Even over the rumbling of the prison train and the screams of soldiers, the bells of Anima rang clear.
Lightning heard them ringing as she pointed the gun at the soldier's forehead.
"Sergeant, no—"
The bells rang through the gunshot.
The train accelerated suddenly, throwing Lightning off balance. She stumbled and grabbed the wall for support, cursing and ducking low. Fighting without a Grav-Con Unit left you a victim of the whims of inertia. She felt naked and exposed without it, a knight without her armor.
She quickly searched the soldier. He had lost his GCU. Idiot! She banged his helmet with her fist. But if he wasn't stupid, then it only confirmed what she had suspected: The soldiers on board were also going to be Purged. And the Sanctum didn't want to waste their precious technology on the damned.
Stupid to be on the Purge train. Everyone here was stupid. Sometimes there wasn't a smart option.
She took the ammo from his gunblade and hurried behind the cover of the panicked, milling civilians in the train carriage.
"There's warmechs flying around outside!" Sazh panted, clutching a pair of pistols. He had taken them off one of the three soldiers now laying on the floor of the carriage. They were military-grade Vega 42s, designed for on-the-move, flexible units of soldiers who could carry pistols, shotguns, and sniper rifles all for the weight and space of a single pair of handguns. She wondered if he really knew how to use them.
"So?"
"So if we go out the side door, we're sitting ducks!" As if to emphasize his point, a tiny baby chocobo popped out of his thick, curly black hair. Lightning stared at in in disbelief for a moment.
"This train is going to Pulse," she said eventually. "The Sanctum doesn't care if every soldier on board is Purged too. They'll never stop it till every single person who might be tainted by a Pulse fal'Cie is taken off Cocoon no matter what the cost."
"Then…then we have to move soon." Sazh licked his lips and looked outside. Lightning followed his gaze. They were in the Vestige, the Hanging Ruins coming up fast. The last stop before Pulse.
"But how do we open the door?" he said.
"Just cover me."
Lightning strode toward the door to the next cabin, which wasn't opening, as she expected. As long as they couldn't get out the side door, they were stuck on the train, which was taking them to Pulse. Who cared if the civilians rioted? They were trapped anyway.
She shouldered her gunblade, a Blazefire Saber model, and nodded at Sazh.
He blanked. "What?"
"Blow it open!"
"Oh, uh, right. You got it, lady."
Lightning glared as he struggled to reshape the pistols into a shotgun.
"Other way," she snapped, "lock it in, turn the barrel, and cock it!"
"Like this?" He pointed the newly assembled shotgun at the door. "Fire?"
"Fire!"
She snapped her fingers. He squeezed the trigger, and an explosion went off. She screamed and bent over at the sudden noise, having forgotten she didn't have her Grav-Con Unit to protect her from the blast.
Sazh was saying something, motioning to the earplugs in his ears. He must have picked a pair off one of the soldiers. She said, "Fuck off," and didn't hear it, and looked at the door, which, as she expected, was mostly undamaged.
"Open this damn door!" she felt herself scream at the occupants on the other side, "or we start killing civilians!"
She saw Sazh making a wild gesture and felt herself say, "Fuck off," again.
Something shadowy moved in the window. Lightning drew back and raised her Blazefire Saber. Sazh mimicked her action.
The door opened. Her ears were ringing. But she heard the bells of Anima ringing louder.
No grenades, no gunfire rocked the cabin. They could deport civilians to Hell if they wanted, but they wouldn't want to kill any of them.
She peered into the carriage from her vantage point. They were sitting nice and polite in their seats, shuttled in comfort to certain doom. And in the back, a flicker—
Lightning whipped her cape off and tossed it in front of the open door. Even as a round of machine-gun fire tore holes in it, she was diving along the floor, the barrel of her gunblade lining up with the target. She squeezed the trigger, and a round burst off, ripping through the armor on the soldier's leg. He fell, and she rolled, Sazh bracing her against the wall.
"That's one!" he shouted into her ear. Lightning nodded, pushed him away, and pointed her gunblade at one of the civilians she could see. They were cowering, covering their faces and trembling. They had boarded the train with relatively little fuss. What was a bullet compared to Pulse?
She squeezed the trigger again, watched a hole appear in the wall just above the civilian's head.
"Toss your weapons down and come out with your hands up, or I start blowing heads off!" she screamed.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then a pair rifles flew in past the door and landed on the ground, followed moments after by a third.
"All of it!" she shouted. Three pistols followed, and three knives.
"Come out with your hands up!"
The scream of the train on the AMP track was the only thing she could hear.
"They want to know about the soldier you shot!" Sazh screamed into her ear.
"Leave him, the other two come out!" Lightning shouted.
"Don't do anything funny or I'll shoot!" Sazh added unnecessarily. Lightning gripped her gunblade and crouched.
The first soldier appeared, hands behind his head.
"Get in the chair!" Lightning barked, and he sat in the nearest open seat. Then she shot him.
The next soldier had a lieutenant's stripes. Lightning had a fragmentary moment of sourceless dread. Then he snapped his fingers behind his head, and in the next moment had kicked Sazh against the wall so hard the cabin shook.
Lightning squeezed the trigger, but with his Grav-Con Unit activated it deflected off his shoulder. The inertia-manipulating field showed as a hazy purple glow around his body. Cursing, she faked a move to stand up and dived to the side instead, but his kick caught her in the midsection and threw her against the edge of the door. Her back slammed painfully against the metal; she screamed and saw red.
