Kershan Saga Chapter 2

Author's notes

1: Sorry it took so long but I've been under a lot of stress lately.

2: Italics indicate a character's thoughts.

After recovering from the impact James looked down to see whom he had hit. He found a girl wearing a helmet with a few strands of purple hair hanging out from it. She seemed to be looking for something so he knelt down beside her and asked her if she was all right. She looked toward him with a pair of pale blue eyes, "I can't find my glasses." she explained.

He looked around and noticed a pair of glasses laying a few inches beyond her reach. H reached over and picked them up, then placed them in one of her outstretched hands "Here you go." "Thank you." After she put her glasses back on she paused to look at him. "You're not from around here, are you?", she asked.

"No, I'm from Choras and I just moved here after my old house burned down." he replied sticking to the story his mother had worked out when they first arrived. "My name is James Pendragon," he added as he offered his hand to help her up. "I'm Lucca Ashtear, but you can call me Lucca the Great." She replied as she grabbed his hand and he began to pull her to her feet.

Unfortunately when her left foot hit the ground a lance of pain shot through it and her knee buckled, James barely had time to catch her before she fell again, "Well Miss The Great it appears you've injured your leg. How far is it to your house?' he asked with a amused grin "It's on an island a few miles south of town." "Do you have anywhere else in town you can stay the night?" "Normally I could stay with my friend Crono and his mother but they're visiting family in Porre, and no one else wants me to stay at their house so no."

"I wonder why? She seems like a nice enough girl. If it's the island I think it is it'll be closer to take her home then to take her to my house. Still it will be dark long before we get there." He thought. Out loud he said, "In that case we better get moving." He shifted her arm so that it stretched across his shoulder and let him bear most of her weight, which caused her to ask him what he was doing. "I'm helping you walk. Unless you would rather spend the rest of today and tonight crawling home that is."

After Lucca thanked him for offering to help her, the pair set off in the direction of Ashtear Island. About halfway to the island James asked a question that had been running through his mind since they had left the alley, "Lucca why were you in that alley anyway?"

"I was working on a robot to clean the house for my mother but it exploded." Her voice quavered slightly with the next words, "A lot of my inventions blow up, that's why people don't want me around their houses."

James could tell that she was starting to feel depressed so he decided to try to cheer her up, "Lucca without scientists and inventors all of humanity would still be in caves, eating raw meat and bugs with no hopes or dreams for the future." paraphrasing a book he had read when he was a child. "Sure you'll make mistakes but you'll learn from those mistakes and sometimes those mistakes might lead to you discovering something wonderful. I've read books that say that the person that discovered Tonics dropped some leaves into their canteen by mistake and then accidentally splashed some of the mixture onto a scratch on their hand. That mistake has saved thousands of lives so you shouldn't be upset because one of your mistakes could someday do the same. Besides if I hadn't heard that explosion we might have never met. So what do you like to do when you're not working on an invention?"

"Sometimes I go camping with Crono but not often, I read a lot and Crono and I talk while he's helping me find parts or practicing with his wooden katana, I tried to teach him chess but he didn't take to it very well. So what do you do when you're not wandering into alley science labs and escorting injured, great scientific geniuses home?" She asked him.

"I like to read a lot and my mom's an author and part of our family library survived the fire so that makes finding books to read a lot easier. I like to go camping alone sometimes when I want to relax or think without having to worry about interruptions. I also like practicing my swordplay and playing chess, so we'll have to try a game sometime. I did like hanging out with my friends but other then you I haven't met anyone my age around here so my mom decided to kick me out until I made some new friends. Which left me wandering Truce until we ran into each other."

By now the sun had set and the temperature was dropping fast so James paused for a minute to slip off his coat and offered it to Lucca. She stared at it for a moment. "Take it, I'm warm natured and you're injured so the last thing you need is to get sick from the cold." The rest of the trip was spent discussing books that they had both read.

About half an hour later the pair arrived at Lucca's house. James knocked on the door and opened it once he heard a voice tell them to come in. James knocked on the door and opened it once he heard a voice tell him to come in.

James and Lucca entered the house but there was no one in the front room. "Mom, Dad I'm home." Lucca called as they stepped inside. James hears some shuffling from the next room and a man covered in soot came into the front room. "I'm guessing that this is Lucca's father and she appears to have picked up her skill at making things that go boom from him." "Lucca are you okay?" he asked.

"I just hurt my ankle dad. This is James, he's new in town and offered to help me home."

The man turned to James "My name is Taben thank you for taking care of my daughter."

"It wasn't a problem the entire reason I was out there was because I was trying to find a new friend so everything worked out great."

At this point Taben went up a set of stairs to the right and opened a door "Lara Lucca's home and she brought a new friend." "Lucca why don't you introduce me to your new friend"? came from inside the room.

James entered the room behind Lucca and saw a woman sitting in a chair. Lucca turned to her, "Mom this is James Pendragon, James this is my mom." "Hello Mrs. Ashtear." James added. "Hello James, so how did you meet my daughter?

