Well, we'll, we'll, looks like it's that time again- update time. I have to say, I'm really starting to feel bad for Lucca; this girl just has her work cut out for her.
Aaaaand it's really not about to get any better.
"They should have been here hours ago! Hours!"
Despite her best efforts, Lucca had been reduced to pacing back and forth about the small, cobblestone patio at the End of Time. She held the Chrono Trigger held tight to her chest as she railed about anxiously.
"My interior clock indicates it has been twenty-one hours since we split company at Crono's house," informed Robo, who stood by the gate studying the glass screen attached to his wrist.
"What?!" exclaimed the scientist.
"Almost twenty-two, in fact."
Lucca's hands went to her forehead as she groaned. "Oh that's great- just great. We should be half way up that mountain by now!"
Robo frowned- at least, it looked as though he had. "This is a most distressing situation."
"Indeed." Gaspar looked from her parallel strides to Frog's, for the amphibian maintained an equally concerned manner of conduct
Much to Lucca's surprise and dismay, Frog had been unusually silently since their arrival at the End of Time. Instead of arguing as she had expected him to, he simply paced around them silently, burning holes in the floor with his ruthless repetition. His throat vibrated thoughtfully, and his lips were pressed into a thin, grim expression, refusing to speak. She almost wished he would say something simply for the sake of breaking the tension he was unwittingly creating- not that she was any better, she knew. In all truth, she was fighting the sinking feeling that Frog was right, telling herself that what they had seen in Medina was simply a kink in the fabric of time which had yet to be ironed out.
"Lucca," Gaspar's voice was both gentle yet as firm as the stone grip he kept on his cane. "You mustn't wait any longer. That egg isn't designed to last forever."
"I know! " she nearly snapped. Catching herself with a cringe, she sighed and reached half-heartedly into her backpack to retrieve the egg. "Please Gaspar, I don't know what to do. I… I have to go to Crono. But the others… I… Do you know what's happened to them?"
"Me?" he looked up at her, surprised.
"Yes," the inventor pleaded. "You're the Guru of Time, aren't you?" An uncomfortable breath escaped him, as though he wished to be somewhere else at the moment. "You must be able to help us somehow? I mean, being here at the end of it all should give you some sort of advantage over-"
"Lucca." His glassy blue eyes looked dull, suddenly. "I do not have much in the way of power. It is merely ill fate that I have come to be kept in such a place. Besides…" he looked away to hide the guilty tension of his jaw, "the end cannot interfere with the beginning."
Lucca pursed her lips slowly, but then planted her hands on her hips. "I don't believe you. You knew how to help Crono, didn't you? THAT was interference."
Gaspar said nothing to that, which Lucca took as confirmation of her suspicion.
"If we can't change what's going to happen, then surely you can-"
"I didn't say that now, did I?"
Lucca blinked, confused. "But-"
"I merely said that I could not change what is to be. You, on the other hand-" he smiled here, "- you have the winds of destiny favoring your sails. Even this turn of events is merely a detour of destiny; a diversion of what was always meant to happen. Destiny is a rather determined character, you know."
"Destiny?" echoed the scientist blankly.
"Oh yes. He will have his way, all right. Everything that has happened to you and your friends was determined to be so long before you were even born- even the perils which now threaten them."
The intense, nearly breathless silence shattered at this. "Threaten!?" cried Frog, who pivoted towards the old man as though he had snapped back to life. "Peril?"
Lucca's wide eyes only seemed to grow wider. "What happened, Gaspar?"
Gaspar suddenly looked uncomfortable again. "Er, perhaps I've said too much."
"And thou needent saith a word more." Frog's cheeks flushed from green to blue, and he looked as seriously as an amphibian possibly could.
"Gaspar, please tell us what happened," begged Lucca, her restless hands roaming over the surface of the Crono Trigger.
The old man looked between the three of them- Robo's silent presence, Lucca's desperate out lashes and Frog's fervent twisting- and he shook his head. "That I cannot say, I'm afraid."
Lucca had been about to persist, but Frog seemed to need no further convincing in the matter. "Tis' all too clear what hath transpired," he began, addressing the others with strained and frustrated concern. "I trust that vile wizard hath all too much a part in the delay. T'was absolute foolishness to allow him unguarded! Pure foolishness!"
"Frog," tired Lucca patiently, uncertainly.
"Who knowth what matter of evil he hath accomplished!" he continued ignorantly, his webbed fist slamming into his palm. "Desolation! Devastation!"
"Let's not jump to too many conclusions, Frog," insisted the inventor, trying haplessly for the devil's advocate now. "Magus doesn't have any reason to get rid of us or our trust. Not yet, at least."
But Frog was as unmoved as a Yarka parasite in Guardia castle. As though he hadn't even heard her (and perhaps he hadn't), he moved quickly towards the steps leading towards many gates. "I will return to 600 A.D. and find them immediately, and when I do, I shall-"
"Frog," the scientist snapped. "I know you're not thinking straight right now, but please, please- think of Crono. We NEED to go. Now. And this mountain is named after death. I'm not feeling particularly confident about this."
As though the thought itself had tripped him, the knight-turned-creature nearly tripped over his own momentum as he came to an abrupt halt. He hadn't thought about what it would mean to leave Lucca and Robo on their own.
Slowly, his head lowered.
"Frog." Even if it were a losing battle to defend someone like Magus- even though she didn't fully believe her own words- Lucca couldn't help but fight her conflicted conscience; not for her sake, but for the team's. For Crono. "You can't just go running after Magus like this without knowing what happened. There's no proof to base such a hefty decision on. Anything could have happened to have changed that statue in Medina. Maybe they took a wrong turn somewhere?"
Glenn looked severely torn for a long moment, silently croaking to himself.
"Marle trusts him," was her last and desperate shot, like a child trying to justify themself.
