Author's note: I don't own FF8 or its characters. This story is AU.

Tour the Lab

Dr. Quistis Trepe adjusted her lab coat and straightened her glasses. She wasn't nervous exactly, but she always needed something to do with herself before these tours started. Tonight she was playing guide for an introduction to forensic science class from Balamb University. She was there to give them a tour of the Balamb Crime Lab and a feel for what real criminologists did everyday. The duty had fallen to her since she was the supervisor for the graveyard shift as well as one of the coroners. Tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear, Quistis took a deep breath. They should be here any minute.

As the class filled the lobby, Quistis smiled and mentally reviewed her plans. It should be an interesting evening for everyone. Graveyard shift had just started, and so far it was a slow night. It was doubtful that would last, but she was going to take advantage of it as long as it did.

"Good evening. I'm Dr. Trepe. I'm one of the coroner's for the crime lab, and I run the graveyard shift." Quistis offered the group a smile. "There are a few things that I need to go over before we get started."

When she was sure she had everyone's attention, she continued, "This is a working lab. That mean we will be processing evidence during your visit. Please do not touch anything unless you are invited to. You could contaminate evidence, and furthermore, we use a number of dangerous chemicals here, and you really don't want to spend your evening in the emergency room. Please feel free to ask any questions you have."

With a smile, Quistis held open the door that led into the actual labs. "Let's get started."

Their first stop was the audio/visual lab. Once all the students had been herded into the room, Quistis began.

"Balamb Crime Lab is one of the three best labs in the country. This has allowed us to afford a number of things that most crime labs can't such as full audio/visual lab. This is Selphie Tilmitt, our A/V specialist."

The perky brunette beamed at the group. "Welcome to my lair. Feel free to call me Selphie. Most of my work is done here. While I am trained to do other things, like collect evidence, I don't do much fieldwork. There's enough of a demand for my services here that it would be silly for me to waste my time with something that someone else can do. So, you're probably now wondering what exactly it is that I do."

Selphie quickly typed something on her computer and a number of screens in the room flared to life. The students were suitably impressed. Selphie smiled and continued.

"Most of my work involves video images from crime scenes, mostly captured by security cameras. I can enlarge people or things in a video, capture stills from the video, translate video formats, and highlight images of interest in a video. I also have a background in forensic photography. Our lab here uses both digital and 35 millimeter film. I'm responsible for the storage of photographs as well as making duplicates or enlargements. In a pinch, they'll send me out to photograph a crime scene."

Selphie got a number of questions which she dealt with quite well. Quistis just sat back and watched. There was a reason they always started with Selphie. The young woman was funny and engaging, and she almost immediately drew people in. By the time they made their next stop, the class would be fully engaged in the trip. The one drawback to Selphie was the fact that once she started talking, it was hard to get her to stop. Quistis would know; they had shared a room for several years at their foster home.

Quistis managed to pry the students away from Selphie's lab and led them down the hall to their next stop.

"This building wasn't actually designed to be a crime lab, so we've had to be inventive about how we put together the various parts of the lab. For instance, Selphie's lab was originally a manager's office. It's one of the smaller labs in here since she's often the only person working there. Our next stop is the trace lab. During dayshift and swing shift, we typically have lab techs who actually do most of the processing and crime scene investigators who do the actual collection of evidence." Quistis gave them a rueful smile. "However, graveyard is the smallest shift and sometimes we have to double up positions. Zell Dinct is a crime scene investigator, but he also runs trace during graveyard. Since it's been a quiet night so far, he's actually in the lab."

A spiky haired blond looked up as they entered the room. "Hey, Quisty. These the kids?"

Zell didn't look that much older than the college students. He smiled at them, nearly bouncing with energy.

"So, I'm in charge of trace. About half the time I get to go out in the field and collect evidence. Just so you know, trace evidence is just about anything that has left some sort of contact at the crime screen. Fingerprints, blood spatter, glass, dirt, it can be just about anything and can be found just about anywhere. It makes for some very interesting times. We actually have a fingerprint specialist on staff so I don't mess around with that too much."

Zell continued to explain about his job, pulling out examples at random. Thankfully, he kept the material to appropriate subjects and examples. There had been one time when they had a high school class come through that Zell had brought out the examples from the time he had needed to gather trace from a boutique full of sex toys. Needless to say that hadn't exactly gone over well. Tonight, however, there were no such problems.

Once Zell was done, Quistis moved the group to the ballistics lab. This tended to be a favorite stop. Irvine knew what he was doing when it came to guns, and there was something about the weapons that seemed to fascinate people. Irvine was in the middle of a reconstruction when they arrived, so the students got to see just what a twenty-two caliber bullet could do to a jello salad. He was trying to figure out how the bullet they got from their crime scene had ended up in a similar situation.

Irvine pulled off the ear muff looking contraption and favored the class with a smile. "So, y'all have mosied over to my neck of the woods? Let's see if I can top whatever Zell pulled out to impress you."

