Right.
So let's take, for example, that basic substance of life that we call 'air', and the manner in which we ingest the compounds within. D'you know if you're really breathing air? Or do you just think you're breathing air? Maybe it's really water and you don't know because the universe exists inside of a raindrop in the twelfth dimension and we're really all automatons of the great dreamer that is fate, anyways.
Dragonites would call that being the Planet. Pleasant nightmares, mate.
Uh - yeah. Whatevah. Point is that like I said, there are very few confirmable facts in the universe... if you ask them philosophy blokes with all that relativity shit runnin' through their heads (heh - I so psyched ya ). Schala coulda been a philosopher, since she'da thought that disagreein' with anyone would make her awful and hateful and mean and philosophers luv more than anything to be 'open' to stupid possibilities instead of up and doin' stuff. 'Cept even she took a chance and up and offed herself at the end, so there you go. I was never that lame atfer all. And Kid Zeal? Kid Zeal and this dagger says that philosophers talk out of their arses, and there are lots and lots and lots of confirmable facts in the universe, an' if you just think em through you're halfway to an answer already.
So. Facts. When you've just been spat out into the time stream like so much stale gum, facts are good. Like starch or something - helping you hold up and get yer bearings back.
Fact #1 - Harle is a nutcase. And I don't mean like before, when she was all obsessed with Serge and devious and putting on wierd accents to cover up that hissing sound she's always making and tryin' to manipulate the world into a fun new humanless epoch (dressed as a bloody clown no less... but we must all accept each other for our differences no matter what). Now, though... now she's just a screechin' loony.
Er, mentally handicapped person.
Bollocks.
Even Angels Lose
Their Way
02 - fact
New Porre City, 2013 - Unified
FATEd Timestream (Lavos Entity, Chronal Trigger/Cross ++)
fact (fahkt)
n.
Etymology: Latin factum, from
neuter of factus, past participle of facere
1.Knowledge or information based
on real occurrences
2.a)Something demonstrated to
exist or known to have existed
b)A real occurrence;
an event
c)Something believed
to be true or real
3.A thing that has been done,
especially a crime
4.Law: The aspect of a case at
law comprising events determined by evidence
Fact #2 - Harle is not supposed to be here. Harle was supposed to have merged with the Dragon God and gotten melted into their big ol' mobile computer blob. Except.. she was never really a Dragon God, was she? She was like Dragon God Junior Espionage Model, eh? So she couldn'tve been. But then if she was never part of the Dragon God, her memories woulda gotten erased like the rest of 'em, right? Although she was never like the rest of 'em either - all those people like Norris an' what have you. Part of that temporal freakshow that was Dinopolis, not one of them descendants of the Time Crash. There was only ever one Harle in both dimensional fragments after all.
Hell, a bloody overgrown genetically enhanced Reptite fabricated from the stuff of another dimension to be mother earth's version of the secret police is what she is. So her memories wouldn't be erased by the Chrono Cross since the only dimensions united and wiped clean-like were the one with Serge an' the one without him... what'd Lucca call em? FATEd Timestream A and FATEd Timestream B. She was part of whatever human-free zone Dinopolis came from. Heh. Lucca always liked her project titles. Like yours truly - Project Kid.
Okay, revise Fact #2.
Ahem.
Fact #2 - Harle is still alive, still packing heat, and actually supposed to be here. An' apparently reeeeally pissed off at me too, though I've got no clue why. Still in love with Serge too I gather from her insane rambling. That's bloody brilliant. Oi - Leena's better than psycho lizard gel (except she's really just misunderstood, and I shouldn't judge her that much, because she's probably very lonely and a nice person deep deep down inside).
Fact #3 - Fact #1 + Fact#2 = Bad.
***
Ribcage heaving, knees still skinned, and with a machete she'd.. errr.. freed from the faschist repression of the local corner store, Kid Zeal hugged a corner. Or rather, the corner, because there weren't really any other suitably shady corners in sight. Streetlights had that effect on things - all glowing and orange and awful. Flickerly, unreliable candles make the thief's heart grow fonder (well, not that she'd really steal anything that she didn't really really really need, right. Because that's wrong and whatnot. Now. Right. Damn conscience.) Or.. something.
In dark, shadow corners it's easier to make out light. No particular reason why - or maybe there was, but Kid thought it was mostly human nature. So she saw the cop car quite clearly speeding around the corner, and heading strait past being at her. Damn good luck, that. This alley was a dead-end.
There was a square out there. Lots of squares in this place. Big polygon buildings of glass - no domes yet, just all angles and the like with the air still breathable. A good sign for Serge, at least. Bad news being that even though the night air runnin' suprisingly fresh on her skin was non-toxic, there were enough people in New Porre City to make looking for her best mate about as enjoyable as looking not for a needle in a haystack, but a needle somewhere in ten haystacks with rats that bit and the like. Harle bein' the rat, of course. Stupid bitch.