"Indeed." He turned towards her slowly, and she felt the last bit of hope slip from her heart. "Such circumstance tis' the most concerning to the few decent scruples left in these bones. Pray thou forgive mine impertinence," his croak was slow; sincere but solemn. "But… I am bound by the very stings of existence to protect the Guardian line, no matter what era. I cannot stray; not even in thought."
"Augh!" With both pride and persuasion bruised for the second time that day, Lucca grunted at the wall-like resilience of men with their minds set. Damn pride. "Are you serious?! Frog-"
"Lucca," the wretchedly guilty knight sighed. He sounded almost human- more human than she had ever remembered him being.
"Fine!" she spat suddenly and defiantly. "Dammit Frog! Damn your honor and loyalty and- augh, dammit all! Just don't kill him, okay?" she grunted, never minding the dark twinkle of imagination in the knight's eye. "Not till I get to him."
It was the closest he would come to receiving her blessing, and he accepted this as the guilty parting it was. With a brisk nod, more so of farewell than an honest retort, the amphibian leapt purposefully past them and was gone through his familiar portal in the blink of an eye.
"Men…" Lucca watched him disappear. "Or… whatever. C'mon Robo, let's get going. We'll get Crono back one way or another."
Unmoving as ever, Gaspar watched them leave with a deep, concerned frown. His knuckles had turned white from the rigid grasp on his cane.
-v-
The dead silence of Keeper's Dome weighed heavily on Lucca's already downed disposition, and each step and breath she took seems to echo in forever as she walked. There had been little in the way of comfort since leaving the End of Time; Robo had been unusually silent, leaving her to wallow in the dark depth of her own fears and doubts. Of course, the scenery (or lack of, therefore), was no help either. Though she was glad to be out of the wild, musty wind of 2300 A.D., being inside was still really no consolation. Death here, death there…
In some hope of distracting herself, Lucca had taken to gently rubbing at the egg in her hands. The Crono Trigger gave no objection- on the contrary, it was beginning to warm up to her. She could sense that, somehow. The gentle massaging had become something of a strange, maternal instinct for the last twenty minutes. Not only was it soothing to her, but she was sure it was soothing to the egg as well. She had begun to image there being something inside that needed her warmth and care- something small and soft, something innocent and helpless…
Realizing they had come to the end of the room, she rotated the egg in her hands and came to a stop. "Well, where is he?"
"Belthazar?" replied Robo. The sound of his voice snapping the elongated silence unintentionally startled her. "When I was here last, I detected no trace of him. He sent a Nu to speak on his behalf, and relay the message about the clone."
"You guys didn't say anything about that to me…" Lucca mumbled.
Whether he heard her or not, Robo rolled past her up the last set of platforms. "It was up here…"
Beginning to feel rather miffed about being ignored for the umpteenth time that day, Lucca begrudgingly followed Robo up the stairs, careful to keep the egg secure. Sure enough, at the top of the room, there was a blue Nu pacing peacefully in place. It seemed as though it had waiting for them.
"It is time for you to attempt Death Peak," it began.
The scientist's brow quirked. "Attempt?"
The Nu didn't seem to catch her skeptical look much less hear her, for it responded in no way. "It's the only chance you have of reviving your friend. The last program I've implanted in this creature's memory banks will help you up the mountain. Stand back."
The two did so.
Rather in a rush- as all awkward Nus are- the creature moved through the magically sealed door and disappeared. The door slammed shut behind it and the room was silent for what Lucca deduced to be far too long. Absent-mindedly, she murmured something under her breath about crazy old men and stroked the egg.
"I concur. I have noticed in past encounters that he portrays many symptoms of psychosis," Robo noted, apparently able to decipher her grumbling.
She looked taken back by this, then glowered ever so slightly. "You seem to have selective hearing today, Robo…"
Suddenly, a jolt of blue electricity jumped through the room, and a tiny Poyozo doll strolled back through the door. "Executing program!" it declared before shooting through a hole in the roof and out of sight.
Again the room was silent.
They looked to each other, one with concern and the other with concerned, metallic consideration.
Another doll followed and repeated the sequence, and then another. After the three dolls had come and gone, the Nu returned, sealed the door behind itself and intently faced them. "Those three entities you just saw will help you climb Death Peak. This ends my message."
As if a weight had been lifted from its shoulders, the Nu rapidly grew fatigued. Its large, beady eyes began swaying between reality and dream, and its voice was murky when it spoke.
"Now, I must ask you a favor." There was an unnatural pause. "This creature has executed his program, so please let him sleep. The switch is on his stomach."
"Switch?" Lucca asked without reply, for the Nu was already sound asleep, snoring loudly. "Er, okay then. Let see here…"
The genius tinkered with the Nu while Robo stood waiting, silently keeping track of time on his internal clock.
"Do you really think he was crazy?" she asked after a quiet minute. "Belthasar?"
"There is no sound proof, though he did seem it."
"That's what I assumed, too. But if he really was crazy, how did he know to save all his memory regarding that mountain into the Nu at just the right time? He's only met us once before, and I'd daresay we hardly made a lasting impression. And he even knew about the clone. It's like he knew that Crono would…" she blinked down at her hands. The thought had never crossed her mind before now
She climbed over the backside of the creature and felt about blindly, pressing the thick lenses back onto her face to better the search. No part of the Nu seemed to comply with her.
"It's like… I mean… like he knew we were coming." She looked up at the roof, stumped. "But how?"
Robo, who always keen to share his logical conclusions aloud, was oddly silent. He could find none.
Upon finally finding the switch and flicking it, the Nu's loud snores instantly stopped. Lucca backed away from the creature, a little unnerved. "What…? It's not breathing…" An involuntary chill ran down her spine as she backed away. The Nu stood, unmoving as a statue.
"Come Lucca, Crono awaits." Robo turned back down the long corridor, following the howling of the chalky wind outside.
