"Culture Shock"

by Skandranon

Genre : Final Fantasy VIII

Rating : (PG13)

Warnings : yaoi, some cussing, may contain grotesque violence and crudity

Pairing : Irvine/Squall

Summary : An injured and ornery Squall takes on a mission to uncover a rebel plot in Galbadia, with Irvine at his side.

Chapter 1 : "It Begins"

The thing about the doors in Balamb Garden was that they were not meant to be opened by pushing against them. They were supposed to slide electronically when you pressed a button or waved your hand in front of a sensory panel. So it couldn't have been good for the door to Quistis' office to be wrenched open by Squall this way, and it protested the punishment with a pathetic whine of metal, before it was flung into the far wall and, on its way there, a lamp, a couch, a potted plant, and thirty two separate pieces of important tax documentation. Or at least they claimed to be important, but there's not a tax document that doesn't. Accountants had made fortunes in choosing wordings that would impart the maximum amount of gravity to things as dull as sales tax.

Squall stood in the rain of paperwork, panting lightly to catch his breath, and turned to gesture at Dr Kadowaki, who was trailing after him. "There, see? I'm healthy enough. You want more proof, get me a jeep to bench press."

"Yes, Bahamut is perfectly healthy," she retorted, unimpressed, and tried to catch him unawares with a syringe of sedative, but he moved away too quickly. "You, however, had a building dropped on you, and need to recuperate."

"It was a small building. Quis, tell her."

Spinning her headmaster's chair towards the computer, Quistis typed out a quick letter to the resident electrician asking that he fix her door at his earliest convenience. Then she made an apologetic face to the military general she had been interviewing at that very moment. Then she retrieved her favorite chotchky from off her desk and stored it in a drawer where a certain rampaging gunblader might not destroy it with one of his sullen moodswings. Then she removed an air conditioning bill from her hair. "You're on medical leave for two weeks, Squall," she finally replied, now that her temper had cooled.

"Like hell I'm wallowing in a bed more than a day. Who's this?" Squall eyed the man in Quistis' office warily. He had a Galbadian uniform on. Squall hated him already.

"This is General Seaki, and you're covered in bandages. You're practically a mummy, Squall, look at you."

He glanced down at the... swathes was the only word for it, really. Swathes of bandages, chest to knees, and few clothes besides. Add in the bruises and pale, exhausted face he'd seen in the mirror that morning, and he could understand why people were pushing him towards the nearest bed. He could still feel his ribs stinging where broken bones had been mended by quick magic, and his head swum from the blow he'd taken to the temple. The giddiness he was feeling was probably a concussion. He didn't care, though. "Blame her," he gestured at the Doctor that still circled him. "She's got a fetish for wrapping people up. I want back in the field. Seaki as in General Seaki of the Galbadian military?" Growling, he stared down the elderly officer, who seemed unconcerned by all the sudden activity. Maybe he could prove his wellness on the man's hide.

Kadowaki put a hand on her mighty hip. "Little boy, if you don't get back to the 'firmary before I drag you back there, I'll have your records say you're allergic to potions, and you can convalesce the painful way."

Squall ignored her, and dodged the resulting needle attack. His attention was on the general, who had stood to face him. They briefly tested each other's stares. "What's Seaki doing here?" Now that he looked properly, he recognized the guy. Grey hair, square head, square beard, squinty eyes. Right, he know those eyes. They'd been on the opposite side of a few battles. The battles that had ended up worse for him, he remembered grimly.

Quistis seemed like she would continue to argue, but then resignation crossed her face, and she removed her glasses to rub her nose. "He's here to hire us for a mission, actually. Cue the melodramatics." She leaned back expectantly.

Instead of arguing, Squall lunged forward and snatched the mission paperwork from the general's hands. The man was clearly expecting a different lunge, and so his block was unmet, and he had to recover awkwardly. "I'll take it," Squall grunted, examining the details. "Resistance faction, huh?"

Standing to come around the desk, Quistis meaningfully patted her whip that hung ever by her side, her eyes firm and steely. She'd dealt with his violent tantrums before. "You are on bedrest and you'll like it, Commander. Don't make me explain why."

Squall shot her a glower, and gripped the papers to him fervently. "I need to get out of here Quis, I'm taking the mission."

"Don't make me and the entire security force and a filing cabinet explain why."

