Epoch was ripping through time, first warping to the distant past in 65,000,000 B.C. Time travel in Epoch is different than time travel in a Gate. For one thing, there is no twisting, swirling motion to make some people nauseous, but instead, any sickness in Epoch could be blamed on the incredible speed of it. Neither Crono, Marle, Lucca, nor anyone else they knew, experienced this sickness though. The sky ripped open, allowing them to reach their destination and begin their search for Crono's mother.
The 1000 A.D. gang arrived at night, with Epoch unnoticed. It landed near Ioka's meeting place. In the meeting place, there was firewood burning in a large campfire. There was nobody around, no humans at least, so it must have been forgotten after a party. However, it was hard to believe a fire would be forgotten, but the trio didn't bother wondering about it too much.
Crono, Marle, and Lucca jumped out of Epoch. Crono walked, from where Epoch landed, past the fire to a spot a good distance away from it. He stared out into the darkness as if looking for his mother, but only barely saw Iokan or Laruban huts. It did not matter to him which they were. This ended when Marle walked to him, gently touching his shoulder, and gestured him to sit with them by the fire.
Marle started the conversation when she and Crono sat down by the fire. "So," Marle started, directing the question at nobody in particular, "how do we go about searching for Crono's mother? We definitely cannot thoroughly search the entire world in more than one time period."
Lucca answered the question as if she had been rehearsing it, "I've been thinking about that too. I think I might know of a way. I need to find a certain rock that can only be found in this time period. That shouldn't be too hard. Then I can use it to amplify the Gate Key, which I still have. The new Gate Key could then be used to detect people who experienced Gate travel. Since most people have never used Gates, let alone heard of them, it should be easy to narrow down to Crono's mom."
"Wow! Cool!" Marle exclaimed, "How long should it take?"
"If I start soon I should be done by dawn," Lucca said. "Crono? Can you take Epoch to the Mystic Mountains to get the rock? A rock near the former Gate would be best. I'll stay here to make preparations to the Gate Key so it will be ready to be changed."
Crono nodded in agreement.
"I'm going too!" Marle ordered.
Crono and Marle leaped in Epoch and started the engine. They could see Lucca taking something out of her pouch as they flew off.
Crono used Cyclone and Slash techs to help the two get past the first sets of dinosaurs. Marle and Crono had gotten halfway up the mountain when he fell down to his knees with his hand on his head. He had a short dream during this time. In it, two familiar people started speaking.
"Daddy, I want to grow up to be just like you!"
"You do, do you? You'll grow up to be better than me!
"I can't be better than you because you're the best daddy in the WHOLE world!"
"You won't? Yes you will! Just for saying that the tickle monster will get you!"
"Hahahahaha! That tickles! S-sstop!"
"Hi, Honey. I'm just playing with our son."
Another voice entered.
"Isn't that sweet? I guess I'll have some fun too!"
"Hahaha! Mom... Dad! Ssssstopp! Haha! That tickles!
Moments passed before the tickled child was able to speak.
"I love you Dad. I love you Mom..."
Crono got up. Marle asked, "Crono? Crono? Are you all right?"
Crono nodded his head.
"Good, now lets get the rock."
They proceeded up the mountain to the place where they once jumped to enter the Gate. Crono found a rock, tossed it in the air, and caught it.
"That looks good enough," Marle said, "Let's go!"
Back at the fire Crono gave the rock to Lucca, and she examined it.
"This should be an appropriate size. You two go to sleep. I'll be finished by morning."
Crono and Marle both laid down by the fire and closed their eyes. A few minutes later, Lucca called toward them.
"Wake up! There's someone here."
The "wake up" part was unnecessary, because they were still awake; they found it difficult to sleep on the ground. Both of them stood up, but slowly, because of their exhaustion.
Marle asked, "What is it?" That statement was also unnecessary, for a woman approached them. It was not easy to tell she was a woman because the shadows from the fire masked her identity.
"Hello? Who are you?" Marle once again asked. She tried approaching the mysterious woman, but the woman backed away further into the darkness.
The woman didn't speak, in the definition of words coming out of her mouth. Instead, as though through words in the air with no distinctive voice, she telepathically spoke.
"Hello! I am your friend, and I am familiar with your quest. I will help you search for what you seek."
"Thank you ma'am," Lucca began, "but I think what Marle -- that is her name. He is Crono and I am Lucca. Anyway, what I think she wanted to know was, WHO are you? What is your name and identity?"
