Copyright: You're on a fanfiction site, do I really need to say anything? Why would I want to be sued? I don't own Tales of Symphonia...

"How..." Remiel stood on all fours, blood pouring from his wounds and missing eye while his enemies stood before him victorious, "How could an angel, the ultimate being...be defeated by a group of inferior beings?"

"Dwarven Vow Number Seven," Colette answered, "Justice and Love will always win!"

"You dare speak..." Remiel spat, straining to look into Colette's eyes, "You who have condemned your world to die!"

"Shut up!" Lloyd roared at the fallen angel, scrapping the blades of his swords against each other as he walked towards the fallen foe, "I think it's time to end your lies once and for all-"

"Lloyd..." Colette placed her hand on Lloyd's shoulder, "Let me take care of this."

"Colette..."

"Trust me," Colette whispered, "Maybe he himself doesn't know about the truth."

"So Yuan was right," Sheena said and noticed the observant glance of Raine, "You didn't know?"

"That would explain everything..." Raine concluded hesitantly, "Lloyd's mana...Colette's change...this entire mess..."

"I can explain the rest after we deal with him." Sheena said to Raine while Lloyd stepped back leaving Colette kneeling down to the angel, "You sure about letting her talk to this guy?"

"No." Lloyd admitted, "But if he tries anything, I've still got enough to finish him off."

"If I give you this gel, will you be able to return to Cruxis?"

"COLETTE!"

"Lloyd..."

"You're going to offer him aid!" Lloyd shouted, "You can't be serious!"

"Lloyd! Don't yell at Colette like that!"

"You don't know this man, Genis!" Lloyd shouted at Genis, "He's part of a system that lies to thousands of people and then uses their lives as a cosmic plaything for a sick exchange! All while choosing innocent people like Colette and forcing them into this journey of regeneration! This isn't a journey to regenerate the world! It's just a sick, torturous ordeal that young boys and girls have had to go through for four thousand years! At the end of it, they're cast aside for not being fit to serve as the "goddess' vessel! Then they cycle through the same process in the world parallel to ours! This isn't a journey of regeneration, it's just a front for Cruxis' selfish actions! And Colette is actually offering to help one of the guides whose led hundreds if not thousands to their deaths!"

"Because it's the right thing to do." Colette calmly answered Lloyd, much to his surprise and mild shame, "I know that it's hard, but we shouldn't become as bad as those who oppress us. We've already defeated Remiel and unlocked the Fire Seal...and now I know why you don't want me to remove this present...to protect me from "Cruxis' blessing."

"I'm sorry that I didn't tell you sooner."

"It's alright, I was overwhelmed before and I wasn't sure about how I would be." Colette confessed, "But now, I know that I can still be Colette. Just because I'm not the Chosen anymore...or rather...the chosen of the goddess, that doesn't mean that I can't be me. Just because the goddess...is false...that doesn't mean that I can't be a good person that I was taught to be. But now, I can be that person because I want to be good, not because I have to. Sylvarant is my home and it still needs to be saved. So I will save it with truthful actions and not through deceitful actions, whether I knew about it or not. That means forgiving people who wronged me...even if I would rather not."

"Colette...you're so strong," Lloyd said to the smiling girl, "That's why I love you."

"Thank you Lloyd...What?"

"Did I say that out-loud..."

"How cute..."

"Ha! You owe me when this is over Raine!"

"Unfortunately...you're right...Genis..." Raine mused with a light chuckle and found that she was being joined by their fallen foe, "Why are you laughing?"

"What's so damned funny?"

"Naive...all of you..." Remiel stated with a strained laugh that continued in spite of his pain, "Do you fools even know why the worlds were split into two? Why this cycle has been imposed? Why the Great Kharlan Tree died? Because of you foolish humans...humans who believed that they could control everything little thing that they touch!"

"Coming from who again?"

