If the lack of change from the main story bugs you, I apologize. We'll get into more of Rei and Sai's contributions as we progress.
If you don't like it and hate the story because of it, you can leave if you want. I'm not keeping you by force.
If you're staying, review!
"Is that wreckage from the Vestige?" Snow asked.
"Looks like it," Sai said.
The group walked through a bunch of metal chains, continuing through the small wave of Pantherons. They even encountered a small group of PSICOM Wardens and Enforcers, but they were just as easy as ever.
"We must be heading towards some kind of base of theirs with the mechanical monsters and the soldiers," Rei noted. "Not exactly the best plan if we're trying to avoid them, but maybe we can commandeer a ship out of here."
"We'd make quite a ruckus if we did," Sazh pointed out. "Even if we do get a ship, it most likely won't be a quiet escape."
"Better than nothing," Sai said. "If it were easy, we'd have been out of here ages ago."
They walked up a crystal ramp to reveal that it was actually a train half buried in the crystal. "The train fell too," Vanille muttered. "I wonder what else is down here."
The other half of the train wasn't covered in the slippery frozen rock, and so it was a lot safer to scale down. From the ramp, a short distance away, a certain crystal stuck out of the ice.
At first, it was hard to tell exactly what it was, with it being made of the same crystal that the entire lake was now composed of, however, upon a few extra moments of examination, it was revealed to be Serah's crystal, perfectly intact and lying in a large bed of crystal attached to the crystal of the lake.
"Serah," Lightning muttered in shock.
She stepped forward, but Snow surged past her.
"Serah!" He ran up and kneeled in front of her. "Serah…"
He gently touched her face, before taking her hand. "I'll get you out of there."
He turned and went over to grab a large, sharp piece of metal - most likely thrown from the wreckage of the train - before hurrying back over to her and working to dig her out of the crystal bed she was now resting in.
Vanille grabbed a smaller piece, maybe the size of a chisel, and kneeled beside him. "I'll help you."
"Thanks!"
Sazh sighed and grabbed his own piece, while Sai drew his sword and helped out too, each being careful not to harm Serah's actual crystal, and only the stuff surrounding her and sealing her to the crystal lake. Hope, having little strength and no more room to join them, stayed back, but looked ready to help if they needed him.
Lightning stared at the crystal of her sister, sadness flashing through her eyes.
"This is goodbye," Rei heard her think to herself.
Then, Lightning turned and began to walk away.
Snow noticed, turning towards her and standing. "Lightning! You're just gonna leave her?"
Lightning came to a stop. "PSICOM will be here soon," She said without turning around. "If they find us, we're all dead. You think Serah would want that? You think you know how she feels?"
The soldier began to march off once more, until Snow caused her to halt once more. "If I leave her, then I'll never know. We'll be fine. I can handle anything they throw at us. No one will die. I'll protect Serah. And Cocoon!"
Seeing the potential threat even before it happened, Sai, Rei, Vanille and Hope all stepped back.
Lightning turned, her teeth clenched in built up rage for the blonde and his boasting in a time like this. She'd had enough of him, his cocky and overconfident declarations despite things set right in front of his eyes, and with Serah not around to stop her anymore, she stomped up to the taller man, paused for only a brief moment, before giving him a right-hook to the jaw strong enough to send him toppling back into Sazh behind him, and down into the ground.
"Does she look protected to you?!" Lightning shouted.
Hard-headed as can be, Snow rose once more. "I can save her!"
She punched him down once again. "What can you possibly do?!" She demanded.
"Whatever it takes!" He responded.
Lightning had her fist clenched, prepared to strike him down again, but his words caused her to pause. She slowly dropped her fist, instead turning to the side with a sigh of exasperation, with a subtle hint of surprise at his dedication.
Sazh stood with a heavy sigh. "You two are hopeless," He muttered.
Snow stood with a huff, before turning back to his task and grabbing his tool to continue hacking away at the hard crystal around his fiancée.
"You just can't admit it," Sazh continued, walking a short distance away. "You want to stay as much as he does."
Vanille turned and continued her efforts as well, Sai shrugging and joining in again too. Lightning stood firm, unwilling to assist, but no longer moving to leave either.
Rei was going to join in the efforts, but then her senses spiked.
"Heads up!"
She drew her sword and then flicked it. It turned to light for a moment before being replaced with a golden longbow about five feet tall. She snatched Sai's silver sword, hooking it to her belt, and it turned to light like hers had, but instead of a bow, it transformed into a silver quiver of arrows.