"I am familiar with your names as well. I cannot tell you who I am or tell you of my identity for reasons you will know later. This is why I am not speaking to you with my mouth."
She continued, "However, before you rescue your mother, Crono, I should let you know your friends that helped you in the fight against Lavos need your help."
Crono seemed as if he was about to speak, but Marle interrupted him before he could, "Why? What's wrong?"
"I do not know, for I have not checked them out myself yet. I was only told that each of them needs help in their own way. Although I believe I know the quest of one of them."
Marle then looked at Crono and Lucca and said, "Well, we better find Ayla here and help her!"
"She has a slight exception. Her problem is not now, but in two years from now."
Lucca started saying, "But--"
"Yes, I know Epoch cannot go to that particular year, so I will modify it for you so it can."
With that phrase, the mysterious woman raised her arm. That much, the three of them could see. A beam of white magic encircled Epoch, and then sank into the Wings of Time.
"There. From what I know, your help given to your friends will probably be nothing more than a transport with Epoch. That transport, however, will be vital in that person's quest, or robot's quest as is the case is in 2300 A.D. I must go now, so I can finish what I came to do."
Then the shadow that was the mysterious woman disappeared. There was a moment of silence before Lucca spoke.
"Weird... Since we're checking all the time periods for your mom, Crono, we might as well help out our friends while we're there. It shouldn't be hard to locate them using the soon-to-be-modified Gate Key. And the woman said all we should have to do is transport them to another location. Even so, the one thing we have plenty of is time."
This would have been Marle's turn to talk, but she was so drowsy she fell asleep right onto the ground. Crono and Lucca glanced at her sleeping body for a moment. Crono laid back down as Lucca continued working.
That night Crono had another dream. It involved the father and the son in the other dream he had earlier that night. The son was older in this one, in his teen years most likely. The dream began with the clashing of swords. The father was the first to speak.
"Very good son! You're getting better!"
"Thanks Dad."
The sound of the swords continued for a few minutes, and then stopped. Both males were breathing heavily after the end of their spar with swords.
"I... f-finally... beat you, Dad..."
"Very good f-fight! I... congratulate you! You... are the first of my s-students in... sword fighting to... beat me."
"You... put up a good fight too. I can tell you weren't just... going easy on me."
"Of course not! I was giving... i-it my all! I had to do so in order to make the... fight fair."
"I...still can't believe... I finally beat you..."
"Don't get too cocky! You still have more to learn. But, out of all of my students, I believe you will be the one to surpass the teacher."
"Imagine that. And the student... is the teacher's son!"
"... I'm proud of you son."
"Thanks, Dad! You're the best! Even IF I will surpass you."
"Don't worry, you will."
When the dream ended, Crono awoke to the daylight. Marle and Lucca were fully awake (or seemed to be) and standing, having a discussion. He yawned, silently, got up, and walked over toward the females. They stopped their discussion and turned to look at him.
Marle said, "Finally, you're awake! Dang, you're a heavy sleeper!"
Then it was Lucca's turn to speak, "I finished modifying the Gate Key. Marle and I decided to call it the Gate Locator."
"The name is kinda misleading though."
"For our purposes, it is misleading. The Gate Locator doesn't really search for people that entered a Gate before, but rather it looks for an element (non-magical) that identifies Gates, and nothing else. But, of course, now that the Entity has been put 'to rest,' there are no more Gates. However, when someone passes through a Gate, a trace of this harmless element enters him or her. The element won't leave the body for about 45 million years. I was able to amplify the Gate Locator so it could locate the smallest trace of the element instead of the large amount it would look for when looking for a Gate."
"I just trust that it works," Marle said to Crono.
"Well, are you two ready to begin?" Lucca asked.
"Yeah!" Marle exclaimed.
Crono nodded his head.
"OK! Let's use the Gate Locator here!" Lucca said.
Lucca took the Gate Locator, which still looked similar to the Gate Key, out of a pouch. She brought it to Epoch and climbed in. She then hit a switch to start the time machine.
"Come over here," Lucca said to Marle and Crono. They walked over to the side of Epoch opposite of Lucca to see what she was doing.
