[center][b]Chapter 1: Building Chaos[/b][/center]



(Continued from "Universal Defense" in Traverse Town.)

A black haired man of about 25 in heavy, futuristic, metal armor sat, rubbing a hand through his black hair. His sky blue eyes were on the silver-haired demigoddess of approximately the same age beside him. Kaith sat silently, thinking, as Demi did not move. He did not know what to say. After all, he knew she had done terrible things, from torture to murder, as Diana. What would his friends have done? John was not exactly the negotiating type. Karsath, if he could legitimately be called a friend, and the others were not close enough to her. [i]Wait... Someone close to her... It might work.[/i]

[i]Zivaku, you live in a video game universe. If it's the only chance, it [b]will[/b] work in almost every scenario.[/i] That was Lukgar Revak, the personification of the power of a Cruxis angel that resided within the Marine captain. For once, he knew how to help. Unlike his past, this entity had a sense of when to help, not hurt. Or he just wanted Demi to stop her moping. It was hard to tell.

The young man acknowledged the pseudo-encouragement with a slight nod, and spoke. "Kyn, listen to me." He watched as she turned to him, light eyes bloodshot from her tears. "You did some terrible things. I don't deny that."

[i]"Not helping, captain,"[/i] came a voice from the walls. The artificial intelligence 54-1N, more commonly known as Sain, was taking a suicide watch of Demi, taking into account the recent attempt. He had worked with Kaith since his time in the Halo UNSC Marines, and so was their information database and security control.

"I have this," the Cruxis angel told his friend. He then spoke again, holding the woman's shoulders gently. "What you did is in the past. You did it, and it's over and done with in less than a minute. Don't dwell on the past any further than we are now, because it's gone and done with. Live right now, right here."

There were ten seconds of silence as the future of Kynthia Usagi pushed his hands off. "So says the time traveler who changed his brother."

"Are you doubting Yuna?" No response. "I don't know who's kid that is," he whispered, not wanting Sain to hear. "but I'll help you with it no matter what you've done. We need your help, Kyn. If we don't, I don't want to know what kind of worlds it'll grow up in."

Demi wiped her eyes, then looked at her boyfriend. Another twenty seconds of silence. Then, "I'll do it. I'll help. Just don't... Don't tell them, okay? About all of it."

The soldier nodded, giving her a brief hug before helping her stand. "You got it."

He walked out of the room with her, and saw Somnio talking to Hawk and Angel. The future of Grace Wang wore a ruby-colored robe that would have fit right into the Han dynasty of China, with goldenrod cuffs, sashes, and collar. Around the waist were two cords, one to hold together the sash, the other to hold a small pouch. A cut was down the left side, showing black pants and red, yellow-trimmed shoes. "...Then they just dropped in that portal. I think it was a time machine, from Dolor's comment. I had to run out with the girls to get out." She motioned to the two frightened eight-year-old girls who were hugging her waist for comfort. "We might have lost Amestris already, if they're heavy in Bord'wan."

"Always, [i]always[/i] Bord'wan." Kaith made his presence known to the three fighters and near-Little Sisters. " I'm starting to consider making it a no-fly zone for all of us. It never ends well when we go there."

"Is she okay?" Angel asked, his brown-and-blue eyes showing his concern for his demigoddess friend.

"As I'm going to be," Demi replied grimly.

Hawk wisely decided to change the subject. "Where are Axel and Grace, then? They're the only group we haven't had check in."

It was then that Sora returned to the shop, a smile on his face. The Twilught Town gangs were behind him, along with Ephraim. "Hey, guys!" he greeted, waving. "Guess what? Vivi can use magic! Awesome spells, too!"

Said Twilight Towner shuffled his feet in embarrassment. He hadn't expected that kind of response from Sora, especially not to everyone else.

There was complete silence. Derest, half asleep, perked up at the announcement.

All expression faded from Captain Kaith's face. This was the last thing he expected to hear. Then, a grin grew slowly. "Great. We'll need the backup firepower, whether figuratively or literally."

