A/N: A much longer delay on this chapter, but here it is! I changed the format of the robot names for this chapter - Guts Man instead of Gutsman - to see which works better. Still undecided, but I'll probably go forward with the new format for now. Also, though I hope to get more written at a faster pace then I have been, if nothing else I plan to work on this for NaNoWriMo this year, so I'll have most of the story finished before the end of the year. Then again, with the amount of content I have rolling around my head, this story could end up being my longest yet.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it! Let me know!

Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VI or any of its characters or rights. Nor do I own Mega Man or its setting.

Chapter 3

Silence filled most of the trip back to the Edgar's lab. Celes still had questions, but there would be no shortage of things to discuss now. Might as well get it all out at once after they settled in. Some time to think over Guts Man's disappearance didn't hurt either.

After landing on the roof of Edgar's building, Relm set about locking it down. The girl was amazingly competent for her young age. Celes could almost forget there wasn't a veteran pilot at the controls – until Relm opened her mouth. The girl was very good at acting her age.

Once the craft's hatch lowered, Celes headed out first. "I'm going to put the suit back," Celes said. "Will you be in the main lab?"

Edgar nodded, the motion slow and distracted as he looked elsewhere. "That's fine, your clothes should still be in there for you to change into." She rolled her eyes – he didn't answer her question – but headed down to the suit's holding room.

#

Once the suit was locked away in its capsule, Celes found Edgar in his lab, tapping away the computer console. He didn't seem to notice her arrival, so she slipped up behind his chair and peered over his shoulder at the computer screen. Text flew across it as Edgar's fingers danced over the keyboard, and she skimmed over the words. It looked like a log. She caught Guts Man and Bomb Man referred to, and something about – was she reading that right?

"Evolving?" Celes was somewhat gratified to see Edgar jump clear of his seat at her voice. "Robots don't evolve."

"Celes! I-" Edgar glanced between her and the screen. The tension eased from his face as he sighed. "Well, I was going to talk to you about this anyway. Please, have a seat."

From anyone else, being told to sit before a conversation would've worried her. Edgar though didn't know how to be anything but the gentleman. "Alright," Celes said as she moved a stack of books and claimed their chair, "so talk."

Edgar cleared his throat. "Well... since you're not really part of the scientific community, you should know it's been my goal for years to develop a more advanced robot then those we're used to seeing around the city."

"Advanced how?"

"In every way," he said with a wide movement of his hands. "Ability, durability, competence, intelligence. I wanted to make robots that could go places and do things far too dangerous for humans. Robots who could learn and improve, maybe even move beyond their initial skill sets." A glow of enthusiasm lit his face as he spoke. "Robots who could even teach others! Imagine!"

Celes frowned – after seeing two such robots, she could imagine it all right. "You're talking about artificial intelligence."

"That was the idea, yes. Robots that needed no interface or instruction from an outside source. It's been the one greatest flaw across robotics – the inability for them to make the kind of important, snap decisions humans do every day. The kind that save lives and mark the difference between us."

"And the kind that are impossible for robots to make," Celes added. "People have been trying to create an AI for decades and more, I'm not so out of the loop that I wouldn't know that, but it's supposed to be impossible. No matter how well programmed it is, a robot still acts according to it's programming. Not its own thoughts."

Edgar nodded, conceding the point. "That is the difficulty, yes."

In the silence that followed, Celes looked at him. "But you think you've done it." His smile was answer enough. "How?"

"By finding a different way." He spun back to his computer and pulled up new screens. Lines of code flashed into view. "I keep track of all of my creations through the net. Now I can't see much, but I do have viewing access to their base programming. The code here on the left is Bomb Man's original code, as I wrote it," he pointed it out as he spoke, then shifted to point at the other text window, "and on the right is his code the day we encountered him."

It was all a mess of words on a screen to her, none of it making any more sense then any other part. Still, it didn't take a genius to grasp as what Edgar was pointing out. "They're completely different," Celes muttered before snapping her gaze down to his. "Is this even the same part of the code?"

"As close as I can make it," Edgar confirmed. "I focused on the same base block of code in each, not the line since there's far more lines in Bomb Man's new code. Even this single section is different enough that it was hard to find and compare."

"Someone changed it then," Celes said with a frown. "But what does that have to do with anything."