Unknown to their owners, their quiet footsteps were the last noise ever to be heard in Keeper's Dome.
This creature sleeps beyond the flow of time…
-v-
In the woods of Medina forest, a single figure roamed tirelessly. His shoulders were slumped from the hours of fruitless searching and his heart was near the point of dismay, already overflowing with shame. How could he have let such a thing happen? How could he have failed again? First Cyrus, now Lenne… now Marle… and Lucca.
He had let everyone down. Everyone.
Worst of all was the fear of the evils he was sure Magus had committed. He knew the team was skilled enough to take care of themselves; that is, those whose hearts were on the team.
And he knew Magus better than to even think of such an inclination as possible. Was this part of his sick plan the whole time? To gain their trust, lure them into the pit of the earth and summon Lavos again to destroy them all?
'Old practice fights to the grave,' he told himself.
The thin tree branches slapped at his sensitive skin like tiny razors, but the cruel hand of guilt slapped at his whole being as he took his miserable, failing steps through the forest. It distracted him from the stinging scratches and the weariness of his webbed feet. He rambled along through the ancient woods he had helped to save, grumbling to himself under his breath as he went about this and that.
In such a state, it should have been no surprise that he found himself stumbling over something one minute and toppling over face-first the next, biting the dust as his jaw lolled along the ground.
"O-oof," he grunted. He lay there for a long, miserable moment, until the realization that he had tripped over something finally washed over him. Slowly picking himself out of the soil, Frog rubbed his eyes, looking around for the culprit which had tripped him so expectantly.
"Alfador?" he croaked, looking up into those feline eyes with a great amount of astonishment. "What art thine dealing in such a place?"
The cat mewed loudly and ran towards the paved path ahead of him, turning and waiting for him to follow. He watched the small creature suspiciously, but seeing no other hope in his wanderings, Frog spat the dirt out of his mouth, tightened up his belt and ran after the strange tabby, wondering if he would regret the decision later.
His hand clenched the Masamune's hilt.
Gradually, Frog had lost track of how long he had been following the cat. It had taken him through water, over hills and even underground. This, of course, left him wet and covered in mud, though neither states were discontenting to him; rather, he had come to find contentment in them long ago. Perhaps it was that his mind had been strongly steeped with the animalistic nature of an amphibian that his humanity found it did a wonder for easing his stresses. Even so, he would not let his guards down, and he could not help but wonder where he was being led still.
That is, until they stopped at the mouth of a large cave, and he knew exactly where they were going.
"Ozzie's fortress…" Stopping himself, he stared up at the looming mountain, remembering how he had split them in half with the Masamune.
Alfador paced around his feet anxiously, letting out a demanding sound after too long of a rest. He stopped briefly to lick at his paws.
"What reason hath I to trust you?" Frog looked down coldly, finally asked the burning question. "You side with Magus, and that be enough in itself to mislay my faith."
As though he were trying to say something very important, the cat looked up at him, its eyes narrowing in the fading sunlight. Then, making sure to swat the amphibian's leg with his tail, the cat disappeared impatiently into the mouth of the cave. He didn't look back to check if Frog was following.
He didn't need to.
-v-
Not surprisingly, the outside world was as dreary and unforgiving as she remembered it. Lucca held her scarf over her nose as they made the short trip to the mountain's base, watching as the wreathing peak grew larger and larger.
She felt like an ant looking up at it.
"Well," she sighed upon reaching the foot of the mountain. "I guess this is where it all starts."
"The altitude of this mountain is 5640 feet above sea level," began Robo. "However, we will climb a mere two-fifths of that, due to the high land level of this peninsula."
Lucca shook her head to herself. "Thanks Robo. I feel much better now."
The first stretch of the journey had been relatively easy. One of the strange Poyozo dolls had aided them in the first climb- the windy part that had nearly thrown them off the mountain. From there, Lucca had set herself into steady, decent pace thorough the ankle deep snow. Robo rolled along behind, remarkably silent for the most part.
"We need to avoid fights as much as possible," Lucca spoke softly over, eyeing the strange creatures hanging from the trees watching them. Some she recognized, but some… "We don't want to spend our energy unnecessarily, so let's just lay as low as possible."
"This is a wise idea," the robot agreed.
"I think its best we keep to the lower paths if we can." The scientist gestured towards the rigid peaks directly over their heads with a firm line pressed in her lips. The steep slopes leading up to them would make them almost impossible to reach, even if she had wished it. It was quite intimidating, really. "I don't have a good feeling about anything up there."
"I think the appropriate response to that would be to say that none of this gives me a 'good feeling'."
Lucca shook her head a little. "Yeah well, you'd need feelings for that first, Robo. I know you really don't get it, but I just have this awful knot in my stomach, and-"
An livid, ear-splitting scream rolled down the cliffs from somewhere above them, stopping the scientist dead in her tracks. When the shriek finally subsided, Lucca was left blinking up after it, horrified.
"Robo," she breathed. "D-Did you hear that?"
"Is this one of those rhetorical questions you were trying to inform me of yesterday?" replied the unfazed machine. "I would like to think so, perhaps to pretend I didn't not it hear it."
Pale faced, Lucca turned to him slowly. "No, I'm serious this time. That scream… it was Lavos'."
Robo shook his head firmly. "That is impossible, Lucca. There is no way Lavos could have-"
Another blood-curdling scream ripped through the air, and to Lucca's horror, a monstrous creature appeared on the white cliffs far above them. She knew it saw them, because it screamed again and began sliding down the slope towards them.
"Robo!" she screamed, pointing wildly. "Look!"
