Magus: Rail Rider? You know, the word 'ride' is kinda raunchy...
Crono: Eh? What do you mean? *looks clueless*
Magus: Oh, come over here and I'll explain *evil grin*
Yaoiboy: *forgets the fic and watches the action* ^_^
Disclaimer: I luff Chrono Trigger! I luff it too much to shackle it down into the slavery of ownership. Squaresoft should be ashamed of themselves for owning it! They should let it run free...in this meadow, over here. That's right *readies his net*
The interior of the rail rider was even more impressive than the outside. There were windows alongside the inside that could not be seen on the outside. There were enough seats positioned along either side for 12 passengers, not including the two seats in the front behind glowing, complicated looking controls, and whatever was in the mystery room at the back. Crono cringed, as he guessed at what the room might be.
"Don't tell me that's a bedroom back there," Magus said, voicing Crono's thoughts with his statement, and voicing Crono's suspicions with the somewhat creeped out expression he wore.
"It is," Lucca responded simply, her voice sounding haggard.
She must get this reaction a lot, Crono thought, looking back and forth between the suddenly tired looking woman, and the broad-shouldered man whose face was a mask of concern.
"So you two-" Magus began. Crono couldn't decide if the tone was one of indignation, or disbelief.
Probably a bit of both, he decided.
"Sleep here, yes," Lucca responded. There was an edge to her voice that Crono didn't remember having heard before. Apparently it caught Magus off guard as well, as he didn't see it fit to press the issue. Lucca turned to her head toward Robo, but didn't take her eyes off of her visitors. "Where's Ayla?"
The man that was supposed to be Robo shook his head. He looks so human, Crono thought, and the thought seemed very morbid all of a sudden. Hadn't he always thought of Robo as 'human' and 'alive'?
"She stayed to fight. Considering that I told her I would return as soon as I could to help, I didn't see any reason to press her."
Lucca nodded, and Crono barely suppressed his urge to ask 'fight who?'.
"Fight who?" Magus asked, peering at the strange couple.
Geez! Is he reading my mind now or something?
Lucca sighed and gave a weak gesture for them to sit. "Let's get moving," she then said to Robo, who nodded, gave her shoulder and affectionate squeeze, and went to sit at the controls. She sat down in a seat near to them, and turned so that she faced them. She sighed, gave a wan smile, and said "This is the first time I've had to tell this entire story..."
Finally, Crono thought, barely able to keep his overwhelming curiosity in check. He wanted to fire a barrage of questions at her, but decided to just let her do it at her own pace. She seemed exhausted. Chancing a glance over at Magus, he was surprised to find the red eyes of the dark mage were on him yet again. They were staring at one another when Lucca began telling her story.
"It all started the day of the disaster...We had all been flung back into the clearing where we'd taken off just moments before, minus two passengers of course.
"After confirming that there were no serious injuries, everyone turned to me to find out what went wrong. Of course, they weren't wrong in their assumption that I would know, and I was not about to lie to them..."
The wing...Crono thought, turning to Lucca to face an accusing stare that was not there. She wasn't even looking at him.
"So I explained that there had been a minuscule structural integrity issue. Not knowing what kind of havoc the extra space I'd added onto the Epoch would wreak on the original safety parameters outlined for the original model, I gave into the pressure of the moment...Threw caution to the wind, so to speak..."
It was my fault, Crono thought dismally. I was the one who convinced her it was no big deal.
Looking over to see Magus's reaction, he was surprised to see that there was no anger in the magician's face. He just looked very attentive, and behind him, the scenery was streaking past. They had started moving and he hadn't even noticed.
Lucca took a breath. "...and it came back like a boomerang to stab me in the heart. I vowed never to make that mistake again...Little good it did me at the time, though. They were all furious at me for having placed everyone's life in such danger. None of them could believe it. Marle actually slugged me..." She gave a thin smile, shook her head a bit. "They couldn't get away from me fast enough, but not before making it clear that they held me responsible for losing you two, and therefor, responsible for bringing you back. Robo was the only one who stuck by me, though even he could find no logic in my actions..."
Casting a glance at the back of the brown haired pilot, Crono wondered if he was listening.
