entrance
DIVISION 2: BREAK-IN

Setting 27: 1831 DAY 23, Directly under Nova Trabia Garden

"Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value."

		-Einstein, Albert


	He saw spots.  He saw spots run.  Maybe his vision flickering was a telltale sign that the oxygen-to-carbon dioxide ratio in the tunnel was dropping dangerously low.
	Seifer checked his watch for the time, which turned out to be a pain because he hadn't the foresight to buy one with organic, electro-luminescent cells.  The damn thing didn't glow, which meant he would have to angle it with respect to the inadequate lighting provided by the rotten Tonberry lamp.  The odor of kerosene was simply foul.
	Doubts about the mission began to enter his mind.  What if their obscure patron had set up a trap for him?  What if operation turned out to be more onerous than he had bargained for?
	I can't go back now, he reminded himself glumly.  I can't go anywhere.  Probably best get my act together and my head in the right place.
	For once he was more tired than bored.  He decided to crack his knuckles to pass the time.  It had been almost twelve minutes since he last beat Raijin or had the desire to do so.
	Hmm, better call him up on something then, he reasoned.  The last time the little freak got off easy.  I should have gone ahead and socked him.
	"Raijin!" he snapped.  "How much further we do have to go?"
	A lethargic pair of eyes looked up in his direction and then veered down some forty degrees to scan the soot-covered map.
	"Never mind," Seifer dismissed in disgust before Raijin could shrug.
	You had the map upside down anyway, nitwit, he contemplated bitterly.
	He could have chosen to rail on Raijin vociferously, but one quick look over at Fuujin rubbing her wrists told him that everyone was so exhausted that it was no surprise that the big oaf could not think straight.
	"If your mother could only see what a spelunker I've made of you," Seifer commented instead.  He'll probably ask me in a few minutes what 'spelunker' means.
	The mordant sting that habitually accompanied his snide remarks was notably absent in his remark.  Catching the peculiarity, Fuujin set down her pickaxe and gazed at him for a second.
	"I don't think hauling bits of rock for two weeks qualifies as cave exploration per se," Titanus growled from farther down in the pit.
	"That's enough out of you, Mister Second-Tier-Guardian-Force," Seifer snapped.
	Though the illuminative range of the gas lantern did not extend far enough to show him what Titanus was doing, he was pretty sure the GF was retaliating to Seifer's scorn with some lewd gesture below the waist...
	...that was until he picked up a shovel and sent it whistling through the air towards Seifer's head.
	It would have been messy had it actually connected, but Seifer ducked the projectile with professional ease.
	"Don't worry," Seifer shouted at his assailant, "because in a few weeks, I'll be out of your life forever."  Everyone's usefulness has an expiry date.  Your time is almost up.
	"Are you going to fire me?" the GF replied immediately in an affected, hopeful tone.  "Because if you are, that would be super."
	The subordinate clause ended in a caustically humorless pitch.
	"SERIOUS," Fuujin quickly interjected amidst their testosterone-pissing bout.
	Seifer ignored her, focusing intensely on the witch's spy.  In due time my skills will have surpassed yours.
	Aloud, he advised the demon knight with a grin, "If I were you I would learn to appreciate me while you can since now is the only time we'll ever have with each other."
	Departing from her accustomed single-word utterances, Fuujin whispered in her corner, "Now is our eternity."
	The other three attendants stopped to a dead halt and looked at her in stunned amazement.  In Seifer's opinion, Raijin could have tried to hide his oafish look of incredulity a bit more.
	"What's a spelunker?" Raijin ventured to ask, revealing once again that he had been autistically oblivious to the drama that had taken place around him.
	Yet his words had been enough to break the ice.
	"All right, everyone," Almasy eventually said, shaking off his goose bumps and reanimating the cavern, "back to work."  That sounds so familiar.  Where have I heard that before?
	But around the corners of his mind he found no answers forthcoming, only more corners that led to an endless maze of veiled dissimulations and confusion.  It was as if his uncooperative memory was eating away his history.
	Seifer gave up at length and tried again to focus on the immediate situation.
	Father, wait for me, he repeated in his mind, sobering.  I am coming.  I am coming.
	His eyelids narrowed over a pair of eyes lit with passion.  I have the witch's weapon and I am coming to take back what is ours.
	At that minute, just six meters above their heads, a serious-looking man with a conspicuous blue suit was herding loitering Garden interns out of the main corridor and bidding them to return to their posts.
	"Back to work, everyone!" Sergeant Jay barked the order.  "Do not continue lingering in the hall after the false theft alarm!"
	The honorary medals pinned on the breast pocket of his Garden uniform rattled cacophonously.  He had polished badges so meticulously that no passerby could have missed his new designation as the head of the Disciplinary Committee.  And he had been bossing everyone around so relentlessly since lunch hour that there was no one in the entire Garden who did not know about the promotion Commander Leonhart had given him.
	"To Diablos with him!" a second-year trainee cursed as she and her colleague walked away towards the main lobby elevator.
	"Can he get any more annoying?" the other whispered back.
	While they waited for the elevator, the two exchanged with expert efficiency a fair portion of gossip and giggles.  They conversed about the intercom broadcast from Headmaster Cid of Balamb Garden about the appointment of Quistis Trepe as the new Headmistress of Nova Trabia Garden and the possible political implications of such a promotion, as well as how unfortunate it was that the announcement had been followed by the theft alarm, which was probably a drill.  They made mutual exclamations over the latest dating habits of the lone wolf SeeD Commander and how someone had gotten tips about the specific hours that he would be in the weight room this week.  They chatted giddily about the new Mogberry Arctic Latte sensation at the 'Garden Ricebox' eatery.
	Seeing the door opening, they quieted down and tried to conceal their smiles.  A man in the standard dark SeeD uniform walked out of the elevator with a similarly outfitted blonde woman carrying a folder close on his heels.  There was a discernible air of tension between them as if some strong words had recently been exchanged.
	As they walked past the two female trainees, the first grabbed the latter's arm excitedly.
	"Isn't that Commander Leonhart?" she squealed.
	Her back turned to the two girls, Quistis rolled her eyes.  First-years.
	"And our new Headmistress," the other intern added dully.
	"I liked her pink skirt better," her friend remarked as they stepped into the elevator.
	"Yeah, she looks so old in that," came the agreement almost too quickly.
	"Definitely too old for him," they giggled in unison as the doors closed behind them.
	By then, Quistis had caught up with Squall on the limestone bridge.  One part of her wanted to turn around and wring their slender little necks, but the more professional side of her compelled her swallow her slighted pride.  Shrugging off slander was part of the responsibility that came with a public image that she had long come to accept.
	"Squall, you haven't heard a word I've said!" she cried, focusing back on the original issue.
	Maybe because I've gone deaf from your shouting at me in the elevator, he conjectured crossly.
	"Huh, what?" he verbalized, voice completely devoid of any humor.
	"Will you slow down?" she asked, grabbing his coat sleeve and pulling him to a stop.
	The commander turned and looked at her silently.
	"These thefts are an ever-growing concern, especially now when they've hit home," the Headmistress told him.
	So this is home now? he wondered, resisting the urge to lift a questioning eyebrow.  Are you sure you aren't taking this Headmistress position too personally?
	"I heard the alarm five minutes ago too," he reminded her.
	Had Quistis been a mere modicum more exasperated, she would have broken protocol and slapped him for so infuriatingly stating the obvious.
	"What do you want me to do?" Squall inquired.  "I've already heightened security."
	Quistis cocked her head at an angle in disbelief.
	"You assigned Sergeant Jay the head position on the Disciplinary Committee!" she argued.
	"Yes," Squall muttered in the most uninterested tone, "and I thank you for reporting to me my own executive decisions."
	"What was your rationale behind that promotion?" she prodded further.
	"I think he is an assiduous worker," he answered, though he felt the need to explain himself was definitely lacking.  "He is fully capable of handling this escalating situation."
	"Did you even read my officer's report?" she countered angrily.
	Yes, I always read everything, he wanted to scream in her ear.
	"It was my call," Squall declared flatly.  "That's the end of it."
	"No," Quistis retorted, "I outrank you as of seven minutes ago and I am rescinding your order."
	Squall could have frowned if he actually took her seriously for even a second.  Propitiously for him he was well versed enough in technical details and regulations that he would not have to resort to ever taking her seriously.
	He meticulously explained to her how her new administrative status did not give her jurisdiction over decisions regarding the executive branch of the Garden, which were still at the complete discretion of the superior SeeD officer, citing three similar cases of chain-of-command discrepancies from previous years.
	"That would be me," Squall concluded, thrusting his thumb into his chest to point at himself in case the Headmistress missed the underlying theme of the explanation.  I am that superior SeeD officer.
	I'm familiar with the cases, Quistis thought to herself.  You don't need to lecture me like that, Squall.  I'm a senior officer, not a senior citizen.
	"I don't think Jay is competent," she voiced through clamped teeth instead.
	"On what grounds?" Squall questioned, scowling.
	"The shot was aimed at me!" she protested in reference to misfire made by the trigger-happy sergeant.  Please don't look at me like that.  It's frightening.
	After glaring at her for a while longer, Squall finally decided to roll his eyes.  Now really...
	"It was!" she repeated weakly.  She wanted to stamp her feet.
	"Then how did the bullet hit the burglar?" Squall asked skeptically.  Why am even I talking to you?
	Quistis bit her bottom lip.  It was impossible to depict the full account to Squall so that he would understand her frustration without betraying the intrigue between her and the man who had saved her life.  Still, she had to room to maneuver.
	"Your report said that Sergeant Jay chased down the culprit and managed to score a direct hit on the man, isn't that right?" he cross-examined her before she could put up a rebuttal.
	"Yes," she argued, "it happened that way, but-"
	Selphie, with Irvine and Zell in hot pursuit, ran full tilt into the two commanding officers and nearly bowled them over.  When they had all recovered their footing, she looked up at Squall sheepishly like a melting lemon gumdrop.
	"He started it!" she said quickly, pointing at Irvine, and then ran behind Quistis using her as a shield.
	Irvine and Zell, smartly dressed in their dark SeeD uniforms, pretended to discuss something acutely interesting over the side of the bridge and acted as if they had no part in the unpleasantry.  Their guise of sudden sophistication didn't fool anyone. 
	"Aren't you a bit old for a game of tag?" Quistis reproached Selphie, noticeably irritated at the younger girl for interrupting the rare opportunity for a private moment with Squall.
	Selphie seemed to understand the odd moment at which she had arrived on the scene and did her best to look apologetic.
	"Sorry, Quisty," she whispered and squeezed Quistis' arm for reassurance.
	Quistis didn't mean to do so, but on reflex she rudely shook Selphie's hand off.  The latter pulled back as if she had been stung.  The better half of Quistis got the best of her, and she instantly regretted her action.  It was unbearable to see a darling like Selphie cringe.
	"Why aren't you in uniform?" Squall questioned abruptly, pointing at her yellow mini-skirt.
	"I'm boycotting it because it's two-percent leather!" Selphie exclaimed idealistically.  "Creatures have a right to life too!"
	Quistis just stared at her former student.
	"I'll have to file a SeeD salary demotion of two levels against you if you don't change before your next shift starts," the commander warned Selphie.
	"But I like my outfit!" Selphie pouted obstinately.
	Squall glared at her, and she scowled right back at his intense eyes.  For a split-second Quistis thought he might actually drop his undeviating aplomb, pick Selphie up and shake her in the air.  Even though he didn't move a muscle, it seemed as though he wanted to holler in her ear, "You are supposed to be a construction worker!"
	Irvine scratched the back of his neck nervously.  The rest of the spectators held their breaths.
	But Selphie eventually sniffled and was the first to look away from the tenuous stalemate.  She sniffled, rubbed her eyes melodramatically, and scampered off to find Dante for some commiseration.  For some reason she felt that her subordinate always understood what she was feeling.
	The corridor she was heading towards suddenly produced a familiar face that drove her to widen her eyes in fear.  It was that pesky student, Lily Furgle.  She remembered the rash promise she made and looked back nervously at Squall, the unwitting beneficiary and victim.  Given the circumstances, Selphie opted to avoid eye contact with Furgle and to try to evade her completely.  She ducked behind the nearest column and, scampering from pillar to pillar with successive rests in the lee of each, took the long way around the voluminous lobby to her exit. 
	Having won his point against Selphie, Squall resumed his brisk but stately walk to the officer's lounge.  Zell elbowed Irvine knowingly and ran over to Squall with a ploy to put him into better spirits.
	Quistis shook her head.  Absent-mindedly she turned her head to watch Selphie leave.  Her movements were curiously awkward.  She squinted and scrutinized the girl more carefully.  Why is Selphie slinking away like that?
	Quistis furrowed her brow but emitted a half-chuckle.  Then she noticed that the men had gained quite a distance from her.  She hurried to catch up to them, though it was a feat even then to just keep up with their peripatetic pace.  She had gotten the impression that as of late they were walking faster or taking longer strides when she was around.
	"Where are you headed?" she asked Irvine in passing.
	"Basketball courts," he replied as he headed in the direction for the gymnasium.
	"Be careful not to incur any more fines," she told him.
	Irvine gave her the thumbs-up without turning back to look at her.
	"And Irvine -" she called out before he had taken more than four steps.
	Irvine's back visibly stiffened at the addition, and jerkily arresting his pace, he looked back hesitantly.
	"-it's good that you finally ironed your uniform," she finished with an approving nod.
	The sharpshooter grinned in relief and headed into a perpendicular corridor before Quistis remembered to ask about whether or not his restriction from the basketball courts had been lifted.  For a moment, just before he disappeared from view completely, she thought he had paused for the briefest of moments in mid-stride, as though he had caught a glimpse of a familiar face out of the corner of his eye, but had found only phantoms of the mind upon a second look.  Gradually her thoughts drifted back to the business at hand.
	"You really got to hand it to Selphie," Zell chirped, hanging awkwardly over Squall's shoulder.  "Is this lobby a visual stunner or what?"
	Squall slowed his steps and scanned the atrium as if it had been his first time to set foot in Nova Trabia.  The water for the artificial river that ran under the white cobblestone bridge had been pumped in, and the indoor waterfall was functioning beautifully.  Bits of Dragon Fin and Orihalcon had been deliberated poured into the riverbed to make the bottom shimmer under the organic, electro-luminescent chandeliers hanging from the altitudinous ceiling.  Water Crystals were homogenously embedded on the squares of cobblestone, and she had also taken meticulous care to have Moon Stone embossing the corbels of each of the twelve semi-circularly pillars stationed around the perimeter of the grand chamber.  Each corridor entrance was surmounted by tri-lobed archways and a corresponding triangular gable with Coral Fragment filigree micro-architecture interspersed along the polished walls.  He didn't know why he hadn't been up to his usual, impeccable circumspection to notice it.
	Squall mentally whistled.
	Maybe it's because she hasn't blown anything up yet today, he tried to make an excuse for himself in order to assuage the sting of self-reproach.  She ought to be less extravagant with the materials budget.
	The more he got to thinking about it, the more he thought Headmaster Cid's assignment of construction detail to Selphie when her natural talent clearly lied with deconstruction was as ill-advised and unqualified as his order for Irvine and Zell to handle negotiations with their Shumi patrons.
	Seeing that the aesthetic ambience had put him into a more pensive mood, Zell took the chance to ask Squall about his new blue-haired belle.
	"I see you hanging out with her all the time," Zell commented in a half-accusatory tone.  "Even saw you take her to McChocobo's for lunch on Wednesday."
	As if that were some sacred place, Squall retorted silently.
	He took an extra second to decide between denying the allegation and throwing Zell's chummy arm off of his own.
	"I bet you don't even know her name," the latter goaded him.  I wonder if he even knows Rinoa's name anymore.
	Squall glared at Zell but was clearly surprised that his companion knew this fact.
	"In case you're wondering, I know her name," he gloated, quite unnecessarily in the shocked SeeD Commander's opinion.
	He was meanwhile falling through a cascade of mixed emotions.  Zell as a source of intelligence?  Do I believe him?  How in the name of Odin did he-
	"What are you two talking about?" came the voice from behind them.
	Quistis broke into the fray, stepping between the two of them before he had the chance to question Zell.
	Squall was half-relieved to have been liberated from supporting Zell's body-weight, half-annoyed that he now had Quistis under his own arm.  It would evoke a shameful sense of schoolgirl-squeamishness and be egregiously impolite if at this point Commander Leonhart were to struggle like mad to free himself, even if that was what he wanted to do.
	Over Quistis' shoulder he looked back at Zell and thought to himself, I guess one needn't be intelligent to report intelligence.  But if the principle of Occam's Razor had any merit in it, then in this case like any other the simpler solution would be the correct one.  On this more probable interpretation he settled and turned the question of Zell's sudden illumination from his mind; Zell was probably just horsing around.  The white lie was a joke meant to goad him on, egging him as childhood chums might.
