Chrono Trigger: Alternate Realities // Part 3

by Dark Majesty

Part 3 to CT:AR. R&R this one also.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Chrono Trigger or

the characters, just the plot in this story.

1999: The Day of Lavos

Part III

BY

D A R T H V A D E R

DATABASE ENTRY. SPECIFY REQUESTED INFORMATION.

SPECIFY SEARCH PARAMETERS.

The immediate aftermath of the devastation, and what happened to the kingdom Guardia.

PROCESSING....PLEASE WAIT.
......
......

ENTRY TO SPECIFIED DATA FILES IS PASSWORD-PROTECTED.
PLEASE ENTER A PASSWORD.

*******

ACCESS DENIED. PLEASE EITHER ENTER THE CORRECT PASSWORD OR EXIT THIS PROGRAM IMMEDIATELY. OTHERWISE, A TEAM OF SECURITY ROBOTS WILL BE NOTIFIED OF YOUR UNAUTHORIZED PRESENCE IN THIS FACILITY.

*****

.....ACCESS GRANTED. PLEASE WAIT, PROCESSING DATA.

PROGRAM READY. TO RUN PROGRAM, PRESS ANY KEY.

C

RUNNING PROGRAM....

Lavos's eruption into the heart of the Kingdom Guardia isn't what destroyed Guardia. That's what everybody thinks, but they're wrong. At least, it didn't directly destroy us. This program is designed to, in a user-friendly manner, explain precisely what happened to the world. It was created by the last survivor in this dome, upon his last days. I have password-encrypted this program in a way so that the blasted robots won't be able to get into it. After painstaking analysis of the robots' programming, I figured out a couple words that weren't in their vocabulary. Ironically, one of those words is Lavos. Of course, that's perfectly understandable; the actual word 'Lavos' is derived from an ancient prehistoric tongue. 'La' meant fire, and 'Vos' meant big.
I am--was--the king of Guardia before its downfall. My title is King Guardia LXVIII (sixty-eighth). The Guardia dynasty began in the year 1 BC, and the following year was proclaimed 0 AD, in celebration of the newly-founded kingdom. No one really knows what AD or BC stand for; the king simply thought they sounded appropriate, and that was that.
And then, exactly one year before the Second Milennial Fair was scheduled to occur in Leene Square in 2000 AD, all hell broke loose and soon after, the Guardia dynasty ended.
It started on New Year's Eve of the year 1998. My wife, Leene II (named after the famous queen in back in 600 AD who nursed King Guardia XXII (twenty-second) back to health during the terrible war with Magus, which was won by a mysterious group of young people and a Frog; not many historical records were kept back then), and I were in the Castle's living quarters, counting down to the New Year. There was only about five or six minutes left and we were watching the New Year's Eve Countdown Extravaganza, hosted by an old man named Richard Lark. He must've been crazy! In Leene Square around winter time it gets to around ten degrees and he's standing out there like a fool with a coat and some ear muffs on.
Er, anyway, the countdown had gotten down to the ten second mark, when all the sudden the castle started shaking pretty bad. I managed to get a good enough look at the TV to notice that the ground was shaking there, too.
It didn't stop either. There was too much chaos for anyone to notice that the ball had dropped and it was already 1999.
Despite protests from Leene, I made my way to the skyway on the second floor of Guardia Castle. See, there used to be a great big forest in front of the castle, and unless you wanted to track through it every time you wanted to go somewhere, you'd have to use the skyway to get back in. Luckily, it was built pretty sturdy and held itself together during all the shaking.
About halfway through the tube, I saw a bright glow coming from the distance. I hurried through the remainder of the skyway and climbed down the stairs to the ground. I hopped in the nearest car and floored it to the huge turtle thing that the National Guard was trying to combat, and failing miserably at that.
I got my megaphone from the passenger seat and yelled into it, "Troops fall back immediately!!! I'm gonna send in the Air Force. They'll definitely be able to hold out against this thing better than you can!!"
So the soldiers retreated to the military base, where (according to some old blueprints in the treasury) the Guardian Cathedral had stood about 1400 years previous.
It was almost to Truce Village by the time the Air Force started attacking. Unfortunately, they didn't prove much help either. The missiles and bombs were damaging it a little, but just the shell. And then the thing launched some really long spike-things from its shell, taking down all the planes one by one.
Once it had taken care of them, it continued to Truce Village. By this time, I'd had the entire village evacuated, and I remained in my car about a half a mile away from the action at all times, maintaining constant radio contact with the military base.
As the creature stomped through Truce, apathetically destroying houses and buildings in its rampage, I got a message from the castle. It was Leene.
"Horace, Hon, I think you should hurry on to the castle as fast as you can. Don't argue or anything; this seems pretty important."
Before doing anything else I looked ahead with my binoculars to check out where the creature was headed next. It looked like Medina Village was its next target. I picked up the receiver. "I'll be right there, just as soon as I give the order to evacuate Medina."
"I'll see you then, and please be quick," Leene replied.
I switched channels. "General, are you there?"
"Right here, You Highness. What's your next order?"

"Get the people outta Medina as fast as possible, and I have some emergency business at the castle so you take over till I get back. Understood?"
"Loud and clear, Sir. General Chiles, out."
I floored it back to the base of the sky way and got back to the castle in about five minutes.
"What's wr-- Hey, who's that?" I asked. Someone was standing next to Leene.
It was a woman. She had light, purple-blue hair and wore a beautiful, flowing purple robe. She had a mysterious ere about her, and I was suspicious.
"This woman has alot of things to say that should interest you," said Leene. "Go ahead, dear, tell him what you told me."
The woman took a few steps forward. She had large, sad eyes, as if she'd just been through some sorta emotional trial. "My name," she spoke, "is Schala. I don't know how far in the future I've traveled, but I do know what is happening to your world. It's happened before, during my time."
"What? Where are you from?" I asked.
"I'm from the past; I thought I'd already made that clear. You see, in the past--we'll estimate ten thousand years ago, just for the sake of argument--there was a magic kingdom called Zeal, and everyone in Zeal except for me and my little brother followed a religion that worshipped a horrible, turtle-like creature because it gave us great power. But, one day the creature erupted from under the ocean, where it had been, and created a bunch of time portals. Me, my brother, and the three Gurus of Time, Reason, and Life were thrown into them, and this is where I am. The creature's named Lavos, which was derived from an ancient prehistoric word. 'La' meant fire and 'Vos' meant big," she explained. "However, I'm guessing that the creature was somehow forced back underground and now it's re-emerging. I doubt there's much you can do, even with the advanced technology your wife has spoken of. However, I'm willing to help you in any way that I can."

PROGRAM TERMINATED.

"That's it!" said Magus. He took a disk off a ruined old shelf and inserted it in the disk drive.

DOWNLOADING INFORMATION......

DATA TRANSFER COMPLETE. PRESS ENTER TO EJECT DISK FROM DRIVE.

"Schala...don't worry. It's just a matter of time now." He reached in his pouch to make sure he still had his own Gate Key and headed for Proto Dome.

***

"Janus, my boy. Nice to see you again. What brings you to the End of Time?" asked Gaspar.
"I've no business with you, old man, but if you must know I'm here so I can get to the Epoch so I won't have to go here anymore," Magus snapped impatiently.
"Ah, so you've a lead on Schala?"
Magus stopped and looked at him briefly, then went on to the appropriate pillar of light without answering.
Gaspar smiled after Magus was gone. "I see."

Leene Square is quite boring when there's not a fair going on in it. It's mainly just cobblestone ground with a big fountain in the middle. Even the now-famous telepods were gone. Magus had to straighten this all out before he left the place.
The year was 1001 AD, and the date was January 1st. Exactly one year after the Milennial Fair had begun. Nothing drastic had happened since then. Crono and Marle were husband and wife, currently living together in Crono's mom's house because Marle said she needed some time away from her dad. But, that was the only thing even worth mentioning.
Magus left Leene Square, but not before stopping to take a drink from the crystal-clear fountain. He'd been in the future for a while now, searching through countless databases in the hopes of finding some record of his sister's whereabouts, and all the water there was too dirty to drink.