Even if he isn't, the boy thought, there's no way he can't hear. It's so quiet in here...
"But he tried to help me. He tried to help me find a way to fix the Epoch, so that we could go through time to search for you...but it was out of our league. Yet another blow to my pride, I realized I had never truly understood the mechanics of time travel, and how to make it happen. I had been playing around with something totally beyond me...and it seemed I had paid for it with the lives of my friends...I began to lose hope as the months went by. No one came to see me, or encourage my efforts. Robo and I worked tirelessly to no avail. Even the old gates we had used before were closed to us, and the gate key was gone. Marle had lost her pendant in the accident...There were no leads! We didn't have anything..." She paused here, and looked off out the window with a pained expression."And then all of a sudden, Marle was pregnant."
Magus took a sharp breath, and immediately regretted it, as two sets of curious eyes fell onto him.
Control yourself, he thought, and raised his brows to the querying stares as if to say 'What, I can't be surprised?', and he was surprised, as well as intrigued, and faintly horrified at being forced to remember the whole 'I'm inside Marle's baby' weirdness. Lucca gave another pitiful smile.
"We were surprised too," she went on, acknowledging Magus's little slip. "I mean, she hadn't been dating anyone at all, and it was very unbecoming of a princess to just be...sleeping around. She swore that wasn't the case though. According to her, she didn't know HOW she got pregnant. Of course, no one believed that. She gained a terrible reputation, and her father was very disappointed in her. Soon enough, he became very angry with her when she stuck to her story that, in everyone's eyes, had to be a ludicrous lie. Even I, learning the story from my father, couldn't believe it. At the same time, I knew Marle. She might have told half truths when she was joking around, but she was no liar. I especially couldn't imagine her smearing her reputation that way under any circumstances. Still, I couldn't think of any alternative explanations, but she had an idea...and that's what brought her to me."
Of course Magus thought. Just like Marle not to be able to handle her own messes. Immediately he felt chastised remembering the woman was dead; but not THAT chastised.
"She needed my help to prove that it wasn't true. Of course, she hadn't said one word to me since the day of the accident but...I couldn't really blame her for that. Besides, I had a feeling that the accident had played a part in her mysterious impregnation, and it turned out I was right..."
Magus leaned forward, listening intently, and he saw Crono had done the same long before. The boy was cutely chewing on his bottom lip with impatience. Magus felt the image stir something in him, but he didn't bother to analyze the feeling.
Lucca turned to Crono.
"When you and Marle were sucked out of the ship...and Magus jumped out to rescue you, something strange happened. I didn't actually see it, but Marle described it to me in pretty good detail. She said you turned into 'energy bodies', to use her words, and that for a moment, you all mixed together. It was actually very frightening to think about, as any number of things could have been damaged or mutated in all three of you. But apparently, since different types of energy, like oil and water, can't truly be mixed, nothing really serious occurred, unless of course, you count the pregnancy."
Damn her that stupid know it all brainiac! Magus could think of a thousand more profanities to throw her way, and he could barely contain his anger. Why did she have to tell THAT part of the story!
Across from him, Crono had been staring directly at him ever since Lucca said the words "and Magus jumped out to rescue you". Of course, that story differed from what Magus had seen fit to tell the boy. Then there were all those other juicy tidbits of information that he'd concealed.
Lucca had paused in her story, obviously noticing the sudden tension in the room, but before Magus could say anything, Crono simply looked away from him, and back to Lucca.
"Go on," the boy said softly, and it was obvious, to Magus at least, that there was a torrent of feelings hidden beneath those words, the least of which had anything to do with him finding out that he may have unknowingly fathered a child.
Why did I lie? Magus asked himself. Agh! Just when things were beginning to get so...so what? What the hell am I thinking?
It was becoming increasingly evident to the silver haired magician that he was losing more and more ground in the battle against his feelings for the all-but-pouting Crono. It was evident in the way it stung him to see the boy's downcast expression. He wanted to say something, but what could he say? Especially with Lucca right there in the room.
Right, he thought bitterly. Hide your feelings from the one sleeping with a robot because her opinion matters sooo much. Besides, he probably won't want to talk to me at all anyway...