	The party of three turned down the main corridor where former Sergeant Jay was interrogating an unprepossessing vagabond with a huge satchel slung over his shoulder.  In his hand was a slip that Jay was trying vigorously to decipher.
Seeing them coming down the hall, the new head of the Disciplinary Committee saluted first the Commander, then the Headmistress, and finally snickered when he saw Zell, whom he greeted with, "Not thinking of causing any trouble today, are you, Dincht?"
	Stepping out from under Squall's arm, Quistis moved between Zell and Jay as arbiter and tried to shift their attention back to the newcomer.  Save for the boy's torn overcoat, sharp visor, and blue cap, he was dressed inconspicuously as far as vagrants went.
	"What is his business here, Sergeant?" Quistis inquired.
	"Lieutenant," her addressee corrected her, indiscreetly brushing his fingers over the insignia pinned over his left breast pocket.
	Quistis was scowling too hard to blink.
	"He claims he is the new head librarian, but he doesn't have any formal identification cards or reference letters to work here," Jay picked up again.  "Even his passport is suspect because it was just stamped by Balamb emigration only yesterday."
	The senior officers exchanged looks, and Squall looked at Quistis for an explanation.
	Quistis turned her gaze to the stranger who was either intimidated by the interrogation or growing tired of it.  It was hard to tell with his visor over his eyes.
	"You're Jeremy Chapter?" she asked incredulously.
	It was against high societal policy for women to snort uncontrollably.  As such, Quistis suppressed the impulse and wordlessly opened the folder in her hands without waiting for an answer to verify his identity against the enclosed photograph.  She systematically flipped past a half dozen pages listing Nova Trabia Garden SeeD exam scores and names of newly initiated Balamb Garden SeeDs and found his transfer application.
	"We were expecting you to arrive yesterday," the Headmistress continued talking just as he was about to give affirmation.
	Redundantly she added, "You're late."
	Not knowing what to say to that, the newcomer rubbed his shoulder uncomfortably.  Whatever he was toting in the bag must have been heavy.
	Quistis guessed that it was probably everything he owned.  She then motioned to Squall that he could go on ahead and that she would catch up with him later.  Squall shrugged and walked into the lounge with Lieutenant Jay and Zell vying for his attention.
	"Follow me to the new library facilities where we've been depositing whatever survived the missile attacks from the old Trabia Garden library," Quistis told Jeremy.
	As they walked down the hall, she said, "You won't need those in here," and relieved him of his visor.  He instinctively began to protest, but she interjected that he would get them back as soon as he had forgotten about them.
	Just as they neared the door to the new library, a female Garden student carrying a bulging crate of miscellany came out through it.
 	"Do you need help?" Chapter offered.
	"Nah," the girl said, "but thanks anyway."
	"Is there anything I can do to make you stay, Katie?" Quistis asked her, skipping the courtesy introduction.  "We'd hate for you to leave."
	"Sorry, Headmistress Trepe," the other replied, visibly touched, "but I found another opportunity elsewhere, and I really want to go with it."
	Jeremy looked at the two ladies blankly and waited for the Headmistress to give him an introduction that never came.
	Katie's eyes drifted to one side as if she were recollecting some moment worth becoming nostalgic over, but then, retracing back to the present, gave a curt smile.  She hoisted the already overflowing box to a different position and tried to step around her two interlocutors.  In the bustle, a marble fountain pen shifted out of its original position and fell to the floor.
	Jeremy bent over and picked it up.  The way he was shouldering the bulky bag as if he was afraid to set it down on the floor made the simple retrieval a challenge even for a contortionist.
	But he managed and was about to fix it in some place deeper in the carton when Katie shook her head.
	"No, you can keep it," she told him.  "I still have plenty."
	"Oh, thank you," Jeremy said, his countenance betraying his surprise.  "My first fountain pen!"
	"You're the new librarian, right?" Katie asked with a cursory glance at his outfit.
	Chapter nodded with a bright beam.
	"You're late," she commented dryly and walked right past him, heading towards the far end of the hall.  She had not taken more than a few steps before she nearly collided with Sergeant Jay who was headed in the opposite direction.  Quistis breathed sharply but then exhaled easily when she saw that the potential disaster had been averted.  Katie gave him a disapproving look and continued on her way towards the Garden Main Gate.
	The lieutenant walked over to the entrance of the library and took something out of his pocket.  Quistis waited for him to say something.
	"Kinneas couldn't find anything on it with preliminary searches," Jay said, showing them a circular piece of jewelry.
	"Well, it's more than a bracelet," Quistis reminded him.  Why don't you make yourself useful and pick up the paper trail, Sergeant?
	"I agree," Jay informed her.  "In fact, our research team had something interesting to say about it."
	"Well, what?" the Headmistress grumbled, slightly irritated at having to wait again for the man to speak.
	"Their scanners indicated that it wasn't artificially produced," the man clarified.
	He then handed it to Jeremy.  Quistis eyed the bracelet with a frown.
	"You're the bookkeeper now," he said.  "Here is your first assignment.  I want a report telling me exactly what this thing is and how it ended up on my beach by tomorrow morning."
	The serious-looking man remained standing there after he was done.
	"Don't you have a thief to catch, 'Sergeant'?" Quistis snubbed him bluntly.  I hope he kills you.
	It occurred to her Jay would have been the perfect, expendable unit that she could send to tail Seifer - the proverbial sacrificial lamb.  She had no compunction about signing this virtual death warrant, if she didn't think he was totally incompetent and wouldn't even have the slimmest chance of completing the mission.
	Meanwhile, the condescension in her voice had been unmistakable.
	Having asserted his authority over the new guy and not particularly keen on seeing it slip away, Lieutenant Jay clicked the heels of his polished shoes together, turned, and departed without further prompting.
	Jeremy turned and looked at the Headmistress.
	"I read the Garden standard operating procedures manual, ma'am," he spoke with some hesitation, "but I don't remember coming across any salute that matches what he just did."
	"I think he just made that up," Quistis shooting a dirty look in Jay's general direction.  "At any rate, I want that same report on my desk an hour before he gets it."
	"Of course," he replied and excused himself to get a head start on his assignment.
	Just after Jeremy disappeared through the door, Quistis caught Squall and Zell exiting the officer's lounge out of the corner of her eye.  Turning her head, she called for them to wait and walked over to them.
	"Have you managed to locate Seifer?" she posed openly so that either man could answer.
	While her gesture effectively doubled the response probability, twice of zero was still zero.  They looked between her and each other and conveniently decided that it was the other's turn to deal with her.  By all rights she should have beat them both senseless for this demeaning treatment, but there were no mop handles within arm's reach.
	Squall looked as antsy as an expressionless person could.  She guessed that she was putting him behind in his daily docket with her nagging.  He was a fanatic about being punctual, unlike most guys his age.  She wondered if he would have spent more time with her if he hadn't decided that she was a colossal waste of time.
	It eventually occurred to them that she was not going to let them off the hook until one of them replied to her question.  Zell scratched and back of his neck and deferred to his commanding officer.
	Squall frowned at him for the briefest of seconds and then explained to Quistis that his statisticians did not think that Seifer posed enough threat to warrant sending an investigator.  The fact that he had volunteered for the missionary cause actually reduced the odds of his becoming further involved in criminal activity.  Additionally, the Nova Trabia Garden legal advisory committee was unanimous in their review that Seifer had not technically violated his parole.  In short, Quistis was being paranoid.  Squall would have told her to check out Seifer's whereabouts personally if she was so concerned about him, that is, if he didn't think her responsibilities as the new Headmistress put as massive a restriction as they did on how much she could do in her free time.
	"You know as well as I do that normative probability statistics don't apply to Seifer," Quistis refuted his reasoning.  "He is an ubiquitous wildcard."
	It was Squall's turn to scratch the back of his neck and look bored.  This maneuver he and Zell had been switching off in performing for the past five minutes but he had uncharacteristically missed the next beat and ruined the rhythm of the trade-off.
	"He has been underground for over a week, Squall," Quistis pressed further, "possibly three!"
	Squall stared straight ahead into space, trying to see past her head.  Maybe she isn't really talking to me.  Maybe she's speaking to someone else.
	"Zell himself confirmed the reports of Seifer being in Nova Trabia!" she continued to squawk.
	"Second-hand information," Zell piped in order to distance himself from the argument.
	Squall decided that it might be more expeditious for his escape to humor Quistis rather than convince her that she was wrong.  Prodigy or not, they should have left her at the orphanage.
	Thinking quickly and looking her straight in the eyes, he hypothesized, "If Seifer was honestly trying to penetrate Nova Trabia Garden via subterranean route, and if he has had all the time that you say he's had, then he would have broken in already."
	At that moment, a large section of the floor beneath them ruptured and gave way.  The three officers snapped to attention and instinctively reached for their weapons.  Squall felt the rush of air blow across his face and the clutter of sedimentary granules settle over his hair.
	"What in Eden-"
	Quistis' exclamation trailed off in ambivalent anticipation of what the veil of jetsam might reveal to be its cause once settled.  She noted the awkward knot that suddenly took hold of her stomach.  Despite the unexpected tumult, she felt a strange sense of familiarity in the tension in the air.  Bothered, she tightened her grip around the whip handle.
	As the three of them found themselves engulfed more and more in a small penumbra of dust and powder thrown up from the sinkhole, Squall began to feel grungy.  He made a note to wash his hair for the third time that day.  The cost for the supply of shampoo he planned to extract in full from the offender.
	Zell could hear that a crowd of students had begun to pour into the corridor ahead of them, having been stirred by the loud rumble that had accompanied the collapse of the flooring.  He could also vaguely discern a peppery Rishi trying to elbow her way to the front past the static clump of bodies that had gathered under the archway.  Finding her attempts frustrated, the mass too thick to penetrate, she tried jumping up and down to gain sporadic peeks over the shoulders of impeding classmates.  Every now and then he spied her head surface from the uniform line of nameless faces, just as quickly disappearing back into the throng each time.  Sergeant Jay had also reappeared among the ranks and did succeed in making his way to the front.
	The dust finally cleared and revealed a circular chasm spanning the width of the hall...and a few seconds later, also the silhouettes of the three people inside it.
	"Stars of Gilgamesh!" Quistis gasped when she recognized the blonde male at the head of the pack.
	Squall recognized him as well, but forced himself to take a second to survey the totality of the scene, in compliance to section 4.2 line 7 of the SeeD manual of operations.  He noticed that the hole in the ground was actually closer to the neglected file storage room than to the officer's lounge.  It was the same space where the movers had apathetically cached overstock microfilm and texts decades old that no one ever bothered to transfer into the computer network databases.
	What in Diablos is he looking for? Squall wondered.
	The dust-covered man in his torn white coat was hissing expletives at the taller and more tanned of his two accomplices, though under the powder they appeared equally pale and gray.  Had the former been unpinned and had more complete use of his legs, he would undoubtedly have tried to kick the latter.
	Upon seeing Leonhart and company, his eyes narrowed and he assumed an expression of unsmirched smugness.
	"I think we must have missed a ramp," Seifer Almasy teased the wordless SeeD Commander.  "I was supposed to get off at the last exit."
	"W-what are you doing here?" Quistis demanded shakily.  I hate how my premonitions are always right.
	The subsequent sigh that escaped from Seifer's lips was indiscernible as being either real or feigned. 
	"This is the scene where you declare your undying hatred for me," he added, clearly addressed to Squall.
	Quistis paled another two shades.  That line had added meaning.
	Zell scowled and looked over questioningly at Squall.  Give me the signal to sic him.
	Nothing from the commander.
	Unable to solicit any reaction from Leonhart, Seifer decided to switch tactics and personas.
	"Don't just to any conclusions about the storage room, fellas," he lied, deciding the best ruse would be the slight distortion of the truth.  "We were just hunting down some antique issues of 'Girl Next Door'."
	"Even Fuujin?" Zell scoffed skeptically.  "And besides, I already traded them to Zone for Triple Triad Shiva cards, you dip-wad."  All the friends and classmates of mine you've killed with Galbadian resources and you're still this cocky?
	That was rather quick for Zell, Quistis noted mentally.
	Seifer decided to try another play-act.
	"I'm...seeking...medical...attention," he appealed to Squall in between histrionically labored breaths.  "I'm pretty sure it's covered by the company's health policy."
	Gun-blade still clinched in hand, Leonhart crossed his arms and pronounced frigidly, "You forget; you don't work here anymore.  Get out."
	Quistis and Zell both turned to Squall and stared at him in penultimate disbelief.
	"What?" Quistis exclaimed. "Squall, enemy or not, he's wounded and deserves treatment!"
	"What?" Zell shouted simultaneously over Quistis' voice.  "You're just going to let him go without beating him up!?"  After all the times he has tried to kill us?
	Behind Seifer, a soot-smudged Fuujin let out a controlled groan and flexed her arm sorely.  Besides her, Raijin whimpered and coughed.  Two arms' length away from Seifer there lied a flashy Kris-style blade, so broad that Squall doubted if there was even a need to use the trigger part of the multifaceted weapon.  Most noticeable were the lavish etchings of dragons on the side of its hilt.  He had not seen that style of gun-blade in any of the 'Weapons Monthly' magazines, which obviated the possibility that any blacksmiths in the region would know how to fashion a duplicate.
	Squall looked back and forth between Zell and Quistis, unsure of which extreme to pursue.  He spared a moment to look at Rishi who was biting on her thumbnail nervously and at the mixed expressions of all the trainees around her.  Hardened and soft aspects were pretty much split evenly down the middle.  At this point, it was clearly futile to resort to popular opinion.  It would all rest on his unilateral executive judgment call.
	Seifer smiled innocently at Zell and said of the wreckage, "Don't you worry.  I'll clean this up and have it looking spanking new in no time, Chicken-wuss."
	Oaf!  Quistis winced internally.  It was as if Seifer was daring for someone to clobber him.
	Both Zell and Squall stared hard, fists clenched and jaws cast in iron.
	Between them the air felt like it was going to snap.
	To Diablos with it!  Zell decided.  You're in my playground now.
	Without so much as cracking his knuckles to indicate that he was coming, the SeeD boxer lounged at the intruder.  His punch was set to land in Seifer's jugular.
	Snap!
	"Huh?" Zell exclaimed.
	He looked back to see what was stopping his hand and saw Quistis' whip wrapped around his wrist.  She met his half-accusing, half-hurt glare with guilt tantamount, but still braced her full weight in opposition to his maneuver.  The more Zell struggled against her, the harder she pulled to meet him.
	"I always knew you had a soft spot for me, Instructor," Seifer spoke first.
	"Shut up, Seifer," she snapped venomously.  "And I'm not your instructor anymore."  I'm not anyone's instructor anymore.
	"You're not anyone's instructor anymore," he reminded her mockingly.  Lest you forget I was your last student.
	Zell was still trying furiously to pounce on Seifer.  As far as she could discern, he was aiming for a killing blow to the neck.  Strength nearly spent and realizing that she would not be able to hold him off for much longer, Quistis turned her head towards Squall and searched him desperately for some sign of arbitration.  Please, Squall, set a good example for the new wave of cadets.
	The SeeD commander's expression read a dark cloud.
	Raijin gritted his teeth nervously, only to find the taste of blood in his mouth, and felt a missing space in the top row.
	Fuujin was on the verge of relapsing into conniptions from the pain all over her body.   There are probably bruises on my teeth.
	Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Zell heard his name from behind him.
	"Hold it, Zell."
	It was Squall's order.
	To everyone's shock, the commander then dusted his SeeD uniform off with a few pats and remarked aloofly to his arch-nemesis, "You're not worth my time."
	Zell's mouth hung open in full display of the crass and Quistis' taut whip slackened to a disbelieving droop.
	"You're not even worth a Med Kit," Squall added after the briefest of pauses for a verbal sting he knew would survive for a lifetime.  Burn in hell, Seifer.  Some day, I know you will.
	Regaining his usual commander-caliber composure, Squall told Quistis to call staff security down immediately.  He made a point not to send for any medical units for on-site emergency inspections.  However, the three trespassers were to be referred to the infirmary for Dr. Kadowaki to treat within the next five minutes.  Seifer's parole officer informed of the flagrant prima facie violation within two minutes.
	At this point Quistis interrupted, pulling him aside where their words would not overheard by the population of students present.
	"Squall," she began nervously, "I know I might have undermined the integrity of the chain of command in Garden with that last public display of conflict of authority, but Seifer-"
