Chrono Trigger: Twins of Destiny Chapter 23
Confrontation
By Mox Jet
Celes Orbit
Jack took off his white officers jacket and hung it carefully in his closet. Pushing past some of the other clothes, he pulled out a set of black battle garbs: loose fitting pants and tight black tanktop. On his forearms he clamped a pair of silver bracers and on his feet he tightened two jet-black combat boots. Bending down to the base of the closet, he applied pressure to a small indentation on the wall, causing a square panel to open up and reveal a tiny compartment in which was nestled a necklace. He drew it out and examined the blue pendent which hung from its chain. Standing up again, he tired the necklace around his neck and turned to look out the port hole and on to the planet below him.
Behind him, the door slid open and Sarah walked in wearing her officer’s uniform and carrying a sword in a simple leather scabbard. Walking up to him, she placed her right hand on his shoulder and handed him the blade with her left. He took the blade and lowered his head, closing his eyes.
“Are you sure you have to go?” she asked him. He forced a chuckle.
“You know more than anyone that I do,” he said, drawing the blade from its sheath. A dim red glow appeared around the double edged sword as Jack ran his fingers up and down the katana-style leather grip.
“Tristan could pull it off…” Sarah said. “I might be wrong.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “This will need the intervention of me and Doreen.” He lifted the blade up, flipped it over a few times in his hand, then sheathed it again and attacked the sheath to his hip. He turned to face her.
“I must go, and I must solve this,” he said. “Ready or not, this situation has come to a head. Darius has the boys, and I cannot let harm come to them.” Slowly, Sarah nodded.
“I have faith in you,” she said, smiling faintly and embracing him. She whispered in his ear, “I love you,” then kissed him and looked at him longingly. “Go,” she finally commanded him. “Go and bring them back.” He nodded in response, leaning forward and kissing her again, then quickly leaving the room before giving himself a chance to change his mind. He hurried down the hall, his right hand never releasing his grip on the scabbard.
.
Renektent
Tyrion was the first to awaken, finding himself in a rather precarious situation. He looked around, seeing that he was in some kind of laboratory. Trying to get up, he soon also found that he was being bound down to a table by thick metal straps. He squirmed around a for few moments, unable to release himself. He let out a grunt and continued to look around. To his left, the man with blue hair from the prison cell was strapped down to an identical table.
Must be Teclis, he thought to himself. He continued examine the room. Off to his right was a glass wall behind which lay the unconscious bodies of his allies, Alaria, Lina and Grev. Tristan was no where to be found, which gave Tyrion some hope that perhaps the mysterious man was watching over him from afar as he had promised on numerous occasions.
Around him there were a few large computers with large holographic projections. He noticed one of them displayed what he knew to be his own Lifestream signature. Only then did he become aware of the tubes that were stuck up his nose and the IV that was in his arm. Also, he noticed the fact that his robes had been stripped and he was wearing nothing but the loose brown fabric that made up his pants. He looked back over to Teclis and saw that he had been stripped to a similar state.
“You’re awake?” a voice came. He took a moment to focus in on its source and recognizing it as the blue haired man from before: Darius.
“You,” he stuttered. “What…do you want?” Tyrion asked, not really sure if any words were coming out of his extremely sore mouth. Darius couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Why, I want you, silly boy,” he said. “You are my Avatar, you could say.”
“But…why?” he asked. “Why go through all this?” Darius put his hand to his chin in thought.
“I suppose that’s fair question,” he said. “As you must be rather confused. “I’ll answer the question once, and since your friends will be dying to know as well…” He looked to the prison and extended his hand. “Wake up!” he shouted. To Tyrion’s shock, electricity filled the prison cell and forms of his companions filled with life, some of them yelping in pain.
“Bastard!” Tyrion cursed.
“Well, yes,” Darius muttered. “But technically, so are you.” In the cell, the others were rubbing their heads and climbing to their feet. Some instinctively reached for their weapons but found that they had been collected and placed in the corner of the room on the wrong side of the glass. Darius pointed to Teclis. “You too,” he said bitterly, sending a shock through the young man and causing his eyes to shoot open.
“Gah!” Teclis yelled, coming awake quickly, his body convulsing sharply and trying to break the bonds. His head turned to Darius and he was overcome by fury. “I’ll kill you!” he screamed, his eyes going wide with anger. “You’re going to fucking burn in hell and I’m going to laugh as you suffer!!”
“Now, now, young one,” he said, waving a finger. “No need to get nasty. As a matter of fact, I don’t even really need you anymore.”