A replica of none other than the giant, alien Lavos was sliding towards them, hurtling at startling speeds. It was spinning madly as it gained velocity, awkward and out of control, but this really gave no comfort to Lucca's anxiety; it was moving towards them, and she didn't want to even imagine what could happen if it got close enough. Their last encounter with Lavos had been anything but successful, after all. She could almost see that blinding crash of electrical energy, disintegrating anything, everything in its path…
Crono…
Without realizing it, Lucca had frozen herself to the spot and petrified herself into watching helplessly as the monster spun towards them, closer and closer. Seeing the problem with the situation, Robo's wheels kicked into motion and he scooped the stunned scientist up in one swift movement.
Lucca blinked up at him breathlessly. "R-Robo, what're you doing?"
The machine was focusing intently on the open field they were approaching, his eyes scanning everything three or four times over. "It seems highly unlikely that we are in the right place to approach the miniature Lavos offensively. It is for the best that we avoid these replicas completely."
This only slightly pacified Lucca. She struggled to peer over his metal frame as they moved, watching the spawn grow smaller and smaller until it was a merely spec off in the distance. She slumped back into his arms a cold sweat. "How could this have happened? Is Lavos… reproducing?"
"It would seem so," Robo replied. Gauging the distance he had covered, he began to slow to a normal pace until Lucca squirmed out of his grasp. She stumbled back through the tracks his wheels had made and stood stock still, watching to be sure they had really got away from the monstrosity. "Shall we continue on?" the machine finally asked upon scanning their new environment.
The scientist blinked and shook her head as though she could wake herself up somehow. "Robo, this is bad news. If Lavos is reproducing… then we're in serious trouble."
"We were in trouble long before this, Lucca."
"Robo," she frowned. "This is a nightmare. It's worse than that. If Lavos has the capacity to reproduce, then the entire world could be overrun with thousands of those replicas if we don't do something. If those little guys are even half as powerful as the original Lavos, then-" Lucca gasped suddenly and shook her head at the machine. "Oh, Robo, your wheels…"
Looking down at the bottom of the machine, the scientist saw the water dripping from inside his metal body with immediate dread. If there was one thing she knew with all certainty about mechanics and water, it was that they didn't mix well. There was some gentle sizzling sound coming from inside.
Robo blinked down at himself thoughtfully. "This could be problematic."
"I don't think you were designed for a winter climate, huh?"
Another horrible scream interrupted the gentle sizzling, and the two pivoted sharply towards the source of the scream. Sure enough, they found another of the Lavos spawn inching itself towards them from the cave across the snowy plain.
"Great. Just great." Taking a deep breath, Lucca bit her lip. She reached for her stun gun.
Robo shook his head. "Lucca, we cannot-"
"Look around, Robo. We're practically at a dead end here, and that cave is our only way to the top of this hell-hole. We can't go back…" she tightened the grip on her gun. "We have no choice. We have to fight."
-v-
Ayla woke to the smell of mildew and stale water dripping on her face.
Like some form of mental torture, a continual dripping noise echoed somewhere beyond the metal bars and stone walls surrounding her. Touching the floor lightly, she felt that it was cold, musty and sticky with… something unpleasant- something she decided against spending too much time smelling. Thankfully for her, she relied heavily on all of her senses and not just her vision, for everything was fairly dark save for the few naked lanterns which graced the cobblestone. They gave just enough light to discern the three diverse, shapely figures gathered outside the cell. She made to move, but the strange metal circles around her wrists very quickly limited her motion.
She was chained.
Growling, her teeth clamped down hard on the metal, but it made nothing near a dent.
"So what now?" started the most feminine voice of the three shadows, which really wasn't very feminine at all. In fact, it still confused the cavewoman, but her honed experience told her to keep quiet. "We can't just leave him hanging there. He'll wake up soon, and then we'll have our heads handed to us."
"Not if we hand him his first!" argued a more nasal tone. It spat at the floor angrily.
Flea frowned. "That's gross, Ozzie. Can't you do that outside?"
"You're gross. Can't you-"
In his ever-timely manner, Slash chimed in. "What about the two girls with him? Why don't we pick them off first and save him for later? A little emotional torture never hurt…"
"Because," annunciated the green villain rather matter-o-factly, "he's the main course, not them. Besides, it would be a waste of time. He doesn't have enough emotion to toy with."
The prehistoric woman blinked and blinked, letting her sharp eyes adjust to the features of the room until she could clearly see the fresh spit on the ground.
"I thought you thought he's gone soft," quarried Slash.
"Well… whatever." Their leader hammered a fist into his grimy palm, adding extra malice to the particularly sour temper he was in. His dark, beady eyes glimmered with the odd flickers of firelight that would catch his face, which was ripe with glistening sweat. "That girl in the ice cube has to be toast by now, anyway."
"Mmm, no, toast doesn't sound quite right," churned Flea, who flicked his braid lovingly over his shoulders. "Too warm..."
Seeing something move out of her peripherals, Ayla suddenly jolted back. Suspended above her was a body, hung upside down at the ankles by chains thicker than her own. While Magus' unconscious form shocked her, she quickly recovered upon seeing the glimmering object behind him- or more so, what was inside of the glimmering object, which she recognized as the ice block.
Marle.
Panicking, she began biting harder at the chains, and while the light clinking sound was enough to snap Magus's eyes open, it went unnoticed by the three arguing Mystics.
"Toast doesn't always have to be warm, you know." Slash grazed his fingernails along the edge of his blade absentmindedly, almost lovingly. His eyes glimmered at the darkness of the blade- so dark that it absorbed none of the faint light allowing him to see it. In true oblivious villain style, all three had their attention turned away from the prison cell which was slowly coming alive with movement.
"Tsk. I've had cold toast before."
"Yeah, but it sucks."
"Well so does dying!" Ozzie deadpanned, sick of talking about food for perhaps the first time ever in his life. It may have also been the only instance where his appetite had been absent.
"Oh please don't, you're scaring me!" Slash cried sardonically as he took an eye from his beloved weapon. He crossed his arms over his broad chest, scrutinizing the green mass of the Mystic. "You know, maybe you should have considered signing up for Medina's acting academy instead of its head leadership position."