It was easy to swear about Harle, even though a part of her felt disturbingly bad because of the cops chasing her. Kid Zeal - assaulter of women with stupid accents an' runaway hooker that needs help to solve her shatterin' life issues n' all. Hooker? If she wasn't so busy running from the law shed'a kicked their asses so hard....
Patches of orange light tangoed an amateurish beauty with the streetscape, birthing an odd reflected glow in the sky. Different watching and being there, y'see. It never felt much like a labyrinth when you were watching it from the bubbles, and it always kinda skipped over those gross winos huddles in the corner. Not proper viewing for a young lady of taste (or a baby world devourer) that. And damn did it smell nasty. No stars in this place either - not a good sign.
Well, that and the barking. For the love of... they'd set out dogs. Make that needle in a haystack with rat poison and moustraps, and...
Getting closer. The spotlight beams of halogen flashlights scoured the night for her presence, and those noses weren't to be fouled by a evening mist and exhaust fumes and conveniently placed shadow o' the modern urban landscape.
Getting closer. On your trail now, girl. This sound familiar luv? Cept last time this happened, there was less jail and more you being a little kid and no Serge and where the hell could he be? She was already all over the news and rubbish by now, according to the screen things they'd had in that lobby place, and there were helicopters and the like. Serge hadn't ever been too up on killing stuff that could talk to you - well, neither was Kid, mind - but if he was around he'd at least've taken down a helicopter for her. Right? Right? He wasn't that easily confused, right? He'd been slow on the uptake with that whole dimension bit, but he'd managed beautifully after awhile, and he wouldn't get too thrown off by all the substances and devices and such that just sorta floated to the forefront of her mind like foam when she needed it to, right?
Yanking a soiled blanket, half-invisible in the orangey substitute for a nonexistant moonlight, away from the mumbling old bastard with the greasy beard was easy. So was covering herself with it to make the scent, to stop herself from retchin', and huddlin' to the wall.
Nothing to it. The more things change - like men in uniforms tromping about with big vicious animals, persuing hapless Kids through the street over matters what didn't concern 'em, - the more they stayed the same.
Yeah.
Right.
Problem here being that in this time there were so many of them it was like solider ants swarming the place, that she was gonna be under this blanket twenty bleedin' years if she wanted to wait this out.
Hearing the pad and the military tromping pass by, and noting that the old looney was starting to tug at her disguise in a not too appeizin' way, the fugitive took off. Unconciously swerving right and left, here and there, through the back passages and in the foliage-laden darkness that the city's bare allowance of nature produced. Heading nowhere, which was where he was, and where her body seemed to be taking her without thinking, since a daughter of Lavos has gotta survival instinct above all, doesn't she?
The place she'd never thought of (but the spawn had - the spawn was wily and ancient and lived in the planes of the unconcious where the half-fragment of its soul could dream away exile from apparent corporeality). The safest place on earth. Cuddled up to the tumor itself like a security blanket. Home sweet malignant home ten years before the surgery hit.
The Underground.
***
Fact #3 - There's no bloody way I'm finding Serge here, and it makes me feel like causing severe bodily harm to something. Or panicking. Panicking is good. Bloody hell! Does no one ever get a bloody happy ending in this stupid story? I ain't asked for much, really, just to not get amnesia all the time or be part o' a big giant space bug, and maybe see me little brother once n' a while. Nothin' unreasonable all things considered - being as how I've got this habit of saving the universe an' all. But nope. That ain't in the cards for you, gel, because fate is a right bitch. Nothin' for you but a deranged loony on your tail and and your best mate up some creek Lavos knows where...
I'd be kinda depressed - me, the indomitable Kid Zeal - if I had time to think about it. Schala'd be depressed. And... oh, blast it. I am being depressed. Snap the hell out of it!
Anyways, fact is the if he hasn't come round and that witch Harle hasn't found him, he's likely not here. Bugger all.
Fact #4 - I've been alone for fourteen thousand years, I have.. or eight, if that's how you wanna look at it. And M'tired. Tired of feeling like there's nothing else out there - like existance is just black and black and black and bubbles I can only look into like looking-glass moresels prepped for the kill. I don't even got revenge anymore, do I, so there's no Lynx for me to chase... there's nothing. And this is stupid and weak, and foolish, and NOT the indomitable Kid Zeal...
Thsi is one hundred percent Schala Zeal, and the Ashtear don't like it one bit.
