Change had never been a thing I could easily accept.  Change, I rationed, rooted the seeds of doubt and fear that ran rampant amongst the world I lived in, and I had vowed never to let these doubts and inhibitions to damage my life in any way.  As far as I can remember, I had always feared and stayed away from change, avoiding it at every turn.  Only once did I slip, allowing the change around me to interfere with my emotions and my thoughts.  The pain I felt on that day was un-like a pain I would ever experience again.

            So from that day on, I had fought with myself, and with the people around me, to contain myself within my emotions, and within my life.  For three years, I succeeded in doing so, until Crono and Yush decided to destroy everything I’d worked so hard to retain.

            Their arrival changed absolutely everything.  None of the relationships anyone had formed with Cris held any meaning now, as it was quite evident Crono was a totally different person from his other red-haired counterpart.  Crono was more out-spoken, less shy, and far more dangerous than Cris had ever been; in essence, everything I liked about Cris had been washed away in Crono.  Though his allegiance was un-questionable, everything else about the sworded warrior was unknown, and very debatable.  His actions were outright and direct, but the soft, almost reserved way in which he spoke left one to wonder just what his true intentions were.  Deep down though, I knew that my resentment of Crono did not stem from his personality, but form the way he acted around a certain person…

            Nikita and I had, to say the least, a very insecure relationship.  It had started off on the right foot five years ago, when she and I met.  She had been only ten, but was already a very powerful fighter, and I instantly gained her respect.  As she grew up though, I began to find myself looking at her as less of a comrade, and more of a woman.  Then, two and a half years before Crono and Yush arrived, she and I proceeded to get into a fight over who would be the first to test out the then brand new Arena.  We quickly mended our association into a sort of rocky friendship, but soon, I realized that my feelings for her had grown since that fight, and had went far beyond any kind of friendship I’d ever felt before.  She had only been fifteen then, but she was already more physically and mentally mature than any other woman I’d ever meant before.  I tried to hold back my feelings, to keep my thoughts and sentiments to myself, but I found out, very quickly, that that was much easier said than done.  I could tell from the way she looked at me, the way she acted around me, and the manner she conducted herself in, that she did not possess feelings similar to my own, and hence, I told myself to shut these feelings out, and concentrate on the threat that loomed over the horizon.  But instead of suppressing these emotions, they grew stronger, until one day, when I could not hold myself back any longer, and I revealed what I’d been keeping secret for so long.  To say she was stunned would be a very bad understatement; more like shocked and almost horrified.  She was amazed that I saw her in the light I did, and was even more amazed that I would sacrifice our “friendship” in order to tell her what I did.

            Agony would not describe the pain I felt that day, or the ache I would feel for days to come.  But after the suffering had passed, I’d made a vow.  I told myself I would never allow Nikita to be hurt again, to let her fall prey to the very pain she had exposed me to.  I made sure to never let my emotions get the best of me again, and made a conscious effort to distance myself from Nikita, so that she would not expect me to be watching over her, when in fact, I was.  For two long years, I succeeded in my goal, and had managed to re-start the foundation for a new relationship with Nikita; and then Yush arrived.

            Yush and his crew of Caprian’s not only showed me that I could not defend her, but that she in actuality had a far more capable protector already at her side.  And as much as I resented Crono for that, I knew just how much he meant to our group now.  He had a repertoire of attacks far beyond any I’d seen before, and a natural born will to fight, far beyond any I’d ever witnessed before.  In that regards, I had no choice but to give him the utmost respect.  That, however, was where my admiration for him ended.

            Still, that in itself seemed motivation enough for me.  As long as he was physically stronger than I was, I knew that he would only supersede me in Nikita’s eyes.  Thus, I was determined to grow stronger than I had ever dreamed.  If there was one positive effect about Yush’s arrival on Earth (besides his apparent recruitment), was that he showed us just how ragtag our group seemed.  According to the Vannattasanian native, he was actually one of the weaker officers within the army, and that the men under his command were some of the puniest in the army.  This left a huge gap for us to make up, especially if we intended to not only defend the dragonballs, but also put an end to the entire Caprian army.

            This being the case, I knew that the twenty months before they arrived would be the hardest, most intense and difficult year and a half I would ever experience.  To most this would be a daunting task, but after already dealing with similar conditions for the past five years, the challenge ahead of me was far from daunting; more like… exhilarating.

