FicWad

Disclaimer: Chrono Trigger and all its attendant goodies belong to Square-Enix. I'm just playing in their sandbox. Further information can be found in the header for Chapter One.

Thanks to Xyn at fanfiction.net for catching my lapse in proofreading.



She hit the ground on her knees, a little dizzy from the time travel. After so long with the Epoch, Lucca had almost forgotten what a rush the Gates were. She wasn't certain that she'd missed it.

Getting to her feet, she glanced around and found herself in a large clearing, the half-moon shining down overhead. Ahead, the lights of civilization glowed through the gaps in the trees. There could be little doubt which civilization it was.

Lucca took off at a run, wondering how long she had before the fire broke out. If the time frame of the last Red Gate was any indication, the answer was "not long."

Wheezing and clutching her side, Lucca came to a stop against the wall of an outlying shed and tried to catch her breath. Apparently she'd gotten a bit out of shape since the battle against Lavos. Not that a genius needed to be athletic, but it was embarrassing.

There'd be time to worry about that later, though. She sent her mind racing through parallel memories, hoping to find a clue hidden in a half-attended history lesson. Of course, there hadn't been any witnesses, so the odds of her finding an answer down that road were slim.

But something wasn't right here. Farther along in the town, there were lights shining in several windows, indicating that a percentage of the populace was still up. Surely those people would have been able to run away before a fire claimed them. While Sandorino wasn't as sprawling as, say, Porre, there were enough homes spaced far enough apart that a normal blaze shouldn't have been able to kill everyone, especially those who were awake enough to see what was happening. It was too much to ascribe to an accident. It was almost too much to ascribe to arson.

"But I heard one of our kind is living here," came a raspy voice from the forest.

Lucca started, then dove around the side of the shed. Easing the Wondershot out of its holster, she peered around the corner and waited for the speaker to reveal himself.

"Traitor," grunted another voice. Something about it was vaguely and unpleasantly familiar. "No one who grovels for peace with the humans is a true Mystic."

There was a chorus of agreement, suggesting more a dozen figures were hiding in the shadows. Lucca cursed herself for neglecting to bring bombs.

"Is everyone clear on the plan?" continued the voice.

"Yes, Sir Ozzie!"

Lucca let out an annoyed sigh. Why is it always an Ozzie?

Ozzie went on, barely keeping his voice low enough to avoid alerting the village, "Tonight we leave a message the humans cannot ignore. Tonight, the Mystics rise again!" He was answered with muffled cheering.

That was interesting. Either they'd completely botched their "message," or someone in the Guardia investigation hadn't wanted the Mystic uprising to become public knowledge. Lucca's innate distrust of politicians led her to suspect the latter.

"Enough!" barked Ozzie. "Secure the perimeter!"

If she didn't make her move now, Lucca would have to contend with a town surrounded by enemies. She took a breath to steady her nerves, then angled herself around the corner and aimed her gun in the direction of the voices.

"Wake up!" she screamed. "You're under attack!" Before she'd finished speaking, she'd already fired a shot into the darkness and heard an inhuman shriek.

The windows of the houses nearest her lit up. Encouraged, she fired another round and ducked back behind the shed. Confusion was her ally now, but it wouldn't take long for Ozzie's minions to follow the blasts back to her. And then where could she run?

If the monsters chased her into the town itself, there would be bloodshed, and at least some of it would be on the part of the villagers. But if she drew the Mystics away...

Lucca sent one more blast into the trees before scampering into the forest. If his ancestor was any indication, this Ozzie would be hot for revenge as long as he had backup. And all that she needed was enough open space to use her fire magic.

"It went this way! Catch it! Catch it, you fools!"

As gratifying as it was to know that she'd guessed correctly, Lucca wasn't keen on being called an "it." And by the time she'd sprinted into the clearing with the Gate, the stitch in her side had only added to her annoyance. This Ozzie was asking for it.

An assortment of shadows reached the edge of the clearing. Lucca didn't get a good look at the Mystics who first charged her, and they weren't identifiable after her magic roared over them. The monsters who had been close enough to see the devastation wisely hung back in the trees, and the ones behind them took the hint.

Except for Ozzie. This particular branch of the family tree didn't seem to have inherited the cowardice gene; he broke through the line of Mystics in front of him and rushed into the clearing at top speed, bellowing, "You filthy human pest!"

