Well, if Final Fantasy 7 can go on here, then I guess this nifty little
crossover will also work. You'll forgive the overemphasis on the other
universe crossing over. And it may take a few more parts before the
mechanics of the crossover become clear enough.

Oh, and the following terms may come in handy: Gold Stud, Doom Scythe,
Steal, Dark Matter, Dark Bomb, Fire 2, Full Tonic, Double Cut, Odin,
Masamune, and Grand Dream. Bonus points if you can point out exactly what
they are and WHERE they come in handy.

****

"What Falcon Hath Wrought"

A work of SquareSoft fanfiction by Glazius Falconar

The legalities, please...

This work and all new characters and situations are copyright ((c)) 1998 by
the author, Glazius Falconar. You can't alter the text in this story without
my permission. The characters, situations, and artifacts from Final Fantasy
VII and Chrono Trigger are copyright ((c)) SquareSoft. You can't charge
money for the express purpose of viewing this story without THEIR
permission. Good luck. H. G. Wells first put forth the concept of the
Internet in a story entitled "Men like Gods". Read it some time, if you can.
And my e-mail's at the end, for whatever reason. But I, like most authors,
will simply laugh disdainfully at any attempts to flame.

****

Home.

Yeah, right.

The arch-mage surveyed the wreckage of his fort, which had been utterly
destroyed when the Black Omen fell from the sky. He was a bit surprised to
find that the great ship was still intact. "Perhaps... she's still in
there," he thought. He steeled his nerves, slicing the eerily glowing scythe
he held through the air a few times and fingering the gold stud in his
ear... just to make sure it was still attached. Wouldn't want to run out of
magic halfway in and be unable to teleport out. If there were still monsters
in there, which he doubted. But it was better to be safe than a smear on the
wall, he mused.

Taking a deep breath, and feeling the magic build deep inside him, Janus
began floating a few inches off the ground. He then took off. Literally.
Slamming his shoulder to the door of the Black Omen, he raced through its
now-deserted halls as quickly as possible.

He was afraid of what he might find at the end...

****
****

"You 'found' it?"

"Yeah. They just left it under some silly glass case, and I thought it was
rather careless of them. I could take much better care of it..." The girl
trailed off, and gazed almost adoringly into the depths of the gigantic
diamond on her lap. "And I did, too."

I sighed in resignation. This was NOT what I expected when I told Bugenhagen
I'd talk with the spirits inside my Materia. I was inside the city in my...
what I perceived as.... Let's take this from the beginning.

Hojo did something to me. I don't know what, exactly, but I'm currently
fused with about twenty-five hundred spirits from inside the Lifestream. And
they're all running around inside this massive network of materia crystal,
which covers most of my body.

Oh, and I'm a six-foot high talking falcon. Amazing what a few billion rads
worth of Mako will do to you.

Anyway, all the spirits sort of... impinge on my subconscious. So when I'm
not concentrating too hard on reality - like when I meditate or sleep - I
travel to the city.

How to describe it?

"Chaotic" would probably be a good word for it. Every spirit has his/her/its
own little residence, fashioned after the way he/she/it wants to live. And
there's a whole ton of vacant property around the edges...

They say the Lifestream is wall-to-wall, almost. I'm just one person; it's
the Planet. Of course, there are probably enough souls with egos or
reputations big enough to take up as much ground as possible, so I guess it
balances out. More or less.

I've got my own little residence set up. Nothing too fancy, really... it's a
carbon copy of the simple hut I live in back at Cosmo Canyon. They were
awfully nice about taking me in; I guess I was a bit too intelligent to be
one of the monsters. There have been more of them as of late; I guess Hojo's
been making improvements to the creation process. But I digress.

Anyway, Bugenhagen said that nobody ever felt more than a faint empathic
bond with the spirits inside Materia. Which is why I'm here: to talk to
them. Find out a bit about their lives. Maybe learn a little more about the
past.

Maybe.

I took another look at the spirit I was currently interviewing. She was a
rather young woman, with short black hair and a black bodysuit that allowed
her androgynous figure full mobility. It was rather obvious that she was a
thief, but she kept insisting that she had only "found" everything in her
house.

The Shin-Ra museum of Ancient History would give about three years' budget
for a tenth of the collection she had here. Of course, it was all just an
illusion, but to her, it was real. Everything she'd ever "found".

"They don't come loose. And I can take care of them just fine, thank you."

"Hmm?" She sat back in her chair, the chisel she'd tried to chip off part of
my Materia with conspicuously absent. I hastily changed the subject.

"Thanks for letting me drop by."

She smiled. "It was nothing. The least I could do. I mean, all this SPACE...
just like the Lifestream, only a bit bigger. And not so many people soaring
over the place, making total fools of themselves when they try and show off.
I don't like show-offs."

