"So you're not the least bit curious about whether you're going to get nominated for homecoming court or not?" Lebreau asked as she and Lightning walked the halls together on their way to their literature class.

"No," was Lightning's terse response.

"Not even a little? Because I'm pretty sure Jason is a shoe in for prince, him being one of the lead scorers on the team and all, and if you were to win and get paired with him after that little spat between you two at the party… Let's just say, I could see it being kinda awkward."

Lightning gave her an unperturbed look in reply.

"Okayyy. I guess you don't see that as a problem... Are you even planning on going to the—"

"Whoa!"

Lightning staggered backwards in surprise as something suddenly rammed into her shoulder. "Hey! Watch—"

She froze in mid-statement when her eyes lifted to meet the intent gaze of Fang staring down at her.

"—it."

"I'm sorry, Lightzinger," Fang apologized as two hands moved to steady her, one on her elbow and one on her upper arm. "Didn't see ya there. You alright?"

Lightning just raised her brows as she looked her aggressor in the face.

Fang didn't look apologetic at all. Her eyes were lit up way too much for Lightning to even consider it. If nothing else, it seemed as if she were masking a wide smile behind that faux concerned face of hers.

"Next time, can you just watch where you're going?" Light asked.

"Sure thing," Fang replied with a light smirk. "I think I can manage to keep an eye out for ya."

The hands that had previously been on her arm slowly slid away as Fang left to lope off down the hallway in the opposite direction of Light and Lebreau, looking back over her shoulder once, still smirking, before turning the bend in the hallway.

"So speaking of problems, looks like I'll have to change my name to 'The Problem Solver'," Lebreau said in wonder, clutching her books to her chest and looking away from the corner of the hall to watch Lightning expectantly. "I didn't think the stint between you two at the party did much, but I guess it worked well enough."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Lightning had been watching Fang walk away too, but she had to quickly snap herself out of it in an attempt to validate her argument to Lebreau.

"Oh, you don't? Last person to bump you in the halls like left an imprint in a locker from how hard you tossed him for it, but Fang does it and all she has to do is 'watch it next time'?" Lebreau asked, making sure to use a dramatically flirtatious tone when mocking her friend. "Better yet, here's someone who probably knows what's going on. Serah! Hey, Serah! Over here!"

"What?" Lightning's head flew in the direction that Lebreau was waving in. Sure enough, her confused little sister was standing with a group of friends at a locker not too far away. "Why do you have to call her into this?"

"Oh, hush! Serah! Heyyyyy, girlfriend," Lebreau congenially greeted when Serah apprehensively approached, shooting a jumpy side eye from Lightning to Lebreau.

"Hey, guys... What's up?"

"Oh, nothing much. Just the same old same. Or not really," Lebreau quickly conversed before diving in for the kill. "Have you noticed anything weird going on with your sister lately?"

"Huh?" Serah's eyes grew to enormous proportions as she looked quickly to Light before turning back to Lebreau again. "Different? No! Nothing's different. Why would you think something's different? She's totally normal! Not different at all. Why are you asking me in the first place? I know nothing!"

Both Lightning and Lebreau stared at Serah with dumbfounded expressions.

"I've gotta go." Serah didn't wait for a response before immediately taking off into a quick stride down the hallway, not even bothering to return to her group of friends at the locker.

"Weird," Lebreau stated, staring off after the younger Farron with a still puzzled expression on her face.

"Yeah. Weird…" Lightning quietly agreed, although there was a bit more concern in her eyes as she watched her sister quickly escape down the hallway.

Despite her failed attempt at a double team, Lebreau continued to badger Lightning about Fang until they entered their classroom, just as the bell rang, where she came to an abrupt halt in the doorway. "Speaking of things being off today, what in the hell is this?" she asked.

The layout of the room was completely different from its normal configuration. Instead of the desks being lined up in neat rows, they were bunched into groups of fours.

"Language, please!" their teacher called, looking up from where she leant over her desk to rifle through a stack of papers. "And don't tell me you forgot! Today's our writing workshop day! After the less than impressive class average from the last round of book reports, I thought that this would do the class some good for your papers due next week. I've even invited an upperclassman to come in to proofread and give writing tips. So please, take your seats so we can get started."