Ozzie glared. "Medina doesn't have an acting academy, you fool! And what do you take us Mystics for with this democratic 'sign up' nonsense? You think I would wait around to take this position?"
"Take it?" Slash laughed sarcastically. "Oh please, you can't really expect me to believe you earned your way here. Maybe the last Ozzie had proved himself worth, but you just ride along his glory like it's your own accomplishments you're bragging."
"I what?!" hollered the mystic leader, going red in the face in the process. He hobbled towards him a few inches, jiggling with each little step.
"Somehow you managed to squeeze you're way in here, and it must have been one heck of a tight squeeze," he laughed cruelly. "Or was it your stunning intellect that earned you the spot?"
Ozzie's jaw tightened. "Oh yeah, well if you're so smart then you come up with a plan!"
"A plan? Oh that's cute. Shall I write it all down in that pretty purple pen of yours and draw each of us out while I'm at it?"
Ozzie opened his mouth to snap back, but Flea's voice beat him.
"Girls, girls, you're both pretty," the magician drawled, uninterested in any bickering he was not a part of. "Let's not go brandishing our nails, now. I left my popcorn upstairs."
"I don't have nails, Flea," Ozzie drawled. "And you don't have popcorn upstairs!"
"Yeah, Ozzie inhaled it all when you weren't looking." Slash snickered as Ozzie tried to slap him, but of course Slash as too tall and he was too short, so it made for a lousy attempt.
"Did not!"
Flea planted one hand firmly on his hip and the other he wagged through the air. "What did I say about stealing from my snack stash! You're lucky I'm feeling forgiving today." He snapped his fuchsia- coated fingernails and a bowl of popcorn materialized in his hand. "Go on."
"What!" Ozzie yelled, flailing his pudgy arms about as though he could use them to take off from the ground. He let off some steam with another wad of spit, which was fired at the wall to his right. "I buy the popcorn, I eat it. That's how it works."
"What are you talking about?" Slash hissed. "You never buy ANYTHING- you're too cheap! In fact, you still owe me that-"
"Ahem!" Ozzie digressed, hoping to change the subject for more than one reason. "Can we focus on the problem at hand here? If we don't take care of this little wizard situation now, then we're in a pickle. And I'm sick of pickles!"
"No, no," Flea insisted, correcting him haughtily. "You're sick of being in a pickle. Pickles themselves are never to be exhausted."
Slash exhaled noisily. "You're always in a pickle Ozzie."
"Well," the accused growled, "this pickle is lethal! It's us or him."
"You know, I've never met a lethal pickle before," Flea drummed his bowl of popcorn thoughtfully. "Unless you're chocking on it. And that would be a real shame, wouldn't it Ozzie?"
Their leader glared a little. "Why are you directing that at me, you sicko?"
"I don't know, maybe because you never chew your food?"
Slash's snicker echoed a little. "Watching him eat, are we Flea?"
"You don't need to watch to know," shuttered Flea, perturbed at the uncontrolled images filling his mind.
"What's that suppose'ta mean?!" Ozzie rumbled, oblivious to the general disgust being directed at him (as always).
Flea looked down his nose at the green blob. "It means I can hear you eat all the way across the castle, and I can tell all the way from there that you're not chewing- which would make you the sicko, thank you very much."
"You listen to him eat too?" The swordsman looked genuinely disgusted by this. Despite himself, Flea's highbrow attitude faltered a little, and Slash jumped all over it. "That's sick and perverted! Don't you have anything better to spend your time on?"
"You would need time to be able to spend it," came a bottomless voice from within the cell, stunning the three of them mid-sentence. "And it seems you're about to run out."
Perhaps hoping that they had imagined it, the three Mystics turned around very slowly, very skeptically. They were met with darkness.
"D-Did anyone else hear that?" stammered Flea nervously. He moved to take a step forwards to peer into the darkness but Slash put an arm out to stop him.
"He might be tied up, but he's still dangerous," the violet villain warned.
"Y-You!" shuddered Ozzie, murder written all over his pudgy face as he ignored the warning and rambled away for a torch. "You…you dirty lowlife! No more funny business, Magus!" He would have ended with something more dramatic if the resident swordsman hadn't cut in.
"You find this funny?" Slash shot, unusually calm. "I didn't think putting him in the cell was funny."
"Oh, do you always have to be so literal about things?!" cried their leader, again distracted. "A little figure of speech is what makes the villain! Jeeze, don't you know that by now?"
Slash's eye twitched just the slightest at that. "Are you saying I'm a bad villain?"
"Well at least you're not completely stupid!" Ozzie huffed tersely at him, but then a look of mild confusion rearranged his features. "Wait. Do you mean bad at being a bad villain, or bad at being a good villain? Cause if you're bad at being bad in a good way-"
"No, I meant-"
"It's good to be a bad villain," he swung the wooden torch about decisively. "Cause if you're a good villain-"
"Hey funny boys," Flea interrupted gruffly, pushing their shoulders to get their attention. "Here's a joke for you: what's empty and shouldn't be?"
"Ozzie's-"
There was a loud smack, and then a second of painful silence before Flea spun both of them around to the dark cell- the empty cell.
"WHAT?!" came the harmonic, two-tone shock.
Sure enough, as Ozzie held up the fiery light and they peered into the cell. Only the rope on the floor, broken chains and the solid block of ice remained.
"I-Impossible!" Ozzie sputtered as he ran (or wobbled) to the cell door to unlock it, waving the torch about thoughtlessly. If there was one thing he looked, it was unimpressed. "A trick!"
"Well what were you expecting?" groaned Slash empathetically, seemingly less concerned than the other two. "I told you we shouldn't have put him in the prison, but noooo-"
Flea, however, was more concerned with Ozzie's confrontation tactics; namely, opening the cell doors. "Ozzie-!" His face went white. "What're you doing!?"