Their view of Epoch clearly shown the front of the inside. Between the front two seats was the "C" shaped dial, used to select a time period to warp to. Just below it was the "A" button, used to actually make the warp and to land Epoch. The steering "wheel" in the left seat was not round, but in the shape of a non-curved "U" (notice how many letters are involved in this? :-) with a rod connecting it to Epoch. This allowed the time machine to go not only right and left, but up and down. Epoch did not have a "music machine" in between the two seats like the race car in 2300 A.D. (which some of the citizens there called a "radio"). Where the "radio" would have been, was a digital image of the world map, that changes depending on the time period.
Lucca took off the map screen, revealing a tangle of wires behind it. She took a knife from a pouch and sliced a wire. Then she took the Gate Locator and put both parts of the sliced wire touching it, like the Gate Locator was an electromagnet. She bound the wires and the Gate Locator together with a rubber band. Finally she took the screen and placed it back in its regular position, so that the wires, and the Gate Locator, weren't showing.
The screen now shown three lights on the map. Two of them were shining right beside each other where Epoch was on the map. One was shining where Ioka was.
"Crono's mother isn't in this time period, " said the mighty Lucca, "These two lights are you two, Crono and Marle. This light at Ioka must be Ayla. When you're actually in Epoch, like me, the lights representing you two won't show."
"Well enough chit-chat," said the only one of the other two that generally spoke, "let's go search for Crono's mother!"
And so, the threesome entered Epoch and blasted off to help Ayla in 64,999,998 B.C.
In 64,999,998 B.C. they helped Ayla and Kino get to the attacking Laruban leader. In 12,000 B.C. they helped Magus get to the sunken Ocean Palace to find Schala. They supposed the mysterious woman was helping out when Magus was teleported magically into the Ocean Palace. In 600 A.D. they helped Frog and (may their eyes be fooling them) Cyrus get to Guardia Castle to take back the throne from the Frog King. In 1000 A.D. Lucca rested at Guardia Castle, after all, she was up all night working. The three also ate a big meal since they hadn't ate anything yet since before they left the Millennial Fair. They saw on the map that, like in the previous time periods, Crono's mother wasn't there. 1999 A.D. was a bore, nothing and nobody of interest was there. In 2300 A.D. they had to do more than just give a lift, but they actually had to help Robo fight the stronger Mother. Although they found the general location of Robo using the Gate Locator, they found his exact location by noticing his Shock attack. Unfortunately, Mother was the only mother they could find in 2300 A.D. There was only one more "time period" left.
Epoch came flying to a halt in the void. Above it was the "port" to get off. The map screen went black, like it usually did in The End of Time. It didn't matter much because there wasn't much there besides the endless void and the floating platform with the lamppost.
"Something feels... wrong here," Marle awed.
"I feel it to," Lucca agreed.
Crono nodded his head in agreement.
Almost using the reversed process used to put the Gate Locator in Epoch, Lucca took it out. She held up the Gate Locator and felt two pulses from it.
"There are two people who been through Gates here," Lucca stated.
"Gaspar is one," Marle suggested, "could Spekkio have been through a Gate?"
"Well, we couldn't find Crono's mom in all the other time periods available to Epoch," Lucca said, "She would've had to go through a Red Gate to get to a time we haven't been to, and we all saw her enter that Blue Gate."
"But what about the cats? Wouldn't they have been noticed by the Gate Locator?"
"No, there would be way too little of the non-magical Gate element that would enter the cat for even the Gate Locator to detect. Even so, while the Gate element takes 45 million years to leave humans, it takes only a few minutes to leave cats for several reasons such as bodily structure differences and other things that would be too complicated to mention."
"So Crono's mother must be here," Marle said, sounding more scared that relieved.
"Let's go," Lucca said in much the same manner as Marle just did.
The three jumped up to the platform and woke Gaspar up from his standing nap.
"Gaspar! Gaspar! Have you seen a woman come here?" Marle shouted.
"What? Woman? Let's see, I don't know. If there was, then she didn't wake me."
"It doesn't look like anybody's in the former portal room," Marle started, "The only other place could be Spekkio's --"
"CRONO!" Lucca interrupted.
Crono was kneeling on the ground with his hand to his head, as if he had a migraine.
"Crono! This hasn't happened to you in years!" Lucca yelled again, "Fight it!"
"You mean this has happened to him before?" Marle asked.
"YES!"
"At the Mystic Mountains something similar to this happened to Crono. I thought he was just feeling faint."
"He was like this at the Mystic Mountains?! Oh, I forget that you don't know Crono as long as I do. Here, I'll tell you his story."