	"Get back in character, 'Quis'," Squall broke her off acerbically with the deliberate choice of the diminutive childhood sobriquet to cast a condescending air over her Headmistress-ship.  "I'm the one who runs the missions here; your job is to clean up the playground when recess is over."
	He shook her hand off of his arm violently.  "Understand!?"
	She looked away angrily.  No!  No!  No!
	"Take a look at all the students who witnessed this just now.  This is Trabia, for Hyne's sake!  How many of their friends and families were left homeless or killed because of him?" Squall resisted the urge to shake her by her SeeD uniform collar out of professional courtesy but hissed in her ear.  "We let Seifer off light, and when the word gets around, I'm going to get the heat for it, not you, Headmistress Trepe."
	No tempered tactic seemed to be working, so Quistis resorted to a more ad hominem approach.
	"What would your father think?" she coaxed without meeting his eyes.
	"My father wasn't the paradigm voice of conscience, and you don't need to be mine," he replied.
	Squall grabbed Sergeant Jay from behind her and directed him to secure the area with what hands they had on site.  He then ordered a courier to send word to Instructor Tilmitt about getting a construction crew down to the first floor to repair the damages.
	"You all have your orders," the commander huffed and dismissed them hurriedly.  Anxiously he took a split-second to check his watch.  Diablos take this!
	Zell leaned against the cold metal wall and rubbed his right wrist gingerly.  Had it not been for his glove, the whip might have torn up multiple epidermal layers.
	"Squall," Quistis bravely urged again, "this isn't how we should handle it."  Now that I think about it, though, how else could we handle this?
	The answer to her plea was only too obvious.
	"Whatever," he shot back as if it had were an automated response.  Do whatever you want.
	Turning on his heel, he stormed off towards the locker room in the adjacent hall.
	Zell's blinked twice in rapid succession, having witnessed the flurry of happenings that seemed to have blazed by him.  Did that just happen?
	Quistis read his look and nodded tentatively, though it could just have easily been read as an answer for the negative, shaking her head at the awful scene before her.  She could not have known how high her eyebrows were arching, the entire countenance of shocked incredulity having been provoked by Squall's unanticipated reaction.
	After all Seifer put us through, Quistis remonstrated, eyes flashing as a whirlwind of possible explanations raced through her head, I doubt even someone as phlegmatic as Squall could have repressed the desire for a quick and painless reprisal.  And yet he chose to walk away from it.  It happened!  I saw it!  What is going on?
	He has to be hiding something, Trepe concluded naturally.
	Her eyes narrowed.  Or someone.
	Rinoa?
	Zell finally picked his jaw off the floor and sped after the commander, calling out to Squall to wait for him.  The request was grudgingly granted.  Just as Zell sprinted across the intersection between two perpendicular corridors to where his colleague was waiting, a silver-haired girl with pink irises poked her head out from around the corner curiously and surveyed the commotion still going on outside the officer's lounge.  Zell squinted at her and tried to recall why she looked so familiar.
	Where do I know her from? he wondered.
	Squall noticed his peculiar expression and followed his gaze.  When he found her, she struck him oddly enough as someone he'd met before as well.
	"Pearl?" Zell murmured tentatively.  The mental spark plug tried over and over to light itself, refusing to remain an inconsequential fizzle.
	Suddenly the mechanism snapped to life: She was the girl who had simply showed up one day looking for her allegedly missing friend!
	The two SeeD officers exchanged looks and then turned their glances back to their curious visitor, but by then she had disappeared into the crowd, eager to see what all the stir was about.
	Squall shook his head severely and let out a vexed sigh.  There was something wrong about the situation, detected facilely enough by the uneasiness he felt within.  His gut instincts were seldom wrong.
	"Blast it, Pandemona!" the Level A SeeD cursed and then continued on his way to the changing room.  Some things were just more important.  It wasn't that he was walking away from his responsibilities, but if he'd be damned if he was going to have to personally handle every lost girl scout in Garden and command their highly regimented martial body to boot.  A leadership position that he hadn't asked for was punishment enough.  He thought humorlessly how the karma from his past life had finally caught up with him.
	Jay will handle it, he reassured himself as he found his locker.  999, the highest-numbered compartment they had.
	"Leonhart, Squ-" he spoke into the voice-lock-identifer's receiver.
	"Hey, Squall," Zell burst in, "can you believe what just hap-"
	His voice trailed off punctually when Squall shot him a glare after a little red light on the mini-panel lit up and access was denied to him.
	"Leonhart, Squall," he tried again, still eyeing Zell.  This time the ungarbled input registered successfully and the locker door popped ajar.
	Dry-mouthed, the blonde SeeD tried swallowing and succeeded only with upper-level difficulty.
	Squall ignored him and changed out of his black SeeD uniform back into plain dark clothes.  He rolled up his orange t-shirt into a bundle and tucked it under his arm.
	As Squall slammed his locker door shut, he noticed that Zell was still trying to say something.  He hasn't he left yet?
	"What?" he demanded.  Is it too much to hope that it might actually be something important this time?
	"You're not going to press and fold them?" Zell inquired, raising an eyebrow.  It's out of character for him to deviate even the slightest bit from his hard-set habits.
	Squall shook his head.  He didn't have enough time to perform his fastidious, quotidian ritual of ironing his uniform today.  Between Quistis' harangue and Seifer's intrusion, he calculated that he had lost about four minutes and twenty seconds.  It seemed like forever.  She would grow upset soon if he didn't get out to the quad and pick her up.  He estimated that it wouldn't take her longer than another two minutes to begin wondering if he had stood her up...for the third time this past week, and have an irate, nameless, beautiful blue-haired menace to answer to.
	In a rare moment of weariness, Squall rubbed his temples.  It is always something.  Something always comes up.  I bet she's probably used to it by now.
	Zell was flabbergasted, unable to comprehend what that never-before-seen sign of fatigue meant.  He was surely the only person in contemporary history to witness the mere suggestion that the first seams of the stonewall had begun to unravel.  It was common knowledge in the public domain that Squall's sangfroid was akin to chain-mail armor.
	Something about the way Zell was gawking at him reminded him of Ellone.  Squall looked to the side for a half-second and made a mental note to check up on her.  It had been so long since he had last seen his foster-sister, or god-sister, or whatever relation she was to him.  Instinctively he reached over to his opposite hand to feel his ring.  When he did not find it on his finger, his hand moved up to his throat, expecting to find it dangling on his chain necklace.  When both attempts were frustrated, Squall looked down and realized what he had been doing subconsciously.
	Wake up, Squall! he censured himself for silliness.  Of course I don't have Griever on me; I told Rinoa to keep it.
	In retrospect, he regretted the decision.  For so long he hadn't been feeling quite like himself without it ubiquitously at hand to guide him.  After Ellone gave it to him she had promptly disappeared.  The ring naturally assumed the character of moral authority in the vacuum that she'd left by her pitiless departure.  A decade later she would seem innately handicapped by immaturity, but at the time she was everything he wanted to be and be with when he grew up.  And he would finally grow up on that day when he suddenly realized that the ring fit him perfectly.  Putting it on, he felt as though his entire being had changed, as if he had stepped through the transitional threshold from one life to another.
	Something occurred to him.
	"Zell," he said, looking back at Zell, "if you still have the mold for my Griever ring from that time when you made Rinoa a copy, could you fashion one that would fit me?"
	Zell scowled, thinking hard, and finally shook his head.
	"I had to modify the mold to accommodate Rinoa's finger size," he answered.  "I can make you a slightly miniaturized copy of it like the one she has if you want, though."
	Squall nodded and replied, "That will have to do then.  Hope it won't be too much trouble."
	"No trouble," Zell chirped back.  "I was looking for an excuse to fire up the forge and upgrade these Ehrgeiz gloves anyway.  You've seen the 'Weapons Monthly' September issue, right?"
	Tasks completed and points made, Squall excused himself without answering the question and hurried to the door with brisk but nonetheless dignified strides.
	"Have you heard from Rinoa?" Zell ventured to inquire.  He sighed, having finally gotten out of his chest the question he'd been wanting to ask all morning.
	Squall shook his head, keeping his stride.  It had been over a week since she had last sent him the exhaustive quotidian bundle of eighteen back-to-back mushy voice messages.
	"Oh, one more thing," Zell eased in before he reached the door, "her name is Merali."
	Squall tensed up and stopped dead in his tracks.  Turning back, the Commander shot his fellow SeeD an inquisitive look.
	"You think I'm BS-ing, don't you?" Zell prodded, flashing an unguent grin.  It was the first smile flashed since the unwelcome appearance of the posse.
	Squall thought it better not to question the integrity of the information in light of his current tardiness that was distending with each passing second.
	"Okay," he registered with a tentative nod, and then exited the locker room from the side door that led to the parking garage.  In the background, Zell interjected a few 'Booya!'s and pumped his fist in the air.
	After entering the garage, Squall would take his A09 Galbadian military motorbike to gateway connector ramp that opened out onto the Quad where she'd be leaning on the railing by the steps and expecting him.
	As always he had parked it on the far side of the lot towards the exit, but it met him halfway, Squall having activated the auto-ignition, autopilot, and key-holder auto-find with the radio remote on his key chain.
	Zell ground his upper and lower teeth together as the SeeD Commander slid smoothly into his bike seat and started the engine.  Squall sat back, braced himself for the jerk of precipitous acceleration, and raced up the exit ramp with the authoritative screech of burnt rubber over concrete.
	What couldn't distance change?  Watching him go was like losing Mina all over again.  How he could stand by and watch Squall lose Rinoa reflected and magnified his own glaring error, indelible because it happened the past, and unforgettable because the resulting pain was etched in his heart.  How much longer would it be until Rinoa walked out on him just like Mina had done at the post-Time-Compression Balamb Garden ball, if she hadn't made her exit already?  They were all fools.
	A minute later, Zell snapped out of his daze and stuck his outstretched hand back into his pocket, having meant to keep someone but to no avail.  Air was the only thing that one couldn't hold onto for dear life.
	Squall found Merali exactly as he had imagined, leaning over the railing by the marble Quad steps with her chin resting on her palm, her angelic head held in a soft caress that matched the gentleness of her white skirt and blue-green blouse.  She looked perfectly harmless.  Regrettably Squall feared that her imminent ire would soon belie that cherub image and dispel any remnant fantasies he had about heaven.
	He sucked in his breath when she caught sound of his stentorian engine and cocked her head ever so slightly as to peer at his arrival.
	With a bemused poker-face that was too early to read, the attendee nonchalantly clapped her hands together and shoved at the railing with her wrists so as to push her back upright.  The amount of effort it took her suggested to Squall that she had been leaning against the bar for quite some time.
	She rubbed her wrists tenderly and strolled over to where he remained mounted with the engine running.  Something about her muteness had told him not to shut it off.
	Eventually she moved alongside his motorcycle, but instead of hopping on, she studied his face intently.  For the millionth time that week, he couldn't look away.
	Is it gnawing on you too? Her sad eyes seemed to say.
	It could have been interpreted a malevolent rub towards a guilt trip.
	I'm sorry, he might have answered.
	She climbed into the seat behind him and wrapped her hands around his sides.  Safely situated, she squeezed his ribs slightly and he clapped his helmet visor down in acknowledgment.  He would have gotten out the matching jet-black passenger helmet from the bike's storage compartment and offered it to her had she not acculturated him to the vanity of the gesture.  She had inexplicably developed an acute adversity to wearing helmets after the first ride he had given her back to Garden from the beach on that fateful morning of their meeting.  Was it really that hard to breathe with the visor down at 200 kilometers per hour?
	He gave the bike some juice, turned the vehicle on a dime, and kicked up a small dust cloud in the process of jetting out of the Quad, out of the Garden, and sooner than soon, out of sight.
	A slender silhouette formed presently against the veil of dust, breaking out of which was none other than Quistis, trying intently to wave them down.
	"Wait!" she cried, a shout that seemed to reach out a lifetime too late.  Come back...
	The Headmistress leaned over, resting her hands on either knee, and panted heavily.  More blood than oxygen was rushing to her head, the latter of which was what she needed.  She put her head between her legs to ease the flow and felt the after-burn sink into her calves.
	She had traversed the lobby twice going from the Garage to the Quad in an attempt to catch him.  The taxing sprint only took two and a half minutes, which ought to have been a new track record.
	But it had not been good enough.
	She had not been good enough.  She had lost him to Rinoa.  She had willingly sacrificed her coveted, prestigious SeeD instructor's position just so she could be with him without transgressing regulation, and still, she had lost him to her.
	She had lost him to the enemy, their new enemy.  The enemy.  To think that the sole purpose of Garden was to defy a single woman!  They were only mercenaries for hire on the side to pay the bills; out of expedience they sold out their ethics.  It had been in her mind for quite some time that the entire SeeD program had a rather myopic focus.
	Infatuation makes for a rather myopic focus as well, Quistis considered morosely.  Love would do that to you.  Tunnel vision.  You can't see anything but the light that you believe is at the end of the tunnel, and there is no turning back.
	Was there no turning back from SeeD either?  What was SeeD?  What was the glamorous aim, the noble purpose, the lofty goal?  There had to be at least one redeeming virtue in the institution.  Quistis struggled in vain to find one, and had immense difficulty even in falsifying one.  She considered everything from the internecine battle of Galbadia and Balamb Gardens, to the redounding travesty of Squall's role in his relationship with Rinoa as either the lover who was supposed to take her home or the SeeD Commander who was supposed to take her life.  Quistis even considered the unfinished, derelict contract that obligated them to assist the Forest Owls resistance group in liberating Timber from the oppressive Galbadian government.  Even with President Deling dead and the country's administrative powers in disorder, Timber's autonomy was still far from realization and a formidable task certainly too large for Watts and the sex-crazed, stomach-crippled Zone to handle on their own.
	The fogginess of her memory she attributed to the interference from her Guardian Forces.  It seemed so long ago that it all happened; they had not been more than Level 20 fighters in experience when they were contracted, a great contrast with their present Level 99, demi-god, Hero statuses with the most powerful weapons and magic stock in the world.
	But even so, what good are we? Quistis considered ambivalently.  A life devoted to repeated assassination attempts - when we fail, we try again, and if we succeed, there will just be another sorceress the next day to fight.
	The defeat of one sorceress meant that her powers would be passed to the next lucky beneficiary.  It was an endless cycle.  Hyne seemed to have designed the timeline of the world so that in every age, at any given time, there would be one and only one sorceress.  They would never be free from them.
	Maybe SeeDs aren't supposed to ever win, she reflected glumly.  Maybe we are just supposed to keep the sorceress in check eternally. 
	How tedious and pointless it all was!  Nothing would ever change, and they were condemned to live in a perpetual state of war.  She might as well start her own orphanage like Cid Kramer did and raise orphans to do the fighting for in her stead.
	Quistis clenched her fists tightly and shook her head.	
	There had to be more meaning to life than this.
	She had walked herself through the same logic game countless times: If the Great Hyne used to be contained within the world, then She could not have been above and beyond it.  Hyne was one of them then, just another snowflake to be shaken up inside the crystal ball.  When she couldn't fall asleep, Quistis would stay awake in bed and wonder what was Primal Cause had introduced Hyne into the world, and why It had removed Her.
	What is out there? for the longest time she yearned to know.  What out is there?
	It had taken her months and this moment to figure out that she wanted out.
	Quistis stopped trying to look through the trees beyond the Garden gates.  Squall was probably miles away by now.
	Head drooping, Trepe reached over to the left side of her black SeeD uniform and tore the Headmistress insignia off the breast pocket.  Almost lifelessly she let it fall from her hand and settle on the dirt path.  She placed her heel over it and felt the colossal difference in the weight she no longer carried.  She didn't feel half as tired anymore.
	Quistis turned and headed back up the Quad steps with a mind to resign her position as the Nova Trabia Headmistress.  It was the only chance she had at ever walking away from this part of her life, to purge herself of this failed experiment known as youth.  Her superior, the Balamb Garden Headmaster Cid Kramer, was only a call away.
	Half-hidden behind the crocketed pinnacles crowning the altitudinous gable of the gothic archway between the Quad and the atrium, a caped figure watched the blonde beauty's movements with great interest.


