Disclaimer: This is fanfiction and should be in no way mistaken for being anything else.

A/N: The Final Fantasy series seems to have some of the most durable robots in the universe. Especially FFXIII since five hundred years later those suckers are still moving about as they please.

Fear not, Cait Sith isn't the only character from FFVII that will show up. Also, the personalities of the FFVII cast are influenced more by the original game than the rest of the compilation since I've been playing through it again recently.

OOO

Chapter 2 – A Puzzle without a Picture

OOO

Serah was grading papers at school when she heard it. It was a sound like the sigh of the wind, sending a glitter of crystal and light through the air outside. She glanced up sharply, head snapping to the window. Her eyes widened at what she saw.

"Fang! Vanille!" Papers forgotten, she rushed into the courtyard.

OOO

There were times when Hope desperately missed magic. His hands would itch with the urge to cast something and Hope would clench them into fists until the feeling passed. It had taken months for him to stop trying to cast a spell by reflex when a monster would appear. Combat spells were brilliant in their devastation, but it was the practical spells he missed most. Cure, haste, libra…

Libra would have been useful for the artifacts they were digging up.

He'd been able to determine that the cat-moogle was a robot of some kind. It seemed bizarre that such a strange looking robot was inside a power company though. Maybe the building once had a day care center in it? As near has he could tell, the robot appeared undamaged, at least on the outside. It was just turned off.

He should probably just photograph the thing and move on, but what if he could get it to work? Maybe it could tell them something about the ruins. He ran his fingers along the dusty surface looking for a switch, a button, a panel cover, anything… Eventually his fingers found what looked like a pinhole on the side of the cat. It looked like there was some kind of recessed button. Hope quickly repurposed a paperclip and pressed it.

Nothing happened.

Hope frowned. Maybe he had to hold the button down longer? He tried again. Still nothing. He signed and flopped back in his chair. Maybe there was internal damage to the robot. Or maybe the battery had just gone bad. If it even ran on electricity. Maybe it ran on steam or whatever 'mako' was.

Hope tried not to be too disappointed as he began to fill out the paperwork. He was just filling in the last few descriptions when he heard a strange whirring sound behind him.

The robot hadn't moved, but a strange grinding noise came from it for a few moments before falling silent. Huh, maybe there was a hope of getting it to work, after all.

OOO

Lightning leaned out of the plane to get a better look at the ground below. Monster reports were increasing. Even when they were crossing Gran Pulse on foot three years ago, they hadn't run across this many monsters. Something had to be causing the monsters to attack the city. The question was: what? All she could see below was a vast expanse of wilderness.

When she returned to New Bohdum construction on the wall around the city was well under way. It was at best a temporary fix. It wouldn't even slow down some of the larger monsters. All equipment and workers from the New Palumpolum project were forced to return to town every night. They were currently too exposed at the ruin and the construction site to remain there safely. It was a setback that would delay construction of the new town even further than the discovery of the ruins.

Something had to be causing the monsters to become more aggressive. The monsters had behaved more like animals before. They attacked if you ran into them, but otherwise left you alone for the most part. Lightning made a mental note to ask Fang about it.

It was well after dark when the plane returned to New Bohdum. The airstrip was busy. The Scientific Research Team was unloading crates of artifacts to be taken to a nearby warehouse to be catalogued and the construction crews were stowing their equipment for the night so they could ship them back to the site the following morning.

Lightning was leaving the airfield when she spotted one of Hope's friends from the research team helping to push a cart that was weighed down by what vaguely resembled a large crystal. It had something dark trapped within it, like a bug in amber.

Lightning frowned at the strange sight, but brushed it off for the time being. If it was of any interest Hope would tell them all about it sooner or later.

OOO

"Fang? Vanille? What are you doing here?" Hope looked up from an ancient photograph of some sort of headless… thing. The two women had appeared in the doorway.

"We came to keep you company." Vanille bounced into the room.

"Snow mentioned you were working here, so we decided to come check things out. Any idea what these things are?" Fang poked at twisted hunk of metal that vaguely resembled a something mechanical.

"There's at least five theories for every object in here." Hope shook his head. No one could agree on anything. "Some of them seem to be in relatively good condition for being at least two thousand years old. I think I almost got one of the robots to work." Hope walked over to where the cat-moogle sat in a corner, half hidden by other artifacts. "He came in two weeks ago, but I've been putting off listing him as catalogued. I really think I can get him to work."

"That looks like something you'd see in Nautilus!" Vanille scooped up the robotic cat for a closer look. She turned it over in her hands, looking for a switch. "How do you turn it on?"

Hope shrugged. "They said the site used to be a power company's building, but they've found all sorts of things that don't seem to fit. They've found a laboratory of some kind and lots of weapons. Not what you would expect from a utility company."

"Weird." Fang's gaze wandered about the room. "Hey what's that? A crystal?"