Times like these made Lucca appreciate having a Sun Stone-powered weapon. With the flick of a switch, she went from being charged by a ghostly streak in the darkness to being charged by an illuminated target. Her blast halted Ozzie and threw him into a frenzied shrieking.

The shot also scattered the Mystics who were watching from the cover of the trees. "Looks like you should have stuck with the family tradition," Lucca remarked, drawing a bead on Ozzie as he began to cast a spell. But this time he spun aside before she fired, and Lucca barely dodged a blast of ice magic.

Without giving her time to recover, Ozzie sent a barrage of ice chunks into the night air. Lucca ran for cover, but one of the missiles grazed her thigh, breaking her balance and landing her face-down in the grass. Another missed her head by inches.

Panting, she pushed herself up in time to see Ozzie preparing another round of magic. She threw a weak fire spell at him, doing little harm but giving her a chance to get to her feet. Ozzie eyed Lucca warily.

"How is it a piece of human filth uses magic?" he demanded.

She ignored the bait. Taunting had nearly gotten her killed a few seconds ago, so it was clearly time to shut up and fight. While Ozzie was puzzling over her ability to throw little flames, Lucca was building up much bigger ones.

Flare took him completely off-guard.

"Like that," she said, once she was certain the magic had done its job. Even as the air thickened with the smell of roast Ozzie, she fired a final blast from her gun into the Mystic's remains. There was a lot to be said for thoroughness.

In the near distance, Sandorino had bloomed into a cluster of lights. Even if the surviving Mystics made another attempt on the village tonight, they wouldn't get very far.

Satisfied, she holstered the Wondershot and let herself back through the Gate. That the Mystics hadn't seemed aware of the glowing portal made her certain that she'd been given something special. Another gift.

As she picked herself up off the floor of the now-dark kitchen, she smiled at whatever force happened to be listening. "Thanks," she said before heading back to her bedroom.

Thoughts of how she'd relate the story to Crono and Marle whirled giddily around her brain as she got ready for bed. At first she was worried she'd have too much of an adrenaline rush to sleep, but her body had other ideas. She was out before she'd finished pulling up the covers.



An usually high concentration of daylight streamed in through her window. Blinking, Lucca fumbled her glasses onto her face and read the clock on her desk. It was almost noon.

She let out a low whistle as she stretched. Usually, her mother liked to see that everyone was up and about by eight o'clock, as a means of discouraging late-night inventing sessions. Lucca had learned long ago that the best defense in those cases was to ask Crono to put her up for the night, since his mother didn't see anything wrong with a growing teenager sleeping until lunch.

Well, long ago in the newer set of memories.

Lucca felt a bit uncomfortable as she dug for clean clothing on her floor. As much as she dreaded being dragged out of bed on a few hours' sleep, she liked the reassurance that her mother was really, permanently all right. When Lara had decided to let her have a late lie-in a few months ago, Lucca had all but panicked until she'd found her mother cheerily cleaning the living room curtains. Even now, a little break in the routine made her stomach knot up.

But there wasn't time for that. She needed to let her friends know that Sandorino had been single-handedly saved by the inimitable Lucca the Great. Maybe she wouldn't phrase it quite that way, but there was no harm in entertaining a few heroic delusions in the privacy of her own head. It was just a pity there was no way to let Sandorino give her a plaque.

In the world outside her imagination, clean clothing was becoming a difficult prospect. She must have been neglecting her laundry even more than usual lately. At last Lucca settled for the least dirty outfit and headed downstairs.

Her mother wasn't there.

Great. Now Lucca would be worried until she saw that everything was still all right. Nervous irritation carried her into the empty kitchen, then up to her mother's bedroom.

"There you are," Lucca said in a mixture of annoyance and relief. Her mother was seated by the window, staring out over the yard. "And, uh, good morning," she added.

"Good morning." Lara's voice was distant, in that terrible, empty way it hadn't been since-

The thought tangled and died. Lucca's gaze had just fallen on her mother's legs, and not even the long skirt could hide that they were twisted and atrophied.

Lucca staggered back as if she'd been kicked. "What the hell is going on?"

"Lucca, /language/." Even the voice was broken.

"No!" Her scream startled Lara, but Lucca couldn't stop the words from rushing out: "This is wrong! I fixed it! Get up, Mom! Get /up/!" Ignoring her mother's frightened protests, Lucca grabbed Lara's arms and tried to pull her to her to feet. "You can walk! I fixed this! Get up!"

