Disclaimer: I own nothing!

A/N: Thank you everyone for your reviews! I especially enjoyed hearing what everyone thinks is going to happen.

OOO

Chapter 3 – Clues

OOO

Hope and Vanille had snuck the robot out to show it around, which of course meant that Lightning was forced to meet the ridiculous looking thing. And so she found herself in the common room listening to Cait Sith talk.

The little robot's machinery was basic, but the AI was quite sophisticated. If she didn't know better, she'd believe a human was controlling it. At first the robot was difficult to understand, but the more they talked, the clearer his speech got as if he was adjusting for the pronunciation drift due to time.

"So the world was ruled by a power company? Are you sure you're not making this up?" Lightning gave Cait Sith a skeptical look.

"Technically there was a government, but it was little more than a figurehead. Shinra was the one in control of everything from transport to the military, but its most important monopoly was mako," Cait Sith explained.

The robot painted a description of the ancient world in broad strokes with few names and only major details, since what he was telling them seemed bizarre enough to begin with and was further impeded by the fact the robot had little understanding of the current world to draw analogies from.

The Shinra, a power company, ruled the world with a monopoly on mako energy. Lightning thought they sounded similar to Sanctum, except Sanctum used fear instead of energy.

Cait Sith told them mako was refined and condensed lifestream. Somehow the Shinra got power for lights and trains out of it. Mako could be further condensed and be used for spells by people and somehow those people weren't l'cie. Despite the fact that touching mako was a good way to get mutated into a monster, Shinra had found a way to use it to create soldiers with superhuman abilities to protect their rule. But the process eventually either drove the soldiers mad, mutated them, or both.

Using monsters as soldiers… Lightning thought of how the fal'cie used the superhuman abilities of the l'cie for their own purposes before casting them away to become cie'th or crystals. At least the bioweapons that Cocoon used were never human.

Believing mako was killing the planet, an eco-terrorist group called AVALANCHE began blowing up reactors before they discovered that Shinra's former general was trying to call Meteor to destroy the world and make himself a god. They stopped the general, but at a terrible cost.

Humans had survived. Midgar hadn't. Cait Sith's memories ended less then a year thereafter.

In an effort to lighten the mood Vanille changed the subject. "So what kind of robot are you anyway? A pet?"

Lightning wouldn't admit it, but part of her had been wondering about the robot's appearance herself. Cait Sith seemed strangely well informed for something that looked like it should be surrounded by children under five.

"I can tell fortunes, but I was created for spying." Cait Sith puffed up his chest proudly.

"You. A spy?" Lightning gave the robot an incredulous look. "A cat riding a moogle isn't very incognito."

"I spied on AVALANCHE for Shinra before I switched sides!"

"The leader of AVALANCHE must have been crazy," Lightning muttered. There was no way that could have ever been a good idea. Letting a known spy continue to follow you around? That was like letting a thief into your group after they had stolen from you. It was just asking for them to steal from you again.

"He was sane at the time!" Cait Sith waved his arms in agitation. "Granted they didn't want me around after they found out I was a spy, but I persuaded them to let me stay. I can be very persuasive when I want to be, you know. And I proved myself too! I sacrificed one of my bodies so we could get the black materia before anyone else!"

"I thought you said the crazy general used the black materia to summon Meteor?" Lightning raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah… well… that was a not-so-sane moment… and completely not my fault! We got it back again …temporarily…but we stopped everything in the end!"

AVALANCHE was starting to sound like they were more ill prepared for saving the world then their own group had been. They must have stopped Meteor through sheer dumb luck. The general probably made some sort of catastrophic error, or perhaps insanity was affecting his judgment. How you ended up getting something stolen from you when your enemy ran around with a giant pink moogle was beyond her.

OOO

Snow sighed in frustration. Titan hadn't been in the valley. The trenches the fal'cie had dug remained, but there was no sign of the gargantuan creature. They had searched the area for hours to no avail. How a creature that large could leave no sign of its passing was beyond him.

Now they were even more in the dark than before.

"You know, I think I've seen that crystal Titan was digging around in before." Fang paused with her hand on the gate to the chocobo stables.

"Where?" Snow perked up.

"They have a large one in the artifact warehouse Hope works at. Looks similar anyway."

"Have they found out anything about it?" Maybe the trip wasn't a total waste after all.

Fang shrugged. "You'd have to ask Hope."

It was a lead, at least. Snow found Hope up to his elbows in brittle, yellowed papers.

"Hey there, backed up in paperwork already?" Snow waved when Hope looked up.

"I don't have to fill it out. Just catalog it. Some of this stuff is really weird, though. Apparently Shinra tried to blow Meteor up while it was in space. I'm surprised they could get anything launched to space, much less hit Meteor."

Snow's eyes scanned the room and found the large crystal half under a tarp just like Fang had said. "Do you know anything about this crystal? We saw some like it in the foothills where Titan was digging around."

Hope shook his head. "Nobody's sure what it is. It feels sort of… strange… if you leave your hand on it too long. I haven't had the chance to ask Cait Sith about it. He's been occupied answering questions for the rest of the research team since yesterday."

Snow pulled back the tarp and nearly dropped it in surprise. Fang hadn't mentioned the crystal was occupied.

Hope stifled a laugh. "We can go see if Cait Sith's free."

They found Cait Sith at one of the computers reading one of the history databases that Serah had put together for her students. It was kind of funny seeing a robot using a computer.