In hindsight, there couldn't possibly be a cap to the times that singular question had been voiced under the chaotic roof of the Mystics' layer.
"Ozzie, NO!"
In fact, it could easily pass for their official catch phrase should anyone venture to ask.
"Get out of there!"
Of course, having a stoic, calculated dictator as their previous leader (and now sworn enemy) had saved or at least limited most of the fiscal carnage from Ozzie's previous thoughtless moments.
"Oh, shaddup!"
That is until recently, when Ozzie had naturally fallen into the vacant role of 'self-proclaimed' leader due to lack of potential candidates. But however 'natural' the transition had been in theory, the road bumps of its actuality had been felt throughout the whole of the Mystic race- especially in moments such as now, where the idea of putting a matter-transcending magician into a physical jail cell had decidedly been a good one (to Ozzie, of course). If there were one thing their new leader was notorious for, it was lack of thoughtful strategy.
Or lack of thoughtful anything, for that matter.
"Ozz…"
And so knowing Magus well enough to discern that their leader was certainly sauntering to his own grave and quite possibly digging theirs, Flea did the only thing reasonable thing at that moment; he groveled.
"O-Ozzie, I-I," the feminine figure sniffled into his own flailing arms, not wanting to see unavoidable bloodshed of one of the closest people in his life. "I always thought you were the most unorganized, careless leader the Mystics have ever had!"
Looking over at the sodden composure of his partner with his arms crossed, Slash sneered. "That's awful soft of you."
Ozzie seemed mildly graced by this, but quickly played it off as if it were, of course, the most natural and righteous conclusion in the world. "Heh," he laughed, swinging the door to the cell wide open.
Nothing happened.
After an awkward moment if the door creaking back and forth, Flea cleared his throat and kicked at the cobblestone. "What I meant was, you're… too nice."
"Right." Ozzie smirked and then continued wobbling about the cell, sniffing to himself and lost in his own world of suspicion. Flea and Slash exchanged skeptical looks before hesitantly joining him.
"You can only play hide-and-seek so long, Magus!" the green Mystic demanded of the darkness, waiting patiently for some sort of answer. The others joined him in the cell. Nothing. Then, like an obnoxious mother, "I know you're in here! I put you in here myself and I can take you out!"
"Ozzie," Flea began, less emotional this time, although there was definitely something if not flat serious to his tone, which was largely missed by the others.
Because as usual, Ozzie wasn't really listening. "SO help me, when I find you I'll… I'll-"
"Oz-"
"I'll scallop you! Like a potato!"
"OZZIE."
"WHAAAT?" he whirled impatiently towards an unmistakably aggravated Slash, only to find him and Flea gesturing to the ice block behind them with unusually blank faces. "I thought we discussed this already," he began as he slugged up to it and pushed them away. "How many times do I have repeat myself before-"
Magus was in the ice block.
For a long moment, the only noise in the room was the sound of Ozzie's cracked lips clapping together as if he were learning to speak for the first time and failing miserably.
"B-But…" too horrified to meet the red eyes staring him down, he instead looked back to his team for some kind of sane reassurance. "I thought, er, I mean… it was the girl in the ice block… wasn't it?"
"YES you dolt!" Slash, looking a cross between irritated and completely freaked out, drew his sword. "I hung that creep up myself!"
Knowing that Slash's already paper thin level of sanity was wearing and finding that he couldn't make any sense of the situation himself, Flea hovered backwards just in time to miss the wild range of Slash-motion starting up. Giving a fierce yell, the bald villain hacked at the ice hunk with the butt of his sword and the brunt of his strength, accomplishing solid dents and cracks which were nowhere near enough to actually break the ice.
"Let me," Ozzie growled impatiently, trying to shove Slash out of the way amid swinging and missing with his own strange magic.
"No," sighed Flea, covering his face in vicarious shame. "You're both going at it all wrong. It's not a punching bag, and we're not looking for ice cubes. If you want to cut ice, you've gotta' use heat!"
Before either of them could object that that wouldn't truly be considered cutting, Flea was raising his molten hands and jumped between the two, letting loose a wild stream of fire. Instantly, the sizzling sound of melting ice filled the room. The three villains smiled to themselves confidently as the ice shrunk and melted.
"Heh heh heh," chuckled Ozzie, devious as ever.
"Heh," agreed Slash.
"Ha!" Flea cried. He stepped back and took a menacing breath.
The block of ice had been reduced to nothing but melted water that now gathered in large, uneven pools at their feet, which was all they were left with when the river of fire stopped.
All they were left with.
There was a perplexed blink that passed between them.
"Flea!" Slash smacked the confused cross-dresser upside the head. "You fried em' right down to nothing! That's no fun!"
"How unfortunate," came the voice of Magus from the other side of the bars. The evil trio spun on their heels and starred, stunned to find the wizard watching them with a tight knit frown. "Perhaps I should leave something fun to remember me by, after all this time together."
Before Flea could stutter a retort, a small, sparkling object was tossed through the metal bars right into his stunned hands. Before he had the sense to toss it- not that there was much of anywhere TO toss it- it flickered and let out a wild stream of black shadow, which rapidly grew into the form of a black hole. Before Flea could attempt to dispel the vortex with his own magic or at least shove it into Slash's unsuspecting hands and run, the water at their feet slammed upwards with an unseen energy and was forced up around them, encasing both them and the black hole completely.
The sound of crackling ice echoed down the empty halls, and the room went very quiet.
Before Magus could turn his back on the eight-foot solid ice block of a prison, he turned his attention to the cavewoman hovering anxiously over Marle's still form, nearly jogging in place and watching him with a concerned, insistent expression.
"How fast out?"
-v-
Push the shell, climb the shell. Repeat.
Push the shell, climb the shell.
Repeat.
