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 go to Myshu at fanfiction.net for catching my proofing error.



There would be time enough later to second-guess herself. If Lucca survived, she could spend the rest of her life wondering what else she could have done.

"If" was a stupid word, too short and weak to carry the burdens of its implications.

/Focus/. Directing her emotion into her hands, Lucca tried to figure out what level of physical threat Prometheus represented. He seemed to be alone, and he was designed to exterminate the helpless, not the armed and dangerous. As her gaze flickered over the weapons, she tried to recall the weaknesses of the R-series instead of wondering when the robots had found unit R-66Y.

She couldn't. You woke up, but there was no one to wish you a good morning.

"Uh, Lucca?" Nadia tugged urgently on her sleeve. "That noise's getting louder, and he's getting closer, and I don't know much about robots, but I'm sure that's bad."

Lucca blinked. "Right. He's charging his weapons." She glanced at the wreckage around them before saying, "Split up and keep finding new cover. I'm trying to remember where the weak spots are." As Nadia complied, Lucca crouched back behind the metal, grabbed her thoughts by their shoulders, and shook them.

She could rattle off his fighting capabilities in alphabetical order: Beams. Close-range explosives. Electrical discharge. Projectiles. Self-reparation. So why was she drawing blanks on his vulnerabilities?

At least she wouldn't have to worry about any major surprises. Under the Mother Brain, the robots had mobilized themselves and wiped almost all of the life off the planet's surface- but for all the sophistication of their AI, the machines could create nothing. There had been no innovation since the Day of Lavos.

"A nation of steel and pure logic," the Mother Brain had said. But it wasn't a paradise, just an eternally frozen moment after the fire fell. Without life, there was only stasis.

"Lucca! What the heck are you doing over there?"

Nadia's blast ricochetted from Prometheus's armor, creating just enough of a delay for Lucca to dodge a blindingly bright beam. Focus, dammit, she chided herself. I told him I'd watch his back because-

"Backs of his knees," Lucca called, darting behind the remains of a door. "Keep moving!"

Nadia rolled behind a boulder seconds before her old cover burst apart. "/Where/?"

The heaps of wreckage were being rapidly reduced to scraps and slivers. Another explosion cut down the number of potential hiding places by a quarter.

"Behind the dome! Move it!" Lucca leapt up and unleashed a tidal wave of magical energy toward Prometheus, which she knew would be enough to delay but not disable him; the R-series were better armored than standard security droids. Panting and light-headed, she scrambled around the curve of the building in Nadia's wake.

As she caught up, Lucca gasped out, "Jog. He's slow."

Nadia slackened her pace enough to let Lucca catch her breath. "So could we just keep running around the dome until he gives up?"

"I'm sure he-" Lucca winced and grabbed at the stitch in her side. "He's put out an alert. Even if the closest back-up is at the factory, we don't have that long."

"But that last alert didn't really pan out, did it?"

Just ahead was a large mound of dirt and metal pressed up against the base of the dome, which gave Lucca the seed of an idea. Changing course for the artificial hill, she said, "Why do you think Prometheus was waiting outside for us? I'll bet the droids are stationed all along the main road, and there's probably another R-series robot or two at the factory. We're dead if they all show up."

Nadia didn't answer, and Lucca felt a twinge of guilt for making things sound so bleak. "Look," she added, "I've got a plan now, okay? See if you can climb that thing."

After a casting a dubious look at her sandals, Nadia stashed the gun in her belt and began to scramble up the junk pile. "How high?" she asked from around the half-way point.

"High enough to find something you can hide behind and peer around."

A few more seconds' cautious ascent found Nadia on a steel outcropping, where clumps of dirt and what appeared to be appliances shielded her from Lucca's view. Keeping a way ear out for Prometheus, Lucca said, "I'm going to draw his fire, and I want you to fire at the backs of his knees.You're not going to get off more than a shot or two before he figures it out, so for God's sake /aim/."

"Right." Nadia's tone indicated that she had noticed the lack of ground cover. "Are you sure you-"

"Hey, I'm Fire Goddess Lucca, remember?" Lucca hoped her bravado wasn't too transparent. "I'll be fine. You just worry about being a good sniper, soldier."