Lightning and Lebreau were fortunately able to find a group of desks with two free seats and sat together there.

"Sheesh," Lebreau whispered, leaning back in her chair to spy who was in sitting in each group. "I haven't had to sit at desks like this since kindergarten."

"And here he is! Our temporary classroom helper for the day!"

Lightning turned in her seat to look at the door and her eyebrow instinctively arched in surprise on seeing the young Hope Estheim walk into the room.

"Upperclassman?" she could hear Lebreau harshly whispering across from her. "Now this is just demeaning…"

Hope quietly walked to the front of the room to stand at their smiling teacher's side.

"Now I don't want any of you to doubt our editor's knowledge because of his age, you hear me? Mr. Estheim was the only student in this class to ever get a perfect score on every assignment he handed in, as oppose to some of you who seem to struggle with even the simplest rules of capitalization. There's a lot you can learn from him. Better yet, Hope, why don't you start off by giving the class some advice on how to approach their papers before we break off independently?"

"Huh?" Hope looked to be blindsided by the request. Surely, he had expected to have a few one-on-ones with the older students about their papers, but he hadn't exactly been prepared to make a speech to the entire class.

"Go ahead," the teacher encouraged, nudging him forward a bit before taking a few steps to the side so that he was the only person standing in the front.

"Oh… Okay. Uh…" Hope's eyes anxiously scanned over the crowd until they landed on a familiar face, Lightning's. Lightning tried to put on an encouraging face as well, letting the edge of her lip slightly curl up into a partial, faint smile and nodding her head down as if to tell him, 'Keep going.'

"O-okay. Well," Hope began uneasily, only letting his eyes stray for a second to scan over the rest of the more disinterested faces in the class before training them back to Lightning, "The important thing to do is to, uh, pick a good subject matter. You… you don't want it to be too broad or too narrow. For instance…"

Hope turned to the board to scribble down BROAD and NARROW and write certain example topics under each word (some of them eliciting groans from those who had actually picked such topics), explaining what their downfalls were and how to turn them into more suitable topics.

"…and that's probably the most difficult part of the whole assignment," Hope began to wrap up. By now, he had found his little comfort zone in the speech and wasn't stuttering or using fillers anymore, and when he looked back at Lightning, there was an excited smile on his face.

Without even forcing it, Lightning could feel her own lips stretch into an impressed grin. She even wondered if it would be too Fang-ish for her to give him a proud wink for what he did. If not too Fang-ish, it might definitely be thought of as creepy… Lightning turned to peep across her desk at Lebreau. The girl seemed to have mind-reading powers when it came to figuring out when Lightning might be thinking about Fang, and she wanted to make sure she wasn't currently being watched now.

"I guess if you have any other questions, you could just ask— ….."

"Mr. Estheim?"

Lightning turned to face Hope again. She barely noticed that he had suddenly stopped in the middle of his closing until their teacher called his name. Hope was still standing at the front of the room, looking out at the class of older students, but something was different.

Lightning uncomfortably shifted in her chair and leaned forward, the faint smile that was on her face slowly fading away as she eyed her young neighbor. He stood with his mouth slightly agape. He was still looking in Lightning's direction, but he wasn't looking at her. He didn't seem to be looking at anything at all. If nothing else, his eyes seemed to be vacant.

"He picks the perfect time to zone out, huh?" Lebreau whispered from across the desk, but Lightning ignored it. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck prickle as her body continued to inch forward, almost to the point where she was nearly standing up from her desk already.

"Mr. Estheim!"

Most of the class gasped as Hope's pupils suddenly disappeared before his body tumbled to the ground.

"Hope!"

Within the blink of an eye, Lightning was kneeling at Hope's side.

"Ms. Farron, move out the way and get back to your seat—"

"Aghhhh!" Hope shot up, taking in loud, gasps of air. His small chest heaved in excitement as he frantically looked around.

