Please be aware that this story is going to move very slowly in the first few chapters, so just hang with me.  ~SP

Chapter 1 ~ Here and There

            "Crono!"

            It was morning in Guardia Kingdom.  The sun had started to rise again, as was expected of it, over the tops of the trees in Guardia Forest and shining orange light onto the buildings in the nearby city of Truce.  People were only just then waking up and eating breakfast.  It wasn't quite time to be up and off to work just yet, but time was quickly catching up with the people of the land.

            It was a small Kingdom, Guardia, but then it had to be because it was a small Planet.  The largest cities on the planet were Truce, on the northern continent, Porre, on the southern continent, Medina, on the western continent, and finally, Choras on the southeastern continent.  There were a great number of smaller settlements in the surrounding areas, but most of them of no real importance and thus not listed on the world maps in classrooms, etcetera. 

            Not everyone had been all around the world, even as small as it was.  But, to one young man living in Truce, the adventure would never end.  He could visit every continent on the Planet and he still wasn't satisfied.  He knew what was out there and he wanted to see more of it, no matter how much time it took him to do it.

            "Cro-no!"

            The female voice rang in his ears as he was being shaken by the shoulders in his bed.  The person bounced him up and down, evidently not in a patient mood.  He looked up from under the blanket.

            "What do you wa-aannt….??" He whined, burying his head back in the pillow.

            "You have to get up, Crono!  It's 6 o'clock in the morning and you said you'd help me in the woods near Porre today!"

            "Alright, alright….I'll get up…."

Ten minutes later…

            Crono came quickly down the stairs, seeing his mother, Jina, and Lucca standing at the doorway. 

            "Do you need any money, dear?"

            "No, mom, I have enough," Crono said, opening the front door.  He smiled to himself.

            If she only knew how much money he really did have.  He had enough money to support his mother and himself for a very long time.  Marle's father, King Frederich Guardia the 33rd, had promised to make sure that neither his family nor Lucca's, ever went hungry or without a home.

            "What about lunch?"

            "I have enough for that; we'll eat at the café in Porre," Lucca said, standing behind him.  "We'll be okay!"

            "If you kids say so," she replied, letting the both of them outside.  "Be back soon."

            They stepped out onto the sidewalk in the city of Truce, the Epoch sitting in the middle of an unoccupied street.  It would be bustling with activity only a few hours later, with people making their different ways to work and setting their children off to school. 

            Crono and Lucca hopped inside the unguarded Epoch, Lucca having been quite sure that no one in the area would have been smart enough to know how to get in it, much less operate it.  The cockpit rose back up into the ship as they both fastened their seatbelts, Lucca sitting in the pilot seat.  She flipped a few switches, which started the engine whirring quietly, and finally the burners that lifted them up high into the sky and off to Guardia Castle.

            "Lucca told me to be ready and standing here at 6 in the morning, now, she had better be here…." Marle said, tapping her food impatiently. 

            "Maybe they were running a little late, your highness," the chancellor told her.  "Things like that happen, you know."

            "I'll bet Crono just overslept again, Jacob," she said, more to herself than to the chancellor.  Crono always overslept.  "It doesn't seem to matter if he gets four hours or fourteen hours…" 

            "What exactly are you three going to Porre today for, if you don't mind me asking?"

            "We're going to find a place that we had seen before and fix it back up," she replied. "We needed a place to put the Epoch while we're not using it.  We talked about it and decided that it would be better to not have it at as public a place as the castle.  It needs to just disappear and no one but us really know where it is.  We need everyone to think that we dismantled it."

            "Would that be them, Princess?"

            "Yes," she said, waving her arm at the flying ship that had just come over the tops of the trees.  "That's them."

            It landed about twenty feet away, the force of the wind blowing her ponytail backward.  Lucca didn't bother to turn the engine off, she just lowered the cockpit down as Marle and the chancellor ran to it.   

            Marle sat down in the back seat next to Crono, who was asleep again.  She strapped herself in the seatbelt.

            "Be careful, Princess Nadia! When do you plan on returning?" he asked, handing her the bag she had packed full of peasant clothes.

            "We'll be there for a few days at least," Lucca said.  "If we have to come back for anything, it'll be at night when no one can see the ship in the sky."

            "The castle will always be open to you," the chancellor said ask the cockpit was raised back up into the ship.  "You're always welcome!"  He ran back toward the steps as the engine's burners were being ignited.

            The ship's burners switched on, lifting them up into the sky once again and they were off southward to Porre.

