Chapter Theme Music: Pearl De Vie ~ Electrypnose

  <03/18/1972 – 15:09 | Eldora Tower, Junon Region, Sprawn Valley>

  "I wish everything was simpler to my ears. For now, you should practice battling magic at night instead of during the day where everyone can see your symbol's activation." Danton was talking to all three of them, the group reunited and together again, though they all looked exhausted right now. They must have been fighting their hearts out. That agent never really gave a detailed report, not that there was much to report anyway.

  "I thought Jane was acquitted of that charge!" Danny knew Jane wanted to be the first to argue, but this situation is already too unpleasant to ignore. Jane or her friends should not be in trouble for behaving normally in Sprawn Valley. "You shouldn't be dictating where we conduct our battles and how we go about doing it!"

  Jane was gd that Danny had simir sympathy, but this injustice strikes at a different issue, and she sure raised her voice about it loudly to the champion. "It's Leray magic! We should all be allowed to use it whenever we want!"

  Danton whacked the bottom of his Mega-Staff against the steel floor of the champion chambers in a regretless protest. "You're missing the point!" he shouted. "This country isn't safe enough for that right now, specifically for the three of you. Jane? The Scarlets know who you are now. They know of your existence, and they know that you're the one who has been marked with their E-7 spell bomb. They'll be looking for you now everywhere. That means using your symbol, whether intentional or not out in public is sending a beacon signal towards your specific location."

  Danton didn't want to share this harsh reality with any of them, but given Jane's upset face and everyone's agreeable silence, he knew it was true. It must feel so unfair to all of them right now that they cannot live their own lives the way they want to. The journeys they must have been on to stand here today... "Everyone is working on emergency assignments, and you three have agreed to assist me as well. I don't want to put you in harm's way, but until we find and capture the leaders of the Scarlet Cult, things in Sprawn Valley are not about to die down."

  So even he is afraid? Danton, the most powerful person is afraid of these Scarlet leaders? What exactly did Kite and Gleeon do? Danton already mentioned that they killed one of Danton's former partners, but it must have been worse than he made it sound in the story Danton told them all the other day. "So, you're asking us to go on another mission for you?"

  "I will in a moment," Danton answered the young man, and then diverted his eyes towards Jane Venn, the girl who started this all unknowingly. "But first, we have a status update regarding your symbol."

  Jane's attention perked up instantly, but at that same moment, the doors behind them opened up, revealing Mainne, who has been leading Danton on about the decipherable information regarding Jane's personal symbol. Apparently, Danton called her up here to expin it together. Once Mainne greeted everyone again, the air felt heavier in the room. "My symbol?"

  "Jane Venn?" Mainne called. "When you all arrived back in Sprawn Valley, I told you that your symbol most likely belongs to the ancient marking of lunastasis. After our final examinations into your genetic makeup, it is now confirmed that the mark running in your blood is a modified version of lunastasis."

  So she really does have this? Taylor never imagined that they would actually be able to figure this out for her. Jane knows what she is marked with... But what is lunastasis again?

  "What does it actually do?" Jane knew she sounded desperate for answers right now, but she has already seen Dr. Geiger get captured over this device. It must be important!

  Mainne waited calmly for everyone else to rex. This isn't going to be the easiest thing to expin. "Some of this will be news to all of you, even Danton. I carefully finished more deciphers on the ancient scriptures of the lunastasis symbol. During the Avion Wars a couple of centuries ago, the Liberators invented a lot of symbols and weaponized markings to help them fight the Sentinels. Among many of their research programs included genetic engineering using magic in order to assist their changes, but their only popur weapon of destruction turned out to be the idea of lunastasis, a symbol that would grant the wearer access to utilize pure lunar magic without causing them any harm."

  Still with no questions, Mainne continued her expnations. "But many people died trying these experiments. There has never really been a way to force a wielder's ME points to soar high enough to support the use of lunar magic. The project took too much time without enough promise, and the idea was disbanded."

