Well! Would you look at that... 3/4 of the way done. How strange is this? (Okay, that's probably just me. Don't worry. Its me. Not you.)
Anyway.
MAN is it ever difficult fitting this in with homework! :/ It took me about a month this time.. hence the shorter chapters and all. But really, thank you so much to anyone who's stuck along with me. And reviewed. I really, really appreciate the regular reviews from a number of you! Mr. Shadows, presea221, snickermoon814... your regular little blurbs really make my day :)
So! on to dreams and electrical things:
Marle woke to a sky full of strange, colorful birds flying rather low- some green, some yellow, some red, some with red hair…
"Crono?" she shot up, head craned to see the strangely familiar hair style each bird was sporting. Yes, each bird upheld the young man's fiery hair to the tee, save for the colors. The spiky, sharp style was undeniable. "How did you get Crono's hair?!" she demanded in confusion as she sprung to her feet. "G-Give it back!"
The birds flew in circles and laughed at her, laughing like a ringing bell.
"Those who hear Leene's bell will have happy lives," they squawked again and again. "Happy lives, happy lies!"
"What?" she yelled, fighting the panic rising into her chest. Their words were invasive, ringing over and over again in her mind.
"Happy lives, happy lies! Those who hear Leene's bell…"
"Stop it!" Desperation screamed from her lips. Even when she covered her ears and squeezed her eyes shut, it wouldn't stop. She felt as though she were drowning in their chaotic chorus.
"Don't mind them," came a sudden tone from behind her, overpowering and soothing from the ringing in her ears. "They just like to tease."
"Huh?" she peaked, looking all about herself to find a familiar, purple cat watching her. It sat a few feet away from her in a rather uncomfortably manner, with his back end hunched up as though he were sitting on a large rock. Despite this, his tail was contently swaying its tail to and fro and he gazed up at her with the largest, softest eyes she had ever remembered seeing. "Hey… did you hear that?"
The cat cocked its head at her. "Hear what?"
"Alfador?" she realized aloud, forgetting the birds and forgiving the fact that he, too, was speaking. "How did those birds get Crono's hair?"
His tail swept the ground. "Well, they do like to tease, you know. I warned you."
"Oh." She stopped and tried to let the answer suffice. "Well... what are you doing here?"
"Who, me?"
She blinked. "Yes, you."
"Well if you really must know..." he smiled proudly. "I've been working on a little something- a little something that is not so little, but very big, actually. Would you like to see?"
"Please, if you don't mind."
Alfador inched himself forward from the strange position ever so slightly, revealing that he was sitting on something dark and round like. Something familiar.
"Hey, isn't that…" Marle took a curious step forward, first petting the cat and then sitting beside him. "That's the Chrono Trigger! How did you get that?"
Alfador laughed. It sounded as velvety as his fur felt. "I've been keeping it warm, of course. I'm going to hatch it. In fact," his paws nudged at it eagerly. "I think it's nearly ready. Any time, now."
Marle suddenly felt panicked. "W-What? Almost ready? What do you mean 'hatch it'? Who said you could-!"
As she spoke, the egg began violently shaking itself along with poor Alfador, who seemed to have no sense to get off of it. Larger cracks broke up the middle, and then spread to the bottom. It shook and shook until she finally grabbed the shaking cat away, whom she held tight. "Alfador, why is it hatching here? You have to stop it! We need to take it to Death Peak!"
"Now why would we need to do such a thing? I think it's done so wonderfully here."
As suddenly as it had started shaking, there was a loud crackling sound and egg split open. From within came a tiny, toy-sized figure, which was also rather familiar. But it was dark, and didn't have spiky hair as Marle had expected.
It was a little Magus.
"Hello sir," Alfador mewed. "So good to see you again." Stretching, the little Magus jumped out of the shell, and to her terrible shock, another one stood in its place inside the egg. "You're looking well, sir. Have you gotten a hair or two cut?"
It too jumped from the shell, joining the other one on the rippling, shimmering floor. Were they standing on water? Was that another little Magus jumping from the shell?
Marle felt suddenly like a stranger had invaded her room. "Where's Crono?" she yelled abruptly, startling the cat in her arms a little. "Tell me what you did with him!"
"Why, he's right here." The cat's cold nose pointed to the Magus' on the floor. "Isn't he looking well today?"
