Disclaimer: This is fanfiction, guys. If I owned this, would I be posting on a fan website? Hmmm… I think not.

When I started writing this chapter, Lethian had a very distinct direction in which to travel. He hopped the fence and took off running on a very different route. And then Kratos stepped in and saved the plot with a well-timed revelation. I suppose the point is, after Lethian's conversation with Zelos, he starts going somewhere and doesn't tell me exactly where that somewhere is. If I didn't like him so much, I'd be serious when I give him threats about killing his character. As it is, he merely laughs when I say that and… he has one of those contagious laughs… Giggles are heard

Ick, I got the flu on Friday and am still rather sore and achy feeling. It held back my updating schedule… again. For me, being sick is conducive for reading, not writing.

A big thanks to StrawberryEggs, Hamlord, The Zelda Master, and Me! (this one does give me the strangest feeling that I'm talking to myself…). If ever anyone has anything they really answers to, I'll PM you or email, depending on if your part of This no answering reviews stuff is sooooooo stupid. Oh well, at least I've never had any of the issues with it some of the other authors have had.

Chapter 13

Everyone felt, to some degree, the sudden rage from not far away. It was as fast as a blink, there one moment and gone the next, but it was enough to alert even the non-sensitives to the fact that something was very, very wrong.

Raine jerked awake, her hands clutched to her ears, and let out a shrill yelp of pain. She barely noticed when someone wrapped his arms about her protectively, but she leaned into Kratos' embrace. There was a note of desperation in what they'd sensed; a feeling of potential loss and the frustration of not being able to find out what had happened.

A loud crash signaled the second heart-stopper of the hour. Colette had gone upstairs to retrieve a bracelet the Lloyd had been working on for her while he'd gone to the kitchenette to get a few drinks for the two of them.

Clumsy Colette had been on her way down the stairs when the blast hit the house and now she was tumbling down the steps with no way to stop her descent. It was Dirk who got to her first and it was Ra, the second person to reach her, who immediately identified the unintentional damage that she'd caused herself. Her arm was broken and the bone was almost, though not quite, puncturing the skin.

Raine tugged herself away from Kratos and ran over to the younger girl. "We need to set this, but I've never dealt with broken limbs like this before." The healer gestured to the part of the bone that was almost poking out of Colette's arm.

Ra nodded and began radiating calmness. "Okay, Colette, looks like I'll be setting your arm for you. That all right with you?"

Lloyd, looking paler than any had seen him appear in a long time, crossed over and knelt on her opposite side and held her good hand.

Colette nodded at Ra, clearly too dazed and shocked to do much else.

"I'm sorry, this'll hurt a lot. I'll try to dampen it if you'll let me, child," he soothed. Colette nodded again and Ra reached out mentally to deflect some of the pain as he carefully set the broken bone.

"Ahh…" Colette hissed.

Isis stood slowly, her eyes wide and glowing. "That… that was Zelos. Someone's been hurt and he's…"

"Sheena!" Seles pulled away from Yuan, who seemed to be the only person unaffected by the brief onslaught. "She's hurt and Zelos is gone! He was attacked and knocked out!" A wild light entered the girl's eyes and what she might have done in her rage was quickly deflected by Presea.

"We'll do what we can here first," Presea said, moving slowly towards the strawberry haired girl. Genis' arms were tight around the ax-girl's shoulder's, a cute, yet highly protective, look on his face. "You can let me go now, Genis. I'll be fine." Sheepishly, the platinum haired boy released the girl. "Now, Seles, what else did you sense from Zelos' unintended sending?"

"That was it. There wasn't enough time to get anything else from him…" Seles shuddered and added, "actually, I saw Sheena unconscious at the base of a tree, so we need to go find her."

Clutching her arm tightly against her chest, Colette had been taken to the couch by Lloyd. "I'm not going to be able to go with you to rescue Zelos, am I?"

"No, you aren't," Raine agreed readily, taking Kratos' hand to lever herself up. "Your arm is somewhat healed, but not fully. If you were to fight a battle, which is quite likely, you'd end up breaking it again."