Push the shell…
Lucca had never been good with melodies, tunes or almost anything musically related. As if that weren't obvious by her total lack of rhythmic skills and out of tune humming she humored herself to as she worked away at her inventions, then this took the cake. Strangely enough, it had been the one quirk of hers that actually annoyed Crono in their moments of silence- perhaps because she was so terrible sounding, or perhaps because she did it on purpose to bother him.
But somehow, she could always keep a beat.
A beat was something steady and predictable, unlike a melody. Yes, she could keep a beat just as faithfully as a Crono could (and would) eat everything in her fridge, and she took a small sense of prided in that. In fact, she was so good at it (she liked to think) that she could keep a beat to anything. She kept a perfect ninety beats per minute on the bolts lined up to be tightened while she worked in the shop, and a perfect one-twenty on the steps up the giant hill to her house…
On the giant, spiky shell she was pushing around like a mouse with an oversized block of cheese, she kept a lousy fifteen beats between the heavy, exhausted breaths. It was starting to feel as if beating this thing had been easier than trying to move it about, but she was well aware of how much that fight had drained her.
"AUGH!" she screamed to the howling winds. "Stupid shell!"
As to her luck, she thought her untamed burst of anger would be heard only by herself. Robo had hovered behind, searching for somewhere to take temporary shelter from the unforgiving elements. But hearing her screaming over the wind, he looked up with something like concern and watched as the inventor waved her fists about uselessly. Now she was angrily trudging about the shell as though she were about to about to jump at it.
"Everything!" she yelled, pointing at the shell. "Everything is stupid! Guru of Life gives us weapons to take life, the Guru of Reason is actually a crazy old quack who sends us up a mountain named after death, and the Guru of Time doesn't know a thing about time itself! What kind of backwards world have we been thrown into?"
"Lucca?" Robo called. But Lucca wasn't done.
Backing away from the heavy and obnoxious shell, she could all but glare at it, forcibly reminding herself that kicking something with spikes was, in general, a very bad idea. But so was climbing it... "Stupid Lavos! This is all your fault, you brainless, spineless extraterrestrial pain in the butt! Ugly… stupid… you… you porcupine! I HATE YOU!"
"Lucca." The machine, who had been watching more than he wished to see, had come up behind her without her knowledge and pulled her away from the miniature replica of their arch enemy. "Your methods of dealing with your frustrations are inadequate. I deem it best we seek temporary shelter now. I have found an empty cave for us to retire to."
She made to protest, but her arms went limp. She let the machine pull her towards the opening in the rock wall. The altitudes and the exhaustion of collectively fighting three powerful Lavos spawn had finally caught up to her. Having come half way up the mountain already, Lucca found herself exhausted to the point of simply falling over when they finally came to the opening of the small cave. It was her first break from the elements since they had started the trek hours ago- who knew how long it was now- and she was more than ready for it.
"My interior scanner indicates that we have one-third left of the total surface area left to cover," Robo announced, holding his place as a windbreaker at the mouth of the cave. "We are almost there, Lucca."
Collapsing onto an unwelcoming surface of grit pebble and thistle, Lucca let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding. She barely managed to grapple off her helmet before her screaming muscles melted onto the compromising surface like a hot pancake tossed out of the grill.
"Nawhh…" With a shaky hand, she wrought her satchel from her hip and pushed it under her head as a make-shift pillow, relishing the temporary comfort it gave.
"Lucca," began the machine. "I am concerned for your wellbeing. Is there any way I can be of immediate aid?"
"I'll be fine. Just…" she curled up into a ball and bit back the rising nausea, "Just give me a few minutes."
"I will keep watch," Robo announced, and without waiting for an answer he set himself at the mouth of the small cave they had stumbled into. As an extra bonus, his massive body blocked out the sharp winds which had been blowing snow drifts into their little nook in the mountain side.
Brushing the last wisp of snow from her greasy hair, Lucca hugged her knees to her chest and... "Uhhhg…" Feeling the uncomfortable bump of the Chrono Trigger in her bag, she pulled it out and cradled it at her abdomen for fear that the cold would somehow stunt it. Yet she found it surprisingly (and pleasantly) warm, and so huddled it closer in hopes of absorbing the subtle heat.
It was here her stomach rumbled demandingly. She realized, then, that in the midst of being tossed though random time gates and fighting off Mystics that she had forgotten to pack any other food. Closing her eyes with an exhausted sigh, she reached back into her bag for one of the sandwiches Crono's mother had packed, thankful she had at least enough for the day. Her fingers met not with the paper bags, but with a strange fabric, at which she arched a brow. Uncertainly, peered into the bag and a sliver of colorful thread caught her eye.
A smile split her cracked lips as she pulled out the fabric, and she almost laughed despite herself. She immediately knew what it was; it was the green bandana Crono hated, one that was pulled out for special, dressy occasions. No doubt his mother had snuck it into her bag, passing the torch of her son's personal hygiene into Lucca's unfortunate hands- not like it had been the first time.
If there was one thing Crono fought with more intensity than seven-foot tall Heckran or an entire army of Mystics, it was dressing up. The few times a year Crono went missing, Lucca knew immediately that it was because the dreaded bandana had appeared, lying ominously at the end of his bed as a freshly pressed warning that some dreaded special occasion was on the horizon. Looking at it now, Lucca couldn't understand for the life of her why in the world his mother took such pride in the stupid thing, or why she forced him to wear it on such unfortunate occasion. It was by no means classy or elegant.
Even Lucca thought it looked tacky in his bright, red hair.
Yet Crono held more of a personal grudge against the specific bandana due to one simple fact: he hated have anyone see him that way. Lucca could remember- on more than one occasion- his grumblings as he finally succumbed to his mother's hunting him down and strapped the freshly pressed fabric over his forehead, whining that he looked like a cheap Christmas decoration.
Of course, it didn't brighten his mood any when Lucca had walked through the doors with tinsel and ornamental bells.