  "You said, modified lunastasis," Danny repeated. "The Scarlets who made this device did so with secret illegal research in a boratory. So then, how have they gotten away with it for so long?"

  Danny does raise a concerning argument. After all these years, Danton never considered the Scarlet Cult to be a big enough threat until now. Because of that, there has never really been an efficient search to find their hideout. Wherever they might be hiding, it must be in a boratory rge enough to prevent the detection of massive magical outputs. A submarine was reported to be used in the successful capture of Dr. Geiger. Therefore, their base should be far underwater. Danton already requisitioned a U.S. Navy submarine to use for emergency warfare purposes, but he could only get one vessel so far. "Once we find their base of operations, we'll know more about that."

  Nothing about this is easy to digest, and Mainne knew it so. "This integration of genetic alteration magic being connected into spell bomb technology is highly unusual. The reason for doing that was to disguise the device from local authorities and prevent its detection. Normally, if we were to use advanced aerial scanners, we would have picked up the E-7 spell bomb as an unknown magic anomaly."

  Danny knew where this was going already. "But nobody was really doing that anyway, given the weak threat assessment of these assholes."

  "Altering genetic structure is the only way to allow a person to handle such a high energy input from the spell bomb's activation, a two in one deal. Your ME is forced up really high, and lunar energy is charged into your body at the same time to prevent a systemic colpse. That would be," Mainne compared, "simir to what you felt when you expended all of your stored magical reserves outside of Sprawn Valley."

  Jane knew what Mainne was talking about. She did have a small colpse after first using that symbol. It's just that, since she was in Sprawn Valley, the veil was slowly recharging her energy and healing her. But outside, there was no way to regenerate, no way to heal.

  "Lunastasis gives the wearer the ability to use unreguted lunar energy and disperse it into unusual magic attacks. It does this by dramatically increasing your ME at a gradual rate. Instead of forcing your ME points to say, 100,000, it would start small and gradually climb in order not to kill the test subject. That's only on the modified version you received, not the previous tests from the historical documents. Right now, you have the ability to store and disperse a lot of lunar magic without causing adverse health effects."

  Danton continued the point where Mainne left off, tying it back together with why this is important. "Lunar magic is ten times more powerful than dark magic. It will put a hole through anything if used properly. During the incident we had ten years ago, mage Sirus and myself took the liberty of keeping the existence of lunar magic a secret from everyone, and that included Kite Fargenst and Gleeon Miao. For a long time, I thought that we were safer knowing that our enemies would never understand this even with dark magic; that they would never know the most powerful format of magic avaible to them. However... Given that the Scarlet Cult created the E-7 Mark 64 spell bomb, this proves to us all that they have somehow figured out what we are hiding here at Eldora Tower. They know what lunar magic is, and they want to try and control it for themselves."

  Taylor was following along with her friends easily, but this still left one disturbing question. "What will they do now that Jane took their device from them? Geiger is still missing you know!"

  Danton didn't forget, but not knowing the end game of his enemy is a frightening thing to behold. A lot of the actions made recently by the Scarlet Syndicate do not make a lot of sense put together. "What would the Scarlet Syndicate want with the ability to infinitely discharge pure lunar energy anywhere in the world? That is the question we all need to ask ourselves."

  What do they want with the ability to use lunar magic? Jane really had no idea, but there might have been some clues left behind with the recent activities of the Scarlet Syndicate. Yes, they want this spell bomb to use lunar magic, but they also raided the lighthouse at Tilsit Port for mapping data, all while Alpha Zero was installed as a dark magic veil to cover up secret seismic scans being conducted by Brightworth, a turncoat likely working for the same people. Danton never really found anything underground in the Outback yet, but there is something oddly disturbing about something that one guy said yesterday. "There is something." Jane struggled to remember, but she instantly had everyone's attention.

