Tales of Warp (story)

[Lloyd Irving Aurion 17]

Random kinda-intro info

So, this is a story that Yoshi and I have been working on for a year and a half now. Sadly, since both of us are taking turns writing, it isn't very long since one of us usually forgets to add something else. XP

But it's a self-insert that I hope (and have been told) is different from most of the others crowded FanFiction.Net. And we do have this story up there, too. smile So...onward to the story!  

[Lloyd Irving Aurion 17]

Prologue

A hotel in the small town of Larkhill, England was silent as the people there slept. The few night staff went about their duties quietly so that they didn't wake anyone up from downstairs. As far as anyone knew, everyone was asleep at midnight...except for the occupants of one room. A small strip of light shone from underneath the door of room 419, and if someone were to listen, they would hear a whispered conversation within between two teenage girls.

Within the room, two lamps gave off the light that came from underneath the door, which wasn't enough to light the entire room but enough to get rid of the thick darkness the night brought. One girl was sitting on one of the two beds, lacing up her shoes and looking fairly reluctant while doing so. She had to push up her glasses halfway through, since they slipped down her nose a little bit; her wavy, shoulder-length hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, looking as though it had been done hastily and without a mirror, even though one sat just a few feet away, on the wall above the dresser.

The second girl was rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, looking impatient and a little bored at the moment. Her own shoes were already on her feet and laced up, and she had donned a jacket. She wore gloves and her brown hair was cut so short that she had it spiked, as she usually did. She was lingering near the door, looking ready to open it and bolt outside with her bouncing.

"Hurry up, Genis," she said quietly, glancing over at the door behind her. The other girl, nicknamed Genis with the real name of Katherine, finished lacing up her shoes and stood, pulling on a jacket as well.

Her answer was coupled with a sigh: "Hold on, Lloyd." The second girl sighed right back and stopped bouncing, crossing her arms over her chest and drumming her fingers on her upper arm. Like her friend, she, too, possessed a nickname - Lloyd - while her real name was Caitlin. The pair got their nicknames from one of their favorite video games, which was only rivaled by others in its series: Tales of Symphonia. They had played it every weekend for months on end, completing it at least twice by now, and getting their nicknames from the characters they figured their personalities matched the most.

A moment later, Katherine was ready to go. Caitlin cracked the door open slowly, to make sure it stayed silent, as her friend clicked off the lights. No one noticed the pair of them, since the door was well-oiled and stayed silent as first Caitlin and then Katherine slipped out of the room, closing the door behind them (after the latter made sure that they had a room key in order to get back in. Waking up their team leader to get back in would defeat the purpose of sneaking out silently).

Neither of them were supposed to be out of their rooms past curfew, since they had come to England with a group of forty students from their home state of Wyoming. They were there on a student ambassador program and had stopped in Larkhill for the night, after being at Stonehenge for a good part of the day. It made sense that they weren't supposed to be out and about if they had to sneak out of their hotel room, however.

The two girls crept silently down the hall, watching for any lights that would randomly snap on or listening for someone to open up their door, which would be bad since there was absolutely nowhere to hide in the middle of a hotel hallway. Luckily, like in most places, the floor was heavily carpeted so even if it did creak, the sound was muffled so that it was inaudible to anyone who didn't possess wolf-like senses, which was everyone.

"Should we take the elevator?" Caitlin asked, motioning to the silent, still, metal doors that led to the elevator. Katherine shook her head, and her friend seemed just a tad bit relieved by that fact. "Wait, then we have to walk down four flights of stairs?" she complained, but quietly.

"The elevator would make noise. Moving up and down, and they always ding whenever they open. Taking the stairs will make us less likely to be caught if you want to do this. Anyway, it's not that far," Katherine reasoned, and the other girl sighed but nodded, agreeing full-heartedly with her. Elevators did make quite a bit of noise, which wasn't something that the pair needed at the moment. So they entered the stairwell and started down. At least the stairs were always lit in case of an emergency, or else going down would have been difficult. Without windows, the small space would have been pitch black.

A few lights were on downstairs because of the night staff going about their business, and the two girls avoided them as best they could, going to a side door and stepping out. A chilly wind hit them as they left the warmth and quiet of the hotel building. Caitlin instantly tugged her sweatshirt's hood over her head to cover up her ears and stuffed her hands in her pockets, while Katherine shivered and crossed her arms.

"I think it's that way," Caitlin declared, not bothering to whisper, since no one in the hotel would overhear them now, pointing in some random direction. She sounded very sure of her decision, though her friend wasn't as sure, shaking her head. "What? We came from that way, didn't we?"

For a moment, the question went unanswered as Katherine looked around, "No. We came from that way," she corrected, pointing in almost the complete opposite direction. Caitlin grinned sheepishly and nodded, putting her hand back in her pocket.

"I knew that," she said, getting a skeptical look from her friend before Katherine set off in her own direction, Caitlin trailing behind her. The first girl's hair would have been in her face if it wasn't tied back, though a few random strands had gotten free of the ponytail and were bothering her because of the wind. The other girl had no problems with it, except for the fact that the wind was cold. And she didn't like that it was fairly dark outside, except for the fact that a streetlight interrupted the shadows for a very short while.

Overhead, a full moon shone, along with a smattering of stars. A few wispy clouds scuttled across the sky, but otherwise it was clear. The moon gave just barely enough light to see by as the two girls made their way out of the town, which took a good fifteen to twenty minutes of walking to do so. Caitlin's watch, which she always wore, said that it was nearing 12:30 in the morning on the day of June 15th. Just so long as they got back before seven o'clock without getting caught, they would be fine though.

The wind seemed to pick up just a tad when they left the safety of the buildings, though it did randomly stop for short intervals before coming back. Caitlin was watching her feet as she walked, trying to keep her friend's shoes in sight as well, stay warm, and not trip over some random obstacle all at the same time. Katherine didn't seem to mind as much, even though she seemed just as cold as the other girl in just thin, long-sleeved shirt and her jacket. She was watching where they were going, though, following the road further and further from the few glowing lights of the town.

Neither of them spoke, except for Caitlin's few moans of "I'm cold," "I'm bored," or "Do you see it yet?" None of her comments or questions got answered, so she fell silent, looking up every now and again. Her spirits were suddenly lifted when a structure came into view through the darkness and the windy gloom that was England after dark, and she stopped looking down at her feet, going to Katherine's side and matching her pace.

In front of them was the natural wonder that was Stonehenge, in all its rocky glory. The blurry shapes were barely recognizable with the encroaching darkness and the shadows, but the moon lit up the edges enough to make the general shapes recognizable. Earlier, the area had been bustling with people there to see these giant slabs of stone sticking out of the ground, though now the place was absolutely deserted, leaving it free for the two girls.

"Come on, Genis," Caitlin said, grabbing her friend's wrist and pulling her toward the towering slabs of stone when she thought Katherine was going too slow, "I want to see this place without all those people crowding around." It had taken away the excitement of seeing Stonehenge earlier, to see people all over the place; she figured it would be cooler without it being overcrowded.

Katherine looked about her worriedly, "Is it okay for us to be here, Lloyd? I mean, there's no one else here..." The reluctance she had shown before leaving had come back, now that they had actually reached their destination.

Caitlin grinned reassuringly, "You worry too much. We'll be fine. Anyway, having no one here is the point. We can't get caught if no one is here," she said, going up to one of the stones of Stonehenge as soon as she reached them and letting go of her friend's wrist, "Besides, doesn't it look cool now? Kinda spooky actually." She glanced up at the full moon above and then around at all the rocks around them. There were a lot of shadows around, and it did seem kind of Halloween-y. She half-expected a werewolf, like in Harry Potter, to jump out from the deep shadows and attack them. That, coupled with the cold wind, gave it an even freakier feel.

Katherine stood in the center of the stones, spinning slowly to look at the whole formation. The stones seemed to glow in the moonlight, but she credited that to the bright light of the full moon, "It's really...breathtaking, you know? It is so worth it to see it at night on a full moon."

"Told you so," Caitlin said, following her friend into the middle and glancing around at the glowing stones. The light seemed a little off for just being from the moonlight, but she dismissed it. It wasn't anything bad; it was just light after all, "I told you, but you didn't seem to be listening."

"Of course, I wasn't listening," Katherine muttered, not really listening even then. The light was slightly brighter now, more than it should have been for only a full moon. It was almost as if the stones were giving off light themselves, which didn't make any sense at all, "Caitlin? I think something's wrong here."

Caitlin frowned and nodded, glancing around at the stones, "You're right. Stones don't normally glow. Unless it's like one of those crystals with the lights underneath." She looked at one of the glowing stones as if she'd be able to see why it was glowing in the first place, "Maybe we should just go back to the hotel. This place is starting to creep me out a bit."

Nodding, Katherine started to back out of the center of the stones. Suddenly, the light grew to nearly blinding and teal symbols etched themselves across the stones, forming a pattern that must have meant something when Stonehenge was built. Now, however, it only meant that something was seriously wrong.

It took a moment for Caitlin to tear her eyes away from the strange markings, which she had been looking at in shock. She grabbed Katherine's wrist again to pull her out of there faster, but they didn't get very far. A flash of light filled the area between the stones, blinding the two of them briefly, before it faded away, the symbols disappearing from the stones. Everything looked the same now; the stones were glowing, there wasn't any light around...and the two girls were suddenly gone without anything to show that they had been there in the first place.  

[Lloyd Irving Aurion 17]

Arrival at Palmacosta

The two girls landed with a thud on the hard ground. The surrounding area looked nothing like England. The towering blocks that make up Stonehenge were nowhere in sight, and the ocean could be heard from where they were. "What the hell just happened?" Caitlin exclaimed as soon as she realized that they weren't in England any longer, which took about a minute of looking around blankly.

"Hoooly crack. Where are we?" Katherine said slowly, while shaking her hand quickly in the air. Like with her friend, it had taken Katherine a moment to notice that they weren't in England any longer. She didn't even seem to notice that Caitlin had spoken, let alone asked a question that couldn't be answered, "Ow, ow, ow... well, Lloyd, where are we?"

"How'm I supposed to know? I'm as confused as you are, Genis!" Caitlin pointed out, watching Katherine moving her hand through the air in pain. She was trying to hide a smirk that wanted to come to her face. "And how'd you hurt yourself this time?"

"I hit my hand. On the ground," Katherine answered shortly, stopping her wild flailing and inspecting her hand. Caitlin rolled her eyes at her friend's klutziness and muttered, "Idiot," under her breath while getting to her feet. Katherine didn't seem to hear the small insult and also got up. She was looking over the other girl's shoulder when she suddenly pointed. "Hey, look! There's a city over there!" She announced, momentarily forgetting the small pain in her hand.

Curious, Caitlin looked around to see where her friend was pointing. Just as she had said, a city was resting a ways away from the two girls. Nothing distinct could be made out, but a blue line could be seen right past the town - the ocean. Caitlin started off toward the city, saying over her shoulder, "Come on. Let's go see if anyone will tell us where in the world we are." She glanced back at Katherine to make sure she was following; the other girl ran up to her friend, walking alongside her.

"We're one waffle away from reaching the city! Hurry up!" That made Caitlin snicker and roll her eyes. Just like her friend to quote Bolt almost randomly.

"How long is 'one waffle away' anyway?" Caitlin asked curiously, looking over at Katherine for the answer. Katherine just shrugged, not knowing exactly how to answer it.

For several minutes, there was a lot of pointless yet hilarious chatter that wiled the time away until they reached the gates of the ocean town. The buildings looked a lot bigger this close up, and right inside the entrance a bridge connected the town to the road. There were quite a few people on the stone streets, and the two girls were given a couple odd glances. A sign sat on one of the posts at the entrance, and Katherine went to read it so that they knew where they were.

"Palma-" She started reading aloud, before stopping halfway through. "Lloyd, we're screwed."

Confused, Caitlin drew her attention away from the seaside town and looked at the sign. Her jaw dropped and she read the word a few times over, "What the hell?" She said (again) as soon as she got her voice back. "No way. This can't be Palmacosta. That's a place in a video game, not in real life!"

"But... but what if Stonehenge is like the Otherworldly Gate? We're stuck here! What do we do?"

"But I thought the Otherworldly Gate was just a portal between Tethe'alla and Sylvarant," Caitlin said, her voice hushed. There were a lot of people watching them, because of their reaction to finding out about the town. "As for what we should do, well... what else? Hang out here, try not to draw attention to ourselves, and try to find a way back!"

The group of onlookers dispersed after a moment, leaving the girls alone. "Well, we don't have any Gald. Maybe we should try waitressing at the Academy? They pay pretty well for...well, here I suppose."

With a sigh, Caitlin nodded slowly. "I... I guess we could... this is so weird," she muttered. It was kind of hard to grasp the fact that they had just happened to travel from Stonehenge to Palmacosta. It was a bit too absurd for her to believe fully. She and Katherine had just been sent into their favorite video game, it seemed, and quite randomly as well. The idea that they were dreaming was much easier to grasp and she went with that mental conclusion. It was all just some wacky dream from playing a little too much Tales of Symphonia.

Slowly, Katherine entered the town and instantly came upon a store that she walked up to, stopping and reading the sign, while Caitlin looked at the full display window; it held dark bottles. The sign proclaimed the name of the store to be Marble's.

"Caitlin, this is too sad. I never could handle going in here, at least after I found out what it was. Remember when I tried to avoid it all together?" Katherine said, giving the store one last glance and then walking away.

Realizing that her friend was leaving, Caitlin jogged to catch up before answering the question. "Yeah. It didn't work out so well. The game really wanted you to go into that shop... poor Marble," she said, glancing over her shoulder at the store. A second later, she almost ran into someone, so she turned around so that there were no more near-collisions in the middle of the street.

Weaving in between people easily, now pulling Caitlin along by her wrist so that she would keep up, Katherine made her way to the Palmacosta Academy . It looked a whole lot bigger in real life than it did in the game, and Caitlin suspected it had more than four rooms all together. As Katherine dragged her friend inside, she noticed a basket in the corner that was the Wonder Chef.

"Spell your love with ketchup..." She mumbled while her friend rolled her eyes, before she continued dragging Caitlin down the hallway where she presumed the cafeteria to be.

"You know that you don't have to drag me around everywhere," Caitlin complained, pulling her wrist away from her friend and looking around the Academy. "And do you even know where you're going?" she added as an afterthought. It seemed pretty easy to get lost in this place now that it was real-life-sized.

Katherine laughed nervously. "Of course I do! In case you haven't noticed, this place looks almost exactly like the game. Let's see...there's the sign. Look, Lloyd- today's special, same as usual. I wonder if it's chicken tenderloin." Caitlin snickered at the inside joke - which had happened all because of the tenderloin recipe only needing 'meat' and the two girls picking apart the logic of that - while her friend stifled a giggle and entered the cafeteria, where she stopped in the doorway, mouth agape with shock because of the size of the room. "Hoooly Martel. Waitressing will be a lot harder than I thought it would be."

Seeing as how Katherine was in the way, the second teenager had to look over her shoulder into the cafeteria to know what she was talking about. Once she saw the giant room in all its glory (holding about a hundred tables, she estimated roughly), she gave a low groan. "Aw, man... I thought this would be easy. There were only two tables in the game!" she said, pouting slightly. "This means it'll be a lot of work..."

Flitting around excitedly, Katherine looked for the man in charge. Finding him, she calmed down and steeled herself to ask for a position. "E-excuse me. My friend and I were wondering if you had a waitressing position open? Uh... maybe with a uniform, too, please?"

Caitlin stood behind Katherine, looking around at the cafeteria as her friend spoke. She wasn't really paying attention to what was being said. Instead, she was still trying to figure out why they were there in the first place. It wasn't working.

The man Katherine had spoken to looked at the two of them and then around at the large cafeteria. "Well, we could use some extra help," he told Katherine, nodding as he spoke.

Katherine smiled. "Thank you! Thank you so much! Um, do you have some uniforms for us? And what exactly should we do?" She listened intently as the man, whose name turned out to be Carl, explained the waitressing 'process'. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Caitlin wasn't paying quite as much attention as she should have been. Katherine sighed inwardly. There was one more thing she'd have to explain.

"Follow me," Carl said as he moved towards one of the back rooms. "Here are your uniforms, and you can change in here. We work until sundown, but you'll get some breaks in between. Start as soon as you're ready. Good luck!" Carl chuckled as he walked back to the kitchen.

"So, uh...what're we supposed to do?" Caitlin asked sheepishly when Carl left the room. "I kind of wasn't paying attention."

"So I noticed. Look, it's exactly like in the game, alright?" Katherine quickly put on the rough wool uniform. It was mostly without dye, but had blue trim everywhere. "I should probably undo my hair, but what about my glasses? Should I leave them? It's not like no one else wears glasses, but..." As she spoke, Katherine pulled out her hair tie and put it in the pocket of her folded jeans.

"Why would you take your glasses off, anyway? You need to see. I'm leaving mine," Caitlin pointed out, also putting on the uniform. She removed her watch and stowed it in the pocket of her jeans, since she doubted people there had watches. But then again, if it were a dream it wouldn't really matter, and that's all this experience was, right? "And it's not exactly like the game! There are at least fifty times as many tables!" she added.

Katherine sighed. "I mean, the process is the same. People order, food is made, we give them the food. Best part is that because there are two of us, I can man the counter and you can give them food," Katherine explained, a sly grin on her face. "I can write the orders and a quick description, too, if you want. I snagged a pencil from Carl, and there should be plenty of paper."

"Hey, why am I the one to give the food out?" Caitlin whined, crossing her arms over her chest. "I don't want to do that! There are too many people." The slight, childish whine didn't leave her voice as she looked accusingly at Katherine.

Katherine laughed evilly as she led Caitlin back to the main cafeteria. "Finally catching on, Lloyd? I didn't want to do that, and I was the one paying attention, so I told Carl that I would take orders and you would pass out the food." Katherine found a pad of paper and set it next to the cash register. "Now, you can sit here and try to remember where people sit. Have fun!"

Caitlin scowled, not liking the arrangements very much. "I hate you, Genis," she grumbled crossly, plopping down into a chair until she was ready to start working. She was trying to think of ways to make her job easier as well, though no successful-sounding ones came to mind. "You're evil, you know that?" she added.

"Yes, yes I know," Katherine mumbled. "Very evil indeed." The first customer came up to the counter. He was a young man in a blue school uniform, and he looked glum as he placed 40 Gald on the counter.

"I'd like two Yum Tea and one curry please." Katherine smiled, thanked him, and quickly scribbled his order down on her note pad. The next customer was likewise served and when she had five orders, she peeked into the kitchen.

"Carl! I have some orders!" She handed the paper to Carl and scrambled back to the counter, praying to Martel that Caitlin was remembering where people were sitting. Her eyes stung a little, she had forgotten that they used onions to make tenderloin. Katherine hated onions with a fiery passion, so she figured she would spend as little time as possible in the kitchen. Sighing to herself, Katherine took more orders.

When the food came out, Caitlin took it to the customers - feeling very nervous as she did so, since it was a little difficult remembering who sat where, especially since she had a hard time remembering what people looked like. She got a few of them right, but a few more than that wrong and had to quickly correct her mistake until she got it.

Suddenly, a bright flash of light stopped all activity- some students paused mid-bite- and a faint rumble restored life to the room. Everyone- students, professors, staff, even a cat- all moved closer to the window, some standing right in front of it. The view from the window could only be classified as unique: across the sea, to the point it was almost invisible, a giant tower stood, not only reaching the sky, but surpassing it.

Everyone gasped collectively.

"It's here."

"The Tower of Salvation."

"The Chosen will finally begin her journey."

Mutterings flew through the air, giving everyone a sense of hope. Everyone but Caitlin and Katherine. The latter gripped the edge of the counter tightly, resisting the urge to smash her head against the wooden surface. This was bad. Really bad.

The other of the two girls was just looking toward the window (not that much could be seen out of it, with so many people looking out at the Tower of Salvation). "Oh, man..." she muttered. "This can't be good." She looked over at Katherine and grabbed her shoulder, pulling her away from the counter before she did smash her head into it. "But it can't be that bad, right?"

The long-haired girl squirmed out of the other's grip. "Yes, it is. The only way for us to get out of here is to join Lloyd and the others, you know that, even if you haven't thought about it yet. And as for where we came in during the timeline, well, I hope you can figure that out." Katherine shrugged her shoulders. "I really hope you aren't expecting them to be here in eight hours. This part of the journey could take weeks and we're stuck here until then. We'll need Gald, so...I guess we should get back to work." Most people had already returned to their seats, politely eating their meals.

For a moment, Caitlin pondered over it and sighed. "I don't want to go on the regeneration journey," she complained, looking out the window again. Maybe this whole experience would get done before that though? She hoped so. "Hopefully, we can join up after they get rid of the ranch, though. If they do that before Kilia like we did," she added hopefully. She really didn't want to go to the ranch with the group - they didn't even know how to fight, except with lightsabers! That wouldn't be very helpful, even if the two of them did buy weapons while in Palmacosta.

A few more customers came by before Katherine addressed Caitlin's last comment. "You don't want to go? Why not? I'd say it sounds like fun, but then reality would ruin the statement." There was an odd sound, sort of a mix between a nervous laugh and a depressed sigh. "It's just about the only way for us to get home, which I'd rather like by the way, and we're lucky to be at this point in the game-there's a ranch, and we'll be able to snag some Exspheres. Although..." Katherine stopped; another customer had come up to the counter. "Yes, may I help you?"

The customer, a young blonde girl, smiled. "I'd like to order the special please. I believe that it's chicken tenderloin today." The smile faltered when a small storm of giggles erupted from the waiting staff. "What is so funny about my order?"

Katherine took a moment to stop laughing, deciding that telling this Sylvaranti about their inside joke wasn't the best idea, and answered, "It's just that you sounded unsure about what the special was, but it's the same every day."

Caitlin covered her mouth with a hand, muffling her own snickers which she tried to force down. "Chicken tenderloin" would never stop being funny, even if the two of them heard it a lot while waitressing. It just seemed too silly. Though she managed to stop her laughter and took her hand away. "Yeah, you'd think you'd know what the special was by now," she said, nodding and agreeing with her friend.

The blonde huffed and crossed her arms. "So I haven't been living in the cafeteria like you...vermin, but perhaps I don't generally eat here and, therefore, I would not know what the special was, today or any other day." She fixed a glare on Katherine. "I would like chicken tenderloin, and I would like it now." After keeping her glare a few extra moments, she stomped off, muttering under her breath.

Uncomfortable in her seat at the register, Katherine turned back to Caitlin. "Well, I guess at the preppy academy we can expect a few customers like her. Don't forget where she sits!" Katherine finished in a mock sing-song voice, stepping gingerly into the kitchen to place the order and ignoring Caitlin's groan from behind her.  

[Lloyd Irving Aurion 17]

Birds of a Feather

The morning light shone brightly through the uncovered window into one of the rooms in the Palmacosta inn. Despite the brightness, Caitlin still slept on, dressed in shorts and a large shirt for sleeping. Her clothes, newly bought right after the two girls got paid, lay in a heap at the end of the bed. It was pretty much just a mound of red and black fabric. Large, obviously knee-high red boots had been tossed next to the bed, along with twin swords in their sheaths. She also had a bag that was half-open on the floor near her bed as well, which had bottles with gels and anything else that she had figured would be helpful. Though mostly gels and life bottles, seeing as how the two of them would be going on the Regeneration Journey when the Chosen's group came to town.

