AN – Z says I need to write more, and she's right of course, so I challenged myself to get this done in seven days. It took nine.

(._.)

Anyway, I dedicate this dumb story to Casey 'cuz I got the idea for it while chatting with her. Plus, she's a total bamf, just ask anyone.

"The Lost Fal'Cie" by Imrryr

She awoke to something heavy being dumped in her lap.

"Get up," Lightning said gruffly, as usual the perfect image of morning cheerfulness. "We've got a mission."

Fang rubbed her tired eyes open to find her clothes unceremoniously splayed across the bed. In addition to her sari and underwear, there was also a backpack, an assortment of tools, weapons and potions, and what appeared to be two or three days worth of Guardian Corps rations. It wasn't exactly an unusual wake-up call for Fang these days. What some women might choose to say with flowers, or breakfast in bed, Lightning chose to say with expeditions for two into the steaming hot jungle amongst the company of beasts that could easily tear them limb from limb.

And that's why she loved her.

Still, it was hard for Fang to remember such things when she was so very, very tired. "Light," she croaked, her voice rough from insufficient sleep, "It's Saturday. It's also –," she rolled over to check the clock on her nightstand, "six forty-five?!" With a groan, she burrowed her head in her nice, warm pillow and wrapped it around her ears. "Come back when you're no longer insane."

Lightning crossed her arms and huffed.

Admittedly, there were few things Fang liked more than waking up to find her girlfriend hovering over her in a loose white shirt and shorts, her pink hair disheveled from a good night's sleep, but really, Saturdays were for sleeping in. It was the one thing people from both Cocoon and Gran Pulse could agree on.

Just as she was beginning to drift back into blissful sleep, Fang felt a sharp strike to her knee. She opened her eyes to see Light still standing over her, lips curled in a definite smirk.

"Did you just kick me?"

Lightning shrugged. "And what if I did? What are you going to do about it?"

Oh, this was completely and utterly unfair. "Liiiiiight," she whined.

"If you want to come along, I expect you to be ready in half an hour."

Fang groaned, reluctantly turned over and propped her back against the headboard as her girlfriend padded away. "You're supposed to be on leave, you know?"

"I know," she said, a ghost of a smile lingering on her lips as she paused at the doorway. "It's all right. If you can't keep up –"

'Dammit.' Lightning always knew exactly what buttons to press. "All right, all right," Fang muttered. "I'm up."

…

Despite the appalling time of day, Fang slipped easily into her usual morning routine. First, a quick shower, and then a traditional Gran Pulsian breakfast: eggs, bacon and toast, and of course, coffee for Light. The women couldn't seem to get through the day without it.

Perhaps later, she might even bother to get dressed, but for now, black shorts and the towel draped over her shoulders would have to do.

Lightning certainly never complained.

Although, admittedly, it was hard to complain when your mouth couldn't actually form words.

Right on cue, Lightning appeared, already dressed in her familiar Guardian Corps uniform: a white coat, red cape, short brown skirt and high leather boots. A single shoulder epaulet shone with a faint orange light to indicate her newly attained rank of lieutenant.

Fang noted with barely suppressed pride the way Lightning would always close her eyes and take a deep breath whenever she entered the kitchen in the morning. The woman loved the smells of a good, freshly cooked breakfast. She smiled unconsciously. You didn't grow up in an orphanage with dozens of other children without learning how to cook like a pro. "So," she asked, "where are we going anyway?"

Steaming cup in hand, Lightning walked over to the large window and pointed. "Up there."

Unconsciously, Fang gulped. 'Cocoon.' She hadn't been up there since she'd been freed from crystal stasis three months ago. When she was growing up, Cocoon had always been called the Nest of Vipers. Sure, she understood that world and its former inhabitants a lot better these days, but she had never liked it up there. Being inside Cocoon's shell, as spacious as it was, had felt confining and unnatural. Fang much preferred the infinite landscapes of Gran Pulse. Cocoon was a manufactured world and eventually it would wither and fall, crystal spire or no, but Gran Pulse would live on forever.

Lightning's attention turned to the front porch and she let out a weary sigh. Fang followed her gaze and smiled. As usual, a small crowd of teenagers were waiting patiently for them, eyes peering back through the gate.

"Oh, looks like your fanclub is out there," Fang said, her tone amused. All the former l'Cie were now heroes, even Serah and Dajh, but for some reason Lightning was the one who garnered the most acknowledgment from the people. It had to be some kind of cosmic irony. Lightning hated the attention.

The soldier shook her head in disbelief. "Don't they have better things to do on a Saturday morning?"

Fang raised an eyebrow.

"Don't you dare say anything."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Fang replied, eyes sparkling.

Rolling her eyes, Lightning quietly drew up a stool in front of the counter and helped herself to breakfast while Fang dried her hair. If it hadn't been a Saturday, it would've been just like any normal weekday for the couple. "So, you gonna tell me what this mission is all about, or should I guess?"

"We'll have plenty of time for that when we get up there."

Fang looked up at that mass of crystal and metal as she stretched her back. For as long as she lived, Cocoon had always been there, hovering high over the Archlyte Steppe. And now it was little more than an empty shell of crystal and metal, albeit an empty shell of crystal and metal with a giant crystal dragon perched on top of it. "You think it will be dangerous?"

"Probably not, but you never know. I could always use some -," Lightning had turned to look at Fang and was now staring open mouthed at Fang's bare chest ",- muscle."

Not so secretly pleased, Fang made sure to draw out her stretching routine a few moments longer. This time, Lightning licked her lips and didn't avert her eyes, at least until she realized Fang was smiling back at her, only then did she quickly look away.

'Ah, well…' Fang thought. Eventually, Light would learn that you didn't always need to leave the house to have a good time.

Having hastily finished the rest of her meal, Lightning stood up and made for the front door. However, after just a few steps, she stopped short and sighed. All those kids were still out there.

