Ah. This one. This one is... interesting. Ish.

This is not the first chapter I've uploaded. 41 was. You've been warned.

There's a rather amusing line from Jade regarding Reighn, Emperor Peony's palace, and blue, but I didn't put it up here for space reasons.

Enjoy!

"Congratulations, Seth. I came here to see if he was awake so I could ask him about something and I think you might have broken him." –Reighn

The sarcastic little voice in the back of my head that sounded an awful lot like Kairi decided then was a wonderful time to pipe up with 'Hey, Logic! Where've you been? We missed you!' –Jade

"And you're blind." –Ari

And then I tripped over Anise. –Jade

Chapter 4.9 – For Want of Separate Roads
Part 45

Jade's POV

There are very few things that worry me. Not to say I can't be worried. Some of the things my sister gets into certainly are cause for concern. But, aside from her, fomicry, and war, there aren't a lot of things that can shake me.

Waking up knowing full well that I should be dead is one of those things. Especially when it happens when I'm not hardened against the harsh realities of war. It usually means I've done something stupid. Except, I can't figure out what could possibly have caused this particular episode.

I remembered speaking with Emperor Peony, getting clearance for Kairi and the others to come into Grand Chokmah. I remembered him saying something about needing more than one witness to Reighn's innocence before he could released the former God-General. So I'd gone back to personally escort my sister and her (our, the more rebellious part of my mind corrected) friends to the city.

That was where things had gone wrong, I was sure. I'd met with the two Malkuth soldiers at the southern edge of the Theor Forest. I'd shown them the passes I'd filched from the military base.

Then what? The aching of my bandage-bound torso told me I must have been in a fight. Given that most of the wounds were on my back, I'd been attacked from behind. An ambush? But why me? And who had attacked?

"Oh good, you're finally awake."

I looked up and almost thought I'd never woken up at all. I thought I'd fallen into a nightmare, one that I hadn't had in years.

Standing over me was... myself.

Except, unlike in the old nightmares, this echo of me wasn't exactly the same. There was no fonic glyph in his eyes, dying them forever crimson. No glasses inscribed with a fonic arte to control aforementioned glyph. And he was younger than me, by at least a decade, probably closer to two.

The echo leaned over me, one hand glowing green. A familiar feeling of gentle prodding followed over me where his hands moved. Scan? But that's—!

The glow faded, and the replica—for he couldn't be anything else—started muttering an all-too-familiar verse. "Come forth, o illumination of life!"

I could do nothing but stare.

This was impossible. Utterly, completely impossible.

A replica of me, many years younger than I and without the fonic glyph in his eyes that nearly destroyed my fonslots as a teen, was standing over me, healing me with seventh fonons.

"Congratulations, Seth. I came here to see if he was awake so I could ask him about something and I think you might have broken him."

I blinked and looked past the replica—Seth?—to see an amused Reighn standing by the doorway, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. Seth shook his head.

"I'm sorry. He shouldn't have been hurt in the first place."

"Stop apologizing already," another familiar voice grumbled. Sync stepped into the room, and I felt like I suddenly understood what he had felt so many months ago, seeing me standing in Nephry's office. Ice water dripped into my heart as dark, cold green eyes locked on mine. Sync crossed his arms.

"You conscious enough to follow a conversation?"

I nodded. I didn't trust myself to speak right now, not with an unexplainable replica of me standing nearby, and the look of utter desolation that Sync wore.

"You were attacked by Oracle Knights. I don't know if you remembered that or not. Kairi was temporarily blind from over-stressed fonslots, so she ended up carrying you. By the time we reached the other end of the forest, we'd ended up split up. Ion, Guy, Anise and I didn't arrive until after everything was over, but..." Sync trailed off and looked at the replica.

He sighed. "I saw the Oracle Knights sneaking around and decided to follow them. When they attacked you, I stepped in, but I'd have gotten killed myself if your friends hadn't stepped in. Kairi, Tear and I were one group, Asch, Natalia, and Dark were another. Twilight was following us on his own. We... our two groups met up just before we were ambushed. Largo and a girl named Star attacked us, separating us again. Kairi, Asch, Dark, and Sorylle against Largo, the rest of us against Star. I... I'm not sure what happened, really. But there was a hyperresonance... All five of them were there one minute, and gone the next."

Sync made a noise of irritation. "The Malkuth military is refusing to let us use their equipment to track the hyperresonance. They seem convinced that all of them are dead."

