Hello reader, here's the eigth chapter of ET for you.

There are no words to describe how sorry I am for not updating in so long, apart from shear laziness I've been rather preoccupied fixing up all my stories. Even almost completely rewriting one of them. But that's all out of the way now so updating should get back on track more now. Also this might not mean much to you but I've finally used one of the quotes from the book I keep writing them in in this chapter, and it was one I personally created, so yay.

And for the chaper, but it takes place directly after the sixth one and before the seventh one. Aaia was scary at some point in it. Don't you think it's weird that the characters who you are creating their move can scare you, cuz I think it is. Luckily she stopped doing it so it's all good.

Also on an unrealated note but I got to see my baby cousin for the first time the day I finished this chapter. Have to say but I'm going to have a funny story to tell him when he's older that's gonna go 'You know Lockie, when you were born, no one told me' I have no idea how all of my family members somehow forgot to tell either me or my sister that my aunty who had just been pregnant for nine months had GIVEN BIRTH, but they did. It was funny when I actually told my Mother she had forgotten to tell us about him, cuz she kind of flipped (We'd picked up the day he was born, his name and his gender from random things the family were saying.) It kind of just got to the point that we were waiting to see if someone realised, not that they did of course, but it was funny waiting. P.S He's adorable!

Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy, Square Enix does.

The start

Serah and Hope just stared at the girl in front of them. A nightmare she said? Why, what did she mean? What made this situation a nightmare? What? Sure it wasn't the number one kind of circumstance they would have preferred to be in, but now that they were free surely it wouldn't be so.

But something in Serah's mind stilled these thoughts, as more of what the girl had said registered in her mind. 'You two were captured for a reason.'

Serah gulped, those words could have an unending amount of possible meanings to them. So it was in fear that she asked, "What do you mean, why? Why is this a nightmare? And why did they want us captured, we're no one special. What was special about us is in the past, for what reason would they-"

The girl-Aaia- stopped her short. Her words were soft and calm, sweet. "I told you before, those men are stupid oafs, it's not you they fear but your potential."

While it was not welcome information, she'd said it in a way specifically to calm Serah. It helped but didn't erase her anxiety. Beside her she saw Hope wasn't faring much better.

"Can you explain what you mean? I want to know why." He asked next.

Aaia looked his way briefly, then dropped her gaze to the ground, "I can't explain everything, really. There are things about what is happening that I just can't say. But I'll tell you what I can."

Clasping and unclasping her hands, Aaia walked over to a tree and rested her back against it. "There isn't too much to say really, unless you were going after every single detail, but that would take more time then we have so I don't suggest doing to it." Rolling her shoulders she looked up to the sky she couldn't see. "What's to say? Those big boofheads you see come from the world of Valhalla, and work under someone. If you ever hear them converse you'll hear them address him by Untundra, though the people on my side tend to just call him the 'The bitch'. The bastard's obsessed with domination, and holds this world hostage against those few in Valhalla who still remain to oppose him. That's the one and only reason those oafs are here, pitiful as it is. And you see, he fliches at every sight of opposition, not literally of course, but in the way that he reacts so quick to it he doesn't even think about what he's doing."

"And how are we opposition?" Hope interjected.

Aaia, threw him a look and snorted, not at his expense but wholeheartedly agreeing with him, "That's what I mean by he flinches and acts without thinking. You two left alone would have never done anything." She paused, "Well maybe you because you were in the army and all that- but nothing substantial." She said with an extravagate gesture.

"If anything he's endangered himself more by capturing you and hence involving you in all of this."

"And what would we do to harm him?" Serah shot out. Her anxiety leaving her some the more she calmed down.

"Not anything necessarily," Aaia replied, "but this action could set off others. While there are not many active players on our side in this world, the ones we do have here pack a pretty nasty punch when you come to blows with them. This situation here could very well push some over the edge enough to act."

"And who are your side? Hope asked. "It'd be nice to know more about the person helping us."

Looking his way again, she waited a moment, as if contemplating what to say, then said "My side are the ones who don't agree with the Untundra. And the few humans of this world who are connected to us, are ones who see unclouded the truth of it all, and know which side to pick. Don't worry for your safety around us; we pose no harm to you. Anyone who has suffered under the dictatorship of the Valhallan men who roam these lands are friends of ours."

Hope opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it instead and nodded, whatever worries that were in his mind mostly dispersed. "What about you then?" He asked.

Strangely, the girl flinch at his question, and a look of great pain passed over her face. Slipping down the trunk of the tree she laid back on, she sat on the ground. Her next words were spoken from a painful place in her heart "I'm nothing worth mentioning."

