Summary: Back on Bhunivelze, the leaders of the Academy discuss possible life on Nova Chrysalia (although the news is not well-received). Hope and his team of scientists find a flaw and hypothesizes that time may very well have stopped, with no way of proving it.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Final Fantasy XIII series

Bhunivelze – 500AF (Five Days after the Chaos)

"Are you insane?!" The board chairman yelled. Hope didn't even flinch, standing at the head of the table right in front of the holographic projection screen where both pictures and data of Nova Chrysalia and Bhunivelze were displayed. "You propose we move down there?! Director Estheim," he said, spitting the name out like something bitter. "With all this so-called Chaos, who knows what could happen to us? And fal'Cie?! You, of all people, as a former l'Cie, should be telling us to stay as far away as possible! Unless you're secretly their spy, l'Cie scum!"

Throughout his whole rant, Hope's face remained emotionless. "Chairman, if you are not going to control your language, then I will ask you to leave," the current Director of the Academy in 500AF, Director Nazca, said, glaring at the man. He scowled under her gaze, but thankfully kept his mouth shut.

Hope had immense respect for the woman who had been nothing but respectful and accommodating toward him since he arrived in this time period; she understood that he was purely there for research and had no intentions of taking over the Academy. Despite that, Director Nazca gave him a top advisory position, allowing him unlimited access to the Academy's resources and making decisions in the upper ranks of administration alongside herself. When she became Director in 492AF, she had won the respect and admiration of most people in the Academy, and had cited his accomplishments in her inauguration speech. Now, she nodded her head toward him. "Director Estheim, please proceed."

"Although we had trouble with fal'Cie five hundred years ago, the scans I completed in 10AF and 400AF showed that they have all died out. Pandaemonium is definitely an outlier in that it is the last remaining fal'Cie in the world. The fal'Cie only do what is commanded of them by either, for lack of a better term, a more powerful or dominating fal'Cie- which we have ruled out in this situation- or simply work toward the purpose they were made for, which, in this case, is building Nova Chrysalia and creating food for human consumption like the fal'Cie Carbuncle on Cocoon."

"Director, if I may," another board member spoke up. "I thought Bhunivelze was created by you as the new home for the human race. Why then would we need to ever move down to this," he paused to look down at his notes. "Nova Chrysalia?"

"Bhunivelze is self-sustaining in every way," Hope affirmed. "The proposal for relocation to Nova Chrysalia is simply a precaution, a Plan B, if, for any reason, we would need to leave. The fal'Cie is creating cities, habitation, and food for mankind; to take advantage of the available resources is not an unwise course of action."

Director Nazca folded her hands on the table in front of her. "Thank you, Director."

After Hope took a seat, discussions continued well into the afternoon, resulting in him stretching out his arms and back, letting out a sigh of relief as he walked out of the conference room after a grueling three hours. It was the last thing he needed when precisely five minutes after him walking back into his own lab, his assistant came running breathlessly into the room.

"Director!" she almost yelled. It was everything Hope could do not to sigh out loud.

"What is it?"

The assistant took a moment to catch her breath. "The Chaos you told us to research- Stacks put a chronometer into the Chaos residue and sir, time is not passing."

That made his aquamarine eyes widen, his breath catching in his throat. He walked briskly down the hall to the lab he had restricted access to, bar himself and a very select group of scientists. Two days ago, he had gathered a team of ten researchers, all top of their field and people he could trust since coming to this era, to look into the Chaos. After his trek through the Temple and the sudden influx of it, Hope had a sinking feeling in his gut whenever the topic came up; he had to get to the bottom of it.

Hope slid his keycard in the scanner, the lab door in front of him sliding open to reveal a rather large lab with his team standing around one person's screen.

"Director!" a young, purple-haired scientist swiveled around in his chair to face him. Stacks Orregan, a recent graduate of the University of Academia, had been assigned to help Hope when he arrived in 500AF several weeks prior. The two bonded quickly, over both academics and their unnatural hair colors, and Hope had taken him under his wing in the Academy. A few other scientists in that room were recommended by Stacks, and seeing that the young man had a good judge of character (although not on Fang's level), Hope had conceded to meeting and recruiting them.

"Report," he said as he looked at the information on the screen. The chronometer flashed in the corner, a direct projection from the containment room inside the lab. The digital numbers were blinking, but instead of moving forward, it was looping.