“What did you need him for?” Tyrion asked coldly. “And me. What do you need me for?” Darius weighed the question for a moment, pausing to address the other prisoners.
“Is everyone paying attention?” Darius asked the others. “Because I’m only going to be kind enough to explain this once.”
“Explain before you die,” Alaria said. “Just like that rat, Yiri, died.”
“Miss Greywind, I promise you’ll have a much harder time defeating me than you did Yiri, especially considering you current…situation.” Alaria let out a growl, pounding the glass.
“Then talk!” she screamed. “And tell us why we’ve been through all of this! Why any of this had to happen! Why we couldn’t just go on living our lives!”
“I’m getting to it, my dear,” he said, shaking his head. “If you would just shut up and listen like a good little girl.” She growled again, but subsided and stepped away from the glass.
“Good,” Darius said. “So now I can try and shed some light on your unfortunate situations.” He clasped his hands behind his back, thinking about where to begin.
“My name is Darius Godessaire,” he said. “And, like these two boys here, I am also what is called a Planeswalker. The only difference is that when Geminus created me, it was thousands of years ago and Ithilmar was not yet even in the sky. My purpose, was to provide him with a clean genetic code from which to reconstruct his own DNA. Because, you see, my poor, poor father was unfortunate enough to find that a particular substance on this planet, Crystain, has a mutating effect on the DNA of his species. To add to his problems, he was also unfortunate enough to find that the cavern in which he rests is full of it and he didn’t even realize its effect until his powers had already become severely limited by the alterations it made to his genetic code.
“So how do you fix that?” Lina asked, seeing where he was going. Darius was happy to answer.
“When Planeswalker is born, they possess a ‘pure’ set of genes that allow the collection of Chaos energy, that is, the energy that powers both us and those like Geminus. He thought that if he created a Planeswalker, the Planeswalker would be born with pure genes and when those genes were returned to the Lifestream, he could collect them and assimilate the clean set. It was through this thought that I was born, ready to live and then die so his genetic code could be recreated.” Darius clenched his fist.
“But the joke was on him, because I didn’t come out properly,” he continued. “I was a ‘reject’ that also had a mutated genetic code. The Crystain had the same effect on me as it did on him. He was faced with a problem, then, and it was one that he took several thousand years in contemplating the answer to.”
“So he created us,” Tyrion said. “Teclis and I, as another try?”
“I served him so well…” Darius said bitterly, his fist still clenched. “I even created a religious organization that would worship him when he came to purge this planet of the life on it.” He turned to Alaria. “And yes, Miss Greywind, your precious Church is nothing more than a farce which I set in motion millennia ago in order to prepare the world for my father’s coming.” Alaria eyes went wide.
“Impossible!” she said, not really believing it.
“Oh, come now,” Darius said. “Consider what you now know about Geminus and everything you know about the Church. That the Two Avatars will come again to prepare the world for the ‘Judgment’ of his followers? That God’s son will come again?” Darius laughed. “I never died, Alaria. I only went to hiding, letting the puny nations of man think that they had killed me: the Son of the God of this world! How pathetic you must feel to have been drawn in so completely.”
“No…” she said, slumping to the ground.
“Oh get over yourself,” Darius said. “You and most of the rest of the world…so gullible…so desperate for something to grab on to. Leading you all around like puppets was so easy.” Alaria didn’t answer. Darius laughed at her.
“And your Nisai Ryu were in on it, too,” he continued. “I started them with the explicit purpose of monitoring the Church’s following on the surface when Ithilmar went into the sky. It was those few Nisai Ryu that disagreed…the Grand Masters and those that would become the Saidiar, that changed the goal of the order.”
“The Saidiar were…Nisai Ryu?” Lina asked.
“And still are, Technically,” Darius said with a laugh. “Isn’t that right, Grev?” Grev lowered his head.
“It’s true,” Grev admitted. “Adult male Nisai Ryu are trained to become Saidiar. It was the will of the Grand Masters to fight against Ithilmar and prepare the world for Geminus’s return. Your creed…our creed: Halus Viavius Geminus Jallar, means “To Find the Son of Geminus We Search” in Ithilmarian. The order became a training ground for the army to fight Geminus and the army to fight Ithilmar.” He looked at Alaria. “After all, how else would I know so much about your weapons and customs?”
“I don’t know…” she said, head lowered.
“Because you’ve only believed what you were told,” Darius said. “And like a good little puppet, you played your part.”
“I am not!” she said, new life flowing into her. Darius shook her head.
