Star... You know, I'm not totally sure what Star is up to. Really, I'm not. She's just kinda gone AWOL and I have a vague idea of what she wants to do, but... Oh well. I'll figure it out eventually.

Enjoy! Yeah, just these two today. Not up to doing much more right this moment.

Also... How many people can look at Kairi's quote and figure out who she's talking about right off the bat? It's been mentioned before, but I think his characterization's been slightly off most of the story. Or just not very easy to see... Oh well. It's going back to where it's supposed to be now.

"Normally, I would be terrified by that laugh... However, since we're getting our asses kicked and you're laughing like that, I think I might actually like the outcome for once." –Guy

"Eternal pessimist, you are." –Kairi

"There's a nice version of 'screwed'?" –Luke

Chapter 12.11 – Out of Time
Part 108

I spun into another Guardian Field, then jumped back and scowled. Damn, but Star was pissing me off.

Her white fairy had been defeated after about five minutes, thanks to Reighn unleashing a Final Embrace on it right before I hit it with a Havoc Strike. The frozen wood hadn't stood a chance against my anger-fueled strike arte.

Of course, we still had to contend with the blue fairy, the swordsman, and Star herself.

Jade had been knocked out a few minutes after we'd destroyed the white fairy, and we'd found ourselves with rather a bit of a problem.

Tear, whose Resurrection could have woken him up again, was also unconscious, having been the victim of a Prism Sword Star had let loose on her.

Natalia, our other main healer who could have at least started unleashing Revives on those of us who were still standing in case one of us got knocked out, was also down from a rather backhanded move made by the white fairy before its icy demise.

Asch, the third person used to acting as a healer for large battles like this, was at the top of the Tower of Rem negotiating with the replicas Mohs had created and abandoned and preparing to unleash the most power hyperresonance he would ever have to use.

And the rest of us were apparently completely out of Life Bottles.

So all we could do was fight and hope those three woke up on their own... for now, at least. Reighn had admitted that if worse came to worst, he could use Regenerate to revive anyone in a specific area, and I'd moved Tear and Natalia over to where Jade was, but the problem lay in that Regenerate, like its base arte, was technically a forbidden arte. He'd be utterly exhausted upon casting it, and then we'd have Tear, Natalia, and Jade back, but would lose him. And yes, Tear could then revive him with Resurrection, but...

See this nice, irritating circle of exhaustion? Yeah.

So we were saving it and hoping we didn't have more than five people to revive when Reighn finally hit a point where he'd have to use it.

I didn't quite move fast enough to dodge the next Prism Sword, and I cursed it rather loudly. Pretty arte, but damn, it hurt like a bitch.

Then, after blocking an attack from the damn irritating little blue fairy, I felt something click into place. A very familiar something.

"Hehehe..."

"Normally, I would be terrified by that laugh," Guy said, running away from Star to catch his breath. "However, since we're getting our asses kicked and you're laughing like that, I think I might actually like the outcome for once."

I grinned, dropped, rolled under the now-confused fairy puppet, and raced toward Star. She smirked, apparently thinking I'd be stupid enough to get into stabbing range again. All of her strike artes were very short range, but they did a lot of damage.

I stopped just far enough away she wouldn't be able to get me and spun on my heel again. This time, it wasn't for a Guardian Field.

Star shouted in surprise as my over-limit sent her flying, and I laughed, letting my katana collapse back onto my arm as I gathered up fonons. The swirling galaxy appeared again, and Star looked around worriedly, having realized what was going on. Though, the utterly shocked look she gave me was just amusing. "O ancient melody of newborn stars..."

"No... No! This shouldn't be possible!" she started.

"Resound into these broken souls..."

She paused and tilted her head to the side. "Wait... This verse..."

"And give them hope!"

The galaxy collapsed in on itself, and Star screamed as I cried out in triumph. "Twilight's Requiem!"

The world faded back in, and I had to immediately hit the ground or risk decapitation. Star started to slowly push herself back to her feet while her puppets guarded her, and she looked at me with wide blue eyes.

"How did you...? No, it can't be... Ion can't be wrong..." she muttered.

I started casting, tapping against my thigh for rhythm the way I always did when I didn't have my sword. Star seemed to realize this battle wasn't over yet, but I could tell from the way she was swaying that she didn't stand a chance at this point.