Fang finally decided to take pity on her. "Let me get dressed and I'll go let them down easy. You bring the bike around."

"Thanks," Lightning mumbled.

…

People often asked her if it was hard to date someone like Lightning, and it had taken Fang quite some time to figure out why people kept asking it. Apparently, in Cocoon's society, it was unusual for someone to shun the spotlight as desperately as Lightning had done; especially, they kept saying, someone "as beautiful" as Lightning. It all made Fang want to go out and punch something.

Those people never saw her girlfriend when prying eyes were off her and she was free to be herself. She was a doting sister to Serah, a mentor to Hope, and a lover to Fang. She could fierce and frightening, she could be tender and thoughtful, she could be a hundred other things besides. "Someone like Lightning?" There was no one like her in all the world as far as Fang knew.

Simply put: she was amazing.

Granted, Lightning wasn't very open about her feelings, and that was probably the biggest reason why their relationship had been 'progressing' as slowly as it was. But whatever anyone else might think, Fang wasn't too upset by that. Sure, she couldn't help but imagine what it would be like when they finally became intimate with each other, but in the end her girlfriend's general hotness wasn't why Fang found her so intriguing.

No, it was the little things that told Fang that Lightning was the one for her. No one else got to see the subtle signals that Lightning would give her, and her alone. Nobody could make her blush, or make her lose her train of thought with just a single toothy grin or a flash of skin.

Those were parts of Lightning only Fang got to see.

And if people wanted to know what the truly most difficult aspect of dating Lightning was… well, that was easy. It was having to live life as a celebrity.

From almost the moment she had awoken from crystal stasis, Fang had to deal with people clamoring all around her whenever she so much as crossed the street; people filming her every step, asking for autographs, and sometimes just being outright annoying pests. Lightning, Snow, and the rest of the l'Cie had had three years to get used to it and watch the interest slowly die down, but with just a few months amongst the living, Fang was still taken aback by all the attention she received.

And when it quickly became known that she and Lightning were an item, well, it soon became all the media could talk about.

When not venturing out into the distant wilds of Gran Pulse, Lightning confined herself mostly to desk work. Patrolling the streets of New Bodhum, or the streets of any city for that matter, was completely out of the question when you were surrounded by paparazzi and those annoying automated cameras of theirs that hovered around you like gigantic gnats.

Fang felt truly sorry for the woman. Sure, the media was interested in Fang because she was "exotic", and that was pretty insulting and annoying in its own way, but Lightning was like a supermodel and movie star all rolled into one to these people; a supermodel who had also been cited four times for assault on a cameraman in just the past year alone.

Of course, that didn't stop them either. The papparazi just ate it up.

So, to keep Lightning from losing her job, and prevent her from losing her mind, they often went out in the wilds of the Steppe together; usually alone, but sometimes with their former l'Cie comrades in arms. And at home, Fang was the voice of the small house on the beach they shared together. She answered the annoying calls, shooed away the annoying lurkers, and whenever possible did her best to keep Lightning's mind off her celebrity status.

And that was one of the reasons why she had taken up the task of going through her girlfriend's fanmail.

Every Friday after lunch, Fang returned from the post office with at least a crate-full of letters. And once through the usual mob of admirers waiting outside, Fang divided the letters and packages into three separate boxes. The first box was for letters that Lightning might actually want to see: children's drawings of their l'Cie heroes, thank-you's for Lightning's incredible acts of heroism, and of particular interest: women who were inspired by Lightning's example to join the Guardian Corps. Her girlfriend's eyes always lit up when she read those.

Box number two was for articles that were a bit too weird for Lightning's consumption, or really anyone's consumption to be honest: Long poems expressing a writer's profound, and bordering on obsessive, love for her, naked photographs of men and women hoping to catch the soldier's eye (admittedly, sometimes the occasional photo of a pretty woman would accidentally end up in box one), and people soliciting product endorsements, or photo-shoots.

And that was part of the reason why Fang's help here was so essential. What would happen if Lightning read the letter Fang had seen just last night; the one where some misguided fool actually asked if the destroyer of the fal'Cie wouldn't mind starring in a commercial where she slowly strips out of her uniform to wash a velocycle while wearing a bikini? All while surrounded by other naked girls in bikinis? Certain death, that's what.

Really, Fang was just preserving the poor idiot's life.

As well as keeping Lightning from a prison sentence.

To these sorts of letters, Fang usually mailed a standard response: something gruff, simple, and sufficiently "Lightningy"; something along the lines of, "If you ever contact me again, no one will ever find your body. Sincerely, Lightning Farron." That usually did the trick.

In a similar vein, box two was also the dumping ground for the impressive number of letters Lightning got from people who wanted to sleep with her. It was hard to believe that a civilization as technologically advanced as Cocoon's could produce people dumb enough to attempt to solicit a night of casual sex from a women who decorated the walls of her bedroom with gunblades and who once rode into a battle against Cocoon's gods on the back of a giant flying horse, but there it was.

Sadly, there was also a box number three, and the contents of that box went straight to the authorities every morning. This was where Fang put the threats against their lives, and the long tirades about how Lightning was subverting everything that was good and decent about Cocoon's society.

These were the people who were never going to believe that Barthendelus in the form of Primarch Dysley had been plotting to destroy them all, despite the mountain of evidence for it. Hell, most of those people still refused to believe Dysley had been a fal'Cie at all. Burying one's head in the sand was a natural human reaction to change, even more so when you thought your home was a paradise and everything in it had been perfect.

Thankfully, that box was by far the smallest of the three.

And Fang got her own fanmail too, of course. In fact, she had developed quite a devoted following of young people after awakening from crystal stasis and falling into the waiting arms of Lightning Farron. The Sanctum was long dead. Everything Cocoon's citizens had been taught about the world for a thousand years had been exposed as a lie. It was only natural for those newly liberated people to go looking for something new to believe in, and as unwanted as the attention might be, Fang and Vanille's connections to Gran Pulse provided that something.

