Um…hi all. So, where to begin…I'm not dead, even though I've been absent from for a year. I had a bit of a dry spell in terms of writing (read: was too lazy), but, heheh, it's gone! I had some other stories in mind besides this one, but after playing and beating Xenosaga IIII (German name Zarathustra) I was inspired to start this one, which I had promised to write as a sequel to Borne Up on Angel Wings at some point or another.

This fic takes place after the end of Xenosaga III, so I guess that means there are a few spoilers, but if you skip the flashbacks there won't be anything that will detract you from the game if you haven't played it yet.

It was close to impossible for me to reconcile the ending of the series with Borne Up on Angel Wings, but I managed to conflate the two somehow… Obviously some things had to be tweaked, so I suppose it's slightly AU, but I tried really hard to make everything fit seamlessly. The first draft will probably be loaded with inconsistencies and anachronistic messes. I'll do my best to clean them up. Basically this story takes place after the events of Borne Up on Angel Wings and (most) of the events of Xenosaga III. It's easier to read this story than for me to sit here wasting bytes here trying to explain it.

Anyway, I really hope you enjoy it. Sequels usually suck, so I don't know what I'm getting into here, but hopefully you guys'll like it.

It's good to be back!

The Harmony of Chaos

Prologue

"To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream."

---

If one single human thought can change the whole world, then…

It's dark. And quiet. But not ominous. Menace, fear, terror, all of these words are merely used to describe how the observer perceives what he sees. There is no terror in darkness, nor is there menace in silence. Humans who innately fear the unknown give the expansive darkness of space the characteristics of that which can harm them. Humans, who innately dread being alone, shun and resist the silence, while filling up all the voids with endless noise, drowning out the silence, as if to assert their existence.

Why do I exist? No…it's not passive: Why am I forced to exist? We fight against mysteries by attempting to solve them with reasons, for our own peace of mind. Sometimes we come up with our own reasons in order to stifle the unknown, even if those reasons—born from the human desire to explain their world and their place in it—turn out to be untrue. We shed light on mysteries because we don't like the dark. Hmm…it's strange. Although the dark holds no harm, there has always been something reassuring about the light. Even if the light brings forth an awful truth, we still prefer to know something undesirable rather than not know anything at all. Humanity's greatest sin was, after all, eating from the Tree of Knowledge. We would rather be condemned then live in the dark…

Why do I exist? I exist for the people I care about…for the people I love. Yes, this is my reason for existence. It may or may not be true—but it's true for me. And it's true for her…And that's all that matters. This is not deception. I am not fooling myself. This is hope. Hope: the little word that saved her…and myself.

I have done no wrong. I have chosen my own path, and walked it with no regrets, as they all did. In my weakness, or despite it, I exist for the people I care about. I elude human definitions, yet I am inextricably bound to humanity's words and feelings. I am a part of their consciousness, their beautiful consciousness. I believe in peace, despite my weakness…

I am…the Order born from Discord.

I am a single Melody in the Dissonance, yet I am the Dissonance itself.

I am the Harmony born from Chaos.

In the midst of all these contradictions…

If one single human thought can change the whole world, then a single human life holds: infinite possibilities.

…I exist.

Yes. It's strange. In spite of all these contradictions, I exist.

I am chaos.

---

In the aftermath of all that had transpired, Shion Uzuki would have been a fool had she thought she had done nothing life-affirming in the past three years. Yet, regardless of all the triumphs, the deaths, the losses, and the final confrontation, fate would not let her believe that she was done. Her journey was not over. Far from it. And she would have to continue doing…what she did.

What, exactly, did Vector's former First Division director do? This thought plagued her now that she had ample time to think about it. What she did…Well, a hell of a lot of traveling. No one could argue with that. If one were to inquire what the state of the Elsa's fuel bill was ever since Shion stepped onboard the ship, the freighter's Captain would very likely have a stroke—and then knock said inquirer out. But "traveling" didn't seem to cut it; the one word was insufficient. Not that Shion was one to think highly of herself, but her activities did seem—even in her modest eyes—more impressive and effecting that mere "traveling".

