"They've seen us." Lightning warned, referring to the squad of soldiers they were currently trying to hide from.

"They did." agreed Cloud, and so did the sudden muzzle flash in the distance, followed by the impact of bullets on rock a few meters away from them. "Feign retreat, and I'll hit them in the flank?"

"Works for me." she said, and then they were both moving.

Shots rung out, and more bullets were sent her way, all missing wildly. At this distance it was extremely unlikely that either side would hit a moving target. Out of the corner of her eye, Lightning could see Cloud vanish into a small ditch hiding him from sight. Now she would have to keep drawing the enemy's attention.

She found a spot that provided her with at least some cover, aimed at center of mass while crouching, and fired. She wasn't really expecting to hit anything, the idea was simply to provide them with a visible target.

So it came as quite the surprise to her when the shot found its mark almost perfectly, hitting one of the pursuing soldiers right in the chest. She was so surprised that she actually wasted half a second before abandoning her current position and continuing to run. A mistake. Bullets impacted the terrain around her, and some of the impacts sounded like they were uncomfortably close.

How had she hit that soldier? Not that she wasn't confident in her marksmanship, she was one of the best, but that had been a one-in-a-thousand shot aimed at an erratically moving target at long range. And on top of that it was dark, she had no night vision gear, and had barely taken a fraction of a second to aim, lest she be stationary for too long and be hit herself.

It really should not have been such a shock, but somehow the sudden realization that she could see perfectly even at night still came completely unexpected for her. She'd been living so much in the moment, she hadn't even noticed until now.

She ran, and shot, and darted from cover to cover, and two more enemies went down. Then Cloud was suddenly right in the middle of them, seemingly having appeared from nowhere, and seconds after that none of the soldiers remained standing.

Was this the power of a l'Cie? Was his having been a l'Cie for two weeks longer than her the reason Cloud could move this fast?

Maybe. But there was no point in idle speculation. There was no time to waste – now that they had been discovered, it would not be long until more hit squads were sent after them. Lightning quickly moved over to where the group of soldiers had fallen.

When she got there, Cloud was already looting the bodies with the nonchalance of someone who had done so countless times before. Ammunition, medicine, smoke grenades, anything. But not the night vision gear.

They wouldn't need it.

"Poor bloody infantry is getting murdered down there. Damn, why won't command just let us drop the hammer on those bastards? How many more people do we need to loose?" The Lieutenant manning the communications console in the command center was getting visibly frustrated. Lt. Colonel Yaag Rosch could hardly blame him. They had lost no less than 28 good men and women in the last two hours, and absolutely nothing to show for it. They might have lost more by now, and just not know yet.

"Have some faith in our commander in chief's competence, Lieutenant. Those are l'Cie we're facing here, and Primarch Dysley knows a lot more about the nature of the threat we're facing than you or I do. He has good reasons for his decisions, I'm sure." He wasn't entirely sure whom he was trying to reassure, his subordinate or maybe just himself. Even so, he showed no outward sign of his own doubts.

"Of course. Sorry, Sir, I didn't mean to sound disrespectful."

"It's alright, Lieutenant." There was nothing wrong with showing concern for one's comrades. And truth be told he was at least as sick of this as the Lieutenant.

Not much happened after that. They simply waited, and hoped there wouldn't be any more casualty reports. Not that there was much of a chance of that, Rosch grimly admitted to himself. In all likelihood, PSICOM would lose many more people yet today.

"Sir? I just got new data." the Lieutenant interrupted his thoughts. "GC squad 13 encountered the l'Cie, and someone managed to transmit combat data before... before they were all killed, Sir."

Yaag Rosch felt slightly guilty for it, but he was actually a bit glad that this time at least it weren't his people who'd payed the price. PSICOM division had lost too many already.

"Show me, Lieutenant. Do we have video footage?"

"Yes, Sir, and yes, we do."

What he saw on the display, it was difficult to believe, even for someone like him. The two l'Cie were armed with nothing but a Guardian Corps issue gunblade and a broadsword that must have been hopelessly out of date even a hundred years ago. They had no armor, no fire support, no nothing. And they still cut through the eight man squad opposing them like a hot knife through butter. He could have sworn the pink-haired woman had taken a grazing shot to the leg at one point, but when it was all over, there wasn't a scratch on her.

"Monsters..." whispered one of of the command crew who were now all watching the screen. Rosch didn't bother to reprimand her. The woman was merely voicing aloud what everyone was already thinking.

"Pause. And go back right to the beginning."

"Sir?" the Lieutenant at the console questioned while he did so.

"We have an excellent view of the direction the l'Cie came from here. And we know there's at least five of them. But where are the others? All I can see here are those two."

"I didn't see anyone else either, Sir." There were murmurs of agreement all around the command center. It appeared that only the two l'Cie on the screen were present when squad 13 had fallen.

"Keep observing the situation," he ordered. "I will be back in a minute. Primarch Dysley left very clear directives that he wanted to be informed if it looked like the l'Cie had split up."

And with that, Yaag Rosch left the command center. His subordinates, meanwhile, kept watching their equipment and occasionally speaking into their headset microphones to help coordinate the ground forces on site, and sometimes simply to make sure their comrades were in fact still alive.

Five minutes later, Lieutenant Colonel Rosch returned, bringing new orders with him. When he told his subordinates what they were, the reaction of nearly everyone in the command center could essentially be summed up in one word.

'Finally.'

"You think Lightning and Cloud are doing alright?"

Sazh looked up from the ground under his feet, and at Hope. "I don't know, kid." He really didn't. "But I guess those two are probably better at looking out for themselves than we are."