Colette winced and then reached into her sash with her right arm, which was unharmed except for a few bruises, and dislodged her chakram. She handed one to Lloyd and then, shyly, gave the second one to Ra. "I want you two to fight for me, okay."

Lloyd nodded, kissing Colette lightly on the forehead. Reluctantly, he stood up straight and turned to the Protozoan. "Noishe! Come here, I have an important job for you." Head bobbing and concern written on her delicate features, Noishe scurried over to Lloyd. "Now, I need you to…"

/o/

Zelos awoke to what seemed to be, to his groggy mind, a huge, overweight bird screeching at the top of it's rather large lungs. It seemed to be sitting on his left shoulder and it's claws felt as if they were digging into his skin.

The second impression he had was less… imaginative… and right on target. The bird was not a bird. It was an alarm wailing from a speaker that been dislodged at some point not long ago and had a sharp corner digging into his shoulder. The speaker didn't survive past that point, though.

Zelos had developed a strong dislike of beeping wake-up calls as a child. His mother had possessed a sadistic tendency to fiddle with or simply hide his alarm clocks and, as a result, he remembered quite clearly having chased alarms across the house, ransacking his own room for the source of the incessant beeping, and much, much more.

This speaker took the brunt of these remembered annoyances as it crashed into the wall and shattered.

"You'll have to pay for that, you know."

Zelos jumped and sat up, his eyes narrowing as he registered the fact that he was inside a jail cell and the dark haired man who'd assaulted him and harmed Sheena was standing just beyond the ex-Chosen's physical reach through the bars.

"Tsck, tsck, tsck," the man clucked in a mock disappointed manner. "You shouldn't glare or stare so rudely."

Tilting his head to the right curiously, Zelos maintained his glare. "What did you do to Sheena?"

"Sheena? You mean that dark haired tramp you were with when I found you?" he drawled and stepped forward, his eyes seeming to dance in the half-light of the room. "I hate to break it to you, but your girlfriend's dead."

A high keening with no source filled the room and the dark haired man doubled over in pain; long fingers shot up to cover pointed ears. A scar stood out on his cheek as light finally hit his face properly.

Zelos regarded the man coldly for a moment. "I know who you are, Apophis," he said softly, his voice icy with rage. Dark eyes snapped up, proving that somehow the quiet tone the redhead used was audible. "For your sake," Zelos continued, "you'd best be lying."

The air snapped and crackled, energy pulsing out towards the fallen angel. Confused terror became Apophis' expression of choice as he fled the room.

As soon as the door shut, the energy vanished and Zelos pulled his legs up in order to bury his face against his knees. A choked sob shook him violently; "Sheena…"

/o/

"Hey, wicked witch, wake up…" Sheena tried to tune out the voice that spoke to her from who knew where. Zelos was somewhere in the darkness with her and she had to find him… let him know she was okay. "Your flying monkeys wish to obey your evil commands."

"G'way." Sheena swatted ineffectually at the source of the far too perky tones.

"Sheena!" The voice changed, morphing into a far more familiar one. Lloyd sounded worried as he repeated her name once more. "Sheena, you have to wake up."

"I'm up, I'm up…" Sheena propped herself up on her elbows and began to gaze about the clearing. "What happened?"

"You don't remember?" Seles asked worriedly.

"No… wait…" Sheena sat up all the way. "I didn't want to answer Isis' question, so I went outside and Zelos offered to help me 'hide.' We went up here and were talking when this dark haired guy with a scar on his face showed up and…" she trailed off and shrugged. "That's all I remember. Where's Zelos?"

Guilty looks traversed through the group and it fell to Ra to answer. Glaring at nothing in particular with a steely look in his eyes, the blonde angel growled the words, "it sounds like Apophis captured him."

/o/

Lethian stared blankly at the floor, a sick feeling, not unlike the one he'd received from the monsters of the Gaorrachia valley, coursing through his veins. He'd returned only moments ago from his foray into the forest and had been ceased by apprehension the moment he'd entered Set's darkened office.

Perversely, his mental shields had never felt so strong before.

