Okay, real chapter now.
I apologize if my author's notes are completely incoherent in this chapter, as I'm currently high on whatever it is that fuels Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and I may randomly spout quotes from said anime.
ROW ROW FIGHT DA POWAH!
It's even funnier because Japanese Kamina is voiced by the same guy that did Japanese Lloyd. Ha ha...
I wanted to inform all of you that Regal, Alicia, and Presea will not be booted from the story, as I just had a stroke of brilliance. I have a few things to iron out, but once I do... Hehehe... MWAHAHAHA!!
Unless there's a critical plot failure and I can't keep them after all. Which would make me sad, because it would be freakin' awesome if it worked out.
Also, please leave a review if you read! While I write this story because I love it, reviews make me even happier! Please, please review!
DON'T BELIEVE IN YOURSELF, GENIS! BELIEVE IN ME WHO BELIEVES IN YOOOOOOU!
(-Shot-)
Chapter XI: The Scatter
The animal is mindless and soulless,
Fleeing from even the slightest danger.
The human and the believer fear nothing,
And will embrace even death.
-The Scriptures of Martel
"Lord Yuan, what happened?"
Botta had alerted the entire base when he had heard Lord Yuan, the Chosen, and her companions had almost been killed at the Tower of Salvation. He had rushed to the Triet Base's entrance as soon as he had heard Yuan and the others had arrived. As soon as Botta had approached his superior, Yuan began yelling orders.
"We need to evacuate the bases, now!" Yuan shouted at his subordinate. "Yggdrasill knows I'm the Renegade leader. We have to get out of here, now!"
Botta hesitated only a moment. He saluted smartly. "Yessir!"
Yuan turned to Lloyd and the others.
"Now I need all of you out of the base," Yuan ordered, "I'll come back for you when it's safe, understand? Sheena knows where the Rheaird hanger is - you can take those. Take them to Flanoir, Yggdrasill might not look for you in Tethe'alla."
"Wait!" Lloyd shouted. "What about Mom? We can't leave her here!"
Yuan could barely stop himself from shouting at the boy. "If Raine had cure her, then go and cure her! But be quick about it! It's not safe to stay here!"
Yuan immediately ran off, too distracted by anxious thoughts about saving his men to worry about Lloyd's mother.
Lloyd immediately turned to his teacher, desperation in his eyes. Raine felt uncomfortable that Lloyd was putting so much faith in her. "I think I found the correct spell, but I'm not sure it will work."
"Well we have to try something!"
"...Very well," Raine conceded. "I will try to heal your mother. Do you know where she is?"
Lloyd nodded. "Yeah. I think it was this way..."
"Lloyd..."
"Colette?" Lloyd turned to the Chosen. The girl's head was hung, and her hands were clasped. "Is something wrong?"
Colette saw in Lloyd's eyes his hope that he could save his mother, and could not bring herself to say what she wanted to say. She shook her head. "It's nothing. Let's go help your mom!"
"...Right," Lloyd said, nodding, still worried about Colette. The Chosen rarely, if ever, admitted to suffering herself, but rather worried about the pain of others...
"Where is your mother?" Sheena asked, breaking Lloyd out of his troubled thoughts.
"Uh... in the cells," Lloyd said, feeling awkward.
Raine raised her eyebrows. "The cells? She's a prisoner? I thought you said she was sick, shouldn't she be in the infirmary or some similar place?"
"It'll make sense when we get there," Lloyd explained, who didn't want to tell his friends the exact state his mother was in.
"...Do you know where the jail is?" Sheena asked, realizing she had never been there herself. She knew there was a jail in the Triet base, but had never seen it. She started to wonder why.
"Um..." Lloyd looked around, trying to remember. The whole base seemed like a metal maze when he first arrived, and now it didn't seem any different. Then he pointed down a hallway and said, "I think it's this way."
Unfortunately, as Lloyd could only vaguely remember where the prison was, finding it was mostly hit and miss. However, soon the whole base was in a state of panic, and everyone tried to evacuate as quickly as possible, and frantic Renegades were soon running everywhere. The urgency of the situation sped Lloyd and the others on, and when they did find the jail, they ran inside, Lloyd himself immediately running down the line of cells until the came to a specific one. He grasped the bars, staring at the prisoner inside, anxiety building up inside his chest; what if this didn't work out? When Colette and the others reached the same cell, they saw what the prisoner was.
The warped monster inside the cell lifted its ugly head to stare at the humans, who in turn stared at the monster in mixed surprise and disgust. Colette gasped and covered his mouth, while Sheena and Raine were simply shocked.
"W-what is that monster?!" Genis shouted, backing away from the cage, his eyes wide.
"She's not a monster!" Lloyd snapped, rounding on his best friend. "She's my Mom!"
Genis stared at Lloyd, eyes wide with horror. "What are you talking about?"
"She's... sick, or something!" Lloyd blurted, feeling awkward. "Yuan said it was because the Desians removed an Exsphere that was planted directly on her skin. And it... did something and it made her like this! He said something about it messing up her mana or something!"
"She's... crying..." Colette said vaguely, her hands clasped.
"I wasn't aware Exspheres could cause such a... change." Raine said, both fascinated and horrified by the monster. It cocked its head as it looked at Lloyd's friends, possibly curious about them.
"Professor Sage! Please heal her!" pleaded Lloyd, eyes alight with desperation and hope. "You said the unicorn horn gave you new healing arts! You should be able to change her back, right?"
Raine glanced the monster in the cage. This creature had once been a person? "I don't know if I can cure this," Raine confessed, trying not to raise Lloyd's hope. "But I will try."
Raine cautiously approached the cage, uncertain. The monster inside turned its head and stared blindly at her, long clawed fingers curling around the bars of the cell. Raine raised her staff.
