A/N: Alright… due to high demand demands, some offers that I can't refuse looks at MakoStreak/Aria, and the cruelty of how I left you on the last chapter… I've worked as fast as my lil' A-

… as fast as my lil' butt could carry me to get this next chapter out.

Hey… all you people who like to know the ending at the beginning… Phoenix dies… WAHAHAHAHAHA!

Step Eight Part II: Death Beds… or No?

Jullianne's eyes were as wide as saucers when she saw Phoenix take the arrow, saw the arrow rip through his flesh, and saw that he fell down face forward, which drove the arrow further and caused it to pop out through his back.

The Judges, indifferent as ever, declared the match won by Armageddon. However, after the formalities of the engagement, Judgemaster Cid raced over to the limp Hunter, dismounted his Chocobo, and knelt down next to Phoenix to examine exactly what happened.

He checked his pulse first. It was still going, though not very strong. His eyes widened in horror when he saw the arrow move in rhythm with the pulse. Had the arrow really pierced his heart? If it did, he should be dead right now, but he wasn't. Maybe the heart was beating for a few minutes longer before it finally died out.

Regardless, he picked up the body, stood up, and warped into the Bervenia Medical Center. By this time, Jullianne had raced down the cloud steps and reached the two just as Cid had warped.

"Dammit." She cursed under her breath. "Why is this happening? It's because Phoenix is being a love-sick fool. Stupid Phoenix! Stupid, stupid, stupid Phoenix! Now he's got my heart racing because there's a chance I might have killed him! STUPID Phoenix!" She raced off to the BMC, because she knew the Judgemaster had enough common sense to take him there.

"Kupo?"

Mack blinked as his eyes stared at the sunlight directly above him before he realized that the Clan Amor Judge had revived him. He looked around and noticed he was the first to be revived on his team. He saw Yuwain, Nelson, Spengler, Melanie-

"Kupo? Phoenix, kupo?"

He didn't see Phoenix. He briefly scanned the field, but did not find the Hunter in question..

"Kupo? Where'd he go, kupo? Did we win, kupo?"

By then, the Judge had finished reviving all of his teammates.

"KUPO! JUDGE, SIR, KUPO!"

The Judge looked at him, teleported next to him, and lifted the faceplate covering his eyes, giving Mack an inquiring look.

"Can I help you?"

"Where did the Hunter on our team go, kupo? I don't see Phoenix anywhere!"

"Took an arrow to the heart." The Judge responded simply. "Looked like he intended to, from what I could tell."

"… You're joking, kupo…"

"Judges don't joke."

"Kupopo! Why would he do that?"

"Your guess is as good as mine." He dropped the faceplate back over his eyes and shifted on his steed. "I must make my way over to the Bervenia Medical Center and report to Judgemaster Cid to see if there's anything I can do for the kid." And with that he was gone.

"Kupo… why are you doing this, kupo?"

Jullianne raced through the hallways of Bervenia, attempting to follow the directions to the Medical Center given to her by a Moogle at the gate to the arena. At several points she had to conceal herself to get past guarded checkpoints so she could save herself some time. She was just glad the palace didn't have any Guard Panthers to Reveal her. All she got were some odd stares when the guards heard racing footsteps belonging to nobody.

She skidded to a halt outside of the Med Center, removed her Concealment, and walked in slowly, trying to catch her breath. She was greeted by a Nu Mou White mage who looked older than time itself.

"Can I help you?" Asked he in a raspy voice.

"Uhh… can I see Phoenix? He's a Hunter who just came in-"

"Ah, yes… but no. He's requiring immediate White Magical attention due to the severity of his wound-"

'Dammit.' She thought angrily.

"-and visitors probably won't be allowed for another hour or so."

Jullianne put on her best frustrated look possible, shifted her weight from one foot to the other, looked down as if she was deep in thought, and then looked back up at the Nu Mou.

"Look, he's a good friend of mine and-"

"I'm sorry… no visitors."

"I know some white magic! Is there something I can do to help?"

That seemed to catch the Nu Mou off guard for a second, but then he shook his head sadly and responded. "I'm sorry, but no. You will have to wait for about an hour until we are done healing him. You can either take a walk around the palace grounds, or wait in the lobby area outside of the Healing rooms. Don't worry." He cracked a small smile when he saw the Sniper's distress. "His Highness has the best White Mages on staff at his palace's medical center… he wouldn't stand for less. Your friend will be alright, believe me. Now shoo." He turned around walked back into the Healing room that Phoenix was obviously in.

Jullianne was tempted to Conceal herself and watch anyway, but she felt an urge to listen to the old Nu Mou and wait. He had a respectable aura around him, and it was hard to say 'no' to his requests.

So she waited. And she waited for quite a long time.

Inside the Healing room, things were a bit more hustled. Phoenix, heavily drugged to reduce pain and resistance, was fully de-clothed for a full range of healing and to get the best look possible at his wounds. This was one of the reasons why he was drugged into a near comatose state.

"Hey, doc… amIgoingtolive?" He slurred, giggling afterwards.

"Yes. Now hush so we can concentrate."

"A'ight." He muttered. "Fine… I won'talk t'you, then. Just make sure you fix me up righ- Ow! Whyssat hurt?"

The White Mage looked concerned. "That hurt?"

"'Ell, yes it did. Now why'dithurt?"