Ah. That explained why he looked like he wanted someone to kill him.

Reighn crossed his arms. "Emperor Peony isn't actually connected to the military. There's nothing he can do. But you've got high enough clearance and enough connections that you could order it."

I let my head turn so I was staring straight up at the ceiling again and then closed my eyes, trying to think everything through.

Luke and Tear had survived the hyperresonance to Tataroo Valley. Asch and Kairi had been blasted from the prison cells in Daath to Aramis Spring... although Kairi had mentioned that that was a very, very controlled hyperresonance, or it had at least started out like that, until Asch interfered.

I would have liked to think that the odds were in their favor, but still...

And then there was the question of the replica.

I opened my eyes and looked up at him... Then noticed something. I glanced at the table nearby and frowned. "Where are my glasses?"

He cringed. "They kinda got broken in all the confusion after the hyperresonance. Emperor Peony said you had spares in your office, but we haven't been able to get in there. Sorry..."

"Do I need to start counting the number of times you apologize in a day?" Reighn muttered. The replica flinched, opening his mouth, most likely to apologize again, before catching himself and closing it.

I sighed and closed my eyes again. No reason to stress my fonslots more than necessary. "Who are you?" I asked. I heard someone take a deep breath. Probably the replica.

"My name is Seth... Kairi tagged me with the surname Balfour earlier, or Flick throws Arlynde on the end, but... I guess... you already realized I'm a replica."

"Of me."

"Rhunön said the replica data was twenty years old when she used it. You would have been eleven when it was taken."

I took a moment to frown over that. Eleven? But that was around the time when... "Damn. Dist must have taken it just after we confirmed it was an applicable theory."

"And then Rhunön started mucking around with the data... which is why I can use the seventh fonon."

I thought over that for a few moments. So. Seth was a replica of me, created from twenty-year-old fomicry data. That would make him fifteen now. And a seventh fonist. Now that I'd cleared that up...

I sighed and opened my eyes again, sitting up carefully and noting the painful twinges in my back. I looked up at Reighn, noting with some worry that his face was becoming blurry. "I need to get my glasses first. I'll deal with tracking the hyperresonance once I've gotten those. Gather up the others, have them meet me in the courtyard outside military headquarters. And one more thing... How long have I been out?"

Seth crossed his arms. "Two days. We've been in Grand Chokmah a little over forty hours now, and it took us almost three to get through Theor Forest without anyone noticing us."

I nodded. Then it was probably sometime in the afternoon.

I slipped out of the bed and wandered over to the closet. "Do try to be careful? A few of the wounds got infected between us finding you and reaching Grand Chokmah, so those aren't healing as fast. Try not to aggravate them too much."

I glanced back at Seth, noting the concern in his eyes, and felt every ounce of anger I'd been about to direct at him vanish.

I was angry, furious, really, to find out that I had a replica. But that was no fault of Seth's. In fact, I likely owed him my life. If I'd been taken down that easily by a surprise attack, I had no doubt that the two guards were dead.

Seth had said he'd jumped in after he saw the ambush. He'd risked his life for three men, all of whom could well have been dead by the time he had a chance to act. But he'd done it anyway... Even though one of those was his original.

The flash of discomfort that accompanied that thought made me even more uncomfortable, because it made me feel like a hypocrite.

Thinking of Asch as an original and Luke as a replica had become a habit over the course of a few months. Asch admitted it, Luke... didn't know, but again, that was no fault of his own. Sync and Ion were replicas, though Ion was posing as the original. It didn't bother me, anymore, thinking of them as such.

Dark was a replica of the man who had kidnapped my sister, leaving me to believe her dead. That hadn't bothered me, not since I'd initially mistaken him for Danté back in Engeve.

Now that I was one of those originals, with a replica myself... I couldn't bring myself to be comfortable with that notion.

I pulled my coat on and started in on the buttons, trying to distract myself from both the thoughts and emotions that were threatening to break my self-control and the fact that my vision was getting worse by the minute. I had maybe ten minutes before I was completely blind. And it took many, many hours, oftentimes days, for my vision to rebound if I hit that point.

So, rather than fighting with my gloves then and there, I started walking, pulling them on as I went. Reighn, Sync, and Seth had left sometime while I was dressing, thank goodness. I didn't think I wanted to have to explain—

Wait a second.

