The zebra looked from Justice, to me, to Copper, to the finer details of both Justice and Copper's harness, back to me, and then shook his head. "You lot are crazy."
I raised an eyebrow at his sudden change in speaking patterns. "No more rhyming?"
He shook his head again before replying. "No, zebras typically only do that with those they don't trust...though shamans and mystics do it all the time, helps keep their wits sharp for whatever situation they may find themselves in. And I'd say saving me from a public beheading for a crime I didn't commit is a pretty big earner of trust."
I smiled at that, but frowned as my eyes ran over his wounds. "Shame I don't have any medical supplies," I mused.
In response, the zebra merely smiled and closed his eyes before humming slightly. If there were words to whatever he was humming, I couldn't hear them. A slight sheen coated his form, and the wounds on his body seemed to lessen in severity. The process, however, was weird to watch. It wasn't the wound healing that was off to my senses, it was watching the wounds and bruises being unmade, as though they'd never happened, that sent chills down my spine. After a moment, the last injury vanished, and the zebra opened his eyes before nodding.
"Good as new," he proclaimed.
Justice's eyes 'blinked' a few times before he replied in his usual flat voice. "Interesting. It would appear this zebra is capable of manipulating his natural life-force into healing injuries he has sustained. Though this does raise the question as to why he did not do so earlier."
At this, the zebra smirked before replying. "Probably because it takes concentration and effort to pull off?"
"Ah," I said while nodding. "And I'd assume they were giving you trouble in holding such concentration for very long?"
"Plus," Copper pitched in while motioning to her neck, "I'd be willing to bet that there are some things it just doesn't heal."
The zebra nodded while wincing slightly. I raised an eyebrow and waved at the courthouse and the square before returning my attention to the zebra. "Well, I assume there's an underlying story behind this whole griffon-zebra thing that almost happened. One larger than you being in the wrong place at the wrong time."
He sighed before replying to my query. "Griffons and zebras don't get along because of a series of border skirmishes perpetuated by one zebra shaman from four hundred years ago. He summoned dark spirits to do his bidding and cursed quite a few of the royal knights sent to deal with him. He styled himself as the 'Fiendlord,' and even though he's gone, the Griffons blame us all for doing nothing to stop him or his army. More than a few can point out a great-uncle or other distant relation that was lost due to his...summonings."
"As well," Justice pitched in, "More than a few survived to this day."
A chill went down my spine at the mention of such foes, and I looked at the zebra with a bit of fear. "So...why did they arrest you, again?"
"Because their precious heiress to the throne was taken by means most fiendish, and in the minds of the griffons, that typically indicates that there was some sort of monster behind it. Which means that clearly, it must have been a zebra behind the whole thing. Despite the fact that only one zebra was ever in control of the fiends, and that it was four hundred years ago, or that the fiends attack zebras just as often as they do griffons."
I nodded at the information and looked the zebra over a bit more carefully. He'd been bound with simple rope, and I drew my katana again before placing it between his forelegs. "Don't move," I said before bringing my blade down with a swift motion. The rope cut near instantly, and I walked around to his rear side before repeating the motions.
The newly freed zebra rotated his joints, which brought forth a cacophony of cracking noises as joints were popped all over his body. "Oooh, that's better," he stated. "Now if only I had my staff, I'd be back in business."
The zebra turned to me as I sheathed my blade and stuck a hoof in my direction. "The name's Zehan," he stated.
I nodded and took a hold of the proffered hoof, shaking it once before letting go and pointing out my companions. "That there is Copper and Justice. I'm Crono, as you probably already heard. So I have a proposition for you, Zehan."
He arched an eyebrow at that. "What sort of proposition?"
"Care to help find a missing princess?"
He snorted at that, actually snorted. "Why bother? The gryphons will storm into zebra land eventually and find the latest fiend nest, thus saving us the trouble of dealing with them. All I'd have to do is bring back word that they're coming to the zebras likely to be in their way, and it'll all sort itself out eventually."
I smirked at that and gestured towards the portion of the courthouse where the griffon who'd been wearing the shroud and wielding the halberd had impacted the wall. "If I thought along similar lines, you'd be about ten pounds lighter right about now."
To his credit, Zehan flinched at the thought and brought a hoof up to his own neck. "Yikes...yeah, okay, fair enough. But why should I help bring back a griffon princess? They'll not thank me for it, you know."