It had been just a little over a week since Caitlin and Katherine had found themselves in Tales of Symphonia. During that time, they had been continuing to work in the Palmacosta Academy as waitresses. It was at least giving them enough money that they bought weapons, clothes, other necessary supplies such as gels and food, and enough for a night at the inn. The inn had been their home for the past week for the most part.

When the pair got their weapons - Caitlin's twin blades and Katherine's sword and shield - they had started practicing. At first, the practices were mainly to get used to the weight of the weapons and the fact that they were holding actual swords. It honestly hadn't progressed really far, though they were getting more relaxed while using the weapons. Enough that they could hold their own against an angry little kid armed with a stick. Their sword skills were fairly feeble, honestly, despite the fact that they often had fake fights at home with toy lightsabers. But lightsabers were different than real blades by a long shot.

Katherine, on the other hand, was wide awake, already dressed in her new white and navy clothes, lacing up her navy boots on her feet. She knew that white clothes weren't practical on a danger-filled cross-country journey, but if Colette could pull it off, then so could Katherine. Unlike Caitlin's, Katherine's bag was neatly stored in the corner, filled with gels (mostly apple, but who knew when you needed an orange?) and a few life and panacea bottles. Katherine never found panacea bottles particularly useful, but there was no knowing if Raine would have 'Recover' or not, or even if it would work like it did in the game.

Thinking of which, Katherine desperately wished that she had access to any techs at all, sorely rubbing the bruise on her arm from their sword practice yesterday. So Caitlin had only hit her with the hilt, it still hurt! If she had 'First Aid,' then the bruise, along with many others the girls had accumulated, would be gone. Heck, even if she had 'Demon Fang,' she could keep Caitlin from advancing on her so quickly. That girl was definitely accustomed to the twin sword style, adding to her likeness to Lloyd. Glancing at the offender, Katherine realized that she needed to get Caitlin moving or they would get nowhere quickly. Remembering the fight Caitlin had put up, even in sleep, when Katherine tried to shake her awake, she used a different approach.

"Lloyd. Lloyd Irving, wake up!" Caitlin didn't seem to react, so Katherine raised her voice slightly each time, moving from a whisper to practically yelling at Caitlin.

When Katherine started almost-yelling at her, Caitlin woke up but didn't open her eyes. She just groaned loudly to signal that she was somewhat awake and not wanting to get up anytime soon as she turned away from Katherine. She was never a morning person, and now was no different. Anyway, she hadn't fallen asleep until really late, and wanted more sleep. "Le'me 'lone," Caitlin mumbled into her pillow.

"Good, you're awake. Get up or we'll be late. Seriously." Caitlin didn't look like she was getting up from Katherine's perspective, but she had a brother who was exactly like this sometimes. "I know you're awake. I'm already ready to go, so now I'm waiting for you. Up! Get up!" As much as she loved ranting to heavy sleepers, this wasn't very interesting. "Geez, I'll just sit in the corner. For the love of Martel, you sleep like...hell, I don't even know!"

"Don't care. Go 'way," Caitlin mumbled without moving. As mentioned before, she was not a morning person; she would rather sleep until noon instead of waking up early. And listening to Katherine ranting wasn't helping her; it just made her more reluctant to get up. "Too tired." Unfortunately, though, she was becoming more and more awake with each passing minute, and it was difficult to breath through a pillow. So after a moment she slowly sat up, still looking half asleep, her hair sticking up all over the place.

After a couple minutes, Caitlin was awake enough to move from where she was sitting and get dressed. Her clothes were much like Lloyd's were in the game, though slightly different. She had a red jacket, though a flame pattern went along her arms and over her shoulders in a darker red. Gloves, also dark red, came up to her elbows while her boots did go up to her knees. She had black pants, and also a black cape. It took a moment for her to manage to get her swords belted on correctly, though.

"Need food," she announced to her friend as soon as she had finished fastening on her two swords, going to the door and opening it. She didn't leave yet, though, one hand on the edge of the door as she looked over at Katherine. "Are you coming or are you just going to stand around while there's food downstairs?" she asked, pointing out the door to stress her point.

"I didn't notice I was hungry until you said that. I guess I just don't eat a lot in the morning." Katherine followed Caitlin, closing the door behind her. There was no lock, but the lovely town of Palmacosta probably had a whole bunch less crime than the hotels Katherine normally stayed at. Like the Academy, the Inn also got an upgrade now that it was...you know, real. Instead of just a few rooms and a lobby, the inn comprised of three floors. The top two floors had four or five rooms apiece, and the ground floor had two rooms for customers, the lobby, and a kitchen-which is where the girls were headed when they saw a group of four people in colorful clothing walking up to the desk.

"Hello, welcome to Skipper's Haven!" The young girl at the desk beamed at the group, her short hair bobbing around her face. She was obviously expecting a reply different from the one she received, a few grunts and a faint 'thank you' from one person, as her smile fell and her energy dissipated. "It's 200 Gald for a night. Would you like to stay the night?"

One young man stepped to the front and slammed his fist against the desk, startling the receptionist. "How dare you try to take money from the Chosen! She will bring you salvation, so you should be the one paying her!" he growled, leaning in closer to drive his point. Katherine and Caitlin stared in shock, only now noticing who these people were. There were two males and two females, the male at the desk obviously being the leader. He had spiky, dark auburn hair that practically stuck straight up. He wore patchy plate mail, clearly showing the bare skin underneath. How impractical. He had obviously never seen even five seconds of battle.

The other male, who glanced nervously at the first, really did look like a gorilla. He was heavier-set than the others, but stood slightly bent over like he felt inferior. He wore a large, dark green tank top with a wide, tan belt. His hair was shorter and more brown than the other male's.

One young woman, a mage by the looks of it, wore pale blue robes with a matching cape and carried a small wooden staff. Her blond hair peeked out from a large, sky blue witch's hat, and the look on her face was calculating as she glanced around the lobby. Katherine quickly moved her gaze to the other girl in order to avoid the mage's stare.

The last member of the 'Fake Chosen Group' was a small, demure girl in a long mustard dress. She had short, dark blue hair that perfectly framed her face. Placing her hand on the leader's shoulder, she spoke up. "The truth is, we're running a little low on Gald. Is it alright if we give you 100 Gald? We will remember the kindness of Palmacosta when the world is regenerated."

Caitlin kept glancing from one member of the group to another, her eyes wide as she realized something. "Genis," she mumbled, tugging on her friend's shirt sleeve to catch her attention. "Since they appeared now, won't the actual group be coming real soon?" She looked back over at the group of fakes, who seemed pleased that the poor girl at the counter had accepted their offer of 100 Gald. Her mind wandered to the possibility that they could stop this group from getting the book from Dorr, but that would probably mess stuff up badly.

Katherine stared at the group, moving from member to member periodically. "Yeah, they will. We need to make sure we're ready for that..." Her voice was quiet, a whisper almost, not because she was scared, but mostly because she didn't want to alert the fakes to her presence. Sort of a predator-prey instinctual thing.

"Haven't we been ready?" Caitlin asked, pointing upstairs to their room where their bags of supplies were. "That's kind of why we bought all that stuff. Well, except the apple gels of course. Those were mainly for our sparring." She grinned at her comment, before heading to the kitchen. "Come on, Genis, we were going to get food weren't we?" she said over her shoulder.

Laughing a little, Katherine followed her friend. "That's true. But I meant ready mentally, more than ready item-wise. Hmm, what should I eat today?" Katherine glanced between a muffin and scrambled eggs. "Muffins are yummy, but scrambled eggs are healthier..."

"Just take both," Caitlin suggested, rolling her eyes and taking both kinds of food for her own breakfast, plopping down in at the table in the kitchen and taking a big bite of her muffin. "Anyway, is there even a way anyone could be mentally prepared to meet up with them?" she added, once she was able to speak easily without food messing with her speech.

Katherine mumbled something incomprehensible, not bothering to finish devouring her muffin. Knowing that Caitlin didn't understand her, she swallowed and spoke again. "For the sheer weirdness factor? That's impossible. But for the not-spoiling-anything-even-though-it's-screaming-to-be-said factor, that'll take some preparation. That means we can't call Kratos 'Darth Kratosmort'." She sighed. "But it'll be so tempting..."

Caitlin snickered, her fork of eggs halfway to her mouth. "Why not? Krat-man wouldn't understand what it meant anyway. He might just get confused as to why we called him that," she pointed out, popping the eggs in her mouth afterward. She liked to be able to understand what the heck she was saying, unlike Katherine.

"Well, I guess so...just be careful with what you say. If I could do it for my brother, I can do it for them, right?" Katherine forked more eggs in her mouth, pondering how to get into the journey in the first place. Maybe...Hmm...What would work?

"Yes, but that's you. You slip-up easily when you're excited or something. Anyway, I bet'cha that I could just blow it off with some little lie as to why I said whatever it was, if it ever happens," Caitlin said, sounding sure of herself as she finished eating. "So...are you done yet? So we can leave the inn again?"

"Yeah, yeah. Let's get to work." The girls were, of course, still waitress-ing at the academy. You may have only gotten four or five hundred Gald in the game, but when you worked there for hours on end, day in and day out, you earned enough to live off of. Katherine was still mulling over how to join the group. Even if they convinced Lloyd or Colette, Genis had trust issues and Raine and Kratos would be difficult, if not impossible to convince. This was a conundrum Katherine had been avoiding the last few weeks. It was scary to think about what might happen if they didn't get to join. Palmacosta gets destroyed later on, and everyone there dies! What if they were still there? Katherine shuddered a little, and turned her thoughts back to trying to join the journey.

Like her friend, Caitlin was also thinking about encountering the group, chewing on the inside of her cheek absent-mindedly. It wouldn't be as easy as going up and saying, "Hi, we'd like to join your party, thanks," and being accepted, like what happened on FanFiction all the time. No...it would be a lot harder. Now, maybe if the decision fell on the Chosen's shoulders again (as the decisions usually did), then they would be in the clear, even if they weren't accepted by everyone. "Maybe we can see them if they go to the academy, for Genis' test thing and for Colette to help with waitressing. We actually could use a little help," she said, practically thinking out loud. And help would be nice; she kept forgetting who ordered what and who sat where, even though she was doing ten times better than when they started.

Startled slightly, Katherine nodded. "Yeah, that's what I was hoping for. Colette helping would be awesome, and we'd have bonus Chosen points because we'll have talked to her and everything."

"Chosen points?" Caitlin said, raising an eyebrow at her friend as she swerved around a couple people who had stopped in their way to look at some object that someone was selling. "You mean there are points for knowing and befriending Colette?" She grinned back at Katherine before managing to make it through the crowd and to the Academy.

She led the way down to the cafeteria, which was fairly close to the door like in the game. It made it much easier to find and get to, and lessened the things that Caitlin's swords could hit. But it also helped for her to pick out the start of a faint, interesting conversation near the entrance before she opened up the cafeteria door.

"Weren't you supposed to come here, Genis?" she heard, and the voice made her freeze, looking at Katherine. She seemed shocked, since the voice was recognizable, and the fact that they said 'Genis' kind of clued her in. That's Lloyd! she thought, looking from her friend back toward the entrance and now not wanting to go through the door behind her.

Katherine returned Caitlin's shocked look and turned to the group at the entrance. Sure enough, it was Lloyd & Co. Lloyd and Genis were at the front of the group, well inside the front room, with Colette hovering happily over their shoulders. Raine and Kratos remained close to the door, like they were securing an escape route. Katherine looked closer, and she noticed that while the group was extremely similar to their game counter-parts, these people were just that more real.

Lloyd was definetly taller than Genis, the latter's hair having a silvery sheen while sticking all over the place. Like in the game, his hair seemed unnaturally long for a twelve-year-old boy. Of course, he was wearing his usual shorts and short-sleeved blue outfit that you saw all the time in the game, and he held his colorful kendama in one hand. Apparently he hadn't wanted to leave it behind at the inn, where Caitlin assumed all of their supplies were.

Lloyd himself looked a lot less childish than he did in the game. Then again, ToS could make anyone look childish, so that wasn't saying much. Except Kratos; Kratos could never look that way. But he was pretty tall - Caitlin guessed about an inch or two taller than herself, not counting his hair sticking straight up - and was of course wearing his usual suspenders, red jacket and gloves, black pants, and large boots with his swords belted to his hips.

Next, Caitlin looked over at the overly-cheerful Chosen. Her white outfit was a little stained (mostly by green from falling on the ground so many times, she assumed, though a few were by small amounts of blood that showed up really well against her outfit). Like in the game, she was smiling, as she did so often, looking like a perfect little angel. Which was kind of true... Her chakrams were in a little contraption on her back so she didn't have to carry them all the time.

It was kind of obvious that Raine enjoyed being in the Academy just because, well, it was an academy. She looked a little less stern than she usually did when out of Ruin Mode, and like the others in the group wore her customary clothing - the white shirt, black pants, really weird boots, and orange robes. Like always, her staff was present in her hand. Katherine cringed at the sight of the boots, those terrible, Martel-cursed things were real!

Compared to the others who were at least showing some emotion about being in the Academy, Kratos seemed particularly withdrawn. He was scowling - though that might have just been his usual expression - with his arms crossed over his chest as he watched the three younger members of the group. Caitlin thought that he looked a little intimidating, even though she wasn't next to him and he wore purple. Maybe it was the look, or the sword that he had that she knew he could wield with ease.

Genis shrugged in response to Lloyd's question. "Yeah. I got a recommendation to come here last year." That was the jerk's cue to tromp down the stairs.

"You? A child like yourself would never be accepted to this prestigious academy." That was obviously Mighty Washington, who looked a little more familiar than he should have. Katherine covered her mouth with her hand. This guy looked just like the vermin-girl! They must have been relatives or something, but little shocking.

Lloyd leaned slightly forward. "Oh yeah? Genis is really smart! He even knows his times tables!"

"That's only an achievement for you Lloyd." Genis sighed heavily.

Mighty laughed, "you know what they say. Birds of a feather flock together." His entourage snickered meanly. Caitlin frowned whenever Mighty started teasing Genis, and felt like jumping in, but she didn't know if that would do anything other than draw attention to her and Katherine. But after a second she decided to also come to Genis' aid.

"And you've just flocked to them, so what does that make you?" she said to Mighty, crossing her arms over her chest. Surprised, Lloyd looked over toward her and Katherine to see who was also sticking up for his best friend.

Mighty turned to Caitlin, disdain in his eyes. "And so did you, miss. If I'm not mistaken, you and your friend match the description of the waitresses who mistreated my dear sister."

"I was right!" Katherine pointed at Mighty. "Your whole family is full of jerks!"

Caitlin just stuck her tongue out at Mighty childishly at first before saying to Katherine, but loud enough for Mighty to hear, "And apparently full of idiots, if his sister didn't even know how to read one measely menu board." She noticed that Lloyd was trying to smother his snickers and Colette was giggling at the argument.

Genis started to snicker, but was promptly smacked by Raine. "You are all acting like children. If you cannot act more maturely, we should be going." Kratos nodded (while Caitlin muttered under her breath, "But we are children..."). "As the Chosen, you must focus on your journey."

Everyone who wasn't part of the group- including Caitlin and Katherine for effect- stared at Colette in shock. "The Ch-chosen! You're the Chosen!" Mighty sputtered and coughed.

Colette paled. "Well, yes...but, please, treat us normally."

Katherine tilted her head. "Wow. You sound a lot different from the other Chosen who came through here. They were kind of mean..."

Lloyd looked a little surprised when Katherine mentioned the other Chosens. "What? Another Chosen?" he asked, his tone as shocked as his expression.

Katherine shrugged nervously as the group's attention turned to her. "Yeah...But wouldn't one of you have to be fake? If I had to guess, I'd say the other group was fake, you seem more...genuine, you know what I mean?"

Caitlin facepalmed. There was no way to just say 'Yeah, you're the real Chosen and by the way, don't trust Mithos, it'll kill you' without the girls being brutally slaughtered by Kratos. Which would be bad.

Raine cast a scrutinizing look on the girls. "Really now? And what does this Chosen look like?"

Katherine turned to Caitlin. "You tell them, I don't want to be in the spotlight anymore."

Caitlin thought for a second before shrugging sheepishly. "...I forgot," she said, grinning at her friend. Lloyd snickered.

Katherine hung her head. "Seriously Caitlin, it wasn't even an hour ago. Anyways...there's a girl with blue hair, she's the 'Chosen', and then there's a mage, I think. And then there's these two guys. One has really spiky hair, like yours," she pointed to Lloyd, "and the other guy looks like a gorilla."

Genis laughed. "A gorilla? Seriously? That's great!" A moment later, he turned to Raine. "Sis! That sounds like the people who we ran into earlier!"

Raine nodded. "Yes, it certaintly does. Should we go back to confirm? I have a feeling they won't leave until we provide another Palma Potion."

Katherine brightened. "A Palma Potion? We can get you one of those! Here, come with us!" She grabbed Colette's hand and ran down the hall, leaving Caitlin, Lloyd, Genis, Raine, Kratos, Mighty, and entourage behind.

Caitlin stared after her friend, while Lloyd just looked stunned. "Better follow her then," she said to Colette's friends, running after Katherine herself and feeling very bewildered. Lloyd looked at Raine and Kratos for a moment before following after the two girls and his friend.  

[Lloyd Irving Aurion 17]

Tests of the Mind

Katherine burst through the cafeteria door, dragging Colette behind her. "Carl! We need a Palma Potion!" Carl only looked out from his position in the kitchen, realizing that it was Katherine. He had gotten somewhat used to her unusual boughts of random-ness, but the customers had not. They gave the loud girl the oddest of looks, which only intensified when she was followed by two others. Carl walked up to the small group, wiping his hands off on a towel. "Well, what do you need a Palma Potion for? Those things aren't cheap you know."

Katherine pushed gently pushed Colette forward. "She's the one that needs it. Can you help her?" Colette seemed a little nervous as she smiled and gave a small wave.

"So you need a Palma Potion? Why not just buy it at Marble's?" Carl asked, looking at her curiously. While they talked about needing the potion, Caitlin was zoned out again, fingering the hilt of one of her swords, since she already knew the reason and had no need to listen in.

"Ah, yes. We would have bought it there, but we ran out of Gald," Colette answered, and Lloyd nodded behind her. "But if you aren't able to help, then that's okay, too!" she added. Carl shook his head.

"No, it's fine, I can help. We do happen to have a few in the back right now, just in case anyone would like one, since they are rather expensive. But I'm afraid we can't just give it out for free, miss," he said, sounding a little regretful.

Lloyd frowned at him when he mentioned that. "Then how much are you selling them for? Less than they were in Marble's, right?" he checked, and Carl nodded even before the question was completed.

"Don't worry, we aren't selling them for nearly as much as that. Is 200 Gald more affordable for you?" he asked, and Lloyd nodded. The group had enough Gald for that, if just barely. "Good. Then, Caitlin, you know where they are kept, don't you?" he said, and Caitlin started out of her zoning, jumping a little when her name was mentioned.

"Uh...yeah. I know where they are," she said, and moved around the others to disappear into the kitchen and fetch one.

"So...how did you guys run out of Gald?" Katherine asked, trying to break the ice while Caitlin fetched the Palma Potion. Genis answered, having just come through the door. "Lloyd found the weapon shop. I don't know how he did it, but he convinced Kratos to pay for new swords."

Katherine raised her eyebrows as she looked at Lloyd. "Wow, you must have been really convincing if he spent all of your Gald on you."

"It wasn't all on me," Lloyd said defensively. "A lot of it went into supplies and stuff too. Anyway, we have just over 200 left right now, so not all of it was spent." There was a small crash from the kitchen, accompanied by Caitlin's startled yelp and then a muttered, "Dammit!" She appeared a moment later, holding a bottle with the potion and inspecting one of her sword sheaths as she walked.

"Stupid sword," she grumbled, looking back up at where she was going. "Has to go and hit everything." Lloyd was trying to smother his laughter again and Colette smiled. "Shut up, or I'll risk throwing this at you," Caitlin threatened, holding up the Palma Potion. Lloyd backed up a couple steps but was still snickering quietly.

Katherine sighed. "You still haven't gotten used to those? It's already been a week or so."

Genis laughed. "It took Lloyd a few months to get used to his swords. For a while, he was almost as clumsy as Colette! There was one time when-" Genis stopped talking when he saw Lloyd's face. "Or...never mind."

"What happened?" Caitlin asked instantly, putting the Palma Potion down by her side, though it was quickly taken by Carl before she actually did throw it. She ignored the fact that she wasn't trusted with something fragile, looking between Colette, Lloyd, and Genis curiously.

"Nothing," Lloyd answered, shaking his head, and Caitlin rolled her eyes but didn't press. "But you'll get used to having those," he added to change the subject slightly, pointing to the two swords. Caitlin looked skeptical. "Just don't hit stuff with them." He snickered again and made the other twin swordsman give him a not-very-menacing glare, since she was kind of holding back a smile.

"Anyway, here's the potion that you needed," Carl interrupted and Lloyd's snickering stopped. He looked around behind him, expecting the Professor or Kratos to be behind him since they had their money, though they hadn't followed the kids into the cafeteria.

Genis looked around realizing that Raine and Kratos hadn't followed them. Katherine looked at him, curious. "You do know that you need to pay for this, right? Oh right! That other guy has your Gald, doesn't he?" Colette nodded. "Well, I can go get him for you. He shouldn't be hard to find, he's the purple guy, right?" Seeing another nod from everybody, Katherine opened the door to the hallway. "Do any of you want to come with me?"

"Naturally," Caitlin said, nodding. She didn't want to sit around the cafeteria waiting for Katherine to get back. That would just be really boring, and she did not cope well with boredom.

"Of course you want to. Does anybody else? Eh, what are your names anyways? You are Lloyd, right?" Katherine faced Lloyd.

"Yeah, that's me," he said, nodding. "And these are my friends, Genis Sage and Colette Brunel," he added, pointing to each in turn. "And Kratos is also with us, the big mercenary in purple, and the other person with us was Genis' sister, Raine." Caitlin simply nodded, a little tempted to say that they already knew that, but she didn't. That would be bad and stupid.

"Well my name's Caitlin, and that's my friend Katherine," she said, pointing to her hyper-active friend. "Okay, so, introductions aside... You guys coming, or do you want to wait here for us to bring Mr. Mercenary here?"

"We can come with you. Genis probably knows where the Professor and Kratos are, right Genis?" Colette stepped to the doorway, joining Katherine.

"Well, they shouldn't be that hard to find. The Professor is probably around here somewhere, since it's a school, and Kratos...well, he could be anywhere," Lloyd said, giving Kratos' position a moment of thought before giving up and shrugging.

"Then let's go find him, and you guys can get your Palma Potion," Caitlin said, going out passed Katherine and Colette and then heading down the hall. She stopped at the front door and looked back over her shoulder to make sure she was being followed. Lloyd had moved out of the cafeteria as well and followed her over, as well as Colette. "Come, Katherine and Shorty!" she called, grinning.

Genis 'humphed' as he and Katherine joined the others. "I'm not short!" he muttered at last, the five of them all walking together. Katherine giggled.

