This story is based on the legendary game Chronotrigger, just re-released for the DS. If you haven't played it yet, do so now. Go ahead, we'll wait... Images of the characters are posted in many places on the web.
“I thought everything would be perfect after we destroyed LAVOS and saved the world. Boy was I wrong,” Marle thought as she wandered past the abandoned wooden structures with only the moonlight to show her the way. Everything was so boring now, with only her duties as Princess Nadia to keep her busy. Marle found herself spending her time decorating the castle, overseeing the domestic staff and planning the next Royal Ball.
The life she’d sworn she’d never live. That was why she’d run away in the first place.
At first, of course, things had been different. They’d been heroes, all of them, Crono, Frog, Robo, Ayla, Lucca and even Magus. Most especially Crono. The Moonlight Parade had been one of the highlights of her life. Then to top it all off, Crono had been named heir apparent by King Guardia, provided he marry an “appropriate” woman. That could have only been her, of course, and so she became engaged. Talk about exciting!
It hadn’t lasted. Frog, Robo, Ayla and Magus had gone back to their own times. Lucca had gotten all wrapped up in some new project. And Crono, her betrothed, was so busy learning how to govern, that he had no time for her. Honestly, he was spending so much time with her father and the chancellor, she couldn’t remember the last time Crono had really talked to her!
Things had been so much more exciting back when they were fighting not just for their own lives, but for the very survival of the planet. Everyday, She and Crono and the rest and faced another, even more challenging foe. Death had always been a very real possibility. It had been terrifying, but those days had a flavor to them that the present just couldn’t match.
Maybe it had been because, for the first time in her life, Marle had been important not because of her beauty. Her companions hadn’t needed her because of her pretty face, slender body or long, blond hair. No, it had been her Ice magic, freezing the cold blooded reptites, her healing magic and her bow that had earned her respect. She’d been valued by her friends for reasons that had nothing to do with being a beautiful princess.
Now, that was over. She was just Princess Nadia again. Her only job to be a pretty bauble of the arm of the future king.
So Marle had taken to coming here, the site of the Millennial Fair, almost every night. The fair had ended months ago, the crowds and vendors long gone, but the memories lingered, and the memories were all she had. Over there was the circle track that the runners must have gone around a thousand times, apparently having nothing else to do but race from morning to night. And that was the table that some jerk had kept his lunch on, the lunch that Crono always insisted on stealing. Boy, that one almost came back to bite him! Even such silly memories made Marle smile.
In the center, had been Queen Leene’s bell. Right in front of that was the spot she and Crono had met. Her shoulder was still a little sore from that meeting on rainy nights. Why couldn’t they have a less painful meeting story?
And the empty field that had held Norstein Bekkler’s lab. It was there Marle had insisted on holding onto hope when all seemed lost. Why couldn’t she do that again?
A cold wind, strong enough to blow her blond hair askew if it hadn’t been in its trademarked ponytail, started blowing, pulling Marle out of the past. She was considering going back to the castle when she heard a strange bit of music coming from the back of the fairgrounds. It was faint, so faint that Marle couldn’t have told you when it started. She might have dismissed it as wind blowing through the trees if it hadn’t been achingly familiar. Almost without thinking, Marle headed in that direction.
She walked away from the lights of the nearby village until they were lost behind the trees, following the path to a clearing at the very edge of the fairgrounds. She heard the song before she saw its shiny metal body.
“They call me Gato. I have metal joints. Beat me up. And earn 15 silver points.”
Gato was a robot built by Lucca as a combat simulator. She and Crono had fought it many times while they waited for Lucca’s ill fated teleportation experiment to start. Battling the metal creature had not only allowed them both to begin building their battle skills, the silver points they won had been exchanged for gold which bought their first weapons and armor. Nobody would have guessed it at the time, but Gato had proved an invaluable, and convenient, first step toward saving the world.
Marle was surprised Lucca had left her creation here. True, it was primitive. Lucca had built Gato before going to the future and seeing the stylish and self-aware robots there. Gato’s body was nothing more than a giant ball. Stubby arms and legs jutted out with little in the way of shoulders or waist to make a graceful transition. Its head was nothing more than an old helmet with twin, glowing yellow eyes underneath.
But Lucca tended to think of her inventions as her children. She was almost obsessive in taking care of them. Why would she abandon Gato?
Marle was so concerned about her friend, she almost missed the high pitched bell that signaled Gato had entered “Battle Mode”.
The circle hatch on Gato’s stomach opened, and an extendable arm with a boxing glove on the end shot out. Marle threw herself to the side, feeling the breeze as the glove passed inches over her head.