"Adventuring," maybe. Eh, she didn't like the sound of that. She had never considered her exploits to be adventurous. An adventure implies something not only life-changing, but also fun. Exciting. Thrilling even. Nothing about her various missions had ever been thrilling. Tortuous maybe. Fun? No. "Adventure" was a euphemism for what she had gone through.

"Fighting"? Well, yes, and a lot of it. The reason she had purchased 26 expensive M.W.S.'s (out of her own pocket) was due to the fact that the previous 25 weapons had broken during combat. The cause of this constant breaking was probably abuse and overuse. However, fighting was only a fraction of the activities that made up her time during her journey. She had also spent her time eating, talking, crying, using the bathroom, loving…, sleeping, and a number of other verbs, none of which seemed to capture her experiences either. "Loving" may have had a shot, had her journey not been rife with pain alongside it. So it seemed to her, unfortunately, that the most accurate word used to define what she did over the past three years would have to be "adventure". A tortuous adventure. The phrase would have to do for now, but it was only temporary. The time she had now to think about other such mysteries was practically limitless.

"You're boring."

Shion snapped out of her deep thoughts and glared at her red-haired friend:

"Excuse me?"

"I said you're boring. You haven't said anything for the past 10,000 miles. You could pass for dead."

"Oh?" Shion raised an eyebrow, "I'd gladly speak with you, had you the ability of providing me with intellectually stimulating conversation."

Jr. sighed and dramatically shook his head, showing off his evident disappointment with what he thought was a lame comeback, "You're losing you're edge, Shion. That was almost funny, but keep trying!" He smiled hopefully, "At least you can attempt to entertain me."

Shion rolled her eyes, then paused, hoping to stimulate some intelligent words from her friend, "I was just thinking, you know? About what happened. Why things happened the way they did. I've never had time to actually sit down and sift through all the information we've come across."

"Yeah, well." Jr. turned and stared out the window of the Elsa's bridge, "You could write a book if you wanted to with the time you have now—once you stop being boring, of course—seeing as that we won't be going anywhere anytime soon at this pace."

She nodded, ignoring the insult, "Funny how we take things for granted—until they're gone." She mused, "How much time did we used to spend in hyperspace, or in the Encephalon, or communicating through the U.M.N.? While I was working for Vector, I spent more time in virtual space than in real space. It was a huge part of life…and now it's gone. I miss the U.M.N."

Jr. laughed, nudging Shion with his elbow, "Right, and by "U.M.N.", you mean "chaos"—" He abruptly stifled his giggles though, suddenly realizing his stupidity, "Sorry," he began, "I was just—"

"It's fine," she said, "Really, I'm surprised that I'm not sad. I wasn't sad at all, actually. Just disappointed. However," She folded her arms and stood up, towering over Jr. with a distinct height advantage, "You should take some sensitivity training. I know you have issues when faced with smart people, but please try to keep your intelligence-deprived remarks to a minimum."

Jr. nodded and smiled, "Better, Uzuki. If you keep going at this rate, you may actually say something funny tomorrow."

Shion shook her head and sighed with a final outburst of friendly frustration, and turned around with the intent of heading towards the Elsa's restaurant. "I'm hungry," She called over her shoulder, "be sure to call me if anything happens."

Jr. let out a forced laugh laced with sarcasm, "Oh, ok. We may encounter a whole lot of dangerous nothing in your absence, but I'll promise I'll alert you to the perils of empty space should that need arise." He smirked, loading his words with pretension. He was about to head towards the cockpit to annoy Tony in an effort to stave off his boredom, but he thought better of it and called out to Shion, who was just leaving the bridge.

"Hmm?" She turned around, responding to the young voice.

"If it makes you feel any better…I miss him too." He replied, avoiding her eyes out of gentle timidity, "I know you hate hearing this, but I understand how you feel."

She smiled, "I know you do. And thanks. I appreciate that."

Jr. started, "You know we can always talk about it if—" But he was caught off by Shion's waving hand:

"Yeah, yeah, I know." She smiled, "Now come on. Come with me to the restaurant and lets raid the fridge. Better yet, let's drink all of the Captain's beer!"

