FFXIII-2 is owed by Square Enix and I make not money off this unauthorized use of their intellectual property.

This is just the start to something I was thinking about as I was playing FFXIII-2. The thought of just how far we can go with alternate timelines came to me.

Paradox Shift

part one -The Death of hope-

By Slayzer.

AE00 (After Exodus Year Zero)

Cocoon had fallen and was shattered.

Inside Cocoon the sky and ground both seemed to crashed into each other before falling upward. Within that roar of earth and wind the dieing screams of millions of men, women and children were swallowed up before being silenced. All the while the soul trapped within Ragnarok looked on and wished to join them in death.

Then with in a flash, he woke, alive when so many others were not.

A mountain range was born out of the wreckage of Cocoon and the dust cloud was still choking the sky.

The sky.

He had never seen the sky, not the real one anyway. The steel gray clouds of ash and dust were cut threw with blades of sun light. One such beam of light fell on him and warmed his broken body. For this first time his skin felt the touch of true sunlight and it's warmth. With that feeling he remember he was alive and pain followed soon after.

His left arm felt numb and cold but burned with a sharp pain at the same time. From wrist to shoulder his whole left arm was crisscrossed with black jagged lines, almost like some twisted tattoo. The nexus of the whole thin was his left wrist where a red jewel was set into his skin like an unhealing wound.

The boy's arm would never heal as this was his penitence. That knowledge flowed into him the same way his focus had, with an image and some otherworldly understanding of it's meaning. Amnesia would have been a mercy as he was to remember what he had done and the millions he had killed with his twisted left hand as a painful reminder.

'Maybe it be better if I just stayed here and died.' he thought.

Thunder roared somewhere overhead and a memory played back in his mind. The memory of that woman he meet on a train.

That solider woman who was branded a l'Cie with him and the others. They had split up after escaping PISCOM and again when she abandoned him outside the Gapra Whitewoods. She had walked off into the woods so proud and so sure of herself and her skills. So sure that the boy wouldn't make through this even with her help so why slow herself down?

A vengeful smile creep up his lips as he remember the pathetic look on her face as she died. She made it to Palmupolum before him and charged the front gate. Snow and some dark haired woman he had never seen before tried to save her but all three of them were gunned down in dead end ally. If only they had someone who knew the city but they didn't so they died. While she and her fiends died like dogs in a gutter. He snuck in through the underground waterway and made it home without incident.

So much had happened that he had forgotten about that young pink haired solider. He couldn't help but wounder what was her name and why did she suddenly cross his mind. Perhaps he'd think more clearly without the thunder and Lightning crashing overhead.

Slowly and painfully the young boy pulled himself across the broken landscape. Hope had long died in him but the will to live was stronger then despair and guilt.

It may have been hours or it could have been days, in the dark gray haze time lost meaning but someone found him. A small PSICOM scout ship combing the area saw him and landed near by. The soldiers that disembarked looked at tired and wreaked as boy did but they still had fight in them.

The leader of the troop removed his helmet to get a better looked at the boy. "I can't believe it, a survivor." he then took note of the child's arm. "Wait your the l'Cie who helped hold Eden City as we evacuated? You are him aren't you, Hope Estheim?"

The boy gagged and spat blood then after fighting his gasping and hacking for air he broke out into a harsh joyless laughter. Tears ran down his dirty face and the healed scare that slashed cross his left cheek.

"No, I'm not hope. Not anymore and never again." he stopped laughing and looked up at the soldiers, the first living souls he had seen in who knows how long and if they were alive. "Are their any other survivors."

The PISCOM solider knelt down next to the boy. "Yes. There are many more survivors, millions of us in fact. But there will be fewer survivors if we don't work together and we need all the help we can get. I don't care what you call yourself now but we need you."

"My mother and father are they..." he couldn't bring himself to ask.

"Nora and Bartholomew Estheim are alive and well. They been helping out Lieutenant Colonels Jihl Nabaat and Yaag Rosch with the relocation effort. Your mom and dad have been waiting for us to find you. They never gave up on you even if your giving up on yourself."

The young boy smiled that pure, boyish and carefree smile that he thought he had lost with his soul. "Will anyone else be happy to see me? What do you even call the harbinger of death?"

The solider waved to the waiting airship. "Come on, were all still sorting out what happened and no one is blameless in this whole catastrophe." the solider put his helmet back on and then almost as an afterthought. "and the answer is Raven. If I had to name the harbinger of death then it would be a raven."

The sliver haired boy thought about it for a moment before joining the others and heading for the airship. "Then let me be the first to greet you as my new self. My name is Raven Estheim."

-End-

Anyway a lot of this story is drawing in my old inspiration from my fic Bloody, Bold and Resolute. There will be some major differences but the plot of an alternate Hope as the anti-hero still stands in both.

The main thing about this time line that I'm making and the one that's in the game is that inside of saving the wold with five strangers Hope meet on the train. Hope saves his family with the help of PISCOM but losses the Cocoon and a majority of the population.

Because Lightning and the others made different choices in this Timeline they all died and it fell to Hope to see their Focus through. So Hope working with Jihl and Yaag save as many people as they can as Cid and the Cavalry destroy Cocoon as the Fal'cie's new puppets. In the end Hope throws away his humanity to become Ragnarok and slay Orphan.

The end is a world were Hope save his family but our other heroes are gone.

So now what happens when this timeline's Raven Estheim has to deal with the Main timeline's heroes. (hint, it's not going to be a happy reunion)

Review and Tell me what you thought both what you liked and what I need to work on.