Well, I was convinced into picking up the slack on the Wonder Chef/Caleb series of fics for ToS, which means I'm juggling a lot more fics than I'm comfortable with, but at least these ones were completed long ago. So they were never posted anywhere. Go fig. Caleb's story is companion to Adam: Cast from Paradise, as the events in both occur at about the same time, running parallel until they reach the Wonder War event. Now, because things from Caleb's future is a little different from the series I've written so far here in his past, we can just blame ToS2 for that, since its timeline crashed with the one I had for my fics and so I had to speed up the events in the history Caleb has in his modern form. Did that make any sense? Oh well. I'll try to keep both of these updated at the same time.
Ch 3
The next day, Huron led Caleb, Pepper, and Raine to the computers in the east wing of the city. Pepper absorbed mana almost constantly, spewing out plumes of light from her mouth as she walked. She laughed and pranced around the group happily.
"Mana Light much stronger here! I make new magic attack, Breath of Light! Sound good, look good, yes?" she asked cheerfully. Caleb grinned up at her as Raine rubbed her head in exasperation.
"She's going to bring down the city if she keeps that up." the half-elf commented, "Pepper, use proper language. 'Mana Light is much stronger.' 'I made a new magic attack.' It will make you easier to understand." Huron stopped before one of the computers and turned to the group.
"This is the main computer that serves as the link for the system. You may use this to search for the data you want. However, to access the file for Subject A-481, you will need Mithos's password." he explained. Caleb frowned as Raine looked back in confusion.
"We don't have that." she remarked, "Why is it password-protected? Wouldn't Mithos have wanted it open for others to read so that the plan could be activated in case his body was destroyed in battle?" Huron spread his hands helplessly.
"Mithos didn't want the identity of the Final Chosen to be known, suspecting that either Kratos or Yuan would discover it and go to warn or rescue the host before the Cruxis Crystal turned the Chosen into a new Fourth Seraphim." he explained, "We believe the password may be found in Mithos's personal effects, located in a treasure box in his throne room in Vinheim." Caleb walked up to the computer and ran his fingertips along the keys, thinking carefully. Raine sighed and shook her head.
"Without it, we can't open the file and find out who the third Chosen is so that we can protect him or her. And if the password is in the hands of the Angels of Vinheim, they can open it before us and Symphonia will be in trouble again." she remarked dully, "What a dilemma."
"Let me retrieve the password." Caleb suddenly said and turned to the startled group, "I'll go back to Vinheim and get the password, then come back and we can unlock the file. Once we have the identity of the Final Chosen, we'll sabotage the file and give that to the Angels of Vinheim." Huron nodded slowly in agreement.
"A good plan. In fact, I now know what it is I wish for you to do for us in exchange for access to this database." the angel told him and tapped a few keys on the computer, bringing up the image of the transporter system connecting Welgaia and Vinheim. "The Angels of Vinheim have placed a magical seal on their end of the teleporter that allows them to enter Welgaia whenever they wish to attack and try to steal the data, but it prevents us from passing through to try to stop them, reason with them." Huron looked back at the doll, a determined expression on his face. "Pass through to get the password and, when you have gained the information you desire from the libraries of Vinheim, destroy the transporter on their end of the system." he told Caleb, "Without it, they can't attack us any longer. We can be safe to exist as we choose here."
"We can't send Caleb into Vinheim alone!" Raine snapped angrily, "Are you insane? The Angels of Vinheim will destroy him on the spot if they discover he's there to sabotage their transporter!" Caleb shook his head at her, frowning.
"No, they won't. I'll sneak into Vinheim and archive the libraries before getting the password. I can use my skills to infiltrate the castle more easily than with all of you, and I can store massive amounts of data at high speeds. I should have everything in a few hours' time. " he told the half-elf, "You stay here with Pepper and read through the database. I'll let you borrow my data crystal reader/writer unit and Pepper can make data crystals for you so you can copy the database into them." He pulled the small piece of magitechnology from his pack and handed it to her. "Please don't pull it apart, but you can examine it as well, if you like. Pepper, stay here and protect Raine. Your magic is much more powerful, attack-wise, than hers." Raine took the device and blinked at it, eyes wide.