Jr.'s eyes lit up, "Alright!"

The two friends bolted for the restaurant. After their final battle, Shion and Jr. had made a promise to speak of what had happened if they ever felt the need to voice their pain. But now, like before, didn't seem like the right moment. It was probably too soon, and still hurt too much. Besides, who could forget what happened?…

It's over. She knew for sure now. The final confrontation—they had won. Zarathustra and Wilhelm had been defeated. And now Shion's sacrifices would finally be avenged. The universe, at least for a few thousand years, was saved. How clichéd did that sound? Very, but for her, in that moment, it didn't matter. From the death of her parents to her second and final resignation from Vector, she knew now that her suffering had not been in vain.

She gazed at her surroundings one final time before this region of space disappeared from temporal reality. The crystalline structures, the greenish light, the way her friends gasped and held themselves to keep from falling, all these last images would be burned into her memory forever. This would be, hopefully, the last time she would have to use an M.W.S.. In that shining room bathed in green light, resonating with the mysterious crystals that Ormus had enshrined and protected for millennia, lay the ruins of the Eternal Circle: Zarathustra. The Compass of Order was no more. She and her friends had erased Wilhelm from existence.

Shion sank to her knees as the frail walls of the sacred room began to fracture. Wilhelm… Despite all the tragedies she had witnessed since her cursed day on the Woglinde—some horrifying enough to draw the weak-willed to suicide—the one regarding her former CEO seemed to get the better of her, for reasons she couldn't bare to analyze. She had saved him. Long before this defining moment, she had saved Wilhelm one year ago on the day that she had come into her own. Fighting a cataclysmic battle on the Elsa's hull, floating above Lost Jerusalem, she had borrowed some of chaos's power and used it to protect her friends and save Wilhelm from U-DO's contamination.

Tears formed in her eyes as the crystals around her began to crumble. How long ago did Wilhelm tell her that he would restore glory to Vector, that he would make amends, that he had in fact been used by U-DO, and that now he would take responsibility for his actions? She had found solace in those words, thinking that if Wilhelm could return to normal, then anything could be possible. But the truth has a way of wiping away naïve hopes. The truth dictated that Wilhelm had never been "normal". The truth asserted that U-DO was, shockingly, not the enemy, and that Wilhelm and the Testaments had been merely abusing U-DO's essence for their own ends: to cheat death and humanity, to take control of imaginary space…to establish the Eternal Recurrence. Wilhelm's contamination had not been caused by U-DO, he was more likely a puppet of Zarathustra. Or perhaps it was the other way around, with Wilhelm as the grand director, instructing Zarathustra and U-DO to strut about his stage and play the roles he had scripted for them.

Either way it didn't matter now. Whatever his circumstances were, they didn't change the fact that when Shion thought she had rescued a dangerous man from himself, it had only been temporary, for Wilhelm wasn't even a man. He was…what? A tool, probably. A tool used to change the existence of the universe, a tool manipulated by himself and by Zarathustra. When Wilhelm's first plan to slay Anima…Yeshua…chaos failed, he decided that preventing the dissipation of the universe through chaos's death was not the answer. The Messiah's death would have obliterated the Gnosis—those poor souls who reject each other and this universe—and erased the threat of universal dissipation, but it wouldn't have changed the way humans feel about the universe. It wouldn't have changed the hate they feel for each other, themselves, and their worlds, or the hurt they inflict upon one another. No, the answer for Wilhelm wasn't saving the universe, it was erasing it and starting over. Freeing humans from death, allowing them to live life over and over again…the Eternal Circle.