Taban's voice suddenly carried across the room: "Lucca, what on earth are you doing?"

She let go of her mother and turned, tears blurring her vision. Scarcely able to keep the sobs out of her voice, she said, "You don't get it, Dad. This is wrong. I fixed it. Why is Mom-" Then her control broke, and she cried as her father embraced her.

"I know it's hard sometimes, Lucca," he soothed. "But it'll be all right. Your mother and I are here for you." Releasing her, he smiled and patted her once on the shoulder. "Let's get you some tea, okay?"

Behind her, Lucca could hear her mother's barely muffled weeping. "No, I think I'm okay now, Dad," she said, fighting keep her voice level. Her stomach was clawing its way up her throat. "I just need to go see Crono for a while."

Taban's eyebrows knitted. "Who?"

She was out the door and across the bridge to Truce before her thoughts caught up with her. This isn't happening. This isn't happening. This isn't--

Lucca gave a frustrated cry and shook her head as she ran, trying to clear it. There was no use panicking. Maybe some little ripple in the timestream had changed Crono's name to Roy. Maybe the Entity had revoked her first wish in order to grant her second. Maybe she was having a nightmare, and she'd see Crono with a penguin's head right before she woke up. Hell, maybe she'd fallen asleep at her desk, and everything in the last twelve hours had been part of an especially bizarre REM cycle.

If she could believe that, why was her stomach an icy knot?

Crono's front door loomed in front of her. Biting her lip, she raised a shaking hand and knocked twice.

"Coming!" called an unfamiliar voice. A child's voice. Lucca was still reeling when the door swung open to reveal a little girl in a yellow dress. "Are you here to see Papa?"

An adult woman appeared next, cradling an infant in one arm. "Oh, my," she murmured, the color draining from her face as she saw Lucca. "Do you want something?"

"Where's Crono?" made it past Lucca's lips without checking in at her brain.

The woman made a small, fretful noise and backed away from the doorframe, pulling the little girl with her. "Carl!" she called back into the house. "Go get Taban. I think she's getting violent again!"

"I'm getting /what/?"

Lucca's outburst startled the woman into slamming the door. The muffled clanging of locks filled the air as Lucca stared helplessly at the knob. Somehow, she didn't think that following her impulse to scream and kick the wall would help her case.

Crono's gone.

The next thing that registered in her mind was hunching over the nearest bush and heaving. When there was nothing left in her, Lucca collapsed on her back and tried to convince herself that she'd wake up any minute now. She could pretend as long as she didn't pinch herself.

No, she had to be stronger than that. Taking a deep breath, Lucca got to her feet and ran in a daze toward Leene Square, fighting the urge with each step to turn around and dash back to her bed. Think like a scientist, she told herself. /You can work this out if you just /think.

Something had gone wrong. Horribly wrong, even. Somehow, her actions last night had wiped her best friend out of existence, and she had no idea how to fix it. Scratch that. She'd find a way to fix it. That what she did, wasn't it? Fixing things.

Panting, Lucca stopped running long enough to curse at the top of her lungs and kick a tree. She resumed her journey with a sore foot.

What had she done, exactly? She'd killed one of the Ozzie line, but that was only a problem if he hadn't spawned a replacement yet. And even then, his demise shouldn't have had the kind of historic significance that would prevent Crono from being born.

She'd killed some Mystic underlings, too. Surely that wouldn't have left the timestream in chaos.

No, the only event she could see affecting Crono's lineage was the fate of Sandorino itself. Had some villager's death led to his existence? Had she saved a murderer who would later cut off Crono's line? Had she prevented widowhood, remarriage, and a different child?

Lucca's footsteps slowed as she entered Leene's Square. This, at least, looked the same; all the decorations for the Fair had long since been taken down, and the air of celebration had mellowed into a sense that this would be a nice place to a have a picnic. Swallowing the lump in the throat, Lucca made her way to the upper plaza.

The bell was bronze.

But there was no surprise left, not after finding a strange family in her best friend's home. She wasn't going to cry, either. She'd already cried once today, and she was still angry about it. Instead she kicked the bell's supports. Twice.

Foot throbbing, Lucca ran on into the forest behind the square, making for the clearing where she'd left the Epoch. There was no surprise, then, either, when she found only an empty space. Still dazed by the enormity of what she'd done, Lucca wandered back to Leene's Bell and sank down against the base, resting her head in her hands. There was no time now to brood over the "what"; she had to figure out the "why."