"No," Edgar said, holding up a finger against her protest. "As I said, these robots are stronger then that. I designed them to be completely impervious to outside influence after activation. Their core systems are isolated and untouchable."

"So..."

"So," he continued, "they weren't altered by an outside influence. They changed of their own accord."

She blinked at him. "Edgar, that's impossible. You can't expect me to believe that you developed some sort of sentient, super code."

"Well, no," he admitted with a loud sigh. "I can't take credit for that really. After all, programming isn't the aspect of robotics that I most excel at. I'd hardly call myself better then my top peers in the field."

The man made less and less sense by the second. "Edgar," she growled, feeling her patience slip, "get to the point."

"Here, let me show you." The windows of code collapsed from the screen and a new image jumped up to replace them, a simple, winding chain of colors. It was all sharp edges and blocky connections, like some image out of a history of computing book. With all that though, something about it struck a familiar cord. "Looks like something you should recognize, right?"

Her eyes flicked to him for a moment before returning to the screen. "What is it?"

"Maybe this'll help." The image shifted aside as a new one opened beside it. A similar strand of colors threaded across the new image, but where the first chain was full of edges and bends, the second wound and twisted like ropes.

"That's a DNA strand." Edgar nodded as she spoke, and she looked back to the other picture. Seeing it side by side with the clear DNA image changed how she looked at it, and the similarities between the two jumped out at her. It was like they were the same picture, only one was distorted and warped through a multitude of filters. "So what is that one?"

"That," Edgar said, emphasizing the word, "is from a sample of the metal I used to create my new line of robots."

Her breath caught. "Wait- you're saying that your metal – and the robots you made with it – have DNA?"

"Not exactly?" Edgar shrugged. "The similarities are clearly there, but I can't justify saying they're the same with any certainty."

"Damn your certainty, Edgar!" Celes snapped as the implications rolled over her. Edgar froze and blinked at her, taken aback. "You're telling me – just now telling me – that your robots are what- basically human? Robots don't have DNA, Edgar!"

"Celes-"

"Stop!" Celes jumped from her stool and sent it clattering across the floor. Her teeth clenched as tension thrummed through her body. "Never again. I swore that I would never again blindly hurt others, and you- you manage to trick me into basically murdering someone! In less then a week!" Her chest heaved with ragged breaths as the words washed over her, registering in a way they hadn't when she said them. Celes slumped back against a table.

Everything made sense now – Guts Man's anger at being attacked, Bomb Man's refusal to let them take his memory away, and even the other man's insistence that Bomb Man was so much more then a simple robot. They'd walked in there and demanded something they never had a right to. What had they done?

"Celes," Edgar's soft voice carried through the silence and she looked up. "Please believe me when I say I never intended or imagined that events would go as badly as they did. And after Bomb Man attacked, everything happened so fast, and..." Edgar sighed. Blonde bangs slipped over his eyes as his head fell. "Bomb Man was one of my first new creations. One of the first of his kind."

Celes didn't respond to that – what else was there to say about it? Her breathing slowed as the moment slipped passed, and her temper cooled with it, leaving her looking at the slumped posture of a man who bore his pain in silence. It wasn't difficult to recognize – she saw it often enough in the mirror.

"Why didn't you look into it more?" Celes asked, her words a vast change from before. The gentle tone surprised her even as she spoke it. "Before this all happened?"

"It's been more then a year since the first new robot when into active service," Edgar answered. "I've watched each over their time in the world. Visited and repaired them." He shook his head. "There was never any indication of this level of personality or sentience before. Their code changed over time as they adapted to the world and their work, but nothing more."

She cocked her head. "Why didn't you at least tell me?"

A smile tugged at his lips. "Would you have believed me without seeing it for yourself?"

He had a point there. Living robots? With thoughts and feelings? It was like a bad science fiction movie. "Still, the way I treated them-"

"Bomb Man wasn't your fault," Edgar cut in. "He attacked and tried to kill us, that was his first response, and that he attacked us at all was because of my decisions. You did nothing but protect us."

It didn't feel that way, and her gut twisted as she thought back to the encounter. Robots were tools, and Celes had plenty of experience putting them out of commission. If these new ones were some sort of artificial life form though...

"Enough," Celes muttered before forcing the feelings down with a deep breath. Even if it everything changed how she saw these robot masters, it didn't change their aggressiveness. Just being alive didn't make them good or bad.

