Okay… as for timeline, what timeline… You know, I think I should really just give up trying to figure out how this fits into the game. I mean, it's a gender bend AU.
Background: Van and Sync were at the Radiation Gate for the big confrontation that happened at the Absorption Gate in-game. They used the arte on Luke, and Asch who was there, while the other god-generals, who did not play possum and let everyone think they died at Mt. Roneal, kept the party busy.
By the time that was over, Asch had been knocked out and Luke, wearing very ill-fitting clothing and so on, was playing keep-away from Van due to the physical changes having played merry hell with her ability to run, let alone fight solo, and Sync had been pretty close to used up by the hyperresonance and hit over the edge into the core by Luke when he almost managed to grab her. Anise, the other party member who wasn't fighting the god-generals, had been forced to grab Ion and run because Van had made the mistake of telling Sync to grab Ion (he'd intended to kill Ion with the arte instead of Sync) where she could hear. Asch and Luke had decided to cover her retreat and keep Van busy while the others were occupied, which turned out to be a mistake.
The 'one month' post-battle lull in this was replaced by everyone going to Belkend and trying to figure out WTF was going on re Luke being female and Asch trying to tear apart anyone in his way (to Luke), since his reliance on official gear meant his fonic defense stats weren't high enough to resist the mental effects. It helped that they had the intelligence to keep Luke away from him.
Thus, they knew they had the Sword and Jewel. When the miasma rose, Ion was well out of Mohs' reach and thus is not dead. All this enabled Luke to use the Sword's power to absorb, the Jewel's power to magnify a hyperresonances effect in the process of spreading out the fonons, second-order hyperresonance, and the glyph that controlled the planet storm to shut down the planet storm and destroy the miasma in one stroke. They needed the 10,000 people as a power source, but the planet storm is the ultimate power source. They couldn't use the planet storm for it in that point of canon because they lacked the jewel, which they needed to destroy the glyph later on in canon and so Jade didn't have the two and two to put together and realize that was an option.
It wasn't until after that that they were able to break the arte on Luke, although putting 'her' gear back on allowed her to resist the mental effects and dressing her as Asch allowed her to pass for male (all of this had been kept as secret as possible since she was a replica already, and a celebrity due to worldsavage). Before the arte was broken, Asch was willing to take Luke's place in combat. Now that he's in his 'right' mind, however…
To set the rest of the stage: they've dealt with Mohs, done most of the sidequests (except Nebilim, of course), the god-generals are still alive, so's Ion, Eldrant hasn't risen.
And thus…
-
"Luke, don't be ridiculous. You and Asch have the same genes. Do you have any idea what inbreeding can do to children? Not to mention that you aren't naturally female! And then we need to go to all those hazardous places on top of that! It is almost certain that you will not be able to carry the child to term, even if you were they would most likely be severely deformed and almost certainly retarded! And you're seven going on eight! Do you actually believe that you can take care of a child?" Jade wanted to tear his hair out.
"They're the same as we are, Jade. They won't have any inbreeding problems that we don't." Luke was surprisingly calm, and not budging.
"The odds that it doesn't have double copies of at least one gene are… If they're female, they would have identical copies of the X chromosome at minimum!" Not that this was too much of a handicap: no worse than being male.
"And the odds of a human being born with Lorelei's fonon frequency are exactly zero." Luke's hand didn't leave her stomach. "They're healthy, Jade. They're alive."
"You only conceived a month ago. You can't possibly…"
"They're my isofon, Jade. I can sense them." That smile. That look of maternal contentment… if Jade hadn't triple-checked it himself and had Ion, Tear, and the doctors here each check it over he would have been sure they hadn't been able to shake off the mental effects. "And I'm only seven and I'm saving the world, aren't I? I can take care of my child."
"Asch's child as well, and you may think you want it but he doesn't."
"That doesn't matter. I checked."
