A Generation of Aeons
Chapter Twenty-One

Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy X or X-2

Last Time:

Kiron's voice dripped with anxiety. "Did he tell you how many maesters there are now and how many there have been in the past?"

"Well, there are two now. One's your dad, the leader of Zanarkand, and the other one is the leader of Bevelle, I don't remember his name though."

"And he told you there has only been one maester at a time before this, right?" Kiron continued to ask.

"Well, yeah."

"But did he tell you why?" Seru asked.

Lenne shrugged. "No, but I just figured that it was extremely hard and no one could pass it. Why's that a big deal? I mean, I know that if you fail a test you can never take it again, but what's the big deal?"

"Lenne," Kiron started, "in the Cheribum's case, when Takoire said you can never take it again, it's literal."

Seru looked at Lenne with a pained face. "Look, if you take the Cheribum's test and fail, Lenne, you die."

"Die?" Lenne asked. "What do you mean they die?"

"Why do you think there's only been one maester at a time? Everyone who tried and failed is dead, and everyone who was going to try backed out at the last minute," Seru said.

"I didn't know that," Lenne said, "that changes everything."

"So what do you think you're going to do?" Kiron asked.

"I'm not sure. I need to think about this."

Kiron offered a sympathetic look. "Well, if you need to talk to anyone, I'm sure the three of us will all be able to help, but," the prince added thoughtfully, "I don't think Zaon will give you very much feedback."

Everyone laughed at Kiron's little comment on his guardian while Lenne looked down below. "How far down is the city?"

"A long ways," Kiron answered, "don't know exactly."

"You know," Lenne started, "according to my parents, when the fayth were around, a lake covered all of this," she sighed, "but when the fayth left, the lake disappeared. My parents said there was a huge forest, too, and well…"

Seru wrapped an arm around her friend. "Come on, what is it with you and withholding details? If Takoire can coax it out of you, so can I."

"Okay, okay," Lenne said, motioning with her hands to settle down, "I'll tell you. My parents have this supposedly fantastic love story. My father was given a chance at the real world and became my mother's guardian. He loved her so much that he couldn't watch her die. He broke tradition and helped save Spira, but in a way, he sacrificed himself for my mom. The fayth were what kept him in Spira, and they couldn't stay otherwise Sin could come back." Lenne laughed softly. "But my mom couldn't stand living without him, so two years later after, of course, saving Spira again, the fayth gave him back to her and made him real."

Kiron leaned against the railing and peered down on the busy city below, people running through the streets, going about their business. "So what does the forest and lake have to do with it?"

"Uh," Lenne rubbed the back of her neck uncomfortably.

"Don't leave us hanging," Kiron said.

"They had their first kiss in a spring in the woods."

Seru sighed. "Aw, quite the love story you have to live up to."

Lenne shrugged. "I guess, but nothing exciting ever really happens to me. My parents have such a huge legacy, and I'll always be in it."

"You're kidding, right?" Kiron asked in disbelief. "Lenne, look at yourself!"

"What?"

"You're from a thousand years into the future. You're already writing a legacy of your own." Kiron laughed and placed a comforting on his friend's shoulder. "It's like that priest said earlier, you don't give yourself enough credit. Trust me, I know what it's like. I've got my parents and my sister to deal with. Everyone in my family has done something great except me, and I want to earn my place."

"Wow," Lenne answered, dumbstruck, "you hit me exactly."

The prince of Zanarkand shrugged. "The way you talked… it sounds exactly like the situation I have to deal with everyday until I started my pilgrimage. The way you talk, if there isn't any royal families in your time, then your family's the closest too it if I'm right."

"What do you know?" Seru asked slyly. "Kiron gave good advice. At last! He has a purpose!"

Kiron rolled his eyes and softly pushed Seru. "Fine, be that way… there are some things I need to get done, if you don't mind, I'll see you later."

Zaon moved to follow him. "I'll stay with Kiron. You should stay with Lenne as long as Takoire's gone."