Casting one final glance back and forth between the two, Lucca cleared her throat and went on.
"Well...there was really no way to be certain of this, but I was pretty confident in my deduction then, and once the child was born, I was pretty damned sure...I mean, he's the spitting image of both of you."
"Both...of us?" Crono asked, his mind still trying to grasp that he had been lied to, still wondering whether or not his mother were alive, and now trying to come to terms withe the fact that he may have somehow fathered a baby. On top of it all was the dreadful guilt he felt at having convinced Lucca to, against her better judgement, take-off when things weren't safe.
I'M the one everyone should be angry at, he thought, and he sighed heavily as he waited for the nodding woman before him to go on.
"Both of you. You'd have to see it to really understand. I'm sure the resemblance is much more pronounced now that he is older. I haven't seen him in several years though..."
"Why not?" Crono asked, urging her on. His curiosity was peaked.
"Heh...Why not? Because he doesn't want me to see him that's why." A shadow passed over her face then that was both menacing and bitter at once. "I'd torch him if I ever saw him, or at least I'd try. Whatever love I had for him died with..." she stopped herself suddenly, appearing to struggle to regain composure. Her voice had been steadily rising with anger.
Died with what? Crono thought, but he didn't dare push her this time. He just waited for her to continue.
"I'm...getting ahead of myself," she said after a long pause. "It's important to tell this story in order...So back to the child being born.
"By the time he was born, I had already convinced the general populace that Marle had not gotten pregnant on purpose, or through any lack of chastity on her part. It was simply...an accident. Once everyone was thoroughly convinced of this fact, the princesses' pregnancy became the joyous occasion that it was meant to be, and in all the festivities the group pulled back together again. More specifically, they forgave me...
"So, when the baby was born, we were all there to witness it. Frog, Ayla, Robo, and myself. And even though we had all accepted the fact that at least ONE of you would likely turn out to be the father, no one was prepared for the striking resemblance to both of you. It was strange to see, but entirely possible when you considered the exceptional circumstances in which she had been impregnated in the first place. At a later date, I was able to run some DNA test and confirm it as fact, but right there when he was first born I knew. The child belonged to both of you. After a while of debate, Marle decided to name Cronus, after you both." Crono cast a quick glance at Magus, who had also caught the name, and was nodding his head as if to say "Ah ha!".
Cronus was the name...of the King at the castle, Crono thought. Was he the one who made those zombies? And then: Is he really...OUR son?
"We all agreed it was a good idea. If we could never find the two of you, and no one planned to give up searching, then at least we would have your son to love in your stead. And we loved him soo much. We did...For 5 years everything was perfect. We all chipped in to help raise him, and he amazed us by being more and more like the two of you each day. There were times, when in his full royal garb, walking through the palace with his pet kitten, that we would picture the Janus we saw on our long ago travels...And then there were the times he practiced his swordplay as doggedly as Crono had ever done. It was a joy to be around him, answering all the questions he had about you two, being able to relive all our fondest memories through the stories we told him...Little Cronus made it easier for us deal with you two not being around...until something began to happen to all of us."
Crono furrowed his brow a bit, but just kept listening.
"It wasn't something that just happened all of a sudden. Gradually, it had been occurring all along. There were little things that were changing about us that we couldn't really explain. Marle couldn't stand to be out in the heat for too long, or to sit very close to a fire place. Frog had to return to the bath four times a day to re-moisturize his skin. I was having strange hot flashes... None of these things happened very much at first, but then it began to get worse and worse. Frog had to spend most of his day soaking in the water, and Marle would cast small ice spells around herself to keep cool. I actually saw streaks of vividly red hair appearing on my head in growing abundance each day. Even the color of my eyes was beginning to change...On the flip side, nothing was happening to Ayla or Robo...and little Cronus seemed to be perfectly fine. So, I began to run test on the three of us who were having problems..."
So that's what she meant by not all of her changes being natural, Crono thought, putting the pieces together.
