Deuce couldn't see her siblings the same after they ascended.

"I can't discern anything unique," she admitted to them. And Mog, because he would be conspicuous in the other group. "But… the balance is upset."

"That's the same as what I got," Eight said.

Cater said, "Okay, uh, so we're pretty sure that the paradox energy is mostly coming from the stuff that the sorceress pulled, right? Time compression, or whatever?"

Sice scoffed from where she leaned against the wall. "Repeating ourselves is definitely going to be all we need to do."

Seven kept quiet and Deuce wondered at the presence she kept despite her silence. She steamed like a readied fire yet wouldn't release.

Cinque shifted her weight as she leaned on the handle of her mace like a predator tensed. But where hid her prey? "Guess we're just gonna have to go find that energy source," Cinque said.

"Yeah, okay, if we have to, we can brute force this whole thing," Cater said. "But listen up. I'm in charge, okay? This is my mission."

"Whatever," Sice said, straightening. "Let's get going."

"Kupo, kupo?" Mog flitted around and landed on the bench beside Deuce. "There's no one point of energy, kupo! It's a broken-up stream that goes all over!"

A stream? It wasn't an uncommon visual, but it did paint Mog as a… Deuce stopped herself. This was not a time dissect the mental processing of a moogle.

"You can sense that?" Cater asked.

"Of course, kupo!" Mog waved his staff in the air and Cinque shot him a proud look. "Do you think my pompom is just for show, kupo?"

"Is there one point that's worse?" Eight asked.

Deuce felt out in the currents of energy that flowed by, but it felt like trying to read another language. A lot of a language, where they used words and phrases beyond the commoner's understanding.

Mog dipped his head, his pompom falling slack. "I don't know, kupo."

"Great," Sice said, "let's go look."

"What did I say?" Cater jumped to follow Sice to the door. "Yo, who's leading this thing? Sice!"

Seven and Cinque followed Cater while Eight watched them go. He looked back to Deuce.

"I'm coming," Deuce said, stifling her frustration.

Eight took a long time to leave, but Deuce waited until he did before taking after him.

Outside, students wandered about in the midmorning sun and Deuce wondered what emotions she could capture if she could harness that gentle breeze that tickled her cheek and rustled her skirt.

She pretended it was another day in Akademeia, learning how to use her flute better, how to move faster, how to speak more efficiently… she missed those days of the rest of the school wondering at their skill and having students from other classes come to her for advice.

"Mog, keep me updated on what you figure out," Cater said. "We're going on a stroll. You know, to collect information."

Cinque pointed to the sky. "It's a beautiful day for a stroll."

"This isn't a stroll!" Cater turned on Cinque. "We're trying to figure out what's wrong with this place!"

Students looked their way, but Seven glowered back and most turned away.

Cater lowered her voice, "It's important work."

"Which way first?" Eight asked.

Cater pointed at Eight as she turned to Mog. "Good question. Any ideas, Mog?"

Mog shook his head. "No, kupo…"

"Great!" Cater struck out in a random direction. "We'll start over here!"

Deuce watched Seven avoid the eyes of anyone else after scaring away the natives. Her posture remained rigid and she flicked nothing from her shoulder every few minutes. Deuce almost saw the swirls of tension around her person as slight disturbances in the air. Like frantic brush strokes instead of smoothing blurs.

"We'll figure this out," Deuce said to her.

Seven cast her a narrow look. "Try saying that to King and Queen."

"King and Queen have other things on their minds."

"Like our missing players."

"Serah and the others will fix one of those, at least."

Seven stopped and Deuce stopped with her. They watched Cater guide the group into one of the school's labs. "I could fix it."

"Not by yourself."

"It's not like I could die."

"Queen would call it a waste of time."

"I don't care what Queen says."