"Hope, are you—" Lightning tried to begin but was ripped away from the boy as the teacher knelt down beside him instead.

"Mr. Estheim, are you feeling alright?"

Hope twisted his head around to look back and forth with an frightened expression on his face. His eyes jumped from Lightning to the teacher as he wordlessly tried to surmise where he was and what had just happened. "I-I'm fine…" he finally choked out in a strained voice.

"Oh, thank the heavens," the teacher breathed. "Sometimes the stress of speech making and the heat can make people go faint, especially if they have a bit of stage fright. Don't worry about the proofreading. You should go to the nurse's office and fill out an accident report, okay?"

"I'll take him," Lightning immediately volunteered. She hadn't moved an inch from the spot where she had been pulled back.

The teacher looked over her shoulder to give her student a reproachful glare. "You think that I'd let you out of this classroom after that little outbur—"

"I'd like Lightning to take me," Hope spoke up, planting his hands to the floor to pull himself up into a better sitting position. The teacher looked back at him with a mildly surprised look on her face. "She's my babysitter. She knows a lot about my medical history… Please?"

"Lightning!"

Snow's feet wildly skittered beneath him as he slid around the bend of the hallway and almost into a wall of lockers. Lightning just stared at him with an aggravated expression as he regained control of himself before continuing to run down the hallway in her direction. "I got a bathroom pass as soon as I got your message," he breathed heavily as he slowed to a stop in front of the nurse's office, right next to Lightning. "What happened?"

"He had a vision at the front of class."

Snow's eyes bulged. "What? Just now? Like that?"

Lightning gravely nodded as Snow reached up to interlock his hands above his head. "Fuuucccckkkkk…"

"Guys!"

Lightning and Snow both turned around to see Vanille rushing their way down the hall.

"Is something wrong?"

Lightning opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted by Fang's voice calling from behind her.

"Aye? Why are we meeting at the nurse's office? Light, are you alright?"

Lightning looked over her shoulder to catch Fang worriedly scanning over her body with her eyes. "No—I mean yes." Lightning reached out to grab Fang's wrist, hoping it would be an assuring enough gesture, especially with the other l'Cie standing around, to let the other girl know she was okay. "It's not me. It's Hope," she said, releasing Fang's wrist when those worried green eyes finally rose to meet hers.

"I—" she turned to look back at Snow and Vanille, "I shouldn't have called you all out of class like that. We shouldn't even be talking about this here. It's just… We can't keep sitting around like this waiting for some sign to just drop into our laps, telling us what to do."

"Light…" Fang murmured from behind, but Lightning just brushed her off.

"It's obvious that we're not getting any of the help we've been expecting, so what are we doing? Besides just waiting to see what'll happen as this thing strings us further along?"

"Well…" Snow rubbed the back of his neck as he thought of something to say. "We have been training."

"But for what?" Lightning asked, trying to keep her voice down. "To sit in a classroom? And even that's not working out for us." She angrily looked to the closed door of the nurse's office as she said this.

"Lightning, there hasn't been an encounter like ours in years. It's not like there's just some simple answer on how to go about solving this," Vanille said quietly.

"I thought there was," Light ground back, a firm look to her eyes as she glanced over Snow and Vanille's faces. "And we saw it when we were at Opie's house."

Vanille let out a soft gasp and Snow looked to the ground.

"Look, we shouldn't be talking about this here," Lightning sighed, rubbing her forehead. She had been a bit worked up, but seeing such shock on her comrades' faces, Vanille's especially, did make her feel a bit guilty at how hard she was grinding them. "I'll wait here for Hope and you guys get back to class. We'll meet at the bleachers after school, got it? This gets figured out today."

"We can all stay and wait for Hope—"

"No," Lightning cut Snow off in the middle of his offer. "It'll be suspicious if all of us are out here for too long together. Go back to class. I'll wait. By myself."

"Okay, neighbor…" Snow unsurely mumbled as he slowly turned to make his way back down the hall.