"Yes, you are pretty short compared to all of us. I'm a little short too, but I don't let it bother me." (This was a complete lie. She let it bother her. A lot.) Genis looked at the girl sideways.

"You also don't befriend people much older than you. In fact, you're just about Colette's height, and Caitlin is just about Lloyd's height, minus the hair."

Colette grabbed Katherine's hand. "You're my height? Then we can be friends! You'll be my first girlfriend!"

As Katherine tried to say that Caitlin could be her friend too, Lloyd shoved his hands into his pockets. "That's right, Colette wants me to figure out how to be friends with that assassin. How do you do that?"

Katherine looked at Colette. "Assassin? You want to be friends with an assassin?" She knew that this was Sheena they were talking about, but still, it sounded extremely absurd when spoken out loud.

Colette nodded and smiled. "Yeah, because she seemed really nice actually. I don't think that she's really all that bad," she answered. "And I feel a little bad for her, since she got hurt a lot." Caitlin snickered for a second, mainly because she knew one of the times that Sheena had gotten hurt would have been falling down that mine shaft on the Ossa Trail.

"But she's still an assassin, right? What if she's trying to trick you into thinking she's good?" The comment sounded a little ludicrous even to Caitlin, who had said it. Colette shook her head, obviously not thinking that was true. "Well, either way, it's kind of silly to trust and befriend someone who wants to kill you."

"Yeah. But Colette still thinks she's a friend," Lloyd sighed, shaking his head and looking around the Academy. "Do either of you two know where Kratos might be?" he asked, looking at Genis and Colette. The Chosen thought for a moment before answering.

"Maybe he's wherever Raine is, waiting for us?" she guessed.

Katherine looked at Genis, for some reason expecting him to keep track of his sister. "Do you know where they are Genis? Is Kratos even with Raine?"

Genis shook his head. "No, I think I saw Kratos slip into a classroom when I was following you, and Raine went upstairs."

"A classroom? What would he be doing in there?" Katherine asked as she opened the door to the first classroom she saw. Inside were a teacher and student, talking to each other, a huge bookshelf with a young girl looking through the books, and in a chair leafing through a large dusty-looking book, was Kratos. Katherine had to wonder why he was reading in the first place, wouldn't he already know what was in it? Maybe he was just reading it to see how bad Sylvarant's books were. Or...Katherine really didn't know. And she sure wasn't asking him.

Lloyd had already hurried up to Kratos to explain what had happened with a few very exaggerated hand movements. "These two girls, Caitlin and Katherine, helped us find a Palma Potion to give to those people. It's only 200 Gald, a lot cheaper than at Marble's, but we need you to pay for it," the twin swordsman said, dropping his arms to his sides as he finally realized that he was motioning a lot and without real reason behind the movements.

Kratos glanced at the two girls. "200 Gald? That may be less expensive, but it's still too much. We only have 500 Gald left, and we need it to fall back on."

Lloyd was sullen. "But..." Colette turned to Katherine and Caitlin. "Is there another way we can get the Palma Potion? Something we can do to help perhaps?"

Sensing a sudden spark of inspiration, Katherine smiled. "Yes there is actually. You could help us waitress, and maybe Carl will give the potion as payment! That would be awesome, because there aren't enough waitresses right now. Actually, Caitlin and I are pretty much the only ones."

"He'd probably give you some Gald too, so that you have more to 'fall back on,'" Caitlin said, making very small air quotes around the last three words. She thought that what Kratos said was kind of stupid - they'd still have 300 Gald and what would they need it for, besides this anyway? - but she didn't really want to tick him off. She really did not think that it would be good to mess with Kratos, especially whenever he didn't know the person and could easily hurt them. Though the reasoning behind this assumption was greatly influenced by her dislike of him and the mass of FanFictions she often read.

"Okay!" Colette said agreeably, nodding. "That sounds like fun!" Caitlin made a face, though didn't say what she thought about waitressing, like how hard it was to remember who ordered what and where they sat, or that people got really mad if you messed up. Having random people get mad at you for something simple did not help a person's self-esteem.

"Then we should go tell Carl. You know, I feel like I'm going in circles now," she sighed instead of mentioning her thoughts.

The girls all went back to the cafeteria, Lloyd and Genis opting to stick with Kratos rather than serve food to random customers. "If you feel like you're going in circles now," Katherine muttered, "just wait until later." Opening the door, Katherine found Carl struggling to keep up with the rush of customers demanding service. She grimaced slightly, then led Colette up to the poor man. "Carl, is it okay if Colette helps us waitress in exchange for a Palma Potion and a little Gald?"

Carl looked at Colette briefly, his expression turning relieved at the prospect of more aid. "That's fine," he agreed, and Colette smiled, thanking him. "Hopefully it'll be a little easier with some more help, and that seems like a reasonable payment." Caitlin just nodded before grabbing Colette's hand and leading her back into the kitchen and away from all the people.

"Hey, Ge - er - Katherine," Caitlin said, glancing back at her friend and correcting herself before she called her 'Genis'. "Do you think there's another uniform for Colette?" As she spoke she grabbed her own uniform, changing into it quickly. She flinched when she knocked over a couple more things when her swords were tossed aside, and those objects joined the few others scattered around the floor from a few minutes ago.

"Probably. If there's not, she can borrow mine. I mean, my clothes do sort of match the uniforms..." Katherine looked down at her outfit, the white and blue similar to the uniforms.

Caitlin nodded, picking up the mess that she'd made because of her swords and then dumping the load on the counter. A can rolled off and fell to the floor again. "Alright," she agreed, picking up the can and glaring at it before slamming it down on the counter. Colette giggled as the twin swordsman went to search for a spare uniform without knocking anything else down. "Ah-ha!" she cried triumphantly a moment later, pulling out another uniform. "Here you go, Colette."

"Thanks!" Colette said cheerfully, changing into it. "So what can I do to help?"

"Well...you can help me remember who ordered what and where they sit and bring the food to them. Katherine has the easy job," Caitlin offered, sticking her tongue out at Katherine.

Colette nodded. "Alright, that sounds fun," she said, still really happy. Caitlin was starting to wonder if she'd hear her be anything but happy, even though she knew it happened a couple times in the game. Once Katherine had also changed into her uniform, they went out to start serving the large group of people.

The day passed pretty quickly. Katherine stayed behind the counter, taking orders and making the food to give to the other two, while Caitlin and Colette worked on getting it to the right people. They had split the room up half and half, and Caitlin had to admit it was a little easier. She still screwed up a couple times (with one person, she screwed up a few times and they ended up shouting at her in annoyance, where she had almost snapped back but decided against it) but it was a bit easier. Colette had the same problem of remembering where people sat and what they ordered, though she didn't seem to mess up quite as much, just tripping occasionally either over people's feet or thin air. A couple plates of food had been dropped throughout the day by her.

Carl seemed pleased whenever the day was over and the three girls had switched back to their normal clothes, relieved from work early. "Thanks for your help, miss!" he said gratefully to Colette, offering her the Palma Potion that had been promised as well as a bag of about 700 Gald. "I really appreciate it."

"You're welcome. I'm glad I was able to help," she said, taking the payment he offered her and smiling. Carl nodded, saying something about coming back to help another time if she was able before he went to make sure things were cleaned up before closing the cafeteria down for the day. "Thanks for telling me about this job. The others will be glad to have the potion and the Gald!"

"It's not a problem at all. I'm sure Caitlin's glad that she finally got some help, she messes up a lot. Do you want to walk to the inn with us? We're headed there now." Katherine ignored Caitlin's protest to her comment, and just kept talking to Colette.

"I wouldn't mind, but I need to find the others first. Is it alright for me to go get them first?" Colette started drifting towards the classroom where she left Lloyd, Genis and Kratos. Katherine smiled.

"That's fine with me! Let's go find them!"

"Off to find Lloyd, Shorty, Mr. Mercenary, and Shorty's sister!" Caitlin declared, pointing in the direction of the classroom a little dramatically and "accidentally" hitting Katherine at the same time. It was just a teeny bit of payback for her comment a second ago, since Caitlin had noticed her protests being ignored. "I bet they got kind of bored waiting for you," she added, lowering her arm back down to her side (or rather, her sword's hilt which she preferred to rest her arms on now).

"They aren't you Ll-Caitlin. You get bored really easily. But I guess it has been a while, maybe they're all reading?" Katherine opened the door to the empty classroom, half expecting to see everyone reading. Ok, maybe not Lloyd, but at least Genis might be reading. Instead, only the original occupants remained, the girl reading and taking notes at a desk, the teacher and student trying to work a problem out. Kratos, Lloyd, and Genis were not in the room, which left the question of where they could possibly be. "Ehh, maybe they're upstairs?" Katherine muttered, closing the door and moving towards the stairs.

"Either that, or they left already, but I doubt they'd do that," Caitlin said, looking at Colette. "Unless, you know, they just thought you were taking so long getting done that they got fed up waiting for you and decided to go somewhere else." It seemed like a reasonable thing to do, even if it would never happen.

"No, they wouldn't have left," Colette said, shaking her head. "They probably are upstairs waiting."

"Then let's go upstairs," Katherine muttered, rolling her eyes. The girls walked up the stairs and found Lloyd pacing back and forth at the top of the stairs, tossing a rock up in the air and catching it. "Hey! Lloyd! Where's everyone else?"

Lloyd snatched the stone out of the air, turning to the girls with a brighter air about him. "Genis is taking some sort of test, and I was supposed to wait out here for Colette. She and I can take the test if we want to, the Professor said something about it being a good chance to test our abilities or something."

"Who'd wanna take some boring old test?" Caitlin said, making a face. She had been glad they were at the Palmacosta Academy, since that meant that they wouldn't actually be with the group when they took the test, so she wouldn't have to. She didn't like tests, not because she did poorly on them (actually, she generally did fairly well, though sometimes just by cheating), she just didn't like them.

"It's a good thing the Professor isn't here - she wouldn't like hearing someone say that," Lloyd said, and Caitlin adopted an innocently curious expression, since she knew they hadn't called Raine that before, and even though it was quite obvious who he was talking about, it was easiest to play ignorant. That and she wasn't supposed to know what Raine was like.

"Professor?" she asked simply, and Colette nodded.

"Uh-huh. Genis' sister was our teacher in Iselia, so we call her the Professor," Colette supplied.

Katherine nodded. "That makes sense." She may have already known, but she wasn't going to let them know that. "Do you think it would be alright for me to take the test too? It might be nice to know ... whatever it is that the test would tell me, I suppose. Please?"

"I guess you could... But you'd probably have to ask the Professor or Kratos," Lloyd answered, while Caitlin was looking at her friend as if she had just lost her mind. Who in their right minds would want to take the test? Then again, it was Katherine she was talking about...this was the girl who told their Spanish teacher that she would much rather take a test than do a project, who took the ACT in 8th grade, and who took the PSAT as a sophomore.

"Thanks! I'll go ask! Where are they?" Katherine's energy levels soared, and upon recieving an answer of the third door on the right, ran to the door and cautiously opened it. Inside, the room was quiet, Genis laboriously working on his test. He looked up when Katherine opened the door, then quickly turned back to keep working. Finding Raine reading in the corner, Katherine asked her if she could take the test too. "I don't see why not, but it is a timed test, and you won't be given an extension." Katherine nodded, and Raine pulled a stack of papers off of the desk to the side, handing it to her. "You can sit over there and start working."

Colette had come in to take the test as well, though Caitlin refused to go in there and test at all. She sat down with her back against the wall, her swords crossed behind her. "So...you don't want to go in and take the test either?" she asked, looking up at Lloyd who had also remained outside the room. He shook his head, leaning against the wall.

"No. I'm not very good at tests," he said, shaking his head, and Caitlin nodded. Of course she had known that already, but again she wasn't supposed to let them know that.

Katherine had always been a little curious about what was on the test that Genis took. It would obviously be somewhat difficult, but she didn't expect anything really complicated. How much would decline affect the acedemics in Slyvarant? Did they have logarithms and stuff like that? She loved logarithms, they worked, like algebra in general. You just follow all the rules, and you get an answer. Looking at the test, she noticed a few different sections: math, science, history, and...logic? Really? Logic? What the Niflheim would that be? Whatever, it was the last section so she might not even get to it. Start with math, then go through in order, no skipping around.

Math question number 1: Given that x=13, what is the solution to 5x-12? Well, that was relatively simple. 5 times 13 minus 12, easy. What was 5 times 13? Better do that real quick to make sure she wasn't wrong. Once she got 53 for an answer, she went on the next problem. The next looked a little harder, but not much. Would there be graphs? Katherine had said before that graphs were the bane of her existence, so she hoped not.

Caitlin looked over at the door to the room before groaning and leaning her head back against the wall. "I'm bored," she complained, having nothing in the hallway to entertain herself with. Lloyd slid down the wall and sat down as well, nodding.

"Me too," he sighed, also glancing at the room. "How long do you think they'll take on the test?" Caitlin shrugged in response - she wasn't sure if the time limit was even mentioned in the game. Though no matter what it was, it'd be too long.

By the end of the math section, Katherine's head started to feel like mush. She had been on summer break and had had no reason to acctually use her brain. Science was next, and she figured that there wouldn't be much chemistry on it, at least not elements sort chemistry. Maybe reactions and stuff? She did expect physics and maybe some genetics too.

Science question number 1: In the synthesis of water from its elements, 20g of hydrogen would produce what volume water vapor? Lookie, chemistry! Umm, the problem looked like mass-volume, so it would go something like this: 20g hydrogen to 1 mole hydrogen over 2g hydrogen to 2 moles hydrogen over 2 moles water to 22.4 L water over 1 mole water. The answer: 224 liters of water vapor. Cool, she could still do these.

Science question number 13: The alleles for white flowers and red flowers are codominant. What are the possible genotypic and phenotypic ratios in the cross between a white flower and a pink flower? Yay, genetics! This rocked! Genetics was the reason that Katherine got an A in Biology even though she got a D on the final (long story). White and pink? That was pretty easy too. The phenotypic would be a 2 pink:2 white ratio, while the genotypic would be 2 RW:2 WW.

While Katherine was going through the test, the other two who weren't in the room had succumbed to massive boredom. "Wanna play a game?" Caitlin asked after a minute, while messing with the hilt of one of her swords. Lloyd looked at her questioningly.

"What game?" he asked, and she looked around for something to keep them occupied for as long as the test would take. Or ten minutes, whichever worked.

"Word association!" Caitlin said after a second. "I say a word, you say another that relates to it, and so on. Summon Spirit."

"Uh...Efreet."

"Fire."

"Fire Ball."

"Mage."

"Genis."

"Um...short?" Lloyd laughed at Caitlin's answer before thinking about his.

"Colette!" Now Caitlin laughed. Colette was kind of short, even though it wasn't as short as Genis. Then again, that was a four year age gap between the two.

"Chosen?"

"Remiel." This is where the game came to a stand-still, since Caitlin had adopted a confused look at the angel's name. Lloyd noticed it and smiled a little sheepishly. "Oh, yeah... You wouldn't know him. He's an angel that is helping Colette through her journey of regeneration."

"Oh...okay. Then angel!" Caitlin said, deciding to try and continue the game.

Katherine had to leave some of the science questions blank because she didn't get them. Next was history. Yay. Not only did Katherine not know the most basic of Slyvarant's history, but these would be difficult questions designed to test their knowledge. Maybe the game's scant information would be enough to get through this section.

History question number 1: In what location did King Cleo III make a pact with the wind spirits? That was easy! The stone dias in Asgard! Katherine scribbled down her answer and moved on to the next question.

History question number 2: Who was the first Chosen? Another easy one! Spiritua!

History question number who cares anymore: Who was the founder of Hima and what was his fate? The era of answerable questions had long passed. She'd only answered a few questions and had given a couple others the answers she wanted them to be. Like that Luin was founded on the priciples of goodness and love (they always win!) or that if they wanted an answer they should ask a mercenary (they know everything!).

Outside in the hall, the word association game had continued on from 'angel', going through 'wing', 'bird', 'fly', 'frog', and lots of other things until they somehow reached 'school'.

"Raine," Lloyd continued, seemingly entertained by the game.

"Professor."

"Math."

"Icky."

"Tomatoes." Caitlin snickered at his answer. "What? I don't like tomatoes. They're gross," Lloyd said.

"They kind of are, but they're not that bad," Caitlin told him. She hadn't understood for a long time why he thought that tomatoes were so gross - as well as Kratos - but she thought it kind of funny anyway. Mainly because in fanfictions, people made fun of the pair of them and their 'fear' of tomatoes. "And I don't know where to go from there..."

"Uh...I don't either," Lloyd said, frowning and looking around the hall for something else to do.

Finally the logic section. What would this section be? Glancing through the problems, she saw a whole bunch of analogies, and a bunch of other word problems. Well, Katherine wasn't bad at these...

Logic question number 1: Torture is to Flay as Execution is to... Wow, what a cheerful question. Hmm, flaying was a form of torture, kind of, so decapitation was a form of execution! Decapitation!

Logic question number 7: In another language, the phrase mangez vous les saucissons means do you eat sausage. Also, the phrase voulez vous les saucissons means do you want sausage. What would the phrase voulez vous manger les saucissons mean? Haha! French! Simple. Voulez vous manger les saucissons means do you want to eat sausage! Go foreign language!

"So where are you guys gonna go next?" Caitlin asked, now sprawled out in the hallway, lying on her back and looking at the ceiling. She ran the risk of being stepped on if someone came down the hall, but wasn't really thinking about that. They could still go around her if they noticed the twin swordsman lying there in the first place.

"We don't know yet," Lloyd said, shaking his head. He had slid down the wall a little more so he was more slouched against it, half-lying across the hall now. "We still have to figure out what the next seal is." Caitlin nodded, which felt weird lying down like she was. They fell silent for a second before Caitlin spoke up again, randomly.

"I Spy..." she said slowly, arching her head back so she was still lying down, but looking upside-down now. She saw Lloyd snickering at the random change. "...something...red."

"Your jacket?"

"No."

"My jacket?"

"No."

"Your gloves?"

"No."

"Mine."

"No."

"Boots." Lloyd pointed to his own boots and Caitlin shook her head. "Yours?"

"Yes." Caitlin grinned upside-down. "Your turn!"

Inside the room, the test had been stopped as time had just run out to do it. The headmaster went and collected all the tests. "I will be back soon with the results," he told the people in the room. Colette went over to talk to Genis about the test once the headmaster left the room. Katherine slumped, her forehead against the the table. Her brain had throughly begun to feel like mush, and the table was nice and cold. Bleh. She didn't expect to do too well on it, seeing as she left over half of the history section blank, but she figured most of what she did answer was right. She turned her head to cool off a different part of her head and noticed Colette and Genis walking towards her. "Uhh, hi?"

"Yeah, hi." Genis and Colette pulled up chairs and the three of them sat together at the table. "So Genis, how do you think you did?" Genis grinned.

"Awesome! The questions were really easy compared to what Raine gives us. You guys must have done pretty well too!" Colette smiled.

"Except I didn't know too many of the math and science questions, but the history ones were easy!" Katherine pushed her forehead farther into the table.

"I guess I did okay in math, science and logic, but I didn't know most of the history questions. I'm not good at remembering historical facts."

A couple minutes later, the headmaster came back in with the scores. "I have the scores of the tests," he announced a little unnecessarily. "Colette with 210" - Colette smiled, pleased with her score - "Katherine with 217" - Katherine groaned - "and Genis with a perfect 400." Genis' grin got bigger as Colette congratulated him as well. She also congratulated Katherine for her score, even though it wasn't that good. "Now, Raine and Genis Sage, I would like to have a word with the two of you in my office. Please come this way." Genis and Raine stood and followed him.

"Where are they going?" Katherine asked, getting up with Colette to go back out to the hallway.

"Well, Genis was going to go to this school originally, so maybe the Professor is still trying to get him here?" Katherine nodded.

"That makes sense." In the game Genis had never stayed, but maybe now he would? How different would the beginning of the game be without Genis? Actually, it didn't really matter right now. The girls had found the twin swordsmen in the hallway, and were giggling at their amusing positions.

Caitlin stopped halfway through saying 'floor' (Lloyd's color in I Spy being brown) when she saw Katherine and Colette and heard them giggling. "Oh, hi!" she said, rolling onto her stomach and getting up, though she leaned against the wall right afterwards. "Whoa... I'm light-headed," she said, holding her head in one hand as Lloyd got up as well.

"How'd you guys do on your test?" he asked as Caitlin shook her head quickly to clear it, pushing off the wall to stand normally.

"I think we did good! I got a 210, and Katherine got a 217," Colette said happily and Caitlin smirked at her friend.

"But isn't it out of 400?" she asked, snickering at the fact that Katherine had failed the test she had so wanted to take.

"I didn't fail it! If there wasn't a history section, I would have done really well! It's not my fault I don't know any history."

"You don't know any history? What about the question about Luin? What did you put for that?" Colette asked, looking at her curiously.

"Luin? Umm, I put that they founded Luin on the principles of goodness and love." Caitlin made a face at the first half of Dwarven Vow number seven - she, like Lloyd, didn't like it. She found it too be too cheesy, even for Lloyd to be saying, and that was a pretty dang cheesy line.

"You seriously wrote that? No wonder you failed the history part of the test!" Caitlin told her friend. She didn't know the answer either, but it definitely wasn't Dwarven Vow number seven.

"Hey, where are Genis and the Professor?" Lloyd asked after a second, having noticed that they hadn't followed the two girls out of the room.

"Oh, the headmaster wanted to talk to them once we were done with the test," Colette answered, looking back over at the room.

"When they're done, maybe we can finally go back to the inn. It's actually pretty late..." Katherine turned to find a window to confirm her speculation. Seeing bountiful sunshine, she laughed. "Or, maybe it's not really that late." She was hoping to get back to the inn and think about what was going to happen now. She hadn't put that much thought into it before, but now that they had actually met the actual group, it was something she really needed to start thinking about.

Caitlin looked out the window as well and nodded. It surprisingly was only about mid-afternoon - what had happened to work lasting until late? But she wasn't complaining about that. If there were a few hours were they didn't have to go around and wait tables, she was okay with it. "We need to get out and train some more tonight," she told Katherine, and Lloyd looked between them with interest.

"I guess we're off work for a while, training wouldn't hurt. I'll go check with Carl." Katherine bounded down the stairs cheerfully.

"We'll just wait for Shorty and his sister then," Caitlin said, watching her friend disappear. Since they were all headed to the inn anyway, she might as well wait around for Genis and Raine to show up. She leaned against the wall, already bored, and watched the door a little absently, hoping they would come soon.  

[Lloyd Irving Aurion 17]

Epic Training Fail

After Genis and Raine had come back, the group went to the inn, where Katherine was waiting for them. She had run up to their room and fetched her sword, since she hadn't bothered to bring it to work like Caitlin had. So now the two of them were training, with Lloyd and Genis sitting to the side and watching, while Raine and Colette were back at the inn (Colette trying to keep the professor from making their dinner), and Kratos wasn't anywhere in sight. The former was laughing quietly at the complete lack of skill both of the girls had. Anyone had to admit that it was amusing - much like watching two little kids pretending to fight.