Setting 28: 1838 DAY 23, Nova Trabia Garden Quad

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art...
It has no survival value; rather 
it is one of those things that give value to survival."

		-Lewis, C. S.
		In Friendship


	He had but to call out to her.  He hadn't been more than an arrow's flight away.
	And yet, between the height of the sun that noon and the chronic ache from his still healing chest wound, there was not a modicum of incentive in the entirety of his body for him to do that.  The orphan amongst orphans simply could not be bothered to scoot more than three inches in any direction from where he had planted himself.
	With a lazy nod from his head Match beckoned for her to rejoin him on the comfortable patch of grass, but she shook her head, purposely, he thought, just to piss him off.
	Bringing her to this canopied glade at the heart of Hodmimir's Forest had been a mistake.  Hers was a spirit incompatible to the serenity that the quaintly static ambience offered.  It was a curious shelter of foliage that he had accidentally stumbled upon in the "Shawl's Stone" countryside during his desultory, pre-engagement vagrancy.  Overhead the circular ring of shrubbery admitted a single golden stream of light, the one welcome intruder from the fenced off outside world, perfectly picturesque and virtually inviolable, all while retaining its all-naturalness, which was not altogether something easy to do.
	But apparently she wasn't a big fan of sitting.  Her non-stop movement from place to place was as sprightly as her attention was capricious.  Her life seemed too short to spend it being stationary.
	Annoyed with her deliberate noncompliance, he released a disgusted sigh and lied back down, placing both hands behind his head to cushion it.  It was somewhat risky to open his shoulders so wide because he could never be sure about how far he might be able to stretch him arms before they would being tearing at his injured pectoral muscles.  
	Unconcerned about his condition or merely oblivious to it, Sujie hopped on top of him, knocking the wind out of him and forcing him to shrink into a defensive, fetal, cringing position with a sharp and startled, "Umph!"
	A brief sensation of pain shot through him, recalling to his mind the feeling she introduced to him when she drove the dagger into his body.  It couldn't have missed his heart by more than a hair's length.  Had he been doped up on extra-strength valium in conjunction with half a dozen other anesthetic medicines, it might have felt more like a pinprick than a serrated stalactite, but that was obviously too much to hope for.
	Match had heard of Curaga spells that could heal wounds instantaneously, but he didn't have a Guardian Force of his own to show him how to draw and wield magic.  He had been on his own since as far back as he could remember.  He never had a guardian, legal or supernatural.
	Without apologizing, Sujie proceeded to straddle his waist and then leaned down to snuggle against him, plaintively nudging her soft cheeks into the temporary cavity between his ribcage and upper arm.  In that position, it was hard not to notice what she was wearing in her hair.  After all, it was practically in his face - the cryo-frozen chrysanthemum he had given her she had her fashion designers specially mount onto a hairpiece that was now an indispensable part of her daily wardrobe.  Everything else in her outfit seemed to revolve around this ornamental tiara and underscore its charm.
	He decided not to chastise her for pouncing on his stitched wound, but grunted to signal his displeasure.  In acknowledgment she grunted back in the same masculine octave.
	"Isn't it about time you washed this?" she asked a moment later without looking up.  She was referring to the blotches of bloodstain that covered his grungy shirt.  Mischievously Sujie took a peek under it and poked at the unraveling carapace of bandages beneath.
	"I'm too lazy," he answered and fiddled with her hair.
	"Then hand it to me and I'll wash it for you," she suggested eagerly.
	"I'm too lazy to do even that," he replied.
	"Pig," she mouthed disgustedly and tossed her hair back to where he wouldn't be able to reach it.
	"Runt," he shot back with an irritated look.
	She made a face and then, sitting up, tried to swat him, but he caught her hand and to her pleasant astonishment pulled her down closer to him.  In the millisecond before his lips moved over hers, Sujie wondered if she had made the right decision in running away with him before his body had fully healed.  It was a lesser concern that she might never see her father again, or that half of the "Shawl's Stone" county constables were looking for them - her to bring back to the Duke's palace and him to shoot on sight.  After all, she had a new crown now, and one that she fancied above all others, even if they were studded with all the rarest gems in the world, simply because he had given it to her.
	I should probably change his bandages soon, she considered right before she closed her eyes and felt her world melt into a slightly wet, white and gold-painted heaven.
	Why did you have to kiss me?  You shouldn't have.  Why?  Why? her thoughts echoed inaudibly into nothing in their togetherness.
	"You shouldn't have!" he exclaimed with a surprised look.
	Yumey blushed and looked down at her pink toenails.
	"Why?" Seifer prodded her, wondering if she would ever look up into his eyes without feeling embarrassed.  In his hands he held with fascination the complete Ribbon that she had sewn for him out of the lace blindfold that he didn't even know she kept from their first date on the beach three weeks before.  She had been thorough from the looks of the Ribbon quality.  Better than any GF refining ability, that's for sure.
	"So I can keep this?" he asked her.
	She nodded.  It was yours to begin with.
	He smiled slyly in afterthought and joked, "And I can keep you?"
	She blushed even deeper.  YES!  YES!
	Yumey turned away quickly and walked further down the hidden path into what the local map indicated as Hodmimir's Forest.  I was yours to begin with too.
	Somewhat confused by her response, Seifer marveled at the Ribbon for a moment longer before tucking it away in his coat pocket and following after her into the dense undergrowth.
	After the initial rejection he suffered by her hand on the beach, he had forgotten about the blindfold.  She in turn had forgotten about giving it back to him.  When it occurred to him later that it was missing, he looked all about his A08-Series Galbadian Motorbike and eventually concluded that it was lost for good.  The reality was not easy to accept and he had sulked for a full week over the loss.  The Ribbon lace had been the only thing of even remote sentimental value that his father left him besides a truckload of Gil that was wisely invested in Estharian stocks and a portfolio full of high-paying Galbadian Government Army bonds.  Sporadic expenditures on over-the-top luxuries such as the motorbike was made possible by the proceeds from the stocks alone.  However, the Ribbon he could not buy anywhere.  There were no mail-order catalogs for Almasy family heirlooms.
	Or should I say, the Shojora family heirloom, Seifer corrected himself, since Almasy was just my mother's maiden name?
	In his fourteenth year, training at Balamb Garden had become intensive, and so Seifer's request for temporary leave to attend Shojora's military funeral had been denied.  It was no real wonder that Cid would refuse because Seifer never revealed the truth about his parentage, and the death of a benefactor was a distant second to a death in the family by stringent Garden standards.  The secret training he had been permitted to receive three out of the seven days of the week in Galbadia was also discontinued.  A Ribbon lace stuffed in a crude manila envelope had been the sole memento in an otherwise bountiful inheritance, symbolic of all the good-byes that were never said and of an anonymous father who could never be acknowledged.
	"Seifer," Yumey's voice interrupted his thoughts.  "Are we going the right way?"
	"I don't know," he answered honestly.  "I've never been to 'Shawl's Stone' before."
	"Neither have I," huffed Yumey wearily.  "How did you find out about this place?"
	"I read about it in the first volume of 'Occult Fan' back in the Balamb Garden library," Seifer explained.  "I had to wait for hours before that stupid pig-tailed girl got out of the way so that I could reach it on the bookshelf."
	"I can't wait," she mused.
	From behind, Seifer was painstakingly trying to maneuver through thicket without brushing his coat across any branches or rub it against the tree bark at close quarters.
	No stain, no pain, he kept in mind.
	"Sometimes I think you take more care of your white coat then you do of me," Yumey commented lightly.
	"It's freaking expensive to have it cleaned professionally," Seifer informed her.  "Are you jealous?"
	She smiled knowingly but made no answer.  She could see the light from the clearing just a little ahead of them.
	She tired to list all the reasons she had come up with three weeks earlier that had served to pick apart her resolve.  She must have recited everything that was wonderful about him to herself a million times, memorizing them by heart, backwards and forwards, before dispelling all her doubts, suspicions, insecurities, and misgivings and finally convincing herself to let him into her life and to live the past weeks as if they were the last three weeks of her life.  She knew she would hate herself if she did, but in order to love him, she had ventured to suffer her own hate.
	With minimum rustle, she walked through the last partition of enshrouding leaves and found herself dipping into a flood of halcyon sunlight.  Immediately she noticed two lovers lying together in the center of the enclosed glade, chatting in their own language.
	"Oh!" exclaimed Yumey, brightening up sufficiently.  "There are people here.  Let's go greet them!"
	"That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard," Seifer remarked.  "One would hardly call that a necessity.  Besides, they probably want some privacy."
	Yumey gave him a knowing look and let go of his hand.
	"You still don't understand a thing about us," she mouthed, and began walking towards the couple.
	To retaliate, Seifer muttered something lewd in her direction, taking a certain satisfaction in seeing her stiffen slightly at his scandalous suggestion.
	From their place on the grass, Sujie had spotted first a teenage girl step into the garden, leading by hand a second figure who gradually emerged from the circumscribing trees.
	The sight of the cute couple holding hands inspired a sunny smile across her face.
	"That's my boyfriend over there, from a previous life," Sujie whispered to Match, trying to make him jealous.
	As if automated, Match grunted in response, keeping his eyes closed.
	She wondered if he had even been listening to her.
	"Does that vex you?" she tested him.
	Determined not to let her usual antics spoil his mid-afternoon nap, he made another noise in lieu of answering.
	"Are you vexed, knowing that I have another lover?" Sujie asked.
	He grunted again.
	"No, you're not!" she whined and started to attack him.  "You're supposed to be very vexed!"
	"I will be if you keep shoving me," he finally grumbled.  Notaque insana mens et ea pendeant...
	Sujie pouted for a little bit, decided it was futile, and then leaned down close to his ear and nipped it.  He shook out of his play-coma in surprise and she giggled hysterically.
	Seeing that the other girl was drawing close, Sujie stood up and brushed a few homeless blades of grass from her skirt.  Afterwards she none-too-discreetly looked her visitor up and down before finally sizing her up as being a colleague of respectable birth.  Taking the initiative with assurance, then, she politely introduced herself.
	"Hello, there.  I'm Sujie."
	With that, she moved forward and brushed a stray strand of hair away from Yumey's face to behind her ear, subsequently placing a gentle kiss on the other girl's forehead.
	Yumey reciprocated by giving her name and repeating the two gestures of brushing Sujie's hair back and kissing her, thus completing the Galbadian greeting ritual between women in the upper-echelon social circles.
	Out of courtesy, the man lazily sprawled on the ground made a move to get up.
	"Try that same greeting on me and I'll cut off your arm," Seifer threatened him semi-seriously, brandishing the Hyperion gun-blade peeking out from under his coat.  As if on cue, it gleamed menacingly.
	The humorous caveat managed to solicit a contemptuous snort from Match, a giggle from Sujie, and a disapproving nudge from Yumey.
	"Judging from your accent, you don't seem to have been raised in Galbadia," Sujie addressed Seifer with a half-quizzical, half-curious glance.
	"I'm from Balamb Garden," Seifer elucidated and stood up slightly straighter.
	"We're from the capital," Yumey cut in, hoping to take control of their side of the conversation before Seifer committed another faux pas. 
	"From Deling City!" Sujie affirmed with a understanding smile.  She clapped her hands together as if knowing their origin pleased her immensely.
	She's certainly a maudlin one, Seifer analyzed critically.
	Reading his disapproving expression, Yumey elbowed him.
	"So what are you doing here in 'Shawl's Stone'?" the other girl.
	"It was his idea," Yumey answered with a shrug.
	Both ladies directed their questioning gazes towards Seifer.
	"Can we speak somewhere more private?" Seifer urged Yumey plaintively and, taking her forearm, tried to usher her aside.
	"Oh, we're not here," Sujie quickly pretended, pointing at Match and herself.
	Match rolled his eyes.  Ibidem.
	Yumey searched Seifer's pale face curiously, putting her hand over his to give him reassurance.  The situation was rare, and perhaps unique.  She had never seen him so hesitant, or hesitant at all.
	"Honey," she asked him softly, "what is it?"
	"I-I had something I wanted to tell you," stammered Seifer with difficulty.
	"You're not going to propose are you?" Sujie blurted out.  Holy Shiva!  Pop the question!  Pop the question!
	Yumey reacted quickly, looking up at his face with her startled eyes glistening in the hope that it might be true.  He's going to take me with him!
	The irises of the truest Galbadian blue moistened.  He's not leaving me!
	A torrent of exhilarations and thoughts blew over her.  We aren't over.  We won't be over!  We'll always be together!
	She was bathed for the first time in infinite relief since she met him.  We won't end like I feared!
	There seemed nothing more that she would ever have to worry about.  The locked door had been thrown open and she had stepped out into a fresh, horizon-less future.
	Sujie was biting on her lower lip and looked over at Match gleefully, scarcely able to contain her excitement but not wanting to disturb Yumey's moment.
	Match closed his eyes, his visage expressing ambivalence, though he was dreading the possibility.  Dude, don't set a bad example and weigh me down with another expectation in front of Sujie.
	To his relief, the man in the white jacket shook his head, his face reddening a few shades.
	"This place has a name.  People call it the 'Garden of Good-byes'," murmured the swordsman softly.  "Only lovers can come here, and having been here, part their own ways."
	She was deathly silent.  A dead stare ahead into a space beyond space cast an eerie umbrage over the heart of the garden.
	Seifer hadn't anticipated this.  The scenarios he had beforehand gone through in his head all included her demanding the meaning of his bringing her here in one form or another.  The symbolism for the inevitable reality that they had been skirting and ducking for the past three weeks of blissful, irresponsible elopement had rammed her straight-on like a freight train emerging from a dark tunnel.  Whether he had been the train conductor or the one who had pushed her onto the train tracks was uncertain and probably unimportant.  They both amounted to the same thing: He was going to leave her in pieces.
	Unsure of what to do, he moved towards her as if to take her up in his arms and comfort her.
	Snapping to life, Yumey pushed him away violently and began to make her abashed exit.
	Seifer instinctively lifted his hand to try to stay her, but she pushed him away for a second time and, turning, ran out of the underbrush in untamed tears.