She turned back to Edgar and shoved the mixed feelings away. "This special metal, where'd you get it?"

"From my supplier out in Gigantis."

Her brow shot up. "That mining city out in the middle of the ocean?"

"That's the place."

A thought struck her – several in fact – and Celes scowled. "That's not even an island, it's a man made mining platform grown into a city. You're telling me someone just happened to build a city on top of a source of living metal out in the middle of the ocean?"

Edgar shrugged. "Of course it can't be a coincidence, something must've led them there."

"It's not just that," Celes argued. "That city's been there since- I don't even know when."

"About five years ago. Not long after I started development on my robot masters."

Five years. Right about when she left the military. "Only five years?"

"It's not much of a city."

Edgar would know better then her, so Celes let it drop with that. Still, five years wasn't much time, barely enough to start attracting residents – and out to the middle of the ocean no less. Not that its population really mattered. Whoever controlled the place had an interest in the special metal there, so what were they doing with it? Other then giving it to Edgar. Another frown crossed her face. "Who else has this metal?"

"Nobody," Edgar replied. "My supplier wanted to limit its spread until they knew what it was capable of. They sought me out for that purpose."

"Out of the entire scientific community, they chose you," Celes drawled. "You don't think that's the least bit suspicious?"

"Out of everyone who competed, I chose you," Edgar mimicked with a smirk. "Should you be suspicious?"

"A bit, actually." Edgar blinked at her response – he likely didn't expect that. "But fine, we'll forget that for now. Who's your supplier?"

He hesitated. "I don't think I'm supposed to tell people that."

"Edgar-"

"But I know – bigger problems." Celes fumed at the grin playing over his face. He was playing with her. "I've never met him in person though, I only know him by his first name: Leo."

Celes froze. It couldn't be the Leo she knew, and why would it be? Tons of people could have the same name. Just because this Leo had chosen Edgar out of all possibilities to work with – Edgar, who then chose Celes out of all possibilities to work with. It was too many coincidences, and she feared she knew the answer even before asking. "Edgar, do you have any connection to Katellox Island?"

Surprise flashed over his features. "Uh- Yes. Yes, that's where the Refractors come from."

Celes groaned and slumped into her seat – which turned into a less then graceful collapse to the floor when she remembered she'd knocked the stool away earlier. She blew out a sigh and stayed where she landed. Of course. Since the day she left the military, she'd always felt it went too smoothly, that they let her leave too easily. Damn that man.

"Umm, Celes?" Edgar's voice broke through her thoughts and she raised her head. A smile tugged at her lips when she saw his confused face. Celes could only imagine what she looked like right then, and a helpless giggle bubbled up and slipped past her lips. It was all ridiculous – everything connected together – and none of it was a laughing matter, yet as Edgar's brow rose higher she couldn't help it. She covered her mouth as she tried – and failed – to stop laughing.

Then the lights went out.

Emergency lighting switched on before she had a chance to move, the dim yellow lighting doing little to banish the shadows from the previously well lit room. Celes stayed crouched low to the ground, her body reacting to the new situation and pushing other concerns aside.

When she spoke, even her whispered voice sounded loud in the absence of machine noise. "Edgar, what's going on?"

Edgar spun back to his computer, tapping at it to no effect. "The power's out," he answered, his voice grim as he stood and headed toward the back door. "Come on."

Though he didn't run, his fast stride wasn't far off. Celes rushed to catch up. "How does your power just go out?'

"It doesn't."

Celes cursed. "What about backup systems? You must have some other form of security!"

He swung open a wall compartment near the door and hauled out a... something large enough that he hefted it in both hands. It had a trigger and a barrel though so it wasn't hard to make a general guess, even if it was the strangest looking gun she'd ever seen. "Of course I do," he said, looking back at her with a grin. "You're it." Celes stared at him and he shifted into a shrug. "With my assistance, of course."

"Of course," Celes muttered, then gestured at his gun. "I don't suppose you have one of those for me?"

"Afraid not, we'd have to get down into storage to find you anything like it- oh, allow me." He waved her off as she tried to tug the door open, then leaned on his weapon and pulled something from his belt. A few button presses later, the large robot she'd seen in his lab before stood from where it was hunched in the corner. It crossed the dark room without trouble, dug its metal fingers into the door frame, and forced it open.

Celes raised a brow at the sight. Those doors weren't easy to move without power. "Why not bring this thing with us?"

