Chapter 3: On the Properties of Metal When Exposed to Extreme Cold and its Negative Reactions with the Human or Amphibian Tongue
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"Hey, guys, come take a look at this," Lucca called over her shoulder to Frog and Robo several hours later as she came to a stop on a fairly calm, quiet, and un-deadly-looking flat section of mountain, where the rock of the cliff jutting up from it overhung slightly, sheltering it from most of the wind.
"What is it?" Frog called back, quickening his pace and casting an anxious glance at the darkening sky. Death Peak by day was one thing, but Death Peak by night was something that he wasn't sure even qualified as difficult anymore, as opposed to impossible.
"What does it look like? It's a cluster of bluish, sparkly crystals dancing about in mid-air. We've seen at least thirty of them so far," Lucca replied, rolling her eyes.
"A Save Point!" Robo paraphrased cheerfully.
Frog was silent for a moment, considering this.
"Er…shoudst I glean some significance from this…Save Point?"
Lucca ground her teeth, turned around, counted slowly and deliberately to one hundred, and turned back.
"It means there's something really nasty waiting for us just up ahead. My guess is it's through that cave door. It also means we camp here for the night, because it's very, very late, and we know from experience now that nothing sucks more than trying to fight something you can barely see because it's too dark," she replied with a calm politeness in a far-too-sweet tone that made Frog think of a delightful caramel pie with a bomb hidden somewhere it in, just waiting for some poor, miserable fool to accidentally prod it with a fork and set it off.
"I see," he hastened to say. "Shalt I set up a tent?"
"Please. I'll go look for something edible."
"You might not have any luck," Robo informed her. "I believe the only edible creatures around the Death Peak area are rabbits, and if I remember correctly, we decimated the only remaining one earlier today."
"No, we started to," Lucca corrected him. "Then we remembered that our weapons were still back at the Epoch."
"The point is, Lucca, do you want to go back down the mountain to catch the rabbit?"
Lucca began to reply angrily that yes, she did, but then, as memories of exactly how easily they had accomplished the great feat of getting up the mountain assailed her, she drooped forward slightly.
"No," she grumbled. "I'll go look for plants or something."
"Mind that thou takest caution," Frog called from where he was already hammering tent pegs into the ground, evidently forgetting about the Auto-Assemble button just to the left of the tent flap.
"Sure thing, Dad," she called back teasingly.
Frog pouted as best a Frog, even a man-sized one, could.
"Dad?"
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"Oh, geez, how are we going to do this?" Lucca wondered aloud, staring helplessly at the tent, with its three sleeping bags and enough room to accommodate approximately half a normal-sized person.
"You don't need to bring me into the tent," Robo informed her cheerfully. "I'll just wait under that little overhang, and plan our strategy."
"Well, yeah, we were going to do that anyway," Lucca grumbled. "But there's still not enough room for two people in one of these things. That's why we always use two: two people can sleep, and one can keep watch. Unfortunately, we don't have tents to waste. Although, I don't know why we don't reuse them. It seems like kind of a waste to just leave it there in the morning. Oh, well. The rules are the rules, I guess…"
"Shalt I take the first shift?" Frog asked nobly and heroically, inwardly praying that she might say no.
"Uh, Frog, we're leaving Robo over there," Lucca reminded him.
"Of course, but what of the time that our comrade wilt spend in sleep?"
The girl sighed. Then she turned to Robo.
"Do you want to tell him, or should I?"
Frog blinked in confusion for about half a second. Then, as a realization of exactly what she was talking about hit him, he gave a long, unearthly groan.
"Today hast been a long day, has it not?"
"Yeah, you're obviously tired. Look, let's get to sleep so we can keep going first thing in the morning, okay?"
"Very good."
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The next morning, Frog woke to a sensation of extreme cold. This was strange, as his last, very fuzzy memory was of being reasonably warm, and of throwing his arm sleepily over something else quite remarkably warm. Once he managed to pry his left eye open, the sight of dazzling white snow all around him startled him into opening his right, and sitting bolt upright, to find himself just outside the tent, in the middle of a snowdrift.
Seconds after he had finally decided what exactly had changed in his surroundings – it always took Frog several minutes to entirely wake up – Lucca emerged from the tent.
"Good morning, Frog," she greeted cheerfully.
"Why art I outside?" he asked grumpily.
She scowled at him.
"You didn't tell me you were a cuddler."
He blinked several times, digesting this.
"I was just starting to go to sleep," she continued, her cheeks growing slightly redder than usual, whether due to the stinging cold of the wind or to embarrassment, "when I felt this arm flop over me. You almost broke my ribs!"
"Er…I apologize."
"And then you started nuzzling my ear!"
"I…I did?" Frog asked, utterly horrified.
She nodded grimly, the faint red spots on her cheeks darkening.
"Well…I hath heard that some girls enjoy that," he joked weakly, with a weaker laugh.