Now Fang spent her weekdays passing down all the lore she could remember from her childhood to the archivists at the Museum of New Bodhum, and occasionally leading archeologists to places that had been teeming with life five-hundred years ago. It was sobering, being one of the last two Pulsians left, but at the same time Fang was glad to have the chance to pass on the old ways to a new generation, a generation that saw the those ways as exciting and fascinating, and not just something they'd had to learn because it was expected of them.

The Elders would be rolling over in their graves if they could see her now: Oerba Yun Fang of all people, teaching the next generation, when she had spent her childhood missing her lectures and running off into the woods with Vanille at every opportunity.

She hated sitting still for anything.

Donning her sari and sandals, not to mention her trusty spear, as well as the backpack Lightning had prepared for her, Fang stepped out onto the front porch and was immediately greeted by a crowd of young people crying out her name from behind the cast-iron fence. As she did every morning, she sidled up to the front gate, unlocked it with a swipe of her personal keycard and joined the tiny mob on the sidewalk. And as always, she quickly had a dozen electronic pads thrust in her face. Patiently, she signed her name on each one with a finger in her usual flowing Pulsian script.

"Fang!" one of the girls called out, a cute blonde of maybe sixteen or seventeen, wearing something that a normal person might wear to a beach, but which was typical for New Bodhum's youth. Come to think of it, she kind of reminded her of Vanille. "Can you make it out to Rikku?" she said. The girl didn't need to explain further. Fang took the engraving pen in her hand and signed the dagger she was offered. It looked dangerous. She hoped the kid was being careful with it.

Lots of kids were taking up weapons training these days. Fang knew it all too well. She taught classes on the subject herself.

Thankfully, Lightning was quick to pull around the house and right up into the small crowd. The soldier kept her gloved hands firmly on the controls of her velocycle, refusing all requests for an autograph with a look that, while not exactly frightening, clearly said "not now." Or possibly, ever.

"Where are you going today, Fang?" one of the kids asked.

"Sorry," she shrugged. "That's top secret."

The crowd whined, but knew to keep their distance. Fang had taught them well. You were allowed to hang around outside all day, as long as no one violated Lightning's personal space.

"Liiiiightning!" the blonde girl cried out, rocking on the balls of her feet. "You're so awesome!"

Fang wanted to laugh. Lightning wasn't as short with her teenage fans as she was with the grownup ones, so their typically clumsy shouts of adoration tended to get a pass. Briefly, the soldier locked eyes with the young woman and nodded ever so slightly. Fang recognized that dreamy, star-struck look in the girl's eyes. It was love all right.

"Oh," Rikku cooed, "I wanna be as cool as Lightning some day."

Fang grinned as she slid easily onto the back seat, wrapping her arms around Lightning's stomach just a little bit possessively. "Me too," she said as Lightning gave a weary grunt and the velocycle took off into the sky to the cheers of their fans.

…

Cocoon shone gloriously in the early morning sun, its newly acquired crystal facets scattering light in all directions. Fang had definitely had enough of crystals for one lifetime, but even she had to admit the effect was beautiful. Lightning meanwhile kept her eyes firmly on the velocylce's digital readouts as they rose further and further into the clouds, aiming for the enormous hole in her former home's shell.

Fang kept herself entertained by sneaking a hand underneath Lightning's Guardian Corps jacket and rubbing the firm muscles of her abdomen beneath. Lately, Lightning had been exercising those muscles particularly hard after work. Watching her girlfriend work out was just about Fang's favorite activity in the whole world, short of inspecting the results first-hand of course.

Their relationship was progressing almost achingly slowly. It was quite a change from what Fang was used to. In Oerba, relationships tended to proceed quickly, a natural response to living in a world where everything wanted you dead. Life was short, and it was rare enough for people to live past thirty or forty years. There wasn't much time to go looking for your soul mate.

Of course, Fang had to be different. Much to annoyance of the village elders, she had never gotten too serious with anyone back in Oerba, and that actually turned out to be a good thing in the end. Who knew that the perfect woman for her would be living five-hundred years in the future and on another world?

She smiled and wrapped her arms even more tightly around her lover.

...

It took half an hour to reach Cocoon. They passed through the enormous force-field that kept the interior of the shell at its correct pressure and temperature and passed slowly over a forest of dead trees, abandoned buildings, and mounds of rubble.

The interior of this world had fared much more poorly than even Fang had expected. Most of the lower half of the sphere was a graveyard of concrete, plastic and fiberglass... remnants of now lost cities that had once hung from the very top of Cocoon, dislodged by the absence of artificial gravity and spilled onto the surface below like children's toys dropped from a table.

Lightning explained that there had once been a fal'Cie hidden under the city of Eden; Uvutano, the fal'Cie in charge of gravity. Its job was to mimic the natural gravitational force of Pulse by pressing down everything on the inner surface of the sphere, while at the same time, counteracting the gravity of the true world below. Like its fellow fal'Cie, Uvutano did its job well for over a thousand years. However, it too fell asleep in the aftermath of Orphan's fall.

By some miracle, in the moments after the l'Cie were crystallized, a fail-safe system engaged, restoring a modicum of normal gravity to the world of Cocoon and thereby saving the lives of the millions who lived in the highest parts of that world.

There were many questions afterwards: Had it truly been a fail-safe system, something to protect the fal'Cie in case of attack from Pulse? Or did Uvutano have other reasons?

Lightning said she wasn't sure. Indeed, they would likely never know.

Regardless, Cocoon's engineers were able to keep that emergency backup running for several days, allowing the Calvary and PSICOM precious time to find not just millions of survivors, but also to salvage vital equipment and supplies.