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Geminus couldn’t get what he needed out of me, and so he tried again. The only problem was that there were two eggs that were fertilized in the new Vessel, Jara, and she gave birth to twins. If Geminus had his way, those Twins would be allowed to grow only until they were old enough to express the Black Wings, at which point several genetic limiters on a Planeswalkers seem to be removed. It was through sheer luck that Jara managed to break free from Geminus’s control and send the boys to be hidden away.” Darius laughed. “But perhaps it was for the better. As it happens, you two possess mutated genes as well, but Geminus noted that it could be turned to his advantage.”
“How so?” Tyrion asked.
“Consider the abilities of you and your brother,” Darius said. “Your strength and speed are unparalleled, and your brother has tremendous abilities with magic and energy. Your individual mutations led to these idiosyncrasies. However, Geminus figures that when the individually mutated sets of genes are combined, he can access a set of genes that is even more powerful than his own original set!”
“And so you needed the two of us to extract out genetic code,” Teclis said. “So that you could build a super-strain of DNA for Geminus.”
“Exactly!” Darius said. “I had to go through quite the bit of work to acquire you both. Originally, we thought you were both in Lyons and so we made a treaty with their government, helping them in their war in exchange for help locating you two. We were able to find Tyrion that way, but we had to take alternate routes in tracking down Teclis. To solve that issue, we put an open bounty on his head and let every bounty hunters on Celes scour the earth for him. When we finally tracked him down, he played into our hands. For a moment, we thought that you had also slipped out of our reach, Tyrion, but then you came running into our grasp as well.” He began to pace back towards the boys on the tables.
“I took the liberty of extracting samples from both of you while you were asleep. All that needs to happen now is for the computer check the recombination potential of the genes and now here we are, all ready to complete the plan the Geminus had envisioned!” Behind the wall of the cell, Lina shook her head.
“No, no, no!” she said. “That doesn’t make sense.” She looked at Darius and waved a finger. “What’s in it for you?” she asked him. “Because that whole thing seems like way too much of a hassle for you if you have nothing to gain.” Darius couldn’t help but smile.
“Quite astute,” Darius said. “Certainly service to-”
“Service to Geminus is reward enough,” came a new voice. Everyone shot their glance to the right to see a woman with long blue and gold robes and a regal aura walk into the room.
“Who the hell are you?” Teclis asked.
“Silly boy,” the woman said. “You don’t recognize your own mother?”
“I have no parents,” Teclis spat. “Don’t think for a second you can claim that right to be my mother.”
“Well, sadly, Teclis, you don’t have much of a choice at the moment.” She walked up to him and stroked his cheek. He cringed and pulled away.
“Away from me, devil woman!” he shouted. “You’re nothing more than a slave to evil!”
“Feisty little thing, isn’t he?” she asked Darius. The Planeswalker only responded with a cold stare.
“Jara, I’m handling this,” Darius said.
“And I’m observing,” Jara answered. Darius looked pissed.
“You’re interrupting,” he said coldly.
“Get off your horse, Darius,” Jara said, walking up to him. “And let’s get this procedure over with.”
“Psh,” he scoffed. “Fine.” He walked up to the computer that was positioned between Tyrion and Teclis’s tables. He typed in a few commands on a touch-pad and then hit a red button on the side of the monitor. On the screen, pictures of Teclis’ and Tyrion’s genomes appeared and the computer began to run through a series of calculations. A timer appeared above the calculations that started at about eighteen minutes and began to countdown.
“So what happens to us now?” Tyrion asked Darius, gritting his teeth. Darius smirked.
“Well, once this computer finishes making sure that your genomes can be combined as Geminus desires, we need to return your DNA to the Lifestream so that he can absorb it.”
“What??” Teclis demanded. “You take what you need and then you kill us?”
“Oh, most certainly,” Jara said. “But don’t worry. Darius will be sure to kill your friends, too. You won’t be lonely.” He looked to Tyrion. “And you’ll be with that girl…what was her name again? Rachel?” Tyrion twitched. “Ahh, yes,” Jara continued. “You’ll be with her again. Fitting, actually, that we will have killed both of you.” Tyrion’s heart stopped.
“What?” he asked coldly
“I said it would be fitting that we will have killed both of you,” Jara repeated. Tyrion’s eyes became filled with anger and his face glowed red. “What?” Jara asked. “Oh, that’s right. Kallar told you that she was killed by Denegrad soldiers.” She laughed. “Actually that whole plot was my idea. Genius wasn’t it? To get you to actually come to us by killing your beloved and making you think that Denegrad had done it? I must admit, I was quite impressed with myself.” Tyrion did not seem so amused.
