This chapter will follow Lightning and Hope to right before they are captured by PSICOM. It will then take up Sazh and Vanille from the split up and follow their journey to Nautilus. – Thanks for reading – Reviews are welcome….

Lighting and Hope had made it to Gapra Whitewood and Lightning was trying to teach Hope how to fight so he could take care of himself. She let him take point and kept telling him what to watch for and to keep his eyes forward. They encountered new enemies here, some more difficult than others.

The forest was beautiful around them as they stayed to the platforms that snaked through the area for ease of access. "Focus on your targets, Hope" Lightning told him as they proceeded "Watch them as they move, listen to the sounds they make. It will help you anticipate their next moves and know how to strike them."

They met and defeated beasts along the pathway; Lightning was always instructing Hope on what to do and yelling encouragement to him during the battle. He was getting stronger and his fearfulness was subsiding. Lightning had to caution him against becoming too over confident "I've seen many soldiers defeated by over confidence" she told him "always be cautious and be aware of your surroundings."

They continued along the platforms, when Hope shouted "We have to hide!" as he ran for cover under some foliage, Lightning asked no questions and followed him. Three soldiers on Aero Bikes flew over, apparently on a routine inspection, and flew off.

"They didn't act like they were looking for us" Hope said, confused by soldiers actions.

"PSICOM is keeping this under wraps" Lightning explained "They haven't told the other divisions that there are fugitives to look for. They don't want to broadcast their failure."

Hope smiled, saying "That's good for us then!"

Approaching an entry way protected by an energy field, they paused for a rest and Hope verbally wondered how the others were doing.

"Sazh and Vanille?" Lightning questioned, then continued to say, "They'll be captured eventually." Lightning then starting thinking of Serah and said "Serah should be alright, Snow will take care of her. He's too stubborn to die."

Hope started to discuss his dislike for Snow and Lightning fed into Hopes feelings by telling him of her displeasures with Snow as well. She had no idea of Hope's secret and that she was contributing to his growing hatred that was inside of him for Snow.

The energy field on the entry way finally dissipated and allowed them to continue on their way. "This is the bio-complex," Lightning explained, "They turn wildlife into weapons here", as they rode the lift down to ground to face what lay ahead of them.

They had to battle wildlife, entrapped in enclosures, to proceed through the area. The enclosures were sealed off by force field beams that would only engage if the bio-creatures were detected. To turn them off, Lightning and Hope had to rid the enclosures of the creatures so they could continue. They fought and defeated the monsters from one enclosure to the other, until they could finally get to the platforms again.

"We'll rest here" Lightning told Hope, noticing he was winded and tired from the fighting.

She had lent him her survival knife to help him take care of himself, and while they were resting, Hope sat flicking the blade in and out with a hateful look in his eyes.

"What's eating at you?" she questioned, "Is it the l'cie thing?" He sat silently and didn't answer her. "It's Snow, isn't it? What happened with him?" Lightning asked as she knelt down on one knee, next to Hope.

He responded coldly, "He killed my mother." Then, went on to explain the story to Lightning. "I know it won't bring her back, but he has to pay for what he did. It's all his fault!" Hope said as he got to feet and walked away from Lightning.

"Hope, Snow didn't kill your mother, the Sanctum killed her." He became angry and yelled "Who's side are you on?" Lightning calmly replied to him "The side of truth."

He was still angry and her answer did nothing to make him see that his hate was mis-guided. "Fine!" he yelled back "Then I'll help you fight the Sanctum!"

His mother's name was Nora, so he decided to name his objective "Operation Nora", a mission of murder and revenge. Lightning did what she could to discourage Hope from this, but the boy refused to give in, as the hate had taken over any rational thoughts, festering within him like a disease.

They proceeded on the platforms for short time, when they again found themselves being lead back into the enclosures of trapped beasts. The progression was slow as they fought their way through the bio-engineered wildlife. When they finally spotted a path to get back on the platforms, Hope was too slow getting through one of the force fields and set off an intruder alert.

"Troops will be coming for us" Lightning told him, "Keep your eyes sharp."