"We tried three different chronometers, all with the same result right at the exact same time," Stacks explained. "Time seems to stand still within the Chaos. Our watches and clocks are working fine, but given the data from the Chaos, time is not passing as it should. And if the Chaos has completely covered Pulse- I mean, Nova Chrysalia- and Bhunivelze, then time may have been completely frozen, sir."

Whatever proved false you took away, and whatever was left, no matter how unlikely, must be the truth. The Director's lips were pressed into a thin line; he would have to let Noel, Snow, Sazh, and Director Nazca know. Emergency meetings would have to be called, and once the news was made known to the public, there would be mass confusion and panic. However, there would be no way to actually prove Stack's hypothesis without time actually passing, a large amount of time, except for the chronometer. Maybe it would be better to just tell Director Nazca without spreading the word until they were certain of anything; that way he wouldn't have to answer the same questions everyone would have, those he didn't yet have answers to.

He thought back to Caius' words in Etro's Temple. What effect could the souls of all the Yeuls throughout time have through the Chaos? What else could the Chaos do, if it was powerful enough on a surface level to terraform the world? Was stopping time feasible, if the Chaos really had the power to warp time, that Yeul's suffering ended only by the end of time?

"Keep an eye on that chronometer," Hope ordered. "Run a full analysis on the Chaos within the containment room, and report the findings to me."

"Yes, sir!"

FinalFantasyXIII

Messages had been sent out to Snow, Noel, and Sazh, and Hope had personally gone to Director Nazca's office to tell her the news. She was calm when he explained the situation; the silverette was convinced it was because it hadn't sunk in for her yet, but was grateful that it wasn't another three-hour meeting. By the time he finally made it back to his own lab, everyone was gone for the night. He took a moment to himself, leaning his hip against one of his console panels to decompress from the extremely long day he had. Closing his eyes and breathing in deeply, he visualized the vast plains on Gran Pulse, the Archylte Steppe, the precipice of the Yaschas Massif, and pretended he was breathing the fresh, clean air of the Pulsian wilds. This zen technique he picked up in college helped his muscles to relax just a little before he exhaled fully, opening his eyes to walk to another part of the lab, sliding his keycard to gain access.

Inside the bare room was a single desk and chair, some stringed fairy lights, and not much else. The bare furnishing of the room was not the focal point though, as Hope's eyes were immediately drawn to the two crystalline figures placed in the center of the room.

After Sazh took Vanille and Fang out of the collapsing pillar, it was deemed that their crystal would be safest with Hope. The silverette's heart clenched as he walked to the frozen shapes of his friends. Wearily, he put on a weak smile, sitting down in the chair next to them.

"Hey Fang, Vanille," he started, putting a gloved hand on top of their entwined ones. "Sorry, I haven't really had the chance to sit down to talk with you guys in a few days. Things are…pretty hectic right now."

The air rung with expectancy after that, causing Hope to let out the breath he had been holding. He could just see the exasperated looks that would have been on both women's faces as they put their hands on their hips, waiting for him to cave and tell the truth. If Lightning were here, she would have given him the glare, the one that never failed to make him feel like a disobedient child.

"All right, so things suck. Serah is gone, Light is in crystal stasis, a fal'Cie has appeared, and now time has stopped. People are looking to me, asking me for answers when I don't have any, and not that I have any right to complain in front of you two, but the weight of the world is heavy."

Hope ran his other hand over his face, sighing. It may have been his imagination, but he could feel Vanille waiting, encouraging him to keep talking and get it off his chest.

"How did you guys do it?" He asked quietly. "How did you two manage the weight of the world on your shoulders for five hundred years? How did Light manage, knowing that the entire timeline was at stake?"

The Academy director bowed his head, closing his eyes and imagined, just for a moment, that his family was whole again, that one of them wasn't dead, that three of them weren't frozen in an eternal crystal sleep. He imagined Fang putting a hand on his silver head like she used to when teaching him to hunt on Gran Pulse, imagined Lightning's arm around his shoulder, comforting him the way she did when he realized Vanille and Fang were gone. He imagined Vanille taking his hand, lacing their fingers together, and like that, Hope dropped the front he carried as Director, leader of the people, hope for the future, and was just Hope Estheim, the fourteen-year-old who needed them when he needed strength, staying vigil by their crystal's side.