"It's not a combat unit," Edgar replied as he peeked out into the hall. "Wouldn't even know how to throw a punch."

She accepted that without comment, then slipped through the door beside Edgar. Her nerves hummed beneath her skin, and her fingers itched for a weapon. Since she'd started wearing the mega-suit, she didn't even carry a simple blaster with her – where would she put it? "Could we activate the mega-suit if we get to it?"

"It doesn't need an external power source," he said with a nod. "Getting it out of the capsule's a little more difficult, but I can do it."

So no splitting up then. Edgar couldn't use the suit even if he got to it, and Celes couldn't get to the suit without Edgar. Just as well, since he had the only weapon between them. Celes focused as they moved down the shadowed halls, eyes alert as they flashed from one side of them to the next. Thankfully, the complex wasn't large, but in the dark, the hallways seemed endless, and held far too many hidden corners. She felt her lack of weapons acutely.

Questions hung on her lips, but she didn't want to risk breaking the silence around them. If whoever shut the power off didn't already know where they were, she wasn't going to help them. Unfortuntely, neither of them were prepared for stealth, and their boots slapped against the metal floor at a volume that made her wince.

Their goal came into view, the door sitting silent and dark along the wall, and she made a decision. She needed to know. "Who would do this?" Celes asked as they stopped by the suit's storage room.

Edgar's eyes flashed to hers before he set about prying at the door. "I don't have a lot of enemies, if that's what you're asking."

"Must have at least one," Celes said as she slipped in next to him, grabbing the door and adding her strength to the cause.

Edgar grunted, though in agreement or from straining at the door she didn't know. Together they slid the door back on its track maybe a foot or two before he let go, panting hard. Celes managed to keep her breathing even, but her arms ached with the strain. "That wasn't an answer."

It took a moment before be answered, and she heard his breathing even out. "It isn't that easy to knockout my grid, so yes, I have an idea who could've done it." Edgar wedged himself into the door opening. Though he couldn't fit through it, the position would give him better leverage against the door. "But I don't like it."

Celes frowned and took up watching the hall again. She couldn't get in there enough to help him now. "It doesn't matter if you like it, tell me who we're up against."

"Elec Man," Edgar said before he set his jaw and pushed against the door. It ground backwards a few inches before he paused for breath. "He would have the innate ability to enter any electrical system he wanted to." Another grunt as he pushed the door again. "I just don't know why he would."

"Another of your robot masters?"

A nod was his answer as he groaned against the door once more before sliding down in the frame. The opening was wide enough for them to slip through. He looked up to her, his lips parting as if to say something before his eyes went wide. "Celes!"

She threw herself forward as he yelled out the warning, a breath of wind whipping her hair across her face as she ducked and spun. Something had missed her by a scant finger width, and as her spin brought her around in full she saw what it was. A dark figure stood in the hall where she'd been moments ago. Her attacker held a short sword – or a long knife – In each hand and bore a small, bladed weapon with four points upon its forehead. A mask covered all but its eyes, but that little bit was enough to see the enemy for what it was: a robot.

A second later it came on again in a blur of motion her eyes couldn't begin to keep up with. Then Edgar was in between them, the large gun of his hefted in both hands and firing out... darts? They weren't bullets, whatever they were, and they whistled out of the weapon and through the air in a steady stream. Metallic clangs rang out as the robot deflected some of the projectiles with its blades and dodged the rest in a series of flips and spins. Celes watched the display of agility in shock.

"Celes! Go back!" She tore her eyes away at Edgar's shout and she backed down the hallway as her mind caught up with the situation. Edgar followed step by slow step, never letting up on his attack. Though the robot didn't gain ground on them, neither did the distance increase. For each step they took, it followed, warding off the never ending stream of darts with unerring precision.

Until the stream stopped. Edgar's weapon hummed in his hands, but nothing came out. He was out of ammo.

"Time to go!" Edgar turned and ran, and she didn't hesitate to follow. The door back to his lab stood open not ten feet away, but Celes had a feeling it was nine feet too far.

"Give me that!" Celes reached over and tore the weapon from his hands. "Get ready to close that door!" Then she spun around, shoving against Edgar to keep him moving.