The students were more than a little disappointed that they weren't actually allowed to handle or shoot any of the guns in ballistics, but they were still fascinated as Irvine walked them through the different things he did and techniques he used. He had a tendency to illustrate each part with an example, and Quistis had to admit that he was a good storyteller. She just wished that he would refrain from using them to get out of work. More than once she had been subjected to some incredible story that explained why he couldn't come in that night or why he was late.

DNA was next on their list of places to visit. On their way there, the group ran into a young woman dressed in neat blue suit. She smiled at Quistis.

"Hey Quisty. Is this another tour group?"

Quistis nodded. "The intro to forensic science class from the university."

She turned to the group. "This is Rinoa Heartily, the lab's PR person."

"Why does a crime lab need PR?" one of the students asked.

Rinoa laughed. "You would be surprised. For one thing, we may work with the police department, but we're a separate entity, and there are times when the police are perfectly happy to throw us to the media wolves. We also are in part funded by tax revenue. If for some reason we wanted to get a bond passed that would provide more funding for the crime lab, I would be in charge of that. Have fun on your tour."

Rinoa headed down the hall, and Quistis got her group moving again. The DNA lab was a little larger than the rest, mostly due to the amount of space some of the machines took up. A young woman with a pair of braids was bent over a microscope. Quistis smiled. Hypatia Toshokan rather reminded her of herself at times. The young woman was an expert at her job, but extremely shy at times. Still, her budding romance with Zell seemed to be helping her come out of her shell some. Quistis cleared her throat, and Hypatia looked up. She took in the class standing behind Quistis.

"Hi." Her voice was soft.

"This is Hypatia Toshokan, our DNA expert," Quistis introduced her. "She's in charge of our on site DNA analysis."

Hypatia was not as an engaging speaking as some of the others, but she did have a wealth of knowledge to share. Quistis tried to help her out as much as possible by pointing out good examples and keeping her on track. Once Hypatia got started talking about something she was interested in, her shyness seemed to disappear, and she was much more comfortable. Hypatia walked the class through the realities of DNA analysis, including the amount of time it actually took to get results versus what they saw on TV.

When they had finished there, it was time to visit Quistis' own domain: the morgue. Some people might find it a little off putting, but it was her home territory. Of course, as her friends had mentioned before, the fact that she had chosen to become a forensic pathologist marked her as a little odd when it came to death. Once everyone was inside the room, Quistis began.

"So, this is our morgue. While I may be in charge of the graveyard shift, I spend most of my time here. I'm one of the lab's coroners as well as a forensic pathologist. Depending on where you work, the rules and training required for the position of coroner differ. In my case, I have the highest level of training and education that would ever be required for the position. My job is to determine the cause, time, and manner of death. Because of this I work closely with many of the others in our lab. Truthfully, only a small percentage of the deaths actually require a full autopsy."

She went on to explain her day to day responsibilities and the different methods she used. Quistis was halfway through explaining how a typical night on the job went when she was interrupted.

"Hey, Lady Death, have you gotten to the part about how you used to make troublesome staff members in one of the cold chambers to mellow them out?"

Quistis rolled her eyes at the tall blond man. "Ignore him. He's just making things up. And now you've met one of the hazards of this profession: obnoxious cops."

"I resemble that remark."

"Exactly."

The students were looking confused, so Quistis made introductions.

"This is Seifer Almasy, one of the police officers I work with on a regular basis." Quistis sighed. "He's not as funny as he thinks he is."

Seifer stuck out his tongue at her. She ignored him. They were the oldest two of Cid and Edea Kramer's foster children. Their relationship had always included teasing and bickering, though these days they were a lot closer to being friends than they had been as children. Seifer considered it one of his missions in life to come irritate her at work when he had nothing better to do. He was one hell of a cop though.

She continued her spiel about her job and the morgue with Seifer interjecting comments wherever he saw fit, typically snarky ones. Though Quistis did have to admit, he had some points. Like the fact that some cops didn't know the first thing about what to do with a dead body and could mess up a crime scene quite easily. Or the fact that some cops seemed to think that real life lab work worked the same as it did on TV. She couldn't count the number of times people had come to her wanting tests results five minutes after the samples had gotten to the lab. And Seifer could also provide the cop's point of view about the lab. He and his partner didn't completely rely on the lab to solve their cases, but they worked pretty closely with the lab much of the time.

Still, Seifer's presence caused her to take twice as long as she had planned with this part of the tour, in part because of all his interruptions. It was something of a relief when Squall showed up to drag him off to a crime scene. Quistis had no doubt that whatever crime those two were off to handle, she'd hear about it before her shift was over. Seifer and Squall might be two of the best cops on the force, but lord did they know how to find trouble. Of course, given that they had been able to do that as children as well, Quistis didn't know why she had expected them to grow out of it.

Once Seifer had left, it took surprisingly little time for her to finish up the tour and field any remaining questions. Quistis saw the class out of the lab and took a moment to lean against the wall and catch her breath. Well, that was over with. With a sigh, Quistis closed her eyes a moment. Then she opened them and pushed off the wall. Time to get back to work. Her shift wasn't over yet.