Morning light, edged with silver and cold weather, filtered in through the
blinds. It was spring, but still chilly enough to turn breath into fog in
the morning. The sun was rising, and the sky was pearly gray edged with
rose. Beautiful, sure, if you liked morning. Eiada winced, rolled over,
muttered "Son of a fucking bitch" into her pillow. She weighed, as she did
every morning, the necessity of filling out reams of Garden paperwork
against transferring into a room with a west-facing window. Probably not
worth it, she decided, cracking her eyes open. She'd lose more sleep
filling out every letter of her personal information than she did waking up
at dawn every day.
(In a perfect world,) she thought, (they'd have my personal information on file somewhere. All I'd have to do is write down my student ID number, my request, and my justification, and they'd accept or deny it. Very simple. But no, why do that when I could spend all my free time filling out nice sheets of high-quality paper with the Balamb Garden logo watermarked on them?)
On her nightstand beside the bed, her digital clock hummed thoughtfully to itself, then went into its alarm sequence.
"Hey." Eiada's own voice, crackly with static and bad recording quality, filled the room. "You're awake. Get up. Remember what today is?"
Hyne, she was a smartass. Eiada squinted into the pillow, trying to remember what was so damned important. It hovered on the very edge of her mind.
"Here's a clue. The transport leaves for wherever you're going in one hour exactly."
Eiada made an inarticulate noise, shoved herself out of bed, and began groping frantically in the dark for her pants.
"Suggestion: Shower before you change." She could swear the alarm had added a certain. smirkiness that she hadn't recorded the night before. "You don't want to pay twice the dry cleaning bills because you got into your field uniform smelling like ass."
In the tiny shoebox of the room, Eiada found pants and towel in one long sweep of her arm across the floor. She yanked her pajamas off, wrapped the towel around herself, and skidded out into the main room.
"By the way." the recording followed her out into the hall, growing fainter and fainter. "Good luck on your SeeD exam."
By some miracle she managed to fight her way through the crowds of junior classmen at the breakfast bar and acquire a cup of yogurt and a grain bar. Maybe it was the still-wet hair flinging little splashes all over whoever got in her way. Maybe it was the pair of sheathed knives, one strapped to her hip, one across her back. Maybe it was the look on her face.
"Get out of the way." she snarled at two absolutely tiny children in front of the coffee dispenser. They stared up at her, mute, pale, terrified. "Shoo!" she barked and they scattered, an involuntary whimper escaping one.
The yogurt was gone in two gulps, the grain bar shoved in her skirt pocket, and the coffee laced with sugar and bolted down. Throwing the paper cup in the general direction of the recycler, Eiada began to walk as fast as the goddamn skirt would let her. (If I make SeeD today, I'm never wearing this field uniform again, I swear by Hyne.). The paced walk became a jog through the circular elegance of the air-conditioned main hall, past the adjacent hallway to the dorms, a run up the flourescent hallway to the garage, and a skidding halt under the nose of a clipboard-bearing full SeeD.
"Student ID number?" the woman asked, pen poised and eyes condescendingly tolerant of Eiada's near-absence.
Eiada pulled herself into a neat salute, heels clicking together and right thumb brushing her temple, then held herself at attention. Sometimes the best apology for being a bad student was to be a good trainee. "Student ID one five nine seven four three six, Connolly, Eiada, ma'am."
"Connolly, Eiada." The business end of the pen trailed down the clipboard, made a small notation. "Squad D. Ah." A light smile crossed the woman's dark chocolate face. "That's my squad." She turned on one heel, pen pointing at a standard Balamb G car- electric yellow, shaped like a fat teardrop. Eiada winced involuntarily. "That far transport, Trainee. I'll join you shortly."
"Yes ma'am." Eiada saluted again, dashed off to the car. Sincerely hoping she wasn't the last person in Squad D to arrive, she knocked timidly on the rear hatch. After a moment and some fumbling from inside the car, the latch popped free. Eiada shoved the door the rest of the way open, scrambled inside.
It was dark in the passenger compartment, but lights lining the floor and ceiling activated automatically when she shut the door, filling the tiny cabin with a warm white glow. Two lean figures sprawled in a distinctly masculine way across the padded benches lining the compartment- one tall and dark haired, the other scrawny and, from the look of his face, barely old enough to qualify for the SeeD exam.
