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Turned On	By : blackwaltz0 Category: +M through R > Phantasy Star Views: 2172 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Phantasy Star, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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It was daylight before Chaz knew it. The boy sat up and rubbed at his eyes, finding himself spread out on one of the long couches in the ice digger, slightly slipping off it as his right leg dangled off the side and was touching the cool floor. The bridge was pretty active right now, Kyra wandering about the place and stretching while Rune had just returned from a call of nature. Rika was singing sweetly from her small room. He was surprised that he hadn't woken up earlier from the bustle alone.

But wait, hadn't he fallen asleep outside, with Wren? Or had that been one of his strange lurid dreams? That was funny, because it had felt so real, especially the feeling of contentment in knowing that his friend was alive and well. Chaz yawned, snuggling into the blankets wrapped around him once more. They were not pale blue with penguin print, rather they were a dull bland army-colour green. Wren must have picked him up at some point in the night and had carried him back into the ice digger, putting him to bed here. He smiled and deeply inhaled the smell of the cloth. It had not been a dream after all.

Chaz sneezed. At first he thought it was because the blankets had been a little dusty from being in storage, but then he realised that he could barely breathe through his nose. He remembered Rune from yesterday and noticing how the esper had seemed to be on the verge of a cold. Chaz had joined in along with him. That rat bastard must have passed it along to him when they had talked over their mugs of cocoa. The hours spent in the freezing temperatures mustn't have helped either. He groaned and pulled the blankets up over his face. A cold. Just wonderful.

He was cheered up a bit when he heard Rune sneeze loudly as well, then curse out of annoyance. Chaz didn't have to suffer alone, but this meant that two people of their five member party were sick. That would cut their effectiveness down largely in battle. Imagine if Rune cast a tandle spell in combat and then went into a sneezing fit right at the height of his incantation? Actually, that might be kind of funny, provided Chaz was a safe distance away. The boy rolled off the bed and stood, his head and sinuses all clogged up and foggy. He felt pretty well rested though, despite the sickness.

His clothes were ripped and ruined. It seemed to him that he had been wearing the same red bodysuit forever. Chaz glanced at the bandaged wound on his arm and tugged at the dressing with his free hand, pulling the bloody dimate-soaked material away. There was a raw red mark on his arm where the cut had been, it had bonded together nicely without the need of stitches. He just had to take it easy on his arm for a few days more, then he'd have another scar to add to his slowly growing repertoire. At the rate he was gaining them he'd be a marked man soon enough.

He knew he couldn't get a shower right about now, but Chaz thought he could settle for the next best thing and change into some much fresher clothing. The boy hauled himself to his bunker while rubbing his poor foggy head, sniffling at the same time. He dragged the green blankets along behind him, like a silly bridal train. Chaz shared his sleeping quarters with Rune but he had already gotten used to the magician as a roommate long ago, so he didn't feel very exposed as he changed into his other set of clothes while the esper's back was turned.

Rune sneezed again just as Chaz was zipping up his shirt. The hunter smiled and turned around again. Rune practically had a handkerchief crammed up his nose. He didn't look very impressed, especially when Chaz giggled at him. "You gave me a cold." He accused tonelessly, or he tried to but his words got all stuffed-up, turning it into; 'You gabe be a code.'

Chaz shook his head, trying to fix his messy hair. He kind of felt like arguing with him, but didn't want to take the argument seriously. "Uh uh. You gave me a cold when you handed me that drink last night. You're one great big germ factory." He retaliated, hearing that his own voice was no clearer than Rune's was. Chaz sneezed one more time, involuntarily lending weight to his rebuttal.

The esper huffed dramatically. "I only got this cold because I spent hours and hours out in the damned glacier trying to find your sorry excuse for a body. Stupid you and stupid Wren. Both of you did this to me."

The hunter let go of his firm grip on the argument. He checked himself over to make sure that he looked okay and then smiled brightly to Rune, like a ray of sunshine cutting through both of their illnesses. Rune was reminded of Kyra's words from the day before. Chaz looked like a boy in love. "I'm sorry about that, but thanks for saving us. I know I can always count on you for help. Beneath your nasty arrogant exterior beats the shriveled up heart of a two thousand year old man." The youth laughed as Rune appeared shocked to him. "Say, do you know where I can find Wren?"

Rune ground his teeth and then threw a pillow at Chaz. If there was one thing that he hated it was being called old. He was not freaking old! "You damned brat, go and find him yourself if you're gonna be disrespectful!"

"Disrespectful? To my elders?" Chaz ventured mischievously.