In the future, somewhere on Death Peak, Queen Zeal II scoffed at Magus.

"Just a minute!!" Crono's mom called in reply to a knock at the front door. She finished up washing the dish she was on and ran to the door.
A tall man with light, purple-blue hair stood ominously on the other side of the door. "Hi, ma'am," he said, "I'm here to see Crono, if you don't mind."
"o...Of course, please, come right in," said Crono's mom. "Crono!!! Get down here. Someone wants to see you!" she called up the stairs.
"Actually, I was planning on talking to him outside, so there's no need for me to sit," said Magus. "..thanks for offering though," he added, in an admirable attempt to be polite. If he wanted to find Schala, he'd have to have people skills.
Crono and Marle met Magus outside.
"Yeah, what do you want?" asked Marle. She was holding Crono's hand and rubbing it affectionately.
"Well, I..." he began, but decided to get this out of his head first. "Are you two involved or something? It's just that I've never seen you holding eachother's hands before."
"Yeah, we're married. Where've you been?" said Marle. Magus's eyes damned near popped out of his head.
"B..but you're only.."
"15 and 16, we know, but unless you have somethin' nice to say, don't say anything at all," said Marle.
"Fair enough," Magus admitted. "Well anyway, I need your help. I think I found where Schala is but in order to retrieve her safely I have to borrow the Epoch. Now I know you won't let me use it by myself, but I do know of a reason you might want to use it to go to the same place."
"...Go on," said Crono, the first words he'd spoken in a while to someone besides his mom, Marle, and Lucca. The sound of his voice distracted Magus, as an unusual amount of things had been doing in this time period. It was actually beginning to annoy him, and that distracted him even more.
"I think Schala got transported to 1999 AD, not too long after Lavos comes up. That doesn't make much sense though, because..." and he trailed off. In the timeline of events, something had gone screwy, and he couldn't make any sense out of it. He decided to stop telling that story so they wouldn't think he was crazy or anything.
"Well...?" said Marle.
"Nevermind....I just realized something. We need to get to a computer so I can run this program." He took the disk from his pocket. "I got this from the future." He offered to let them hold it.
"What're you trying to show us for? THIS is a job for Lucca!" said Marle. "Follow us, she can probably figure it out."
The three of them walked down and across the bridge to Lucca's house. Crono knocked on the door. It opened a moment later, and Lucca was standing there. But it wasn't the Lucca that Magus remembered.
"Hi guys!" she said brightly. "Hey, what brings you back here?" she added, to Magus.
Magus was speechless. The last time he'd seen Lucca, she was wearing something that mildly resembled a pilot outfit, what with the helmet and goggles, and dull, brown, baggy, clumbsy-looking clothes. All of this added up to create a look of sheer nerdiness.
Now, the helmet and goggles were gone. They were replaced with a batch of long, flowing purple hair that came down to the middle of her back and contact lenses that made her eyes blue instead of brown. Instead of those dull, baggy clothes she was wearing a fashionable shirt and a loose red skirt that came to her knees.
"Magus, what brings you here?" she repeated. She saw that he was stupefied by her new look and was quite flattered, but pretended not to notice.
"Uh..I um...Oh yeah, I have a computer program I need to run. I was hoping you'd have the right computer to do it," he said quickly, and held out the disk.
She snatched it from his hand and examined it. "Where'd you get this?" she asked.
"From the future. It says what happened to Schala, and has some other things that will probably interest you."
"Cool. I'll try it out. Follow me." She led them to the new lab that King Guardia built for her as an extension on her house.
"This is a nice lab," said Magus, even though he'd barely looked at anything in the lab. He was busy staring at Lucca's legs.
"Alrighty, let's get started," she said, sitting down in front of a computer screen, similar to the ones in the future, only not as big. She put the disk in a slot on the table.

CANNOT READ SPECIFIED FILE TYPE. FILE IS ENCRYPTED.

Lucca stared blankly at the screen for a split second, then her face lit up. "Oooh! I love a good challenge!" Her hands sprang to the keyboard sitting on the same table with the slot in it and her fingers danced like magic over the keys.
After a good ten minutes of various de-encryption codes and continuous ERROR messages, Lucca gave up. Sort of.
"This is no good. We need a better computer, one that's more familiar with...with...what era did you say you got this from?"
"Twenty-three hundred."
"We need a computer more familiar with 24th century technology. And I know just where to get one. We're goin' to Guardia Castle."
"What's in Guardia Castle?" asked Magus.
"Epoch. They built a docking port there specifically for it. Come on, let's go," said Marle.

"Ah, yes, here we go," Lucca declared triumphantly. Epoch's computer system was reading the file perfectly. "Wait...what's this?" she said, and stopped suddenly. "Magus, it's asking for a password. Do you know it?"
"Yeah, the password is Lavos. L, a , v, o, s," Magus said. Him, Crono, and Marle were standing outside the ship so Lucca would have more work room.
"Good. I wasn't lookin forward to spending an hour searching for a password."
A moment later, "Well, well, well....what's this...? 1999: The Day of Lavos?" She sped-read through the first few paragraphs and a troubled look swept her face. She pressed a few buttons on the keyboard. "You probably didn't know this program had video on it, did ya?" she said to Magus.
"Huh? Video?" Magus replied. Lucca nodded to herself and pressed a couple more buttons. A holographic image was displayed on the wall facing the front of the ship. They could all tell that it was the ruined basement of Arris Dome, a former military base for Guardia Kingdom. There was a man standing there, looking into the camera. He looked like a combination of Crono and King Guardia XXXIII.
The man in the projection started reciting the words that Magus had read in type, 1299 years later, except in the place of descriptions of people the king spoke of, actual digitized pictures of them showed up. Leene II looked just like Marle, despite the many years of DNA mix-and-matching that had gone on. And Schala looked exactly the same as they remembered her.
Finally, the program continued past the part that Magus had stopped at. It was showing actual video of Lavos, romping across the content toward Truce Village.
"But we killed that thing!!" Marle cried. "What's it doing still alive?!"

"As you can see," said King Guardia LXVIII, "The Air Force had been completely wiped out, and when the creature got to Truce it burrowed underground again, making the ground get molten-hot to do it. Of course, I wasn't there at the time, but this is what the security camera from the nearby watch tower saw."
The scene switched over to a top view of the northern section of the Medina continent.

"Lavos, as Schala had called it, re-emerged just north of Medina Village. The weirdest bit of the whole thing happened here." And then it showed the scene that Crono, Marle, and Lucca knew all too well. It was the scene of Lavos emerging from the ground, causing a fiery rain of molten rock to shoot up from the ground. The one that had inspired them to embark on their famous quest to save the world.
"As you're about to see, three people suddenly and mysteriously appeared out of nowhere." The voiceover waited for Crono, Frog, and Ayla to pop out of the blue time gate. "Then, as you're about to see, a spectacular battle ensued." It showed close-ups of the fight with Lavos's outer shell. "And finally, the head of the beast disappeared and a hole was left in the shell. The three mystery warriors entered the shell, and not long after, the whole mess just disappeared. Let me say that again. The whole mess just disappeared.Lavos, its shell, the three mystery-people."
"So how'd the world get destroyed and stuff?" Marle asked.
"Looks like we're about to find out," said Lucca.
And then the projection turned black and the screen said,

PROGRAM ENDED. PRESS ENTER TO RERUN THE PROGRAM. PRESS ALT TO EJECT DISKETTE FROM DRIVE.