Katherine struck out at her friend, and it was quite obvious that she still hadn't gotten used to the weight of the sword in her hand, since the attack was slow and sloppy. Then again, they had only been fighting with real swords for a couple weeks other than plastic toys. Caitlin caught her friend's sword between her two blades, which were in front of her in an X. "Careful!" she said, looking at the sword point that was in front of her warily. "I don't want to be killed by you. That's not high on my list of ways to die." So keeping with her comment, she lowered her swords and backed up quickly. Then she took one step forward and slashed at Katherine, and the blow was just barely deflected before the point of the sword grazed Katherine's stomach.

"How long have you guys been fighting?" Lloyd suddenly asked, halting the childish-looking training session between the two friends. He was grinning, obviously having fun watching them.

"Uh...three weeks with real swords. Before that, we used...practice ones for a while with our brothers," Caitlin said, wording it carefully for once. She didn't want to mention the whole 'lightsaber' deal since obviously they wouldn't know what the hell she was talking about.

"But Holy Martel, these are so much heavier than the ones we used to use." Katherine swung the sword carefully and slowly, the weight impairing her movement. "I still haven't quite gotten used to it, and I have no idea how Caitlin is managing to use two at the same time."

"It's not that hard - they're probably lighter than that one," she said, gesturing to her sword with one of her own carelessly. Luckily no one was around or else the small motion might have caused injury. "And you're not allowed to laugh. I bet you sucked at sword-fighting when you pretty much first started."

Lloyd shrugged in response. "Yeah..." he said slowly, almost as if he didn't quite want to admit it. "But it didn't take long to get better! ...I could help you guys if you want," he suggested, and the two girls glanced at each other before Caitlin grinned, nodding her approval. It would be awesome to learn how to use her swords, and who better to help her at least than Lloyd, perhaps the only other twin swordfighter. She knew Katherine would get something out of it as well.

Caitlin stepped aside, closer to where Genis was watching so that she could see her friend getting pwn'd by Lloyd. She knew his sword skills were lightyears ahead of theirs, even though at the beginning of the game they kinda sucked. That just proved how bad the two of them were. He drew his swords, and she noticed that they weren't the wooden blades, like she and Katherine had forced on him in the game. They used the wooden blades all through Kilia, yet were put out when no title came their way, so they gave up on it.

"Ready?" Lloyd asked, and Katherine nodded, looking a little nervous. "Okay." He instantly slashed out at Katherine, though his movements were fairly slow to give her some reaction time, not wanting to cut her to ribbons just because she found it hard to lift her own sword. Katherine gave a funny little sound, probably coming from her obvious fear and nerves, drawing her sword up as quickly as she could without hitting herself and meeting one of his blades before it hit her. However, it was much harder to block the second, so the flat edge hit her leg, most likely giving her another bruise. Lloyd grinned at her. "I don't think you're supposed to get hit." At that, Caitlin laughed.

"I know that!" Katherine said, backing up a step to go at it again. This time she tried to get a hit in, though it was easily blocked by one of Lloyd's sword and a small clash of steel. Caitlin was watching what Lloyd was doing intently, hoping she could see how he fought for when it was her turn. The small spar was fairly short, ending with Katherine managing to block both, though one of them was pure luck since his sword struck down on almost the tip of hers.

"That was cool," Lloyd said, grinning again as he moved his blades away. Then he looked curious and asked, "Can you guys do Demon Fang or anything?" Katherine and Caitlin glanced at each other for a second before shaking their heads.

"No," Caitlin said, sounding a little bummed. "We've tried but, well, it hasn't really worked out that well." Probably because neither of them knew how to use a tech. Obviously there was no such thing as techs that rely on the usage of mana on Earth. If there was, then school fights would be a lot more interesting.

Lloyd was quiet for a moment before offering, "I could teach you how to use it, if you want... Kratos could probably teach it better, but I don't know if he would." He shrugged, looking at the two girls to see their reaction.

"Sweet!" Katherine agreed, as Caitlin shouted happily, "Sure!" Lloyd laughed, amused by their responses to his offer. Caitlin came over to the two of them, leaving Genis to watch the continued training session, as Lloyd tried explaining what to do. Pretty much his explanation boiled down to concentrating mana and letting it out through a sword, though he had a slightly round-about way of saying it. Probably because he couldn't find the right words to explain quickly.

Once he was done with his explanation, Caitlin looked ready to make her first tech work; she was rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet impatiently, wanting to try. "Got it?" Lloyd finally asked, and the two girls nodded, having gotten the gist of his explanation. "Go ahead and try."

Katherine went first, trying to draw in mana. It was fairly difficult, since she didn't know quite how to do that. Nothing felt out of the ordinary, like it could be used for anything like a Demon Fang like in the game. However, after a moment of trying to concentrate on drawing in mana, she felt a slight mental block, which she was sure wasn't there before. Pushing against it gave her a slight headache, but after a moment she could feel something go through her body. Trying not to let it go, she struggled to pull it back, before pushing the power and the name that came with it through her sword. With a cry of "Star Stroke!", a burst of energy went along the ground before petering out fairly quickly. It was a weak tech, but it had still occurred.

"Awesome!" Caitlin cried. "Lemme try." She went through the same process as Katherine, though it took a little while longer for her to find her stored mana, by which time she was getting frustrated. But when she found it, the power from the mana quickly came over her, but then dissipated. She was unable to keep her concentration long enough to draw it in. "Dammit," she swore, before trying again with a determined frown. It happened again, but the third time she managed to push it out through one sword. Like Katherine's it traveled across the ground for just a second before disappearing.

Katherine stood in stunned silence after pulling off her first tech ever. While it may not have been a particularly impressive version of a standard tech, it was a tech nonetheless. For some reason it took Caitlin longer to pull one off, but when she managed it, her's was just as wimpy as Katherine's. "Amazing! I actually used Star Stroke..."

"Yeah, but it still has a long way to go compared to Lloyd. And even further compared to Kratos." The smirk was obvious in Genis' voice.

"Shut up, Shorty. Let's see you do one," Caitlin challenged, knowing full well he had no attacks other than spells that he could use. "Besides, we were never taught how to use techs. I doubt you were perfect your first try."

"Geez, I don't even use a sword. But I bet I could beat you at magic!" Genis kept a huge grin on his face as he charged up a fireball and launched it into empty space. "There, let's see you top that."

Katherine sighed. When did this become a competition? "Genis, I don't think that-"

"Come on, is that all you can do? Pretty pitiful," Caitlin interrupted her friend. "One measly fireball can't do any real damage, and that kendama can't either. Bet you I could top that if I had any elven blood."

Lloyd was laughing at the strange competition, finding it extremely amusing. It seemed like the girl wasn't going to let Genis beat her like that, since she managed to charge up another Demon Fang, quicker than she had before. It wasn't any bigger, but the fact that it took her half the time than it did before was improvement enough. "Ha. I did even better that time. Doubt you can do better with that spell," Caitlin challenged, grinning.

"Oh yeah? How about this! Aqua Edge!" Genis conjured three spinning blades of water as quickly as he could and sent them off into the wild blue yonder.

"Ah, um, Star Stroke?" Katherine tried to get her own attempt in between the two competitors, managing to increase the size of her attack slightly, and willing it to go further. For her second ever Star Stroke, that was a good improvement.

"You never did better with Fireball, so it doesn't count," Caitlin said, sticking her tongue out at Genis, before looking at Katherine. "Hey, how'd you do that?" she complained, gesturing to the now disappeared tech with one of her swords.

Lloyd stopped laughing, though he had a huge grin on his face. "I can do even better than that," he said, and Caitlin turned to him curiously. "Sword Rain!" The girl stared at the tech, wanting very much to know how to do it, since it actually looked a lot harder than it did in the game. It actually seemed really difficult to move fast enough to stab with a sword that many times, but she still wanted to learn since that was her favorite tech.

Katherine looked on with interest as well, although she would have thought it impossible to pull off with only one sword. It wasn't until she had looked closely when Lloyd used Sonic Sword Rain (her first, and only tech to reach max uses) that she realized he only used one sword. So maybe... "Lloyd! How do you do that one?"

Meanwhile, Genis stuck his tongue back out at Caitlin, charging up another fireball. "You never said it had to be Fireball. Burn, Fireball!" This time he put more strength into the attack, creating not one, but four fireballs, all flying out to nowhere.

"Yeah I did. I said that I doubted you could do better with that spell," Caitlin pointed out, though she looked put out that he had managed to do so well on Fireball. "...Bet you can't do more! Like, ten or something!" She had pulled the number from the max amount of fireballs gained in another Tales game, even though it would mean the spell was very advanced.

"I don't really know exactly," Lloyd said, shrugging. "I think the mana focuses in just this one sword, making it move really fast." Then he paused for a second, thinking, before adding, "And I have something cooler than Fireballs!" With that, he jumped up and cried "Tempest!" at the same time, spinning rapidly through the air, and then landing a little awkwardly as soon as he stopped, looking a little dizzy. Caitlin laughed at him, noticing this, before trying her one and only tech again. It took her a moment, but when she finally shouted out, "Demon Fang!" the attack was bigger and went further than Katherine's just because she had forced it to.

Katherine stared as Lloyd jumped and spun in the air. As cool as it was, she doubted she would ever be able to do that. She couldn't even do a cartwheel, or whatever it was that they had tried to teach her in third grade P.E. And from how dizzy Lloyd had been, even he still hadn't mastered it. "Woah. But you've got that moment after you land when you're vunerable. I don't know how useful that would be in battle..." She concentrated a moment, swinging her sword to release another Star Stroke. This time it was as big and went as far as Caitlin's last one had, and though she didn't know it, slightly less effort had pushed it.

"So what? You still can't cast that spell. And no one can do ten fireballs! That's insane!" Genis focused harder, putting as much energy into his six fireballs as he could, reaching the limits of his strength. Lacking energy, he stumbled a little after releasing the spell.

"Rita can," Caitlin mumbled under her breath, since they obviously would not know who the Vesperia mage was. "And you can't do any melee attacks either, so it's okay if I can't do one spell." Even though it was an awesome spell that she really wished she could do. It wasn't her fault that she was a slight pyro... "So, let's call this a draw," she suggested, albeit a little grudgingly, not wanting to lose a contest of any kind. But she only had one tech that she wasn't very good at, so that wouldn't help at all to beat all six of Genis' fireballs.

"A draw? No way! My spell was way better than your Demon Fang. I win." Genis crossed his arms and smirked. "Unless you can do six or seven Demon Fangs at once, you'll never beat me."

Caitlin frowned for a second before smirking. She knew it was impossible to do more than three Demon Fangs at once, so she just did the next best thing. "Demon Fang!" she shouted, sending the attack straight at Genis. "I win."

"Hey!" he yelled, jumping out of the way, barely. Genis glared before sending an Aqua Edge at the girl. "I win."

Katherine resisted the urge to facepalm. "You guys, this is just stupid. Why are you both so set on winning?"

Caitlin jumped aside before the spell hit and scowled at the younger kid. "Hey, I don't like water," she protested, getting up. "Hey, Lloyd? Wanna help?" she asked, grinning at the other dual swordsman. Lloyd hesitated for a second before grinning back.

"Demon Fang!" both of them shouted at once, two of the attacks headed toward the mage. They were purposefully ignoring Katherine's comment.

"Hey, that's not fair! Katherine, keep them off me while I cast!" Genis was already charging up more Fireballs, sending two at each of the opposing teens.

"What? This is just...whatever." Katherine turned to Lloyd and Caitlin, sending a Star Stroke to Lloyd then swinging her sword at Caitlin. For protesting against fighting so much, she was really getting into it.

Lloyd just quickly jumped out of the way, since he couldn't duck the fireballs and jump over Star Stroke at the same time. Then he sent another Demon Fang at Genis before he could get another spell off. Caitlin yelped when the fireballs came towards her and ducked, though one of them singed her cape. "Hey, you burnt my cape!" she shouted, before yelping again when her friend swung and quickly putting her swords up as well. It was a little awkward, being on the ground after ducking, but she managed.

Katherine saw the Demon Fang go past out of the corner of her eye, while still attacking Caitlin. Genis had barely managed to get his last spell off before needing to jump out of the way. "Yeah? Well, you're a sore loser! Cheater!" Katherine laughed while dodging Caitlin's blows. "And don't you dare say you're winning because you're not."

"Winning cheaters!" Caitlin shouted, grinning hugely.

Katherine glared, continuing her attacks on Caitlin. Meanwhile, Lloyd and Genis kept at it, Lloyd dodging a fireball while Genis started to charge up another. Lloyd started to attack and stopped, mid-tech. Wondering what made his friend freeze up, Genis stopped the spell and looked where Lloyd was. Fear was evident on both faces, because there was Kratos. Complete with the Aurion Glare. Both girls stopped too, glancing over to what was now a symbol of absolute terror.

"And what might you be doing?" The question was obviously directed at Lloyd and Genis, but Caitlin and Katherine were not exempt from the glare.

"Well, we were training," Lloyd said with a small, nervous laugh. "But then it became a contest... She started it." He pointed over at Caitlin, who just looked at him like he was an idiot.

"No, Genis did," she argued, trying to ignore the glare by just not looking at Kratos.

"I did not! You did!"

"Guys, can you stop arguing for two seconds? Err, I don't think Kratos particularly cares who started it anyways." Katherine tried to smile, but it wasn't genuine.

"While that is true, your input is not necessary. Lloyd, Genis, if you have that much energy left, a more efficient form of training could be found. And there is never a reason to be fighting for no reason." The boys hung their heads, and the girls backed away slowly.

"b*****d mercenary," Caitlin mumbled under her breath, despite the fact that Kratos probably heard with his angel hearing. Then, so that she could be heard by more people than just Katherine, she added, "Isn't that fighting training too? It helps with sneak attacks since you don't always know when or how you're going to get attacked." She stumbled over her words a little as she tried to figure out exactly what she was saying while speaking, which left her a little confused and at a loss for good words. When she brought it up, Caitlin was also looking at a point above Kratos' head, not trusting herself to look down at his glare.

"However, training in and of itself holds a purpose. In addition, fighting without warning is different than fighting without a purpose." Kratos' eyes narrowed even further as he spoke, although it was difficult to tell as everyone avoided looking at them.

This was one of those moments when Katherine was sure that Kratos was exactly like her dad. She wanted to jump in and defend Caitlin, but at the same time, she knew that would probably make things worse. At least, it did whenever she tried to defend her younger brother. It was times like that that she really wished her dad wasn't as big as he was. He could be really scary.

"We had a purpose. We were training," Caitlin said, telling a half-truth. They were training...for a little bit, before the contest. Not while they were fighting, but she supposed it could be counted as so. "It was just...an improvised training."

"As already stated, a more effective form of training could and should be found." With that, Kratos turned back to Genis. "Your sister would like to speak with you." Kratos turned around and walked away.

Genis glanced at Lloyd, then at the two girls. "I'll see you guys tomorrow, right?" he asked, looking back to make sure Kratos wasn't leaving without him.

"Yeah, no doubt," Caitlin answered, looking up from scowling at her feet. She had been about to say something else to Kratos before he walked off, which kind of annoyed her. Genis grinned before running off after the mercenary in order to go talk to Raine. "Well, we better head to the inn. I'm tired."

Sheathing their swords, the three teenagers went up to the inn, goofing off the short distance there. It seemed like it'd be fun being with the regeneration group if that evening had been anything to go off of.  

[Lloyd Irving Aurion 17]

Magnius, the Grand Impersonator

After everyone had gone to bed, Caitlin stayed up well into the night, unable to fall asleep. It was a problem she generally had, and she'd always jokingly told one of her friends that he'd passed his insomnia onto her. However, tonight she was just getting fed up with it. Being unable to sleep while everyone else was already asleep meant she couldn't do much except lie there, and when that happened her mind tended to wander. Tonight it was wandering back to home.

The two girls had been there for nearly a week and a half - they'd left June 15th from home, so now it was about the 25th. Were their parents worried about them? Did the delegation leaders call to say that they'd left their hotel room and never returned? She knew her parents would be upset, and hated to think of how her nine-year-old brother would react. He had always been kind of a softy, and Caitlin knew that losing his only sister would be devastating to the poor kid. Heck, even her fourteen-year-old brother would be upset, and they were always at each other's throats!

Caitlin frowned at the thought of her family and turned onto her side, glaring at the wall as if it was its fault for giving her these things to think about. Hell, these thoughts were probably what was keeping her awake well past midnight! She groaned quietly and put a hand to her head, as if she could force the pictures away. But it was difficult. She didn't know if they'd ever be able to get home - not one of the multiple stories she liked reading on FanFiction ever got to the end of the story. Never. How could she know that it would work out? The past week and a half she'd kept herself busy, which had helped with keeping her thoughts at bay, but now it wasn't working too well.

Katherine, fortunately, had the ability to pass out as soon as she was under the covers and the lights were out. No staying up late, wondering about home for her. She was blissfully in dreamland. For now. When she was awake though, all those thoughts Caitlin was having now sat around in the back of her brain whenever she wasn't busy. They'd pop up every so often, and she'd start thinking about them, but then her attention would turn to something else and she'd lose her train of thought. Similar to how she'd yell out "Deddechi!" whenever she thought of Vesperia's loose plot end.

As best she could figure, (and she didn't want to assume that Symphonia time matched up with Earth time) they were maybe ... 10, 13 hours into the game? The only times she could remember getting were 6 hours to the Fire Seal and 40-some to Latheon Gorge. That was of course if Earth time synchronized with how long it took in the game. But that was always different, so that couldn't be it...but what else could it be? Even then, it'd still been around 13 hours, so it was already noon-ish at Stonehenge. How long had the whole game taken her the first time around? 60 something hours? That would mean that they'd return to Earth in less than 3 days. ...If she guessed correctly. And where would they reappear? Stonehenge? That made sense, if Stonehenge was a form of Otherworldly Gate. At least they spoke English there; Katherine could only imagine the chaos that would ensue if they suddenly appeared in a country where they didn't speak the native language. There were a lot of those in Europe. What if the Gate miscalculated or something and sent them to Germany, or somewhere else that they didn't want to end up? That was of course, if they could get back.

Eventually, Caitlin managed to drift off to sleep, and was consequently grouchy the next morning whenever Katherine woke her up for work. She enjoyed functioning on at least twelve hours of sleep, not five. So she wasn't in the best of moods when she went down to the kitchen with her friend for breakfast, though the bad mood lifted slightly when she noticed Lloyd, Colette, Genis, Raine, and Kratos down there as well. Lloyd seemed a little bummed about something, Kratos was as emotionless as ever, Colette also seemed a little upset, Raine looked like she was thinking about something, and Genis looked slightly nervous - at least, that's what it seemed to Caitlin.

Genis, the first to notice the two Earthlings, perked slightly at the sight of the girls. Katherine assumed it was because they had practically(if they hadn't actually) become the new best friends of the poor, socially-deprived half-elf. "Hey guys!" The rest of the table (except maybe Kratos. No one can tell what Kratos does.) noticed the girls' presence and shifted, in both mood and position, in reaction to that fact. Lloyd and Colette both cheered up almost instantly, and Raine looked like she had finally come to a decision.

As the girls sat down in the now open spots, Raine turned to the girls and began to use the teacher voice. "Caitlin, Katherine. As I'm sure you know, Genis has been requested to attend the academy here in Palmacosta. Due to certain...circumstances, there is now the opportunity for him to attend the academy. The decision has been made that Genis will remain here to study rather than continue on the journey with Colette. Seeing as how the two of you have...bonded with him so quickly, I believe that you posses the ability to care for him when I cannot. Can you do that?"

Oh. That's what everyone was so down about. Once Raine mentioned the academy, the moods of Colette, Lloyd and Genis perceptibly dropped. Colette tried to keep a smile on her face, but she was obviously sad about Genis. This was definitely an...interesting twist to the story. Did this happen because they were there?

"You could've said that in fewer words," Caitlin mumbled, rubbing her eyes as she still tried to wake up entirely and yawning. "But sure, we can do that. We make enough Gald that it'll work." She found it a little strange that they were leaving Genis behind, since obviously in the game he accompanied the group. What would happen to the story without everyone's favorite little mage around? He didn't really have that important of a part to the story... The first thing she thought of was that he befriended Mithos which might've helped with something, but she didn't see much of a need to have him in the group. Would it really be that bad if he was left behind after all?

"Now you get to go to the school, right, Genis?" Lloyd said, trying to sound cheerful though failing a little bit. It was clear that he didn't want one of his best friends to be left behind, yet he still tried to be happy for Genis. "Then we can come and visit you whenever we come back to Palmacosta!" he promised, looking a little more enthusiastic at the prospect.

Genis laughed, trying to remain upbeat. "I'll be fine, but how will you do without me? You won't have anyone to do your homework for you."

Katherine looked at Raine for a while before speaking. "Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, he is your brother, and you guys barely know us. Are you okay with that?"

Raine looked back at Katherine, her eyes obviously upset with the prospect of leaving her brother behind for the first time in twelve years. She'd raised him, but at some point she needed to let him go. "Yes. This journey is a dangerous one, and if he can stay here to study, then that would be the best way to protect him." Her gaze flicked to Colette quickly, but returned to Katherine just as quickly.

The banter continued for a few minutes-long enough for the two girls to munch some breakfast-before Kratos stood up. "Chosen. We need to move quickly. Time is always of the essence."

Colette blinked for a moment. "Oh. Right!" She stood as well, and started to move out the door to the rest of the inn. "Let's go!"

Everyone else got up as well. "You're awfully happy, Colette," Lloyd mentioned, smiling at her just a little bit. The slightly hyperactive Chosen stopped and looked back at him, looking apologetic.

"I'm sorry. I was just trying to cheer everyone up," she said.

"What are you doing that for? No one needs to be cheered up." Genis tried to smile, but to anyone who paid attention, it failed miserably. "I mean, I was going to come here eventually anyways. Thanks for letting me tag along on the journey so far. Good luck you guys. And don't let Raine cook."

Raine narrowed her eyes at the last comment, but moved closer to the door, her attention fixed on the exit. "Stay out of trouble Genis."

"I will." And with that, the Chosen and her entourage of friend, teacher and bodyguard left the inn, leaving the mage behind at the same time.

Katherine rolled her eyes and laughed. "Wow Genis. You don't have to make it sound like this is a death sentence."

"I did not!" Genis retorted. "I'm just...a little jealous is all."

"I doubt going on that journey would be all that great. It'd probably get really boring," Caitlin said, still not really wanting to follow everyone on the journey - when the chance came up again. It was a very long journey. Couldn't there be some other way to get home? It's not like anyone else had thought about it... Even though she had absolutely no idea how else to get home herself. "Anyway, we should go. We're supposed to be at work," she said, the last comment directed at Katherine as she headed out of the inn as well, looking like she did not want to go to work.

Katherine laughed on her way out the door. "And if we have to be at work, you need to be at school!" It had hurt so much to see the group leave, especially without Genis. They needed to join up so that they could get home. It was kind of funny, Katherine thought, that now that they were in the world of one of their favorite games, their only goal was to get home again. Whatever happened to actually enjoying their time here?

Caitlin was waiting for the two at the entrance to the academy, leaning against the wall with her chin on her chest. It looked very much like she'd dozed off against the wall, and she was very near it as well. It probably didn't help that she was exhausted and had the odd ability to sleep anywhere anytime - the reason why she'd fallen asleep in so many of her classes before, actually. But because of that, she didn't even notice when Katherine and Genis caught up to her.