"Because it's the right thing to do?" I replied while shrugging.
Zehan opened his mouth to reply when a loud cawing sound came from behind me. I turned to see no less than five griffons in highly reflective armor, wielding fine blades, and glaring at us with such stern expressions that I had no problem believing that they were members of the guard. One of them stepped forward and eyed me warily before opening his beak.
"Are you the one that threatened the citizens with fire and brimstone if they would not leave this zebra be?"
"Fire and brimstone?" I replied while mimicking a severe level of 'offended'. "Good lords, no! Does it look like fire is my specialty?"
I swear I heard a cross between a laugh and a snort at that. "I don't know, is it?"
"No, it isn't," I replied, causing the guards to relax for a second. Only a second, though, as I picked up the line again not long after. "Fire is Copper's field of expertise, and Justice...we don't get into what Justice does. My field is Lightning," I finished while drawing my katana and letting a charge dance up and down the blade. "So. While I did assault the executioner, I call it a win since he's likely alive, and so is the zebra."
The guards were silent for a moment longer before the one that had spoken before opened his beak again. "You chose to stand with this criminal rather than the crowd, that doesn't speak highly of your character."
Justice interjected then, his green eyes turned red. "A criminal convicted by which court, guardsman?"
The griffons opened and closed their beaks a few times in rapid succession, trying and failing to put to word what they thought was right, but being stopped by the sheer weight of the realization they were abruptly forced into:
Discrimination of this sort was wrong, and they were all guilty of it.
However, that didn't seem to stop the lead guard, as he shook it off a moment later. "Regardless of whether or not he was convicted of being a criminal, he was on the grounds of the palace during the time in which the princess is projected to have gone missing. Highly suspicious."
I snorted at that and smiled as a thought occurred to me. "And what of any other griffon that was also on the palace grounds during such a time?"
"You aren't suggesting that any of their servants or subjects had anything to do with it?" An eyebrow was arched in my direction, and I arched one back as I fired off my reply.
"Why is it such a novel idea to you that your own kind could have had something to do with this tragic event?"
Because there's a zebra nearby we can blame was the unspoken response, and I fired off my reply to it before the lead guard could open his beak again to give voice to such words. "Narrowing your search only delays the chance that you'll find your precious princess before something happens to her. After all, I don't see anyone else on the chopping block, when in reality, anyone who was there, not just this soul, is a suspect. You just don't want to act like it."
Thus stunned, I turned back to Zehan and motioned for him to fall in line. "Come on, we could use your help."
The zebra took a few steps forward and tilted his head towards me in curiosity. "Help with what?"
I turned back again and gave the lead griffon the stink-eye something fierce before sheathing my blade and letting the charge in my hands die off. "We're going to find and rescue their precious princess before them, to prove to them that their racism is unfounded, and that more than just griffons are capable of being noble."
...Had I known then just who the princess in question actually was, I might not have been so quick to make that claim.
On our way out of the city towards the southern gate, we ran into an interesting sight.
A very interesting sight.
A particular pony walking down the street. Ponies walking down the street weren't exactly common, but not rare either. The griffons were mostly civilized with their hatred towards equine life-forms, except where zebras were concerned, or anything that seemed to resemble a zebra. I'd caught more than one dirty look shot our way, and I returned all the ones I caught. Quite a few citizens had quite quickly gone on their way.
No, the pony that caught my eye was no normal pony. It had an orange coat, red mane, yellow eyes. But everything about it sparkled in direct sunlight. In other words, it was a crystal pony, and judging from looks alone, it was a stallion. And the really weird thing?
The griffons nodded their heads at him as he passed by. I came to a stop and pointed him out to my companions with a simple set of phrases. "See that shining pony?"
The others nodded, and I continued on my line of thought. "Think we should talk to him?"
A round of thoughtful humming came from my friends at that, before Zehan spoke up. "We probably could, but why would you want to?"
I smirked at the question. "He's early. There shouldn't be any crystal ponies out and about for a few years yet. I want to know his story, how he came to be here, and why the griffons seem to treat him with respect when they only seem to begrudgingly accept the ponies."
Of course, catching his eye was easier than I thought it would be, as once he caught sight of me, his eyebrows raised and he walked over. "Hello, who might you be?"
I pointed at him, then clapped softly, slowly. "You, sir, have earned my respect. Because you asked who, not what, I am."