But I'm just so tired. The one time I find someone who might remotely understand how fucked up my existance is (other than me brother, of course, an' I better tyke out o' this if he doesn't wanna get hurt), and they up and disappear like the rest of 'em. What's the use of being the indomitable Kid Zeal if nobody else is indomitable an' your stuck wanderin' about doing jack all like stome stupid sad homeless wench? It's easier when you just got the mission - the hunger for bloody or energy or that pulsin' lava in the earth. That's straightforward, mate. And there ain't much ever been straitforward to yours truly.
***
"Hallo 'Dad'," Kid's boot scuffed at the ground beneath her. She was, at the moment, somewhere deep beneath the streets of New Porre City. There was yelling somehwere behind her - apparently someone was trying to get a service car running - but she'd taken care of any immediate persuit with a blst of flame to the wiring that ran by the tracks. Heh. Bloody computers never knew what hit 'em. At'd show them for having an automated system.
She was also running a bit faster and feeling a bit better. Well, as well as completely and totally without remorse for having grabbed an unopened chocolate bar from a small child during the short rampage through the subway station which had preceeded her jogging off into the tunnels. Confusion was bad, but chocolate was always good. An' acting like that (she could see the headlines of the 'morrow already: "Mad Arsonist Prostitute Steals Candy and uses Voodoo Powers to Blow Up Control Station. Also, Alien Baby Born to Bearcow in Guardia") made her feel all closer to her family. Kinda like being underground did. Which was prolly all connected, if she thought about it, which she didn't.
"Ever-so pleasant to sense you again," and the power was strong - radiating upwards to energize the mass of humanity above. Its children. 'Course, she was its child too.. but in a more literal sense. Oi. Wait until Serge heard about that one. Like a bloody comic book, they were. The Adventures o' Serge and Kid : the Assassin of Time and the 1/3 Parasitic Space Bug.
"This is all your fault, you know!" the aforementioned 1/3 Space Bug glared down a the ground, which she was also feeling an uncomfortable urge to lick. Her English was for once unaccented - Schala Zeal was the one with the huge Parasitic Space Bug issues, not Kid. "If you'd left well enough alone all of this would be fine!"
Lavos didn't seem intent on responding. Not that she'd ever met the chap. Feh. Fathers were deadbeats, the lot of them (except of course for her poor deceased father, a white knight likely the victim of Queen Zeal's cruel whims).
In spite of this, the lifeforce beneath her feet fairly thrummed with interest.
"Bet you just want me to get rid of Harle, eh mate? I know how your kind thinks."
It thouht in terms of oblivion. That she knew well. And she could destory Harle, once and for all, leave her nothing but a shell. Stupid... arrrg. She was nothing. She was opposite and nothing and she deserved to be destoryed. it all did. And then everything would be perfect because...
Oh, hell.
"I'm not playing that game, do you hear me?" it was damn in here - and cold. But as her attire suggested, Kid Zeal could feel warm whenever she pleased. Mmm. Her blood, the center of the earth - those would be hot. Like a nice sauna.
But...
Guess the whole Schala conscience thing might be useful after all.
"She's needed, y'see. To keep a balance between them and us. D'you understand Lavos? I happen to like this world. It goes to hell and I'll never find Serge if he's in the future tense."
Except that sounded really selfish. The closer she was to Lavos, the more she felt like...
Well that didn't matter. She'd figure it out after the Serge-rescuing. Right. Gotta keep on the ball here. Was that an explosion she just felt? Bollocks. Harle'd probably blocked off the one side to trap her in. Cornered like a bloody rat.
Kid did not like to be cornered. it did not feel like fire, or warmth, but burning.
Then the smoke came. All around her... stupid.. arg! It was not gonna make her cry. Those human blokes thought they could smoke her out, eh? And Harle'd be waiting.
Well let 'em try. Just
let those bastards try.
***
Fact #5 - Getting what Schala (errr.. I) did - really getting it - scares the shit outta me. When I was Schala I didn't get the value of indominability, and in the end that screwed me an' the brother up royally, didn't it?
Oi! I'm royalty now. Real high-class. Beauty.
Fact #6 - So it's decided then. I gotta find him for me own sanity and since you just gotta know that he's buggered without me (it's nice to think that someone would be buggered without me - Schala'd've gone all gushy by now. It's all warm and fuzzy-like.. sorta like takin' a steam-bath in the earth's core and then eating your way out. A big warm yummy marshmallow bath). Easier said than done, but that's the new mission. You can't dispute the facts, mate. They're indomitable too.
Fact #7 - It was settled a long time ago. Schala'd think - and I agree, bein' her and all - that if you can find someone who'll switch over dimensions and jaunt through the timestream to save your arse, you damn well better go save theirs. Errr.. assuming it needs saving. Which I'm gonna, since I've got no bloody clue whatsoever where he is, an he's all helpless by himself, poor bloke.