That was, in theory, Wilhelm's goal. At least until the hero (that's what chaoshad called her. She remembered) overcame herself and asserted humanity's right and responsibility to take its destiny into its own hands. For her, the future was overflowing with hope. For her, salvation was possible even if it meant risking the universe's balance and walking over that fine thread that separated existence from dissipation. Her hope and resolve had saved them all. chaos had said that the world was more flexible then even he thought possible, and on that fateful day, Shion had been the embodiment of that statement. Humans, she and her friends asserted, had the right to walk their own path, with a full understanding of the consequences their actions would bring…

Taking responsibility for humanity's future did not come without its costs, though. With Shion's victory came the loss of imaginary space and all that came with it: the U.M.N. and Faster Than Light travel. But more importantly, and tragically—for her—came the loss of chaos and KOS-MOS. Shion had knelt, shivering on her knees, staring in front of the two siblings. The android—Shion's treasured friend, almost like a daughter to her—stood awakened before her for the second and final time. And chaos…the one she loved. They had found each other only a breath of time ago, and so soon they would have to part ways again. She was unnervingly silent during their last moments together. She forced herself to say something…anything, to resist fate at all costs and force him not to leave…but all she had the strength to do was look at him.

"Please don't be sad, Shion." KOS-MOS had said. And...she wasn't. For some reason, KOS-MOS's words reached her and caused Shion to accept these heart-wrenching circumstances. As for chaos…he had just looked at her. Their gaze met, and Shion found in his eyes all the reassurance she needed.

And then it was time. One final goodbye. One final embrace, and KOS-MOS and chaos, along with Nephilim and little Abel, absorbed the Gnosis and returned to Lost Jerusalem, with the promise to see each other again soon. Shion hadn't resisted, but she knew that her life and sanity hinged around that promise. So there was one more thing she had to do before settling down for good—she had to find Lost Jerusalem (for the second time). Her adventure would finally end once she found humanity's ancient home, her creation, and her love.

"Too painful." She muttered, as she forced the memories of her last moments with the Aeons out of her head for the time being. At the time of their separation, she hadn't been sad. She wasn't sad now either, in a strange sort of way, but that didn't mean she wasn't hurting inside. The wounds were simply too fresh, that's all. Of course she would see all of them again, she didn't allow herself to have any doubts about that. The only problem was time…too much of it. Too much time would pass before she reached Lost Jerusalem without the aide of FTL travel.

"Um, sorry Jr. I'm actually kind of tired. I think I'm going to take a rest." She excused herself from the restaurant and walked towards her cabin.

Jr. looked up from the wine crate he was rummaging through, "Uh. Ok. Er…sleep well then, I guess." He took a breath to say something but then thought better of it and closed his mouth. Friends knew when silence was the best answer.

Shion walked into her cabin and collapsed on her bed. She tossed and turned for a few minutes, gazed out into space, and thought. Then, in a final struggle in her mind between her defeatist, dramatic self and the more hopeful optimistic one, the latter won out. She sat up and looked at herself in the reflection of her cabin's window. Her mirrored face had a backdrop of the cosmos. She giggled, finding her temporary portrait strangely funny. No. Things were not perfect. She didn't get the happy ending she was hoping for. She closed her eyes and remembered her short stay on Lost Jerusalem, the first and only time she had seen humanity's cradle. How transient the time she spent there felt like…and yet the memories of that beautiful place were so vibrant. She still saw the sea and the sunset in her dreams. She remembered it all. The beach. The limpid sky. The columns of the ancients. And of course, it all reminded her of him… That would have been her ideal ending, but, of course, she knew there never really was an "ending" to anything. Life goes on. As much as she wanted to stay in Rome forever, she knew she had to leave. She returned to her job, and chaos had returned to his, for a brief time. Then came the shocking discovery, one that shook her to the very core. Vector's involvment with the Gnosis phenomenon. She quit her job, joined a terrorist organization, orchestrated a rendezvous with her lover and the Elsa's crew on Fifth Jerusalem, and then…well…it hit the fan. Lots of it.

She opened her eyes again. No. Things were not perfect. But they were not hopeless either. On the contrary, she had accomplished more than she could have dreamed. Now there were no Gnosis, no Ormus, no enemies. No reason to fight or suffer anymore. The only thing that stretched ahead of her now was a journey to find the lost planet, the one the ancients called Earth. And despite her complaining, she really did enjoy traveling. And Jr.'s company. But she'd be hard-pressed to tell him that anytime soon.