The blade came down on her almost before she got her eyes straight, and she brought Edgar's empty gun up to deflect it. Celes spun the weapon, knocking aside her attacker's first weapon and intercepting the second as it darted in low toward her side. Still she gave ground, backing toward the door as the robot attacked over and over, blades flashing through the air. Counter attacking was out of the question, it was all she could do to keep from getting skewered.

"Celes!" Edgar shouted. "Come on!

His voice was too far off though, she couldn't disengage that far. "Just be ready!" she shouted back. A yelp followed the words as a blade slipped through her guard and nicked her upper arm. Celes growled at the slip and renewed her efforts. She took another step back, then another, when the robot pulled back from the clash and dashed forward again in a single motion. Celes jumped back a step – and her shoulder hit the wall. Her footing stumbled and her breath caught. The robot knew that would happen, baited her into it, and now she couldn't steady her guard in time.

"Come on!" A hand snagged her shirt at her other shoulder and yanked, tugging her around the corner she hadn't realized she was on. A blade flashed by as she slipped through the opening, and the door slammed shut on it, pinning the weapon in place. "Hold that door closed," Edgar ordered, and his large robot stood still as a statue against the door. Celes let the weapon drop to her side as Edgar turned to her. "You alright?"

She nodded, "Yeah, thanks. Back to square one though, I guess." Being stuck in Edgar's lab put them closer to outside, if they wanted to walk unarmed out the front door. The other exit from the room was closed, but without the electronic locks it wasn't any more secure then the one being held shut by Edgar's robot, and they didn't have another one of those around. "Are we secure here?"

"Not for long I'd guess," Edgar grimaced and dropped into his computer chair. He gave the screen a few futile taps.

"Is there any other way to get to the suit?"

He spun back to her. "We could technically use the emergency exit tunnel from that room to get back into it, but we'd be stuck with anyone else in the room. Climbing that path isn't fast."

"You think there'll be someone else in there?"

"It would make sense. Why attack us here if they didn't want something? And the suit's the most valuable thing here."

"Other than you," Celes added.

He smiled. "Such flattery, but if they're after me then they're doing a terrible job of it." Sighing, he shook his head. "No, they're here to take something, and knocking out the power tells me it's something here in the building, not in my database."

Celes paced, feeling helpless. She hated being helpless. "Don't you have any more weapons here? Something we can fight past that... ninja-bot with? Why you make something like that anyway?"

"I didn't." Her pacing stalled. "He's not one of mine. And no, my auto-crossbow's the only thing I keep on hand in my lab."

"Auto-," Celes shook her head. "Never mind. What do you mean it's not one of yours? You're telling me someone else out there is making these super robots?" At his nod, her jaw clenched. "You told me only you could make them."

Edgar blew out a loud sigh and stood, walking a couple steps away. He stopped there, hands on his hips. "What do you want me to say, Celes? Apparently I was mistaken." The scowl fell from Celes' face as she stared at Edgar's back. Whenever things went wrong, whenever she yelled at him, Edgar always kept the mood light. She wasn't sure he could get upset, but there was no mistaking the rough edge to his words.

He turned and met her eyes then. "But if they take that mega-suit, they could make more than robots. We have to assume they're smart enough to reverse engineer it – If they can get it out of the capsule." His voice tensed. "We have to get get that suit, Celes."

At first, she said nothing. Her thoughts tripped over one another as they fought for priority, each equally bad. Still, at least she didn't feel like shouting at Edgar anymore. Funny how now that Edgar showed the slightest bit of tension her own melted away. A meager chuckle slipped out as she shook her head. What a pair they were.

"Edgar," she waited until she had his attention, "the suit doesn't matter if they capture or kill us. Even if they recreated the suit, we could stop them, but nobody else understands your tech. We have to get out of here, simple as that."

Edgar shook his head. "You don't understand the things they could do with the mega-suit."

"We don't even know who 'they' are yet," Celes said, "So let's get out of here, track the suit after they take it, and find out who they are. Plus, we'll get the suit back." Shaking his head again, Edgar turned away, apparently not convinced. "I know you can track it, even if you have to build a tracker from scratch, so let's focus on what comes after that – after we get out of here."

"Celes-"

"One fight at a time, Edgar."

He grimaced and fell silent. No sounds came from the hall, so the ninja must've moved on, but there was no way to know if it intended to leave them alone or if it was looking for another way in. Celes didn't want to find out, not under the circumstances.