As the other experienced Interferences spoke to most Twilight Towners about recent events, Seifer Alamsy and Hayner walked up to the armored soldier and the daughter of Yumigami beside him. Both had very serious expressions on their faces. The latter spoke up. "It doesn't matter what you say. We're helping you fight these guys, like it or not."

Demi and her boyfriend stared at the two teens. These were kids. They fought will foam bats. Their overall contribution to the war effort had been escaping their homeworld, which was very likely under control by the unnamed enemy forces.

After several seconds, the future of Gregory Zivaku said just two words. "Wait here with Demi." Then he walked off into a room.

"Is he always like that?" asked Pence, seeing the exchange.

"Not usually." The silver haired demigoddess looked where the Aselian had gone. "Just... It's complicated."

"I'll bet," Seifer remarked.

It was then that Grace came in, followed by Axel. "We kept them out of the Land of Dragons! Oh, and both Jessicas are evil," she added as a side note.

"Great..." Somnio groaned, palming her face.

Axel looked to the others. The refugees (except the Little Sisters) looked surprised to see him.

"Axel? You too?" Olette asked. She and her group had learned to find the Flurry of the Dancing Flames at least neutral to them, possibly friendly.

"Is that 'no surprise'?" Sora asked Fuu.

"Not that," was the familiarly curt reply.

"You'll never believe how we got out of there," Grace said.

"The imperial city was hurt, but a lot of people are still okay." Axel looked exhausted.

"Shang? Mulan? The Emperor? Mushu?" Sora asked, concerned.

"They're okay," Grace reassured him.

---

Kaith return a few minutes later, a few short, straight metal pipes in his hands.

"...So that's how we did it," Grace said, barely holding in laughter at the group's confused expressions. Donald and Goofy had joined them.

Sora spoke first. "That is, by far, the weirdest use of three pigs, a barrel of fish, a crossbow, nineteen Assault Riders, a shiny rock, corn flakes, a mop, a banana, some string, a cow, a hat, six wooden puzzle pieces, four candles, cinnamon, and a rubber chicken I have ever heard of in my life."

Axel looked to Grace. "The cow was a little overboard."

"Worth it."

Kaith would have palmed his face if his arms were not full. "I don't want to know, do I?"

"No, you don't," the ex-Number VIII of the Organization XIII agreed.

Hayner looked to the captain as he put down the lengths of pipe. "So, what's the story?"

One metal tube was thrown to him, another to Seifer. "Hit me as hard as you can."

The two rivals nodded, and charged at the challenger, holding the pipes like they would Struggle bats.

====================

(Continued from "The Way the World Ends" in Other Worlds)

Kynthia gripped her scythe tightly, ready to spring to action. That man in the strange red and black armor had not stopped the murder of Fal, so he definitely was not a good person. Okay, so she barely knew the now-deceased Elite. That still did not make it right.

"If you attack me, he could die of these wounds untreated." The stranger apparently was aware of her actions as the white light coming from his fingers healed the younger Gregory Zivaku.

Surprised, the demigoddess kept looking at their captor. "What do you want with us?" She winced, holding her wounded arm.

"Ten more seconds....." Hayabusa let down his arm, the wound mostly healed. "Major plasma burns. He will make it, though."

"Answer me," she ordered.

"Let go of your arm," he avoided the question, taking her hand softly off of her bullet wound and healing it in the same manner as Greg's plasma one, white light from the fingertips. The arm ejected the bullet, and the wound sealed. "There. You should be fine now."

"Answer my question. Now." She touched her arm, testing for pain that was not there.

"Nothing, but to get you back to your own time, Miss Usagi," Hayabusa finally answered, and put a hand on his neck, turning some kind of knob.

"How--?"

"Without that synthesizer on, you should recognize me better, kid." When Kynthia gaped in recognition of the voice, the man reached up, removing his helmet.

"K...Kaith?" she asked, moving closer to Greg to help him sit up as he regained consciousness.

The man nodded. He had definitely seen better days. A long scar crossed his face from left ear to the right side of his chin. He had a short beard, more of not taking time to shave than on purpose. But his eyes...those eyes were cold. They had seen horror and pain. Death and corruption. "It's been fifteen years. I lost. You can help win if you get back to that time. I think you two, with the right information, could stop this time from ever happening."

