A loud ripping sound tore through the woods as a bright flash lit up the sky. Everything felt jumbled. It was like nothing was there. No time. No space. No being. Just a strong ache in her head and what felt like a coursing pain flowing through her system.

Then suddenly… ground.

"Ugh!"

Fang's shoulder hit the earth hard, taking the brunt of the impact from her fall. It didn't matter though. At this point, the pain in her shoulder was the least of her worries.

"There you are…"

The voice sounded distorted, as if her head was underwater. Nevertheless, Fang could distinguish that brusque growl of discontent from anywhere. It was Caius.

She opened her eyes and tried to focus, but the world was still so blurry. She planted her forearms on the ground in an attempt to lift herself up, but her arms jiggled and caved under her weight like jello, immediately face-planting her right back in the grass.

"Yeul…" Caius's voice still sounded distant, but this time a little more put together. "Don't move. You'll be okay…"

Her vision was sharpening a bit more and the pain coursing through her body was starting to feel less acute, but instead it was all being replaced with a huge feeling of uneasiness. Her body had gone through a lot and it wasn't settling well with all of the changes.

She took a deep breath, bracing herself in case she had to vomit while hearing what sounded like others in her group failing to do as well at holding it in.

"You…"

This time, Cauis's voice registered loud and clear… It sounded much closer.

Fang slightly lifted her head and squinted to stare at the toe of one his boots.

He was standing over her.

"I can't believe you!"

"We're a board! It's not like I made the decision by myself."

"Did you suggest it?"

A tense silence filled the air as Lightning and Jihl burst into Jihl's Eden home.

"Are you serious?" Jihl asked, an outlandish expression on her face.

"Yes! I'd seriously like to know whether I'll be sharing a bed with a wanna be mass murderer!"

"You do realize they're down there plotting the same thing, right?"

"You're defending this with paranoia?"

"I'm pointing out that they tried to do the exact same thing to us four years ago! You would know this better than I do, considering you were there!"

"I can't—ugh!" Lightning ran a frustrated hand through her hair. Her emotions were everywhere. She couldn't even comprehend everything she was feeling towards Jihl at the moment. Fury. Disbelief. Exasperation. Disappointment.

"What I don't get is how I'm the one that's under so much fire right now," Jihl went on. "Especially since YOU were the one clinging to 'Miss Theodora Cornwallis'," she made sure to use an exaggerated Southern drawl as she spoke the name, "the entire night like a schoolgirl with a crush."

"I wasn't clinging," Lightning sternly reprimanded. "And how in the hell is me talking to another woman in any way, shape, or form comparable to wanting to eliminate an entire race?!"

"Talking?" Jihl's eyes widened as if Lightning had just made the most incredible statement she'd ever heard. "You were NOT just talking. Every time I turned around you were finding some reason to put a hand on her. And that dance—"

"You're getting jealous over one dance?"

"IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE OUR DANCE!" Jihl exploded.

Lightning froze in surprise at the intensity of the outburst.

"It was supposed to be our night! Our dance! And you gave it to someone else!" Jihl's chest heaved beneath the gray fabric of her dress as she yelled out the words. "And worst of all, I was forced to go about by business—forced to pretend that it didn't bother me that my girlfriend was getting intimate with someone else right in front of me because our relationship would be deemed 'inappropriate'! Gods! I just pray someone didn't take a picture of you two because then all I'll be seeing on every tabloid cover for the next week is you rubbed up against that woman!"

Jihl breezed past Lightning on her way to the kitchen. There was a bottle of spirits in her top cupboard that needed her attention right now. Lightning just held her place near the doorway, staring distantly at the floor as she listened to Jihl clink away in the next room.

"I can see why you're upset," she finally said, keeping her voice low and composed.

Jihl snorted.

"But there's a bigger issue here. Innocent lives are at stake—"

"We're at war. Innocent lives are going to be at stake."

"But they don't have to be targeted! Jihl, I've already seen this feud turn someone I loved into a monster! I won't sit back and watch the same thing happen to you!"

The clinking of glasses stopped. Lightning shut her eyes. Between the wording and the timing, she knew the multiple ways where her rebuttal had come out wrong.

There was a tired sigh from the kitchen.

"And that's just what this argument was missing." Jihl's voice sounded defeated. "Her. No matter what's going on, you always find a way to pull her into it."

"I didn't mean to—"

"I trust you. You do know that, right?" Jihl stepped from behind the kitchen doorframe to glumly look Light in the eyes. She clutched a glass half filled with ice and brown liquid in her hand. "I know you didn't mean any harm with that woman tonight. But sometimes… I just wish you trusted me half as much as I trust you."