Since the landslide had led to Crono as surely as the fire, the ancestor of someone she'd saved must have originally perished there almost half a century earlier. Then the rise of the forest had saved the ancestor but damned the descendant. And last night, apparently, Lucca had removed the last barrier to this person's existence.

But it still didn't fit. If saving Sandorino had erased Crono, wouldn't there be a paradox? Without Crono to help jumpstart their adventure, how would the landslide have been averted? But if the forest wasn't saved and Crono was born, then the forest would be saved and...

Lucca groaned. It had been easier to accept, or at least ignore, the paradox presented by the future, especially since everything seemed to have worked out for the best. This one made her brain throw up its metaphorical arms. Unless some bizarre quirk of history and time travel had grown the forest without their interference, Robo would have to have been there to cultivate the trees.

Maybe Robo was still there.

Her head shot up as footsteps sounded on the cobblestones. Lucca's father was making his way to her with an expression that was half-exasperation and half-pity, and another, more immediate problem asserted itself in her mind.

"Am I insane?" she asked as he reached down a hand to her.

Taban shook his head and pulled her to her feet. "Just because you're not some social butterfly is no reason for anyone to think there's something wrong with you," he said, patting her on the back. "You're a brilliant girl, Lucca. Don't let 'em get you down."

Was she so pathetic that she'd never made any friends without Crono? Lucca sighed as her father continued, "They just don't know what to do with a real genius. Jealousy's all it is."

Wonderful. She was a genuine mad scientist in this reality. There was no telling what she'd done to make the denizens of Truce afraid to let her near their children, but she was willing to bet it had to do with explosions and runaway robots. If she ever saw Crono again, he'd think this was hilarious.

"Let's go home, then, okay?" Taban said. His smile suggested that while he would never doubt his daughter's sanity, he thought it was important to keep from agitating her.

Lucca sighed and followed him. Get over it, she told herself. Solve the big problem and the little ones will go away, too.

"Hey, Dad," she said as they made their way to the bridge home, "you know the forest north of Porre?"

Taban nodded. "Would you like to go camping there again?"

"Not exactly." His flicker of disappointment made her feel guilty, but she pushed on: "Actually, I was wondering about the shrine."

"Shrine?"

Lucca stopped walking. "Maybe more of a temple," she said weakly as her father turned back to her.

After scratching his head for a moment, he said, "Well, that's an interesting word for those ruins. It just looked like an old house to me, but maybe it used to be part of a nature cult or something. Never really thought about it."

"Ruins," she echoed. Her heart had sunk somewhere past her knees. "Empty ruins?"

"Just half a wall and a chimney." Taban inclined his head. "You feeling okay, sweetie? We went there just a few summers ago."

She'd started walking again so that her brain could occupy itself with things like direction and balance. "I'm fine," she managed. "Just had a little trouble remembering."


So much for finding Robo in her own era. But at least now she knew where to start looking. If there was still a forest, someone or something must have created it back in the Middle Ages. And considering that whatever revived the forest had vanished, she hoped to God it wasn't still Robo.


There wouldn't be a Gate Key in her bedroom anymore, but Lucca was confident that she could build another. Then she'd just have to hope that the Gate had always been at the fairgrounds and was opened, not created, by the fluke with the pendant and the Telepod.

Recalling the incident stung. Without Crono, she would have never met Marle, either. There wouldn't even be a Marle, just a Princess Nadia who never made a friend at the Millennial Fair. Was she lonely, too?

Lucca shook the thought away. The sooner she resolved this mess, the happier everyone would be.



Buildling a new Gate Key was proving a little harder than she'd expected. Of course, Lucca's technological prowess was bound to come through in the end, but her memory was a little fuzzy about some of the particulars. She'd only ever made one Gate Key, after all. It wasn't as if she'd streamlined the process.

As she disassembled yet another piece that didn't seem right, she heard the door ease open, followed by her father's voice: "You doing okay now, Lucca?"

"Yeah," she replied, wracking her brain for a plausible lie about what she was making. "I just had a bad dream last night. I'm fine now."

"Glad to hear it, dear."

The door closed. Lucca blinked and glanced over her shoulder to make sure that her father wasn't still there.

Did she normally lock herself up in her room without a word of explanation? The Taban she'd grown up with would have wanted to know why she wasn't working downstairs, why she hadn't bragged about her latest idea to him yet, and why she thought a nightmare was a good excuse to terrorize the neighbors. She almost would have preferred it if he'd forced his way into the room and demanded answers.