"What are you talking about? That's NOT Crono!" Her voice echoed, but the little Magus' kept jumping from the shell, pulling on one glove at a time and running around her in circles.
"Who are you looking for?" they began asking. "Is it me, Marle? Aren't you looking for me?"
"NO!" she flushed red and let Alfador go, who purred patiently beside her. "Where's Crono?! Fix the egg, Alfador! We need to fix it! We need to fix him!"
"It may or may not hatch," came the booming voice of Gaspar from off in the distance, growing louder and louder as the floor rippled towards her. Marle's eyes widened, and she looked about wildly for the source of the voice. No one else seemed to hear it.
"Crono!" she cried out.
"Who Marle, who?" the Magus' were joined by the birds, swooping down with their red and yellow Crono hair. "Who? Who?"
The ripples on the floor grew larger and larger until they were waves, bumping and rocking her around like a doll. She could find nothing to grab onto, and with the last chorus' of 'who' she felt herself slipping into the water, her grip slipping away from gloved hands she hadn't realized she had been holding.
"Who? Who? Those who hear Leene's bell will have happy lives! Happy lies! Those who hear Leene's bell…"
-v-
"S-STOP!"
As though she had been shocked back to life, Marle sputtered to consciousness, her hands flying to her chest as she bolted up from the cold and hard ground. She instantly regretted it. Pain shot through her torso, and a numbness met each of her limbs. She cried out lightly, biting her tongue before gingerly laying back down. Cringing, she took a deep breath and looked around her.
Frog lay unaffected by her trauma next to the fire, tongue rolled across the ground with a heavy snore coming from his little nose. Ayla was just as oblivious, though perhaps not nearly as exhausted, for she was comfortably curled up as close to the fire as was both possible and safe. But a good distance from the fire and the people around its warmth sat the lone wizard Magus, who had almost looked concerned for a moment. He sat, watching her intently from his perch upon the tree stump, leaning forward on his elbow as though he had been reading a book.
"I see my well wishing was to no avail."
"What?" she stammered blankly trying hard to focus on him over the shooting pain in her feet.
"Although you don't usually need such encouragement considering you sleep like a stone." He shifted his gaze to the fire. "It seems everyone else has taken to your kind of sleeping, especially guardsman Glenn over there."
A short look about her sufficed in refreshing her memory, and her face quickly darkened.
"You!" she whispered angrily, looking about her body as though she were alien to herself. "What did you do to me?!"
Magus blinked slowly. "I put you to sleep."
"What?!" gasped Marle, whose expression fluttered between confusion and then settled on anger. "Y-You're making me dream those things, aren't you!"
"Am I?" he asked, a mock meekness in his tone. His posture wasn't going to change, apparently. "What makes you think I would have any inclination to interfere with your insignificant brain's reverie?"
Growling with offense, she had fully intended to march over to him right then and there to tell him off, but her worn body would not respond. Of course, this further frustrated her. "You… you! We should be going after Crono right now!"
"And exactly how do you intend to do that?"
She growled lightly, ignoring his rationality. "You just want us to forget about Crono!"
His brow arched. "Do I?"
"Yeah! You want us to forget so that... that..."
"So that what?"
As she stopped to think about it, Marle could find no plausible reason Magus would interfere with their plans to save Crono- save pure disinterest, that is. But she was tired beyond tired and sore beyond sore, and goodness knows old habits die hard, for in that moment she longed to blame him somehow, and blame him again for her dream. "You just don't care about him! You don't care if we ever see him again!"
"And?" Magus lulled, waiting for her to yell something he wasn't already aware of.
She huffed. "You're selfish, you know that? I can't believe you! Don't you care about anyone besides yourself?!"
There was a moment of off-beat silence, then, "things don't tend to end well for those I've cared for. So no." He took an audible breath. "I don't."
"You?" annunciated the princess. "Care for someone? Yeah right, like who?" She almost laughed, but then suddenly realized the gravity of what she had said and wished she hadn't opened her mouth at all. It had been such a stupid thing to say; it had come out so quickly…
For a long minute, Magus merely looked at her with such vacancy that she could not discern even a speck of emotion. That didn't make her feel any less horrible, however. Before she could stumble through some sort of apology, or at least try to correct her careless words, the wizard's eyes slowly shut, and to her surprise, he gave some sort of sardonic laugh. "You know, that is quite the accusation- coming from a run-way, fugitive princess."
A new and unexpected spark of rage lit her face. "What?"