After that conversation was forgotten. Neither Hope nor Serah had any idea what about his words had upset her so, but whatever it was had put the girl into a state of quiet distress. And for a long time she just sat there on the grass staring off into the distant like she was in a world of her own. After a timespan of many silent minutes she got up from her spot and walked over to the unconscious Valhallan man from where he still sat in the corner of the grove and kneeled down by his head. She took hold of his arm, which they saw to be tattoos with a strange array of ancient markings, and started mumblings thing under her breaths. Her quiet words were as foreign as her actions, but neither of them bothered to ask what she was doing. They could tell conversation wasn't something she'd hold up right now.

After many more minutes, Aaia let go of his arm and got up and dusted herself off. Looking back to them she said in a very drained, quiet voice "We must go now, more Valhallans will past through this area soon and we have to be gone before they come or there will be nothing but bad for us. Whatever else I have to tell you I will tell you when you need it."

Hope and Serah nodded at her request, and followed behind her as she exited the grove and slipped into the bright green foliage of the forest around them.

…:…

Hours later in the cold of night, the black haired Valhallan man woke.

Disorientated and confused, he rolled off his stomach and onto to his back in order to relieve some of his discomfort from spending hours lying at a bad position. Groggily, he opened his eyes to the dark sky of stars above him.

His first thought was that his arm hurt. Right down the centre, and vividly painful, but a familiar one that was to him easy to ignore. A more pressing source of hurt came from his chest, after spending hours with his face pressed to the earth he figured his body must have been fighting for air. It ached. A pain he was not familiar with.

These were the simplest of thoughts he could clear from the rumble of his mind. For the rest lay in piles, and for the moment irretrievable. They swirled around his head in rounds of three or five at a time, leaving none eligible. It took many minutes for another to separate itself from the others and catch his attention. And this one he realised was far more important than the pain he felt in his arm and chest.

It was why his arm hurt.

He lifted his arm, the branded one for him to see. He realised now that the pain he felt, while familiar, wasn't one he had felt in a long time, not since he had given up. The brand was red, glowing and hideously painful, but none of that mattered because it meant…it meant…

It meant that for now he was free.

…:…

Under Aaia's leading, days past. She led both Serah and Hope through the forested terrain that seemed to go on endlessly. Serah knew it didn't of course, but as the days passed she did truly begin to wonder where it ended. She knew that the forest around Bodhum had been huge because exploring parties used to go out into it all the time before the time of the Valhallans, but she had never thought that they had meant this big. Her eyes darted around her constantly trying to take in the mysterious beauty of the place but no matter how many times she looked it never seemed like she could catch it all. It made her sad that Aaia couldn't see just how beautiful this place was.

On the note of her peculiar guide, the girl hadn't spoken much since the initial day they met. She was no longer in the saddened mood Hope's question had put her in, but had become a person of few words. Though the things she had said to them, little as they were, had that same happy note that her words had had back on the first day when they were on the beach. To what of Hope's question had upset her, they had no answer.

The topic of what was happening was also an obscure one. She got it that there must have been some sort of trouble in Valhalla, and this 'Untundra' guy must have thought it a good idea to make the entire of pulse his hostage, but the question was why? Why make Pulse his captive, why? What did all of us have to do with all of them when Valhalla and Pulse were completely different worlds? This was something that had gone unanswered.

The day passed without much consequence from then on, and as the hours slipped by the sun sank lower in the horizon until sunset lit up the sky vibrant orange. Eventually Aaia stopped just as it was getting dark.

"We'll stop now." She said. Serah had a thought that the strange girl could have gone on late into the night, Hope too probably. But she guessed that she must have understood that a decade or so in a safehouse didn't leave you in stupendous physical condition, no matter how hard you tried to keep fit.

"Ok." She responded, as Aaia and Hope began to look around for a suitable place to sleep that was out of plain sight.

A little incove made by the way the trees around it were shaped was chosen as their sleeping space. It was nearly completely hidden from view by the tall grass that racked either side of their primitive path. So settling there, Serah let herself rest. She wasn't going to sleep anytime soon, but the day's long trek had left her exhausted and a nice lay down was sounding really nice to her. Hope sat by her side, and Aaia not too far off in the branches of a tree. From where the girl sat it should have been harder to for her to hear them, and so make a conversation something safe from being eavesdropped on, but Serah guessed that as she was blind her hearing would be good enough to hear them even if she had been one hundred metres away. So it made the matter void. Still, she struck up a conversation with Hope anyway. It wasn't Aaia's fault if she heard them.

"Hope." She spoke up.

Twisting around at the sound of her voice, Hope dislodged his attention from the vision of the setting sun that shone between the blades of tall grass, "Yeah."