  Chapter Theme Shift: The Capital Sleeps ~ FFXIII-3 OST

  "Lance," she repeated firmly. Jane recalled the name he went by, a guy working for the Scarlets who nicknamed himself after his own weapon. "It was Lance who said something about Zantos. Didn't you say something about a secret temple in the legends of Zantos?"

  "Tch!" Danton spat in disgust. If they really are doing this over a stupid legend, then Kite and the others are bigger fools than he's ever known. Even so, Zantos is just a folk's tale, nothing more. "To prove that he is full of it, I did some digging myself," Danton proudly announced. "The legend of Zantos is as I said before, a bunch of passed down stories lost to accuracy told from ancient times."

  "How did it even start?"

  Danton wasn't expecting Mainne to share a curiosity about Zantos as well, but even if she does, there is a reason this has to be a cover-up for their real objective, something to distract them all from the real truth. "It started back when the ancient ndowners were still first experimenting with pure lunar magic, and the technology in mirror refraction. Mirror refraction is what eventually led to the creation of lunar crystals, and ter Leray crystals for magic storage. The legend starts with some unfortunate accident at testing site Beta."

  Danton could recall all of the information perfectly, being obsessed earlier with proving this story to contain within it, a heavy level of insanity. "Apparently, a rge explosion ripped the testing facility apart, killing everyone inside, and injuring most in the bst range. This explosion wasn't from anything like a bomb or a melted reactor. Nobody knew what caused it, and the energy signature from the bst was apparently the same used in lunar magic dispersion."

  Danny wasn't sure if he was following along as well as he thought, so he interrupted briefly to confirm. "You're saying, that the explosion itself was caused by pure lunar magic?"

  "As the reports say, they were, but it isn't the explosion that makes this interesting. It's what came after. At the same time the explosion occurred, a rge anomaly shaped just like our modern day glyphrings remained in the sky above the destroyed facility. Only minutes ter, a massive creature, or monster spawned out from the summon glyphring. Nobody knows what this monster was supposed to be. Many argue that Zantos has the makeup of a king dragon. Others argue that Zantos is some kind of ghost animal. Nobody was certain of anything, other than this creature's average size of an entire town, with the destructive capabilities of God."

  "God?" Everyone shared their doubts at the same moment, assuring Danton it was okay to continue.

  "Most probable, assuming this is even real, is that the creature was able to use lunar magic to attack and destroy everything in its path whenever it wanted to. Naturally, that would be a real problem, since it means Zantos would be capable of traveling anywhere in the world to use lunar magic. A creature made out of the same energy signature could easily recharge its own stamina and magic whenever it wants to under a full moon, and at the time, no veil existed to stop him."

  "But then," Danny knew something had to have happened.

  "You're wondering how the story ends. The legend states, that a rge band of brave wielders formed together, people by the way that were only capable of using lunar magic to fight. They battled against Zantos, since the creature was razing everything to the ground. They nicknamed their battle, the fight against the wrath of God. Upon defeating Zantos, they used their powers of lunar energy to seal the essence of the defeated monster into a secret temple, locking away its magic forever."

  "That sounds like it's out there, I'll admit." Danny knew now why Danton was skeptical to believe any of this. Even if it is true, there are a few things wrong with the story in general detail.

  Danton couldn't agree more. "Anyone who uses even a small amount of lunar magic, as a human anyway, would be killed rather quickly. So I personally find it hard to believe, under any circumstances, that a formation of mages gathered together and fought, let alone defeated a creature so powerful. In theory, if Zantos were real, its capabilities would far surpass the parameters of the data on the creature we collected in Alpha Zero, codename: Gaia. Everyone fighting and sealing Zantos away would be sacrificing their own lives in doing so."

  "But..." Taylor felt uneasy about the whole mess of detail. Just because defeating Zantos would cost a heavy sacrifice, doesn't mean it never have happened.