Greg had awakened fully during these short sentences, and smiled up at the Nippon-born demigoddess. "Good to see you okay," the youngest Cruxis angel told her, and she helped him up with a returned grin. He stroked her dark gray ponytail as F. Kaith, also known as Hayabusa, continued.

"I have an AI unit with all of the info you need except one thing. When you get back, tell me that I need the sword from Rhodes. I'll understand. I didn't realize how important that would be to the war effort, but it ended up being the one thing we desperately needed." The personal bodyguard of Diana's twins sighed. "A while after you dropped out, we crashed and burned. Everything went to hell in a handbasket, one after another. Kyn, my time's version of you was captured and re-corrupted. I hear you met her sociopathic kids, Letum and his sister Nyx. I was re-bound to Diana's will the same night. I think the people sent to get us were...Kyle Chambers and Elesius, a Houdini Splicer and a Brute Stalker--they both can turn invisible. If you see them, kill them immediately and you'll fix a mistake." A pause. "So many people died. I had to kill so many. I stopped caring about what I did to anyone else. But you two...you can fix this. Find Isaac--"

"That jerk's here too?" Greg asked, tensing up at the mention.

"Yeah, so shut up. He's your brother still. I lost mine to power a long time ago. From reports, more are here. Somebody I work with killed the Elite of rebel group number six hundred--sarcasm, mind you--and that sniper girl, so watch your back."

"She's dead?" Kynthia asked. Abigail Williams had never liked her in the short time they had known each other, and with good reason, given her relation to Diana, but the demigoddess still recognized her as a good person.

"Yeah. Look, I'll give you instructions on how to get to the experimental portal chamber. If I can get a quick look at your Chronos Pathway, Greg, I can give you the coordinates you'll need to put into it to approximate the right time. It should work, but you never know. The technology is pretty hard to track, so it might not work. Anyway, about the portal. Reaper has been trying to find a way to get to the Externals' world for years. He says he'll move on to Umiyuri's world after that."

"Who?" Kyn asked.

"It's complicated," Greg told her, giving his future the time-travel armband for a short time before it was returned. "Okay, give the instructions."

"...I see," she said as they both stood up.

Hayabusa did so, taking about two minutes. "If you see Karsath, don't listen to him. There's something...wrong about him. Just was pulled out of the portal, I think, so he could be on any side."

"Swell. An evil Alex. That's just great," Greg said.

"Go. I'll catch up with you in the chamber and get that AI. Got some work to do first about Omega, the bad guys." With that, the man disappeared in a golden flash.

The couple nodded, and took off running, heading in the direction they needed to go. After several minutes, they found two figures, one familiar, the other not.

"Black Paladin!" Greg greeted, making his presence and that of Yumigami's daughter known. "Who's..." The young man recognized the blade wrapped around the cloaked man's arm. "Oh. Martel damn it all."

"Shut it, kid," Dolor told him.

"I'm not a kid!"

Isaac ran up to them from a nearby room. "Greg? Kynthia?" He shook his head. "No time. We have to go, now. I just saw a Karsath. That's not a good thing this time for any of us. Any idea how to get out?"

"Kaith just told us," Kynthia replied. To the shocked expressions, she added, "Yes, he is good. We were just heading toward an exit he told us about."

Another young man limped quickly into the area. He had his eyes closed. His dark brown hair was unkempt, his pale skin showing that he had not spent long outside any time recently. The young man was about the age of Greg and Kynthia. He held a scoped pistol in his right hand. His left arm draped over a floating metal orb. His pants and shirt had cuts and burns marring them. "Greg? Kynthia? That you?"

"Fixer, it's us," Greg confirmed. "Do you want to get out of this time, back to ours? We can stop this."

"Hey, that's that lightbulb that knocked us out!" Dolor shouted.

"Don't attack it again!" Isaac pleaded. "We need to work together."

Beeps could be heard from the robotic sphere, then a depressed toot.

"Don't listen, Sparky," Simon "Fixer" Goodman said. "He's a jerk."