He fought down the urge to grab her shoulders and shake until approval fell out. Instead he closed the distance so he could mutter without the others hearing. "Quis, seriously." He let his eyes show a little of the claustrophobia that was climbing his inner walls, driving him towards flight instinct. From her face he knew he'd pulled the right string. "No way I'm staying here. It's too quiet. Give me a mission, any mission, put me in the field where I can just concentrate on fighting."

Hesitantly, Quistis looked past him to Kadowaki for support. "You just got off a mission, and you had over a dozen broken bones..."

"Which are healed. Yay magics. Put me in the field." He snapped his fingers at Seaki. "You, mission stats, come on."

Seaki looked nonplussed.

"Come on, rebel group in Galbadia. With the..." he glanced at the papers. "...possible bombings. Linked to the Ellnoy unrest. Give me the goods. Lots of people to kill, right? Lemme at 'em. I'm good at killing lots of people, you know that. Remember Timber?"

"Vividly," Seaki groused.

Clicking her tongue in frustration, Quistis pointed at the Doctor. "Eliza, fetch the tranquilizer gun."

"Actually..."

They all turned to look at Kadowaki, pulled by the strange note in her voice. She seemed pensive, but then grinned wryly and shrugged her shoulders. "As much as I hate to admit it, I don't look forward to putting up with a bedridden Squall for the next few weeks. We all know how that will turn out." Squall snorted, but didn't deny it. "And if the mission is just investigative, it won't mess up his healing, though it'll take much longer of course."

Quistis nearly sputtered, but composed herself quickly. "You mean you're actually giving him the greenlight for this?"

"Chaperoned, of course. We can't trust him to look after his own health." The hand returned to the mighty hip.

The Headmistress turned to the General. "And you would be alright with this?" she asked warily.

After a brief hesitation, the man nodded. "Though we haven't gotten along in the past, I can't deny the Commander's abilities, nor that he'd be well suited to this particular mission. And I'm sure he'll perform well. He's very... eager." His voice rumbled, and Squall had to tamp down on some anger as he remembered that rumble shouting orders to kill him. But it was offering him an outlet now, so he just plastered on a smile. Or his version of one, at least.

Quistis was silent for a long moment, chewing her lip violently, then she tossed her hands in the air. "I'm outvoted. Go do your thing."

Viciously relieved, Squall grabbed a spare chair and dropped into it, firmly keeping off his face the wince that came with that action. He wasn't going to give her any ideas of changing her mind. "So, scoop. Rebel group. Move it people, let's do this."

Slowly the rest of the group chose their seats, and he had the feeling Quistis took hers slow just to torment him. But he didn't care, he had something to focus on now. Something to do, instead if just sit in a bed for weeks with nothing but his thoughts for company. He couldn't stand his own head on a good day, and the last week, the last mission... not made up of good days. Made up of very not good, not fun days, too much bleeding and screaming and -

"Why is it called Ellnoy, anyway?" he wondered, trying to distract himself. "Named after the monster or what? Stupid name."

"...It's named after one of the founders of the town, I believe," Seaki rumbled. "I think the similarity's a coincidence. Back to the point, I'm hiring SeeD to investigate this rebel group linked with several bombings, to wrestle out their intentions, their leaders, and hopefully either perform some arrests or eliminate the problem." There was no hesitation or change of tone before the last bit, as if to shield the speaker emotionally from his own implications. Seaki wasn't that kind of guy.

"Galbadia's forces can't handle this themselves, huh?" Squall asked scornfully.

"You'll be working with the local police force, but I'd prefer if this was handled outside of the official books. There's too much underground support for a political coup these days, it could get messy. And it's an election year." He didn't hide his humor for the last sentence. Everyone knew Galbadian elections were rigged. Political corruption was nearly a national sport. "Besides, we think there may be rebel moles inside of the police and military, so there's no knowing who can be trusted to handle this. But we can all trust Commander Leonhart of Balamb, can't we?" He smirked. "You're well known for despising all Galbadians equally, so I feel confidant you won't take sides."

Squall scowled. "Lies, I do hate some more than others." He glared pointedly.

Seaki met his gaze evenly. "I suppose it depends on whether their weapons are aimed at you. Well, the police's won't be, but the rebels surely will, if they know you're on the hunt. So I'll take comfort in that, and let you do the rest." He was trying to spear a look of mutual respect into the Commander's hide. Squall wasn't having any of it. "I've opposed you often enough to know you get the job done no matter what, so I'll leave this in your capable... bleeding hands."

