A Step Onto Chronos Chapter Twenty-One
The Desert Forest
Shadic the Hedgehog
It had been six hours since we left the caves when someone came to pick us up. They had just arrived back from looting the tomb in both time periods, and had powered up the Masamune when Glenn arrived to pick us up. When we returned to Choras, I explained a way to do the next set of the adventure.
"Our next stop is the planting of Fiona's Forest, near Domino, but we'll also need to have someone stop by Guardia Castle to have them retrieve the Rainbow Shell. I'm also planning on doing a minor solo journey to make the Sunstone quest somewhat easier. We'll want Magus and Marle for the fight in what is currently Fiona's Desert, as the boss monster is weak against Water-based attacks. However, I also think it would be a good idea to have it be Marle talk to King Guardia and a bad idea for Magus to be there when she does."
"Hmph," Magus snorted. "If it's all the same to you, oh mighty lord, I'd rather be there and explain that I'm no longer interested in their petty kingdom."
"You'll need some way past the guards," commented Crono. "We haven't been there in a while and if they see only one of us, us being Joe, Lucca, Marle, Glenn, and myself, they might think you've put us under a spell or something and attack."
"In that case, why not have the party consist of Magus, Marle, Crono, and myself. That way we have three heroes they know," suggested Glenn.
"You're actually volunteering to travel in a party with Magus? Better make sure Lavos isn't about to arrive early," Lucca joked.
"Guess that's a common theme in all worlds, joking about the apocalypse when something strange happens," I mentioned. "Anyway, who said we had to always travel in parties of four? Especially since we're all in the Middle Ages together already. I'll go ahead with my side-trip to Porre and meet you all at Fiona's house. It's near Glenn's place in the Cursed Woods."
"And how do you suggest we fit seven people in a ship built for four?" asked Robo.
"Good point. Er, Magus, I noticed you can hover when you want to go fast, does that power extend to flight?"
"Yes, though the further from a semi-solid surface I am the harder it is to stay up. I doubt I'd be able to keep up with the Epoch," He answered.
"Actually, you'd only have to keep up with me. I'll take you with me up to the Truce Gate, since I have to grab something in AD 1000 Porre before doing anything in AD 600 Porre, then you can fly off to meet everyone else at the castle."
"I shall accompany you as well," said Glenn. "As I can fly using my Wind magic. And we've already established that we can fit five people into the Epoch."
"Then I suppose that's settled. Let's make sure we're stocked up for the journey and be on our way." As everyone else headed off to make sure our inventory was in good order, Lucca approached me.
"I'm surprised," she stated.
"How so?"
"You've been Barog for the last six-and-a-half hours, and you haven't lost control once."
"It's rather difficult to sustain a feeling of calm when you have no emotional control, but it does keep me from rampaging. One of the more un-helpful things about my lack of control is that emotions tend to have other emotions linked to them. To quote an old movie from my world called Star Wars, 'Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.'"
"Wow, you really do have it tough. Well, at least you can remain calm."
Everyone gathered back together and we prepared to take off. Glenn had several Mid-Ethers that he bought with some of the money gotten by selling the gear in from the tomb. We took off in a north-easterly direction, watching as the Epoch took off at it's slightly faster pace. As we flew, I suddenly felt exhilarated. I was flying under my own power, just me, my wings, and the sky. I gave a cry of happiness as I climbed up to the clouds, and let loose a loud "YAHOOOOOOOOOOO!" as I dove back to where Glenn and Magus flew. I buzzed them, getting a yelp from Glenn and an annoyed sigh from Magus.
"This is awesome! I never knew flying could be so awesome! Why didn't anyone tell me how awesome it was?" I babbled.
Glenn muttered, "If he says 'awesome' one more time..."
I took off again, this time doing aerial tricks like barrel rolls and loops before coming back down with a cry of "AWESOME!" Magus bashed me in the back of the head with his fist the moment I got in range. I rubbed the spot with one hand as I pouted. "What was that for, Magus?"
"Quit acting like a child, we're on a mission."
"Aww, quit being such a sourpuss. I bet you acted that way when you first found out you could fly!"
"You'd be wrong. Now, if you're done messing around perhaps we could pick up the pace."
"You're gonna hafta lighten up one of these days," I grumbled.