It was half covered in a tarp that was too small for it. Unlike most crystals they had seen, it lacked the graceful spikes and spires of those in crystal stasis or the pillar that held up Cocoon. It was more geometric and rough, like crystals you dug out of the ground, but had almost a strange glow to it. Fang pulled back the tarp. Suspended inside the crystal was the dark shape of a person, but the surface of the crystal was too rough and dirty to see much more than a silhouette. Horizontal to the ground, with their limbs gently reaching upwards, the person looked like they were sinking into the crystal, as if some weight on their back was dragging them downwards. It was an eerie sight.

"That's not someone in crystal stasis."

"They look like they fell into water and then it turned into crystal around them… like Lake Bresha did," Vanille's voice was somber.

Hope glanced at the crystal, before turning away quickly. "They found it in a cave on one of the exploration trips a few days ago. It's not from the Shinra ruins like the rest of these." He gestured to the rest of the artifacts in the room.

"Did you say Shinra?" Vanille looked at Hope curiously. "There was a mythical city that was said belong to the Shinra. What was it called? …madeoheim …malboro? Midgar! That's it!" Vanille grinned at her success.

Fang looked thoughtful. "I remember that story. Midgar, the floating city. It was supposed to be the greatest city in the world. According to legend, something called Meteor came from the sky and destroyed it. People used to use the story to justify distrust towards Cocoon. Some even used to say Meteor was another Cocoon and like Meteor we needed to destroy it. One must never trust the calamity from the sky, they said." Fang glanced at a large sign that bore the Shinra logo. "Huh… I guess the Shinra weren't a government though. Just a power company. Myth and reality… they're always different."

She let the tarp fall back into place.

"Snow said the expedition brought some things from Oerba?" Robot cat forgotten, Vanille's expression was mischievous.

"In the next warehouse. No one's brought Bahkti back yet. The excavation's on the other side of the ruins right now."

"We'll just have to get to Bahkti before they do! I'm not giving him up after all!" Vanille danced out of the room with the others trailing behind.

OOO

NORA had taken to patrolling the area and providing backup for the Guardian Corp against the steadily increasing monster attacks. The attacks came almost weekly now, usually at dawn or disk when it was hardest to see them. Fang had confirmed the unusualness of the behavior. It was like something was driving them to attack, controlling them from the shadows. A fal'cie? After what happened to Cocoon, Snow wouldn't put anything past them. They were scouting the foothills of the nearby mountains when they encountered a pack of cie'th.

"Come on! We can't let the Guardian Corp have all the fun, can we?" Snow leapt off his chocobo and charged ahead into the fray, the rest of NORA close behind him.

Snow's fist connected with the creature's face and the creature went down with a shriek. Behind him muzzles flashed as gunshot peppered the rest of the monster pack. Soon nothing but the still forms of the creatures remained.

Snow needed to find out what was controlling the monsters so they could protect everyone.

"What's that fal'cie doing?" Yuj pointed down into the small valley below them.

Snow took the binoculars. A large fal'cie, Titan it looked like, was digging deep into the side of the valley, kicking up some kind of blue-green crystal in the process. The fal'cie paused to examine its diggings, almost as if it were looking for something buried, before resuming its uncharacteristic burrowing.

"What are you up to?" Snow lowered the binoculars.

They watched the fal'cie, periodically looking over its progress with the binoculars, but it gave no indication of what it was looking for, or what it was up to. It merely dug into crystal and earth creating a deep trench in the valley floor. If it was Atomos, the digging would be normal, but Titan had always seemed more concerned with producing stronger creatures than rearranging the surface.

Hours later, Snow stood, stretching out his stiff muscles. "We should check back on this area again later. That thing is up to something."

"Isn't this where the exploration crew was yesterday? Think it could be checking what they were up to?"

"Trying to make sure we don't find something is more likely." What would the fal'cie be trying to hide from them? Snow took one last look before heading back to their chocobos.

OOO

They were really making progress. Vanille and Hope had managed to clean out most of the mechanical parts of the cat robot and reattached some of the wires. Now they were ready for another attempt at turning the little robot on. Tip of her tongue poking out in concentration, Vanille pushed the recessed button with a stiff wire. The robot's gears ground noisily, then it sat up.

"We did it!" she clapped her hands together in celebration. Hope grinned back.

The robot shook its head as if to clear it and then looked at them. It said something, but its voice was garbled and the only word they were able to catch was "you."

"What's your name? I'm Vanille and this is Hope."

"I'm Cait Sith. Where am I?" The robot's words were understandable with concentration.

"You're in New Bohdum. We found you in some ruins."

Cait Sith considered this for a moment. "Ruins? How long was I trapped in the Shinra building? I wasn't able to properly activate when my previous body was destroyed, but my memory download was successful."

"We don't know exactly. They think the ruins are at least two thousand years old. Older than the War of Transgression, anyway." Hope watched the robot curiously.

"Two thousand years?" Cait Sith seemed shocked.

"I've was in crystal stasis for five hundred years. I was lucky though; Fang was there with me. We're going to tell everyone all about Gran Pulse and what it was like back then. You can tell all of us what it was like two thousand years ago!" Vanille smiled.

Cait Sith gave a small smile. "Hopefully things are very different now than they were back then."