Author's note: This chapter was written while listening to the song "Requiem for a Dream". You may want to pull that up in the second half of the chapter to make it more epic. xP

Chapter Eleven: Humanity's Fate

Lightning and Caius stepped out of the rift and onto the dry land of a new era. As soon as she saw it, a ragged gasp left Lightning's lips. "No," she breathed, blue eyes wide as they darted over the area.

This was just outside of Academia. They were standing in the same place where they had left the year 405. But this time, the ground was covered with white ash and sand. The city itself was blown apart, with buildings black and no lights on at all. Valhalla's shadow still loomed in the distance, as it had for all the time periods that they went to. It still had yet to take over, but this city was desolated. Completely destroyed.

"What…happened?" she asked weakly, taking a few steps forward. What could have caused this destruction? What year was it? This wasn't 500 AF, right? Maybe they created a paradox by visiting 405 AF. Maybe they ensured the destruction of this place somehow…

"Stay calm," Caius said. "Academia was always destined to turn out this way. The fact that we are seeing it in this state means that humanity is still doomed to die in the year 700 AF. This is probably at the end of time.

"So we didn't cause a paradox," Lightning breathed, relieved. Okay. This wasn't permanent. But… "Why are we here, though? If there was danger here, I would have seen it in the timeline when I was in Valhalla…"

"It's a mystery to me as well," he agreed. "I assume your desire was to protect those that matter to you?"

"Yes."

"Maybe there isn't danger here that we need to fight off. Perhaps there is something within the city that we are meant to take."

"Such as?" she prompted, all ears.

"Battle supplies? Information? I'm not sure, but we'll need to explore the city to find out."

"Sounds good," she nodded. She looked over at him as an idea popped into her head. "Hey, Caius, why don't you fly above the city to get a scope on things? Maybe you can see something that can give us an idea of why we're here?"

"You'll be alright on your own?"

"It's a deserted city," Lightning stated with a casual shrug. "Horrendous monsters don't often turn up in cities, and I doubt I'll run into any people. I'll try to find my way to a building with weapons or books."

"How will we meet up again?"

"I can set off a flair to show you where I am, if you roar to let me know you're ready to join me."

Caius hummed his approval. "Good plan," he agreed. "Alright. We shall rejoin later."

At that, Caius turned and walked away a few steps to transform into Chaos Bahamut. He ran his hand over the eye of Ragnarok casually, allowing it to glow with a red light for a second before a dark cloud surrounded him and he transformed into his eidolon and took off to the sky.

Lightning watched from the ground, arms folded over her chest as she watched him soar into the sky. "I gotta get me one of those," she said, surprising herself by how casually she spoke. That rarely happened, but when it did, she was alone. She was never too casual in front of others because she didn't want them seeing her as somebody…human. She did and she didn't want that. Humans were not strong creatures. They died easily. They were so wrapped up in emotions that they weren't firm in their convictions. But she was firm. Unbreakable.

With resolve shining in her eyes, Lightning started into the city and walked the abandoned roads of Academia. What a horrid future this was. Honestly, she was confused as to how this came about. People didn't die when Cocoon fell, yet humanity died out two years afterward. What caused it? It wasn't just a rise in monsters; it was something huge. But she didn't know what it was. She did have a chance to study the end times because she had been so focused on stopping Caius from destroying time itself. Noel came to save the future, but what he did was save time, not the future. Humanity was still doomed at this point.

Well, Lightning and Caius would change that somehow. First they needed to find out the cause. If it wasn't buried in one of these decaying buildings, maybe it was buried in Caius's mind. He did live at the end of days after all. He lived in all times that Yeul lived. But since Yeul no longer existed in the timeline, maybe the Caius that travelled with her didn't exist there anymore either. "So confusing," she muttered as she looked around the buildings. Most were completely destroyed and the doorways were blocked from access.

But one on her left looked accessible. Lightning glanced up at the sky one last time, seeing Caius high above inspecting everything still. I'll be back out soon, she thought before stepping over towards the building and ducking inside the broken doorframe.

Books were scattered all over the place. "What, have I actually had a stroke of good luck for once?" she mumbled to herself. Apparently she did. And the first book that she nearly stepped on was a history textbook. She couldn't believe her luck. Maybe some kind of god of goddess was looking out for her after all. Fang's "Lady Luck" was on her side today.

Lightning didn't see any chairs still standing, so she walked over to a spot where light from outside poured into the room and knelt down there. Opening up the book, she turned to the index and searched for a history section. The words "Bhunivelze's Downfall" caught her attention immediately. She quickly turned to that chapter and began to read.