Deuce wished for the calming tones of her teacher's flute and wondered why she didn't appreciate him more when he was alive. Why she didn't mourn when he fell to battle. "She guides us for a reason and we should listen to her. But then again, she sculpts rough clay and expects artisan ridges."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm saying that she expects a lot of out of our limited resources. She has to. But she also can't micromanage everything we do. Seven, if you really want to chase Bhunivelze, then I won't stop you. But I would recommend staying with us a little longer and not running beyond your strength."

"I have the strength—"

"You do now, but that will change after you've jumped between five worlds in two days. We have time, so let's not waste it."

Seven growled and looked away. "Fine."

Deuce gave her a grateful nod and joined the others at the lab. But she doubted Seven would keep to that if they didn't get a win soon.


Serah crouched low and peeked around the corner, then raised a hand to signal the others.

Dead or not, they were taking Noel with them, she reminded herself, but it would make things a lot easier if they could avoid raising any suspicion.

"Why didn't we just walk in?" Lightning muttered behind her.

Selphie said, "We can always say we're practicing our stealth."

"They'd buy that?" Fang asked.

Selphie looked confused. "Why not?"

Serah took a step forward and stuttered as images filtered over the scene before her. Tiles disappeared to reveal metal crossbars and supports, then those vanished to leave nothing but dirt.

"Until they try to look us up in your archives." Lightning's voice snapped her back to reality.

Snow rested a hand on her shoulder. "Are we getting close?"

"I think so," Selphie said.

They reached an intersection after another corner and Selphie guided them to the left.

"You're sure?" Serah asked.

"… Kinda."

Fang made eye-contact with Lightning and said, "I'll cover the other side."

"We'll shout if we need you," Snow said.

Fang nodded and disappeared down the labyrinth of hallways.

"What are in all these rooms?" Serah asked. They passed dozens of nondescript doors with no windows and few markings to designate them.

Selphie gave the doors a look. "Galbadia Garden used to be a military academy for Galbadia itself. These are probably classrooms."

"Thought the Gardens were disconnected from governmental purposes," Lightning said.

"The smart ones are and Galbadia's changing that way, but you can't weave tapestries in a night."

Voices echoed in Serah's head, shouts from drill sergeants pushing soldiers already on the brink. It sounded like the past with the scratchy ambience that filled her ears.

They rounded a corner to find a guard at a small and metal door. Lightning's posture changed as she stopped beside Selphie and Serah caught a glimpse of the soldier that brought food home to Serah and left her to eat it alone.

"Need something?" the guard asked.

Selphie perked up and said, "We're here to pick up the body."

"I didn't hear anything about a transfer."

Snow said. "We're supposed to keep it quiet."

"And that's why there's four of you?"

"Quiet and secure," Lightning said. "What, you're gonna pretend that he's safe with one person guarding him?"

"Who's 'him?'"

"Oh, stop playing dumb," Selphie said. "Noel Kreiss. We have orders to get him out of here in the next few minutes because he got taken out for a reason, right? You don't think there's some idiot out there wanting to put on a show?"

"I'm gonna need proof."

"Proof?" Selphie asked. "Did you just start yesterday? Do you want a civil war on our doorstep?"

"It's just procedure, ma'am. If this is such an important transfer, then you'll know the importance of sending it through proper channels."

Serah panicked and stopped time. The man froze in place.

Selphie asked, "What?"

Lightning raised an eyebrow and gave Serah an appraising look. Serah tried to pretend she didn't notice and that Selphie making it out of that freeze was deliberate.

"You're getting pretty good at that," Lightning said.

Snow clapped Serah on the back. "Yeah, she is."

"But I can't keep it up forever, so let's make this quick."

"You can stop time?" Selphie asked.

"Only temporarily." Serah tried the door, but it was locked. A scanner showed red by the door.

Selphie gave a nervous laugh. "You know time here is funky, right? Any chance you might make it worse?"

"The others are working on those tangles right now," Snow said. "Should I break this down, or…?"

Serah felt the ghosts of those tangles of time and hated that she couldn't touch them from here.