"What?!" Lucca shouted. "That can't be the end!! It just...just can't!!"
"I know it said 'Data transfer complete' after I downloaded it onto the disk," said Magus.
"So now what do we do?" asked Marle.
"We go back to 1999 and find out what really happened," Crono decreed. Once again, the sound of his voice threw Magus for a loop.
"Yeah!! Let's go!" said Lucca.
"So you'll take me to 1999 to get Schala?" said Magus.
"As long as you help us out if we run into a jam," said Crono.
"No problem," he answered, patting the sickle hanging from his belt.
"So then when should we leave?" asked Marle.
"As soon as we get prepared. Everyone go home and get your weapon," said Crono. Crono didn't speak much, but when he did, he had quite a powerful voice, and people tended to listen to him.
Crono and Marle went back to their house and Lucca and Magus went back to hers.
"So, how've you been doing?" Magus asked. Lucca giggled to herself. Magus was actually trying to flirt with her!!
"Heh, heh, I'm doing just fine," she answered.
"Made up any new inventions lately?"
"Well, yeah, I made that computer in my lab. Also a few more little gadgets n' stuff."
"I see," Magus said, nodding. He was having more trouble doing this than he thought he would. It had been decades since the last time he'd had a conversation with a female. Back in Zeal as a teenager, all the girls would mob him and though he was too troubled to take any interest in any of them, the positive attention was sort of nice. After that, the only 'female' who ever even came close to being his friend was Flea.
Lucca was putting on some armor and a helmet, which disappointed Magus a little because she had to stuff all that beautiful hair under it. She looked up at him and smiled. "Look, Magus, I can see what you're tryin' to do and I'm flattered but I think I'm a little young for you. What are you, like, almost three times older than me? Something like that?"
Magus turned away, obviously quite embarrassed. Lucca rolled her eyes, still smiling. "Sorry, didn't mean to embarrass you. Let's just forget the whole thing, ok?"
Now that was something Magus was good at. He almost effortlessly brushed the entire incident from his mind and turned around. "Ok," he said with a blank face.
All four of them reconverged at Guardia Forest and then went back to the Epoch.
Just as Lucca was about to turn the ignition, Marle said, "Hey, didn't Gaspar say somethin' about no more than three people traveling through time at once? Some law or something?"
"The Law of Conservation of Time," said Lucca. "And don't worry, that doesn't apply with the Epoch. Belthasar built it so that it could defy that law. I have a vague grasp on how that works, but I don't think you feel like hearing all that right now." She turned the ignition and pressed the remote control that opened up the ceiling. It opened, and Lucca activated the vertical thrusters. Once at a safe distance above the castle, she set the time gauge to '1999: The Day of Lavos" and pulled the activation lever.

They were above Guardia Castle once again. The basic structure looked about the same, and there were alot of extra sections that must've been added on over the years. Magus took note of the military base in the forest, where the Cathedral used to be.
"Here we go....the instruments are going haywire!" said Lucca. "It's...it's Lavos!! He's coming out to the east....on the Medina continent, just as it showed in the video!"
"Well what are you waiting for?! Let's go!" said Marle. Her pendant was glowing fiercely.
"Wait!!" said Magus. "Let's get Schala first. I want to make sure she's safe before we do all this."
"No, we've got to find out what happened. Besides, you saw the video. Schala didn't die during our battle or anything," said Crono. Magus had no choice but to wait.
Lucca flew the ship to Medina. She made it hover above the city so they'd have a good view without getting hurt. Using the ship's visual sensors, she displayed a close-up view of the battle on the monitor.
"Check out what I did right here," Crono boasted, pointing at himself on the monitor. He did that pretty much the whole time up until his counterpart, Frog, and Ayla went into the shell. They waited a while, and then the shell disappeared.
"Here we go," said Lucca.
"Take us down outside of town. Let's go over there and wait to see what happened," said Crono. Lucca did as he asked, and they got right up to the edge of the molten hole that Lavos came out of. Lucca brought along tweezers and special bags to take samples. Magus paced anxiously, waiting for the chance to see his sister. Just as he was about to hitch a ride off the ferry route to Truce Village (running from Medina), a helicopter landed right near them. Out of it stepped King Guardia LXVIII, Queen Leene II, and Schala.
"Schala!!!!!" Magus yelped joyfully. He spread his arms and half-ran to Schala. She just stared at him, a little bewildered. Once he had his arms around her, she said,
"P...prophet?! What in blazes are you doing here??"
This took Magus a few seconds to figure out, and then he remembered that the last time she'd seen him, it had been him as the Prophet in the Ocean Palace.
"True, I was the Prophet, but I'm also your little half-brother, Janus!"
"What?! How is that possible??" she asked. A queasy feeling came over Magus, because right then he realized that he'd have to explain everything that had happened since he first got transported to the Middle Ages.
"Please, I'll explain all of it later. Right now, I'm just so glad to finally see you again..." he said, and tears ran down his face.
"Schala...?" said the Queen, "This is your little brother that you told us got thrown into that time gate thing ten thousand-odd years ago?"
"Well, that's what he says....I'm not quite sure myself," said Schala. "I--"
Then came just the thing that Crono, Marle, and Lucca were looking for.

Before any of them knew it, all of them were suspended in mid air.
"Hunhhh?" said Marle. Her pendant was radiating again, even more intensely than a few minutes before.
"Ha ha ha ha ha!!" said Schala, from on the ground. Now she wore a crown just like the one Queen Zeal had been wearing. The front of it looked like Lavos's head, complete with the hypnotic eyes.
"Schala?!" Magus yelped.
"You thought you could defeat me. But I've possessed this foolish girl's body now and I'll lay waste to the entire world in return for you killing me!"
"So this is what happened to the world," said Crono.
"Well what're we waiting for?! Let's get her!!" said Marle.
"Yeah, we can't let Lavos destroy the world again!" said Lucca.
"'Again'..?" said Schala. She pondered this for a second. "Oh yeah, you mean back in 12,000 BC? Heh heh, yeah, that was fun. Now I get to do it all over again!"
Lucca began charging up to cast a spell at Schala. Magus noticed her doing it.
"No!! You can't kill my sister!" he cried. He cast his own quick spell at Lucca to distract her.
"Ha ha ha ha ha! Thanks, 'brother'! I'll pay you back by sending every last one of you into some other time period so you get stranded!! Now don't you go anywhere, because this might take me a few minutes to do and I'll have to let you down so I can get up enough power to do it," said Schala. She let them all down and concentrated.
"Wh...what's going on?!" the King asked desparately, once his feet were planted on the ground.
Lucca came to everyone's rescue. "King Guardia and Queen Leene, you two need to get back in your helicopter and hightail it back to the castle as fast as possible. Try and kill her as fast as you can or else your planet's gonna be doomed!"
"No...please, don't kill her! She's my sister...I haven't seen her for decades...please...I beg you.." said Magus. By now he was on his knees.
"Get up!!" said Lucca. He wouldn't though, so Crono had to drag him along the ground to the Epoch. Once Magus and the others were safe and sound and the helicopter was already out of view, Crono tried attacking Schala.
"Crono!! Don't you dare! Get back here!!!" Marle cried, but he didn't listen. He drew his sword and leapt at her. He slammed into an invisble forcefield and fell down limply.
"Crono, you idiot!! See what you did?! Get back here right now!!!" Marle scolded, even more fiercely. A time gate was starting to open around Schala. It was small, but growing rapidly. Meanwhile, Crono was fighting to stay conscious and wearily trying to crawl back to the ship. The gravitational pull of the time gate was getting stronger though, and Crono was slowly being pulled in.
"Lucca! You've got to do something!!!!" Marle screamed, nearly grabbing her by the collar.
"Uh.." said Lucca, thinking of something to do. Finally, when Crono was halfway to the time gate, "I've got it!!" She yelled outside, "Crono!!! Hold your sword as tight as you possibly can!!"
By now, Crono was more or less fully conscious, so he held onto his sword for dear life, not quite sure why.
Lucca turned and pressed a few buttons on the ship's control panel and rigged it so the ship would radiate a powerful magnetic pulse.
By sheer luck, the Sunstone just happened to be a material that was attracted to magnets, and Crono's Rainbow Sword had part of the Sunstone in it. The sword zoomed to the outside hull of the ship, hitting right below the glass outer cockpit. Crono managed to climb into the ship, and Lucca hit the 'Close Hatch' button.
That wasn't the end of it, though. By now the gate was so big and its gravity so strong, it was pulling the entire ship in toward it. Lucca had to put the forward thrusters on full blast just so they could make the ship stand still. She tried the vertical thrusters, but they weren't working very well because now they were not only contending with the planet's gravity, but also the time gate's. They got up ten feet into the air before something had to give and the ship was pulled back to the ground.
"Crap!!" said Lucca.
"What do we do??" asked Marle.
"I...I don't know!!" Lucca replied.
"Man....I'm such an idiot...if I didn't have to try and get in that attack, we'd already be gone..."
"Crono, don't even try and blame this on your--"
"Why not just let it pull us in?" suggested Magus. They all looked at him.
"Look, Magus, I know you're depressed and all, but suicide won't do you any good,"said Marle, her voice quivering with fear of death.
"No," said Magus, "Think about it. It's not like this is a gate into Hell or anything. It's just a time gate. Once we get pulled in, all we have to do is use the ship to go to a safe time period. No big deal."
The others looked at eachother. "Oh! Duh," said Marle, "I can't believe we didn't think of that!"
"Let's all just sit back and wait, then," said Lucca, and she turned off the forward thrusters. The ship got sucked into the time gate. It closed, and Schala laughed, not even realizing that they'd probably be completely safe. The time gate closed.

