Part of an arc. One of these days I will get to explaining the Empire. Related to the story "Perfect Color Me", though you can read this one without having read it. Seifer is fun to write.

He'd been banging on the bars for close to an hour now, and it was getting kind of musical the way his little tin cup clanked against the iron. He figured Esthar would have provided something a little more than the old Brig configuration, but maybe they'd put him in such a crude setup just to piss him off.

Seifer Almasy had been caught, though not by the people he'd expected. His anger had been misaimed. The Kramers weren't the problem, they never had been.

No, the problem was the next generation. His generation.

"You've got some awful good focus for a guard. Isn't this kind of work below you now, Captain?"

He could tell that Xu was not amused, just too damn stubborn to do much else than keep up that sourball expression. Trepe's lackey. They'd change her out with a normal cadet later and there wouldn't be much difference besides their brief acquaintance.

He tapped out a cadence. The drumroll of the damned.

"And how do you like that Trepe managed to outrank you? I thought you were older or something. Maybe you should have sucked up more."

Seifer was taking out his mistake on someone else. Fujin would have given him that creepy one-eye glare by now and Raijin would have been strangely quiet. But they weren't here--and possibly dead--so he really didn't give two shits.

"You hear me Xu? Maybe you should have dropped the superior attitude done a little more than Trepe's dirty work. Maybe you'd be one of those 'generals', then."

Her shift was up though, it seemed, as she looked at the clock and primly went out the door. Great. Some stupid lackey that wouldn't even resist a reaction to his very pissed off mood would enter and he'd have nothing to do but slowly go mad.

Or Leonhart could walk in.

---

The problem, why things had quickly turned violently against Seifer was quite simple and probably could have been avoided if he'd have used his head and hadn't gotten cocky.

Story of his life, but that was off topic.

For all her fight against it, for her cute little name changes, Rinoa was a Caraway. Give a taste a power to her kind and they were likely to do something unexpected. Give a taste of power to her kind and they were likely to want to keep it. All of it.

And that was before she got all the sorceress shit.

Sure, it was fun while it lasted, but Seifer never did want to be a lackey. The irony of that statement didn't taste as bad as it used to. Live and learn and then die.

The second problem was negligence. Pure negligence. He'd figured that if the Kramers weren't going to send the goon squad after him he was home free. He could catch those damn fish that Raijin liked so much and he and his crew could rest for a while.

Seifer had wanted to think when he should have been acting. It was getting annoying just how off his instincts were. He wanted to blame that headworm, but deep down in that place Seifer would only admit to himself he knew that foresight and he were always strangers.

At least the old headworm gave him an opportunity. He was probably one of the first people to know when Rinoa got her upgrade. She had screamed that godawful unnatural scream...

Right, how he got caught. This cell was starting to get to him already, and he'd barely been in it. Seifer never took well to bars.

They'd been fishing, like every damn weekend it seemed. Maybe the sun was out, maybe it wasn't--it didn't matter. It had been years, and he'd taken to a different kind of mercenary work. The fight hadn't been beat out of him, but he knew that the fights of man were futile.

That was what the headworm had taught him.

With all that was going on in the world, three people in their mid-twenties could dissappear easily. And they did; fishing and protecting farms and the like from monsters. Seifer didn't intend to do that forever, he knew eventually that glory would catch up with him, but he didn't care that day.

He remembered that they'd sent Leonhart, only this time, Seifer lost.

---

"Now I know you are certainly too good for guard duty. How's the Princess doing?"

"Empress." There weren't any nerves to hit there, it was plain. Leonhart was the type to tersely correct. Seifer thought it beat Xu's serious and near constipated expression.

"So am I going to be an example? That what this is all about? Get rid of the last Knight--"

"Cid was the last Knight."

There was the nerve, if slight. Oh, he could see that Leonhart had really taken to the Knight thing. He was practically drunk on it. It was written all over his posture and if Seifer dared to look close enough, probably in the depths of his pupils.

No matter what the deluded fuck said, Seifer had been one. It was like being junctioned to insane wailing of the stars.

He cackled. Seifer realized that he must have sounded a little strange now, after being locked up for the good part of a month. "Well isn't that interesting. Squall Leonhart really did sell his soul after all."

All he got was a slight scoff at that. Yeah, he could still get under his skin. At least something had stayed constant in the world. Seifer was beginning to think that ignoring the outside world was enough to make what he'd known simply cease to exist.

There were bars and years between them, but Seifer knew that even if everything went to hell, he'd at least have one good fight in it.

"Looks like you went and made yourself a perfect villain, Squall."

He moved from against the bars then, setting his cup down with a clink on the ground. Seifer then lay down on the slab they used for a bed and closed his eyes.

Even though his back was to him, he knew that Leonhart was still watching.

He hoped that this Knight would get enough glory shoved down his throat that he choked on it.