"No, use this." Selphie passed Lightning a card. "Keycard. Get through there, get your body, and don't break anything."

Lightning accepted it. "And you?"

"I'm headed back, Selphie said. "I'm worried they're gonna do something stupid without me."

They let Selphie go and Lightning tried the card on the scanner. It didn't respond.

"Maybe that was the wrong side?" Serah asked.

Snow looked over her shoulder. "Looks a lot like the ones we had in Yusnaan. Side shouldn't matter with a scanner if it runs on proximity."

"But this is a different planet," Serah said, "why would it run on—?"

Lightning said, "You need to take this thing out of the time stop."

"Oh. Duh."

She cut out a piece of the net holding time around the scanner and reabsorbed the energy of it.

Lightning tried again and the light went green. The door clicked open and Snow pushed through. Serah followed Snow inside the mortuary.

Dozens of cabinets made up the walls on the inside, making the entry itself a short hallway. The cabinets were marked with numbers and letters, but no names.

"Did Selphie say which one he's in?" Serah asked.

Snow said, "Don't think so."

Lightning went to the far wall and started sliding the cabinets open. "No locks," she said. "These guys are idiots."

"What could you get out of dead bodies?" Snow asked before taking one side.

Lighting said, "Belongings. DNA samples. More than you think."

Serah opened a cabinet and peered inside. Empty.

"How long can you keep up this freeze?" Snow asked Serah.

"I've got it a while, but maybe not long enough to get through all of these and then get away before they sound the alarm."

She took a deep breath. Deep breaths… Serah took note of which cabinets she searched and sidled over to Snow.

"She's not okay," Serah whispered.

"Hasn't been ever since she got back." He closed another cabinet and opened the next. "But she'll snap out of it sooner or later."

"I think it's getting worse."

Even with the compliment earlier, Lightning acted much like when Serah started dating Snow. Only back then she took longer getting back from her shifts and now she didn't have that same place to run away to.

Snow closed another cabinet with a glance over his shoulder at Lightning. "You know her better than anyone."

Her heart dropped. Did she really know Lightning better than anyone else? Longest maybe, but Serah hadn't travelled with Lightning in her darkest days or been there for her in her hardest moments. She couldn't even say that Lightning knew Serah the best, because Snow knew Serah best.

"I think she can work her way out of this, but I don't know if she will. Maybe she's gone through worse, but she's been going through worse for centuries now."

The world distorted around her again and the other two vanished. Then blinked back into view, looking the same as before.

Snow said. "Probably should've tried to figure out which one he was in before we left."

Serah turned to face the rest of the room. She saw other points in time, sometimes visually, sometimes audibly, sometimes both. If she could use that…

She reached back in time.

Lightning and Snow vanished again. Serah's hands went clammy at the realization that if she looked down, she wouldn't see herself. So, she didn't look down.

A figure moved around the room with jerky motions. The displacement of it kept the figure dark against the bright tiles and cabinets. It moved dozens of children in and out of those cabinets.

This was too long ago. She saw that in the state of the room, not to mention some part of her that whispered the time. This world had shorter days than she knew on Cocoon.

She forced time forward. The cabinets emptied and the figure appeared less frequently. There was a break for a long moment, with no movement besides the occasional janitor.

A flash and a bloodstained body appeared.

"Noel!" Serah reached out for him, yet no arm appeared.

The figure examined the body and measured the hole in his chest. Holes. Three. Abdomen. Chest. Neck. Blood-soaked uniform and torn cloth.

The mortician moved him to a cabinet in the back-right corner. She didn't catch which one.

Serah struggled to breathe. Noel didn't move. Didn't breathe. Like so many companions they had to put down on Pulse.

She snapped back to the present and hands gripped her shoulders.

"Serah!" Snow looked into her eyes. She hadn't… She should have said something before trying that. She didn't know…

Her eyes stung and her breath hitched. Tried to say, "I'm sorry," but it came out as a choked sob. "I don't what I expected!"