During the shortages that followed, Cocoon was abandoned and stripped of everything useful and the power was redirected to keep the burgeoning cities of Gran Pulse humming. As a result, entire cities rained down onto the lower levels of Cocoon, burying the lower half of the sphere (including Bodhum) under a mound of dirt and debris.

Three years later and power had been mostly restored to Cocoon, including to the gravity generators which were now able to almost fully replicate gravity as it had been for the past thousand years, and once again, scientists were scouring the interior surface for anything useful.

"So," Fang drawled over the wind and the hum of the velocycle, lips intentionally close to Lightning's neck. "Home sweet home, eh?"

Lightning grunted in response.

"You gonna tell me where we're going now?"

The soldier shuffled uncomfortably in her seat, but eventually conceded. "Last week, I was going through some old PSICOM maps of the mountains near Euride Gorge. You never know what the higher ups might have been hiding from us. Anyway, for some reason there are extensive power lines running to a place that is supposed to be nothing but solid rock."

"So, there's something down there, you mean?"

Lightning nodded. "It's the same sort of set up you'd find around any place where a fal'Cie would reside; extensive transmission cables, heating and air-conditioning ducts... all going to a place where there's just nothing."

"A secret fal'Cie?"

"Maybe."

Well, that was an interesting theory. "How many fal'Cie were there on Cocoon anyway?"

"At least eight-million."

Fang whistled. She could name maybe a few dozen fal'Cie from Gran Pulse. In order for there to be so many on Cocoon, they must've been very highly specialized.

"Indeed," Lightning said with a nod. "They've all gone dormant since the fall, but there are still hundreds of thousands that remain unaccounted for."

"And exactly how dormant is dormant?"

"Even with power restored to Cocoon, not a single one of them has so much as blinked in three years."

Well, that was reassuring. Fang had a strong feeling that her presence wouldn't exactly be welcomed among this world's fal'Cie.

…

Much was damaged in the months and years after Cocoon was evacuated, but the equatorial region of Cocoon had escaped most of it.

And that was where Lightning had taken them today. The underground entrance wasn't much to look at; a disused elevator in the middle of what had been a wilderness area not unlike the Gapra Whitewood, except here the forest was long dead, robbed of Phoenix's light for the past three years.

Once inside, there was corridor so long that the end of it was lost under the curve of Cocoon's shell. The marble ceiling was dazzlingly far above their heads and light poured out of panels high above them. It was yellow, like sunlight, but like all fal'Cie constructs it was just an illusion.

Clearly, this was a path that led to something important, but whatever that might be still eluded their understanding.

"Any idea how old this place is?"

Lightning shook her head. "This architecture is a little unusual for a fal'Cie construction. It may be ancient. Or it may be something else."

The air smelled as fresh as a summer's day on Pulse. In fact, if it wasn't for the evidence of damage; cracks in the walls, crystal pieces scattered on the floor, Fang would've thought the place was brand new.

As it was, it took several long hours to walk the length of the corridor, and when they finally reached the end of it they were left standing in front of a solitary black door. On the wall next to the door was a keypad.

"This thing looks ancient," Lightning said. "I can't even read what it says."

Fang looked over Lightning's shoulder. The characters on the pad looked almost Pulsian. She thought about it for a moment. Where had she seen them before? "That's the old script," she finally said. "The kind used in ancient Gran Pulsian rituals. Hundreds of years before I was born, everyone used to write with those characters."

"That makes sense, I guess. If the people of Cocoon originally came from Pulse –"

"Gran Pulse."

"Sorry, Gran Pulse, then they must've brought their language and writing with them."

Fang nodded. This place must've been truly ancient then, if they were still using this script.

"So, can you make sense of this?"

Fang frowned but took Lightning's place in front of the keypad. The letters were familiar enough to her. The writing was more or less the same as what she was used to back in Oerba, just with less stylized characters. As for the spelling, it was a little archaic certainly, but what she read was understandable enough: "Input password."

"Huh?"

"That's what it says: Input Password."

"That's it?"

"Mmhmm."

Lightning sighed. She scanned the walls, but as they were completely barren of any kind of ornamentation, they didn't provide much help. "Any idea what the password might be?"

Fang tried to think. She wasn't really cut out for riddle solving, but seeing as she had woken up appalling early to be here, she might as well give it a try. But first, she needed hints. "You think the Sanctum constructed this place?"

"Probably not. I'm thinking this is the work of someone higher up."

"Barthandelus?"

A nod was Lightning's only response.

"Wonderful. I thought we were done with that jerk."

"Most everything that was constructed by him collapsed into ruin when Eden and the northern cities fell from the sky. This would be the first time we've found anything of his intact."

"So," Fang drawled. "If I were a mad, genocidal fal'Cie, what would my password be? Something suitably pompous and nihilistic, perhaps?" She held out her hand and in a mocking caricature of Barthendelus's voice proclaimed, "Make this day a brave epoch. Deliver the Divine, Raaaaagnarok!"

The words echoed down the hall as Lightning shook her head and laughed, "I'm so glad no one else can see you right now."

Fang smiled back. "You don't think I've got it?"

Again, Lightning shook her head. "It's probably something mere humans could never guess," she said bitterly.

Fang furrowed her brow for a moment until something suddenly came to her. It was so simple there was no way it could work, but one by one she entered the letters on the keypad anyway, 'R-A-G-N-A-R-O-K.'

The instant the last letter was entered, the door slid easily open.

Lightning was already peering through the door. "Another corridor," she said, shoulders slumping ever so slightly.

This trip was already providing little in the way of interesting scenery. Fang sighed. Well, at least she had Lightning to stare at.

"What was the password, anyway?" the soldier asked.

"Well," Fang began, "Think of the most destructive force the world has ever seen; something innately terrifying, yet something you can't take your eyes off of once you see it; something that parents still scare their children with stories about to this day. To one world: an unholy demon, striking for the devils from the world below. To the other: an avenging angel, come to destroy the mad fal'Cie that yearn for their own annihilation."

