Soul Pendant Chapter 2
Emotions
By Saul
"Ayla and Frog are here." Lucca announced as the three entered the main "room" of the End of Time.
"Good. Now we need someone to get Robo and Janus." Gaspar said.
"I'll go now." Insisted Marle.
"But I want to get Robo!" Claimed Lucca.
"It's my turn now." Marle jumped into the Epoch and started the time warp.
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2300 AD
It was good times at 2300 AD. The technology flourished. Domed cities, teleport travel, virtual reality internet, Moon and Mars colonies. If an American had an friend in Japan, in Internet he could feel as if he were really with his friend, or he could teleport to Japan in seconds.
The latest news was the robot that claimed that he had emotions. R-66Y or Prometheus, as he was sometimes named, had always done the bidding of their masters, but when they wanted to change his memory chip, he refused. It was normal nowadays the robots with simulated feelings, and some people treated robots like people, but this was new.
Prometheus went to a lawyer's boreau and asked them to defend his rights. They accepted. Prometheus was state's property so the case was taken to a court. Could really a robot have emotions? This was the trial of the century, though it was just beginning.
Prometheus was sitting on a cliff next to Atropos, explaining to her the meaning of friendship (looked like she had already understood love), when the Epoch blasted out of the sky.
"Prometheus, isn't that the Epoch?"
"Affirmative, Atropos. It looks like Marle is driving it."
"Looks like?"
"It means that I can't be sure. I say it but I have no sure proofs that it is the truth."
"If it's not a confirmed fact, why do you bother in saying it?"
"That's the way humans think."
"I can hardly understand the humans or you."
"You would have go adventuring like me to understand. Humans don't have true reasons to do things, don't express themselves exactly or follow logic always."
The Epoch landed nearby and Marle came out of it. "Hi Robo!"
"Greetings Marle. This is my friend Atropos." Said Robo as he stood up.
"Hi Atropos. I remember you from the other future. Hey Robo, she's quite a cutie." Marle giggled.
Atropos' eyes blinked ritmically and she looked like she was processing something hardly. A couple of seconds later, she said, "Thanks. I'm R-66X or Atropos XR."
"Is something wrong?" Robo said, noticing her processing.
"No person had actually called me "cutie" before."
"What does that make you feel?"
"That path of action wasn't expected or programmed to follow, so I had to think quickly of a response, but I can't be sure if it is the right one because I have no previous memories of an incident of this type."
"You're surprised."
Atropos' eyes blinked again. "That did "surprise" me too."
"Hey!" Marle exclaimed, interrupting the conversation. "Sorry to bother you, but Gaspar is needing you Robo."
"Now? I can't leave. I'm on a trial." Robo answered.
"What? Who did you kill?" Marle said worried.
"I didn't kill a person. The trial is to demonstrate I do have emotions and feelings. It is a very important matter."
"But then who will come? I'm sure this is important too."
An original and brand new concept - an idea - formed in Robo's mind. "Atropos will go."
"Atropos? Gaspar said he needed the team because there is an emergency in our futures. He needs you."
"Atropos has combat abilities similar to mine."
"I'm not sure. Atropos, would you like coming?"
"I have no orders of either staying or going, but it is Robo's wish and I will have the chance of understanding the emotions. I may go."
"Ok, Robo. I'll ask Gaspar, but if he says he needs you, I will come back for you."
"I am in agreement with that choice."
Marle, wishing Robo were human enough to talk normally, and Atropos jumped into the Epoch and zoomed into the time warp.
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End of Time
Atropos and Marle jumped into the platform. Everyone stared at them, only Lucca recognized Atropos.
"This is Atropos, Robo's friend. Robo couldn't come because he had to show he has feelings."
"Nice to meet you Atropos. I'm Lucca, and these are Crono, Frog and Ayla." Lucca said signaling at them.
"I'm pleased to meet you Lucca, Crono, Frog and Ayla. Robo has told me about you. I hope I can be of assistance and get to understand the emotions everyone talks about."
Lucca noticed Atropos didn't use formal terms. "I'm sure you will. Robo has taught you well."
Gaspar looked at Atropos. "Under normal circumstances I would not accept other one than Robo, but as this event concerns you too and it will be only temporary, it is okay. Now would anyone get Janus?"
"Where is he, Gaspar? Last time we saw him he was climbing some mountain."
"All I know is that he went to 12000 BC."
"I'll go." Crono said. "Ayla, I'll need you."
Ayla nodded and jumped besides Crono in the Epoch.
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12000 BC
"If Magus is here, he may still pose as the prophet."
"Blue man, looking for sister." Ayla jumped off the Epoch with Crono. "Brrrrrr. Cold!" It was pretty cold although it had stopped snowing.
"Oh, I forgot about that. Do you want to wait on a hut?"
"Ayla strong, no pain cold. Better look for blue hair man so go out of cold."
Crono and Ayla asked in the commons and found out that the prophet indeed had appeared in this era, but recently had been missing again. The pair flew on the Epoch looking into every island, and finally found him inside the small cave in one of them, casting spells at one point of the ground.
"Magus! There you are."
"Oh, it is you. I was trying to open the gate again. What are you doing here?"
"Gaspar needs all of us."