She closed her eyes briefly, as though summoning patience of divine sources.
"Frog," she began slowly, "there is a time and a place. The time is not now, and the place IS NOT FREAKING DEATH PEAK!"
"Is it morning already?" a cheerful voice asked from several feet away.
"Yeah," Lucca called back grumpily. "Come on, Robo. We'd better keep going."
"Yes, let us journey onward," Frog said grandly, his preternatural ability to sense an opportunity for a dramatic moment leaping immediately to live. "For Crono!"
"For Crono," Lucca agreed flatly, not in the mood to completely play along by shouting it enthusiastically, but not entirely willing to see Frog's attempt at team spirit fall completely flat.
And so they continued onward, venturing boldly through the mouth of the cave, into the darkness that lay beyond.
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"Ow!" Lucca yelped.
A startled, alarmed noise from Frog.
"Lucca! Art thou all right?"
"Fine," she replied, quite annoyed. "I just tripped over my foot. Shut up," she concluded as the snickers of a frog and a robot reached her ears. "Guys! It's dark in here, okay?!"
"I apologize," Frog said, clearing his throat. "At any rate, let us be on our guard for whatever mayst lie within this cave!"
"You mean, like a big spiky thing, slobbering from something that may or may not be a mouth, and advancing menacingly on us?" Robo asked brightly.
"Yes, Robo, exactly like that," Frog agreed enthusiastically. "Quite an imagination thou hast, for a robot."
"Frog," Lucca said urgently, poking him in the ribs. "Turn around and look."
Frog turned.
Frog looked.
Frog struck a dramatic pose.
"Comrades, the foe has shown itself! Let us face this challenge with all the courage that lies within our souls!"
"Sure," Lucca sighed. "Okay, Spiky, say your prayers!"
And somewhere, somehow, in a completely different universe, a young blond man named Cloud with absurdly spiky hair looked up suddenly from his task of polishing his massive sword, which had already taken up the better parts of the week.
"Someone call?" he asked. "Barret? Did you call me? Did you just tell me to say my prayers? And when did your voice get so high?"
No answer.
With a shrug, Cloud went back to his work, wondering if hearing voices was a bad sign.
Meanwhile, back at the cave on Death Peak, the battle seemed to have begun without both the chronicler and her readers. Frog was already heroically charging the beast for the fourth time, while Lucca shot repeatedly at it, aiming at the tip of each spike, just for fun, and Robo repeatedly bashed it with his arm.
The creature, apparently being towards the bottom percentile on the Official Intelligence Scale of Big Spiky Drooling Thingies, did nothing, save pulsate disgustingly, look scary, and possibly gaze confusedly and a little bit reproachfully at the group beating up on it, although no one could quite be certain of this last one.
However, there is no rule that says that a Big Spiky Drooling Thingy cannot have a nefarious scheme, and so, just as Frog was beginning to wonder why on earth it wasn't reacting, it attacked.
And how.
Frog, Lucca, and Robo flew back and into the wall of the cave, Robo dented in several places, Frog severely disoriented and wondering how he had come to be upside down, and Lucca reflecting that this would "hurt come winter", as it were.
"You bastard!" Lucca exclaimed, peeling herself from the wall and wiping off the blood trickling down her arm. "How dare you fight back?!"
Unfortunately, yelling at the creature was not the best strategy, and just as soon as the group regained their footing, they found themselves with their backs (or faces, in Robo's case) against the wall.
"This is pretty bad, isn't it?" Lucca shouted to Frog as together they hauled Robo from the Robo-shaped indentation in the wall.
"I doth agree," Frog shouted back. "Dost thou require a healing spell?"
"No, what I require is revenge," she replied, turning abruptly and starting toward the creature.
Once in front of it, she began to chant a spell that Frog, upon recognizing it, reflected that nothing, even a Big Spiky Drooling Thingy, deserved.
Seconds later, a Flare spell burst forth from her outstretched hands, and the creature made whatever sort of noise it is that Big Spiky Drooling Thingies make when they're in pain.
"I think I got it," Lucca began to say on her way through the air, back into the wall. "Never mind," she concluded mournfully, her words muffled by the rock.
Then the creature revealed that it had another trick up its Big Spiky Drooling Sleeve. A thick flurry of needles shot forth from its spiked body, raining down severe medical nightmares upon two people who had never particularly liked getting shots, and a robot who had never cared either way.
"Ow," Lucca said flatly, pulling a handful of needles from her leg.
"I quite agree," Frog said, yanking several from his side.
"How did those pierce me?" Robo wondered, pulling out several needles, leaving several tiny holes behind in his arm.
"Okay, that's it," Lucca began with eerie calm, stalking slowly toward the creature with such fury in her eyes that it looked as nervous as a Big Spiky Drooling Thingy possibly could.
"Lucca! Can we try the new one?" Robo pleaded. "Please? That new trick we learned! We can try it, right?"
