Legacy of Hope

By: Chibi-chan

Chapter 1a: “Interesting Times”

*

Seventeen years earlier…

*

“Princess, you can’t be seriously considering this! You said yourself that you were going to follow your heart in that letter back then!” The blond swordsman practically yelled in disbelief at what the future queen was telling him.

“It’s for the best interest of the kingdom…” the young woman began in an attempt to defend her position.

“Screw the kingdom; what about your best interests? And… and what about mine?! Was it all just completely meaningless to you?! Did you think it was just some stupid fling?!” the swordsman countered. “I know my timing was suspect, but…”

“Just ‘suspect’? Really, mentioning it after Elmina announced her engagement-“

“She’s not Elmina anymore; she’s Alicia now, and she’s moved on,” the man said, sounding a bit calmer this time. “She’s not Elmina, and I’m not Garrett any more.” He took a few steps towards the lady. “ Princess… Cecilia…” He paused, for once trying to think about what he was going to say next. It didn’t take long for the words to come to him. “If you have to marry someone else, at least let it be someone you care about, not some random schlub that you barely know because ‘it’s in the best interest of the kingdom’.”

He turned to leave, but he didn’t have the chance to even take a step before the young woman closed the distance between them and held him from behind. “Jack… you’re right…” she said softly.

“Never thought you’d ever admit that,” the man said just as softly with a dry chuckle.

“Well, I never thought you’d be right, so we’re even,” the woman replied with a smirk. She waited a beat and told him, “Well, turn around so I can do this right.” Despite her reasons for asking not quite clicking in his head, Jack did as he was told. Cecilia then went down on one knee and took his hand in both of hers. “So… marry me and help me tell Johan that other suitor can go jump in the lake for all I care?” she asked.

“Only if you can come up with a better expression than ‘go jump in the lake’, Princess…”

*

Present day…

“And tell that ambassador from Court Seim that he can go jump in the lake if he expects me to agree to that!” Queen Cecilia shouted to someone outside her quarters before slamming the door shut. She wearily walked past her husband and flopped down on the bed. “Honestly, I’m doing the best I can about the recent increase of attacks on towns by monsters… Jack, why does everyone seem to think that just because I can hear the Guardians, I can solve things with a snap of my fingers?” she said with a heavy sigh. Ruling a country isn’t exactly easy to begin with, but recently the queen was beginning to think that a few more weeks of this and her hair would be completely gray.

“Now, now, they don’t think that because of the Guardian thing, Princess,” her husband, whose still waist-length blond hair was slowly but clearly becoming white, said. “It’s because of the whole ‘hero who saved the world’ thing, or are you forgetting about such things in your old age?” he teased.

“Me? The old one here? You’re going senile already, I see,” Cecilia countered. “At least, that would explain why a man you age would still keep their hair that long.”

“Hey, lots of men my age would kill to have this much hair!” Jack protested, pulling his hair over his holding and clutching it defensively.

“Then cut some off and give it to them!”

“So that’s where the expression ‘bicker like a married couple’ comes from,” said a soft male voice from the doorway.

Cecilia immediately sat up upon hearing the voice. “Rudy?!” The blue-haired young man just smiled at her. Seventeen years and he hadn’t changed very much, at least appearance-wise. He still wasn’t very tall and he still looked like the unruly-haired fifteen-year-old who helped save the world, and he still wore that bandage on his left cheek, leaving anyone who knew him to wonder just what was under that thing.

“Can we just go in already? I don’t think Fluffy is going to stay in the bag much longer and being on fire hurts…” a fruitier male voice whined from the hallway.

“Yeah, I think it’s OK, Zed,” Rudy told the man in the hallway.

“Zed?!” Jack exclaimed.

“On fire?” Cecilia repeated incredulously.

Rudy looked away and wore a nervous smile. “Erm, yeah, I should tell you… Zed’s come with me and he insisted on bringing his pet along…”

Zed hurried in at that point with a duffel bag that seemed to be wriggling and barking. Despite being a local hero in the rapidly rebuilding city of Saint Centour, he was still the unluckiest person on Filgaia, and his odd taste in pets didn’t help that fact either. He quickly set the bag down, opened it up, and out sprang what appeared to be a brown-and-white bulldog. That is, if bulldogs had three heads, black, bat-like wings, and could breathe fire. The monster dog laid eyes on Jack and pounced on him, knocking the man out of his chair and sending him to the floor with the dog on top of him. The dog then barked and the middle head started licking Jack’s face. “Aw, she likes you!” Zed said brightly.

