Also Updated. I figure if ply can help cure a cold, it can help with frostbite, too. Seems like aura and cure would do better, though, being warm elements, and all.

Warnings: I introduce Alex. I also made him slightly less hateable.Also, spoilers for Lost Age, like woah. So, if you haven't finished that, I'm sorry for being such an ass, but um. Come back when you're done?
Pairing: Hints of onesided AlexMia, and you get your first taste of IsaacFelix.
Rating: still K+ for the chapter.
Notes: I tried not to make any Proxians assholes, except Menardi. She's fun to write. And, lookit, Isaac can talk, too!

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The unHero Intro

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Isaac awoke to a soft warmth covering him, relieving quite a bit of pain he had only just realized he was feeling. He opened his eyes to see three blurry spinning figures, one red-haired one and two blondes. The sensation faded though, and Isaac was quickly aware of just how cold and wet he was.

"Another Aura just for good measure, Lily," a voice Isaac recognized as his father's said.

Red blurry spinning figure replied with a nod that looked a bit like a blurry head-bob to Isaac, and used her aura psynergy again. This time when he felt the soft warmth (such a relief from the freezing cold!) the blurry spinning figures began to come into focus.

Kyle, Lily, and her husband, Brian were standing over Isaac with worried looks on their faces. "Are you okay, son?" Kyle asked gently, holding a hand out to help Isaac up.

Isaac sat up before taking his father's hand, and looked around to try and see where they were. "Where's Felix?" he asked, "And where are we?" The only thing he could tell was that this was definitely not Vale. The rocking ground (a ship?!) and the endless deep blue sea were major hints.

"Er…We… um," Lily began.

Brian cut her off with a quick reply. "These two foreigners saved us. I don't know where our son is, or our daughter, either, but the two promised we would see our hometown again. Nothing to fear, Isaac," he assured the shivering boy. He had thought that perhaps telling Isaac everything at once would lessen the impact. It didn't.

From the tallest hill on the edge of Mt. Aleph it was possible to see Vault if one used one of those tele-somethings Kraden had made the children. Isaac looked around the deck. On the tallest area stood a scary blonde woman with an awful lot of pink and red clothing, and a blue man with a blue mohawk was steering the ship.

From what Isaac could see, there wasn't even anything remotely interesting on the horizon. No distant speck like Vault without the tele-something, and no mountains, no trees, no land. Everything outside of the ship was water. Salty undrinkable water. Everything might as well have been blank canvas to Isaac. It was the most lost he had ever felt in his life.

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Isaac gasped as they stepped off of the boat and onto frozen land. A week of being seasick, homesick, and overall feeling lost, andnorth of here was where they would be staying? He didn't even have a cloak or a scarf. None of the Valeans did. They had whatever they had gotten out of the river in. For Isaac this consisted of his pajamas and the old gray tunic he had only worn one other time--the day his mother had given it to him.

Snow came about once a year in Vale. It had only stuck to the ground so that the children could make snowballs once that Isaac could remember. Kyle said it had something to do with all of the fire- and earth-based psynergy coming from Mt Aleph, because even Vault got more snow than Vale.

This place though, far north of little Imil, was even colder than the coldest Valean winter. Colder than the river and storm had been, too. Isaac shivered for the hundredth time, but the for the first time so far, it wasn't because of the cold. What if Felix didn't make it? He thought. So far no one had been able to tell him what had happened after he jumped. It would be ironic, he mused, if Felix hadn't made it out alive, after all. That jump-flip maneuver was by far not guaranteed to even work. There had been a good chance that the momentum would not be enough, that Isaac wouldn't be strong enough…

A thousand things could have gone wrong. He had half-expected to just be pulled into the water with Felix. Isaac was beginning to suspect divine interference.

Dora was probably worried out of her mind, too. To anyone in Vale it would appear as if the four now wandering the wilderness south of Prox had disappeared, not even leaving bodies to be buried. The two that had saved Lily, Brian, Kyle, and Isaac had insisted that there was no time to stop and say goodbye. Isaac had been unconscious at the time the question had been raised.