Nocking an arrow, she fired into the sky. As everyone looked to where her projectile headed, they suddenly saw the main body of a Manasvin Warmech flying down. It was missing it's razor-claw arms, and it looked pretty beat up, the metal scratched and dented, half the eye lights broken and the other half flickering.
Rei's arrow struck the Warmech in the side, exploding on impact, but it recovered in the air and landed on the train that the group had previously walked across. It shined it's searchlight at them, and Lightning drew her gunblade, charging in for a fight. Rei transformed the quiver back into a sword and tossed it to Sai, her own weapon reverting, and the two joined her to face the Warmech.
The machine launched up and over the group, landing with a thudding boom behind them, where Hope and Vanille had been standing. Hope fled with a shout of panic, while Vanille drew her weapon as well and Snow ran up with his AMP emblem appearing on his coat to enhance him.
Lightning, Rei, Sai, and Snow all ran up to use their short-ranged attacks, Sai and Lightning doing straight up attacks while Rei and Snow infused theirs with spells. Vanille threw her own spells into the mix, while Sazh fired his bullets from his long range.
The Warmech's body section split to send out a beam of powerful energy, and it swept across the area to hit everyone. Vanille quickly got to work with some Cure spells, and Rei tossed out a Cura to everyone before they continued their assault.
Sai switched to casting magic to help with building a stagger, and in no time, the mechanical beast shined golden, the attacks doing significantly more damage, cutting through the metal like it was nothing, denting it with little effort, and causing it to flinch from the more magic attacks throw its way.
In retaliation, the Warmech raised it's head up before using Crystal Rain, letting out a large meteorite of crystal at Lightning, Sai and Snow. The three of them flinched back from the attack, taking some serious damage, and Vanille threw some Cures their way. The Warmech threw another boulder of crystal, knocking them all back.
Snow switched to Sentinel and glowed with Steelguard, learning his l'Cie abilities quickly. His new power also made it so that when he was in Sentinel mode, the rest of the group also had some slight protection as well. Vanille quickly continued her Cures, while Lightning, Sai, Sazh, and Rei continued the assault on the weakening Warmech.
As it's stagger came to an end, Rei jumped up, flipping in the air to bring down her sword with as much force as she could muster and slammed her sword through the Warmech's body, unleashing a Scourge attack. Sparks flew, and the mechanical beast spasmed before raising it's tail and sending out four beams of energy concentrated towards her. She quickly pulled her sword out and jumped away, but the damage was done.
The Warmech continued to use it's laser attack in its final attempt to fight back, but Snow, Sai, Vanille and Rei all threw in as many spells as they could, quickly staggering the enemy and causing it to glow gold once more. At that point, everyone except Vanille - as her skills lied in magic, not physical attacking- switched to Commando and threw all the attacks they could at it.
Rei jumped upon the Warmech once more, gathered energy in her hands, before slamming her palm down into the hole she'd made previously from her Scourge attack. "See if you like this!"
The machine exploded with a torrent of water, courtesy of a powerful Waterga spell. The liquid surged through it's already damaged circuits, causing any working mechanisms in the machine to explode. Finally, the Warmech broke down from the severe damage done and slumped, the few lights in its eyes dying out and all power fading from its wires.
Rei sheathed her sword before tearing off a piece of the metal from the Warmech's back where she kneeled. She dug around in the wires before pulling out a small, red, pulsing cylinder no bigger than a pill. "Built in tracker separate from the main structure," She reported. "In essence, it can't be hacked if the rest of the machine is, and it will remain active even if the Warmech is destroyed in some way. It's pulsing, meaning it's sending out a signal that the Warmech is down. We don't have a lot of time before soldiers will converge on this area."
Everyone sheathed their weapons. "So, what's the plan then?" Vanille asked.
Lightning said nothing, before briskly turning to walk off. Snow saw it and hurried to cut her off. "You're leaving?" He demanded.
"We wanna help Serah too," Sazh said, before sighing and nodding towards her crystal. "But without tools, we could be digging for days."
"The army's on our trail," Sai admitted. "For now, we've gotta keep moving. For now."
"So I just abandon her, and save myself?!" He snapped.
Sai hung his head. If he were in Snow's position, seeing a loved one turned to crystal, he understood how hard it would be to just walk away and abandon them.
"What about your Focus?" Lightning asked. "What happened to banding together and saving the world? Isn't that what you promised? Now you want to forget it all and die right here?"