Realization shone in the soldier's blue eyes.

"That's right," Fang said with a smile. "L-I-G-H-T-N-I-N-G."

Those eyes immediately narrowed and Fang had to step quickly backwards to avoid a half-hearted shove.

...

It was another hour or two of long passages and descending elevators before they came, rather anti-climatically, to a large, circular room topped with a small dome. In the very center of the room was a touch-screen console of the kind Fang had seen a thousand times in just the few days she had spent in this world as a l'Cie fugitive. On the floor underneath it was what appeared to be an elevator, although she could really see nothing more than an ever so slightly transparent circle with the Sanctum's sigil emblazoned on it.

However, when she got a closer look at the keypad, Fang realized they had a problem. The screen was littered with Pulsian characters, but they didn't make a lick of sense. "It's all just gibberish."

Lightning briefly glanced over Fang's shoulder and nodded sympathetically.

In frustration, Fang gave the console a hard whack.

Everything went dark.

"Uh… shit."

She heard a familiar weary sigh. "I do hope those lights come back on."

They didn't, but a moment later, red lights began flashing from the ceiling. Fang scanned the room nervously, even as the strobe effect made her nauseous. It didn't matter if this was Gran Pulse or Cocoon; red lights were always a bad sign.

Finally, text began scrolling slowly across the screen's black background.

"What's it say now?" Lightning asked.

After clearing her throat, Fang dutifully read the text to Lightning's growing annoyance, "Thank you for purchasing the Securi-Tech model 5X3000 lift with optional restraining system for your home or office. This lift is one-hundred percent guaranteed to provide you with a century's worth of secure and easy transport or your money back."

"I don't believe this."

Fang continued, "Please follow the instructions on page seventy-three to properly configure and activate your lift or call our offices anytime at zero four four dash six sev-"

"You see a manual lying around anywhere?" Lightning interrupted, her face barely illuminated by the red glow of the touchpad. Every five seconds the lights at the top of the dome would flash, like several dozen simultaneous lightning strikes but a million times more annoying to look at.

"All I see is the fact that I'm gonna lose my breakfast all over this floor if these lights keep flashing much longer."

She could just barely see Lightning nod in agreement, then there was another almost blinding flash. 'Ugh.'

Feeling rather sick to her stomach, Fang shut her eyes and pressed her hands against the console to steady herself.

The lights came back on and the text now shone in green letters, "Input accepted."

"Huh." Fang scratched the back of her head sheepishly. "That was easy." Apparently, all it wanted was a handprint.

Without a word, Lightning reached over and pressed the 'down' button.

…

At this even lower level, the air turned decidedly frigid. A strong breeze at their backs seemed to push them onwards through more and more elaborate corridors and down additional elevators, each activated by Fang's touch. Here, the damage was much more severe than it had been. Often, they had to double-back and find a different way when a hallway led to nothing more than a giant heap of debris that they had no hope of squeezing through. Fortunately, Lightning was continuously mapping the entire labyrinth with her personal touchpad as they walked.

They had done this before on many expeditions into the wilds and ruins of Gran Pulse, but this was the first time that the ruins were of Sanctum construction. Fang felt decidedly out of her element, so she did the only thing she could do and took point, spear in hand, in case any creatures were living in this hellish maze.

It was very unlikely, but it at least beat staring uselessly at the floor. And unfortunately, Lightning didn't appreciate Fang staring at her butt all day.

At what the huntress assumed was the end of the day (judging by how tired she was), they came to a rather beat-up looking door. Air whistled through tiny holes in the seal between the door and the wall. Without a thought, Fang pressed her hand against the nearby console just as Lightning shouted her name.

It was too late, with a rush the door opened and the air began roaring out. As she practically flew through the threshold, Lightning tackled her to the ground just before Fang would've found herself falling over the edge of a chasm that revealed the sky and landscape of Gran Pulse lying miles below.

"Whew..." Fang said, squeezing Lightning's back in thanks as the soldier quickly dug for something in the pocket of her Guardian Corps jacket. The continuation of the corridor could be seen straight ahead, maybe a hundred feet away across the windy chasm.

It might as well have been on the moon.

Finally, Lightning found what she was looking for and pulled out a tiny black sphere, which, to Fang's disbelief, she threw out before them as the wind kept rushing by.

"Light, what are y-"

She didn't have time to finish her sentence. Suddenly, a red beam joined this end of the corridor with the far end, creating a circular column of light. The wind died completely and Fang finally felt as though she could breathe again.

"What is that thing?" Fang asked. The little black sphere remained in the air, hovering in the middle of the column of light it had created. Truly, Cocoon had machines that were completely indistinguishable from magic.

"It will keep the air from escaping and return the air pressure to normal levels," Lightning replied. "Hopefully, the temperature too," she added, rubbing her upper arms.

"Any chance we can walk across it?" Fang asked. Curiously, she pressed a finger into the force-field. It went straight through. Already, she could feel the difference in temperature between the air in here and the air outside. It was a lot colder outside than she realized. "Never mind."

"Yeah," Lightning mumbled. "Without the force-fields, there isn't enough oxygen at this altitude to breathe for long." She leaned over the ledge, "Hmm, I wouldn't want to try flying a ship through that." Fang had to agree. Beneath them were a thousand twisted spires of white rock criss-crossing the chasm below. Even if there had been a way to extend the force-field even further, Fang didn't see an easy way across.

"So," she began, rubbing the back of her head which had come in rather hard contact with the floor after Lightning had tackled her. "What do we do now?"

"The sun is setting. Tomorrow, we can head back the way we came."

"We're just going to give up?" Granted this particular problem seemed insurmountable, but still... They'd faced down much worse things than potential impalement or a sheer drop of several dozen miles.

Lightning's brow furrowed. "I don't think even you could jump that far."