"Hey, you drunken minor!" She yelled running out of her cabin, "You'd better not be extinguishing the Captain's liquor stash all by yourself!" Her voice rang out across the Elsa as she made her way back to the restaurant. Unfortunately for her, Captain Mathews—who was taking a bathroom break from his hectic job of doing nothing—heard her, and his trained ears especially picked out the key words "Captain," "liquor," and "extinguished."

His face reddened, "Wait, Shion. You're…YOU'RE DOING WHAT?"

---

"Are we there yet?" Jr. moaned in exasperation. When they had first departed from the Dammerung in search of Lost Jerusalem, their resolve had been unshakable. Not that it had dwindled now, but the interminable amount of time that it would take to reach Lost Jerusalem was starting to sink in. They had been traveling at normal speeds for a long time, and there was only so much one could do on the Elsa without losing his (or her) mind.

"Little Master, if you say that one more time, I swear to God, I'll give the Elsa the overdo scrubbing that it needs with your face!" The Captian bellowed, tired of his crew's constant whining. What was he paying them for anyway? (The fact that he wasn't paying them anything didn't excuse them, in his mind, from their insolent behavior.)

"But we're going soooo slow!" Jr. groaned again, pacing around the bridge along with Shion for lack of better things to do. "Can't you speed up this hulk of trash?"

Tony interrupted what was going to be a curse-laden insult from the Captain, "It'd be kind of hard to go faster without a U.M.N. column. I'm afraid all we have at our disposal are the Elsa's thrusters." He cracked his knuckles, relaxing his hands from the grip they usually have on the Elsa's controls, "We can't gate-in to hyperspace if there isn't any hyperspace to gate-in to."

"How eloquent, pilot." Jr. grumbled, "But what about that overboost thing the Elsa went into when we escaped Michtam after the battle with Zarathustra. Can't we use that to increase our speed?"

"For about two minutes!" The Captain responded, "Overboost requires a tremendous amount of energy. We'd burn out the Elsa's Logical Drive if we kept her in overboost for an extended period of time."

"Hmm…not really."

All heads turned towards the Elsa's navigator.

"Er…" Jr. prompted him, "Care to elaborate, Hammer?"

"Well, the Captain is right that the Logical Drive would burn out in overboost—if it had hyperspace capabilities. Both hyperspace and overboost would short out the Elsa's transmission chips, which use the Logical Drive's gravitic warp to bend space and access the U.M.N. via column pulses—" Hammer was interrupted.

"Ok Hammer, whatever. Cut the technocrap and get to your point…idiot." The Captain simmered.

"Ah, as I was saying. Both hyperspace and overboost put too much stress on the Logical Drive. However, since hyperspace is no longer an option, that ability has been erased from the Drive with the disappearance of U.M.N. pulses. This allows the engine to save a tremendous amount of energy that was previously used to gate jump into hyperspace. We could use that energy to power the overboost without shorting out the Logical Drive."

Silence. Then:

"You serious, Hammer?" Shion asked.

"Well, yeah. It's just basic thermodynamics theory." He began a short-lived lecture on said theory before the Captain exploded:

"WE'VE BEEN TRAVELING FOR TWO FREAKING MONTHS!" He shouted, "WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US BEFORE!"

"Well, I thought you knew…" Hammer began defending himself.

"DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH TIME YOU COULD HAVE SAVED US?"

"It depends on the—" Hammer was cut off again, the Captain deciding whatever he had to say to be negligible from this point on.

"TONY!" He bellowed, then inhaled deeply and managed to calm down, "Initiate overboost."

"Roger."

Shion attempted to assuage Hammer's bruised ego, but before the words left her mouth she was thrown off her feet and slammed against the back wall of the bridge.

"Waaahh! Tony! What the heck?" She gasped, reeling from inertia. She didn't remember her first experience with overboost being this powerful. Must be the extra energy saved up from the lack of hyperspace capability. She scrambled, somewhat successfully, to get to her feet without tripping over Jr., who was sprawled out in a heap right beneath her.