	Beside them, Sujie had uncomfortably witnessed the whole state of affairs.  As Yumey fled from the scene, Sujie gathered herself up, shot Seifer a dirty look, and then rushed off after the sobbing girl.  The nasty, accusatory facial expression that he would never forget seemed to say, "Congratulations, you son of a bitch.  You destroyed an angel."
	Match sat up when he heard the sound of fleeting feet and trampled grass.  Realizing that he didn't actually want Sujie to leave his side, he reached out, only to grasp wisps of air in her stead.  Hey, wait a second!
	Neither of them moved for a matter of minutes, trapped in utter speechlessness, both of them dumbfounded, open-mouthed, and barely comprehending.  Come back...
	He had but to call out to her.  He hadn't been more than an arrow's flight away.  But she was purposefully ignoring him that day because he had forgotten to sing her a song on her birthday two nights before.  Making a delivery in the southern hemisphere of Terra and sending a well-wishing birthday card in his stead hadn't nearly been enough.  The distance that her barricading cold shoulder had set up between them must have extended for miles, even though she was busying herself with her Geiger counter right in front of his eyes.
	It had to have been some time later, perhaps after a whole year had passed, since they visited the glade in Hodmimir's Forest.
	Match glanced around without the slightest interest in his environs.  Plundering sacked sites for spoils and pilfering property from corpses was nothing new in their line of work.  He considered himself one notch higher than a grave robber because he oftentimes also dug their graves too, metaphorically speaking.
	As much as he would have liked to claim credit for the destruction of the much-loathed Galbadian Missile Base, though, it was not his doing.  Deserted and half-destroyed, the military ground was nothing more than a wasteland of scrap metal and smoldering junk now.  The reduction of the place to rubble had to have been a professional job.  No ragtag village resistance group or guerilla militia could have organized and implemented such a blow to the coveted government facility, not even the Timber Forrest Owls.
	As much as he sympathized with the cause and disappointments of the puny Forrest Owls club over the years, he was never the type to drift over the lines and into the territory of their civil rights activism.  Issues about basic human rights neither interested nor seemed to apply to him.  Upsetting the status quo in the political Deling-Timber dynamic made no difference to him, and so he would make no attempt to make a difference for either side.  To him, they were nothing more than frequenting clients, and his aim had been to always keep it that way.
	Match looked over at Sujie who had for some time stopped over the scorched remnants of a red Kevlar uniform.  Most of the body of the soldier who had last worn it having been incinerated, the asbestos-laced suit was now much too capacious for the volume he had to offer.  The soldier had lost enough weight to go down four sizes, not to mention his appendages.
	She was definitely puzzled by some quality of the dismembered carcass other than its gruesome image.  From the arch of her eyebrows, he could tell that she was having trouble laying her finger on precisely what it was.  Match glanced distastefully down again at the pieces of charred flesh and decided that he knew precisely what it had been and that he sure as Ifrit wasn't going to place his finger on it, not even to save his life from thirty Tiamats.
	He decided to make a closer inspection of the smoking junk heap near the entrance of the base.  It had a bluish coat of paint over its metal haul, reinforced with countless layers of armor.  This he reasoned from its continued existence and preserved form, suffering only a few dents and escaping the apocalyptic past of the rest of the site.
	Match brushed his hands over the metal contraption quickly, sweeping off a layer dirt and char.  The plate marking read "BGH251F2".  More curious still was an object protruding out of a side compartment that must have fell open upon impact.  He pulled it out without much difficulty and studied it.
	"Looks pretty worthless," he concluded after identifying it as a rusty antique sword with relatively little attack power.
	Sujie could inflict more physical damage with a soup ladle than with this hunk of tin, he thought wryly.  So clumsy and bulky too that I can't imagine anyone ever using this in battle.  It's obviously a collector's item.  I wonder if its age will give it a respectable resale value.
	Scarcely realizing why or how the next thing happened, all he would remember later was the BGH251F2 vehicle rumbling back to life.  Perhaps he had triggered its ignition accidentally.  The damn item compartment had probably been rigged as a trap for scavenging thieves like himself.
	It was time to get going before the mechanism did.  Match stretched his legs and looked around for Sujie.
	He had but to call out to her.  He hadn't been more than an arrow's flight away.
	But as much as he wanted to hold her, she would have been cold and lifeless, totally unresponsive to his touch and tears.
	Her body lay limp, her clothes riddled with bullet-holes hidden only by voluminous bleeding.  Around her messy corpse was littered another twenty-odd cadavers, similarly festooned.
	He fell to his knees, and choked out a pained cry.  It was too wretched and horrible and hateful a cry to belong to a human.
	It was truly the cry of an animal.
	Match looked up at the ceiling and around at the walls, wondering if this was the same den that they had for so many evenings for convivial drinks, communal dinners, and Galbadian national sports-events television broadcasts.  This was where life had been.
	The past perfect tense was correct.  All that remained here was death, to which he too would succumb if he lingered.  He no longer belonged here.  He should get going.  Judging by their sirens, the police would show up at any minute.  The Deling City Civil Authority division was always a convenient twenty minutes too late to prevent any crime.  Tardiness seemed integral to their canonical law.
	And framing the innocent was derivative.  Match tore himself away from the gruesome scene and took off into the night.  He tried to come up with reasons to go to Trabia over Centra or Balamb, to weigh arguments for a land-route or sea-route, but his brain was too choked up with misery to function correctly.  Determining his new destination and mode of travel seemed nugatory compared to the answers he wished to seek from - wished to beat out of - the perpetrator.  All the really interesting questions were those asked at knife-point or at the end of an adamantine baseball bat:
	Who hired you?
	What was your purpose?
	Why did you have to kill them?
	Why did you have to kill her, you bastard!?
	Why didn't you just kill me too?
	Are you proud of what you've done?
	Are you sorry?
	How many times do you think I am going to run your head into the wall before I am happy?
	Match found himself running towards the south gate exit of Deling City at hyper speed.  If he kept his bearing, he could eventually make it to the southern coastline of the Galbadian continent and find a port with a passenger ship.  He considered how if he took one of the chocobo taxis or called for a chocobo air lift, he would have drawn less attention to himself - the red blur streaking down countless streets and was drawing a small cylindrical cyclone of dust and scraps behind him.  Yet, he didn't want to risk any chocobo driver remembering and describing his face should the police conduct an unusually thorough inquest.  At any rate, he was almost clear of the urban slums.  Match pushed the blistering pace up a notch...
	...and screeched to a stop when he saw ahead of him what was blocking the only southern road out of town - a huge mobile contraption fitted with the latest automatic weapons and medium-sized projectile launchers.  Match could make out the markings on the side of each of the eight legs of the mechanical juggernaut - "X-ATM095."  Reciprocally detecting his presence, the battle tank shifted its weight and stomped towards him.
	Someone really wants me dead, was his first thought.  Talk about ruining one's evening...and it used to be so nice to be wanted.
	The speed of the Weapon surprised him.  Its eight legs were smoothly coordinated and the obvious drawbacks from its bulk in maneuvering cleverly minimized.  It was probably designed to look like a giant spider in order to intimidate its opponents, perhaps scaring the weaker ones stiff.  Whatever he chose to call it - Widow spider or widow-maker - it was upon him in less time that he imagined and almost before he had time to react.
	Match came to his senses and rolled out of the way of pavement-splitting Arm Crush just in the knick of time.  Even before he could scold himself for underestimating the enemy, though, the robotic Widow had flung out another of its legs.
	Match instinctively dodged aside, gasping as the metal appendage flew past his face and took out wall of the building behind him.  The white lettering of "X-ATM095" was less than two inches away from his nose, discernibly under the focal length of his eyes required for legibility and too close for comfort.
	He spent the next twelve seconds moving from place to place, sometimes caroming off the brick walls that flanked the street, cutting to and fro, weaving between the monster's legs, always eluding its attacks by a split-second and driven on by the sound of concrete being dashed to pieces where he had just been.  The threat of a horrible death was more inspiring and moving than any poignant sermon or Haste spell, and it seemed to lend a second set of wings to his feet.  It was tepid consolation and amelioration to his foe's next attack - a long series of piston-powered pounces under which it was eight times as difficult as before to avoid being squashed.
	His heart rate was soaring.  Having witnessed the full exhibition of the Widow's agility and maneuverability, Match doubted that he could successfully flee from the fight without a diversion first.  If no such opportunity presented itself, he would have to stand his ground.  Match wasn't too keen on staying on the defensive forever, because he knew that without an offensive counterattack he would eventually lose.  Yet, he was just as adverse to the idea of striking the metal hull with his bare fists.  He judged miserably that that chucking stray pieces of refuse at the beast would be ineffective.  If only he had access to magic, he might in fact be able to damage it.  Machine-type enemies were especially susceptible to Lightning-based spells, but the intermediary agents popularly called "Guardian Forces" were substances of mere legend.  He certainly had never seen any, much less captured and enlisted the help of one.  Match wondered how much truth historical fiction actually contained.
	The mechanical monstrosity lurched back and forth, placed its armored head forward and tried to ram him repeatedly.  Always it would back-pedal with two sets of legs while throwing a barrage of kicks and crushes with its other two pairs.  Thus it never gave Match the chance to seize the initiative.  The lightning-quick swipes narrowly missed him, but he could feel the weight of the air that the blows carried behind them.  Any physical connection between metal and flesh, even if just a slight knick, would have been akin to being nailed by pile-driver or speeding truck.
	In reaction to its own near misses, the Widow swept its hind legs around for another assault, leveling three iron lampposts in the process.  Match somersaulted at just the right time so that when his body was inverted at the peak of the flip, by extending his right hand, he was able to plant his palm on the killer beams and catapult over it as it sped by.  Still airborne, he grabbed onto a protruding branch of a telephone pole and swung himself up into a perching position.
	Its light-emitting diode sensors detected and followed his new elevation.  As such, it angled its body up to face him, drawing itself to full, frightening height.  This was the demonic machine that was supposed to kill him, the technical innovation against whom he was pitted in the arena of life and death.  The stakes were high and the odds were completely against him.
	The devil drew near.  Darker became the black pitch of night.
	Then to his surprise and momentary relief, the Widow backed down, if only for a half-second.  In that lacuna of time, it managed to prepare, announce, and execute the launch of a "Ray-Bomb Plus."  The self-important robotic voice that had crackled over its loudspeakers was cold and lifeless.  Match had heard Sujie use that tone of voice during her bad days as well.
	Well, at least it's not enjoying this any more than I am, he guessed.
	A medium-sized pellet that he deduced to be the Ray-Bomb was propelled into the air with a bang and spiraled towards him.  He definitely did not see any pluses in his situation.  What he could see was the micro-circuitry on the surface of the projectile switching on as the color indicators changed and the bomb armed itself.
	And it was coming straight at him, coming for him, calling for his name...
	He had but to call out to her.  He hadn't been more than an arrow's flight away.
	But it was clear that her attention was purely focused on someone else.
	He recognized the man she had meant to tarry by his A09-Series Galbadian Tactical Assault Motorbike.  It was the same bike he had scoped out outside the weapons shop and the same bloke who had walked out of it and ridden off on it.
	He could have done without all the commotion, though, Match fancied.  It was probably just to impress the Miss.
	The blue-haired belle had been waiting alone on the marble steps for quite some time before he finally made his grand entrance into the Quad.  Even he had expected her to whack him, and she surprised both of them by doing and saying nothing.
	His eyes following the blonde's movements now, it was a no-brainer to infer from her body language that she was extremely disappointed.  The lithe body so buoyed up and charged with vitality the moment before had been toppled.  It was as if the buttress of anticipation had given way and her whole spirit had come crashing down.
	He'd never felt so sorry for anyone before.  He could hardly believe his eyes.  Was this the same woman he had saved on the basketball court by posing as Squall Leonhart?
	She must have known that her voice could not possibly have carried beyond the roar of the thirsty engine, and that the man in the smart, black uniform had not ignored her deliberately.  Something about the way she was cushioning her head against her palms told suggested to him that she was probably used to it, deliberate or not.
	In that minute interstice, he thought he heard and felt an extrasensory pop - the audible and tangible proof of pain.  Tender hearts make a louder sound than tough ones when they crack.  Ever so gently and ever so sorrowfully she tore the insignia off her vest and let it flutter to the ground.  It fell every bit as lifelessly as would a plucked feather.  A grave injustice it seemed to trample over the dead, even with steps as light as hers.
	Yet, to him her beauty seemed to shine more fiercely after a touch of sadness, as if her frustrations and defeated resilience were a veneer to something more transcendental.  Still, Match could not deny that something had transpired in her private moment of epiphany, something that was a cause for concern.  The dignity was still there, but the person did not seem to be.
	Rinoa, he worried, borrowing the name he had heard her assailants use during their first meeting, where have you gone?
	As if on cue, she turned to leave, and he had to strain his neck further out in order to keep her within his line of sight as she walked back into the Garden atrium through the archway.
	As nauseated as Quistis was with the idea of her continued employment in SeeD, she spared a moment to allay her paranoia.  The premonition that someone was looking over her shoulder had for some time been nagging at her, and under usual circumstances when she was less upset, she might have felt silly giving in and so denied it, but today was different.
	Could the setting sunlight be playing tricks on her eyes again between the shadows and silhouettes?  Just as she passed under the Gothic portico, she thought she caught a glimpse of someone or something perched over the gable.
	When she stepped back to look again, there was no one there.


