route_1065 | [closed]

In my world? The last time it had happened was five hundred years before I got mine. So not common. Heard of, but before it had happened to me, I'd written it off as just another embellished tale in our history.

You see, my world used to be divided into two-- a sphere called Cocoon where people lived inside of it, supported by a fake sun, and the land down below, Gran Pulse. I was born in Cocoon and raised to believe that Pulse was hell and the humans living there were monsters and demons.

About five hundred years before my birth, there had been a war between Cocoon and Gran Pulse, and while Cocoon claimed itself the winner, it had sustained considerable damage to its shell that could not be fixed. We have creatures called the fal'Cie, which are completely beyond our comprehension, but they're powerful and one used to operate as Cocoon's fake sun. Even with their powers, the fal'Cie of Cocoon couldn't fix it.

Due to the war, practically everyone was afraid of Pulse, to the point that if a person from that land would enter our world, it would create mass panic in every city, and the city the Pulsian appears in would be evacuated and the people rounded up and prevented from leaving to avoid tainting the rest of Cocoon.

This happened to me and my mother. Word had gotten out that the city we were visiting had not a person but a fal'Cie from Pulse was hiding in it.

[Swallows a little. This one is difficult, now.]

We were rounded up and forced into trains and brought to the lowest part of Cocoon for the 'Purge', as our government called it, but some residents-- rebels, really-- of the city objected and fought back. In an attempt to get us home, my mother accompanied them and died.

[His narration of her death is woefully short for now, because he's remembering it, the same way he'd been remembering all those events for thirteen years.

He'll try to make it a little more descriptive though, if asked. Or if he can find the words to do so.]

Edited 2013-07-05 11:40 (UTC)

[So that's why Hope doesn't like trains. It makes sense when you have memories like that attached to the ride. He knows how painful the loss of a mother can be, he can really sympathize.

A part of him completely wants to get furious about being round up to be "purged." It was so much like that the Nazis were doing, it makes him feel a little sick that more worlds than just his had to deal with that.]

That must have been devastating, I'm sorry.

Thank you.

[He pauses a little, just to get his story in order. This is a man who has no idea what his world is like after all. It's like telling Ventus all over again.]

With the prodding of my new companion, a girl who'd noticed that the woman who fell from the bridge was my mother, I followed the leader of the rebel group to speak to him about my mother-- he was heading towards the Pulse fal'Cie because it had apparently captured his fiancee. In the fal'Cie's vestige, we found not only her but her sister, a soldier who'd quit to be able to find her freely, and a man who accompanied her because she was a soldier.

It was when we all came together that we found out it was the man's fiancee who had met the fal'Cie before it had even been discovered by the military. She had branded a l'Cie-- a person given powers to accomplish a specific goal for the fal'Cie. If they fail, the l'Cie transforms into a monster and has no trace of the human it used to be. However, if the l'Cie succeeds in completing this Focus, they become crystal and gain 'eternal life' as a reward.

[The huff that follows that statement shows just what he thinks of this so-called reward.]

The woman crystallized and her fiance and sister decided to attack the fal'Cie in revenge. The rest of us, we went along with it because with the military closing in on us, there was nowhere else to go.

We had fought the fal'Cie, but it forcibly inserted our eidoliths into our bodies, thus branding us and giving us the same Focus as Serah.

[He doesn't realize he'd said her name, but when he does a fraction of a second later, it's too late to take it back.

Hope starts to pace around his room, an unconscious action as he turns his dull eidolith around and around in his hands.]

While we were being branded, the military had begun to gun down the fal'Cie-- it had most likely died in the attack, because we never found its remains. But they had found us instead just a few hours later, and knew we were a threat as well, despite being Cocoon citizens. Naturally, they had orders to detain us-- kill us if necessary.

Obviously, the only thing we could do was fight back [kill] and run while they regrouped.

[Notice he's not mentioning what his Focus was.]

[Steve listens and takes in the details he understands and translates what he doesn't to the best of his abilities, but some things escape him. Two things haven't, the "Focus" and how the name Serah seemed to be what triggered the pacing.

Hope always struck Steve as a gentle soul, a good person at heart, killing must have been horrible for him at first. He's seen many men become different people once they learned to kill, he wonders how different Hope used to be.]

I'm glad you got out of there alive.

[He'll ask about the Focus later]

[Hope's only glad that Steve doesn't ask. But Hope sits down on his bed anyway.]

There were times that I almost died, though. I had magic, eventually specializing in it, but sometimes, when you're the designated healer of the group, it's difficult to do something when you yourself are almost down. [His scars are old and white now, faint against his skin, but they're still there and he doesn't like looking at mirrors because of him.]

Our situation had gotten more complicated than just an entire branch of the military bearing down on us. We'd found that one of our companions-- the same girl who had been with me from the start, in fact-- was a Pulsian native. She hadn't been branded at the same time we did, because she was already one.

She'd apparently been in the vestige with the fal'Cie as crystal, and returned to her human form thirteen days before the Purge-- and she wasn't alone because there had been one other with her. They'd been crystal statues in the vestige for five hundred years, and I think they were two of the only few native Pulsians left in the world, because when we went to Gran Pulse ourselves to find a way to remove our brands, there were no other people around for miles but us.