After catching up, Katherine rolled her eyes and bopped Caitlin on the head. "Wake up, sleepyhead!" Once she entered the academy, she turned back to Genis. Pointing weakly at her destination, she said, "Aaaaand, this is where we go to work and you go to school! Maybe we'll see you at lunch; that would be cool. Other than that...I guess we'll see you later..."

Genis was skeptical. "...Right. I'll see you later." Slumping his shoulders, he trudged up the stairs as the girls walked to the cafeteria. Once they were safely out of hearing distance, Katherine poked Caitlin's shoulder. "What do we do? What do we do? What do we do?"

Caitlin yawned and batted Katherine's hand away. "Well...is there anything we can do, except try to make everything work out?" she asked, looking back to where Genis had gone a little sympathetically. She'd feel bad in his position - ditched by his friends, being taken care of by two people he barely knew, and probably not really understanding quite what was going on. "For now let's just get through the day and worry about it when we get back to the inn."

Before Katherine could answer, she entered the cafeteria's kitchen to get ready for work. Since she was still half-asleep, she tried to force herself awake. Just because she was tired didn't mean she should do poorly at work - not when she was starting to get the hang of it. That would just be dumb.

As soon as they got back to their room in the inn, Caitlin flopped onto her bed, before grumbling to herself about her swords. She and Katherine had just gotten off work and met up with Genis, who had been waiting for them at the entrance while reading. They'd instantly gone back to the inn, having no where else that was necessary to visit. "So, Genis, how was your first day at the academy?" Caitlin asked, adjusting her swords underneath her so that the sheaths weren't hurting her back.

Genis shrugged. "Pretty boring really. It was mostly getting me caught up with the rest of the students, even though I've already proven that I am." He sighed, obviously a little resentful about being left behind. "And how was your day?"

Caitlin just grunted in response, clasping her hands behind her head. After a second she got around to answering with words. "Boring. Annoying. A whole lot of not fun," she said with her own little shrug, before lifting her head up slightly to look at the small half-elf. "Are you alright, Genis?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

For a while, Genis was silent, and wrapped his arms around his knees. "No..." His voice caught slightly, but he continued. "This is the first time that I haven't been with Raine. She's been with me for as long as I can remember, but now I'm on my own. The only reason I'm even here is because of what happened in Iselia..."

Katherine glanced at Caitlin. They hadn't heard about that, had they? Urging the half-elf to continue, she asked, "What happened?"

Caitlin sat up, feeling bad for Genis. She hadn't thought about the fact that he and his sister hadn't been separated ever, so she guessed it would be hard for the kid. She crossed her legs and looked at him questioningly, waiting for the little half-elf to answer Katherine's question.

Unfortunately, it was a long wait because the half-elf avoided the question. He just outlined the basics of their journey so far, starting with Colette's birthday and the Temple of Martel and going on to Triet and the Fire Seal, and ending up with Sheena (still just that 'weird assassin') and the boat ride from Izoold. From the sounds of things, everything went similarly to the game.

"You seem to have had a rough journey so far, Shorty," Caitlin said, reaching over and ruffling his hair with a smile. "But at least you don't have to worry about getting hurt, and Raine is happy because of that, and you get an awesome education while staying with people who are friends - or at least going to be," she pointed out, her smile turning into a grin. "That's worth something, right?"

"I'm not short! But, I guess you're right..."

Katherine slyly grinned. "She is. After all, what could possibly go wrong here?" Barring Magnius, Desians in general, that whole lack of mana thing and of course, the Giant Kharlan Tree/Bush. "Maybe your friends will come and visit sometime later?" If they could. Having a full-time mage, because Kratos only counts as half of a mage, is really handy, especially when dealing with things with elemental weaknesses, like the seal guardians. Without Genis, how well would they do? Of course, this was still just in terms of the game, so there might not really be any problem at all.

"Yeah..." Genis didn't really look like he believed the girls, but maybe his trust issues were masking how he really felt. He started to stand up, and informed the girls that he would be studying.

"I thought you were ahead?" Katherine didn't get this kid. Not at all. Studying? Really? This is Tales of Symphonia! Besides, who studies anyways?

"Yeah, what do you need to study for?" Caitlin asked, laying back down and looking at Genis curiously as she spoke. She could kind of understand it, with Genis being so into school and all, but if he was ahead didn't that mean that he got to relax while the other kids studied? It didn't make much sense to her. Then again, studying never did.

Genis rolled his eyes. "Even if I'm ahead, I still have to study to stay ahead. Obviously." With that, he left the room, adding "I'll see you guys tomorrow, alright?" as he left.

"Who studies anyways?" Katherine muttered. Heading in the general direction of bed sounded like a good idea. A very good idea for a sleepy Katherine. Caitlin shrugged in response to her friend's question, crossing her legs while still laying down and closing her eyes.

The two girls eventually fell asleep as well, hoping that the next day would prove better and more cheerful than this one.

The next few days progressed in about the same manner - the girls would work, Genis would go to class, and they'd meet back up again at the end of the day. Nothing really changed much, except for Genis' behavior, which Caitlin was personally very glad for. He was slowly starting to warm up to the two girls and didn't seem as upset about being left behind as he was at the beginning. Caitlin liked that, since he was a little more enjoyable to be around now, and not quite as bratty and harsh as he had been, even though he still retained those qualities.

As June started to come to an end, she started to wonder when the group would come back - when Cacao would get hung by Magnius. Surely it had to be pretty soon, even though she noticed that time was kind of...skewed from the game. Otherwise the Regeneration Journey would actually be done by now if game time was anything to go off of. But she hoped it would be soon. Waiting around Palmacosta was so boring, and she knew Genis would perk right up as soon as he saw his friends and sister in town again.

A little more than a week had passed since the group had left Palmacosta, and it seemed to be a pretty average day. It was lunch time at the school, so the two girls were hurrying around trying to get people's orders filled. Suddenly, a loud noise from outside halted conversation, and some people moved to the window to see if they could notice anything outside. It was the sound of people marching on the cobbled streets, and a voice shouted out, "Out of the way! Lord Magnius approaches!"

Caitlin's eyes widened and she quickly went and grabbed her swords from the back room, not caring that she had no way to hold the sheaths in her waitressing uniform. "Come on, we gotta help," she said to Katherine, and the two girls hurried outside before most people comprehended what was going on. Outside, a group had gathered around the hangman in the square, where Cacao stood with the noose around her neck, looking frightened. Desians were lined up along it, probably to keep people back and form a path for Magnius.

"It's Magnius from the eastern ranch..." the girls heard a man mutter, and the Grand Cardinal turned to look at who'd spoken. Caitlin had to stop herself from snickering, since he looked so ridiculous - he'd looked even more comical in the game, being all chibi-fied, but he still looked pretty funny now. His dreadlocks were bright red, like in the game, and his purple vest made him look like he was trying to imitate Zelos, but doing a very poor job of it. His boots were really pointy and she thought that he could totally ditch his axe, kick someone he didn't like, and still manage to kill them. At least, if they were small enough.

"That's Lord Magnius, vermin!" he barked, and the girls smirked at what was very definitely his catch-phrase. Surely he could come up with some other word like the usual 'filthy human' or something to that effect. Though the looks disappeared as soon as he reached over and broke the guy's neck in one swift motion. Katherine gave a little squeak and looked frightened, while Caitlin's eyes widened and she covered her mouth, gulping. Okay...maybe mental insults were not the best thing.

"This woman defied the wishes of the great Lord Magnius and refused to provide us with supplies," one of the Desians announced, sounding a little smug about the fact that they'd gotten her for such a charge. And some of it probably had to do with the fact that she was about to be killed just to prove a point.

Another Desian picked up where the last left off. Caitlin wondered if they'd rehearsed it. "Therefore, while the designated death count has been exceeded, we have been granted orders to carry out this woman's execution!" As the Desian declared that, Genis slid silently up by the two girls, glaring at the Desians in front of them.

Over across the courtyard, Chocolat made her appearance, running out toward her mom. She looked almost as frightened as Cacao did. A Desian stopped her from coming closer by shouting, "Stop right there, woman!" He had one hand on his weapon, looking quite ready to use it if it was necessary.

"If you interfere, we'll make you suffer in ways that will leave you begging for death," another threatened in a kind of creepy voice, one of those reserved for the bad guys in horror films or cheesy action movies. Chocolat seemed to go from looked scared for her mom, to pissed that they'd even try such a thing.

"You think Governor-General Dorr will let you get away with this?" she asked, half-yelling as her hands balled into fists at her side. Magnius smirked, which was a pretty creepy sight in itself, and laughed, which was even worse.

"Dorr?" he asked, amusement deeply evident in his tone as he laughed. "Don't get your hopes up, woman!"

"No!" Chocolat yelled, right as a little kid drew his arm back and chucked a decent-sized rock at Magnius' head. It struck with pretty good aim, and the Grand Cardinal turned around to find the kid with murder clear in his eyes. Caitlin gripped her swords tightly, starting to build up enough mana for a decent-sized Demon Fang as the Cardinal turned to kill the kid.

Just then, Lloyd moved forward a bit so that he wouldn't hurt anyone in the crowd and yelled, "Stop right there!" Magnius paused, allowing the two dual swordsmen to Demon Fang him at about the same time, letting him get hit from both sides of the courtyard, which just served to piss him off further.

Raine came out to talk to Lloyd, and they started talking about how Lloyd didn't want this town to become the next Iselia because of a Desian attack. Obviously Colette agreed with them, and the very convenient conversation was halted by another Desian. It was lucky that Magnius was still trying to recover his composure from the Demon Fangs or else the conversation would have ended a lot sooner.

"You! You're wanted criminal #0074...Lloyd Irving!" one of the Desians accused, pointing a finger at the male dual swordsman. Lloyd got a slight, "oh, s**t," look on his face, but didn't manage to say anything before Magnius did.

"Well, now! So you're that boy with the Exsphere! Hahahaha! This is perfect! After I take that Exsphere from you, they'll make me the leader of the Five Grand Cardinals! Get them!" the ranch-owner shouted, pointing almost a little too dramatically at the group. One of the guards cast a spell, which was hastily dodged since Genis wasn't there to cast Force Field and block it. That was quickly changed when Genis decided to head over and help his friend. Worried about the small half-elf in the middle of the courtyard of Desians, the girls followed.

Magnius growled with the show of reinforcements for their side, and glared at his men before going over to Cacao, who had almost been forgotten in the whole "that's Lloyd Irving!" deal. "Dammit! You worthless idiots! Enough of this! I'll take care of this woman first!" Before anything bad could happen, Colette acted, her chakram severing the rope around Cacao's neck and allowing her to drop to the floor, which was much safer. "What the?" Magnius asked in shock as the Chosen caught her weapon again.

Almost as if he needed a part of the fight, too, Kratos came forward and slashed at Magnius, wounding the Grand Cardinal. "...Let us respect the wishes of the Chosen," he said in a deadly serious tone, giving Magnius the patented Aurion Glare. Everyone was clearly surprised by his statement, since they started muttering amongst themselves about Colette being the Chosen. Caitlin tried to ignore them, wondering why they'd even care when they had a pissed off Grand Cardinal right in front of them, shifting her swords in her hands. Katherine had armed herself with a few rocks, like the boy, knowing that she'd need them. So far, no one had had time to question why they were also fighting Magnius right now. She looked back and saw Raine and Lloyd talking again, the red-clad swordsman vehemently expressing his opinion on what was going on.

"They're only after Colette and me anyway," she heard him say. "And besides, we have the Chosen on our side! The savior who will regenerate the world! Right, Colette?" Colette smiled and nodded.

"Yep! I'm going to fight for everyone's sake," she promised, looking very pleased.

"I give up. You're all hopeless... But I'll help, since I'd be worried about you otherwise," Raine said resignedly, shaking her head. Lloyd's face lit up with her comment.

"Professor Sage! Thanks!" he said cheerfully, and right then was when Magnius decided to interrupt again. He'd had a pretty long recover time there... Despite that, though, he still wanted to show his cowardly side.

"Damned little...enough of this crap! I'm leaving them to you. Get rid of them!" he barked at his men, disappearing from the scene. It was almost ninja-like the way he did it... Apparently he was a Zelos and Mizuho ninja impersonator.

"How dare you lay a hand on Lord Magnius! You're all dead!" a Desian threatened. The crowd quickly moved out of range of any attacks, not wanting to get hit in cross-fire, and took shelter in the nearest buildings. The group of about ten Desians didn't even notice and all charged the opposing group.

Instantly, Caitlin sent a Demon Fang their way, smacking into one of the Desians who was headed for Genis. The small half-elf was casting, the kendama he had been carrying everywhere moving rapidly and his eyes closed. The dual swordsman's tech was enough of a distraction for Genis to finish his spell and send a load of fireballs at the Desian.

Not wanting to be caught defenseless, Katherine stood back near the hangman, throwing her rocks as best as she could and collecting more as necessary. It would have been a very good idea for her to follow her friend's example and carry her sword around everywhere, though really she hadn't thought she'd need it. But at least rocks served well enough to throw the Desians off momentarily.

Kratos didn't seem to be having much trouble with the fight, and he kept an eye on Lloyd and Colette both, who were each up against two Desians. Colette threw a Pow Hammer down on one of their heads and then pulled her wings out and flew out of range of their whips. Lloyd was blocking one of the attacks with one sword and slashing a little awkwardly with the other. Obviously, even though he'd fought before, he had yet to get down some of the better techniques.

Caitlin glanced around, noticing the Fireballed Desian getting up and heading back toward the little mage. Quickly she ran over there and put herself between the man and the half-elf, who sent her a look of thanks before he started casting. The Desian flicked his whip hard enough to leave a pretty nasty cut if it connected and Caitlin instantly raised a sword to block it. The whip wrapped around the blade, pulling taut as the edges caught on it. She gave a clumsy slash with her other sword, barely grazing the guy's stomach and not doing a lot of damage. The small amount of blood made her bite her lip, though - sparring was a whole lot different than actually trying to hurt someone. She didn't really like it that much.

A Desian went toward Katherine, who was still trying her hardest to help out with her rocks. Of course they weren't doing much more than ticking the men off (unless she got off a really lucky shot), so she was clearly a good target for any kind of attack.

Katherine squeaked again when the Desian got closer and quickly moved out of the way. She really didn't have to though, as Kratos Demon Fanged the man, tripping him up and turning his attention away from the annoying, rock-throwing girl as he went after Kratos now. The girl moved back and resumed her measly attempts to help while watching her friend carefully. One of Caitlin's swords had been pulled away by the whip and was now lying out of reaching, forcing her to use just one sword to keep the Desian at bay.

The Desian Caitlin was fighting whipped at her again, the material digging into her arm and making her bite her lip in pain as it cut into her. She slashed at him clumsily, feeling very unbalanced without her other sword, and the blade connected with the side of the man, cutting in pretty deeply. It wasn't enough to kill him, though he was pretty badly wounded. She prepared for another attack before Genis finished his spell, sending another wave of Fireballs out. Luckily, that was enough to send the man into the realm of unconsciousness.

It seemed as if the fight had finished as soon as that last Desian fell. Kratos calmly wiped his blade off and stowed it away in his sheath; Lloyd just shoved his weapons into his sheaths without much of a care; Colette touched back down on the ground and pulled her shiny pink wings in while replacing her chakrams. Caitlin went and retrieved her sword from where it had fallen while saying, loud enough for everyone to pick up, "Well, that was fun."  

[Lloyd Irving Aurion 17]

Lloydish Suggestions

Chocolat was clearly pleased that her mom was perfectly fine, and ran over to her as soon as Caitlin spoke up, as if that was a cue to move. Cacao hugged her daughter and shushed her, assuring her that she was alright and everything would be fine. No one seemed to want to disturb their reunion and everyone hung back for now.

Genis had run past Caitlin and practically launched himself at his sister, a huge grin on his face as he was reunited with the group so soon. Raine laughed and returned the hug before they started talking. Lloyd ruffled his hair and Colette hugged him from behind. It was quite obvious that everyone had missed the little mage. Well, except Kratos, but he wouldn't care either way as long as the journey finally got completed.

Katherine had moved over to her friend, who'd sheathed her swords and was watching the two reunions with a smile, her arms crossed over her chest. "Well that went well," Caitlin said, looking over at the other girl. "Especially for our first actual fight."

The second girl chuckled, rolling her eyes. "At least you got the benefit of an actual weapon. With a sharp, pointy side." Glancing back over to the others, she smiled. "Looks like they're just happy to see each other. Time for us to storm the castle?"

"Having a sharp, pointy-sided thing did make a bit of a difference..." Caitlin said, nodding and fingering the hilts of her swords. "You need to carry yours, too, since you know that there's lots of fighting here." She paused for a minute, looking at the group, before saying, "I wonder if they'll even let us come with them..."

"Of course they will!" Katherine spared a glance at her friend, then quickly stared at the ground before answering her unspoken question. "I don't know why, they just will! Maybe if...uhh...look, I don't know, they just will! And sure, I'll start carrying my sword with me. It shouldn't be that weird, I mean, since we are in Symphonia..." Her train of though was interrupted when she saw white boots approaching the two girls.

"Hi! I just wanted to thank you for helping us. It was really nice of you!" The perky blond looked genuinely happy to talk to them, even if it meant moving away from her friends. Katherine asked why she wasn't over with her friends, talking to Genis. "Well, you looked a little lonely over here, so I thought I'd come and say hi, but I'm sorry if it's a problem!"

"Oh, no, it's not a problem," Caitlin answered quickly, grinning. She was glad that someone had come over to talk to them, honestly. It was getting a little awkward just standing back and watching the other two reunions. "And we couldn't just let you guys take him on yourselves. You're our friends. And he was a jerk."

Katherine nodded. "A total jerk. He may be important, but I really don't see why these guys are putting up with him if they have their own militia and everything. Why don't they just charge in and get rid of him?"

"Because they're scaredy-cats, that's why. I'd like to go in and get rid of him myself," Caitlin said, before catching Colette's worried look at the idea. "I won't, of course, but I'd like to. And it'd be kind of funny if the entire city militia did less than one fifteen-year-old." She grinned, amused by the thought which, if her and Katherine's plan of joining them worked, would happen to some extent.

Colette smiled and giggled a little. "I'm sure that won't have to happen. They'll go and make Magnius go away soon. That's what they're here for, right?" she said optimistically.

Katherine hated the idea of crushing Colette's hopes, but she had to. "That may be what they're here for, but that's certainly not what they're doing. Actually, I'm almost more surprised that Mr. Jerk is ... allowing the militia to stand. Think about it. Who does the militia endanger the most? Then why hasn't he crushed them yet? Obviously he'll go to extreme measures for less, so why not?"

Just then, Lloyd came over, gesturing behind him to the group, Chocolat, and Cacao who were starting to move away. "Come on, guys, Chocolat wanted to thank us for helping her where less people were around," he said, and the four teenagers hurried to catch up to the rest of the group. They entered Marble's shop, which the two Earth girls had become fairly well acquainted with since they'd arrived. Despite Katherine's reluctance to enter, they'd eventually agreed it was necessary for all of their supplies, namely the apple gels they needed so often due to training.

Chocolat stayed protectively by her mother, as if afraid that something else would happen to Cacao if she wasn't around to stop it. She seemed to be ignoring the fact that it was her fault that anything even happened in the first place. The older woman smiled at everyone and thanked them, and Chocolat jumped in with her own thanks.

"Thank you so much for saving my mom!" she said, a huge grin breaking out on her face. It looked a little out of place, since her eyes were red from crying just a few moments earlier. "I don't know what I would have done if they'd murdered my mom as well..." Her smile faded slightly and her tone of voice suggested that she wanted to leave the conversation there, at least when it came to the topic that she'd just brought up. However, Genis didn't seem to catch onto that fact.

"As well?..." he asked, a look of confusion, surprise, and concern crossing his face. Some of the other members of the Regeneration group also seemed a little curious and surprised by the small comment, except Kratos who just looked bored. It almost seemed like he wanted the conversation to hurry up so that he could get going.

Cacao looked a little gloomy when she answered, but obviously she was trying to not let that show too much. "My husband volunteered in Governor-General Dorr's army...and was killed in a battle against the Desians. And my mother...was taken to the ranch." Caitlin and Katherine shared a quick glance at the mention of Marble before paying attention again.

"It was Grandma that originally founded our shop," Chocolat pitched in, her grin having disappeared to a small, almost sad smile. Caitlin glanced over at Lloyd and Genis from the corner of her eye to see if they were connecting the dots, as Chocolat continued. "We have to protect it, not just for ourselves, but also for Grandma's sake, when she returns. I'm sorry, but I'd better get going soon. It's almost time for the next Asgard pilgrimage."

Katherine stared at Chocolat. "You're just going to go to work after this? Don't you think you should qualify for a day off after what happened?"

Chocolat was already shaking her head halfway through Katherine's second question. "No, I'm needed there. Besides, Mom is safe now thanks to you guys, and so I know it'll be alright to go to work," she said, her smile returning again.

"Are there really people who still want to go on a trip?" Lloyd and Caitlin asked with one or two varying words in their questions. Lloyd glanced over at her, surprised with the unison of their words, but Caitlin ignored it. She was used to things like that happening all the time.

"It's after events like these that people feel the need to go out on a journey in search of salvation," Kratos spoke up from near the door. Chocolat nodded in response.

"That pretty much sums it up," she said happily. "Well then, thank you all very much!" With that, Chocolat left the shop to head for work. The group followed her out after Cacao said one more thanks of her own and told the two Earthlings that she'd probably see them soon enough.

"So..." Katherine cracked her knuckles, one fist in the other hand. "When do we storm the castle?" Caitlin facepalmed at the stupidity of her friend's words.

Raine and Kratos stared at the girl incredulously while Lloyd, Colette and Genis tried not to laugh. Raine spoke first. "Excuse me?"

"I mean...uhh...we're going to go take Magnius down, right? You are the Chosen after all, isn't it your job to help people?" Katherine made a point to stare Colette down, dejectedly adding, "unless you've got other things to do..."

Kratos folded his arms and readied an Aurion Glare. "It is not the role of the Chosen to settle minor disputes. Hers is a time sensitive mission; if you would rather sacrifice the fate of the world for the downfall of one Grand Cardinal, then so be it."

Caitlin frowned at the mercenary's response and crossed her arms in return. "I have a funny feeling that the world actually isn't going anywhere, and while the situation is bad, it isn't as pressing a matter as you are trying to say. The world has lived this long without regeneration, it can last another couple of days while we help the people that are suffering around us," she said hotly, glaring back at Kratos. She had a feeling that he wouldn't like it, but he was a little irritating.

Raine interrupted Kratos' reply with a sharp glance at both the man and the girl. "Our next step on the journey is to find the Book of Regeneration, so whether or not we eliminate the Desians, our next destination is the House of Salvation. We can decide as we travel, but I suggest we get moving." The group hadn't moved far before Raine snapped around and pointed at Caitlin and Katherine. "And by 'we' I mean members of the Journey of Regeneration. While you may have aided us earlier, you lack the skill and training to travel with us."