James and Lucca spent the next few minutes explaining how they had met that afternoon. After they had finished Lara turned to James "Thank you for helping Lucca home. You should spend the night here rather then trying to go home in the dark. James nodded even though he would have been fine going home in the dark. Lara then turned to Lucca "As for you young lady you need to be more careful, you're lucky that James was nearby when you got hurt and even luckier that he was nice enough to help you home". At this point James felt obligated to cut in and Lara turned toward him. "Mrs. Ashtear if I hadn't been in her way Lucca wouldn't have been hurt". Lara turned back to Lucca. "And he was nice enough to give you his coat despite how cold it is. (It was late fall and a cooler then usual year) he's been a perfect gentleman."

James had looked down and started blushing slightly. "More like a noble rogue." He murmured. He looked up to see Lucca and her mother staring at him with a slightly puzzled look in their eyes. "It's how an old friend used to describe me" he explained with a hint of sadness in his voice waving his right hand in the air (an old habit when he was nervous). Lucca and Lara both tried to cheer him up by saying that he might get to visit his old home soon or his friend might come to visit him."

A shadow passed over his face, "She died." He replied in a haunted voice. Lara and Lucca both started to apologize but he cut them off. "I'm getting tired if you don't mind I think I'd like to get some sleep" with the haunted tone still in his voice.

A few minutes later he was lying on the couch with a blanket and his coat which was serving as a pillow. "Good night Izumi." He whispered before closing the pendent which contained a photo of him and his best friend, one of only two color photos that James had his mother had from pre-attack. I still can't believe she's gone. I'll never see her again. He paused remembering how she would twirl her blue braid when she was thinking or the look of serenity in her green eyes when she had thought of a new idea for a painting or sketch. Tomorrow would have been her birthday. I'm so sorry Izumi. he thought with a silent sob before drifting off to a hopefully dreamless sleep.

James yawned and opened his eyes, it had been a long night trying to patch the holes in the compartment from the Imps and he had fallen asleep against the inner hull. His mother was snoring away to his left and Izumi was off to his right. He decided to wake Izumi up first since she got angry if anyone let her sleep too late. "Izumi it's time to wake up." he whispered not wanting to disturb his mother. When that didn't work he reached over and pushed on Izumi's shoulder. She toppled over with a thud and he saw a bloodied spear point sticking through the hull. He opened his mouth to scream but no sound came out.

The light in the compartment faded as Izumi's now glowing corpse rose from the floor. "Why did you let it happen James? You were supposed to save me. You promised you would protect me!" James's breath caught in his throat as he remembered that promise, made after he had told her about his bad feeling about the Kershan contacting Medina first and she had asked him if he really thought anything bad was going to happen. After a few seconds he managed to reply shakily, "I tried, I did everything I could." "No you didn't!" she screamed back. "You could have checked on me right after the attack ended. You couldn't even be bothered to take 10 seconds to make sure I was okay! "You could have told me not to sit against the hull but you didn't! So, what exactly did you do to protect me!"

James froze as he realized she was right, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to I just made a mistake! He cried almost incoherently. "You're sorry! I'm dead and all you can say is you're sorry! Do you really think you being sorry does me any good!" Izumi's ghost screamed, angrier then James ever remembered hearing her when she was alive. "Water!" James was knocked on his back by the spell. "Ice!" He rolled to the right in a feeble attempt to dodge.

"Ouch!" James awoke to find himself on the floor in the Ashtear family's living room, coated in a cold sweat. "Are you okay? You sounded like you were having a nightmare." Lucca asked him as he sat up. "I'm fine thanks for asking." He answered. "And believe me I deserve my nightmares." He added bitterly as he stood up, put his coat and glasses on, and glanced at a clock which revealed that it was 4:19 AM. "I doubt that." Lucca replied. "You went through a lot of trouble to help me home today. I don't see how anyone who would go that far for a stranger can deserve nightmares."

"I was dreaming about Izumi." He explained as he sat down a little to her left. "The girl you told me and mom about earlier?" "Yeah. She was telling me about all the things I could have done that might have saved her, and she was right. I didn't do any of them, she needed me and I completely failed her." He explained in a numb tone. "Some mistakes can't be unmade." Lucca replied sadly and guiltily, thinking about her mother. "You just have to make sure never to make that mistake again."

James could tell from her tone she was speaking from experience, though he had no idea what that experience was. Hoping to distract her he asked her what she was working on, and she explained that she was trying to figure out what went wrong with her cleaning robot. He asked if there was anything he could do to help, she told him there was, and they spent the rest of the early morning working.

End Notes

1: Again I'm really sorry this took so long

2: There was nothing romantic going on between James and Izumi but there would have been soon if the attack had never occurred.

3: As for dream/ghost Izumi's accusations the blow killed her instantly, and in the CT game universe James did talk her into moving away from the hull. When the Imp with the spear pulled it back in the game universe it ripped out enough of the hull that combined with the other holes the Imps could get inside the compartment and they killed everyone inside.

4: and this should be the end of most of the stories angst.