"Hi." The younger said, eyes playing perfunctorily across Eiada, sizing her up. "Squad D?"
"Yeah, hi." Eiada offered her hand. "Eiada Connolly."
"Arin Tayler." The young man grinned, which made him look even younger. His skin was a very light olive gold, his hair spilling away from the skull in golden-brown corkscrews. He had hazel eyes, the brown so light it was almost gold. "Put your stuff behind the seat."
Eiada slid the rest of the way into the car, plopped down between Arin and the back door. Craning around backwards, she slid her knives between a healer's satchel and a longsword behind the seat cusion. She twisted back to face the hand of the second boy. His face was triangular and honest. His eyes were blue and green.
She shook the offered hand. "Eiada Connolly."
He smiled politely. "Roen Zyras. Squad Leader."
His accent was Galbadian. "Transfer student?"
"Yeah." The smile faded and he sat back. "I moved here from Deling City."
"I was born in Winhill."
He nodded, expressionless.
(Okay.) Eiada turned back to Arin. "That your sword, or are you the healer?"
"I'm the healer." Arin smirked. "I get the fun job. Laughing when you two hurt yourselves and then fixing you up."
Roen snorted softly, his opinion of the likelihood of hurting himself plain. Eiada smiled. These two seemed nice enough. Hopefully they'd be easy to work with as well. It wasn't often that a candidate failed the exam because of personality conflicts within their squad, but Eiada didn't even want the possibility to come up. Look at that blond, the head of the Disciplinary Committee- Something Almasy. You could only take the SeeD exam between the ages of fifteen and twenty, and Almasy had already failed twice, once because of some bullshit grandstanding stunt that endangered the rest of his squad, once because of deliberate insubordination. He was eighteen. His time was running short.
None of that for her. Eiada just wanted to coast along quietly and pass with middle marks, not to be a hero. She had enough trouble doing well when she was the only person depending on her to succeed. If it was for money, or for someone she didn't know very well, she could do it. Thank Hyne they'd assigned someone else to lead- now she could just keep her head down and excel where she was ordered.
Yeah, she was definitely better off than Almasy. Eiada swallowed. "But we're just Trainees. Do you really think they'd put us in a position where we'd need to get fixed up?"
Arin shrugged elaborately. "I dunno, dude, I just heard there's some pretty hardcore stuff goes on in the exam. It's all for real."
"You heard correctly, Arin." The driver's door popped open and the short Instructor Eiada had spoken to hopped into the seat. "You'll have ample opportunity to show off your skills today." Buckling herself in, she turned to face them. "I'm Instructor Merina Dobbs. I'll be your supervisor today, and I'll be with you the entire way. If you have a problem you can't handle, you can call me. Just keep in mind you're being scored throughout the exercise, so any action that implies you can't take care of yourselves and each other in the field will get you docked points. Now. I have Tayler, Connolly, and Zyras on my list. Zyras, you're leading today?"
He nodded affirmatively. "Yes, ma'am."
"Good." She nodded back. "Anyone have questions?"
"Ma'am?" Next to Eiada, Arin craned his hand like he was in class. At her acknowledgement, he slumped back into the cushion. "Where are we going, ma'am?"
Instructor Dobbs crooked an eyebrow at him. "You'll find out when we leave Balamb."
Eiada glanced at Roen and Arin. Neither of them looked like they had known they were going out of the country. Eiada bit her lower lip. (Why?) The only reason she could think of was. (We're going on a real SeeD mission. Someone hired the SeeDs and we're tagging along for the ride.)
"Any other questions?"
Numb, Eiada shook her head. Roen did the same, but Eiada barely noticed. All the nerves that had been suppressed in the flurry of activities that morning had hit her in one strong offensive push. She suddenly wished she hadn't had breakfast after all.
(Get it together, Eiada. You should have seen this coming. A simple review of our training or a controlled exercise wouldn't have been enough. We need to know, now, if we can handle being in real combat, making real decisions that could get real people killed. Or save real lives.)
"Good." Instructor Dobbs looked satisfied. "Let's get going."
The car rumbled to life and Eiada exchanged nervous smiles with Arin. Roen shifted uncomfortably- probably more from tension than anything else. The car was utterly, perfectly silent.
