Author's note: Just a warning: this chapter may contain spoilers for FF13. I also hope you enjoy this chapter

Response to reviews: well, review (at time of writing there was only one review)

Exodiano:At this stage, I am not too sure what Hope is, although I think I will rule out Infiltrator as he doesn't use guns. I was thinking maybe Engineer, but until I decide whether Hope will have biotics or not, Sentinel (ME2) will remain a possible option. To answer your other questions; I think a Warp, while it will do a bit of damage, will probably add 50% to the enemy's chain gauge, and I think an Overload will deal lightning damage to everything, but more will be done to synthetics, who will also suffer plus 100% to their chain gauge and will take double damage if already staggered, so it should indeed fry something in Barthandelus.


Chapter 2: During the Tragedy: Part 1.

In Palumpolum: Some aspects of Cocoon didn't make any sense whatsoever to Legion. With regard to power generation, there was only 1 power plant, and although it seemed quite efficient, it was still incomprehensible how that one little power plant could provide electricity for an entire planet. There was also something else to note: if anyone on Cocoon were to rise up against the Sanctum, that location would be the first target for a surgical strike and, according to one Sanctum record that Legion managed to hack into, it had suffered through one already. Another primary target would be the Palumpolum fal'Cie due to the fact that it produced all of Cocoon's food, and once you take away the enemy's food supply, you have severely weakened them unless they happen to not be organic, and most, if not all of Cocoon's forces were organic beings.

On the night of the Bodhum Fireworks Festival, Legion hacked into the Sanctum again, looking for more information on a number of topics, and found an interesting order. It went along the lines of "Pulse fal'Cie found in Bodhum area. City is possibly contaminated. Initiate Purge the morning after fireworks festival." Legion knew that Nora and Hope were there, and they needed to be warned, but they were probably in a deep sleep by the time it found the order so it probably wouldn't be able to warn them and even if the geth could, they would be so exhausted that they wouldn't remember the warning the following morning.

In Bodhum: Nora and Hope awoke to the invasion of what, to the latter, looked like some sort of Eclipse mercenary, but it couldn't really be Eclipse, because this planet was isolated from the rest of the galaxy, so it had to be one of the local organizations, maybe PSICOM. Hope, not knowing what really happened, assumed that the invaders were there for him. He thought that someone in the Sanctum must have made the connection between him and the crashed geth ship, and found him in this city. Upon seeing the number of other people that, like him and Nora, were being forced onto one train in a strange garb, he wondered how he could have caused such a commotion. However, he also started to think that maybe there was something else going on. What exactly was going on wasn't clear to him until a point much later on, but until that time came, he assumed that his first theory was correct.

When that time came, however, he was in a state of shock. Although everyone that was part of the forced evictions by these soldier-types was rescued, Nora Estheim had fallen. Hope had a bad feeling in his stomach the moment Nora decided to fight alongside the rebels that rescued them. He didn't want her to leave him for a number of reasons. Firstly, despite the fact that the 2 of them being a mother and son was just a cover, Hope was genuinely becoming attached to Nora. His true mother and father were killed during the raid on Eden Prime by geth that Legion labeled as heretics. The last Hope saw of his family was when both of his parents were impaled on giant spikes undergoing an extremely horrid transformation. And now, the closest thing he had to a mother was falling to her death.

Secondly, although it didn't really matter now that the geth ship was ready to lift off, Bartholomew would surely sell Hope and Legion out to the Sanctum. That thought only just registered in Hope's mind as he was in shock, due to the death of someone close for a third time. It seems like whatever was out there, be it the Maker, the Goddess or the Enkindlers, was deliberately sabotaging his life. All Hope could think about was this new tragedy, until something hard, but not too hard, connected with his face. The next thing he knew was that he was following a woman to what looked like a gathering of other refugees.

This woman was quite strange, as she, unlike just about everyone else on Cocoon, seemed to possess a sense of concern for him that went beyond the usual "get these people out of harm's way" drive that he saw in their so-called rescuers. This was made even more apparent when she pulled him into an embrace; it was almost like she could feel his pain and wanted to try and help him deal with it. This act had surprised Hope quite a bit, as nobody else seemed to notice him or his suffering at all, so the fact that this person had at least a sense of sympathy for him was a very good reason to stay around her, although he never knew that doing so would eventually take things from bad to worse.

Hope never knew that following this girl, who called herself Vanille, would get him involved in a big local affair that would change his life. When that moment came, and he awoke in Lake Bresha after a disastrous attack on one of these fal'Cie creatures, he knew that his luck had taken a turn for the worst. There was a strange tattoo on his wrist that he didn't remember having before, proof of this major reversal of fortune, proof of what had just happened to him. He couldn't believe that he had gotten what was probably the second worst thing in the universe just below the genophage! And all because of these three people, the first being probably some sort of elite mercenary type judging from her custom made device that could switch from being a bladed to a projectile weapon and vice versa, the second being the idiot fist-fighter whose mercenary gang rescued the Purge victims and led Nora to her eventual death, and the third being a black man who appeared to have a nest in his hair. There was also that girl that Hope saw crystallize moments ago. He also held her responsible, because it almost seemed like she became a servitor of this fal'Cie specifically to make his life and the lives of others a living hell.

He was, however, able to keep most of these opinions in check, with the exception of who he thought was to blame, but at least they just assumed that he was extremely traumatized by becoming a Pulse l'Cie. The only question he was really asked was about the vision that he had prior to waking up. He actually found it quite disturbing: what looked like tentacles of some sort were erupting from what looked like a surface of some kind. The only thing he knew had anything close to tentacles was what had attacked Eden Prime and cost him his family: the Reaper Sovereign, or as Legion called it, Nazara. Hope didn't tell them this, as he would sound insane and besides, he felt he couldn't tell anyone, not even Vanille, about who he really is, or his past. With these people's obsession with xenophobia, Hope would probably be left to die somewhere… at best. No, nobody else could ever know who he really was, better he keep on masquerading as a child of Cocoon, this broken Terminus systems rock.

Back home, Legion found out about Hope's fate during a hack into PSICOM when the latter was in the Vile Peaks. It quickly came to a consensus on what to do: it would have to lock down the Felix Heights hideout until Hope got back home, whereupon it would escape from this rock once and for all to resume its primary objective. But due to the current circumstances of its partner being chosen as a Pulse l'Cie, a fight with Sanctum warships would probably ensue during the second phase of the current objective, and while the geth had a pretty good idea of the Sanctum's military capabilities, it needed to know now where they were deployed so as to choose the path of least resistance off the planet.

The next day, Legion detected many "Havoc Skytank" frigates in Palumpolum. It made an assumption that was confirmed later in the day by a Sanctum broadcast: Hope had managed to return to the city, and it also knew, due to the rescue effort that was unwittingly shown on said broadcast, what sort of company to expect. No further information about Hope was broadcast since that time, so the only thing Legion could really do was hack into the Sanctum reports involving him. The information found led the geth to assume that there will eventually be a siege at Felix Heights, which also concerned Bartholomew, who promptly began preparations to evacuate. He had just finished when the doorbell rang. Legion knew who the visitors were, due to having received a message on its omni-tool, and subsequently opened the door to find Hope and his 3 companions.

The first thing Hope said was: "Legion, we may have a problem…"