Chapter 13.2: Bhunivelze's Downfall

None could have foreseen the destruction of Bhunivelze. The day the Bhunivelze rose in the sky was a day that all rejoiced for, since all of humanity waited nearly 400 years to see the rise of a new world. The architectural planning of the building was astounding. The Graviton Cores that were miraculously gathered by a team put together by President Estheim (President? Lightning thought in surprise before continuing) were able to hold the planet up without any problems. They did not weaken for the first fifty years of Bhunivelze's existence.

But in the year 580 AF, something went terribly wrong. Bhunivelze was no longer firm in its place in the sky. Originally, the world was built to withstand any gravitational pulls from Gran Pulse or from heavy windstorms that could direct it to a different location. Somehow the world started to move on its own. Gradual, but quickly enough that people took notice. Scientists immediately began to search for a way to stabilize the planet, but none could solve the problem quickly enough.

Within six months, Bhunivelze drifted towards an active volcano. The Graviton Cores set off the volcano in an explosive eruption that made the planet completely fizzle within one day of being struck by the lava. All who were on Bhunivelze died, and many on Gran Pulse suffered the same fate. That volcano set off many others, earthquakes occurred, and cities burned down in panic. Over eighty-five percent of the human population died and the same amount of animals died as well.

Culture has recessed to primitive ways. Not many scholars still exist in this year, 595 AF. I took it upon myself to write an account in case the human race ever recovers from the devastation that caused the destruction of so many. I hope that humans can rise above and conquer this. But right now, it does not appear so. But if this time is just a new beginning for humanity, I hope I live to see people rise again. I sincerely hope so.

Lightning turned the page. Blank. That was all that the author had written.

She fought to urge to drop the book on the ground in shock. Bhunivelze's fate was tragic. After all the work Hope put into it, things somehow went wrong. Most of humanity died in that accident. The only reason that these deaths did not open Etro's Gate was because that time was not set in stone. Not yet. As long as she and Caius were around to interfere in the timeline, those deaths wouldn't official. She knew what they had to do now: they had to save Bhunivelze.

The sound of a rolling pebble outside entered Lightning's ears. Silently but quickly, she rose to her feet and stepped into the shadows of the building. Somebody was out there. And it wasn't Caius. He had no way of knowing that she was in this building.

Whoever was outside, they were trying to be quiet but failed. One person ducked inside of the building and then another, well-hidden in the shadows. But not as hidden as Lightning was in her spot. Still, she couldn't tell who they were because of the lighting. And were they wearing masks…?

"Come out," one said, his voice muffled behind a black and tan mask. "We know you're in here somewhere."

Oh do you? Lightning though silently, seeing their heads turning as they scanned the room. They had no visual confirmation, not yet. She backed further into the darkness, glancing over her shoulder when she noticed a staircase in the corner of the room. She had to take it to the next floor; the people were coming further into this one and would discover her eventually.

Lightning took a step onto the first step of the staircase. It creaked underneath her feet.

"There you are," the second one said, eyes set on where Lightning was. He pulled out a gun and started shooting at her immediately, but she was too quick. She ran up the stairs with the book still in hand, eyes scanning the floor as she tried to find another place to run to.

From the outside, this building was a skyscraper. One of the tallest left standing in the building. But it was surely ready to collapse with the faintest damage done to it. Just gotta reach the roof, she thought as she sprinted up the stairwell. Then I'll have an open area to engage them in. I can use the building's poor architecture to my advantage there. And besides that, Lightning still held the history book in one of her hands. She couldn't lose it yet, in case there was still valuable information within it.

"Freeze!" a voice cried as the two mysterious figures chased Lightning. One shot off more bullets, some coming dangerously close to her.

"You idiot!" hissed the other to his friend. "Do you want this whole building to come down on us?"

So, I'm not important enough for them to commit suicide for, she thought as she sprinted up what must have been the sixth floor staircase. Okay, good. But what were they after? How did they find her, and how did they know who she was?

The staircase ended abruptly at the eighth floor. Rubble blocked the rest of the stairs so that she couldn't reach the roof. She swore under her breath, eyes darting around the area. An open window greeted her. It was her only option. She ran for it and jumped out of it, soaring as she fell towards a nearby building that was only five stories high.

At the very last moment, she realized that the building was too far away for her to land on. Lightning reached out a hand, grabbing onto the edge of the building with that one hand. She grunted roughly, swinging herself up onto the ledge just as gunshots came from the other building towards her. She cast a shield around herself as she stood on the building, turning around to give them a glare. "You are seriously ticking me off," she muttered in fury. Who were they?

Though they were apart at that moment, Lightning noticed them back away from the window so that they could jump across to this building like she had. Time to go! She turned around and sprinted across this rooftop, jumping onto another one of the same height. Whoever these punks were, they were taking drastic measures to get to her. And she couldn't very well fight off two of them when she was so intent on protecting this book. Where was Caius?