With a lurch and a grumble from the engine, they bounced out of the garage and into the wan morning sunlight. Eiada resisted the urge to look back at her knives. She didn't want to kill anyone today, but she would if she had to. She was perfectly clear on that.
(Okay.) She took a steadying breath, another. (This is going to be okay. I'm not stupid. I just need to hold it together, and I won't die. Choking now could get me killed. So I won't choke. End of story.)
She stretched slowly, deliberately trying to distract herself.
"Soooo-" "Is anyone else-"
She and Arin stopped, grinned shamefacedly. "Go ahead," Eiada suggested.
"Oh-" he smiled. "I was gonna ask if anyone else was nervous."
She chuckled. "You bet."
"Hell yes." Roen added emphatically.
"But we can do it, right?" Arin looked at them timidly, suddenly seeming very young. "I mean, we'll be okay, won't we?"
"If you're asking if we'll pass, no guarantees." Roen said quietly. "But it's not like there won't be other opportunities, especially for someone your age."
"How old are you, Arin?" Eiada asked.
Arin blushed. "Fifteen. I mean- Just turned sixteen last Sunday. How old are you guys?"
"Seventeen," Eiada said.
"Eighteen."
"Oh. Okay."
"Don't worry." Eiada tried a smile. It worked okay. "We'll get through all right. SeeD candidates do this every year."
Arin looked relieved. "Hey, yeah! No big deal, then!"
Eiada settled back in her seat, caught Roen nodding approvingly at her. She gave him a half-smile. She had the feeling Arin was going to need some reassurance, that he was unused to being the youngest. Okay, she could do that, if it helped hold the Squad together.
Roen must have agreed. "Okay?" he asked Arin.
"Yeah, I guess." The younger boy smiled. "How're you doing, Fearless Leader Guy?"
The car took a bump on the road a little too fast. The three students, seatbeltless, flew into the air, making inarticulate noises of surprise. Except for Roen, the tallest. Eiada heard his head connect with the ceiling from across the compartment, followed closely by his curses. The words 'Fearless Leader Guy' combined with the look on his face post-impact made her crack up. Arin followed suit.
"Come on." Roen complained. "You guys, not cool. You guys?"
Eiada shook her head, still laughing.
"Dude-" Arin managed. "That was priceless."
"Hey-" Roen paused, thought for a minute. "Thanks."
They were still laughing when the car bumped to a halt in Balamb harbor.
(In a perfect world,) she thought, (they'd have my personal information on file somewhere. All I'd have to do is write down my student ID number, my request, and my justification, and they'd accept or deny it. Very simple. But no, why do that when I could spend all my free time filling out nice sheets of high-quality paper with the Balamb Garden logo watermarked on them?)
On her nightstand beside the bed, her digital clock hummed thoughtfully to itself, then went into its alarm sequence.
"Hey." Eiada's own voice, crackly with static and bad recording quality, filled the room. "You're awake. Get up. Remember what today is?"
Hyne, she was a smartass. Eiada squinted into the pillow, trying to remember what was so damned important. It hovered on the very edge of her mind.
"Here's a clue. The transport leaves for wherever you're going in one hour exactly."
Eiada made an inarticulate noise, shoved herself out of bed, and began groping frantically in the dark for her pants.
"Suggestion: Shower before you change." She could swear the alarm had added a certain. smirkiness that she hadn't recorded the night before. "You don't want to pay twice the dry cleaning bills because you got into your field uniform smelling like ass."
In the tiny shoebox of the room, Eiada found pants and towel in one long sweep of her arm across the floor. She yanked her pajamas off, wrapped the towel around herself, and skidded out into the main room.
"By the way." the recording followed her out into the hall, growing fainter and fainter. "Good luck on your SeeD exam."
By some miracle she managed to fight her way through the crowds of junior classmen at the breakfast bar and acquire a cup of yogurt and a grain bar. Maybe it was the still-wet hair flinging little splashes all over whoever got in her way. Maybe it was the pair of sheathed knives, one strapped to her hip, one across her back. Maybe it was the look on her face.
"Get out of the way." she snarled at two absolutely tiny children in front of the coffee dispenser. They stared up at her, mute, pale, terrified. "Shoo!" she barked and they scattered, an involuntary whimper escaping one.
