Chapter 2

Light came home to find some kind of fluff all over the hardwood floor. A soldier's learned instinct put her on edge. Had someone broken in? Her hand settled on the hilt of her gunblade as she moved along the wall. Someone was in the living room; she could hear them rummaging around. With her back against the wall, she stilled when she got to the archway that lead into the living room. Mentally, she counted down to herself. '3.. 2.. 1!'

She sprang around and through the archway, pulling her blade in one swift motion.

"Agh! What are you doing!" Nyx looked up from where she was tearing into the couch like it was a dead behemoth.

"Mew?"

"Bad kitty! Bad!" She sheathed her blade and moved to grab the little feline but Nyx shot past her and darted up the steps. "Come back here!" She followed, only to find Nyx had tucked herself under Fang's bed, where Light couldn't reach her. She got down on her belly to slip under the bed, doing an army crawl to get to the offender.

The doorbell rang. It startled her enough that she lifted herself, causing her to smack her head on one of the support bars of the bed. "Etro's hands!" She swore, a curse she'd picked up from Fang. Nyx used the distraction to run past her again, off to a new hiding spot. She let her go as she shimmied out from under the bed, rubbing her head as she went to answer the door.

"Oh goodness! Are you ok?"

Light stopped rubbing and sighed as her arm dropped to her side. "I'm fine. Hit my head." She moved and allowed Vanille to enter. The younger girl followed her in and shut the door, quickly taking note of the trail of fluff. She gasped when she saw the torn up couch.

"What happened?"

"Nyx decided to practice on my couch."

Vanille couldn't help but giggle, her hand coming up to try and hide the smile. "She must be bored." The canthor in question poked her head into the room and immediately bounded up into Vanille's lap as she knelt down to greet her. She proceeded to purr happily and nuzzle her hands for pets. "She should be trained soon.. or she might keep doing it." She said thoughtfully as she scratched her behind her ears.

"I don't know how to train a canthor.." Light sighed as she dropped into her favorite armchair, thankful it was still intact. She was exhausted. Work had been brutal and all she wanted was a nice bath to relax.

Vanille looked at her thoughtfully. "Hmm.. Well, there was only one canthor in Oerba before.. it was older than me and already trained.. but they're really smart. Maybe you could take her with you and let her watch you when you train? Maybe she'd pick something up.."

"I don't really want her to pick up on attacking people.." That wasn't a happy mental image at all. "Maybe I'll try though. Maybe someone on post will have some ideas."

Vanille nodded, smiling as she stood and shoo'd the cat away. "C'mon then, I'll help you clean up." Light was grateful for the offer.

Once everything was cleaned up, they made dinner and settled on the patio. As Light got comfortable on her lounge chair, she watched Vanille. The girl seemed pensive as she picked at her food. It was obvious something was bothering her. "You're worried," she stated, reaching down to give Nyx a pat as she came to curl up with her on the chair, apparently over the earlier incident.

"Of course I'm worried.." She pushed some of her potatoes around on her plate with her fork. "It's been a whole month. Without any way to contact her.. without any way for her to contact us.. How do we know if she's ok? What if she needs help?" She turned to look toward the mountains. "..She's all alone out there."

Light shifted her gaze down to where her fingers were rubbing Nyx's ear, the feline happily purring for the attention. "She said she's done this before."

"Well she has.. Every two years since she turned ten. But she always had Delta with her.. she wasn't alone." She finally looked back down at her plate. "I always worried, even then."

Light sat up, turning to the side so that her legs hung over the edge of the chair, feet on the stone. It was time to have that discussion she kept putting off. "Tell me about the Yun." Now, Vanille looked up to her, mild surprise written on her features. "Tell me about her clan."

She hesitated; Light made a mental note of it. "..I don't really know all that much about them.. They were kinda secretive about a lot of things." She pushed away what was left of her food and turned to give Light her full attention. "Fang was.. I dunno, kinda an outcast I guess. But she didn't really tell me much about them either. I guess I was never really surprised.. I mean, all the clans that still followed Clan Law were pretty secretive."

"Clan Law?"

"Mmm.." She hummed a moment, trying to decide how best to explain. "Once upon a time, all Clans followed laws specific to them. A lot of them were common to most clans, but a lot were different too. Mostly, they supported whatever the Clan's specialty was. But when people started branching out instead of just following that specialty, well.. a lot of clans started switching over to Universal Law.

