. Zelda, Saria, for the sake of our two newest friends, what can you tell us about the Triforce?"

"How much do you know?" Zelda questioned.

"The basic story," X explained. "The three goddesses who created Hyrule – Din, Farore, and Nayru – left the golden power behind as they departed for the cosmos. I also know that each triangle represents something different."

Saria hummed contentedly and ran her fingers through her long, jade hair. "They represent the body, mind, and heart. More specifically, power, wisdom, and courage."

"I am confused," Nanaki spoke up. "Each of us is branded with the symbol, but separately the three triangles physically belong to a person?"

"Correct," X nodded. "I have the Triforce of Courage. It grants me unbelievable strength of will in times of desperation."

The symbol on X's hand suddenly changed, flooding all of the golden glow into the bottom left triangle, where it beamed like a beacon. The holographic display began to disfigure from the sheer radiance, morphing the enlarged symbol into garbled, golden mess in comparison. Suddenly, adjacent to him, a second beacon erupted, making it so difficult to see that the newcomers of fire and water shielded their watering eyes.

"The Triforce of Wisdom is in my possession," Raven spoke beyond the blinding light; the golden triangle shone from the bottom right. "With it my intellect is enhanced and my psychic abilities are all heightened. And… I am honored to know the person it belonged to prior."

She gave a wink and smile in Zelda's direction while the white-gold shimmer still blinded the others. The former princess of Hyrule seemed to be the only one capable to tolerate looking straight at the reflection of their true Triforce pieces, which were finally beginning to fade into a more normal gleam.

Tidus looked around. "So, I'm guessing the Triforce of Power…"

"Yes, Zero has it," Zelda answered him. She sighed hard. "It was given to him by a man named Ganondorf from my world. Long ago he was known as the King of Evil because he wished to rule all of Hyrule, but over a century ago the Hero of Time before Mega Man X stopped him, and the sages and I sealed him away in an eternal void of light. Once, Ganondorf attempted to escape, but by drawing myself and my servant Impa to the Dark World, we were able to re-strengthen the seal."

"From there," X continued, "Ganondorf attempted for years to find a way out without success. Zelda existed in the Dark World for seven years, but time in the Dark Hyrule didn't pass the same as it did in the normal world. Zelda's seven years turned out to be a hundred for us."

Tidus and Red XIII gasped. Zelda merely clenched her fists underneath the table in an attempt to disregard that painful reminder of how far away from her own time she was, and she tried to ignore the shocked looks that she was receiving.

"Ganondorf finally found a chance to escape," said the Princess. "But it was very dangerous. The King of Evil couldn't free his body, but he could send the Triforce of Power away in hopes of contacting someone who would free him. He needed someone powerful, but still someone he could control."

Zelda held her breath tightly. "Being quite full of himself, Ganondorf made a very poor choice. He found out quickly that he couldn't control Zero at all, and so without knowing that he had the Triforce of Power yet, Zero let Ganondorf fade away and die."

It was hard to notice during the tale of how their war had begun with the crimson reploid, but the holo-display had changed again, this time to Zero's appearance. As it had done with Terra, it showed multiple stances and actions, as well as a plain, standing image at the center. None of them matched what had become of his appearance and demented mentality.

"He looks so… honorable," Nanaki frowned, taking sight of the images.

X nodded solemnly, staring at his old friend. "He was," X added. "And I feel we need to discuss that as well. You all know by now that Zero was once a righteous person who fought for justice against the Mavericks just as I do. None of us are truly aware of how or by whom he was created; only that he was discovered in an abandoned lab like I was. Unfortunately, he was far less docile than I was upon being activated."

Mega Man felt his heart sinking with each word he spoke. The story was too painful to recall, especially after seeing all those people slaughtered in the Icicle Village on Gaia, and the horrible destruction that occurred on his own planet, and to Alia…

It took all his strength to keep his facial features from trembling.

"I can take this burden," Raven's soft, echoing voice beckoned to his mind. "I've seen some of this moment in your mind, and if you give me access to more, I will tell them."

He glanced quickly at the dark sorceress, sucking in the features of her face as she so tenderly cared for the slightest pain that entered his mind. Beneath a firm exterior with stern eyes and pale, almost grey skin, there was so much beauty that so few knew she could exude. To be among those few was wonderful. Her hair, deep violet, accenting the cool sweetness of her eyes, had grown beyond her collarbone, growing more accentuated waves the further it trickled past her neck.

Two seconds wasn't nearly enough to appreciate her. With a simple nod and the weight of so much lifting from his chest, X agreed.

"Zero was a Maverick," the dark sorceress stated, barely allowing any interim between when X had stopped speaking and she had begun. Through the images in his mind that he made for her, the story came together. "He was one of the most powerful ones they had encountered despite his small size in comparison to junk robots and other reploids. Sigma, (X flinched in his seat), the reploid man we defeated with the future, was also once the leader of the Maverick Hunters, and it was he who barely survived that first encounter with the unknown Zero where so many others were destroyed."

Sigma and Zero were both being displayed now in the rotating hologram, but, like Zero, it was a Sigma that they barely recognized. The malicious creature that had once attacked them in the Temple of Time as a conglomeration of reploid body parts now looked like a man, only with the facial rigidity and angles of something slightly less human – one of the reploid trademarks. The body armor that the past Sigma wore was a pine shade of dark green, and he wore a red cape that was tattered and lightly torn at the bottom where it nearly reached is feet. His eyes were solid in color and still very cold.

X tapped his control panel and breathed heavily. The look on his face stated to Raven that he was relaxed enough to take over again, or at least that he didn't want to look weak in front of the sages any longer. The dark sorceress happily relinquished the baton to him.

The room was now tinted pale purple. At the center of their table, the grid had expanded to include multiple figures. One was clearly the floating head of Sigma, but it was veiled in static like some sort of garbled video feed.

