"AAAACK!!!!" Boomerang shrieked as he was rudely awakened by the rising sun. Blinking to try and get his sight back, the demon slowly rose to his feet, clutching his side. He groaned and leaned against the tree. His ribs were hurting five times worse than they had the day before. "Ow...damn...I need a doctor...what the hell's wrong with me?" He winced as he and Lucied started to walk northwest again. "Damn you, Zed...."

Lucied whimpered and nuzzled her master. Boomerang smiled slightly and said to the blue wolf, "It's okay, Lucied. I'll be fine--OW!!" He clutched his side and leaned against a tree. "Damn it...what's wrong with me?!"

Suddenly, screams and roars flooded his hearing. Boomerang looked around, searching for the source of the screams. Then, he saw the origin. A group of four teenage boys and girls were being attacked by a pack of twenty goblins. At first Boomerang did not do anything, for he was trying to understand something.

Something was happening inside him. He used to love hearing the screams of humans as death closed in on them. He used to love watching the fingers of the Grim Reaper close around them. However, he found that he could not just stand there in the trees and watch the humans die.

Before he knew what he was doing, Boomerang whipped out one of his namesakes and threw it at the pack of goblins, killing four of them instantly. The last sixteen goblins immediately whirled around and charged at him. Lucied leapt forward and killed three of the goblins with her spell the Purple Electric Revised. One of the goblins swung its club, hitting Boomerang's right arm. The demon winced and countered with his Crescent Fang. Lucied was mauling goblins left and right, using every attack she knew from Purple Electric to Black Fang. The last three swung their clubs at Boomerang.

Boomerang dodged one, was hit on the left shoulder by a second, and took a hit to his ribs from the third. His eyes widened as he screamed in pain. As Lucied finished off the three goblins with her attack Large Moon, Boomerang stumbled backwards, his back slamming into a large tree.

His arms wrapped around his sides, Boomerang slowly slid down the trunk of the tree and into a sitting position. His vision began to haze over and his breath was starting to come out in gasps. He looked up in time to see the four teenagers run over to him before unconsciousness enveloped him and his vision went completely black.

*knock...knock...knock*

"Go away..." he groaned.

"Zed! Wake up!! Otherwise we'll never find Boomerang!!" came Rudy's response. Zed groaned and slowly climbed out of the bed that Cecilia had assigned to him while he was staying in Adlehyde. He tied on his headband, strapped the Doom Bringer to his belt, and started for the door. However, he stopped just long enough to look in the mirror at his still blackish-purple eye. The swelling was down tremendously, but it still looked pathetic.

"It's about time!" Cecilia teased as Zed slowly entered the throne room of Adlehyde castle.

Zed simply retorted, "I feel like a herd of horses just ran over me, so LAY OFF!!"

(Note: I don't know what people on Filgaia ride. The FF world has chocobos, but Sony never told us what Filgaians ride. So I'm just assuming that they ride horses.)

Jack tried his best not to laugh. Zed asked, rubbing his extremely sore arm, "Where are we gonna look first? Knowing Boomer, he could be miles away by now!"

Noble Knight replied, straping her sword to her belt, "DD said that he'd help us find him."

Dan Diaram spoke, "For the last time: DON'T CALL ME THAT!!"

Noble Knight retorted, "Sure! Whatever, DD."

Seph asked, "But how do you plan to find him? Do you have tracking capabilities or something?"

Dan Diaram retorted with a hint of vanity in his voice, "I'm the Guardian of Time. I can predict where he will be in a certain time!"

Rudy whispered to Elmina, making sure that Dan Diaram did not hear him, "He's starting to remind me of Zed." It took all of Elmina's willpower to prevent herself from bursting into laughter.

Cecilia then spoke, picking up her staff, "Let's go. The sooner we leave, the sooner we can find him."

However, just as they started to leave the throne room, Alicia's voice yelled, "WAIT!!" The Dream Chasers, Zed, Noble Knight, and Seph whirled around to see Alicia entering the room. Noble Knight's eyes narrowed as she gazed at the girl. Something was not right about her and it gave the ‘creature' the creeps.

Alicia was trying her best to hide her exhaustion. She had run all the way to the throne room from her room. A normal, blind person would not have been able to do so without either running into walls or tripping on everything. However, Alicia was the only one who knew she was anything but ‘normal'.

She said, taking something from her small, leather belt, "Here. Take this with you, Zed." She handed him a small, ocean- blue stone. Carved into the stone was the zodiac symbol of Gemini. "It always gave me luck, now maybe it will help you."

"Um...thanks," Zed replied. He had no idea what to make of the stone. He had never seen anything like it. The blue of the stone was the same color as his eyes, though. That much he could make out.