Set had been immensely pleased with the apparent success of Lethian's mission. The exact location of the Mirror hadn't been ascertained, but the valley was small and surely wouldn't take long to traverse.

No mention of the mutant monsters was made. Lethian didn't want Set to know simply because telling the man felt wrong on a level that the brunette half-elf had never experienced before.

"Lethian, you're dismissed," Set finally said and, nodding silently, the younger man turned to comply.

He didn't get to actually leave the room, however. Apophis, the shadowy enforcer of Warrior security, burst into the office through the public entrance.

An incredibly hostile expression settled onto Set's face. It didn't matter that Apophis was his brother; an unwritten rule had just been smashed to smithereens. Namely, the workers were never to know when the leader's wraith-like brother was visiting. They were meant to fear every moment that their actions were being seen by the most loyal of observers.

"Are the power suppressant systems online in the cellblock!" the scarred man demanded.

Set replied in a calm voice laced with poison, "yes. It is active. Now, what do you want?"

"The systems aren't working. Wilder was still making use of his telekinetic abilities."

Lethian stiffened and backed up to the door.

"Get out of here, Lethian," Set snarled and, this time, there was no one to stop him from completing the task.

/o/

"You incompetent, worthless excuse for a 3,000 year old expert!" Set growled, his normally emotionless voice uncharacteristically revealing his sardonic nature. "Dear brother, what a mess you have made."

Set stood from his chair and began to circle his younger sibling menacingly. "Leaving that ninja witness alive, scurrying away from Iselia in fear after Wilder let loose a small psychic blast…"

"Small? They felt what he felt all the way in the village itself and we were several miles into the woods!" Apophis cut in heatedly.

"…and turning into a frightened child because Wilder can still manage a few wind tricks inside his cell," Set continued as if he hadn't been interrupted, a scowl decorating his face. "I am appalled, brother mine, I truly am."

"I am not a child!"

"Then stop whining like one," Set sneered. "We finally have the fire-child destined to be the first to find the Firelight Mirror and destroy it shortly afterwards. All we have to do is ensure that the second half of Ibis' petty prophecy doesn't come true."

"Then we can release the Tenant."

"If we decide that we can trust the entity, yes. Now, why don't you head back to the cellblock and finish tormenting our guest. It shouldn't be too hard to twist him around until he can't tell our will from his."

"His mind is not weak, Set. You underestimate him."

"You overestimate him, little brother. It might is unbecoming to think so highly of a boy brought to his knees by the death of a mere servant."

Apophis turned and left the room, not bothering to wait for a dismissal. There was something more to the young Chosen than Set suspected; he could sense it.

/o/

Lethian walked into the cellblock and approached the last cell in the room. A redheaded predator stalked the edges of enclosure, occasional pausing to survey the room beyond from a new vantage point.

"What do you want?" Zelos demanded, the air pulsing with an almost hopeless anger… but it was not directed at Lethian.

"I only just got back from a… recon mission. I overheard someone say you'd been captured."

"And…? Honestly, Lethian, don't tell me that's all you wanted to do. Make a duty-visit to an old friend from school."

"Zelos… I'm sorry, okay? I'm gonna make it up to you, promise."

"How, exactly, do you make up for something like this? I happen to know the answer, from past experience, but I think it'd be better if you figure it out for yourself," Zelos quipped, a faint amusement entering his tone in the form of irony.

"Just… trust me on this. Can you give me a second chance?"

"Yes. Do keep in mind, though, that this is my second chance and if things go wrong for you, I won't be getting another."

Lethian nodded slowly and turned towards the door. Then, pausing, he asked, "what happened to your first chance?"

"I wasted it playing three sides at once. I got my second one when I finally chose one and they still accepted me. Now get going. I… I think someone is on the way."

Lethian walked out the door and, moments later, Apophis stalked back in. It took all of Zelos' willpower not to recoil, physically, from the rage the man emanated.

It did not seem to be turning out to be a good day.

/o/

"I'm fine! Raine's even given me the stamp of approval," Sheena argued as several others (a.k.a. Lloyd, Seles, Isis, and Ra) tried to convince her that after the injury she'd sustained, despite its healed state, she should stay behind with Colette and her two keepers, Dirk and Noishe.