"Universal Law is more like what you know, everyone follows it. As more and more clans made the transition, those that still followed Clan Law were vastly segregated. Clan Law wasn't outlawed or anything, but a lot of people looked down on it. But there were treaties and Laws that protected those clans that stuck with Clan Law and as long as those were followed, they let them go on as they pleased."

She looked thoughtful again. "There were only.. I don't know, maybe five clans that stuck to Clan law completely. The Yun Clan was one of them."

"So they were specialized."

She nodded. "Yeah. Yun are.. or were, hunters; protectors." She smiled, "I'm sure you could figure that out already."

Light nodded with a chuckle of her own. That was easy enough to see in Fang.

Vanille continued, "So aside from what everyone saw of them, no one really knew much about them. No one ever saw Yun under the age of sixteen. Fang was the odd one. She was born in Oerba, and grew up here. But once she hit ten, she had to go to the Yun Village every two years."

"Why?"

"Training I guess.. I'm not really sure. Fang never talked about it much."

Now it was Light that looked thoughtful. "What was the Dia specialty?"

"Oh.. Herbalists.. Healers." Light nodded as Vanille continued. That made sense. "They had long since gone to Universal Law before I was born though." She smiled, perhaps a fond memory crossing her mind's eye, "I actually got into healing because of Fang. She had a habit of getting into trouble when we were little. She'd often come home all cut up or bruised." She paused before adding, "Usually escorted by the Hunt Elder, Oerba Yun Delta. Delta was the only other Yun who lived in Oerba, but she grew up in the Yun village and then settled in Oerba in her twenties I guess."

"Was that common? Them settling in other places, I mean."

"Oh.. yeah, Yun were everywhere. They usually served as hunters for smaller villages, and in the bigger cities they would act as protectors."

"But Pulse had a military."

"Well yeah. Originally clans either defended themselves, or hired Yun."

"Mercenaries?"

"Not exactly. Delta always said it wasn't a job.. it was their purpose. I'm not really sure what she meant by that, she never explained it to me."

Light 'hmm'd' thoughtfully. "So how did the military come about?"

"Well.. As Universal Law was more accepted, some clans fought against it."

"Civil war."

Vanille nodded. "So the Military was formed to deal with that. Then they basically sat around like a figurehead for a long time."

"Huh. Like Psicom after the War."

Vanille thought about that. "Now that I think about it.. there are a lot of correlations. And it was the War with Cocoon that put the military back in action. " She shook her head, "But they were outmanned and outgunned, so they focused on the bigger cities. The small villages like Oerba were left undefended, so the Yun stepped up to defend them. But as good as they were.. they couldn't' stand against Fal'cie or even l'cie."

"What about Pulse l'cie?"

"There just weren't enough of them, and most of them weren't particularly strong." At Light's look of slight confusion, Vanille clarified, "Anima is the only Fal'cie on Pulse to proactively create l'cie. All the others.. well, some of them would create l'cie, but they would always be like the ones we helped; just to hunt and eliminate cieth or monsters. Some of them would go against their focus and fight in the war.. but it would always make their brands progress faster. Some would go cieth right in the middle of battle.. and start taking out those who were allies just moments before."

Fang's fears of them all turning cieth on her were making more and more sense. "Tough break."

Vanille nodded, lapsing into silence. Light settled back into her lounging position on her chair, idly stroking Nyx's sleeping form as she though over what Vanille had said.

It was only a few moments before Vanille's phone alarm went off. "Oh! I have to get home. Thanks for dinner!"

Light sat up to give her a slightly awkward hug. "Alright. Can we talk more on this sometime?"

Vanille tilted her head, curious as to Light's sudden interest. "Sure."

"Thanks Vanille. I'll call you in a few days ok? I'm going to be tied up at work a lot."

"Ok. Don't work too hard!"

The next few weeks of work weren't as busy as Light made them out to be. She told everyone it was, as the extra time afforded her the ability to work with Nyx, as well as pour over the history of Gran Pulse, as told by Fang and writings that had been found around the ruins.

Nyx sat off to the side of her office, curled up on a pillow that Light had brought in for her. She was kicking a little in her sleep, every so often making a noise that made Light look away from the reports and over to her. Once assured the cat was still asleep, she would look back to the reports.

There was so much to go through. She almost couldn't believe Fang had been able to get through writing most of this in the time she'd been working with them, especially since she'd been going out in the field quite often as well. She supposed Fang tried to be moderately efficient at some things she did, while here she was lying about how busy she was so everyone wouldn't bother her as she poured over history texts and trained her- no, their cat.