As the ship was hurled through temporal limbo, Lucca soon realized that they weren't re-emerging anywhere. "Aha! I see what she tried to do," she said. "The time gate she opened wasn't meant to lead anywhere. It was just meant to hurl us into temporal limbo and trap us here forever. Heh, that's pretty clever, I'll give her that."
"But then wouldn't we eventually run into the End of Time and be able to get out relatively easily?" said Magus. Lucca thought about this.
"I'm not so sure about that. As far as I can tell, this place is infinitely huge, like the universe is, so the odds of us running into the End of Time are kinda slim. But forget that. Where do you guys wanna go?"
"The future. 2300 AD," said Crono. "We can investigate this further once we're there."
"Yeah, and you know something that just hit me?" said Lucca with sudden realization. "How come when I went into the future to get Doan, it wasn't all ruined? I mean, shouldn't it have been?"
"Something weird's definitely going on," said Marle.
"Are you still with us, Magus? I mean, I understand if you don't wanna go on, what with your sister getting possessed and all," said Crono.
"I'm tagging along with you, either until I get her back to normal or until she dies, like it or not," he replied. Crono nodded.
"Alright, here we go," said Lucca. She set the time gauge to 2300 AD: The Future and pulled the lever. A hole opened up in the fabric of the limbo and Epoch sped through it.

"I still don't understand it!!" Lucca said as she piloted above the wasteland. It looked exactly the same as it had the first time they came there. "This place was like paradise the last time I was here! What could've happened?!"
"Take it easy, dude," said Marle. "We'll find that out sooner or later. Right now I say we go back to wherever you got that program from and see if it has the whole thing there, Magus."
"The computer was in Arris Dome. If I understand correctly, it's where you three first heard about Lavos. And I've been thinking that maybe what was on the disk actually is the entire file. I didn't look through the whole thing the first time I read it. Maybe something happened and the thing just stopped recording. Something like that."
"I just got an idea," said Lucca. She pressed some buttons on the control panel.

PROGRAM NOT FOUND.

"What?!" Lucca shouted. She popped the disk out of the drive and looked at it closely. Nothing appeared to be physically wrong with it. "There's more going on here than I'd like to believe," she concluded.
"Let's go on to Arris Dome for now, and then we can figure things out from there," said Crono.

Arris Dome looked much the same as when they'd first been there. Doan was still the man in charge and all the people looked more or less the same.
"Hey Doan," said Lucca, "Do you remember me taking you to the past not too long ago?"
Doan squinted to get a better look at her. He almost couldn't recognize her because she didn't have those goggles on. "Oh! You're one a those young people who brought over that seed. Well, it actually growed into a 'plant' believe it or not! Why, I--"
"That's great. No offense though, but we're kind of in a rush. Do you remember me taking you into the past not too long ago?"
"I don't have the slightest idea what you're talkin' about, Lass," he answered politely. Lucca sighed heavily.
"Alright then, thanks. We'll see ya in a bit!" said Marle. Crono led everyone down into the basement.

As everyone had half-expected, the only thing that came up on the computer terminal when Lucca and Magus tried accessing the program was

PROGRAM NOT FOUND.

"Damn it!" said Lucca. She banged her palm on the panel and lowered her head.
"There's only one solution I can think of," said Crono. "We have to gather up all the help we can and fight Lavos. Unless anyone else has an idea, that's what we have to do."
Then a bunch of alarms went off. Some metal panels slid up on the wall, revealing some chutes for who-knows-what to come down, and the doorway was sealed off.
"Oh crap," said Marle.
A whole crapload of battle robots swarmed out of the chutes lining the walls. The four time travelers positioned their weapons.
"Marle," said Crono, "This doesn't look good, so if we don't make it through this, I want you to know that I love you."
"I love you too," said Marle.
The battle began when a spider-like thing shot out an electrical spider web, missing completely. Massive chaos ensued, and in the end, Crono, Marle, Lucca, and Magus came out on top, though they did sustain quite a few cuts and bruises, etc.
"That was the most excitement I've had since I had to fight you guys!" said Magus. Adrenaline was still pumping through his veins. "Let's go kick some more ass!"
"First we have to find a way out of here," said Lucca. She was already examining the door for a possible weak spot or something.
"You will stop immediately."
They all turned to where the voice was coming from, one of the chutes. They couldn't believe their eyes.
"Robo?!" said Lucca. "Boy, are we glad to see you!!" She ran to him, but as she approached he hit her with a left hook in the gut, reeling her back to the door again.
"Robo?! What's gotten into you??" Marle shouted.
"If you are referring to me when you say 'Robo', you are mistaken. My designation is R66-Y, leader of the R-Series line of combat robots, the remaining of which you have obliterated. I have been programmed for vengeance and vengeance is what I will carry out."
"Uggh..." said Lucca. "Robo--I mean, R66-Y, who programmed you for vengeance? I mean, since you're about to kill us it doesn't really matter whether we know or not, right?"
"I have been programmed not to give out that information. I must follow my programming and destroy all of you," said R66-Y.
"Guys, don't destroy him, or at least try not to," said Lucca as she recovered from the hit, "cause if you can just disable him then I can reprogram him back to the way he was."
"We'll try," said Crono.
R66-Y started out with emitting a strong electrical surge throughout the room, electrocuting everyone. As they stood there, stunned, R66-Y took the initiative and fired metal wire nets at all of them. As Magus recovered from the electric shock, he grabbed his scythe and tore through the thin steel with the curved blade. Marle didn't have quite so sharp a weapon, however, and Magus had to make a detour from R66-Y and free her before it got to her. Crono managed to get himself out of the net and freed Lucca from her net, and once they were all free, R66-Y had had enough time to charge up for another, stronger electric emission. This one knocked everyone unconscious.