The freezing snow kept interrupting Isaac's thoughts, though, and he had been falling behind without distractions. Several times the party had had to stop, and Lily would have to use a bit of her psynergy to use aura or to create a small flame to help keep the frostbite away. Menardi kept insisting they just leave him behind, and Saturos would calm her down, then leer at Isaac.

Isaac was slightly less mortified at the cold to know that it was at least summer in Prox. Though one could hardly call it that. Prox possessed two seasons: everything-is-frozen, and most-things-are-frozen. Summer in the general sense that it was actually warm did not exist.

The Proxians had described what could happen to their own people in a particularly nasty winter, let alone what may happen to Valeans used to much warmer weather. Isaac was almost happy to hear that it was summer at that point.

When they (finally! Isaac thought) reached the actual town that Saturos and Menardi had described so fondly, Isaac was ushered off to stay with an old Proxian couple, while Kyle, Brian, and Lily got their own frozen home far away from the entrance. Menardi had said something about "No running away."

Really, though, Isaac was quite convinced by the large icebergs that experienced Proxians had narrowly avoided missing. The ship had been odd, too. Only Saturos and Menardi could even get it to move, nevermind steering it. An experienced Proxian escort would be necessary before Isaac even considered running away.

For the first few weeks Isaac had to have a Proxian with him at all times. The pair that had rescued and brought him here had said it was because he possessed Venus psynergy. Autumn came, though, and in Prox it meant that it was close enough to winter that there was no hope for escape, even for seasoned adventurers, meaning Isaac could run free. He mostly chose to stay near Lily because she was the nicest Mars adept around.

By the Weyard equivalent of December, Saturos and Menardi were insisting that Isaac start training his psynergy. This led to being around his and Felix's fathers more often, because they were the only Venus adepts in the entire town.

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Isaac glanced out the window to gauge the weather before stepping out. He expected to either see the neighboring family's children playing, or to not see them at all. He did not expect to see half of the town's citizens gathered at the entrance to Prox. He grabbed his winter gear (Lily had made it for him, since no one else in Prox needed so much clothing) and ran outside to see what the crowd was trying to see.

Upon arriving two things were made clear by the curious townspeople: one, there was a visitor from Imil, and two, he was as blue as his oversized eyebrows. If someone didn't use a bit of psynergy, preferably an aura, then this man was dead.

Isaac pushed his way through the crowd, hoping to try to help the man who had stumbled into the frozen village. The foreigner had blue hair, barely shoulder-length. He would probably grow it out if he had any thoughts about actually staying in Prox. He also had noticeably large eyebrows. Isaac promptly began using the bit of psynergy he had mastered, a simple cure ability. According to Saturos it was not as helpful as aura in this climate, but it was at least warmer than ply.

The man began to mumble he didn't need any help, but paused mid-rant when he realized that he was getting feeling back in parts of his body. His fingers and toes were still frozen, and everywhere else was cold, but like Saturos had predicted, cure proved to be warmer than ply.

Isaac stood when he was tapped, helped the foreigner up, and began to lead him through the stunned crowd back to the old Proxian couples' home. The man introduced himself as Alex, a Mercury adept from Imil. Alex had thought his ply psynergy would be enough to reach Prox. Had Isaac not happened to see the crowd, though, he probably would have frozen to death. The Proxians were too wary of strangers to go around wasting perfectly good psynergy that could be used to keep the town warmer on auras for strangers.

The old couple Isaac stayed with offered to allow Alex to stay with them. Alex was hardly fit to even sit up comfortably for the first week, and would spend the first few moments of his morning plying the frostbite out of his fingers. He had nearly lost his fingers and toes to the cold.

Some nights after he began recovering, Alex would pray by his bed. Isaac chalked it up to superstition and Alex's religious upbringing as a priestess's apprentice. Kyle (and Dora, too) had always just left beliefs to Isaac to figure out on his own. The high healer in Vale, though, had only ever believed in the Wise One.

It was on nights that Alex prayed (most nights) that Isaac could wake up to hear the foreigner crying out in his sleep to someone named "Mia". Alex would beg her not to go, and wake up in a fouler mood than usual.