With that, Kiron and Zaon went back inside the temple, leaving the two girls on the trail that ran around it. "You know," Seru said, "Kiron's changed lately."

Lenne turned to her friend. "Really? I've only known him for about, wow… has it been two months already?"

Seru laughed to herself. "I've known him for about four, maybe five years. But it started when my mother and I left for Zanarkand. I knew the kind of guy Kiron was the minute I first met him. Especially because the way we met." She laughed out loud again. "Kiron was fourteen, and I think he was trying to avoid his tutors, but I was cleaning, and all of a sudden, someone ran into me. When I realized who it was, I couldn't even look up. I was shaking so badly; I thought we would be thrown out of the palace for sure."

"So," Lenne said anxiously, "what happened?"

"He was really nice about it. We were just sitting there, and I listened to him talk. After that I'd run into him every now and then, and like the first time, we would just sit. He would talk, and I would listen. Over time, he started asking the staff about me. According to Kiron, it wasn't hard to get my mother and I assigned to the royal family because we were such hard workers. Then Sir Jole began teaching me."

"In other words, you know Kiron pretty well."

Seru shrugged. "Yes, and I can definitely say that he's changed lately."

"Maybe it's his new responsibilities as a summoner. Or maybe it's his sister showing up; I noticed he gets kind of competitive when it comes to her."

"Or," Kiron's guardian suggested, "maybe it was his life and death situation with assassins. Or other outside sources of course."

"What do you mean?"

"Kiron seems more down to earth lately for starters. Not gloating because he's royalty, and he's not as annoying You notice how he and Takoire haven't been bickering lately?"

Lenne turned thoughtful for a moment before speaking. "You're right, and you know what else I think was a huge factor?"

Seru shrugged. "Enlighten me."

"High Summoner Yunalesca. Her little visit. I think Kiron realized that he didn't really have anything to brag about it except his family tree and that even wasn't anything to brag about because he isn't the first heir."

Seru patted Lenne on the shoulder. "But Kiron's not the only one who's grown up."

"Takoire?" Lenne asked with a smile.

"He's turning into quite the guardian, don't you think?"

"Can't say," Lenne responded. "The only ones I can really compare him to are you and Zaon."

"Think about it. Through all your headaches, taking you around our Spira, and answering all of your questions, he's always been there. He's a lot more than I expected from him."

"What are you talking about?"

"He's a blitzball player, that's all." Seru motioned to the temple. "I'm getting a little cold, aren't you? Why don't we follow the guys and head inside?"

The rest of the day played out, and Takoire was nowhere to be seen. It was late before Lenne went to bed, attempting to wait up for Takoire but was only served to be disappointed. The following morning Kiron, Zaon, Seru, and Lenne ate breakfast together at the temple's courtesy, but Takoire remained absent.

They all now stood once again at the large clearing behind the temple, large enough, Lenne judged, to maybe summon one of the aeons from her time, not that she had much experience. The only aeons she had ever summoned were Valefor and Ifrit. Looking up, she marveled at the temple, two floors were below a dome shaped tower, and at the very top was a frozen bell that Lenne feared if someone were to ring it, the bell would surely shatter.

Standing on the platform, Kiron put a comforting hand on Lenne's shoulder. "Have you made your decision about Bevelle yet?"

"Not exactly," Lenne responded, shaking her head.

"Well then," Kiron said, "wait for Takoire here, he should know about the test and should be here soon. Just be patient."

Lenne gave her friend a hug. "Good luck."

"Thanks."

Moving away, Kiron walked to the railing, joining Seru and Zaon and turned to each of them. "You guys ready?"

Zaon nodded. "Let's get this done."

"Last one," Seru said.

Before Lenne could realize what they were doing, Kiron, Seru, and Zaon all jumped over the frozen, metal railing. As fast as she could, she ran to where they had been standing and heard a high-pitched whistle fill the air. Forced to shield her eyes, a bright light seemed to engulf the temple like a lake.