"Over the time it took for me to gather data, the symptoms got worse. It got so bad, in fact, that at least the cause of our troubles was achingly obvious. It was our magic. Our magic powers were to growing in strength beyond what we could handle. About six months after I had begun the testing, we started having small uncontrollable energy discharges. Rapidly, they increased in size and power until each discharge was overwhelmingly destructive.. I would have to go out into the most barren places to discharge my energy. If I didn't, I could have destroyed the entire village. It was the same for Marle and Frog. Their powers were becoming overwhelming to them. It was, again, up to me to determine what was happening. It was relatively simple to figure out by then though.
"Over time, our magical abilities grow stronger. However, our bodies, the vessels for this immense power, are not able to handle such incredible and volatile amounts of energy. If we had been born with it, maybe. But Spekio gave us these powers unnaturally, and in all reality, he probably meant for it to be a temporary thing. I mean, if you REALLY think about it, he probably didn't even think we would actually defeat Lavos, and who can blame him? But we did, and now we're stuck with these powers. We can't even get to the end of time to find out if he can take them away.
"So I was racing to find a way to get things under control, but I didn't know exactly where to start. I ended up attempting to develop something that could siphon off the extra energy, but that meant that I would have to determine the exact nature of magical energy. Considering how tiring it is to cast multiple spells, I surmised that magical energy was bound to the normal type of energy that gets us through the day. So, to just arbitrarily siphon off energy would basically turn us into tired weaklings. It was a complex problem to solve, but I didn't have forever to work on it. The power, if it kept growing, would obliterate us.
"One day, while I was busy in my lab-then relocated into the castle-, little Cronus came down and asked me if his magic would ever do that to him. It occurred to me then that he might have inherited some magic from all three of you, but since it was with him since birth, maybe his body would be structured in a way to properly control the power. So, I set out to discover if he even had any magic at all. Maybe...if I hadn't done that..." She shook her head. "No, he was bound to discover his powers at some point..."
"What is it Lucca? What happened?" Magus pressed. The story had made him forget about everything else.
"Exactly what I wanted to happen," she responded, the sarcasm in her tone directed at herself. "He found out that he did indeed possess magic. Magic much greater than what any of us could ever hope to posses."
Crono: Eh? What do you mean? *looks clueless*
Magus: Oh, come over here and I'll explain *evil grin*
Yaoiboy: *forgets the fic and watches the action* ^_^
Disclaimer: I luff Chrono Trigger! I luff it too much to shackle it down into the slavery of ownership. Squaresoft should be ashamed of themselves for owning it! They should let it run free...in this meadow, over here. That's right *readies his net*
The interior of the rail rider was even more impressive than the outside. There were windows alongside the inside that could not be seen on the outside. There were enough seats positioned along either side for 12 passengers, not including the two seats in the front behind glowing, complicated looking controls, and whatever was in the mystery room at the back. Crono cringed, as he guessed at what the room might be.
"Don't tell me that's a bedroom back there," Magus said, voicing Crono's thoughts with his statement, and voicing Crono's suspicions with the somewhat creeped out expression he wore.
"It is," Lucca responded simply, her voice sounding haggard.
She must get this reaction a lot, Crono thought, looking back and forth between the suddenly tired looking woman, and the broad-shouldered man whose face was a mask of concern.
"So you two-" Magus began. Crono couldn't decide if the tone was one of indignation, or disbelief.
Probably a bit of both, he decided.
"Sleep here, yes," Lucca responded. There was an edge to her voice that Crono didn't remember having heard before. Apparently it caught Magus off guard as well, as he didn't see it fit to press the issue. Lucca turned to her head toward Robo, but didn't take her eyes off of her visitors. "Where's Ayla?"
The man that was supposed to be Robo shook his head. He looks so human, Crono thought, and the thought seemed very morbid all of a sudden. Hadn't he always thought of Robo as 'human' and 'alive'?
"She stayed to fight. Considering that I told her I would return as soon as I could to help, I didn't see any reason to press her."
Lucca nodded, and Crono barely suppressed his urge to ask 'fight who?'.
"Fight who?" Magus asked, peering at the strange couple.
Geez! Is he reading my mind now or something?