Damn! Now Gato was malfunctioning! She’d have to disable it before it hurt somebody. That would be difficult without one of her bows, but Marle wasn’t really worried. She had defeated enemies hundreds of times more powerful than this during the quest using nothing but her magic. She just hoped she could do it without destroying the metal man.
It had been months, however, since Marle had done so much as make an ice cube, so it took her a minute to get “in touch” with her abilities. That was enough time for Gato to make another attack. It moved its microphone up to its mouth.
Marle knew that Gato was about to unleash its sonic attack. She had felt it several times before, and grit her teeth. It wouldn’t really hurt her, but it could sting like nails on a chalkboard.
When the sound came, however, it was louder and more powerful than anything Marle had experienced before. A high pitched wall of cacophony slammed into her, making her cry out in pain and cover her ears. Any thought of magic slipped way.
The princess could only lie there, bright lights exploding in front of her eyes and her muscles refusing to obey her brain. Marle could barely see Gato’s hatch open again and that third arm strike out. She steeled herself for the blow.
But this time, instead of a boxing glove on the end of the arm, there was a hook. It caught Marle’s shoulder, and pulled her inside. Before she knew what it her, the Princess was swallowed by metal and darkness.
Soon, a dim red light flickered on. Marle could see she was inside of a steel sphere. It was too small a space to stand, sitting cross legged, Marle’s head was only inches from the ceiling. She shouted for help, but knew there was no one close enough to hear anything even if sound could escape her iron prison.
Then Marle heard a buzzing sound, and the sphere she was in started shrinking. The sides, ceiling and floor were all closing in. She’d be crushed! Out of desperation, Marle reached out her arms, fingertips touching the curved walls to her left and right, and began to push with all her might.
Marle knew it was futile. She could feel the slow pressure, pushing back against her arms. There was no way she was strong enough. Why, oh why, couldn’t she be Ayla or Robo! Soon the walls were close enough that she could put her palms flat against the metal surfaces. Marle straightened her arms and locked her elbows. Sonn her muscles grew tired of pushing.
Suddenly, without warning, the buzzing stopped, and so did the walls. The princess had somehow been saved from being crushed. So relieved was Marle, that she didn’t notice the steel grow warm under her touch.
Marle was still trying to calm herself and think of a way out of her cage when a couple of small holes opened up in front of her. Two metal arms,about as thick as a broom handle, came out. Each one had a circular brush, about two inches wide, on their end. The brushes looked like the one her father used to shave with.
She screamed again and tried to bring her arms into some kind of defensive position. It was then that Marle realized her hands were stuck to the sides of the sphere. Pull as hard as she could, nothing could free them. It was as if her skin had bonded to the metal.
As the armss grew closer, Marle again forced herself to calm down. She focused on her simplest ice magic. That would stop them.
The brushes struck first
King Guardia had always hated the white top Marle was wearing, which was probably the reason she wore it.. It barely covered her chest, leaving both her arms and shoulders bare. Robo had stated once that it defied the laws of gravity, leaving Lucca to joke that it must have been held up by sheer willpower.
The brushes nestled in Marle’s exposed underarms. The bristles were firmer than Marle had expected and felt prickly on her delicate skin. When they started to caress her armpits, the princess’s reaction was immediate.
“Hehe ehe eheheheheh ehWHATTA hehe ehehehe ehe nawoooooheheh eheheh!!!!! Stawwwpp heh heheh eheheheh!!!!” the blond princess giggled, “Can’t he eheh eheheh dodooohohohoo heh ehheh thissssssesesheee eehe tohohohoho mehehehhe hhehehhehe….”
Despite having a musical, almost lilting laugh, Marle hated being tickled. She had been incredibly ticklish as long as she could remember. One of the best parts of being princess was that it shielded her from such attentions. That wasn’t always the case, however. A governess had found put about Marle’s weakness during the princess’s even more rebellious teen-age years. She had decided that, since nothing else was working to control the hellcat, maybe tickling would.
For a while, every time Marle broke a rule, she had been tormented by the governess’s talented fingers. It was five minutes of belly tickling for a messy bedroom. 5 minutes of tickling on her ribs for breaking curfew. Her feet had been the worst. Once she had even gotten half an hour of toe tickles for kissing a commoner boy. Eventually, she had managed to get the governess fired for some made up offense, but the woman had made Marle’s life a living hell until them.
Now it was happening again, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. The brushes covered both her underarms, swishing back and forth from underneath her bicep, across the curved hollow and down to the side of her breast. Marle could feel each bristle, hundreds of them, gliding over her soft skin, scraping ever so gently.