Setting 29: 1840 DAY 23, Winhill Ellone's Old Home 2F

"One day, to pass the time away, we read Lancelot.
When we had read how the desired smile
was kissed by one so true a lover...
that day we read no more."

		-Alighieri, Dante
		Inferno V


	There was no one sitting behind the piano that night.
	He had left Kiros and Ward behind at camp and slipped back to Deling City under the cover of the moon.  Earlier that afternoon they had been reassigned south to a reconnaissance unit in Centra, meaning that come morning time they would probably be dropped off there with little reinforcements to spy on the Estharian excavation of the legendary 'Crystal Pillar'.
	Whatever that is, Laguna reiterated dismissively.
	He didn't actually care.  Normally the aspiring journalist side of him would not have let material as sensitive as this slip past him down into the drain of oblivion so lightly, but anything he did during his mandatory term of service in the Galbadian infantry was restricted information that, while newsworthy, was not publishable.  It was just more convenient to forget everything he did during the day by focusing completely on his occasional guilty indulgence in the nightlife in Deling.  In this way Laguna Loire found his lifestyle the frightening antithesis of a would-be writer's; each morning he would wake up to a fresh, blank page on which he would write his autobiography and each evening as he pulled the covers over his head he would crumple it up and toss it in the wastebasket.  Over time the pile had built up so that there was more trash than actual bound pages in his life's story.  There wasn't much about him that he could tell anyone, and what remained was too scant to strike up a conversation with - the manifestation of a free-lance writer reduced to a free-floating soldier without a past.  If he wasn't at a loss for words, he was at a loss of life to narrate.
	The floor of the bar seemed glossier than it was when he had last left it.  The sound of his boots against the surface seemed to echo with a deeper resonance, probably heightened by the hot blood rushing to his head as he gathered the courage to make the big move.
	He was certainly tired of Kiros and Ward constantly ragging on him.
	They can call her 'Piano Lady' all they want, he adamantly held, but to me she's a vision.
	Except for the fact that at that moment he couldn't find her anywhere.  At this hour, there weren't but a few booths and tables occupied either.  The doldrums that seemed to seize the place indicated that it was either in its off-peak hours or between worker shifts.
	She's probably up in her room, Laguna guessed.
	The first attempt up the stairs had failed.  He had come back down after mounting three steps with a mind to recuperate for at least a half hour.
	Come on, leg, he coaxed, show your mettle.  Earn your keep.
	Rallying his nerves together for a second advance was proving more difficult than he had thought.  He ended up quite subconsciously sitting at the loneliest-looking table in the far end of the room to rest his bad knee before trying a repeat climb.  It wasn't an Everest, but he felt that he needed an oxygen canister if he wanted to successfully tackle the staircase.  The closer he got to her, the thinner the air seemed.
	A sleepy-eyed waiter ambled over to his table and asked if he could take his order.
	Laguna asked if the bartender wouldn't be able to whip him up a Mogberry Arctic Latte with an extra flavor shot of Mad Rush at this hour.
	The waiter scratched his head and revealed that in his eight years of service throughout all the large pubs and posh nightclubs in Galbadia that he'd never heard of such a silly drink, nor had he ever come across the name in any of his text books or manuals before his prestigious graduation from the Le Garcon Chic School of Waiting. 
	Incensed by a zeal to cure the server of his ignorance, Laguna was compelled to list all the ingredients and their proportions to the beverage, assuring him that it would be all the rage in the next twenty years.  As the waiter hurried off to pass the instructions to the bartender, Laguna settled back in his chair and resumed his attempt to lower his pulse with deep breaths.
	Meanwhile, his attention strayed, only to refocus on two men in military uniform sitting at the center table in the lounge.  With a start he ducked under the table out of fear for being spotted off of the base without authorization.  Luckily they seemed to be in the closing stages of their conversation, during which he had not been noticed.
	The insignia on their uniforms indicated that one was a lieutenant and the other general.  They were engaged in a convivial exchange of toasts rather than some clandestine meeting to discuss any sensitive military information.  It didn't take Laguna long to figure out by the direction in which the drinks were being bought and offered that they were celebrating the promotion of the lower-ranked officer.  For such an occasion, it was Galbadian custom for the junior to buy his senior three shots, followed by the senior buying the junior two shots, and the junior paying for all the orders thereafter.  Apparently the lieutenant was slated to become a captain by the end of the week.
	Laguna strained his ears trying to listen in on their conversation and catch a name or two.
	"Caraway, my boy, you've really done it this time," the older, more decorated man congratulated with a half-empty glass in hand.
	The younger officer bowed his head graciously and returned the compliment.
	"All I've done is apply what I learned under your tutelage, General Shojora," he deferred modestly.
	This incited a second hearty laugh from the addressee and another toasting.  They brought their glasses together.
	Shojora?  Laguna recognized that name.  General Shojora?  No way!
	He cocked his head in frenetic disbelief.  The general of the whole army is here!
	Laguna's immediate reaction was to begin fumbling around for a business card with which to introduce himself and his talents in journalism.  Perhaps he would be able to network a post in the Galbadian Ministry of Education after his term of service, or even obtain preferential access to military interviews for future news coverage that the Deling media could broadcast from the communications tower they were planning to build in Dollet.
	His imagination was cut short by both the realization that he could not afford the demerits and pay reduction that he would surely be penalized with for sneaking out of the camp if he did venture out and introduce himself, and by the two officer's rising from their seats in an effort to pay a visit to the restroom.  They had each had about eight rounds of vodka.
	"They have a promising performer here," the general told the lieutenant as they walked past Laguna.  "Don't know if you've had a chance to see her."
	"Can't say that I have," the younger of the two replied as the door to the men's room closed behind him.
	Laguna stuffed the grubby name card back into the cluttered depths of his pocket.  Suddenly feeling the pain in his leg dissipate, he rose to his feet.  To test out his new peripatetic capacity, he meandered all over the room and eventually ended up standing over the table that his two senior officers had just quitted.  Though their jackets hung limply over the back of their chairs, it did not appear as though they would be back anytime soon.
	A decorative piece of Ribbon lace that lied derelict on the table caught his notice.  His eyes widened and his sights zeroed in on the newfound treasure.  Ooh, pretty!
	Laguna's Ascent to Heaven: Take Two.
	The second-floor didn't usually induce this type of vertigo.  If he could only get to his feet, he was sure that his steps would be as spry as a newborn sprig on the first day of spring.  To whom should he attribute his dizziness?
	Laguna literally crawled along the hall until he came to the right room.  Knees severely racked and useless, it was with great effort that he finally pulled himself up into sitting position against the stucco wall.  Not ready for the challenge at hand, he slid back down and flopped against the carpeted hallway floor with his back against the doorframe.  The spot where he sat had a plushy feeling to it, comfortable like a pile of fresh-picked flower petals.
	It probably wouldn't be a good idea to sleep here tonight.  If she doesn't freak out in the morning, it will be because she'll have probably tripped over me on the way out before noticing.
	He thought about knocking on her door.  He could feel its woody surface and imagined her palm on the other side just within the contour that his own palm was making on his side of it.  Just as he was about to lean into it, it swung open on its own accord.  His mouth gaped in surprise.
	Light.  Lightness.  The light!
	Hush.
	Descend the black curtains.  A blank screen.
	Let there be...
	Suddenly shuffling.
	Shuffle-shuffle.  Sporadic.  Spastic.  Seismic.  Splenetic.
	Moans and giggles.
	Exit hero, stage right.
	Dreamt the same thing...again, didn't I?
	Damn, he thought.
	Laguna woke up in a cold sweat, wondering what had just happened and how many more times it was going to repeat itself.
	The run-down room that he found himself in looked vaguely familiar, but did not seem the least bit hostile.  That much he could gather from the pink polka dot sheets that partially covered him, which wasn't a favorite among the enemy camps or interrogation rooms of the time period.
	 Untrendy! he was about to exclaim before he became aware that he wasn't alone in the room.
	A weathered old maid stirred from her stool beside the bed he was lying in.  She had had the unfortunate task of tending to him with all of his comatose excitement to keep her company.
	"Where am I?" he asked her.
	"Relax, Mr. President," the matron-figure answered.  "You're still in Winhill."
	"What about Kiros and Ward?" he posed after he had rewound his memory far back enough to realize what activity he had been engaged in before blacking out.
	"They thought it was best to let you recover here while they continue the search for Ellone back in Esthar," the woman informed him.
	"How long ago was that?" Laguna asked as a wave of fatigue-induced drowsiness washed over him.
	"It's been eight days since they brought you in," she answered after taking a moment to count them off with her fingers.
	"Have I gone to the restroom in all that time?" he murmured just before he drifted off.
	The last thing he remembered was the stern look she gave him in place of an actual reply.