            So as I climbed out of my Capsule Corp. air-car, and out onto the vast expanse of the northeastern greenery, my mind was focused, beyond a level any regular human could match.  I felt the light, fall wind run through my hair, smelt the freshness of the few flowers left remaining, and heard the sounds of the nearby sea crash on the shore.  I looked up into the sky, the blue expanse of light and clouds, and knew that every second they came closer, nearing the world, and woman, I treasured so deeply.

            I leaned back into the air-car, and slowly pulled out the delicate gravity generator.  Immersing myself in ki, I shot out into the center of the field, came to a halt over a flat patch of dirt, and gently placed the fragile piece of equipment down.  Next, I glided across the ground and hopped back into my air-car.  I floored the ignition pedal, and took the car at least twenty kilometres away from my training grounds before flying back to the site of the gravity generator.  As I landed next to the small, box-like hunk of metal and electronics, I found a small gecko climbing over the top of it, instinctively smelling the new invader of his territory.  I picked up the green lizard and gently placed him in the thick of the grass, a few metres away.   Before I turned my attention back to the generator, I closed my eyes, concentrated my ki within myself, and then in a few seconds, released it.

            A surge of invisible, impregnable ki energy shot out from my body in all directions, creating a circular aura of ki exactly ten kilometres in diameter.  The small surge of ki immediately activated the primeval, beyond natural sense of fear in absolutely every animal in the radius of the blast.  As soon as the ki began to dissipate, the grassland around me came to life.  Animals of all shapes and sizes popped up from out of the prairie, their heads whipping in my direction before they shot out of their hiding places and scampered across the field, instinctively fleeing from a presence, a fear not even they could understand.  I realized right then just how powerful a sensation fear was.

            Once I was sure all the living animals capable of fleeing had escaped from the radius of the gravity generator, I checked to make sure my weighted clothes were tightly fit, then bent down and adjusted the read-out of the display screen to 70 G.  I took one last look over the long, expansive prairie, and then flicked the “on” switch.

            The weight of gravity seventy times that of what I’d grown accustomed to crashed down on me.  I was almost floored under the immense weight, but somehow managed to keep my balance long enough for my legs to stop wobbling and grow accustomed to the new force pushing down on me.  Once I was certain I was ready, I slowly pushed up with my legs, finding a resistance I knew all too well.  I breathed in slowly, having complete faith in my training up to this point, while knowing that I would have to go beyond anything I’d ever dreamed of before, just to contribute to the upcoming fight.

            Before I even noticed, the grass all around me was flattened, then crushed, then grounded into tiny rolls of green by the gravity I had put them under.  There were few rocks or mountains nearby, but the few that were also gave way to the huge pressure, crunching down to sizes almost half of the norm.

            Suddenly, something very strange occurred to me.  Perhaps it was because I activated the gravity field so quickly after using my fear-enhancer, or maybe it was something else, but a tidal wave of emotion suddenly came over me.  My mind was pounded with a streak of terrible visions, one right after the other, a horror film un-like any other.  The pictures moved, creating themselves from the thoughts that I hid in the back of my mind.  They formulated a video of the future, of my future.

            The images moved too quickly to discern individual moments, but their message was too clear to miss.  They showed absolutely everything:  The Caprians landing, their slaughter of the people of Earth, the loss of each one of the Z Warriors, the death of the final human being, and the claiming of the dragonballs.  I didn’t question this future, my mind wouldn’t let me.  Somewhere, deep within myself, I knew that this was the future, the only one that could ever occur.  A feeling of dread shot up within me, which soon exploded into full-blown fear.  I fell to the ground, succumbing to the fright and weight.  I rolled on the ground in silent agony, realizing that nothing, absolutely nothing could stop the upcoming turn of events from taking place; not me, not Nikita, not even Crono could save us from this horror, this utter defeat.

            The entire experience lasted only a few seconds, a few short-lived moments of pure terror.  That, however, was long enough to firmly plant the vision within my mind, to allow the fear a foothold in my memories, in my life.

            I remained on the ground, un-willing to get up; seeing no reason why I should.  The future had been set, established in my mind, and I knew I had no means by which to change it.  I laid on the earth for several minutes, the fear causing my heart to beat at in-human speeds, my lungs to contract and expand more quickly than they’d ever done before, and my mind to freeze; turning into a relative ice-cube of emotions down-trodden and paralysed by fear.

            Fear, I then understood, was not something you could fight, and neither was change; the two, more often than not, went hand in hand.  You could not fight them; you could only accept them, or they would defeat you.  I then began to wonder which of the effects they would have on me.