"Great, because I needed Gaspar to find Schala. I don't think she's on this era."
"We'll talk about that later."
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End of Time
"Ok, we finally have everyone in here..." Gaspar noticed how strangely Magus looked at Atropos. "well, kind of."
"I don't know what is going on here, but I only want to find Schala."
"Janus, if you don't succeed in this, you'll probably never find Schala." With that, Magus had to keep his mouth shut for once. "Now will everyone hear me?"
Everybody nodded.
"Ok. Seven pendants of faraway lands... ejem... come with... the power..."
"Seven pendants of faraway lands protect the future of Chrono Triggers, so shall the evil arise more than once, the leaders of time will always be there. The keeping of a hope for the future is the power that the soul pendants have." Atropos said as most people stared at her in amazement. "That is the 300 year old Soul Pendants legend."
"I wouldn't have said it better!" Gaspar exclaimed.
"Yes, but what doeth it truthfully mean?"
"Where should I start?... Well, you are chosen ones that saved the world like no one would have done. In the far future, evil forces may threaten the world again, so there must be others then also save it."
"Why can't we do it?"
"It is out of your reach. Plus, if you tried to save the world from every single evil that appears, you would never have time to live a normal life."
"So who will?"
"The chosen ones are unique, and no one may replace them, except their own descendants. But if his descendants are unworthy, they cannot save the world. So, each descendant must be an image of its progenitor."
"Wait a minute. Robo is one of the chosen ones, how is it possible he has descendants?"
"They must not only be biologic progeny, but to have the courage, ideals and love for the world as his or her ancestors, as I said, the ancestor must be in some way present on it. May Robo not have biological children, but if he builds by himself a robot, cares about him and transmits his personal feelings, the robot can be said to be his descendant, as he is a continuation of himself in another being."
"This is complicated. Could you tell us what is exactly happening?"
"I can show you." Gaspar took a Chrono Trigger out of his vest and held it on his hand. It began to spin, and some sort of screen formed. It showed the disgraceful descendants of the Chrono Trigger team: Cronx, Lang Ta, Glarem, the RXY series, Atumy and Magina. Even Magus was affected by this vision, it was awful. "If you gather the Soul Pendants, it will be made sure that something like this won't happen whatever follows."
"But wasn't Doan my descendant, and Ayla my ancestor?" Marle asked.
"When the succession lines of important persons, like Ayla and Kino and you and Crono, meet, they will move apart from each other over the generations. Your children may be a mixture of the two, but the children of your children will only be cousins from each others and in a few more generations they will be different families, one of them will be more like Crono and one of them will be more like Marle. Marle, you are more a Kino's descendant than Ayla's, and Cronx is more like Crono's descendant than yours."
"And what about Doan?"
"Indeed he is your descendant, and so his daughter." The Chrono Trigger shows a girl with long, yellow hair and blue eyes that wears Marle's pendant. She is nice, happy and correct, but later she is shown very concerned, and after that, dead.
"Noooo!" Marle cried. "What was wrong with her?", she asked, indeed distressed by the vision.
"Only that she was alone, and cared so much than tried to fight this way and failed. She is the only one worthy. That is, because Marle has the Light Soul Pendant."
"WHAT???" Asked everyone looking at Marle's pendant.
"Yes, Marle's pendant is one of the seven. As her family always kept it, she was protected from corrupting, but not from this awful destiny. Also that's why Marle's bloodlines have always had a bright future."
"What can we do?"
"The evil you fight is very strong, although I have still not determined its identity. It was the one who was able to turn the team members evil along many generations. In the far future, as no team is there to stop it, he may turn the world into chaos. But, if you find each one of the seven Soul Pendants: Light, Darkness, Flame, Solid, Wave, Air and Life and place them together, the rightfulness of the team will be sealed no matter what happens to the pendants."
"Guess who's getting the Dark pendant." Lucca said looking at Magus.
"You're wrong. The pendant's nature has nothing to do with the magic types. It is about the way the things show in our world. Although Fire is normally shown as a flame, with the power of the pendants there can be an icy flame or a solid fire. Although Janus dominates Shadow Magic, that has nothing to do with the Darkness pendant."
"Then what is the difference between the magic elements and natures?"
"The elements are the prime material and the nature is the way it works. Shadow, for example, is the energy that comes from the fusion of all the elements, being the weaknesses of each one cancelled and only the proposal of making damage remaining. Darkness is the nature of the things we don't know, of the emptiness and infinity of space, of the thrill of a mystery we can't figure clearly, of the knowledge that is completely absorbed and hardly revealed."
"And Light?" Marle asked lifting her pendant.
"Light could be the exact opposite of Darkness, more than Fire and Ice. It is the nature of things we do know for sure, of what can be known completely and is the basis for other things, of clear purposes and sincerity, of the unimaginable bright of the center of a star, of the purity of beginning of something anew."
"What pendant could get..." Magus started asking.
The door to Spekkio's room suddenly opened, and a powerful voice came from within. "Hey, guys, sorry to bother you, but there is a pretty interesting battle going on 1000 AD."
"This matter possess higher importance than any single battle." Frog said.
"Oh, well." Spekkio answered from his room. "I thought you would like to hear about it. They're attacking Guardia Castle.".
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