After another moment, Edgar sighed. "Fine, you're right. There's another exit over here." He cut across the room and started moving crates and cabinets away from the wall. The outline of a door peeked out from behind them.

"Another secret exit?" Celes asked, curious. "In a robotics lab?"

Edgar grunted as he pushed a stack of crates aside. "You never know what'll happen in my line of work."

Her brow quirked. "Your line of work?" Celes repeated. "What, research and development? You're not a spy, Edgar."

"Well, I mean..." he hesitated. "You know what I mean."

"No, don't think I do."

As he cleared the last of the blocks from the doorway, Edgar shook his head. "Never mind, come on." The door swung open on a hinge, with no tech at all, and Celes followed him through. He locked the door – for all the good it might do – before leading the way down the hall they found themselves in. The floor rose with a slight incline, and a bend showed in the distance, marked by more shadows in the dim lighting. The hall must lead straight to street level.

"Edgar," Celes called, voice low.

"Yeah?"

"You remember telling me you were going to stop with all the secrets, right?"

A pause. "Yeah."

"Then why do you have a secret exit?"

With the silence around them, it wasn't hard to hear him sigh from up ahead of her. "Because of a guy I worked with, years ago. We had a disagreement over the project we were working on at the time and went our separate ways. It ended bad, to put it mildly."

She mulled that over. "So much for not having any enemies. You think this guy would come after you?"

"I'm thinking he might have done just that, yes," Edgar grumbled. "I don't know how he could've pulled it off, but I don't know how anyone could've."

"Because you think Elec Man's involved?"

"Right," Edgar said. "If it was just him doing this alone, I could pass it off as whatever awareness is causing the others to riot, though that wouldn't explain why. With this ninja robot in the picture though there has to be someone else involved. No one's more likely then Dr. Wily."

"Dr. Wily?" Had she heard that name before? "Why does that sound familiar?"

A shrug was Edgar's response. "He was a promising scientist back when we were both still learning, but he never gained much widespread acknowledgment. Wily was actually a nickname some of us gave him. He was always cunning and a bit crooked, more concerned with results no matter what it took to get there. Palazzo's his real name."

Celes stumbled, her mind torn to distraction by the name. "Kefka Palazzo?" she shouted, then winced at the way the volume echoed in the corridor.

Ahead of her, Edgar stopped and half turned to blink at her. "You know him?"

"He's a lunatic!" Celes snapped, making sure to keep her voice down. "Why would you have worked with him?" Somehow she kept the presence of mind to shove Edgar forward and keep him walking.

"He wasn't always crazy." Now turned away, Edgar's face wasn't visible and she couldn't see what, if any, emotions crossed it as he spoke of his former partner. "Crooked, but not crazy, and he was brilliant. We made so much progress working together." Edgar shook his head, his long hair swinging over his back. "He still is brilliant, if you can get past his obvious insanity and complete lack of morals."

Kefka, brilliant? Celes frowned at the thought. In all the times she'd seen him, he never struck her as anything more then an unhinged pscyho. It never made sense why Gestahl kept him around – not until Katellox. If what Edgar said about Kefka was true as well, then it made all the more sense. A true mad scientist.

Which reminded her. "Edgar, I need to tell you-" Celes' words tapered off as the lights surged to life around them, illuminating the corridor in both directions. Both she and Edgar halted their steps to look around. "Really?" Celes grumbled. "Now the power comes back?"

Edgar shook his head, looking far from relieved. "No, this isn't a good thing. We need to go." Having said that, Edgar dashed ahead, leaving Celes hurrying to catch up.

"If the power's back, they're gone, right?" she yelled. After the long, stark silence from before, the hum and buzz of of the hallways, combined with their pounding pace, sounded deafening.

"No!" Edgar shouted back. "If they wanted power it probably means they got into my system! Which means-" Edgar bounced back with a grunt as he turned the corner, stumbling into Celes and almost knocking them both down. Celes reached out to steady him, but her eyes were drawn to the wall of energy now blocking the corridor. "-they got the security running."

Sparks of electricity snapped and crackled through the air mere feet from them, and Celes could only stare. "Edgar, why do you have an energy fence in your secret tunnel?"

"To keep people out, of course."

"Out of your secret," she emphasized the word, "tunnel?"

"Never can be too careful," Edgar shrugged.