Lucca sighed and gave a weak gesture for them to sit. "Let's get moving," she then said to Robo, who nodded, gave her shoulder and affectionate squeeze, and went to sit at the controls. She sat down in a seat near to them, and turned so that she faced them. She sighed, gave a wan smile, and said "This is the first time I've had to tell this entire story..."
Finally, Crono thought, barely able to keep his overwhelming curiosity in check. He wanted to fire a barrage of questions at her, but decided to just let her do it at her own pace. She seemed exhausted. Chancing a glance over at Magus, he was surprised to find the red eyes of the dark mage were on him yet again. They were staring at one another when Lucca began telling her story.
"It all started the day of the disaster...We had all been flung back into the clearing where we'd taken off just moments before, minus two passengers of course.
"After confirming that there were no serious injuries, everyone turned to me to find out what went wrong. Of course, they weren't wrong in their assumption that I would know, and I was not about to lie to them..."
The wing...Crono thought, turning to Lucca to face an accusing stare that was not there. She wasn't even looking at him.
"So I explained that there had been a minuscule structural integrity issue. Not knowing what kind of havoc the extra space I'd added onto the Epoch would wreak on the original safety parameters outlined for the original model, I gave into the pressure of the moment...Threw caution to the wind, so to speak..."
It was my fault, Crono thought dismally. I was the one who convinced her it was no big deal.
Looking over to see Magus's reaction, he was surprised to see that there was no anger in the magician's face. He just looked very attentive, and behind him, the scenery was streaking past. They had started moving and he hadn't even noticed.
Lucca took a breath. "...and it came back like a boomerang to stab me in the heart. I vowed never to make that mistake again...Little good it did me at the time, though. They were all furious at me for having placed everyone's life in such danger. None of them could believe it. Marle actually slugged me..." She gave a thin smile, shook her head a bit. "They couldn't get away from me fast enough, but not before making it clear that they held me responsible for losing you two, and therefor, responsible for bringing you back. Robo was the only one who stuck by me, though even he could find no logic in my actions..."
Casting a glance at the back of the brown haired pilot, Crono wondered if he was listening.
Even if he isn't, the boy thought, there's no way he can't hear. It's so quiet in here...
"But he tried to help me. He tried to help me find a way to fix the Epoch, so that we could go through time to search for you...but it was out of our league. Yet another blow to my pride, I realized I had never truly understood the mechanics of time travel, and how to make it happen. I had been playing around with something totally beyond me...and it seemed I had paid for it with the lives of my friends...I began to lose hope as the months went by. No one came to see me, or encourage my efforts. Robo and I worked tirelessly to no avail. Even the old gates we had used before were closed to us, and the gate key was gone. Marle had lost her pendant in the accident...There were no leads! We didn't have anything..." She paused here, and looked off out the window with a pained expression."And then all of a sudden, Marle was pregnant."
Magus took a sharp breath, and immediately regretted it, as two sets of curious eyes fell onto him.
Control yourself, he thought, and raised his brows to the querying stares as if to say 'What, I can't be surprised?', and he was surprised, as well as intrigued, and faintly horrified at being forced to remember the whole 'I'm inside Marle's baby' weirdness. Lucca gave another pitiful smile.
"We were surprised too," she went on, acknowledging Magus's little slip. "I mean, she hadn't been dating anyone at all, and it was very unbecoming of a princess to just be...sleeping around. She swore that wasn't the case though. According to her, she didn't know HOW she got pregnant. Of course, no one believed that. She gained a terrible reputation, and her father was very disappointed in her. Soon enough, he became very angry with her when she stuck to her story that, in everyone's eyes, had to be a ludicrous lie. Even I, learning the story from my father, couldn't believe it. At the same time, I knew Marle. She might have told half truths when she was joking around, but she was no liar. I especially couldn't imagine her smearing her reputation that way under any circumstances. Still, I couldn't think of any alternative explanations, but she had an idea...and that's what brought her to me."
Of course Magus thought. Just like Marle not to be able to handle her own messes. Immediately he felt chastised remembering the woman was dead; but not THAT chastised.
