And this is where we introduce the concept of Grandpa Clan Head who speaks Japanese. Yes, it is relevant... And very important for Book 3, though it might seem like a bit of filler fluff stuffs for right now.

"You didn't notice? She was paying more attention to us than the road yesterday. That's why she tripped." -Kairi

"Ion, look out!"

A green-sleeved arm shot out even as the fourteen-year-old turned, Ion glancing at the oncoming soldier just long enough to aim and shoot the gun in that arm. The soldier dropped almost as soon as the bullet struck.

Ion didn't even twitch, simply turned and fired the next bullet at a soldier who was about to kill one of the White Knights. That one went down, clutching at the back of his knee and yelling profanities.

I jumped off the lift, striking out with my katana and knocking out as many as I could. Those I couldn't disable were killed.

"Ion!" Anise sounded horrified.

"Not the time, Anise!" Ion said, reloading his weapons and making a face. "I'm almost out!" he announced. Dark scowled.

"Damn! I don't have any more I can give you! I didn't even think to grab another box while we were in the castle," he cursed.

I huffed, kicking a soldier and glancing around. "No time! That's the last for now! Let's go!"

We piled onto the next lift, and I glanced around. "Seth, Jade, Flick, Selenia. They're the only ones left, now."

*Well now. This is actually rather amusing.*

*What?* I asked, poking Jade's mind. He let me in a little further, and I got to watch through his eyes as General Goldberg fought against... Miyagi? Well now, hadn't expected that. Oh well.

*We're almost there.*

The lift stopped, and we started moving. I glanced back, noting Seth, Jade, and Selenia separating from the crowds and joining us.

"Princess Natalia! Most of the Zao Desert is gone! Head for the Inista Marsh!" one of the citizens yelled, holding off a soldier with a staff. Natalia stopped to argue, only for Asch to grab her and start pulling her along.

"But—"

"If we're gone, the soldiers will stop attacking," he reasoned. "We have to get out of here."

I heard a pained grunt and looked back, just in time for a crimson and violet blur to drop between the injured Miyagi and General Goldberg. "Phoenix Flare!" Flick shouted, unleashing the blazing blast at the general. She dropped, picking up the wounded elder, and then started running. Knowing full well she wouldn't last long, I hung back with Sorylle, the two of us managing to get him up on Sorylle, while I pushed a number of Energies into the wounds. It was rough, and probably painful, but we couldn't risk him losing much more blood.

"Someone want to tell me why we're bringing him with us?" Asch asked. Flick scowled.

"Aerith's been digging in the old Clan shit. Miyagi-sama was in trouble, anyway," she said. Miyagi chuckled.

"Oh, come now. There's no need for that kind of formality, Flick-chan," he said. I blinked. Wait, I thought Miyagi was Chinese? Ah, curse Asian people!

"Miyagi-san, then," I muttered. He looked down at me in surprise.

"You know the Clan dialect?"

"Hai, a little." Anise gave me a weird look, and I rolled my eyes. "'Hai' means 'yes.'" Confusion now cleaned up, I glanced up at Miyagi. "You wouldn't happen to know a young woman named Din in Chesedonia, would you?"

He blinked. "Ah, is that where my granddaughter got off to?" Answer: yes. "Hmm... But Chesedonia fell..."

"She's fine," I assured him. "By the way, I don't think I told you my name the first time we met. I'm Kairi."

He chuckled. "I am Miyagi. Tell me, how much of the old Clan dialect do you know?"

I shrugged. "Not a lot. My mom taught me a few songs in it before she died and started teaching me a few words, but I'm not fluent in it."

Our conversation continued along this tangent for a while, with Miyagi teaching me a few new words, or re-teaching me some I'd forgotten in my time on Auldrant. About halfway to the Inista Marsh, we were forced to stop and make camp. Jade and Seth both gave me odd looks as Miyagi and I continued to speak about Japanese while I healed him.

"You know... If what Reighn said was right, you two should probably learn a bit of that as well," Asch commented. Jade adjusted his glasses.

"I didn't hear him."

I looked up, suddenly remembering what Asch was talking about. "Aurelius, Balacruft, Cecille, Darigan, Fende, Gardios. Those are the six Clans he mentioned, right? And he said the last of the Balacruft Clan remains as the Balfours."

