Disclaimer: I don't own FF13, squeenix does.
A/N: This is a novelization. A genderbent novelization. A serious, non-crack, genderbent novelization. Some of you are probably going to be pretty weirded out. That's alright.
Prologue's dedicated to LoriMina and Music's Crescendo without whom I wouldn't have started writing this. You can blame them.
Prologue: Last Train Home
The Thirteen Days after we awoke… were the beginning of the End.
Traveling through the canyon that linked inner Cocoon with the boundary zone that was the Hanged Edge was never pleasant. Felt altogether too much like being kidnapped. Which it was, in a way.
Lightning wanted to drum his fingers. Nervous habit he'd picked up.
He couldn't, of course. He was restrained. Came part and parcel with being a Purgee. Or, more officially, a 'Deportee.' Magnetically shackled locks bound his wrists together.
Outside, images of greenery and sheer cliff walls flipped by as the train whistled through the tube. A Splattershot whipped close. It was an ugly, reptilian bird, featherless and covered with rust-colored scales. Lightning watched it as it sailed parallel to the train before banking off and flying away.
He quirked his lips. No free meals here. This was the Purge Train. Everyone here was destined for Pulse.
Whether in bits or in pieces.
Purge Trains were a monstrosity. Not a deathtrap in the conventional sense of the term; but certainly not pleasant. You got on in one of two ways. The first involved a PSICOM pass and a suit of armour to match. The second involved a Control Robe: a long, white garment that would cover from head to toe. Mutiny or malcontent would be met with a punishing amount of electricity from the Robe. Hands and feet were magnetically bound together.
To make matters even more pleasant, a Control Robe couldn't be shorted, tampered with or hacked on pain of paralysis, possible heart failure and death. The PSICOM mooks would be green; greener than Sunleth Waterscape but that didn't make them any less dangerous. Nervous and trigger-happy bastards.
Finally, there was the train itself that would be retired, along with its human cargo after it had reached its destination.
Retired. Euphemism for slaughter.
Once upon a time he'd been appalled. No, wait, he was still appalled.
The train rumbled as they passed underneath the shadow of the last cliff and then directly into the mountain. Lightning closed his eyes. Showtime soon. Beside him, a fellow deportee shifted uncomfortably.
"You serious?" A throaty, distinctly feminine voice whispered.
Her name was Sazh. She had been an unexpected companion. Fortyish with a rather large, unlikely afro, she was dark-skinned, slim and fit despite her age. An old pilot's uniform identified her as a former flyboy. She had a chocobo chick that took residence in her monstrosity of a hairstyle and had volunteered to get onto this train too.
Lightning didn't know why; didn't care to know why.
"Be quiet," he bit out, annoyed.
Sazh didn't bother obeying. She knew, or had guessed, the itinerary. After a beat, answered: "Best of luck."
The entire train jumped. Turbulence from the last gate. PSICOM soldier next to her fumbled to secure the remote to the Control Robes. Now or never. Quick as his chosen namesake, Lightning grabbed onto the soldier's collar with his hands and flipped over him. Unbalanced, the soldier lost the remote.
Lightning's feet hit the ground hard. One crushed the remote. The other slammed onto the guard's fragile neck armor. The magnetically sealed cuffs disengaged as the Robe became inert. Design flaw.
One that Lightning had predicted.
"He did it!" Sazh exclaimed unnecessarily, already on her feet.
Sliding doors opened, admitting two more guards. No time to rest.
Lightning tossed the robe up as a distraction. Jumped and flipped over it. Bullets tore the robe to shreds. A moment of surprise was all he had. Slammed a boot into the helmet first guard, knocking him out cold. A leg sweep followed by an elbow strike to the neck nullified the second one.
Lightning took the time for a quick breather before grabbing a fallen gun. He checked the gauge to his grav implant. Full. Good.
PSICOM teams were deployed in groups of nine. Six left.
He shot the three downed soldiers. Quick, painless.
Had to be done.
"Hey, Lightning. If you need a hand-"
Sazh stopped, wide-eyed at the fallen soldiers. She was holding one of the PSICOM automatics with the ease of long practice. Lightning shook his head. "You'll only get in the way. Go find the other deportees."
Sazh hesitated, before nodding and rushing off.
Lightning took a breath.
Don'tthinkdon'tthink-
Bursting through the blast doors, the ex-Guardian Corps thumbed the safety before indiscriminately pumping the room full of lead. A helmeted head, clearly freaked, staggered backwards heading for the rear. A hundred and twenty rounds a second and he'd missed every shot.
Lightning wasn't sure if it was pity or amusement he felt when the soldier couldn't seem to find the trigger on their own weapon.
Or regret.
No time, no time. Mind on the goal.
Lightning aimed a kick at the guard's torso. PSICOM grunt dropped to the ground, still fumbling with their weapon. Lightning had his finger on the trigger. This time, he couldn't miss.
Blood leaked onto the ground.
He stared at it, tasting bile.
