Now
By Exile



Disclaimer: THERE IS NO DISCLAIMER*.

Those not interested in the boring "Tale of the Nu" I tried to write may skip the few italic paragraphs below. It's not exactly important to the story anyway.



Chapter 2: Nothing ordinary

A long while ago, when the Earth was nothing but a frail piece of muddy rock, only animals roamed. They had been set there only to eventually protect the planet, mostly from itself.

But to achieve the goal of being able to protect the blue planet, they first had to reach the pinnacle of evolution. They had to become The Perfect Being. Of course, they did not know that by themselves.

Many millennia passed without any success. Every time a new being came into existence, another one was wiped out. Evolution had taken a wrong path, a wrong branch in the tree of life so to speak.

In order to correct this, it needed to start completely from scratch again. So it created a new being, without basing it off of another one. This being is known to most as The Human.

In it's most primitive form, it resembled nothing but a hairy mass of moving flesh. But as time would have it, the being would evolve into a more sophisticated organism. Gaining the ability of speech and interpretive thought, it soon became the only creature to be able to protect the Earth.

But the other branch of the evolution continued. For countless aeons, it grew into a more and more complex being. It still wasn't a rival of the human, but the distance was only set by small shortcomings.

Humans still didn't have everything they should have in order to be perfect, and the other evolutionary branch didn't either. But as luck would have it, they both complemented each other's shortcomings perfectly. Now all that was necessary was a merge of the two beings' most perfect abilities.

Seeing this opportunity for perfectionism, evolution stepped in once again and did the job, thus creating the perfect being known to the current universe. This being got the name of Nu, and would without any doubt eventually stray further away from the Earth to inhabit other parts of the Milky Way...

And so goes the story of the Nu.



"That's it?!" Lucca said. "That's both scientifically and morally impossible!"
"Do you question the perfect being's knowledge?" the Nu asked, glancing at Lucca.
"Perfect being? You've got to be joking! You weigh over two tons, are almost completely circular and have the limbs of an underdeveloped chimpanzee!" she shot back.

The Nu jumped down from his log and walked over to Lucca.

"Pffft to you! You think you scare me with that teacup-body of yours?"
"Easy Lucca... easy..." Crono tried.

Taking no more insults from the young woman, the Nu grabbed her by her neck and pinned her against a tree.

"Let me go you buffed up balloon! I'll turn you into ashes before you can even say..."

The Nu tightened its grip on her neck. Lucca was having trouble breathing now. "Argh!"

Crono tried sneaking up behind the Nu. While moving towards the blue creature he picked up and unsheathed his katana, as silent as possible. While trying not to make any sound, he lifted the sword into the air, aiming for the Nu's back.

"Take that!" he shouted.
Surprised, the Nu let go of Lucca and turned around, only to come face to face with the end of Crono's sword. It plunged into its body, without even spilling a single drop of blood.

The blue mass fell onto the ground, lifeless, with the sword still jammed into it.

Shocked at what he had done, Crono stumbled backwards and sat down on the ground, his eyes still fixated on the dead body. Lucca was still trying to catch up her breath but was equally as shocked as Crono.

After Lucca had gotten her breath back again, she crawled over to the dead body. She stood up, grabbed the sword that was stuck in the Nu by its hilt and slowly pulled it out. Crono just watched silently.

Lucca fell back onto the ground, with the sword still in her hands.
"I... I..." she stuttered.
"Don't worry Lucca, it's just a Nu." Crono said, still a bit dazed.
Lucca turned her look to Crono. He had found his usual calmth again.
"Couldn't let it kill you, so I killed it. Survival, that's all." he reassured her.
"Yeah you're right. But I didn't have to snap at it for telling us that story, no matter how stupid it was."

They remained silent for another while, still sitting on the ground.

"Suppose we should bury him?" Lucca finally broke the awkward silence. "That's the least we can do."
"Yeah..." was all Crono answered.

Lucca stood up and walked over to the Nu. But when she touched it, the Nu's body began to glow in a faintly yellow color... Lucca jumped back.

"What's happening?" Crono asked.
"How should I know?"

Then the Nu's body completely dissolved, leaving only a yellow mist floating in mid-air.

Both curious and afraid, Lucca closed in on the haze. "What in the name of..."
Crono came a little closer too. "What is it?"
"I don't really know... but look. Look into it..."

Crono gazed into the mist, seeing the yellow subside for something of a more definite shape... Lucca's living room. Lucca's eyes went wide, but before she could say another word, the fog expanded all around the two. Unable to move because of the fog's effects, they remained motionless, only to lose consciousness and fall onto the ground.



* Actually, there is a disclaimer. I don't own any of the characters in this story, Squaresoft does. Those reading this part must be really bored.