"I don't get what you're asking here," Lightning replied, her voice sounding just as deflated as her girlfriend's. "Trust you to what? Kill and imprison as many Pulsians as you can without any mishaps?"

"No." Jihl gave Lightning a hard stare as she pushed the word out. "Trust that I know what I'm doing—"

Lightning shook her head.

"—and that I have everyone's best interests in mind."

"Then don't go through with it," Lightning pleaded, bringing her eyes back to Jihl. "Think of a different strategy. Any strategy. Anything has to be better than this."

"Light…" Jihl sounded tired, as if she had given up any hope on continuing her earlier rant. "Look… It's out of my hands."

"What?"

"It's a plan that's been in motion for a while now, even before they let go of Piquely. With every drop to Pulse, a couple of special unit soldiers would stay on the planet. We've built up enough numbers and tonight's going to be their first strike. They're planning on clearing some location – Monolith Gorge –before sunrise."

Jihl stared at her glass for a second before lifting her eyes to meet Lightning's, which were ablaze with a type of fury that she had never seen in the younger woman before.

"Trust you?" Lightning finally managed to say, fighting to keep herself from shaking. "Trust you to do your job but it's 'out of your hands'?"

"If you'd just calm down and—"

"No," Lightning cut off, spinning on her heels and heading for the door. "I—I can't with you right now. I can't."

"What do you mean you can't? Wait, where are you going? Light?"

But it was too late. Lightning was already out the door. She was trying her best to stay composed, but she knew she was shaking so hard that she couldn't even keep her hands from trembling.

"Lightning!" she heard Jihl calling from the doorway of her house. "Claire!"

Hope removed his headphones after vaguely hearing three thuds on his door. He looked over to his roommate, who laid sprawled across his bed with a comic book resting on his chest. The other boy looked just as surprised and simply shrugged.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

"Hope, open up!"

"Lightning?" Hope softly asked aloud, pulling the headphones from around his neck. Then a light bulb quickly flashed on in his head on why an angry Lightning would be banging on his door at this time of night. "Crap! Lightning! Uhhh, Steve." He looked back towards his roommate. "Could you, uh, give us a moment?"

"She's the hot one, right?" his roommate asked, lifting his comic book up so that it was once again in a reading position. "No way, dude. Our deal was that I only had to be out the room until your dress up thing was over. That, and she sounds pissed. You're gonna want a witness around."

"C'mon…" Hope pleaded.

Another few thumps.

"Hope, I WILL kick this door down if I have to and we both know I'm not lying," Lightning's voice growled from the hallway.

Hope's roommate whistled as Hope sighed and pushed away from his desk. Within two long strides, he was twisting the door's handle and was immediately thrown backwards by the woman on the other side.

"You. Out." Lightning commanded the boy lying on his bed.

"Savior of Cocoon or not, it's my room and you're just a guest—"

"I said OUT," Lightning repeated, this time whipping her gunblade out so that it immediately flipped into gun mode with its barrel pointed at the ceiling.

"Yes, ma'am!"

And with one less stride than it took for Hope to reach the same distance, the roommate had bolted out of the room.

"Lock it," Lightning ordered, her eyes stern as they stared at Hope, who had yet to move an inch from the space where he had been pushed behind the door.

Silently, he reached out a hand to spin the door's two locks in place before turning to guiltily look at Lightning.

"How'd you do it?" she asked.

"How'd I do what?"

"I'm not in the mood for games tonight, Hope. How'd you get them here?"

"Are… are you okay? You don't look like you're in a good way right now."

"Answer the damn question!" Lightning shouted, making Hope jump.

The two stared at each other, suspended in a tense silence that now filled the room – Hope waiting for the apology that usually came after such bursts of exasperation from Lightning over the years and Lightning for the answer to her question. Hope was the first to break, letting out a soft breath when he realized an apology wasn't coming.

"I used a portal generator."

"A portal generator?" Lightning echoed, tucking her gunblade back into its sling. "What? Like—like creating portals between here to Pulse?"

Hope nodded.

"How's that possible? All the gates were destroyed when Ragnarok fell off Cocoon. You can't have portals without gates."

"Actually… you can."

Lightning crossed her arms and lifted an eyebrow. "Explain."

"Well, the science of it all is actually pretty complicated—"

"In laymen's terms."

"Uh…" Hope stared at Lightning uneasily. He knew she would be upset that he went behind her back to bring the Gran Pulsians to Cocoon, but there was something else frustrating her. There just had to be. She hadn't even seemed this angry at the ball. "Okay… I guess the best way to describe it is that the gates aren't a necessity. They're just a safety measure."

Lightning's stare never wavered. She just kept her eyes glued to Hope, waiting for him to continue.