Prometheus's footsteps grew uncomfortably loud, so Lucca waved to Nadia before darting away from the mound. Each stomp seemed more protacted than the last, until Lucca began to wonder if time would crawl to a halt and this moment would still be playing when Gaspar tipped his hat in front of the lamppost. No, not this moment. Not here. Anywhere but here.

She and Crono used to play "Anywhere but Here" in their literature class. Remembering took the edge off her fear. Letting out a long-held breath, Lucca found that time was flowing forward as always, and Prometheus was rounding the dome.

She was too drained to manage another attack like the one that had left scorch marks on his chest, but he had no way of knowing it. "Back for more?" she called, rolling a gumball-sized fireball over her palm. "Don't play with fire unless you want to get burned."

And that really just came out of my mouth. Without waiting to see what other clichés her wit would resort to under pressure, Lucca threw the tiny flame at Prometheus and dashed out of the way of his retaliatory blast.

Finding the energy to cast spells quickly became irrelevant. She had nothing to shield her, and it was all Lucca could do to avoid the volley of beams and missiles. When she stumbled once, a laser burned away the end of her scarf.

Each strike brought Prometheus nearer, as well. Evasion came down to milliseconds and hair's-breadths, but Lucca couldn't draw him out much farther without making it too difficult for Nadia to aim. The only thing keeping her alive was the ingrained knowledge of how to predict his attacks. Right hand, clockwise, missle. Armor shift, electrical discharge. Left arm-

Lucca darted to the right and realized too late that Prometheus had been expecting it. In desperation she sprang away with almost enough force to wrench her ankle, and her back tensed as the searing heat of the beam came within an inch of her skin. It occurred to her that her body was too contorted to land properly an instant before her foot struck the ground, buckled under her weight, and sent her sprawling.

There was no chance of her getting up fast enough. She gritted her teeth and tried regardless, if only because she could still remember watching Crono rise, battered and bleeding, to stagger forward, while she had lain helpless and watched the already-thin line blur between inspiration and idiocy.

A shot rang out.

Instinctively Lucca rolled aside, just in time to avoid being crushed as Prometheus toppled forward like a felled tree, the flexible material around his left knee torn and smoking. She had a screwdriver out of her bag and into the back of his head before he could move.

Then she sat with the tool dangling from her fingers, staring at the place where the dent should have been.

"Nice shot, Nadia!" said the princess's voice. "You saved my life, Nadia! Way to go, Nadia!" There was a pause. "Um, are you okay?"

It occurred to Lucca that she hadn't moved in a while. "I don't think I'm injured," she replied at last. "When did you climb down here?"

"While you were zoning out. Is he..." Nadia trailed off as her hand appeared in Lucca's line of sight and began waving. "Hey, snap out of it! Weren't you worried about other robots showing up?"

Lucca looked up at her and blinked. "Sorry. It's just, well, maybe I can-"

"Say no more. You be Ms. Fix-it, and I'll be lookout." Nadia gave her an encouraging smile before adding, "Just fix it fast, okay?"

"And look sharp." Lucca's hands trembled as she took off her outer shirt and draped it over her work area to block the worst of the duststorm. Ideally she would have been doing this indoors, but ideally she wouldn't have needed to do it at all.

Steadying herself, Lucca opened the top of Prometheus's head. While his circuits were still mapped out in her mind, the cartography was shaky. The only way to recall some of the trickier areas was to hover her fingers over them and wait for kinesthetic memory to kick in.

So it took her a moment to realize that the strange component plugged into his motherboard was new and not just forgotten.

It had to be a networking device, she decided, following the wires to a little nub of an antenna mounted on the side of Prometheus's head. Something else seemed off about the layout, and after a few seconds she realized that certain other components were missing. Prometheus had no means of storing data locally.

The conclusion was there, as obvious as a crow in a snowfield, but for once Lucca craved the ambiguity of gray.

Breathing hard, she disconnected the network device and flipped the power switch. The processor whirred and the lights came on, but there was no longer any AI to determine Prometheus's actions. His eyes shone vacantly into the dust.

The earth cracked as Lucca stabbed the screwdriver into it.

"I think I see something," Nadia called down from her perch atop the junk heap. "It's really far off, though, and it's hard to tell with all this dust." It sounded as if she was climbing down again, but Lucca was more concerned with hating the planet for being injudicious with its favors.