The sword-wielding puppet came racing at me again, and I had to cancel my arte to avoid it. Star ran past me, her blue fairy puppet distracting Anise and making an opening for her.

"Ion isn't wrong! You can end this! You have to be able to end this, or everything we've done is a waste!" Star said, though I think she was talking to herself more than to us. We didn't hear anything else, if she said anything else, because she was so far gone by that point. I sighed and looked around.

"Does anyone think they've got spare Life Bottles in their wing pack? I know I don't," I said, looking over at Tear and Jade. Reighn was huffing and puffing and looking about ready to collapse. No wonder—he'd been our only real healer for most of the battle, and there had been four of us to keep alive.

"Hng..."

"Oh, thank Lorelei..." Reighn muttered before he finally sat down rather abruptly. I couldn't help but giggle a bit, and he shot me just the nastiest look for it.

Natalia rolled over, then opened her eyes and started looking around. "Hmm... Did we beat her...?"

I nodded. "Yeah, though Reighn's now to the point of collapsing from exhaustion. Tear didn't last much longer than you did, and Jade got knocked out to. His healing artes may not be as strong as yours, Tear's, or Reighn's, but at least it would have been a little less work for Reighn to do..."

Natalia blinked a few times, then slowly sat up and looked around. Then she used a Cure on Guy, who was the most heavily wounded. A short pause, and then another Cure got directed toward me. Anise and Selenia got Heals, since they'd been staying back to act as fonists for most of the battle and so were less injured than me and Guy, since we'd been acting frontliners.

A third Heal went toward Reighn, who was slumped over. He grunted a barely-understandable 'thank you', but didn't really move.

Natalia then moved over to Tear and Jade and started looking them over. They both got Heals as well.

It took about twenty minutes for those two to wake up. By then, Reighn had finally recovered enough to stand up and walk over closer to the elevator.

"It's been a little over an hour. They should have figured something out by now... Assuming they're not dead."

I sighed. "Shut it, Raincloud. Sheesh... Eternal pessimist, you are," I grumbled. I did not want to hear something like that, because I knew it was the truth. I'd sent Asch and Luke on ahead to try to talk hundreds of replicas into sacrificing themselves. Hell, since our battle had moved a few hundred yards away from the elevator, I'd gotten to watch at least ten groups of replicas head on up. And if Asch and Luke didn't succeed... then who's to say Fallon, Path, and the other replicas hadn't killed them?

Or rather, they'd have killed Asch. Luke was a replica, had admitted to it, and they would likely leave him alive because he was one of them.

But that was beside the point, and I didn't want to think about the fact that Asch could have died while we were fighting Star.

Another group of replicas walked in as we headed over the elevator ourselves, and when I saw a couple of the replicas struggling to carry a limp, dark-haired woman between them, I ran over and offered to help.

The woman bore a striking resemblance to Selenia, and it wasn't long after we got on the elevator that Selenia gasped.

"No, it can't be... Mama?"

I looked up from the cut I was looking at. Jade looked stricken, and Selenia... I couldn't read her expression at all.

"How... How could they have gotten Mama's replica data?!"

Jade grimaced and turned away. No one else saw it, since they were watching Selenia and the replica of her mother, but I did, and I frowned. *Jade?* Silence. *Jade, what's wrong?*

*They've gotten into my research. They're taking replica data out of research material I've collected in the past ten years. And that it had to be her...*

*Jade...?*

*I killed her, Kairi. You weren't around when Selenia first joined us, when I first found out... I executed Maria Andres-McGovern for wartime insubordination. She refused to kill her little brother... and I left her eight-year-old daughter motherless.*

I sighed. *Jade, that wasn't your fault. Maria must have known what she was doing, and... as for the research data... We'll be fixing that soon, too.*

Jade turned around slightly to look at me, and I smiled to encourage him.

He nodded once, and then took a deep breath and walked over to Selenia. *Kairi... I don't want the others to hear this yet.*

I nodded and let Selenia into the connection. She gave me an odd look, and then Jade explained. To be honest, once he was done, she looked angry, yes... but it was obviously not at Jade.

*I can't believe Mohs,* she grumbled. I shrugged.

*I can. He's as bad as Van... Actually, no. Worse. Van pissed me off with the shit he pulled around the beginning of the year, but he was at least somewhat bearable as a person. Mohs... Mohs just kept at it, and doesn't stop. Drives me up a wall.*

Jade looked up. "I think we're nearly there."