After a moment, Lightning raced forward. No time, no time he was here to save his brother. He couldn't believe that the gunshots had not been heard. Where were the other PSICOM soldiers?
He quieted his footsteps as he approached the next set of doors. Put a cautious ear to the metal.
By the sound of it, the guards in the other compartment hadn't yet realized what happened.
It was probably the insulated helmets. Bad idea, those.
Lightning risked a look, mentally noting their positions. He'd only get one shot at this before it turned ugly. One of the soldiers had his Blaze Edge. Lightning took another deep breath. The PSICOM automatic felt clunky and clumsy in his grip.
Opening the doors, he activated his grav implant. The fine meshwork technology had been spliced into him after he'd made it as a Gunblade candidate. A subtle hand gesture re-oriented his personal gravity, flinging him across the compartment to land heavily on a PSICOM grunt who groaned, falling to the floor even as Lightning took back his gunblade. Another flick and he was moving back again, legs extended to bowl over the next soldier.
Using him as a springboard, Lightning leaped for the ceiling. Other mooks had finally figured it out and were firing, aiming – too slow – return fire took two out, clipped a third damaging his visor. Guard struggled to aim but by then Lightning had both guns aimed for a headshot and it was far too late.
He heard booted feet on the ground. Sazh was back – having apparently broken into a PSICOM weapon locker. Two RPGs were strapped to her back and she'd somehow managed to retrieve her pilot-issued pistols.
She was accompanied by the civs.
"They all want to fight," Sazh reported, surprise clear in her tone.
Lightning hadn't held any delusions as to the end result of following this path. He might have still been conflicted over the whys but still he knew the end of the journey. This was a suicide mission.
He gazed at the civilians, most of them unaware of even the most basic gun safety.
The smallest couldn't have been older than six.
"Good for them," Lightning managed to say.
And then he threw up.
"You okay?" Sazh asked again after he was done horking his guts out. Lightning waved her off, wiping his mouth with a trembling hand.
Get it together man, get it together.
"Had to use an implant," he muttered, as if it'd explain anything. "Side effects."
Lies, all of it, but at least the civs seemed to be marginally reassured that he wasn't dying from some spontaneous l'cie disease. You're all gonna die anyway, he wanted to tell them. It'd be the nerves speaking so he didn't. Lightning was an elite, one of the best the Guardian Corps had ever produced. But he hadn't been trained to kill people.
He could almost see the report before him.
'Unsuccessful desensitization', the report would read. 'Subject too compassionate for battlefield. Suggest relocation to less strenuous locale until desensitization programme can be implemented.'
He'd been trained to protect. To hunt down monsters. And today…
Sazh patted his shoulder comfortingly. "We're almost through the tunnel. You'll be fine."
Lightning didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Did neither.
Couldn't afford it.
Lightning took a breath. Then light filtered through the windows and he knew his time for lollygagging was up.
Windows on the Purge Train weren't supposed to open.
But Lightning had done his research. These were all decommissioned, first-class tourist trains. Someone's idea of a bad joke, no doubt. The windows were large enough to comfortably take in a near panoramic view, or admit a person. And they were made of plastic in the forward compartments. After kicking the flimsy piece of material off the portal, he looked out.
The Hanged Edge was aptly named.
Lights and bridges, as far as the eye could see. More trains, more deportees. Some already fighting with PSICOM forces. Looks like he hadn't been the only one with the idea to fight back.
Wait was that-
Lightning blinked. It couldn't have been Snow.
He focused up after hearing a familiar noise. Seraph fighters. Great.
"EVERYONE DOWN." He bellowed down the corridor. The civilians had elected to stay in the rearward carriages and only Sazh had come with him. Apparently his little vomiting act had them scared stiff.
The Seraphs went in for strafing run. Bits of metal and plastic rained around them.
No one dead though. That was a plus. Someone in command had neglected to mention that anti-infantry weapons wouldn't work on trains whose structural integrity approached that of a tank.
"Give me that," he snapped, yanking the RPG from Sazh's grasp.
"What the-"
Aim, shoot, fire.
Watch the blossoming inferno at a successful hit.
Simple.
One Seraph down.
In the aerial corps it was five kills to become an ace. The hollow pit in Lightning's stomach grew. He grabbed the other RPG, this time Sazh didn't complain. Shot – missed – some traitorous part of him was glad when it hit the one of the train terminals instead of its intended victim.
A Seraph spat out electricity, the tracks melted where it hit-
Shit.
"Grab ahold of something," Sazh yelled down the corridor, seeing the inevitable.
Lightning grit his teeth.
Something exploded.
Then there was nothing but a high-pitched whistling noise. Lightning blinked. The other compartments… were just… gone. He was staring directly at the tracks, a giant hole in the back where it used to be attached to the other train carriages. Behind him, Sazh was wordless.
Just like that. They'd lost fifty people or more.
He spotted them out of the corner of his eye. The train was already far enough so that he had to squint to make it out. The rest of the train hit one bridge, then another, lodged somewhere below – already PSICOM had deployed crack forces to look for survivors – Lightning felt bile rise in his throat again.