            The trip took, in all, about twenty minutes to travel the distance between the castle and the woods just north of the village of West Porre.  The Epoch was a fast piece of machinery.  It flew so smoothly in fact, that Crono slept most of the way until Marle elbowed him in the ribs for snoring too loudly. 

            Lucca had already cleaned out a lot of the clearing where Frog's home had been, with the help of Fritz and Elaine.  They helped her for nothing; just getting to ride in the Epoch was enough for them.  She did end up having to show them the way out of the forest, though, so they could go to town and get different supplies to build with.  They had needed a ladder; the old one was nowhere to be found.  The bed and everything else that had been there was gone, as well. 

            The single room abode had been cleared out, cobwebs, spiders, and snakes removed.  The floor had been swept and the entrance squared off to make a door. 

            Crono, Lucca, and Marle stepped out of the Epoch, looking around.

            "Looks almost like we left it in 600 A.D.," Crono said, walking over to the entrance to the cave.  They climbed down inside and Lucca flipped on the light switch she had installed on the wall.  There was a small electricity generator in the corner with a gas can a few feet away.        

            "Well, guys, this is home," Lucca said, looking around.  There was a hardwood floor and wall paneling where only dirt had been before.  Crono's eyes darted around the room, from left to right.  He turned around in a circle, still examining the room.

            "Hmm….not just yet…." He said, and pulled a picture frame out of his pocket.  Inside the frame was a picture of Crono, Lucca, Marle, Robo, Frog, and Ayla. 

            Crono picked up a nail out of a bag on the table in the middle of the room and Lucca handed him her hammer she had hanging off her belt.  He pounded the nail into the wall across from the ladder.  He hung the picture there carefully, making sure it was straight.

            "There," Crono said, satisfied with himself.  "Now, it's home."

            "You know….There's only one thing missing from that picture, Crono," Marle said thoughtfully.  Crono turned to her.

            "What's that…?" he asked, a tad puzzled.

            "Magus."

            Crono took a double take of the picture.  It did seem that he was missing, though he had never noticed it before, as many times as he had looked at it.  Now that she had mentioned it, the picture didn't look quite right. 

            "Well, what exactly can we do about it…?  If he wanted the picture taken with him in it, he knew we were having it taken, so it's not our fault he's not in it," Lucca said, going back up the ladder.

            "We could go get everybody and have it taken again with Magus in it this time," Marle said, looking up at Lucca from the floor.  Lucca looked down from the top of the ladder with a raised eyebrow.

            "Do you really think he would come just to have a picture made with us…?"

            "We could leave tonight and find out," Crono shrugged.  "There's no harm in trying."

            "…hm…I suppose not…." Lucca said, continuing up the ladder.  "C'mon, we have to go into town and get those bedframes and mattresses, it'll take two trips!"

            Crono sighed, looking at Marle and putting his hands on his waist.

            "Time to go to work," he said, starting up the ladder.

_______________________________________________________________________ 

            "Pull up, pull up, pull UP!!!" Cloud yelled at the blond man at the helm of the Highwind, the only airship in existence.

            "We're gonna crash, Cid!!!" said the girl holding frantically onto the control panel.  He held onto the cigarette between his lips, tilting it up as he pulled backward on the steering column.

            "No fucking shit, Yuffie!!" Cid screamed back at her, cigarette ashes falling down onto his blue flight jacket.  "I think I noticed!!"

            "What th' hell izzat?!" Barret yelled, pointing toward the odd blue spheres all around them.  They were flying past them at an alarming rate, with Meteor closing in on Midgar in the distance.  He tried to dodge them, but failed.  As one came near, it expanded, opening up and swallowing him as it went by.

            "Barret!!" Tifa screamed, but was being dragged inside one of the blue holes herself.  Cloud grabbed onto her, trying to pull her out.  Yuffie clasped onto his leg as he was being pulled in, too.

            "You can't leave me here, you said you'd give me your materia!" she said as the thing closed.  Cid was still trying to keep the ship from crashing.

            Vincent stood in the middle of the ship and calmly let one of the blue apparitions engulf him, while Cait Sith, seeming to catch the hint, jumped to the nearest one and it swallowed him, too.

            By this time, Cid was all alone.  He looked at Meteor, then at the blue spheres.  He sighed, letting go of the steering column and giving up.

            "Ah, fuck it, it's gotta be better than here," he said, throwing himself into the last sphere, letting it open and shut behind him.

            "Gaahhh!!"

            "You're on my hair, Yuffie!!"

            "Both of you be quiet!"

            Cloud, Tifa, and Yuffie were squished up against each other inside of a very small space, taller than it was wide.  They were not comfortable at all.