"You're not a legal adult and under Kimlascan law your parents can disown you for this."
"I've been expecting them to since I found out I was a replica." Luke's smile was still dreamy. "I don't care what Asch wants. Asch didn't want me either. But I'm alive, and this child is alive. I want to live, and I want them to live. I want them to have what I didn't. I want… I didn't know what I was going to do afterwards. I can't be my father's heir, I'm not the rightful one. Even if I am his son, I'm the younger one. I… I've traveled to so many places, met so many people, but there weren't any that felt like home. At least… not that I could stay with. They're not my family. They're Asch's. It feels like a lie even though the memories are real. But this child… they're my family. They're real."
Jade opened his mouth and tried to muster the traditional arguments against underage pregnancy.
None of them really applied.
Not dedicated enough? Ha.
Not enough money? Luke had funded a million-gald bridge between Sheridan and Belkend and owned a small interest in Din's shop as her patron! Jade had tried to teach him financial responsibility by forcing him to use personal money to buy those arte books, and then he found out Luke had saved up that much by handling the shopping and expenditures right under his nose! Not to mention that he was entitled to a share of the profits of Keterberg's newest attraction, had been granted the title and lands of Viscount by Kimlasca, Peony had already set aside a manor for him in Grand Chokmah nearby Guy's and the palace…
Not to mention that Luke was a seventh fonist, and since the Jewel of Lorelei had such healing powers there really weren't going to be any of the usual health side effects, and yet…
"Luke, you may want this child, but Asch doesn't."
"I know. He tried to use the link between isofons to kill them."
"What?!" Trying to convince Luke to end the pregnancy was one thing, but attempting to kill an infant against their mother's will? "That idiot! Doesn't he have any idea what…" No, Asch wouldn't know the kind of havoc a badly done abortion or miscarriage, even this early, could wreck on a woman's body. Since Luke's body was artificial on top of that and the seventh fonon would have rallied to the child's defense… Luke's death was not out of the question. A hyperresonance destroying Belkend wasn't either.
"That's why he's in that coma." Jade had never, he realized, seen Luke truly angry, but it was there, just a glimmer behind that pasted-on smile. "I'm not letting him wake up until he promises to leave them alone, and if he tries anything after that I will kill him if it's the last thing I do."
"I wouldn't argue with you there. But Luke, do you really want your child to be hated by their father like that?"
"Master Van… is the closest person I have to a father. He made me and pretended he loved me so that he could use me to destroy Akzeriuth and spare Asch. It hurts, but I don't think Asch will lie to them like that. It's a lot easier to deal with honest hatred than betrayal." Luke hugged herself, and the child, eyes closed in mourning, contemplation, or both. "He doesn't want them in his head, but then he doesn't want me in his head, and he was the one who arranged for me to get my fon slots synced to him at Choral Castle. It took awhile for the complaints they made to make sense. All my life, it's been about Asch. Asch's replacement, Asch's puppet when he tried to control my body and make me attack you, Asch's scapegoat… I don't care anymore what Asch wants. He can go fuck himself, because he's not going to get to fuck me over anymore and he's not going to lay a hand or a fonon on my baby. This is my body and my life, not his."
Jade put a hand to his forehead. Faking adjusting his glasses wasn't going to cut it. "Luke, we're effectively in a war. That is no place for a pregnant woman. They're going to aim for your stomach and we won't be able to spare the life bottles, the spell that keeps fonic artes from affecting group members only covers four lives and your child would count as one, meaning only three combatants, your reflexes are all wrong for your changed body…"
"Remember when I had a hard time killing?"
Jade had planned to put Luke and Ion in the center of the party, keep them out of the battles. The battlefield was no place for sheltered Fon Masters and nobles, young (replica) children, especially ones that needed to be kept alive for the mission to succeed.
"I really shouldn't be fighting anyway," Luke told him. "I'm the only one with hyperresonance." Asch didn't travel with them by choice, couldn't be counted on and hence didn't count. "I realized that ages ago, but I didn't want to be a burden."
