Yay! We're back! I'm so sorry that this chapter took so long. I blame a combination of high school, video games, Netflix, YouTube, other FanFics, and online comic strips. But now I'm back, and we have another chapter for you to read. Is it any good? Who knows? I think so, but who knows what you'll think?
This chapter is pretty much pure character development, except for a little bit of action in the first half of the chapter. Also, this chapter gets a little emotional, which may make it extremely unbearable for some people to read as, being a robot, I'm terrible at writing emotion.
Anyway, allow me to pretty much sum up everything that happened between chapters: Smash Brothers! Pokemon! School! Halloween! Thanksgiving! Christmas! Valentine's Day! St. Patrick's Day! Easter! Memorial Day! Xenoblade Chronicles! Papers! Presentations! Exams! Colleges! Graduation! This Story's One Year Anniversary! And, I'm pretty sure that that sums up my life in the past few months pretty well.
Anyway, here's the disclaimer:
Dragon Quest IX is property of Square Enix and Nintendo and not me and probably not you.
What I do own are the characters that I make up, such as Michael and Jessica and some of the crazy things that happens around them.
And here are the reviews:
Yurei Hanatsuki: I'm actually pretty excited for college at this point. That's a pretty good suggestion. Is Merrill your cat? Thanks for the moral support.
princessdaisy01: I'm glad you caught the Frozen reference. I forgot that I wrote the last chapter while it was still relevant. I bet most people couldn't wait for this chapter.
JohnyGhostFace: I'm glad I meet your tough standards. Interesting idea, may consider it. Thanks for the interesting fact. That was one pun that I missed while playing through the game.
Olivia: Not a terrible idea. It made plenty of sense. I'm glad that you looooove it. Yes, I suppose it would be weird, wouldn't it?
Act 1 - Part 7: Spoils and Secrets
(Michael's POV)
The next morning, we hurried to the castle to report to the king. The grand beauty of the castle was a welcome sight after the decrepit setting of last night's events.
"Ah, it's you!" King Schott exclaimed when we entered the throne room and bowed in greeting. "Good to see you! Simona's told me everything." He shifted awkwardly in his throne. "Sounds like that Wight Knight was having a tough old time of it. I feel a wee bit guilty in hindsight." He paused for a moment.
"Still, all's well that ends well. You did a braw job there. I'm impressed! Aye, and you more than deserve that reward I promised. You just help yourself. Take all of it if you want to! Just climb the stairs behind the throne and go outside. East from there you'll see the treasure chamber."
He suddenly seemed to remember something. "Crivvens!" he exclaimed. "I almost forgot! I've opened up the eastern checkpoint again. It was closed while all that stramash with the Wight Knight was going on. There's a bid town beyond the checkpoint. Could be an interesting place to visit on your travels."
He looked around the room. "Aye, well…" he murmured. During the pause, Simona smiled and bowed to us, which surprised me. "I hope you have a safe journey," the king said. "And maybe you'll stop in Stornway again sometime? You'll always be welcome here!"
Jessica and I bowed. "Thank you, King Schott," I said.
"Thank you," Simona returned, "for everything."
I smiled. "It was our pleasure," I replied. "Now, if you excuse us, we must be going." King Schott nodded, and Jessica and I headed up another flight of stairs.
On the way to the treasure room, I noticed that Jessica had a new spring in her step. It didn't appear to have come from the prospect of treasure or the feeling of a job well done, but from the news about the reopened checkpoint in the east. The big city that King Schott had mentioned had to be the place that Jessica had called her hometown, and the place where her parents live – Coffinwell. It seemed the possibility of seeing her parents again had made Jessica more excited than I had ever seen her. Seeing her like this made me feel a little guilty about what would happen once the Starflight started working again…
We quickly found our way to the treasure chamber, and, upon entering, we were dumbstruck by the amount of treasure sitting before us. I mean, I've seen a fair amount of valuable objects back in my day, but damn… This was pretty impressive. There were gold coins strewn in piles all over the floor, treasure chests sitting between the piles, and hundreds of jewels scattered throughout the entire room. We slowly made our way farther into the room and began looking through the treasures.