Vanille hesitantly looked behind Lightning to Fang, who was staring at Lightning with a troubled expression on her face. She looked up when she felt Vanille's eyes on her, and nodded her head forward to signal the younger girl to go back to class. Vanille cast one last worried look at Lightning before sagging her shoulders and doing as she was silently told.

Fang watched Vanille go, waiting until she was a good deal down the hall before taking a few steps closer to Lightning. "Light, I know you're emotional right now, but—"

"Are you for real right now?" Lightning hissed, quickly rounding on Fang.

"Okay, okay. Bad choice of words." Fang lifted her hands and took a cautious step backwards. "I understand. I'm worried about the little guy, too. But don't ya think you might be jumping on the warhorse a bit too quickly, here?"

"No. I don't. And as gung-ho as you were when we first got these things, I thought you'd be a bit more supportive of moving forward instead of sitting around scouring newspapers looking for a Godzilla sized Easter egg!"

Fang sighed. Lightning did have a point. She had been the group's biggest proponent of hurrying up to figure out how to deal with their focus up until their visit to Opie's cabin… "Light, I… I might have something to tell ya. Something important. It's about—well…"

Lightning tightly crossed her arms and looked to Fang expectantly.

"Um, how about this?" Fang said quickly, nearly ramming all of her words together as she spoke. "If I told ya that when this all began, something happened and I started to feel, I dunno… heavier—No, no, that doesn't make sense."

Lightning's brows furrowed as she continued to watch Fang.

"What I mean to say is that sometimes when something bad happens, or if I start to feel down n' out about something, it's like I go to this dark place, and when I'm there, something else takes the wheel for awhile. Ugh… it still doesn't make any sense when I say it like that. I guess, what I'm flat out trying to say is…" Fang paused for a moment before lifting her eyes to seriously stare Lightning in the face. "Light, if I told ya something about me, something really bad, would you—I mean, do ya think all of you… You think we could work through anything, don't ya?"

Lightning looked to Fang with a mystified stare before taking a deep breath and relaxing her shoulders. "Fang…" she tiredly sighed. "Is this really the time?"

"It's really import—"

"Look." Lightning quickly scanned the hallway to make sure it was completely empty before taking a step closer to Fang and gently placing her hands on her arms. "If this is something about us, we can talk about it later. Right now, we've got other problems to worry about."

"But it's—"

The sound of a locker clanging somewhere around the bend of the hallway's corner made both girls jump. Lightning quickly moved away from Fang and brought her hands back to her sides before warily peering over her shoulder to make sure that the hall was still clear. "Fang." This time she spoke in a much lower voice. "I'm going to wait for Hope. You should go back to class."

Fang let out a heavy breath and ran a hand through her hair. "I just… okay. Are ya sure you don't want any company?"

Lightning quickly glanced over her shoulder in the direction that the clanging sound had come from before returning her attention to Fang. The look on her face said it all.

"Got it," Fang answered, glumly nodding before turning to head back to class.

When she reached the door to the stairwell, she turned back to get one more look at the pinkette. She had taken a seat on the floor, leaning her back against the wall of lockers and twiddling her fingers while waiting for the nurse's door to open.

Fang silently shook her head, scolding herself in her thoughts, before pushing the door open.

"But it's great to see you're alright!" Vanille cheered as she hugged Hope from behind.

The group had convened outside on the bleachers, where they had held their first l'Cie meeting, to talk business, although the first few minutes had been spent with everyone fawning over Hope and making comments about how happy they were to see him conscious.

"The nurse thought I was just dehydrated and really afraid of public speaking," Hope said sheepishly as Vanille released her grip around his neck to sit on the bleacher behind his. "She wouldn't let me out of her office until I had like three bottles of Cactuarade. I spent most of my next period in the bathroom."

Snow chuckled and lightly slapped Hope on the back as Lightning stood to face everyone on the bleachers. "We're all glad you're fine, Hope, but I think everyone's missing the big point here. At first, our visions were only coming to us in our dreams. Not only have our brands progressed, but this is the second time someone has had their visions take over in the middle of the day while they were fully conscious."

"The second time?" Snow asked. "When was the first?"