Nyx actually turned out to be the easy part. The first few training sessions were a bit rough as the feline learned the difference between friend and prey, but once she figured it out her intelligence really started to show. It was easy to see why canthors had been a popular pet for hunters; their natural instinct, bonded with relatively easy training would certainly turn them into a worthy adversary on the field. Light was beginning to see why Fang had referred to her as a 'good partner'. In turn, the pair had grown closer and it had become rare for anyone to see Light without the cat at her side.

She didn't feel bad about taking the extra time. She only felt a little bad about lying to everyone. Well, almost everyone. Vanille had found out the truth first, as Light often asked her questions and asked if she could clarify certain things she'd read from the reports. Serah had found out shortly after. Since Snow was still busy with scavenger runs with NORA, she'd been spending more time with Vanille, and Light when she was available. So Serah opted to help, though still neither she nor Vanille were clear on why Light was so interested. They suspected it was a work thing at first, but the more it went on, the more they felt she was seeking information that might help her find Fang. After all, the northern mountain range covered a vast amount of land.

That was the main reason, true. But also, she was looking for any references to the Yun Clan. Serah had been right, it was obviously important if Fang would risk her life to find out what happened to them. However Light had let the opportunity to ask Fang about it slip through her fingers, and now she was left scraping for whatever she could find.

Frustratingly enough, there wasn't any reference to them at all. She found references to other clans, if only in mention of names, but never Yun. It was like they simply didn't exist. Part of her knew that a lot of clans weren't being mentioned but if what Vanille said about Yun being so important to the villages and cities was true, there should be some mention of them somewhere.

A knock on her door distracted her from her agitation. As she looked up, she called, "Come!"

A woman a little older than her stuck her head in. Her dark blue hair was pulled up into a loose bun and a small pair of reading glasses was perched on her nose. She was one of the historians Light had been working with. "Bad time?"

She exhaled, letting out her stress as she settled back into her chair. "Not at all, Liza. Did you find something?"

Liza's face broke out in a grin as she entered the office, allowing the door to close behind her. She gave Nyx a pat on the head before she sat in the chair across from Light. She set a folder in front of her. "Thought you might find these interesting. We haven't been able to translate much though. This seems an older text than anything else we've found."

Curiously, Light flipped through the scanned images printed on the pages. Though she could read the newest form of Pulsian, these ancient texts might have well been from another planet. "Where were they found?"

"Small village they're excavating in the foothills. They found quite a few texts there.. unfortunately, most of them are too far gone. We're doing what we can to restore them, but it'll be a miracle if we can get anything out of them. On the other hand, some are still easily legible; they just need translation."

She flipped through a few more pages, wondering if there was anything in them she might find remotely recognizable. And then she did. A collection of symbols, arranged in two nested circles around a very familiar symbol. "The Eidolons?" It was easy to recognize Odin's symbol in the center and she was fairly certain the inner circle consisted of Shiva, Alexander, Hecatoncheir, Brynhildr, and yes, the last was definitely Bahamut.

Liza tilted her thoughtfully. "They seem the same. However this text is pretty old.. from what we can tell, it's a text on Pulsan Mythos. We're working on translations, so what we have is a bit sketchy.. but these symbols seem to represent the 'Epic Beasts', which had been mentioned in other texts, but no symbols for them until now." She reached out and flipped to the next page where a similar diagram of symbols showed, only they were definitely different. The only one she could recognize was a rather ancient symbol for Etro, which resided in the center, as Odin had. "These would appear to be Deities of some sort." She handed Light a magnifying glass. "More interesting are the captions beneath the symbols."

Light used the magnifying glass and looked closely, moving from symbol to symbol. Mostly, she didn't recognize anything, except for a few of the captions contained the Eidolon symbols as well. Most of the text wasn't very legible even if she could read the language it was in. She stopped when she found one that was accompanied by Bahamut's symbol. The caption with it was legible, and someone had translated it; 'Yun' was written by hand below it. Light didn't need the translation however, as it was written the same way Fang had always written it.

Liza grinned. "This is the first mention of the Yun we've found." The woman still looked apologetic. "Unfortunately, it raises more questions and only answers one single question; that they did exist." Liza did not voice that she wished Fang was still around to give them answers. Everyone had become wary of mentioning the Pulsan Warrior in Light's presence.

More frustration, that's all it was. Light put down the glass and ran a hand through her hair. "Was there anything useful translated?"