Glancing down, Squall realized ruefully that he was dripping on the mission paperwork. "I'm going to need another copy of this."

A hint of doubt showed on Seaki's expression. "You said chaperoned, right?"

"I have someone in mind," Kadowaki replied.

Ellnoy was a dirty city, probably the smoggiest, grimiest in Galbadia. You couldn't see the sun at midday for all the grey haze. Loud, too, with the poorly maintained trains grinding and screeching, and factories pounding and puffing out smoke, the traffic jams blaring. The city had grown too large too fast, packing in the population without room to expand. And the natives just made things worse. They were so used to shouting and fighting to be heard that now everything was done at full volume. Street bands and music blaring from night-and-day clubs nearly drowned out the traffic. It was strange music too, that Squall couldn't get his head around. As if country folksy music had been attempted by a demolition crew. The trains were more melodic, he thought.

The Pontsy district police station was crammed up between a cheap hair salon with a flickering neon sign, and a 24 hour pizza joint. Across the street was an impound lot with barbed wire and guard dogs. The whole thing was under an overpass, with the trains roaring by. It was by no means the ritzy part of town.

He shook himself to pop his ears as he stepped out of the taxi. He'd been louder places, but they'd been in the middle of civil wars.

He trudged up the narrow, crumbling steps to the station, stretching his healing back and enjoying the tingling burn of fading magics. Doc and Quistis had refused to let him undertake this without at least buffing him up to something resembling health, and had pumped enough healing into him to keep even a dead chocobo in the race until the final lap. He only had a few bandages left, cradling his chest, and the rest was aching red welts that would fade with time provided he didn't test their limits. Not that he intended to rest, mind you. There were bad guys about, and some of them were cops.

He grabbed the first person he met inside and raised bloody hell, and damn it felt good. Soon he was pleasantly throttling anyone who refused to show him to their captain, and blithely ignoring the more suicidal few that were trying to arrest him. Seaki surely had hoped for him to handle things more diplomatically, but he felt it best to play to his abilities, and make it clear from the beginning that he wouldn't be pushed around. Plus he needed the exercise.

It ended with him in an interrogation room holding a seargeant's face to the table while the captain carefully explained that they hadn't been informed he was coming. He was asking ever so nicely why the hell they hadn't known, and they had better trace the drop in communication and fry whoever fumbled it, when Irvine showed up.

The cowboy's necklace were missing, was the first thing Squall noticed. His hair was untied and askew, hastilly shoved under his hat, and his satin shirt was almost all wrinkles. Seems he'd dressed in a hurry, and now he was trying to shoulder past some policemen to get to his Commander, waving his SeeD badge and soothing feathers with an incessant string of complacencies.

"-just in there, I can find it myself, I'm sure everything'll be explained soon as we get this sorted out... Squall, hey, there you are. Sorry I'm late, had to commandeer a shuttle. Captain Renolle, pleased to meet you sir. Glad to be working with you, and could you bring us the reports on the bombings last month, thanks so much. And Seargeant..." he bent down to check the nametag on Squall's victim. "...Kidmen, good lad, appreciate the cooperation. Why don't you nip along, get us some coffees, it's gonna be a long day. Let the fella up wouldja, Squall, he's got work to do."

Squall knew the 'handle the Commander's fallout' tactic when he saw it, and grudgingly let go of Kidmen's neck, and watched the poor cop speed off. Probably wouldn't bring any coffee back, he grumbled mentally.

"Kinneas," he greeted.

Irvine flashed him one of his wide grins, face all teeth. "Got started without me? You look like hell."

Squall snorted. "So do you."

"Ah, sorry about that." Irvine tried to smooth his hair down, but didn't look too embarrassed about it. "Heiress, redhead. Was playing babysitter for her over in Monday Beach on a bodyguard contract. Think she had a thing for me. Stole my laundry and tried to force me into a banana hammock. She was also a bit... handsy with her staff, if you get my drift." And if you didn't get his drift, his lazy smirk said it all.

"Was a bit handsy with your staff, you mean," Squall retorted, gruffly accepting the coffee offered to him by a trembling Kidmen, who immediately fled again. "Selphie doesn't have a problem with that, or does she not know?"