There was a silence as Nadia's feet shuffled into her peripheral vision. "Something's wrong, isn't it?"

"He's dependent on the network." Lucca's eyes stung, but she ignored them as she said, "If I take away the connection, he can't function. But if I leave it in place, he'll be taking orders from the Mother Brain again as soon as he powers on. It looks like the system exists to prevent exactly what I'm trying to do."

Nadia knelt beside her. "But you're a genius. You can fix it."

"There's nothing I can do. The one time it matters I-" Lucca's voice hitched, and her rage at herself exploded out on the next word: "Goddammit!"

"But we can't-"

"Right. We can't." Lucca's head throbbed as she calmed into bitterness. "All we can do is leave him here, and then they can find him and patch him up and send him killing again. Ain't life grand?"

"But we can't just leave him!" Nadia's voice had a strange tenor to it, and Lucca looked up to meet an expression that would have been earnest if it hadn't been so confused. "He'd kill people," Nadia continued, but her voice wavered. "I don't think he'd want that."

Don't you dare. Lucca clenched her fists until the joints ached. "So how the hell is this different from Sandorino? Because he's just a machine?" The last word was almost a snarl, and she tried to get control of herself as she said, "Or is it because there's only one of him? Is there some magic number that it's okay to sacrifice?"

"No!" There were tears in Nadia's eyes. "That's not what I meant at all! I- I just- I hate this! It's not fair!"

Maybe she hadn't meant it, at least not consciously. But even if Lucca had inferred correctly, Nadia wouldn't be the only one tainted by hypocrisy. Had Lucca ever really believed that she fought for the sake of the future? No one wanted to save the world just for the sake of saving it; everyone wanted vengeance or absolution or a sense of purpose or just the ability to sleep at night.

So why did you, Crono? For friendship? No one fought for humanity, either, but for a handful of human beings who meant something. Or maybe I'm just cynical.

But none of that changed that there was an extermination squad approaching, a child crying in a crater, and the kind of choice that she resented having to make.

"You're right, though," Lucca said at last, the words leaden on her tongue. "He's only a shell. They already killed him when they took his memories away." She shook her head. "It's not the same at all."

Nadia was still crying. "No, there has to be a way to-"

"He's /already dead/." Hoping her resolve would hold, Lucca got to her feet. "Don't make it worse."

Nadia's lips trembled as she breathed, as if they were trying to wrap themselves around the right words. In the end she managed, "But it's not fair."

"I know." Lucca retrieved her shirt, then took the gun and pressed it into Nadia's hand. "Here."

"What?" Nadia would have dropped the weapon if Lucca hadn't been holding it in place. "Why are you-"

"Fire straight down inside his head. It'll destroy the circuitry. Irreparably."

"Lucca-"

"Just shoot him, okay? Don't make me do it."

Biting her lip until she tasted blood, Lucca turned around and closed her eyes. How much time passed was impossible for her to say, thick as it was with the need to scream and the cruel, wild hope for a miracle. The only sound was the dark cry of the wind, drowning out the noise of her own breaths.

Then she heard the blast, which seemed to have come from inside her own head, and it might as well have; everything horrible lately seemed to be a product of her misguided brain, and all she could think was that it was her fault, and was it worse if this world mattered or if it didn't?

Nadia's arms were around her, and there were hot tears soaking her shoulder. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

A tiny gasp reached Lucca's ears. Ripping herself out of Nadia's arms, she whirled to find the source of the noise, already drawing what little fire she could into her hands. "Come on," she growled. "Try me."

Through the blur of her tears, it took Lucca a moment to recognize the small figure almost blending into the dust. The magic died in her palms as the child stared wide-eyed at her.

"It's okay," Nadia said, but her voice was unsteady. "We can help you, see?"

Glancing wildly from one girl to the other, the child dashed to the cliffs along the shore, where it scampered into a hole so well concealed that Lucca never would have noticed it on her own.

They're in hiding. Still half-dazed, Lucca made her way to the gap and reached a hand into it. Not even she would be able to fit through easily; a larger person wouldn't have considered trying. "They're alive," she said, trailing her fingers along the edge. "They found somewhere safe."

Nadia's hand appeared beside her own, resting against the rocks. "They're living underground?"

