Magus: *sigh* Before yaoiboy gets here, I should warn you that in this part of his story, he has my younger counterpart defiled.

Janus: Yeah *sniff*

Yaoiboy: *enters* Hey! Get back in your cages!!!

Magus: *mutter*

Janus: *sniff*

Yaoiboy: Oh, yeah, I should warn you there's some non-consensual stuff in this part. Nothing graphic, or explicit. It's not even actually confirmed that any particular thing happened...but still, just to be safe, I'm WARNING YOU!!! Don't flame me, okay? I'm not a whopper. ;;

Crono: ba-dum-bum

Yaoiboy: CAGES!!!!

Disclaimer: Though I have hired a super secret team of ninja lawyers, none of their ancient tactics have been able to procure the ownership of Crono Trigger for me. So, I still don't own it. A bunch of squares-I mean, Squaresoft does. So, um, don't sue me?



Crono felt light, as if he were floating on air, or rather, like he was air. He couldn't feel his limbs, he couldn't feel his heart beating, but he was conscious. Maybe that's all he was.

He could remember everything up 'till being knocked out. He figured that everyone was dead, including himself. After all, there was nothing but darkness, and he couldn't feel anything. After all, no matter how much he willed it, he could make no mouth open and no voice scream the one name that kept repeating in his mind.

And then, his eyes opened.

Immediately, he recognized the locale. There was only one place he had every seen that was as beautiful as the room before, only one place with magic in the air-literally. It was the floating kingdom of Zeal, inside the palace, in someone's fittingly opulent bedchamber.

Okaaay, Crono thought uneasily as he attempted to rise. It was then he realized that he still couldn't feel anything. So of course, the body didn't move. In fact, nothing much happened at all for a while, except blinking that he couldn't feel, and shifting that he couldn't control. Then in walked a beautiful woman in a shimmering white nightgown with magic woven within the threads. He thick blue locks cascaded down onto her shoulders, and when she smiled, as much with her sparkling green eyes as with her mouth, even this seemed magical. Crono recognized this woman! As the body he was in sat up, Crono's mind raced.

That's Schala, Magus's sister! What the heck is going on?

The eyes squinted towards her, the effects, Crono guessed, of a smile in return, and then cast a downward glance at the purplish cat at her feet. A child's hand reached out, and Crono heard the tongue clicking of a cat call. With one graceful leap, the cat was in the bed beside the mystery body that Crono occupied.

I recognize that cat too...Magus's cat?!

"Here, Alfador," came the boyish voice that confirmed Crono's suspicions. He was inside of MAGUS'S body! Well, technically, Janus's body, BUT STILL!

"Good morning, Janus," Schala said, just as the scene began to fade to black.

What IS this? Crono thought, but before he had time to really think about it, he was looking up into the eyes of, well, himself.

"The black wind begins to howl," Janus began,"one of you is about to perish..."

How could I ever forget THAT? Crono asked himself, remembering how he'd felt upon first hearing the prophecy of his own death. He watched the quizzical expression on his face as he walked off, and was surprised when Janus suddenly took off running after him, stopped short when he saw his sister of to the side, giggling at him, then took off in another direction. He bumped into a table, upsetting a stack of magic books that sent jets of flames in an arch across the room and sat a man's robe on fire. The man turned around just in time to see the impish blue haired prince dash down the corridor towards the royal bathroom.

Geez! What was THAT about? Crono wondered as Janus turned into the extravagant royal washroom.

He came to a stop in front of a bubble that hovered motionlessly above a gleaming silver sink. While he stood before it, it filled with water and, and Janus's face was reflected therein.

Crono noted first the wide green eyes, that stared back at themselves as if in disbelief. Then the strands of blue hair that had fallen in front of those eyes during the boy's frantic running. Then the small, cute little mouth wide open and gasping for air, nothing like the cold scowl that Crono remembered. Lastly, he noticed the flushed red cheeks.
Is he...blushing???