Hope nodded he understood as the two made it back to the platforms, hastening their pace to reach the exit of the complex. Lightning was right, as they started to encounter soldiers investigating the cause of the alarm being tripped.

"There has to be a way to get through to him." she thought as they started to approach the exit out of the complex, "Perhaps talking to his father would persuade him, if she could get him there safely."

After exiting the complex, she walked up to the edge of a large lake. Its water was as smooth as glass and reflected distorted images of the scenery around it. A city lay directly across the lake and Hope said excitedly "That's it. Palumpolum!"

Lightning asked, "That's where you live, right?"

"Yah" he responded, becoming melancholy.

"We'll stop in and see your Dad." she said in a matter of fact tone.

"No", Hope said "l'cie won't be welcome there."

Lightning sternly responded to him "Hope, he needs to know what has happened." Hope hung his head in silence, convinced that his Dad didn't care about him and wouldn't allow a l'cie in his house.

Their trip through the woods to Palumpolum took them about an hour and was remarkably uneventful. There were no soldiers or monsters to fight off and this had Lightning concerned, although it felt good to proceed without constantly fighting.

"Something's off" she finally said to Hope. "There should be Guardian Corps patrols on guard out here and there is nothing."

They had made it to the out skirts of Palumpolum and discovered why the GC patrols were not where they should have been.

"I knew something was wrong" Lightning told Hope as they hid behind some equipment. "PSICOM has taken jurisdiction of the city. They knew we were coming and made it easy for us, thinking we would walk right into their hands."

Hope told her of an old tunnel system that existed and hadn't been used in years. "We could make our way through the city using it and avoid the soldiers."

She agreed, as Hope took the lead and got them into the tunnel system. They made their way through the tunnels, only encountering a few PSICOM soldiers that were easily handled.

The system of tunnels came to an end at a huge door, pushing it open; they entered the Nutriculture Complex the fal'Cie had constructed to feed the inhabitants of Cocoon. The door swung shut behind them with a bang and Lightning turned back to look at the door.

"Don't worry, nobody knows about the tunnels except kids like me" Hope told her.

"They will put units together and search every inch of the tunnels" Lightning responded, looking back at Hope.

"We better get going then" Hope said as he started walking along the short platform. There were control panels at the end of the platforms that, when activated, would move floating platforms to them, transporting them to other platforms in the area.

Here, they met different enemies, mostly large Flans that guarded the area and could cast cure, which made it more difficult to overcome a group of them. One nasty beast, that they avoided confrontations with, was a lizard like creature with armored scales that were almost impossible to penetrate. It was slow and easy to dodge, so they opted to dodge this monster whenever they encountered the beast.

They stopped in front of the fal'Cie that controlled the plant, Hope told Lightning that its name was Carbuncle and mused it was a Cocoon fal'Cie and their enemy now. After some discussion, Hope said that the fal'Cie always provided for them, as if they were pets.

These words struck Lightning as she repeated "Like pets. Of course, it all makes sense now", she continued, "I was born to a fal'Cie world and led on a fal'Cie leash, then all this happened and it took everything from me. My master was gone, my future, my life had no purpose, all I had left was to fight. Everything was alright as long as I was fighting. And you Hope, you got swept away with me!"

"I don't understand what you're talking about, Light" he said with a confused look on his face.

"Hope" she said as she turned quickly to face him, "Operation Nora is over."

Hope was shocked and yelled "What!? But you said we had to fight. You can't just stop now!"

"I was wrong, OK?" she responded, with a wrenching feeling in her gut. She hated to admit she was wrong about anything, but she had to admit it to Hope to make him understand they were taking the wrong path.

"So what now?" he asked "What are we supposed to do? Just give up and wait to die?"

"I didn't mean to give up" she explained "We just can't fight for the sake of fighting; we have to think this out. Serah was trying to tell us that, back at Lake Bresha."

Hope was angry and confused, shouting "So who do we fight?"

"I don't know yet" she said, turning her head to the side.

"You don't know, yet!" he shouted.

"No! I don't know yet" she shouted back.