He managed to get out of the room just in time, before Rune could incinerate him with an efess spell. He skipped merrily down the corridor as Rune raved behind him. He could forget all about the cold, he just felt too good mentally to care. He was alive and with his friends again. Rika popped her head outside the entrance of her bunker like a tentative rabbit, wondering what was going on. She still had a toothbrush sticking out of her mouth. Chaz ran into the bridge and made a sharp right, about to go outside and back into the tunnel again. He disliked the place after all that had transpired there but he needed some fresh air.

Chaz hopped down the ramp a little too quickly than he was supposed to and missed his footing somewhere near the bottom, tumbling over and flopping into the snow. Chill rushed into his front all at once and his natural high came to a temporary halt. That was klutzy of him, but it served him right for running about like a hyperactive child.

"You are so clumsy, Chaz." Wren stated right in front of him. He had crouched down so he could speak to Chaz more levelly. The boy 'hmphed' and struggled to get up again, but accepted Wren's hand as his friend helped to pull him up to his feet. He was carrying the ice digger's toolkit with him so he must have finished making some repairs on the engine. Wren looked completely normal, all better again. Well� actually, that might not be true. Wren actually looked cheerful without an incentive for him to be so, which was definitely not normal.

But Wren was cute when he was cheerful, so it was okay. Chaz brushed some clinging snow away and then openly hugged his friend. He was beginning to not care whether the others saw him or not. What was the worst that could happen? He wondered to himself why he had been so uptight about it in the earlier days. "I'm so glad you're okay. Don't ever do anything like that again. It really scared me." Chaz admitted, letting go of him.

"I'm sorry." Wren said truthfully, then grimaced as if he were in slight pain. The new parts that Rika had installed in him worked well but he was not quite used to them yet, which caused Wren to experience severe hot or cold flushes that were very irritating. They would be gone in a few days as his body became acclimatized to using the new parts, but until then Wren felt rather ill. Rune had mentioned something about him developing menopause and Wren had been tempted to hit the esper. He had not found that rather funny, even if Rune did.

Chaz suddenly grew very excited. Wren had actually sounded palman. "Hey! You said you were sorry! Not; 'my apologies', or; 'please forgive me', you actually said you were sorry!"

Wren blinked once and checked his backlog of actions. Oh, he supposed that he had. Why was Chaz so excited over that? "I'm sorry?" He said again, not because he was apologizing but because he didn't know what Chaz was so adamant about. Repeating what he had said just seemed to make Chaz's grin wider. "We're leaving soon. We will be in Meese by midday if my calculations are correct." Wren added, trying to alter the subject.

Turning around and walking back up the ramp, being careful of where he put his feet, Chaz chuckled. "We're going to go and see the old man again. He'd better not be dead and we made this trip for nothing. I hope the espers at Meese have something I could take for this cold." The android didn't say anything. He was glad that their journey was getting back on track again. The sooner they could get to the Garuberk tower the better.

But for the first time, and this was truly the first time that Wren had thought of it in this manner, he realised that the sooner their mission was accomplished and Algo saved from the darkness forever, the sooner that Wren would have to say goodbye to his friends. Would have to say goodbye to Chaz. Some of Wren's good mood ebbed away. It wouldn't happen for awhile, but it was bound to happen someday. He did not clearly understand how he felt about that.

Two hours later they were back en-route to Meese. Navigating through the glacier had been much easier the second time around, as many of the tunnels that Rika had drilled through had not collapsed yet. The numan girl stayed by Wren's side and gave him useful directions anyway. Almost everybody cheered when they broke through the surface and saw the sky once more. The beautiful Dezorian sky. It was dark, cloudy and angry but it was still a welcome sight to behold.

Any obstructions they found from now on the ice digger just ran straight over it.

Suffice to say there were no more unexpected stops along the way to Meese.

��

"Mr. Su Raja?"

The priest looked up from the small book that he was reading. One of the nurses had given it to him earlier to stop him from complaining that he was bored so much. It was a book of short trashy romance stories that seemed to appeal to young women nowadays. It was certainly not the kind of material one should give to a priest to read, but with Raja unable to leave his bed he had been desperate. "Yeah?" He said, diverting his attention from the pages.

The green-haired esper standing in the doorframe regarded the dezorian with a doctor's eye. Raja held a great resistance to the black energy wave within his body, which probably had a lot to do with his position as a priest, but nobody could be totally immune to its effects. The wave was still eating away and corroding his body from the inside out. Raja was having a rather lucid day today, but as time passed days like that were growing further and further apart. "You have some visitors. Should I let them in?"