"They probably followed the rats." Even in the midst of Lucca's misery, the click of pieces falling together was comforting. "I don't know how they're surviving down there, but they-"

"Matter?" Nadia gave her a hesitant half-smile.

Lucca turned away, then put both hands on the nearest boulder and strained to roll it over the entrance. Sensing an impending protest, she stopped to explain, "It's so the droids won't find them when they come looking for us. It's not safe for the people to use this exit for now, anyway."

"Thank goodness. I was afraid you were crazy again." With just enough of a smile to lighten the comment, Nadia helped her push the rock the rest of the way over the entrance. There was nothing left to suggest that humanity was only a tunnel away, and even the girls' footprints would be gone by the time the squadron arrived.

"We should go now," said Nadia. "I need to see the sun again."



Proto Dome was deserted, but unlike the last time Lucca had seen it, the lights were on. She let out a sigh of relief. With everything else that had been running roughshod over her, Lucca had forgotten to worry that the power might not be activated.

"And birds," Nadia was saying, continuing her list of things she had missed. "Especially the little yellow ones that sort of coo."

Lucca caught sight of the Enertron, and her body veered toward it. "I can't believe you haven't gotten to ice cream yet."

"I'm saving that for last. I have whole subcategories for toppings." Nadia's voice was a little too strained to be cheerful, but she made a commendable effort. "I was going to do a poem, too, but I couldn't get past, 'I love ice cream, it makes me scream.'"

"'My spoon doth gleam'?" suggested Lucca, pressing the release button for the Enertron. She let herself fall back into it with a sigh.

"I know this thing has a name," said Nadia as she examined the device, "but all I can remember is 'Magic Sleeping Machine.'"

"And right now, I almost like that one better." Resolving to apologize to science later when she was less angry with it, Lucca frowned and leaned forward to peer at the controls. "Why isn't it closing automatically?"

"Maybe it's stuck. Here, let me help." Without waiting for a response, Nadia let her fingers dance up and down the Enertron's buttons.

Lucca caught her wrist. "Geez, Nadia, don't just hit stuff at random. I don't want to find out whether this thing has a purée function." When the only answer was an oddly pensive look, she cleared her throat and added, "Er, I was just kidding. Maybe I shouldn't try to make jokes right now." The silence persisted. "Okay, I give. What'd I do?"

"It's nothing like that," Nadia said quickly. "It's just... That's the first time you've called me by my name."

"Is it?" Lucca shifted uncomfortably. "I didn't realize. I mean, I wasn't trying not to or anything."

Nadia shrugged. "It's okay, just something I noticed. I can be pretty acute, you know."

"Astute."

"That too."

"Although," Lucca added, "I'll bet your interior angles are all less than ninety degrees."

"Would that be funny if I'd paid attention to the math tutor?"

"Not really, no." But it was enough to keep Lucca together as she stepped out of the Enertron.

Well, there's the problem. None of the machine's lights were on, and a vague memory asserted itself, reminding her that the Enertron had once worked when the rest of the dome hadn't.

Lucca tapped one of the darkened bulbs. "Guess it's on a separate generator. There'd be no reason for the robots to replace the power supply if it failed, either." She turned and headed for the door in the back.

As Nadia watched, Lucca pressed the conveniently labeled button to open the path to the Gate. The action triggered another memory, one of waiting, more lonely and paranoid than she'd ever been willing to admit, as her friends ventured north to the factory. The combination of boredom and anxiety had frayed her nerves, and her brain's decision to replay the Day of Lavos on loop hadn't helped. The initial euphoria of having a plan and purpose had been passing, leaving her to wonder if they had all left their sanity somewhere back in Guardia Forest.

Robo had come back to her broken, but she'd been able to fix him then.

Nadia's voice was a welcome interruption. "So where does this Gate lead? I mean, anything's better than this, but I'm not really up for a surprise."

"Let me check." Lucca dug out her notebook and flipped to the page where she'd sketched the layout of the End of Time, complete with annotated Gates. "It connects to Medina," she said, following the line with her finger. There was a flash of recollection as the order of events came clear. "It's the closet Gate."

Raising her eyebrows, Nadia asked, "Do I even want to know?"