"I didn't stutter."
Cringing, she sat up. "How dare you! You have NO idea what you're talking about!"
His eyes spoke before his lips. "Don't I?"
"No," she exhaled hotly. Having been lectured on such matter more times in her life than she wished to count, there was no response she could muster but an angry one. Yet the air deflated from her chest when his words fully hit her, and she remembered that she was speaking to the once prince of both Zeal and the Mystics. Not a good one, by any means, but all the same…
Magus moved for the first time to cross his arms over his chest. Marle, for the second time that night, was caught for words.
Thankfully, someone else took over the conversation.
'Mew!' Having been woken by the girl's rampage and sensing her anger, Alfador ran to her and wormed between her arms, begging to be held. Caught between her anger at Magus and the shocking recollection of how horrible it would be should Alfador ever speak, it took her a moment to gauge whether or not the cat was safe to address.
Seeing her hesitation in touching Alfador, Magus shook his head. "You're wasting your time staying awake if you really want to be off looking for your boyfriend first thing in the morning. If you hope to be even slightly mobile, you should return to your slumber."
Managing small, shaky strokes over the velvety fur of the small creature, Marle's anger slowly drifted away in consideration of his words. They were sensical. She was tired. Beyond tired.
"Right," she finally relucted, leaving those subtle coals of anger to simmer in her chest as she gingerly rolled onto her side, away from the warmth of the fire. She might not have had the strength to argue at the moment, but she wasn't about his accusations of her prove true; she would show him just how little he knew of her... later. But even so, she still felt… guilty, for having said such a thing. She sighed to herself, studying the deep darkness of the woods around them as the warmth of the fire melted the stiffness in her back and neck. She could have almost sighed in relief had it not been for the guilt clinging to her, knotting her stomach into balls and making her feel sick...
But perhaps it was not the guilt.
The darkness of the woods, which she had unconsciously been staring into, seemed to inexplicably and impossibly stare back at her with its heavy, malicious blackness the longer she focused on it. She could have sworn the trees were moving, and she could have equally sworn that there was no wind to cause that movement. She blinked. The sickening knot in her stomach remained. She swallowed hard, questioning if perhaps it were some side effect of whatever had happened to her.
But the longer she stared into those dark, gnarled trees, the worse the knot grew.
Perhaps she had not noticed until now how dark the woods truly were, but now that she was neither in intense pain nor intently angry, the heaviness of the environment blanketed her mind, dominating her senses. The all-consuming depth of darkness seemed to hold whether her eyes were open or closed, filling her already racing mind...
Marle suddenly found herself taking a deep breath and rolling around so that she was facing the fire, and consequently, Magus. To distract herself from the darkness at her back, she took to studying him.
His chin was resting against his chest, and he did not move to acknowledge her although she knew him to be awake- she had never seen him truly sleep, after all. Dark bags tinted the pale skin beneath his eyelids, which were closed and turned towards the ground. His cape, which was draped down his front like a make-shift blanket, was ripped and heavily fringed along the bottom and his usually flawless hair looked dull, even a little tangled. He looked tired through and through- it was all she could see. Worn, frayed, and tired. Now that she really observed him, it struck her how little he looked like himself.
He looked anything but majestic.
She frowned to herself, looking down to her hands, which were slightly tingly and numb. In the faintness of the fire, she could make out the red shade they had turned, and could feel the heat of them when she pressed them against her forehead.
But beneath her skin, they felt cold and chilled as though her bones were frozen. Marle exhaled softly to herself and closed her eyes.
Slowly, Magus opened his.
The princess tucked her hands beneath the thin blanket around her, careful not to pull the bandages on her forearms. Where had those come from?
Magus waited. He waited a little more. And… he waited.
Finally, her breathing slowed, and with each shallow breath she took, her accusation hit him once again, sinking past the surface of his mind like a rock sinking to the bottom of the ocean.
"Don't you care about anyone besides yourself?"
A sigh so quiet that one would have mistaken it for the wind was all that was heard among the mostly sleeping group. Memories of the same accusations coming from the people of Zeal pricked and prodded his mind.
'Janus,' they had whispered his name as though it were a burden, trying unsuccessfully to keep their judgments from his sharp, sensitive ears.
Alfador instinctively wormed his way between his master's feet, impatience for his attention.
'That selfish child. Have you heard what he's done?'