"Good point." If only they still had their eidolins…

Only now did Fang get a real good look at the destruction in front of them. "Wow," Lightning breathed. "No one's been able to replicate the material the fal'Cie made the shell out of. It's supposed to be practically indestructible..." she said, seemingly to herself.

'Almost indestructible,' Fang thought. She knew what had caused this damage. Ragnarok.

Lightning stood up and leaned tiredly against the crumbling marble wall. "I wish I had thought to bring a sleeping bag."

Without a word, Fang took off her sari and laid it on the floor. Then she smiled and gestured Lightning toward her. "C'mere."

The soldier blinked. "What?"

"On Gran Pulse we had a way of keeping warm at night," she said, lying down and patting the soft fabric beside her. "I promise I won't touch anything you don't want me to touch."

Nodding ever so slightly, Lightning slipped off her holster and then the pouch she wore around her upper leg, before settling down comfortably at Fang's side.

"This all right?" Fang asked, gently stroking Lightning's hair as she made herself more comfortable.

"Mmm," she mumbled, burying her face in Fang's neck. "Why haven't we done this before?"

Fang smiled. "No idea," she breathed. Lightning wasn't the easiest woman to read, and she hadn't wanted to scare her off by moving too quickly. Although they hadn't really spoken about their respective romantic histories, Fang was pretty certain that there was none to speak of as far as Lightning was concerned.

And from what Serah had told her of her sister's life growing up, Fang could understand why.

As Lightning's breathing evened out, Fang's hand drifted slightly lower and reached the beaded necklace the soldier wore around her neck. It warmed her heart to feel it. She had made this necklace for her. Each colored bead represented a notable kill: a behemoth, and adamantoise, each an achievement worthy of a Yun warrior, or in the case of the adamantoise, a dozen Yun warriors.

In addition, two of the beads were made of metal; one silver, one gold. Fang had to think of something special for those two. No one back home had ever killed a fal'Cie before, let alone two of them. That was the kind of thing only legendary heroes did, usually just before the gods immortalized them by placing them amongst the stars.

Fang realized she was still smiling, but couldn't help herself. She felt Lightning stir, and soon piercing blue eyes were staring down at her.

"You're looking insufferably smug tonight."

Fang shrugged. She was very, very happy. Surely, any smugness she felt was fully justified.

"Fang?"

"Hmm?"

Lightning had settled back down at her side. "I'm sorry if I haven't been the best girlfriend."

Now what brought that on? "Light," she said, again softly brushing the woman's pink hair, "You are an amazing girlfriend."

She felt, more than heard, Lightning's answering laugh. "I barely know what I'm doing though. We haven't even -"

Fang interrupted her, "You're doing just fine, Light. Trust me."

Lightning seemed to relax a bit more and Fang felt the slightest hint of a kiss against her collarbone. "I think I might be ready... soon."

Fang felt that smile return, and she hugged the woman at her side. She would wait as long as it took. "I should warn you, Light. Yun warriors are known for their… endurance."

Again, Lightning met her gaze, seeming to study her. Fang couldn't be sure if she saw interest or a hint of fear in those bright blue eyes. Perhaps a mix of both? Fang smiled, and again Lightning huffed.

…

The next morning, Fang awoke to find Lightning reading something on her touchpad. Sleeping on a hard, marble floor hadn't been at all fun, but dammit if she didn't love having the woman in her arms. "We still going home?" she asked, yawning prodigiously as she foggy mind struggled to remember how to properly put on a sari.

"I've got an idea," Lightning replied. "But it's kind of risky."

"Oh," Fang said, sidling up to her. "Do tell."

"Well, if we shut off the grav-generators for this sector, Pulse's gravity should send us falling more or less in the direction we want to go."

"More or less?" Fang repeated.

"Yeah. More or less."

"That's not very reassuring."

"Here," she said, wrapping her arms around Fang.

Fang quickly hugged her back. "Aww, if you wanted a hug, Light, you only needed to ask."

"Ha." Lightning snapped her fingers and she and Fang found themselves surrounded in a sphere of blue light before their feet floated off the floor.

"Whoa!"

Lightning chuckled. "I forgot. I guess you've never used a grav-con unit before. Hang on."

Fang did just that as Lightning entered something in her touchpad. Suddenly, Cocoon's gravity fails and they were falling towards the hallway opposite. Lightning's focused gaze indicated that at least she knew what she was doing, but Fang squeezed her more tightly anyway.

A second later gravity returned to normal, leaving Fang and Lightning unceremoniously splayed across the stone floor, more or less exactly where the soldier had said they would end up.

It was a bit rough, but at least they had made it.

"Ugh. Let's never do that again," Fang muttered as she picked herself off the ground. That had to be the most disorienting five seconds of her life.

Lightning smiled. "We might have to when we come back this way. Unfortunately, getting back over there is going to be tougher and grav-cons don't work so well with more than one person at the best of times. And," she added, "unfortunately, Pulse's gravity won't help us the next time."

Fang shook her head. She had absolutely no understanding about all this stuff about grav-generators or even how gravity worked to be honest. Maybe she shouldn't have cut so many science classes as a child.

...

It wasn't long before they came to yet another door. However, being covered in elaborate runes, this one looked substantially more promising than the last twenty they had passed through.

Unfortunately, the console and its touchpad were completely missing; buried under a mound of rubble from a collapsed column.

"Fang. Hand me your spear for a sec."

Reflexively, she reached for her weapon only to stop short, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. "Wait. What do you want it for?"

"I want to try prying open this door."

Fang was indignant. "You are not using my spear as a crowbar," she said, clutching it protectively. "It took me years to earn this!"

Sensing she hit a nerve, Lightning held up her hands in apology and Fang was, as always, easily placated. She could never stay mad at the woman for long.

Dumping her backpack on the floor, Fang reached inside and pulled out the only explosive device she had remembered to bring along. "Would a grenade work?" she asked.