  "And one more thing, we've never in all our history since - been able to locate any artifacts such as a secret temple, whether it be underground, underwater, or on the surface of an unpoputed isnd. I know it is still technically too soon to say such things, given that our seismic scans of the Outback have still yet to complete, but we're almost done scanning that area, and nothing of value has been found." They all looked stumped now. "So, if these criminal fanatics want to believe and worship in a creature that does not exist, then it only proves how insane they are."

  Jane's heart felt heavy with the weight of uncertainty. "There's just one thing," she mentioned. "They sealed the temple with lunar magic, and that means, it would require the use of pure lunar magic itself to unseal the same temple." Are they not connecting those dots? "My marking has the ability to do that. Even if Zantos isn't real, it expins why they want lunar magic."

  "Or," Danton corrected, "it means that Kite was never able to successfully obtain followers for his new world order to actually use lunar magic the way he would need to in order to generate that new world order. Imagine an army of lunar magic wielding people, more capable than anything if additional veils were set up outside of our magic zone. All they would need to accomplish this is your symbol, to generate a lunar magic field that self-regenerates people like yourself in an infinite energy chain reaction, to use lunar magic anywhere in the world without exhaustion. Or, they could simply infiltrate this tower, and steal the crystal core containing a small amount of charged lunar energy needed for the conversion of the Leray veil. But in order to get more people on board, they would use a false image of God in order to transform the will of people's hearts, a kind of psychological religious deception used to gain followers. With all the current injustice in the world, it wouldn't be that difficult. Convince people to follow a god rather than a person, and you've got instant support, given that the populous understands what is going on."

  Danny and the others considered Danton's expnation more carefully. In every tactical manner, this actually makes the most sense. All they would have to do is skew the goal of having lunar magic for one purpose, only to stab their own people in the back ter and use it for themselves. Jane's symbol was their safest way of doing it. The Scarlets know that they could try to steal Danton's crystal core, but in that ten years of time, they've never attempted to. That must mean the security of this tower is more impressive than it seems, courtesy of Danton's security advisor. But there are other methods, right? "Danton? What about lunar crystals? Couldn't they just rely on those?"

  "In theory, yes. But between Jane's symbol and our crystal core, you would need an enormous amount of lunar crystals to pull something like that off in the first pce. The only pce we can go to harvest the high quality crystals are on Eupharus Isnd, which is restricted by the government and watched carefully by our elite agents. With that, you would also need the sacred knowledge of crystal assembly to correctly shape and format the shards and fragments into lunar crystals. The kind we store in the vaults are already permanently modified to be Leray crystals only. I can deduce that they may have figured out how to transform Leray crystal shards into dark magic crystal shards, but even then, it isn't going to be enough to meet their end goal."

  "So then," if Danny had this all figured out, the solution is a bit simpler. "All we have to do then is protect the crystal core, and Jane Venn."

  "Not quite," Mainne nodded. "They captured Geiger, in case you forgot. I'm sure Geiger will never make another one of those devices for them, but they may already have enough knowledge to develop another E-7 Mark 64 spell bomb, and that would mean that it is only a matter of waiting in shadows to achieve the energy that they need. Once they do, they won't have a need for Geiger. I suspect they'll keep him alive just long enough to taunt Jane Venn into whichever facility they're hiding him in."

  "But, why me? They can't control the symbol anymore while I'm the bearer."

  "Precisely," Danton sharpened. "Jane, you are now a major threat to their operation with that much power under your hand. I would never put it past these guys to try and lure you and your friends into a trap, disguised as a rescue mission in order to take you out and eliminate one of their obstacles."

  Danny, Jane, and Taylor gred at the floor in fear. These guys really don't mess around. They don't leave any room for error. What kind of enemies has Danton made?

  "However," Danton cleared his throat, "there is actually something you mentioned about lunar crystals, Danny, something in particur that bothers me."

  "Don't tell me there is yet another source they can use."

  Danton couldn't promise anything at the moment. Pying this dangerous game in the dark is all he and his team can do at the moment. "I don't believe so, but I've sent one of my trusted operatives to a specific location for confirmation of a specific object, uncimed by anyone important. This is likely another fluke, an item only famous by legend and not by magical conductivity. If I'm right, we have less to worry about."