'He doesn't care about anyone except that cat and Schala!'
Alfador rubbed against his leg knowingly, intending to steal his focus away, but it was in vain. He mewed and mewed again, but was still ignored.
'That's why he can't use magic…'
Alfador- in rare circumstances- knew when to bite.
"Hey!" Magus hissed sharply, turning his attention from his sour day-dreams to his companion. "What is it?"
The cat sat, looking deep into his eyes with his own large, sad pupils.
"What does it matter?" the wizard finally asked aloud. "I care about what matters. I care about you, Alfador. You've always been there for me."
The cat's tail flickered once, twice. You left me behind.
He looked into the woods for a moment. "I needed to go look for Schala. I told you that."
I wanted to find her just as much as you. You knew that.
Magus remained silent.
Why didn't you call for me when you came back to the commons? Marle called me.
"Go back to sleep, Alfador" he spoke softly. "We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow."
Alfador looked a little dejected, but all the same he curled up at Magus' side. Magus uncurled his arms and was petting his faithful friend when Marle began mumbling something incomprehensible from where she lay across the fire.
"Ihatahenjik-no… jsutstyrniga…" she rolled over, her face showing a torn and tormented expression in the gentle firelight. "…"
Alfador glanced up at him.
"What?"
The cat blinked his large, waxy eyes.
Reluctantly, Magus rose to his feet and moved towards her in slow steps, setting his gloved hand on her forehead and muttering a few words. Slowly but surely, her struggle faded and she relaxed into a dreamless sleep.
Alfador jumped back on Magus' lap when he returned to his place on the log, Magus' hand returned to his cat, and Frog's observant eye finally closed.
But his mind, wondering at what he had seen and heard, did not find such quick rest.
-v-
"What do you mean she was here last night?!" demanded a deep and authoritative voice. The vibrato of it shook the entire throne room- or at least that's how it felt to the dozen guards standing at attention about it.
There was a little extra attention put forwards at the outburst.
"Your majesty," laughed a nervous, snakelike little man, who stood before the king with his head half bowed. "She was wild and unreasonable- completely out of her mind!"
"All the more reason for you to alert me, chancellor!" The king's large fist slammed onto the arm of his throne, spelling trouble. "Was she alone?"
The chancellor shook his head in mock meekness before venturing to open his mouth. "The guards reported that there was a man in the forest with her when she-"
"That trouble-making redhead again?"
"I don't believe so," the chancellor replied, gradually lifting his eyes towards where the king sat. "My men- the patrolling guards, that is- they claimed it was someone… unfamiliar."
"Unfamiliar?" growled the king, who instantly took to brooding.
"A tall, pale man with long flowing hair, they said." The king was silent for a long, long moment, leaning in anxious silence upon his upright fist and blinking off at nothing. "Perhaps I should send my men out after her? She may still be-"
"That's enough from you," interrupted the brooding king, who's attention still remained fixed elsewhere. "You are dismissed for the day. But so help me, if you ever fail to inform me of my daughter's presence again- no matter what time of day it be- you will be stripped of your powers immediately."
The tiny, old man pursed his lips into a fine, patient line. "Yes, your majesty." He bowed once more and turned from the room hotly. Some of the guards watched him walk by, and when he threw the large throne room doors open, they all jumped a little.
All except one, that is.
The standing guard at the front doors of the castle- who had been trying to discretely pick his nose, took the slamming noise as he cue to stand to attention.
"Ya-Chancellor sir," he barked to the fast-moving man as he walked by. "Permission to accompany you beyond the castle gates?"
Said chancellor grunted, which he took as enough of an answer to follow after his retreating form. He followed along curiously until they were deep into the Guardian woods.
"Wha'd he say?" the guard finally asked, wringing his hands nervously.
"What do you think he said?!" barked Yakra, spinning around at him viciously. "It was a mistake even telling him that she was here! That idiot Guardia is going soft on his daughter. She's become far more of a nuisance than her great-grandmother ever was!"
"W-Whell what about that guy who was following her, huh? What about that?"
"What about it?" Yakra turned to him in full attention. "Why is he of any concern to you?"
The disguised Mystic laughed an uncomfortable little laugh. "D-Didn't he sound familiar to you at all? Maybe something you heard about growing up…? You know, old myths n' such?"
"No," deadpanned Yakra, slitting his eyes at the little Mystic before turning back down the forested path. "And it doesn't sound familiar to you, either. Do I make myself clear?"