"Well.." She pulled the last paper out of the folder and set it on top; an ancient map. Again, the symbols of the Eidolons and Deities repeated over various parts of the map. "Obviously, Gran Pulse doesn't look like this anymore.. but we can easily see land formations that still exist today. The ocean, the mountains. Oerba would be about.. here," Liza pointed out for reference sake. "We think this is a sort of.. domains map. This is the Steppe here.. it was very different then; much larger. Odin's domain." She pointed to another area, "These appear to be volcanoes.. obviously, not there anymore. Brynhildr's Domain." She pointed to a land mass far to the south in the ocean. "We think this is supposed to represent an ice floe. Air reconnaissance suggests it's still down there."

"Shiva." Light supplied, leaning forward to follow along.

"Right. Out here," she moved her hand to another part of the map, "is a dessert. It's still there. Alexander." She moved her hand to point out a great mass of what was supposed to be trees. "This jungle is mostly gone.. There's a huge gash in the land there which covers roughly this area," she moved her hand to cover a good portion of the jungle. "We believe that may be one of the first areas that was 'plundered' by the Fal'cie." Light nodded, understanding the 'plunders' were events where Fal'cie came and literally stripped the land without warning, gathering material for the building of Cocoon. "Hecatoncheir."

"So that leaves Bahamut in the mountains."

Liza nodded. "Interestingly enough, Bahamut's symbol is again paired with this deific symbol. None of the other five are associated with a deific symbol, though some of the lesser ones," she pointed to the paper with the Eidolon symbols assembled in nested circles, specifically, at the outer symbol of symbols Light didn't recognize, "are. This one, Fenrir, is also associated with the mountains, but does not seem connected directly like Bahamut and this symbol are." She motioned back to the map.

While it was all terribly fascinating in a way she never expected ancient texts to be, Light wasn't sure how it actually fit into the story.

Saturday; a day off for a change. She padded down the steps in a simple pair of black yoga pants and a t-shirt. She had nowhere to be anytime soon, no reason to get dressed entirely just yet. Nyx followed along as she went into the kitchen, where she got water on the stove for tea and then went about making up a morning plate for her feline companion.

She knelt down to place the plate on the floor, but stayed to rub the canthor's ear affectionately. "It's funny how things work out. I brought you to her so she wouldn't be lonely.. and here you are, keeping me from being lonely." She smiled softly, noting that Nyx hadn't dove into her breakfast. Something she'd noticed while training, Nyx now awaited certain signals before acting. With a pat on the head, she signaled to her that it was ok. As she got up and made her tea, she could hear the cat tearing into her food.

She took her tea and moved back out to what was technically the dining room, though it wasn't used for that purpose. She set her tea down on the ledge of the large window as she pulled the drapes open to let in the sunlight.

Her hands shook as she pulled the white sheet away to reveal the dark hardwood of the piano. She folded the sheet and set it aside before moving to sit on the bench before the keys. When she lifted the cover, her hands were still shaking.

The keys were pristine, white and black, perfectly in order. She just stared at them. She wasn't entirely sure why she'd gone to it. She hadn't even uncovered the thing since that day it appeared, nearly two months before. It had been nearly seven years since she'd played. She was afraid she wouldn't be able to anymore.

"Now or never.." She breathed to herself as she settled her hands on the keys. First, she depressed three keys to form the chord. She was pleased with the sound; it didn't seem to be out of tune.

Her fingers moved across the keys, mimicking a song, though she didn't press any down. Once satisfied she remembered the song enough to at least find the keys, she began to play.

For the first time in years she simply let go. She let the music flow back into her. It came back to her easily and she closed her eyes, a smile toying at the corners of her lips. She'd always played as her emotional release. For the last few years, Fang had provided her with some release through sparring with either verbal wit or physical prowess. Now, with her gone.. she couldn't help but be glad for the piano's return to her home.

She wasn't sure how long she played. She wasn't sure when Nyx finished her breakfast and came to perch herself on the bench next to her. How long had it been since her tea had gone cold, untouched on the window sill? She wasn't sure when Serah and Vanille had arrived, or how long the two of them had been standing there in the archway watching her.

They startled her enough that she slammed the cover back down over the keys. She was fighting the blush of embarrassment she could feel creeping up her chest.

"Don't stop, that was beautiful!" Vanille actually had tears in her eyes. Light looked back down at the hardwood.

"Light's a little.. shy about playing." Serah said slowly. A little shy? The only one who ever saw her play was Serah, and she had a hard time playing in front of her.

"I just lost track of the time." She swiftly moved to cover the piano and then recovered her cold tea. She ushered them out of the room, hasty to forget the momentary embarrassment. They automatically moved toward Light's study, where scanned pages and notes were tacked up all over the wall, including several maps.