"Resurrection!"
- ∞ -
"...So the Chosen survived."
"Yes."
"As did all her companions."
"...Yes."
"I expect Yggdrasill will pursue them will all the resources at Cruxis' disposal, if this Chosen is so valuable to him."
"..."
"The poor girl... she will never be able to stop running..."
"..."
"I no longer need you to track the Chosen. Return to your previous duties."
"I do not think that would be the wisest course of action - "
"Are you questioning my authority?"
"...No, Master. I will resume my normal duties."
"Good. Then you are dismissed."
- ∞ -
A light... a warm glow...
Then it was gone.
Inside the cell, a humanoid figure collapsed, and lay still on the cage floor. It was female, long chestnut hair obscuring her face, and the tattered remains of clothes clinging to a thin frame.
Raine stared, amazed that her spell had worked. "Is that...?"
Lloyd immediately ran to the cell door and started to pick the lock. He had some wire in a pocket, but his fingers shook as he tried to open the door. Then the lock popped open, and he threw the door open and ran inside, falling to his knees at the woman's side. He reached out a hand and gently shook her shoulder.
The woman groaned and looked up, her eyes unfocused.
"...Lloyd?"
"...Mom?"
The woman blinked, and slowly sat up, with Lloyd's help.
"Lloyd?"
She sounded uncertain, but then, she had not seen her boy for fourteen years, and he was no longer the little toddler she had known. Her arm shook as she reached out and touched his face, as if unsure that he was real, and not some sort of dream.
"It's... it's me... Mom..." said Lloyd. "It's really me."
Her eyes finally focused on him, as she seemed to be seeing him for the first time. "Lloyd..."
Then she proceeded to pull him into a tight hug.
"M-Mom!" Lloyd gasped, surprised.
"My boy..." Anna murmured, running a hand through his hair. "My little boy... it's really you!"
"Mom!" Lloyd repeated, blushing. "Yeah, it's me!"
"Oh, Goddess, I missed you so much!"
"Mom!"
Anna released him from her hug, but held on to his shoulders as she looked him up and down, eyes filled with tears of joy and pride. "My boy..."
This only made Lloyd blush more. He looked down at the ground, unable to say a word to his mother.
Anna looked past her son to the strangers outside of the cell; she assumed these were her son's friends.
"Um... hello," Anna began, awkwardly. "I should... probably get out of the cell... shouldn't I?"
"Can you stand, Mom?" Lloyd asked, holding out a hand. She took it, her head feeling as if cotton balls had replaced her brain. She had only just returned to her human form and had met her son for the first time in many years, all of which left her a little disoriented, as if she were walking through a very realistic dream.
After she got shakily to her feet, she found she could walk on her own, if a little unsteadily. Finding herself beyond bars for the first time in over a decade was a strange feeling, and even stranger when Lloyd's friends immediately began introducing themselves.
"I'm Colette! It's a pleasure to meet you!"
"I'm Genis!" the boy added, trying to be polite.
"I'm Sheena Fujibayashi!" the ninja cut in, proudly.
"And I'm Raine Sage," Raine began, "Lloyd's teacher."
Lloyd blushed a little, wondering if the professor was going to bring up his grades in a time and place like this.
Anna smiled a little, still feeling slightly disoriented. "It's good to meet all of you," Anna began, feeling a little awkward.
Anna was still wearing the cloths she had been wearing when she had first transformed, which had by now been reduced to rags. Raine, who felt sorry for Anna and her situation, removed her orange coat and held it out to Anna. "Here."
"Thanks."
Anna gratefully accepted the coat, wrapping the coat around her shoulders. She paused for a moment before asking: "Do you know where Yuan is?"
Raine shrugged. "He's evacuating the base. He could be anywhere at the moment."
Anna's face set into a determined expression. "I need to find him, now."
"I'm sorry, but I really don't know where - "
Anna ignored her, walking briskly away from them, fully prepared to search the entire base if she needed to.
"The base is evacuating," Raine started, running up to Anna. "Yuan could be anywhere right now."
"Then I'll look everywhere!" Anna retorted. "It's important!"
"We'll help you look!" Lloyd volunteered.
Raine sighed, she could tell what they would be doing for the next hour.
It ended up taking them only half as long.
The found Yuan talking urgently with three other Renegades. After Sheena pointed out the half-elf to the rest of the group, Anna steeled herself; now that she had hear bearing back, she had some business to attend to. As soon as Yuan's underlings left to do underling business, something terrible happened.
"YUAN!"
The Renegade turned his head when he heard his name. He saw a strange woman with fire in her eyes and an orange coat around her shoulders stomping up to him. The mad woman grabbed him by the collar of his cape and started shouting at his face.
"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU MEAN KRATOS TURNED HIMSELF IN?! WHAT COULD HAVE POSSIBLY MADE HIM GO BACK?! TELL ME WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED!"
Yuan blinked, momentarily unsure how to respond to this sudden verbal onslaught. "Are you Anna?" he asked, hoping the answer was no.
"Yeah, I'm Anna," she snapped. "So you can tell me what the hell was going through Hairball's stupid mind when he went back to Cruxis, AND WHERE THE HELL YOU WERE! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO KEEP HIM AWAY FROM THEM!"
Lloyd and the others stared at Yuan, who was looking uncomfortable.
The half-elf cleared his throat, possibly to stall for time. "You understood what was said to you while you were a monster?" Yuan asked, surprised. Then he added, "and...'Hairball'? You nicknamed Kratos 'Hairball'?"
"What? Don't know what a pet name is?" Anna demanded. "And before you ask, I am aware of the irony. And yes, I understood every word you both said to me, and now you have some explaining to do!"