"A blue-green crystal in the ground?" Cait Sith looked thoughtful at their question. "Sounds like the kind of stuff you find at a natural materia spring."

"Any idea why the fal'cie might be rummaging around in it?" Snow asked.

The cat shrugged. "The Weapons were encased in crystal before they woke."

"Weapons?"

"Giant monsters created by the Planet to reduce the world back to nothing."

"Sounds like something Barthandalus would do. What about humans encased in it?" The large crystal bothered him. It reminded him too much of crystal stasis, and crystal stasis could only mean that fal'cie were involved.

"There's only two people I've ever heard of being encased in the stuff. There was Lucretica and Sephiroth. Both fell into the lifestream."

"Sephiroth was the megalomaniac right?" He didn't like the idea of that guy being around again.

"It can't be him. He was destroyed." Cait looked up at Snow. "I remember Luretica's crystal being clear enough to see her, but I suppose it could have been damaged over time." Cait Sith shook his head. "It doesn't make sense why she would be over here though. Her cave was on the western continent."

The moogle bounced off down the hallway to the catalog room, leaving Snow and Hope to follow. Cait Sith pulled the tarp back and examined the crystal.

The cat sighed. "I suppose it could be anyone. When the lifestream came to the surface during Meteor, it swept a lot of people away."

"Are they still alive?" Hope asked.

"Lucretica seemed to be aware of things happening outside her crystal. And Sephiroth was revived… but they weren't really normal people."

"Maybe we can find a way to wake them up." Putting Fang and Vanille in the garden had worked. Maybe they could do something similar? Snow didn't like the thought of leaving someone stuck like that if they were alive.

"Vincent would know if there was a way. He used to spend time talking to Lucretica. They'd know better than I would about the Weapons as well."

"Where'd he keep his research? Maybe we can find it." Hope seemed excited at the thought of actually getting to explore this time. Snow didn't blame him.

Cait Sith perked up as if realizing something. "It's a small chance… but we might be able to ask Vincent himself."

"I realize you miss your friends… but two thousand years is a long time." Snow felt a little sorry for the little cat.

"No… Vincent was different. He spent thirty years sealed away and hadn't aged a day. There's a chance!"

Well, he supposed it wasn't any stranger than anything else Cait Sith had told them. "Any idea where to find this guy?"

"If he went back to sleep, he'd want to be near Lucrecia."

OOO

While they had been able to see the mouth of the cave from the air, there had been nowhere to land, forcing them to hike up the side of the mountain. The moogle's progress was slow, and the blasted thing kept cheery conversation with the others the whole way. It was as if everyone had forgotten the meaning of silence.

It had taken two long days of travel to get this far. Two days that they weren't there to keep monsters out of the town. Her time as a l'cie had done little to give her faith in the effectiveness of the Guardian Corp and PSICOM. The only reason she had come was that she was unwilling to let her friends face the monsters of the countryside on their own. Snow, Serah and NORA had stayed behind to help protect new Bohdum.

If the fal'cie were going to try and wake up the Weapons to destroy Cocoon then they needed to know everything they could. This Vincent knew more than Cait Sith. Things that might help them.

Gathered together, traversing the countryside on foot and trying to protect Cocoon, it was like they were l'cie again, except without the brand that would turn them into monsters.

The moogle tripped, sending the cat flying into the dirt. Lightning sighed, this was going to be a long trip.

OOO

In his darker moments, Vincent still dreamed of his sins. What if he had been able to stop her? So many people wouldn't have gotten hurt. Meteor never would have fallen. He had done his best to make amends. Though so many had been lost, they had saved some lives at least. He had done what he could during those days when Meteor hung in the sky. Vincent had wandered the Planet for years after that. Searching for further ways to atone. But even his efforts at atonement also led to regrets.

Time moved forward.

He didn't.

Everyone was gone now. Only he remained. Aeris had only been the first. They never found Cloud after the Highwind crashed from being caught in the crossfire between Holy and Meteor. Reeve was killed a few years later by a collapse during salvage efforts. Nananki had lasted the longest, but time eventually caught up with him as well.

Even Lucrecia was starting to fade. Her voice had become softer over the centuries. He hoped she found peace one day at last. She deserved to be freed from her pain and sorrow.

Vincent spoke to her when he was awake. He periodically traveled the world and told her what he had seen, before returning to rest once more. Lucrecia enjoyed hearing about the world and how things changed. She had never lost the sense of curiosity that had made her such a wonderful scientist.

It wasn't much of a life, just existence, but he owed it to her to keep her company. He owed her so much. He couldn't let her languish alone.

Lucretcia lamented not being able to properly disperse into the lifestream. Jenova would never let her die so easily and the lifestream, like an oyster, built up a protective barrier between her and itself. Sephiroth had been the same way in the northern crater, although they eventually had been able to destroy Sephiroth. The process had been brutal and Vincent couldn't bear to do the same to Lucrecia. A selfish part of him liked having one familiar face through the centuries.

Another sin to add to the rest.

Vincent loaded up his pack with supplies. He had slept longer than usual this time and would need to find some new parts for his awakening apparatus. He turned to Lucrecia. Unchanged, she lay within the crystal.

Her ethereal voice drifted through the air. "Something has happened… I hear things in the lifestream…"

"What do you hear?"

"The Planet… and something else"

Was the Planet in danger again? Vincent frowned.

"I'm so sorry..." Her voice was little more than a whisper.

"I'll investigate. Don't worry." Vincent shouldered his pack and exited the cave.