Inside the ruins the SeeDs had since split into smaller groups to make things easier for them and give their persuers a headache while giving them a fighting chance. These groups were composed of a mage or magic nerd as well as someone proficient in a weapon. Zell and Selphie; Celia and Quistis; Squall and Rinoa; Alex, Seifer, and Irvine.
<select your group by pressing the Y button>
     “We’re all gonna diiiieeeee!” Alex wailed at the top of his lungs as they ran through the ruins, triggering trap after trap after trap.
     “If you’d stop with the water works and looked before you leapt we wouldn’t be in this situation!” Seifer growled, ducking large blades that swung out of the wall in his direction.
     “Tell the people behind us to stop chasing us!” Irvine cried, holding onto his hat while leaping over a pit that suddenly opened up in their path. “Must be something pretty important hidden in here if there are all these traps.”
 Energy blasts joined the arrows that sailed over their heads, striking the wall in front of them to leave scorch marks. The trio glanced back to see their persuers still on their tails, and all three face faulted.
     “Crossroads,” the three said as Zell and Selphie tore past them with four agents on their tails. They looked to the left, where their friends were running, then to the right, which was clear, then behind them again, where five agents were closing the distance between them, before coming to a decision.
     “Lighting!” all three cried, filling the hallway with blinding light from high energy illumination spells. With their persuers blinded for a short time they took off down the right hallway, unaware of what awaited them, only knowing that running was their only option at that moment.
     A short distance from the crossroads the three ducked into an indentation in the wall, where they crouched low and made themselves as small as possible to avoid detection.
     “Big question of the moment,” Seifer said in a rather loud whisper as he poked his head out to see what was going on, “Where the bloody hell did we end up after that last jump?”
     “I told you, it’s not on the map,” Alex hissed as a reply, clicking his computer back on. He ran another scan through the mapping archives and blinked when the computer found a match. “Well I’ll be...”
     “What did it find?” Irvine asked, looking over Alex’s shoulder, his bangs brushing the back of the mage’s neck.
     “Ever hear the legend of Angwat Gor?”
     Seifer and Irvine blinked in unison. “Wassat?”
     Alex fell over, one leg twitching in the air. He quickly regained his composure. “Angwat Gor,” he explained, “was a legendary city of the ancients, hidden away from the world and prying eyes by the use of strong magic and the surrounding forest.”
     “So what’s so special about this place?” Seifer asked.
     “Aside from the ancient knowledge and priceless artifacts?”
     “Yeah, aside from those?”
     “Dunno really. It doesn’t go into detail about what they hid away in the city grounds. All I know for certain is what is written into the legends, like a gladiatorial pit somewhere within the main building.”
     Dark shadows fell over them, and they looked up to see a pair of agents looming over them.
     “Look at what we found?” one of the agents said, leaning down to take a closer look at the trio. “Three scared little kids.”
     “Guys, I don’t think his elevator goes all the way to the top floor,” Alex said through gritted teeth.
     “Come out of there or else we rough you up,” the other agent said, also leaning over to get a closer look.
     Seifer held his hands out, the palms facing the agents. Irvine pulled his hat lower on his head, and Alex covered his face. The agents blinked in awe as Seifer’s hands began to glow ice blue.
     “Look, the kid has some magical powers,” the first agent said, “C’mon kid, hit me with your best shot.”
     “If you insist,” Seifer smirked, the glow increasing in intensity. “Blizzard Barrage!”
     A volley of snowballs erupted from the air in front of Seifer’s palms, striking both agents in the face and blinding them instantly. As they stumbled backwards Irvine and Alex pushed past them, knocking them off balance and onto their backs. Seifer continued his attack for a little while longer before joining Alex and Irvine in running, leaving a couple of hastily constructed snowmen in his wake.
     “What’s next?” Irvine asked as they skidded around a corner.
     “How about watching where we’re going,” Alex replied, snagging the collar of Irvine’s coat and puling the cowboy back. Irvine looked forward, then down at a large drop to a dirt floor. He then looked up to see Seifer struggling to hold onto Alex, who was trying to pull him back up.
     “This must be that gladiatorial pit,” Alex grunted as he pulled Irvine up.
     “Pretty big drop,” Seifer said, pulling Alex onto the small precipice they had stumbled onto.
     “Ooooh yeah,” Irvine nodded as he was hoisted onto the outcropping. “Must be one of their traps.”
     “More like a nice place to catch escapees,” a gruff male voice said from across the room.
     The trio turned their heads to see five of the dark suited agents blocking the doorway. They then looked across the room to the source of the voice, which was the same person from the mall. “Welcome to my nightmare, gentlemen. I hope you can stay and play.”
