Disclaimer: I do not own any part of Final Fantasy VII or Final Fantasy XIII. This is purely a work of fiction meant to entertain people.

"How is the work going?"

"Very well, Mister Tuesti, although some of this rock is much harder to break though than the other stuff," the young man replied as he handed a small box to the dark haired man.

"As long as we're making progress," Reeve commented as he slipped back inside the base with the box.

He walked over to a table covered in small items that had been unearthed and started to empty the box, examining each item. As he carefully placed each item on the table, his cape wearing friend, Vincent Valentine, walked over and looked over the new items.

"More dead materia?" Vincent asked as he grabbed a chunk of materia-like crystal.

"We seem to be finding more and more of it now. And not just here in the crater, but all around the foot of the mountain ring," Reeve answered with a curious tone.

"Well after the last few years, who knows what was shook loose."

Some shouting from the other room caught the attention of both dark haired men and they just lightly shook their heads.

"You think they'll ever get along?" Reeve asked with a light chuckle "I mean even Barret has accepted Shinra as a friend."

Ever since the events with Deepground a year ago, things had drastically changed. A little more than a month after the events, Reeve had learned that what was left of the Shinra company had evacuated Junon and several towns after the mass disappearance from Junon. Since then, Rufus Shinra had been able to pull the Shinra Electric Power Company back onto it's feet and had been working closely with the WRO, the World Regenesis Organization, and Barret Wallace. All the Mako reactors had been decommissioned and dismantled, recycling the materials to assist Barret in oil refinement and creating other power sources. Rufus Shinra may be the president, CEO, and owner of the Shinra Company but he now had to answer to Reeve, and the members of AVALANCHE.

Cloud had proposed they try to recover the black materia from the northern cave, to which most of the others thought him crazy. After Rufus, Reeve, and Vincent agreed on the idea, the others unanimously agreed, Vincent being the one to change their minds. That proposal lead to the construction of the base in the dig site. The base camp was built to hang over the bottom of the cave as to not intrude upon the available dig area and was suspended by numerous support structures mainly connected to the sides of the crater.

Before the dig site base had started being constructed, Rufus had suggested they power it with a small-scale Mako Reactor, which inevitably lead to an argument with the members of AVALANCHE. After a lengthy discussion as to why, solar, wind, and oil, power would not be feasible in the Northern Cave, and that there was no ecosystem that would be damaged by the use of a reactor, Rufus was permitted to construct a Mako reactor in the Cave to power the base and all the equipment.

Since the base had been finished, and the dig team had been working, Cloud and Rufus had been non-stop fighting about one thing or another.

As Vincent grabbed a bracelet and started to examine it, the door to the room where Cloud and Rufus had been fighting opened with a hiss. The blond hero stormed past the dark haired men with the white suit wearing CEO calmly following him into the room.

"What was it this time?" Reeve asked without looking away from the book being used to catalog everything.

"I was just curious as to why Cloud is so obsessed with finding the Black Materia," Rufus answered using a dismissive tone.

"You implied I was being controlled again," Cloud growled.

"I just said that it is a fools quest to continue looking for the Black Materia."

"You did agree to fund this, Rufus," Reeve pointed out. Vincent had taken to stoically observing the interaction.

"That was before I knew all the details. We are searching for one materia, buried miles down, under millions of tons of solid rock," Rufus was almost laughing at how ridiculous it sounded.

"So we will stop looking for it," Reeve stated in a matter-of-fact way.

"What!" Cloud shouted.

"We will continue to excavate these artifacts and if we happen to find the Black Materia, well, good for us," Reeve chuckled as he finished speaking. Before anyone else could speak, the radio clipped to Reeve's belt crackled to life.

"Sir?" Reeve quickly grabbed the radio.

"What is it?"

"You need to come down here and see this."

Reeve stood up and grabbed his thick jacket off the wall and headed out to the lift. The two blonds and the cape wearing gunslinger sat in silence for several minutes before anyone of them even moved. Cloud eventually sat where Reeve had been and continued to catalog what had been excavated. A few minutes later, the loud engine for the lift was heard and shortly after Reeve appeared in the door to the lab. He waved for the three other men to follow him and they did without question.

When they entered the lab, which had several high-tech machines meant for analyzing materials, the three men were stunned. They slowly walked over to the object in the middle of the room and simply stared dumbly for several moments. Rufus was the first to lay his hand on it and nearly shouted in surprise.

"That's-" but Rufus did not know how to finish that thought.

"Materia. The entire thing is one, single, piece of live materia," Reeve stated.

"Are you sure?" Vincent asked, although he was unsure as to why. Reeve just nodded in response.

"But, who could carve materia? Into this level of detail as well," Cloud examined the materia statue a third time.

Vincent walked around it and glanced at a large circular object that had no apparent purpose. His crimson eyes took in every detail of the materia statue, each individual hair, the detail of the woman's face, the way her hands looked like they had been holding another pair of hands, and the way she was curled up. It was an amazing art work in Vincent's opinion.

The gunslinger lay his gauntlet covered hand on the statue and a strong power surged through him. He knew the power was Chaos, one of the WEAPONs made by the planet, specifically designed to herald the coming of Omega. Chaos surged again, and Vincent heard a voice in his head.

Fang?

Chaos' power surged through Vincent once again, much stronger than before. He felt the materia crack under his hand and looked up briefly. He saw the confused expressions on Rufus' and Cloud's faces and moved to look behind him. The materia cracked again and a bright light shone between his fingers. Vincent moved to shield his eyes just before the materia exploded, throwing him back.

The cape wearing gunslinger slowly opened his eyes and sunlight instantly pierced into them. He slammed his eyes closed and sat up before climbing onto his feet. Feet pounding the ground alerted him and in an instant, Cerberus was in his hand and he was running at the sound. He leaped high into the air, fired three warning shots at the squad that had been approaching, kicked the weapon out of the leaders hand as he landed, got her arm into a lock, pushed her down onto her knees, and held Cerberus to her head. The other squad members slowly set their weapons down as he glared at them but something caught his eye.

He looked down at the weapon he had kicked away from the leader, who he currently had hostage, and saw very familiar symbols on the blade of the odd looking sword. The symbols were a perfect match to the Cetra language.

"Who are you?" Vincent asked the leader.

"Lieutenant Lightning Farron," He looked down at the growling woman and finally noticed her bright pink hair "Of the Cocoon Emergency Teams and Refugee Aid."

"What?" Vincent was hoping he misheard her as his eyes widened.

"We're CETRA for Etro's sake!"

So this is another random idea of mine. Let me know what you think and I might consider continuing it. I know there are some errors in it and some partially developed paragraphs and I will fix that IF I decide to continue this story.