Lightning approached, alarm in her eyes. "What do you mean?"

"He's…" Serah remembered her job and pointed to the corner. "Somewhere there." Her legs threatened to give out beneath her, and her grip on time grew weaker. She'd traded time for time. "But he's dead!"

Snow went to search that corner while Lightning watched Serah.

It would be fastest if all three of them looked. But she couldn't… she couldn't handle the thought of opening one of them and seeing his body.

Lightning put a hand on Serah's shoulder and Serah choked down her sobs. "I'm fine. I'll be fine. Once… once we get him back."

"Found him." Snow pulled out a slab and revealed Noel's colorless body, dressed in hospital clothing of the Garden.

Noel didn't look away when she died. He held her. Until she breathed her last, Noel stayed with her. She had to do the same for him.

Serah forced herself closer. His skin was grey and his eyes didn't close all the way. She glimpsed wilting beneath the lids.

Serah swallowed bile and looked away.

"We need to go," Lightning said.

Snow nodded and hoisted Noel's stiff body onto his back.

Time slipped and Serah snatched it back.

"How much was that?" Lightning asked.

"A second or so." Serah hated the squeak in her voice. "Can we still save him like this?"

"Of course," Snow said.

"We'd better," Lightning said. "Careful with that, Snow."

Serah turned in time to see Noel's back slam into the side of the doorframe. Snow cursed under his breath. "Gonna be easier said than done."

"It should be okay now." Serah avoided looking at the guard. He barely shifted an inch since they left him.

Serah tightened her grip as Snow tensed and almost lost Noel. "It's fine," Serah said. "Just keep going."

They made their way through silent hallways and around still students until they found Fang.

"Let's get scarce," Fang said when they gathered. "And be quick about it because people are starting to move."


"Here, kupo!" Mog stopped where he floated and Deuce almost bumped into him.

The more she walked in this place, the less she liked it. The students in this school were less like students and more like soldiers. Akademeia was different, the students there were students first and soldiers second. … Until the war, that is.

"This place is more tangled?" Cater asked. "Really? It looks just like every other pathway we've gone through."

Mog said, "It's transient, kupo. This energy netting moves with the…"

Time froze around them.

"Something's gone wrong with the others," Seven said.

"Oh, yeah," Sice said, "Serah probably panicked at the first sign of danger."

"Do you think we should go make sure?" Cinque clapped her hands together. "You know, maybe kill something?"

"We aren't killing anything right now, Cinque," Deuce said.

Eight shifted his weight. "The energy here is thick. It'll be a challenge to traverse."

"Big surprise there," Cater said. Eight met her eye and she looked away.

"I'm sure that's part of why it was so hard to get here, but what does that tell us?" Deuce asked. "It isn't moving away like it should, entangled as it is."

"That sounds good!" Cater said. "So how do we fix it so that the energy has somewhere to go?"

Eight said, "We don't."

Seven threw her hands up in the air and Mog lost altitude.

Sice groaned. "You're not saying this is an Eternity thing, are you?"

"Perfect," Cater said, "that is just great. We gotta talk to those stuck up, good for nothing, dead people."

Deuce took a deep breath. "We need to talk to Queen and King first. No negotiations until we've figured it out with home base."

Sice looked between them. "So we're back to waiting for the body."

Cater said, "That's not good enough, we have to do something."

"Like what?" Sice asked.

"Like something!" Cater yelled back.

Deuce watched the two dissolve into a shouting match. Cinque added her own thoughts, but Deuce, Eight, and Seven kept out of it.

"Listen to me," Deuce whispered, "please hear me. I know you heed prayer—would you be willing to speak with us? We can still work together. I can ask King and Queen-"

We've been waiting for this.

All went silent and time resumed.

Cater looked up. "Why in the hell do they want to talk to us now?"