I pointed at a rather large cup on the far wall. "So that trophy for
cliff-diving..."

"Oh, he had twenty of them already. And it was getting a bit tarnished, so I
thought he didn't want it anymore..."

I started going through Bugenhagen's standard regimen of questions. This was
certainly an interesting way to find out about the past...

****
****

It was empty. Completely empty.

He'd expected as much. Crono had led them through the halls of this twisted
ship and they had taken out every beast they'd encountered. And deactivated
the security, he thought, as he zoomed past a wall panel which Crono had
taken out with that strange sword of his. He suddenly halted, and gently
floated down to the cold metal deck of the ship. The next door would take
him to the bridge. And to her.

Zeal. His mother. Or what had been his mother, until Lavos got a hold of
her. He remembered seeing her collapse to the deck, and seemingly fade away.
He knew better. He'd used an invisibility spell enough times to understand
the not-quite-rightness of the space where an invisible object was.

He just hoped he wasn't making a big mistake.

He opened the bridge doors, stepped into the glass-domed room, now a mess of
charred consoles, and called out. "Mother? It's me, Janus."

****

"Lavos? Lavos, you came for me, I knew you wouldn't leave me, I knew it,
I..."

Janus paled as his mother crawled from beneath a still-sparking console. Her
regalia was in tatters, her hair a hopelessly tangled mess, and her eyes...
God, her eyes...

She was insane. Channeling the power of Lavos had drained her completely,
and without it, she was helpless.

His mother's eyes stopped their random motion and fixed on him. Janus could
see nothing but hatred. "You... you KILLED HIM!"

Not entirely helpless, he reflected, as he leapt out of the way of a burst
of energy.

"Mother... mother... don't you recognize me? It's Janus... your son... I
came back..."

"DIE!" He barely dodged the burst she fired at him. That had been a lot
closer. A few more and she'd be back...

Janus screamed as the burst ripped through his cloak to strike his chest.

...to normal.

He hated himself for what he was about to do. "Forgive me, Mother," he
whispered, as he began drawing in the magic.

And became Magus again.

****

A tetrahedron of ever-expanding blackness began to form between his hands as
he wove them in arcane patterns. He grimaced, then flung it at the gibbering
lunatic he had once loved. It grew ever larger as his own awful memories
surged to the surface, and soon engulfed that thing he once called Mother in
its infinite depths.

It abruptly shattered, to reveal... what?

She was laughing at him, a maniacal expression covering her features. "Lavos
feeds on shadow. I feed on shadow. You will FEEL SHADOW!"

Magus gasped in shock as a black circle began to form around him. He was
abruptly enclosed in a column of gray energy, reaching halfway to the stars.
The evil inside him delighted at the evil that was surging outside. Don't
fight it, he told himself. That is how it hurts you. Accept it, and it can
do nothing.

Magus had grappled with his own evil far too many times. It knew him
intimately, and he knew it almost as well. It had not won. And the nameless
torrent of vileness that invaded his senses would not win either.

It could not.

It did not.

Magus gave a relieved sigh as the column faded away. His most powerful
spells could not harm the... THING... which stood before him. But the
others...

He waved his arms in the patterns of a simple summoning spell, and a snake
of fire swirled around his body. It danced faster and faster, becoming a
huge chain of fiery rings by the time he released it.

He could not have expected what would happen next.

****

Queen Zeal made no move to defend herself against the torrent of flames. She
had suffered through worse. Far worse. But that was with Lavos's power in
her body. Without it...

"NO!" screamed Janus, as his mother was completely consumed by the fire. He
dropped to his knees and sobbed, watching the last vestiges of his mother's
regalia turn to ash... along with what now passed for her body.

"Mother..."

Janus drew a bottle of healing tonic from the folds of his robe, removed the
wax seal, and drank. Life surged through his body, and the dark fire that
tormented his skin was quenched. He continued to swallow the life-giving
tonic, feeling the mass of blistered flesh on his chest slowly dwindle to
nothingness. And, finally, the pain was gone. His body was identical to the
one that had entered this room a few minutes ago.

His mind, however...

****

Janus knelt over the ashes on the deck, holding back the tears he knew were
waiting for him to lose control. Then, a rather strange idea entered his
head. He looked to the bottle in his hand, then to the pile of ash.

There was still something he could do for her.

****
****

"Head of the Guards?"

"Yes... though I don't really know why. There were many others with far
greater skill than mine..."

I was in a hut, similar to my own back in Cosmo Canyon, talking to a young
warrior wearing finely polished plate armor and wielding a rather impressive
sword. The simple hut he'd made for himself seemed rather ill at odds with
his raiment... but it was not at all conflicting with his personality.

