ATUHOR'S NOSE: I didn't even realize this chapter was coming out on Valentine's day. Or, as I like to call it, Thursday.
I accidentally my sleep schedule and my usual pre-posting last-minute final editing pass was kinda half-assed; let me know if I missed anything.
We hadn't gotten far out of town when Noishe suddenly caught up to us, whining and holding a letter in his mouth. The letter turned out to be from Dirk, wishing him well on the journey and reminding him to read something called the "Traveler's Guide". And a postscript...
"Oh, speaking of EX Gems," I said, "y'know how you were gonna show Genis how to use that Exsphere? You mind explaining it to me a bit, too?" I pulled out one of the Exspheres I'd confiscated from a Desian. "It's already got a Key Crest and everything." (Dirk had decided to make that Key Crest for Marble after sleeping on it, but Genis was using that one.)
"Whoa, where'd you get — how many of those do you have‽"
"A handful. You might or might not be aware that I made a disastrous attempt at raiding a human ranch not long ago." Plus the two without Key Crests from the prisoners they... whatever the hell they did to them. I decided not to bring them up.
"Oh, right... um, yeah, I can show you."
...
The sun was almost set when we reached a House of Salvation — a little combination inn/chapel run by the Church of Martel, which had apparently scattered several of these places around the world for the benefit of travelers.
Asking around, we learned that "the Chosen" and her group had been spotted heading south, into the Triet Desert, presumably to the town of the same name.
"They say the heat of the desert is caused by a gate to Efreet, the Summon Spirit of Fire," Genis explained as the three of us settled down for the night in our rented room. "It would make sense for Colette to go there."
"How many Summon Spirits are there, anyway?"
"It's not completely known," Genis admitted, "but there are four seals tied to them: Fire, for Efreet, Water, for Undine, Wind, for Sylph, and Light, for Luna and Aska. Those five Summon Spirits are absolutely confirmed to exist, but there are rumors of others. Ice, Lightning, Earth, and Darkness."
"Makes sense," I said, nodding, "what with those being the eight... elemental..." I trailed off, confused. "Why... do I know that?"
"It's pretty basic magic theory," Genis said. "Even Lloyd can remember that." ("Hey!") "I guess you learned it so long ago that it's ingrained into your mind and the amnesia can't break the connection. You didn't wake up knowing literally nothing like a newborn baby, right?"
He hadn't been there, but it was an obvious enough guess that he didn't have to be. "Right. I knew language and how to walk around and stuff. I know what my meds are for. I may have forgotten my phone's password, but I still understand the basic idea of using..." I trailed off again. "... a device that by all indications can't possibly have been made here. Grrr, this doesn't make sense!" Obviously I was from somewhere else, but that didn't explain why I was here now. The notebook indicated that it was on purpose, but I hadn't cracked enough of my code to even have a guess as to anything deeper.
"Well, it's getting late," Lloyd pointed out, yawning. "You should get some sleep. Maybe an answer will come to you in your dreams."
"Maybe," I admitted. "I can't exactly say it's never happened before, right?"
"Also," Genis added, "we'll be spending tomorrow hiking to Triet, and you'll have all that time to think about it."
"Yeah, fair." I grumbled vaguely as I flopped into the bed. "If I could just figure out how to get into this thing, I could start piecing myself back together..." But with no ideas for how to make progress in that department, I put it back in my backpack and just curled up to sleep...
...
The trip to Triet was... uneventful? Ish? We ran into random bandits and monsters, but like, we'd been running into those for days now, and they were trivial to dispatch. Things got a little dicier once we reached the actual desert; the heat was exactly as bad as one would expect, and the shifting sands made navigation unexpectedly complicated with only the mountains on the horizon as landmarks.
But we did manage to make our way to the town, whereupon things immediately ceased being uneventful. There were Desians running around, putting up wanted posters of Lloyd's face.
... wait, why Lloyd? "Wait, why Lloyd?" I mumbled, not wanting to draw their attention while we hid behind Noishe. "Me and Genis are the ones in official trouble. Are they ignoring their pretext and just going straight after your special Exsphere?"
"Damn it... what's so important about this thing?"
The name 'Angelus Project' seemed obviously indicative, but I couldn't bridge the gap from there to anything specific. "Not sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion we're gonna be finding out, one way or another."