"The gates are what stabilizes the body and keeps it all together when travelling via portal, but I figured out a way to add some stabilization into the construction of an actual portal. It's nowhere near as effective—"

"An army… This is dangerous. What if they get a hold of this and try to send an army?"

"Not possible." Hope shook his head. "It's too unstable. Just bringing in five people was risky enough to make it snap. I can't tell how much worse it made the ride for them, but they looked really messed up when they first came through. We were almost late waiting for Sazh to stop barfing."

Lightning dropped her eyes and rubbed her chin as Hope spoke.

"I know what I did was impulsive and dumb and if it makes you feel better, it won't happen again any time soon because it's definitely too dangerous to—"

"Send me to Pulse."

"What?"

Lightning's eyes darted back up to meet Hope's. They held a strong conviction in them. She had clearly made up her mind about this before she even learned how he had transported the Pulsians to Cocoon in the first place.

"Light, I can't. You saw what it did to Fang and Vanille, and they're l'Cie. If you had seen Sazh and Noel's reaction to it… It's—it's too dangerous right now. I need some time to try to fix it first."

"If you sent Sazh and the other guy through twice in a day, then you'd have no problem sending me through once," Lightning replied, looking around Hope's room. "That," she said, pointing at the huge object covered under a sheet near his back wall. "That's it, isn't it?"

"Wha—yeah, but… But once?" Hope followed Lightning as she power walked to the back of the room and whipped the sheet from over the covered object. "How are you going to get back?"

Hope watched as Lightning studied the tall object before her. For the first time since she had entered his room, he thought he detected the first real sign of hesitancy at her plan as her eyes roved over the shoddy looking project. Its large, hefty base was a bubbly, multicolored mix of different metals that had unevenly been melded together and piled on until it reached Lightning's waist, where a huge ring was constructed out of wires and thin lines of tin that had been twisted together to make a lumpy circle.

"You're a smart kid," she said with a hard swallow, steeling herself so that she looked resolute in her intentions once again. "I'll give you time to fix it."

The pain was excruciating. It pulsed through Lightning in waves, at times being so intense that she thought she would explode. She wanted to shout, or cry, or do anything to let her frustration at it all out, but it was like she had lost all control of her body. She wondered whether she even had a body left to have any control of…

A deafening rip tore through her ears and what felt like a breeze whipped across her chest. She then felt something hard beneath her. The pain was still there, but it didn't seem as intense. She wasn't experiencing that feeling of being throttled through time or space anymore. She felt, if she could even call it that, a little more stable.

Unintelligible noise surrounded her. Loud noises. Shouting?

She opened her eyes but her vision was too blurry. She tried to speak, but she couldn't tell whether anything was coming out. Even the act of trying was causing her throat to burn. The noises surrounding her seemed to be getting louder, more intense. Blurs were revolving around her, with different color blobs shifting this way and that. She tried speaking again, still not sure if any sound was coming out or not. She wasn't sure of whether she was surrounded by people or whether she had been transported in the lair of some Pulsian beasts. Either way, she had no choice. She was in no shape to defend herself from man nor monster. Her only option was to try and warn whoever was around her and hope they'd listen.

She tried speaking again, this time using all the power left within her to keep repeating the same four words.

Attack on Monolith Gorge.

Fang kept one hand planted in the grass as she braced herself in front of Lightning Farron's body. A deep-seated grimace was planted on her face as she glared up at Caius. She still hadn't built up enough strength to stand and needed a knee to be anchored to the ground to keep her steady, but she was determined. She would not be moved.

"That's enough," she pushed through tightly grit teeth.

"You've led them straight to us!" Caius barked back.

"We both know this isn't about her." Fang's eyes darted to where Yeul was sitting up in the grass, her face looking paler in color than usual. "It's about me taking Yeul. If you're going the be angry at me, take it out on me. Leave her alone."

"She's a viper!" Caius yelled in such a volume that it nearly shook the trees. "You've already let one free! I won't let that mistake happen again!"

"Mrmmm…" Lightning softly gurgled from behind. Fang slightly winced at the sound. The pinkette was totally defenseless.

"She's the same one…" Fang sighed, hoping the revelation would help her cause more than hurt it. "She's the same soldier we captured at the theatre."

"And she has the audacity to return?! What if she's told—"

"She hasn't!" Fang yelled. "She was a l'Cie too! The one who helped everyone evacuate! She wants to help!"

"I remember her…" For the first time since Fang had landed, one of the two warriors who had accompanied Caius through the woods spoke. "She was there when we rushed the Sanctum. She was fighting that one guy in the giant robot suit."

Fang gave a slight, grateful nod to the warrior before looking back to Caius. "See?"

"I will not take that chance," Caius said in a low, menacing voice.

