Chapter 23 - All That She Wants

They sat there, still alone in the dim, dark world. All conversation had dried up leaving this scorched plain barren. They'd even run out of things to say about make-up and that was unheard of between two women. Yes, Marle and Lucca were really, really bored.

"I spy... with my little eye... something beginning with... L" said Lucca, sat in a corner, slumped out all over the floor.

"Lamppost again Lucca. That's the hundred and fourteenth time the answer has been lamppost. There must be something else to do..." sighed Marle, spread out in the opposite corner, in a similar fashion to Lucca, both oozing out onto the floor.

"We could play Scissors, Paper, Stone again."

"For the love of God... we've played that even more than I Spy! How about we have a look around here?"

"And see what? We've already been everywhere. There are only three rooms here..."

"That's the thing... where did Destiny go after we left her here? I'm pretty sure she didn't take any of the pillars in there so where did she go? I think there's a secret room in here..."

"Yeah right... this ain't no spy thriller we're in. Don't get so melodramatic. Why wouldn't she have taken one of the pillars?"

"Well, she was going to this Hand of Kronos place right? Do any of those pillars over there take you there? Hell no they don't... so how did she get there? There must be some more gates around here." Rising to her feet, Marle started knocking on the walls. "Come on Lucca, it'll be fun."

"Been there, done that..." Lucca muttered before getting up and helping Marle in her quest. As usually happens in these types of situations, they did indeed find a secret wall. What they found wasn't quite what they were expecting. Slamming the wall back in place, the two walked away from it and shuddered. Spekkio's personal porn supply wasn't exactly the two girls idea of magazine entertainment.

"Not quite what I expected to find... lets try the opposite wall."

After a few minutes of fumbling about and tapping, their search revealed nothing. Slumping back down in their respective corners, Marle and Lucca simultaneously sighed, both still bored.

Silence billowed around them, enveloping them in its cloak. Cosmo-chronic tumbleweed slowly rolled between them, bumping into and going round the lamppost in the middle of the room. The light shimmered slowly, the argon bulb issuing light eternally. Sighing again, Lucca rose to her feet and opened up the secret wall again.

"Eww... how can you look at that?" squealed Marle, her face all scrunched up in disgust.

"Hey, it's something to do. Call it... biological study." Lucca sat back in her corner and opened up the first magazine in the bundle she had grabbed. Marle sat there, watching her expression change from disgust to bemusement. Slowly, Lucca tilted her to one side and then the other. Finally, she turned the magazine upside down and her expression changed to one of pure mortification. Unable to contain her curiosity, Marle got up and walked over to where Lucca was sitting. Slumping down next to her, she peered at the page and her face turned green. Scrambling up the wall into a standing position, her hand pushed in one of the bricks. A mechanical groan was heard and the wall behind her and Lucca slid open, Lucca tumbling over backwards as her support disappeared.

"Well I'll be damned..." Lucca whispered as she saw the hundreds of pillars of light, all of them with different colours, shimmering. From her position on the ground, it looked like a panorama of colour spread out before. Rolling over and getting to her feet, she stared in awe at the spectacle before her.

Jumping up and down on the spot in glee, her strawberry-blonde hair bouncing all over the place, Marle couldn't contain her excitement. "I told you, I told you so! And I found it!"

Ignoring Marle's twittering, Lucca strode in to investigate. Each step she took, a new light shone down upon her. Looking up, she couldn't see where the lights were coming from... "They're gates, each and every one of them. They're gates! Each one to a different time-zone... but why the colours?"

"Well... there's a hell of a lot of them. Maybe the colours represent different times? Say, the darkest ones represent the beginning and the lightest the end?

"I think you're onto something there Marle..." Looking around, Lucca decided. "You're right, just the other way round... There is one of pure white but not one that is pitch black. We're at the end of time already so it's probable that the opposite colour is the birth of time and it has to be pure white..."

"So where is this Hand of Kronos place then? If the end of time is one base, wouldn't it make sense to have the base at the beginning? In the white pillar? It could be all symbolic and stuff..."

"I suppose... it does make sense and it's the kinda fancy thing us scientists like to do. Makes us feel all tingly and warm inside."

"Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go check it out!"

"WHAT! Hell no! If what Destiny was telling us is true, that's leaping right into the lion's den! God knows what those Black Wind creeps would do to us if we got caught..."

"So we won't get caught. We still need to know what's going on there... we've only got Destiny's word that she is a Hand of Kronos Time Warden. For all we know, she is in the Black Wind. We still don't know that we can trust her!"

"But Crono said--"

"But Crono said squat! He said absolutely nothing to convince anyone that Destiny is to be trusted and neither has she! There's no reason at all!"

"We can't! What if Crono gets back here and we're gone? We have to wait for him!"

"I can't do that. When he comes back, he'll bring Destiny with him and she'll make sure we don't go there to check it out. We have to go now whilst we still can. I'm going whether you come with me or not. You can't stop me." With that, Marle turned and walked into the pillar of black light. "This is your last chance to come with me. Take it or leave it, I'm still going."

Lucca let out a sigh, knowing she was defeated. "Bloody hell... someone's gonna have to look after you and it might as well be me, right?" She stepped into the black pillar and the two of them entered the vortex together...