Inside one of the treasure chests, Jessica found a solid gold rosary amongst other pieces of jewelry. "I have a friend who would love this!" she happily explained to me, noticing the odd look I was giving her since a mage normally has no use for something used by priests.
In one of the back corners, I found a small vial filled with an orange liquid. "Aggressence," I said to myself, pocketing it. "That could come in handy." We spent a few more minutes looking around at the various treasures, and we both took a fair amount of gold coins to go shopping with before leaving the room.
Back outside, we decided to spend the rest of the day in Stornway, shopping and relaxing. As we headed towards the many stores in town, I let Jessica get ahead of me as Stella appeared to talk with me. "Nice one, Michael! Looks like everyone here thinks you're the flea's knees know! See! Check it out! Benevolessence as far as the eye can see!" I looked all around me, but I frowned when I couldn't see a single blue crystal. "Oops!" Stella said. "I forgot you can't see it! What a flapping idiot! I'm sure the Almighty will notice what you've been up to now, anyway. We'll be back to the Observatory in no time, you'll see!'
After Stella said that, I felt another wave of guilt roll over me, even more powerful than before. While watching Jessica happily search through a rack of magic-resistant dresses, I reminisced about all the fun we had in just the last two days, and realized that, for the first time, I might not really want to go back at all.
That night, I was lying on my bed, waiting for Stella to give the signal. She had decided that it was best to return to the Starlight in the middle of the night, while everyone was sleeping. Already, the moon was high in the sky, and all of the sounds of the kingdom outside had completely subsided, save for some crickets in the grass and the sound of Jessica's soft breathing coming from across the room.
When she decided that it was safe enough, Stella appeared next to my bed, already looking rather impatient. "Come on! Come on! The coast is clear! Let's go already!"
I rolled my eyes. "Don't worry," I whispered in response, really not wanting to wake Jessica. "I'm coming." When I sat up, however, my heart froze as the bed made an extremely loud creaking sound. I glanced towards Jessica, who rolled over in her sleep, but, thankfully, stayed asleep.
"Keep it down, will ya!" Stella yelled at me carelessly. I wanted to scold her for being much louder than I was; but, not wanting to risk making more noise, I simply rolled my eyes.
Finally off the bed, I gently grabbed my bag and silently crept to the door. Halfway through the doorway, I looked back one last time at Jessica's sleeping form, before turning away and softly closing the door. I paused for a moment, thinking I might have heard something, before looking both ways down the deserted hallway. I quickly ran downstairs to the lobby, where Erinn was passed out on the counter. Being careful not to wake her, I slid out of the inn and quickly headed out the gate of the kingdom, heading back towards the west.
(No One's POV)
A dark figure stood at the edge of a window in the inn, looking down at Michael as he left. "Where is he going...?" the figure asked itself.
(Michael's POV)
It wasn't long before we reached the mountain pass where the Starflight sat, illuminated by the moonlight. Stella flew over to it to better inspect it. "Hang on a minute!" she exclaimed. "The Starflight looks exactly the flapping same! I was sure we'd have given it a new lease on life by now… If the Almighty had noticed all out good work and decided to help out, it'd be all glowing…I can't have gotten the wrong end of the gearshift on this one, can I?"
I was just as stumped as she was, so I just stood there, thinking, until I got an idea. "What if," I asked, "I have to be on it for it to work?"
Stella shook her head. "No, that wouldn't be it," she replied. "But, maybe, if you were to go on it, it might work. Let's give it a shot." I rolled my eyes as she flew up to the back door of the Starflight. I walked up behind her as she opened the door and flew inside. "I don't believe it!" Stella cried out. "It all looks exactly the flapping same! And after we went to all that trouble...has the Almighty decided to turn a blind ear to us or something?"
