I've been gone for over a month. I AM SO SORRY. Between working and home stuff and other crap and my other fic, it's been really difficult trying to juggle things. I AM SO SORRY FOR BEING GONE SO LONG.

Although...I promise this chapter is totally worth it ;) thank you guys for sticking with me and with this story/series! You guys are the best :) Meyneth24 THANK YOU for catching the Voltron reference! I got really into it last year, so I've been trying to make cameos everywhere I can ;)

Summary: It was the flickering, transparent form of a young girl with her eyes closed. Her short blonde hair covered her ears, and barely reached the back of her neck. The oddest thing about her, though, was her outfit- she was dressed in an Academy Uniform, one Hope recognized had been standard back in 10AF, tweaked to meet her personal needs. Something yanked at his memory, making him wince as a single name popped into his head.

"Alyssa," he murmured.

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

Bhunivelze – 503AF (One Thousand Two Hundred and Forty-Six Days After the Chaos)

It was exactly a month after Hope had been coerced into taking a day off did the breakthrough finally happen, both figuratively, and, quite literally, in the way that Stacks rather unceremoniously burst through the door of Hope's lab. The silveret didn't have to ask- the look in the young scientist's eyes had both of them running down to the bigger lab, where Noel, Snow, Sazh, and Keith met them, the four skidding to a stop in front of the door. Stacks quickly slid his keycard and keyed in the passcode, granting them entrance. Pidge and a number of others stood in front of a screen next to a few large machines that were hooked up to the Chaos containment room.

"Sir," Pidge addressed him, clipboard and pencil at the ready. She pushed her glasses up. "We've managed to tap into a partial frequency of the Chaos, and were able to calibrate the available AMP tech to that specific frequency. It's…not quite stable and it's not a lot, but with what we have, we're able to bend the Chaos. If we can reach further into the Chaos, we may actually be able to reverse its affects. As of right now, we are able to do that on a miniscule scale with the Chaos in the containment room. We're…not quite sure what will happen, but I think that it should create an echo of some sort, something that the Chaos has touched and affected with time."

Keith walked up next to her in a silent show of support as Hope nodded. "Proceed."

One of the other scientists adjusted a few things on the instrument panel he was seated in front of, pressed a few buttons, and then slowly lifted a lever on the side. A loud whirring sound was heard, the instrument's lights blinking rapidly as the technology meshed with the Chaos, and fought for dominance. The black mist seemed to sway before it parted, and the machine in front of the scientists hissed open to a sight no one expected to see.

It was the flickering, transparent form of a young girl with her eyes closed. Her short blonde hair covered her ears, and barely reached the back of her neck. The oddest thing about her, though, was her outfit- she was dressed in an Academy Uniform, one Hope recognized had been standard back in 10AF, tweaked to meet her personal needs. Something yanked at his memory, making him wince as a single name popped into his head.

"Alyssa," he murmured.

"Hope, you know this girl?" Sazh asked, rubbing the back of his afro. The chocobo chick kweh-ed softly, as if repeating the question.

"N-no," he replied, squinting his eyes. She really did look familiar, but Hope was certain he had never seen her before in his life. But he knew her name, without a single doubt. How?

The girl's eyes slowly opened, blue eyes looking around the lab as if in a haze. She raised her hand, looking down at it before looking up at Hope, and then it was as if she broke through her daze, a wolfish grin appearing on her thin lips.

"Forgotten me already, Director?" she asked, her voice crackling like static. "I'm hurt."

"Who are you?"

She sighed dramatically. "You remember my name. That's not good enough. Although…good job, you people at the Academy aren't completely hopeless and are clever enough to bring me back."

"Enough with the games," Noel said, trying his hardest to not snap at her in irritation. "Just tell us who you are. And what do you mean by 'bring you back'? Back from where? Did you…die because of the Chaos?"

"What, Noel, you don't remember me either?" she replied almost mockingly, her left arm coming up to hug her torso. She nested her right elbow on top, her index finger tapping against her lips. She sighed again, this time visibly deflating. "All right then, since you look so clueless."

Her transparent shoe tapped against the linoleum floor of the lab. "My name is Alyssa. I was Hope's personal," she emphasized this word. "Assistant in another timeline. I was one of the leading researchers in Time Gates and paradoxes and spacetime theories."