“Get. This. THING. Off of me before I kill it and kick your ass, Zed!” Jack growled as he tried to push the overly affectionate monster off to no avail.

“Why, what’s the problem? She’s perfectly harmless…” Zed asked.

While that little scene was being resolved, Cecilia wisely decided a subject change was in order. “So, what have you been up to, Rudy?” she asked, trying very hard to ignore the silliness going on in the room.

“I’ve been trying to figure out why the monsters have started attacking towns,” the ARM user said. “It’s terrible, big sister, really terrible. Yard, Baskar, most recently Surf… Court Seim’s been hit hardest and most often; Jane’s at her wit’s end by all the death and destruction…” He shook his head sadly and continued, “The only places that haven’t been attacked yet are Milama, Saint Centour, and here, and Saint Centour’s only on the list because they haven’t been attacked by outside monsters because of the barrier. There’s still creatures like Fluffy there roaming about and despite that they seem to be becoming domesticated, there are some that occasionally attack…”

“So Court Seim’s really has been hit hardest… So the ambassador’s pushy with good reason then,” Cecilia mused.

“I went to Saint Centour to ask Zed if it’s happened before, hoping he might know something, but he was too young to remember if it happened before the war, so he offered to come with me to see Mariel about it,” Rudy said with a look that said he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

“Well, Laurie’s in good hands with the mayor, so I figured I take a break from protecting just the people of my city,” Zed said. He was now trying to put a leash on Fluffy with little success. “Fluffy, please, hold still! You need the leash if you want to go for a walk around here!”

Cecilia shot Jack a look. Jack shrugged and said, “Hey, better that thing be out there than in here.”

“Lovely…” Cecilia muttered…

*

Meanwhile, at the inn in town, a sandy-haired young woman was just waking up. She fumbled for her glasses that were sitting on the nightstand but only succeeded in knocking them to the floor. “Lovely…” she muttered. She then spent the next five minutes squinting her violet eyes and feeling around the floor in search of her glasses.

She finally found them in one of her boots. She wiped them off and put them on, thankful that she could see clearly once more. “Score one for Mira,” she said to herself proudly. She jumped to her feet and proclaimed to the world, “Today, I, Mira Montoya, soon to be famed researcher, will convince the queen to get me into the fabled Sealed Library so I can continue my research on the fabled Yggdrasil machine of the Elw! YEAH!”

*

In the next room, a slightly hung over blond was woken up from a nap by the loud proclamation of one Mira Montoya. “Shut UP, or today, I, Ron Derringer, soon to be truly pissed-off, will blast you so full of holes that chefs will be able to drain spaghetti with you!” the blond yelled to the person in the next room before rolling over and trying to use the pillow to muffle the sound of any other announcements.

However, after fifteen minutes of trying to get back to sleep, Ron sighed and went to get dressed…

*

Ron had no sooner stepped out of the room and taken a few steps before the door to the next room swung open and slammed right into him. He said some choice words before the door closed and he finally got a look at the person who likes making loud announcements at odd times when the person started frantically apologizing.

There was no better way to describe this person except “cute little girlie”. She was decidedly on the short side, with sandy hair pulled into two big pigtails. She had a pair of small glasses perched in front to her violet eyes. She wore a pink shirt with flaring sleeves, a black skirt, blue tights that were too loose at the knees, and black trimmed blue boots with little pink bows on them. She also seemed to carry a lot of stuff, as indicated by the backpack and two small travel bags that looked like they may fall off her waist at any minute. She stopped talking as soon as she saw Ron and just stared up at the taller person for the longest time, until she finally said, “Damn, you’re cute.”

Ron was not amused…

*

Mira had no sooner than swung the door wide open when she heard it hit something and then heard the thing it hit swear at her. She frantically began apologizing as soon as she closed the door but stopped when she got a good look at whom she hit.