"She needed my help to prove that it wasn't true. Of course, she hadn't said one word to me since the day of the accident but...I couldn't really blame her for that. Besides, I had a feeling that the accident had played a part in her mysterious impregnation, and it turned out I was right..."
Magus leaned forward, listening intently, and he saw Crono had done the same long before. The boy was cutely chewing on his bottom lip with impatience. Magus felt the image stir something in him, but he didn't bother to analyze the feeling.
Lucca turned to Crono.
"When you and Marle were sucked out of the ship...and Magus jumped out to rescue you, something strange happened. I didn't actually see it, but Marle described it to me in pretty good detail. She said you turned into 'energy bodies', to use her words, and that for a moment, you all mixed together. It was actually very frightening to think about, as any number of things could have been damaged or mutated in all three of you. But apparently, since different types of energy, like oil and water, can't truly be mixed, nothing really serious occurred, unless of course, you count the pregnancy."
Damn her that stupid know it all brainiac! Magus could think of a thousand more profanities to throw her way, and he could barely contain his anger. Why did she have to tell THAT part of the story!
Across from him, Crono had been staring directly at him ever since Lucca said the words "and Magus jumped out to rescue you". Of course, that story differed from what Magus had seen fit to tell the boy. Then there were all those other juicy tidbits of information that he'd concealed.
Lucca had paused in her story, obviously noticing the sudden tension in the room, but before Magus could say anything, Crono simply looked away from him, and back to Lucca.
"Go on," the boy said softly, and it was obvious, to Magus at least, that there was a torrent of feelings hidden beneath those words, the least of which had anything to do with him finding out that he may have unknowingly fathered a child.
Why did I lie? Magus asked himself. Agh! Just when things were beginning to get so...so what? What the hell am I thinking?
It was becoming increasingly evident to the silver haired magician that he was losing more and more ground in the battle against his feelings for the all-but-pouting Crono. It was evident in the way it stung him to see the boy's downcast expression. He wanted to say something, but what could he say? Especially with Lucca right there in the room.
Right, he thought bitterly. Hide your feelings from the one sleeping with a robot because her opinion matters sooo much. Besides, he probably won't want to talk to me at all anyway...
Casting one final glance back and forth between the two, Lucca cleared her throat and went on.
"Well...there was really no way to be certain of this, but I was pretty confident in my deduction then, and once the child was born, I was pretty damned sure...I mean, he's the spitting image of both of you."
"Both...of us?" Crono asked, his mind still trying to grasp that he had been lied to, still wondering whether or not his mother were alive, and now trying to come to terms withe the fact that he may have somehow fathered a baby. On top of it all was the dreadful guilt he felt at having convinced Lucca to, against her better judgement, take-off when things weren't safe.
I'M the one everyone should be angry at, he thought, and he sighed heavily as he waited for the nodding woman before him to go on.
"Both of you. You'd have to see it to really understand. I'm sure the resemblance is much more pronounced now that he is older. I haven't seen him in several years though..."
"Why not?" Crono asked, urging her on. His curiosity was peaked.
"Heh...Why not? Because he doesn't want me to see him that's why." A shadow passed over her face then that was both menacing and bitter at once. "I'd torch him if I ever saw him, or at least I'd try. Whatever love I had for him died with..." she stopped herself suddenly, appearing to struggle to regain composure. Her voice had been steadily rising with anger.
Died with what? Crono thought, but he didn't dare push her this time. He just waited for her to continue.
"I'm...getting ahead of myself," she said after a long pause. "It's important to tell this story in order...So back to the child being born.
"By the time he was born, I had already convinced the general populace that Marle had not gotten pregnant on purpose, or through any lack of chastity on her part. It was simply...an accident. Once everyone was thoroughly convinced of this fact, the princesses' pregnancy became the joyous occasion that it was meant to be, and in all the festivities the group pulled back together again. More specifically, they forgave me...
"So, when the baby was born, we were all there to witness it. Frog, Ayla, Robo, and myself. And even though we had all accepted the fact that at least ONE of you would likely turn out to be the father, no one was prepared for the striking resemblance to both of you. It was strange to see, but entirely possible when you considered the exceptional circumstances in which she had been impregnated in the first place. At a later date, I was able to run some DNA test and confirm it as fact, but right there when he was first born I knew. The child belonged to both of you. After a while of debate, Marle decided to name Cronus, after you both." Crono cast a quick glance at Magus, who had also caught the name, and was nodding his head as if to say "Ah ha!".
