His head cleared and he realized he was on the ground. Why was he on the ground?
He tried to sit up, but his body was too weak to respond. Defeated, he looked up. Mechanical parts floated around the ceiling. Lights flashed in various places. A machine hummed under him. Wait-- there was something else he could hear through the humming. It grew fainter as he lost consciousness.
".....o.........Zio........Zio...."
It was then that he remembered where he was and what he was doing. Before he could respond, everything went black.
Several days passed before the magician opened his eyes. The first person to welcome him was a petite academy student.
"How are you feeling?" the student asked.
Zio let out a moan in response.
"I see...we did rough you up a bit. But in our defense, we weren't really aware that you were possessed by the dark force..."
That's right! The dark force! In the process of searching for powerful spells, the magician had stumbled upon the dark force and lost control of his will. His life after that was nothing but a dream-- starting a religion of sorts, building a fort over the Nurvus system, turning people to stone, killing that woman with the Black Energy Wave...
"Your friend, that woman... I'm sincerely sorry..." Zio looked down at his hands. The same hands that terrorized Motabia. Although they were clean, he saw blood on his hands. Innocent blood... "I have to clean this off," he muttered to himself.
"Huh?" the scholar asked.
"This blood-- I have to get this blood off of my hands." The once dark magician looked the scholar in the eyes. "Surely there must be some way to erase this guilt from my hands."
Perplexed, the academy student simply stared back. Finally, after gathering his thoughts, the student walked out of the room. From the hallway, Zio could hear silence, then "That isn't funny, Hahn!", then more silence, then "You're crazy. He's a monster and I want nothing to do with him!"
Those words echoed in Zio's mind and with every echo, his heart felt a stab. A monster. He was a monster and no one would ever forgive him. He destroyed lives that couldn't be returned. He tore apart relationships with his new religion. Motabia was struggling because of HIM. The monster.
He didn't have much time to pity himself, though, because a shriek tore through his thoughts. The people in the hallway rushed outside to the source of the scream. The magician hopped out of bed and hobbled his way downstairs-- he was still in terrible condition-- to join them.
When he got to the front door, he found the reason for the scream. Four magicians and one cyborg had stormed into the city. Four magicians and a cyborg that had originally been under the command of Zio. One of the magicians held a girl by her hair. They had already made short work of the academy student, a motabian, and what appeared to be a numan. Challenging them was a short, blond haired boy, an android (one that he recognized as the controller of Nurvus), and another magician in green.
"We were told to take control of this town in the event that Lord Zio was killed!" One of the magicians announced, "If anyone else opposes us, they will end up like this girl here." The magician charged his staff for a spell, but the android shot his staff out of his hand.
"Correction: We are here to protect this town in the event that Zio sent his goons here," the android said. The blond haired kid glanced over at Zio, glaring intently. The town cheered.
A battle ensued. Streams of elemental power flew through the air, along with bullets and bursts of electricity. The blond sliced off a magician's arm, although he seemed to do it in slow motion. His reactions were slow, because another magician managed to strike him with a hewn attack, leaving only the green magician and the android to fight.
The two held up very well, dodging and attacking without missing a beat. The town cheered them on as they dealt blow upon blow on the magicians. The enemy cyborg, however, wasn't receiving attention and caught the duo off guard by shooting the defending magician. The android shot at the cyborg, destroying it, but not soon enough to stop an enemy magician from stepping on his counterpart in green. He pointed his staff in the defender's face.
Before the invader could utter a spell, however, a cloud of dust surrounded him and he disintegrated.
The man in green, surprised, gasped to himself, "That was Zio's Corrosion spell..." then looked over at the once evil magician. The rest of the town followed his gaze with shock. The two remaining magicians also looked on with confusion.
"Now... that's enough," the magician began, "Put the girl down." He looked at the attacking magicians and said, "Go home, or you might get killed."
Confused, the magician let go of the child and looked at Zio questioningly.
He answered the magician's look with "I'm no longer the man you think I am. Now, begone, and don't come back."
The magicians left, but the townspeople didn't cheer. They stood paralyzed with fear of the man who had just rescued them. The girl who was set free was the only one who moved, only to run back to her mother. Heartbroken, the magician moved to the outskirts of town.
A few hours later, while he was watching ducks swim in the river, the rescued girl walked up to the magician in black and sat next to him. As soon as Zio acknowledged her presence, the girl handed him a piece of shortcake and a pinwheel.
"When I'm sad, I like to eat shortcake to make me feel better. But sometimes, my mom won't let me eat shortcake. She says it's not healthy, so when I can't eat shortcake, I look at a pinwheel. They make me happy, too." As she spoke, she looked Zio in the eyes and smiled.
"I saw that you were sad," she continued, "So I thought that maybe a pinwheel or some shortcake would make you feel better."
Touched, the magician ate his shortcake while trying to understand the child's gesture of kindness. Sure, he helped to save her, but he's probably also hurt her sometime in the past.
"I'm a monster, you know. You shouldn't be talking to me. I killed people."
"I know." the girl answered matter-of-factly, "You killed my dad."
Zio choked on his cake. The girl continued, "But you were bad, then. Now, you are a nice man who saved me and chased those bad guys away." At that, she snuggled up against his arm.
The magician sat there, stunned. He just received a life lesson from a child. While he was moping at the things he did in his past, she looked past it and thought about the present and the future. She was right. Yes, he wrought destruction in the past, but now he's a changed man. He is no longer under the grasp of the dark force. Now, he has the power to make a positive change. The question now is how he'll make that change.
"I'm sorry about your father," the magician ruffled the girl's hair.
She crossed her arms and scowled at him. "Just make sure it doesn't happen again," she responded in her most "grown-up" voice.
The magician nodded his head and thought to himself, That's how I'm going to do it; I'm going to destroy the dark force so that no one else has to go through what I went through.
The sun rose as Chaz and his companions Rune and Rika checked out of the inn. Not too soon after they walked out of the door did someone fall flat on the ground in front of them. To their surprise, it was the magician, bowing, who had caused them misfortune.
"Please let me accompany you all on your journey! I want to be able to eliminate the dark force with my own hands." Zio begged.
"Dark force?!" Rune, the magician in green, exclaimed.
"Chaz, what do we do?" the numan, Rika, asked.
The blond furrowed his brows. "What would Alys do?"
Rune sighed and said, "She'd let him come."
"Really?" the blond and the numan said at the same time.
"I'm afraid so."
Chaz snorted and said, "Fine. Get up, you're embarrassing yourself." When Zio stood up, Chaz handcuffed him. "I still don't trust you, though."
"Understandable," the magician said. And so, the team of four set out to the spaceport to meet the star system custodian, Wren.
(Okay, so here's what's going on... My sisters and I were talking about our battle with Zio. When they first played, they were disappointed because they thought that Zio would turn out to be a good guy under the influence like Rulakir was in PSIII. Another sister thought he'd be a new party member, so I figured I'd create a scenario where that happened and have it as an answer to "What if Zio was actually a good guy?")
