Lucca

"It appears to be a humanoid robot. Incredible...I think I can fix it."

- Lucca

Lucca Ashtear (ルッカ) is a recurring character in the Chrono (Series). She is a brilliant inventor and Crono's childhood friend. She is very witty and tends to make flippant comments during serious moments. Using her intelligence and creativity, Lucca invents many devices, such as a battle-training robot named Gato ("Gonzales" in the Japanese version) and a short-range teleporter called The Telepod. Lucca battles with a gun and hammer, and when she gets to Spekkio she learns to cast Fire magic.

Appearance
Lucca has short plum purple hair underneath a helmet with an antenna on the left-hand side. She wears glasses, along with a long-sleeved dark teal-green shirt under an orange tunic. She wears a dark yellow scarf around her neck, and a pair of dark brown boots on her feet. At her belt line, she wears a small brown bag, and hanging from her shoulder she wears a large blue bag. In the initial character sketches, Lucca sported a bow tie and thicker glasses. Her personality was portrayed as being "wilder" as well.

Chrono Trigger
Lucca's Telepod is scheduled to be presented on the first day of the Millennial Fair. Her father, Taban, also an inventor, assists her. Crono and his new friend, Marle, are first to test the device. Crono successfully teleports. However, this device causes Marle to go back in time. Crono follows her immediately. Lucca eventually catches up after creating the Gate Key to ensure safe and speedy time-traveling. It is also Lucca who realizes Marle is a Princess and when the team attempts to save the Princess' ancestor and restore history, she tries to talk Crono out of allowing a Frog knight to join the party. Later, when Frog is filled with shame for letting the Queen fall captive, Lucca tries to stop him and finally confesses that he was not a bad guy after all. When Crono is accused of abducting Marle, Lucca rescues him from the Prison Towers in Guardia Castle and singlehandly disarms several royal officials in the process. Fleeing the Present to evade the Chancellor and his guards, Lucca and her friends enter a Gate that leads thirteen hundred years into the Future. In the Proto Dome, a robotic-man is discovered. Lucca uses her skill with machines to repair the robot. He later joins the party and is quite partial to her, even to the point of calling her "Miss Lucca", a formality seen in the southern region of the United States which dovetails perfectly with his dated chivalrous manner. In one of the Full Motion Videos (FMV) from the PlayStation and Nintendo DS versions, Lucca is trapped by several hostile Robots. Robo rescues her shortly after.

Later, when the party recovers Dreamstone to repair the Masamune, Lucca aids Melchior in fixing the blade. Likely, she lends assistance because of her savviness with technology, but also, in the smelting of swords, fire is needed and Lucca's element is Fire.

Lucca blames herself for the accident that claimed the legs of her mother, Lara, in 990 A.D., an incident which motivates her to study science. During the course of her time-travels, an opportunity opens for her to revisit that moment and change the events. Saving Fiona's Forest opens a Gate to that time period and it is believed by many that an unnamed deity opened the Gate to allow her a second chance. In 990 A.D. Lucca encounters a younger version of herself.

In the ending FMV scene, Lucca eventually creates a mini-robot modeled after Robo. In the same scene, Lucca finds an infant with a pendant that in Chrono Cross turns out to be Kid, the clone of Schala, and takes her in.

Lucca appears in several of the alternate endings of the game. In one, she and Marle narrate the credits as they roll by. In another, she and Marle ogle Glenn, who has recently transformed back into a man.

Radical Dreamers
Lucca opens an orphanage in Regiorra, where she eventually adopts Kid. At some point in her life, she recreates prototypes of the Chrono Trigger given her by Gaspar, Guru of Time. Lynx kidnaps and murders her while searching for a specimen of the device, eventually luring Kid to his Manor to unite her sample with the Frozen Flame as a last resort. Strongly attached to Lucca, Kid seeks vengeance on Lynx but is unable to exact it when soldiers from Porre intervene. As a musician, Serge wrote a song that Lucca was very fond of. Very early in the story, Kid remarks that Lucca liked the song because it reminded her of a "close friend who is now dead." This piece of dialogue suggests that Crono's resurrection atop Death Peak after the incident at the Ocean Palace was not originally intended as canonical. However, the PlayStation release of Chrono Trigger reveals he and Marle becoming husband and wife.

Chrono Cross
In Chrono Cross, where she is referred to as Dr. Ashtear, it is discovered that Lucca eventually converted her house into an orphanage. Kid is revealed to have been found by Lucca and raised in the orphanage. Lucca is kidnapped prior to the beginning of Chrono Cross by Lynx and Harle in an effort to subdue the Prometheus Circuit that keeps the Frozen Flame sealed. She is presumably killed by Lynx later on.

Alongside Crono and Marle, Lucca is one of the Ghost Children haunting Opassa Beach and Dead Sea. With the others, she vindicates Serge for undoing their efforts to thwart the destruction of Lavos, although his influence on the timeline was accidental.

Kid's seventh-level tech, HotShot, employs a lethal machine invented by Lucca to shoot molten projectiles at a single opponent.

Xenogears
In, another Square game, Lucca has a brief cameo appearance in the village of Lahan. Masato Kato revealed in interviews that Lahan is one of the locations he designed for the game, which could explain why Lucca appears in it.

Abilities
Lucca is a "black mage" type character, relying on techs that deal damage (all of which are fire based) while being able to take very little damage herself. While she possesses a wide variety of duel and triple techs, most of them deal fire damage making her less useful against enemies with fire resistance.

As Lucca's element is fire, she takes extra damage from water.

Name Origin
Lucca is a city of northwest Italy west of Florence. On the site of an ancient Ligurian settlement and a Roman colony, it became a free commune in the 12th century and was later an independent republic. It's one of Italy's most conservative and richest cities. Lucca is also the root of many light-oriented words, such as luminescence. This is likely a reference to her "bright" personality.

Also, Lucca's name may be an adaptation of Lucia, which was the name given to a Catholic Saint who is titled "Healer of the Blind". This is appropriate as Lucca saves her mother from becoming crippled and she opens an orphanage for misplaced children.