"Sure, Robo," Lucca agreed with a sigh, reflecting that the sense of menace was really lost now. The creature was starting to breathe…and drool…easier.
And so, the new trick was tried.
And the creature fell. It was rather embarrassed at being seen in this silly position, until it died.
Then, predictably, it no longer cared.
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"Oh, God, that was awful," Lucca sighed, dropping wearily to the ground in perfect time with their former foe. She was, however, in much better health.
Frog looked up anxiously from the task of cleaning his sword with an old rag and a clump of snow. She was still coughing a little more than he would have liked, and she was beginning to shiver violently again. Eyeing the drops of red trickling from a rather nasty gash in her shoulder to mar the dazzling white of the show, he hauled her up by her other arm and, ignoring her protest at having her nap-time cut short, began to chant a healing spell.
"Thanks," she yawned with a small smile as the bleeding slowed to a stop and the cut melded back together.
"No problem, babe," Frog might have replied in a glaring lapse of characterization, had a deafening crash not filled the air, jolting his attention and hers away.
At the sight of Robo lying, unmoving, in the snow, both hurried over and hastened to haul their very heavy fallen comrade to his feet.
"Oh! I'm sorry,"
Robo said contritely. "I must have sustained more damage in that last fight
than I thought."
"Yeah, we noticed," Lucca told him,
casting an anxious glance at Frog.
"Do not worry, Robo," Frog said. "I shalt take care of thy injuries."
He chanted the same healing spell again.
Nothing happened, save those thing that had already been happening, such as the wind howling just outside the cave, the ocean miles away doing all those nice things oceans do, and the planets revolving as is their wont.
With a frown, he tried again.
The result was remarkably similar, aside from the fact that, coincidentally, at the same moment that he finished the spell, four different people at four different locations around the world coughed in unison, one of them being Lucca, and in a totally different part of the world, a wounded zebra fell to the ground with a wounded-zebra-noise, and three lions shared but a single thought: lunch time!
However, none of this affected our band of heroes in the slightest, so we shall ignore it.
"Uh, Frog," Lucca began, tapping him on the shoulder. "I think you're out of Magic Points – er, out of…uh…hypothetical units of magical energy. Yeah. Heh-heh-heh…ugh."
Frog blinked.
"Oh."
"Here," Lucca said, rummaging through her pack. "I think I've got an Ether somewhere in here."
"No, Lucca, we wouldst be well advised to save all such provisions, for thou canst be sure we hath not seen the worst yet."
"Well, then, what do you suggest we do about Robo?" Lucca demanded impatiently.
"I hath another method of healing," he assured her.
"Great! Go to it," she invited stepping back. "I'll go for firewood. I hope."
Frog began to chant once again, but a different chant. Then, once the spell was complete, his tongue shot from his mouth, began to drag across Robo's backside…and stopped abruptly.
"Ah! I feel much better now," Robo announced beamingly, completely missing Frog's dismayed squeak.
Frog pulled back gingerly, remained stuck fast, and then wondered resentfully what on earth was going on.
Then, in a sickening rush, a few things occurred to him.
The first was that it was, indeed, very, very cold.
The second was that Robo was made of metal.
The third and final one was a certain memory of his childhood, in which he had
been dared by a few mischievous youngsters to lick the metal fence outside the
tavern of his hometown. Hot on its heels was the memory of the miserable half
hour he had spent trying to get his tongue free, as well as the pain that had
resulted when he had finally done it.
Frog groaned in dismay.
And, of course, it was this moment that Lucca chose to make her reappearance, arms filled with dried pine needles and strips of bark.
At the odd scene in front of her, her grip released, would-be fuel dropping to the snow, unheeded.
Then the wave of laughter hit her.
Frog waited, arms crossed, scowling darkly out in front of him, tongue still extended.
This only served to make him look sillier, and thus caused another gale of helpless laughter in the girl, and so it was ten minutes before she had recovered sufficiently to say, still wiping away tears of mirth,
"Frog! I thought you said you loved me!"
Frog made an unintelligible noise of protest, and doubtlessly would have blushed, had frogs possessed such an ability.
"But," Lucca continued with a theatrical sigh, turning to leave, "I guess I can be happy for you. I'll leave you two alone now."
"Lucca!" Frog tired to exclaim reproachfully
"Fine, fine. I'll get you off. Er…I mean, I'll get you free. You'll just have to hold tight, though. It might take a while to start a fire. I've got some kindling, but we're out of matches, and I've never been able to figure out how to get sparks from rocks properly."
Frog made an exasperated noise, and howled something that sounded vaguely like,
"Lucca! Are you or are you not a fire innate?!"
His great exasperation had led him, for once, to forgo any unnecessary fills and trappings in his speech.
"Oh, right!" she laughed sheepishly. "Geez, am I losing it, or what?"
"WHY ME?!!!" Frog tried to howl.