"Ahhh!" Lucca woke up screaming. It wasn't because she was chained tightly to a snow-covered rock wall or that an ominous woman was staring at her, or even that she was stark naked (as were Crono, Magus, and Marle, but she hadn't noticed them yet); it was simply the shock of waking up that made her scream.
Then came the screams for all the things I just said.
"So you're finally up," said the ominous woman. "Glad someone finally is. I've been waiting here a good ten minutes for someone to wake up. Robo, you go over just around the corner. I need to talk to this person alone. I'll call for you if I need anything."
"Yes, Mistress," said Robo, and he plodded off around the corner.
"You called him Robo," Lucca observed.
"Yes, he told me his story and mentioned that you called him 'Robo'. I figured that sounded better (and was alot easier to say) than R66-Y, so I changed his name. Now, down to business. You can go ahead and ask me any questions you want. I think I'll let you four go eventually, since you can't time travel anymore and there's no one in this era that could possibly help you defeat me or anything like that. Now go on, ask away," said the ominous woman.
"First off," Lucca said groggily, "Why are all my clothes gone?"
"Oh, yeah, terribly sorry about that. Robo felt that since you had all those weapons and armor that you'd be a security risk, so he removed everyone's clothing and left it back in that dome. But you couldn't defeat me even if you had all your armor n' stuff, so there's no need for me to worry about you having it," the woman answered.
"Ok, now who are you?"
"Well, physically, I'm Schala Zeal. In terms of my mind and soul and spirit, I'm sort of like a mix between Lavos and Schala Zeal. See, over these past 300 years, Schala kind of forcefully integrated her personality into me so I'm more of a hybrid than anything. Think of me as a homogenous mix between Schala and Lavos, there's no better way to explain it."
Lucca took a moment to ponder this. Finally, she said, "Where are we?"
"Well, as you already know we're in 2300 AD, and this is Death Peak, which is just east of the Keeper's Dome. It's also the former locale of that guy's castle." She pointed to Lucca's immediate right, where Magus was still unconscious, chained to the snowy, rocky wall with no clothes on.
"And what's wrong with that stupid program that the last king of Guardia made? I think you know what I'm talking about cause I'm sure you're the one responsible for it."
"Oh, that? Hehe, I did that so you'd be forced to come to Arris Dome and try to figure out the rest, and then you'd get trapped."
"Um....ok, how did the world get destroyed? I'd always figured that Lavos used his physical self to destroy the world, but that's obviously not it."
"I used Schala's natural magic ability to take control of all computers and computer-controlled systems in the world, and I used them to make armies of destructive robots n' crap to lay waste to the planet. Of course, since Schala was integrated into my personality I've lightened up since then so I decreased the number of robots in the world, but I'm going to make sure the planet suffers as much as possible until its destruction."
"Why?"
"Because you people are the reason Lavos was destroyed and since I did used to be Lavos, I'm still pretty pissed off about that."
"So why not just kill us instead of killing the whole planet and going about your business so you wouldn't have to stay in this sorry place making sure it rots away?"
"Hmmm...." said Schala. "That's a good question. Oh well, too late to do anything about it now, hehe. Is there anything else before I let you go?"
"Two more things. First off, why can't we time travel anymore? What'd you do?"
"I destroyed your time ship and Robo broke your Gate Keys when he took your clothes off. What's your other que--" and she stopped because right then Magus woke up with a jolt.
"What the...? Where am I?" he asked himself and he looked around. First he saw Schala. "Who are you?" Without waiting for an answer he kept on looking around and his eyes stopped on Lucca. They widened and his mouth draped open, and he was on the verge of drooling.
"Oh great..." Lucca mumbled.
"So what was your other question, before I start snapping him out of it?" said Schala.
"I was going to request that you get us some clothes or something, so this," she nodded toward Magus, "wouldn't happen."
Schala laughed genuinely, and said, "I'll see what I can do. Robo!" she called.
Robo came rushing to the rescue. "Yes, Mistress?"
"See if you can't find these people some sort of clothes to wear."
"Right away," said Robo, and he plodded off to another section of the mountain.
"And, if that'll be all, Lucca, you'll have to excuse Magus and I," said Schala as she undid Magus's chains. He was still staring at Lucca, his eyes alternating between her legs and her chest. Schala practically had to drag him off to a place where he couldn't see Lucca.
A moment later, Robo came back with some clothes. "Where has the Mistress gone?" he asked.
"She went over there with Magus," said Lucca. He nodded and plodded off to there.
Another moment later, Robo returned and unchained everyone, careful not to let Crono and Marle fall to the ground after the restraints were gone.
"Thanks," said Lucca as she pulled the tie on her pants so that they'd tighten around her waist.
"Your well being is no concern of mine. I simply do as my Mistress commands. No more, no less. Therefore, your gratitude is meaningless," said Robo as he clothed Marle.
"Spoken like a true android, said Lucca, and she ran over and pressed a secret, camouflaged button on his back, deactivating him instantly. She opened up the panel on his back and fiddled with some of the wires and things inside. She pressed a few tiny buttons on a mini-control panel and crossed some more wires, then after examining her work, she smiled. She closed the panel and pressed the same camouflaged button, and Robo re-activated. He turned around to face her.
"Ah, Lucca. It is nice to see you again. What is going on?"
"Robo, listen to me because we don't have much time. You have to make it so that you can't be reprogrammed by anyone ever again, except maybe yourself. Do that right now, and then I'll let you in on some things. You have to trust me."
"I do trust you, Lucca. I will do as you say." Robo set up a few jamming signals and created some automatic subroutines, along with a complex network of other devices and programs, like a security lock-out on the control panel on his back. "That task is complete. Now what?"
"Now you have to go over there and try to knock out the woman without letting her know you're even there. Magus will be there too. You're gonna have to bring him back here and while you're doing that I'll try and think of something else, ok?"
"Affirmative," said Robo. He used the wheels on the bottoms of his feet to roll across the ground, so to not make any noise.
Thirty seconds later, Robo came running back, Magus trailing behing, still quite dazed from all of this. Lucca handed him his clothes and then they tried waking Crono and Marle up. However, this turned out to be more difficult than they'd anticipated, so Robo carried one of them over each shoulder and they all raced down the mountain.
"So you knocked her out, right?" said Lucca.
"Affirmative. She should be unconscious right now."
"So what exactly is going on?" asked Magus.
"Didn't she tell you?" said Lucca.
"No, she just said something about Lavos and the Ocean Palace that I honestly can't place any relevance to."
"Oh. Well, that was Schala and she said she was possessed by Lavos 300 years ago and over the years, Schala's personality sorta merged with Lavos's and now it's really an entirely separate entity all together," said Lucca.
"What?!" Magus replied, more from bafflement than shock.
"Forget it for now. We gotta get outta here."
Soon, they reached the base of the mountain and hightailed it for the sewer system, leading to Lab 32.
"Are we going to travel to a different era?" asked Robo.
"We can't. Schala told me she destroyed Epoch and you broke the gate keys," said Lucca.
"I have no recollection of dismantling the gate keys."
"That's because you did it before I reprogrammed you. See, apparently once you got here she did something to reprogram you to be her servant."
"If that is the case, then I apologize for any wrongdoing I have committed."
"Forget it. Not your fault," said Lucca.

Finally they made it outside the sewer and went to Arris Dome.
"We gotta be more careful this time so we don't trip any security systems or anything," said Lucca as they walked in the door.
"Y..you're back!!" said Doan. "What the devil is that robot doing with you? He's the one who captured you! We saw it with our own eyes!"
"Yeah but I reprogrammed him so he'd be our friend again. Hey, do you know where he left our clothes when he captured us? We've come to get 'em back."
"Well, we're not sure. When he brought you up here y'all were all naked, so I guess they're still downstairs. We woulda gotten them for you, but we were too scared to go down there," said Doan.
"Thanks."
Everyone's clothes were still in the computer room. The shirts and pants Schala had given them were fine, so all they did was put on the armor and get the weapons. Lucca looked for her gate key, and found it in pieces in one of the pockets.
"Aw man, we're screwed," she said.
"Or maybe not," said Magus. He was holding up his own gate key.
"Yes!" Lucca shouted happily. "Robo, how'd you miss that?"
"I am attempting to access my memory banks so that I may determine what I did while I was reprogrammed. It should only take-- I have gained access."
"Ok, so how'd you miss Magus's key?"
"I happened to look through your clothes first, Lucca, and once I had found your key, there seemed to be no point in searching everyone else's belongings for another one. In addition, I had no idea that Magus had his own key."
"Hey, come to think of it, neither did I! Magus, where'd you get that from?"
"I have my connections," he answered.
"Unnhhhh..." Marle groaned. "Wh...where are we...?" She looked up and saw that she was on Robo's shoulder, and freaked out, screaming and hollering."
"Take it easy, Marle! I made it so Robo's on our side again," said Lucca.

After alot of idle conversation and a ride on the highway through Lab 32, they went to Proto Dome and entered the time gate. By this time, Crono was awake too, because he was the only one Johnny was willing to race with and they had to wake him up in order to get past the lab.

