A/N: Well hi, everyone. As you may have seen from the latest chapter I've posted (as of now it's "Shiva") things look a little different. If you're no stranger to this story you will already have learned from Shiva's new AN, but if you're new here, I'll give another explanation.

Now, as you all might have guessed, the first two chapters of this story were...er, shall we say, lacking, in terms of both writing style and fluidity. As you will see, I have fixed those issues, and split the original first chapter into two.

That, as you might also guess, was a major effing pain to deal with. First off I had to make changes to chapters 1 and 2, as well as read through the other chapters to make sure everything was smooth. I had to find the original chapters and pluck them from my archives and of course change the numbering. I then had to replace EVERY SINGLE CHAPTER that was originally posted with the newer version. EVERY. SINGLE. CHAPTER. In a night. And it's very late, and I have to get up in about four hours to go Christmas shopping. Ahh, the things I have to do to avoid having to run around the parking lot with my mother to find a parking spot for an hour.

In other news, yes, I'm alive! Did you guys miss me? ^_^

...also please don't hate me for being away so long. I love you all, I promise!

Chapter One – Defiers of Fate

The thirteen days after we awoke…were the beginning of the end.

The train shuttered along the tracks suspended high above the ground at high speed, making the otherwise beautiful scenery look like blurred splotches of coloured paint upon a canvas if someone were to look out a window. However, this train was not designed to carry tourists leisurely over cities and jagged cliff-sides. No, this train had other purposes today.

In the four compartments, elite PSICOM soldiers stood guard over the other denizens inside – civilians dressed in similar white garb with loose sleeves and hoods that hid their faces in shadows, and blue and black linings. One woman used these convenient shadows to glare at one of those passing soldiers, the cogs in her mind turning.

The Purge had begun.

"You serious?" the man next to her whispered, knowing – or at least guessing – what was flowing through the mind of the woman at his side. She had long since given up on trying to warn him away, instead bearing his presence with an ironclad will.

"Shut up," she answered.

"Hm. Best o' luck."

All she had to do was wait for a convenient moment to strike, just like her namesake. Lightning. It flashes bright, then fades away.

This is exactly what she did.

She waited until their guard's back was turned – having broken her electronic shackles within the first ten minutes of their journey – before she jumped him, and as she did so a rumble shook the train as it crashed headlong through the barrier separating them from their destination. Using his shoulders as leverage she flipped herself into the air – a move that simultaneously allowed her to disrobe, revealing pink hair and a sergeant's Guardian Corps uniform.

She gave a vicious roundhouse kick to the side of his head, knocking him to the ground, smashing the AMP-switch that held the rest of the citizens captive underneath their Purge uniforms soon after. After disarming the unconscious soldier, she continued onward toward where they were keeping the armoury, successfully ignoring her audience – having overheard the guards discussing the switch in shifts with the newly-promoted grunts was a stroke of luck, but one she was all too happy to take advantage of.

With the switch disabled, the rest of the carriage was in a complete disarray as the civilians decided to take after the pink-haired beauty in the Guardian Corps uniform. The man she'd met while boarding the Purge train was right behind her, chasing, trying to catch up to her. She ignored him, choosing to focus on activating her Grav-con unit – only given to Guardian Corps soldiers, this piece of technology allows the user to harness the power of Anti-Matter Principle technology and defy gravity in all manner of ways, seemingly only limited to the user's imagination.

Lightning used this technology now, clicking her fingers together to activate the pressure switch implanted just under the first layer of skin on her right index finger. Now cloaked in an anti-gravity skin, she used the liberated gun to shoot down all the guards in her way. Now only one soldier stood in her way to the armoury – and his back was turned.

Using this opportunity, she flipped onto the roof of the carriage and, back straight and her gun pointing at the back of the soldier's head – before she could fire, the guard turned and spotted her. He opened fire, jackets jumping through the air as bullets slipstreamed towards their target – who simply flew through the air, somehow dodging each bullet fired, to slam the unlucky guard against the wall. There was a satisfying crack as his head collided with the wall, but he did not go down. Raising his gun, he tried to fire again, but this time Lightning beat him to it, firing rounds in quick succession and fracturing his mask as each bullet hit home.

Meanwhile the man – Sazh – was behind her all the while, finding it easy to keep up as she was stopped by wave upon wave of soldiers. He was the one responsible for rallying the other captives, and was currently kneeling down in front of a blond-haired boy with his arms wrapped around his knees in terror.

"It's alright, I'm not a l'Cie," said Sazh as he began to work on comforting the boy. He looked up and saw the chocobo chick in the stranger's hair give a happy 'kweh', and the boy could not help but smile.

"Tch," Lightning muttered as she wrenched open the door to the armoury and grabbed her Blazefire Sabre. She heard her unwanted companion catching up to her and grabbing his weapons, casually throwing them into their respective holsters while the other civilians grabbed their belongings and weapons of their own, most doffing their white attire as they did so.

"So far so good. They all want to fight!"

"Good for them," said Lightning, holstering her gunblade as if to punctuate her statement.

And as she did so, a huge rumble shook the train, signalling that the last barrier had been broken.

Leaning out of the side-door, Lightning stared into the night as time slowed down around her and she was able to get a full glimpse of her surroundings.

The first thing she noticed was that they were currently gliding through the Hanging Edge – one of the areas that had taken real damage and was deserted in the War of Transgression five hundred years before. The area around them was alive with movement and war tonight, however, as soldiers turned upon their charges and shot them down.

