Truthseeker's Rise
Eve wasn't entirely sure what was going on. She was presently in a small briefing room with Sergeant Major Farron and the two non-Crystallinus natives. Lightning and Vanille were sitting across from her at the table. Fang was standing against the wall behind Vanille. All three of them seemed to be... studying her. It was unnerving.
They, along with First Lieutenant Estheim, had arrived not minutes after she'd been forced awake by the shock of a dream she'd had when she'd fallen asleep outside Alva's room. Lightning had demanded they needed to talk with both her and Alva concerning Baseline. She'd still been trying to regain her composure from the visions to really feel the fear of possibly being caught, but she'd recovered enough to agree to answer any of their questions. She was also granted her request that they at least wait until the next day to involve her sister.
After what seemed like an hour of sitting in silence, Hope entered the room, followed by General Amodar. Eve stood, out of habit, and saluted. She'd only seen the General and Councilman a few times while with CRYSIS, hadn't ever met him in person. While she'd never expected to—nor ever intend to—it didn't mean she didn't respect his rank and title. He salute quickly before moving to take a seat.
"Alright, let's get this started, shall we?"
Eve slowly sat again, catching Hope's eye. He had an interesting look in his eye. It was cautious yet understanding, full of suspicion yet... apologetic? Turning to the Sergeant Major, the look in her eye was even harder to read. Whatever it was, Eve found she couldn't hold the older officer's gaze for long.
"DeFluo, where were you two nights ago, just before dark." Hope asked the first question. Eve decided it was definitely about Baseline.
"With my sister. She met me after I left CRYSIS HQ." Eve wasn't a liar. She'd never had to, nor had she ever seen the point of doing so. But it didn't mean she didn't think things through. She wanted as much as possible to keep Alva out of any CRYSIS matters. If that meant answering vaguely, so be it.
"And you both went home?"
"We went for a walk-"
"Where?" Lightning asked this time, almost immediately. Eve swallowed, finding it harder to maintain her calm when questioned by the Sergeant Major. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
"You went to the pillar," Vanille spoke up, "Didn't you, Eve?" The Lance Corporal looked over at the small stranger, "With Alva." Her mind quickly flashed back to before when Vanille had approached her with the explanation behind the situation Eve had found her and Alva in.
They'd met barely a minute after she'd left Alva at the orphanage gates. She was lost trying to find Fang and had asked Alva for help. Eve had actually wanted to laugh, it was just like her sister to help a total stranger obviously not from Crystallinus. They'd ended up chatting for the few minutes before the quakes hit the city. As she'd find out later, a rather huge Cie'th creature broke through the street they were on. Vanille had tried to help get Alva away but the Cie'th managed to throw her against the wall, knocking her out. The last thing she said she'd seen was Alva standing in front of her, clutching the weapon she'd been hiding. The first thing she saw when she'd opened her eyes was Alva on the ground, bleeding.
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Eve sighed heavily. She had been out of control when she saw Alva hurt, but speaking with Vanille—though technically it was more like listening to Vanille in the med center... a lot—she found the anger for her had more or less faded. She'd even offered her Alva's spare set of clothes to replace her own. It only occurred to her as she was falling asleep that with the last half-dozen people she'd met, people she'd never met before, she felt more familiar to and drawn to them than anything else in her life—save for Alva.
"What happened there, DeFluo" Hope took over the questioning again, bringing Eve back to the briefing room.
"I... don't know."
"You don't know how a hundred-foot pillar of crystal shattered while you were wandering around near it?" Lightning spoke up, her voice low but hard in tone, "A restricted area?"
"It was an accident," Eve began after a second of hesitation, shaking her head, "I should never have followed..." The Lance Corporal let out a heavy sigh as she began to slowly relay the events that had happened that night with Alva at inside the Pillar. She found it strange; she'd been so adamant on keeping the secret—keeping as much as possible from even Alva who's memory of the night seemed to be blurry. Yet she felt no apprehension while she relayed the memory.