Absolute silence reigned in the room as everyone scrambled to process that bit of information. Alyssa was downright amused, a smirk playing on her lips. "Oh man, if you're floored by that little tidbit, what'll happen when you start asking questions? Of course, I don't have to answer them, but…" she trailed off, tapping her index finger against her chin.

With that little comment, Hope cleared his throat, shaking his silver head to regain focus.

"What do you mean you were my assistant?" he asked. "Why don't I remember this? You don't exist in any of the Academy's data archives."

He wasn't going to say out loud that her name had come up before, a half-forgotten memory, a fragment of time he couldn't remember, and he had gotten curious and tried to find her before realizing she couldn't be found.

Alyssa shuffled her feet, putting her hands behind her back as she looked straight at him. "You remembered my name though," she pointed out, almost gently. It wasn't hard to tell, at least not for Noel, that she very obviously had a soft spot for Hope. He almost cringed at her body language, but bit down on the inside of his cheeks. "After the fall of Cocoon, when the Time Gates started appearing everywhere, I started studying them and got really into spacetime theory. I met Noel and Serah at Lake Bresha, back in 5AF. You approached me a while after that, because you were impressed with my work."

"Hold on," Noel stepped in, clearly confused and unable to keep silent anymore. "Serah and I have never met you. Lake Bresha…5 AF…" his eyebrows furrowed as he tried to remember. He snapped his fingers in Hope's direction. "What's your assistant's name again?"

Hope opened his mouth to answer, but Alyssa was faster. "Aina. Aina Stein." Her eyes were guarded, unreadable. "She's…a descendant my friend, Nena. We were Purge victims, back when the Sanctum still had Cocoon under its thumb. We ended up at Lake Bresha after what happened at Hanging Edge, but when everything was coming down…" Alyssa made a gesture with her hands, causing Snow to blanch at the implications of her words, the man undoubtedly thinking about his and NORA's involvement in what had happened. "Well. I kept having this nightmare, that at the graveyard in Lake Bresha, it was my name on that gravestone instead of Nena's. And," she let out a sarcastic chuckle. "I was right."

"That still doesn't explain anything," Noel pointed out. "How could you be Hope's assistant when none of us remember you?"

The blonde threw him a glare as she put a hand on her hip. "When Etro decided that the world was better off with the ex-l'Cie- and, as I understand, currently the last l'Cie in the world," she said, pointing right at Snow. "She upset the Chaos balance in the world when she released them from stasis."

Snow wanted to speak up and make a stand for his friends, to justify what they had done to save both Cocoon and Pulse, but Pidge beat him to it. "So…what? The Chaos that came from the imbalance managed to warp time all the way back to the Purge, and you survived instead of your friend? You got good at spacetime theory and became Hope's assistant?"

"She's a bright one," Alyssa said. "That's right. That's exactly what happened. I realized…I was living a lie. Then out of nowhere, Noel and Serah appeared, and then there was that fear, knowing that timelines were still unstable, that they were here to wipe me out while they were busy trying to play hero."

"We didn't-" Noel tried to say, but she cut him off.

"If they fixed the timeline, everything I had done, everything I had become, would be gone for good. Everyone would forget me. I couldn't let that happen, not with Hope."

Hope clenched his fists, jaw tightening. Sazh sucked in a breath. "You had a thing for Hope, I'm guessing," he said, none too tactfully. Alyssa let out a harsh laugh.

"I was good at what I did, that's how I earned my position. But Hope never understood, did you?" she sneered. "It was always about Vanille. Vanille this, Vanille that. 'I have to find a way to save Fang and Vanille and Lightning.' He never saw what was right in front of him."

Sazh let out a heavy sigh, and Snow bristled. She was getting close to crossing the line he had drawn for people he cared about, and talking about both Vanille and Hope that way was the furthest thing from okay with him. Hope thought he was going to be sick.

"And then it happened," Alyssa continued, her voice softening. "He came to me, and gave me a way out. I could live. I could be remembered. I only had to give you a fake artefact, and then everything would work out for me."