If Kairi had over-stressed her fonslots to the point of temporary blindness, that left me with three questions. First, when had that happened? Second, how had it happened? And third... If she was blind, why the hell was she fighting Largo?

The sarcastic little voice in the back of my head that sounded an awful lot like Kairi decided then was a wonderful time to pipe up with 'Hey, Logic! Where've you been? We missed you!'

I rolled my eyes and then blinked. Damn. Stairs.

I put a hand on the railing and headed down, as carefully as I could without slowing. Once I found the bottom, I moved off to the left, and bumped into something, of course.

A low, almost humor-less chuckle told me why I hadn't seen the person standing there. "Need some help?" Reighn asked. I growled quietly, and got a much louder, indignant growl back. Dull orange and purple floated off, further to the left. So, Twilight.

"I can maneuver myself just fine... Except for when I'm walking around in a blue palace and run into a blue-haired man who is also wearing a lot of blue." I raised an eyebrow at the end to stress my point, and Reighn chuckled again.

"Alright... Whatever floats your boat. I'm going to go find Tear."

I scowled and walked past the barely-distinguishable blue object that was Reighn, finding the doors quickly enough. Colors other than blue assaulted my eyes, along with, of course, more blue.

This time, avoiding the blue was a must, unless I wanted to go for a swim.

Well, at least until I made it to military headquarters.

"Colonel Curtiss! You're awake!"

I blinked a few times and then sighed, giving up on getting my vision to clear. "Awake, and mostly blind."

The soldier was silent for a moment before he moved to the side. "My apologies, Colonel." I nodded and stepped forward, managing to find the handle quickly and then walking into headquarters.

Having had to deal with this before (this certainly wasn't the first time I'd broken my glasses), I closed my eyes to let them rest and simply counted my steps.

Most people knew better than to step in my way when I had my eyes closed and was walking around headquarters without my glasses.

Then there were the idiot recruits who hadn't learned this yet.

"Oomph!"

"Ugh!"

I huffed and opened my eyes, pulling myself back to my feet. "Oh, Colonel! I'm sorry, I didn't think we'd... I mean..."

I sighed. "Don't worry about it. I'm almost blind right now, so I had my eyes closed."

The man apologized again and then left, while I blinked.

'Almost blind' was rather accurate, given that everything was getting very dark, very quickly. Damn.

I kept my eyes open and practically ran the last few yards to my office door, throwing it open and making a beeline for the desk.

Second drawer down on the left, here's a pair, opened, and... Too late. Damn.

I huffed. Now what? I couldn't conceivably fight like this, nor could I examine any results the hyperresonance-tracking equipment could give up.

"Someone was in a hurry."

I almost fell to the ground laughing. Of all the days for my luck to actually cooperate... This had to be one of the best ones.

"Lieutenant Colonel Avarice Miles... You are a godsend..."

"And you're blind."

"My irises are almost black, aren't they?"

"There's also a nice little red spot in your right eye."

I sighed. That was normal. Kairi probably had the same thing happen. "You're not too busy right now, are you?" I asked. Ari chuckled.

"What do you need?"

"I need you to go track a hyperresonance. It would have occurred less that forty-eight hours ago, originating in northern Theor Forest. We need to know where it converged."

"'We' being..."

"A large group of people who will be standing in the courtyard outside. You should have high enough clearance for that, correct?"

"Yeah. You sure you don't need me to guide you out?"

I snorted. "Lieutenant, this happens often enough that I can navigate from here to my rooms in the palace with my eyes closed. Blind shouldn't be much different."

Ari chuckled and left, and I stepped out of my office, making my way to the courtyard quickly. Of course, I had to stop and listen for a minute before I figured out where the others were.

And then I tripped over Anise.

"Sorry. I'm completely blind for the time being," I said quickly. Reighn chuckled again, apparently very amused by my predicament.

Ari joined us some twenty minutes later with some rather worrisome news.

"The hyperresonance converged deep in the Meggiora Highlands."

Sync growled, and I sighed. "Damn."

Fun Fact: You all have Tea to thank for most of this chapter. She thought it would be amusing to contemplate (read: bug me about) what happens if Jade doesn't have his fonic-glyph-suppressing glasses for x amount of time. Here's your answer. Blind Jade, stumbling over poor, 13-year-old girls. (And let's not forget Reighn, who blends right into Grand Chokmah's palace.)