Deuce said, "No, I said we need to wait for King and Queen! I didn't-"

"Listen up!" Cater said. "You guys wanna talk it out, we can do that! Let us know when you wanna meet up!"

"That's reckless," Eight said.

"Kupo."

Cater put her foot down. "Well, I'm not waiting any longer. They wanna do this, they can do this now."

Deuce felt the energy tug at her soul. Mog disappeared. "Not now," Deuce whispered, "please, I meant after we return to King and Queen."

"Apparently they don't want me," Cater said. "Good luck guys."

"I'm staying, too," Seven said.

Cinque winked out of existence, followed by Eight. Then Sice. Deuce forced a breath and let them take her.


Lightning looked around a corner and jumped back. Then shot Serah an accusatory look.

"What?" Serah whispered. Lightning shook her head and led them into another classroom and shut the door behind them.

"You dropped time again," Lightning said.

"Oh." She hadn't even noticed. She reached out towards it again, only for it to slip away from her grip.

Snow set Noel down against the wall. "Just means we need a plan."

Lightning gave him a cold glare. "We're not just working through patrols, they're going on active alert after what happened with the guard."

"This gets better by the minute," Fang said.

Serah grimaced at the thought of going out there and being caught with the body. Try as she might, she found no way to explain that away.

"So, we'll find something in here to use," Snow said.

Fang glanced to the door. "Like what? There's nothing but a bunch of old furniture in here."

Lightning said, "Even if we found a way to carry a body without arousing suspicion, they have our descriptions."

"So, we'll make a break for it," Serah said. "If I have a minute to rest, I should force time down again."

Snow opened his mouth to respond and vanished.

Then Fang disappeared.

Lightning caught Serah's eye before blinking out of existence.

Serah reached for Noel before the room faded.


Selphie tried to ignore the nagging feeling in her gut that they planned on doing something stupid with Irvine.

Time turned back on when she arrived in Galbadia's lobby. Just a few dozen more feet until she got to that waiting room that Squall commandeered for the Balamb crew.

Alarms blared out and soldiers ran past her. They must have tripped some alarms picking up the body.

Selphie slowed what looked like a mindless walk before she entered the rendezvous room and said, "Hey, I'm back!"

Her heart stopped at the sight of Quistis sitting alone and reading a book.

"Where'd everybody go?" Selphie asked.

"To initiate the final steps of the plan. Irvine will be leaving once our visitors clean up what they can of this paradox."

"Who else?"

"I'm not sure I understand the question."

Selphie stuck her hands on her hips. "Who's going with Irvine?"

"No one."

"Oh, hell no."

"Selphie-"

"He's not going anywhere by himself! What are friends for, Quistis? Friends don't let other friends go through hard times alone!"

Quistis sighed and put the book down. "It's not that simple."

"The hell it's not!"

"I'll take you to him." Quistis stood and looked Selphie in the eyes. "But this isn't a pleasure voyage you're going on."

"And it won't be one for him, either! I don't want a vacation, Quistis, I want my friends to not be alone."

"You'll be alone together without a way to contact us or another planet. You may never come home."

"Then at least he'll have one of us with him!"

"You're sure about this?"

Selphie swallowed her doubts and nodded. "Very sure."

"Fine." Quistis moved past her. "Then let's go catch him."


Rikku whistled at the engine room. She hated to admit that this hunk of metal was better than any of her rides back home, but it was true. None of hers could go to space, after all.

"Any chance of taking it out for a spin?" she asked. She almost felt Paine roll her eyes.

"I'd love to," Luca said. "But there's this agreement with all the kings saying that we can't. Right, Kain?"

She asked that stoic dragoon that treated them like thieves. "I would not have believed that the King would allow otherworlders to view such a thing, let alone journey with it."

"It's certainly no Strahl," one of the other two visitors said.

The other, the bunny woman, said, "It is more suited to us as now."

Rikku didn't understand what half of the gizmos in the room did. If only that little punk hadn't run off, again, then maybe he could help her get this beastie figured out.