Snow's anger quickly faded, as Lightning's observations were accurate. Sazh tapped his hand to his head like, "She's got a point," and Rei slid off the Warmech with a grim look on her face. Snow did a lot of boasting, but in the end, he still had the best intentions at heart.
"Snow?" Lightning continued. "You're nothing but talk."
With that, she walked past him.
Snow's head fell, but he gritted his teeth, and clenched his fists. "Lightning!" He shouted, causing her to pause in her tracks, though neither turned towards each other. "I'll do whatever it takes. I'll finish this Focus, and keep Serah safe." He raised his head, looking forward. "That's my promise."
"Great job so far," She responded monotonously and continued her march forward.
Sazh sighed and looked to Snow regretfully, knowing that following Lightning really was the best course of action.
"Stay out of trouble," Snow said to him with a small smile.
Sazh put his hand on Snow's shoulder as he walked past. "You too."
Vanille looked reluctant to leave Snow, and Hope looked conflicted, unsure of how he felt.
"Get going," Snow said, jabbing a thumb behind him in Lightning's direction. Vanille reluctantly moved forward, Hope following behind her. Snow put his hand up in farewell. "Later."
"Okay," Vanille nodded before running to catch up.
Hope moved to do the same, but paused just as he ran past Snow. He moved to stand in front of Snow once more, surprising the tall warrior. "Snow…" Hope began, but couldn't seem to find the right words.
Snow put his hands on his hips. "Save it for next time, kiddo. You'll get left behind."
Hope moved to hurry and catch up, but paused once more. "But…"
"It's okay, Hope. Light will take care of you." He smiled. "We'll meet again."
"Yeah," He finally conceded. "Count on it."
With that, Hope finally ran off, turning to look back only once more and then joining the others.
"Look," Rei said. "Even if you could get Serah out before PSICOM catches up, what are you planning to do then? Are you going to drag her to safety somewhere? Even if we all worked together, we'd never outrun the army with her to carry and monsters and some random soldiers to fight along the way. Stay if you want, but PSICOM most likely won't do anything to a crystal, but if they find that a Pulse l'Cie cares about it, they'll go for it first and destroy it just to use it as a weakness."
She sighed.
"Snow, if you want everything, you'll end up with nothing," She continued. "At least you can get some more information before you claim that our Focus is to save Cocoon. You may believe that Serah's Focus and ours is to save Cocoon, but there could be the simple fact that it's not. Just think about this: did Serah choose her Focus? You say she's not and enemy, but what she's told to do doesn't make her one. What she wants to do does. Her Focus could've been to help destroy Cocoon and she told us to save it so that it wouldn't happen. I believe Serah has a good heart, and I know you do too. I know there's no changing your mind, but I'm just saying…keep an open mind. And be careful, all right?"
"I get the picture," He promised.
She chuckled. "I sincerely hope so."
"We'll be seeing you around, right?" Sai said.
He nodded, and the two moved to join the others.
Snow, meanwhile, turned back to Serah, kneeling in front of her. "I'll get you out of there," He promised, before grabbing his piece of metal and continuing his task.
Sazh sighed, rubbing the back of his head. "I'm not happy about leaving the kid on his own, but we've got to keep moving."
"Maybe we shouldn't have left him on his own," Vanille muttered as we walked.
"He's a big boy," Rei said. "He can handle himself."
"You can't fault the guy for not trying," Sai admitted. "He may be all talk, but he's giving it his best."
"Guess all we can do is pray he makes it out okay," Sazh said.
They continued through the crystal waves, encountering the usual Breshan Bass, Bloodfang Bass, Pantherons, Cie'th, etc.
At one point, they had to cross large cables to get across a cavern. Below were jagged spikes of crystal, and even when the crystal leveled out, it was still a good 50 meters down.
"Okay, do not shake the slippery tube!" Sazh announced. "We cool on this? Do not shake the slippery tube!"
"It's only scary if you look down!" Vanille called.
"Are we seriously sure this is a good idea?" Sai asked.
Rei slipped her hand into Sai's. "I'll keep you safe," She promised. "Come on."
He sighed. "What's that old saying? If all your friends walked off a cliff…"
"Oh just shift!" Rei complained, playfully shoving him forward.
He reluctantly walked forward, and they made it across without incident.
"Still couldn't talk to him?" Vanille asked Hope while Lightning scouted the area ahead. "You'll never get past this if you don't say something."
"Words won't change anything," Hope argued. "But next time we meet, he'll know exactly how I feel."
"What's up with him?" Sai asked.
"Human stuff," Rei muttered, her attention elsewhere. "Hm, maybe we can utilize this."