"I doubt it." I started getting annoyed, and thanks to my unstable emotions, annoyed quickly became pissed.
"Quit acting like such a jerk!" I raised my hand and formed some fire into a weapon, and just as I was about hit Magus with it, Glenn tapped me on the shoulder. "What?!"
"Why do you have a hammer made of fire?" I blinked and looked at the weapon in my hand. Sure enough I had formed a hammer from fire. I was temporarily bewildered, which was a calm enough emotion that I could calm myself down again.
"No idea. Just felt oddly appropriate. I also felt like I should be yelling 'Magus no baka.'"
"Magus no baka? What's that mean?"
"If I remember what little Japanese I've read, it means 'stupid Magus.'"
Glenn snorted, which was really odd to hear come out of a frog's nose. Magus simply sped up, forcing us to catch up. I, thankfully, retained my calm as we continued the flight, which was mostly uneventful. Glenn had drank all but two of the Mid-Ethers by the time we reached land. I bid them farewell as we split up, them to the castle, and myself to the Truce Gate. Thankfully, Lucca had handed me the Gate Key before we separated and I used it to travel back to the End of Time, then a quick jump to Leene's Square in AD 1000. I transformed back into myself (though for some reason I wanted to start thinking of my original body as my "human form") got a room at the inn for the night, then prepared to take off then next morning.
I got as much altitude as I possibly could (which actually put me well above cloud level). I looked down at the world, and saw how everything looked like it did on the over-world part of the game. I looked south, and saw Mt. Denadoro, the Cursed Woods, and there, in the distance, was Porre. I took off, diving as I flew to reach as great a velocity as I could. Just as I flew over where Fiona's Forest would eventually be, I saw it shimmer slightly and a line of trees began to form on the northern side. I was beyond it a few seconds later, but I knew the significance of what I had seen: the gang must have fought the Retinite monster without me. Fine with me, I didn't want to fight any more than I absolutely had to. I reached the outskirts of Porre, and transformed back before entering the Snail Stop.
I examined the place, noting the Kilwala-like Mystic playing piano, and the patrons of the bar. I sat down at the bar myself and looked at the bartender. "Yo, I hear this place has good jerky, anyway I can try some out?"
"Oh? Where're you from, stranger?" asked the Bartender.
"Area of Truce, but I like to wander all over the place. Just recently arrived from Choras as a matter of fact."
"That so? Well, I'm not sure if you'll be able to afford my jerky."
"I'm sure I will, monsters tend to carry lots of money. Though I wonder how they get it in places no one's visited in a long time."
"I hear there's someone called Robina Hood that gives it to 'em, but I think that's absurd. Anyway, the jerky's nine thousand nine hundred gold. You sure you got that much?"
"Oh, yes, I have plenty. In fact, I think I'll get two." I reached into my gold sack and pulled out several smaller bags. "Each of these contains about two thousand gold each, so five outta do it, don'cha think?" Did I mention that the treasure from Cyrus's grave sold really well? The music seemed to stop as everyone else in the bar turned to look at me.
"Er, right, uh, here's the jerky." He gave me two bags full of it. "And since I'm down to one bag I'll need to make more, excuse me."
I nodded to him and walked out the door, absently chewing on a strip of jerky. It was good, though I couldn't quite identify the meat used. I was just about out of range of the village, and was about to transform when I heard several footsteps behind me.
"Gimme your gold, or die." Ah, brigands.
"Hmm, I wonder," I muttered to myself. "If I should handle this like Lina Inverse, or Barog Firestorm..."
"Hey, I'm talking to you! Do you want to die?!"
"Not particularly. You see, I just recently regained my memories from my previous lives and wouldn't want to work on getting them back all over again." I turned around. "Besides, my friends are going to need me back in the Middle Ages pretty soon." I studied the faces of the bandits as I contemplated being known as Joe McCord the Bandit Killer, before realizing giving them my other... I mean, my actual name would be a bad idea. Hmm, they were all from the Snail Stop. Apparently, they saw my vast amounts of cash.
"Then I suggest you give me your gold. I know you're loaded." That clinched it, they had seen my gold.
"You know what would've been smarter for you to do?" I asked, a light smile on my face.
"What?"