"You wouldn't be a burden any more than Ion is." Jade sighed. "You're right, and I should have realized how foolish it was to risk you in combat ages ago." If Luke died the world was doomed, and they'd let him go up against god generals? What had he been thinking?! Jade chalked it up to the Luke Effect again, the same one that had kept him from realizing just how dangerous Akzeriuth's destroyer was and doing something about it. Luke was a good person, Luke wanted to help protect, Luke was competent… and he didn't see beyond those truths into the shadows. "But we don't have any idea why they wanted you to have this child, Luke."
"We did nearly die, when they came into being. I think it was an assassination arte all along. We're isofons, and another midway between us, half replica and half original… we would have blended together and been absorbed into Lorelei, I think."
"Why didn't you?" Just killing someone didn't always work, not if there were life bottles and seventh fonists nearby. Making Luke and Asch, the isofons of the consciousness that healed and revived, die and stay dead while the rest of them were present would be difficult enough to justify something that elaborate.
"Asch started to, but I didn't want Asch taking over my baby's body, so I kept him out. That was when I understood how the whole talking thing worked. If my baby had died but we hadn't then that arte would have just made us try again until one of us died and then all of us would have." My baby. Not our baby, Jade noted. "I didn't try to drown them at all, because they're so precious. I know how Lorelei feels now when he calls us his precious isofons. If I were them I couldn't look at them, and hold them, and take care of them." There was that 'pregnant woman' look again.
"You do realize that this means you're going to have to remain female for another seven months."
"Maybe more. Breast feeding is very good for them."
"Gah…gg… What?" And Jade had thought he'd never had the ability to be shocked like that.
"I don't know if I'll switch back, actually. The arte isn't on me at more at all. I did this myself when it broke, so that my baby wouldn't die. But this is kind of fun, and I don't see why Asch is complaining. I mean, you would have to be really stupid to mistake me for him now." Luke grinned. "Well, Guy has problems with women, but I think I'm helping him. He can touch me because I'm me, and I think that's making it easier for him to handle getting glomped by Anise and so on. Guy really wants a family, since he lost his. If I can help cure that phobia so he can have one as well as me, I think that would be worth staying in this body for awhile longer."
"You don't…" Jade waved at Luke's body: the breasts, the lack of external genetalia…
"Yeah, it was weirding out the others too and Asch doesn't feel this way. I think it might be because I'm Lorelei's isofon and all seventh fonon. Asch is still an original, but I'm… You know how Ion is. I don't think a lot of replicas think it's such a big deal, and Lorelei really isn't inherently male, any more than fire is. If the seventh fonon were male then all replicas would be, so that's obviously not the way it works. And all originals would be hermaphrodites, which is scary. I mean… staying in this body is better for my baby, it helps Guy, it makes me less like Asch," and Luke now had even less tolerance for the baby-murdering bastard, "and I like new experiences. Maybe it's because I was trapped in the manor for so long."
"Well… it is the mother's decision, and you've countered all my arguments." Saying that it felt wrong was so very unJade. "Moving on, are you really going to have to keep Asch in that coma? We don't really have anywhere safe enough to put him, and I don't want to haul him around with us."
"Oh, like anyone's safe with him running around loose." Luke snorted with derision. "At least this way we can get our hands on him if we need him. I'll know if he's attacked and I'll let him wake up. Or puppet his body to kill the attacker the way he tried to puppet mine." Making Luke attack one of his friends? Luke had been willing to forgive and forget before, more than he really should have in fact (Luke was like that), but Asch had been placed in the same 'it would be nice if they weren't bastards but they are, so I'm just going to have to deal' category as Van, it seemed.
