Chrono Trigger: Dare Chapter 6
Aire and Tirantis, Mostern and Lavos
By Crono_12
I swung my sword at his arm, hoping to stop the fight quickly. He jumped out of the way and backhanded me. Regaining my balance, I spun around and fired lightning at him. In less time than a blink of an eye, he swung his sword at the bolt and dispersed it. My awe lasted only a second because he launched a bolt of lightning back at me. I used my sword to bounce the lightning away from me and into the ground. And so it continued, each of us dodging or parrying or reflecting each other’s attacks. The battle raged on, neither of us gaining any andvantage over the other. Our skills were matched in every aspect, parry for parry, thrust for thrust, technique for technique. The battle became mechanical; we fought for so long we knew what the other would do. As for how long we had been fighting, I can’t tell. When fighting, no one really concentrates on anything but the fight itself. Strangely enough, in this fight, my mind began to wander. And then, suddenly, our swords clanged together and stayed there, surprising the both of us and making me painfully aware of the tip of his blade. Much to my surprise, I felt tired. I hadn’t noticed.
"I’ve never seen anyone fight like that!" He gasped between breaths.
"You’re not bad yourself. What say we call it a truce for now?" I offered, equally winded.
He thought for a second, then sheathed his sword and held out his hand. I gladly put away my weapon and accepted it.
"My name is Cid."
"My name is Crono. I know this seems a little…weird, but where am I? And where is Marle?"
Cid made a face. "Weird, yes, but not the weirdest I’ve seen or heard. You are on the planet Aire, in the former city of Caier. Amazing that you don’t know the most famous city on the planet."
I opened my mouth to say something, then shut it immediately. He had said Aire, not Earth. I pieced all the information in my mind, and came up with one fantastic answer. I flashed back to the time we were in the room with the hologram. Marle’s pendant had glimmered for a second time before we had left. Now I had figured out what the twinkle was. It had activated the gate, and teleported Marle, Lucca, and me here. My eyes opened wide as the facts came down on me.
"Hello? You still there? Or have you phased out of existence? Where did you come from that you don’t know what planet you’re on?"
The questions snapped me back to the present.
"I know you’re not going to believe this, but from a different planet, called Earth." I saw his jaw drop in awe as I continued the story. "Lucca, Marle, and I stumbled across an old Zealian building, and within it we found a gate leading to a planet the people of Zeal called Tirantis. We activated the gate on accident, and our ship and we were transported here," I explained.
"You mean to say that Zeal exists on this…this Earth? Like it does here?" He asked, anxiety in his voice.
"WHAT? Zeal exists here too? Since when? How?"
"Scientifically, I can’t answer that. It has always existed here. But, I’ve heard legends that a King was sent from the heavens to Aire. Most of our people worshipped him as a God, until he discovered Mostern. He then made a pact with the beast, and it granted him eternal life. He then drew upon its power to create a huge floating kingdom, filled with his followers. We-"
"Wait a sec. Did this Mostern have a huge shell on it’s back, with spines protruding, and a head made up of three segments, the joining point of the segments being a metallic-looking eye?" I interrupted.
He did a double take.
"Crono, you just described Mostern down to the horrible eye itself! How do you know how it looks like?"
I looked solemnly at him, all humor gone from my mind, memories of Lavos flooding back to me.
"Cid. I know that beast too damn well. It tried to infest Earth, but failed. It failed because a group of young warriors destroyed it. I was one of them. Marle as well. We called him…it…Lavos."
Cid stared at me in shock as I recounted for him how much effort it took in bringing Lavos down. Once I had finished, he had lost all humor too.
"You mentioned a third person with you earlier. Who is she?"
"Lucca? Oh, she is the genius of the group. Our ship took a beating when we came here, and she had to repair it."
"Did she help in fighting Lavos?"
"If it weren’t for her, we would have lost from the very beginning."
"Where did your ship crash? We have to get her before King Zeal finds her," he ordered.
We found our way through the wreckage to the door and to the outside. I looked up, then did a double take. I saw a small off-yellow ship darting in between two larger ships, firing lasers whenever it could.
"Come on! That’s Lucca, and it looks like she could use a hand!"
Cid and I ran all the way to where Lucca was battling, but we had a problem. She was up in the air, and we were down on the ground. I looked at Cid and saw him drawing his sword.
"I thought we were done with the dueling!" I said as I reached for my own sword.
He ignored me, and angled the blade so that it reflected the light from the red sun. In a matter of seconds, the Epoch landed.
"Crono! Get in quick! We’re gonna burn these babies!" Lucca pretended not to notice Cid, but then flashed me a wild grin as I passed by.
"Who’s the hunk?" She whispered as the Epoch took off at a breakneck speed.
When we were in the air, I told Lucca who my friend was. "Lucca, meet Cid. Cid, meet Lucca. Lucca, this planet is called Aire. King Zeal is alive, and has established a kingdom like Zeal on Earth. He’s also dealing with another Lavos, and we have to get Marle."
Lucca grunted; any more of a resonse required her to spare too much concentration. I noticed the Epoch looked nearly back to normal, with the exception of the cracks in the windows. They seemed a bit thinner. On a second glance I noticed some of the panels were fused together rather crudely. I was about to ask Lucca if she had taken off the third layer of the triple paned window when my thoughts were interrupted as the Epoch started to shake violently. The shaking stopped as abruptly as it started.