"Incredible! Where did you get this?" she cried and cooed at the unit, "Such a wondrous little device! How does it function? What is made of? What is a data crystal?"
"Pepper can tell you about it, if you can teach her to speak well. I retrieved a larger version of this device from Iselia Ranch for Altessa and Dirk to use to read the Moria Gallery crystal. The Renegades took it to deliver it to them and built this portable version for my personal use." Caleb explained and turned to Huron, "I'll do as you say, Sir Huron. I'll get the password and the library information, then destroy the transporter. Is there another way of getting back here without it?" Huron tapped the keys again and a new image appeared on the screen.
"Before the transporter system was set up to connect the city and the castle together, the Four Seraphim used this network of catacombs to travel between the two points. Use that to escape Vinheim and return here." Huron told him, "The entrance is somewhere on the castle grounds, probably hidden in a gate or a set of stones. Also, I don't know if those catacombs are completely safe, so beware of collapsed tunnels and stray monsters roaming them." Caleb studied the image and pressed his hand against a black panel beside the keyboard, closing his eyes as he downloaded the map into his memory.
"Do you know the identity of the Final Chosen, Huron?" Raine asked suddenly, holding the reader/writer in her hands. The angel shook his head.
"When the host was brought into Welgaia, Mithos personally oversaw the compatibility test with Pronyma and her minions. The Cruxis Crystal was attached and the Chosen was trapped in one of the rooms in Vinheim for safekeeping. Mithos personally entered the data on the Chosen and protected it with a password." Huron replied and looked at the computer. "I was told to keep it safe at all costs. I may not know who the Chosen is, but I know that any information that leads to its retrieval is highly valued by the Angels of Vinheim."
"I'm glad I didn't bring Wren, then." Caleb sighed, pulling his hand from the panel. He flexed his fingers and shook his hand. "Not only would he completely lose it up here, but all this crud we're dealing with now... he wouldn't be able to handle it." The doll smiled wanly. "If Wren can't fix something within the time it takes for his meat stew to cool off, he gets really pissy." Raine blinked at him in confusion. "You never want to see Wren in a pissed off mood; that man's lethal when he's ticked." Caleb added with a sheepish laugh.
"I assume it's because of Incineration?" Raine asked with a raised eyebrow, "Exactly what is the damage potential for that spell anyway?"
"Goddess, Raine, it's an incinerator! What more do you need to know? It turns everything to ashes and shadow!" the doll exclaimed, throwing up his hands, "Okay, so let's do this thing!"
"Caleb go crazy, too?" Pepper asked in confusion.
"Caleb is going crazy." Raine corrected in her Professor mode, one finger in the air, eyes closed and nose lifted in a semi-superior air, "You've got to learn to fully use the modern language!" Caleb checked his supplies and pulled free the oversized spoon, long unused when the doll chose to exercise magical power over physical. He turned to the angel and nodded grimly.
"Okay, I'm ready to go. Where's the entrance to the catacombs from this side? I'll sneak into Vinheim from that and make my way to the throne room and libraries." he told the angel. Huron turned and floated away, wings fluttering as he led Caleb towards the western half of the city. The doll waved back at the half-elf and mana beast, running after the angel. "I'll be back soon, don't worry! Get what you can from the databanks and be good, Pepper! Learn all you can from Raine, she's a good teacher when she's not in Ruin Mode!"
"Don't give it a funny name!" Raine yelled back as Pepper whimpered and howled after him.
The maw of the Welgaia Catacombs loomed before Caleb once Huron opened the doorway. Hidden in a wall in an alley between two weapons storage facilities an hour's walk from East Welgaia, the door was sealed long ago when the transporter system took its place. The angel murmured a few words before it and a slab of the wall slid aside, revealing a darkened hall that stretched into inky black swirls. Caleb peered into it and swallowed.
"So, that would be the Welgaia Catacombs, huh?" he murmured and stepped inside cautiously, "Do the Angels of Vinheim know about this place?"
"A few. But you should be able to get through. As a doll, your strength, agility, power and speed should be equal to ours. A pity you don't have our wings and magic." Huron told him. Caleb grinned back at him.