For Marle, it was like her armpits were on fire. Countless tickles, exploding on her skin. The electric sensation quickly overwhelmed her and Marle’s laughter grew and grew.
“HE EHEH E eheh EHE e ehHEHEHEHEH NAAWWOOOO HEHE Ee ehe EHE WHHHYYHEH EHEHHE EHEHEHEHEH EHEH WHHHHYYYYYY EHEHEH EHEHEHEHE EEH eeheHEHEH etickkkllehehehheh TICCKKLLEHEHE EHEHEH MEHEHH EHEHEH EHEHEHE!!!!!!!!!!!!”
With Marle’s hands fused to the metal sides of her prison, she had virtually no wiggle room at all. Rope or even chain would have had some slack to it, but as she was bound, the princess could barely lean her body an inch forward or backward and nothing to the side. There was nothing she could do even to lessen the tickling even for a second.
To make things even worse, the brushes started moving faster, forcing Marle to laugh harder and harder. Now it was as if the bristles were skating over an icy pond at great speed. She could feel the lines they were leaving on her flesh, long, red marks.
Without even being aware she doing it, Marle began to beg in the midst of her hysterical cries, the same pleas she had made that cruel governess long ago.
“HA HAHAHAHHAH PLEEAASSEEAAH!!! AHAHAHHAHH MEERCYYY MAAAHAHAH MAAAAAMMMMMM HA AHAHAHAHHAH!!!! I’LLL BEH HAHA AHH AHA I HAHAHAH BEEEHAHAHAHAHH BEEEHEHE EHEH A GOOODD HAHAHHHAH GIRRLLLL!!! HAHAHAHH GOOOODDDD HAHAHAH GIRLLL HAHAH!!!!!!!!”
Eventually, the tickling ended. When it did, Marle could only hunch over, gasping for air. Every muscle in her stomach and chest hurt. Sweat was rolling off her cheeks and shoulders. Never in her life had she been so exhausted.
When Marle started to become aware of her surroundings, two things became apparent. One was that the brushes hadn’t gone away. They were still nestled in the exact center of the deep hollows under her arms, as if just waiting to begin torturing her again.
The second was that there was a face staring at her. The concave wall facing Marle had revealed itself as a monitor, and on it was the face of her best friend Lucca.
“I thought everything would be perfect after we destroyed LAVOS and saved the world. Boy was I wrong,” Marle thought as she wandered past the abandoned wooden structures with only the moonlight to show her the way. Everything was so boring now, with only her duties as Princess Nadia to keep her busy. Marle found herself spending her time decorating the castle, overseeing the domestic staff and planning the next Royal Ball.
The life she’d sworn she’d never live. That was why she’d run away in the first place.
At first, of course, things had been different. They’d been heroes, all of them, Crono, Frog, Robo, Ayla, Lucca and even Magus. Most especially Crono. The Moonlight Parade had been one of the highlights of her life. Then to top it all off, Crono had been named heir apparent by King Guardia, provided he marry an “appropriate” woman. That could have only been her, of course, and so she became engaged. Talk about exciting!
It hadn’t lasted. Frog, Robo, Ayla and Magus had gone back to their own times. Lucca had gotten all wrapped up in some new project. And Crono, her betrothed, was so busy learning how to govern, that he had no time for her. Honestly, he was spending so much time with her father and the chancellor, she couldn’t remember the last time Crono had really talked to her!
Things had been so much more exciting back when they were fighting not just for their own lives, but for the very survival of the planet. Everyday, She and Crono and the rest and faced another, even more challenging foe. Death had always been a very real possibility. It had been terrifying, but those days had a flavor to them that the present just couldn’t match.
Maybe it had been because, for the first time in her life, Marle had been important not because of her beauty. Her companions hadn’t needed her because of her pretty face, slender body or long, blond hair. No, it had been her Ice magic, freezing the cold blooded reptites, her healing magic and her bow that had earned her respect. She’d been valued by her friends for reasons that had nothing to do with being a beautiful princess.
Now, that was over. She was just Princess Nadia again. Her only job to be a pretty bauble of the arm of the future king.
So Marle had taken to coming here, the site of the Millennial Fair, almost every night. The fair had ended months ago, the crowds and vendors long gone, but the memories lingered, and the memories were all she had. Over there was the circle track that the runners must have gone around a thousand times, apparently having nothing else to do but race from morning to night. And that was the table that some jerk had kept his lunch on, the lunch that Crono always insisted on stealing. Boy, that one almost came back to bite him! Even such silly memories made Marle smile.