[A bit of a pause, because he's rambling and possibly jumping around.]

We had found... too many things while running away from our Focus and trying to remove our brands before it was too late.

It had all been orchestrated by the Cocoon fal'Cie, the ones who'd sheltered us and fed us and kept us safe from the monsters in Pulse. They wanted Cocoon gone and were using us, l'Cie branded by a Pulsian fal'Cie to do it.

[He's just inadvertently revealed his Focus. Oops. But he hasn't seemed to notice yet.]

[Oh, well, now he doesn't have to ask. It's a lot of information to understand. He does his best to take in all he can, a little confused in a couple places, but doesn't show it. No reason to make Hope reexplain something painful.]

They didn't want simple reintegration, did they?

No, they weren't aiming for reintegration. Their true reasoning still escapes me until now, but they wanted the entire human population of Cocoon to be destroyed. They'd planned for the Pulsian fal'Cie to be discovered in Cocoon and knew it might panic and take some humans to brand and carry out the Focus of destroying Cocoon.

And we, as the ones taken by that fal'Cie, were the ones to do so.

[He stops playing with the crystal, letting it sit in his palm.]

When we were told to go back to Cocoon to destroy it, we went back willingly, but to instead stop the plan ourselves.

You weren't scared of the consequences.

[Steve thinks it's very admirable that they went back to stop it, to turn against the Focus. Doing so would turn them into monsters from what he said. Some fear is okay, but they didn't let any of it stop them, and that's what Steve admires most in people.]

[Hope smiles a little-- ruefully, but it's the first sign of an expression other than soul-crushing pain over the memories.] No, we weren't.

Things still happened as they wanted though, just not the exact way that they wanted it to be.

We fought the fal'Cie that had been taunting us the entire time, and then eventually our Focus' target-- the fal'Cie supplying power to Cocoon and keeping it afloat about Gran Pulse. We didn't mean to, obviously, but it had appeared suddenly, and we had no choice.

We killed it, obviously, but along with it, the other Cocoon fal'Cie died as well and without that one fal'Cie's support, Cocoon fell. But our two Pulsian friends and another of us Cocoon citizens had stopped it from crashing into Gran Pulse. [These memories are false, he knows, brought on by a paradox, but he cant help but still be pained by just recalling them. Because it doesn't change the fact that Fang and Vanille are still crystal, and Lightning had been taken from them.] They transformed into a crystal pillar that held up Cocoon.

Everyone was relatively safe, but without power and without the fal'Cie, we all had to move out of our old homes and settle in Gran Pulse.

[Steve wants to say that Hope's friends were brave and he's sorry for the loss, and he is, but it feels weird to do that right now. He's not sure why, but he just nods to show he's listening, giving Hope a sympathetic look. He can really understand the loss of friends, even if it's for the greater good.]

[His voice starts becoming a little more hollow now, like he's reciting a memorized speech, because he's still personally stuck on the fact that Fang and Vanille are crystal.]

We lost our brands and powers, but I found my father, returned to school, or at least a semblance of it, and became head of a scientific expedition group he founded, the Academy. I began to research the history of Gran Pulse to help me come up with ideas to better the lives of the people who had survived the Fall. I led my people to Pulsian ruins and excavated them to understand the secrets of how the Pulsian people lived without their own fal’Cie to coddle them.

Eventually we came across the city of Paddra, where the people used to be led by girls who could see the future. There would only be one girl at a time, but when she’d die, another one with the exact same name and appearance would be born, and with the exact same abilities. Each of these girls used a machine called an Oracle Drive to records their visions for their people to view at any time they wanted.

I found the Oracle Drive and found that my memories of Cocoon’s Fall were false. [Falls silent because... he’s honestly unsure on how to go about explaining this. Even for himself, paradoxes and changes in time are notoriously difficult to comprehend.]

[Steve looks confused for a second]

False?

Time in my world is... a largely unstable thing. If an event is altered in any way, everything that happens from that point onward is changed, including the memories of people. [This is actually more confusing and complicated, but he knows he should translate it into terms other people can understand.] There would also be records of timelines converging, people and things from one time period appearing in another, events that should not be logically possible occur, and making time unstable in the general sense. We call such events paradoxes.

With the Oracle Drive I found in the Paddrean ruins, I discovered that one of my friends-- Serah's older sister, in fact-- whom I thought was part of the crystal pillar was in fact alive and well in a completely different world, because I watched her fighting in that world. I don't know the complete story, but it seemed she had been captured by a paradox and somehow ended up in that world.

All I remember is her leaving us to crystallize, but according to Serah, she had been on Gran Pulse with us when everyone began to evacuate Cocoon. I remember Serah being happy one minute, announcing her plans for marriage with her fiance, and the next minute crying because her sister was gone and I...

I was the one who told her that her sister was part of the crystal pillar, and she didn't believe me.

[He should have known back then that there had been something wrong with the situation. But he didn't.]