The others were shocked at that for a moment before realizing that they, too, had never asked 'what' I was. I smiled and gave a semi-bow towards him. "The name is Crono, good sir. Traveling swords-arm. And might I have yours?"
The stallion smiled at me before inclining his head. "The name is Anima, master smith by trade."
"Ah," Zehan spoke up. "That would explain why the griffons respect you. If there's one thing they respect, it's someone who knows how to work a forge."
Anima nodded his head and looked over Copper and Justice. "My word, you seem to have found a fair bit of equipment. However, were we to exchange notes, I'm sure we could come up with something truly remarkable."
"Well," I said to the crystal pony, "Lead the way to your forge, O Master, and we shall see about improving our gear."
I like to use the simple "Trunks" explanation.
It's quite simple.
You see, it is technically impossible to travel through time. But, you can travel to alternate worlds that would be very similar to your own until you travel there. After that, there is a split and what happens is set on a different course.
Same thing happened to Trunks in Dragon Ball Z.
You're writing a goddamn LoHAV/LoHAH fanfic, infinite worlds are canon in that genre so there should be no paradox.
B goes back in time to kill their ancestor A,
B creates a two parallel timelines where we have A1, B1, A2 and B2
A1 is the ancestor of B1,
B1 goes back in time and kills A2 thinking they are A1
B2 is never born, but B1 continues to exist.
Does that help?
5165614
5165658
The reason he's trying to avoid it is because this is supposed to be the same world in different times, otherwise 'Crono's' efforts would be totally wasted ant the whole world dies no matter what. Plus he couldn't make cool rumors about himself that evolve into legends to he gets recognized and praised is the futures so it's a win-win.
Zehan seems to know Aura, Guess he's our water user.
5165658 well actually it's possible since events can't be destroyed only altered meaning only how the princess was saved will change
5165614 the same can be said Zelda games
5166178 ..wat.
Oh geez only one griffin I can think of not Gilda
5166185 orcarina of time splits into 3 separate timelines
1. Child timeline (link returns to the past)
2. Link defeated Ganon
3. Lost hero timeline (implied link died on his quest
I'm sure that many of your fans will forgive you if you make some paradoxes. Especially if it means more of the gems come out faster.i mean there were paradoxes in croon trigger, but that game is still awesome.
5166203 That isn't what i meant, though..
Those are alternate timelines based on a split of what happens, regardless of time travel.
If it was the time travel that made the split, it would be that EVERY SINGLE TIME Link traveled through time, there would be a timeline. In addition, some of what he did would be impossible. (Such as performing the Bootstrap paradox with the Song of Storms. If he travels to an alternate universe, how in the world would the guy have the song already?)
5166264
Minor paradoxes, I'm fine with.
The Grandfather Paradox or anything like it, I'm not. Time would break apart if you tried to both stay in the same timeline and create a grandfather paradox!
And here we have Melchior. Dare I say I called it? The Crystal Empire is Zeal.
5166311 whelp an author just replied to my comment. Now I can die with no regrets
Also in regards to
Crono has ONE line in the game. It's a special ending only available after you meet Schala but before the ocean palace.
5166311 There's a solution to the Grandfather Paradox, and it's called Time Traveler's Immunity. Essentially, time travelers carry a "pocket" of their own spacetime with them, and are immune to the changes they wreak on the timeline.
This actually plays back into a comment chain we'd had a couple chapters back w/r/t a particular pony recognizing Crono's mucking about. Just as the Porre family doesn't know a time in which they never had jerky, ponies would never know a time in which events didn't happen as Crono made them happen, unless Crono plucks them from time's flow.
5167681
In this instance, we have two different Grandfather's Paradoxes. The first is Marle going back and taking the place of Leene by accident, thus causing the search to be called off, thus tipping the odds against her ancestor's survival, thus cascading in a chain that results in there being no Marle, thus causing her to vanish from Time Itself...which should have warranted the search parties being sent out again, because she never really came back, because she was never born, which meant they found the queen, which meant Marle existed, which means... In this case, though, Crono and Lucca have to go out and solve the problem, which results in Marle existing properly again. It's an endless loop if we're trying to force one solution for one timeline, which seeing as how Lavos is straddling the thing and probably keeping divergent timelines from existing in the first place, I'm gonna say we are. Only with the immunity that comes with being a Time Traveler can the dilemma be solved.