Caitlin shrugged dismissively at the comment, and though she wanted to snap at Raine for calling them unskilled, she only said, "Fine. Then we'll meet you guys at the ranch whenever you come to the decision, okay? 'Cause we're gonna go help the people of Palmacosta before something like this happens again, with or without skill and training." With that, she turned away from the group, grabbing her friend by the sleeve to tug her back toward the inn, even if it wasn't quite necessary. If Katherine was annoyed with it, she'd apologize later, when she wasn't feeling ready to hit someone. "Come on, let's go, Katherine."

Katherine followed without resisting while floundering for words. "Abah..wha...uhh..." The group was heading directly out of town, probably because they hadn't actually gone to inn on this particular visit, so the girls completely split paths. Once back in their room, Katherine fell on her bed face first. "Lloyd, we're screwed," she muttered, only partway comprehensible because of the pillow covering her face.

For a minute, Caitlin didn't answer, just glared moodily at the wall above Katherine's bed. But eventually she said, "Why do you say that?" She didn't see anything wrong with things at the moment. Okay, it would have been helpful if Raine hadn't turned them down just because they were slightly less skilled than Lloyd and Genis... And they would probably have to meet up with the group outside of the ranch whenever they went to get Chocolat... But otherwise it didn't seem like they were screwed.

"Because Raine's right. I mean, even if we do wait at the ranch, like you so Lloyd-ish-ly suggested we do, there's no guarantee that nothing bad will happen to us. We don't even know where the ranch is! And we could be attacked by something really nasty on the way there, or get jumped by Desians once we get there, or..." Katherine continued, listing off every possible horrible ending to their woefully short lives. Once her crazy mind latched onto something, she would follow it through to the many, impossible endings. She was a true crack theory-ist, able to whip up an explanation for just about anything given pressure.

While her friend ranted, Caitlin watched, her mood changing from pissed to very amused with the ideas that Katherine was coming up with. Eventually she interrupted her when the theories started to get into the realm of the unbelievable as they tended to do. "Genis? I doubt anything majorly bad will happen. At the worst, we'll run into a couple of monsters and maybe a Desian if we're really unlucky. But if you're that worried then we can stay here and wait to see if the group comes to kill Kilia before going to the ranch. If not, we'll probably be left stranded and Exsphere-less. Waiting by the ranch is the best bet."

Katherine sighed. "I suppose you could be right. I guess that means we're leaving now, right?" She stood and grabbed her bag, hanging it on her shoulder before grabbing both her sword and her shield. "We wouldn't want to get there after they do, would we?"

Caitlin nodded in agreement and closed her bag up with slight difficulty, since everything was thrown in haphazardly. "It probably won't be that hard to get there before them. In the game they get to the House of Salvation before they have to turn around," she said. She headed out of their room and down to the lobby, her friend following.

Once they exited the inn, Caitlin paused and looked toward the square. "Hey, you should go to Marble's and make sure we have everything we're going to need. A few more apple gels are always worth it, since there are monsters. I'm gonna go tell Carl that we're going to be disappearing on him." Not waiting for her friend to answer, the younger girl ran off down the street, her cape flaring behind her as she went to tell Carl that he was going to lose his two workers and wish him luck.

"Gotcha!" Katherine ran off to the shop, grinning to Cacao before grabbing an armful of apple gels, adding an orange gel or two to the top. She faltered for a moment as she tried to get them all on the counter without dropping any, then as she pulled her makeshift wallet out of her bag. "So, it looks like we're leaving soon." She paid and stuffed her half of the gels in her bag before grabbing the rest of them to hand to Caitlin. "We'll totally see you later, okay?"

Cacao laughed. "Of course you will. Good luck with whatever you two are doing. Make sure you come back and tell me all about it!"

"We will!" Katherine smiled on her way out, but drooped sadly once she was outside. "We will."

It took a couple of minutes for Caitlin to meet her friend outside of Marble's. She was panting, obviously having run from the Academy to the shop in order to meet up with her friend in good time. "Holy crap, I had never before noticed how hard it is to get through that damn market," she said, shaking her head and getting her breath back at the same time. "But I told Carl. He wasn't too happy to be having his only two workers leaving on him, but he wishes us luck with whatever we're doing anyway. Said he'd try and manage without us." She grinned, taking the gels that Katherine held in her arms and reaching around to put them in her bag. It took a little bit of maneuvering but she got them in. "You ready to go off to the ranch?" she asked, tilting her head at Katherine questioningly.

"Of course I am. We've got gels and no other options. I'm only slightly less ready than you are." The friends left the city, and were once again greeted by the plains they had started on. As they were walking, Caitlin was thinking about what would (hopefully) happen when they reached the ranch. It shouldn't be too difficult to not be caught by Desians, since there was forest around the ranch - which, really, was a poor idea since that meant absolutely anyone could sneak up on the place if they'd wanted to - and the half-elves would make some noise if they got close to the girls. Monsters might be harder to avoid, but fighting them would help their chances of getting strong enough to go through an actual fight without utterly failing like in Palmacosta. And then they could storm the ranch with the group when they got there to save Chocolat. It wouldn't be all that bad, really, if things went as she hoped.

A bit of time passed where the two girls were silent, caught up in their own thoughts as they left Palmacosta behind. Both of them were a little jumpy, though, seeing as how where they were going wasn't the most inviting place in the world. However, they didn't really seem so attentive as to have much warning should a monster come up on them. Which was unfortunate, as after about half an hour in which Palmacosta had faded into the distance, one such monster came down to attack.

The only sound that alerted them to the monster's presence was a screech from above, at which both girls looked up quickly. Their eyes widened and they jumped back as a wyvern landed in between them, about where it would have hit one of them if they hadn't moved. Its wings folded up to its sides and it turned its head back and forth, hungry eyes taking in both girls. The slight pause in the dragon-like creature was long enough for them to get their weapons out in preparation for an attack, which was quick in coming.

Seeming to see the smaller girl as easier prey, the wyvern turned and snapped at Katherine, who quickly threw up her shield with a yelp. The wyvern's head hit against the metal, making a small clang as the tough scales hit the shield. The shield was dented inward slightly from the force, but otherwise was in good condition. At the same time that her friend had had to block the snapping teeth, Caitlin had had to jump out of the way of the swinging tail before she was nailed with it. It was a close call and she stared at the wyvern a moment where she was safe before taking a deep breath and lunging at the scaly back with her swords.

One of the swords just slid off of the scales, while the other hit the soft membrane of the wyvern's folded wings. The small dragon didn't seem too pleased with having something cold and sharp sunk into its wing and turned, making the hole turn into a tear as it turned, Caitlin's sword falling to her side. This only succeeded in making the wyvern angry and Caitlin only had enough chance to gulp, "s**t..." before it struck out at her. She dropped to the ground, feeling its head go right where she'd been a second ago. Having only swords was slightly problematic, since even the defensive 'X' couldn't do much to hold a pissed-off monster at bay.

Now Katherine took her chance to attack, hurriedly slashing at the wyvern's side while she had a chance. It made a shallow cut at the base of its back leg where the scales were thinner, but it didn't even seem to notice. Instead it simply spread its wings and rose into the air. The bleeding tear in its membrane didn't appear to do much to impair its flying, but it did seem to be slightly painful.

Caitlin looked up at the wyvern fearfully as her friend came to her side again quickly. Hoping that the monster would be kind enough to wait, Caitlin pushed herself up off the ground, but dived aside almost as soon as she rose. A fiery jet came from the wyvern's mouth, barely hitting the two girls. Caitlin's cape caught fire and she quickly put it out, a little disappointed that it had been burnt again, but also glad that it was the only damage done. Katherine's pant leg had a small flame building which was quickly put out as well.

"Genis... How the hell are we supposed to fight this damn thing?" the younger girl shouted, scrambling up again and running back as the wyvern landed again. Her friend followed this time so that they wouldn't be separated by the winged serpent again. The wyvern touched down, its eyes narrowed in as much of a glare as any monster could give. It did not seem happy at all with the girls, and it was even more annoyed that its prospective dinner was refusing to simply sit there and be eaten.

"I have no idea," Katherine answered her friend, adjusting her shield slightly in preparation for another attack. This time the attack wasn't as quick as the wyvern looked between the two, still trying to figure out the easiest to nab. It considered Katherine before dismissing the thought - the round shiny thing on her arm had hurt quite a bit. So it moved back to Caitlin.

The younger of the two girls shouted as the wyvern came at her, holding her swords up. The defensive maneuver didn't do much more than hit the wyvern in the head with the crossed blades, but that at least stalled it for a second. Then she realized something they should have tried from the start - what about techs? None had been used so far!

Quickly, she tried to focus her mana as she put her sword up in front of her, deflecting one of the wyvern's huge teeth, but another scraped and cut her arm as its jaw moved down. She flinched, losing control over her mana slightly before trying again even harder. Once she was sure she had enough, she shouted the first thing that came to mind. "Tempest!" At that moment, she jumped up, tucking herself into a ball and spinning with the blades pointed out. They hit against the scales on the wyvern's head, one of them impaling the eye with an insane amount of luck and making the creature half-blind.

Caitlin wound up sprawled between the wyvern's wings, completely dizzy and also aching from her hard impact with the scales. That was not a tech that she was going to be using again anytime soon. It left her a little too exposed she realized as she got up, gripping one of the wyvern's wing joints to keep from falling off. The grip reminded her of her position and she made a small noise of fright as the wyvern looked around to stare at her.

The dragon-like creature's eyes were full of loathing and it beat its wings, hoping to dislodge her and also consequently rising into the air slightly. "Son of a... Genis!" Caitlin shouted, nearly losing her grip on one of her swords. One of the blades hit the wyvern's wing again and it roared, flapping its wing harder. The girl was thrown to the ground with the movement and she landed hard, wincing as she forced herself to her feet. She knew it was dangerous to stay down on the ground where she was vulnerable when there was a wyvern up above just waiting to kill her.

"I'm sorry, are you okay?" Katherine asked worriedly, and her friend just waved her off and rotated her shoulders - which was another painful movement - while waiting for the wyvern to touch back down. It opened its mouth, about to breathe fire, and Katherine grabbed her friend's arm and pulled her underneath the wyvern as soon as it let the breath out. Luckily it didn't seem to realize that if it simply landed that both girls would be crushed and kept to the air, looking around for its prey.

After the fire had disappeared completely, the girls hurried out from underneath the wyvern. It spotted them and swooped down to attack again. Katherine had decided to copy her friend's technique (minus winding up on the wyvern's back) and build up her mana for a tech. When it got close she released it, the words, "Sun Strike!" coming from her mouth at a shout. Her whole weight was put into her shield arm, and the metal was rammed full-force into the wyvern's face, stunning it effectively. It dropped to the ground, trying to shake its head clear of stars and blood, as both girls took advantage of its weakness to thrust their swords as hard as they could into its scaly chest.

The wyvern let out one last groan before falling still, letting the girls collapse to the ground. Caitlin gave a groan of her own, closing her eyes and letting her swords roll out of her hands. "That was hard," she moaned, turning her head to look at her friend to see Katherine's opinion on the fight.

Katherine nodded, leaning back. "My arm hurts..." she sighed. "But I guess you're not much better off, are you? Not bad for our first fight against a wyrven. I didn't even know those traveled so close to Palmacosta..." A stray thought made her giggle, the adrenaline messing with her head. "I guess that makes you Caitlin, Wyrven Slayer!" she added, putting as much dramatic flair in as she could.

Caitlin laughed at her friend's dramatic title and sat up, hoping that she wouldn't feel as sore much later since that would just suck. "'Cause I just rock like that," she agreed, nodding, before deciding to add, "And it's pronounced 'wyvern' by the way. You're mixing the letters up." She was a little particular about things like that, since she was very into mythical creatures. It was like how Katherine had tried to pronounce 'homunculus' as 'homuncluse'.

"Che. Whatever...we still rock." Katherine took a deep breath before standing up, tossing an apple gel from her bag to Caitlin before reaching over to grab her sword and shield. "Do you wanna loot the body for anything valuable looking? Or just leave it and get going?" Rubbing her arm, she added, "Because I am not touching that thing any more than I have too. Bleh."

When her friend tossed the apple gel, Caitlin fumbled to catch it for a minute as she sat up. She managed to keep a hold on it and swallowed it in a few gulps. It took effect fairly quickly, and her aches and the cut on her arm started to disappear as she stood up. For a minute she was silent after Katherine suggested looking to the wyvern for loot, looking from the dead creature to the shorter girl and back again. "Why would looting it get us anything?" she finally asked, fixing her attention on Katherine. "I kind of doubt that monsters actually carry Gald and gels and stuff with them. Or anything of value, really."

Katherine looked back at the wyvern. "...Oh. I actually hadn't really thought of that. I guess it wouldn't be carrying its treasure with it. But maybe it has Gald or gems stuck on it from its hoard, like in The Hobbit!" She examined it again. "Or not. Whatever. I guess we should get going then?"

Chuckling and rolling her eyes at her friend, Caitlin agreed, leading the way toward the general direction of the ranch again. At least they would know they'd be getting close when they reached a forested area. So there was some kind of landmark, as well as the vague directions they had from the game itself. "Keep an eye out for more fire-breathing monsters, 'kay?" she said, grinning back at Katherine, half joking and half serious. It would suck if they were jumped by another wyvern while heading to the ranch.  

[Lloyd Irving Aurion 17]

Ranch from Hell
*Warning: This chapter does contain a lot of swearing*

And thusly the weary travelers arrived at the Palmacosta Human Ranch. Obviously not the safest or wisest place for the girls to be, but they were there nonetheless. While in the game, the ranch was surrounded by a seemingly random forest, the building that stood before the girls was found in a copse of trees that started out relatively thin about a mile out but grew thicker until it was nigh impenetrable. The only exception was a handful of well-worn paths that were taken by patrolling Desians and the like.

The two of them hid out in a semi-clear patch in the forest far enough away from the patrols that would no doubt pass by that they wouldn't get spotted right away. There was a possibility that they could get spotted if someone was actually looking, considering Caitlin was wearing bright red... But they just hoped that no Desian would bother looking close enough. It's not like anyone else - save for the main group and Neil of course - would bother trying to sneak up on the ranch.

"So...we're going to need a better camp than this after a while, but it should work for now, since we can see the patrols somewhat," Caitlin said, gesturing in the general direction of the Desian's paths. "Just so long as we don't get noticed, 'cause that could get pretty bad. And as long as the group hurries up and gets here sometime within the next week." She really wasn't expecting them to be much earlier than a week or so, but she didn't know if the game would vary a little bit because of what she'd told them. Lloyd and Colette at least had probably agreed with her and might want to go get rid of Magnius before Chocolat got kidnapped so... It was best to be prepared.


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A few days later, the girls heard a group of Desians passing that seemed larger normal. Peeking from behind trees, they saw why: the Desians had prisoners with them. There were quite a few, relatively speaking, but not enough to be a whole town. Looking closer, Katherine recognized one prisoner in particular. "Chocolat..."

Caitlin stared at the people being led to the ranch. It'd be so great if they could just jump out now and free those people from the pilgrimage. The only thing was, even she knew that was a stupid idea. The two had gotten a little more skilled by driving off any monsters who wanted to bother them, sure, but not enough to take on a group of Desians on their own while protecting people.

"At least the group will get here soon now, right?" Caitlin said to her friend as quietly as she could while lying still on her belly. She was watching the group of prisoners and Desians from underneath a bush - it was her way of keeping the bright red of her jacket, gloves, and boots muted. From that position, she watched the group head away from them slowly and glanced up at Katherine.

"They'd better be. I don't know how I'm going to handle sitting out here knowing that Chocolat and everybody else is in there waiting on us." Katherine turned away from the path, having seen enough, and sneaked back to their makeshift 'camp'. "Although, that begs the question: how exactly are we going to get into the group then? I mean, I know you said you'd wait here, but it'll still be a little awkward...considering the situation and all."

Caitlin nodded, crawling backwards so that she could still try and keep the red of her clothes covered. There were some Desians that were trailing behind the group, watching for stragglers and run-aways, and another couple had branched off to take their respective patrols around the perimeter. Luckily, the girls (Katherine) had figured out this pattern during the time they had camped out right outside, so they knew when to hide and avoid the patrols. The twin swordsman only sat up normally at their camp when she knew the Desians were out of sight.

"Well...I was thinking maybe we could say that we wanted to help them save Chocolat. She is our friend, after all. And if they don't let us come with them, then we'll just follow them on our own!" she said. It sounded like a very good idea to her, and she realized after she said it that that was also a Lloyd-ish suggestion, considering it was something he could potentially say in the actual game. "But hopefully they'll let us go with them. I mean, they let Sheena go with them to the Luin ranch cause she had friends there, so they could do the same for us, right?"

"Good point, but that was after...well...I suppose we have shown the group that we want to help, but we still have to get over the potential 'double-agent' factor." Come to think of it, Raine was suspicious of everyone, expecting anyone to betray them. Anyone, that is, except Kratos and Zelos, who do betray the group. That's pretty ironic, Katherine thought, the people she suspects the least are the only ones guilty...

"Hmph. If they actually spend some time around us, then they'll know we're not double-agents. Couldn't Genis have figured that one out?" Caitlin pointed out. Of course, there was still a possibility of Genis being slightly suspicious of them, and it might not affect Raine's decision, but it was still a nice, optimistic thought. "But still, at least we can follow them in if...we..." Caitlin's words suddenly trailed off and her eyes got wide in surprise and fright. Katherine looked a little confused at her friend's behavior and turned around to see what she was looking at. Then she screamed.

Directly behind the older of the two girls stood one of the Desian guards. He had most likely heard their conversation and followed their voices to their small camp site. The sight of the half-elf was enough to make the girls freeze for just a second before they jumped into action. Katherine scrambled up and bolted to her friend to get away from the armed man behind her as Caitlin jumped to her feet, hands going for her swords.

The Desian smirked at them under his helmet, holding a sword of his own. Apparently, this Desian was one who tended to do any kind of fighting, considering there was no weak-looking whip anywhere in sight. "Why don't you two just come with me quietly and no one will get hurt?" he suggested. His answer came when Caitlin drew her swords and took a rough defensive stance. Katherine kind of followed her friend's example by unsheathing her sword, which she then proceeded to practically cower behind.

The smirk turned slightly sadistic now as the Desian gave up any ideas of negotiating (not that he had very many of those) and simply went in to attack. The forfeit of those ideas and the creepy smirk didn't bode well for the girls as the half-elf swung his sword down toward Caitlin. She made a frightened noise and brought her swords up to stop the attack, and the force of it jarred her arms and made her stumble. She fumbled to keep her grip as the Desian launched his next attack, a sweep toward both girls. The attacks were meant to disable so that the girls could be taken back to the ranch unharmed, but they could still be deadly. Clearly, the half-elves didn't see much of a distinction between 'disabling' and 'killing'.

Katherine jumped back out of the way, eyeing her shield which was attached to her bag behind the Desian. She thought that if she could reach it, that she might have a better chance of standing up against the half-elf. Unfortunately, that hope was very small, considering that the Desian didn't seem to have too much of an intention of letting them out of his sight. After his next attack, which was desperately dodged by the two girls, his expression became amused and he lowered his sword slightly. Confused, the girls raised their own swords just a little bit with the expectation of another attack. The attack did come, but not from the direction they expected.

Two Desians appeared, one behind each of the girls, restraining them before they really comprehended what was going on. As soon as she felt it though, Katherine screamed and dropped her sword in surprise. Caitlin shouted out and nearly lost her own weapons, but she managed to keep a hold on them. After her scream, Katherine paused for a minute before she lashed out with a kick toward her captor. The attack was fairly ineffective, considering that the Desian behind her had placed himself a good enough distance behind the girl to avoid an attack like that while still restraining her.

Caitlin took advantage of the fact that she still had her swords in her hands and swung one up behind her. It collided with her captor's helmet with a solid thunk and she grinned at the success of the attack. It was the Desian's fault for pulling her arms back the way he had. However, he didn't take that attack lightly and pulled back on her arms roughly. She yelped and dropped one weapon but barely kept hold of the other. It was an advantage of having two weapons.

While Katherine tried unsuccessfully to hit the half-elf behind her or wriggle out of his grasp, the armed Desian made his way to Caitlin. She was having a hard time gripping her sword with her arm being jerked back painfully, so it wasn't that difficult for the swordsman to knock it from her grip and into the bushes nearby. "Well ********," she said to herself, watching her sword disappearing before glaring at the Desian in front of her. "You cowardly b*****d. Are you too scared to fight two weak kids on your own without resorting to sneaky attacks? Or are you just afraid that we could easily kick your a** to hell?" she snapped. She had gone from being frightened for her life to being fairly pissed off.

The Desian with the sword seemed annoyed at the fifteen-year-old's insults and hit her in the chest with the hilt of his sword. She lost her breath with the hit and doubled over as best she could, gasping for breath, but she still managed to groan, "******** b*****d." At the same time, her hands were pulled behind her and shackled while she was distracted by getting her breath back.

"Caitlin!" Katherine tried vainly to wriggle her way out from her captor. Contrary to her normal, planned attempts (as it would be against her brother) she unknowingly let instinct take over, as all rational thought was delegated to this: Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God... Even while she struggled, Katherine's hands were shackled behind her as well.

"Take them to the ranch with those other inferior beings," the Desian with the sword ordered, gesturing with the weapon. Caitlin had got her breath back a bit, even though she had a feeling that her chest would hurt for a long time. The Desians started to pull the girls away, keeping firm grips on their arms. Caitlin tried digging her heels into the ground so that she wasn't pulled ahead as quickly, while pulling back from the Desian at the same time. Katherine was also struggling and trying to get free of their grip.

The head Desian noticed how slow and hard it would be to get the two back to the ranch willingly. He came up behind them while the other two Desians continued to try to drag them off and raised the hilt of his sword. He landed a blow to each girl, knocking them unconscious easily and mercilessly. "Carry them into one of the holding cells," he ordered the other two, who quickly went to do as he asked.


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The two girls woke up a while later. Katherine gave a small groan and sat up, rubbing the back of her head where the sword's hilt had collided and moved over to her friend. Caitlin just rolled over onto her back, rubbing her chest with a slightly pained look. She took in the dingy, dirty room they were now in, as well as the clothing both girls had been changed into. It was the standard uniform-thing for the prisoners, which meant any helpful items they had before were now gone. "Son of a b***h," Caitlin swore under her breath, closing her eyes.

Katherine winced, feeling the extent of her injuries. Note to self: getting knocked out is not fun. "Someone owes a nickel to the swear jar..." she muttered under her breath. Her head hurt. A lot. Actually, it felt a lot like the time she fell of the swing in the third grade and the swing came back to smack her upside the head. As it was, her thought process was a little muddled. "So...I guess we really do have to sit back and wait for them to come."

Caitlin sighed and sat up, a hand on her chest and one rubbing the back of her head. "I guess so. This really isn't going to help with any kind of 'we're strong enough to accompany you' argument, though," she pointed out, before surveying their surroundings a little more. The room didn't look much different sitting up than laying down, and it was eerily empty. She assumed that the other prisoners were out doing...whatever it was they did exactly. "And that Desian can hit really hard," she added, scowling.

"Normally, I'd say something about how that would be obvious, because he's a trained solider and all, but he hit me too. I am in pain. Great pain." She reached back and felt the lump on the back of her head again. A noise outside the cell attracted the girls' attention and they spun around where they sat. The door slid open with the help of a Desian and his key card.