"Let's go," Cecilia repeated. With that, Zed stuffed the stone into his pocket and followed the Dream Chasers, Noble Knight, and Seph.

As they left, Alicia grinned and said halfway to herself, "I'll be watching you..." Then, she, too, took her leave and went back to her room.

Zed yawned and asked, "Exactly where are we going?" He, the Dream Chasers, Noble Knight, and Seph had already made it out of the sight of Adlehyde and were walking slowly through the forest to the west of the kingdom. Occasionally, Zed's hand would trail up to his throbbing arm. Somehow, touching it helped to ease the pain.

Cecilia answered, "Dan Diaram said that we should try the Curan Abbey first, but I seriously doubt that Boomerang would want to go there." Zed burst out laughing.

"Curan Abbey?!" he said through his laughter, "That would be the LAST place he'd go!!"

Dan Diaram asked, his voice retaining a hint of vanity again, "And what makes you say that?"

Zed retorted, trying to calm his laughter, "I know Boomer. Maybe not very well, but I do know him. And I can tell you right now that if he went to the Curan Abbey, he'd be a nervous WRECK!!"

Noble Knight had to ask, "What do you mean?"

Elmina added, "Isn't the Curan Abbey all girls?"

"Yep!" Zed replied, "And Boomer gets kinda nervous around girls. But you may not have noticed it, NK. He's really good at hiding his feelings."

Noble Knight thought for a minute and then shrugged. Seph spoke, "Do you smell something?"

Everyone sniffed the air and shook their heads. Everyone except Zed, that is. "Now that you mention it," he said, "Something does smell funny."

"What?!" Jack snapped, "How can you smell something when we can't?!"

Zed grinned and answered, "We demons have heightened senses. Err...well...some of us do."

Seph, however, was not listening, he was sniffing the ground in front of the warriors, trying to figure out what the smell was and where it was coming from. Suddenly, Elmina shrieked, "Oh, my god!" Everyone ran over to her and gasped at what she had seen.

In a small clearing in the forest was a pile of dead goblins, most of which had been burnt to a crisp by something other than fire. The burnt corpses were what they had been smelling. Zed stated, "Looks like Lucied's handiwork, to me."

Noble Knight silently walked over to one edge of the clearing and picked up an object. Half of a boomerang. "What do you think happened to them?" she asked. Zed had no answer this time.

Rudy finally spoke, "Maybe these goblins attacked him and he broke that thing while he was fighting them off."

Zed, deep in thought, said to no one in particular, as if he was talking to the air, "Boomer wouldn't leave his weapon behind. He'd take it along and try to fix it...unless something happened to him...." With a sigh, he shook his head and rubbed his arm again.

Elmina could not help but say, "But you'd think that he'd manage to handle a group of goblins!" Zed shrugged.

Seph said to them as the group began to walk again, "Might I suggest that we try the village of Surf, first?"

Jack nodded and conveyed, "Yeah. It's close, and Boomerang might have stopped by there to get some berries or something if he was hurt."

Noble Knight let out a half-hearted laugh and said, "He was already hurt."

That got their attention. Cecilia and Rudy asked in unison, "What do you mean?"

Elmina added, "Did you fight him or something?"

Noble Knight answered, "No! I live on an island not far from the Ship Graveyard. Boomerang and Lucied washed up on my beach a few days ago. He had some deep gashes and two almost shattered ribs. He was out of it for a few days, but he woke up yesterday morning." She looked at Zed. "In the fight yesterday, you broke his ribs again, that's why he was trying to get out of the cafe so fast." Noble Knight shrugged and silence reigned over the group.

Cecilia finally started to say something when they heard a boy's voice say, "Wow! That's too cool!!"

"Sure is!" came a girl's voice. The warriors looked at each other and walked in the direction of the voices. Just outside of Surf Village were two teenagers, a girl and a boy. The girl continued, "I mean, he just came out of no where! And he had this big, blue wolf with him!" The Dream Chasers, Zed, Seph, and Noble Knight gasped and exchanged a glance.

"What did he do?" the boy asked.

The girl answered, "At first he was just standing there, watching those goblins attack us. Then, he threw this thing-a-ma-gig at ‘em and killed four in one blow!"

"No way!"

"Yes way!! Then, the wolf howled and blasted some more of those goblins into next week!!"

"Where'd he go?"

"Well, one of the goblins got the jump on him and slammed his club right here." She tapped the boy's ribcage. "The wolf finished off the rest of the goblins, but the guy blacked-out. Must've been hit pretty hard. Tony's dad found us and helped us drag the guy back here. He's still out of it."

"Where is he?"

"The mayor's house."

The warriors looked at each other and ran into the village.