"Where are you going?" cried the monster, watching his leader walk off.
"That's none of your business; get back to your post and keep your mouth shut."
-v-
"I hate this place. It gives me the creeps."
The air of the Mystics' wood was cloaked in a thick darkness, making Lucca feel like she were choking on nothing as they walked the forest path. Not one for the element of surprise, Lucca was ever ready with her stun gun fixed on any and every obscure creak or squeak that dared to make itself known to them. But of course, dark woods tend to have many squeaks and creaks in them, and this resulted in a rather jumpy, dodgy scientist whose gun was bouncing in every possible direction.
"I swear it was day before we landed here. I'm telling you, there's something messed up about this place. There should be a.. whoa!" she spun around at some loud rustling in the underbrush along the side of the path. "What was that?" Before she could fully address it, she was twitching out at another sound somewhere to her left, and then somewhere behind them, and then...
Hearing the constant movements, her calm companion turned with an agitated frown. Would you quit it?
"Wwhat?" she breathed.
You're making me jumpy.
"Me?!" came the paranoid reply. Her eyes continued to dart about. "We're on the devil's highway and I'm making you jumpy?"
Yeah. His palm flattened over top of her tightly gripped gun, forcing it a few inches away from his chest. This earned a rather unimpressed but more relaxed response from the wild frills of the scientist.
"Hmph," she grumbled, half heartedly allowing the gun to slide to her side. But her eyes were still keen, ready for anything. "I'm the least of your worries around here. Don't you remember what Magus' castle was like? That place was freaky!"
His brow popped. Like Frog kinda freaky?
He missed the glare shot at him as he turned, but chuckled to himself all the same. This only proved to further peeve Lucca. She knew that he knew damn well what she meant. He was just too cocky to admit that the extraordinary darkness scared him too.
So she took the opportunity of conversation as a distraction. "What was up with Gaspar back there, huh? Sure seemed like his missed you or something." She watched Crono's shoulders shrug before continuing. "I guess you must have really grown on him, which is really something- I mean, considering it's you and all."
She missed the sly smile spreading across his cheeks until he spared a glance back at her.
"Oh please," she groaned. "Don't even start with your infectious charm spiel again."
Crono shrugged again. Well its true.
"Yeah, that's as true as your skull is thick."
Crono tossed a sick over his shoulder, and she smiled, side-stepping it. "You better be careful if you want to stay in Grandpa's good books- he likes me, see? And if I tell on you-"
A loud SNAP sounded from the left, earning a startle from both of them. Lucca jolted into a stiff stance, defaulting to her previously-panicked screening of the entire area, dreading each step over the other in the tense, ensuring silence.
Even if this place had never existed before Magus had opened that fatal portal to Zeal and changed the timeline, the same kind of darkness which had lingered in Magus' castle lingered about woods they had inevitably come to. The Mystic's darkness, Lucca dubbed it right then. But naming it offered her little respite. It gave her this awful, suffocating feeling… as though all of her worst fears had been realized and she were about to be consumed by the shadows of the night. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the obscure idea of running off into those dark woods had somehow crept in with a strange allure.. as though it were calling her. Of course, she had no desire of her own to do such a thing, the nagging was a constant tug on her mind, and had Crono not stood directly in front of her, she might have even succumbed to taking a step or two off the path. To say that she had tolerated Magus' castle would be an understatement; she had hated every step of that dark journey. This was not proving to be any easier.
And the flickering orange lights of the black castle ahead of them did little to ease her anxiety.
"Do you think they're inside?" she asked after the long stretch of silence. The fortress was so close that they could see the onyx doors up ahead, tightly sealed shut and glimmering in the faint light.
Crono never stopped walking, but he seemed to be studying the castle intently. Finally, he shrugged.
"I don't think we should go in there." He looked over his shoulder at her in near disbelief, but she firmly continued. "I'm serious! We don't know what's become of Magus, or Frog for that matter. And if he has turned sides on us..."
Lucca never had the chance to finish that horrible thought, for the something strange was happening in the woods- so strange that she had to check her glasses to be sure she wasn't seeing things.
As though some sort of unnatural wind were blowing upon them, the trees along the path began to move- no, dance- at the unseen touch. They started slowly, as though coming to life were a rather tedious and tiresome task. Yet their movements were an equally unnatural happening. They moved in awkward back and forth motions, as though they were a liquid trying to be shaped and sculpted. The few trees that had managed to retain their leaves quickly lost them. They wilted from the dead trees and were dead themselves before they reached the ground.