Staring upwards, Serah remained silent for a time. Why was it now that she realised she'd tried to start up a conversation without a topic? Probing her mind for something to feel the void of silence that had overtaken the area around them, one eventually slipped onto her tongue, "What do you think is happening?"

The look Hope gave her confused her for a second, before he said "You do know who you're asking right? I've been with you nearly this entire time, how could I know anything more than you?"

"That's not what I meant." Serah complained, hitting him on the arm, "I'm mean can't you think of anywhere this girl might be taking us." Going quiet for a second or so, she then conceded to him "But the whole question of why is also something I would like to know as well."

Taking his eyes off Serah, Hope directed them skywards as well, "That's one I certainly can't answer for you, but the question of where we're going, there's a couple possibilities."

"Like what?"

Giving Serah a sidewards glance, Hope said "Well, without knowing her intention, it's hard to make an informed guess about where she could be taking us but this area had a lot of possible choices. Like for starters, it is a mostly Valhallan held district, but to the north-east of here is a virtual safe zone. The lands very hard to traverse there so they don't usually bother themselves with it and leave it alone. I've heard a few stories of soldiers finding themselves trapped around here escaping into it and avoiding capture, if only barely. But you then have the exact opposite in the form of a military base that was taken over years ago in an all-out massacre battle. The Valhallans were the obvious winners of course and have held the base ever since and used it to make this place like their own playground, it's why no comes to this area anymore."

That last piece of information shocked Serah, she hadn't known of Bodhum's fate after they were forced to leave it. She had asked all around to all the newcomers and army personnel that she could, but none had said they knew. It made her a little angry on the inside. Some of the army personnel that she had asked were high up officers who would have surely knew of this if Hope had.

"How long have you known of that?" She asked him, not sure whether to be angry at him too for not telling her sooner.

One look at her face and he knew her quarrel, so he gave her a reassuring smile to calm her and said "Don't worry, I wasn't keeping this from you, I've only known it for a little while myself. Most of the people who know about it try to keep it a secret and just label this place a shadow zone because its Valhallan population is so large making it a place too dangerous to step into. I only learnt of it because one of the secret holders accidentally let it slip to a friend of mine while drunk, and she told me."

"Oh." She mumbled, glad it hadn't been one of his secrets. She knew he had kept a lot of them from everyone over the years. But at least for those secret she knew he had justifiable reasons for keeping them to himself, even if she didn't know what they were.

Processing all of the information he'd given her, she translated their meaning. "So what you were talking about before, you were saying she could either be helping us or leading us into a trap, is that right?"

"That about it." He replied, returning his gaze back to the sky.

Serah let the silence acumalate around them for a couple seconds, before forming her feelings into words, "That's a scary thought."

"It is."

They didn't talk for a long time after that. They just both lied there on the ground as the sun sunk below the horizon and the day was long gone. The night hours were long upon them and Aaia was yet to move from her spot in the tree and didn't seem like she was going to any time soon when Serah found words on her tongue once more.

"I don't think that's her real name."

"Hn." Hope twitched quite visibly at the sound of her voice, obviously he had been falling asleep. Serah couldn't blame him, sleep had been eating at her eyes for over an hour but she just hadn't seemed to be able to fall asleep.

"Aaia, I don't think that's her real name." She repeated.

Staring at her, curiously now Hope asked, "Why do you think?" He hadn't picked up on anything of the sort.

"I don't know really, but don't you remember when she told you it? She said that you could call her Aaia, she never said it was her name."

Pursing his lips in thought, thinking of reply, he said, "You know that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't her name."

"And it doesn't mean it is. I told you I don't know why I think so, it's just a thought is all, doesn't mean it's true."

They both went quiet again after that, and Serah soon felt her tiredness getting the better of her and dragging her off into the world of sleep. Before she was gone, she heard Hope say.

"It is a pretty name though."

…:…

Hours later and Hope jolted awake from the grips of a nightmare.

Sucking in deep breaths he tried to calm himself and bring his heart rate back to normal. He was covered in sweat and the freezing night air around him bit at his skin painfully. Slightly calmer now, he sat up and focused on his surroundings as the dream receded back to that dark place in his mind where it belonged, but wouldn't stay.

The night was still, the only sounds arising out of it were those of the nocturnal wildlife, the flow of the wind and the quiet breathing of Serah beside him. Obviously she hadn't been woken be distress, not that she had expected her to, as she hadn't done so for any of the nights he had woken in the dark. But as he looked to the side, he saw that Aaia was quite aware of it. The black haired girl was sitting cross-legged on the side opposite of Serah, her unseeing eyes locked intensely on him in an eerie sort of way.