The yogurt was gone in two gulps, the grain bar shoved in her skirt pocket, and the coffee laced with sugar and bolted down. Throwing the paper cup in the general direction of the recycler, Eiada began to walk as fast as the goddamn skirt would let her. (If I make SeeD today, I'm never wearing this field uniform again, I swear by Hyne.). The paced walk became a jog through the circular elegance of the air-conditioned main hall, past the adjacent hallway to the dorms, a run up the flourescent hallway to the garage, and a skidding halt under the nose of a clipboard-bearing full SeeD.
"Student ID number?" the woman asked, pen poised and eyes condescendingly tolerant of Eiada's near-absence.
Eiada pulled herself into a neat salute, heels clicking together and right thumb brushing her temple, then held herself at attention. Sometimes the best apology for being a bad student was to be a good trainee. "Student ID one five nine seven four three six, Connolly, Eiada, ma'am."
"Connolly, Eiada." The business end of the pen trailed down the clipboard, made a small notation. "Squad D. Ah." A light smile crossed the woman's dark chocolate face. "That's my squad." She turned on one heel, pen pointing at a standard Balamb G car- electric yellow, shaped like a fat teardrop. Eiada winced involuntarily. "That far transport, Trainee. I'll join you shortly."
"Yes ma'am." Eiada saluted again, dashed off to the car. Sincerely hoping she wasn't the last person in Squad D to arrive, she knocked timidly on the rear hatch. After a moment and some fumbling from inside the car, the latch popped free. Eiada shoved the door the rest of the way open, scrambled inside.
It was dark in the passenger compartment, but lights lining the floor and ceiling activated automatically when she shut the door, filling the tiny cabin with a warm white glow. Two lean figures sprawled in a distinctly masculine way across the padded benches lining the compartment- one tall and dark haired, the other scrawny and, from the look of his face, barely old enough to qualify for the SeeD exam.
"Hi." The younger said, eyes playing perfunctorily across Eiada, sizing her up. "Squad D?"
"Yeah, hi." Eiada offered her hand. "Eiada Connolly."
"Arin Tayler." The young man grinned, which made him look even younger. His skin was a very light olive gold, his hair spilling away from the skull in golden-brown corkscrews. He had hazel eyes, the brown so light it was almost gold. "Put your stuff behind the seat."
Eiada slid the rest of the way into the car, plopped down between Arin and the back door. Craning around backwards, she slid her knives between a healer's satchel and a longsword behind the seat cusion. She twisted back to face the hand of the second boy. His face was triangular and honest. His eyes were blue and green.
She shook the offered hand. "Eiada Connolly."
He smiled politely. "Roen Zyras. Squad Leader."
His accent was Galbadian. "Transfer student?"
"Yeah." The smile faded and he sat back. "I moved here from Deling City."
"I was born in Winhill."
He nodded, expressionless.
(Okay.) Eiada turned back to Arin. "That your sword, or are you the healer?"
"I'm the healer." Arin smirked. "I get the fun job. Laughing when you two hurt yourselves and then fixing you up."
Roen snorted softly, his opinion of the likelihood of hurting himself plain. Eiada smiled. These two seemed nice enough. Hopefully they'd be easy to work with as well. It wasn't often that a candidate failed the exam because of personality conflicts within their squad, but Eiada didn't even want the possibility to come up. Look at that blond, the head of the Disciplinary Committee- Something Almasy. You could only take the SeeD exam between the ages of fifteen and twenty, and Almasy had already failed twice, once because of some bullshit grandstanding stunt that endangered the rest of his squad, once because of deliberate insubordination. He was eighteen. His time was running short.
None of that for her. Eiada just wanted to coast along quietly and pass with middle marks, not to be a hero. She had enough trouble doing well when she was the only person depending on her to succeed. If it was for money, or for someone she didn't know very well, she could do it. Thank Hyne they'd assigned someone else to lead- now she could just keep her head down and excel where she was ordered.
Yeah, she was definitely better off than Almasy. Eiada swallowed. "But we're just Trainees. Do you really think they'd put us in a position where we'd need to get fixed up?"
Arin shrugged elaborately. "I dunno, dude, I just heard there's some pretty hardcore stuff goes on in the exam. It's all for real."
