Cosmos chooses Rosa, Celes, Eiko, Lulu, and Lightning. Chaos chooses Weiss, Remedi, and Emperor Mateus.

Rosa was standing next to Cecil's thrown, listening intently as their son gave his report. She was so proud of him, even if he wasn't yet commander of the Red Wings. He was following Cecil's path of command, though he had not taken the route of Dark Knight that Cecil once had. No, he was more like the Paladin that Cecil was now. She didn't notice until her son cried out that something was wrong. Magic was curling around her and before she could cry out, she was blinded by a white flash of light.

Celes stared out at the ocean from her vantage point. She had lost track of how long she and Cid had been stuck on this deserted island. She had failed. Kefka had destroyed the world, and her friends were scattered or dead. Cid was ill, but going to survive, but she.... Despair from her failure gripped her heart, and in the next moment she flung herself from the peak. She expected to die in the waters below, but before she hit the water, a bright light enveloped her.

Eiko looked out her window at the city of Lindblum. So many years had passed since they had fought for and saved the world. The man she had fallen for was now married to Queen Garnet of Alexandria. Freya had finally convinced Sir Fratley to fall in love with her again and they were settling down to raise a family. Even that damn knight and the mercenary had both found women to love. She would have gone to win Vivi's heart but.... She pushed the memory of her lost friend away. As the "Princess" of Lindblum, she had a duty now. She had to find a suitor that her adoptive father would be proud of. Hell, she would just be happy with a boyfriend! How was a beautiful eighteen year old rich girl like her unable to snag even one man? Was it her horn? Were people intimidated by her status as one of the "Heroes?" She was pacing the room in thought when she felt the magic pulling on her. She could feel no malice from the magic, so she curiously let it take her.

Lulu stood on the beach, thinking of the proposal. Wakka wasn’t very smooth about these things, and while endearing, his proposal had been hadn’t been much of a surprise or romantic. He had bumbled through it almost shyly. It wasn’t that she didn’t have feelings for him. The fact that she did was more shocking than the proposal itself. No, what bothered her was Wakka’s relationship to her. They had been partners in protecting Yuna both before and during her pilgrimage, filling the roles of both Guardians and Mentors to the young summoner. More than that though, before she and Wakka had started getting close, Lulu had taken Wakka’s younger brother Chappu as her lover. They had been engaged when he died in battle against Sin.

Part of Lulu wanted to be with Wakka, but at the same time, she felt like she was betraying Chappu’s memory. It was this dilemma that had made her come out to the beach on her own to watch the sunset. She was trying to clear her thoughts when the magic began to swirl around her. She was alarmed for a moment, but then realized that the spell was a transportation spell, not something that would actually harm her. Wondering what was going on, Lulu allowed herself to be pulled into the light.

Lightning ran through the soldiers, cutting them down one by one. She had to get to Serah, had to protect her. Even if it meant that she was a traitor, she was going to save her sister. Next to her ran Sahz, a man she had met on the purge train. He didn’t seem all that brave, but he was still right beside her. He had taken two pistols off of some of the fallen soldiers and was doing his best to cover her. On a road farther down from their position, Lightning could see a group of people resisting Coccoon’s soldiers just like her. She recognized them as Snow’s group, but didn’t see the man with them. Where the hell was he? He should have been protecting Serah, not starting up some gang! Lightning was about to move on, but then something odd happened. The section of road that had the resistance fighters and the people they were protecting suddenly vanished without a trace. Lightning didn’t understand how such a large section of road could just disappear. There was no explosion or collapse, just where there was a road, there was suddenly nothing but air.

“Sazh, hold on to me.”

“W-what? What are you saying?”

“I need to check something out, so either you come with me or stay here to fight alone.”

“Oh I’m definitely going with you. Hell, you think I can fight all these soldiers on my own? Not happening.”

The man put an arm around her and together they leapt over the side rail and began falling to the remainder of the road below. Lightning turned on her anti-gravity device and was able to gently lower them down, but it wasn’t meant to transport two people at once. The device sparked and died just as they landed.

“Guess I can’t use that now. But my first priority now is….”

She stepped closer to the edge and looked around. Both the end she was standing on, and the other far end that she could see both looked as if something had very cleanly cut through and taken a large part of the road. But roads didn’t just disappear…

“What caused this? It looks too perfect to have been the fighting.”

“Agreed,” she said to Sazh’s comment. She couldn’t see any trace that the missing portion had fallen, so she turned to find a way back up to the road they had left. That was when the magic started to swirl around her.

“I can explain, but you need to come with me.”

“Huh? Who are you,” Lightning asked the feminine voice, but the light blinded her and the next moment, Sazh was alone on the road.

“The hell did she go?”

Gathered before her were some of the greatest warriors of their worlds. Cosmos knew that the team wasn’t exactly balanced in magic and strength, but they each had skills that together could save them and their worlds.

“I am Cosmos, the Goddess of Harmony,” she began. “For millennia, I have held the worlds in balance with Chaos. But now, he is ripping all the worlds apart in order to create his own world. Though it is my duty to stop him, I cannot. It is taking all my strength to hold the remains of your worlds together.”

“I take it that is why you called us. We’re your muscle,” Lightning spoke up. The Goddess nodded.

“But why us? I know a lot of people that are stronger than me,” Eiko said as she noted that she was the youngest and least endowed of the girls there.

“While that is true, physical strength isn’t everything. Sometimes what the world needs to save it is compassion. You Eiko are a very passionate young woman, with a strong spirit and unyielding nature.”

“Most people just come on out and say I’m stubborn instead of dancing around it.”

This pulled a laugh from the other girls, except for Lightning, who continued. “I don’t have time for this. I have to save my sister.”

“And you shall. It just will not be today. If we don’t stop Chaos, your sister will be just one of hundreds of billions of lives lost to the Void. Once you have won, I can return you directly to where you left off in your timeline, as seamlessly as possible.”

“So everyone we left behind, they just will know we suddenly disappeared and then reappeared?”

“Yes Rosa. Now please, I don’t have a lot of time. I’m going to send you to a place called Midgar. There you can gather information and try to stop Chaos.”

“Come forth!”

From the darkness, three figures emerged. These were the three Chaos had decided to use for his little game. The first was Weiss. His white hair and muscular form were the result of years of genetic experimentation. Though something about the man seemed odd to Chaos. Though he moved just fine, Chaos could sense that the soul controlling the body was not the one that had originally inhabited it. Next was a dazzling woman named Queen Remedi. She had been created to control a dream world, and had done a good job until those trapped there had rebelled. Her true nature was that of Li-Grim, a powerful entity born of magic. She had commanded armies and he had no doubt she could do so again for him. The final member was Emperor Mateaus. The man was a powerful mage that had nearly succeeded in taking over his world. With his clever mind and powerful magic, Chaos doubted that the heroes could stand against him.

Chaos issued his orders, but these pawns were ambitious. He pretended to give in to some demands, but in truth he knew that sooner or later, one or all of them would turn on him. As long as the job was done, he couldn’t care less about it. He would simply destroy them anyway once they were through.

“Now Cosmos is sending her warriors to Midgar, so-“

“Midgar? That would be troubling,” Said Weiss. “I suggest interfering with their plan. Send them somewhere that is less favorable for them.”

“Hmmm. Agreed. It would be more interesting that way too.”

With a flick of his wrist, Chaos interrupted Cosmos’s teleportation magic and sent the girls flying off course.