"Fang had a vision after she stormed off at the track meet."

"You did?" Vanille's head swerved around to look at Fang in surprise.

"Hey!" Fang jumped before sending Lightning an accusatory look.

"Fang, this is getting serious," Lightning explained. "We can't hide these types of things from each other anymore. Back at Opie's we all saw that the fal'Cie wants us to be in the Primarch's chambers with that monster, so what if us getting more aggressive visions is some sort of sign?"

"Hm?" Vanille peeled her scolding eyes away from Fang to look at Lightning curiously. "What kind of sign?"

"A sign that maybe Ragnarok has already been chosen and is making his way to Eden."

"What…" Vanille's mouth dropped open as she stared at Lightning incredulously. She turned to look at Fang who was also staring at the girl with a less surprised, but equally disturbed look on her face.

"Think about it," Lightning continued. "What better way to try and force us to get a move on? And just because no one else has spotted it doesn't mean it can't be on the loose somewhere else. There's a bunch of underground tunnels and uninhabited land all across Cocoon. Look at the reservation, for example. So we need to get to Eden to stop it, and we need to do it fast."

"Light, I don't think—" Fang tried to begin.

"I guess that could make sense," Snow cut in, rubbing his chin. "And you think we're ready to just go and chase down some monster?"

"Do we have a choice?" Lightning returned.

"Seriously, guys, can ya just pump the brakes for one second on the—"

"If you think Ragnarok's already on the way to Eden, do you think we should tip off PSICOM about it?" Hope asked. "Nothing specific, but just to warn them that something big might be heading to their area and they might want to beef up on security? Or keep an eye out?"

"No, they'd easily be able to trace the call and that'd put all of us under heavy investigation. But I know where my dad keeps a few of his weapons if we need to bring them."

"Weapons?" Vanille silently peeped.

"Alright, guess this has gone on long enough. Guys, we need to tell ya something," Fang sighed, despite the even more worried look that Vanille was now giving her.

"Fang?"

"Vanille, it's time."

"But what about your parents?" Snow asked, looking to Lightning and Hope. "I know me, Fang, and Vanille could get away with it, but I'm sure the two of you aren't allowed to road trip it to Eden whenever you like. How would we even get there?"

"Well, so that we don't get stopped by authorities or leave a trail, I was thinking you could drive," Lightning offered. "We might have to use a different car, but we could figure that all out."

"Drive to Eden?" Snow asked, raising his eyebrows. "That's at least a two day trip!"

"We can stop in Palumpolum," Hope offered, turning optimistically to Snow. "My family owns a house out there that we only use for reunions and stuff. I could swipe the key and we could spend the night there. If I convince my parents that I'm spending the night at someone else's house to study for one of those Academy standardized tests, we should be in Eden by the time they get suspicious enough to even check there."

"Sounds perfect," Lightning said, feeling quite accomplished at how quickly a plan was actually being thrown together. "The only thing left would be to figure out a way to scour the area and catch Ragnarok before he does too much damage."

"That won't be necessary," Fang quietly responded, finally tearing her eyes away from Vanille to look to Lightning, but the pinkette didn't hear her.

"We could establish a beat or maybe see if Maqui has some type of high tech equipment that might be useful for tracking—"

"GUYS!" Fang finally shouted, fed up with being ignored.

Lightning, Snow, and Hope paused to stare at Fang, all eyeing her as if she had gone crazy.

"I mean, guys," Fang started again, allowing herself to settle for a moment before continuing on. "We don't need to go through all of that… We know who Ragnarok is."

"What?" Hope breathed.

Lightning narrowed her eyes disbelievingly at the girl. "You've got to be kidding. Suddenly you know who Ragnarok is? And you'd just sit on this information while he runs around trying to rip Cocoon a new one?"

"Well, it's not like that," Fang defended, lifting a hand to her head and leaving it there to scratch at her scalp. "The fal'Cie didn't just decide, 'Hey you, be Ragnarok' and automatically create a huge, demolition machine right then and there. It's a transformation. Ragnarok is human right now, but can trigger into the monster if provoked."