Raja livened up a little. There was only one group of people who would be able to visit him on this side of the walls of ice. He straightened himself up and tried to put his book on the bedside table, but it slipped and fell off the edge, tumbling spine-up on the floor. The esper caretaker stepped aside as Raja began to shout. "Come in if you're beautiful!" He crowed, then laughed as Rika stepped through the threshold first. Yes, she certainly was beautiful, for a horned girl. Kyra and the other three men followed right behind her.

"Raja! You're still here!" Rika cried, immediately zipping to his bedside. She fired off several questions about how he was feeling and how the black energy wave was affecting the rest of the people in the clinic. Kyra had her arms around the green-haired esper and was called him 'Eugene' over and over again, shaking him like a rag doll. He was allowing it as if he were afraid of what would happen if he didn't. Chaz, Rune and Wren just stood there awkwardly, unsure of what they should be doing. They couldn't just throw themselves into the situation as easily as the girls could.

The dezorian priest looked over Rika's shoulder as the girl was hugging him, studying the loitering members of his old party. "You guys look well. Maybe you should all be in bed instead of me." He said jokingly, seeing that they didn't look well at all. Chaz had a runny nose and Rune had a fierce headache, rubbing at his temple slightly. Wren was in the middle of a hot flush and didn't seem to be paying attention to anything at all. Just looking at them made Raja feel moderately healthier. "Did something happen?"

Kyra stopped tormenting her old friend and told Raja all about what had happened in the Air Castle, including their recent escapade in the middle of the glacier. She was a notably good storyteller, along with her evocative words she found herself acting out the story in several places, turning it into more of a stage performance rather than a simple tale. Raja thought that it was fantastic, he hadn't been this entertained in weeks.

He clapped when Kyra's story came to an end. "Bravo! I can't believe you went to all this trouble just to see me. It was probably better that you were delayed a day though, as I wasn't exactly at my best yesterday." The dezorian grew serious. On Raja seriousness was even more, well, serious. "But you know you shouldn't be wasting your time on me. I appreciate it, but stop it. Spend it all on tearing the Garuberk tower down! That'll sure as hell make me happy!"

It seemed like Raja had used up far to much energy making that vehement exclamation, or maybe the tower itself had heard his words and struck back accordingly, for immediately after that Raja began to cough loudly and wildly, doubled over in pain. Eugene ran out into the hall and yelled; "Johari! Nohari! Get in here quick!"

In only a couple of second two long-haired blonde nurses rushed into the room and pushed Rika away from the bed, trying to calm Raja's coughs. He was coughing so hard that he couldn't breathe properly. Rika looked on in horror as Raja hacked up a dark, foul tar-like substance and then flopped back against the pillow, wheezing heavily.

A physical extract of the black energy wave. Raja was nowhere near as healthy as he first seemed to be. One of the nurses took a cloth and gently began to wipe the evil gunk from the priest's mouth and clothes. The other nurse stared at the entourage of guests professionally. "I think you all had better go. Your presence here agitates him and the corruption in his body. Visiting hours are now over. Eugene, could you show them out, please?"

Rika didn't want to go, but she could also see why they needed to. Raja probably wouldn't be very good company after a turn like that. She would pick some snowflowers for him, in the hopes that it might make him feel better. The adventuring party was practically frog-marched downstairs and into the lobby by the caretaking esper, and Kyra managed to score one quick kick to his shin before he limped a safe distance away.

Okay, so maybe the journey had been a bit of a flop. But they had seen that Raja was still alive and capable of shouting, so that was a plus. The second infiltration of the Air Castle was on their minds and they wanted to get on with that quickly, but it would be prudent of them to wait just a little while for Rune and Chaz to be properly combat-worthy again. On the lower floor one of the nurse espers had taken a look at them and prescribed one full day of bed rest for each of them. Unfortunately there were no spare beds left in the clinic for something as minor as colds, so the two men were shipped off to the inn.

Kyra had announced that she had a lot of catching up to do with her friends at the clinic and decided to remain there, for now. She went off with the esper named Eugene, arm in arm as if the shin kick had meant nothing at all, jabbering on like an excited rappy. Rune had definitely not been too happy about that. As for Rika, she just wanted to make sure that Raja was okay, but she couldn't do that with the two nurses watching over him. Instead, she invited Wren to go on a walk with her in the Dezoris fields so she could gather up some blossoms to give to Raja as a present. Wren had accepted, having nothing better to do and knowing that the lower temperatures of the outdoors would be better for his newly-replaced system.