I simply shrugged as I climbed up the short staircase and stepped into the Starflight Express. As soon as my foot touched the carpeted interior, everything quickly flashed brightly as the Starflight gave a single almighty lurch. "Yikes!" Stella screamed, flailing her arms and legs every which way.
"Stella," I yelled out, clutching to the doorway to stop myself from falling, "why are you acting like you lost your balance!? You can FLY!"
She glared daggers at me while trying to regain her composure. "Shut up, okay!? That freaked me out just now. What was that? The entire thing moved when you came in just then..." Her eyes lit up in sudden realization. "...When you came in! That's it! That's it, Michael! The Benevolessence you got from helping that knight has given you back some of your Celestrian powers!"
She crossed her arms smugly for figuring it out. "It looks like my first instinct didn't stink after all! The Starflight will fly if she has a Celestrian on board!" She turned towards the front, deep in thought. "But first you need to help people so you can get your powers back...get back all of your powers and we'll have the old girl flying like a dream again!"
She turned back to me with a victorious look on her face. "We'd better flat-foot it to that town beyond the checkpoint. I bet it's cram-packed with people in need of our help!" She fist-bumped the air. "Woohoo! There's hope at last! Time to disembark on a mission of mortal mercy! Ha ha!" She then noticed that I was ignoring her and was instead looking around outside. "Hey, Michael!" she yelled at me. "What are you looking at that's so much more important than what I'm saying?"
I looked around the area one last time before replying. "I don't know. I thought I may have seen something outside."
"Don't be ridiculous," Stella replied. "There's nothing out there. It's the middle of the night. Even most of the monsters are sleeping at this point."
"I don't know, Stella. I swear I saw something move in the shadows."
"You can't even see Benevolessence! Why should I trust anything that your eyes see?" I remained silent. "That's what I thought. Now let's get back to Stornway before anyone realizes that you're gone."
I followed Stella out of the Starflight, feeling that it might already be too late for that.
(No One's POV)
As Michael began walking back through the mountain pass, the shadowy figure stood concealed within the leaves of a tree, watching him.
'What are you up to?' the figure thought to itself when Michael began to pass underneath the tree. The figure didn't have much time to think, though, as everyone's attention was suddenly attracted to the sharp sound of cracking wood.
'Uh-oh.'
(Michael's POV)
I was heading back to Stornway when a branch suddenly fell from a nearby tree and landed right in front of me. It nearly gave me a heart attack. Not the branch – I had heard it falling. What surprised me was who had fallen with the tree branch.
"Uh... Hey, Jessica."
Jessica was lying among the splintered wood and fallen leaves, dazed from her sudden fall, but she quickly pulled herself together when she heard me talking. "Oh! Hey Michael. Um..."
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
"I could ask you the same thing," she answered.
"I asked you first."
Jessica crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. "Fine. I was following you. Of course, the real question is where exactly was I following you to?"
"...I...was going for a walk. That's it." Stella facepalmed herself.
Jessica raised her eyebrows. "Really? A walk?" She looked back towards the distant horizon, where Stornway could barely be seen in the pale moonlight. "Kind of far for a walk, don't you think? Especially at this time of night. Wouldn't you agree, Michael?"
"Um...Well, I was feeling really restless, and...um...I guess I didn't notice how far I had actually walked."
"May the Almighty help you, Michael," Stella said from next to me. "Even this girl isn't dumb enough to believe your story."
"Shut up."
Stella and I both froze. Did I really hear what I thought I heard? That's not possible, is it?
I glanced over at Jessica and I saw that she was covering her mouth with her hands as if trying to keep her words inside her head. I noticed that her eyes were wide open in fright and were darting back and forth between me and...slightly to my left, were Stella hovered in midair.
"Jessica," I asked softly, seriously hoping that I was hearing things, "who are you talking to?"
"...Um...you?" she barely managed to reply.
"I can't believe this!" Stella suddenly cried out, flying in between me and Jessica. "What are you thinking, Michael? That this poor little girl can actually see and hear me? Don't be ridiculous! She's only a mortal, for Almighty's sake!"
