Chapter 1 - A Fork In The Road
"Crono... Crono! Come on Crono, it's time to get up!"
Slowly, painfully, Crono opened up his eyes, as his mother opened up the curtains. Daylight streamed in through the window, piercing his eyes, lighting up the mess of a room in which he was inhabiting. Ratty-looking clothes were dumped in one corner, each garment sending its own SOS message to Crono's mother, screaming to be clean once again.
"Hunh? Uggghhhhh..."
"You were so excited about going to see the Millennial Fair, you hardly slept last night did you?" a right old scolding on the tip of her tongue, begging to be let loose on the young lad but she bit it back, knowing it would do no good. Things were difficult enough as they were without a war erupting between her and her son.
"Uh-huh..."
Crono's mother shook her head disapprovingly and ruffled his spiky red hair, before walking down the stairs leaving Crono on his own. Throwing back the cover, he swung his legs over the side of the bed. As usual his cat nuzzled itself against his legs, the short fur tickling his ankles. In his excitement to get as much time in at the Millennial Fair, Crono had gone to sleep the previous night in his clothes which were now all wrinkled up, not that he cared. None of the girls in the local area held Crono's attention. Not that they were ugly... well, some of them were, but they just lacked something he needed in a girlfriend. Standing up, he checked himself out in the mirror. Quickly running his hand through his hair again, he reached for his most prized possession. A wooden sword hand-carved by his father. In another daily ritual, he ran his fingers over the blades inscriptions before sheathing it and attaching it to his belt. Finally deciding he was ready, he started off down the stairs.
"Ah, you're finally up! You inventor friend... what was her name again? Lucca, that's it... Lucca called around earlier, she wants you to go and see her exhibition at the fair," Crono's mum said as she saw her son trudge his way down the stairs the same way as he did every day.
Giving her a quick poke in the ribs, Crono laid his palm out upwards, giving his mother the best puppy dog look he could. Seeing his pathetic attempt to look adorable, she sighed before reaching into a pocket in her apron. "Here's your allowance, not that you deserve it after that incident last week!"
Blushing, Crono quickly sidestepped her and dashed through the doorway into freedom, ignoring the call of "What about some breakfast?" from behind him. As he slowed his pace to a walk, he realised that he was indeed hungry. Spotting the inn, he decided to see if they had any grub for him or whether he'd have to get by on some candy from the Fair which was almost definitely gonna be overpriced. Popping in, he went up to the bar, and surprisingly for this time of day there were plenty of people in there already. Holiday time, let the drunkards come, he thought as he glanced at a rather fat man slouched on the stool beside him. Looking around a bit more, his sharp ears picked up some conversation being muttered about in a corner.
"I swear, I've had just about all I can stand of those damn earthquakes... I've put that damn fence up five times in the last year and every quake it gets knocked down..."
"We're having earthquakes and you're worried about your fence? We've been having too many, something's wrong... Hope the 'Big One' ain't coming..."
Guessing it was the usual blabber from drunken fools, Crono dismissed it from his mind and left empty-handed... the words still ringing in his head. Shaking it clear, he sprinted all the way to the fair. He'd been looking forward to the four-hundredth anniversary of the victory of the Kingdom of Guardia over the Mystics and people were celebrating the freedom of life... As Crono arrived, he saw the vibrancy of it all and he stopped, taken aback by the sheer gaudiness of it all. Brightly coloured flags were strung up all over the place and every stall was a different colour, all in a vain effort to make it look pretty and interesting to all of the tourists, trying to con them out of their money. Not that Crono minded, he just wanted to go and see Lucca, he was probably late already... Dashing past a waterfall in the middle of the first plaza, he raced up some steps to the second which housed Leene's Bell, neatly skipping around a young woman dressed all in white and carried on, without even paying her the slightest bit of attention...
"Oh shit... it wasn't supposed to happen like that," said the stranger. "They were supposed to bump into each other, that was how it all started." Nobody had noticed the stranger dressed all in black. What made it all the more interesting was that the stranger was floating half-a-metre above the ground. Now it knew it would have to report this in and it wasn't looking forward to it, he knew they'd go ballistic at him...