In the center, had been Queen Leene’s bell. Right in front of that was the spot she and Crono had met. Her shoulder was still a little sore from that meeting on rainy nights. Why couldn’t they have a less painful meeting story?
And the empty field that had held Norstein Bekkler’s lab. It was there Marle had insisted on holding onto hope when all seemed lost. Why couldn’t she do that again?
A cold wind, strong enough to blow her blond hair askew if it hadn’t been in its trademarked ponytail, started blowing, pulling Marle out of the past. She was considering going back to the castle when she heard a strange bit of music coming from the back of the fairgrounds. It was faint, so faint that Marle couldn’t have told you when it started. She might have dismissed it as wind blowing through the trees if it hadn’t been achingly familiar. Almost without thinking, Marle headed in that direction.
She walked away from the lights of the nearby village until they were lost behind the trees, following the path to a clearing at the very edge of the fairgrounds. She heard the song before she saw its shiny metal body.
“They call me Gato. I have metal joints. Beat me up. And earn 15 silver points.”
Gato was a robot built by Lucca as a combat simulator. She and Crono had fought it many times while they waited for Lucca’s ill fated teleportation experiment to start. Battling the metal creature had not only allowed them both to begin building their battle skills, the silver points they won had been exchanged for gold which bought their first weapons and armor. Nobody would have guessed it at the time, but Gato had proved an invaluable, and convenient, first step toward saving the world.
Marle was surprised Lucca had left her creation here. True, it was primitive. Lucca had built Gato before going to the future and seeing the stylish and self-aware robots there. Gato’s body was nothing more than a giant ball. Stubby arms and legs jutted out with little in the way of shoulders or waist to make a graceful transition. Its head was nothing more than an old helmet with twin, glowing yellow eyes underneath.
But Lucca tended to think of her inventions as her children. She was almost obsessive in taking care of them. Why would she abandon Gato?
Marle was so concerned about her friend, she almost missed the high pitched bell that signaled Gato had entered “Battle Mode”.
The circle hatch on Gato’s stomach opened, and an extendable arm with a boxing glove on the end shot out. Marle threw herself to the side, feeling the breeze as the glove passed inches over her head.
Damn! Now Gato was malfunctioning! She’d have to disable it before it hurt somebody. That would be difficult without one of her bows, but Marle wasn’t really worried. She had defeated enemies hundreds of times more powerful than this during the quest using nothing but her magic. She just hoped she could do it without destroying the metal man.
It had been months, however, since Marle had done so much as make an ice cube, so it took her a minute to get “in touch” with her abilities. That was enough time for Gato to make another attack. It moved its microphone up to its mouth.
Marle knew that Gato was about to unleash its sonic attack. She had felt it several times before, and grit her teeth. It wouldn’t really hurt her, but it could sting like nails on a chalkboard.
When the sound came, however, it was louder and more powerful than anything Marle had experienced before. A high pitched wall of cacophony slammed into her, making her cry out in pain and cover her ears. Any thought of magic slipped way.
The princess could only lie there, bright lights exploding in front of her eyes and her muscles refusing to obey her brain. Marle could barely see Gato’s hatch open again and that third arm strike out. She steeled herself for the blow.
But this time, instead of a boxing glove on the end of the arm, there was a hook. It caught Marle’s shoulder, and pulled her inside. Before she knew what it her, the Princess was swallowed by metal and darkness.
Soon, a dim red light flickered on. Marle could see she was inside of a steel sphere. It was too small a space to stand, sitting cross legged, Marle’s head was only inches from the ceiling. She shouted for help, but knew there was no one close enough to hear anything even if sound could escape her iron prison.
Then Marle heard a buzzing sound, and the sphere she was in started shrinking. The sides, ceiling and floor were all closing in. She’d be crushed! Out of desperation, Marle reached out her arms, fingertips touching the curved walls to her left and right, and began to push with all her might.
Marle knew it was futile. She could feel the slow pressure, pushing back against her arms. There was no way she was strong enough. Why, oh why, couldn’t she be Ayla or Robo! Soon the walls were close enough that she could put her palms flat against the metal surfaces. Marle straightened her arms and locked her elbows. Sonn her muscles grew tired of pushing.
Suddenly, without warning, the buzzing stopped, and so did the walls. The princess had somehow been saved from being crushed. So relieved was Marle, that she didn’t notice the steel grow warm under her touch.
