A/N: So this is the first chapter, I hope that you'll enjoy. Check out the other chapters too, I'll batter Noctis in them (I might be joking a little.) :] English isn't my first language so if you spot any mistakes, please let me know. I decided to rate this as M just to be on the safe side. Please review! :)

Decision

"Sergeant Lightning, I now announce that from this day on you'll be leading the troops of Cocoon in order to stop the constant wars between the kingdoms to combine the kingdoms." The king announced.

"It is a great honor to accept your assignment your highness, I will do my best to achieve the goal." Lightning bowed.

For now on her duty was to combine the kingdoms, one at the time. The rulers of the kingdoms wouldn't just abandon their kingdom, Lightning was sure that every one of them would try to eliminate them. The goal wouldn't be easy to achieve.

At the same time the civil war was raging in Cocoon, people were divided in to 2 groups with different opinions, but the goal was the same, to destroy the most powerful weapon in the whole world. It had too much power.

The rumor of crystal had been circulating around the kingdoms for a long time. A little was known about the crystal, since nobody didn't really know what was it and where it was. However the tale said that the crystal contained huge powers, which could be transmitted in one person at the time and the energy of the crystal would give special skills to the owner of the crystal, the skills the person would receive were based on the person's personality.

However, the crystal could be used to cause massive destruction or to remain the peace if the holder was right. The only problem was greed, it would be really hard to choose the person who would be given the ownership of the crystal, people feared that the person with the crystal would turn evil, because the huge power he was holding. It made people have different opinions what to do to the crystal.

That finally dragged Cocoon into the civil war. People were divided in two different groups.

Group one wanted to the crystal to be destroyed. They thought that it would be best for all to get rid of the crystal so they would be no fear if someone would use it for the wrong purposes.

The group two wanted to find the present owner and to torture him until he would tell them where the crystal was. Then the owner would be killed to get the ownership and the crystal would be handed to the king.

Lightning sighed she was really confused; she didn't have an idea that what she should do. She didn't really belong to into either group. She just wanted the civil war to end and the life to be turned normal. She was afraid that something would happen to Serah while she was gone, people were killing their own people on the streets, neighbors, friends you name it, and that all was caused by their opinions.

The thing that she was now leading Cocoons troops, their mission were to locate the crystal and to monitor the situation until they will find all the needed information to make the decision to what to do for the situation.

Then they would go back to king to tell what they've found out.

Lightning was going to start the research next morning; they had to keep a low profile since they didn't want to get spotted while leaving the city. If they got spotted they wouldn't be able to cross the borders between different kingdoms because guards were guarding the borders so that unwelcomed visitors couldn't sneak in. Even a slight noise would ruin the mission.

0o0o0o0o0o0

"Alright! Is everyone ready? You're following my orders now, my word is your law got it? I've placed you in certain classes, everyone acts according their class. No exceptions. The first border is about 40 miles to east from here we have to cross a forest, so keep your eyes open for monsters. And make sure that nobody can hear us." Lightning gave a speech to the soldiers.

Lightning hated keeping speeches they made her feel stupid, she hadn't given speeches before so she were a little lost with her words, but she guessed that they got the point.

Lightning went into the storage room and grabbed her fighting gear and put it on. Her fighting gear wasn't as heavy as it looked like; it was specially made for her. It was made of titanium which made the gear light and easy to move with since titanium is light and flexible. There were some golden details on it too and white chocobo feathers just as decoration, Serah wanted to add them because she believed that they bring good luck. Lightning didn't really care like the details she thought that they were useless.

She placed the gunblade in its case on her hip while watching soldiers picking up their gear, she saw some kids there too. The age didn't really matter in this kingdom, if you could fight well or heal people, you were in. Most of the kids didn't want to be soldiers but many enlisted just to get some money to help their family. There was a lot of poverty in this kingdom, now it was even worse. The king wasn't managing his kingdom well Lightning had to admit. He was a really cold person, he didn't seem to have any feelings.