Fact #8 - I really ought to be thinking more about the insane dragonite chasin' me, oughtn't I?
***
"You are lost, ma chere?"
Or not.
A figure in the distance. A figure headed towards her natural, mortal enemy. Making herself the hard place to the wall of roch and pavement that had crumbled behind her foe. "Zut allors. It eez, how do you say - distresssssing."
And she was dropping the accent too - going sibilant and darker. Serpent in the depths.
"What do you want, Harle?"
That had seemed like something to say, when she choked it out. Harle's eyes were hidden in the mists and what was probably a gas mask.
Maybe, though, she already knew what the Dragon was thinking.
Harle gave a chiding tisk with her forked tongue. Without that stupid hat the large horns she sported became very apparent. "Ah, no. That.... iss not the question, 'cherie'. What iss more interesssting to me iss why you were sstupid enough to come here."
"You crazy bint," with a wave of her hand, Kid sent a Bushwasker spell reeling through the corridor to get rid of the tear gas. A touch of water still pricked her eyes. "I dunno what you're talking about. Just lemme out of here and we're good, alright?"
"Why would I do that? I underssstand now. You lied to me. You've sssuffered nothing!" A bolt of lightning crackled through the tracks, sending Kid sprawling. The advance was inexocrable. Harle too was ancient, and the ages infused her with something Kid had never seen before. "How long hasss it been for you? Just a day? A week maybe? Did it take you even a moth to sssskip all that time? You deserve nothing, Lavos-Spawn. I am the one who hass waited. The one who's been denied! You made a promissse to me, and you lied."
Righting herself with a groan, Kid blinked a thought into existance.
"You've been alive all this time, haven't you? Makin' sure the demi-humans made it through instead of dyin'? That's why there's no domes in this dimension anymore, innit? I never left the united timestream."
The shrouded stare said yes. Luckily, the lightning bolt had started some squatter's trash on fire. She hoped he wasn't still in there.
"And you haven't seen 'im, have you?" the smirk, working its way through unfamilkiar cheeks, slowly made it's way up to her eyes.
"Of course I haven't... wait, you know?"
"I do now."
"Then...."
"I haven't been lookin' for him at all, Harle," Kid mocked. "But I guess I know where I gotta go to do so, eh? Thanks for taking a few millenia offa my list."
".... I, no! Unnatural thing. Thiss stops here."
It was then that the cadre of gunmen behind the Dragon made them selves apparent. Police. Fucking police.
"Oh really? Luv the posturing, Harle, but this ends on my terms."
It was almost... funny.
Hah! Cornered like a bloody fish in the bloody sea was more like it. Stupid wench. Nobody beat her! Nobody! Poor Harle - always second best to the maginificent Kid Zeal, eh? Mother Earth was weak. Like a big giant apple just waiting for the worm. Fat lot of good powers giveg to you by a big, giant, wormy apples are gonna do.
"Coz if I've ben runnin' about the time stream, that means that this place must be temporally weak for me to have done that in the first place..." you didn't spend millennia eating dimensions without knowing a few things about the malleability of time streams. "Really ought to work on your villainous cliches to scream at me, though."
Er, a villain that saved the world's air quality apparently. But she wasn't gonna think about that. Not while there was still some fleetin' daydream running about her skull where destorying the world seemed like a bloody good idea right about now. Serge'd help her fix that, right? That's what best mates are for, the curbin' of the ol' xenocidal impulses.
Though it would be so pretty.... they could watch it together an'...
"I'll see you.. sometime."
***
Fact#9 - Harle seemed to know what was going on, sorta. Well, more'n I, which aint' saying much but you've gotta go with what you're given. Said I cheated her somehow. That I've been looking for him... travelling through time, wasn't it? That was? Oi! That's it!
Fact #10 - Harle said she ain't seen him, and Harle's been living in the linear timestream. Meaning he's somewhere back before her or after right now - somewhere I gotta get. Harle's also bloody pissed at me, because of something I don't remember doing, which means I did do it in the past.. where Serge ain't, but maybe the way to Serge is.
Fact #11 - Lavos save me, I think I know how to do this.
Fact #12 - Lavos save me? I am so buggered. Bugger bugger bugger. Bugger all. Now I've even gotta conscience 'bout using real curses, which is just blod- um, 'really' stupid. Really stupid.
***
Not caring where she went, yet liking the renewed feeling of control this was giving her, Kid Zeal raised her astral amulet and vanished into thin air.
The soldiers gaped as expected. Madamoiselle Arcange "Harlequin" de la Septieme, fortunately, didn't have much of a problem with obliterating their worthless Lavos-tainted bodies.
