Prologue

"…And this wing is where we perform most of our data testing."

Heels loudly clicked against the shiny linoleum floor as three Sanctum officials made their way down the halls of the Sunleth Scientific Research Center.

"Thanks to the increase in our budget last year, we were able to run more experiments and pay for more state of the art equipment in which to analyze it," the esteemed doctor and lead researcher of the facility continued to explain before coming to a stop in the middle of the somewhat deserted hallway. He turned to face the other two officials who had been on his heels. One was the facility's large and brutish security head, whose bad temper and foul mouth usually always made him uncomfortable. The other was a guest. An attractive, young woman with pale skin, clear blue eyes, and light pink hair who had come from Sanctum headquarters in Eden.

"I'm sorry that I don't have a better prepared tour for you, Sergeant Farron," the doctor apologized, studying his guest with slight interest as she silently let her eyes wander around the facility hallway. "I wasn't informed that Eden would be sending someone to check-in on us."

"That's part of what makes surprise check-ins so effective," the young sergeant coolly answered, those icy blue eyes lowering to land on the doctor. "Now earlier I believe you said that the lower levels are where you perform most of your experiments. Will we be going down there after this?"

The doctor smiled politely at his guest, his interest in the situation rising more and more by the second. "You may have a letter of authorization from Commander Nabaat to evaluate the facility, but permissions to the lower level are only granted to those who have CDC level clearance. My apologies, Sergeant."

Although the doctor could sense a bit of annoyance coming from the woman, she didn't seem to be that much deterred by the statement. "Alright," she breathed, looking around the hall again, taking everything in. "Then maybe you can answer a question for me. I visited the Apollo living camp not too long ago and some of the residents showed concern about their family members. They said some of them had fallen sick and they were taken here for treatment? But not once have you mentioned anything about a medical facility, medical activities, or Gran Pulsians."

The doctor's eyes narrowed on the sergeant. This visit was getting very interesting, indeed.

"Hmph. GRAN Pulsians?" the head of security scoffed, instantly earning him the attention of both the doctor and the sergeant. "Figures that's what you'd ask about. Don't think we forgot for a second how sweet you are on 'em. Everyone here knows about your past, missy. Everyone."

"Then everyone here," the sergeant replied in a hard, even tone, "should know about the oath I swore to protect Cocoon and all its citizens when I joined the Guardian Corps at seventeen. They should know about the fal'Cie I slayed before he could carry out his mission to destroy Cocoon, and they should know about the number of rescue missions I've completed that have brought home Cocoonian soldiers who were out risking their lives fighting on Gran Pulse while you sit behind a desk watching camera screens all day." The sergeant's stony facial expression never faltered as she spoke to the now taken aback security head. "Have we discussed enough of my past already, or should I keep going?"

"I…" was the only word that the security head could mumble out before the building suddenly quivered beneath their feet.

The doctor stumbled back a step in surprise while the sergeant and security head looked to each other curiously.

"What was that?" the sergeant asked. Her pink eyebrows slightly ruffled as she looked from the doctor to the security head.

"I-I'm not sure," the doctor answered. "We've never gotten earthquakes here before, but there have been some strange migration patterns from the flan in the area lately. Maybe one of the larger ones is beating against the—ahhh!"

All three officials instinctively crouched when the building shook even more violently than it had earlier, almost causing the three to totally lose their footing.

"RAAWWWRRRAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"

A loud, screeching roar pierced the air, and the doctor's blood immediately turned to ice.

That wasn't a giant flan. It just couldn't be.

The building violently trembled for a third time, but this time the shaking was accompanied by a loud chorus of splintering glass, crashing objects, and human screams… all coming from the floor above them. It was as if there was a demolition derby going on upstairs. From all around them in the hall, doors were now flying open and people in suits and white coats were running and screaming as they pushed and shoved their way to the exits.

The three officials didn't move from their spots, however. Maybe from a sense of shock or maybe from a sense of duty, the three remained still and allowed the others to rush past them until they were the only ones left in the hall.

Sergeant Farron's eyes were glued to the ceiling. There were no more deathly screams or shattering sounds, but there was a rhythmic pounding that moved across the floor. With each timely rumble, the ceiling would shake and sometimes create a small crack. Something was up there. Something big. She instinctively reached down to her hip to the hanging case where she kept her trusted weapon, her gunblade. "You," she said in a low voice, turning to face the security head when the rumbling above them had momentarily ceased. "How many men do you have in the building with you?"