Then something heavy landed on the roof. A moment later, the runaway train was stopping, slowing. What in the world could have-
A spiked, ceramic blade the size of a small car went through the roof, nearly crushing him to death.
Lightning blinked.
Warmech. Couldn't tell what model. Monstrous as hell. Difficult to kill. But not technically alive. He was almost glad, in a way. He took his Blaze Edge out of his sheathe.
"Run!" Sazh shouted, urgently.
Lightning did. After a moment of disbelief, Sazh added: "I meant away."
Lightning grinned. Wasn't one of the nice ones. Boosted himself up through the hole in the roof, took in the sights: white armor plating, lights blinking out of its head and tail, looked a lot like a giant scorpion with four rotating saws on each claw. Manasvin Warmech, it read on the side.
Good. One of the weaker models. He needed to work off some steam.
As if to remind him that it was a foe to be taken seriously, the mech leaped up ten stories and then slammed into the train, nearly blowing him off his feet. Behind, Sazh who had apparently followed him, gave yelp as she fell.
"Hey, hey, hey! Let's be rational now," the woman said, crawling back. The two of them, in somewhat different manners, avoided the blow of a claw. Lightning leaped over and back, Sazh tucked and rolled before getting back to her feet.
"They're sending in the big guns now," she said, somewhat shrilly. "What do we do?"
"Watch and learn," Lightning quipped.
Combat with something as big as a warmech couldn't help but be messy. Despite her ridiculous appearance, Sazh was a competent fighter. Aerial Corps-issued weapons didn't have much punch but she compensated by actually being decently ambidextrous and carrying two guns and firing both at once.
For his part, Lightning hit it. Hard and as many times as it'd take for him to get the taste of blood and bile out of his mouth.
It was almost therapeutic, getting hit by lasers, giant rotating blades and its goddamn tail. Blood on his arm, didn't matter – haaha- he was gonna carve it up, hahaha – gonna take it apart piece by piece-
Wait.
Lightning backed off, something about the warmech had changed. It backed up, jumping onto the tracks.
Both of its claws lodged into the train.
Interesting. Its AI must have been pretty advanced for it to come up with that sort of plan.
"Fall back," he ordered crisply. The two of them made their way towards the front of the train, away from the automated mech.
It continued to jostle the train, but apparently was incapable of flipping it right off the tracks.
Sazh apparently interpreted this as a victory.
"Ha ha! Not so tough now, huh?"
The warmech activated both of its shoulder-mounted engines. Blue-white fire roared to life.
"Hey… hey! That wasn't like a challenge now, all right?"
The two of them exchanged a look as the train compartment they'd both been in buckled under the stress.
"Time to go!"
Lightning rushed. He could already feel the train – impossible as though it may have been, move towards the vertical. Nearly skidded onto his knees before hitting the rooftop guardrail and sliding down. Hit the next train compartment at a run.
He'd done skateboarding, once.
"Jump," he ordered desperately, watching the dark-skinned women as she clumsily tried to rush down from a near vertical angle.
She did. Landed heavily, but managed not to break any bones.
Lightning lifted his weapon into an en guarde position. "Head's up," he warned.
Warmech was going to attack again.
"This thing…" Sazh panted, her chest heaving, "won't… give up!"
Wasn't programmed to give up.
Lightning smiled again. It was tight and controlled.
The next few minutes were much like the last few. The warmech poured on the pain with some sort of wide-area laser blast. Its intensity was pitiful though – clearly it had been built with crowd control in mind, not with actual combat – and after a few frantic moments of life-and-pain combat, one of the two of them hit something vital.
Explosions racked the warmech's frame. Twitching, it fell off the bridge, towards the ground below.
There was a moment of silence as the two unlikely allies fought to catch their breath.
Sazh collapsed onto her ass. "Oh goodness," she said, exaggerating her exhaustion. "Wooh-we did it!"
Lightning stalked away. Above and below, Seraphs strafed the bridges of the Hanged Edge with wild abandon.
Sazh stood back up. Her voice followed him, even as she got off the train's roof.
"Aren't you supposed to protect civilians, Soldier?" There was a sneer in her voice. Lightning bit the inside of his cheeks to keep from replying. He had a mission. He'd stick to it. Sazh continued, apparently heedless of the danger she was putting herself in by making an armed soldier angry. "Why are you trying to stop the Purge? Why don't you tell me that?"
Lightning's breath caught in his throat. He could see the train fall, the soldiers he'd killed, the Seraph exploding – he could imagine them dead, the letters that the commanders would have to write up to the families of the soldiers… I'm sorry about the death of your son; your husband; your wife; your sister-
He licked his dry lips.
Closed his eyes.
"I was a Soldier."
His eyes snapped open. He walked off.
"Hey, where do you think you're going!" Sazh called.
He ignored her.
Chocobo, we just can't catch a break, can we?
…
Yeah, I'm going to follow him. Shiiii. I'm getting too old for this. At this rate I'm gonna be a wrinkly old lady in no time.