Author's Quickie: Hi. Again. I know, I know: I'm terribly late with this chapter, and I'm terribly sorry. One fault was my life, the other fault was my damn AOL connection, which blocked me from entering ff.net for a week. Sorry! Anyway, prepare for gasps in this one...

Project: Trinity

Chapter Eight:

Losers, Weepers.

Somehow, it was starting to make some fragmented sense in her distorted mind. Cloud had worked for Hades. Cloud had become a demon. Cloud was going to kill Leon. O-kay.

With a scream of rage Aerith hurled a fizzling white ball of electricity at the screen, her anger multiplying as the shield appeared unharmed. "CLOUD! LEON!" she shrieked, banging on the wall once again. It's hopeless. Her magic was useless. She was weak, she was stupid. Slowly she sank to the ground in despair, nodding her head against the luminescent veil. After all this time...the time when I finally get to see Cloud...he won't get to see me...

"Aerith..." Yuffie began, tears welling up in her eyes. She crouched down, placing a hand on her friend's shoulder, "Aerith, don't cry..."

That made it even worse. Aerith turned and buried her head into Yuffie's shoulder, her eyes turning blotchy and overflowing with salty tears. "I wanted to see him so much, Yuffie," she wept, gritting her teeth. "But...not like this! Not when one of them is going to die!" Calm down, she murmured to herself. Calm down. You won't help them this way...

But what was she to do?

* * *

"WHY WON'T YOU LISTEN TO ME?" Leon roared, dropping to the ground to avoid another of Cloud's aerial sweeps. "I'm only trying to help you, you idiot!"

"I don't need your help," Cloud sneered, lunging forward to attack. "You can't help me."

Frustration was not helping him, either. "Stop! There's someone here! She wants to talk to you!" Leon desperately tried again. Panic was fighting a quick battle with his emotions. His stamina was weakening fast. Whatever he had anticipated, it was not a fight with an overgrown bat hybrid.

Cloud hesitated a moment, his sword lowering slightly. "She?" Her voice again, whispering into his ear, her tinkering bell-like laugh...was it really just his imagination? Or was she really here? No. Self-consciously he felt himself harden. There was no logical reason to believe that Aerith would suddenly appear out of nowhere to come and fall into his arms. No reason to believe the his opponent, weary from battle, would tell the truth. "Shut up," Cloud said coldly, bringing his sword up once more to attack, "I won't fall for your lies."

If he had time for it, Leon would have groaned as he ducked Cloud's earth-shattering blow and rolled away to another corner of the arena field. As it was, he had only enough to time to gasp out feebly, "You don't understand!" And then, again, he had to duck. If I ever survive this, he thought resentfully, I'm going to give up fighting forever.

Cloud, feeling frustration working its way up his head, cursed vividly and faked a swing to the right that had Leon dodging again, as he had suspected. With a powerful overhead blow he brought the sword crashing down on Leon, who sidestepped it in time so that it missed his head. Still, Cloud was satisfied to see that his attack had not totally gone astray: the crimson blood that his sword had drawn dripped down steadily from the gash in Leon's black jacket.

With a low grunt Leon dropped down to his knees, his hand placed over the edge of his chest. Desperately he heaved in deep breaths, trying to ignore the hazy outlines that were swimming outside his peripheral vision. Am I...dying? he wondered hazily, forcing himself to remain conscious. Focus, Leon, focus. But the pain that burst between his fingers like thousands of heated needles could not be ignored, would not be ignored. His life was slipping away.

With what was left of his consciousness, Leon slipped his other hand into his jacket, his numb fingers touching the pedant that always hung around his neck as if in tribute. He looked up in agony to see Cloud's booted feet stop short of him. With a blank grin, Cloud raised his sword, his eyes devoid of emotion, as he prepared to strike the killing blow.

"Goodbye," Cloud murmured, an eerie smile playing on his lips. Kill.

* * *

She felt it. She had literally felt Leon's pain when Cloud's sword pierced his jacket and deeper still, into his ribcage, crushing all the fragile bones that protected his chest. Such intense waves of pain slammed into her that it left no room for crying out; unsteadily Aerith rocked back and forth, nursing an invisible wound.

Still, as she looked up and saw Cloud, the demon (Oh, but her heart screamed out at her not to belittle him that way!), raise his weapon in that familiar downward stance reserved only for the end, she broke apart.

"CLOUD!" she screamed, lurching to her feet like a wobbling drunkard. With a shriek she smashed her hands into the crystal veil, tears breaking out anew as the wall refused to give ground. No. Don't do this, Cloud. Let him live, she pleaded, pressing her face against the cold, translucent shield in misery.

She could almost taste the sharp tang of blood as she imagined, in fleeting images, how Cloud would kill him: the flash of silver, biting against skin; the inevitable scream, the crumple of Leon's body under the weight of the sword; Cloud, sliding his blood-stained weapon out of his victim's cold body, would turn around and see her. And he would grin.

Let him live. Hot tears dripped down her face as she tried to banish her horrible thoughts away. I need to save him. Both of them. I won't let this happen...

Aerith took a step back and gazed at the wall for a moment, feeling an unbearable weariness settling upon her shoulders. All she wanted to do was curl up and go to sleep, where only hauntingly beautiful dreams, and no nightmares, would visit her. As it was, she found herself throwing up her hands, tilting her head back, and words that had no sound poured from her mouth. Help them. Save them. Save our future.

Dimly her mind registered that something was happening around her, somehow that the earth was shaking, but she paid it no heed. Power as she had never known before overwhelmed her, as if some invisible hand was flicking all the power switches on at the same time in her body. Power. She could taste it, such a seducing thing.

A loud eruption noise startled her out of her induced coma, and she jerked in humbling shock as she saw what she had unleashed.

A monster.

* * *

As weak and dazed as he was feeling now from loss of blood, he could still vaguely record that the ground was not staying still. A succession of loud explosions, tremors, shot through the arena and crevices appeared, uprooting the firm ground of the Coliseum. Off to his right, Cloud had been thrusted to his knees by the impact, his gaze darting around in alarm and confusion.

What was happening? Squinting, Leon caught a flicker of unbearably bright light from afar, behind the shimmering veil; like a star itself had descended from the heavens. And behind that, something more: a dark hole? No. A vortex, something that reminded him of a warp hole. A dark shape was rearing out from it, coalescing into a recognizable form.

"GRIEVER!" he screamed, stumbling to his feet with shock, his hand still rigidly clamped around his pendant chain. He was able to take approximately two steps forward before another set of quakes disrupted his balance, and he tumbled to the ground in a messy heap.

* * *

Ending notes: NOooO! Leon is...dying! It was quite a wrench to put that in, but I had to. Oh, and I know that some of you think I'm belaboring the fight too much, but--you'll see my ulterior purpose in the end! 'Bye until next week.