     “Now why should we play with you?” Alex asked innocently, “What did you say your name was again?”
     “Leon Inverse,” the man said, his eyes flashing with fire, “son of the great, power, and terrible Lina Inverse!”
     Several voices around the room cried, “WHAT?! WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN?!”
     Silence fell over the room as the other SeeDs stuck their heads out of various places. The silence continued until Celia said, “I didn’t think Miss Lina was ready to settle down and have a child just yet.”
     “He’s from the future,” one of the agents shouted, “and is here to collect some of the most powerful warriors in the history of Terra so that he can assemble the ultimate army!”
     “We just need to bring out the full potential of some of our subjects,” Leon said as Spike, Boomer, and Spark were shoved into the pit. A large door opened at the far end of the arena and a giant of a man stepped forth, the light from the torches around the pit glistening off of his oiled muscles. He set beady black eyes on the three at the center of the room and smirked. “MEAT!” he said before charging down some stairs to the dirt floor.
     “Oh bloody hell!” Spike exclaimed, scrambling away from the other two. “This is worse than that troll that Anya dated!”
     “Not good,” Boomer said, clinging to Spark, “Definitely not good!”
     “Watch as the incredible trollman turns your friends into lunch,” Leon cackled as the troll crashed around the arena.
     “We’re here, they’re there,” Alex muttered to himself, calculating something or other in hopes of formulating a plan. In one motion he snagged Seifer’s and Irvine’s coats and jumped from the precipice they were standing on. Seifer and Irvine glanced at each other before they were propelled off of the outcropping and dragged behind Alex.
     “What the hell are you thinking?!” Seifer demanded as they fell.
     “We’re all gonna DIIIEEE!” Irvine wailed, tears flowing from his eyes as he clung to his hat so that it wouldn’t fly away.
     “Dimelar...” Alex muttered, swapping Irvine’s coat from his left hand to his right so that he had one hand free, which he directed at the ground, the palm extended. “WIND!”
     A tornado funnel formed beneath them, catching all three and setting them gently upon the ground. Alex released his grip on the coats belonging to the other two and charged into battle, his fists glowing with astral power.
     “Leave Spike alone!” he screamed, leaping through the air at the trollman, his fists ready to deliver a powerful punch. What he didn’t expect was for the trollman to catch him in midair, spin around, and send him hurtling into one of the arena walls.
     “Oooh,” seven people gasped as one, all wincing at the sound of the impact. “That had to hurt.”
     “Koala,” Alex muttered from underneath a pile of rubble that had fallen in upon him.
     “Who’s next to get their butts royally kicked by my wonderful champion?” Leon chuckled.
     “Need meat!” the trollman growled, chasing after Seifer and Irvine while Spark and Boomer recovered from the initial shock of being thrown into the arena to face down something four times their size.
     “C’mon folks, time to help one of our own,” Spike said, helping Spark and Boomer to their feet.
     “What about those two?” Boomer asked, pointing at Seifer and Irvine, who were still running from the trollman.
     “They’ll be fine, most likely, so long as they keep running,” Spike commented, practically pulling the other two behind him. “Alex, on the other hand, is another story.”
     The three climbed onto the pile of rubble that the mage’s impact had dislodged and began to dig through in hopes of finding something alive and not just a body.
     “We have a hand,” Spark said after a few minutes of digging. He smirked as the fingers on the hand began to twitch. “And it’s a live one.”
     “Move aside bro.,” Boomer smirked, stepping up to where the hand was. She cupped her hands, a glow surrounding them as multiple glowing balls appeared, each one pulsing like it was alive.
     “Oh, come on,” Spark sighed, “you use those and there won’t be a body left to recover.”
     “Time is of the essence,” Spike said, lifting another large rock off of the pile and tossing it aside. “And if she’s got a better way of doing this then more power to her.”
     Boomer grinned and spread her hands wide, dropping the glowing energy balls over the area. “Fire in the hole!” she cried, leaping from the pile and running a short distance away. Spark and Spike joined her seconds before the balls exploded, spraying the area with dust and pieces of rock.
     “With friends like you, who needs enemies?” a voice coughed from inside the dust cloud. A moment later Alex stumbled out, his face covered with dust, his clothes worse for wear. “Remind me to take you off of my Christmas card list,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.
     “Meat back?” the trollman asked, looking at Alex with a questioning glance.
     “Yeah, I’m back,” Alex purred, and energy whip forming in his hand, “And now I’ll teach you why I’m the undisputed king of whips and chains!”
     “He looks hungry,” Seifer said as he and Irvine joined the other four.
     “And a might bit angry,” Irvine added, ducking behind Alex.