Lightning shrugged, and admittedly, the door did look pretty solid. "I guess it's worth a try."

One not particularly impressive explosion later, there was only the smallest of holes at the foot of the door. Fang frowned. As a rule, she didn't like to carry grenades; the ones from her childhood had an unfortunate tendency to explode at the wrong times. She only had one more, which she now held in her hand, but Lightning waved her off.

The soldier's holster and gunblade slipped onto the floor as she quickly stripped off her belt and jacket. "I've got this," she said, sizing up the hole they had made.

Fang shook her head as Lightning got on her belly. "If you get stuck in there, I should be allowed at least one full minute to laugh at you."

"Deal," Lightning grunted as she pulled herself forward. It was a very tight fit, but with a bit of effort she just managed to squeeze through. Fang knelt down and watched as Lightning got to her feet.

"See anything?"

The answering voice lacked any sense of enthusiasm, "Well, it's a big room, filled with crates. There's a hole in the far wall, but Cocoon's shield seems to be holding. Hang on, looks like the console works on this side."

Thanks to the damage it had just received, the door only half-opened before grinding to an ear-splitting halt. Fang was left staring at yet another expansive hall. And if the previous halls with their high ceilings had seemed massive, well, this one was in a category all of its own. Fang leaned back and looked on in disbelief at the distant dome far above her. Its ornate, gilded surface must've been half a mile high at the very top.

The floor itself was stacked high with crates; thousands... maybe hundreds of thousands of crates all in neat rows. There was no clue as to what might be inside them except for numbers printed on the side of each crate. "four, eight, twelve..." Lightning mumbled, reading the numbers out loud. Evidently, they met as little to her as they did to Fang.

Fang meanwhile, was still dazzled by the ceiling. Painted on the dome were images of what had to be a fal'Cie of Cocoon, what with the way it seemed to radiate light in all directions. She couldn't quite understand what the painting was trying to say though. A glowing fal'Cie handing a towel to a group of tiny humans in skirts. That's what it looked like to her.

Regardless, considering how far above her head the roof was, even those tiny humans must've been absolutely enormous. Out of the corner of her eye she could see hints of open sky and the intermittent white glow of Cocoon's shield, which for whatever reason had actually managed to seal up this particular hole. The cracks from the enormous gash in the wall travelled all the way the top of the dome, defacing the intricate artwork with a deep series of cracks.

Only... Wait. Did that crack just move?

Fang cried out, "Wyvern!" and Lightning looked up while instinctively reaching for her sword, only her gunblade was still in its sheath by the door. With supernatural speed, the Pulsian beast descended and a great blast of air knocked both of them off their feet and sent Lightning into the stacked crates with a sickening thump.

Fang screamed. It was the kind of scream that one never forgets, and it reverberated off the distant walls as she whipped out her spear and held it up defiantly. There was no time to tend to Lightning. This thing needed to die. Now.

The wyvern hissed at her as its enormous wings kept it just out of range, roughly twenty feet above her, two massive talons scraping the lids of the crates as they dangled beneath the creature's massive bulk.

"Come and get me you son of a bitch!" Fang cried, tossing her remaining grenade at the creature.

The resulting explosion shook the room and the wyvern roared in outrage. At best it would be slightly dazed for a few moments.

Fang leapt to Lightning's side, taking only the slightest moment to confirm that yes, the soldier was bleeding badly, but also that she was still breathing. She found the small pouch that Lightning always kept tied to her belt and pulled out a solitary bottle of aegisol and shattered it against the ground.

These days, aegisol was more valuable than all the gold in the Mah'habara Subterra, but that was the last thing of Fang's mind.

The creature roared past them but bounced off the protective shield thrown up by the smashed bottle.

Confused and enraged, the wyvern settled over another stack of crates for a moment before its talons picked up a crate each and hurled them at Fang like they were made of styrofoam.

With Lightning behind her, Fang was forced to stand her ground and take one of the crates head on with only her spear and the slowly dissipating shield for protection. The impact knocked her backwards, but it was enough to shield Lightning as she lay there lifelessly in a growing pool of her own blood.

Fang saw red. This had to end now. "Come on!" she shouted. "Is that all ya' got? No wonder your species is going extinct!"

She'd never know if the creature could understand her words, but the way it shrieked certainly made it seem so. This time, it came straight at her like a bullet, folding its wings to keep them clear of the wall of crates. With a war-whoop worthy of a Yun goddess, Fang hurled her spear right into the creature's open mouth.

She dropped to the ground as it shot over her, hacking and pitching up and down as it choked on its own blood. It circled once... twice... then tumbled down and crashed with a loud bang on the far side of the room, far out of Fang's line of sight.

Fang didn't spare it, or her spear, another thought and rushed to Lightning's side. In her haste, she dropped two health potions before she managed to pour the contents of the third past the wounded soldier's lips.

"Light? Light! You've gotta wake up!"

A heart-breaking moment passed before Lighting gasped and began coughing. Fang pulled her close. "Dammit, Light." She wanted to curse her out. Lightning had no right to go and die on her after everything they had just been though.

"Sorry," the soldier croaked. "Is it dead?"

"I think so," Fang mumbled, squeezing the woman tightly to her.

"You killed a wyvern by yourself? That's pretty impressive."

Fang grunted. "That was nothing. You should see what my girlfriend can do."

Lightning sheepishly rubbed the back of her head. "Yeah, I heard she can make a pretty impressive dent in the floor whenever her thick head collides with it."

"Well, everyone has their off days," Fang said with a toothy grin.

...

Fang retrieved Lightning's Guardian Corps jacket for her to use as a pillow while she recovered. The soldier still had a pretty nasty lump on the side of her head from the looks of it. Unfortunately, it was an injury that would take some time to heal, even after the use of all of their remaining potions.