            "Where are we…?" Tifa groaned, moving as much into an agreeable position as possible.

            "From the texture of the material that we seem to be inside……..it's obvious that we're inside of a closet…."

            "Why in the hell are we inside a closet??!"

            "I don't know, Yuffie, but it's locked," Cloud replied, sighing.  He leaned toward the closet door just a tad.  "Hello??!  Is someone there?  Could you let us out, please?!"

            The sound of small footsteps could be heard coming through the house. 

            "We're tired of you people coming in and out of our closet at all hours of the day and night!  It's getting old!"

            The three adults looked at each other, perplexed.

            "What is he talking about….?" Tifa whispered.  Cloud shrugged as much as he was able.

            "I don't know," he replied.  "Um, we're sorry!  Could you just let us out, please?"

            "Oh, fine…."

            The sound of a clicking padlock was heard and the three adults fell out of the closet onto the hardwood floor on top of each other. 

            "Thank you…..sir…?"

            Tifa looked up from the floor and was face to face with a midget blue creature that resembled a human being in that it had the same body structure, but the head was all wrong.  The creature sighed.

            "You act like you've never seen an imp Mystic before…!" it said, turning around and walking to the nearby dinner table.  He stopped and turned to look at them again.  "Wait….you're not them…get outta here!"

            "We're not who…???" Tifa asked as the imp escorted them swiftly to the front door.

            "Crono, Marle, and Lucca!" the imp said.  He then turned to Cloud.  "Hmm…..you do remind me of Crono…..relative of his?"

            "No….I don't think so…" Cloud replied, scratching the back of his head.  The imp shrugged.  "Who is he?"

            "Hmm…thought for sure that you'd at least know him….."

            "Hey, where are we, anyway….?" Yuffie asked.

            "Where are you??" the imp returned incredulously.  "You're in Medina!  Don't you know anything??"

            "We…kind of just got here…."

            The imp glanced back at the closet.

            "….You're not exactly from around here, are you…?" it surmised.  It sighed.  "Oh, my….."  He walked with them over to a map that was hanging on the wall and pointed at the different marked locations.  "You're here in Medina.  To the west is the city of Truce, a little further west is Guardia Castle, southwest is Porre, and southeast is Choras."

            Tifa looked at the map from top to bottom.

            "That's all….?"

            The imp shrugged.

            "It's a small world, after all…." He said, giggling.  It took him a moment to recompose himself.  "But, no, there are other settlements, those are just the major cities."

            "Okay…"

            "There's a ferry that goes to all three cities from the pier just to the west of here," the imp said.  "The fare to Truce from here is 5g, to Porre is 10g and to Choras is 15g."

            "We'll just stick around here for a while…." Cloud said.  The imp nodded.

            "This is a city of Mystics," he said, pointing toward town.  "You're three humans that nobody's ever seen before.  I would suggest that if you were going to 'stick around', you should go southwest to Melchior's house.  He's a hermit weapon maker, he should be able  to give you a place to stay, at least for the night.  And if you want to go back where you came from, I'd suggest that you go and find Crono, Marle, or Lucca.  Your best bet to find them….well….there isn't really a best bet to find them, because they've been known to be all over the place.  But, I'd guess Truce, it's originally where they're from, anyway."

            "Thanks….." Cloud replied as the imp led them to the door once again. 

            "Like I said, head southwest," the imp reminded them.  "The Mystics in town are fickle about new people.  And, uh…" He looked the three humans over.  "You don't seem to be armed.  Good day to you."

            With that, the imp shut his front door to the three humans.  Tifa looked down at her gloveless hands.

            "Where are our weapons….? 

            "I don't know," Cloud responded, clearly frustrated about the subject.  "I had more materia on that sword than one person should be able to own…."

            "Hey, I'm weaponless, too, here!" Yuffie pointed out.  "You're not the only one with problems…!"

            "Let's go to town," Tifa suggested, ignoring Yuffie, and nodding her head in the direction of the city of Mystics.  "We're tough enough to handle ourselves, don't you think….?"

~That's the end of chapter 1.  Chapter 2 is coming once I get chapter 3 finished.  I'm keeping myself one chapter ahead so I don't get behind.  Anyway, if you'd like to see a real Chrono Trigger novel, then visit and sign the petition at .  Be advised that the site is about to undergo a major revamp, so if it's down when you visit, please don't think that we've gone out of business.  The novel project is very much alive, no matter how often the site gets updated!  We also have a mailing list, so when we do update, you can get an e-mail telling everything that's in the current update.  Thanks!