Cronus was the name...of the King at the castle, Crono thought. Was he the one who made those zombies? And then: Is he really...OUR son?
"We all agreed it was a good idea. If we could never find the two of you, and no one planned to give up searching, then at least we would have your son to love in your stead. And we loved him soo much. We did...For 5 years everything was perfect. We all chipped in to help raise him, and he amazed us by being more and more like the two of you each day. There were times, when in his full royal garb, walking through the palace with his pet kitten, that we would picture the Janus we saw on our long ago travels...And then there were the times he practiced his swordplay as doggedly as Crono had ever done. It was a joy to be around him, answering all the questions he had about you two, being able to relive all our fondest memories through the stories we told him...Little Cronus made it easier for us deal with you two not being around...until something began to happen to all of us."
Crono furrowed his brow a bit, but just kept listening.
"It wasn't something that just happened all of a sudden. Gradually, it had been occurring all along. There were little things that were changing about us that we couldn't really explain. Marle couldn't stand to be out in the heat for too long, or to sit very close to a fire place. Frog had to return to the bath four times a day to re-moisturize his skin. I was having strange hot flashes... None of these things happened very much at first, but then it began to get worse and worse. Frog had to spend most of his day soaking in the water, and Marle would cast small ice spells around herself to keep cool. I actually saw streaks of vividly red hair appearing on my head in growing abundance each day. Even the color of my eyes was beginning to change...On the flip side, nothing was happening to Ayla or Robo...and little Cronus seemed to be perfectly fine. So, I began to run test on the three of us who were having problems..."
So that's what she meant by not all of her changes being natural, Crono thought, putting the pieces together.
"Over the time it took for me to gather data, the symptoms got worse. It got so bad, in fact, that at least the cause of our troubles was achingly obvious. It was our magic. Our magic powers were to growing in strength beyond what we could handle. About six months after I had begun the testing, we started having small uncontrollable energy discharges. Rapidly, they increased in size and power until each discharge was overwhelmingly destructive.. I would have to go out into the most barren places to discharge my energy. If I didn't, I could have destroyed the entire village. It was the same for Marle and Frog. Their powers were becoming overwhelming to them. It was, again, up to me to determine what was happening. It was relatively simple to figure out by then though.
"Over time, our magical abilities grow stronger. However, our bodies, the vessels for this immense power, are not able to handle such incredible and volatile amounts of energy. If we had been born with it, maybe. But Spekio gave us these powers unnaturally, and in all reality, he probably meant for it to be a temporary thing. I mean, if you REALLY think about it, he probably didn't even think we would actually defeat Lavos, and who can blame him? But we did, and now we're stuck with these powers. We can't even get to the end of time to find out if he can take them away.
"So I was racing to find a way to get things under control, but I didn't know exactly where to start. I ended up attempting to develop something that could siphon off the extra energy, but that meant that I would have to determine the exact nature of magical energy. Considering how tiring it is to cast multiple spells, I surmised that magical energy was bound to the normal type of energy that gets us through the day. So, to just arbitrarily siphon off energy would basically turn us into tired weaklings. It was a complex problem to solve, but I didn't have forever to work on it. The power, if it kept growing, would obliterate us.
"One day, while I was busy in my lab-then relocated into the castle-, little Cronus came down and asked me if his magic would ever do that to him. It occurred to me then that he might have inherited some magic from all three of you, but since it was with him since birth, maybe his body would be structured in a way to properly control the power. So, I set out to discover if he even had any magic at all. Maybe...if I hadn't done that..." She shook her head. "No, he was bound to discover his powers at some point..."
"What is it Lucca? What happened?" Magus pressed. The story had made him forget about everything else.
"Exactly what I wanted to happen," she responded, the sarcasm in her tone directed at herself. "He found out that he did indeed possess magic. Magic much greater than what any of us could ever hope to posses."