"I see you're back. What brings you here?" said Gaspar.
"The Epoch got destroyed," said Lucca. "Schala, aka Lavos, did it."
"What?"
They had to explain the whole thing all over again. "Astounding..!" Gaspar reacted. "How could I not have known that when I keep track on everything that goes on in all the major time periods?"
"So, can you help us or anything?" asked Marle.
Gaspar took a minute to formulate a plan of action. Then he said, "Yes, I think this will work. What you have to do is somehow travel back to right after Robo captures you four. Then you take Epoch back before Schala gets to it, and finally, go back to 1999 AD once again and abduct Schala before King Guardia takes her to the place where Lavos died. That should do it."
"You mean, that will get me my sister back and it'll save the world from certain doom?"
"Yes. Lavos shouldn't be able to possess anyone else; the reason he could do it with Schala is that she was a Mystic."
"So Lavos could've just as easily possessed me?" asked Magus.
"I believe so. I think you should all just stay away from there completely," said Gaspar.
"That won't be a problem," said Crono.
"But how are we to travel to such a precise period in time without the Epoch?" asked Robo.
"I can do it," said Magus.
"How do you aim on doing that?" asked Marle.
"Because I have the power of the Black Wind on my side. I'm going to have to use a chant similar to the one I used to summon Lavos, but if I choose my words carefully I may be able to get the Black Wind to open up the correct time gate using my key."
"What's with this Black Wind? It seems like it's really powerful," said Lucca.
"Oh, it is," said Magus, "More powerful than anything else that ever existed. If it wanted to, it could kill Lavos itself in the blink of an eye. It could--"
"Alright, alright, we get the point," said Marle.
"Don't you need a special place to do your chants?" asked Crono.
"Yes, I do, and I would imagine that the best place would be Guardia Castle, preferably the one in 600 AD."
"Why the one in 600?"
"The Black Wind was born in 12,000 BC, around the time of Zeal's creation. Its power fades very gradually over time, though, so in 600 it would be more powerful than it would be in 1000."
"Alright, let's head to 600 AD. Thanks for all your help, Gaspar," said Crono.
"Don't mention it. Feel free to drop by at any time."

"Halt!! Stay right there and don't take another step!" said a castle guard.
"Hey, take it easy guys! It's us, remember?" said Marle.
"You guys can go ahead, but this one right here stays outside!" he replied, referring to Magus.
"Please, let us in. Magus has to come in with us; the fate of the world depends on it," said Crono. Only those three had come through the gate, since the Law of Conservation of Time prevented all of them from coming.
The two guards consulted eachother quietly, then turned back around. "Stay right here. We'll get the King."
"You better get away from the door, Magus, just in case," Marle suggested. Magus went back to the exit from Guardia Forest and waited.

"Crono, Marle! So nice to see you again. What seems to be the trouble?" asked King Guardia XXII (twenty-second).
"Well, we kinda need to let Magus in here so he can do something that could save the world, and your guards wouldn't let him in. We pleaded with 'em, and they went and got you," Marle explained. The king frowned.
"I'll let him in," he said suspiciously, "But only under your supervision. He isn't to go anywhere unless you two are right with him. Make sure he understands that. Now, what is it he needs to do?"
"Our time machine got destroyed, so Magus has to ask something called the Black Wind to open up a special time gate so we can get our machine back before it's destroyed," said Crono.
"Fair enough," said the king. That didn't completely make sense, but it sounded truthful enough.
"We also need to borrow one of the rooms in the castle," said Marle.
"Which one?"

As it turned out, the only room in the castle big enough for the ceremony was the entire throne room. It also had to be remodeled a bit so that it could look exactly like the one in Magus's castle did. The king was extremely reluctant to allow this, but since Crono had saved the kingdom, he figured he owed the kid one, so he gave them permission.

The room was redecorated so that it looked exactly like Magus's old chanting room, and Magus used shadow magic to make the whole place completely dark. Crono and Marle were to kneel beside him as he performed the ceremony. No one else was to be in the room and it was to be completely silent.
"Now is the time....the Black Wind howls...." said Magus. His arms were outstretched to his sides and his eyes were closed.
"Neuga, Ziena, Zieber, Zom...."
Parallel lines of blue torches, starting from the castle gate, began lighting up by themselves.
"Now the Chosen Time Has Come..."
The torches lit up all the way down the lines until they curved around the round carpet Magus was standing on and met on the other side.
Magus took the Gate Key from his pocket and held it straight up. "Open a gate.....To Epoch!"
A bolt of lightning came from nowhere and struck the Gate Key. It radiated, and emitted a concentrated energy beam at the six-armed statue in front of them. Upon contact, it spread out and created an orange time gate, unlike the usual blue ones they'd previously encountered. It started acting like a vacuum too, which was also fairly unusual.
"We've done it! Let's go in!" Magus shouted, trying to keep his voice above the sound of the wind.
Just at that moment, the front door of the castle was broken down, and there stood the two greatest heroes of the Middle Ages.
"Whoa!! What's going on in here?!" Toma asked.
"T.....'Tis a time gate..! And Magus!!" Frog shouted.
"No!! Not now... Not again!!" Magus cried.
The next thing anyone knew, all of them got sucked right into the time gate.

"What're we doing back here??" Marle asked. They were in the End of Time again.
"I'll tell you what we're doing here..." said Magus, "Thanks to these two dolts," and he gestured at Toma and Frog, "The Law of Conservation of Time sent us back to this hellhole again!!!"
"Hey, man, I don't want any trouble. I have no clue what's going on," said Toma, raising his hands defensively.
"Take it easy, Magus. It's not their fault," said Crono. "But why did you two break down the door?"
"We attempted knocking on the gate when we came to it and saw that nary a soul was around. However, no one answered, and I could hear an eerie noise of blowing wind from within. I was afraid that the King and Queen may've been in danger," said Frog.
"What were you doing there in the first place?" asked Marle.
"I had planned on visiting the Queen to check up on her well-being, and on the way I happened upon Toma. He offered to accompany me, and I accepted."
"This is all well and good," Magus said angrily, "But NOW what will we do?! There's no way that ignorant king'll let us do that again, and we once again have no way of getting the Epoch back."

Lucca, Robo, and Gaspar had been listening in on them. Gaspar decided to speak up. "Actually, you do have one more chance."
"And what's that, Old Man?" asked Magus. The tone of his voice suggested that he didn't believe him.
"The solution, put simply, is the Chrono Trigger. Please, follow me into my lab and I'll explain."
"But that thing shattered when we--" Lucca began.
"That's what I meant by 'I'll explain'."

Gaspar led them all, including Toma, into a secret room that seemed to have an invisible door. It was right across from Spekkio's place.
"Despite what your eyes tell you about the End of Time, this place really has almost unlimited resources. You just have to know where to look," he explained as he got a suitcase out of one of the cabinets lining the walls. He placed the suitcase on a table in the middle of the otherwise empty room.
"In here should be the solution to your problems," he said as he flipped up the latches. The suitcase opened up, and in the middle of a big, red cushion inside lay a small egg, perfectly shaped. He picked it up and displayed it for everyone to see. It glittered from a light with an untracable source.
"Whoa!! How much you want for that thing? I bet I could fetch a few thousand from that in San Dorino!" said Toma, who still had no clue what was happening.
"'Tis the Chrono Trigger! But what wilt thou require that for?" asked Frog.
"It's just the thing we need to get Epoch back in one piece," said Lucca.
"I do not understand how the Chrono Trigger is able to exist when we already used it to bring Crono back," said Robo.
"All I did was have Spekkio help me make another one. He knows this place like the back of his hand; he's been here for all eternity and knows where to find everything. It was just a matter of time and research," said Gaspar.
"But to use this, won't we have to go back to Death Peak?" Magus inquired.
"Yes, that's the problem. But if you want to save the world from certain annihilation, that's your only course of action."
"So that's settled. We go back to 2300 and Death Peak. Who's gonna go, though? There can only be three of us," said Lucca.
"I cannot go. There is always the chance that Schala will find a way to break through my defense parameters and reprogram me again," said Robo.
"I still don't know what the heck's goin' on," said Toma.
"I'm going. I don't care who protests it; it's my sister up there," said Magus.

