Disclaimer: I do not own FFVII or FFX, nor do I stand to make any money off its creative property.

The Fall of Gaia

Chapter Three: Overrun

Whatever solace Zeitu might have gained from the older, stronger man's presence at the start of the battle was slowly beginning to fade as the fight drew on. While the blond Achilles seemed to be able to take on these fiends with little to no effort at all, slicing his gargantuan white and blue blade around with the precision of a razor, Zeitu and Cirri were significantly less able than he and both were taking far too much damage in the fight to continue for much longer. This was made much worse simply by the fact that each fiend that was destroyed burst into the lights which composed its being, which then flew up into the massive cloud of other such lights and reformed again some 10 meters or so away.

And so Zeitu drew his attention to thinking of how they would escape; they could not possibly win under these conditions. No... He doubted that they would be able to defeat these fiends under any conditions. He yelled at the blond man when the circumstances of battle led them to once again come close, "Sir, we have to retreat!" There was a moment of pause, where he and the warrior exchanged glances, and he was relieved to see the man nod. The man turned towards the jungle, putting his hand to his forehead briefly as a faint green light cloaked him: a light very similar to the light which shone across the fiend's backs and composed the green cloud overhead. The next moment was a flash, and Zeitu caught a brief incantation as a fiery blaze cut its way directly through the fiends. But that wasn't all, as the man suddenly turned to Zeitu and Cirri, touching them on the shoulders; "Make haste."

A strange feeling surged through Zeitu's body, stemming from the spot where he had been touched and settling in his legs. He felt as light as a feather, and when the man turned around again to run into the jungle, Zeitu followed. His eyes lost track of his peripheral vision as he felt the world melting and blurring around him. Was everything else moving in slow motion? Or was he just moving that quickly? He couldn't believe the speed with which his legs moved, each step slurring into the next as his body automatically performed the task that the mind was too slow to appreciate, and in what felt like seconds they were crashing through the jungle, outside of the range of the green cloud.

There was no denying it now; the man in front of him was some sort of magic user. Magic was a fading art practiced only under the closest of scrutiny by descendents of the talented mages of days past. There used to be a time where anyone could perform magic given the time to study its practice and the aid of a Sphere Grid, but with the advent of guns and machines which circumvented both study and physical training, there was no need for such things. The only working Sphere Grids left were held by the rich, powerful, or extremely lucky. And with the decline of the Sphere Grid, magic users were limited to those who were naturally born with the gift to control creation and were regarded as highly dangerous. While discrimination against mages was illegal, magic was banned under conditions except for emergencies.

Zeitu supposed this was as much an emergency as anything could be.

In time, whatever spell the mage had cast wore off, and they were now jogging into city limits. It occurred to Zeitu that alerting the townsfolk was imperative, but as they had a few seconds to spare, he spoke to the man ahead of him, who was now looking at the destroyed city around them with no apparent emotion on his stoic face. "Thank you for saving us. My name's Zeitu, and this is Cirri." The man turned his head to him very slightly. nodding. "Cloud." It took Zeitu a moment to realize that he was being told the man's name, not being reminded of the encroaching green cloud far behind him. Zeitu mulled over his companion's name for a very short moment; Cloud was an extremely uncommon name. In fact, Zeitu never heard of anyone named Cloud before. Cloud probably had very strange parents if they had given him such a weird name; especially one that took after the weather.

But there would be time to think about that, later. "We have to warn everyone about the fiends coming from the beach; two swords won't be enough to protect the thousands of survivors." Cloud stared at him for a moment before nodding, "Then let's go."

They jogged down the path to the clearing just inside city limits where Zeitu and Cirri had passed through earlier, and many more people had congregated there. It made sense that people would naturally collect where people had already gathered, and they were not surprised to find a huge number of people mulling about in small to large groups. The largest groups were those crowding about radios; with the sphere net down, these devices were the only way of getting information from the mainland. Being a hobbyist item, there were probably several ham radio sets powerful enough to transmit something back, but government aid had yet to arrive on scene. Zeitu saw the mayor in the center of a crowd of people: while she was not nearly as powerful as the central government, she was standing as guide and leader while everyone regrouped. Zeitu dived into the crowd of people, trying to squeeze up to the mayor so he could try and tell her what had happened.

Unfortunately, the fiends had worked faster than Zeitu had anticipated and a wave of screaming people moving away from the jungle's edge sounded their arrival. The people began to twist and shove, moving en masse away from a danger they could not see but did not want to see, understanding instinctively that when people were running one direction it was best to run with them.

But a few people weren't running; a large group of gun-toting soldier-police, along with Cloud, were forming a line against the fiends. Zeitu ran up to join the line next to cloud, wielding his sword and praying that he was making the correct decision in sticking to the man that had seemed so strong earlier. Cirri took a spare gun from a dead soldier and joined them, clearly thinking the same thing. The moment the fiends made their strike, however, they once again they found themselves slowly retreating into the city in the face of the massive onslaught. They would need to find some way of holing up in the massive rubble behind them, or else they would die before the night ended.

They made a full retreat in the face of the encroaching cloud of green light, and found themselves barricaded in an abandoned equipment shop with several soldiers and a small group of civilians. This was not looking well for them, and the sounds of screaming and fighting outside were terrible, but they were safe for now.

A/N: Thank you for reading