Crono continued on up the final set of small steps to where the real action would be happening whether it worked or not, the 'it' being his friend Lucca's latest device. They had been known to go disastrously wrong but not all of them were too bad. Take Gato, the fighting robot for instance. He was set up somewhere else at the Fair, he'd have to go off and hunt him down later for some serious practice. As he emerged onto the third and final plaza, Crono saw it. Two large metal chambers sat in the corners, large wires draped between them with bulky amounts of machinery tacked onto the side of it. Before it stood a burly man with dark red hair and a shorter girl with large glasses and purple hair beside him. Catching a sight of the familiar red spiky hair, she called out.
"Crono! Where have you been?" she asked petulantly. "No-one wants to try the Telepod. How about you?"
I wonder why? He thought sarcastically as he looked at the contraption behind Lucca. Shrugging, it looked like a pretty good laugh to him so he did what he was asked to do.
"Just hop onto the left pod."
Crono stepped up onto the pod as a young woman climbed up to the exhibition area with a stick of cane candy clutched tightly in her hand. Lucca and Taban started flicking switches and pulling levers in what seemed a random order but somehow it managed to make the machine do something. "All systems on," Lucca casually remarked as Crono started to see flickers of electricity on the wiring near his head. Gulping down the fear, he just thought about how cool it would be when whatever was happening would finish.
"Begin energy transfer!" called out Lucca as Taban worked the controls. Crono could feel a strange itching, burning sensation all over his body. All of a sudden, pain flared out, enveloping him in it. All of his cells were pulled apart and shot across the exhibition area to the other telepod. In a flash, Crono re-materialised in one piece. The crowd gasped as Crono checked himself over and then let out a big sigh as he saw he was alright, all body parts accounted for but one, but he was hardly gonna check that in front of everyone else, not with ladies present at least. Not that it had stopped him in that incident last week... He quickly stepped down, anxious to get away from the device.
The crowd all applauded and the young woman with the candy stepped forward. "May I have a go?" she asked.
"Of course you can. Just step up on the left pod over there and quick as a flash we'll have you over the other side," replied Taban. As she stepped up, he asked, "What's your name by the way?"
She hesitated before replying, "Marle, my name is Marle."
Lucca stared at Marle oddly, with a faint hint of recognition in her eyes. If only she could recall from where she recognized her... Her eyes fixed on the pendant she was wearing. The gemstone embedded in it was shining translucently as it swayed from side to side over her cleavage.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, lets give this vision of loveliness, Marle, a real big hand when she re-appears on the other side!" Taban cried out, trying to give it his all in Taban and Lucca returned to the machine to operate it again.
This time, something went wrong. Marle's pendant flared up, shooting light out of it. Electricity surged around he pod as she pulled her pendant off from around her neck and stared at it. As she felt the pain blossom, she screamed and dropped it. There was a large ripping sound as a vortex opened up in between the two telepods, sucking Marle inside. All that was left of her was the pendant, lying on the pod floor...
Everybody just stood there in shock until finally someone responded. "Everybody out of here now!" yelled Taban. "Clear off the whole lot of you!" Everybody apart from Crono, Lucca and Taban ran like crazy to get out of there.
"What happened Lucca? Where did she go?" Taban asked.
"The way she disappeared... it couldn't have been the Telepod!" She replied. "The warp field seemed to be affected by her pendant..."
"What are we going to do know?"
"She's so familiar! I KNOW I've seen her somewhere..."
As Taban and Lucca discussed what could have happened, Crono walked up onto the left telepod and picking up the pendant by its chain, he stared at the large gem in its centre. It seemed liked the many facets of the gem were each staring back at him, trying to figure to what kind of person he was. Taban looked up and noticed Crono standing on the pod. "You're actually going to do it!" he asked, snapping Crono out of his trance.
"Wha!" Thinking it through quickly, he realised it was a chance to prove himself as a hero by rescuing the fair princess... Inwardly shrugging, he nodded to Taban.
"What a fine lad!" Taban responded.
"I'm guessing it's her pendant that caused the reaction, so I'm gonna need a bit of it to try and find you later," said Lucca. Sticking his hand down his top, Crono pulled it up through his collar. Taking it in her hand, Lucca carefully scraped a slender chip out of the gem, handing it back quickly. "Once I figure out exactly what's going on, I'll go through the portal to get you out, so until then, find her and be careful!"
With that, Lucca and Taban returned to the controls to operate the machinery for one last time. The pendant now looped around his neck tucked underneath his blue shirt, the metal cool against his skin, Crono braced himself for the pain of nothingness again but the first time through was nothing like the pain that was coming...