Jade threw up his arms in surrender. "Well, you've already amassed a collection of parenting books and so on. You're healthier than you were before this happened, you should actually be safer now that you're not going to be fighting, it's not like you don't have the resources to take care of them… It seems utterly ridiculous, the entire concept of you having a child, but you're far more qualified than the majority of the people they allow to spawn. I'll brush up on gynecology…"
"Tear's already been trained in that. She is a powerful seventh fonist, after all." Even in the Oracle Knights they had to be prepared for circumstances.
"And you've already had this conversation with her, haven't you."
"And Guy. You're taking it a lot better than they did. Guy started talking about how he'd raised me and twenty-two was way too young to be a step-grandfather. I said he could be the step-father if he wanted and he actually fainted."
"I can't imagine why." Jade gave thanks to Lorelei that neither Luke nor Asch had been aware of their surroundings during the conception process.
"Guy's going to be a really great father. I mean, he was the one who raised me." Although really he'd been more of a mother, but Luke was going to be her baby's mommy and that was that.
"Do you have a name picked out?"
"Yes."
"What is it?"
"I'm going to tell them first. It's their name, after all."
"You keep using 'they,' and yet you say 'my baby' singular. Don't you know the gender?"
Luke only smiled, and Jade decided he shouldn't have gone there. "I haven't decided yet."
Too much information. "Um, well. If you're up to things on that level now then I suppose I'm not needed." Luke was an incarnation of the sentience that governed things like healing and the memories that told the body what it should be, and so on. Jade attempting to counsel her was on the order of someone who had heard a few old wives' tales trying to counsel him.
"I can take care of my baby, but it's nice that you care."
Jade decided he was going to get drunk. When he returned to the men's room of the suite (Jade, Guy, and comatose Asch: Ion wasn't back yet) with the bottles that had been left in the main area Guy held up his arm silently asking for one, or all of them. "Hand them over, I know how to mix drinks, remember."
"What do you think of all this?"
"I think it might be the best thing that ever happened to Luke, actually, and that's really depressing."
Jade considered that for a moment. "Other than you deciding to care for Luke, I can't argue with you."
"But I thought she was Asch-Luke, and I wanted to kill him. Her. Whatever. It started out as a lie. This is something real. I mean, she met all of us under false pretenses of whatever sort. Everything in her life is really tainted by Asch and Van. Yeah, I get that this happened because Van set Asch up to rape her, but it's different somehow. And not all that different from how she came about."
"A second chance. A chance to give her child what she never had." Jade took the glass from Guy gratefully and downed it too fast to really taste it. "But I don't think she loves them just for that. No, that would be like you loving her for Asch. If she saw the child as herself she would have merged with it."
"Lorelei could absorb her and Asch, she said." Guy sipped at his own glass, testing it. "But they're his, its, whatever, precious isofons. That whole family tree gets really weird. The Score brought about Asch, who inherited Lorelei's power. Luke was created from the power of Lorelei that was in Asch, and is therefore his… daughter, sister, and mother due to the whole aspect of fonon sentiences thing."
"Maiden, mother, crone."
"Yeah, you are kind of right. Lorelei is old, Luke really isn't a child anymore, she really isn't. Children are supposed to have someone to look after them. Adults want someone to look after. Luke has that and no one is going to mess with them." Guy finished the next drinks. "That is going to be one pampered kid. Luke found out from Asch when he was going to meet up with Noir and brought me with her to place some toy orders, and man. And the cradle, and clothes, and so on."
"Is it a wise idea to spoil someone with the power that child will possess?"
Guy gave him a look. "Luke was spoiled, and she hated it. She loves Van mostly because he actually gave her some direction and discipline. Kids need that, she knows it."
"Remarkably mature for her age." Bottoms up.
"Yeah, but what age?" Guy did the same this time, and started mixing right away. "She's seven, seventeen, and Lorelei only knows how many thousand. That look in her eye…"
"Many pregnant women get that."
"They do?"
"Yes."
