This is a conversation thats supposed to take place after the events of Chrono Cross, but during the timeline shortly following Chrono Trigger. It's for a fangame I'll hopefully be making if I can get a few more ideas solidified. I decided to post the conversation here to see if it conflicts with any of the ideas presented in the chrono universe. Comments are helpful. Thanks!
Melchior: As Lucca has already surmised, the natural course of our evolution was supplanted by Lavos millennia ago. Through his presence, he began the systematic restructuring of our genome, cultivating the traits he found desirable for feeding. Like the Reptites before us, as our brains developed we gained an affinity with the elements, allowing many of us to express magical talents. However, there was one major divergence between our development and that of the Reptites. Mother Earth.
Lucca: Mother Earth? You mean the Gaia theory, don’t you?
Melchior: That is correct. Our planet doesn’t simply sustain life. It is life. Our own bodies are made up of individual cells, consentient of themselves, but together, forming highly intelligent beings.
Lucca: But we aren’t cells. We have sentience.
Melchior: You misunderstand me. Gaia is made up of the plants and animals and insects of this world, to name a few. We are not her cells. We are her children.
Lucca: Her children?
Melchior: More accurately, her bastard children, born of her desecration by Lavos. That is our divergence from the Reptites. With their affinity toward the elements, they also gained an understanding of Gaia as a nurturing mother. They could literally FEEL her life within them. What Lavos did to us was develop our minds, while stunting the ability to feel Gaia that should have naturally sprung from that development. Like the children of an abusive father, we’ve followed Lavos’ example and treated the earth like a resource to be subjugated, used to exhaustion. Where Reptite technology worked in harmony with Gaia, ours attacks her, drilling, burning, polluting, until eventually if not for the spark of Gaia still within us, we would become our own Lavos.
Lucca: How awful!
Magus: But what’s this to do with the loss of our abilities?
Melchior: Patience Janus. Actually, this is at the heart of the matter. You see while man would have eventually evolved the same potential for magic we currently have today without Lavos’ interference, a part of his manipulation was to make himself the conduit of our power, feeding off of our own mental energies even as he fed directly off of the energies of Gaia while buried deep within the earth. With his destruction, our stunted minds are no more capable of reaching out to the elements than Ayla’s is.
Lucca: But Lavos hasn’t been destroyed yet. I mean, he will be, but we haven’t.. That hasn’t..
Melchior: Ah.. I can see there is still much to tell you..