From the corner of her eye, she spotted something white and scorpion-like flying through the air, closely following her train. Eyes widening, she whirled around and took one of the rocket launchers Sazh was trying to don.

"Hey!"

Ignoring him completely now, Lightning looked through the scope and took aim. Training her eye after the white mechanical being, she took a deep breath, waited for the lock-on, and fired.

The rocket missed, however – the mech using an evasive manoeuvre mid-air to avoid it – and continued to make a beeline for the train. Lightning shot at it several more times with the rocket launcher, managing only to hit it once. The mech spun out of her view.

Several terse seconds later an almighty tearing sound erupted from the rear carriage, followed by a series of heart-stopping jolts that felt horribly like the train was forcibly being slowed down. Seconds after this their carriage was lifted rear-side-up – the mech was using its thrusters to break the rear carriage away from the rest of the train.

It's not going to stop until the whole train is decimated – and everyone inside it. Before she could think much more, their carriage was broken into from above with the shiver-inducing sound of metal tearing from metal, and the train finally came screaming to a halt.

"Run!" her unwanted companion yelled. She jumped through the new hole to the top of the train instead. "I meant away!"

Sazh slowly and reluctantly joined her, both of them facing a huge white Manasvin Warmech – the same mech that had been tearing the train to pieces. For a short moment Lightning stood there, eyeing the huge scorpion-shaped thing as it seemed to eye her back, rune-inscribed saws rotating menacingly at them.

The Warmech lifted itself high into the air – its spotlight trained at the two deportees in front of it – and as it lowered violently back onto the train it threw Sazh back off its feet.

"Hey, hey, let's be rational now!"

The Warmech chose not to be rational at all, instead lifting one appendage armed with four whirring saws and swiping at them. While Sazh scampered away, still on his butt, Lightning smoothly backflipped away from the offending appendage.

"They're sending in the big guns now." Sazh clambered slowly to his feet. "What do we do?"

"Watch and learn." Figure out its attack patterns. She flipped her gunblade into sword mode as smoothly as if it were an extension of her arm, both of them dodging yet another swipe made by the robot. Her companion stopped grumbling and followed her example, drawing his guns and firing. This only seemed to irritate the robot, as it raised its tail and shot a ball of blue energy in her direction. She dodged, slicing away at every part of the thing she could reach until she had to dodge again.

She could hear her ally taunting the robot, which seemed to irritate it further as it tried to slice at him. The robot sliced again, inches away from his chest.

"Whoa!" He dodged again, somewhat ungracefully.

Why did you follow me? Lightning rolled her eyes and continued to move on the offensive, until its thrusters carried it away from them and back to the rear of the carriage, using its appendages to dig into the corners. The carriage began to rumble and sway.

"Fall back!" Lightning commanded as she endeavoured to put as much distance between herself and the mech. Once they had gotten to the end of the next carriage they turned, weapons drawn.

Sazh began to laugh – Lightning didn't know whether or not it was out of fear or something else entirely.

"Not so tough now, huh?" he called, laughing again.

As if in response to his taunt, the Warmech's thrusters, which had been running and helping to jolt the train, doubled in power and the carriage swayed dangerously.

"Hey, that wasn't like a challenge now," he said, raising his guns in front of him. "All right? Hey!"

The Warmech didn't seem to care what Sazh meant by it. The thrusters boosted, using more power, and the carriage – along with the entire train – began to lift.

"Time to go!" he cried, and ran down the slippery slope that was now the carriage.

With an assortment of colourful vocabulary running through Lightning's mind, she, too, booked it. Sliding from side to side with the carriage's momentum, she darted to the left and slid down the rail, flipping with ease onto the top of an undisturbed carriage – the rear of the train in front of theirs.

Sazh, however, was taking a vastly different approach. Simply put, he was running as quickly and as carefully as he could down the shaking carriage, which made for an ungraceful sight.

"I'm coming!" he yelled.

"Jump!" she shouted back as the carriage was violently pulled off the tracks.

He followed her order, jumping just before the carriage was thrown off the tracks the way a child would throw away a toy during a tantrum. He landed painfully on his hands and knees; his chocobo chick landing soon after with an excited and high-pitched "Wheee!"

"Heads up," called Lightning while Sazh was picking himself up once more.

"This thing," he ground out, "won't give up!"

Lightning angled her sword in front of her as if to shield her from the coming violence.

And after thundering through the air towards them, once again, the Warmech landed threateningly in front of them, seemingly ready for round two.

And so the fight began once more; Lightning darting in for close-range attacks while Sazh provided her with cover fire from a relatively safe distance.

Finally, after what felt like hours of fighting, she could hear the mech's circuits short from the damage it had taken. The yellow light left its eyes and it collapsed, sliding off the top of the compartment and taking the long fall to Lake Bresha below.

One step closer, she thought as she flipped her Sabre into gun mode and slid it into its holster, connected to her uniform and hanging past her waist. Its familiar weight gently bumped into the backs of her legs as she circled the carriage's roof.

"Aren't you supposed to protect civilians, Soldier?" Sazh asked Lightning. "I mean, what are you doing, trying to stop the Purge? Why don't you tell me that?"

"I was a soldier," was her only reply as she somersaulted off of the train car, leaving Sazh alone with only his chocobo chick in his hand for company.

"Chocobo, we just can't catch a break, can we?" he addressed it, and it replied with a small 'kweh!'

"That's a good question," he said, then put it back in his hair. "Guess we'd better follow her."

A/N: Y'all know the drill by now. Leave love!