"I have magic, but I don't have wings. Maybe if you had mechanical ones that could be attached to me, then I'd be an angelic doll!" he joked and shook his head, laughing, "But I don't think I'd make a good angel."
"Perhaps not. However, we do have components for automated dolls in our storage facilities. If anything goes wrong, return and we will repair you with our supplies." Huron agreed. Caleb brightened and nodded.
"Thank you very much, Sir Huron! I'll do my best and destroy the transporter. The Angels of Vinheim won't get the Final Chosen!" he declared and raced down the hall.
The catacombs were dimly lit by the light of mana swirling in containers that lined the stone walls. Iridescent shimmers cascaded over the walls and floor as Caleb zipped down halls and around corners, following the map in his mind and making adjustments as he discovered which corridors were blocked by cave-ins. Monsters were a bit of a problem, but nothing Caleb couldn't handle with the spoon and, when one particularly tough enemy snapped it in half, a good dose of magic. Fireballs and blades of wind cut through most of the Dark-based creatures, their strength further boosted by the mana surrounding the doll from the comet.
Racing down the archaic halls, Caleb's uneasy sense of déjà vu continued to grow. He'd been here before, walked these same halls before, but how could that be when he'd never set foot in Welgaia until now? The redhead stopped at one junction and looked around, confused. His mental map told him to take a left turn, but something in him was urging him to go right. He stood there, torn, before sighing and turning towards the path on the right. Caleb followed it for a short time, then paused in surprise as it led to a shimmering violet gate.
"What's this?" he murmured to himself and reached out to traced his fingers over angelic characters carved into the rock beside it, "'Mithos's secret entrance. Keep out.'" Caleb jerked his hand away in horror. "H-how did I find this just listening to a hunch?" he cried and looked worried, gazing at the portal before him, "What's happening to me? Are these half-formed memories and strange intuitions fragments from the soul I possess?" He held both hands together over his 'heart', gazing down in a mix of confusion and fear. "Whose soul is inside me?" Caleb shook his head after a moment and put his hands into fists at his side, glaring at the portal swirling before him, "Gah! It doesn't matter right now! I've got to get the information from this place to stop Mithos's resurrection and go home! I have to continue my journey and keep Wren safe from the Wonder Organization!" With that, he leaped into the portal, vanishing into the violet haze of mana and magic.
The castle grounds on the other side were almost desolate, dead earth supporting plants that had long wilted away. Vinheim towered high above Caleb as he crept from the circle of stones that was the catacombs' exit. Angels patrolled the area and the doll kept close to the ground as he dashed from bush to boulder, making his way to the castle itself.
Though the main doors of Vinheim were guarded, the windows lining the castle were not, and Caleb peered through several before finding a room that was empty of angels. Using his tool satchel, the doll cut through the glass and unlatched the window, climbing inside quietly. He grinned at the myriad of tools in his pack.
"These things come in so handy. I should thank Master Altessa for these the next time I see him." he murmured and headed for the door. Peeking out, Caleb could see a few angelic guards wandering the halls and stairwells. He watched for a moment to record their movements, then slipped through, moving during the precious few seconds they had their attentions diverted. The first library was somewhere up ahead and the doll ran through the open door, coming to a screeching halt before a Swordian that hovered in the center of the room.
"An intruder! Begone!" it declared and slashed at him with its swords.
"Whoa!" Caleb yelped as the blades cut into the front of his jacket, narrowly missing the Eternal Pin attached to the fabric. Synthetic skin split open under the edge of the swords, exposing dull silver-gray metal to the crystalline light of the library. The doll leaped back, hand coming over the exposure in surprise. "I didn't know they put guards in the libraries!" he exclaimed and jumped aside as the Swordian rushed him again. He summoned up a circle of mana beneath him, calling up the energy of the mana crystal in his body. Wincing slightly as the mana burned through his system, Caleb threw his palm forward. "Absolute!"