Janus raised a hand to his cheek gingerly, and just stared at himself, eyes blinking deliberately every now and then. Crono heard the soft tap of casual footsteps as Schala appeared in the mirror behind the boy, a knowing smile on her face.

"He is cute, isn't he?" she said easily.

"...he is."

Crono was at a loss for words as the scene dissolved as quickly as the last. He wondered if they had, perhaps, been talking of some other "he" that he himself did not know about. It seemed very unlikely though.
Then that means...all this time...
Very suddenly, Lavos towered above him.

"NOOOO!"

The boy glanced to the left in time to see Belthasar sucked into space-time. He turned his head to Schala and was able to take one step before the world split open beneath him, and swallowed him whole.

"Schalaaaaaa!"

Crono had only been told about this part of the story, vaguely, after much pestering. Though it made a heart wrenching scene, and the chaotic jaunt through space-time hit too close to home, he was very curious to see what had happened first hand.

The trip ended violently. Janus was ejected through a random rift in space-time into the open sky, and hit the ground hard after dropping several feet. He was saved from serious injury by the lush grass that partially broke his landing. That was probably not on his mind though. Crono was sure of it, as the boy did not make any attempts to rise, and soon the sound of his sobs joined nature's chorus. Only a few moments had passed when Crono heard the grass whispering a warning of someone's approach. He heard several quick, light steps, and he heard AND felt the rumble of very slow, ponderous steps. Soon, shadows danced on the grass about little Janus who, still sobbing, did not bother to look up and investigate.

"What is it?" a tiny voice asked.

"A humon!" another answered.

"Looks like lunch to me", came a whiny voice in a superior tone that Crono could never have forgotten.

Ozzie!

Janus looked up slowly to see three little multicolored, giggling imps and one HUGE green blob of a creature with mean looking beady eyes, and a tunic that could have canvassed Zeal Palace. He squinted at the strange group, and cautiously began to rise.

"Oh but it's only a child!"

"A baby!"

"Bite sized, I'd say," Ozzie added, and bared his menacing looking teeth.

"You had best leave me be," Janus replied, through clenched teeth from the sound of it."I'm not in the mood for this insolence."

There was the briefest moment of silence as the rabble bunch froze and looked at him as if he were crazy. Then they burst into a horrible, most unmelodious gaggle of giggles.

"So YOU laugh at ME? Fine. Enjoy your pain."

Crono could recognize the hand motions of the spell that Janus hastily cast. It was the Dark Bomb. The entire area darkened drastically as the spell was cast, the shadow energies drawn to the boys hand condensed into dense ball of volatile power, and he flung it at the four of them.
The imps tried to scream and scatter, but Ozzie did not make the slightest move. The Dark Bomb smashed right into him and exploded violently, rending a the ground and engulfing all of the targets. Janus stood still and waited for the thick clouds of dust to clear.

That was powerful, Crono thought, but not at all strong enough to take out the Ozzie I remember fighting.

Sure enough, as the dust thinned, there hovered Ozzie, completely unscathed. The imps weren't dead, but they might as well have been. They had fallen into the bottom of the small crater left in the aftermath of the explosion.

"Gya ha ha ha! That was pretty good! But very STUPID!"

Crono heard the lightening spell crackle seconds before impact, but little Janus never knew what hit him.

*******************************************************************************

Janus awoke naked and in chains. He was on his back, atop a table or some other elevated surface, and the chains held his arms out to his sides, and his legs spread wide. He could only lift his head a bit, but there was nothing to see but feebly flickering torches and darkness.
Then there was the sound of a door opening, and the steps of many. Janus looked up and saw several creatures entering the room. Some he could see in hideous detail, while others kept to the shadows. Some even flew above him, and hung upside down, staring him in the face.

"Here is the human boy who can do magic." It was Ozzie's voice again. His statement was met with a myriad array of sounds, not all of them in any language that Janus could understand, but all with a general tone of dissatisfaction.

"why did you not just kill him and be done with it?" came a raspy, hissing voice.

"Yes...Why bring him here?" piped in another, rumbling voice.

The creatures began to murmur again, this time in agreement.