From the look of things, it was the exact same Desian who had knocked them out and probably bruised Caitlin's ribs. His sword hung from his belt, and one of his hands rested casually on the hilt. His smirk was still noticeable under his helmet as he looked at the two girls. "Well, well, look who's woken up," he said, chuckling to himself under his breath. Caitlin's response was to flip him off. His smirk turned into a scowl. "Watch it, kid, or you'll pay worse than you already have," he threatened, his hand that was resting on the hilt of his sword now grabbing the weapon.

The Desian stepped inside the cell, still loosely holding his weapon in case he felt the need to use it. "Now get up and come with me," he ordered. Katherine obeyed, pushing herself to her feet. A little reluctantly, Caitlin rose also, but she stayed away from the Desian, a defiant look on her face. He ignored the look for the moment, considering it to just be an act, and headed out of the cell again. The older of the two girls followed behind, but Caitlin didn't. She simply crossed her arms over her chest stubbornly, noticing for the first time the Key Crest-less Exsphere on the back of her hand.

"Come on, you inferior being. Step out so I can put you to work," the Desian barked, turning to look at the younger girl when he realized she wasn't there. With a little shrug, Caitlin went up to the cell door but stopped there instead of following her friend out into the hallway.

"I'd rather not do anything you jerks want me to. That's hardly a great choice," she said. The venom and swearing she'd expressed in the trees was just being suppressed. She didn't want to go and do whatever the Desians wanted her to. She would prefer to just sit back and make the most of being captured in the cell while waiting for the group. And no Desian with a sword was going to change her mind. Instantly.

The Desian didn't look too pleased with her and went back over to her. He made himself look threatening, and it worked really well. Caitlin gulped but didn't back down and managed to keep her stubborn and defiant look in place. "You don't have much of a choice in the matter," he snarled. Katherine watched fearfully, wishing her friend would just do what he told them since she wouldn't get in so much trouble.

"I'm pretty sure I do have a choice," Caitlin said with a frown of her own. In response, the Desian smacked her with his armored hand. She winced, rubbing the new ache, but then glared at the Desian.

"Don't speak, brat, and come with me," he said dangerously. She listened to his first order, but not the second, simply stepping back and shaking her head 'no'. Finally fed up with her, the half-elf stepped forward and grabbed her arm tightly, forcibly pulling her from the cell and down the hall. Katherine followed after them, continuing to watch her friend worriedly.

The swordsman led the two girls outside, where other prisoners were going about doing mundane, but laborious, tasks in the yard. Some were busy digging out a random trench along the wall, while others worked on making the walls thicker with numerous bricks. Desians watched over the prisoners, and a lot of them were getting very whip-happy. There was the snap of the whips, cries of pain and coughing from the prisoners, and not much other noise.

The two girls were led past a lot of the prisoners, back to one of the walls being thickened. "You get up there and help bring those stones into place," the Desian ordered, shoving Caitlin toward a short ladder up against the six-foot-high wall. "You get stones from the pile and bring them here. And don't slack - we're watching," he said, the first part directed toward Katherine and the second toward both. Caitlin rolled her eyes and pulled herself up the ladder onto the short wall. The other prisoners watched her without stopping their own work as she got up onto the top.

As Katherine reluctantly went off to do as the Desian said, not wanting to get into trouble like Caitlin, the Desian turned to one of the whip masters watching the prisoners. "Keep your eye on that one," he said, gesturing to the girl up on top of the wall. "She might need a few good reminders of who's in charge." The whip master smiled sadistically and nodded, going back to his work as the swordsman left to do his own job.


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At the end of the day, the prisoners were all brought back to their cells, all of them exhausted and wanting to get what little sleep they could. As soon as the door closed, Caitlin collapsed to the ground in a corner of the cell she and Katherine shared with a lot of other humans. She had a couple of cuts from the whip, one or two from talking back to orders and any others from simply not going fast enough for them. "I don't want to go through that again tomorrow. These guys seem to have it out for me. And while some of that may be my fault, it doesn't seem like it entirely," she said.

Katherine sat next to her friend and pulled her knees into her chest. "Dammit, Caitlin. It took everything I had not to yell at them. I can't do this. I can't do this until the group comes. I just can't." She was trying desperately to keep from crying, having held everything back during the day. "And now I've got a freaking Exsphere, and no Key Crest, and so do you, and I just know that our lives'll be screwed up enough that somehow we won't even last a week before we become Exbeluas. Because our freaking mana signature is all messed up, or something, or just because the stupid Rubik's Cube decided to freaking screw up our lives." She kept ranting, most of it incoherently, but she just needed to blubber her way through things. And if this is how it is after one day, Katherine thought, what kind of mental state will I be in after a week?

Caitlin sat through her friend's ranting more patiently than she would have normally. Generally, Katherine would have been interrupted by now with some kind of joke or something to either distract her or make her feel better. But Caitlin wasn't feeling up to it at the moment, and she figured that her friend just needed some uninterrupted venting time. So she just sat there silently for a minute, letting Katherine rant herself out before speaking up herself. "This does royally suck, but you can't have bad thoughts now. Then we never will make it past the week. Just keep thinking that the group is going to come by any day now," she said quietly, both from lack of energy and the need to keep their conversation private.

She looked over at her friend with a small smile. "These Desians may be heartless, abusive bastards, but they'll get what they deserve soon," she said, and it sounded more like a promise than a comment. Then she looked down at the ground with a frown, running her finger along the small grooves in the stone floor. "Especially that guard that brought us here. He's pissing me off."

Katherine rubbed her eyes with her arm. "He's a jerk. He better get what's coming." Absently, she toyed with the Exsphere on her hand. "But seriously, what are we gonna do about these?" Mentally, she tried going through all of the possibilities, but the fatigue was messing with her head. They needed to get Key Crests, that much she knew, but from where?

"Maybe we can steal a couple Key Crests from Desians whenever everyone comes," Caitlin suggested, still running her finger along the lines in the floor. "I can't think of any other option - taking them off is way too dangerous." She looked at her own Exsphere, the bright blue possessing an almost shiny quality to it since it was brand new. She thought that by the end of the week, it'd be dull from dirt.

Caitlin opened her mouth to say something else but stopped when a woman, one of the other prisoners, approached them, a bowl of something in each hand. She knelt down in front of the two girls, a sad smile on her face. "Here, you two should eat something and keep up your strength. It's better than going hungry until tomorrow night," she said, offering them the bowls. It was filled with a thick, gray-ish goop that could barely be called food. Nevertheless, it was something that would keep them from starving, so the girls thanked the woman and took the bowls.

While poking the goop experimentally with her spoon, Caitlin said, "Yum, yum - delicious slop. No wonder everyone here is so sick looking. It's like they took some of the least appealing foods in the world, shoved them in a blender, and called it food."

Katherine finished the bite/slurp on her spoon and grimaced. "And here I almost expected a joke about my cooking. But sheesh, after surviving this, maybe you won't be so hesitant about my concoctions."

The woman sat down, and started to eat her own gloop. "'After surviving this'? But..." The woman sighed. "You girls aren't looking to escape, are you? Because I've seen enough failed attempts to know that it's not worth it. And it's not a fate I would wish on anyone, especially not you two."

Katherine set her spoon down slowly, and closed her eyes, trying to control her rattled emotions. "Not worth it? Why on earth wouldn't it be worth it? Either you succeed and get out, or you die in the attempt. Either way-"

"They don't kill you." The woman looked straight into Katherine's eyes. "They wouldn't deign to grant that mercy to us. What they do to those who try to escape...it's enough to dissuade anyone else from trying."

Caitlin scowled at the woman's words, setting aside her bowl. "Apparently no one's come through with enough guts to actually stand up to these bastards. Just giving up because a few idiots failed is stupid. And we'll try our own way, and we will get out," she said, crossing her arms over her chest and daring the woman to argue with her. "So far these guys haven't seemed overly threatening anyway. Just overgrown, whiny, bullying children with weapons."

The woman hushed Caitlin hurriedly. "I know you're new here, and that's probably why you don't realize just how bad these Desians are. If they hear you talking like that..." She shuddered. "I suppose I could look out for you. You girls remind...my name is Lucille. And yours?"

"My name's Caitlin, and that's my friend Katherine," the younger girl introduced, settling back against the wall. She left her food beside her, after seeing that she'd lost her appetite, which was rare for her. "And just for the record, I'm not scared of them. Actually, the way I see it, it's more them who are scared of us. It makes sense," she said to Lucille with a small shrug.

"Uhh, Caitlin? No, it doesn't. Why could they possibly be scared of us?" Katherine raised one eyebrow and glanced at both Caitlin and her bowl.

"I think Caitlin might be right. They're controlling us by keeping us in these ranches. At least, that's probably how it started. Now, we're just as afraid of them because of the ranches," Lucille said smartly.

Smiling slightly, Caitlin nodded. "Yeah. But there's no real reason to be too scared of them... Okay, they're sadistic and strong, but they're also not the brightest guys around. Or really the sanest..." The 'sanest' part was added thoughtfully as she looked up at the ceiling, thinking about whether that was the right word. "Well, no, not sanest exactly but...they're not really..logical. That's the word I want." After she found the word she wanted, she nodded. The younger girl couldn't help but glance toward the cell door, though, just in case a Desian would be able to hear.

Katherine managed a laugh, her fatigue somewhat lessened from relaxing and the 'food,' "You got that right." 'Cept I can't really say it's because the designs of these ranches make absolutely no sense... "So, Lucille, what's your story? How'd you end up in here?"

Lucille just smiled sadly and gave a little shrug. "I don't have much of a story. Like a lot of the people here, I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Desians came to get some new workers from town, and I just so happened to be in their way." She shook her head slightly, looking a little upset. Not that the girls could really blame her.

"Oh. I'm sorry. At least you weren't as stupid as we were. Although it really was all Caitlin's fault. I just follow her around to make sure she doesn't get in trouble." Katherine ignored Caitlin's protests and continued. "But don't worry, I'm sure the Chosen will be here soon, and then we'll be able to escape for real!"

Lucille, instead of looking hopeful, just closed her eyes and shook her head. "Girls, I don't know why you're so optimistic, but the Chosen's not coming. He never does."

A moment of silence passed as Caitlin and Katherine stared at each other. "He?" Katherine asked.

"Do you mean the last Chosen? 'Cause Colette is most definitely female," Caitlin asked, and Lucille looked slightly confused as to what the girls meant. "Oh...I bet the Chosen position was passed on while you were here... And Colette is probably loads different from the last Chosen! She'll want to come and help us as soon as she can." The younger girl's voice was a little more cheerful than it had been before, though it was slightly forced to try and convince Lucille of their imminent rescue.

"Not if she's anything like the last Chosen. Aiden was...indifferent, like he didn't care about anything but regeneration. Which is fine, of course, but it means that us in the ranches get forgotten until the regeneration actually happens. And it hasn't yet. I saw him, once. It looked like all he wanted was to get it over with. I'm sure your new Chosen is no different." Lucille stood up, ready to leave the girls. "I wouldn't go telling too many people about this Colette. You don't want to get their hopes up." And she walked away, leaving Caitlin and Katherine on their own again.

Caitlin sighed and slumped down against the wall so that she was stretched out on the floor. Some of her recent injuries stung from the movement and the dirty floor, but she ignored it for the moment. "Well, I think convincing her Colette is good went well," she said sarcastically, watching Lucille going to speak to another prisoner. "Imagine their shock when the group actually comes, though..." Then, without waiting for a response, the girl slid all the way to the floor so she was laying down. "I'm gonna get some sleep now," she said, curling up facing away from her friend. Katherine nodded and laid down as well to try and get a little rest before they had to work the next day.

Curling into a tighter ball, Caitlin closed her eyes tightly to keep some stray tears at bay and muttered to herself, "Please get here soon guys... Please..." Then she forced herself to relax enough to fall asleep, trying to keep her tears hidden from everyone else.  

[Lloyd Irving Aurion 17]

Passcodes and Chocolate

A little more than a week had passed since Caitlin and Katherine had been captured and brought to the ranch. That week had been hell for the two girls. Katherine quickly lost any fight she had previously had, and she had been trying to move under the radar and avoid attracting attention. It worked to some degree, though she could never entirely get away from being hit by the whip-happy Desians. Any fight that left her, though, seemed to be transferred to Caitlin, who had already made it a regular habit to argue with and insult the Desians whenever she had a chance. So while her friend managed to drift quietly through the grueling day-to-day schedule, Caitlin made enemies with her captors and frequently got punished for her words or actions.

So it was that the ninth night in the ranch found Caitlin sprawled on her stomach in their cell while Lucille tried her best to clean up the fresh whip marks on her back. Earlier that day, Caitlin had tried to stop a little kid from getting hurt, since he had been a new arrival to the ranch and had yet to get the strength or endurance to keep working all day. Her efforts had been in vain, as she'd gotten herself in trouble along with the boy. So now her back was just hurting more than it had been the past week.

In order to try and ease the pain and clean the cuts, Lucille was very slowly and carefully pouring a battered cup of water over the girl's back. There were two more cups by her side, which had belonged to both of the girls, but it had been decided that they were better used on the injuries. While the woman worked, Caitlin prodded her bowl of mush, which was nearly half-empty. Katherine sat propped up against the wall just a foot away, slowly working her way through the tasteless meal. Even after nine days, the food had yet to seem appetizing, and neither girl was in much of a rush to finish it.

After a little while of the usual, tense silence in the cell, Lucille sat back on her heels and stacked the three empty cups up. "There. That should at least have cleaned your cuts," the woman said, the ghost of a smile playing around her mouth. Caitlin seemed to have no trouble smiling, since she grinned at the woman next to her in thanks. She would have voiced her thanks, but right then she'd taken a big bite of sticky mush in a sudden attempt to make it disappear as fast as she could. "Just make sure you don't lay on your back, or probably even on your sides. You don't want your back to get dirty and infected," Lucille lectured.

"Don't worry, I'll make sure she doesn't," Katherine promised, as her friend was still struggling to down her bite. "Thanks." Lucille nodded and stood up, grabbing the cups and her own, empty bowl and leaving the two girls alone. She glanced back over at them once as she took her usual spot not that far away and tried to get comfortable enough to sleep. Looking over at Caitlin, Katherine sighed, "You need to stop picking fights." Caitlin blinked at her and finally managed to swallow as she pushed her bowl away and lay her chin on her arms.

"What, would you rather I just watched a little kid who's probably not even reached double digits yet get whipped?" the girl snorted, rolling her eyes. Katherine shook her head, setting her bowl aside and wringing her hands.

"No...but you can't jump in front of everyone the Desians target. They'll end up killing you," Katherine said, the worry clear in her tone. Caitlin shrugged and lifted her head, looking down at her hands. She let her fingers travel over the smooth curve of the Exsphere that was slowly gaining power on her hand. Both of them knew that if for some reason Lloyd's group didn't show in the next couple weeks, they were dead anyway because of the stones that glinted innocently on their skin. Caitlin didn't voice this aloud though, since it was too scary to voice as a possibility.

After a couple minutes of silence, Caitlin finally said, "It doesn't matter anyway. We're leaving tomorrow." She never looked up from her hands, so she missed the look of shock that had made its home on Katherine's face. Katherine stared at her friend as if she was crazy, but the look was missed as Caitlin continued. "We don't know when Lloyd and them are gonna show, so why not get out of here when we can? I'm personally sick of this place, and my back hurts, and I want the apple gels that are waiting outside in our bags. And I have a plan." Finally she looked up, right as Katherine looked down, looking uncomfortable.

"It would be safer just to wait here," she said. "You know that they'll come to the ranch, to save Chocolat if nothing else. And they should be coming soon. A few more days and they'll be here. Hakonesia Peak is far away from Palmacosta, but it can't be that far."

Caitlin frowned at her friend and moved to push herself up, but the movement made her back twinge with pain and she dropped back down onto her stomach. "I don't want to put up with these bastards for another few days! I'm getting out of here tomorrow night, and I really hope that you can see the logic in coming too. True, there is a chance of getting caught, but really, I don't care. These guys can't be much worse than they have been, and if we get out, we can meet up with Lloyd's group before they come here and get healed up and help them."

For a moment, Katherine seemed to be considering her options as she sat there, biting her lip. But then she looked up and shook her head, saying firmly, "I'm not going with you. I don't want to risk it." Caitlin stared at her friend dumbfounded for a full thirty seconds before looking down at the ground dejectedly. She was trying to look as sad and pitiful as possible, though it wasn't working on her friend. Sadly, that tactic almost never did work on Katherine. Seeing that she wasn't getting a response, Caitlin sighed and nodded, resting her head on her arms again and closing her eyes.

"Fine," she muttered, turning her head away. "But you'll see that I'm right. It will work." With that, she tried to get as comfortable as possible while still lying face-first and tried to go to sleep. Katherine looked at her and then shook her head, slowly working her way toward sleep as well.

The next morning, Caitlin had slipped into the team of prisoners that was digging the trench. She had noticed it inching closer and closer toward the gate, though the Desians had stopped its progress two days ago before it had gotten too close, and now the hole was just being filled in again so that it could be redug. Caitlin was at the end of the trench, as close to the gate as she could get, as she shoveled dirt back into the deep ditch that had probably taken at least a month to complete. From there, she could watch the Desians coming and going on their different patrols and look for what she most needed - the code they typed in to open the doors.

Over the course of the week, Caitlin had been plotting how best to leave the ranch. When she had noticed how the Desians left it, it had been her top priority to figure out how to do the same. From what she could tell, in order to leave, a passcode and a key card were needed. The key card she had aquired halfway through the week when she'd nicked it from a Desian's pocket while she had been fighting him off, and currently it was tucked into the waist band of her pants. Every now and then she would check to make sure it was still there and that it hadn't slipped free and fallen into the trench to be buried.

The passcode was more difficult to aquire, but Caitlin had tried her best to be near the gate whenever a patrol left. She had all but two numbers, and she would have a fifty-fifty chance of getting those two numbers right. But she wanted to try and get one of them down for sure, so then there would only be one iffy digit. When the noon patrol started out, Caitlin paused in her work in order to sneak at peek at the key pad. 1-3-7/8-2-...6? Unfortunately, she was unable to tell for absolute sure whether the Desian had pushed the five or the six, though she was pretty sure it was the six, since just then a Desian had come up behind her.

Bringing his whip down across her shoulders, the half-elf barked, "Keep working," and glared at her. Caitlin flinched away as she felt the mediocre weapon cut a new little mark on her skin, but she quickly went back to work. Today she didn't want to have any disagreement with a whip-wielding half-elf, since it would be hard enough running away without a mass of new injuries to hinder her. The Desian nodded, pleased, as he moved down the line, barking out orders and insults and using his leather weapon as freely as he wanted.

Finally, the sky started to darken, and the Desians started to gather the prisoners together in order to shepherd them back into their cells. Caitlin joined the gathering of humans outside the main building, though she had no intent of staying with them. As she moved through the people, she spotted Katherine. The other girl gave her a frightened look as Caitlin just smiled, waved, and slid out of the mass of bodies into the cover of shadows. Under any kind of scrutiny, her hiding place was horrible, so she quickly sought out a better one. Some of the large stone blocks lay abandoned nearby, and she quickly ducked behind one. None of the Desians noticed her abrupt departure as they herded the humans inside.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Caitlin grabbed the orange key card from her waist band and held it tightly in one hand. As soon as all of the Desians had gone back inside, where they were no doubt going to have a nice, relaxing sleep before morning, she stole away from her hiding place and into the building that the prisoners had entered a few minutes before. Instead of going very far into the complex and risk getting caught, Caitlin quietly opened up the nearest door and slipped inside, shutting it just as quietly behind her. When she turned, the girl swore to herself for picking such a horrible hiding spot.

Unbeknownst to her, she had walked right into one of the Desian's lounges. Three couches were gathered in a horse-shoe shape with a coffee table in the middle. There was a counter lining one wall, with cabinets above it, and a tiny refridgerator underneath. A larger, closet-looking cupboard sat against another wall, and there was another door on the other side of the room. Afraid of going any further - because what if the next room was the sleeping quarters and there were Desians there? - Caitlin decided to find a hiding spot in the lounge. Considering that there was only one area big enough for her, she didn't have many options.

Quickly, the girl crossed the room to the tall cupboard, but then paused and looked over at the mini fridge. Looking back and forth between the door, fridge, and cupboard, she finally made up her mind and made for the fridge. Opening it, she found fruit and vegetables and what looked like a bowl of pudding. But instead of grabbing any of that, she grabbed the treat in the freezer part of it - a slab of sweet, frozen chocolate. With her prize in hand, Caitlin shut the fridge door and quickly ducked into the cupboard, pulling the door closed behind her. Inside was practically bare except for a couple forgotten capes on the floor, which the girl sat on. Clearly, the space wasn't often used.

It wasn't too long after she'd taken her hiding spot and started on her sweet, delicious snack that the door opened. Light suddenly appeared through the cracks around the doors of the cupboard as one of the Desians threw the light switch. They were laughing as they entered, and Caitlin narrowed her eyes. Evil half-elves like them shouldn't be allowed to laugh. And also, it was faintly disturbing.

"Did anyone else notice how calm D204 was today?" one of the Desians asked as the door clicked shut behind them. Caitlin pushed the cupboard door open just enough that she could see out of it. The Desian that had just spoken had flopped onto one of the couches, and he had two of his buddies with him. One was out of her view, but he had to be there to have closed the door, and the other was raiding the fridge.

"Maybe she's finally learning her place," the one at the fridge snorted as he pawed through the freezer. The other two Desians seemed just as skeptical, and Caitlin's eyes narrowed further as they realized they were talking about her. She hadn't heard her number before, but there weren't a great many other prisoners who hadn't 'learned their place' and were girls, so it was pretty easy to know who they were talking about. "Hey, did either of you two steal my chocolate? I was saving that." The girl inside the cupboard froze, looking down at the half-eaten chunk of candy in her hand.

"You probably ate it last night when you were half asleep, Drake," the third Desian laughed, finally coming into the teenager's view. He had removed his helmet, and he had a bad case of helmet hair. The blond locks were flat against his head, and the tips of his slightly-pointed ears were red from where the helmet had rubbed against them. The Desian tossed his helmet on the coffee table, where it landed with a thud, and he flopped onto another couch. "Either that, or you can't see it past that overly-large helmet of yours."

Drake turned around and yanked the helmet off his head, revealing the fact that he was glaring. Caitlin stared at the half-elf, since he didn't appear to be much older than she was, and he had a very faint resemblance to one of her younger brothers. His light brown hair refused to do what normal helmet hair did, and a large chunk was practically sticking straight up in the air, giving him a more comical look. "Shut up, Sawyer. I can see just fine through my helmet, and at least my head isn't too big for it to cover." With that, Drake stuck his tongue out at the older half-elf very childishly.

"Would you two quit bickering? It's too late for that," the first Desian said, pulling his own helmet off and shaking his head to get his own red hair to pop back up. He set the headgear on the couch beside him and looked between his two comrades. "Just shut up and calm down already." Sawyer just chuckled and reclined on the couch, propping his feet up on the table, while Drake instantly turned back to continue the chocolate search.

