Prescript: Hmm . . . only one review? crushed :( Thanks MoonCannon for the support, anyway!

Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of Symphonia. But I do own Taro, Mina, Jennai, and Sera.

Transcendent; Chapter two: The Truth

Taro didn't look any different than he did three years ago. If he hadn't spoken to us at all, we would have never known he'd been as depressed as Zelos had described him. "Good to see ya, ladies!" he said, grinning. He sounded weak and exhausted. "Guess Zelos got home all right, Sheena? How's little Mina doin'?"

"Yes, he did, and she's doing very well. And you?" It felt weird to talk to him like this after so long, almost as if I'd been promised a pool and gotten a puddle (that is to say, here I was expecting this big, exciting reunion, and all I got was a Hello, how's the family).

Taro got on his feet, the metal discs on the heels of his boots clinking on the ground as he paced the room. "Good, good. I called you here to tell you . . . Sera Cetra is still alive."

Beside me, Jennai made a sound between a choke and a laugh. "What? You . . . how dare you bring me here and feed me these lies? You're just as—"

"Hey, if you don't want to believe it, go on home." I could tell from his expression, Taro was dead serious. Which was nerve-racking, because if Jennai hadn't doubted him, I would have. "But she is alive, and I can take you to her."

"Tell me how." My neighbor folded her arms and scowled. "Tell me how my baby sister is alive after what happened in Mizuho. And tell me, where is she?"

I could see those smiling eyes of his glistening slyly. "Sera was never harmed that day. She was simply transported elsewhere via angelic powers," he explained. Before we could ask, To where? He said, "She was taken to the inner sanctum of the Tower of Salvation."

"Why? What is she doing in a place like that?" I hated the Tower of Salvation. It made me nervous and dizzy, especially when we went up in it.

The feeling you get when you're about to sit through a long spiel sprang on me just as Taro began to answer my question. "Ya know how there's that barrier around the Tower of Salvation? Sera, ever since the day she was born, was meant to produce that barrier. She is a half-elf, selected to guard the Tower, much like the Chosen is selected to regenerate the world." He looked to me, then to Jennai. "Get it?"

I did . . . kind of, but Jennai shook her head slowly. "Why? Why my sister? I wasn't compatible with the requirements, why is she?"

"It's the genes," Taro said, shrugging.

Jennai looked like she was going to go AWOL at any given moment. "That's not fair . . . "

"Wait, so . . . Jennai was supposed to do it before? But she can't, because she doesn't meet the requirements, and Sera does?" I asked, baffled. All this was just barely making sense to me.

She burst. He nodded. "That's right."

Okay, I got that. But one thing didn't make sense at the time, and I guess I shouldn't have asked — "What are the requirements? Er . . . what did Sera do that her sister didn't?"

"Sera came to me when she learned about her duty. Jennai didn't," Taro answered. Once again, he answered my next question before I could ask it; "I'm not just a lowly fallen priest; although I was once a follower of Martel and am no longer, I am the only priest out there that was taught to awaken dormant abilities within angels. Only by coming to me can the guardians of the Tower learn how to do their job, as well as use their transcendent powers to their advantage."

This came as a surprise to me. Truths be told, I always thought Taro was just a lazy bum who gave up on the teachings and was too cheap to move out of his chambers in the temple. "So . . . you taught Sera what to do."

He started to answer, but Jennai jumped into the discussion to chew him out some more. "You corrupted my baby sister! Why couldn't you just turn her down? You didn't have to do that to her!"

"What, and risk gettin' nuked by the Cruxis?" Taro snapped back. I could feel serious tremors building up. An earthquake of an argument was just bound to happen.

Jennai moved closer to Taro and raised a hand to smack him. That wasn't smart, I knew rather well. Threatening that guy could get you shot. "Better you than her," she snarled in his face, and the fight was on.

Taro pounced on her, knocking her totally senseless. She couldn't get a hand on him, not even close. He pounded her face in and pulled her hair, bit her hand when she tried to sock him, then took a pillow off the couch and pressed it over her face until she was screaming and begging him to lay off.

Why didn't I interfere? I... don't know. Maybe because Jennai sort of deserved a good beating (even if I'd already pummeled her earlier that day).

"Besides," Taro roared. "I turned her down once and she came back the next day, begging me." Getting on his feet, he began fixing his blonde hair until it was perfect. "But anyway. I've been speaking with Sera at the Tower of Salvation, and she has requested that I take you to see her."

Jennai got up, also. "Damn right. You're taking us to see her whether you like it or not." I saw her flinch when Taro whipped around to glare in her direction. Obviously, this was considered a threat.

For the first time in what felt like my whole life, I was suddenly afraid to speak. It was unlike me to be like that — seven lonely years in a backwater prison cell tend to make you tough and desperate to be heard — and I found myself swallowing down a lump in my throat before I could ask, "Should I bring Zelos and Mina, or . . . no?"

"Nah. She asked to see just you and her sister." Taro shook his head at me, giving a sort of sorrowful glare to the floor.

Jennai looked to me like she really couldn't believe any of this. She had admitted to being aware of what had happened, but still, she seemed so out of it. Guess I would be, too, if the only person I really loved got taken away from me before I could say goodbye . . .

Rather abruptly, I felt a hand on my shoulder. "Don't cry . . . " Taro said, turning me around to face him. "It's okay." I guess maybe I'd started crying because of Zelos. He worried me, always vanishing for so long without a word or even a note. "Let's get going, all right?"

I nodded. The three of us moved out of the door — people throughout the temple seemed shocked to see Taro — and went around back to where the Rheairds were kept. It amazed me how many Rheairds there were now, and the aircrafts could be used for longer periods of time.

XOXOXOXO

We flew right over Mizuho on the way to the tower, and I spotted a large group of children marching around in the grass. Mina's class must be having a hike today . . . I thought, searching for my little redheaded daughter. But I didn't see her (or Zelos for that matter), and Taro landed us outside the Tower of Salvation.

As I stared up at the stump of a tower, I remembered why I hated the place so much. It was cold and dizzying, always seeming ominous from the outside and threatening on the inside. If you looked really hard, you could actually see the translucent, incandescent barrier guarding it, with only a small gap in front of the door for specific people to go into. Dead grass crunched beneath our shoes as we entered.

"Sera is on the very top floor of the tower," Taro explained as we climbed the stairs and the dias. "Beyond Welgaia, and very near the port leading to Derris-Kharlan. There will be no gravity, and little oxygen."

The thought of being unable to breathe scared me. "How does Sera survive there?" Although I was wary of asking questions that would upset Jennai, my curiosity was boundless.

"She's an angel. Breathing isn't really an issue, and the Cruxis Crystal sustains her," he answered.

The teleporter we stood on whisked us up higher into the Tower with a bright explosion of white light, and as we hurtled upward blindly, the ground dropped away, the oxygen thinned, and we landed abruptly in the city of angels. "Just a bit further," the priest said, taking us higher via the transport discs.

The last room was like a spacious black cloud; we floated through it with no fear of obstacles, but it was too foggy and dark to really grasp the image of the interior of the room. Mounds of various portions of energy wafted about and swirled around each other, all lingering near a pair of pastille red lights. They were wings, Cruxis angel wings, and were suspended in midair, apparently against their will for they occasionally twitched violently. A gap in the shadows revealed a white backdrop, and in the center of it all was Sera, a silvery, electric-looking orb in both hands.