"I don't like the looks of this," Lucca managed with surprising composure, backing away slowly.
Crono didn't seem to like the look of it either. They were immediately at each other's backs with drawn weapons before another movement had passed, both fixed on the hostile motion of the trees. Their unnatural sway made Lucca feel what she could only liken to seasickness; she had never been one for sea travel. It was a sick thing, watching the way the trees twisted and turned.
"Looks like a bad hair day to me."
They waited for a long minute for something further to happen, but suddenly, as though the life had been taken from them, the dark movements of the trees came to an abrupt stop. They remained frozen in those strange positions, sinewy and distorted, black as night and void of verve. In a final act of spirit, they slowly warped back into themselves and crackled to a stone stillness. A dust settled over the woods, and with it came a strange silence which had not been there before.
Perplexed, the pair relaxed their fighting stance. With the nightmarish scene still etched into their minds, the two waited for another long moment before daring to inch closer to the woods.
Nothing happened.
But the dark nagging in the back of Lucca's mind had not disappeared.
"Well that was weird." She attempted to resign her fears with a shake of her head and fixed a hand on her hip. "What was that, anyway?"
Beats me, shrugged Crono as he sheathed his sword.
Catching Crono's wary eye, they moved tentatively towards the gnarled trees. Even knowing Crono was at her back, she waited a hesitant moment or two before resting a palm on one of the trees. She found that it was plain and simple wood, save the unusually dark color of its bark. Was that simply native to the region? Or was that because it was so completely and totally dead? She gave it a curious knock before studying it with closer scrutiny.
Curious himself, Crono followed Lucca's lead and moved to place a hand on a neighboring tree, but it never made it there.
The forest line they stood at began to tremble violently, and they with it. "W-What now?!" Lucca stammered, jerking away from the trees while shaking this way and that before finally falling on her face. "I-I've had enough surprise for one day!"
Crono, however, managed to hold his ground. He got to his knees next to his fallen friend and planted a fist into the ground as the tremors grew stronger and stronger. In response, the ground shook hard and harder until he noticed a rather strange thing happening. The trees, already shaking with the great tremors, began to shift about with the earth as though they were somehow superficial instead of deeply rooted. They shook abruptly and violently, appearing as nothing more than fragile puppets, moving this way and that like a curtain being drawn and retracted.
The red head's eye widened. "No way…"
And then the shaking stopped just as suddenly as it had begun, and the earth became still. Lucca groaned to herself and was swiftly brought to her feet by a pair of strong arms. "What was that all about?"
Crono let out a short breath and gestured off to the right. Following the direction he pointed, Lucca was surprised to find a perfect trail had been cleared out among what had just been a wall of trees. It led deeper into the woods, ending in a hazy darkness.
She went pale. "You've got to be kidding me. You don't seriously think we should go down that path?"
But Crono was already walking down the torn up, dark road.
"Why do I waste my breath on these kinds of questions," the scientist grumbled to herself. "Hey, wait up!"
The forest did not stray from its dark theme whatsoever. In fact, it only seemed to grow worse the deeper they went. Lucca had quickly returned to clutching her weapon too tight and anxiously jeering about every which way.
This time, Crono didn't tease her.
The darkness of one tree etched into the other no matter which way she looked. Despite having a clear path, she found she could not look straight ahead for more than a few seconds without being overcome by paranoia. "Have I ever told you how much I hate forests?" Lucca began.
The hero's head tilted to the side, then back again. Once.
"Well." She paused. "I do. A lot."
They walked on in silence a long while, neither having the nerve to turn back or the sense to move any faster. The perfect stillness about them was unnerving; absent were the sound of normal woodland life, like owls or rabbits or leaves rustling. No eyes peered out of the darkness at them, no sign of life whatsoever, and despite everything, this concerned Lucca the most.
Well, almost. There was still that damned darkness…
The rustling stated again, earning a startle from both of the tense heroes. After a moment of suspenseful silence, Crono put a reassuring hand out behind him as though he were about to reason the sound away when it started to their right. It was louder, and it was no longer a rustling. It was a thin, slickening sound, as though there was water moving along the ground, careening through the dark and shady wood... behind them, beside them. She could hear it so clearly that it made her stomach turn.