"And you know who this human is?" Lightning asked. She could feel her body heating up with anger at thinking Fang knew the biggest missing, and not to mention most dangerous, piece of this puzzle but had refused to tell any of them about it.

"Yeah. I do." Fang's eyes lifted to scan over the Cocoonians' faces guiltily. "Me and Van figured it out when we saw the vision at Opie's and he talked about the fal'Cie's picking standards."

"Then who is it?" Lightning asked, although she had a feeling that she already knew who it was. Of Gran Pulsian blood. Hates Cocoon. Easily provoked. Probably a total prick. She'd bet all her money that it was that Dane guy who they kept running into.

Fang glanced over to Vanille and gave the smaller girl and comforting nod before looking back to the rest of the group. "It's us."

Lightning felt her face suddenly drop in shock. She had been so prepared to hear something else, that if Fang had said any word that began with the letter 'D', she would've heard the name Dane instead. But what had come out of her mouth was so unexpected, there was no way she could've interpreted it as anything else.

"Come again?"

"It's us," Fang repeated, turning to look at Vanille who sadly nodded along. "Me and Van are Ragnarok. The two of us were chosen, and if one of us goes off the deep end, we'll somehow combine to turn into, well… it."

Lightning just stared dumbly at the two. That couldn't be true. They all had the same focus. They all had the same brands. The two of them didn't seem at all 'monster-ish'. They were all… friends.

"Wait, wait, wait. I thought we all had the same focus," Snow said, thinking the exact same thing as Lightning.

"We don't," Vanille answered softly. "We never did. Me and Fang didn't even understand why ours was different until we met Opie. Then it all made sense."

"So it's just more things you've been lying to us about…" Lightning murmured, looking down to the bleachers. Her whole body felt numb, almost as if it were unwilling to even attempt to react to the situation at hand. She couldn't even bring herself to look up at either of them at this point.

"It wasn't exactly lying," she could hear Vanille trying to explain. "We just didn't think—"

"That it was important enough to tell us?!" Lightning exclaimed. "That the two of you are supposed to destroy the world and, oh, we were all turned by the same fal'Cie! Which means we're supposed to help! What didn't you think, Vanille?" Lightning could feel her chest and arms finally begin to tingle as she shouted at the girl. She knew that some of her energy was beginning to gather at her fingertips, but she was so upset that she couldn't even tell which kind.

"Light, we didn't mean any harm. Ya don't have to yell at her like that."

"Don't even get me started on you," Lightning growled. She turned to fiercely glare at Fang. "You had the nerve to make me feel guilty about something that wasn't even your business in the first place, when all this time you were hiding this from everyone?! After all the talks we've had about how things would be when this was over and even last night after we—Grrr!" Lightning bit her tongue and took a heavy breath before she let slip anything else personal in front of the rest of the group. "You still didn't think this was something you should've told me? Fuck you, Fang."

"Light, I'm sorry…" Fang stood up and made an attempt to step down a bleacher but even those innocent movements set Lightning's anger ablaze even more. Both of her hands now violently tingled as a strong electric current coursed through them.

"No! Get away from me!"

Purely driven by anger, Lightning reached out one of her supercharged hands to slam her palm dead into Fang's upper chest.

"WRAHHHHH!" Fang wailed as her body broke out into mini spasms and the shock sent her flying back into the bleachers.

"Fang!" Vanille jumped up, but Lightning quickly lifted her other hand to point directly at her face, a sign for her not to come any closer.

Lightning stepped up the bleachers so that she was hovering over Fang, who had flown back so forcefully that she was now lying in a dent that her own body had created in the metal seat. Light lifted her hand again so that it was nearly touching Fang's still convulsing chest. "So you're telling me that if I wanted to, I could save Cocoon, my family, my entire world… right here, right now in these very bleachers?"

Fang tried to brace herself in a futile attempt to stop her body from continuously bursting into shakes. She stared at Light's lit up hand before looking into her angry, blue eyes. "Ye-ye-yeah," she finally stammered out between the shaking, never breaking eye contact and not even trying to put up a fight.