"Killing me while my back was turned and taking the money from my corpse. But now that you've alerted me, I'm going to have to do something with you." I smiled evilly and raised my hand, a flame dancing in my palm. I threw the fire at the ground under their feet, and released the weakest Point-Flare I could, while calling out a spell name. "Explosion Array!" The ground exploded and sent them into the sky, and as they fell back down, groaning as they hit, a sack of money fell into my hand, prompting me to comment. "Well, that was lucky."
One of them raised his head as I turned and prepared to transform. "Who- who are you?!"
I let the flames change me as I looked back. "I'm Barog Firestorm."Then I took off. I flew over the emerging forest to see a cathedral appearing as the edges of the still-growing forest spread. I landed outside of Truce and landed before changing back. I stretched my now human back and was startled to hear a loud ripping noise. I looked back and saw, to my dismay, that my precious leather coat had finally worn itself out, and my shirt was close splitting as well. Probably from all the times my wings appeared through it combined with all the fights we had been in, amongst other things. I returned to the inn and asked someone if they could recommend a good tailor for me to get new clothes from.
I visited the guy they recommended and I transformed into Barog for the measurements. He gave me a whole new outfit, though the colour scheme remained the same red and black, and replaced my old coat with a trench coat that extended all the way to my ankles. I paid for the outfit, even though he tried to give it to me for free, and left, returning to my original form before I went through the gate. I quickly returned to Truce Canyon and headed south, flying closer to the ground than I had been on my journey four-hundred years later and a few minutes ago.
I saw the Epoch still parked by Fiona's Villa and landed, just in time to see the group head for the sink-hole in the sand.
"What're you guy's doin' heading back in?" I yelled to them.
They all turned to look at me in surprise. Crono was the first to speak. "We're not headed back in, we're just going in now."
"That's... interesting. I saw the desert turning into a forest as I travelled in AD 1000, so I thought you had already gone in and fought the Retinite."
"Nope. You're just in time to join us." Suddenly, his pointed at me. "You mentioned something about this just before we fought the Heckran! 'You must wait for a forest to rise from the desert and a robot to work for four hundred years,' all because I asked who the Entity was."
"Well, we still have to go forward in time after we finish this off, so let's get crackin'. We'll discuss theories on the Entity later."
"Then can we ask about the new look?" asked Lucca with a raised eyebrow.
"My clothes were getting rather badly beat up thanks to my rapid transformations, so I found a tailor in Truce and he made me a fire-proof outfit to Barog's measurements."
It was a very un-eventful journey. Oh, sure there were plenty of monsters in the caves beneath the sand, but they didn't stand a chance against all eight of us at once. We made it to the boss chamber and saw the Retinite rise from the sand. I repeated the monster's weakness to water and we alternated comboing with Magus and Marle to fell the monster. Eventually, all that was left was the weird eye-thing in the middle that kept draining our blood.
Then we did something with an interesting effect: we blasted it with eight different spells at once. Crono used Luminaire, which apparently learned in the Hero's Grave, Lucca used Flare, Marle cast Ice 2, Robo activated his Mega-laser, Glenn used a new spell he called "Hurricane," Ayla pelted it with hundreds of little rocks thrown fast enough to ignite and called it "Meteo," Magus used Dark Mist, and I blasted it with Holy Flare. The resulting magical backlash actually blew us out of the cave, collapsing it. Ayla, Glenn, Marle, Robo, and Crono quickly cast healing spells (I noted Ayla's Cure 2 with interest) and we headed back to Fiona's.
We chatted with her for a little while before we left for the Epoch, though Robo stayed behind, since he was going to be planting and cultivating the trees for years to come. Once again, I took off for Porre, this time to drop off a bag the jerky I had bought (and I wonder still what recipe calls for jerky). Magus and Glenn started on their way to the Truce Gate, so the others could use the Epoch. I met them back at the gate and we did a quick jump through the End of Time to four hundred years later. We made a return flight to what was now Fiona's Forest, just in time to meet up with the gang as they activated Robo and left the Cathedral. Due to Glenn and Magus' magical exhaustion, and Robo wanting to celebrate our meeting again after 400 years of work, we decided to camp out for the night. And that's when Crono's long awaited discussion took place...
"The future can be anything we want it to be, providing we have the faith and that we realize that peace, no less than war, required blood and sweat and tears." -Charles F. Kettering