His black boots appeared in front of her. Feeling around, she realized she had dropped the Blazefire Saber. A single shimmering hand hauled her up roughly and slammed her against the doorjamb. His fist drew back, and her hand came out of her jacket and stabbed her survival knife into his gut, forcing it through the inertial field. It wasn't enough to stop him, dulled as it was by the Grav-Con Unit, but it did prevent the blow to her jaw from knocking her out.
He dropped her and backhanded her with the same hand, sending her crashing to the floor. She spat blood and whirled around. The civilians were crowded against the opposite door, staying as far away from the fight as they could.
The lieutenant had his pistol, and had pointed it at her head.
A gunshot went off, and the lieutenant collapsed.
"Bastard," Sazh grunted, holding his shotgun.
Lightning rushed over to the lieutenant and taking his Grav-Con Unit. She snapped her fingers and breathed a sigh of relief as the crackling purple field surrounded her.
Sazh was saying something. Lightning cued the Grav-Con Unit and heard his voice through the amplified sound waves.
"I'm in a lot of pain," he grimaced. "He did a number on you too. What now?"
Lightning grabbed the Blazefire, more ammo, and stood in front of the side door.
"We have to go now," Sazh said. "We'll be past the Hanging Edge in less than a minute!"
She activated the Grav-Con Unit again, grabbed the door, and pushed. Transferring the kinetic energy from her own body traveling at the same speed as the train into the door, it was shoved away and flew into the distance like a toy.
Wind whipped into the cabin, blowing her tangled pink hair around. Warmechs were flying around in the distance, clearly monitoring the train. At once they spotted her, or rather the open door. A radio message crackle on the lieutenant's com.
"Report in, lieutenant, what is happening in Cell D?"
Lightning ignored it. She peered down. There was a narrow road leading away from the gate to Pulse and toward the Vestige. The problem was getting there.
"Lieutenant, we are sending units your way. Respond immediately."
The Hanging Edge was vast and vertical, wrapped with dozens of winding roads that were lined with soldiers. Strange structures hung in the air, vestiges of the war 500 years ago.
Buzzing, blue-glowing flying ships were speeding toward the train. They had wings and tails, half machine, half animal. Strong, but stupid.
Sazh had stood up and was standing beside her, leaning against the wall. "How do we get out of here?"
"I don't know yet."
"You don't know yet?"
"Shut up." A platform near the train was coming up fast in the distance. "There! A docking point."
"You think this train is going to stop?"
"No, but I'm going to jump!"
"You mean us, right? At this speed?"
"Yes. Get ready."
"Hey! Lady! I don't have that magic purple thing, I'll get crushed!"
Lightning ignored him. It was a standard buddy jump.
"Hey! Are you listening to me?"
"Shut up! I'm gauging the distance."
She narrowed her eyes. Five seconds.
Four. She grabbed his belt.
Three. "Hey! Don't—"
Two. She snapped her fingers.
The air vibrated; the bells of Anima had tolled.
She pushed off with impossible force, transferring the speed from the train into her jump, pulling him with her. They hurtled toward the platform and were there in an instant, the inertial field crackling around Lightning as her combat boots landed heavily. Instead of keeping the field around her, she cued it to stay in place, meaning she skipped forward and pulled Sazh into the energy field, now a thick purple ball. It slowed his velocity to almost nothing, allowing Lightning to brace him.
He was shouting something. She snapped her fingers and wished she hadn't.
"—whoa, whoa whoa! Don't ever do that again! Saw my life flashing before my eyes…."
Lightning tuned him out and scanned the horizon. A large, flying wraith was coming.
"Move!" she ordered, grabbing his chest and pushing him toward the other side of the platform. There was no path—because there would be a transport shuttle for the soldiers—
A loud whine split the air. Lightning turned her head, saw it—Manasvin Warmech, she remembered from pictures in the manuals—a giant, metal scorpion with electric buzz saws for arms, a machine-beast designed to fight the monsters from Pulse. It was coming closer, too fast—she shoved Sazh against the edge of the platform and braced him, and snapped her fingers.
It smashed onto the platform, cracking the stone apart. It knocked their footing loose and slid forward faster than they fell; Lightning's boots touched the metal creature, she grabbed Sazh's belt, pushed off with the energy of the diving metal scorpion, and launched them toward a low road curving around toward the eastern wall. Again she braced him for the landing.
Setting him against a pillar, she stared up at the crumbling platform. The Warmech was nowhere to be seen.
Sazh was visibly laughing. She checked the juice on her Grav-Con Unit and snapped her fingers.
"—ha ha ha ha! Oh, have mercy, I am never doing this again!" He threw back his head and laughed, then winced and grabbed his side. "You're crazy. What are you, PSICOM?"
"Guardian Corps."
"They all as crazy as you?"
She thought of her old sergeant. "Yes."
He laughed again. "What's the plan, Thunder and Lightning? This road's so far down there aren't any soldiers, but we've got quite a hike to our destination."
"So let's go. Can you walk?"
"Not really. Can you?"
"With the adrenaline and the Grav-Con Unit, I'm fine."
"You Guardian Corps are something else, huh?" He chuckled. "You gonna leave me here? Holding you up and all that."
"Can you still shoot?"
He started breaking down the shotgun into twin pistols. "Think so."
"Then I'll support you. Come on."
She helped him break the shotgun down and hoisted some of his weight around her shoulders. Together they started walking up the long road. Toward Anima, toward the God from Pulse that had started this war.