"Maybe about twenty?"

"Well, find them and make sure that the top floors are totally evacuated. If you have a safety bunker, rally everyone who hasn't rushed too far outside into it. Then, I need your best shooters to come with me up—"

"Sweet Etro…"

Sergeant Farron slightly tilted her head in confusion as she stared at the security head. His face had gone totally white and his eyes were nearly bulging out of his skull as he looked past her head towards the other end of the hall.

A tingling feeling crept up Sergeant Farron's spine as she slowly turned around to get a glimpse at what the security head was staring at. What she saw made her own breath hitch in surprise.

A large, black dragon was hovering on the other side of the large window that composed the research facility's back wall. Perched on top of the dragon, leaning forward against its head and staring into the window at the three officials was a young woman with tanned skin, a messy rag of dark hair on her head, and intense green eyes. It was the most wanted woman in all of Cocoon history.

The Gran Pulsian warrior, Oerba Yun Fang.

"It's her…" the security head barely pushed out in a whisper.

Sergeant Farron and the dangerous fugitive locked eyes. A tight, challenging smile slightly spread across the Gran Pulsian's face and a smug gleam sparked in those vibrant green eyes.

That's when the sergeant's spine stiffened in realization.

"Run," she croaked, still staring at the dragon rider outside of the window, but no one moved. They were all still too frozen in shock. Even Sergeant Farron had trouble feeling all of her limbs.

The smile on Oerba Yun Fang's face widened and a hand reached down to pat the side of the dragon's neck. In return, the dragon bared its teeth and slightly cocked back its head.

"RUN!"

A burst of energy flooded Sergeant Farron's system as all of her senses suddenly snapped back on. She immediately spun on her heel and yanked at Dr. Osborne's coat with one hand while pushing the security head forward with the other. Behind her, there was another roar and the shriek of breaking glass.

Sergeant Farron threw the doctor ahead of her into the first door to their immediate left in the hallway before diving into the doorway herself. A hot gust of wind scorched her legs and backside as she slid across the floor of the room. When she came to a stop, she rolled over and sat up to look back into the hall through the open door. The hallway was now glowing a warm orange color, and small bits of burning material clung to the walls and floated from the ceiling.

"Holy hell, that was close," the security head breathed from his spot on the floor beside her.

Sergeant Farron grunted in return and planted a hand on the floor to lift herself, but halted when a sharp pain shot up her arm.

"Ahhh," the sergeant hissed, pulling her hand back to momentarily cradle it. She must've had an awkward landing on her wrist when she had dove into the room.

The building rumbled and shook once again.

"We need to call Eden," the security head was now chattering, his eyes on the ceiling. "My men aren't equipped to handle this. And how in the hell did she get a dragon?! Taking that thing down alone will—hey! Hey, where are you going?!"

The security head jumped up, leaving the dazed doctor alone in the room to follow Sergeant Farron out the door and into the on-fire hallway.

The sergeant didn't answer or break stride as she deliberately strode to the end of the hall and poked her head out of the shattered glass window.

The building continued to shake.

"What are you—holy shit!" The security head peeked his head out of the window and looked up just as the sergeant was doing and immediately caught sight of the huge dragon climbing up the side of the research facility and methodically clawing out and smashing all of the windows.

"She's not on it," Sergeant Farron stated in such a level tone that it somewhat disturbed the man.

"What?" The security head just noticed that there was no one clinging to the back of the beast that was still savagely ripping apart the building that he was getting paid to protect. "Where could—"

"There." The sergeant pointed off into the near distance where the security head could barely make out something disappearing into the bushes of the heavily forested Sunleth area. "Let's go."

"WHAT?!" The security head stared wide-eyed at Sergeant Farron as she hopped through the space that had once been a glass wall and landed on a beam that was jutting out from the building's side. "Are you out of your ever-loving mind?! I'm not following that thing into a jungle!"

"Fine. Then I'll do it myself."

"Wait—"

But it was too late. Sergeant Farron had jumped off the beam and landed on a staticky cushion on the ground, from an anti-grav unit no doubt. The security head could only anxiously watch as the young woman sprinted off in the direction where they had seen the movement in the bushes.

On the ground, Sergeant Farron was fueled by pure adrenaline as she rushed through the Sunleth jungle. Stray limbs and branches reached out and scratched at her face and legs as she ran, but she didn't care.

She was going to catch up.

She was going to settle this.