"Hey! Are you gonna leave without me?" Fang shouted from a distance with a slight smirk on her face.

Lightning turned around to see where the sound was coming from and then she saw Fang ascending down the stairs and walking towards her.

"Please keep your voice down Fang, we don't want any unwelcomed intruders to hear us and ruin our mission." Lightning sighed.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I just wanted to make sure that you don't forget to take me with you, I want to have some fun." She smirked and tapped Lightning's head

Lightning slapped her hand away and asked irritated "Since when did I ask you to come with us, you should have –"

"Since now! Okay let's go guys we don't have all day!" She shouted to the soldiers gathering questioning glares.

Lightning tried to protest, but Fang was already going. "Dammit Fang" she muttered and ran next to her.

"To let you know, I have been ordered to lead this group, if you do anything stupid it's considered as my fault, I can't afford that to happen." She told her with determinative voice tone.

"Geez, calm down redhead. Nothing can happen when I'm around." Fang smiled playfully.

"Hey! I'm not a redhead, where did that come from? You better to keep your mouth shut or you'll end up getting kicked out of my group." Lightning shouted to Fang.

"Oh, I'm so scared, I apologize sergeant Farron." Fang said to her with a slight laughter.

"Please quit using those stupid titles, just call me Light." She said while they walked into the woods.

"Oh, by the way where are we exactly going?" Fang asked.

"Oh my god Fang, you just decided to come with us and you don't even know where we're going?" She looked at her in disbelief and shook her head.

"I was bored." Fang answered bluntly.

"That's the most ridiculous answer I've ever heard."

"I just told the truth. What made you to take the whole bunch of soldiers with you?"

"I didn't want to; I was ordered to take them with me. We must locate the crystal and track the situation until we have enough information to return to the king." Lighting explained, trying to keep her balance when the terrain turned rocky and hard to walk on.

"I see. Did you see how quickly the surroundings got darker, it's seems like it would be night." Fang looked around surprised. Then she tripped and fell over.

"Dammit!" She cursed.

Lightning giggled.

She could hear the soldiers laughing too.

"Shut up, it's not funny!" Fang shouted at her

She rose up and swept the dirt off her blue sari.

"You deserved it." She smirked.

"Shut up."

0o0o0o0o0o0

Noctis sat on his chair in front of his desk, on the desk were huge piles of papers and letters. Liquor bottles were lying all over the floor and papers were covering the floor. His office was messy, very messy.

He didn't allow the maids to come into his office to clean up; he didn't want people to find out that he was drinking while he was working.

Alcohol was his friend, it kept him going. He had too much to do, managing the kingdom was torture to him. He had to make sure that all the paperwork was done in time. He also had to attend to stupid conferences and make decisions about his kingdom. Sometimes he had to keep speeches too and other stupid stuff what king had to do.

He drank a lotit made him feel better, alcohol made him to forget his worries. It made him feel self-confident and relaxed. He tried to hide his real personality. He had no self-confident, he was shy but he could be very caring too. He thought that he was weak. His personality wasn't fitting in his imago at all. He was the prince. The prince couldn't be shy; he just didn't want people to think that he was weak. He tend to act restrained around other people. He was acting coldly, like he got no feelings. He was rude toward other people too, so he would look stronger.

"Dammit!" He cursed to himself. He knocked some piles of papers of his desk enraged. He looked the papers falling on the floor and then he lowered his head on the table and ran his fingers though his hair.

His hair was messy and not in too good condition but it still managed to maintain its natural shape, his hair had unnatural spikes on back the back of his head he hated that people thought that he was using some hair products to maintain the shape. He didn't care what he looked like, he hated to look himself. He was pale, like he would be sick. He had dark circles under his eyes, like he wouldn't have slept for a long time. He didn't know that, he hadn't looked in a mirror for a long time.