Realization dawned on Noel like a sucker punch to the stomach. "Academia, 4XX AF," the brunette breathed. "When Serah and I were separated in the Historia Crux. The artefact we had. That was you?" He barely registered Snow putting a careful hand on his shoulder, in case he lashed out in his anger. "Caius found you, didn't he? He gave you the artefact, am I right? Do you have any idea what you did?" He snarled. "Serah is dead. We wasted time with those stupid gates and having to face the demons on our own. I couldn't watch her back. She came after me, and she had time to fix everything before she died, but she didn't because you planted that stupid artefact, and-"

Snow was fully restraining him now; Noel's words broke through his anger-filled haze, and he stopped struggling against the bigger man. Serah didn't have the time they thought she had. She never did, a fact he had come to terms with in the three years he had spent mourning her. In the back of his mind, he reprimanded himself for getting emotional, for speaking out when Serah's fiancé hadn't said a word. But, he countered, Snow hadn't been there for their journey. He hadn't traveled through time with them, a journey that fostered such a close friendship between the two of them. Noel trusted Serah with his life and everything he had, and Serah had done the same.

Is it harder to be the one who died, or the one who survived?

He stepped back, Snow warily lowering his arms. The bigger man hadn't been there for their journey, yes, but had had done what he could to protect Serah, even if it meant leaving her behind. Which was the bigger crime? The fact that he left her on her own, even if it was to protect her, or the fact that he wasn't there with the two of them, backing them up as their Sentinel?

The bigger man's blue eyes were filled with grief when Noel forced himself to look up, and he could only manage a whispered, 'sorry.' Snow's large hand rested on his shoulder for a moment, both of them turning their attention back to Alyssa's spectral figure, who had a satisfied smirk on her face.

"Okay," Pidge's voice broke through the conversation once again as she pushed her glasses up, her hazel eyes taking in everything she could see about Alyssa. There was no doubt that she was cataloguing their entire conversation as well, her brain running miles a minute. "We already knew that the Chaos could warp time; that was evident with the Time Gates. But for it to reach back to the time of the Purge takes colossal power."

"Power we're not in shortage of," Noel supplied quietly. "If the Time Gates opened to these alternate timelines and realities and echoes of places, and hundreds of years into the future…to places even outside of space and time like Serendipity, then the Chaos just keeps coming. And if it really is the souls of all Yeuls, like Caius said, then…she's existed all through time. Chaos could have reached back further and further to warp everything. But…but it didn't." His gaze snapped up to Alyssa. "Why not?"

The blonde snorted. "And you think I'm going to answer you because…?"

She fully intended on leaving them in their misery, but the look on Hope's face, one she had seen time and time again- he was desperate for answers- broke her resolve. Alyssa sighed heavily, arms dropping to her sides.

"I can't answer that because I don't know," she admitted almost quietly. "The only thing I know is that I am part of the Chaos now. The Chaos is shifting. There's something else coming, something big, and no one is going to be ready for it."

Snow frowned at her, speaking up for the first time. "Then how do we make a stand? How do we prepare for what's to come? What about the people who live here, on Bhunivelze and on Nova Chrysalia? What about them?"

Alyssa shot him a look. "You can't," she said bluntly. "Even now, we're on borrowed time. The Chaos is more powerful than you think it is, and even those who have been lost to it are unprepared for what is going to happen." She held up her left hand to them, spreading her fingers. "See?"

She was already transparent, but now, she was starting to fade even more. Pidge threw her arm out toward her, as if trying to keep her there. "Wait!" she cried, her sharp hazel eyes snapping over to the scientists at the machine controls, who were trying everything and failing to keep the connection stable.

"There is one thing," Alyssa said finally, pursing her lips. "There's been a single word that's been drifting through the Chaos lately. 'Savior.' I don't know what it means, but like I said, something big's headed your way."

"'Savior'?" Noel murmured. "Again?"

"Again?" Snow asked, completely distracted. Alyssa was fading fast.

"Wait!" Hope called, feeling panic rise in his chest. It wasn't enough, he needed more answers, he needed to know what to do, with the future of two worlds hanging in the balance. "Alyssa, please!"

Alyssa's face morphed into a small, sad smile. "What I wouldn't have given for you to have said that to me," she murmured softly. "Good luck, Hope."

She was gone, the shifting frequency of the Chaos rendering their calculations and machinery useless and every person in the room with more questions than they had started with.