In the end, after some debate, the party winded up being Crono, Frog, and Magus. Marle and Lucca were deemed too weak and Toma didn't have any magic, which happened to be the same reason they didn't just go and get Ayla to help.

Before venturing into the sewers, Crono insisted that they check up on the people of Arris Dome. The people were about the same as the last time they'd visited, so they went through the sewers.

Climbing up the windy part of the mountain wasn't all that difficult, just a little tedious, what with having to hide behind all the trees and such. Soon they made it to the part infested with monsters.
The monsters were incredibly easy to defeat.
"So, we are to somehow find safe passage around Schala in order to get to the peak of the mountain, so that we may go back in time and rescue the Epoch before she destroys it a few hours ago?" Frog went over it one more time.
"Yeah, that's the plan, pretty much," said Crono. Frog nodded, and they continued up the mountain.

"I see you're back for more!!" said Schala. This time she was quite preturbed. "I can't believe Lucca reprogrammed Robo on me!! That wasn't very fair, you know! And to think, I was gonna let you go! This is how you repay me?! Knocking me out like....Hey, how'd YOU get here?" she asked Frog.
Magus whispered to Crono, "She still thinks we've been in this era the whole time," and half-snickered. Unfortunately for them, Schala had extremely good hearing (probably due to magic) and replied,
"You mean you found a way to leave the era??? How the hell did you do that??"
"We're not going to bother explaining it to you," said Crono. "We've come here for a purpose, and that purpose we will fulfill. If you could step aside, we'd appreciate it, but if you prefer, we could always do battle again."
"No, Crono, you can leave that to us," said a voice from behind.
"Doan?! Whatst thou do on this mountain?" Frog exclaimed.
Doan was standing there, with all the people of Arris Dome behind him in a sort of battle batallion. "We're here to fight for our future! After you guys told us what you were doing, I decided we should help out. And if distracting her is what needs to be done, then let it be done!" he shouted. The people behind him cheered.
Schala laughed hysterically. "You think you rejects can keep me distracted for more than a minute? These guys right here are the greatest warriors who ever lived and I still beat them with practically one hand tied behind my back! Why, I..." and she went on into this long speech to everyone, completely ignorant to the fact that Crono, Magus, and Frog were scurrying behind her, towards the top of the mountain.
While the people down below got slaughtered, it was decided above that Crono would be the one to use the Chrono Trigger, since aside from Lucca, he had the deepest connection to Epoch and the only way to use the Chrono Trigger effectively is when you're trying to save someone you genuinely love. This, of course, was a bit of a problem, since there's really no way to love a time machine, but you take what you can get.
As it happened, the Chrono Trigger rose into the air from Crono's hands and shattered. An eclipse ensued, covering the sun up completely.
Then, suddenly, there they were, just a few hours before. Everything was perfectly still, and they were outside in 2300 AD outside of Arris Dome. Schala was standing there in front of Epoch, building up energy or something to destroy it, while Robo watched beside her. Crono, Marle, Lucca, and Magus were all lying there on the hard ground, unconscious and completely naked.
"I'm afraid I do not care to know," said Frog. He was, of course, referring to the four naked people on the ground.
"Well, what are we waiting for? Let's get in and get back to the others," said Magus.
"Wait, don't we need to return to Death Peak first?" asked Crono.
"What's the point? This is a time machine; we can use it as we please."
"I think 'twould be wiser to bring it back to the mountain before anything else. These are, after all, special circumstances, in that time is frozen right now," said Frog. Magus pondered this, and eventually was forced to agree. They opened up the glass bubble over the cockpit and climbed in, then they closed it and started the engines. They flew back into the black void where they'd just come from, and once back on Death Peak, Crono set the time gauge to 'The End of Time' and pressed the lever before anyone still on the mountain knew what was going on.
"You did it!!" Marle greeted them when the glass bubble popped open.
"Good job," said Gaspar.
"Now all we gotta do is get Schala!" said Lucca.
"Will we all go to do that?" asked Robo.
"I just wanna get back home, if it's all the same to you guys," said Toma, who still didn't have much of a grasp on just what exactly was happening.
"Here, follow me," said Marle, who was getting slightly irritated with Toma's ignorance. She brought him to the light pillar that lead to Truce Canyon, 600 AD, and told him to walk into it. "It'll take you to Truce Canyon. Ya think you can find your way back from there?"
"Sure. Thanks, dude," said Toma, and he shook her hand. He walked into the light and disappeared.
Marle turned around to face the others again. "Well, that's that. Let's go get Schala!"
Everyone except Gaspar piled into Epoch. Lucca set the gauge to '1999: The Day of Lavos", and was about to pull the lever when she thought of something. "Hey! Why don't we see if that program from 2300 works now that we're in the End of Time? It should be out of Schala's range now."
"What's the point? We already know what happened," said Magus.
"Well, yeah, but this is our last chance to see it. Once we rescue Schala, the future that this was created in won't exist anymore."
"Eh, why not? Pop it in," said Marle. Robo was the only one who got a little uneasy when Lucca said that the bad future wouldn't exist anymore. The future which he was created in. He didn't say anything, though.