"Sure you do. This Gate goes back to our era." Lucca traced her pen idly over the page, decorating the margins with cubes. "It should land us in the friendliest little house in Medina, too. And the rest of the Mystics should be..." She paused, trying to dig through the layers of sullen loneliness that covered her social studies classes when Crono wasn't there to stick pencils in his ears. Her brow wrinkled as the memory clicked. "On good terms with us?"

Nadia shrugged. "Well, sort of. We get ambassadors every now and then. It's a little awkward, I guess, but it's not like there are guards everywhere."

Frowning, Lucca turned to a blank page and drew a round face with pointed ears, then added a grumpy-looking stick figure and an arrow pointing from the former to the latter. It was followed by another arrow, this one with an "X" in the middle of it, that led to a much cheerier figure.

"That's Ozzie," Lucca said, labeling the round face accordingly. "He's usually green."

Nadia nodded. "And the stick people?"

"Deep and compelling symbols for human-Mystic relations." Lucca added a pointy ear to the right side of each figure's head. "See? Now it's art."

"Well, we've given royal grants to worse."

Their banter still felt a bit stiff, but between it and the visual aid, Lucca managed a smile. "I'll keep that in mind when I need to finance my research. Anyway, back in the original timeline, the Ozzie family kept things hostile for centuries after the war ended."

Nadia tapped the happy stick figure. "So this is where you guys took him out and made everyone play nice?"

"Bingo." Lucca drew another face, this one labeled "IV or so," and put it on the receiving end of two arrows from Ozzie. As she added a stick figure with a wobbly half-smile, she said, "So I guess taking out his descendant made everyone play nice in a resentful kind of way. The only weird part is that the Ozzie I killed came from the timeline where we beat the original-" she tapped the double arrows- "and now we're back in crazy paradox land."

"That's the only weird part?" Nadia made her way into the room with the portal, and Lucca followed after swapping her notebook for the Gate Key.

While Lucca supposed that the Ozzie who attacked Sandorino might have struck regardless of his family's status, she wasn't sure that the two timelines blended neatly. Maybe that paradox was being absorbed by the Robo in the desert, as well. No, don't think about that.

"Hey," she said as she keyed in the unlocking code, "who's the mayor of Medina now?"

"Um, some Mystic guy?" Nadia looked sheepish. "Staring out the window is kinda more interesting than international relations."

Lucca gestured at the bright blue hole in the air. "Well, we'll find out soon enough."



The Gate flung them against the closet doors, and the girls tumbled out of the mothball-scented darkness in an avalanche of child-sized coats and umbrellas.

"Hey!" said a sharp, inhuman voice, and Lucca plucked a yellow poncho off her face as it continued, "Did you people just come out of the closet? Get outta here!"

The speaker was a familiar blue imp, who was glowering down at her from his seat at the kitchen table. Imps could look surprisingly menacing when viewed from below.

Nadia winced. "We really didn't mean-"

"Who do you think you are?" interrupted the brown imp sitting opposite him. "Coming and going out of our closet at all hours. Scram!"

Lucca's memory seemed clear on the fact that these imps had been initially gruff and later friendly, so she decided to try the apologetic route. "Um, sorry about that. We didn't mean to make a mess in your kitchen." To show willing, she picked up a hanger and draped one of the coats over it.

The imps' scowls faded. "Where did you come from?" asked the blue one.

"Long story," replied Nadia. "Is that cake?"

The two imps regarded them for a moment, then exchanged a look. "Pull up a chair," said the brown one. "We'll worry about the mess later. You two look terrible."

That they did, if Lucca could extrapolate her own appearance from Nadia's. The princess's hair was matted and tangled, her clothing torn and filthy, and her eyes underscored by dark circles. Both girls probably stank as well, but Lucca's nose was accustomed to it and she didn't intend to press the matter.

"It's been a rough few days," Lucca said, seating herself. "Um, what's the date here?"

"June twenty-seventh, 1001 AD." The blue imp slid a plate of sandwiches between her and Nadia and added, "I'm Dettle, by the way. My better half over there is Greggan."

Nadia said something that might have been "Nice to meet you" around a mouthful of tuna salad.

And with royal table manners like those, we don't even have to bother with a fake name. "I'm Lucca. She's Nadia. We're from Truce, originally." Introductions accomplished, Lucca bit into a ham sandwich and realized how hungry she had been.