I nodded. "Yeah. I can feel the replicas." What I didn't add was that Asch and Luke weren't with them.

The elevator came to a halt finally, and the replicas around us piled off. I lifted the replica of Selenia's mother carefully and carried her over to where the other replicas seemed to have set up a bit of a field hospital. Fallon looked up at me as I walked over.

"You have come as well."

I nodded and gently lowered the woman I was carrying.

"Yes."

She brushed some of the woman's hair out of her face and glanced over her wounds.

"Apathy has not arrived yet."

I frowned. "Oh?"

"He went to find more of our brethren, and while I have heard some of the newer arrivals saying he sent them, he has not come himself."

I sighed. Damn. If Path wasn't here when Asch and Luke let loose their hyperresonance, I would eventually have to find a way to explain him to Hue.

That was not going to be fun.

"Your friends said you were fighting," Fallon continued, standing up. "They left to go help the replicas who fled to the stairs to avoid your fight. The original... Asch... said there were a lot of monsters in the tower, and not all of us were programmed to fight."

I nodded. "That sounds like Asch. Do you need my help patching people up?"

Fallon shook her head. "There is no need. In the absence of your red-haired friends and before you arrived, we spoke among ourselves. It was agreed that we would do as Asch and... Luke?" I nodded. "We will do as they have asked us, for our brethren who have not yet arrived. They have offered sanctuary to them in exchange for our assistance." She paused and looked around. Then, after a while, she looked up at the sky.

"I... I am... I think... scared?"

I put a hand on her shoulder, and she looked at me, wary, but not hostile. "I'm scared too. If this goes wrong, there's no way to save Auldrant. Even if the miasma is successfully neutralized, if Asch and Luke die, we can't stop the Planet Storm and free Lorelei. But I've got another reason to be scared for those two... A personal reason."

Fallon tilted her head to the side. "You love one of them."

"Both of them, in different ways. I love Asch. He keeps me from doing some of the really stupid things I come up with. And Luke... Luke is like a little brother to me."

Fallon looked down at the ground. "...I think I was right. I am scared. But... I do not think I am scared of dying. I think... I am scared for those they have offered refuge to..."

I smiled. "Refuge will be given. You see that blonde girl who's comforting the child? That's Natalia, Princess of the Kingdom of Kimlasca. Asch and Luke are her cousins. The man in the gray and red?"

"He wore a blue uniform before," Fallon said, proving that she remembered him. "You had him shut down the fomicry machine while you spoke to us."

"That's my older brother, Colonel Jade Curtiss. He's in charge of the Third Division of the Malkuth Military, and our entire family has the emperor's ear. As for Daath... Asch is Adjutant Commandant of the Oracle Knights. The two green-haired replicas from the Isle of Feres? One was Sync, the Order of Lorelei's Chief of Staff. The other was the seventh replica of Ion, and the current Fon Master," I said. "We've got influence, and as a God-General myself, I will make sure Daath, at the very least, provides refuge for the replicas who haven't yet reached the Tower of Rem."

Fallon turned to look at me, and for a while, we just kinda stared at each other. Then she nodded. "Alright. I... I trust you." She paused and tilted her head to the side, and I noted that glint of life coming back again. "You know... I... I'm not all that scared anymore..."

I smiled.

Then the elevator reached the top again, letting off another group of replicas—and one original, whose blood red hair matched his own replica's perfectly.

"There you are," Jade grumbled. Asch sighed in relief.

"I'm glad you're okay. The replicas we found who saw parts of your fight said you, Tear, and Natalia were down."

"Down, not dead. Though that exhausted Reighn, since it left him as our only healer," I said, walking over. Asch looked relieved to see me, too. "We're going to have to stock up on medicines before we can head for Eldrant, or we're screwed, and not at all in a nice way."

Luke gave me a bland look. "There's a nice version of 'screwed'?"

I smirked. "Yeah, but you're still a bit young for me to be explaining that."

Asch turned the brightest shade of red. "I thought we banned Sync from saying shit like that for a reason?!"

I laughed. "Hey, I didn't say it outright."

Natalia turned around. "What on earth are you two talking about...?"

I sighed. "Speaking of innocent..."

Asch shook his head.

"Asch..."

Right. The replicas.

Fun Fact: Remember what I said a few updates back about Kairi being a hypocrite? Yup. 'nough said.