His eyes were about to turn red, he fight against it. He didn't want to things to turn ugly. He was very erratic when he had lost the control of himself, he would destroy anything what came on his way. It didn't matter if it wasn't his friend or something else he treasured. The other half of him took the control when he snapped, he couldn't do anything to control it, then he was totally different person what he really was.

That made him hate himself even more, he knew that there were no one who could be keep company with him, someone to share his thoughts with. He was too erratic and dangerous.

Well he had a few friends, he was really lucky to have friends who could understand him. They had the courage to be around him. Even though he had almost ended up killing them few times.

He was depressed.

Someone knocked the door.

"Who is it?" He shouted straightening his posture.

"It's Ignis, can I come in?"

Ignis was his friend; he had been serving his family for a long time so he had known him for many years so he trusted him quite much.

"Come in then." He sighed, he hoped that Ignis wouldn't have come to drag him to some stupid conference, what he had forgotten or to bring him more paperwork that he would need to do.

Ignis stepped in and sighed "Have you drank again?"

"No." He lied, he was fuddled.

"Yes you have." Ignis said rolling his eyes.

"What makes you think that?" Noctis tried to convince him.

"Oh, just look look around, there's bottles and your papers all over the floor, what a mess. Your hair is messy and you look like you were dead."

"Quit bitching Ignis, just get to the point." Noctis said. He actually felt sorry for being so rude, he couldn't understand how he could stand him.

"I'm sorry your highness. I didn't mean to offend you." He apologized, bowing slightly.

Noctis stared him and rose up from his chair and leaned against his table. He felt a little dizzy when standing up.

"I shouldn't have drank that much"he told to himself.

"Stop using titles and being formal, I hate it. Now what did you came here for?"

"The thermal image cameras on the borders have detected some unusual activity of people wandering around the border at night. It might be an army." Ignis tried to explain.

"Tell the guards to let them through, I want to know what they're looking for." Noctis ordered.

Ignis couldn't believe what he said. So he tried to inform him "But isn't that quite risky? They're from another kingdom, they might be after the crystal."

"They don't know that it's here." Noctis said carelessly and started to walk towards the couch. He wasn't interested at all. He hated when Ignis nagged to him all the time.

"Listen to me Noctis! We can't be sure if they've found out that it's here, we can't just –" He was interrupted by Noctis.

"You're dismissed" He said and jumped on the couch. "I have to take a nap."

"But –"

"No butts get your ass out of here." Now he was really irritated, he already had too much work to do and now Ignis thought that he should handle this situation too. In addition he felt nauseated too.

Ignis left the room closing the door after him. He couldn't believe how indifferent he was. He knew that managing the kingdom was exhausting, but it seemed like he didn't care what would happen to him. He could remember when he was happy, until something happened to him and now he was always by himself. He never smiled or laughed, he and his other friends tried to cheer him up, but he didn't even seem to notice.

0o0o0o0o0o0

Lightning yawned.

"Do you think I'm boring?" Fang asked

"Shut up."

"I was joking." Fang answered, she was bored.

"Sorry, we must be quiet now, we will cross the border soon, so if you don't shut up, then I have to make you silent." Lightning said seriously.

"Oh don't be so serious, I'm sure that nothing will –" Fang couldn't finish her sentence when Lightning gave the sign to the soldiers that now was their change to cross the border.

Lightning got up and ran towards the border with her soldiers following and Fang next to her. A long and deep moat was separating the two kingdoms from each other. Around the moat were high metal fences with barbed wire on top of it. On the bottom of the moat were large spikes to stop anyone from jumping to the other side. Since the fence was surrounding the moat on both sides, there was no way to get over it.

They had to come up a new strategy.

"Woah, Well I'm not going to jump into that moat, you guys do whatever you want…" Fang said took a few steps back.

"Oh, looks like someone is scared ." Lightning smirked.

"No, I'm not. I have a better idea." She pointed to the towers which were on both sides of the main entrance, where cars could drive through if they had the permission to enter into another kingdom.