  "Then I must ask." Jane took a few steps forward, her eyes heavy on both of them. "What is our next assignment supposed to be?"

  Danton answered as best as he could. "Until I hear back from my reporter, the mission may not stand. Until then, I want the three of you to stay in Eldora City, just in case you're needed to defend the tower from an unlikely attack."

  Danny folded his arms nervously. "The world we live in now... We have to be called upon to fight deadly criminals with magic of our own, else may the world crumble to pieces."

  "The words from mage Sirus will forever remain with me boy. Leray magic is Pandora's Box. It has opened a whole new world of possibilities, including many elements we don't want to become reality, but it is already too te to shut that box forever. If I were to destroy our crystal core, shut down our veil permanently, and hope for the best, it would certainly make things difficult for Kite and the other Scarlets, but they may still succeed eventually. The knowledge of this technology is already avaible for too many people. If we don't stop these bad guys, they can do a lot of damage to the world."

  "And you're afraid?" Danny knew his question was kind of sudden, but how could Danton not be afraid of this situation? This suspense of danger is only getting worse and worse. How is he not trembling in fear right now?

  What an interesting thing to ask, Danton thought. "I won't allow any fear of mine to control or dictate my actions. If I did that, we could never stop these criminals. Yes, I unwillingly and unknowingly steered Kite and Gleeon in a dark and dangerous path. I know that no matter how insignificant my role has been to them, I must bestow upon myself a partial bme." Mainne moved to comfort Danton, but he quickly scared her away with another hard whack to the ground using his staff. "But I'm done sulking in those kinds of thoughts. I'm in this as much as everybody else is. I have a duty to protect the ideals of Leray magic, and make sure people such as Jane continue to enjoy their lives and careers every single day. That is the promise I had to make for myself ten years ago, so I am not stepping down until this threat is dealt with."

  So he is taking this seriously. Jane sighed silently with relief, knowing that Danton is fully engaged this time in the real effort to restore Sprawn Valley back to the way it should be. "I'll help with that too. I won't stand by and let people ruin the thrill of Leray magic for everyone else."

  Despite the fact that Danton and his new friends were having a moment, his pager started beeping on and off. He had to whip out his wired ear piece, and activate the hidden radio to receive the report, but it wasn't the one he expected to hear.

  "Who?" Danton pressed. "... Okay. No, don't send them up. We're coming down there instead." Danton put away the device, expining the situation to the curious bunch in front of him. "Apparently, some of Jane's friends are demanding to speak with her."

  Jane nearly whispered into Danny's and Taylor's ears, "It must be Alyssa and Iya."

  "We're going to head down there too." Taylor pulled out a fresh water bottle from her supply sphere as she prepared to head down. She already felt rexed being able to see Alyssa and Iya again. Jane hasn't had a chance to talk with them since they all arrived back here, but Taylor did had a chance to bond with Iona just a little before their departure to New York.

  "I think I'll call Nyar after we're finished." Danny knew Nyar would be expecting phone calls sometime soon. He waved a hand behind him for Danton to see. "We'll catch up."

  Danton and Mainne waved and waited for the three of them to exit to the lower levels. Danton wasn't actually going down with the three of them right away. He already knew Jane had some friends other than Danny and Taylor; they just don't seem to share the same bonds, for whatever reason.

  "Danton?" Mainne had to assure herself that he is absolutely certain not to make the same mistake twice. "I know they'll never turn to using dark magic... But are you sure about enlisting their help? They're still so young."

  "And yet they seem to behave so maturely given the situation." Danton knew that Mainne was aware of this by now. Most sixteen and seventeen year olds cannot rationally prepare for anything this heavy. "I don't want any of them getting hurt either. But, they've got skills and potential like I've never seen before in anyone else. The three of them together are our best weapon against the Scarlets. All I must do now is guide them."