As she rested, and Fang tried to get all the wvyern goop off her prized spear, Lightning seemed to stare with increasing interest at the crates that were still stacked in orderly rows all around her.

After enough prodding, Fang finally gave in and opened one of them, which she did using her spear as a crowbar because dammit she was tired and cleaning the wyvern's blood off of it had exhausted all that was left of her patience.

She didn't know what to expect when she finally pried one of the lids off, but it definitely wasn't this. In fact, it was so baffling, Fang had to sit back on her haunches and think about it. Then she pried a second lid off only to be faced with the exact same thing.

Pants.

She scratched her head. The crates were filled to the brim with pants. All in that brown sort of color that male soldiers in the Guardian Corps would wear.

Lightning's voice was still a little weak, "Fang? What's in there?"

She tossed one of them down to Lightning. "That's all there is," Fang said. This was all rather disappointing to say the least.

Lightning was strangely silent. "Light?" she called out, peering down from her perch.

"In Etro's name..."

Fang blinked, and leaned over to look down at her. "What? What is it?"

Lightning was holding the pants up to the light. "It's... it's glorious!"

"Um... Light? It's just a pair of pants."

She must've had a miraculous recovery, because Lightning was soon on her feet, stripping off her skirt, and leaving Fang so confused that she didn't even have the time to admire her girlfriend's butt. With a strange look of delight, Lightning slipped the rather unremarkable pair of pants on and practically beamed.

The last time Fang had seen Lightning smile like that was on the day she had awoken from crystal stasis.

"You don't understand, Fang," Lightning said, finally meeting her gaze. "Female members of the Corps have never been allowed to wear pants."

Fang tilted her head, "No pants… like at all?"

Lightning had her hands on her hips. "Do you honestly think I would wear that skirt with my uniform if I had any choice in the matter?"

"I just assumed you knew you had damn fine legs and wanted to rest of the world to know it too."

"Tch."

Lightning was still admiring herself as Fang jumped down from her perch. It was still a little hard to take in. If what she found so far was any indication, they were in a massive fal'Cie warehouse containing a thousand years worth of Guardian Corps pants. "Couldn't you have just worn men's pants?"

Lightning huffed. "They never fit right. And like I said, the Corps has a strict uniform."

Fang laughed and shook her head. "I bet if you had broken that dress code, no one would've touched ya. And anyway, couldn't you have taken up sewing or something?"

Lightning frowned, but it wasn't her usual annoyed frown.

"You know... sewing? With a needle and thread?"

If the woman's response was any indication, she had no idea what either of those things were. Fang suppressed a desire to groan. Of course Lightning wouldn't know what a needle and thread were. The fal'Cie produced everything on Cocoon...

"So," Fang said, watching with amusement as Lightning brushed her hands up and down her leg, seeming to approve of the fabric and fit. "What are you gonna say when you write up your report on this place?"

A hint of pink tinged Lightning's cheeks. "I think... I think we should get a few of these crates out of here first. Then worry about the report."

Fang couldn't help but laugh. "All right, all right, but I don't see a way to get even one of these crates out of here as it stands." There was still the little matter of that massive crevice they had only just managed to pass over earlier.

"Well," Lightning began, "all we need is a ride."

"You gonna get Sazh to come rescue us?"

Lightning just smiled as her beeping touchpad led the way, seemingly towards the very large hole on the far side of the hall. It didn't escape Fang's notice that the soldier's old Guardian Corps skirt had been left behind them on the floor.

…

The hall was so enormous that it took them quite some time to reach even the center of it. Here was the final resting place of the now dormant fal'Cie.

There wasn't much left of it; a tangled mass of crystal and metal that had nothing recognizably human or animal about it. Lightning lingered at its side, and Fang would've given anything to know what she was thinking about at that moment. She wondered if perhaps this room had changed Lightning's opinions on the fal'Cie, if even just a little.

"I wonder why it's here," Lightning said finally.

Fang had no answers. "Doesn't make sense, does it? It's a kind of petty thing to do to something that just makes pants all day."

Lightning shook her head. "Maybe it wasn't Barthandelus."

"What do you mean?"

"Most professional women in Cocoon have to wear skirts as part of their uniform."

"Huh." 'Well, that's fucking stupid,' Fang thought. She sidled up to Lightning and wrapped an arm around her. "You think that the higher ups told the fal'Cie to lock this thing away?"

The soldier shrugged weakly.

'How frustratingly... typical,' Fang thought.

Still, if Fang knew Lightning, and she liked to think she did, then that was something that was gonna change. "Well, if you took down the fal'Cie, destroyed the Sanctum, and scored a totally hot girlfriend from the evil world below, changing your people's sexist attitudes on acceptable women's attire should be a piece of cake, yeah?"

Lightning smiled and nodded. Then she leaned in for an all too brief kiss.

Damn, Lightning was good at that.

"And you won't mind if I wear pants more often around the house?"

Fang shrugged. "Nah. Not as long as you take them off occasionally."

A growing breeze and high-pitched whine signaled the arrival of Lightning's unmanned velocycle as it executed a perfect landing right beside the dais. The two women quickly got to work loading what they could onto the back of the machine. Hopefully, two dozen pairs of pants Lightning's exact size would keep her happy for a little while.

"I had no idea these things could fly themselves," Fang said as she mounted the seat behind Lightning.

"Of course," Lightning replied, her expression brightening as she revved the electric motor.

"Then why bother piloting it? Why not have the machine do all the work."

"Because it's fun."

Fang smiled back. It was a sentiment she could easily agree with. Still... "Why don't you put it on autopilot for the trip down?"

"Why?" Lightning asked, head tilted in confusion.

"Turn around and I'll show you."

Lightning chuckled even as she blushed. For a moment, she looked out over Gran Pulse waiting in the distance before finally nodding. "All right."

Fang grinned.

The End.

AN – c: ?