There was silence between the two for a short while, both trying to decide what they were going to do, when Lightning broke the silence by saying, "I was just like you when my parents died. Forgot about my past and changed my name to become Lightning, to be strong for Serah. I was just a kid."

She paused, with arms folded in front of her, staring out over the shifting platforms. Finally she said "Lightning, it flashes bright then fades away. It can't protect. It only destroys. Serah tried to tell me, but I wouldn't listen, eventually I even pushed her away from me."

Hope wasn't about to put an end to 'Operation Nora', no matter what Lightning or anyone else said to him. It was what drove him and was all he could think about. Hate is a hard emotion to rid ones' self of. It manifests itself into unreasonable conclusions, justifying the most inhumane acts to satisfy the desires of its owner.

Lightning knew this and told Hope that she wanted him to find the hope he was named for. "To fight without hope, is fighting to die." she told him and continued to say "You need to talk to your father, I can't give you the hope you need, I can only show you how to fight."

They reached the lift that would take them up and into the city; they got on and headed up, neither knowing where in the city they would arrive.

Sazh and Vanille

Soon, Sazh and Vanille heard a big blast and turned to see a big cloud of smoke rise from the direction that Hope and Lightning had just gone. "Do you think they're OK?" Vanille asked.

"Hope so" Sazh stated, with a worried look on his face.

"If we go back, we would probably just be in her way" Vanille suggested.

"Yeah, you're probably right. It is Lightning were talking about, yah know." Sazh replied, as he looked towards the direction they were headed.

They turned to continue on their path in the other direction to find a way out of the Ville Peaks. The monsters they encountered were increasingly harder to defeat with only the two of them left to fight. They came up with new strategies to use and learned new magic techniques to overcome their weaknesses. The more they fought, the stronger they became, increasing the confidence they had in their skills.

Walking into the scrap metal processing area, there were platforms they needed to descend in order to reach the main facility. Each platform had a control panel to extend the stairs to platform below and was guarded by a variety of robots, bombs and monsters. They fought their way down, Sazh working the control panels, only to find the main power was shut down and they couldn't proceed until they could turn it back on.

"We just can't cut a break, can we?" he turned to Vanille and said. She put her arms out and shrugged her shoulders at him. "Well, let's figure this out" he said as he smiled. There were three control panels, each on its own platform and heavily guarded by bombs and robots.

They had to fight at each platform to gain access to the control panels and hopefully start the power generator that would let them proceed. At the last one, Sazh worked the panel and the huge power producing generator lifted up and started spinning.

"It's alive!" Sazh shouted and Vanille shouted "You did it!"

The gate impeding their progress opened as robots and bombs came from the other side to engage them in battle. "Looks like that wasn't the only thing we woke up" Sazh commented, thinking how their luck hadn't changed much.

"We can take em!" Vanille yelled enthusiastically as she ran up to Sazh to engage in the battle.

"Finally, we made it!" Vanille screeched as she ran through the gate and along a long narrow passageway. They came out a small clearing and, as they were both were feeling tired, Sazh asked "We have to sleep somewhere, how does look?"

"Fine by me" Vanille said as she pulled out her sleeping bag and spread it on the ground. "Good night!" she pleasantly greeted Sazh.

Sazh walked towards her and she jumped up and, grabbing a stick, drew a line in the dirt in front of her. "Do not cross this line" she told him, holding her hands up to him.

"What?" Sazh looked at her with a confused look, then said "Grow up!" with his hands on his hips and shaking his head.

He spread his sleeping bag on the ground and fell immediately asleep. He awoke to the sounds of sobbing to discover Vanille had moved up against his back and was crying in her sleep. "Still just a kid" he thought to himself, as he fell back asleep.

They ate the last of their rations, then started walking, at last leaving the Ville Peaks area. Vanille led the way and Sazh just followed, thinking she knew where she was going. They found themselves in the Sunleth Waterscape area and Vanille loved it there, as it reminded her of her home back on Gran Pulse.