Tidus looked closer, as did the others. No, it was not static. The very shape of Sigma's head was subtly warping. Gushing streams of the strange violet substance took many forms, though most resembled the late Maverick leader in one way or another.

"This is much closer," Zelda said to X, "to the Sigma we fought in the future who was merged with Zero."

X glanced at her sideways, his effort geared towards lack of emotion. He tapped his control pad once again, and a quiet fizzling sound accompanied the change in lighting. Once again the purple wash shined across their faces and reflected upon the large glass windows of the Dreamweaver's conference room.

"It's Zero…" Nanaki realized with brimming curiosity. "They look the same as Sigma did," he said, noting the same delicate deformations in the static beings. "What exactly are we witnessing, X?"

"This and the previous images are physical manifestations of the Maverick virus," X said. "And what I'm about to tell you is considered to be the largest secret on my entire planet."

They waited patiently. X breathed hard.

Raven squeezed his arm just beneath the shoulder pads where his protective plating was softer and more sensitive, a fact that she had become well aware of. An intoxicatingly inspiring sensation rippled throughout him.

"During one of the campaigns against Sigma, we witnessed these," he indicated the clones of Zero. "For the longest time, we all thought Sigma was behind the virus, but these images were strong proof that it was actually the Maverick Zero who began everything though his first battle with Sigma so long ago. Zero had actually been captured by Sigma, not destroyed, and they took the opportunity to study such a powerful reploid while they had the chance. To their amazement, there was nothing left of the Maverick virus – as they called it then – in Zero's body. They reprogrammed him and he started from scratch as a free and good reploid. Maverick revolts still continued to occur every so often without our knowledge of how, but eventually Sigma went berserk and came to control the rest of the Mavericks himself. It was assumed that he had started everything, and after all, that was what he claimed, and he believed it because even he didn't know that Zero was behind it. For that matter, neither did Zero at the time with his reprogrammed brain. Something within him, like a second personality, continued to hold and spread the virus after reacquiring it through fighting Sigma. Unlike other reploids, Zero was completely unaffected emotionally, and he even became physically stronger from the virus, so none of the Maverick Hunters ever suspected except for the two of us."

"I'm embarrassed to continually flaunt my ignorance," Red XIII grinned, "but if the virus did not affect Zero, then how did he… become what he is now?"

"That's part of why I'm telling you this," Mega Man answered. "The non-Sigma strain of the virus was growing stronger, resulting in these manifestations that appeared like Zero. It was theorized that they were pure samples of the virus that came from him, unlike the ones spread by Sigma. Those ones managed to cause harm to Zero. Since then, he's been fighting both the original and the Z-virus, but being sent the Triforce of Power shouldn't have in any way pushed him over the edge. If anything, it should have helped him fight even harder. So the only logical conclusion is that Ganondorf sent something else, whether he was aware of it or not, and whatever that something was it caused a massive instability in Zero, turning him into the monster he is now."

Raven sighed, holding X's hand tighter.

"We need to find out what Ganondorf did," Zelda insisted.

Mega Man X nodded to her and then to them all. He continued. "Even before Zero was reprogrammed, he wasn't this calculatingly disturbed. Neither was Sigma while he led the Mavericks. The goal of the Mavericks has always been to conquer and evolve, not whatever Zero's attempting to do by destroying the timeline. He is something much more evil now."

A cynical jeer came from the Kokiri woman sitting in the dim light.

"Is there a problem?" Nanaki eyed her.

"No," she responded with a vacant grin. "But I think it would be more accurate to describe Zero as many evil things, and that's excluding whatever personalities are fighting each other in his mind."

X glared at her. For some reason she was suddenly being very callous and distant from the conversation as well, but whereas the others exuded emotions that he and Raven could faintly.

"She has a point," Zelda said gravely to X. "We may have stopped Sigma, but Zero still has Sephiroth and Jenova, and possibly even Ganondorf. What is the purpose in absorbing all of these life forms?"

"Simple," X stated confidently. "If anything, it's the only obvious similarity between the virus's behavior before and now. As long as the virus spreads between multiple hosts, it can't be destroyed unless all of the hosts are. As long as Zero has the bodies and souls of Jenova, Sephiroth and Ganon, he can fight us without risking total destruction. The difference is that the virus used to spread to other people from Zero, whereas now Zero makes other people a part of him. It's likely he'll attempt to find others if he hasn't already."

Zelda, Raven and Tidus found themselves thinking inevitably about their encounter with Jenova-Zero. The princess in particular clenched her fists beneath the table and pursed her lips nervously. She had been killed, torn to pieces, only to be pulled back in time by the chaos emerald. The sensation was nearly as horrific in reverse, and every moment.

"Zelda, are you alright?" Raven asked caringly. "Your face is flushed."

She nodded and wiped her brow. "I was just thinking. About the chaos emerald. Zero wanted to take it from us in the Deathflow. It saved my life and the life of…" she bit her tongue, "…many others."

Everyone but Raven looked to X for guidance, including Saria, whose glare was strangely menacing. The dark sorceress simply kept her hand wrapped in his, only letting him fall into the outside of her sight.

"So many unknowns," X said to himself, though the others all heard it. "But I can answer more for you than I could before, and the chaos emeralds are a part of it. There's a connection between the emeralds and the Lifestream that I think you'll be interested to hear about."

He stood firmly, reluctant to release Raven's grip.

"I said that the Maverick virus was the greatest secret on my planet, but that would make the chaos emeralds one of the greatest secrets in the entire galaxy. I don't know everything, but there's an important connection between the emeralds, the Lifestream, and the Triforce. Aboard the Dreamweaver are six out of the seven emeralds. Come with me, and I'll show you them."