The summoner sat alone on the ground, shaking her head in disbelief, and the strange thing was, it was beginning to feel normal to her. Well, the disbelief anyway. A world with aeons, summoners, and royalty; it didn't seem so alien anymore. She had made friends, people she had met in this different Spira. Her new friends made up a rather diverse group: Takoire, a former captain and star player of the best blitzball team in Zanarkand; Kiron, a prince and heir to the Zanarkand throne; Seru, a former palace maid turned guardian due to her remarkable talents as a mage; and Zaon, the simple, silent soldier who, as time progressed, had opened up to the group more and more, much to everyone's surprise.

Lenne compared them with her friends waiting for her at her own home. There were her two cousins of course: Garren and Gaia. Garren, the resolute Crimson Knight, who was always the adventurous one when they were younger, while Gaia would always concoct the plans and schemes that would get them into trouble with their parents. One would normally associate plans and schemes as synonyms of each other, but not in Gaia's vocabulary; a plan meant that they had a low chance of getting caught while a scheme was sure to get them in trouble. In the end, both ways ended the same through different means… usually. Vidina, her surrogate brother, seemed to have been the conscience of the group as long as Lenne could remember, but he always seemed to be overruled by Garren and Gaia and ended up being just as adventurous as the future Crimson Knight.

Darka, Lenne's last friend, didn't seem to fit with the rest. He became an orphan when he was less than a year old; his parents were killed on a boat ride headed for Besaid from Kilika by Sin. Ironically, another boat headed in the opposite direction was carrying both of Lenne's parents.

A local Besaid man found the wreck of the ship, and a woman holding a baby while out fishing and took in the child as his own, the woman telling him the baby's name in her dying moments. When Darka was nineteen, a group of protectors was created in order to defend the cities, he joined almost as soon as the group became official; his own guardian dying a little after the young man turned fifteen. Always a little bit of an outcast, Lenne met him while she was still young and became friends with the orphan, although he was six years older than her.

Lenne stood on the platform collecting her thoughts before a shearing pain ripped through her reflection. She screamed aloud in agony as she fell to her knees. This wasn't any pain that Lenne received when an aeon gave her their power; this was something completely different.

Unaware of what was happening around her, a crowd of men began to surround the temple as silently as possible. All wearing Bevelle armor, they peered at her curiously and uneasily as Lenne continued to cry out in pain.

"Hey, boss, what's up with her?"

"How should I know? Shut her up, we don't want to raise any alarms."

As Lenne felt her headache lessening, she barely felt the soldier hit her head with the butt of his rifle. She fell to the ground, somehow staying conscious, and her thoughts were filled with that of her royal friend.

"So, boss, aren't you worried that if the rat becomes a high summoner, we won't be able to kill him?"

"You kidding? Do you see how many soldiers we brought this time? The lord doesn't want any screwups."

"But, sir, what about last time? We still don't know what happened to them."

"Probably were just careless. Summoner still had his guardians around or some dumb reason like that."

Lenne groaned as she strained to get up and open her eyes. "You can try all you want, but you're never going to be able to kill Kiron."

Two men in particular stood in front of the mass of Bevelle soldiers standing at attention. One taller than the other, he leaned down to look at Lenne. "So, you must be that female summoner that travels around with the rat."

"I don't know, can't say I know any rats, unless I make your acquaintance. Then I can easily say at the next party I'm at that I know a rat. This is your second time trying to kill Kiron, and I still don't see the one giving out the orders, probably a sewer rat instead of just a regular rat."

"I beg to differ," the soldier said, "our lord's schedule was just too full of Zanarkand rat hunting. I hear overpopulation can be a real problem."

"You can't kill Kiron," Lenne repeated. "He has too many powerful friends looking out for him. He's stronger than you think."

"Powerful friends, eh?" the soldier asked eagerly. "And you would be one of them, wouldn't you? A summoner who has three of the four aeons needed in order to become a high summoner. That would be considered powerful, wouldn't it? Well, we can't have that. Tursel, would you be so kind as to take care of our little problem?"

"Yes, sir," the other replied, pointing a rifle at Lenne.

Author's Notes:

Final Revision