"Now die!" the Swordian returned, casting a spell of its own. Both spells hit, cutting into the angel and the scholar. The Ice Tornado the Swordian cast lifted Caleb into the air and hurled him against a bookshelf, bringing the bulk of its tomes onto him in a heap. Caleb's own spell sealed the angel in a tomb of ice before shattering in an explosion that pierced its armor with shards, wounding it severely. The doll struggled to get free of the heavy books that fell on him, then yelled as the Swordian flew at him once more, spearing its sword cleanly through him.
"The books!" Caleb cried, looking over his shoulder at the blade that thrust into the spine of one thick tome. He glared back at the angel that looked momentarily baffled at a humanoid intruder that did not bleed. "You're going to pay for the damage to that piece of history!" he growled and put his hands between himself and the Swordian, "Freeze Lancer!" Missiles of ice formed and shot forward, puncturing through armor and flesh more lethally than the previous spell. At close quarters, the damage from the ice spell was greater and the angel toppled away from Caleb, vanishing in an explosion of feathers to leave behind its Cruxis Crystal and the empty armor. Caleb pulled the sword free and winced, probing the wound carefully to see what damage had been done to himself. A section of the mana fueling system had been severed, and the doll waited a moment as he mentally searched for an alternate path for the flow to take. Once that was done, he turned and examined the book that had taken part of the blow.
"No respect for knowledge. No respect at all." Caleb grumbled, carefully opening the book and reading through it, hoping to save at least part of the information within it before the binding came apart completely. He sped through it, then set it aside for the rest of the library's collection. In all there were several hundred books, a drop of information compared to the collections in Sybak but still very valuable materials. Caleb slid a few of the books into his pack, including the damaged one. "Maybe I can find someone who can repair this book. Then I can give the set to Raine and ask her to help me preserve them. She'll like that." he remarked with a smile and turned to the remains of the angel.
The Cruxis Crystal glimmered on the floor and Caleb picked it up for examination, a strange expression on his face. He knew all about Cruxis Crystals, it was knowledge that Altessa programmed into him since before he even had a soul. Now that he could feel and think like a living being, Caleb could understand his knowledge better. This stone was lifeless, like he had been, but its nature destroyed life and humanity. Yet, the benefits from it were many. An angel could live forever if it chose, and was blessed with greater strength and power than any mortal human.
"If I attach this to Wren and he becomes an angel, then he'll live forever too." Caleb mused softly and a sad look came onto his face, "Wren is a human, and one day he'll die. I'll lose my best friend to time. But if I can convince him to equip this and become an angel, then time will never flow for him. I can keep my best friend forever." He stood there, studying the crystal in his hand as tears began to run down his face.
"But that would make me no better than Mithos!" Caleb finally hissed furiously, hand closing around the stone tightly. He shook his head fiercely. "I can't do that to him! No matter how much I want Wren to live forever, I can't inflict the cruelty of eternal lifelessness on him just for my personal reasons!" He tightened his fist until the crystal shattered from the pressure. "Wren has the right to live his life as he chooses, and thus have the right to eventually pass on as all humans must. If I try to control him by turning him into an angel to live forever, then I'm no better than the Wonder Organization that wants to control him by causing his death." He opened his hand and let the dust fall from his palm, watching the sparkling bits with a grim face. "I will not make him a victim. I am his protector; I vowed to protect him as Wren, as Adam, and as the Wonder Chef. I will be his friend, not his master."
The Angels of Vinheim seemed oblivious to Caleb's moving from one library to the next, destroying the guards in each room to archive the information, then crushing the Cruxis Crystals that remained after the angel vanished. With each battle of angel and doll, Caleb steadily acquired more damage to his body frame, though none yet more serious than the severed mana fueling system. He unrolled his map of Vinheim and studied it carefully. He'd managed to archive the libraries on the west side of Vinheim, which meant he needed to cross to the east wing to finish before he could sneak into Mithos's throne room and get the password to the file in Welgaia.
"They never make this easy, do they?" Caleb sighed in exasperation as he peeked out from the doorway on the uppermost level of the building. Angels fluttered all along the walkway that circled the central pillars. Raising an eyebrow in interest, the doll crept forward and looked over the banister at the tall columns. They were connected by a strange platform that held an open black chest and oddly colored bridges and blocks. Mentally gauging the distances between the banister, the platform, and the banister at the other end of the castle, Caleb smiled and prepared to jump. Maybe it was easier than he first anticipated?