"Heh, heh." The Captain chuckled, "I do recommend that all passengers remain seated at all times when the Elsa is in motion. I don't want any lawsuits."

"Thanks for the warning." Shion grumbled, helping Jr. up. She looked out the window and saw flashes of the Elsa's Ether wings as the freighter sped at an exponentially higher speed through normal space. So the Elsa had wings too. Apparently she wasn't the only one…

"Alright." The Captain sighed, jumping out of his seat, "the ship's artificial gravity has stabilized. It's time for dinner. Hammer, you're not allowed to say anything until we find Lost Jerusalem, got it? Now Shion, do something useful and fulfill your womanly duties by making us some curry."

"Hmm," Hammer interjected, preventing a lethal explosion from Shion, "that's interesting."

"Did you not just here me say to shut your trap?" The Captain scowled, then dodged Shion's fist, whose trajectory had been aimed for his face.

"No really, look at this." Hammer pointed at a red dot on his screen.

"Is that…" Jr. approached the screen, incredulous as to what he was seeing, "…a U.M.N. hyperspace column?"

"Impossible." Shion breathed, "The U.M.N. disappeared. How could there be a column? This must be some mistake."

Hammer glared at her, "Are you questioning the efficacy of my computer? This thing is flawless, and it is clearly detecting a transfer column 2 astronomical units away from us at two o'clock."

"I-I can't believe it." Jr. mumbled.

"Well, in that case, what are we waiting for? Let's gate jump into it." Shion said, without a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

"WHAT? Are you mentally impaired? We have no idea where that thing will take us? And what if it's unstable and disappears while we're in hyperspace? We'd have no way of getting back!" The Captain exclaimed.

"Of course I'm crazy." Shion smiled, "We all are. We're on a mission to find a lost planet without a map or any idea where we're supposed to be going. All we have is the fragmented Y-Data, which will at best vaguely point us in the right direction. All of us are way in over our heads here. There is no better opportunity then now to take a risk."

Hammer considered her words, "Well, the column is stable for now, so we could always turn back if we gate out someplace undesirable, but you guys are all missing the bigger picture: how did the U.M.N. column appear in the first place when there is no hyperspace!"

"Could it have something to do with the Elsa's overboost?" Tony ventured a guess.

"Hmm, maybe…" Jr. stretched his last syllable as if to imply massive disbelief, "I bet KOS-MOS could tell us if she were here…"

"Well, she's not!" Shion cried, suddenly impassioned, "And she won't be until we find Lost Jerusalem. Why are you guys hesitating?" She looked imploringly at Jr., "If we play it safe and ignore the column, we may encounter less danger, but we'll regret it deeply if we never…if we never find…"

"That's enough Shion." Jr. smiled. "It's decided. Captain, prepare to gate jump into the transfer column."

"Wha…grr, alright Little Master." He resigned himself to their resolve. "This ship is a damn circus. I'm warning you all! If we run into trouble I'll be the first one to say I told you so!"

"We'll deal with that when the situation arises." Shion smiled, she received her first adrenaline boost in weeks. Maybe she wasn't ready to relinquish her M.W.S. just yet…

"You scared, Shion?" Jr. smirked, "It could be dangerous. There's still time to back out if you're having second thoughts."

She returned the smirk, "Bring it on, you alcoholic."

"Alright!" Jr. smiled, "Hammer, do we have the coordinates?"

"Yup."

"It's settled then, prepare for gate-in!"

The Elsa's Logical Drive hummed and revved into life. The freighter accelerated, began to glow, and for the first time in two months, transcended the barrier of space.

Weee, I love this feeling! Sadly, there was not so much chaos in the prologue of The Harmony of Chaos because I had to set up background and…stuff. I'll get to the loose ends that don't make sense eventually. If you're thinking, "but what about Kevin/Albedo/something else you forgot", I'll get to it—I promise.

Even if you believe this totally sucks, I'd really love to hear what you think. Constructive criticism is always welcome, but be nice—I haven't been writing for a year…

Next chapter will be up…sometime soon. I'm also working on another Xenofic, but I'll do my best. I'm really looking forward to hear form you. So, yeah. R/R!