After a few minutes of trying our best to look unobtrusive as we hid in the stable with Noishe — during which it occurred to me that maybe he was pretty distinctive himself, but it's not like a better alternative was available — the Desians eventually dispersed.
"Whew. They're serious about this, huh? We need to hurry and find Colette," Genis said.
"Are we looking for Colette to protect her or to get help?" Lloyd asked.
"It can be both," I countered. "Mutually beneficial partnerships are kind of the norm, you know? All of us will be better off once we've grouped up, I think."
It felt a bit like tempting fate, but we decided to examine the wanted poster.
"... am I really this ugly?"
I grimaced. "It's a terrible drawing, but... it's not unrecognizable." I rifled through my backpack. "How much trouble do you think we'd get in if we defaced that thing?"
"Even if nobody catches us, the Desians will probably just put up another one," Genis pointed out.
"Well, it'll still make me feel better," I said, pulling out a marker and drawing some ridiculous distracting accessories on top of the approximation of Lloyd's face. A face mask, nerd glasses, a sombrero, some spiky pauldrons...
"How much random stuff do you carry in that bag?" Lloyd asked.
"Uh," I glanced inside as I returned the marker. "All of it, near as I can tell. I spent some time going through it earlier but I kept finding more stuff and eventually got distracted and didn't finish."
We wandered off after that, looking through the town for any signs of Colette. Promisingly, and also bizarrely, there was a house in a corner of the town that had a Colette-shaped hole in the wall where she had apparently tripped and fell. This didn't tell us where she was going, but it at least told us that she had been here. Further search brought us to weapon and armor shops (I picked up a hardened leather cuirass; we didn't have quite enough Gald to fully outfit ourselves but we did what we could), a group of adorable feline explorers who offered services that might one day be very useful for some other problem, and then...
"... a fortuneteller? Seriously?"
"Seriously!" Genis said.
I frowned loudly. Magic was obviously real, I'd seen Genis use it in our battles and — to a lesser extent — even used it myself. And there was no rule I knew of that meant it couldn't be used for fortunetelling. Still, something about it felt... hokey, even knowing all that. "Ah, whatever," I declared. "Worst case scenario we just waste a few Gald."
...
We walked out of the tent 100 Gald poorer, one location richer, and me annoyingly having gained no solid evidence as to fortunetelling's realness attribute, but whatever, that wasn't the important thing here. Apparently there was some oasis nearby that had been destroyed by Efreet long ago. I was pretty sure I had spotted something ruin-shaped in the distance on our way here, so we gathered up our supplies and were on our way out, when
"Wait!"
... a group of Desians tried to stop us. Only one way to solve that.
"Run for it!"
And we immediately bolted.
...
"'Run for it'? What was that for?" Lloyd demanded. "I could've taken a few lousy Desians!"
"Yeah, but could you have taken their reinforcements? You saw how it went when I tried holding off an army single-handed."
Lloyd seethed, but didn't have a counterargument. Since it's not like we had any reason to go back towards the town, we continued onward towards the ruins.
When we arrived there, Lloyd had switched from grumbling about me to grumbling about the heat, which is probably why he didn't notice the creepy floating red orbs starting to channel magic.
"Look out!" In a flash, without even thinking about it, I was between Lloyd and the incoming fireballs. "Link Guard!" I summoned some kind of blue energy barrier around myself, which the fireballs splashed off of harmlessly.
"Whoa! Monsters!" Lloyd drew his swords, and with all three of us paying attention, we made quick work of the things.
A quick look around the ruins led us to a floor hatch made of what felt like plastic, of all things, next to a stone that looked to be a handprint reader. It didn't react to my hand, beyond causing a weird tingling in my Exsphere for some reason, and we concluded that if this was really the seal, it would probably only react to Colette.
"Uh, thanks for the save, by the way," Lloyd said as we set up camp. "What was that barrier technique you used?"
"'Link Guard' is what I shouted when I used it." And I'd mentally spewed my confusion at that convention enough over the past two days already, I wasn't going to get into it now. "The 'Guard' part is obvious, but I'm not sure what about it is a 'Link'. Still, something like that has obvious utility — I think I could teach you. And you too, Genis. Not like we have anything better to do til the others arrive, right?"
...