Luca turned to that swashbuckling guest of theirs. "Where's that piece of equipment you said was a fine piece of work?"

"The warp drive." Balthier, he had introduced himself as, held out a palm sized capacitor-looking-thing. Only with a glowing, crystal-like circle in the center. "It can carry a ship through shadows cast by the worlds. Makes travel between planets faster, I'll tell you that."

Luca took it and Rikku skipped over to get a closer look.

Fran shifted her weight. "The cryst is riven of many worlds. Its power is untold, and we must take care around such a power."

"Is it dangerous?" Kain asked.

"Undeniably." Balthier lifted a hand in a gesture. "Not a good enough excuse, if you want this ship to travel anywhere beyond your own star systems and neighboring star seas."

Rikku couldn't take her eyes off those swirling, prismic rays. It looked more like a spliced crystal used to contain a colorful gas than some natural element.

Paine said, "Rikku, we should go."

"Just a moment!" Rikku begged. "This could change everything back home!" They didn't even have running water, for stupid Yevon's sake, but they were about to use a warp engine.

Luca said, "Well, I can't turn it on without Cid's permission, so how about you start off and tell me how it works?"

"Yeah, I don't see any controls or anything." Rikku tore her gaze away. "What's up with that?"

"It is no simple hume device," Fran said. "It is of the mist, though there be none to command."

Balthier examined the rings on his hand. "Doesn't take too much. Just a bit of magic, whichever flavor of it you use."

"Magic?" Rikku recoiled. "To fly?"

"I was as surprised as you," Balthier said.

Rikku missed Gippal. He'd properly trash talk the idea of using magic to fly. Or at least throw some shade. But Paine made no comment and everyone acted like this was some pleasant surprise after a long day instead of a ground-breaking and reality-shifting discovery.

"Where would you go, if you could?" Rikku asked.

"That's easy," Luca said. "That mage guild, where the twins are."

Kain said, "Their decisions to be brash do not have to affect our own choices."

Luca clucked her tongue. "Heard a lot of stuff is getting set up there. You know, the one time that they sent any news back. At all."

"What kind of 'stuff?'" Paine asked.

"Actually, I kind of thought you guys might know. You're world-travelers, right? They said a lot of travelers are going through there."

Rikku said, "Then that's where we want to go! Come on, let's get this hunk of metal up and moving!"

"I don't know that we can do that, yet, but I can at least plug this in…" Luca looked over the warp drive again, then nodded to herself. "Maybe just find a place to put it. Give me a day."

"You'll want to keep it near to the pilot," Balthier said.

"How long will it take to fly?" Paine asked.

"Um…" Luca looked at Kain, who just shrugged. "No promises, but we might take it out for a test within about a week. Assuming I can get this thing to work."

"Anything I can help with to make it go faster?" Rikku asked.

"Guest quarters are available at the inn in Baron Town." Kain gestured out the door.

"That's not what I meant," Rikku said.

"I don't need any help, but I don't mind if you wanna look around." Luca grabbed a tool chest that had been sitting atop the pipes. "Just don't touch anything without asking first."

"Course not." Rikku dropped to get a good look underneath what looked like a console.

Paine said, "I'll be back in town. Let me know before you go anywhere."

Rikku pulled out a flashlight. She would have so much to brag about when she finally found that little wanderchild.

"Lead the way, Fran," Balthier said. Then a bunch of footsteps leaving the coolest ship they would ever see.

Luca pointed at the flashlight. "I figured out how to make things kind of like that with the tech from the Whale."

"You have an airship," Rikku said. "And you don't know what this is?"

"Well, I do, but I can't make them small enough to get into the right places."

Rikku handed one over. "Makes seeing things a lot easier."

"How do- ah." Luca clicked it on. Then off. And on again. She went through the cycle only about half a dozen times before she got back to work.

It just wasn't fair that this world had such a ship and she would take a lot of notes.