Marle was still trying to calm herself and think of a way out of her cage when a couple of small holes opened up in front of her. Two metal arms,about as thick as a broom handle, came out. Each one had a circular brush, about two inches wide, on their end. The brushes looked like the one her father used to shave with.
She screamed again and tried to bring her arms into some kind of defensive position. It was then that Marle realized her hands were stuck to the sides of the sphere. Pull as hard as she could, nothing could free them. It was as if her skin had bonded to the metal.
As the armss grew closer, Marle again forced herself to calm down. She focused on her simplest ice magic. That would stop them.
The brushes struck first
King Guardia had always hated the white top Marle was wearing, which was probably the reason she wore it.. It barely covered her chest, leaving both her arms and shoulders bare. Robo had stated once that it defied the laws of gravity, leaving Lucca to joke that it must have been held up by sheer willpower.
The brushes nestled in Marle’s exposed underarms. The bristles were firmer than Marle had expected and felt prickly on her delicate skin. When they started to caress her armpits, the princess’s reaction was immediate.
“Hehe ehe eheheheheh ehWHATTA hehe ehehehe ehe nawoooooheheh eheheh!!!!! Stawwwpp heh heheh eheheheh!!!!” the blond princess giggled, “Can’t he eheh eheheh dodooohohohoo heh ehheh thissssssesesheee eehe tohohohoho mehehehhe hhehehhehe….”
Despite having a musical, almost lilting laugh, Marle hated being tickled. She had been incredibly ticklish as long as she could remember. One of the best parts of being princess was that it shielded her from such attentions. That wasn’t always the case, however. A governess had found put about Marle’s weakness during the princess’s even more rebellious teen-age years. She had decided that, since nothing else was working to control the hellcat, maybe tickling would.
For a while, every time Marle broke a rule, she had been tormented by the governess’s talented fingers. It was five minutes of belly tickling for a messy bedroom. 5 minutes of tickling on her ribs for breaking curfew. Her feet had been the worst. Once she had even gotten half an hour of toe tickles for kissing a commoner boy. Eventually, she had managed to get the governess fired for some made up offense, but the woman had made Marle’s life a living hell until them.
Now it was happening again, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. The brushes covered both her underarms, swishing back and forth from underneath her bicep, across the curved hollow and down to the side of her breast. Marle could feel each bristle, hundreds of them, gliding over her soft skin, scraping ever so gently.
For Marle, it was like her armpits were on fire. Countless tickles, exploding on her skin. The electric sensation quickly overwhelmed her and Marle’s laughter grew and grew.
“HE EHEH E eheh EHE e ehHEHEHEHEH NAAWWOOOO HEHE Ee ehe EHE WHHHYYHEH EHEHHE EHEHEHEHEH EHEH WHHHHYYYYYY EHEHEH EHEHEHEHE EEH eeheHEHEH etickkkllehehehheh TICCKKLLEHEHE EHEHEH MEHEHH EHEHEH EHEHEHE!!!!!!!!!!!!”
With Marle’s hands fused to the metal sides of her prison, she had virtually no wiggle room at all. Rope or even chain would have had some slack to it, but as she was bound, the princess could barely lean her body an inch forward or backward and nothing to the side. There was nothing she could do even to lessen the tickling even for a second.
To make things even worse, the brushes started moving faster, forcing Marle to laugh harder and harder. Now it was as if the bristles were skating over an icy pond at great speed. She could feel the lines they were leaving on her flesh, long, red marks.
Without even being aware she doing it, Marle began to beg in the midst of her hysterical cries, the same pleas she had made that cruel governess long ago.
“HA HAHAHAHHAH PLEEAASSEEAAH!!! AHAHAHHAHH MEERCYYY MAAAHAHAH MAAAAAMMMMMM HA AHAHAHAHHAH!!!! I’LLL BEH HAHA AHH AHA I HAHAHAH BEEEHAHAHAHAHH BEEEHEHE EHEH A GOOODD HAHAHHHAH GIRRLLLL!!! HAHAHAHH GOOOODDDD HAHAHAH GIRLLL HAHAH!!!!!!!!”
Eventually, the tickling ended. When it did, Marle could only hunch over, gasping for air. Every muscle in her stomach and chest hurt. Sweat was rolling off her cheeks and shoulders. Never in her life had she been so exhausted.
When Marle started to become aware of her surroundings, two things became apparent. One was that the brushes hadn’t gone away. They were still nestled in the exact center of the deep hollows under her arms, as if just waiting to begin torturing her again.
The second was that there was a face staring at her. The concave wall facing Marle had revealed itself as a monitor, and on it was the face of her best friend Lucca.