The three Desians stayed where they were for a couple hours, bickering, play fighting, and chatting the whole time. Caitlin was dozing off leaning against the wall of her cupboard, with her chocolate-covered hands in her lap. Eventually, at around eleven thirty, Sawyer slammed his hands on the table as he pushed himself up, jolting the girl into wakefullness once more. "We should probably call it a night, guys. I dunno about you, but I'd prefer to get a decent amount of sleep before having to drag those inferior beings out of their rooms." The other two voiced their agreement and the three exited the room via the second door, clinking out the lights as they went.

Slowly, Caitlin started to regain her night vision after the brightness of the electric lighting. She gave it another half an hour before she even chanced moving from her hiding spot, in case Drake decided to come out and raid the fridge one last time. While trying to be as quiet as a ninja, Caitlin slipped over to the door and carefully pulled it open until she could just slide out into the hall. The lighting there once again assaulted her eyes after the darkness of the room, and she blinked rapidly so her eyes would adjust. Once she was able to see again, she hurried from the building and back outside.

Luckily, since it was the middle of summer, the air was warm and actually fairly pleasant. It was always best when there was no chance of freezing in the middle of the night. Throwing all caution to the wind, Caitlin bolted for the gate, getting there as quickly as her legs would carry her. Once there she paused to calm her rapidly beating heart - as she had been sure she would've been spotted. Since no red lights started flashing, and the night was definitely alarm-free, the girl figured it was safe to finish her plan. Just as she'd seen the Desians to, Caitlin swiped the orange card through the lock and punched the buttons. 1-3-8-2-6. It beeped and a red light flashed. Frustrated, she tried again. 1-3-7-2-6. The device flashed red again, and she stared at it. She had been sure the last digit was six! Apparently she had seen wrong earlier that day.

Growling to herself, Caitlin quickly reswiped the card and punched in 1-3-8-2-5. This time, along with the flashing red light, a small but loud alarm started going off above her head, making her flinch and cover her ears. Clearly, the Desians had a three strikes, you're out system, and she pitied any new recruit who was bad at memorizing as she pushed the buttons one last time. 1-3-7-2-5. Finally, the light flashed green and the gates swung open. Caitlin was faintly surprised it had worked at all with a fourth try, but she assumed that the Desians weren't dumb enough to get locked into their own ranch should someone get the code wrong three times.

Before she could dash out past the walls, the sound of barked orders made her turn and look over her shoulder. A few Desians had flown out of the building to see what was the matter, one of which was a drowsy-looking, pajama-clad Sawyer whose once helmet-y hair now stuck out every which way from his pillow. If her life wasn't in danger, Caitlin would've laughed at the sight, but as it was, she just smirked a little before turning tail and running through the already closing gates.

Instead of trying to make a break for the House of Salvation or (if she was really lucky) a traveler's camp, which would be the closest refuge, Caitlin dove into the surrounding forest, where she hoped to find a quick escape. Because of her much-dreaded gym class at school, Caitlin had quickly found out she was the slowest runner in her class, and probably in the whole school. And that was against kids her own age, not to mention a group of angry, adult half-elves with Exspheres. So since she knew it would be impossible to outrun them, she needed a hiding spot.

It didn't take long for the girl to find a tree with low-hanging branches. Getting a running start, she jumped and snagged a branch, pulling herself up and using the few flimsy tree limbs underneath as leverage. As a kid, Caitlin had climbed trees often, and occasionally still did, but she had never gone very high before. Now, however, the situation had kind of changed. No longer was she playing with her little brothers or her friends, and just goofing around. Now she was in big trouble, and she didn't hesitate to climb until the branches felt a little weak underneath her. They were still able to support her weight, but still she clung to the trunk as if hugging it.

Down below and a little ways away, the Desians were starting their search for her, while the alarms continued to blare from the ranch. Caitlin was glad she had managed to sleep a little bit in the lounge, because she knew with the noise, fear, and just the general situation, she wouldn't be sleeping at all that night.  

[Lloyd Irving Aurion 17]

Jailbreak

Morning took its sweet time coming around the next day. And even once the sun had broken over the horizon, Caitlin still had to wait up in her tree. All night she had been fighting off sleep, and now it was getting more and more difficult, as she had been up for more than twenty-four hours, not counting her little nap a few hours earlier. A while ago, when it was just turning light, she had started to hear the prisoners and Desians coming out for the day.

Caitlin told herself that once the next Desian patrol left the ranch, she would leave her hiding spot, as long as it was just a normal patrol and not a search party. All through the night, Desians had been coming and going, trying to find her. Once they'd stopped right beneath her, but luckily they hadn't seen the girl crouching in the upper reaches of the tree. She doubted that there would be anymore close search parties anymore, though, since about an hour before, she'd overheard a large group of the half-elves talking about heading out to check the roads to the House of Salvation and Palmacosta, as well as the places themselves. Clearly, they didn't expect her to be on their doorstep any longer.

The gates opened, and three Desians left, starting their patrol. While they were clearly more alert than usual, they weren't actively looking for Caitlin, so she figured it was safe. Gingerly, she unfolded herself from the curled-up position she'd been in all night and made her way down the tree. She paused when her feet touched the ground, looking around warily, but as expected, no one was around.

Quickly, and ignoring the tingling pins and needles feeling as blood rushed to her legs, Caitlin made for the campsite that her and Katherine had set up a couple weeks before. With any luck, the Desians would have left their gear instead of looting it, and it would definitely be helpful. Luck was on her side at the moment, since when she arrived in the little clearing, she found things just as they had been left. Both bags sat near the long-dead fire, and Katherine's shield was still attached to one of them. Katherine's sword was also still where it had fallen, and Caitlin managed to find one of hers, which she instantly scooped up. The other had fallen into the bushes and it took a moment of searching to find it, but finally she had both her weapons back.

Looking at everything, Caitlin tried to figure out how best to carry it all. She needed to take it, but there was quite a bit of stuff when there were two of them to carry it. And she didn't have any sheaths for the three swords. Frowning, she sat down and pulled over a bag, deciding to change, get something to eat and grab an apple gel or two before figuring it out. Caitlin was quick to slurp up two apple gels, which instantly made her back feel better. Then she grabbed some dried meat, the only food that hadn't perished, and stuffed it in her mouth while she dug around in her bag for a change of clothes. She really didn't want to walk around in her torn, bloody ranch uniform, and the two girls luckily had thought ahead and packed another set of clothes in their respective bags. Once she was done changing into her original red and black ensemble - minus the boots, gloves, and sheaths - she stuffed her ranch clothes in her bag and quickly gathered everything up.

Eventually, she ended up slinging one bag on each shoulder and cut one end of the other two straps free from the packs, tying them together. She had also wrapped Katherine's sword in her spare cape, to try and make it more difficult to cut herself with it, and slid it between the straps of the packs so it rested against her back. Then with both her own swords in her hands, Caitlin started making her way stealthily to the road. The whole stop had only taken about fifteen minutes, so she didn't have to worry about running into the Desian patrol just yet.

As soon as she was on the road, Caitlin gripped her swords tighter, ever ready to start swinging. Past the ranch, it was just plains, so it would be easy for her to be spotted. Or get attacked by monsters. At the moment, neither option sounded very pleasant, and both required fighting, so the teenager tried to keep herself alert. Unfortunately, being exhausted didn't help, and as she walked, she kept having to make herself look around for danger instead of dozing.

Caitlin managed to keep herself going for a couple more hours, until she had nearly reached the House of Salvation. Along the way, she was lucky enough to escape notice by Desians, though a pair of giant ladybugs had thought it would be a good idea to pay her a visit. Alone, the fight had been a little difficult, but at least she had gotten off without any major injuries.

Before reaching the House of Salvation, Caitlin decided to stop and rest for a while. Normally, she would've jumped at the chance to go inside and find a bed – they still had some Gald in one of the packs – but considering her situation, she didn't want to. She was afraid of what would happen if the Desians found out she was there. It was doubtful that the evil half-elves would leave the people in the House of Salvation alone if it was known that a ranch fugitive was staying there. So the safest bet was to stay outside, away from people, until she found Lloyd's group.

Caitlin sat down a little ways away from the road, happily dumping her bags in a heap. She half-heartedly nibbled on a bit more meat and sucked down another apple gel before getting herself comfortable against the two bags. She set her swords to the side, but where they would be easy to grab if she got caught. And then it was only a few seconds before she was fast asleep.


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"You know, sleeping alone in the middle of nowhere when you're such a heavy sleeper is a terrible idea." Genis crossed his arms and smirked as Caitlin finally woke up. Lloyd was standing over the girl with a hand on her shoulder, Colette hovering curious over his shoulder. Raine stood a ways back, and Kratos stood even farther, looking as disinterested as ever and eager to get moving. "...but why are you alone? Where's Katherine?"

Caitlin stared at them in surprise and then groaned and closed her eyes again. "Good thing you're not Desians - that would've been bad," she mumbled, practically to herself. She had kind of hoped she'd actually wake up when someone was there, but clearly not. Opening her eyes again, she pushed herself into a slightly more upright position, since she'd slouched against the bags. "And, uh, Katherine is...still at the ranch," she answered, reaching her arm around to point in the direction she'd come from. However, she quickly retracted her arm, wincing, as the movement made her back hurt.

"Are you okay?" Lloyd asked, looking down at Caitlin with concern. She nodded mutely, rubbing at her shoulder. It still ached, but it was definitely feeling better than the day before.

"What do you mean, she's still at the ranch?" Genis stopped smirking and started to look concerned.

Colette tried to smile and lighten the mood. "I'm sure she's okay! She's just ... waiting for us like she said she would." Genis gave Colette a look as if to say Really?, then glanced back at Caitlin for more explanation.

Looking away and rubbing her arm now - a little nervously and sheepishly - Caitlin explained, "Well...we were waiting for you guys. For about a week. But then some Desians found our camp and we got taken to the ranch. That was...ten days ago. I broke out last night, but Katherine thought it was too dangerous and stayed behind." She avoided looking at the others, instead focusing on one of her swords next to her. There wasn't really any real reason to not make eye contact, but it was easier to explain without seeing their reactions.

"You what?" Genis and Lloyd both looked horrified, and Colette hugged Caitlin as fiercely as she could. Raine and Kratos had both taken interest in the conversation, with varying degrees of worry and 'I told you so' in their expressions, the former for Raine, and the latter for Kratos.

"You were taken to the ranch?" Lloyd repeated. "How'd you get out? Are you okay?" His expression changed to include horror, concern, and anger all at once.

Grimacing, Caitlin gently pushed Colette away as the Chosen apologized, both for her getting captured and for having hurt Caitlin with the bear hug. "I snitched a key card and saw the passcode for the gates. It was easy. And I'm fine. Just some cuts and brusies, I used a couple apple gels earlier, not a big deal." Honestly, normally Caitlin would have complained about the injuries and the aches, but at the moment she just wanted to lessen Lloyd's worry. Her complaining wouldn't help.

"Not a big deal? You look like you're in pain, and you just ran away from Desians. I think that counts as a 'big deal'," Lloyd argued, and Caitlin had to admit that he had a point, though she didn't say as much.

Raine cleared her throat and brushed some dirt off her sleeve. "That settles it, doesn't it? I believe our next stop is the human ranch. And yes, Caitlin, you can come with us. You have knowledge of the layout, and I'm sure," she added with a sharp look at Caitlin, "that we couldn't keep you from following us. Not with your friend in there."

"We'll help you save her. We'll save everyone there." Genis clapped a hand on Caitlin's shoulder, and Kratos turned to face the direction of the ranch instead of the group.

"Yeah," Lloyd agreed, and Colette nodded happily by his side. Caitlin grinned and pushed herself to her feet, using one of her swords as leverage.

"Great! When're we going?" she asked, glancing at Kratos as she spoke. She felt like she needed to make him say something, since he'd just stood there this whole time being annoyingly quiet. Sure, she wasn't expecting him to act all worried or anything - that would be very un-Kratos-like - but she'd expected something.

Kratos looked at Caitlin. "We leave immediately, assuming the Chosen is quite finished here."

"Oh! Uh, yes!" Colette stood quickly and helped the others to their feet. "Right. Let's go!"


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Katherine pushed yet another crate forward to the gaping door that led to the storeroom, one of the few tasks she was forced to do that actually had a purpose, and wiped her forehead with her wrist. It had been several days since Caitlin hadn't come back to the cell. Since there had been no word of her, and Lucille had made it seem like any caught escapees would have led to a demonstration or something of the sort, Katherine was left hoping for the best. So...no news was good news, right?

In the meantime, the Desians had started to be even more strict and whip-happy than they had been before, and Katherine was becoming increasingly fed up with the damn Desians. Her strategy of 'lay low, play it safe, and it will all go away' stopped working as soon as Caitlin left and their captors realized that Katherine and Lucille might have had something to do with that. Honestly, if they had known enough to warrant such treatment, wouldn't they have gone with Caitlin? Or maybe the Desians were just using it as an excuse to be extra sadistic.

Just then, an alarm started sounding, startling everyone. The prisoners stopped their work for a moment, looking around in confusion, while the Desians took a second to process the sudden change. It only took that one second for the Desains to register that something was wrong, and then a number of them ran for the gates, while others demanded of superiors to know what was going on. An order was given amongst the half-elves, and the prisoners were rounded up to go inside much earlier than usual. Clearly, they were afraid of another break out so soon after the latest.

There was a lot of pushing and shoving, as the Desians had absolutley no regard to how the prisoners got in their cells as long as they just got in as quickly as possible. Katherine wound up with an elbow in her face when she tried to turn around and see what was happening, before being uncerimoniusly forced into the closest cell, which was locked as soon as they couldn't fit anymore people in the cell. The din caused by the alarm, the barked orders, and the confused shouts was enough to make Katherine shove her hands over her ears in an attempt to block all the noise out. She was unsuccessful.

Outside at the gates, Caitlin was staring as Kratos easily cut down any Desians that got in their way. It was...a little scary to watch. His sword was stained red, and he wore a death glare on his face. Because of him (and with a little bit of help from Lloyd, Colette and Genis), there were a number of Desians dead, and others were abandoning the fight and running for it. It was pretty obvious that they didn't want to cross blades with Kratos. It only took a minute for the whole outside to be clear of anyone, and Caitlin had to admit she did little to help. She was afraid of actually killing a Desian with her blades, and hadn't done much more than give minor wounds to any of them.

Without the sound of any fighting, the alarm was horribly loud, and Caitlin ducked her head between her shoulders, hoping it would block out noise. With her blades in her hands, it was impossible to actually cover her ears. But after just a second, she noticed the flashing box near the gate that was giving off the loud noise. Pointing to it, she called out, "Hey, Genis. Fireball that thing, would you?" Genis looked up at the box and nodded, doing as the girl had suggested. The alarm blared twice more and then died with a pitiful whining noise when hit with the fire, shutting off the annoying sound.

When the alarm died, the shouting stopped and it became clear to the prisoners that the Desians were no longer standing guard for the first time since the humans had arrived at the ranch, and they were abandoned in overcrowded, locked cells. The silence that followed marked the realization that something was very, very, wrong. Or perhaps, something was finally right. Katherine started to smile, despite the growing pain on her face, and whispered to herself, "It's the Chosen. It has to be." With that said, she started to push herself past the other prisoners to the front of the cell, so she could get a glimpse of any action.

"Let's go," Lloyd said determinedly, starting off into the ranch.

Caitlin watched him for a second before hesitantly asking, "Lloyd, do you even know where you're going?" He stopped, and turned back to look at them before sheepishly shaking his head. Sighing, Caitlin trotted up to him and past him, gesturing for the others to follow. "The prisoners are held over here," she informed them, heading to that building. She was a little worried about leading the way - she knew the Desians hadn't given up on their attack already - but the only sign of her uneasiness was a quick glance back at Lloyd and Kratos, who she hoped would save her sorry a** if any Desians did attack them.

It was unnervingly quiet inside the building. Caitlin was drumming her fingers quietly on the hilt of her swords out of nervousness, and Lloyd moved up to walk next to her, giving her a quick, reassuring smile. Everyone seemed to realize the danger of invading the ranch, and the importance of not getting caught, since no one spoke. When they got to a corner, Caitlin cautiously looked around and became even more worried when she didn't see anyone.

"It's just over here," she mumbled, not wanting to break the silence by speaking normally. As soon as she turned the corner, a fireball shot just inches above her head and she jumped back against the wall, swearing loudly. It was a very good thing that the Desians couldn't aim very well just then, or else she would have gotten smacked in the face with fire. That would have been rather painful.

Down the hall, a mage stood just barely within sight around another turn, and Caitlin realized that from there, it would have been difficult to notice him. Clearly, though, he'd seen her a second ago, since Fireball's casting time was not that short. More Desians came from the two ends of the hall. Now the reason for the silence was well known - they were plotting an ambush further inside the ranch.

Kratos was the first to meet the attackers, followed closely by Lloyd. The two of them split, each one taking one side of the hallway. Caitlin unglued herself from the wall, though she very much would have preferred standing there, and joined Lloyd since Kratos was definitely more than capable of holding his own, despite the number differences. Each side of the hall had roughly ten melee-fighting Desians, and at least one mage.

As soon as she approached, Caitlin had to throw her swords up in a defensive X to block an incoming sword, and then whip one sword down to block another headed for her side. With the sword she wasn't using to block, she thrusted out at a Desian in front of her, cutting a gash in his side and making him stumble back. Lloyd was preoccupied with two Desians, using one sword for each. When one of the Desians brought his sword back too far, Lloyd took the opportunity to stab him in the chest, flinching slightly as he did so. The Desian crumpled when he withdrew his sword, leaving room for another one to come in for an attack.

Three Fireballs raced past the dual swordsmen, in different directions. Two came from behind them, and were accompanied by Genis' incantation. The third came from the mage in front of them. The two swordsmen - and the Desians that noticed the threat - ducked out of the way before they became barbeque. Still, one of Genis' fireballs hit one of the Desians, and the enemy mage's grazed Lloyd's arm, burning the fabric of his jacket and his arm in the process. One of Colette's chakrams spun around Lloyd and hit a Desian behind him before coming back around to her hand.

Caitlin glanced at the Desian mage and frowned, muttering, "Screw it." Then, jumping up and using a Desian's low-swung sword as a boost, she shouted, "Tempest!" The younger dual swordsman summersaulted over the Desian's heads, her swords raking down a couple of their backs but mostly just clanging against their helmets. At the very least, she hoped she disoriented them. But she hadn't been wanting to hurt them - it was the mage she was after.

After that attack, Caitlin landed heavily and off-balance, but in front of a very startled mage, who instantly began casting. Shaking her head quickly in the hopes that it would make the hall stop spinning, Caitlin raised her swords and stabbed at the mage with one while slicing with the other. The stab caught the mage in the gut, and the slice cut deeply through his chest armor and into his flesh. The mage immediately stopped casting and stumbled back, collapsing on the floor. Caitlin stared at him in shock for a moment as his blood pooled on the ground and the life left him. Her stare was interrupted by a burning pain along her arm, and she numbly turned to face the new threat.

One of the Desians had cut her while spinning around to attack, and now brought his sword down on her head. Immediately, she brought her swords up in an X to block, struggling against the pressure that the Desian was exerting as he tried to force the blade downward further. Caitlin grit her teeth and pushed back, and was glad when Lloyd came and cut at the Desian's arm, making him drop the sword with a howl. Lloyd finished him off grimly - it was clear that he was still not very fond of killing. And speaking of killing...

Caitlin refused to glance behind her at the mage she'd fought. She didn't want to see the proof that she had actually killed someone without a moment's thought, that she had taken someone's life just because they had been doing their job. Sure, their job sucked, and Caitlin hated the Desians with a passion, and she would've been killed if no one had killed that mage...but those arguments really didn't matter.

"Are you okay?" Raine asked, looking at her concernedly while a circle of mana gathered around her feet. Caitlin glanced up and nodded mutely, smiling her thanks as Raine released her magic with a quick "First Aid" and the cut on the girl's arm closed.

For a moment, Caitlin just remained standing there, before mentally telling herself to snap out of it. She could be in shock later - now they were kind of on a mission. "It's that way," she said, pointing down the hall where Kratos had killed his Desians, trying to avoid looking at them. Ignoring any looks of concern sent her way, the girl headed down the hall toward the holding cells, and the others slowly followed behind her.

It only took a minute for them to reach the cells, and without any other Desians attacking. Caitlin swiped the stolen card through the device by the door, and the door slid open, revealing the cells.

Katherine heard the door slide open and glanced up quickly to see who was coming in. She expected Desians, but when she saw that Caitlin was coming through the doorway, she started to cry. Seeing Caitlin, in her normal Symphonia clothes, with swords in her hands after all this nonsense at the ranch was almost too good to believe. "Oh my God. Oh my God. It's...you...finally."

The other prisoners also noticed that a non-Desian had opened the door, and dissolved into varied reactions. Some broke down, like Katherine, and others were clamboring at the bars, begging to be released. In such a short time, they had all started to remember what it was like to be people.

Caitlin hurried forward and set her swords aside, swiping the card once more to open the doors, grinning at Katherine. She honestly felt a little pleased with herself for getting them through the ranch this far and being able to actually help. The prisoners were quick to take advantage of the open doors, and they gratefully left the cells in a rush, leaving the little rooms empty within moments.

As soon as she could, Katherine all but fell on her friend, hugging her as tightly as she could. After a moment, she let go, and rubbed her eyes fiercely. "Thank Martel you got here. I don't know what I would have done if...well. Right. What's the plan?" she asked, clearing her throat and trying to stand a little straighter.

When Katherine had hugged her tightly, Caitlin had stiffened for a second, out of both surprise and pain. The pressure was hurting her back, and she was kind of glad when Katherine let go. "First off, don't do that again. That hurt," Caitlin said, rubbing her back. "And the plan? Um...find you guys, stop Magnius?" she added vaguely, turning to Raine and Kratos so that they could add onto the very basic plan.

"The plan right now is for Neil to escort the remaining prisoners out of the ranch while the rest of us find Magnius." Raine gestured in the two directions with her staff. "Unless you know the way to Magnius, Caitlin, you should help Neil with the prisoners."

"We're not going with you?" Katherine looked at Raine curiously.

"Why would you? You have no weapons and no real combat experience. We need to protect you, and the best way to do that is send you both with Neil."

Caitlin huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. "We can handle ourselves just fine," she grumbled. They had fought off a wyvern on their own, and she had been somewhat helpful fighting the Desians a couple minutes ago. "And it wouldn't be hard to find Katherine a sword..."

"In that case, you would be even better suited to aid Neil, as you two would be the only prisoners capable of fighting off any Desians." The reply from Kratos came quickly and curtly. "Now, gather the remaining prisoners and leave with Neil."

"Oh, Katherine! Before you leave, I have your shield!" Colette reached for her back, unfastened the large shield and handed it to the other girl. "We'll meet up with you when we're done. Good luck!" The Chosen said, smiling.

"Okay, everyone follow me and we'll get you out of here," Neil called to the prisoners who were milling around nervously. Caitlin grabbed her swords from where she'd left them, still grumbling and shooting Kratos a dirty look. She was the first to follow Neil out of the room. At the very least, if she was being made to leave with them, she could make sure that the person with the actual weapons was up front. The prisoners fell in behind her and Neil, with Katherine to guard the end of the group. In that manner they started making their way back through the Ranch, with Caitlin and Katherine both waiting anxiously for the trap that would be sprung later.