I'm not even close to Dad, she realized, slumping in her seat. How maladjusted am /I/?

It didn't matter. She was going to fix it. Setting her mouth in a stern line, she got back to trying to remember whether the round bits had been strictly necessary.



By the time the sun rose, Lucca had a new Gate Key. It wasn't quite as aesthetic as the last one, but she was confident that it would unlock any portal through time. All she needed now was a Gate.

Yawning, Lucca staggered out of her disaster of a bedroom to find coffee, breakfast, and a shower, preferably in that order. If she was going to crash into the brick wall of disappointment, at least she wouldn't feel quite so much like hell when she did.

Halfway down the hall she sniffed herself and changed course for the bathroom.

Taban was cooking breakfast when she wandered into the kitchen, her hair still damp. Lucca grunted something to the order of "Good morning" as she poured herself a cup of coffee.

"Thought I'd make us a treat," her father said as she sat down at the table. "Got sausages, eggs, and a whole basket of blueberries. Here, let me fix you up a plate."

Lucca set down her mug and made a face. "What makes you think I'd want blueberries?"

"Well, you liked them last week." Taban chuckled as he speared a sausage for her.

"Er, just kidding. " She laughed nervously and tried not to wrinkle her nose as a bowl of the detestable fruit appeared in front of her.

"Go ahead and eat without me," Taban said, piling food on a tray. "I promised your mother I'd eat with her today." Pausing to tousle his daughter's hair, he picked up the tray and headed upstairs.

As soon as he was out the door, Lucca pushed the berries aside and impaled a sausage. So she actually liked the foul little blue things in this reality? Crono, you were a better influence than you knew.

It was the wrong thing to think. Staring listlessly at the meat on the end of her fork, Lucca sighed and rested her chin in her free hand. Sure, it wasn't helping anything to wallow, but she was having a hard time stopping.

Crono wouldn't have wallowed. Nor would Marle, who held an unshakable belief that if the fundamental truths of reality were in conflict with the way things should be, then reality was just going to have to give. Why mope when you could opt for an empowering case of denial? But Lucca thought too much.

Or, taking into account what she'd done yesterday, maybe she didn't think enough. Or at least didn't think about the right things.

Frowning, Lucca made a conscious effort to switch off her brain and get through the portions of breakfast that were not blueberries. Taste didn't register. When she'd finished, she grabbed her helmet, packed her knapsack, and slipped out before her father came back downstairs. No sense clinging to a timeline that she was going to unmake. Wishing that she had the Wondershot instead of the decidedly less lethal-looking gun she'd found in her room, Lucca set out once more for Leene Square.

Don't think about it, she told herself. Just see if Robo's there. Then make him think about it.

As expected, the square was empty. The people who got the most use out of the public space were the ones who came to read books or simper at a significant other, neither of which was traditionally an early-morning activity. And the kids never came out until after lunch.

As Lucca ascended the steps to the upper plaza, she saw that someone had decided to show up after all. A girl was sitting on top of the arch of Leene's Bell with her back to Lucca, her feet kicking idly at the air, a crossbow at her side.

The name escaped before Lucca had to time to process the image: "Marle!"

The girl on the bell looked over her shoulder with a start. "Hey, there!" she called down, swinging herself around to face south. "Are you looking for someone?"

The girl was Marle in everything but fact. The bright eyes, the honest face, the cheerfully impractical outfit... Every detail was exact, down to the pendant dangling from her neck. But this was Nadia, the princess who ran away from home on a regular basis and couldn't stop butting heads with her father long enough to hear an apology. This girl had never traveled through time and saved the world. This girl had never known Crono.

"If I tell you a secret," Lucca heard herself saying, "will you promise to believe me?"

After a split-second's hesitation, Nadia climbed halfway down the structure and leapt the rest. "You look kinda familiar," she said, tapping her foot thoughtfully as she took in Lucca's appearance. Recognition lit her face as she put a hand to her mouth. "Oh! You're the one who built that crazy machine!"

Lucca winced. At least that explained the horrified woman in Crono's house. "There's a long story there," she said, wondering if telling everything to the princess who looked like her friend was really such a good idea. But out of all her former companions, Marle would have been the most likely to believe. Marle believed in a lot of things, some of which made Lucca despair for the future of Guardia, but sometimes there was something to be said for blind faith. Now, for instance. The thought of facing the wreckage of history alone was a bleak one.