"Ah, but do you not understand? This HUMAN was foolhardy enough to attack ME, your KING! He didn't have the sense to just quietly be eaten like the rest. He must be PUNISHED!"

"Death is punishment enough. Kill him slowly, if you will, with much pain. But kill him, as human's bring nothing but trouble."

"SILENCE!"

There was a flash of orange light, and the unmistakable sound of roaring flames. A series of blood-curdling screams ensued, and Ozzie all but screamed to talk over the horrible sound. It was about this time that Janus's eyes blurred with tears.

"Defying your MAGNIFICENT, BEAUTIFUL, ILLUSTRIOUS, INVINCIBLE KING brings nothing but trouble. Now shut up and listen as I announce this human's sentence."

There was silence, except for the screams that continued on and on. Ozzie's hideous face appear above Janus, grinning cruelly as he licked his bulbous lips and spoke.

"For his transgressions against the GREAT KING OZZIE, this BOY must submit himself to the will of the entire court."

Ozzie looked to the left. He looked to the right. He looked straight ahead. Then he looked downright mad.

"Well don't you fools get it???" he asked, the many folds of his face managing an exasperated expression.

The crowd responded with a series of murmurs that amounted to a firm "We don't get it."

Ozzie sighed, then threw up his hands and cried:

"HAVE YOUR WAY WITH HIM YOU FOOLS!!!!"

Then the defilement commenced.

***********************************************************************************
Janus lay on the cold stone floor of a cell, motionless, with his eyes closed. Crono kept willing angrily for a katana, or a body to hold one with. He was nothing but impotent rage. All he could think was: How could they??? Over and over again.

He could not see anything that was done to the boy, since Janus shut his eyes against the torture. All Crono knew was the piercing screams he'd heard, and the devilish laughter from the room full of torturers. He could well imagine what they had put the boy through. It wasn't to hard to imagine.

A strange thing had happened though, in the days that followed. Crono found it harder and harder to see through Janus's eyes. Everything was getting darker and darker day by day, and he could feel things when the vision's began to fade. He could feel a cool breeze, or feel himself breathing. He didn't know exactly what was happening, but at one point he was sure he had seen stars...

This day, or night, there was no way to tell in the windowless dungeon, as Janus lay there he could here the voice of another boy. He could hear the booming voice of Ozzie decree a similar fate to this new boy, but the screams were not nearly as horrific as Janus's had been. The boy could not be in as much pain as Janus.

Hours passed, and the door to the dungeon opened. Janus's eyes opened wide, but the scene was darker than it had ever been for Crono. He could barely tell if Janus moved or not, which he did, just enough to lay eyes on the newcomer. An androgynous boy with long red hair, who walked listlessly into the room before collapsing in a heap in the center of the floor. The vision went black. It was the last thing Crono saw.

From then on he only heard snippets of conversation between the two. Things like:

"I'm Flea."

"...Do you hate this place?"

"No more than I hate any other place..."

"How can you SAY THAT! After what they've done to you...those...those...DEMONS!"

"...It's no different from what other people do to me...I hate them all...humans, demons......."

"....."

"I hate them ALL!"

And:

"Lavos sent me here."

"Who's that?"

"A monster, like the rest of them. Just stronger..."

"I've never heard of him..."

And:

"I bet they know about Lavos..."

"So what...they'll never tell you..."

"Oh, but I'll make them tell me. My power grows with my hatred. Soon the black wind will blow like a hurricane through this castle!"

"What...is the black wind?"

"I am."

And that was the last Crono heard of Janus and Flea. The moment the statement ended he could feel himself thrust back into his own body, and there was rushing air, the sensation of falling, and the jolt of landing in the grass.

Ack! This is way too familiar...don't tell me I AM Janus now!!

Cautiously, the red headed boy opened his eyes and was looking up into a midnight sky, rimmed in a circle by the tops of trees. He then inspected himself, and to his relief, it was his own body. A quick look around told him that his was the ONLY body in the clearing where he'd landed.

"Magus..."he whispered to himself, and wondered if the worse had befallen his companion.