He awoke like he was trapped in a mirror. The lucid sensation shifted his vision in vertigo. He stood up out of bed in the ambivalent dark, and felt taller. The world around him seemed smaller. A glance at his reflection in the vanity…he had black hair.

A twinge in his eye sockets, his sinuses exploded. He pinched the brim of his nose to find blood dripping onto his fingers. Pinching his nostrils, the pain intensified. He needed an Aspirin.

Down the hall into the bathroom, he didn't bother flicking the lights. He wiped his nose with a tissue and managed to stall the blood flow. The empty medicine cabinet brought him no relief, perhaps Aerith would know where they kept painkillers. He started toward her room…

The pain lessened as he approached her door. He was able to stop squinting. Now that the pain had let up, did he really need to wake her? He could sleep it off now, he was a big boy. But something ebbed at him as he neared her room, something childish that demanded his attention. Light steps brought him to her doorframe. He turned the nob and went in.

The room was a cool blue null with a West-facing window, moonlamp light was diffused through thin curtains that showed shadows of bars outside. No pictures hung on her walls, though outlines shown as if they had all been taken down. Her soft shag carpet welcomed his bare feet, and the titillating waft of white sage incense called him further into her world.

He saw her asleep on a twin bed of down covers, a bed frame like iron vines. He stopped breathing, her soft, sleeping breaths stealing his away. Her legs poked out from under her dark comforters, clad in pajamas of pink plaid. He caught the strap of a white tank under the cusp of blankets. A beautiful laurel, he could gaze at her for the rest of his life like this. But he refused to be that creeper who watched a girl sleep—either wake her and ask quickly or leave her alone.

He flowed to the edge of her bed and sat down, meaning to shake her, to whisper her name, but nothing came to him. His words were dead air in his mouth, entranced by auburn hair. The world still swirled in vertigo, the sensation of falling underwater. At last he was able to lay his hand on her pale shoulder, and she awoke like the moon itself had come to rouse her.

She gasped, and he moved to explain, but when she sat up there was a longing in her eyes, like she needed him. A sense of wonder enslaved him as she smiled, like she'd been waiting for him to come to her. As she curled up against him and brought her lips to his, he froze in a state of awe. Her existence was surreal, soft warmth cradling his mouth in hers. He thought he would enjoy this more, but his awareness remained frozen in a state of mind-blindness. What was happening here?

She smelled of cherry blossoms, the waft of wildflowers flooding his nostrils. She pulled away glowing as she brushed his cheek. Her personality had done a complete flip. This sparkling daffodil was so different from the ghost orchid he'd met in the church. Her hair flowed over her shoulder like a bride's veil, and she leaned back so submissive, so inviting, so alluring. She called to him with her body, and her lithe hand slid a strap from her tank top down her shoulder.

Confusion was Cloud's constant companion, and somehow he got his bearing. Why was she coming onto him? He wasn't the type to take advantage of a girl like this. He really didn't think she was that kind of girl, this easy? Even if she was more loose than he'd first thought—she did seem to have a few problems—something in him really did not want to see her like that. He reached for her inviting collar line, and moved the strap back up onto her shoulder.

But her eyes regarded him with shock, confusion rivaled even by his own. What she said next echoed in his mind.

"Don't you know me?"

Her shaken eyes shook the world. The vertigo whirled in his brain. The room began to shake and blur, the image of her remaining clear in his field of view. Then she was snatched away, and he woke up to find Aerith's mother shaking him.

"You must leave! Now!"

Wha—?

A glance back at the vanity found him with blonde hair. A dream. Now he was being thrown out in a frantic rush.

"Quickly!" she beckoned him, pulling his arm, and he threw his socks and boots back on in a hurry. He followed out into the hallway where Aerith rushed from her room. Cloud gasped…She wore pink plaid pajamas.

"Mother? What's wrong?"

"The Neighborhood Watch called. They've seen him!"

The color rushed from Aerith's face. Her frantic mother cupped her hands in a mad frenzy, while Aerith's eyes flew into a panic. She dashed back into her room and threw on her clothes from the previous day in a handful of seconds. Cloud was already being dragged down the stairs. He sheathed his sword by the fireplace as Aerith grabbed her staff and threw on her cloak and white boots. Her mother shoved them both out the front door.

"What about you?" Aerith asked.

"I'll be at the neighbor's, now fly!"

And Aerith took off, bounding into the night. But Cloud found the big woman grabbing his arm. She bore into him with wild eyes.

"Don't let anything happen to her. Protect her, keep her alive! Swear to me on your SOLDIER honor."

That hit Cloud. He didn't know what this family knew that he didn't, but he was awake now. He nodded back at her.

"…On my honor."

"Then go and don't stop running! Don't ever stop!"

She shoved him away and Cloud sprinted off into the dark.

The woman hurried back inside to grab her purse. She whisked into the kitchen cabinet, grabbed her blood pressure medicine and her glasses. Then she turned to leave, and screamed.

A dark man stood in the doorway, shrouded in a black mist that obscured his form save for one feature—a deadly cerulean daikatana. The woman caught herself against the counter shaking and managed to stand up straight. With trembling hands clasped bravely in front of her, she stood up as straight and formal as she could to address the intruder.

"She's not here."

But the intruder did not respond, yet he took a step forward into the kitchen. His shadow engulfed the woman.

"You will never catch her," she declared. But then that daikatana slid its sharp edge up, and a lightning flash cut short a scream that echoed through the Slums.

Cloud caught up with Aerith at the end of the cul de sac and they kept running, down side streets that flickered in dirty limelight from broken street lamps. Shadows chased them, like stalking wolves. A blown out pile of rubble lay in their path. Aerith hopped it like a leaping deer, jumping from rock to rock, while Cloud scampered after her trying not to break his ankles. At the top, she stopped to survey their surrounds while Cloud caught up.