The was silence after she'd finished. Yes, the others had found out what really happened that night. And they'd found a likely candidate for the trigger for least Fang and Vanille's awakening. Amodar, the only one that hadn't experienced flashes or visions from Baseline, took over the meeting and allowed Eve to return to her sister—ignoring the small protest by Lightning. The Lance Corporal hesitated briefly but eventually stood, saluted and moved to exit the room.
"The voices I heard... the flashes I saw..." Eve paused at the door that slid open but didn't look back, "They were memories weren't they?" None of the other inhabitants of the room replied, "They were yours." Eve stated rather than asked as she left the room, the door sliding shut behind her.
"We weren't finished-" Lightning spoke first but Amodar cut her off.
"We don't have time to be playing guessing games, Farron." The General said, bringing a control panel out of the desk and starting up a few displays above the table, "We know as much as we can get without dancing around in circles with Lance Corporal DeFluo." He turned to Fang and Vanille, "For now we need to focus on what to do about the attacks on the city."
"But-"
"These flashes you had, was it another memory?" Amodar cut her off again.
"No, it was... more like a message." Hope explained, "A message about what's happening—what's going to happen."
"A message from who?" Hope didn't answer the question right away. He scanned the faces of the three women, none of them seemed intent on talking at the moment.
"Titan." Amodar raised an eyebrow at the First Lieutenant. He then shifted his gaze to the others who made no effort to either agree with or disagree with the answer. Lightning's jaw tightened. She'd recognized the voice as well but couldn't fully process how a entity that disappeared a decade ago could be communicating with them.
"Titan?" Amodar said incredulously, "As in the Gran Pulse fal'Cie?" He scoffed, "A fal'Cie that disappeared just like the rest of them 10 years ago-"
"Just like the Cie'th," Fang interrupted, speaking for the first time since entering the room, "Oh wait, they're back now!"
"Fang, not now." Lightning warned.
"Then when, Light?" The Oerban responded, her voice low and almost menacing, "I'm not crystal anymore, when can we actually talk about anything? Before or after the world ends-?"
"Alright, that's enough!" Amodar slammed a hand on the table just as Lightning had risen from her seat and turned to Fang who'd pushed off the wall, "We don't have time for this, the lives of everyone in this city and the future they built is crumbling, we need to find out why and stop it."
"Titan's throne..." Hope's thinking out loud managed to quell the arguing even while said under his breath. Bringing out another control panel, the First Lieutenant brought up a few images of the areas around Crystallinus, "If I remember correctly it was..." He trailed off, the images on the display moving from area to area, faster and faster.
"The Faultwarrens." Lightning said, moving to stand near the the officer, "There." She stopped him, pointing at the display. The others moved closer to the table, examining the image on the screen.
"What... is that?" Vanille asked. The image wasn't in true color, Hope had scanned for specific hot-zones; land effected by tremors, quakes or anything out of the ordinary. Any hot-zone was colored yellow or red depending on the danger level. The image of the Faultwarrens was neither color. The scan was blurry, flickering in and out and pulsing purple.
"That... can't be right." Amodar punched in few controls on the panel near him. The display remained unchanged, "Something must be wrong with the scan." Lightning used the panel in front of Hope to switch the display to a regular feed. What was shown threw the room into silence again.
"There's nothing wrong with the scan."
The area filled with gauntlets of walls and cliffs was barely visible under a low, dark cloud laced with a shimmer—flickering occasionally, the land beneath appeared to change occasionally with each flicker.
"What is that?" Amodar asked as he attempted to clear the image but to no avail.
"I don't know," Lightning stepped back from the table, "But we're going to find out." She caught a look from Hope before she moved toward the door.
"No." Amodar's objection stopped her in her tracks. She spun around, her face demanding an explanation, "It's too dangerous, and we don't know enough." He stood from his seat, the console in front of him disappearing back under the table, "The council needs to know about this. Once we get things under control in the city-"
"We need to move now, Amodar!" Lightning pointed to the display still flickering above the table, "The Faultwarrens is our best lead for answers-"
"It's also probably the most dangerous place to be right now," Amodar interrupted, "Until we can afford both the time for forming a strategy and the manpower for an adequate force, the council will never approve of anyone pursuing this."