"Clearly." With a sigh, Celes moved up next to the security fence. It buzzed louder with each step closer, and a couple sparks jumped the distance to her. She hopped back, her hair frizzing and standing out at the ends. "So can we get past this?"

"Luckily for us, the system's made to keep people out, not in." Edgar pulled a small tool from his belt and knelt by the wall. "There's a maintenance panel here. I should be able to reset the fence."

"How long will that take?"

A series of metal clangs echoed through the hall, and they both stopped to look. Small robots – about half as tall of a person – had fallen from the walls and were angling toward the pair. Clamps waved at the ends of their long, cable thin arms, and they rolled down the hall on the round ball that made up their bottom halves.

"Longer then it'll take them to get here," Edgar said before spinning back to work at the panel.

Celes groaned. "What now then?" She scanned the walls for anything – an escape or a weapon – though she knew there was nothing. "Edgar!"

"Calm down," he answered, voice strained. "Just give me one more second- ah, there." Instead of the fence ahead of them coming down, a new fence surged to life behind them, boxing them in. The robots rolled to a stop on the other side a moment later, their clamps snapping at the air.

Celes let out a relieved breath, "That's one way to do it."

"Yeah, but who knows how fast they'll figure out how to override that," Edgar said, focusing on the maintenance panel. "I've almost got through to the other fence. Be ready to run, it won't be down for long."

Celes scoffed. "If it's long enough for you to get through, I'm somehow not worried." Still, she stood as close to the fence as she dared, catching sight of Edgar's flashed grin before she turned away. He could be surprisingly quick for a scientist, and who knew what other gadgets he could have on him. Better just to be ready.

"Almost... Okay!" The energy barrier sputtered and shut off. "Go!"

As the fence vanished, Celes bolted forward. The distance wasn't far, barely four steps, and she crossed it in one short dash, yet she felt the gate snap back into place before she planted her feet to stop, like the worst release of static electricity ever. Her body twitched while she grit her teeth and waited for the discomfort to pass.

Once it did, she rumbled out a sigh that wasn't quite a growl and turned to glare at Edgar, still on the other side of the fence. "Cut that pretty close, didn't you?"

He gave a one shoulder shrug. "I wasn't sure how long you'd have, but listen-"

"Forget it, we need to get out of here. So do it again – right this time – and let's go."

"Celes, I can't. That was doing it right." Squeaking of metal on metal drew their attention as the robots rolled around beyond the second fence. Edgar grimaced. "There's nothing more I can do from here. You have to get out of here and-"

"And leave you?" Celes asked. "You actually think I'd do that to you?"

A grin grew on his face, though her harsh tone of voice was anything but pleasant. "I'm glad you care, but I'm not telling you to abandon me. They won't kill me, not while they can use me. You need to get help before-"

Behind him, the energy fence disappeared and the robots wasted no time circling Edgar, their clamp like hands latching on wherever they could get a grip. Celes jumped forward, but a shock from the fence still active between them sent her back with a yelp. "Edgar!"

He thrashed and tugged, but the robots overwhelmed him, binding and lifting him. As they carried him away he shouted to her, his words carrying down the hall. "Find Axl! He'll help you!"

Then Edgar was gone, and Celes was left alone, staring after him. She waited only a moment before spinning away and tearing down the hall, or what was left of it. Even from there she could see the ladder leading up, though to where she didn't know. Celes jumped up to grab the rungs, skipping the first three or four, and bounded upward. When she hit the cover at the top, she slammed a shoulder against it, flinging it open to crash against the floor above. Then she was up and out, crouched and ready.

Silent streets and fading sunlight greeted her, and Celes let out the breath she'd been holding. That the enemy wasn't waiting for her there meant they didn't know where the tunnel let out, but that wouldn't stay the case for long. Celes slipped down the alley, checked the street, and – on finding it clear of anything suspicious – started off at a controlled walk in what she hoped was the direction opposite Edgar's lab.

She couldn't shake the tense feeling from her nerves, even as she got farther away, but she forced her breathing to slow. Think. Problems always have a solution, focus on that. Not on how many ways everything could go wrong, or what could happen to Edgar, or where Relm was even at...

Celes groaned and shook the thoughts away. Find Axl, that was her goal. Someone in this city must know who that was. Edgar said they'd help, so Celes would find them, and together they'd track these attackers down.

A/N: More characters coming soon! Creative license activated! ^_^