Miyagi nodded. "Hai. Aurelius, Fende, and Gardios joined Malkuth. Balacruft, Cecille, and Darigan allied themselves with Kimlasca. However, the abilities granted to the Balacruft and Darigan clans through their bloodlines made them feared, and Kimlasca eliminated them, or attempted to. I am the first Darigan to return to Kimlasca in over a thousand years. But not the last, it seems," he finished, looking at Dark, who had his back turned.

Natalia saw it though, and frowned. "What? Dark?" The boy in question turned then, glancing around cautiously. Apparently he hadn't been paying attention at all.

Miyagi frowned and nodded. "Hai. There is no mistaking it," he said. "You cannot gather precise amounts of fonons, correct?"

Dark blinked, but nodded. "Yeah. I have to fine-tune all of my fonic artes for overloading, or I can't risk using them at all." Miyagi chuckled.

"I think I can help you with that," he said. "But, in the morning, when I am healed."

The conversation petered out after that for the most part, Seth reluctantly joining in on the Japanese discussion I was having with Miyagi. The man found it amusing that, despite forgetting much of the words I'd learned, I could still write every character of hiragana I'd known. Seth didn't pick up hiragana at all, but we did manage to get most of the honorifics into his head.

Jade looked at both of us like we were insane when we told each other goodnight, because Seth called me nee-chan and I'd called him otouto. I'd then turned right around and called Jade 'aniki,' baffling him even further as I slipped into the tent I was sharing with Selenia and Natalia. Tear, Anise, and Flick were in another, and most of the boys were spread out among the other two, Asch and Ion taking the first watch.

Anise had argued against that one strongly, only for her to be repeatedly shot down by the replica in question. And when I say 'shot down,' I mean he insisted until Anise got to a point of being ridiculous before he aimed one of his guns at her. It wasn't loaded, nor was he aiming for anything major, but it had gotten the point across.

Ion had then sulked off to one side of the camp, sat down, and wrapped his arms around his legs. Luke had been the only one to go over to him that he hadn't chased off, and I think that might have been more Luke's stubbornness than Ion's lack of trying.

Needless to say, after everything that had happened, I didn't get a lot of sleep that night.

I was still the first one awake, discounting Jade and Guy, who were the ones on guard when I left the tent. I walked over to the fire we'd had last night, put some more wood on, and let it light up.

I'd been sitting there about three minutes, waiting for the water to heat up so I could have some coffee, when Guy walked over and sat... close enough to be considered 'next to me' but far enough that he wouldn't react to every little movement I made.

"How did you know?" he asked. I frowned and looked up at him. "About me and Pere."

I shrugged. I'd been expecting that to crop up, ever since I remembered just after waking up that I'd mentioned it while we were on the run. "Your name was a big giveaway. So is your sword style. Asch knew, because he saw you when he was kidnapped. Jade suspected for a long time, just never got the chance to ask you about it. Dark knew, more because he used to dig through birth records looking for Danté's parents. I just followed the same trail of breadcrumbs Jade did."

Guy sighed. "Were they really that much of a giveaway?" he asked. I smirked.

"Guy is short for Gailardia, and anyone who bothers to look knows that Eugenie Cecille was your mother. Cecil is just an altered version of Cecille. And even if that wasn't enough, the Sigmund style is unique to Hod for its lack of a shield," I said. Sometimes, I was very grateful that I remembered a lot of really odd bits and pieces of lines from Tales of the Abyss.

Guy scratched the back of his head. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Are you... planning to tell the others?"

I shook my head. "No... But you should find some way to join in on the Clan dialect discussions we've been having. Gardios is one of the six, too."

"What about Tear? If you know about me, then..."

"You didn't notice? She was paying more attention to us than the road yesterday. That's why she tripped."

Jade walked over and joined us then, before muttering something under his breath and looking at me. "What does 'aniki' mean?"

I grinned. "It's a more casual word for big brother. Seth is my little brother, otouto. I'm his big sister, nee-chan. 'Aneki' is the casual option. Similarly, 'nii-san' is also a word for big brother," I explained. Since the two of them had been otherwise occupied last night, I launched into something of a short lecture about honorifics, since that was something I'd mastered before getting dropped into Auldrant.

