Chrono Trigger: Dare Chapter 23
Awakening
By Crono_12
Crono
"L…L…Lu…" I tried to say.
"Crono! Shh. It’s ok. I’m going to take you to a hospital. Just sit tight. We’re almost there. It’s a good thing I made the…" I head her say, then the world swirled around me once more and I felt myself wretch then fall unconscious. I think I woke up seconds later.
"Lu…cca…" I heard myself say through the fluid that was passing through my mouth. I had the vague impression that she was making me drink something.
"Relax Crono. We’re almost there. It’s taking longer because the wings were damaged when…" but I didn’t hear the rest. The colors of the world blurred into a haze of delirium.
"Science is driving the plane…" I sang. "Science shmience…no reasons…Ibleess? No…Tsern. Tsern. Sern. Hahahahaha! Fear…Big Tsern is Watching you…Fate likes chess…" I mumbled. Lucca didn’t seem to hear me.
"Lucca...Fate...Ibleess...."
"Crono? If you don’t quiet down, I’m going to have to give you a sedative."
"Sleep…dream…Zeal! Must stop...Ibleess...Fate...."
"Ok Crono, this is for your own good," I heard Lucca say. I felt a needle in my arm, then I dozed off to a blissful sleep filled with old men playing chess.
* * *
"All right. That’s the last of it. Now we should just give him a bit of time and he’ll be fine. It’s a good thing it didn’t last a minute longer, otherwise, he would have died," I heard a soothing voice resound in my head.
"Mom? Mom…" I mumbled.
"I’m not your mom, although if I were I’d be feeling pretty proud of you right now. You just survived having your entire system flooded with a toxin so deadly it can kill a full sized borneru. And this woman here saved your life." The voice said again. I opened my eyes painfully to see whom I owed my life to.
"How’re you feeling, ‘kid’?" Lucca asked with affection.
"Don’t call me that Lucca. Although it is nice to be back in the old times…" My energy was being sapped as I spoke.
"Yeah. I remember. I remember you would always play on a wall that had poison ivy all around it," she said. I heard, rather than saw, her turn to the nurse.
"Every once in a while he would fall into it and I would have to drag him all the way to his mom’s. Aside from the rash, he also had some really nasty cuts and bruises that the poison got into. I think that’s what saved his life. He built up a resistance to the poison from the ivy." She turned back to me.
"The poison from the plant you fell on was almost identical to the poison from the poison ivy. That’s why it was so easy to cure you," she said.
Lucca smiled and ruffled my hair. I had almost drifted off to sleep. The last thing I heard was the nurse saying something about a laser….
* * *
I woke up in Tsern’s room.
"Oh no, not again!" I said, exasperated.
"Don’t worry. You are still in the hospital recovering from you injuries. This is just a representation of you. So…how did it go?"
I rolled my eyes. "Aside from the obvious, it went well. We also found a ring called the God’s Tear. It’s with Lucca though."
"Actually, I think it’s with you. Check your pockets."
"But I know it’s with Lucca. I saw her slip it onto her finger herself!"
"Check your pockets."
"But…"
"Just check them."
"Ok fine. See? Nothing here except for…wait a minute! How’d it get in here?" I fished the ring out of one of my pockets.
"That doesn’t matter. Just give me your sword and the ring," he ordered.
"No," I said with a speed that surprised even me. I wondered why I answered that way. "Why do you want it."
"Give me your sword and the ring…" He said, his voice filled with irritation.
"Why should I?" I asked. I was not in the mood for giving up anything.
"There’s no time to argue! Just give me them!"
"Why? If you’re going to fight Ibleess with it, you can’t. You need this sword," I said, fingering the pommel, "and something called the Aegis. And I don’t see you wearing armor right now."
"Oops. I forgot. You are just beginning to evolve into four-dimensional beings. You still can’t see or move that way though. Here it is." He held out his hand, palm upwards. Seconds later, a breastplate appeared, floating above his palm.
"This is the Aegis. Now, give me the ring and the sword."
My eyes opened wide.
"Why you…you tricked me! You knew I was going to get the ring, and that I was gong to get hurt and everything. You used me!"
"That’s right. You can’t defeat Ibleess on your own, or even with your friends, past or present. But I can. Now give me the artifacts."
"No! I’m not your puppet."
"You are fated to give me them. In fact, I’ll even show you." Tsern waved his hand in the air and the world disappeared. I saw the world twist and turn and writhe and wriggle until it took a shape I could understand.
"I hate four dimensional space," I mumbled.
I found myself in a room of what appeared to be a log cabin. At the far end, I saw an old man searching frantically under a chess table.
"Where’d it go? I’m sure it was here…but maybe it fell…" the man said.
Tsern cleared his throat.
"Who?" The man turned around and then jumped in shock.
"Oh my…you’re him!" he said, pointing at me.
"I’m who?"
"Him! Well, that explains his disappearance. Crono, I think you are called, right?"
"Yes, this is Crono. He doesn’t believe his fate."
"Well my boy. You are fated to give Tsern the artifacts… Oh my, I’m sorry. My name is Malak, but you may call me…Fate. Come, come. Come take a look." He motioned with his hands for me to look at his chessboard. Upon closer inspection, tt looked like a map of Aire with black and white squares pained on it. In one corner I could see where we first landed in the Epoch, while in the dead center of the map I saw three green islands, one with the word Khazdian written on it, the other with the word Udrin, and the third having the word Palace. I realized this was the floating kingdom of Zeal. Off to the side of the map rose a tick, tall, black tower with what resembled a deformed version of the Blackbird. Curious, I bent down to examine the model further.
"Look at this, my boy." Fate pointed to a small statue of a red haired girl sitting next to a prostrate boy. They stood on a drawing of a small town. A hand’s span away from the village lay a behemoth of a fortress, looking like some type of strange animal. "This is you and that girl," he said, touching the pieces in turn. He then waved his hand and the board changed, dropping down and focusing more on the village and the fortress than the rest of the planet. With another wave of his hand, four tiny statuettes appeared at what I took to be the entrance to the fortress. I peered intently at the pieces and realized they looked remarkably like Marle, Cid, Ecin and Kain.
"These are your friends, are they not? And they’re in Terra-Fortress right now. Oh! And don’t forget these…" He flicked his wrist and the scene changed again, this time moving to a close-up view of the three islands of Zeal. Where the palace should have been, three statuettes stood. One of them looked like King Zeal. The other was a sour faced Dalton; his hand curled up in a fist along his side. And the third was not a human. It had arms and legs and a head and a torso, looked the same from the back as it did from the front. I wondered if that could be Ibleess. Malak seemed to read my thoughts.
"Yes! Yes it is! You see him now? That is Ibleess. And trust me. Right now, only Tsern can destroy Ibleess."
"How long have you been playing this game?" I wondered aloud.
Fate sighed. "Too long. I was been playing it even before Tsern became what he is now. It was I who made him this way…."
"So…you’ve been playing me all this time?"
"Of course! Look at this!" He led me to another room with another chessboard. This time the board had a map of Earth on it. Floating above the earth and seemingly standing in air, however, stood several figurines facing a large humanoid and two small, flying, acorn shaped bits. The Lavos core.
"Here are all the rest of your friends. And look! They are fighting another Lavos right now! The has opened a two-front war on you. Would you like see what is transpiring?" Fate asked. It seemed like I didn’t have a choice. I nodded and Fate, laughing and muttering to himself, took my hand.
.