“You…” he said hopelessly, shaking his head. His energy suddenly became very focused. “I’m…going…to…” he said, taking deep breaths between words. The anger that was welling up inside of him defied proper explanation, but as the magma in the earth wells up before it explodes outward in a volcano, the energies inside Tyrion were ready to burst. An extremely dark presence filled the room and his body began to cackle with energy.
“Oh, you don’t think you’re going to escape and do something about it, do you?” Jara asked him. Tyrion closed his eyes tightly shut and all of his muscles tensed up.
“Kill…you…” he said, trying hard not to let the energies around him get out of control. Wind surged through the room.
“Darius,” Jara said. “There aren’t any magical Winds in this room. What is he drawing on?” Darius neither moved nor answered. Jara suddenly became slightly worried.
“Arrrrghhh!!!” Tyrion screamed, pulling his arms and legs and trying to tear the bonds. One by ones, the veins in his arms bulged outward as every ounce of strength that he had was poured into his escape. He became engulfed in a dark blue glow and black balls of energy formed in his hands.
“Guys, watch out!” Lina screamed to the others in the cell, knowing full well what was coming.
“Ahhhhhhh!!!” Tyrion screamed again, agony wracking his body. Jara took a step backwards, unaware of what was actually happening. Slowly, the metal on his bonds began to bend and he applied ever more pressure.
“I’LL KILL YOU!!!” He screamed, finally breaking the bonds and flying off the table with speed that not even Darius could follow. In nothing more than a blur, he had launched himself at the Vessel with hands clasped together. Bringing them across his body in a downward arc, he didn’t even feel his energy engulfed fists tear straight through Jara’s body, incinerating her internal organs as he passed through them. In less than a blink, his hands came out the other side and he spun around full circle, bringing them across her face and knocking her head clear off with the force of the blow. The head went flying across the room and exploded with a splat against some steel cabinets and the rest of her eviscerated body fell to the floor, dead.
The Vessel was just a vessel, after all, and clean decapitation killed even a Farilii.
Tyrion panted heavily, his energy spent. Darius looked at him, resisting the urge to laugh maniacally.
“Thank you,” he said simply before extending his hand and blowing Tyrion into the far wall with a magical blast. As Tyrion slumped there, Darius waved his hand and caused him to disappear from view, reappearing behind the cell wall. Tyrion leaned against the wall there, breathing very deeply and looking at Darius with the fires of hell in his eyes.
“I say thank you because she’s been in my way,” Darius clarified. “I am glad I didn’t have to do that on my own.”
“She wasn’t my mother,” Tyrion said, only then realizing what he had done. “She wasn’t…my mother…” he shivered.
“No, she wasn’t,” Lina said solemnly, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Your mother was engulfed long ago by Geminus.”
“Rachel…” he said. “I’ve…avenged you…”
“Heartwarming,” Darius said coldly. “But to the matter at the moment, you all are as good as dead to me when that counter reaches zero,” he pointed to the timer that now displayed just over fourteen minutes.
“Now, you see, I’m afraid I’ve got of a problem with that,” a familiar voice said, though it was not one possessed by any of the captives. Everyone’s glances shot to the far end of the room where a blonde man in a trench coat stood. Tristan’s gaze fell on to Darius. “Because I still want these boys alive.”
“Tristan!” Tyrion exclaimed, new life flowing into him.
“I don’t know who you are,” Teclis said. “But if you’re opposed to this blue headed asshole over here, you’re okay in my book.”
“Easy, everyone. Tristan’s here to save the day,” Tristan said. “And if you’re in the way of said day saving, I think we have a problem, Darius.”
“I don’t know who you are,” Darius said. “But you’re about to die, you fool.” He paused in thought, recollection of Tristan’s image hitting him. He raised a finger. “Oh, you’re the man who dodged my attack before.” He shook his head. “It means you must have some skill. That’s good…I haven’t been challenged in a very, very long time.” He grinned. “Okay, then,” he said, cracking his knuckles. “Let the games begin…”
.
“There was some sort of weird connection that I felt when I first saw Tyrion, and it was the same as when I first saw Jack. These were men with whom I had absolutely no experience with prior to that day and somehow there was just something between us that was understood. That connection was more than just that of brothers between Tyrion and I, but between Planeswalkers with like minds; there’s some sort of wavelength that we connected on. Perhaps its the understanding of similar destinies, but it’s why I trusted Tristan right away, because Tyrion trusted him. For some reason that I’ve never been able to explain, that was good enough for me.” –Teclis Spelman