Inverse System

"Elaine, You're awake!" Lance jumped out of his seat in excitement.

"Where… Am I?" She uttered as her eyes scanned around the room.

"You're in my room. Are you okay? Does your body feel okay?" Lance asked in concern.

"I'm… I'm fine… What happened..?" She said as she rubbed her head and sat up.

Without answering her question, Lance broke out into tears and pulled her into an embrace, hugging her tightly.

"I'm so glad you're okay… You have no idea how worried I was," Lance wept.

"Why am I in your room? Just what happened to me?"

"You… Almost died. But thankfully, Rein was there to heal you up. I owe that guy the world…" Lance explained as Elaine wore a troubled expression, the confusion about Lance still lingering in her heart.

"Why did you come for me?" She asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I thought that you didn't want to interact with me. I thought you wanted to leave me out of your 'revenge', and your sudden change in personality. What's with you?" She remarked, taking her pent-up anger out.

"Oh… I never meant to—"

"I don't care what you meant to do! Your actions, your way of speech, your attitude… They're not the Lance I know… Not the Lance I grew to love…" She voiced, her eyes beginning to well up with tears as she looked away from Lance.

"Elaine…"

"You made me feel like an idiot… And idiot for ever loving you… I thought you grew to hate me… So why..? Why did you come looking for me..?"

"Let's get one thing clear. No matter what happens, Elaine, I love you. Nothing has ever changed that. The way that I treated you for the past month, the way that I've been acting… I'm sorry for it all… Right now, all I want is to be by your side again, laughing and adventuring. I want to view the world from a different perspective than I do now… And that's only possible with you," Lance confessed as he grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her back around, her face glowing a bright crimson red as the tears that dripped down reflected.

"I'm sorry… I shouldn't have gone off on my own… and thank you for coming back for me… I love you, Lance…"

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"Man, this is some good ass food! My compliments to the chef!" Quint exclaimed in pure bliss, briefly catching his breath before digging back in.

"I don't need your compliments, you seat stealing monkey…" Lillia muttered inaudibly under her breath.

"Hm? You say something?" Quint popped his head back up, talking while his face was stuffed with food.

"Don't talk with food in your mouth you pig!"

The group broke out into a fit of laughter, carried by the light atmosphere that quickly invaded the room, which left as quickly as it came.

"I don't like being the one to bring down the mood, but we should discuss our next moves. The Orthlys government has been pretty quiet over this past month, which is leading me to think that they're planning for something big. Princess, have you heard anything from Zane?" Sho interjected as the laughter came to a stop.

"No, I haven't heard from him since last he visited. I'm worried something may have happened to him…" She said in a concerned voice.

"I'm sure he's fine. But knowing that idiot, he's probably just sucking up to his father and forgot to give us any info. I knew he'd be useless to rely on," Sho bit his lip in anger.

"Wow Sho, you've gone all war prince mode on us. What brought this on?" Rein joked lightheartedly.

"Rein, please, this isn't a joke. We may be facing the resumption of the war," Sho sternly replied, Rein putting his drink down, his smile disappearing from his face.

"I'm aware."

"Zane is the prince right Chloe? Your brother? I remember him from when he showed up in Lifah, and when he showed up in the preliminary tournament. He was staring at me for a little bit for some reason. Maybe he recognized me?" Emria hypothesized.

"No, he never saw you that day. That day, the guy was driven by pure emotion. He didn't even give Rein the benefit of the doubt, despite him only being a small child. I always found that weird about the guy," Core surmised.

"Regardless, I think our next move should be to get in contact with Zane and learn information about the government's movements" Sho suggested, Rein shaking his head in negation at his plan.

"That's a pretty stupid idea," Rein claimed, which slightly angered Sho.

"Wha? And why's that?"

"Come on, the entire thing relies on the fact that the prince would give us that info. Have you forgotten the difference in your positions? He's the prince of Orthlys while you're the prince of Econica. Why would he tell you government secrets? He only gave us a warning of what's to come last time, and it's not like his warning even came true. To put it simply, there are too many holes in that plan," Rein picked it apart, Sho's plan being too unreliable for his taste.

"I don't believe that he was trying to deceive us last time. He seemed genuinely worried for the princess's safety, and he would not have come all the way here to give us false information that wouldn't even benefit him," Clyde concluded, Rein nodding his head in agreement.

"Yes, he wasn't trying to deceive us, you're right about that. So then why did his warning never come to pass? If his warning was honest and genuine, then what exactly happened? Chloe, you said he hasn't contacted you in the past month. Is that unnatural for him to do?" Rein interrogated, asking the girl who sat right next to him.

"Yeah, usually he sends me letters at least once a week when he's away. I think this may be the longest I've gone without any contact with him. But as Sho said, he's probably not in any danger. He's stronger than me after all," Chloe stated, Rein closing his eyes as he was about to say something that would put worry into everyone's hearts.

"No, Chloe, I'm fairly certain your brother's been kidnapped and silenced," he claimed, which widened the eyes of everyone in the room, and dropped Chloe's heart.

"Wha— What do you mean? Why?"

"It's the only logical explanation. Why would he feed us false information like that? The only explanation is that he was also fed false information. He was set up, made to believe that Orthlys would attack the gulf. That was all a ruse to lure him out of the capital, where they could safely detain him. This is backed up by the fact that I sensed a battalion of soldiers above the gulf when the prince left, but when I got up there, they were all riding off in the distance, away from the gulf," Rein informed.

"And why is that strange? The prince was leaving, so he was riding away with his troops," Quint asked curiously.

"Well, everyone that was there saw it. When he walked into the preliminary arena to try and get Chloe back to the capital. How did he depart that day? Was it by horse?" Rein said, trying to make the group think back.

"No, if I remember correctly, he grabbed onto his knight's shoulder and vanished into thin air," Clyde recalled.

"That's right. So then why would he be riding back? And with such a large army as well?"

"Maybe his knight wasn't with him? It seemed like his visit was off the book, so maybe he came by himself?" Quint thought, Rein shaking his head in negation once again.

"He said it himself. He said that his knight was waiting for him above the gulf, so we can rule that possibility out. I grew a little skeptical about the situation that day, but I put it at the back of my mind. Now that Chloe said that he hasn't contacted her since his visit, I'm almost certain that something happened to him that day," Rein said as Chloe's worried expression worsened, grabbing onto Rein's collar in desperation.

"What do we do! If he's in trouble, we can't just sit here! We have to help him somehow!" She panicked as she yelled in Rein's face.

"Calm down. We don't even know where they've taken him yet. But if there's one thing I'm certain of, the Queen is definitely behind this," Rein concluded, Chloe's rage growing.

"The Queen again… I'm going to make her pay…" Chloe let go of Rein's shirt and clenched her fist.

"But it's as the princess said. What do we do? There must be a reason they locked him up, right? If that's the case, we should rescue him," Sho deduced.

"Right. Our next objective should be to rescue Prince Zane from the Orthlys government's clutches. As to how we do it, I may already have a few leads…"