We had just long enough to go over the skill with the two of them, plus a less intense version for when you only needed the shield and not the warp. I was just about considering the merits of trying to isolate the warp as well when the others finally caught up.
"Lloyd‽" Colette exclaimed.
"Genis‽" Raine exclaimed in much the same tone.
... "Kratos!" I called cheerfully when the mercenary's silence made it clear he had no intent of completing the obvious pattern. He just facepalmed.
"How did you three manage to get ahead of us?" Raine asked.
I opened my mouth for just a moment, then faltered. "That's a very good question? The fortuneteller said you'd headed here before we left, so I don't know how we overtook you without noticing, did you take a detour or something?"
"Not exactly," Raine said. "We saw the wanted posters —"
"With or without the funny hat?"
"So that was your doing," Raine said, seeming amused for once. "When we saw those, we realized that you would have had to leave Iselia. Knowing that, Colette wanted to wait for you all to catch up — and there were people needing help in the town, so it's not like we were wasting the time.
"I realized we had just missed you when I overheard a Desian complaining about failing to capture Lloyd — defacing the poster didn't seem to stop anyone from recognizing him. After that, we headed out the very next morning.
"... I see you and Genis both have Exspheres too, now," Raine pointed out, her explanation apparently finished.
"I've got spares, too, if you want to use one. Intact Key Crests and everything on most of 'em; I had Lloyd check."
"Perhaps. What exactly is an Exsphere, anyway?"
I faltered a bit there, not really knowing the precise details beyond 'makes me better at fighting, somehow', but Kratos stepped in with an explanation about how they unlock latent power and enhance existing skills. Raine definitely seemed interested, but
"Releasing the seal comes first. You can show me the procedure when we get some downtime."
"It might not be wise to wait," Kratos pointed out. "The ruins here are likely to be filled with monsters. Enhancing your combat capability immediately might prove critical."
"They're definitely monster-infested," I pointed out, "we fought a few when we got here. I'm not sure where they came from, since no new monsters have shown up to replace them, but if the inside isn't worse I'll eat my hat."
"But you're not wearing a hat," Lloyd pointed out, confused.
"And I'll eat it anyway somehow if there's no monsters in there, which the point is that there definitely will be."
Between me and Kratos, Raine seemed to accept the probably-monster-infested status of the ruins and took an hour or so to get the Exsphere equipped and learn its usage.
After which she immediately got distracted gushing over the ruin entrance being made of "polycarbonate" and the purpose thereof, which embarrassed Genis for whatever reason. I dunno, I thought it was endearing.
The ruins themselves were a maze of fiddling around with raising platforms by lighting torches with a fire-spewing ring Lloyd had apparently picked up back in the Iselia Temple. I almost asked why they'd let him keep it when it was clearly intended for the journey of regeneration, but a few possible answers occurred to me that I decided maybe it was better not to press for.
But after getting through all that weirdness, we managed to reach the seal, whereupon we encountered a bigass spiky fire cat monster and its two babies. Genis's water magic was obviously crucial there, and me being able to copy it meant we could soak the monsters to death twice as fast.
And then, with the monsters out of the way, Colette said a short prayer to Martel and released the seal.
An angel descended to acknowledge the deed and tell us that the next seal was across the sea (making this big show of calling Colette his "beloved daughter", I guess to make up for lost time or something? I had to wonder how Frank felt about that), and then something about granting her power, and —
"Colette... has wings!" Lloyd exclaimed, awed. Which echoed my reaction... almost perfectly.
"And they're made of light," I pointed out as though this fact wasn't plainly visible to the entire room. "Which is very cool, don't get me wrong, but her angeldad's are made of feathers and stuff. What's up with that?"
"Colette's mother was a human," Raine pointed out, "so perhaps it's because she's half-angel. Remiel did need to bestow the wings upon her, too."
Well, it was all speculative at this point. What wasn't speculation was our next destination, which Remiel had said was across the sea. Lloyd was excited about the prospect of sea travel, and after some discussion, it was concluded that we would cross the Ossa Trail and head for the coast.
... which plan immediately had to be postponed, due to Colette collapsing shortly after we got out of the ruins. She looked to be in really nasty shape, but Kratos pointed out that Remiel had said Colette would be going through a trial for one night.
"What kinda trial is this?" I demanded. "What purpose does this serve? She's gonna be in agony for a night, and for what?"