"The Council doesn't need to have anything to do with this," Lightning declared forcefully, "Amodar, you need to trust me."
"Farron, all I'm asking for is a couple of days."
"And all I'm asking for," Lightning continued to insist, "is a shuttle."
"Farron, I trust you, you know I do," Amodar sighed heavily, "But the council was formed for a reason—we formed the council for a reason—so Crystallinus could grow under the control of the people—for the people." Lightning clenched a fist. Amodar spoke the truth, "You only have so much influence in the Council, Farron. Even if the both of us requested the approval of this mission it probably wouldn't be enough."
Lightning's shoulders slumped, her gaze fell to the ground. She was frustrated but she understood where Amodar was coming from. They'd worked hard to build the city from ruins and had spend a good amount of time forming a body of leadership that they'd made sure couldn't lead to another situation like the ones between Cocoon, Gran Pulse and the fal'Cie. Having Amodar force the council would do more harm than good in the long run. Though the Sergeant Major found it difficult to think much about the 'long run', she had enough sense to contemplate the consequences.
"Actually," Hope's voice captured both General and Sergeant Major's attention, "There may be a way." The First Lieutenant received confused expressions from his fellow CRYSIS officers, "Sergeant Major Farron gets her approval and shuttle to investigate the Faultwarrens, and there's less of a chance Amodar's standing as Councilman would be affected negatively." Both Lightning and Amodar slowly showed signs of realization. Amodar reacted first.
"You can't be thinking of-" The General looked between the Hope and the pinkette, "No." He shook his head, "No! That's crazy."
"Maybe, but it's the only way." Lightning stated, her eye locked onto the General's, "I request the Rank Ascension." Amodar stood from his seat, disbelief flooding his features. He opened his mouth but no words came out. The silence remained for almost a minute before the Sergeant Major spoke again, "If you can't do it, I'll go directly to the council." With that, the pinkette turned and exited the room. Amodar remained for a few moments before following quickly. But not before glaring hard at the First Lieutenant who decided to remain behind.
"Okay, ya mind telling us what the hell is going on?" Fang spoke as soon as the doors slid closed behind Amodar. Hope turned to the Oerban warrior, "I must've misplaced my military dictionary."
"What's this... Rank... thing?" Vanille began but seemed too confused to finish the question.
"The Rank Ascension." Hope repeated, shutting down the displays above the table, "It's a... procedure that really only applies to Lightning." He began to explain, "While CRYSIS and the Crystal Council were being formed, Lightning—along with the rest of us, you two included—were honored as heroes. But being in Guardian Corps., Lightning was also offered a seat on the Council, along with the highest CRYSIS rank at the time." Hope leaned against one of the chairs as he continued, "She didn't accept, kept her rank as Sergeant, but the council kept the offer open in the form of a... promise, you could say. Were she to change her mind, she'd always have the place on the Council, along with the higher military rank."
"Why didn't she take the offer then?" Fang asked.
"Being a member of the Council would've meant being a citizen of Crystallinus." Hope replied, running a hand through his hair, "She wanted the freedom to be able to live with family back in Oerba Neo."
"Oerba? It's still..." Vanille perked up, her eyes practically sparkling. Hope nodded, a smile crossing his lips.
"So, Sunshine's gonna use this... Rank Ascension thing to basically... get what she wants?" Fang brought the topic back to the pinkette, "Sounds kinda..."
"It was really more for show than anything." Hope shrugged, "Lightning had been so adamant on staying out of Council affairs, no one ever thought she'd actually request it." He sighed again, looking toward the door.
"So she'd be a Councilor, and a General..?" Fang was still attempting to fully understand the conditions.
"Giving her the authority to investigate the Faultwarrens." Hope nodded,, "Though... at the time, CRYSIS was still being formed. Military ranks have been changed since then." Hope paused, thinking for a moment, "If I remember correctly, the title she'd receive would have to be... Commander."
A/N:
Sleepy... so sleepy...
I wrote a song today, for my father's birthday. Just thought I'd share.
I forgot how hard songwriting was =\