Now
By Exile



Disclaimer: THERE IS NO DISCLAIMER*.

I never liked the turn I gave the (really short) story here, but it's better than nothing. The storyline doesn't allow for much 'diversity' to be created, if you know what I mean.



Chapter 3: See it, feel it

Crono tried to get a bearing on where he actually was, but he couldn't open his eyes.

"Lucca... are you around?"

After a few seconds, Lucca's consciousness returned also.

"What the hell is going on? I can't open my eyes!" she said.
"Yeah me neither. What happened anyway? Were we sucked up by that yellow fog?"

Crono heard a soft ticking noise coming from somewhere.

"What's that?" Crono said.
"What?"
"That ticking noise..."

Crono let his hands go over the floor. It was made of solid wooden beams. While feeling what was in front of him, he tried to crawl over to the origin of the ticking noise. After hitting various hard objects head-on, he bumped into the source of the sound. Then his eyes went wide open.

"Hey! I can see again!"

Experiencing the same thing, Lucca got up and looked around. They were in Lucca's living room, as she had suspected already. Crono was standing in front of the old pendulum that went in the Ashtear family-line.

"What are we doing here? This can't be real can it?" Crono asked Lucca, hoping to get a real answer.
"I... I really don't know..."

Crono walked past Lucca, over to the door leading outside. He closed it as quickly as he opened it.

"No way..." he muttered.
"What?"

Crono walked over to a nearby window and motioned Lucca to join him. They looked through the glass, seeing two children playing outside, Crono and Lucca themselves.



They were much younger, around 4 or 5 years maybe. Crono was trying to climb into a tree, reaching out for his cat.

"Jump! Higher!" Lucca shouted up to the boy in the tree.

He was desperately trying to keep his balance, while clutching on to the branch holding the feline critter. After a few failed attempts at trying to get his legs onto the branch, Crono tried getting to the cat simply by holding onto the branch with his hands.

"Hurry up!" the young Lucca shouted, making Crono more nervous than he already was.

Biting his tongue, he moved further down the branch. The cat, Fraggle, just sat there, cleaning his fur. But just when Crono got close enough to grab the cat, it jumped down from the branch, landed swiftly onto the ground and ran off.

"No! Now I never get to play with Fraggle!" Lucca pouted. She kicked the tree out of anger, making the branch Crono was holding onto break off. The boy tumbled to the earth, directly aimed at Lucca who was still sulking beneath the tree.

But just when Crono was about to hit Lucca, the entire scene splattered apart into a big mess of colors. Lucca staggered back from the freakish change in scenery, Crono just stood there and stared, thinking it was all just his mind going crazy from all the jungle soup Ayla had served for them. Then the world outside the house faded away into pure blackness.

Still confused, Lucca tried to talk.
"Was that... did that ever happen?" she asked Crono, still staring into the blackness outside.
"Yeah... remember that time Fraggle managed to sneak out of my house and ran all across town? We had to..."

Lucca put a hand over Crono's mouth, and pointed outside, where the black void had been replaced by the same scenery they saw before, but quite a bit different...

The tree had grown quite a lot thicker and taller. At the bottom of it both Lucca and Crono sat, in a more mature form, this time around their thirties. Lucca's hair was now held together by a single ponytail, and she didn't wore any glasses anymore. Crono's radical haircut was still the same, but his face was covered with scars.

The adult versions of Crono and Lucca were looking into each other's eyes, not saying any word at all. Crono put his hands on Lucca's shoulder while still staring into Lucca's greenish eyes.

"You know," he began, "I can't take it to leave. Not because of him."
"But..."

Crono put a finger over Lucca's mouth.

"Don't. No questions, 'cause I probably don't have any answers either."

The wind started to pick up a little, blowing through the tree and making the ever-so wailing sound.

Crono took his right hand's ring-finger, and pulled the ring attached to it off.

"Here. Take this." he said, and put the ring into Lucca's hands, then closed them. "Give it a better purpose. No matter how far away... or evil for that matter."

He then stood up and turned around.

"But don't forget, if he turns onto you like he did on those others, don't come to me for help." he said while still facing away from Lucca.

Without saying anything more, he walked off to the bridge. The scene splattered into pieces again, leaving nothing but a black void once more.



* Actually, there is a disclaimer. I don't own any of the characters in this story, Squaresoft does. If you feel sick after this story's sappyness, I will decline all responsibility.