"I hope they'll be alright," said Nora. "He did save my life after all."

"Err... guys?"

"Do you think they can do it? Kill Eden? Why did Cloud follow her anyway?" Hope continued, either not hearing or ignoring Vanille.

"Nope. Not a chance. They'd have to break straight into the heart of the Sanctum to do that, and then they'd still have to find a way to actually kill that fal'Cie. It's a suicide mission." Sazh said, without bothering to beat around the bush. "No matter how good they are. Two people can't take on an army."

"Guys!

"I still wonder... if I could have said anything to make her stay." mused Nora. "She sounded angry, but she also seemed... lost, somehow."

"HEY!"

"Yes. What is it, Vanille?"

"Look!" the girl said, and pointed at something.

When Sazh saw what it was, his eyes widened almost comically. "EVERYONE. FIND COVER. NOW!"

They did. But it wouldn't be enough, Sazh was sure of it. They didn't stand a chance against what was coming for them. They were going to die here.

And he hadn't even gotten to see Dajh again...

He was quite surprised when the airships promptly passed straight over their heads, completely ignoring them. Did they just not care, or had they simply not seen them?

Must be the later, Sazh decided, If they'd seen us, we'd be dead by now. Then he realized that if PSICOM wasn't really looking for them it probably was because they were hunting a different quarry.

Not many options for what – or rather who – that could be.

Sazh was glad to be alive, he really was. But he also felt genuinely sorry for Cloud and Lightning. Sure, the young woman had been a bit grumpy, and Cloud had those weird glowing eyes, but they hadn't seemed like bad sorts.

But even though he'd have liked to think differently, Sazh just couldn't make himself believe they stood much of a chance against what was now apparently coming for them.

"That latest group... their armor looked different."

"It did. They were Guardian Corps," Lightning responded, trying not to let the fact that she was now fighting her former comrades bother her, and failing.

"What's the Guardian Corps doing here? PSICOM is usually in charge of Pulse related business, isn't it?"

She snapped at him. "I – don't – know. Just forget about it." This was the last thing she wanted to think about right now.

"Doesn't this feel... off to you? PSICOM has a lot of airborne units, don't they?"

"Yes. Almost all of them are airborne. What's your point?" Lightning blinked. What was Cloud getting at?

"My point is, where are all the airships?"

He had a point. The military was clearly searching for them, and they'd been found by now. There was no way PSICOM wasn't aware that they were in this area. So why had no reinforcements shown up yet?

"If I was PSICOM," he reasoned, "and if I was trying to find two people on rocky, uneven terrain whom I knew to be-"

He paused when he heard Lightning suddenly curse audibly while looking at something in the distance. Then he followed her gaze, and saw just what it was that she was looking at.

"Oh."

So that was where the airships went.

Lightning could see at least six of them up ahead. And skytanks. And soldiers with personal flight-units - jet-packs to the lay person. Many soldiers. This was bad.

"Paratroopers. Maybe three quarters of a kilometer behind us," stated Cloud. Just great. More trouble? Just what they needed.

She turned her head to see. And swallowed hard. They looked so small from this far away, but there were two groups of at least a hundred each. Two entire companies then, operating as independent units.

"They must know that we're in the area, but not where exactly," said Cloud, before pointing into a third direction, "That would explain those guys over there."

Sure as death, there were another two hundred parachutes descending to the ground in two additional locations. Fortunately, they were off by at least a kilometer.

A series of massive explosions suddenly occurred somewhere behind them. Lightning could actually feel the heat on her skin, and shortly after that the blast wave was moving past them. Thankfully at this distance it couldn't really hurt them. Fragments of rock, debris, and all kinds of stuff rained down all around them.

She never even saw the plane. It must have been flying too high for them to see, or more likely, it was probably already returning to base after having dropped the bombs a minute ago. She wondered if the crew knew they'd missed. They probably did. Had the men and women aiming those bombs known their exact location, they'd have been dead now.

PSICOM would proceed on the assumption that the two of them were still alive. Trying to hide and pretending to have been disintegrated in the explosion wouldn't work.

Lightning felt the sudden need to pinch herself, to ascertain that she wasn't dreaming. For a very brief moment before she could get herself back under control, she even felt fear. And not the more sublimated, low-key kind of fear that didn't really hinder you too much and the presence of which merely proved that you were still human.

No, it was just crude, raw instinct, that inherent flight response completely defying all intellect and conscious intention that she had spent years teaching herself to suppress. An endeavor in which she had been astonishingly successful. Successful to the point where that very success was actually a problem in itself, according to Lieutenant Amodar. She had been too brave, too willing to neglect her personal safety in the pursuit of the mission.

But right now, none of that mattered. It did not change the reality of the current situation: PSICOM had just air-dropped an entire battalion on them. With heavy air support on top of that.

"Well," said Cloud in a tone that would have been more suitable for somebody advising her to stay inside because it was raining, "I guess we should start running."

AN: Did any of you also think it was really strange how the l'Cie got away from PSICOM so easily at the beginning of the game? It's curious, isn't it? I mean, we're talking five people against a military here, and PSICOM's soldiers look like they probably have radios built into those helmets of theirs. One would think once the first group of soldiers has found the targets, it's essentially over – even if the l'Cie manage to fight off the first assault, there will be more. As many more as are needed.

Of course, it all makes much more sense when you take into account the fact that Barthandelus needs the l'Cie as pawns in order for his Evil Plan ™ to work. If I remember correctly, he even outright states at one point that he arranged things in such a way that they could grow in power – level up, in other words – over a longer time span, all the while being confronted with enemies that are just weak enough for the l'Cie to beat them.