Before I could respond to Stella, a faint whisper came from behind her. "Actually, I can see and hear you...Stella...and I would prefer if you stopped insulting me..."
Stella froze in place again and slowly turned around to face Jessica. After staring at her for a few moments, Stella screamed and rocketed away from Jessica and hid behind me. "Th-that's not normal! I-I'm just g-going to stay over here until you're d-done dealing with it!"
I turned back towards Jessica, who looked terrified at this point. "Jessica, can you really see Stella?" She only nodded her head.
For the first time ever, Jessica looked genuinely scared and upset. Even more so than the whole ordeal after the battle against the Right Knight. Wait... "Jessica, having the ability to use wind magic wasn't your big, terrifying secret, was it?" She shook her head. "I thought so."
We just stood in silence for a while after that, Jessica keeping her head down. I tried moving towards her, but she shot up and ran away from me as fast as she could as soon as I moved. Even with my Celestrial speed, it still took me half the distance back to Stornway to catch up with her, cursing mortals' natural affinity with adrenaline the entire time.
"Jessica!" I yelled to her. "Why are you running?"
"So you don't have to be scared of me anymore," she cried out between sobs.
"W-what?" I replied, taken slightly aback. "Why would I be scared of you?"
"Because I see things that I shouldn't, and that scares people!" she screamed at me, before completely collapsing onto the ground in tears.
I got onto the ground next to her and lifted her up so she was looking at me. "So what?" I asked. "That still doesn't explain why I would be scared of you."
"I saw how you and Stella reacted to me," she mumbled, pushing me away. "It was exactly how everyone did when they discovered my secret, too: sheer panic and terror, or speechless fear and confusion."
"Well, I mean, Stella is kind of a jerk, but she has been fairly high strung lately, and this probably just freaked her out."
"Yeah?" Jessica scoffed. "And what about you?"
"The only time I have ever been scared of you was in the Doomingale Forest, when you punched me in the face and I flew 20 feet into a pool of poison. Other than that, I'm not afraid of you. I was only surprised that someone else could see Stella, too.
"It's not just Stella, though. I can see other things, too, like ghosts, the occasional angel-person, the weird box thing you walked into earlier, and when the sky exploded last week."
"When the sky exploded?" I repeated, amazed.
"Yeah... I totally lost my mind when I saw that happen. That's why my last team abandoned me. They thought I was a raving lunatic for screaming into the sky, and they didn't want to deal with me and recovering from the earthquake that happened at the same time." I remained silent while trying to wrap my head around everything that she was saying to me.
She then glanced up at me and said "You probably think I'm crazy now, too."
"Of course not," I replied. She scoffed at me again. "Does anyone else know about your abilities?" I asked.
She thought silently for a moment, and then answered "Yes. Excluding everyone who thinks that I am crazy, three people actually know my secret: my parents and my best friend from when I grew up in Coffinwell." She paused for a moment before continuing. "For everyone else who gets too curious about my secret, I just show them my wind magic and leave it at that. It usually works for a little while."
"I guess I make number four, huh?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
After that, we just kind of stood there in an awkward silence for a while. Then I noticed Stella secretly watching us from behind a bush, and something suddenly occurred to me. "Jessica," I began, "if you were always able to see Stella, then how come you never reacted whenever Stella said something to me? I mean, she was practically screaming at me the entire time."
"I resent you for that, Michael!" Stella said from behind her bush.
Jessica smiled and sighed. "Practice," she said. "After trying to hide it for a while, you just get used to ignoring things that you know aren't supposed to be there. As you saw earlier, I do occasionally make a mistake, though. Well, you know how that usually ends up."
"Wow," was all that I could find in response to that.
"Yeah."
"Some mortals really suck, huh?" I asked, somewhat jokingly.
"Yeah...Wait, what? 'Mortals'?" Jessica asked. My breath caught in my throat as I realized what I just said. Jessica narrowed her eyes and looked at me, then glanced over at Stella – who had slowly rejoined us at this point – then back to me. "Michael, something just occurred to me, and I need to ask you about it."