"You heard correctly, Arin." The driver's door popped open and the short Instructor Eiada had spoken to hopped into the seat. "You'll have ample opportunity to show off your skills today." Buckling herself in, she turned to face them. "I'm Instructor Merina Dobbs. I'll be your supervisor today, and I'll be with you the entire way. If you have a problem you can't handle, you can call me. Just keep in mind you're being scored throughout the exercise, so any action that implies you can't take care of yourselves and each other in the field will get you docked points. Now. I have Tayler, Connolly, and Zyras on my list. Zyras, you're leading today?"
He nodded affirmatively. "Yes, ma'am."
"Good." She nodded back. "Anyone have questions?"
"Ma'am?" Next to Eiada, Arin craned his hand like he was in class. At her acknowledgement, he slumped back into the cushion. "Where are we going, ma'am?"
Instructor Dobbs crooked an eyebrow at him. "You'll find out when we leave Balamb."
Eiada glanced at Roen and Arin. Neither of them looked like they had known they were going out of the country. Eiada bit her lower lip. (Why?) The only reason she could think of was. (We're going on a real SeeD mission. Someone hired the SeeDs and we're tagging along for the ride.)
"Any other questions?"
Numb, Eiada shook her head. Roen did the same, but Eiada barely noticed. All the nerves that had been suppressed in the flurry of activities that morning had hit her in one strong offensive push. She suddenly wished she hadn't had breakfast after all.
(Get it together, Eiada. You should have seen this coming. A simple review of our training or a controlled exercise wouldn't have been enough. We need to know, now, if we can handle being in real combat, making real decisions that could get real people killed. Or save real lives.)
"Good." Instructor Dobbs looked satisfied. "Let's get going."
The car rumbled to life and Eiada exchanged nervous smiles with Arin. Roen shifted uncomfortably- probably more from tension than anything else. The car was utterly, perfectly silent.
With a lurch and a grumble from the engine, they bounced out of the garage and into the wan morning sunlight. Eiada resisted the urge to look back at her knives. She didn't want to kill anyone today, but she would if she had to. She was perfectly clear on that.
(Okay.) She took a steadying breath, another. (This is going to be okay. I'm not stupid. I just need to hold it together, and I won't die. Choking now could get me killed. So I won't choke. End of story.)
She stretched slowly, deliberately trying to distract herself.
"Soooo-" "Is anyone else-"
She and Arin stopped, grinned shamefacedly. "Go ahead," Eiada suggested.
"Oh-" he smiled. "I was gonna ask if anyone else was nervous."
She chuckled. "You bet."
"Hell yes." Roen added emphatically.
"But we can do it, right?" Arin looked at them timidly, suddenly seeming very young. "I mean, we'll be okay, won't we?"
"If you're asking if we'll pass, no guarantees." Roen said quietly. "But it's not like there won't be other opportunities, especially for someone your age."
"How old are you, Arin?" Eiada asked.
Arin blushed. "Fifteen. I mean- Just turned sixteen last Sunday. How old are you guys?"
"Seventeen," Eiada said.
"Eighteen."
"Oh. Okay."
"Don't worry." Eiada tried a smile. It worked okay. "We'll get through all right. SeeD candidates do this every year."
Arin looked relieved. "Hey, yeah! No big deal, then!"
Eiada settled back in her seat, caught Roen nodding approvingly at her. She gave him a half-smile. She had the feeling Arin was going to need some reassurance, that he was unused to being the youngest. Okay, she could do that, if it helped hold the Squad together.
Roen must have agreed. "Okay?" he asked Arin.
"Yeah, I guess." The younger boy smiled. "How're you doing, Fearless Leader Guy?"
The car took a bump on the road a little too fast. The three students, seatbeltless, flew into the air, making inarticulate noises of surprise. Except for Roen, the tallest. Eiada heard his head connect with the ceiling from across the compartment, followed closely by his curses. The words 'Fearless Leader Guy' combined with the look on his face post-impact made her crack up. Arin followed suit.
"Come on." Roen complained. "You guys, not cool. You guys?"
Eiada shook her head, still laughing.
"Dude-" Arin managed. "That was priceless."
"Hey-" Roen paused, thought for a minute. "Thanks."
They were still laughing when the car bumped to a halt in Balamb harbor.