Lightning glanced behind her as more gunshots trailed her footsteps. They were gaining on her. She spun around on her feet and went on the offensive, shooting fireballs at them. And, of course, they were dodged. But if Caius was still watching from the sky, those fireballs should have alerted him that there was some kind of problem.

She jumped to one last building, and as she landed on it, she noticed that this building was her worst option. Not only was it shorter than the other buildings, but it was also at the very edge of the city so that she had nowhere else to jump to. Her heart started racing more quickly, the soldier walking backwards as she looked up at the roof she had previously been on. The two foes jumped down and joined her on this rooftop.

"Who are you?" she dared to ask, cautiously setting a hand on her gunblade.

"Guardians of the timeline."

"Liar," Lightning spat, stopping backing up only because she was at the edge of the building. "There was only ever one guardian of the timeline. That was Caius."

"Times have changed. You have betrayed the goddess and now set out to cause destruction. Your time ends now."

A roar entered Lightning's ears. Caius was close. But he wasn't flying above the city anymore. He was flying below.

And then she understood.

"Hmph," Lightning hummed with a faint smirk. She turned to the side and shifted her hand so that it was on her pouch, but they couldn't see that from their angle. She reached in, pulled out a grenade, and threw it at them after removing the pin.

And then she jumped backwards off the edge of the building, only to land on the back of Chaos Bahamut as he soared upward above the city. Lightning grabbed onto his back tightly with one hand, her other clutching the book as they had a good view of the rooftop that she had just been standing on five seconds ago.

The grenade blew up with a bang, the fire swallowing the two who had been standing there. But once the smoke cleared, there was no sign that they were ever there.

Lightning shut her eyes, grunting in disappointment. I should have done something more, she thought. I should have tried to capture one of them and figure out what was going on. But at the same time, she had a feeling that today wasn't going to be the last time that she saw those two. Whoever they were.

Caius flew to the outskirts of town, landing down on the ground as he allowed Lightning to slide off his back. "Thanks," she said with a nod to the beast. He didn't need to fly in and save her, since she could have just jumped off the building and activated her Gravity Con device to soften the landing, but she appreciated having an ally who looked out for her.

A black smoke surrounded Caius as he transformed back into his usual self. Of course Lightning took a step back to give him some room, so when he was standing on two feet again, he actually had more distance between then just because he was smaller than he was when he was Bahamut.

"What happened?" he asked gravely.

"I went into a building and found this book," she stated as she held it up for him to see. "When I was done reading, two men entered the building. They knew who I was and were looking for me."

"How?"

"I have no idea. I didn't attack directly until those fireballs. I wanted to get this book out of there unscathed."

"Any clue who they were?"

"They said they were guardians of time," Lightning said as her expression turned to one of confusion. "But you were the only guardian, right Caius?"

Caius nodded his agreement. "That's right. I have no idea what they could have meant by that."

"Guess we'll find out next time we meet them."

"You do not believe your grenade killed them?"

"No, I'm too cynical to believe people die that easily."

The man smirked, nodding once more. "You'd prefer to be overly cautious and cynical about everything that surprised by somebody's reappearance in the future," he stated.

Yeah…Lightning agreed, though she showed confusion in her eyes. This was the second time within twenty-four hours that Caius was analyzing her. And he wasn't nitpicking her flaws, because they agreed not to do that with each other anymore. Was he analyzing her just for the sake of analyzing? "Why are you so intent on analyzing everything I do, Caius?" she couldn't help but ask.

"Is that what I'm doing?" he asked genuinely. "I apologize. It's been a while since I travelled with somebody I am not intimately familiar with. Analyzing your actions is something I just do naturally."

"Okay," she said with a small nod. That was a reasonable answer. She understood it because she was analyzing Caius a lot too. Only she did it in her head and didn't say it aloud. She was a bit more socially appropriate than he was. But only slightly. "Anyway, we need to talk about this." She tossed the book into his hands as she continued to explain. "Chapter thirteen says that Bhunivelze changes its position in the sky and flies towards a volcano over a six month time period, the gravity cores trigger the volcano, and the volcano completely obliterates the planet."

"What?" Caius grunted in surprise.

"And then a ton of natural disasters occur after that. Earthquakes and other volcano eruptions and stuff. Eighty-five percent of the population—human and animal—are killed by all this. That's what brings about the downfall of humanity."

"That wasn't how it was in the end days that I lived in," he said as he shook his head. "In my future, the destruction of mankind was brought about by something else entirely."

"Then we've changed things somehow," Lightning said lowly in realization. They changed something and now humanity was doomed to die in a new way. What could they have done? She supposed it didn't really matter. All that mattered now was stopping this from happening. "Whatever. Let's get to 580 AF. If we can stop the destruction of Bhunivelze, we'll prove to be a serious threat against Etro. She'll need to come out of hiding and face us sooner."