"That's a relief." Guy toasted the air with the next mix. Jade took his glass himself. "She's still Luke, but… No, I am not saying my little girl's all grown up. That's creepy."
"She told me she's picked out a name but not a gender." Around then was when they stopped counting.
"Yeah, she's not sure which is better." Weirded-outness loved company. "So she's being given a crash course by Tear on all things feminine. She even borrowed Tear's maid outfit."
"You poor man." Guy could look, but he couldn't touch.
"And Natalia! She was going to marry Luke, and then she found out that her childhood sweetheart was really Asch, and now Luke is having Asch's kid. You buried yourself in your books, she's wandering around in a daze except when there's stuff that needs doing… I mean, yeah, they essentially both got raped. She knows it's not their fault, but it's not like she can put it behind her when Luke's being all… glowy. You know how Natalia is about looking after people: she wanted that baby. And then Asch trying to kill the poor thing and getting beaten into a coma like Luke was after Akzeriuth? He's her Luke, but the Luke she made that promise with wouldn't have done something like that and I really, really wish I could catch her on the rebound."
"You think it's her relationship with Asch that will break, not Luke?"
"I would bet money. Luke is… Luke. Asch, though? He's been nicer to her than the rest of us, but she was there when he was yelling at Luke and finally tried to kill the baby. She's going to come out of denial about the fact he's not her Luke anymore, and at that point he's Asch the Bloody, God-general, abandoner of his country, cousin-abuser, and attempted baby-killer. Yeah, he's as good as dumped. She's going to miss him a lot, but I don't know how many of those arrows are going to hit."
"Hell hath no fury like a woman…"
"He's kind of both scorning her by leaving her to Luke for all that time and not by wanting to kill the baby… They were yelling at each other and I was trying to help Luke calm down before she blew up the building but if he said it was for her sake Natalia's going to try to kill him." Guy nodded sagely, and then blinked at the empty gin bottle. "Why am I still conscious? I'm even speaking in complete sentences."
"Is this the first time you've tried to get drunk?"
"Yeah, but they told me about it during the bartending thing."
"The higher your fonic and physical defense stats the more it takes." Guy took off his bracelet and resist ring, then started taking off his outer clothes to get at the armor underneath. "Good idea. I only brought enough for me to get drunk."
There was a knock on the door. "Jade? Did you take the drinks the governor sent as gifts to Luke."
"Contraindicated for pregnant people, and Anise, Tear, and Ion are underage. Why? Did you want some?" Jade opened the door in his base tunic. He was still dressed perfectly decently: armor chafed if there wasn't cloth between it and the skin.
"Apparently there's only enough for one person of my defense stats to get drunk… Oh, that's a good idea." Natalia removed her gloves.
Guy passed her a glass. "Here, we started before you. Jade, is there enough?"
"Natalia's a seventh fonist, I'm afraid. Tipsy is all we can hope for."
"That's a pity. I've never been drunk before." Natalia drank from the shot glass with decorum. "It hasn't been that long since my eighteenth birthday, and we've been rather busy."
"Is it safe for us to get drunk?" Guy asked. "I mean, only Tear is with Luke."
Jade waved off his objections. "It's nothing a panacea bottle won't cure. And in vino veritas. It intensifies emotions and damages the ability to think before speaking. I think we all could stand to be a little more honest with ourselves."
A while later they looked at the last three bottles, with no more than a half-inch between them. "I'll send a page for more," Natalia decided, and no one objected.
-
Anise hurriedly covered Ion's eyes, and hoped that Guy wouldn't have a heart attack when he realized what was going on. "Why are you two in the hallway?"
"Because if Asch thinks he'll ever see this much of my skin he's got another think coming!" Natalia proclaimed, quite happily.
"Uh, right." Anise rolled her eyes.
"See, Guy? Nothing scary so far."
"I think it's being grabbed that's the problem." Groping, however, didn't seem to be a problem. "Thanks, Natalia, I think this is really helping."