"Whaaah!" Not paying close enough attention to the landscape, the sergeant lost her footing as the ground began to slope downwards beneath her feet. Her heels dug into the moist dirt and her back fell against the ground as she uncontrollably slid down the wet hill and landed in a dark thicket at the bottom of the incline. Careful not to put too much pressure on her wrist as she moved, the sergeant crawled forward, under the low hanging branch here, through the gap in the bushes there, around the snarling roots everywhere… She slowly got to her feet when she had finally pushed her way through a break in the dense brush.

The clearing was small and surrounded by thick vegetation on nearly all sides, making it almost impossible to find. The only part of the area that wasn't blocked by the heavy brush was the part directly ahead of where Sergeant Farron stood, where a huge, vine-covered stone jutted up from the ground.

The sergeant reached down to her hip to snatch her gunblade from its case and point it forward.

Standing between her and the huge stone, clearly studying the structure with her back facing the sergeant, was Oerba Yun Fang. One of the woman's hands was planted against her hip while the other dangled loosely at her side, a data disk case held between her fingers.

"Dismounting that dragon was a stupid idea," Sergeant Farron said in low voice, steadily keeping her gunblade pointed right between the other woman's shoulder blades.

Oerba Yun Fang didn't startle. Her body didn't show any sign of surprise or recognition on hearing the sergeant's voice at all. There wasn't even an attempt to reach back and grab the pronged, red spear that was strapped to the back of the blue, flowy garment that was wrapped around her body. "Maybe I just wanted to get ya alone. I had a feeling you'd follow me."

The woman turned around to face the sergeant.

"Don't move," Sergeant Farron warned, cocking her gunblade.

Oerba Yun Fang slightly smiled and lifted her hands in a disarming way, the data disk still held in between her fingers.

"What is that?" Sergeant Farron asked, nodding her head at the disk. "What'd you take from the facility?"

The Gran Pulsian didn't answer, but instead let her eyes wander to examine the dense bushes behind the sergeant. Sergeant Farron knew exactly what she was doing. She was trying to assess how many people had followed her, how many people she would have to take.

"You didn't bring back-up," Oerba Yun Fang observed aloud, an eyebrow slightly quirking as she spoke. "Yet ya called my idea stupid." She took a step forward.

"Make another move and I swear to Etro, I will—"

"What?" Fang cut off, her expression suddenly hardening as those green eyes bore down on the sergeant. "Shoot me? Put me down? Be the Savior of Cocoon again by slaying the wretched beast?"

Sergeant Farron's stomach curled as she glared at the woman across from her. She didn't like the way that Fang was looking at her. She wasn't looking at her with the soft, friendly face that the sergeant had once grown to love. It didn't have that lightheartedness from always having a joke in the back of her mind or that subtle hint of affection that had always been evident when they were near each other. This face was colder, more detached. It resembled the glowering, animalistic stares that had been plastered over so many wanted posters and damning magazine covers across Cocoon, and not the concerned face that had hovered so closely over the sergeant's in bed one night nearly five years ago, assuring her that everything would be okay.

"Then go ahead, hero," Fang continued. "Shoot me. I dare ya."

Sergeant Farron kept her gaze locked on Fang's face as her finger slightly pushed against the gunblade's trigger, giving it only the smallest bit of pressure. She could feel her face contorting into a pained grimace. She shouldn't have followed Fang into the jungle. She shouldn't have done a lot of things. This is not what she wanted.

"See, I don't think you can," Fang said with a bit of bite. "I think that guilty conscience of yours is finally starting to weigh down on ya. Or maybe…" Fang's eyes narrowed curiously on the sergeant, "…just maybe, even after everything that's happened... part of you still can't let go of the past. Is that it? Is that problem, Lightbug?"

Sergeant Farron felt her grimace deepening at the callous use of one of her old pet names.

"Either way, that's how I knew this would be so much easier if I got you alone."

For the first time since the beginning of their conversation, Sergeant Farron's eyes left Fang's face and flitted over to Fang's free hand, which was pointed directly at the sergeant and glowing white with a burning ruin spell.

"Ya should've taken the shot."

A large whooshing sound filled Sergeant Farron's ears and her vision immediately went white.

A/N: Hey, guys. How y'all doin?

So yep. This is basically the sequel to Enemies of Cocoon (although if you didn't read/have no interest in ever trying to read that, it's cool. I'll try to add enough background in this story to fill everybody in). And I know I kinda kicked things off at a weird spot, but things'll rewind to a more stable point next chapter. As always, hope y'all enjoy!