Ting… ting…
She could remember the darker shade of angry red his face had turned as she held the bells up like little symbols, tanging away at them as he lunged at her to-
Ting. Ting. Ting.
"Huh?" the weary inventor drew a scratched breath and slipped her glasses back onto her face. Something like a pulse clocked at her stomach, and when she looked down, the realization of what it was stopped her mind in its tracks.
It was the Chrono Trigger.
As if by magic, which didn't seem so unlikely to her, the egg gave a beat- a beat she actually felt on her stomach; one she didn't imagine. Startled to attention, she squinted down at the oval in her shaking hands. Something faint was coming from inside, and her curious nature could only lead her to lean in closer to the strange device.
She wasn't sure how she was hearing such a thing, but she was sure she had heard it. The soft tick tick tick within the egg, whirring like two cogs in perfect unison, was getting louder and slowing to a steady beat, a beat she recognized as sixty beats per second.
A clock.
-v-
Panicked, Ayla burst through the fortress' doors so loudly that it startled away any creature brave or stupid enough to make its home nearby. The dark, deadbeat woods surrounding the fortress echoed the clanging of the doors for miles.
"MAGUS!"
In good reply, the wizard floated out after her with the princess draped over his shoulders. Overtop of the burns and blisters, parts of her skin were blue from the elongated cold her body had endured. He could feel the icy chill of her body even through his layer.
As much as Magus wanted a moment where his head wasn't spinning to kick the adrenalin bursting through his veins, just a simple moment to distance himself and not care about what had just happened, he could not force his feet to leave when he laid Marle on the blackened grass and saw the blue color her lips had turned to.
"Cold!" Ayla noted fervently. She sat stubbornly on her bottom, rubbing her hands together and then placing them on the frostbitten princess. Nothing in her forever-summer world ever got this cold. "Need more warm!"
"Heal her, idiot!" he spat, frustrated she had not yet realized what needed to be done.
As if a light bulb had gone off, Ayla jumped up and rubbed her hands together. She mumbled something under her breath till a red burst of energy floated out of her body and into Marle's, momentarily fixing the princess' body in a glowing, red sphere of energy. Anxious for results, she leaned over the downed girl and waited for something to happen.
Nothing did.
"Again." The demand shot from Magus' lips like an arrow.
Ayla's brows creased together. Her calloused hands returned to the body of the girl lying between her and the hovering wizard. The princess' cheeks and most of her visible skin looked like it had been colored by faint dyes; in fact, strange colors were hewn all over her body. Without hesitating, Ayla's roaming hands stopped over the tip of Marle's nose. She was silent for a moment.
"No breath! NO BREATH!" She yelled suddenly, crouching beside the still princess and putting her face close enough to make sure she hadn't imagined it. Her hands were buzzing thoughtlessly everywhere as she thought for a solution.
Eyes wild with fear, the primitive woman looked over to the dark wizard with hopes that he had some form of an answer, but now he would not meet her gaze. "What do?"
"Does she have a pulse?" the wizard kneeled next to her, clipping the brackets off his cloak and draping the long fabric over Marle's icy body.
"Pulse?" repeated the cavewoman.
Magus lifted the cape enough to take one of her hands to check, but actually faltered at what he saw.
The tips of her fingers were black- black and cold as coal.
Ayla saw this with slow realization. She stopped bouncing around anxiously and took Marle's other hand in her own, examining the darkening limbs with a blank expression. It was a look even he would have found time to dread had he seen it.
But Magus was not looking at the twisting features of the cavewoman now. He was thinking deeply, thinking back to the brief time he had spend studying human anatomy. The wizard felt down Marle's wrist with his index and middle finger knit together. He checked the far left side of the left wrist for life. Nothing.
Hesitating, he checked the crevice of her neck. Nothing.
He checked the nose for air. There was stillness.
He backed away slowly, so slowly that it didn't look like real movement.
"Can you bring her back?" he asked lowly.
Ayla, seeing his hopeless reaction, stood up and pounded the ground so hard that shook even the wizard. "GAHHHHH!" She screamed to no one, letting that suffice as an answer. Tearing at her hair, she turned to him. "You do!" she cried viciously. "You freeze! Want die!"
Magus glared sharply at her. "I didn't-"
"Yes!" insisted the wild woman, raw with angry grief. "I see fight! Yell! Talk angry at Marle!" Without warning, she was jumping at him, slamming him with her stone fists.
"Would you-!" Magus, though nearly winded by the heavy pounding on his chest, angrily gripped her wrists with some efficiency, but he was definitely no match for her physical strength. All he could hear was the thud thud thud and feel the sheer force of her anger against his, which was about to unleash on her if he didn't stop this untimely fight.
"ENOUGH!" he snapped, bursting forth a dark sphere of energy between them, but the sound of heavy pounding never ceased. Had it been anything less than magic, the barrier would have easily shattered into a hundred pieces. Her fury was boiling. Livid, each fist came down harder than the next, trying in vain to smash the darkness before her.
"Fight!" was her wrenching scream. "You fight!"
"Stop this," he commanded once.
"I KILL YOU!"
"AYLA!" the wizard finally yelled, a hoarse and unusual humanity in his voice.
Hearing her own name come from the wizard's mouth earned him a strange and needed affect. Stopping mid-pounding, some form of clarity caused her to look up in a moment of raw emotion, tears running down her face. She leaned on the darkened glass-like wall between them, watching his uneven breathing and uncomfortable expression.
"I don't want Marle to die."
Her eyes watered anew, and Magus could be sure it was one of the only times the cavewoman had ever cried. She watched him from the other side of the dark wall with serious sniffles, waiting for him to further his point somehow. He breathed heavily, looking to the ground for something else to say.
"Surely then, you ask for death upon yourself," interrupted a voice so low and lethal that they didn't recognize it as Frog's till the shhiiing of the Masamune rang out.