"Don't you dare judge me boy!" Remiel cried out before he spat blood onto the floor and grabbed his bleeding stomach, "You may not like it, but our actions have ensured the worlds have survived at all! Without us, you humans would have destroyed the worlds long ago! Lord Yggdrassial divided the worlds to prevent them from draining all mana dry! And you have the gaul to judge us when you're only alive on this world because of Cruxis' actions! Have any of you ever seen a Mana War? It's repercussions on the land and it's people? Without us, that war would have left this world dried and dead long before any of you could have been born!"

"Give me a break!" Sheena shouted at Remiel, "You really expect us to sit here and listen to a mass murderer and liar talk about how justified his cause is? Here's what you can do! Go to a place called Mizuho and tell them that same speech! Tell the graves of children and pregnant mothers who you've murdered that their deaths justified your twisted utopia! Tell that to all of the Chosens who went down this path and found out that it was all a lie and that they gave their lives for nothing! Then you can try and talk!"

"What's worse about this?" Remiel continued, finally managing to stand straight up on his knees and look at his vanquishers, "You're probably only in this to save your precious beloved! That's what Lord Yggdrassial is doing as well! You're no different from the man who you're rebelling against! You'd probably watch the world burn for a mere chance to save your beloved and that's exactly what's going to happen! You selfish..selfish child! What would it matter if your precious Colette were to die during her journey? Wouldn't this be worth to give your world a fair share of generations of prosperity instead of the rabble they will likely be trapped in at best? And what of your alternative plan? I've heard nothing of an alternative save for boasts to find a better way? Where is that better way? What is that better way? There is none! And any plan you create will be useless without the Eternal Sword anyway!"

"The Eternal Sword?" Lloyd asked, catching onto Remiel's last sentence, "Hold on! What is the Eternal Sword?"

"Yggdrassial's blade." Remiel explained, "It is a weapon of infinite power created for Lord Yggdrassial by Origin and it is forever out of your reach...human..."

"Lloyd..." Colette muttered pleadingly, "He doesn't know anything else...he's just spitting you...don't waste your strength, you're better than he is."

"Alright..." Lloyd reluctantly agreed as he threw an Apple Gel at the angel, who then quickly applied it to his most severe wounds, "You're healed, now leave."

"You really sure about this?"

"Yes."

"Alright..." Sheena looked on as the angel's wings regrew and he began to ascend, "Just make sure that it doesn't bite you in the ass like it did me."

"What happened?"

"I'll talk about it later."

"I have just enough power...to return to Cruxis..." Remiel stated while still holding his side with one arm and his eye with the other, "Fair well...fools..."

Then a pillar of light enraptured the being and when it was gone, so was he...

"Hear that?"

"The guardian of the seal," Kratos chuckled from catching his own words, "No...the angelic messenger has failed...this will not end well."

"What won't?" Kyros asked, "The Chosen isn't the brat's tool?"

"No, not anymore." Kratos freely answered, his voice sounded both regretful and strangely hopeful, "They are paving forth their own path, another way to free the worlds or at the very least, themselves."

"I see..." Kyros nodded, impressed by this Chosen, "Alright, he must plan to release the summon spirits then?"

"Apparently," Kratos answered, "Whatever Lloyd's full plan is to be, he will need men like you and I to assist him. Efreet is not a foe to take lightly afterall."

"Nor will Mithos and the rest of your friends," Kyros replied casually, "Does Mithos know about your betrayal? Or he is simply unable to do anything about it?"

"Until Mithos says otherwise, I am to protect and observe the Chosen," Kratos stated to the shrugging ex-prisoner, "What of your plans? Do not seek revenge from me?"

"Not you..." Kyros answered while cleaning off the sword that he'd picked off of the Desian High-Captain, "The blue haired elf with a stick up his ass."

"Him..." Kratos exhaled, recalling exactly why Kyros wanted Yuan dead and how their mutual hatred led to Martel's death and in relation, all of this, "Would you be willing to postpone that plan until your mutual enemy is dealt with?"

"I'm not in a hurry, sure." Kyros replied much more easily than Kratos had feared, "I'm still not completely recovered from that seal I had on me...hell...I won't be anywhere near my old self for a long time."

"How do you have any mana at all?"