He leaped over the handrail and landed safely on the platform below, then ran across it to jump to onto the next banister. A well-powered jump and Caleb landed neatly on the walkway. He grinned, looking back at the series of stepping stones he just crossed. Being a doll had its good points, after all.
The east side of Vinheim had its share of angel patrolmen as well, and the doll spent another few minutes studying their movements, resuming his infiltration soon after he learned the patterns of their patrols. Once again, each of the libraries on the eastern half of Vinheim was guarded by Swordians.
"Goddess, how many of you are there?" Caleb declared in irritation, agilely avoiding the blades that came at him as the Swordian stabbed repeatedly after him. He analyzed the angel's fighting, ran through a list of the Heroes of Union's fighting styles and selected one. "Heeyaah! How would you like a taste of Duke Bryant's Triple Kick?" the doll shouted, pulling his hands close to his body and lashing out in a perfect imitation of Regal's Trubel style attack. The angel flailed, collapsing and crying once at the impact of a well-aimed Eagle Dive maneuver that slammed into it. The Swordian vanished in a burst of feathers and Caleb carefully crushed the remaining Cruxis Crystal before resuming his archival. In between reading the books as fast as he could, recording the words and images into his memory, Caleb would examine and repair any small damages he could. There was little he could do about the damage to his clothing without sewing equipment and fabric, however, and the doll quietly fumed over the increasing number of cuts, tears and burns that decorated the dark green and seafoam-colored suit he so loved.
"I don't see how I'm going to get through this with my clothes in one piece." Caleb muttered angrily, patching what he could of an open gash in his leg. A shimmer of mana ran down the circuitry and jumped in a spark as he touched tools to the synthetic fibers for repairs. He jerked his hands back and exhaled lightly. "That was close. I don't want to short out my leg. Man, I'm glad there are spare components in Welgaia. Maybe they also have some extra fabric I can use to repair my clothes." He finally sighed and put the tools away, getting up to test the strength of his leg before moving to the next library.
There were no stairs to the bottom floor after Caleb finished scouring the east wing for the last of Vinheim's libraries, so the doll jumped down from the second level. He froze, listening for signs that he'd been heard, then darted for the main hall. Caleb expected opposition in the form of angelic guards watching over the doorways to Mithos's throne room, and that was exactly what he got. He squeaked and dove for the shadows of a nearby staircase, crouching to avoid detection as the guards floated by on their routine patrol.
"Getting harder now, huh?" he whispered to himself and risked a peek over the wall behind him at the huge double doors. They were open and the patrolling angels floated back and forth before the gate. The room beyond was hidden in the swirl of violet and black, mana shifting around to hide whatever was originally behind the doors. He waited, timing the paths of the guards, then scrambled over the wall and rolled through the doorway. Caleb came to a halt in the throne room and spun around, half expecting a small army of angels to come tearing after him for infiltrating the castle. But there was no one and he breathed a sigh of relief.
Turning around, the doll yelped in shock and stared out at the vast open space within the castle that seemed as if he'd been transported into the heart of Derris-Kharlan. Mana rushed by him, flowing past a floating island in the distance towards what looked like a hole in the center of the comet. All around that island, giant chunks of what appeared to be the same material as the floor he stood on spun around, caught in some invisible vortex. Stunned into silence at the sight before him, Caleb walked forward to the edge of the floor, stepping onto a round symbol on the tile that glowed brightly. He blinked and looked down in surprise as the circle shimmered.
"Hey, what the-?" he cried just before he was transported.
The teleporter dropped him off on the island in the center of the mana storm and Caleb looked over his shoulder at the distant doorway, then turned back to face the single throne that stood before a section of wall with tall statues of Martel on either side of it. He walked towards it slowly, numb to the wind that rushed around him and pulled at his clothes, his hair. Stopping just before the stone seat, Caleb gazed down at it, a faintly terrified look on his face.
"I... remember this place..." he whispered, "I've been here before... But how...?"