"You see those towers?" Fang asked with questioning voice and looked at Lightning.

"Uh-huh"

"If we get rid of few guards around in front of the walls we might be able to get under the towers base and nobody will see when we climb up inside the tower and get rid of the guard on top of the tower and climb down to the other side then we can open the gates to the other side." Fang explained, like she would have done that before.

"Well, we could try that since I'm not personally too interested in jumping to the other side either." Lightning said and informed to soldier so all of them knew what to do. "Shall we go now?" Lightning asked from Fang.

"Yeah, let's go."

0o0o0o0o0o0

Noctis was leaning against the balcony of his room, he stared the city, high skyscrapers were piercing the sky with other high building in the city. Some rooms in the skyscraper were lighten up, some weren't. Only the light separated the buildings from each other. All the buildings were painted pitch black. His father, the king allowed only black buildings to be built. Noctis wasn't too sure why, since he wasn't too close to him.

His father had left a few years ago to somewhere else, nobody knew where. Even he didn't know where he went, one day he just was gone. Some people thought that he would have killed him or something, because they couldn't understand why would a king just leave his kingdom behind like that.

He still was a prince, because the most of the people though the king would soon return, so he was managing the kingdom while he was gone. He was 22 years old now, he would have wanted to spend the first years of his adulthood with no worries and with no commitments. He was 16 years old when his father disappeared, so he already had accepted that he was now soon to be the king of this kingdom what meant that he had to abandon all his dreams for good.

"Damn it." He hit his fist against the marble railing.

He went inside and went to the cabinet where he kept his liquors and he randomly grabbed one bottle to drown his sorrows.

He sat down and took another drink. The alcohol burned his throat as it went down; he loved how it made him feel warm and relaxed. He wasn't hooked on it because the taste. In fact he hated the bitterness and how it tasted like, he just liked how his body corresponded to it.

His cellphone rang.

"Who is it?" He answered the phone, he couldn't think clearly.

"When did you forgot how to read? Your phone should be showing my name on it when I'm calling." He said.

"I'm not stupid, who is it?" Noctis tried to clear his mind.

"Oh my god, it's Prompto."

"What do you want?" Noctis mumbled.

"Are you okay? You sound like you're little messed up or something." Prompto asked little worried.

"Oh, please don't act stupid. You know me." He answered. He just wanted to put it simply. All his three friends knew he had problems. "So what did you call me for?"

"I forgot… Oh, it was about the group wandering around our borders!"

"What group?" Noctis asked surprised.

"You're hopeless."

"Sorry I forgot."

"Just come to the entrance of the city, now." Prompto said and hung up the phone.

0o0o0o0o0o0

Lightning and Fang had managed to get cross the border and were walking towards the city.

"How did we get through so easily, there must be something wrong" Lightning thought.

"I guess that we're just too good." Fang grinned

"Stop playing games, I can't just understand how they couldn't see us, the one guard almost walked past of us." Lightning mentioned.

"Maybe he was lazy and just wanted to ignore us." Fang said with a slight laughter. "Look this place is completely dead, there's nobody around and the only thing I can see is that city over there."

"Maybe this kingdom doesn't have enough funds to plant trees or something, well I can't complain. The surroundings look quite good but it's too dark in here."

"Yeah, I think that the sun was just about to rise when we crossed the border." Fang muttered.

"I guess that we just have to head towards the city, and look like we were tourist or something.

"Are you sure that it's going to work?"

"I'm not sure, but we don't have too many choices, there's nowhere to hide here. I'm pretty sure that the crystal isn't here; if it were the city would be bigger. That city looks like a ghost town to me." Lightning said and yawned

"You gotta sleep more"

"I have much time to sleep when I'm dead."

"That doesn't sound like a good goal." Fang laughed

"That wasn't what I meant, I –"

Lightning dodged.

Lightning looked up, there were the blow came. She couldn't see anything.

Then she looked forward.

"This is not good." Fang took few steps back.