     “Meat!” the trollman cried, lunging at them. The ground began to shake from the force of his footsteps, knocking Boomer from her feet and into Spark’s awaiting arms while threatening to knock the others onto their backs.
     “Wait for it... wait for it,” Alex said through gritted teeth, drawing the whip taut between his hands, a triple bolo forming at the end. When the trollman was unbearably close the mage cartwheeled out of the way before bounding into the air while the other five moved out of the way. Once airborne he hurled the heavier end of the whip at the trollman’s feet, praying for something to go right. He smirked as the bolo wrapped itself around the trollman’s legs, and smirked even larger as he pulled on the whip, drawing it tight around his adversary’s legs, sending the trollman skidding several feet on his face.
     “Victory,” Alex grinned as he landed. He turned to Leon and gave a victory sign. “Your troll has been defeated.
     “Yes, he has,” Leon sneered, “but I have your friends as my hostages. Look around at the catwalk.”
     Alex and the others in the arena pit glanced up to see Leon’s agents surrounding the remainder of the group from Garden.
     “He’s got us there,” Spark said, putting his hands behind his head in sign of surrender.
     “I’m not about to roll over and let him get away with this,” Boomer growled, cupping her hands, a glow encompassing them as globes of charged particles formed.
     “Stand down Boomer,” Seifer said, setting his gunblade into the ground and stepping away from it, “we can’t help the others if they’ll get hurt.”
     “Irvine?”
     “What those two are thinking is right,” the cowboy said, taking his gun from his coat and setting it on the ground.
     “Spike?”
     “No use in denying it any longer, Boom Boom,” the vampire said, a tear rolling down his cheek, “we screwed up and lost.”
     “Alex, you won’t give up, will you?” she asked, looking at the mage, who had his back to her. Her eyes widened in shock as he slid his jacket off and tossed it on the ground in front of him, the sound of clanking metal filling the air.
     “We can only do so much as our disposition allows,” Alex said, his voice wavering.
     Tears streamed down Boomer’s cheeks as she reabsorbed the energy for her attack. “You traitors,” she choked, her hands clenched into fists “I can’t believe we messed up this big. We’ll never see Garden or our families again! And all because you refuse to fight!”
     “This is too perfect,” Leon sneered as he stepped down from his throne. “I have some of the deadliest forces at my command, or I will once I brainwash those goody - goody tendencies from your minds.”
     “We wont’ do that willingly!” Rinoa shouted down from above.
     “Shut up girl!” a guard growled, pushing Rinoa down, thus making her scream.
     “What she bloody said,” Spike growled, clenching his hands into fists, the nails digging into his palms.
     “Fine,” Leon hissed, “Then all of you will DIE! Kill them!”
     Rocks showered down from above as something broke through the ceiling. A wand of sorts stuck into the ground between Leon and Alex, the head shimmering like a rainbow.
     “What in the nine hells?!” Leon demanded, staring at the wand. “What sort of trickery is this?!”
     Alex turned to the others and signaled for them to hit the dirt, since he had an inclination of what was coming next.
     “Lightning Rod!”
     A gigantic bolt of lightning struck the wand, surging through it and into the ground. The wand head glowed before releasing bolts and webs of lightning at the guards and throughout the room. Guards shouted in pain before falling from the stunning voltage. The electric lights around the room shorted out and exploded, showering people with sparks and debris before plunging all into a semi - darkness. A secondary blast from the wand struck the torches from the walls, sending everyone into complete pitch blackness.
     Five people landed in the center of the room, their garments rustling, anything metallic ringing like a bell when they moved, all standing close together where the hole in the roof provided a little bit of light.
     “Eyes that pierce like a fiery blaze,” one of the people, a woman, said before a globe of light appeared, revealing her to be Amelia.
     “And a pounding heart, gunning for battle!” another woman said, a light appearing to reveal Lina.
     “The lightning itself is mine to command!” a deep male voice said, a globe of light appearing to reveal Guile.
     “To eliminate evil from the world!” another male voice said, a light globe revealing Zelgadis.
     “Appearing from the shadows, the battle force known as the Slayers has arrived,” another female voice said, a final light globe revealing Washu.
     “Who the hell?!” Leon asked, growing pale when he saw who had arrived. His features softened when he saw Lina. “Mother?”
     “Who’s he talking about?” Amelia asked, looking at the other four with a puzzled expression.
     “I think he’s talking about Lina,” Washu said as Leon launched himself at the sorceress.
     “Wha...” Lina said, looking up in time to see Leon diving at her with a rather crazed look on his face. Instincts and well honed reflexes took over, and she did what she did best... she cast a spell. “Mega... BRANDO!”
     The explosion could be heard several miles away. Birds took wing in droves and animals ran for their lives from the force of destruction whose name was Lina Inverse.