"Does this happen every night?" She asked.

Refocusing his mind back on the world around him turned out to a lot harder than he thought it was going to be, so it took much longer than it should have to reply to her question "Most nights."

"What are the dreams about?"

His voice caught in his throat for a second at that hated question before he answered, "I'm not going to tell you."

Aaia nodded, making no attempt to pry futher, a bizarrely foreign act for him. "Then I will say no more."

Her answer generally surprised Hope, for he had expected more out of her. "You're the first person to tell me that you know?"

The girl pulled a weird expression, like she hadn't thought he'd say that, then said, "If I keep secrets from you then I have no right to try and take them from you."

After that she said no more and lied down with the clear intention to sleep. It had been decided from the first day that the night watch would be split between her and Hope. Her first, him next. But from the third night on she no longer woke him up for his watch. The girl was very smart it turned out, she had picked up on his nightmares fast, and started to let them wake him up instead of her. He was yet undecided if that was mean or just lazy. But as tonight had told, she was undeniably curious of them. It seemed to him that it was in her nature to be curious, and more than a little crazy, mixed in with an unbalanced mixture of emotions that didn't match or fit together. It was one of the reasons she was so strange.

Moving to rest his back against the tree nearest him, he let the minutes tick by and almost missed his chance to say before Aaia slipped off to sleep, "Hey Aaia, sorry to ask, but Serah says she thinks that isn't your real name. Is she right?" He wasn't that sure why he asked, but had it slipped out so there was no taking it back now.

Aaia, propped herself up on her elbow and looked up at him, staring at him in a way so strange he didn't think he knew the words to describe it. She stared long and hard for many minutes, so long that he thought she wasn't going to answer, but she did, and said "It is."

Hope raised an eyebrow at her, he half thought that the query had all been a part of Serah's paranoia. "Why didn't you tell us your real one then, why give us a fake one?"

The weird expression dropped from her face, and he felt her aura become a lot less queer. "Because I dare say that I'm having a quarrel with my name."

Despite all the rest that had happened, Hope found himself laughing. Not very loud or for very long, because his mind even now knew that in a place like this silence was of the essence, but he laughed nonetheless. He thought for a while there that this lighter side of Aaia had been gone, "What does that even mean?" He asked her when he was done.

"Means what it means." She said with a shrug, as if that explained it all.

"You're a weird one." He said as she turned back around intent on sleep.

"I know." She said as she settled into position.

A few more minute went by, before he said, "It's a pretty name you know, Aaia."

She didn't respond, for a moment he felt her eyes on him, but nothing more and as the time went by her breathing soon softened to signify that she was asleep.

…:…

The soft light of the night sky drifted in through the barred windows of a darkened dank cell made of concrete. A figure wearing a heavily altered Pulsian army uniform awoke, and lifted their eyes. The moon was high in the sky and the world was asleep. Now was the time.

Tensing their arms against the shackles that circled each wrist and held their arms high above their head, their gaze landed on the lock hanging from the cell door.

And it shattered.

And fun.

I'm saying this specifically to my friend that's very interested in this story's secrets, but I have feeling that this chapter would really intrigue you. I was thinking that as I was typing it so I worded some things specifically so that they'd confuse you. Hope it worked.

Also if anyone's wondering, but the friend of Hope's who got told what happened to Bodhum by a drunk officer was in fact Savina. Now that I think about it but he's got some very weird stories about her. Also when he told Serah he hadn't known of the taken over military base for long he meant a year and a half. Because that's apparently what not long means to someone who hasn't seen their friends in five years.

Also unrelated but I'm currently using my brother's old laptop, and let me say, but there's a reason why when he gave it to me and my sister the password was japanese for sorry. It doesn't have a bloody 'B' key for gods sake! It's also very slow and when I first started using it the keys freaked me out because their really weird and I was too used to my school laptop's and the ones on my Parents computer. I have since changed the password to smexy ichgo because the in part of bleach I'm up to his hair is longer and it makes him look smexy. Which is good becuase Aisen isn't anymore.

That was more than a little useless to tell you I know, sorry.

Anyway, I have to start chapterly promoting my sister's and friend's stories now (I'm going to do the same for mine becuse I'm a shameless self promoter who isn't getting as many views as I would have liked.) So can you please go and have a look at Envious skys and 0erbayunFang's stories. I also weould like if some of you could have a look at my other two stories. For any KH fans please read my KH one because I love it and it's barely getting any views. It's and screwed up novelisation if you want to know, and seeing what I've done to XIII-2 with this story, you should get what I mean by screwed up.

And now lastly please review, because I love getting them and they truly make my day, so good bye for now and I hoped you liked the chapter.