Hope looked to the airship she was examining, embedded in the ice. "This thing's a wreck. I don't think we can use it.
She reached to the back of her belt and shot the gun atop the crashed ship. She aimed her shot well, setting off the gun to fire at the wall of crystal ahead, bringing it down with only a few rounds. Unfortunately, it also aroused the local bass.
They fought the group of fish-frog creatures, the Breshan Bass significantly more resilient than the Bloodfang Bass, but still not much of a challenge.
As they passed through the wall of crystal, they came across a green mechanical behemoth.
"What the heck?" Sai muttered. "They made behemoths too? I knew PSICOM made a bunch of mechanical monsters to fight with based on real creatures, but come on!"
"Look out!"
Rei shoved him aside as the Alpha Behemoth charged forward and took a swing. The wide radius of the attack ended up hitting everyone, and Vanille had to quickly switch to Medic and toss some Cures. The behemoth slowly backed away, as though taunting them, but in actuality, it was beginning to charge power, already at 25%.
"Toss fire and water!" Rei shouted.
The others complied, Sazh and Sai throwing Fire spells, Rei casting Wateras, and Lightning taking the Commando role to attack. Vanille just finished up the healing before the behemoth charged up and swiped at her. Everyone had scattered around so that no one else was caught in the attack, so she threw a Cure on herself for the damage and then switched to Ravager and throwing Water spells.
At that point, the Alpha Behemoth had already reached 50% and growing. It swiped at Lightning, but she jumped and back-flipped out of the way just in time to continue attacking not a moment afterwards. It's power built to 90%, but everyone threw in their efforts to hit it with spells, and finally the mechanical monster shined with a golden aura.
Lightning's attacks did significantly more damage, causing the behemoth to flinch under her strikes, and so Rei and Sai charged up with their swords to do more damage, Sazh and Vanille continuing to throw spells to build the chain and allow for even more damage.
With their assault, the behemoth wasn't left a moment to recover, and soon it fell dead before it could unleash the attack it had been charging.
"That guy must mean we're getting close to the PSICOM base," Rei noted. "They wouldn't let their big guns wander too far off. They'd want to protect their base the most."
Sazh walked over to the cliff edge and looked down. "Look at that. They're sending in cruisers. Primarch must be sweating bullets, mobilizing ships like that."
"What's a Primarch?" Rei whispered to Sai.
"A big leader guy of the government."
"Oh. Like a fal'Cie?"
"No. He's human. He's like the human representative with all the fal'Cie, or at least, I think so. I'm not a politics guy."
The group joined Sazh, kneeling to look down and see the large ship he was referring to. Around it, soldiers were lined up and moving out, some on foot and others through the air with glowing wheel-like things strapped onto their backs that spun to propel them forward. Some rode in vehicals with similar properties as well, the motorcycle-like hovering crafts armed with weapons, some open-cabined and others closed off so that it could be debated whether they had pilots or not.
Rei marveled at the wonders of technology Cocoon had. Machines that could let man fly without magic.
"They must be hunting down Purge survivors," Sazh guessed.
"I hope everyone made it out okay," Vanille said.
"So do I. But nowhere is safe for them now." Sazh smacked the crystal ground in frustration. "Dammit! Just 'cause they shared a neighborhood with a fal'Cie…they get treated like Pulse-tainted rats.
Rei looked down, a somber expression on her face. "People…people really hate Pulse, don't they?"
"Not hate," Sai argued, placing his hand on hers.
"More like fear," Sazh corrected. "Tens of millions of people…all scared of Pulse boogeymen." He looked to the brand on his chest and a fist formed. "They'd be shaking in their beds every night if they knew that l'Cie like us were around."
"But…they Purged that entire town!" Vanille said, agreeing with Rei.
"It's crazy, I know," He said to her, before looking forward with a dark expression. "But the Sanctum fal'Cie did nothing to stop it. Up until now, Eden's always stepped in to correct their errors in judgement."
"Guess humans aren't worth the effort," Sai muttered. "Figure they'll let us just kill each other off."
Hope, who had been sitting behind them in silence, stood. "L'Cie are not human," He declared angrily.
Vanille, fed up with his depressing mood and his statements, stood with a huff and snatched his wrist. "Listen, you, that's enough!"
She saw his brand peaking out from underneath the scarf on his wrist, and she hesitated, her anger quickly fading. She released his wrist, stepping away.
"We're still alive," She said with weak enthusiasm, looking up as she tried to smile once more. "That's something."
