Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters with the exception of Kelke Peatsar. All the other characters in this story belong to Square.

A/N: I'm back! I won't be updating this as regularly, as I have to actually write it, so... yeah. Well. I hope I have as much fun with this as I did in the first one, and I hope you enjoy it too! Farewell, until the next chapter!

ShadowMage

"Give us a look at your hands."

"You'll hurt me."

"Only if they're not healed properly, which may I add was your fault because you made me take the casts off. Give!"

With a sigh, Magus held his hands out to Lucca. What seemed like ages ago but could only be less than a week, an enemy's dying blow had knocked him out and Flea, who was meant to be unconscious itself, had sent him to Ozzie. The others had come to his rescue but not before Ozzie had broken his hands and cut his hair- and an incredibly evil, rather nasty wizard known as Kelke had made him unable to use magic until Magus personally defeated him. Kelke, who originated from another universe and wanted to be the only evil wizard in both universes, did not like Magus one bit.

"Can you move them for me?" Lucca requested.

Carefully, Magus moved his fingers. Each one hurt when he did so. "Are they meant to hurt like that?"

"At least you can move them. Be happy with that," she responded. "Want to try bending them?"

Bending his fingers was pure agony and he decided that he could but didn't want to. "Are they healing properly or not, then?"

"They're not as bad as they could be. You just have to keep being careful," she told him and went to talk to Crono. "How are we going to get Kelke here? If he doesn't come, we can't grab him, if we can't grab him, I can't take something from him, if I don't have something from him, I can't make a Kelke-finder and we don't go anywhere."

Crono shrugged. "Last time he showed up when we had a picnic. We could have another one..."

"No. No, that'd be total picnic overload," Lucca disagreed. "After that second one we had to make up for the one Kelke stole, I think we're all picnicked out."

"Or a party..."

"No! The one we had for Magus' birthday was more than enough to last me for the next three years. No parties. Maybe a picnic if we get desperate. We just need a way to lure Kelke out to this universe."

"What, you mean like... send Magus off alone so Kelke tries to get him, then ambush the evil evil wizard?"

"Yeah. Something like that," replied Lucca uncertainly. She considered his suggestion. "Crazy as that may seem, it just might work. I mean, if you had an enemy who couldn't defend himself against you or even attack you and he was wandering around without anyone else who could stop you, would you attack him?"

"Yep."

"There you go, we can do that. Hmm... seeing as Kelke came back to steal our original picnic basket, maybe we should send Magus out with a sandwich," Lucca mused.

"What? Where are you sending Magus?" demanded Magus sharply. "If you're going to be sending Magus out to places where he might get killed, he would like to know!"

Crono explained quite cheerfully. "We need to get Kelke back into this universe so Lucca can get something from him and make a Kelke-finder, so we can find him and avenge our picnic. Oh, and get you able to use magic again. To do that, we're going to send you off alone and follow behind you, so when Kelke shows up to kill you we can grab him. Sound all right to you?"

"Yep, it's all good. Hang on a minute! I don't think so!" But once again, Magus had agreed without thinking about it. With this group, the moment you agreed to a plan you had agreed to it for life. 'However long that is around this lot,' thought Magus sourly then remembered he was a good evil wizard now and not allowed to be nasty.

There were nine of them now. Crono, Marle, Lucca, Frog, Robo, Ayla, Magus, Schala and Alfador. Lucca had added a seat to the Epoch but still people had to sit on each other's laps in order to squeeze in. They went off to 1000 AD and parked near Lucca's house before wandering off to Guardia Forest. Crono sent Magus in first to wander around a bit, the others following and hiding themselves every few steps.

After about half an hour Magus wandered casually over to a tree, looked up and said, "Crono, it's not working."

Crono shrugged and almost fell out of the tree. He grabbed a branch to steady himself and looked down at Magus. "I don't know, do a bit of a song and dance about wandering alone in the forest or something."

"Okay." Magus wandered off again, stood a distance away and sang: "I'm a good evil wizard currently unable to use magic wandering around by myself in a forest, probably lost, get over here Kelke you nasty evil evil wizard, don't you want to beat me up?" A little self-consciously, he did a jig that had Crono falling out of the tree and rolling around on the grass, laughing his head off. "This isn't working either! You made me do that so you could laugh at me!" Magus accused. "Get back in your tree before I break both your legs."

Schala dropped gracefully out of another tree to go to him. "Janus, being good means that you can't threaten people and being able to laugh at yourself is a good trait in anyone. Besides-" she sniggered- "you did look rather funny."

She hugged him, shaking with silent laughter. He tolerated it for a while before easing her off gently and complaining, "This isn't going to work! It's never going to work! Kelke never shows up when I want him to, never ever! Not that I ever do want him to show up, but anyway! Whose stupid idea was this?"

On cue there was a black flash and Kelke appeared. White flecks dusted his yellow hair and white robes, flecks that were definitely not dandruff. "You called?" he queried. "Oh, hello Magus. Who are your friends?"

"Schala, Crono, and everyone else," Magus responded and grabbed him. The others removed themselves from their hiding places to help. Alfador sank his teeth and claws into Kelke's leg, but they weren't sure if that was holding him down or trying to rip his flesh off.

"What are you doing?" exclaimed Kelke as he was wrestled to the ground, Crono holding one of his arms and Schala the other. "This is most undignified- look, you're not going to defeat me like this."

Lucca took out her trusty pair of scissors, snipped off a bit of his hair, and stepped back. "Now what?"

"Now we let him go and run like hell!" Crono suggested. They let him go and ran like hell out of the forest.

Kelke rose to his feet, gazing after them. He was tempted to kill them all now and get them out of the way, but after all, he was looking forward to seeing how long he could make Magus suffer. Also, maybe if he left them alone they'd try to have another picnic and he could steal their food. Kelke was permanently hungry.

He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and glared accusingly at the warm summer scene around him. He hated the heat with a passion. It was definitely time to return to his nice freezing castle. They would come to him. They would have to if they wanted their wizard to ever be able to use magic again. Confident that they would come and that he would bring about their downfall, Kelke returned to his own universe.