He was a fairly handsome young man of about twenty. He had a black hat with an orangish-red band perched atop his short blond hair. His green eyes were narrowed because he was still quite annoyed with her for multiple reasons. He wore a bandana of the same orangish-red color around his neck over a closed tan duster, and had on fingerless brown gloves just for effect. With the stern scowl on his face and the way he was dressed, he gave the impression of being, quite frankly, badass. After staring at him for a while, all she could say was, “Damn, you’re cute.”

He was not amused. “First you wake me up, then you hit me with the door. What next, you gonna push me down the stairs?” the young man growled.

In the back of her mind, Mira noted the man had somewhat high voice for a man, but shrugged it off when she remembered hearing ones higher than that. “I’m sorry for both of those things, really. I didn’t realize that anyone else was sleeping later than I was, nor did I see you when I opened the door… You probably heard this already, since I woke you up, but I’m Mira. You must be… Don, did you yell back?” she said.

“Ron, but I didn’t say you could call me by my first name, and you really should be more careful, especially if you’re going to see the queen, Guardians help her,” the disgruntled young man told her.

“Not a morning person, are you?” Mira asked a little nervously.

“Morning? It’s three in the afternoon,” Ron said.

Mira blinked. “It is? Then what were you doing sleeping at this hour?”

Ron glared some more at her. “Just go away, OK?” he said wearily.

*

At the main entrance at the city walls, a black-haired man who seemed to be in his twenties in a green jacket and jeans had just arrived. He watched the everyday scene taking place before him with his blue eyes and muttered, “Adlehyde never changes, does it? You can burn it down, break it down, tear it to pieces, and yet it’ll always come back to this.”

He cleared his head and started muttering again, “Ah, but I can people-watch anytime. I’m here to find him, and that’s it. He must know… He must be told… The castle, he’s probably there, he has friends there…”

He paused, the told himself, “Dammit, Bernard, you really have to stop talking to yourself or people will think you’re totally nuts…”

*

“Why, Ronnie, are you following me?” Mira asked coyly as she walked towards the castle. She had noticed moments before that Ron was some feet behind her, still not in the best of moods.

“I’m not following you. I just happen to have business with the royal consort, who also is in the castle, OK? And don’t call me Ronnie.” Ron grumbled.

“You too are going to the castle?” the strange black-haired man known to us as “Bernard” asked the two. “Perhaps I should accompany you. It’s not safe for two lovely ladies to walk alone nowadays,” he offered in a less-than-innocent manner.

Ron promptly flicked Bernard with his middle finger right between the eyes. He walked up to Mira and told her in a voice loud enough that Bernard could hear, “And that, dear lady, is what we in the Dream Chasing business call a ‘fucktwit’,” before continuing on towards the castle.

*

Meanwhile, back at the castle…

“MOOOOOOOOMIEEEEEEE! Lee’s being mean to meeeeeeeee!” a little blond boy of about seven wailed, running into the queen’s quarters. He stopped when he caught a glimpse of Fluffy, double-taked, and redoubled his crying.

“Hey, hey, don’t worry, kid, Fluffy’s a good girl; she wouldn’t hurt a fly! Bees, on the other hand… she doesn’t like bees…” Zed told the child, trying to assure the boy that Fluffy wouldn’t do anything, but the child just kept crying.

Cecilia put herself between the boy and Fluffy, went down to her knees, and hugged the little boy. “There, there, Fluffy won’t hurt you… Now, what did Liete do that was mean?” she asked in a soothing voice.

A little girl, also blonde and seven-years-old, barged in with a glass jar under her arm. She marched right up to Cecilia and said, “He’s just being a baby because I wanted to let Mister Pinhead out!” She then nearly shoved the jar in her mother’s face. Inside the jar was an enormous Daddy Longlegs.

Cecilia and the boy both yelped and pulled away in order to get away from the jar and the spider inside it. “Liete! Where on earth did you find that and why is it in that jar?!”

“I found it in the confr’nce room, and it’s in a jar because Daddy couldn’t find a cage that would keep it inside, of course!” Liete told her matter-of-factly.

“’Daddy couldn’t find a cage’?” Cecilia repeated. She then turned to her husband and said in a voice that could cut steel, “Jack…”

“It was either that or let her keep that baby fish monster she found in the kitchen,” Jack answered, not helping his case any.

“Fish monster?! What fish monster?!”