"You will have to go through me," Fang returned in the exact same tone.

"Mon…rith… Ore…" Lightning continued to mumble. "Ack… Monlith…Orge…"

Fang kept her eyes on Caius but slightly tilted her head to try and get a better listen on whatever it was the woman was mumbling. It sounded as if she was repeating something.

"Attack… Mon… Monolith… Gorge…"

Fang's eyes widened and the hard scowl on her face slackened. Totally forgetting that she was using her body as a barricade against Caius, she fully turned so that she was now leaning over Lightning's body.

"What was that?"

"Attack… on… Monolith… Gorge…"

"She came to warn us…" Fang looked over her shoulder at an unamused Cauis and the two warriors. "The Cocoonians announced they wanted to purge us tonight. That must be their first target. She came to warn us." She turned her attention back to Lightning. "Lightning? Light. When? When is the attack on Monolith Gorge?"

"Attack… Monolith… Gorge…"

"We seriously can't be using the word of a viper as a credible source?" Caius scoffed.

"She's not just a viper!" Fang turned to face Caius again. "And she's going back to Paddra. Unharmed."

Caius took a threatening step forward. "Is that so?"

"It is," Fang nodded. "And we're going to Monolith Gorge. And if something unexpected happens to her within that time, I can see things getting very chaotic. I'm not in a good mood right now. I believe you catch my drift."

Caius glared back at Fang. Channeling Ragnarok against his 'divine timing' was becoming her ultimate trump card, and she knew he understood.

"You." She looked at one of the guards. "Run ahead and call in a warning. We need to get Monolith evacuated. When you're done, send someone back to help Sazh and Noel. Go. NOW!"

The warrior nodded and sprinted off into the woods.

Fang looked toward the second warrior. "You, help her up." She nodded down toward Lightning, whose head was now resting in her lap. She still softly muttered her words about Monolith Gorge. "Take her back to the city. We're heading to Monolith Gorge. Vanille?"

"I'm good," the redhead replied, unsteadily getting to her feet from where she had originally landed. Fang softly smirked at her. She was much stronger than most gave her credit for. "And Caius—"

"I'll be dropping Yeul off first." He walked over to where Yeul was still sitting up in the grass and scooped her into his arms. "Only if that's acceptable with you, of course, oh mighty Ragnarok."

Fang could detect the sarcasm in his voice but chose to ignore it. "I mean it, Caius. No harm. Not even a scratch."

"Whatever you wish." Caius politely bowed his head. Fang warily stared at him as the warrior lifted Lightning, who was still dressed in a ball gown (with the added accessory of her gunblade sling) from her lap and into his arms. Feeling confident enough that Caius was calm, she put all of her focus into the act of being able to get herself on her feet.

"Fang…" Vanille spoke softly as she approached her friend. Her eyes were on Lightning as the warrior lifted her into his arms. "Are you going to be okay? With all of this? With her?" She was now looking at Fang, nothing but concern in her eyes.

"This is not what I planned…" Fang admitted in a hushed tone. "But what other choice do we have?"

Vanille continued to stare at Fang with that worrisome look. The reply hadn't answered the question.

"I'll be fine," she finally assured. "I can handle Lightning Farron. Now come. We don't have time to talk about this now."

Caius scoffed as he watched the two. Fang's movements were weak and awkward, like a baby animal taking its first steps. He would let her have this moment. It was of no cost to him. Knowing how Fang was when it came to pretty faces, it might even be good to have the Cocoonian around as a distraction.

"Heehee…"

Caius looked down to Yeul, who was softly smiling in his arms. There was an admiring twinkle in her eye as she gazed off in the direction where the warrior was carrying the Cocoonian.

"The chosen one followed us," she said in a soft voice. "This is good. Everything is in motion."

"The chosen one?" Caius asked, keeping his voice low so not to be overheard by Fang. "What do you mean?"

Yeul's eyes lifted to meet Caius's and her smile widened. "The chosen one from the prophesy, remember? The one to relieve the defier of fate. She is getting closer to becoming the woman of destiny."

Caius's head shot up to catch one last glimpse of the Cocoonian before she and her Gran Pulsian escort disappeared in the trees. A sick taste filled his mouth as he thought back to the particular prophecy that Yeul spoke of–the one that could derail everything. He should have known that he'd have to deal with this sooner or later. He should have better prepared. The prophecies were rarely wrong, but if fate could be changed once… then it could surely be changed again.

A/N: Long time no update. Sorry about that. Things have been crazy with life and school and life and other stuff. but before i try getting back into the full groove of this, i just kinda want to gauge interest... is anyone still interested in reading this? and since it's been a long time, just wanted to remind you guys... yall are awesome.