But Rika needed an hour to freshen herself up and take a good long bath at the inn, so this left Wren with about sixty minutes of nothing to do. He stood outside the entrance of the inn, watching some small palman children running around, playing and dressed in thick heavy furs. It must be nice not having anything to worry about, Wren thought. He checked his inventory, discovering that he still had some money left over from the guild mission he and the others had undertaken in Monsen. When they completed a job the reward money was usually split five ways. Wren didn't really have a use for meseta but it was useful to be able to hands over money when somebody else needed it.

There wasn't anything essential that he needed to buy, but there was one thing that he could think of. He wasn't sure if it was available in this town or not but that didn't matter to him, as he had enough spare time to find out. Wren turned and walked toward the item store, mindfully keeping out of the way of the children. He didn't know what was wrong with him or why he was now thinking in this way, yet there was no reason to resist it. He hoped that this new pattern of thinking would make him a better person, as Roland and Valos had hinted to him within the Ryuon pub.

There was no reason not to try.

��

Chaz didn't want to go back to sleep again. He had been doing far too much of that lately and he didn't want to become lazy. Despite this there was absolutely nothing else that he could do in his inn room without waking Rune, who had fallen into a sick slumber on his side of the room. Nothing else but stare at the ceiling, that was. Boy it was an uninteresting ceiling. Watching paint dry would be more fun than this.

Not to mention that Chaz was also sick. His sinuses were so clogged that he could barely breathe through his nose. It was a lot better when he was sitting up in bed, but as soon as he lay down again breathing became difficult. It was hard to sleep when somebody was inflicted with that. He had used up half a box of tissues, the wastepaper basket by his bed nearly full up. Chaz sighed. He hated colds.

Even though resting seemed positively impossible Chaz thought that he did drift off into sleep or advanced cases of boredom-induced comas, because time began to creep by in fits and starts. Sometimes Rune had his eyes closed and sometimes he was sitting up and reading a book, one that Chaz couldn't understand the title of as it had been written in the esper's native language. Maybe he should have brought something to preoccupy his time as well, but all the stuff that Chaz did for a hobby involved sword fighting.

Resting back against his pillow Chaz allowed himself a selfish thought and wished that Rika could be here for him right now, to kindly nurse him back to health. He had had similar fantasies about that before, although he felt bad for them, as Rika was his friend and not some kind of faceless woman he could undress with his eyes and then cram into a nurse's outfit with his mind. But it would be good, he reckoned, to have her care for him like that�

Chaz suddenly felt another sneeze coming on and sat up in bed, dazed and groping for the box of tissues that he knew was nearby. His hand touched some unfamiliar paper then found what he was looking for, grabbing as tissue and sneezing, blowing his nose. "Gods damn, this is hell�" He moaned softly, turning to see what that other bit of paper had been. He didn't think it had been there earlier.

Somebody had left a small paper bag and a glass of water on his bedside table at some point when Chaz had been sleeping. It looked nondescript, he couldn't tell where it had come from, but maybe it was a get-well present from one of his friends. The hunter picked it up and opened the bag, shaking out a plastic capsule filled with small white pills, directions on how to take them plastered on the side of the container in a pharmacist's scrawl. A neatly-folded piece of paper fluttered out of the bag as well. Medicine?

He checked the label of the capsule. It was called some incredibly long name that he wouldn't be able to pronounce even if he wanted to. The only thing left was the piece of paper. He unfolded it carefully, like it might rip if he didn't.

The chemist said that this medicine will help to suppress some of the symptoms of your illness.

Give some to Rune too if you do not think he is a jerk.

Please recover soon, Chaz.

Could this be the kindness that he had hoped to receive from Rika? He inspected the handwriting carefully. It was near-perfect print and it almost looked like computer font. Rika's handwriting was more calligraphic, freer. And of course that jerk remark made it pretty obvious who had written the note, even if it was left unsigned.

Wren had quietly brought him some medicine while had had slept. That was rather sweet of him. Chaz knew that Wren liked him in a strange sense that only the android could possibly understand, but he hadn't expected that it would extend to acts of kindness such as this. It meant that he still worried and thought about him even when Chaz wasn't there to be worried about.

Chaz smiled and popped the lid off the capsule containing the pills. There was more than enough here for both himself and Rune. He'd toss him the capsule once the magician woke up again. For now he was just eager to make his damned cold go away, if only for a little while. Chaz hated pills, they were evil and foul-tasting when he was forced to chew them, but he thought he'd forget about it just this one time.

After all, it wasn't flowers, or candy, or any other stupid cliché present, but it was still a meaningful, thoughtful gift from his significant other.
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