“Now, now, sis, you shouldn’t…”

Things were not looking good right then. It looked like it was going to get ugly, and fast. Someone had to get the kids out of there so they wouldn’t have to witness it, and the only adult staying out of it was Zed. However, even the losers get lucky sometimes, and Zed had a good idea. “Say, kids, why don’t we just go down to the kitchens and get a snack?” he said as brightly as he could. “And little boy…”

“Garrett, or as I like to call him, ‘wuss boy’,” Liete chirped helpfully.

“Garrett, then,” Zed continued, “Fluffy here won’t hurt you; you have my word.” To help his case, Fluffy barked happily and wagged her little stump of a tail, which seemed to amuse the boy for some odd reason. Leading the kids out, Zed was unknowingly headed for the start of fate-changing events…

*

Once reaching the kitchens, Zed was having a hard time keeping Fluffy from jumping on the table and eating a large chicken one of the chefs had just set on one of the long tables. Liete had no interest in a snack; she was looking in, around, and under everything in hopes of finding a new “pet”. Garrett was standing by some barrels, still sniffling but definitely calmer than he had been upon entering the queen’s quarters.

Slowly, silently, one of the barrels was moving behind Garrett, and things were setting into motion…

*

“Monsters! Monsters are attacking the town!”

“Again? Didn’t we go through this at the Ruins Fesvital?”

“Oh, shut up and RUN, you idiot!”

*

Ron had just walked through the first gate of Adlehyde Castle, followed closely by Mira and less closely by Bernard when they all heard the ear-splitting scream of a child from one of the other entrances. Every knight within earshot ran in the direction of the scream. Ron turned around at looked at Mira and Bernard. An unspoken understanding was formed, they all nodded and ran in the same direction of the knights…

*

Inside, some strange, unnatural-looking monsters were attacking. They had a gooey green outside like the slime-like monsters that lived in the sewers, but there were small, scaly, amphibian-esqe creatures floating inside the goo.

In any event, the knights, all armed with swords, were barely fazing them. Many of the knights were already injured and the most wounded were being dragged out by the less wounded. Many of them seemed to have…

“Burn marks? How the hell did they get burned?!” Ron exclaimed.

“Acid. That’s probably it,” Mira said, looking at the burn marks on the floor.

“So we can’t touch them. Great, now what can I do?” Bernard complained, looking as his sword distastefully.

Ron swept his coat to one side to reveal a long-barreled Revolver ARM. “Just stay back and do what you can. I can handle this.”

“You won’t be alone!” Mira proclaimed, pulling out a Crest Graph. “Time to crispy-fry some monsters!”

*

On the other side of the room, Zed and Fluffy were faring much better than the knights in their attempt to protect the two children. Fluffy toasted any amphibian slime that got too near and Zed sent the resulting projectile from a Garyu Ichimongiri also at anything that got too close. If only we weren’t surrounded, then I could get the kids outta here… Zed thought. Garrett had a nasty acid burn from the first slime that attacked and needed care. We need a miracle…

“Picking on kids, eh?!” a gender-ambiguous voice called out.

“That’s not very nice!” a definitely female voice added.

Shots rang out; a cry of “FLAME!”, followed by a double helix made of fireballs went flying; and a large pot flew out of nowhere. All these attacks hit the slimes blocking their exit. The slimes melted and the creatures inside crumbled and turned to dust, thus clearing the way for Zed’s party. The Metal Demons looked in the direction where the voices called out from and saw a blond ARMs user, an overly cute Crest Sorceress, and a guy looking for something else to throw.

“Fluffy, get them outta here!” Zed commanded. Fluffy looked up at him and whined. “I’ll be with you in a moment, OK? Just keep them safe until then,” he assured the creature. The monster dog whined again, but she did as she was told. Little Liete supported her brother and they followed Fluffy out of the kitchen.

“You three! Think you can handle things here until I can get some better reinforcements?!” Zed called out to the trio that helped the children escape.

“Sure thing!” the gunslinger called back, reloading his ARM.

“Just hurry!” the Crest Sorceress added.

“Hey, a peanut!” the guy looking for things to throw announced happily.

Zed then left, knowing he had to reach the only ones he thought could help and quickly…

*

End Chapter 1a

Go to 1b, 1c, or 1d now.