Wow, it feels like a while since I've updated! Ehh got nothing to say really except for thank you once again for all your way to sweet reviews! :)

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I've Got You

Chapter 5: Growing Feelings

I woke up, kind of. Like..I was aware I was awake, but I didn't want to open my eyes. I felt super comfortable right now for some reason, so therefore I didn't feel like getting up anytime soon. I was snuggled up to something with my arms wrapped around it. Wait...what?

My eyes snapped open, only to find that the thing my arms were wrapped around was Hope... He was asleep, with his arms wrapped around me. How we got into this position I have no clue whatsoever. Well...good thing he wasn't awake, because I was like blushing super red at that moment! How long have we been asleep? I moved my head slightly trying not to wake up Hope to get a better view of the sky. It was still dark...so I'd say we've been asleep for atleast an hour or so. We should get up soon. The others might be worried about us. Or we could just wait here until they find us. I'm not going to lie, I kind of wanted to stay like this....kind of. My eyes lazily closed as I drifted back to sleep. However, a familiar voice just had to interrupt.

"Adeline! Hope! About time we found you gu--Ohh whoops! Were you two in the middle of something?" Said the giggling voice. That giggle I've gotten so use to. I opened my eyes once again to see Vanille and Sazh. Both staring at me and Hope grinning those wide, cheshire-cat grins as if they knew something I didn't know. I heard Hope groan as he slowly opened his eyes. Ohh yeah, Hope and I were still kind of in that awkward position that teenagers shouldn't really be in if they just met each other like a day ago.

"Hmmm...what's going on...?" He asked tiredly. His eyes widened once he realized his arms were still around me, and jumped up. Vanille and Sazh started chuckling, Hope started blushing, ....I started blushing. Well, that's just lovely, isn't it? Hmm okay what to say, what to say....

"It's really not what it looked like!" I blurted out. Yeah, that's the best I can come up with.

"Oh, that's so cute! I always knew you two would end up together eventually!" Vanille said teasingly, totally ignoring my last comment.

Sazh gave a hearty chuckle, "Young people these days, just can't keep their hands off each other." ....Thanks, Sazh. Always the mature one out of everyone here as usual.

"Just drop it!" I said, still kind of red in the cheeks. "By the way...where's Lightning?" I asked trying to change the subject, just noticing that she wasn't with them when they showed up on the worst time possible.

"She went ahead of us, because she actually has the stamina to keep going." Sazh shrugged.

"Well...we found you two already, now we just have to keep moving and catch up with her!" Vanille said with her determination sparkling in her eyes. She quickly ran straight ahead of us.

"Whoa there, slow down! Ugh, who am I kidding?" Sazh said reluctantly as he sprinted to catch up with the bubbly Vanille. I looked back at Hope. He tilted his head to the side a little, gesturing that we should follow. He started walking ahead of me. ...Well I certainly was not going to tell him infront of Vanille and Sazh... I caught up with him and grabbed his wrist, making him stop in his tracks as he looked back at me with surprised eyes.

"Hey...thanks for earlier. That was really sweet of you!" I said smiling at him.

His cheeks turned pink, "Y-Yeah no problem." he said quickly. Goodness, he was adorable! I got on my tiptoes (because I'm just so short) and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. I'm pretty sure he just turned ten shades deeper. Oh well, I didn't care! I walked ahead leaving him completely dumstruck. I didn't bother to stop and wait until he was back to planet earth since I heard his footsteps catching up with mine a few seconds later.

So here's pretty much how the rest of the walk went. We walked, obviously. Then we would find a dead end, but there was always a switch or some exploding thing that would open it. Sazh would press whatever button he had to (having no clue what he was doing, of course) push to get rid of the dead end. Mhmm, that's really what happened for the whole time. Vile Peaks...I hate this place. I think I've tripped over atleast ten scraps of metal in the past half hour or so we've been walking. Oh, and did I forget to mention the machines that still work would randomly attack us occasionally? Especially the huge bombs that were seconds away from exploding on is if we didn't get rid of it just in time. Yeah, like I said, I am really not fond of this place at all!