     “So what you’re telling me is that this Leon guy... is my son... from the future?” Lina asked.
     A couple of hours had passed since Lina and company had crashed Leon’s party and rescued the pre-teen adventurers. Leon was tied to a stone pillar a short distance away from where they were sitting, his agents tied in small, neat clusters around them.
     “That’s what I said,” Washu sighed, looking up from her computer screen with a look that said ‘I just explained that’.
     “So why exactly did he do what he did?” Rinoa asked, glancing up from where she was healing the injured. “Like, the barrier and such.”
     “The barrier wasn’t him,” Alex said, looking up from his own computer, “that was the powers that be granting the wish of four of us.”
     He quickly realized he’d inadvertently stuck his foot in his mouth with part of that remark, and blushed an embarrassed shade of red. “I mean, I’m sure that someone aside from me made a wish on that snowfall,” he stumbled, trying to recover some composure and dignity, “Right?”
     Seifer, Irvine, and Rinoa all turned a guilty shade of red. Seifer cleared his throat. Irvine fidgeted with the band on his hat. Rinoa twisted several strands of hair together around her finger. All three more or less avoided the question posed to them.
     “This is getting us nowhere,” Zelgadis sighed, “we know all four of you made a wish that screwed up the universe as we know it.”
     “So why weren’t you guys affected by the barrier?” Alex asked, narrowing his eyes at Zel.
     “Washu hooked us up with some new gadgets of hers,” Lina said, pointing to a new attachment to her belt. “It distorts our place in the universe a little bit so that the barrier effect didn’t work.”
     “I’m a genius if I do say so myself,” Washu cackled.
     “So how much longer are we stuck this way?” Selphie asked tiredly, “I mean, I enjoy being a kid again, but it’s exhausting to have so much fun all the time.”
     “The good news is that I’ve found a way to reverse it,” Washu said, growing serious.
     “So what’s the bad news?” Seifer asked, “I mean, there has to be bad news to go with the good news.”
     Washu sighed. “The bad news is that we might already be too late to reverse the effects.”
     Eyes widened in horror at the thought of having to relive puberty. Spike looked especially terrified since few people would take a thirteen year old vampire seriously.
     “We’d have to go back through high school and all that again,” Celia sighed, “I mean, it wouldn’t be all bad. I could always try out for the cheering squad, I suppose.”
     “I could take all those classes I wanted to but could never fit into my schedule,” Alex said, “lots of art classes, maybe a cooking course or two.”
     “Then we’d have to go back through college,” Seifer said, “and on Earth that’s usually quite expensive.”
     Alex and Celia weren’t the only ones to nod in agreement to that point.
     “Being nine is fun and all,” Zell said, “but I liked being twenty.”
     “Me too,” Selphie sniffled, “I want to be my normal size again.”
     “Me three,” Irvine and Squall said in unison, “please Washu, please return us to normal.”
     Washu looked at all who had been affected by the barrier around Terra and sighed. She really didn’t want to disappoint them, but if they didn’t hurry then there would be no way to reverse the effects.
     “Celia, do you think you can manage a point to point teleport with this many people?” she asked, looking directly at the vampyress.
     “I could if I was my full size,” Celia replied, “but as is I’d be able to manage half of this number.”
     “I’ll help with the teleport,” Alex said, rising from where he sat, “after all, I was part of the cause of this blunder.”
     “I’ll help as well,” Spike muttered under his breath.
     “What was that.... William?!” Selphie asked, using Spike’s full name.
     Spike colored in the face and growled, “I said I’d help with the bloody teleport.”
     “Save your strength kiddies,” Guile said. He turned red when he realized the multitude of eyes that were burning holes through him. “No offense meant, mind you. But I can teleport thanks to this lovely little gem.”
     The masked magician pointed to the small metal band clipped to the upper lobe of his left ear. “Hey,” Alex said, recognizing the band, “that’s the ear cuff I gave you.” Guile nodded., and Alex chuckled. “I guess it came in handy after all, didn’t it?”
         “Less talk, more ‘port,” Washu growled, pushing Alex closer to Guile and the others. “Time is passing, and with every second that passes we come that much closer to being unable to reverse this glitch.”
     “Then let’s get going,” Zelgadis said cheerily. Well more of a cheery growl, since he said it through clenched teeth.
     “All aboard,” Guile said as everyone gathered around, “Next stop is Balamb Garden. Countdown. Four... three.... two... one...”
     A circle of light formed in the air above the group, a curtain of golden light dropping down around them. The ground under their feet glowed a blinding white seconds before they vanished into thin air, the curtain vanishing with them, leaving Angwat Gor vacant and undisturbed once again.
 

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return to the insanity?