By the time I was done, coffee was brewed, breakfast was started, and Dark and Natalia were both up. Luke was the next one awake, though his emergence from the tent was met by some jokes about Asch suddenly turning into an early riser. Of course, this meant that when Asch finally got up, he was teased for a good four minutes about his replica being an earlier riser than him, jokes that were met by his now almost trademarked 'damn impressionable replicas.'

This, of course, got a good number of laughs from the group, and a few eye-rolls, namely from the replicas, as five of our group fell into that category.

We were up and off again shortly after breakfast was finished, and we'd broken into three groups, it seemed. Miyagi, Seth, Dark, Guy, Tear, and I made up one 'group'. Luke, Ion, and the monsters were the second 'group'. Flick, Selenia, Anise, Natalia, Jade, and Asch made up the third.

I kept a lookout for trouble, but ended up giving most of my attention to the elderly man walking with us. Dark actually looked caught between ecstatic and terrified of the thought that Miyagi was his grandfather, but the man's insistence that his grandson's name was Danté had finally convinced him. I thought it was amusing that Dark and Danté were cousins to Din. It sounded like Din was Miyagi's elder daughter's child, and Danté had been the younger's child.

Tear was finally speaking up once in a while, and by the time we reached Inista Marsh in the late afternoon, we were all having some very boring conversations in Japanese, just to practice. Miyagi was always amused as he pointed out when one of us misspoke a word, and as we got more familiar with the different speech patterns, our sentences became smoother.

It was actually rather funny when Jade tried to get our attention and all of us replied with 'Nani?'

He stared at us a moment before shaking his head, adjusting his glasses and then nodding toward the bridge nearby. "We're taking something of a vote. We can either start through the marsh now, in which case, we're going to have to at least double our number of guards on the nightshift, or we can wait until tomorrow morning and try to get through in just one day. Although we'll be pushing it to pull that off."

Dark was quiet a moment as he looked at the marsh.

And let me tell you, it's not pretty. You know how it looks pretty in Tales of the Abyss? Heh. No.

The Inista Marsh is a marsh. And unfortunately, it looks like it's low tide. Which means mud. Lots and lots of mud. I'm sure it looks a lot prettier in high tide, because I can see a lot of reeds and stuff. But the mud kinda ruins the whole thing.

"I'm not looking forward to going in there at all, but we don't have much choice," Dark admitted. "But if it's low tide now..." he trailed off to think for a moment. "No. We won't make it to any of the dry areas before nightfall, and it's dangerous enough in the marsh during the day."

"You've been through here a few times, yes?" Jade asked. Dark nodded.

"Yeah. Koran always hated it because the mud slowed us down horribly. In fact, we usually had to get a head start running in here if we wanted to get anywhere. He sank into the mud real bad..." He stopped here and looked over at Sorylle and Twilight. "I think I'm going to have to go on ahead with them. They'll just get stuck in the mud if they aren't running."

Jade sighed. "I think you've successfully changed my mind. We'll stay here for tonight. If you're going to have to go ahead, it may be a good idea for us to have a map. Would you mind marking the uplands for us?"

Dark shook his head, walking over and pulling out his wing pack.

While they went over the route through the marsh, Luke and Ion came over to me. I looked up at them and raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

Ion sat next to me and took a deep breath. "Thank you."

I frowned as Luke sat down, completing our little triangle. "What for?"

"For making me realize that Van was wrong," Luke answered. Ion smiled.

"I... I think I almost lost it last night. If it weren't for Luke, I might have. You talked him into leaving Van, and if you hadn't he wouldn't have been here to help me. So, thank you," Ion explained.

I smiled. "You're welcome. And you know, you can talk to me, too. I'm in much the same boat as you two are."

Ion chuckled. "Thanks... Um..." he trailed off and looked away from me. "Could you... talk to Anise for me? I... I want to say something to her, but I'm worried she'll just..." Ion stopped and closed his eyes.

I put a hand on his back, and he looked up at me. "I'll talk to her. Assuming Natalia hasn't already, at least."

The two replicas laughed, and I grinned.

It was a slow process, yes. But they were healing.

We all were.

Fun Fact: Jade wants nothing to do with this stuff. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. ...Too bad for him, he messed something up. Remember a certain line from when he met Tear and Luke in the Cheagle Woods? "Please, call me Jade. I'm not accustomed to being called by my family name." -evil laughter-