Greg smirked at Dolor's incredulous, inaudible response of throwing up his hands. "We can catch up on what's happened as we run. You can do that?"

"No, of course not," Goodman said sarcastically, and they all took off again, Goodman going as fast as he could to keep up.

---

Some time later, Hayabusa walked into a secure room, one only those with clearance could enter. Why he had it... Well, what did it matter if he did? He couldn't do anything against the forces against him.

Kira now resided in his head, thanks to the computer chip's interface with his metal implants for the armor he wore. She had been surprised by his identity, but they had quickly exchange. Plans from the rebels Kira led, and from the ex-soldier. But this one... This was not sane at all.

[i]"Why have you come, meddler?"[/i] The voice echoed within the bodyguard's mind. It could not read him as Reaper could, but did not need to open its mouth. [i]"Have you embraced your own evolution?"[/i]

"Seraphim, how about a deal?" The man walked to the computer console near the hovering bubble, ignoring the six yellow eyes staring into his back. "You cause a riot among the Chimera, I let you loose?"

[i]"This is completely insane,"[/i] Kira told her operator from inside his helmet. "Didn't you learn from Gravemind? These guys don't--"

[i]"Agreed,"[/i] the Seraphim stated.

[i]"...I stand corrected."[/i]

"I'll open this gate, but you don't attack me. Or those you know as heroic Interferences. Not once." The bubble disappeared, and yellowed tentacles reached out, steadying the monstrosity.

It had a human body, with the tattered remains of a shirt and pants. Its six-eyed head had no nose, the mouth twisted into a crazed grin. Two wings that would befit a gargoyle were on the back, if it could be called any gender at this point. The tentacles, eight in all, were also from the back, between the wings and below them. It began to float as an alarm went off, tentacles waving as it walked to the door.

An Omega soldier ran to the source, a group of troops with him.

The beast looked to the adversaries, and they slammed against the walls instantly. Necks snapped, and it walked calmly on its way.

"You're welcome," F. Kaith said, walking in the opposite direction, ready to teleport away.

[i]"He's not making it out of here, is he?"[/i] Kira asked.

"Louis!" Kaith called, making the Seraphim stop. "Thanks for the help, kid."

---

Alexander was not happy.

He had been in this reality all of an hour, maximum, and had been abandoned two times in five minutes. Even with his precautionary Haste spell, the young man still was taking quite some time to see any but the soldiers wandering the halls. That Isaac Zivaku boy had stared at him, almost [i]through[/i] him, it seemed, and had run off in terror. Perhaps it was the same technique that his future self, that "Reaper" man, had used once.

The remaining Karsath knew little of the workings of this incredibly cliched empire outside of its organization as told by its nominal ruler. Okay, so he was strong. That much was true. But a strategist with a goal he could respect and good planning as an overlord? Not so much. It was only a matter of time before the Interference returned to his usual routine. Maybe he could rework that device that so rudely took him from his own reality to send him back. But first, why not have some fun causing chaos here?

These were the Lockshield wielder's thoughts as he searched. He heard fighting up ahead, metal striking metal, and came to a door, flattening against it and opening it inward, slowly. Inside of a gray, room with a computer console, he saw a familiar figure fighting an unfamiliar one in a duel of swords. the familiar one was the angry partner of the first person to abandon him, that "Hayabusa" person. What was his name? Right. Marathon Eva. The man had a longsword, probably taken from the bloody corpse of a man in a robe marked with a crescent moon, if his empty sheath meant anything.

The other person was a muscular man of about twenty. He had short brown hair and similarly colored, focused eyes, and wore a black shirt with his dark pants. In his only arm, his right, he held a broadsword. This was probably that fighter from the obligatory rebel group who Reaper had mentioned.

Rather than cut in, Alexander decided to wait for one of the combatants to come out on top before making his presence known, even as the alarms started up.

He watched as the combatants traded blow for blow. Stab to slash, horizontal to vertical to diagonal. Sparks flew from the clashing blades. Several cuts marked the unarmored warrior. He was losing by the time he jumped to the side to avoid a thrust, coming between Marathon and the door.