"Perhaps. Could you demonstrate your skill for me?" I concentrated, and a
wooden post suddenly appeared in the middle of the hut. I had some measure
of control over the things of this world, or so it seemed.

The young man nodded, slid his helmet's visor down over his eyes, and took a
deep breath. He drew his sword, holding it as though it were, not a weapon,
but an extension of his body.

Then, he struck.

In three seconds, the post was split into a dozen pieces. Easily.

He resheathed his sword and bowed to me. "I trust that was adequate?"

My beak opened in amazement. "Adequate, nothing. That was absolutely
amazing! I've never seen anyone move that fast."

He shook his head. "Then you have not seen Odin. He trained me for ten years
before he moved on, and my meager skills cannot do justice to his mastery."

"Hmm... tell me more about this 'Odin'."

****
****

"Again I salute thee, Sir Cyrus. Sleep in peace."

Glenn stood from Cyrus's grave, where he had been kneeling in prayer, and
walked through the archway. To think that a few months ago, this place was
little more than a ruin. But now, thanks to a skilled team of laborers - and
an equally skilled team of exorcists, he reminded himself - his mentor now
had a resting-place worthy of the glorious life he had led.

Yes, it's amazing what can be done with the proper repairs, he thought, as
he turned a corner, walked through another archway...

And hopped up the stairs.

He wondered how life would have been different if Magus had never given him
this terrible curse. If Magus had never existed to give him this curse. He
and Cyrus would still be together, in the service of King Guardia and Queen
Leene, and he would never have had to worry about saving the world from
Magus's armies.

And he would never have found the Masamune, become friends with Crono... or
unleashed the full power of his sword to destroy Lavos once and for all.
Life would have been vastly different.

Would it have been better? That was a question he did not know the answer
to.

He stepped outside the Hero's Shrine, and breathed deeply, letting his
heightened senses of smell appreciate the pure, clean air. All was right
with the world.

****

"Glenn?"

Almost all was right.

He turned to face the voice, knowing without even a glance that it was
Magus, webbed hand reaching for the hilt of the Masamune... and paused for a
moment. The look in Magus's eyes...

"Thy countenance betrays thy heart, Magus."

The sorcerer sighed. "I know. And please, call me Janus. That is my name,
after all... Glenn."

Glenn nodded. "Very well, Janus. What troubles thy heart that thou hast
sought my company?"

For answer, the white-faced man withdrew a vial from within his robes. It
looked to be filled with some sort of ash. "My mother. Or what's left of
her." Magus seemed to be... crying? "I knew she wasn't gone when Lavos came
for us, Glenn. I knew she survived, and I thought she'd need my help. I
thought she'd shaken Lavos's hold on her when we finished him off." His head
hung low. "I was wrong. God, was I wrong. She came after me like a thing
possessed, didn't even recognize me... she was just a puppet, Glenn. And, as
much as I didn't want to... I had to finish things."

Glenn shuddered a bit as he took this all in. Magus, his greatest foe for so
long, facing down such evil alone... and finding the strength within himself
to destroy it. "Would that we all had such courage... Sir Janus. My own
mother... she would scarce recognize her own son, but were it to come to
blows... I could not do as you have done."

Janus nodded. "And I wouldn't ask you to, Glenn. Nor would anyone expect you
to... I doubt your mother could turn out to be a maniac like Queen Zeal."

"So why hast thou sought me out, Sir Janus?" asked the frog, still a bit
puzzled about the sudden visit.

The mage smiled a bit in return. "We were all there to see my mother die...
I thought we should all be there to see her buried."

Glenn's mind reeled at the concept. "But... we have no Epoch, no Gate Key.
And, while I do wish to spar with Sir Crono again... I can scarce wait four
hundred years to do so."

Janus nodded. "Yes, I realize that. However..." He began chanting in some
arcane tongue, weaving his arms in a pattern which Glenn swore should have
tied them in knots. Slowly but surely, a hole began to open. A blue hole,
with energy coruscating through the great void beyond.

Glenn's mouth opened in astonishment. "'Tis... 'Tis a Gate! But how...?"

Janus laughed softly. "I am a great mage, Glenn. And I managed to pick up
more than a few things from the books in those cities in the clouds... come
on." He grasped the frog's webbed hand in his purple-gloved one, and leapt
into the hole. "Let's see if Lucca's taken the Epoch apart yet. I hope
not..."

****
****

More to come, naturally. Comments and criticism are welcome.

And yes, I thought it was time someone did a GOOD mainstream Chrono Trigger
fic. If anyone knows of an existing good one, my apologies.

--Glazius