It wasn't a lot to cling to in their situation, but it would have to be enough.
Then, the entire area began to tremble with a quake.
"What?" "Where is it?" Lightning and Sazh asked respectively.
"I don't know," Hope muttered as everyone looked around.
"There!" Rei called.
A ship passed overhead, then another, another, another, and another. Eight or ten in all, splitting into pairs before flying in separate directions.
"They're sealing off the area," Lightning realized. "They're trying to trap the stragglers."
"We've gotta get moving before we're caught in the net," Sai declared.
As they all moved forward, they now faced an increasing number of PSICOM Trackers, Rangers, and Watchdrones. The Watchdrones came in groups, were pretty quick, and therefore built up a good deal of damage.
All together, a group of three charged Electrokicks and all targeted Sai. The Electrokicks themselves were only moderately powerful, not instant death but still pretty strong, yet when they all teamed up against a single person, the damage wracked up exponentially and Sai was brought to his knees before he could even realize what was happening.
"No!" Rei charged in with an Electric Blitz before throwing her hand down and summoning a Waterga spell to explode beneath them. She hacked at the machines until they were scrap metal in seconds before then running over and tossing a Phoenix Down to Sai.
"Are you okay?" She asked.
"I've always hated those things," He muttered. "I'm good, thanks."
"Be more careful next time, all right?"
"I'll try."
They knew that there wasn't gonna be any easy route out, so they set their sights on trying to find where some ships so that they could commandeer one.
Heels clacking against the crystal beneath them, they had to climb up a large mountain of crystal, Sazh complaining the entire way. "Do we really have to go this way? I'm too old for this." "I may be a l'Cie, but I ain't getting any younger." "Whoa! How high is this thing? I don't think I'm gonna make it." "Years catch up with you."
"Crystal waterfall," Sai pointed out on a more cheery note.
"Yeah, Sazh, stay positive," Rei agreed.
At the top of the frozen mountain they found one of those hovering vehicals that may or may not have had a pilot within. They snuck up on the Ciconia Velocycle, knocking its stagger gauge high so that it only took a single spell to stagger it. Even with that disadvantage, it was pretty tough, and the stagger actually wore off before it could be finished off. Once it could withstand attacks without flinching, it charged its Beam Gun. Rei Sentineled it, Provoking the attack to her before activating Steelguard to take the heavy hit.
It wasn't hard to finish off its remaining power, and they continued down the road. From their height, they could see, in detail, the rolling waves of crystal spread as far as the eye can see.
"Whoa," Vanille muttered happily. "This whole place is crystal!"
"You know, I question how the crystal formed some of these shapes," Sai said.
"Just go with it and count our stars that we've found a path through at all," Rei told him.
Lightning overlooked the scenery to instead spy the PSICOM ships flying a good distance away.
Sazh sighed and stared off into the distance. "I wonder what it would be like. To become a crystal, I mean."
"It's gotta be scary," Rei said. "It's gotta feel lonely, being blocked off from the rest of the world like that. But maybe you'll dream. Maybe they're just sleeping, and one day, they'll awake. Snow did have a point. It's not called 'Eternal life' for nothing. Maybe turning to crystal doesn't mean death after all. Maybe there's some perks to it."
Vanille turned to them in surprise. "You're gonna complete your Focus?"
Sazh shrugged. "Maybe. If I knew what it was. I probably don't wanna know."
She turned to Lightning. "Hey, Lightning. Did Serah say anything to you about her Focus?"
Lightning looked down, putting her hand to her chest where her brand was. "Nothing," She admitted.
Trying to recover, Vanille said, "Oh, you know what? She probably didn't want to worry you."
"Or she just…didn't think she could trust me."
Lightning walked off, and Vanille made a sound of regret for asking.
We followed her off through corridors of crystal, the occasional Watchdrone meeting us, but otherwise, it was a pretty straightforward path.
"Listen you, there's no need to be all negative," Sazh said.
"Speak for yourself," Sai muttered.
They came out from the tunnel of crystal to find a large structure sticking out from the crystal, as though it was too tall for the waves of ice to flood over. It seemed to be old, some kind of ruins, and there was an Alpha Behemoth right at the top of the steps to it, some soldiers in the distance. Large fire crystals revealed that there were crashed platforms from Hanging Edge here.
"We're getting close," Rei said. "It seems this place attracted a good deal of attention. They're bound to have a ship nearby."
"Then let's hurry, before they send out the alert that we're here," Lightning said.
Nodding, they hurried through the Bresha Ruins.