"Lightning…" Snow rumbled in a low voice, standing up and summoning his own magic to pool into his hands. He wasn't sure what was going through his neighbor's mind, but she had definitely taken things too far. His magic wasn't as potent as Light's, but he knew he had more endurance and might be able to withstand her long enough to tire her out if it did come down to a fight.

Lightning stared hard at Fang, who just looked back up at her with that same tense and unwavering expression. Although the moment was a short one, it still felt like a small eternity for Light. She quickly pulled her hands back to her side and stepped down another bleacher. "Fuck you, Fang," she mumbled again before dropping down to sit on a lower bleacher, placing her head in her hands with her back facing the rest of the group.

Everyone else remained quiet as Vanille immediately jumped forward, hands already green with a healing spell, to place on Fang's stomach and chest. Fang breathed a loud sigh of relief before slowly shifting to sit up.

"We can't go to Eden."

"Hm?" Fang, along with most of the other l'Cie looked up to face Hope, who had suddenly broken the silence between them all. His eyes were glassy and his face looked past forlorn, but there was a strong, resolute tone to his voice that was something usually uncommon to hear when the younger boy spoke.

"The fal'Cie wants us to go to Eden. You don't have to be in a specific place to destroy the world, but there has to be a reason why our vision is so specific, right? Maybe there's something else we're missing… another clue that requires us to meet the Primarch to figure out. Maybe the fal'Cie doesn't even want Fang and Vanille to change until we get there."

"Sorry, kiddo," Fang groaned, her back and sides still hurting from the crash. "But it doesn't exactly work that way. Ragnarok is triggered by anger. If one of us gets too pissed, that's what'll cause the change."

"But you've been angry before haven't you? You looked pretty angry at the track meet. Why haven't you changed yet? Maybe you're not supposed to fully transform until we get to Eden."

Fang turned to look at Lightning's back, which was rapidly lifting up and down with each seething breath she took, before dejectedly leaning back into her bleacher-crater and looking towards Hope again. "So what are ya tryna get at?"

Hope took a deep breath and looked over everyone else's faces. "Well, if there's a small chance that by not going to Eden you might not change, then we should take it. It's a long-shot, but it could save the world."

"Opie said that a focus has a way of catching up with ya," Fang stated. "And none of us are entirely sure what'll happen if we don't fulfill it."

"But we do know what'll happen if we do," Hope replied with a sad shrug. "And we could do stuff here to make sure you don't get too angry. We could be like your buffers. Maybe even use the time to try and figure out a loophole, or something. Everything has a loophole, right? I… I don't know how you guys feel, but you're my best friends. I'm closer to you all than I am with most of my family, even my dad." Lightning finally turned her head slightly towards Hope at this point in his speech. "I don't just want to save Cocoon. I want to save you guys, too."

A tiny, wry smile pulled at Fang's lips at the confession and Vanille reached out to squeeze her best friend's shoulder, a more hopeful look on her face than her older companion's.

"He's kinda right," Snow agreed, looking encouragingly to Fang and Vanille. "We're all like one big family over here. And I guess you two are like the rowdy, drunk uncles that everyone has to keep away from the liquor cabinet before they start flashing everybody."

"We're not that kind of family," Lightning cut in, grabbing almost everyone by surprise. "But I guess we are one, nonetheless. And it's not like we have better options, anyway. If you all are willing to ride this thing out until the end, then I guess so am I. It's for the good of Cocoon."

"I knew you were a team player," Snow tried to joke, despite the dark mood that had settled between the group as they all slowly realized how long of a shot their idea actually was.

"Hmph." Lightning stood up and began her march down the steps, not even sparing a look back at her fellow l'Cie as she descended and disappeared behind the bleachers.

Fang felt a tidal wave of guilt wash over her as she watched the pinkette leave. It was a very small comfort getting the Ragnarok secret off of her chest, but now she wasn't sure if it was worth the cost… everyone's hope. And worse still, Opie's words continued to ring between her ears.

"You can try ignoring your focus… but you won't."