Setting 30: 1845 DAY 23, Nova Trabia Garden Main Lobby 1F

"It is in the thirties that we want friends. 
In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did."

		-Fitzgerald, Francis Scott Key


	She gave him a long hard stare that didn't wasn't relaxed until after he had already disappeared from view.
	Sergeant Jay had walked by along a perpendicular corridor, and in her hurry back in from the quad, she had almost run into him.  Still frazzled from her altercation with Squall from the elevator earlier than afternoon and feeling defeated from not being able to satisfactorily and diplomatically conclude it before he rode off into the sunset left her in a state where she could only glare at Jay but not find any mordant criticism to launch at him.
	On the bright side, the thought that he would continue to advance in the ranks of Garden administration without her there to oppose him was sufficient to make her rethink filling out the two-weeks' notice and the resignation letter to Cid.  Unable to allow that to happen, she decided she would have to stay in her tortured status as a Garden employee.
	"How many more times is this going to happen?" Quistis huffed, relapsing into a slouch and leaned against the wall to share the weight of gravity.  She extended her lower lip in an affected pout.
	More than wanting to finish getting her point across to Squall, who didn't seem the least bit receptive, was her desire to get a good look at the girl riding on the back of his glossy A09-model Galbadian military motorbike.  It would be one vehicle she'd probably never have the privilege of riding on herself.
	The cord of jealousy within her snapped in three.
	Quistis sighed again.  The burden of responsibility, playing out gender-roles, and keeping up appearances were weighing down her more than ever these days.  Additionally, Seifer's emergence would not make her life any easier.
	"Yoohoo!" a seductive and all too familiar call rang out from behind her.
	Quistis turned, her eyes meeting her closest companion GF as she phased into reality.  Shiva was rubbing a fluffy towel against her long, flowing hair meticulously.  Her status as a water elemental notwithstanding, Shiva seemed to enjoy perpetually drying her hair, whether or not she had just stepped out of the bath.
	"So I hear you're the Headmistress of this Garden now," Shiva remarked with her big shiny eyes.
	Yes, Quistis nodded absentmindedly.
	"Does that mean we get a bigger tub?" the ice goddess inquired eagerly.
	No, I'm still living in the same room, Quistis thought to complain, and no one is treating me with any more respect than they used to.
	"Well at least you get your own shower," the sylphlike GF pointed out.  "In the nether meta-plane, all the junctioned GFs have to bunk together on the same floor regardless of gender."
	Headmistress Trepe closed her eyes and rubbed her temple in an effort to contemplate the complications presented by Seifer's intrusion.  Was it one more thing to worry about or one less thing to worry about?  Both her experience and gut instinct told her that nothing was as simple as it seemed, and nothing made anything else simpler.
	"It's so unsanitary because Ifrit and Minotaur shed like complete mofoes and leave stray hairs everywhere!" she griped prissily.  "It's totally wretched."
	The ice goddess shuddered, throwing miniscule bits of snow dust from her body down to the ground where it vanished back into the foggy penumbra around her feet.
	"How can you expect me to work in such unprofessional conditions?" she bemoaned melodramatically.
	"I'm not even sure how I expect you to work at all," Quistis unsympathetically rejoined with a hint of criticism.
	Shiva batted her lashes as a means of excusing herself from the charge of shirking on her work schedule.
	"Hey, I have an idea," Shiva chirped not all too subtly changing the topic.  "Why don't we go for a quick bite at 'Garden Ricebox'?"
	"I don't have time," Quistis replied quietly and looked at her watch.  "I have to class to teach in a fifteen minutes."
	"But there's always time for food, cute waitresses and me!" the GF objected.
	I'm serious, Quistis adamantly maintained.
	You're always serious!  You're no fun!  Shiva pouted and tried to push her.  She changed her mind halfway and decided it would be more effective to hug her and not let go until she agreed to go eat.
	To consider the possibility, even though that meant taking Shiva seriously, made Quistis even more despondent.
	Maybe I am no fun, she posited.  And maybe Rinoa was.  That's why he-
	"A-hem," Shiva faked a cough to bring the conversation back out into the open.
	"You're getting ice on my uniform," Trepe told her.  Even if the other students can't see you, they'll be able to notice my outfit turn into a wetsuit.
	Shiva made a convincing pout and let go grudgingly.
	"Brrr," she mouthed after a while, shivering, "it's become chilly out here.  When did the Garden maintenance crew turn up the A/C in the quad?"
	Quistis thought that was a peculiar comment, given the GF's job description.
	"I can smell the coldness," the elemental added, just to make sure her Mistress heard her.
	"That's because your nose is all stuffed up," Quistis replied dryly.  Usually a good indicator.
	She had used up more time than she had available to her and decided to head off before her constant companion could find a reply.
	The adjoining hall way would lead her to her classroom, which was coincidentally just next to the infirmary where Seifer, Rajin, and Fuujin were being attended to.  Maybe she could spare just a few more minutes to question him before her lecture.
	Shiva wrinkled her nose and stared longingly down the opposite length of the corridor towards the 'Garden Ricebox' eatery on the other side of the lobby.  Lowering her head in defeat, she fizzled back into a meta-realm where all junctioned GFs go when they aren't called upon.  It was like a waiting room at the doctor's office for the patients, or alternately the second floor of a fire station where all the firefighters congregate before each next big moment.
	Quistis was about three-quarters of the way to the lecture hall when she noticed a familiar of hers standing in front of the common billboard.  It was Selphie in her skimpy yellow jupe.  She seemed entranced by the advertisement posted in the center of the board.  To Quistis, it didn't seem like much of an ad.  She might have even gone so far as to say that it was rather dull.
	The Headmistress rolled her eyes and tapped her junior on the shoulder but was unable to solicit a response.
	"Selphie," Quistis reproached half-seriously, "if you stare at anything long enough, it is going to become interesting."
	"Maybe that's why Irvine seems less and less rude," Selphie mumbled back absent-mindedly, probably still unaware who was talking to her.
	"Didn't Squall tell you to get changed?" Quistis reminded her, ignoring the other's last line.  "You'd better listen to him before you get penalized for inappropriate dress."
	But her words were lost on the young SeeD who had already resumed her imperturbable worship of the inane poster.
	Quistis wrinkled her brow sympathetically and decided to leave her be.  Things between Selphie and Irvine had been weird lately, even by their standards.  Ever since he and Zell had gotten back from their climatologic surveying expedition, he had been distant; flirtatious remarks had dwindled down on average to only one every seven hours as opposed to one every seven minutes.  Surprisingly Irvine seemed happiest when he was with Zell.  Let it not be said that SeeD assignments did not build camaraderie between grown men.
	On the other hand, Squall had alienated himself more than he had been when he was still her pupil back in Balamb Garden.  Late-night practice sessions in the training room had been replaced by hours of brooding in his solitary Commander's seat behind a dimly lit desk in his new personal office.  Without any T-Rexsaurs to maim, Quistis wondered what kind of release valve to his new load of suffocating bureaucratic pressures he'd found to keep his sanity.
	Her eyes narrowed and her hand tightened around the handle of her whip.
	The new release valve had blue hair.
	Someone called out her title and rank from behind her.  Turning, she saw a blue-collared, vested boy trying to hail her down.  His costume resembled that of a hotel bellboy, but the insignia on his shoulder patch and his telltale sloppy-style satchel belied that possibility.
	He was clearly a Choco Express mail courier.
	The chocobo was a large mammalian bird that man had learned to capture from the wild and tame over time.  It's historical origins were obscure, and no experts could say for sure whether they had naturally evolved as the crossbreed between the two distinct creature classes, or whether they were artificially created to bridge the duality.  At present, most breeds were hatched and raised in domesticity.  These had no memory of the past heritage and culture, which in her opinion was a real shame.  In their illustrious pre-history, whole chocobo villages had been highly hierarchical and a totemic practices of alpha-male-worship adopted.  They were frugal societal participants and accrued a well-deserved reputation of honesty, which enabled them to conduct warehouse-like business and provide repository and safekeeping services for the humans.  But their speed and mobility on land, air, and water proved more attractive and marketable than their growing intelligence, which the humans were quick to harness and exploit as a pure transportation resource.  The ancient clans of the emerging chocobo nation were summarily enslaved and their camps demolished.
	The few who escaped into the woods were driven into permanent hiding and fear of a repeat scenario.  These survivors made a pact to self-segregate so as to never band together in numbers great enough to attract attention or to give the impression that their pack size would pose a threat to the humans.  In essence, they were coerced into swearing off society, which they never dared to form again.
	The defeated, pacifist refugee chocoboes thereafter lived peacefully in sparse numbers with little confrontation with the human, perpetuating through highly regimented reproduction - one chicobo per household - the rare strain of wild chocoboes that travelers sometimes wander across today.  But the less conservative exiles were incensed.  Jilted, they swore by the blood of their ancestors revenge, and to this day their descendants lie awake in the thickets during silent twilights, waiting for the right moment to reclaim their once grand empire and vindicate their tribal roots from the butchers that had taken them.
	Meanwhile, it was only natural for the mogli to pick up the lucrative trade that the chocoboes had been forced to abandon and take it to the next level of capitalism - vending goods at retail prices through a network of itinerant salesmen, each with his own distinct route and schedule.  Because the moogle was by nature and training a fiercer warrior than the chocobo, the humans were unable to suppress their civilization as easily or inexpensively, and so they were allowed to co-exist in a mutually beneficial capitalist synergy with little incidence of bloodshed.  The mogli were so adroit in defending themselves and their parcels that the option to commercialize the guaranteed delivery of highly sensitive material became viable.  The Mooglenet - 'Mognet' for short - was successfully implemented as a courier system, whose main economic competitor was the human-operated Chocobo Express.  It was not uncommon to see a moogle courier riding a chocobo, though, which is still the safest and most cost-effective means of travel around Terra, or a moogle working for the Chocobo Express company.  But in this case, the chocobo rider standing before Quistis was a human, a status that graced him with the affectionately condescending label 'chocoboy', even though the nomenclature was usually reserved to designate the caretakers of homegrown chocobo stables.
	"Head-mist-ress-Trepe?" the courier between rapid inhalations.  The raised intonation at the end to signal that he was asking a question was especially hard to pick up for that reason.
	"I am she," Quistis answered, wondering how he had identified her.  Selphie probably pointed me out to him.
	"The girl down the next hall told me that I'd be able to find Quisty-er-Headmistress Trepe," he explained, guessing what she was wondering.  His accidental use of her diminutive sobriquet confirmed that Selphie Tilmitt had in fact pointed her out to him.
	Oh, I guess she did notice me, Quistis thought to herself.  At least someone recognizes that I exist.
	The Choco Express rider fumbled around in his mailbag before producing a postcard.  He eagerly presented it to her without so much as brushing off the stray Gysahl Greens fibers from its face first.  His pouch was probably loaded with bundles of the chocobo feed, more than enough for the bird.  Quistis assumed the rest was for his personal use, but thought best not to comment how he was not allowed to light up on Nova Trabia Garden property.  If he wanted to take a little time off for himself, he'd have to smoke it across the street in the vaudeville 'Torama Tavern'.
	Quistis took the postcard and looked over the sendee's address.

	Irvine Kinneas, Sn. Ins.
	Nova Trabia Garden
	Block 435, Dorm A7
	Trabia, TR 11088
	Continent 3
	
	"It's not for me," the Headmistress remarked, handing it back to him.  She had almost forgotten that Irvine's room in Nova Trabia Garden had been assigned before he and Zell had been dispatched on their atmospheric inspection assignment.
	"The front desk couldn't locate the intended addressee and suggested that I forward it to you," the chocoboy informed her.  "I have a very busy schedule today, and following up on forwards isn't required in my job description, so if you could make sure that he receives it, that would be a big help."
	Shiftless worker, that's a filthy lie! was Quistis' immediate thought.  You're probably just itching to take a two-hour downer.
	"I'll make sure he gets it," she said with a saccharine smile instead, opting to uphold the propriety of her office.  But it will have to wait until I'm done with my lecture.
	The Chocobo Express employee smiled and left.
	Quite accidentally Quistis cast a cursory eye over it as she headed for her classroom.  Immediately getting the gist of the message, she stopped dead in her tracks.
	This can't wait, she decided, and directed a runner from the custodial lounge around the corner to take the message to Senior Instructor Kinneas who was probably at the basketball courts.  In afterthought she added that he make sure that Officer Tilmitt did not see it or intercept its delivery.  Nodding to show that he had understood all her instructions, the runner rushed down the hall and across the lobby.
	More than a little worried about the unforeseeable consequences that the course of events that just expired would lead to, the Headmistress tarried for a second longer to stare blankly at the empty corridor exit.  In her unproductivity, she was beginning to feel a bit like Selphie of whom she had just been critical for the same crime.
	Shaking herself out of the daze, Quistis remembered that she had somewhere to be.  She shifted her legs into first gear and felt the rest of her body move with them.
	Presently she found herself in front of the door to the infirmary but slightly hesitant to left her ID card over the sensor to open it.  For the true grasp of what lied behind it and why she could not fathom but she could fret.
	"What am I going to do with him?" she wondered warily and lifted her keycard.  The automatic door slid open with a pressurized hiss like that which escapes the inner bowels of a serpent out through its gaping mouth and across its tongue the nanosecond before it strikes.


Setting 31: 1846 DAY 23, Nova Trabia Garden Infirmary 1F

"The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it."