Lucca put the disk in the slot and it asked for a password. "So far, so good," she said. She typed 'Lavos', and it opened up the program. She accessed the video and fast-forwarded it to the part where it cut off back when they watched it in 1000 AD.
"The whole mess just disappeared. Lavos, its shell, the three mystery-people," King Guardia LXVIII narrated. The scene switched back to him in Arris Dome. "That's when the strange woman calling herself 'Schala' demanded that we take her there so she could look it over and see what happened. That's just what we did, and once we got there, we found that one of the people who had entered Lavos's shell was there again, along with two other women and a man with a cape." It switched back to footage of King Guardia, Queen Leene II, Schala, Crono, Marle, Lucca, Magus, the Epoch, and a huge hole in the ground.
"Schala!!!!!" Magus yelped joyfully. He spread his arms and half-ran to Schala. She just stared at him, a little bewildered. Once he had his arms around her, she said,
"P...prophet?! What in blazes are you doing here??"
This took Magus a few seconds to figure out, and then he remembered that the last time she'd seen him, it had been him as the Prophet in the Ocean Palace.
"True, I was the Prophet, but I'm also your little half-brother, Janus!"
"What?! How is that possible??" she asked. A queasy feeling came over Magus, because right then he realized that he'd have to explain everything that had happened since he first got transported to the Middle Ages.
"Please, I'll explain all of it later. Right now, I'm just so glad to finally see you again..." he said, and tears ran down his face.
"Schala...?" said the Queen, "This is your little brother that you told us got thrown into that time gate thing ten thousand-odd years ago?"
"Well, that's what he says....I'm not quite sure myself," said Schala. "I--"
"And that's when the whole thing sorta got freaky," the King narrated. As he said that, Schala started glowing deep purple. A blood-red kind of mist was entering her body, and a split second later, she raised her hands and everyone else shot up six feet in the air and just stayed there.
Before any of them knew it, all of them were suspended in mid air.
"Hunhhh?" said Marle. Her pendant was radiating again, even more intensely than a few minutes before.
"Ha ha ha ha ha!!" said Schala, from on the ground. Now she wore a crown just like the one Queen Zeal had been wearing. The front of it looked like Lavos's head, complete with the hypnotic eyes.
"Schala?!" Magus yelped.
"You thought you could defeat me. But I've possessed this foolish girl's body now and I'll lay waste to the entire world in return for you killing me!"
"So this is what happened to the world," said Crono.
"Well what're we waiting for?! Let's get her!!" said Marle.
"Yeah, we can't let Lavos destroy the world again!" said Lucca.
"'Again'..?" said Schala. She pondered this for a second. "Oh yeah, you mean back in 12,000 BC? Heh heh, yeah, that was fun. Now I get to do it all over again!"
Lucca began charging up to cast a spell at Schala. Magus noticed her doing it.
"No!! You can't kill my sister!" he cried. He cast his own quick spell at Lucca to distract her.
"Ha ha ha ha ha! Thanks, 'brother'! I'll pay you back by sending every last one of you into some other time period so you get stranded!! Now don't you go anywhere, because this might take me a few minutes to do and I'll have to let you down so I can get up enough power to do it," said Schala. She let them all down and concentrated.
"Wh...what's going on?!" the King asked desparately, once his feet were planted on the ground.
Lucca came to everyone's rescue. "King Guardia and Queen Leene, you two need to get back in your helicopter and hightail it back to the castle as fast as possible. Try and kill her as fast as you can or else your planet's gonna be doomed!"
Again, the King's narration came in. "By this point I was quite befuddled, and I figured we'd just better do as she told us to do. Without saying a word, Leene and I stepped back into our helicopter and I told the pilot to get us back to the castle as fast as possible.
"After we got there, we watched the whole thing on TV, thanks to our camera-mounted watch towers and satellites. I bet those satellites are still up in space, transmitting meaningless signals back and forth to eachother. Heh heh.
"Anyway, on TV, Schala had opened up a weird portal-thing. The two women and the strange man were already sitting in their own airplane, but the one who had stepped inside Lavos's shell was still outside, apparently being drawn into the portal. Then, I don't quite know how, but the man outside grabbed onto his sword very tightly and it started flying toward his plane. It got stuck there and he managed to climb into the ship from there, as you're seeing from the footage. I'll just quit narrating for now and let the video show what happened."
It showed the whole episode, how Epoch tried to take off, but the gravity of the time gate was too strong, and then the ship was pulled in and the gate closed.
The king narrated, "I was pretty scared at this point; that woman had just defeated the people who had singlehandedly defeated Lavos without lifting much of a finger. And I had the right to be scared too."
The video switched to an overview of the country. It was nice and green, the forest being large and looking quite healthy. Then the whole thing seemed to be fast-forwarding. Lucca pointed out,
"This must be a thing showing what happened over a long period of time. Y'know, like in school when they show a video of a seed blossoming into a flower in like, ten seconds."
And that's exactly what it was. In the span of less than a minute, the land started out lush, green, and healthy. By the end, the land was brown; the forest was gone; the castle lay in shambles, spread out over the land (Lab 16), and the same had happened to Leene Square (Lab 32), which had grown considerably since 1000 AD. The entire continent was completely misshapen and looked nothing like what it was before. Then, the domes appeared. Arris Dome took the place of Truce Village; a sewer system was erected south of it, which led to Keeper's Dome, where Medina used to lie. Bangor Dome came about where San Dorino had lain, 1400 years earlier, and the northern and southern continents moved together, crushing Zenan Bridge. To top it all off, Trann Dome replaced the place where Porre used to be.
Then the narration happened again. "You'd think this time elapse was taken over the course of, say, ten years. Well, no, this entire process took less than a year. Can you believe it?! One year!! And you wanna know the way it happened? It was the damned R- Series robots. That's what it was. Ironically, I had been the one who created them.
"The R-Series was a group of seven robots, built and programmed to enforce the law in a fair and just way. The leader of these robots was R66-Y; he was distinguishable from the others because he was a golden color while the other six were purple. He was considerably more advanced than them in every way. They'd worked absolutely wonderfully, until Schala somehow found a way to completely reprogram them and turn them against us. She must've told them to get rid of all plant life and lay waste to the entire kingdom. Then she had two factories built, to make more robots so she could make her reign of terror absolute. One was east of Leene Square, as you'll see here, and the other was built on what used to be Choras Village.
"After all that was done, for some unknown reason the robots started making these domes everywhere and putting up things called Enertrons, which we'd begun designing before Lavos came. Apparently, these things were built to keep us alive, though why she wanted to do that was anybody's guess. We accepted these things as gifts and moved into them, since we had nowhere else to go.
The view switched back to the King. "And that brings me back to where I am now. It's been about two years and I don't have much time to live. I have no idea where Schala headed off to; she's probably somewhere laughing at me as I speak. This is where I stop. So long, to anyone who might be reading this." The King reached forward and pressed some buttons, and the screen turned black.

PROGRAM ENDED. PRESS ENTER TO RERUN THE PROGRAM. PRESS ALT TO EJECT DISKETTE FROM DRIVE.

"There's your answer. Can we go now?" Magus said impatiently.

And so Lucca pulled the lever and they appeared above Leene Square in the year 1999 AD. In the distance they saw Lavos erupting from the ground north of Medina Village, and they even saw themselves flying above Medina Village in the Epoch. But they couldn't worry about any of that.
Lucca took the ship above Guardia Castle and waited for King Guardia LXVIII, Queen Leene II, and Schala to step out into the skyway. When they did, Lucca fired a mild laser blast, shattering the glass and stupefying the three people inside. Epoch swooped down and the glass bubble popped open.
"Goodbye, my friends," said Robo, "Take this disk and give it to me in 2300 AD so that I may remember you." He handed a CD to Marle, Magus pulled Schala aboard, and Robo vanished.
"Robo..?" said Marle. She was holding the CD, but decided not to say anything till the coast was clear.
"We'd better get outta here before they start firing at us," said Lucca, and she reset the gauge to 'The End of Time' and pulled the lever.
"Where hath Robo gone?" Frog asked when they'd come out of the ship and once again stood in the End of Time.
"He was never created, apparently," said Magus, actually showing a touch of sadness, even in his joy for getting Schala back.
"Huh? Robo? That big, gold thing that was with you two back in Zeal?" Schala asked, pointing out Crono and Marle. She looked around and spotted the old man at the lamp post. She squinted to take a closer look. "Gaspar?! Is that you???" she exclaimed and walked over to him.
Gaspar tipped his hat. "Yep, it's me, Mistress. How've you been?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, I've been a bit shaken up," said Schala, trying to ignore the people staring at her from behind. "First, the whole bit in the Ocean Palace happened--I'm pretty sure you remember that-- and then I come to find out that Lavos just erupted from the ground in the time period I got thrown into, and now these people come and abduct me completely spontaneously and bring me here. All in all, it's been a pretty rough day."
"Frog, Robo's in 2300 AD," Lucca answered, though it was a little late. "Since the future was always good, he was never there for us to pick up, and--well, it's complicated. But, if we went to see him he definitely wouldn't remember us at all."
"I'm not so sure about that," said Marle, and she showed Lucca the CD. "Robo gave this to me right before he disappeared and told me to give it to him in 2300 AD so he would remember us."
Lucca took the CD and smiled. "That little...Man, he's smart!! Once we install this in his programming all the memories n' stuff he's gathered since I fixed him back in Proto Dome will be back!! That rules!!" she shouted happily.

And so, everything went considerably well from then on. Magus decided to release his spell on Frog because he was so happy, and Frog turned back into Glenn. He went back to his own time and explained everything to King Guarda XXII and Queen Leene, and that turned out fine. Everyone visited 2300 AD and it looked magnificent, even better than 1000 AD. Guardia Castle still had its original design in the midst of all the add-ons, and the villages were exactly the same. Lucca found R66-Y and installed the CD into his programming, and all that worked out for the best.
Magus and Schala decided to settle down and live together in Medina Village, 1000 AD. Magus wanted to go to 1999, but Schala insisted that they stay close to their friends and that was that.

Crono and Marle finally moved out of Crono's mom's house and got a place of their own, and soon Marle got pregnant and had a girl. King Guardia XXXIII and Marle finally got on good terms with eachother and established a healthy father-daughter relationship.
As for the incident of Lucca going into the future and getting Doan and thinking everything was just spiffy, they never did figure that one out. Lucca eventually just assumed that Schala/Lavos had created a giant illusion and made Lucca think everything was hunky-dorey, and she probably disguised herself as Doan.
That just about wraps all that up. Everyone had a happy ending, except of course for Lavos, and we all know what happened to him.

End of Part III