"I'm going to go peek ahead!" She said running to get ahead of Sazh.

Sazh groaned. "Do me a favor. Stop wandering off and stay where I can keep my eyes on you." he said. Oh so now he chooses to act like the responsible adult he truly is.

He ran after her, again.

"Hey! Wait....oh nevermind!" I shrugged. I'm too tired to run....

"Should we catch up with them?" Hope asked.

"You can. I'm not in the mood for running. Besides, they're not that far ahead of us. Knowing Vanille, she'll probably stop running and give Sazh a break." I said.

It took him a while to reply...lost in thought? Boys... "I'll stay with you. Uh, you know, in case something happens." He stammered. Soo, he's indirectly hinting to me that he'll protect me if something happens? Well, maybe! I can dream, can't I?

I was right. It took only about ten minutes to catch up with them just by walking. You could hear Sazh's loud panting even if you were a mile away. Poor Sazh! I wonder how he managed to keep up with Vanille when it was just those two together. But nonetheless, you could tell Sazh was pretty fond of her. Weren't we all? It's kind of hard not to like her. We continued our walk. Then, out of no where, Lightning jumps right infront of us. Did she seriously just jump all the way from a freaking mountain? It would appear so...

"Hey! Welcome to the party." Sazh said.

"You miss us?" Vanille asked with the biggest smile ever.

Lightning stared and gave them a simple "hmph." Then she just walked ahead.

"Time to move." she said.

Sazh sighed, "Would it kill her to smile?" I couldn't help but let out a small laugh. It's true, I don't think Lightning has cracked a smile one bit since I've met her. New theory, when Lightning ever smiles, five children are brought back to life.

Our walk was pretty much the same as before, except with Lightning, we actually had to run a little bit. Just what I wanted...not. No one bothered to complain, however. Or else...one of us might have to face her wrath.

Minutes later, we stopped dead in our tracks to see one big broken machine. One of the large gears on it seemed to be turning. You can kind of see where this is going, right? Two bright lights started to shine. Before we knew it, the giant machine got on it's two big square feet. It didn't really have a face, except for the two lights. It's two arms where big and it had claw-like hands. On both sides of it's head it seemed to have sharp chainsaw shaped things.

"What is that?" Sazh said surprised.

"Pulse armament." Said Lightning, pulling out her gun-blade.

"And that's bad for us, isn't it." Sazh said with a hint of sarcasm while getting out his pistols.

"You have eyes, don't you?" Lightning countered with her own sarcasm.

Everyone else, including me, pulled out their weapons. Looks like this thing was going to be a tough one. Lightning and Sazh were trying to attack it physically while Hope and Vanille were using magic. Oh, come on! I still have yet to figure out how to do it! Maybe...if I just focus. Clear my mind from everything. I closed my eyes, directing all focus right on the monster machine....nothing happened. Okay, I give up for now. I just started attacking with my sword-whip. The battle went on for a couple of minutes until it started to slow down. Ha. Too easy. It backed away from us and opened it's "mouth." Inside was a glowing, bluish purplish bomb that was aiming straight at us. Way too jynx it, Adeline! All of us backed away quickly, but that didn't stop the bomb from hitting the metal platform we were on. It broke as we all fell into the ground flat on our faces, including Lightning.

"Thought we were goners. You all alright?" Sazh asked as we all got up, trying to stay on our feets.

"Incoming!" Lightning yelled. The machine jumped right into the ground, swinging it's enormous arms around back and forth. Still hasn't had enough, hasn't it?

Our battle was kind of the same as before since we all were pretty much doing the same exact thing. With a little twist, though. It seems like the machine monster can be a half flamethrower now. Yay.... It's "hands" were now filled with flames as it swung it's arms around again and again. I saw it advancing towards Hope, it's left arm lifting up, getting ready for a hard swing down. No...not Hope. One hit from that thing and he was a goner. I couldn't do anything...wait yes I can! I focused, harder than last time. The only thing that was on my head right now was keeping him safe.