She breathed in the air, giggling in the high pitched voice of hers, and twirled around like a child on a playground. "Where are we headed?" Sazh asked, as he looked around at the area they just entered.

"Don't know" she replied, still giggling.

"You don't know! I thought you knew where you going the way you took off like that!" he said in exasperation.

"I followed the smell," she said giggling "All naturery!"

"Smells damp and musty" Sazh remarked "and I think something bit me."

"Hide!" Vanille cried out as she looked up to the sky. Three large airships flew over them and Sazh remarked "Skyfleet, and they're headed to Palumpolum. That is not good. I wonder if those two were caught in the net."

"What do we do?" Vanille asked.

"Right now, what can we do?" Sazh answered.

"Then we should run" Vanille proclaimed "the other way." Sazh turned and stared at the path that laid in the other direction – Nautilus – his thoughts drifting back to a promise he had made not so long ago.

"That would be Nautilus" he finally said and started walking in that direction, still thinking about the promise and the events that surrounded it. Vanille noticed the trance like state that came over Sazh, and silently followed him until they spotted some flan blocking the path, when Sazh broke the silence.

"There's something I didn't want to see" he remarked, as he pulled his guns to prepare for the fight.

They fought a lot of Flan, they seemed to be everywhere the two went. Sazh even commented that it must have been a "bumper crop" for them that year. They fought leaping frog-like creatures and other monsters along the way, before exiting the forested area to beautiful wide open space.

They could see the landscape for miles from where they stood. There were hills covered with trees, meadows, and lakes with outcropping of rocks. As they stood looking at the breathtaking beauty before them, Vanille asked "Tell me about yourself Sazh, you know, do you have any family?"

"I have a son" he reluctantly responded. "Oh, so you're married!" Vanille squealed. "Well, I was" he said quietly.

"We have to get you home, you're son needs you!" she replied. "I don't know about that" he replied, turning away from her. "Why, because of the l'cie thing, that doesn't stop you from being a Dad. What's his name?"

He paused a long while, staring over the scenery before answering "Dajh" he replied "his name is Dajh."

"Come on, Pops, we better get going" Vanille urged as she took off running down the trail.

"Great, now I've got kids looking after me, some Dad I am." he said to himself as he started walking after Vanille.

The monsters were getting fiercer as they proceeded and they dodged the slow moving scaled lizards whenever they could. The wildlife in the area was abundant and they were fighting many battles to make it through the area.

They finally came to a lake and Sazh needed a nap, lying down in the lush grass facing the water. Vanille decided she may as well catch some sleep too, since the area seemed relatively safe from any beasts. When she awoke, Sazh was nowhere in sight, but the chocobo chick was with her and started flying in the direction of Sazh, so Vanille followed and found him looking over the water.

His thoughts were far away when she startled him back to the reality they were facing by speaking his name.

"Sazh, are you alright?" she asked with a concerned look on her face.

"Just thinking" he replied.

"You know, we can't help who gets chosen to become a l'cie" Vanille told Sazh, trying to make him feel better.

"My son was chosen, Dajh is a Sanctum l'cie" Sazh finally told Vanille, and went on to explain that Dahj had been branded by the Cocoon fal-Cie at the power plant when the Pulse l'cie caused the explosion there.

"The Sanctum was brought in to try to determine what his focus might be, since he was so young and unable to understand the whole mess. He had acquired an ability to sense anything Pulse after that. He's the one that lead them to discover the Pulse fal'Cie. They reasoned his focus was to find Pulse l'cie. Pretty soon, the Sanctum wouldn't even let me see him, saying I was a distraction to their efforts to discovering his focus. That's when I put myself on that Purge train, thinking I might be able to fight the l'cie and finish his focus for him and you can see how well that worked out." he sadly said as he lowered his head.

Vanille didn't say much, except how sorry she was for him. She didn't tell him it was her and Fang that was responsible for the explosion that ended up with his son being branded. She had remained silent about everything she knew and just kept running hoping the truth would never catch up to her.

"We should get moving, don't you think?" she asked Sazh.

"Yeah, we should be almost there" he said as he starting walking along the path again to reach Nautilus.