Please, please, please don't be what I think it-
"Why can you see Stella?"
Shit. "Um...Same reason as you?" I tried, but I could tell that Jessica didn't believe it for a second. Plus, it didn't help that Stella facepalmed herself after I said that.
"That's a lie, Michael, and we both know it," Jessica responded. "I've heard some of the conversations you've had with Stella. You're looking for something called Benevolessence, right? And trying to get back to some place called the Observatory, aren't you? What's that all about?"
"Uh..." is all that I said.
"Oh, give it up, Michael," Stella interjected suddenly. "There's no way out of it at this point. She knows too much already. You either have to tell her or you have to kill her." Jessica and I both gaped at her, left speechless by what she just said. She looked at both us and shrugged. "What? I'm just saying."
I groaned despairingly. "Fine..." I sighed. "You might want to sit down, Jessica. What I'm about to tell you is going to be so long, it would take at least seven chapters to write it all down, so we're going to be here for a while."
Jessica lowered herself on the grass and looked back at me expectantly. "I'm all ears, Michael."
I sighed one last time, then began to tell my story. "For years, mortals have always wondered if they are being watched by higher beings..."
"...And then I told you to sit on the ground and I began telling you my story. And, I think that pretty much sums everything up. Satisfied?"
Jessica stared at me, nodding slowly. "So, what you're telling me is that you are a fallen angel trying to collect enough crystallized emotion to power up a magic metal box that will fly you back up to the floating tower that you and all of your angel friends live on because a self-absorbed fairy told you how to do it?"
"Self-absorbed, and beautiful, thank you very much," Stella corrected.
"Whatever," Jessica replied. "Am I right, Michael?"
"Uh...Yeah."
"I see," she said, continuing to slowly nod her head up and down. "Hm...Well, I believe you."
"Wait, really!?" I exclaimed in surprise.
"Sure. I mean, why not? You believed me, and no one is crazy enough to make up a story that fantastic. And, even if you are crazy enough, it just means that I'm just as crazy; and I'd rather that not be the case. Plus, it explains why the sky exploded a week ago, and I don't have any other explanation for it."
"Huh," I responded. "I guess it makes sense when you put it that way."
"Yup. Now, let's head back to Stornway. I'm exhausted, and the sun will be rising soon, partly because your story was so long."
"Hey," I retorted, "you wanted to know who I really was. Not my fault that you asked me at three in the morning."
"Well, then maybe you shouldn't have kept it a secret from me," she countered, smirking.
"Yeah? What about your secret? When were you going to tell me that?"
She just stared at me for a few moments, and then suddenly stuck her tongue out at me and began running rapidly back towards Stornway, laughing all the way.
"What is it with everyone and running everywhere!?" I asked rhetorically, chasing Jessica all the way back to the Quester's Rest, where we snuck back in quietly past Erinn, who was still sleeping on the counter.
As I lay back in bed, I quietly mumbled to myself "Maybe this is all just a bad dream, and I'll wake up tomorrow and everything will be back to normal."
From behind me, I heard Stella mumble back in response "You wish."
I rolled my eyes and went back to sleep, hoping for a fairly normal day tomorrow.
Well, there you go. I hope it was well worth the wait.
Next chapter, the new character will finally be revealed, as will be whoever (if anyone) won the suggestion contest. I don't remember if I had said there was going to be a prize, but I don't think so.
Anyway, you can still try to make suggestions for the fourth and final party member, but I feel that it'll be quite difficult for anyone to beat what I'm already planning in my mind. But, hey, you never know.
When will the next chapter be out? I have no idea, but it'll hopefully be before next February. #JokingNotJoking #SadTruth
Anyway, don't forget to favorite, follow, and review. I'm not perfect, and I'll need everyone's help if I'm to catch every little error that shows up in my story.
Until next time, this has been D~F.