"I don't know…" The Mage responded abstractedly, prodding around at various points in the opened wound. Normally, the medical team would hit the patient with several rounds of Curaga, but the fact that the arrow was still embedded in the patient caused the White Mages to perform a sort of operation to surgically remove it. Therefore, after a lot of drugs being administered to the patient, they re-opened the wounds (with some drunken protesting on the part of the patient) and were carefully trying to extract the arrow.

The new problem was that at some point (probably when the patient had fallen down), some sort of impact caused the arrow to snap in two, so the mages had to open the wound further and delve deeper to extract the other part of the arrow without leaving any splintering remnants behind that could (and would) cause infections later on.

So now, after the arrow was seemingly removed completely, the White Mage didn't know why Phoenix was hurting, even through all those drugs. The mage was using a weak Cure spell to close some of the deeper wounds the team had re-opened when the patient had made the outcry.

"Tell me if this hurts…" The mage muttered and tried casting Cure again.

"YEAH!"

The White Mage instantly stopped.

"Yeah… tha'hurt…"

The White Mage hailed another member of the medical team, a Nu Mou Alchemist, over to Phoenix's table and quickly explained to him the situation.

"What is your diagnosis?"

"I've never heard of this before, I must say. However, as this is a realm of magic, there could be a number of possibilities that could be true, many of them pertaining to black magic, many pertaining to various poisons, and many, less likely ones pertaining to love."

"Love?"

"Yes… the power of passion is a strong magical force, and may have various side-effects if things turn sour."

"They'd have to turn really sour for love to stop a flesh wound from closing."

"It may not be a physical wound, my friend. The pain may be induced from the emotional aspects of the 'wound' inflicted upon him."

"But you said the possibility of love being the cause is less likely."

"I did, but I haven't had a love case in so long that half of me wants it to be one so I can try my hand at healing a broken heart once more."

"Well, we'll have to wait until he's sober before we can ask him anything about his love life…"

By this time, all of Clan Amor and all of Clan Armageddon were waiting outside in the BCM lobby. Mack was Stopping himself to make time go by faster, Yuwain was nervously breathing fire (much to the annoyance/horror of the people around him), Nelson wasn't doing much because the only thing he could do would be worse than Yuwain's fire breathing. Melanie had Concealed herself and was sitting in a corner. Spengler was trying to talk to one of the Medical Team Representatives and persuading him to let Spengler in so he could cast Angel Whisper and White Wind. The rep was calmly telling him raw healing power would not be effective at the present time. It was a surgical matter.

Dave was sitting in a chair on the far end of the lobby, head in his hands, thinking if he could have done anything to prevent this. Each time he went through the events, however, he came to the conclusion that something of this magnitude had to happen before Jullianne realized Phoenix was truly being sincere about his love. Jullianne, meanwhile was sitting by the door, hand propping her up her head while the other hand drummed impatiently on a nearby table. Her eyes were fixed on the door, behind which Phoenix was being fixed.

"Alright… recite the alphabet."

"A, B, C, D, F, E, G, H, I, J, K, L, N, M, O, P, Q, R, S, U, T, V, W, X, Y Z."

"Close enough. Alright, now we need to ask you a few rather important questions. Don't look down."

Too late for that. The instruction had piqued Phoenix's curiosity and he looked down…

"Oh…"

… And he threw up.

"Oi… I told you not to look down. WE NEED A MOP OVER HERE!"

After the mess was all cleaned up, the Nu Mou Alchemist resumed the conversation.

"Alright, we're not sure why healing won't close you up without inducing pain, but we have a couple of theories. The one I'm favoring involves your emotions."

"Alright…"

"Do you love anyone?"

"Yes."

"Have you seen her lately?"

"Yes."

"How recently?"

"A few hours ago."

"Did she fire the arrow at you?"

"Yes."

"Does she love you back."

"No."

The Alchemist paused. He then turned to the Human White Mage who was watching this with interest.

"I do believe I am right about my theory."

"What theory are you talking about, doc?"

The Nu Mou turned back to Phoenix.

"I think that the physical wound caused by the arrow opened up an emotional wound caused by the fact that the one who shot the arrow is the affection of your love. Your emotional soul needs to heal before we can heal the wound caused by the arrow."

"And how's that supposed to happen?"

"You must reconcile with the one who's hurt you."

Phoenix groaned, thinking about how a lovely little chat with Jullianne about his feelings would turn out.

"How soon does this have to happen?"

"As soon as possible, obviously. We can't help you until you do."

"Dear lord, my day has just gotten a whole lot worse. Do you know where she is?"

"No."

"Well how am I supposed to talk to her if you don't know where she is?"

"Maybe if you state her name and occupation, we could send a request for her."

"Jullianne. Sniper."

"We'll be right back."

Phoenix sighed as he watched them walk out. He heard some shouting in the adjacent room a little bit of scuffling, and a lot of what sounded like slapping. After about a minute, the Alchemist and the White Mage returned with a Stopped Jullianne being dragged along behind them.

"It's a good thing I know some Time Magic." The Alchemist huffed. "She was practically clawing her way into the room. Skimble… the Esuna, if you please…"

After a few flashes of white light and some nifty sound effects, the Sniper was moving once more. The first thing she did was move towards Phoenix…

WHAP.

… And slap him hard across the cheek.

'This isn't going to turn out well, I just know it…' He thought to himself while he rubbed the now red cheek gingerly.

A/N: Yes, I left you hanging again. Not as bad as before though, right? I personally find the ending rather amusing, which is why I left it at that. And by the way, for those of you who are gullible and read my alleged "spoiler" at the beginning of this… No, Phoenix does not die.

Healie