		-Faulkner, William


	"What are we going to do now?" Seifer hissed venomously.  "Idiots!"
	He was beyond furious; he was extra furious.
	All of my labors - wasted! he realized. The laborious planning it took.  All the preconditions met.  The sponsor -
	"Calm down, Seifer," the voice of a middle-aged woman coaxed through the obfuscating hygienic curtains.  They bore the same color as that kind of very unappetizing green which everyone who has been hospitalized has grown to hate.
	From his mobile stretcher, Seifer looked up to see the face of Dr. Kadowaki peering through the transparent plastic porthole laced into the green screen.  She looked anything but curious, as if she had expected him to devise some brilliant, laborious plot to get caught just to bother her.  The expression on her face told the story of a once very promising individual who had settled into the numbing shoes of professionalism and so became bored and jaded without really knowing the cause.  These types were often the most dangerous because no amount of internal soul-searching would be able to produce a remedy for their emotional hollowness.  What they were badly missing could not be found within them, but in the outside world.
	Seifer on principle would protest to any command that was given that he did not himself issue, and he would have done so already if he was so easily willed by a woman with a 12-inch hypodermic needle.  Thus, he did as he was told and calmed down.
	"I haven't seen you this banged up since you and Squall sparred during the week of the Dollet run field exam," she commented, leaving him to wonder if she expected a reply.
	"But that was before he became a SeeD and you a terrorist," the doctor added.
	All of this was back in the day, before Squall had been promoted to SeeD commander, before Seifer had served as Ultimecia's knight, and before Dr. Kadowaki had been reassigned to Nova Trabia Garden along with the rest of the crew.
	Seifer ground his teeth together before asking, "How has your new sedan been treating you?"
	Kadowaki didn't answer him as she checked his scrapes and bruises.  The medic trainee had done a substandard job bandaging his cuts in the chaotic rush with which they had brought him into the infirmary.
	When his subtler reference to her questionable use of Garden resources did not provoke a response, he prodded her further with, "Is your contact-lens-dealing side-business' motto still, 'You won't see what we see until we see your money'?"
	She veered her eyes over to his and proceeded to look through him.  In a moment like this, though, the link often works both ways, and he got to steal a glance at something that she had probably hidden for a reason.  The vibes he got from her evoked a woman who had lost her dream, or a mother who had lost her child.
	But it was only a faint glimmer, and the wall fell back into place as each backed off from the stare of the other.
	"I hope you are not trying to goad me into paralyzing you," the good doctor warned with a courteous smile, "because I would hate to have to do that."
	"But if you did that, you'd be obsolete," Seifer countered.  "At least eighty percent of the wounded you take care of are sent here by me.  I account for your patient roster and your work docket.  In a society without me, there would be no you."
	The doctor snorted but then gave a nod that carried with it the weight of a yearlong consideration, as if she had pondered this before.  He was the disease that she could not afford to cure.
	"I guess I just have to make you better and send you back into the field to introduce more new customers to my office," she concluded as she took his temperature.
	Seifer nodded with a stoic expression.
	"And make sure you send them here and not to the mortuary," Kadowaki reminded him.
	"We understand each other," he replied, taking a split second to wonder where the rest of his posse was, not to mention his sword.  They don't seem to be in this room at least.  Haven't heard a peep out of either of them when they were groaning like there was no tomorrow just a few minutes ago.  Maybe I've been isolated?
	As if sensing that his delayed concern for his comrades was finally seeping into his lobes of consciousness, Kadowaki shook her head and gave him the brief update about Fuujin and Raijin's conditions.  It was actually less than brief.
	"She barely got out with half a life in her, and he will be lucky to walk again without a limp," was the succinct prognosis.
	"What about my sword?" Almasy demanded impatiently as if she had wasted his time getting to the main point.
	The doctor's brow darkened crossly and the woman stood up with a disgusted huff.
	"And there you have it," she announced, her words unguent with criticism, "the true character of leadership in the flesh-"
	Seifer's face reflected a frown and waited for her to finish the phrase she was hanging on.
	"-I can't imagine why they follow you," Kadowaki ended her icy assessment.
	"I guess you haven't been keeping up with the program," Seifer chided condescendingly.  The latter half he snorted with a gusto that spoke of the utmost confidence that he had in himself: "Get one thing straight: Leadership means that I'm always right, no matter what happens."  As if you had any right to assume the moral high ground and lecture me on integrity of character!
	Kadowaki shook her head and headed for the door, her stiff body language and grim kinesics betraying her disappointment in herself for ever assuming that he could be reasoned with.  The automatic door slid open with a pressurized hiss as her key card drew near the card reader along the door frame.  After she had exited through it and stepped into the hall outside, she paused there for a second to say loud enough so that he hear but without looking back at him, "A true leader doesn't have to make the right decision every time, but he should always make his decisions for the right people.  Maybe you've been so caught up the 'what' that you have forgotten about the 'for whom', Seifer.  It's not all about you.  Others are being mangled, crippled, and handicapped in pursuit of your goal, your dream.  Had it been Headmaster Kramer or Headmistress Trepe out there today, even if the result had been no different, at least the intention would have been.  The difference between you and Commander Leonhart comes down to-"
	The infirmary door closed behind Kadowaki after she stepped out, cutting off the last of her words from Seifer's ears and driving home the point that he was lying prostrate and alone in lifeless white room that might as well have been a grand casket.  The clamp of the lock on the other side of the door had sealed him inside his coffin.
	Left to himself for the first time in a long time, Seifer fidgeted.  He had been in constant company of his subordinates in the subterranean mine shaft for weeks, and even as far back as when he had been in the Disciplinary Committee, he was never seen in public without his right and left hands - the dextrous Fuujin and the gauche Raijin - flanking him.  A coterie drew so much more attention in the Balamb Garden lobby than any solo stag performance he could have put on on his own.  Perhaps the two of them were the key to making him appear larger than life, accounting for much of his reputation.  In one manifestation they built up his reputation so that it could precede him, and in another they would precede him in battle, as if a prelude to the symphony that he would orchestrate alone on his podium of solitude.  But so many times had this composer lost his cool.  He had tried so hard to distance himself from everything, from the world, to render himself untouchable and otherworldly.
	He was embarrassed now not because he had the pretension to presume that he had deliberately molded his image on a purely selfless agenda, but because he had lost sight of all the once unselfish motives behind it that he used to go refer back to to justify that he was in fact uncommon and above the rest.  There had been some good in shutting the rest of the world out before he could stomp on it and climb to the top where it all would make sense.  It was precisely because so little made sense sometimes and things happened for no apparent reason that the innocent were made to suffer; that sons were left fatherless and wives without their husbands.  The order that was lacking had to be replaced, because without order, there could not be justice.
	He wanted justice more than anything, even more than fame.  Vindication from his defeat by the SeeDs during his service to the sorceress was important too, but still not as inveterate and high a priority as his long-seeded search for justice.  If he could find out why his father died and who killed him, that would be the end-all to how everything began.  Of course, taking justice into one's own hands was probably not the recommendation of the general will, but he felt he was the bearer of light in this case; he sought to illuminate the darkness and smoke that shrouded the unworthy, unrighteous massacre of General Shojora's hunting party.  It was his duty to uncover the truth because he was personally involved and because no one else in the Galbadian government would.  The military hierarchy had always worked that way, and that was how the lower echelons could continue to get promoted without any questions asked.
	However, trying to shed light on history was like shining a flashlight in a well.	 After his being orphaned, he had fully assimilated his role as a mercenary-in-training way before he met Fuujin and Raijin.  It was easy to be a stranger to everyone in Balamb Garden then, just starting out as a newcomer, and he hadn't expected any help from anyone for his cause, much less the help of a stranger.
	So when one did approach him one evening during his summer recess on the curb of the most desolate street in Deling City, it was a rude awakening.  The appearance of the passerby helper, as it turned out, was a rude shock.
	"Are you okay?" a girl who looked no more than a year younger than him asked, bending down to where he was squatting on the sidewalk.  Her voice contained a gentle tremor, but abounded in genuine concern.  It carried with it the softness of Phoenix down, just like the sad and worried look in her eyes, but at the same time made him feel like a charity case for some zealot of public and humanitarian reform.
	His stripling manhood somewhat impugned, Seifer looked up and snapped angrily, "What?  Do I have a little angel on my shoulder pointing at my head and telling you to help me?"
	"Not on your shoulder," she replied softly to smooth over his ruffled temper and with more poise than he thought a girl of her no doubt delicate constitution would be able to maintain under his gruff intimidation, "but in your eyes."
	He relaxed his glower and looked back to the lapping waves.  It was fascinating how the ripples would take turns sparkling under the last reaches of the setting sun.
	"You don't know what a relief it is to know that no man will ever find you ugly," she chirped offhand, beaming as if she was well acquainted with the feeling.  It was a change in the pace of the conversation designed to throw him off guard, like a feint in the opening of a chess game on the far side of the board, and it worked.
	The remark was so contrary to her demure frame that Seifer wasn't sure if he had heard her correctly.  So even smurfs can gloat.  Deling City...it contains all sorts.  I should have spent more time reading up on its indigenous population in the Balamb Garden Library's tour manuals.
	"Isn't it a bit pretentious of you to say that out loud?" he checked her.  He was becoming somewhat cross with himself for not checking the capital's demographics and statistics on Garden Net before he finalized his plans to come visit the city's planetarium and observatory.  They were both closed for the duration of the summer for renovations, meaning that he had no reason to be there.
	The young woman turned to him with a quizzical face.
	"Are you implying that it's not true?" she murmured, somewhat embarrassed and growing unsure of herself.
	Seifer tried to stifle a chuckle.  Well...
	"True or not, who do you think you are?" he parried.  "I mean, short of winning the Miss Galbadia beauty pageant, there will probably never be enough qualification in one's lifetime to voice that statement."
	The girl suddenly took his hand up and clasped it between both of hers.  He lifted his eyebrow but did not pull away.
	"You have to pinkie-swear that you won't fall in love with me," she stipulated without realizing the ludicrousness of her proposal.  She also didn't mind leaving behind their latest exchange as if it had been a completely different conversation.
	Seifer's first reaction was to think: I don't think you could handle it.
	"Aren't you even going to tell me your name first?" he diverted.  Wait, do I really want to know?
	"Promise me!" she insisted, blatantly ignoring his protest.
	"Why are you so insistent about this?" he inquired, careful to act not the least bit curious though he had his own suspicions.  It's so like them to just center in on one minute, meaningless detail and dwell on it.  Monomania is definitely a gender-linked disease.
	"'Cause I just am; I'm a girl.  So promise me!" she whined, shaking his arm.
	Seifer paused, debating internally whether or not the excuse she had given him would have legitimately passed on front of a jury.  What's in it for me?
	"Pretty please?" she tried next.
	Unconvinced, Seifer didn't budge.  For some reason that eluded him at the present, this scene seemed awfully familiar to him.  I think you're just wasting my time.
	"While I have your hand, I want your word too," she pressed again when she saw that there was no change in his skeptical demeanor.  She squeezed their interlocked fingers reassuringly.
	He yawned.
	"I'll know if you're lying too," she warned.
	I care, Seifer thought with about as much sincerity as Irvine would have exercised in narrating his dating experience to an unsuspecting Garden trainee.
	Adopting a more ominous tone, she added, "Humor me or I won't let go."
	"Fine by me," he dismissed the thought with a shrug.  "Your hand is smooth to my liking anyway."
	The heavy blush that flashed over her face was testimony that she had not expected him to say that.  As a reflex, she dropped his hand in shock and pushed him away.
	"Believe me," Seifer said quickly, trying to bring her back into the conversation, "I really don't foresee that as being a problem."
	The girl turned to look at him with an attractive gleam in her eyes and searched his for the answer they contained.
	He looked back at her quietly for a moment, long enough to convince her that he was being earnest and she smiled.  He then motioned for her move back closer to him so that they could complete the pinkie-swear pact that he fully intended to honor.
	She giggled and then brushed her long hair back behind her ear as a blush suffused over her cheeks.
	"My name is Yumey," she introduced herself ever so softly.
	"Yumey?" he repeated thoughtfully before returning, "I'm Seifer."
	"Yumey?" another female voice cut into the picture.  "Who's Yumey?"
	Though it was by no means an unpleasant voice, the surprise that its owner's undetected entry had taken Seifer by would render it more cacophonous to his ears than a bleating Mesmerize in nuptial heat.  The startle was enough to take him from the regretfully irreversible scene with the angel whose wings he had deliberately clipped and dashed to the ground at Hodmimir's Forest two summers before back to the sterile enclosure of the Nova Trabia Garden Infirmary.  The rare glimpse at the repressed past fell apart before he could recollect any of the pieces.
	"Does this 'Yumey' have something to do with why you are here, or have you forgotten my name already?" his new addressor asked.  She was standing about five feet away from him at his two o'clock.
	How could I forget... Seifer mentally rolled his eyes, which remained physically closed from the intense pain of both the re-visitation of his nightmarish memory and its subsequent shattering. 
	"The rubble that landed on you must have been heavier than it looked," the girl commented with a tender, sympathetic expression.
	...my dear Instructor Quisty?
	Having stepped into the room and fully clear from the entryway, Quistis Trepe took a moment to study him as the automatic door closed behind her with a pressurized hiss.
	"How long have you been standing there?" Seifer asked laying his head back on his pillow and staring at the ceiling.  How much of my internal monologue did you hear me recite?
	"I got a status report on your condition from Dr. Kadowaki outside as she was leaving and then came in," the Nova Trabia Garden Headmistress replied.  "Looks like you'll be in good enough a condition to be discharged after two weeks of rest."  Yumey?  To Ifrit!  I wish I'd gotten here earlier so that I could have caught something of what he was murmuring.
	"No mayhem until then?" Seifer responded as if he felt sorry about news.  "Then who will 'Puberty Boy' play with in the mean time?" 
	Quistis' glower was interrupted by the simultaneous activation of all three classes of emergency alarms ringing in the halls at decibel levels powerful enough to penetrate each room in the three-story Garden.  Within seconds the corridors throughout the institution were filled with Garden students who had quitted their classrooms and were stampeding towards the elevators, atrium, and armory.
	Seifer's first instinct was the reach for his sword.  His second was to remember that it had been confiscated already and that the only alternative at hand was remote control to his automated bed incline mechanism.
	"What's happening?" he asked in acute attentiveness.
	But Quistis had dashed out of the room and disappeared into the organized stampede of uniformed passers-by without giving an answer, or perhaps not hearing him over the blaring roar of the alarum.  In the briefest of moments, Seifer thought he saw a face in the crowd stare at him as it passed by the doorway with the rest of the herd of students.  But the long hair was too silver, the eyes too pink, and the look on her face too gentle to be anyone he would recognize, and so he rubbed his eyes and tried again to decipher the cause of the chaos from the chaos itself.  The regulated ring of the alarm seemed to synchronize with the mass of clambering footsteps.  Were they running away from something or towards something?
	"What's going on!?" he hollered again.