"It's okay, Leaf," Colette mumbled. "I'll be fine soon."
I was still pissed... though at who, I wasn't sure... but if Colette didn't want me to make a big deal of it, I'd try to tone myself down, so I kept quiet while we set up camp to let her rest through this mess.
...
The sun was setting on our camp. Genis had made tofu curry for dinner — not as spicy as I'd have made it, but it was his recipe, not mine — and I was just chipping away at decoding my notes.
I'd cracked enough before reaching Triet to know that the Desians there would have captured Lloyd if I hadn't gotten him to run, and that I'd need to give Raine an Exsphere if I changed that. (Why those events were connected was still beyond me, but I figured that that was less important than the connection in and of itself.)
Of course, fighting those Desians would have been a dumb idea even without cheating outside knowledge — more to the point, how did I know such a specific sequence of events before it happened?
I was trying to sketch out some theories in the blank back pages of the notebook — in a new code this time, one I was making up whole cloth right now — but try as I might, I still didn't have an explanation that answered all the questions.
My phone buzzed its nightly hormone reminder. Which also reminded me that I had a virtual archive of my past self in the palm of my hand that I couldn't get into. Whatever had smacked me on the head was gonna get it good for screwing me over like this, when and if I ever found them.
Lloyd interrupted my quiet fuming by sitting down next to me. "Hey, Leaf."
"Hey, Lloyd." At a quick glance, it looked like Colette was in the distance, taking a walk, while the rest of the group was starting to wind down for the night, excepting Kratos who was taking watch. And Lloyd, who had apparently decided to hang out with me. "Not joining Colette?"
"No, she... said she'd be fine by herself."
"Ah." Ouch. "If she's refusing your company, this must be hitting her harder than I thought." My phone buzzed again, and I realized I'd been too distracted with fuming to dismiss the alarm properly — or actually take my hormones, for that matter. "One sec, I better get that now so I don't forget..."
Lloyd looked curiously as I retrieved the pill bottle and tipped out the little blue ovals. "... if it's okay to ask, what are those pills for?"
"A person who had boundaries might regard such a question as invasive," I informed Lloyd lightly. "... but since I'm not such a person, I'll just tell you — these are hormones." I dithered a moment, trying to decide how much detail would be best. Mostly because I didn't want to end up having to explain the entire concept of being queer. Or the entire concept of an endocrine system. I wasn't sure which prospect was the less appealing one. (Okay, fine, it was definitely the latter, I'd seen him trying to study biology.) ... Also, slightly more importantly, a lot of possible ways to explain any of this would rely on details of my personal history that were currently MIA.
"Let's say... It would be slightly misleading but technically accurate to say I was born with a condition that causes my body to produce male hormones instead of female hormones, and I take these pills to fix that. Since the condition is basically invisible from the outside, I presumably grew up looking like an ordinary boy until whenever I realized something was wrong, at which point I arranged to get things solved, and now I'm me." I waved my hand vaguely. "Of course I don't remember any of this, but that's what I expect must've happened."
Lloyd took a moment to rotate that in his mind. "... I don't completely get it, but... you changed your body with those pills? That's... kinda like what Colette is going through, huh?"
My eyes widened a bit. I hadn't thought about that at all, but... "Yeah, I suppose it is. Not on nearly the same level, but it's probably the closest anyone else here has experienced. ... though the superlative is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Still, it is a parallel..." I paused a moment as something occurred to me. "That... probably explains her 'trial', actually. I'm only expecting a bit of soreness in the chest, but I'm also not changing my entire species or — technically — growing any new body parts. It's gonna be a lot worse for her." I said, as though it wasn't already. ... can always get worse than it is, I suppose. Hope it doesn't, though. She doesn't deserve that.
"... I sure hope I don't end up having to explain the trans thing to like, every single person I meet," I mused. "That'd get really repetitive and boring."
Notes: This was cute, but I had to cut it because it doesn't align with some stuff we decided later:
"Kitty‽" Without even thinking about it, I patted the strange feline creature on the head.
"Meow! We're an exploration team, not a cat cafe!"
"Oh!" I quickly withdrew my hand, embarrassed at my overstepping. "Um, what kind of exploration?"
The Katz explained their services, and I concluded that it wouldn't help us find Colette, though we might well benefit from it later.
After that distraction, we continued towards the back of town...