And I don't know how many longer I can handle being the only person who knows.

Nadia looked uncertain for moment, no doubt weighing the rumors she'd heard against Lucca's current behavior, then gestured for Lucca to follow her over to the nearest bench. "I like stories," she said, smiling as she sat down, "and I've been pretty bored all day."

They were off to a good start, then. Of course, diplomacy had never been one of Lucca's strong points, and she wasn't sure how to handle a situation as delicate as explaining that the world in its current form should not exist. Perhaps it would be best to start with some credentials.

"My name's Lucca," she said, seating herself, "and you're Princess Nadia, daughter of King Guardia XXXIII and regular runaway. Your favorite food is ice cream. A few years ago you bribed a solider into teaching you how to use a crossbow so that you wouldn't feel defenseless. Most perfumes make you sneeze. You sleep curled up on your side, and you hog the covers. Oh, and you've got really cold feet, too."

There was a terrible silence.

"Oh, my God." Nadia scooted to the far end of the bench. "Are you some kind of stalker?"

Maybe that had been the wrong approach. "Look," Lucca said, the words almost tripping over one another in the rush to explain, "the thing is, you and me and my friend Crono went on this huge quest to save the world from an alien parasite, and we traveled through time a lot and learned magic, and after we made everything right I did something really, really stupid and made it so Crono was never born. And, um, now I'm trying to get things back the way they were. With Crono. And without the evil... alien...thing." Lucca slumped. "I promise it sounded a lot less unlikely when it was happening."

Nadia blinked at her, then turned her gaze to Leene's Bell. After a long, thoughtful pause, she said, "You mean there was another me?"

"You called yourself Marle. Crono ran into you at the Millennial Fair..."

Lucca had never told anyone the whole story before. When the group ended up in 1000 AD after killing Lavos, she'd told the king (and her parents) an abbreviated version that left out most of the information concerning Zeal, along with Melchoir's identity, the existence of the Epoch, and that fact that one of the "heroes" in question had waged a bloody war on Guardia four hundred years ago. Crono's death and the Red Gate had also been omitted on the grounds that their telling would only create unnecessary pain. And there were a thousand little things that she'd never wanted to share with anyone who hadn't experienced them with her. How could a non-participant be expected to understand the stupid jokes and late-night, so-deep-at-the-time philosophical rhapsodies? How could anyone outside their circle know what it was to watch the Time Egg shatter?

And she wasn't going to tell Nadia the full story now, either. More specifically, Lucca was planning to hit the highlights of the journey with an emphasis on things Marle did and a discreet lack of Crono's death and Magus's assisstance. If necessary, the complicated facts could come later, once Nadia had accepted the rest. There simply wasn't time to say everything.

Especially at the rate Nadia kept interrupting.

"You mean this pendant?"

"So I look just like my very great-grandmother, huh? Say, does she have a mole on her-"

"Can we not talk about the bad future anymore? It makes me... Oh, a friendly robot! Okay."

"I knew magic? Wow! Could I fly and zap things and make animals talk and-"

"There was alcohol in that poi, wasn't there? Hey, answer me!"

"So a giant frog beat Magus? That's a lot more fun than what the history tutor told me."

"What happened to Schala? What do you mean you don't know?"

"I made up with my father? Really?"

"Yay! A happy ending!"

Lucca sighed. "Well, there /was/," she said, raising her hand to cut off Nadia's impending commentary. "You remember what I just told you about the forest, right?"

Nadia nodded, clearly enraptured by the tale for reasons that defied Lucca's comprehension. Lucca wasn't much of a storyteller, and the whole adventure sounded even more bizarre filtered through her efforts, but Nadia had listened eagerly. Maybe she wasn't entirely convinced that Lucca wasn't just an entertaining eccentric, but she wanted to believe. Maybe that was enough.

"Well, we found out a few days ago- in my reality, I mean- that saving the forest meant that everyone in Sandorino died horribly." Without giving Nadia a chance to jump in, Lucca continued, "A special Gate let me go back in time and save the town, but for some reason it's caused all... this." She waved her hand to indicate the world at large. "I think I saved someone who made it so that Crono was never born."

Nadia pursed her lips in thought, staring at the bell and scuffing her sandals against the ground. Lucca held her breath. Trust me. You always did before.

At last Nadia turned to her and said, "So there's a Gate around here?"