"That ninja from Mizuho, Sheena." Kyros answered, "Some of Gnome's mana must've flowed into mine when she healed me after releasing me...not sure why though."

"They never forget their past pact-owners." Kratos explained to the former hero of ages past, "Though your pact was broken, Gnome was still willing to silently replenish some of your strength through his current pact-owner."

"And she managed it by herself?"

"I wouldn't know."

"By the way...who was Gnome's previous pact-owner...and whose is Efreet?"

"Mithos..." Kratos answered while studying the annoyed features of Kyros' tanned face while fingering his neck-length grey hair, "Having doubts?"

"Oh no!" Kyros replied while walking towards the seal chamber, "I'm motivated...let's take Efreet away from Mithos."

"So soon? The chosen and her friends will likely need rest after what they've-" Kratos stopped when he heard a young woman scream someone's name, "As I feared...we must hurry, we may need you."

"A Rune Crest?" Yggdrassail slouched in his throne while Remiel bowed before him, shaking in fear from the truth of his failure, "How did the Chosen acquire a Rune Crest I wonder?"

"I do not know-"

"Silence." Remiel did just as his lord had commanded, around him stood his fellow arc-angels who eached looked down upon him. Peliel was both saddened and pitied by his state, Kutiel surpressed a laugh and did nothing to hide how much he enjoyed Remiel's humiliation and pain, and Cammael regarded him as a corpse.

"You have failed to bring the Chosen back upon her set path." Yggdrassial continued, "And now you claim to have been beaten by not only the Chosen, but that you failed to subdue her guards and that they were assisted by a summoner from Tethe'alla?"

"Remiel dared not speak, he just kneeled, praying that his lord would show mercy.

"I declare my judgement." Remiel's eyes widened as he reached out for his master before a beam of terrible light enveloped and burned him...first his skin was melted away, next came his muscle and finally, the last sight of Remiel, Arc-Angel of Cruxis, was a skeleton that cried out in pain before it too was enveloped and destroyed forever by the light of his master's judgement.

"Let that be an example to the rest of you." The remaining three arc-angels turned towards their master, ignoring the blackened spot where their colleague had stood, "I have not waited four thousand years just to allow my patience to have come to nothing. In the future, should any of you fail to persuade the Chosen to rejoin this path, do not come back here."

"If you do." Another beam of light pierced the blackened spot in Yggdrassial's throne, evaporating the ashes of Remiel while the arc-angels remained unmoving, "When you are sent, do not return until either I summon you or you have the Chosen under my power once more. Peliel, Kutiel..."

"My lord..."

"Lord Yggdrassial?"

"The Chosen will chose either the seal of water or of wind," Yggdrassial stated while Cammael did not stir while his colleagues were debriefed, "I want both of you to wait for the chosen within those areas and coordinate amongst yourselves and the Desian Grand Cardinals, ensure that the Chosen has no rest when she comes there."

"I understand master." The blue haired arc-angel agreed with a bow, "She shall find no rest in the waters of the Thoda Geyser..."

"Nor will the wind of Balacruf comfort her," Kutiel added proudly though he too bowed, "What of her companions? Shall they be slain?"

"If you must," Yggrassial answered, "But bring me the Angelus Crystal if you can...if not, destroy it and it's wielder."

Author's Notes:

Why did Kratos and Kyros hear a scream? Now that Yggdrassial knows of the Chosen's defiance, how will he regain control of her path? What is next for Lloyd and the gang?

Answers will come...as they come...

Well, this one was surprisingly easy to write up, it's the previous chapter that was harder mainly because it was an extended boss fight with a character whose not even supposed to be fought until later in the game, mainly at the big reveal scene just before the group went to Tethe'alla. The next chapter will probably be another friendship bonding moment along with more LloydxColette fluff because...they're the main pairing of the story.

Here's another question, I never actually played the TOS sequel, Dawn of a New World. Though the reaction to it was mixed at best, what did you guys think? What did you like about it and what did you hate, because I'm considering renting either that game or Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.

So until next time folks, Read, Review and Enjoy!