The lady ninja, of course, was having none of that. "Zelos is in trouble, and I will not stand by and do nothing when I am perfectly capable of helping."

Isis sighed deeply, as if the protests came from her soul, and then threw her arms up in defeat. "Fine. Come along. Not that we know where we're going, anyway."

"Actually," Kratos winced as everyone turned to stare at him in unison. "Could all of you refrain from doing that?" Several sets of eyes narrowed. "Ra, didn't you leave a program running in the Cruxis mainframe before you… defected?"

"Yeah. It was a search for the location of the Mirror. It wasn't a very effective means of going about it, though."

"No, it wasn't. It has also been running for 3,000 years." Kratos paused and let that news sink in. "I would have mentioned it earlier except people keep dragging me around the world and sic-ing rabid protozoan/fangirl hybrids on me."

Yuan stifled his laughter and ended up coughing… rather violently so, in fact.

"You think that the program may have located files that would help us locate the Mirror?" Isis asked in a disbelieving tone.

"It shouldn't have been through enough to do that," Ra added.

Kratos glanced and Yuan, each of them wearing smug expressions. "We tweaked the program slightly," Yuan countered. "I gave it the capability to read encoded files and Kratos made it more… reader friendly."

"So, basically, all we have to do is check the program to see what it has found?" Ra demanded.

"No," was Kratos' less than cheerful reply. "We have to check the program, sort through what it has found, and extrapolate, from where it was supposed to go, where it is. That is, of course, assuming that it has even reached the proper files yet. The Cruxis database is, after all, the largest computer system in the known universe."

"The Renegade's system comes second, though," Yuan muttered. Everyone turned his or her gazes on him and he shrugged. "What? Am I not supposed to show pride for my people?"

/o/

Ibis stared at his borrowed computer uplink for a moment and then exclaimed, "I found it!"

The rather large group of people hurried over to him and peered, collectively, over Ibis' shoulder. It was all he could do not to shudder at the feeling of almost a dozen pairs of eyes boring into his back. There was a good reason why he hated it when people read over his shoulder.

"It says that an object of great importance was lost in the Gaorrachia Forest while in transit to the city of Danever. There are several references to the capabilities of the item and they match the abilities of the Firelight Mirror."

Isis nodded slowly, reaching over Ibis' shoulder in order to scroll the page up and down on the screen. "I agree," she said after a moment. "You found it."

"Are we going to leave now or," Sheena gestured to the night light outside, "shall we do the sensible thing and leave tomorrow?"

"Night all," Lloyd answered, making for his room. Colette smiled and waved goodnight with her good hand (her broken one having been lightly bound to her chest) before following Lloyd up the stairs.

"There are guest quarters in the other room," Dirk announced. "Follow me and I'll settle you in."

A/N This is shorter than my other chapters… but every time I tried to make it longer, it felt wrong somehow. It is winding up, though, and will speed up in the next update. After all, they have to fight their way through the mysterious valley and then destroy the evil artifact while subsequently vanquishing their foes.

It always looks simpler when I write it like that…

On a brighter note, I have rediscovered the plot dachshund that spawned an original series in my mind about two years ago. I spent six months… probably a little less… working on it before school cut into it and I decided building my own world took too much time and effort. I needed maps, character analyses, plot diagrams… a fourteen-year-old is too lazy for all that work, right?

Yeah… a fourteen-year-old would be. I am now 16 (months away from 17) and am ready for a challenge. I guess I'll let anyone interested in this original story look for updates on my author page.

I don't know how this will effect my fanfiction writing. As of now, I'm working on the maps, character analyses, and descriptions of very important places. When I finish at least the maps and world descriptions, I'll move on to timelines/plot diagrams. Because I want to be a published writer more than anything in my life, it will probably take priority, eventually. (I still remember being in second grade and trying to write a murder/mystery/ghost novel.)

Fortunately, seeing as I am nearly done with this story, the already terrible update schedule should not suffer further. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing this done until summer.

Darn. I wanted more time to write so it would be done before then…