"Give up, Strongarm. You know you can't win. I've beaten people twice as strong, as crafty, as..." Eva then seemed to notice the spectator. "...Karsath? You again?"

The distraction was enough. The broadsword sliced through the armored neck, decapitating Marathon Eva.

Generally, Alexander assumed that when a head is cut off, the decapitated person should spout blood from the neck, followed shortly by the body dropping. Sparks and oil from the neck remains and a retaliatory smack with the blunt side of a blade, however, were usually not seen. Having the headless figure run to a computer console, let out more sparks and light into it, and then collapse in a heap was not common either. This was no ordinary opponent.

Strongarm grunted, then turned to the source of the distraction. "Thanks."

"It was nothing," was the reply, the young man putting his hands behind his back. "You just needed a [i]Decoy[/i], was all." If the slight emphasis or brief purple mist around both of them was noticed, Strongarm made no sign of recognition. The previous Haste spell, though almost finished, helped hide the charge time for the Ivalice Arcane Magick.

The sound of metal on metal, rushing footsteps toward them, caught their ears. "Think you could help?" Strongarm asked.

"Of course." The Lockshield wielder waited for the opponents to come, ready to draw his Ivalice-made Arcturus firearm or a Lockshield design in an instant.

The enemies finally came. They were two young women, possibly in their late teens or early twenties. The armored suits they wore looks like more movable diving bells, with the same boots and bodysuit. The only way Alexander could see that they were female at all was by their body types. A helmet with a red light in it was on their heads, very large, forearm-length hypodermic needles on their left arms. The Interference heard a sucking sound behind him, and turned, seeing two more of the enemies appear from flashes of blue light.

"Hunters," Strongarm told his assumed ally. "Big Sisters."

In this time, Alexander internally changed designs on his Lockshield. Armored enemies would be more vulnerable to electrical strikes. He summoned the weapon in a cloud of smoke, and spoke as the opponents charged. "Lightning 2!" Orbs of electricity surrounded the young man, harming everyone in range. Luckily, that worked wonders. Or luckily for him, anyway.

Strongarm was severely damaged by the strike, smoke rising from his body afterwards as one of the "Hunters" collapsed, dead. "Watch your fire!"

"I apologize," Alex said, feigning sincerity. All three remaining enemies turn their attention to the one-armed swordsman, thanks to the Decoy spell.

"What's going on?" The rebel was unsure who to blame for this turn of events. In the end, that did not matter.

The beating began when one Hunter grabbed him telekinetically, pulling him to her and ramming her weapon straight through his chest, draining an unknown red liquid--it did not seem to be blood--out of him. The woman seemed rejuvinated. Strongarm was, by contrast, weakened greatly. The rest of the fight, if it could be called as such, did not take long. One more Big Sister died, but it was a poorly aimed fireball barrage from another that did it, not their enemy. Finally, they backed off briefly.

"Help...me..." the fighter begged Alexander reaching toward him with a bloody, burned hand. The Arcturus pistol was leveled between his widening eyes, the Lockshield still in Mr. Karsath's other hand.

"If you insist." The gun was fired, reloaded, and fired again at the corpse to be sure before a second reload. Then, the holder pointed it at the other opponents.

A golden flash occurred beside the headless ex-body of Marathon Eva. Deposited was Hayabusa. "I assume you came too late, then? Where's Marathon?"

"Just help me deal with these two."

"Sure. But just a few questions." The strange man--was he a robot as well?--held up a double barrel shotgun from Rapture, circa 1970, aiming at the figures as they jumped to surround the two on either side. Both males went back to backtoward see both in case of teleportation.

"Make them quick." This was no time for talk.

"Alex Karsath didn't have an Ivalice gun." The mysterious man turned to face Alexander. "Or the Lightning Guard. And Big Sisters don't use guns." He apparently saw the two bullet wounds in the rebel warrior.

Briefly, Alexander looked to the design he had chosen, which this stranger had named. It became covered in smoke as he switched designs, altering to the Heartless Seal for increased reflexes, the Ivalice gun begin put away as he jumped, turning 180 degrees to face the man. His Haste spell had run out, so he needed the speed for this. "Clever." All four combatants charged.

This was going to be close.