As the girls tore through the food, Dettle said, "You're not the first people to show up that way."

Lucca froze in mid-bite. "You just mean Melchior, right?"

Greggan shook his head. "I'm afraid our reaction to you was a result of our last unexpected guest." He paused to pass Nadia a napkin. "Are you friends of Melchior's, then?"

"Wait a minute, Melchior?" Nadia set down the sandwich she'd been ravaging. "Who's that?"

Dettle frowned. "Why does only one of you know him?"

"And that would be the long story." Lucca started to clean her glasses with her scarf before realizing that the burned area was making things difficult. "The short version is that I've traveled more than she has, and we're both on our way back from a bad trip."

"I'd say so," remarked Dettle. "Would you care for some coffee with your cake?"

"Oh, God, yes."

As Dettle hopped off his chair and headed over to the counter, Greggan said, "If you're trying to get back to Truce, you'll have to take the underwater passage. It's not particularly difficult, but I imagine you're tired. You're welcome to stay in our guest room tonight."

"Really?" Nadia broke into a grin when he nodded. "Wow, thanks! I can't believe how nice you guys are being!"

Greggan shrugged. "Think nothing of it. We figure if fate put a time portal in our closet, we're supposed to be helping those who come through it. And besides," he added, as Dettle handed him a mug, "we believe that how you treat others comes back to you."

Dettle winked at him as he resumed his seat. "It seems to be working for us so far."

As much as Lucca hated to burst the love bubble, the earlier comment about the "unexpected guest" nagged at her. "We really do appreciate it," she said, then added as casually as she could, "So this last person who came through-"

"Was a very unpleasant one-eyed human." Dettle frowned. "He ranted about Golems, stole our good cleaver, and ran into the square, demanding that he be crowned king."

"We've had no kings since Magus," said Greggan. "It's very important to us culturally."

"So what happened-" Nadia cut off when she caught the imps' expressions. "Oh."

Lucca shrugged and took a sip of coffee. "Well, can't say it wasn't appropriate."

With an exaggerated shudder, Nadia pushed the now-empty sandwich platter out of her way. "Still, ick." She accepted a slice of cake from Greggan before asking, "So has anyone else come through?"

The atmosphere in the room was suddenly heavier, as if her words had dragged the house far below sea level. After a silence that made Lucca squirm, Greggan said, "One other. That was also unpleasant."

"But in a very different way," said Dettle. "We'd rather not discuss it."

There was another pause, until Nadia gave them all a desperate grin and held up her napkin. "Look! I made a swan!"

"And speaking of swans," said Lucca, deciding that the time had come for non sequiturs, "is this cake homemade?"



By the time the subsequently superficial yet pleasant conversation had begun to wind down, the light coming through the western windows carried an orange tint. "Thanks so much again," said Lucca, stifling a yawn as she got to her feet. "We owe you guys one."

"Nonsense," Dettle replied. "You've been good company. And the bathroom's over there, but you might not fit in the tub."

Lucca didn't fit, but the modern miracle of running water was worth the discomfort. The imp-sized towels didn't fit her, either, and she ended up wrapping herself in a spare bedsheet while her clothing began its exciting journey through the laundry cycle.

When she returned to the guest room, Nadia was perched at the windowsill, still unwashed and gazing at the sunset.

"Bathroom's free," said Lucca, flopping down on the bed. "Bring a sheet and toss your clothes in the washer with mine." There was no answer. Curious, Lucca got up and padded over to the window, where she peered over Nadia's shoulder. "Am I missing something?"

"It's just so beautiful," said Nadia. The light gleamed red from her pendant, as if the Dreamstone were remembering its original color. "I never knew how beautiful it was before."

"Yeah, that's how I feel about indoor plumbing."

But Lucca stood beside her until twilight, watching the last of the crimson glow sink beneath the curve of the horizon. Of course, the sun never actually set; it was only hidden by the turning of the planet, and there was an almost tragic humor in ancient humanity's fear that the sun would one day fail to rise. So many things came down to perspective.

Nadia stood and slipped wordlessly from the room. When she heard the door click shut, Lucca took off her glasses, rested her forehead against the glass, and finally let herself cry.