I felt my l'Cie mark glimmer. My hands...were forming water. No way, this is awesome! Before I knew it, I released a big burst of water from my hands, directly hitting the machine as it backed down. Finally. I finally got the hang of this l'Cie stuff. Well, kind of. The battle went on. I tried doing different things with my newly discovered l'Cie stuff. I did, need a little practice, though. Using l'Cie power can really wear you out, especially if you just learned how to use it. Or, maybe it's just me...whatever. I switched to my sword-whip for the rest of the fight. For what seemed like forever, the machine monster finally had enough and slumped back down to it's former position when we first saw it.

"Pulse is crawling with things like that, isn't it?" Sazh asked directing his question to Lightning.

"Got me," she said, "Not even the Corps has access to intel on Pulse." Ahh so she was a Guardian Corps soldier. She continued, "Soldiers in the field fight blind."

"Yeah, I notcied that," said Sazh, "..But don't you need to know exactly what you're up against?"

"Target's a target." she simply said. "Come on, let's move."

"Not even a tiny break after we just finished off that stupid machine." Sazh mumbled as we all followed behind Lightning.

Lightning really does have quite the stamina as Sazh has said before, but who knew she had so much? She jogged a light pace. She could've probably gone a lot faster if she didn't have to let us catch up with her.

We stopped again, staring at the gigantic, yet broken warship.

"Three minute break, okay? Then we go." Lighning declared. I didn't care if it was three minutes, I was tired like everyone else. I took a good stretch, stretching out both my arms and legs.

"So where are we planning to go now?" I heard Sazh ask Lightning.

"There." she said, pointing her head into a direction in the sky. My eyes followed to see where she was pointing at. Eden.

"Eden? You serious?" Sazh questioned her.

"That's right. I'm not dying a fal'Cie slave." she said.

"So? What are you going to do?"

"Destroy it."

"You want Cocoon to get destroyed?"

"No! What about Serah?" Vanille jumped in. "She said to save Cocoon! It might even be our focus to make sure it stays-"

"Our focus doesn't matter." Lightning said, cutting her off. "I don't take orders from fal'Cie. How I live is up to me. And don't worry, I'm after the Sanctum. I'm not out to destroy the world. ..If it did come to that, wonder if our 'hero' would try to stop me." "Hero" referring to Snow, I bet.

"You want to fight Snow now? Just like that, and you're enemies?" Sazh said trying to reason with her.

"Next time we meet, we might be too." She said, directing it to all of us as she walked off. The rest of us just stood there, not exactly sure what to do.

"Snow deserves it." said Hope as he ran ahead to try and catch up with Lightning. I never really noticed until now how much Lightning and Hope have in common. They're both quiet, need to work on their socializing skills, and apparently share a strong dislike for Snow. Well, that was only three things, but whatever.

For some reason, I couldn't help but want to go and follow Hope. I don't know why... Well, I've already made up my mind.

"Umm..hey guys, I think I'm going to go ahead..." I said kind of unsure.

Sazh sighed, but gave me a small smile. "Go on. He's going to need you anyways, especially if you two are going to be with Lightning."

I nodded and ran to catch up with him. When I finally caught up, he was only a few inches away, and I didn't really feel like running anymore considering all the running I've done today.

"Hey, slow down will you?" I yelled so he could hear me. He looked back with a surprised look on his face and stopped as I walked over to him.

"You...you want to come?" He asked, still in shock.

I shrugged, "Well...yeah. Unless, you don't want me to."

He shook his head, "No, I really do want you to. Who know's how it would be if it was just me and Lightning?" He smiled.

I smiled back. We continued to walk together, trying to find Lightning.

Well, I guess it is a good thing I decided to follow him.

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Finally! This kind of took me a while, but I am proud of this nonetheless! You know I love y'alls reviews :D