"Agreed. Let's get going."

"But we need a plan before we go."

So they plotted together. It was unfortunate that they only had this one book to use to gain knowledge of Bhunivelze, but they made do with what they had. Fortunately, there were conspiracy theories about how Bhunivelze fell in the pages after the blank one that Lightning stopped at. Some believed that there was a power surge of some kind that reprogrammed the Gravity Core devices and didn't allow them to be changed back to normal. Others believed that demons possessed the devices (an unlikely scenario in Lightning and Caius's perspective. Demons didn't exist). Some crackpots must have come up with something that ridiculous.

The theory that Lightning and Caius put their trust in was the last one. Even if the author made it sound crazy, it wasn't crazy to these two time travelers. The theory said that terrorists broke in and altered the Gravity Core devices so that they would make the planet drift towards that volcano. Nobody looked into that possibility at the time because only a select few people knew the password to access the computers that controlled the Gravity Core devices. And plus, the hackers needed to be on the computers right at the Gravity Cores. There was no possibility that people could slip by five different security points and accomplish this.

That was the most logical theory to her though. Terrorists existed all throughout time. What would stop them from doing such an attack? A little bit of security wasn't going to get in their way. If their intent was the destruction of humanity, then they would go to great lengths to accomplish it.

And because they accepted this account as being what occurred, they were able to formulate a plan. There were five centers on Bhunivelze where the Gravity Cores were running to keep the planet afloat. They just had to crash those on the day that things turned sour, take down whoever created the problem, and then that was that.

"Should we stay here and rest for a while, or should we go?" Caius wondered once they were done planning.

"A little more rest would be good, but we can't rest peacefully here," Lightning stated logically as she looked back to the fallen city. "The goons could turn up again at any point. We can't be vulnerable."

Caius continued to stare at the city, staying silent as he focused on his own thoughts. Though Lightning didn't know it, Caius suspected that those two that attacked her were more than goons. They posed a serious threat if they somehow knew where they were and what they were doing. But at the same time, who would attack them and think they were against saving time? That was exactly what they were doing now by defeating Etro. She was evil and needed to perish. All the lies she put in place to protect herself could no longer shield her as long as he and Lightning knew the truth.

"Caius?"

"Nothing," he said automatically. "Let's go." They were going to go to 580 AF, and hopefully they would wind up in the right month. That would be the case as long as Lightning's heart was set in the right place. Which it had been thus far.

Instead of questioning Caius, Lightning decided to let him keep this secret. If it was important, she would find out about it later. Right now she just wanted to save Bhunivelze. I want to save the world, she thought. I want to save Bhunivelze and make sure that people never have to die in such a terrible way.

The rift appeared to their right. Some strength left her in the creation of it, but it wasn't enough to hinder her in the coming battle. She was ready.

Lightning and Caius shared a look, nodding firmly to each other in silence before they walked through the rift to face the fate of Bhunivelze.

*…*…*…*…*…*

Another week, another chapter! I gotta be honest, I almost forgot to post this today. I was writing a future chapter for this story and got so caught up in it that I only now remembered to update it! xD But anywho, onto the personal stuff. First off, I had a fantastic vacation! Not gonna give many details, but it was magical to say the least. ;3

And to the people asking me what I thought about Requiem of the Goddess—Yeah, I did play it. I downloaded it within an hour of getting home from vacation. xD I don't want to say too much in case people haven't played it, but I will say this: SO MANY FEELS. Both good and bad. After that, they BETTER give us a XIII-3. And they better use the storyline of this story for it, because that'd be epic. xP

xxx- If you want to do fanart of Lightning on Bahamut, that'd be terrific! I have no idea where you would post it though…So if any of you other readers out there have ideas, feel free to share them! Also glad you are so excited about the story and rereading stuff. It's SO encouraging to know my work is good enough for people to do that! You asked if Caius dies if Etro is killed, and the answer is that Etro's death will not cause Caius's. After all, he doesn't have her heart within him anymore; he's human again. And I pray I become an author too! I'd be THRILLED to spend my life writing. ;3

i- You had a lot of questions in there! xD I'll answer a few. First off, Caius and Lightning aren't going to run into Noel and Serah at all in this journey, because if they did, it could change the reality Etro worked so hard on. She prevents Lightning and Caius from going to the exact moments when their allies are there, except for 500 AF (which was explained last chapter, if I remember correctly). You also asked a bunch of shipping questions. xDD I don't pair Light and Hope together—they are more like siblings to me. I don't pair anyone with Hope, really.

I think those are all the personal issues I needed to address. So, that's it for today! See you guys later, and keep being awesome, because you guys are by far the best fanbase I've EVER had. I LOVE YOU ALL (no, that's not extreme. You guys are seriously, SERIOUSLY that great).

Peanut