Okay I've been meaning to work on a Final Fantasy XIII story for a while I just wasn't sure what I wanted to work on. My goal is to see this one on TV Tropes or something similar. It's going to be awesome. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do at first, I've beating Lightning returns, but I still haven't beating Final Fantasy XIII yet, I'm on disc three though. It's just I'm going to replay it because I didn't grind appropriately, but that's because the story is so beautiful you known. I was captivated by the graphics and everything. Anyways enough rambling here is the first chapter.
Anyways this takes place at the end of the first game when Fang and Vanille go into their Crystal Stasis. Etro will be mentioned a lol, and though out of character, she makes Lightning timeless not aging or dying. You'll see what I mean. Anyways please review, and tell me what you think.
Line Break
How long has it been since those two had entered their Crystal Stasis? Lightning had stopped counting the years. Everything seemed like so long ago. After Fang and Vanille had entered their Crystal Stasis, Lightning had vowed to get them out of it. Thinking back on it, Lightning wanted to laugh.
Crystal Stasis was a blessing in disguise. All you did was dream, not realizing what was going on in the world around you. Lightning however was cursed. Cursed by Etro with the one thing no mortal should ever have. Lightning was "blessed" with Immortality. She never aged, and the few times Lightning had actually tried to kill herself, she would heal. She was truly immortal forced to live while everybody around her dies.
The first to go was Sazh, kind old Sazh. Lightning could still see the look on his face. He died at the age of seventy. Laying in his bed, his afro having greyed. His aged face smiling. Those kind old eyes looking on all his friends and family. When they landed on her, Lightning remembered that the oldest member of the group had smiled.
The second to go was Snow, the big oaf who had married her sister. In his old age he had let his hair grown out, and he grow a beard. They were both white, and time had been kind to him. He had passed on in his sleep. Lightning could hardly believe it. At eighty years of age, he had died. It came as a shock. Never to hear Snow act like a goof, or see that smile on his face.
It was only a few months later before Serah herself passed on. This one hit Lightning the hardest. There were somethings Lightning couldn't protect her sister from, the finality of death was one of them. Lightning had cried near her sister's bed, surrounded by the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of Snow and Serah.
Her sister was the one who told her not to cry, that it would be alright. She died with a smile on her face. It wasn't fair, it was never fair.
It was probably around this time that Lightning began to feel a boiling rage and hatred. This hatred all at the goddess Etro. It was her fault Lightning had to suffer like this. That she had to watch her friends and family die. Yet buried underneath all that was a deep self-loathing. Lightning was starting to see herself as a monster. A monster that couldn't age, a monster that watched her friends die.
Finally the last member of her mortal friends to die was Hope. He had come a long way from the young teen that Lightning had remembered. Oh Hope was the youngest of the group, and he had found a wife. Both of them had children. Lightning couldn't even remember Hope's wife. Yet, she remembered when Hope had died.
That stupid kid in his seventies died with only his wife and Lightning around his death bed. The last thing he said to Lightning was that he was sorry that he was leaving Lightning alone. That stupid idiot said something like that. He should have just concentrated on passing on.
At first with all of Lightning's friends gone, she tried to focus on visiting their descendants while trying to free to free Fang and Vanille. She watched as Sazh's son died, as his daughter died, and so on and so on. Each time Lightning grew colder and colder.
Finally she could no longer take it. She shut her emotions down. She no longer visited the decedents, no longer cared for living in this world. She cut herself off from the world, traveling around all of Gran Pulse. Still she tried to find a way to free Vanille and Fang the two friends who gave her a tiny sliver of hope.
Since her friends died, one hundred years passed, then another hundred, then two hundred. As the centuries passed Lightning began to lose hope that she would ever be able to free her two friends stuck in Crystal Stasis.
At first legends began to spread about Lightning, a savior of people who was immortal. She wondered around on a majestic horse. Yet those legends changed when finally a thousand years passed.
Lightning could no longer contain the rage that had been simmering for one thousand years. Finally she became blinded by rage. What happened next was the birth of a demon. Lightning had destroyed the city of New Oreba. They had been able to make the land fertile again, yet it was all wiped away in a single instant. What Lightning had done was something that many of the residents of Gran Pulse would never forgive. Nobody survived, and New Oreba and the surrounding area for miles was glass. That's all it was glass. It was now impossible for something to grow there.
After having destroyed New Oreba, Lightning went into a hibernation state very similar to Crystal Stasis. Yet at the same time it wasn't similar. She became covered in the crystals of a Cie'th.
Two thousand years passed before Lightning actually emerged from her crystal slumber. People tried to build around her crystal, and she became worshipped as both a goddess and a demon.
When she finally did emerge, it wasn't to a peaceful scene but by an attack that came from a group known as the Order of Salvation. Apparently they followed the god of light Bhunivelze, who saw Lightning as unclean. He hoped to destroy Lightning while she slept, but the fighting caused her to awaking.
Lightning couldn't bear to watch as innocent people were slaughtered. The guilt of having destroyed New Oreba still fresh in her mind, she sought salvation. According to information from the Order of Salvation Lightning just walked through their soldiers. All she walked past were killed by her shadow.
The surviving members of the Order of Salvation retreated. Lightning though decided to lead the people away from what the area around New Oreba became known as, The Wasteland. She led the people on a long exodus.
It wasn't long before they arrived at Nova Chrysalia, a land that Etro had made for specifically for Lightning. It was there that Lightning developed what would become known as the Eternal Empire, looking for ways to kill both Etro and Bhunivelze. Residing in her floating palace known as the Ark, Lightning became known as the Eternal Empress.
The world soon entered a stasis. Around the crystal statues of Vanille and Fang, the Republic of Grand Pulse was born 500, years after the fall of Cocoon. Further away was the religious and militaristic nation of the Order of Salvation. Then on the continent of Nova Chrysalia was the Eternal Empire lead by the Immortal Empress Lightning.
Events would soon be set in motion that would forever shatter the stasis of the world.