The second paradox that exists in the game is far simpler. If you stop the world from being destroyed, then when 2300 rolls around, Robo won't exist in the same form as he did before you met him, meaning he can't have done any of the things he did with you, because you changed 300 years worth of history. At least! Hell I'm surprised there isn't a butterfly effect from killing the wrong thing back in 65 million BC!
In conclusion: The larger the paradox you create is, and the more time you give your alterations on the timeline to have an effect on the world, the more they should snowball. But don't worry.
In the end, not even 'Time Traveler Immunity' as handed out by Hora at the End of Time will be able to stopper up all the damage that Crono is going to perpetuate in this story, and I'll address it as it comes.
5167716
Ah, but what about the time delay? Chrono Trigger's treatment isn't the best, and it doesn't stand up to intense scrutiny, but here's my take.
1) Marle pops into 600 AD and is rescued. The search for Leene in Menoria Cathedral is aborted prematurely.
2) Time passes, and Marle is banished to the Darkness Beyond TIme. (This is where it falls apart a little, because that would only happen if Leene were to die, and maybe not even then -- TTI might insulate Marle. That was never really explored.)
3) It would take time for the guards to realize "Leene" went missing from her room, reorganize the search party, chase a couple false leads, and get going back to Menoria. During that span of time, Leene could well have been murderized by Yakra.
Not the best recounting because of what I mentioned in point 2. But...it's a fairly decent treatment.
Ah, but he will, though! That's the thing; if Crono travels back in time a couple hundred years and rewrites local history, a new version of Crono will pop into being with memories consistent with the new rewrite. But...mass/energy conservation, you might say. Yes, that's right -- the 'new' version of Crono would disappear and be banished to the Darkness Beyond Time at the same moment Crono originally departed in the unmolested timeline. It's a corollary to TTI, and it's known as Time Bastard. It's Square's way of patching the holes that get chewed in continuity whenever time/dimensional shenanigans happen.
Now, as far as paradox is concerned, between TTI and TB, the world acts to eliminate paradox. The only paradox left in the timeline is in the memories of the time travelers -- the rest of the world seems unified, with all paradox'd timelines relegated to the DBT.
5167796
I'm going to address what happens with both the Grandfather Paradoxes, along with all the other paradoxes that Crono's team are going to introduce, does to the timeline.
Hint: The remake of it for the DS gave me ideas as to what those ripples throughout Time will do.
Just go with the branching multiverse theory. No paradoxes then!
5165658 The way I resolve paradoxes in my headcanon is pretty straightforward. Everything that happened, happened. If I plant an appleseed, then 400 years later pick an apple from the tree, then 400 years in the past dig up the seed before it can grow that's all fine and dandy. The reason being because time isn't a straight line, it can loop back on itself. It can repeat sections of itself. One 'timeline' can have two instances of the same point in time. in my example those 400 years happened twice, once with a tree and once without, the instance with the tree was never a full fledged independent timeline. This works because once someone travels out of their natural timeline, they are no longer bound by it. Their timeline has been retroactively removed from their 'home' timeline. This fits in with the infinite multiverse headcanon of each decision is another universe.
I have to say that I am enjoying this story and look forward to the next chapter. Keep up the good work.
Dragonfox
You've definitely distinguished yourself from the typical 'Costumed Human' story here. Looking forward to its continuation.
Give Justice something other than fists and lasers to fight with, like some disc saws and taser wire nets, smokescreens and stuff, also, I think Robo can use other elements than just Darkness, in the game, like some lightning, because he's a machine and all...
5541610
You are correct, Robo has one lighting tech (Electroshock) and one fire tech (Proximity Bomb)
Please continue writing this as it is a brilliant mix of Chrono Trigger and My Little Pony
Thanks for writing this it looking good so far, can't wait to see what happens next!
Looking forward to the next chapter soon:)
I'm going to take an obvious guess and say the Griffon princess happens to be Gilda.
Crono probably is wandering after the events of a few chapters ago just when he's going to die (and maybe he's unconsciously setting all his friends up to be as noble as possible so they'll do their damndest to revive him when he does?), and seeing another Crystal Pony after seeing Hora earlier may be setting that fear off. Since Hora is a Guru analogue and is one of the Crystal Ponies, I'm gonna assume this new guy is also one of the Gurus.
Also, did you unpublish this chapter for some time? I don't remember reading it the last time I saw this story a few months back.
The last couple chapters were good if a little plain, kind of like they exist only to show off new characters. I trust that things will get more interesting soon!