"Crono..."
Suddenly, the trees were bending into a strange life again, twisting and spinning excess bark and leaves to the ground like a snake shedding its skin. Almost immediately they were surrounded by the ill-intented trees, and before they could blink, there were wisps of black branches lunging at them.
The two rolled in opposite directions, freaked out of their minds but ready to fight. Crono, of course, took the first swing. Darting towards the tree line, he dashed between the violent dancing of the trees, attempting to slice a large branch clean off one particularly large bough. But he never made contact, for his blade went straight through it. His eyes widened in surprise.
"Get away from there, Crono!" called the scientist, who fired a few shots at the same phantom tree while dodging other malicious branches with about as much success. "They're not physical!"
Before Crono could jump backwards, one of the swaying branches materialized and took his feet out from beneath him. The branch followed him down, but he quickly rolled away from wooden limb before it could run him through. It swatted at him in vain, unable to extend itself past its natural limit. "Tell me something I don't know?" he called, swinging unsuccessfully at the teasing bough.
Puzzled, Lucca watched the scene play out intently for a brief second. Crono would jump at the trees and go straight through them. Yet when they attacked... perhaps magic was what they needed?
"Ha!" she yelled, teasing a stream of fire at another high branch about to descend on the unsuspecting hero. The flame made contact with the darkened bark, but to her dismay, it had no effect. "What!? Oh c'mon that's not fair!"
Crono jumped out of the way of the branch coming at him and rolled out of reach of the one behind him.
"How are we supposed to fight these things?!"
Crono grunted something inaudible in her direction, rolling away from another phantom branch. But in doing so, he had unintentionally moved right into the path of another on his left. In one great sweep, a branch caught the startled boy and swatted him though the air. He went flying over Lucca's head, right towards one of the particularly large and lucid tree trunks encroaching them. But instead of going through it or at least hitting it, he was caught and sucked into the transparent trunk, held in a frozen suspension.
"Crono!" cried Lucca, running towards the tree with that rare, reckless abandon which got her into all forms of trouble. Despite being largely transparent, she could sense how massive this particular tree was- Crono almost looked like a child compared to it. "Let go of him!"
From within the demon tree, the redhead's face looked strained, almost contorted, as though the tree were squeezing the life from him. And indeed, this seemed to be the tree's intent; the monstrous thing was pulsing with a gray energy, dull and dark and sickening all at once, surging fresh waves of this magic with each sapping wave it took from him. Crono cried out once loudly, but then his screams were inaudible.
"CRONO!" screamed the scientist, thrashing in vain at the base of the tree. Crono's pained expression grew, but despite this and the all of the restraint, Crono gave what Lucca would have recognized as a strained motioned to get down. But of course, Lucca did not recognize this, because Lucca was no longer looking at Crono; her vision had turned red between the savage and hapless hacks she was making at the tree. "No stupid tree eats my best friend!" she yelled between bursts of fire and snaps of static and-
'Static?'
The realization stopped her dead in her tracks.
From within the tree, Crono's body was shaking with electrical energy. Seeing this with wide eyes, she turned and flung herself to the ground as far away from the demon tree as she could. A cackle of thunder echoed across the woods with the burst of heat that railed over her spine, making her cringe. Daring to peer out from under the protection of her arms, she watched her friend's body lite up with the massive amount of electricity surging through him. From his chest came a swell of pure, white lightning, which mustered itself and flashed out like blizzard descending upon the earth. This was the last thing she saw before she looked away to protect her eyes from the searing, electric heat.
There was a long, rippling charge of energy that ran out, which she felt again along her back. Thankful for her helmet at such a moment, she managed to cover her face and hands before the last, powerful surge ripped out. When the penetrating, blinding light subsided and a high-pitched frequency hummed in the growing silence, Lucca slowly peered up from the dirt and found that everything around them had been totally destroyed scene. Every one of the demon trees had been splintered into thousand pieces, demolished right down to the roots which had exploded out of the ground. For a good half a mile around them, every single tree had been blown to pieces. Crono stood in the middle of it all, a temperate glow seeping from his outstretched hands.
"No fair," she frowned, getting back to her feet as she dusted herself off. "Why does your magic work on them?"
Exhausted, the boy's cocky smile spoke for him. Cause lightning is cooler than fire.
And finally, the fact that daylight was streaming onto her face seemed to register.