One morning after a quiet night, Isaac got up the courage to ask Alex about his dreams. "What was she like?" he said as soon as Alex began getting his boots on.

Alex tied the boot strings particularly tight, his displeasure at the question becoming evident. "Who?"

"The girl you talk about in your sleep--Mia, right?" Isaac clarified innocently.

"She's the reason I ran away…And the reason I never want to go back," the Mercury adept replied coldly. Isaac began looking around the mess on his side of the tiny room for his own boots while Alex spoke. "So why are you here?" Alex pressed, no doubt trying to stir painful memories for the Venus adept. No one in their right mind but a Proxian could possibly want to live somewhere this cold.

Isaac smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Love. I tried to save my best friend. I don't really know if he made it out alive, though. I was thinking about confessing soon, but he almost drowned, and I thought the least I could do was try to save him," Isaac laughed mirthlessly. "It would be ironic if it turns out that he drowned anyway, and I got saved by Saturos and Menardi."

Alex stiffened a bit at the word "love" and reached for his cloak. "So why didn't you confess sooner?" he asked, keeping his voice carefully even and devoid of any emotion.

"I was afraid it might – aha!" Isaac paused, having found his boots, and sat back down before continuing, "I thought it might ruin the friendship. Notice I said 'he'?" Isaac looked around. Alex had disappeared while he had been talking. "Bastard," he muttered to himself.

Alex was outside. Currently he was practicing his douse psynergy. Isaac got to feel just how cold Prox was while you were wet for trying to ask what he had said wrong. Not that calling Alex a "self-absorbed bastard," and a "cold-hearted prick," exactly helped keep Alex from aiming a douse at the area above Isaac.

The only other thing about Alex's girl that Isaac managed to gather was that she had something to do with an angel. Isaac figured it could have something to do with Alex's religious upbringing, or it could be a pet name. Alex also appeared to have something against vows of celibacy, as he burned several ancient and irreplaceable texts mentioning them after he had memorized any valuable information they held.

Saturos and Menardi were not pleased by this. So much so, in fact, that Menardi had her sister challenge Alex to a duel, instructing her sister to "Aim for the eyebrows!"

Despite all of Alex's unexplained anger and waning self-hatred, the man (who could barely be considered that much) had a hell of a talent for alchemy. Isaac woke up a few months after their argument to find that Alex had somehow taught himself to warp with the help of some ancient (now burned) Proxian scrolls.

By the end of a week, Alex had lost half an eyebrow (not enough concentration!) and returned with an armload of new ancient scrolls from his hometown. With each new thing he learned, Alex began to cheer up, he also began to gain some confidence to go with his determination, and would occasionally help Isaac with his training. He repeatedly insisted that after the first few psynergy techniques, the rest just came to you.

Alex even began to fit in with the Proxians like Isaac did. However, after a raid to a town on Angara that Alex refused to name (Isaac suspected Vale, but couldn't prove anything), Alex doubled his efforts and shunned everyone.

A year later Saturos announced that he, Menardi, and Isaac would be journeying across Weyard to light some lighthouses. After that Isaac, Kyle, Brian, and Lily were free to go back to Vale. Alex offered to go as well, but if his current activities were anything to go by, he would come and go as he pleased. They would pick up a Jupiter adept on the way.

The first stop? Sol Sanctum.

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A/N: A big thank-you to my reviewers, Camelot, Nintendo, and Shotgunnova of Gamefaqs (hooray for game scripts! They make this much less stressful for me). Without them this story wouldn't be much.

And for anyone confused about the benefits of cure vs ply vs aura, I am aware that ply actually heals more hp, but I'm referring to the elements, rather than the actual effects. In Contigo it is explained that fire and water are opposing elements, as are earth & wind. Earth & fire are described as warm elements, while wind and water are cold. It makes sense that a cold element isn't going to do a whole helluva lot for frostbite. Obviously aura is the overall best choice for Proxian healing, as it is the equivalent of a warm wish psynergy, but it seems that cure would be warmer than ply.