[Steve is actually able to follow along rather well, a little confused in a couple places, but decides not to mention it. Though, he thought Serah was crystallized, maybe he missed something or is misunderstanding. Oh well.]

Sounds like it must have been difficult.

It was. I'd thought our problems with things beyond human comprehension were gone when we were finished with Cocoon and we were all freed from our Focus. Serah came back, but I feel like we'd lost Light in return.

[Again, he doesn't realize he'd said her name. It slipped out, because the use of her name comes very, very naturally to him.]

[Oh, another new name. Wonders who Light is. He's not going to ask, just follow along the best he can.]

So, you weren't freed of your Focus?

We were, definitely. [He was the first one to have noticed it, after all, and his left hand twitches, because he remembers pulling at the bandanna around that wrist to see if the mark of the Pulse fal'Cie was still there.] But just a few years after that, we had difficulties with time and the potential of the entire time stream falling apart around us because of the paradoxes, not just the difficulties of living in a world that had not been developed by humans for hundreds of years.

[He nods, showing he's both listening and understanding. And he is for once getting everything he's saying.]

Did you find a way to fix it?

Not me, no. But Serah discovered that she had the ability to travel through time by the use of special machines we eventually called Time Gates, and she looked for ways to right the paradoxes and stop them from occurring once again A man claiming to be from the future accompanied her-- Noel.

For my part, I stayed behind and went through time normally, but at least I had a goal in mind. Noel had told me that the future he had come from was in danger, that he was the last human alive due to a number of things, one of which Cocoon colliding with Gran Pulse due to the weakening of its crystal pillar, creating an impact large enough to wipe out cities.

I began looking for ways to either keep the people safe from the impact or keep Cocoon from falling once again.

Did you find some?

[it's still a bit confusing, but he's starting to find a way to keep the information in a way that he can start to organize it and understand in his head. The curse of an eidetic memory is trying to figure out how to keep all the information stored in your head straight.]

Yes, I did-- with the help of the Oracle Drive.

One of the other recordings in the Oracle Drive had been that of the Thirteenth Ark, a fortress created by Pulse fal'Cie long ago as some sort of stronghold for their l'Cie. Apparently it had the ability to stay in the air and I realized that if I could study it for myself, I could find out how exactly it managed to defy gravity for centuries.

However, the Oracle Drive also showed me that it wouldn't be accessible from Gran Pulse for another three hundred and eighty-seven years.

So I created a machine to place myself under an extended sleep and wake me when the time is right.

[Steve goes very still and honestly can't understand why Hope did it. He gets the reason, it's not an entirely bad one either, but at this point in his life, he can't fathom why anyone would ever do that willingly. Surely there were other ways of doing this, but he reserves his judgement and says nothing, letting Hope continue.]

[Hope quirks an eyebrow at Steve-- he's unusually quiet now, when he'd been vocal, asking questions earlier.

It definitely has something to do with his travel through time instead of confusion over the development. But he goes on, because he's most definitely not done. Not even close.]

While I'd been in suspended animation, the Academy had founded a city called Academia right where the Thirteenth Ark was prophesied to appear and gathered everyone to live within it. I woke where and... [Became a man out of time, despite all the power he still had.]

Began to work again. With the Academy, we found that the Ark had been kept afloat through a natural material called a Graviton Core. With further study, we found that it's made of crystals that could generate enough force to keep a massive structure afloat without the need for any outside help. It was then that I decided we could use Graviton Cores to power the Cocoon project we had started long ago, ten years after the fall or the original one.

Serah and Noel gathered five for us, the number we'd calculated would be enough to support our new Cocoon, but it did nothing to speed up construction-- the new Cocoon would take another hundred years to finish, and I was needed to finish it.

So I used my machine again to sleep until the last few moments of construction.

[Steve keeps a pretty calm look to himself, but he's very still and his levels of distress skyrocket at the idea of Hope doing it twice. The idea of doing it once willingly was bad enough, twice makes him want to leave the room to sort his feelings. Sure, Hope had sound logic for doing it, but Steve just can't fathom it.

Suddenly Grace is outside the room getting into a loud argument with the door guards, because like hell she's letting Steve be locked in a room and freaking out bad enough to wake her up. She's getting in that room if she has to fight to get in there.

The noise catches Steve off guard and he's standing, reaching for his shield before remembering it's not there. There's a second before he registers what's going on.]

Looks like Grace realized I wasn't accessible. [he tried to cover it up, but the altercation outside the door is definitely about to get more violent after Steve's reaction to the noise]

[Hope registers the name as Steve's Lucario and he realizes what's going on-- as Lucario are capable of feeling their trainer's emotions, Grace is most definitely reacting to Steve. And Steve's own reactions to Hope's story.

It cant be because Hope's background is terrible-- more terrible things had been told before this point. She would have tried to intervene earlier, so it's Steve's reaction to suspended animation.

And Hope immediately feels guilty about that, striding across the room to open it for her.]

It's fine, Paladin, Valkyrie. She can come in.

[If Grace wants to hit him... well. Hope probably deserves it for doing something to Steve.]

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