Vanille had more or less taken up Fang's spot working with the historians since she became aware of the texts they were translating. She wasn't much good at translating them herself since she'd never learned the ancient dialects, but she did know a lot of the tales that they had been able to half translate.

She'd also been able to fill in some of the names of the deities- who were actually demigods/goddess', but she was unsure about the links between them and the Epic Beasts. There was a little confusion on Vanille's part about the Yun clan's demi, but she thought her name was Artemi. Artemi was either the demigoddess, the Village, or perhaps both. Fang had never told her anything direct, she could only infer from the ways Fang had spoken the name. It was a start.

"So." Light began, as she unrolled a new map on the table. "This is a topography map taken from an unmanned miniplane. They were testing new sensors. As you can see, it managed to get farther into the mountains than any other.. but it crashed apparently around here right after the sensors died."

"Why can't anything get through?" Serah asked curiously.

"They're not entirely sure.. but they suspect there may be a high concentration of minerals that are just wreaking havoc on everything electronic. The closest they've ventured to the mountains on foot is about here," she pointed out an area in the foothills. "They only went that far because of the ruins of some village. Which is where most of these texts came from."

"Hmm." Vanille looked over the map, as if trying to remember landmarks and translated them into what she saw on the paper. "I think.. That might be the Nih Village." She looked thoughtful a moment. "That would make sense too, since they were record keepers."

"That would explain the concentration of texts," Light agreed. "What do you know about them?"

"Not too much.. Their village was small and hidden to protect their work. They tended to keep maps, which was basically a no-no, so it had to be hidden. I don't think most of them lived there.. I think they were mostly scattered among the villages and cities. There was a Nih in Oerba, but he left shortly after Cocoon soldiers attacked. Well, we thought he left. He kinda just.. disappeared."

"Clan Law or Universal?"

"A mix of both I think.. I mean, they seemed to follow Universal, but they were still keeping records, and since that was their clan purpose.. it makes sense to do both."

"Why were maps bad?" Serah interrupted; confused.

It was Light who answered, "When you're at war, a map in the hands of the enemy can be devastating. If the Pulse Army was struggling already, they wouldn't want that info in the hands of Cocoon soldiers."

Vanille nodded in agreement. "A lot of the small villages relied on not being spotted as their main defense. They just didn't have much of a choice."

Serah nodded silently, looking back at the map. "So.. if this is all the sensors saw before crashing out.. it's not enough right?" Lightning knew Serah understood her sister's need to find her love, but she also knew she wasn't very comfortable with the idea.

"Well, it's enough to make some connections. Like this," she pointed to a place on the map far but not terribly far from the settlement Fang would have gotten off the train at; it would take about two days to reach on foot. "This looks like an opening into the mountains that doesn't deal with climbing cliffs. It's easy to use, but also easy to defend if needed, so I can see that as being the first passage."

"Do you think Fang went that way?"

"Possibly. There's no threat of leading an invasion in, so I don't see why she'd take a more difficult route." She mulled that over for a moment. "Unless she's playing on the way . Testing herself," she clarified; she didn't really think Fang just played around for the hell of it. "But I doubt it. She was being very serious about all of this."

Vanille nodded in agreement. Fang had a bad habit of doing things the hard way 'for the fun of it' but this didn't seem to be one of those times. Fang would want to get out there and back as quickly as possible.

"But you have no idea where she would go after that, even if she did go that way!" Serah shook her head, standing in her upset. "This is crazy! How do you expect to find anything out there!"

Vanille looked at her hands, dejected. Light didn't need to look at her to know how she felt. Without her pigtails, it seemed harder for her to hide behind the veneer of cheeriness. Light could tell Vanille wanted to tell Serah to be quiet; to understand that she had to do it because Vanille couldn't.

At the same time, it was obvious that Vanille understood. Serah couldn't sway her anger at Light planning to just.. run off into the mountains on her own. She was going through the same heartache Vanille had just a few short months before when Fang had been planning to leave. Maybe it was worse; at least Fang had a general idea of where she was headed.

Light wasn't taking any of it. "And what would you have me do? Sit here and wait for answers that might never come? What would you do if it was Snow out there?"

A few tears slid from her eyes under her older sister's hard glare. "I.. I would want to find him." She sniffled. She understood her want to go; she was just afraid of losing her.

With a sigh, Light moved forward and wrapped her arms around her sister. "I'm sorry Serah.. but this is something I have to do. I'm trying to be a prepared as I possibly can so you don't have to worry as much." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I have to find her Serah. I can't live without her. I just can't."