"What the-?"
"We’ve been hit. By the feel of it, it didn’t do much damage; this thing can take a beating and keep it coming. But if they keep hitting us, I can guarantee a nice, fast, death," Lucca explained.
I thought for a second, then rummaged around in the Epoch’s storage compartment. Not finding what I wanted, I searched my waist bag for a certain root that had the ability to restore my magic energy, mana. I found just enough to allow me to summon Ramuh. I cast lightning, then, following Ramuh’s instructions, I blurted the incantation.
"Judgement Bolt, strike now!"
I heard the familiar low rumbling, and then I saw a bump appeared in the flat terrain. The bump grew to be a hill, the hill a mountain. Atop the peak of earth stood a giant. Ramuh looked down at me from the mountain, and then the Judgment Bolt was cast. Electricity jumped between Ramuh’s staff and his free hand, forming a strange Jacob’s Ladder. Bolts of lightning flashed around, missed us, and electrocuted the other ships. The air inside the Epoch felt as if it were filled with static. The ships outside turned around and ran away, smoking. The spell stopped in an instant. The mountain disappeared and the old man vanished. No one said anything for the next minute. Lucca landed the ship, then turned around to me.
"Crono, how the HELL DID YOU DO THAT?" Lucca asked me roughly.
"Simple. He summoned Ramuh," Cid answered for me.
"He summoned who?" Lucca asked, still confused.
"He summoned Ramuh," Cid said again.
"How I got it is a long story. Summoning is just like a magic spell, only it calls, or summons, a monster to attack your enemies."
Lucca nodded and I continued.
"For anyone to be able to summon, they have to first go underground to the Land of Summoned monsters, then fight the one or ones he wants to be able to summon. If he-or she-wins, then they get the ability to summon that monster. But, you don’t have to fight the monster that shares your magic abilities. Ramuh casts lightning, so I don’t have to fight him because my magic type is lightning," I finished proudly.
"Ah, so you mean to tell me that you went underground, met a group of friendly monsters who can be summoned to attack enemies, and then came back up here without fighting one?" She asked
"Well, when you say it that way it sounds kind of…well, stupid," I said sheepishly.
"Which is exactly what it is! Silly! Stupid! How do I know that isn’t just a nice hologram created by whoever lives here?"
"You didn’t believe in magic until you got fire magic, so I bet you’re not going to believe this until you get it." I sighed. Lucca was always a scientific person, and sometimes didn’t believe something even if she had seen it.
"Damn right!" She exclaimed.
I was shocked. Lucca doesn’t curse often. In fact, she’s a perfect lady most of the time. Thankfully, she regained her usual composure at once.
"I mean, yeah, that’s right," she corrected. Lucca ran a hand through her brown hair. She thought for a second, then asked me a question that had slipped my mind ever since my fight with Cid.
"Crono, where’s Marle?"
"Um, Cid, where is Marle?" I forwarded the question to him.
"She was being taken to another dome," he answered coolly.
"What do you mean she was taken?" Lucca asked me sternly.
I had no choice now. I couldn’t dodge the question. So I filled her in on what had happened ever since Marle and I left her.
"Great. Just great. I leave you for an hour or two, and look what happens."
I grimaced. Even though we grew up together, made the same mistakes together, she was three and a half years older than I was, which meant that my mother always told her to take care of me. Because of an interpretation problem, she has always tried to mother me, though over the years it’s become more of a friendly jabbing than anything else. Which isn’t to say she she doesn’t try to stop me from making any bad decisions, but most of her mothering is in the form of sarcasm and humor. Most of the time, though, she understands my point of view, and that’s how we’ve stayed friends. But she’s never been wrong.
"Look. Sorry Lucca. But don’t you think we should be trying to find Marle?" I apologized. She smiled and winked at me.
"All right, let’s go," Lucca ordered, temporarily in command. As we approached the dome Cid pointed out, called Dominia Dome by Cid, I reflected on the events five years ago in Zeal. In the beginning, we defeated Dalton, Queen Zeal's right hand man. Dalton, seeking revenge, sealed Zeal from us. But we came back via the Epoch and freed Melchior, the Guru of Reason, from the Mountain of Woe. In return, he gave us a ruby sword to destroy a machine called the Mammon Machine, and with it, Zeal itself. The Mammon Machine was something that harnessed the evil power of Lavos, called the Dark Wind, and with the energy powered all Zeal. We destroyed it, but the Queen somehow summoned Lavos and us to a dimension of her making, where Lavos killed me. I managed to injure Lavos enough so that he broke his hold on Marle and the others. They were transported back to the Undersea Palace, and sent back to dry land using the last power from Schala’s Pendant, an artifact similar to Marle’s. Schala, as well as the rest of the palace, now reside under one heavy heart and millions of tons of ocean water.
"Hello! Aire to Crono! We’re there," Luca interjected harshly, interrupting my chain of thoughts.
"Mmph? Oh, yeah. Sorry, I was just reliving the pasat. Something about this place is bringing back those memories," I said, my mind still far away.
"I know what you mean. I was having flashbacks about the time I had to almost reconstruct Robo." Lucca shivered. I gave her a huge hug; it looked like she needed it. Cid turned the other way politely.
"All right all ready. Come on you big sap, let’s go get your fiancée," Lucca told me. She motioned for me to lead the way, all delusions of grandeur gone from her mind.
.