"Why are we running?" Cloud huffed up the last boulder. "Who's chasing us?"

"His name is Death. You'll know him when you see him."

She leapt onto some pipelines and slid down the frame, while Cloud held his arms out praying for balance. She jumped down scanning, muttering to herself.

"How did he find me…after all this time…?"

Cloud jumped down next to her, and his brand glowed. Her eyes shot wide.

"The anima brand...You lead him straight to me!"

A commotion, ahead of them. Black mist filtered from the shadows. A veil of dark Chaos brooded from the alleys, and from their darkness stepped a pale man with silver hair streaming down to his boots. His face was a sharpened vestige of profane sacrilege, carved from marble with a razor blade. Yet black veins snaked their way up his pale features and black, irisless eyes. He walked as if death himself walked with him, carrying a twelve-foot daikatana in his left hand, and clad himself in a gunmetal longcoat with sword straps crossing his bare chest. The train of his cloak flowed down over fatigues that were all too familiar to Cloud; a SOLDIER 1st Class uniform.

When Cloud saw him, his jaw hit the ground, then curled into a wide smile.

"You! You're alive!"

Cloud laughed. He was so happy! He knew him alright! He started for the man with arms thrown wide. But when he came within arms length, that cerulean daikatana streaked for him in a death-slice.

"What the—"

Cloud leapt aside. The blade followed.

"Hey, it's me!" Cloud yelled to no avail.

The silver man drove for him in a murderous rage, slitting his sword at Cloud, who ducked and dodged as fast as he could. The feral sting of a laser-blade slitting centimeters from his throat stole his breath. He felt the whizz of sliced air against his skin. Life became so simple within arms reach of death.

Cloud backsprung off a hand, drawing his sword mid-leap, and landed blade-crossed with the silver man. A one-two slice-bash exchange sent sparks flying, and Cloud charged in a fulminating power slash that sent the silver man skidding back. But in that split-second, time froze.

The man flared his daikatana, single-slashing across the ground in the streak too quick to see. Cloud barely managed to fling his blade up to block, and was sent flying back fifty feet back into the pipes they'd leapt down from. Rubble and refuse toppled down on him, but a lithe hand grabbed him, pulling him out. Aerith.

"Get back!" she pulled him behind her, flaring her staff out. Cloud couldn't believe it. Was she actually going to try to fight him?

"But you'll die!"

She ignored him, and took a strong step forward. The silver daemon strode toward them, black mist shrouding his movements like a wave. Aerith's iris eyes flashed a dark green hue as she chanted an incantation to the air, and all at once a divine transmutation circle appeared around them at their feet.

"I am a servant of the Goddess of Grace
Ancient Ones of the hierophant race
Besieged by divinations from Hell
Help me cast this spell"

She glowed an unearthly indigo, flung her staff skyward and slammed it into the ground. All at once, the transmutation circle burst into a holocaustic wall of flame that shot in all directions, abolishing the space around them and obliterating all in their path. Hell-Firaga. This was dark, Ancient Magic.

Before Cloud had a chance to see if the spell worked, Aerith grabbed him and they were booking it down the side streets. They sprinted like their lives depended on it, and very well did, running toward the edge of the Sector and the train station. Their luck had seemed to abandon them. The bullet train was already taking off.

Cloud and Aerith ran for dear life up to the platform. She jumped in one graceful, cat-like leap onto the roof while Cloud grabbed the ladder and climbed up. Black mist shrouded all about the train. The Chaos fumed in billowing tentacles, reaching for them in hunger. And from its evil embrace stepped the form of the silver man—he traveled in the mist.

Cloud and Aerith wretched back in terror, his arm holding Aerith behind him. Though deathly low on magic, she cast a weak translucent Barrier around them. It was better than nothing. The man flowed across the roof of the train toward them, and Cloud drew his Buster Sword, which morphed into the more compact Stunner Blade and sent the other Fusion Swords into hammerspace.

Deliberately, he strode toward the man, who brought his daikatana in a sidelong arc to meet him. A harrowing, crashing hit sent sparks sheening across the roof. Cloud swipe-parried and bash-hammered against a slitting daikatana blade that whipped for him like a scorpion tail. He staggered back amid a slice-barrage, lightning streaks flaring in flash-crescents, whirling his sword to deflect the cerulean blade's terribly accurate tip. The rush of hurricane force winds beat against them as the bullet train sped up, and a bend in the tracks threw them sidelong. Cloud whirled for balance, but that daikatana rushed in, swiping and down-slicing on all sides to throw him off. It was all he could do upslice away amid backsteps that almost took him right over the edge. The silver man pressed in with low thrusts. Cloud tried to back away and get back to even footing, but the relentless assault followed his every step. Then, in a last-ditch effort, he twirled his blade in a backhanded cross, sheened the daikatana aside, and back-handsprung away from his attack circle.

He and Aerith ran, leaping cars like jaguars, running for their lives to where they knew now. When they reached the conductor's car, they were out of places to run, and the bullet train was speeding so fast that they couldn't jump if they wanted to. Cornered, they crouched at the end of the train car in terror as the black mist closed in on them. He stepped from the shadows with his daikatana flared like an executioner's halberd, but then he looked up, and stopped. Cloud looked over his shoulder and caught the tunnel closing in on them fast. Without thinking, he threw himself over Aerith and pressed them both flat to the roof. The silver man leapt away as the train entered the tunnel, taking the black mist with him and leaving Cloud and Aerith for now.

When the train emerged, the Chaos mist was gone, and Cloud still clutched Aerith to him with a ferocity that rivaled life itself.

.

[Received Painkillers]