Irvine's face froze in a strange expression for a moment, then shifted smoothly into abashed guilt. "Yeah, Selphie, right. No, she doesn't know, and nothing happened with the heiress, I was exaggerating." He unslung a grey duffel from his shoulder and dropped it heavily onto the table, unzipping it to fish out a spare shirt with slightly fewer creases. Squall absently glanced into the bag to tally the supplies. A few clothes, spare guns, plenty of ammo, field medic kit, and all the assorted trivialities of an away bag. Previous mission hadn't been quite the vacation at the beach Irvine had made it out to be, then, or else he always carried an infrared scope and collapsable ladder while suntanning. He also noted with some surprise that the duffel wasn't a SeeD regulation bag, but a storebought one.

Catching his look, Irvine quirked an eyebrow. "So I packed light," he said defensively, misreading Squall's face. "Figured you'd bring everything we'd need plus a rocket pack."

"Darn, forgot that one," Squall replied. His own two duffels, both the standard issue black with Balamb insignia, were back at the cheap hotel he'd booked, with the suspicious stains on the walls and the window you couldn't see out of for the grime. And now that he thought about, it had been a bad idea to leave them alone there with only a flimsy door lock to guard them. If someone stole his second favorite bootknife he would be sorely perturbed. "We'll just have to make do with-"

Captain Renolle returned then with a hefty stack of manilla folders, crammed tight with papers. He shoved them onto the table beside the duffel, very obviously noticed the explosives in the bag and went tight lipped, and left as quickly as he'd come, grumbling under his breath about 'damn lambies'. Bristling at what he knew was a racial slur, Squall made as if to chase after him and demand more attention via gunblade, but Irvine held him back with a grab to his shoulder.

"Let's just take stock of what we've got, Squall. Seriously, you look lousy. Doc shouldn't've cleared you "

"Let's just get off me and got on the case, alright?" Squall growled, shoving Irvine aside forcefully and snatching up the first of the folders. He was tired of people telling him how bad he looked. He wasn't blind. He just didn't want to curl up and lick his wounds while the world moved on without him.

Irvine made a "tch" noise of exasperation, and took the shove without comment. "Fine, I've leave you to handle your own affrais. But you're going to have to clue me in on the mission stats, I was kinda flown in spur of the moment."

"Leaving behind your heiress," Squall supplied.

"Hah, yeah, Tabilta... nice girl..." He rooted through the other folders, idly flicking pages. "So, what do we know? Any leads?"

"They used homemade incendiaries," Squall read, "but who doesn't. Large quantities of fertilizer, should be able to track the supplier through the chemical makeup..." He threw the folder down in disgust. "Except no one bothered to do so, or to keep a sample of the material. Sloppy Galbie police work."

"They probably didn't have the budget to test it," Irvine offered, with a tone in his voice that sounded like... hurt? Oh, right, he'd called them Galbies. Cowboy always got his chaps in a bunch when Squall started insulting his home and countrymen. Well, Galbadia sucked and Galbies sucked, except for Irvine. He would just have to deal with it. "But if we get on location of the blast," Irvine continued, pulling out a technical looking gadget from his bag, "We could maybe get a residue scraping, and test it ourselves."

His mood immensely improved, Squall snatched away the little instrument and fiddled with it, much to Irvine's obvious dismay. "And you said you didn't come prepared. Leave it to you to pack a... what is this thing, anyway?" He didn't recognize it as any of the chemical analyzers he'd worked with before. It was white for one thing; most SeeD equipment was green or black. "Did you get this from Requisitions?"

Irvine pried it out of the gunblader's hands carefully. "It's the newest model, I had to bribe Jonsie in R&D to get ahold of it, and she'll kill me if it's damaged." He packed it carefully away in its padded case, giving Squall a pointed look in case he had thoughts of pulling it out again without permission.

Sulking at being deprived of his toy, even if he didn't know how to work it, Squall went back to the folders. "How did you get your hands on the latest model while you were in Monday Beach, anyway?"

"I got it before I left," Irvine said stiffly, and grabbed some folders for himself. "Says here the bombing was in Rueheights." He frowned. "That's the clubbing district. Why would they bomb some dance clubs?"

"To drown out the godawful music, maybe," Squall retorted, staring into his own papers. Irvine had left on his bodyguard mission about the same time Squall had gone on his last one, and he didn't remember any Chem-Alysis R&D bills coming across his desk before that. The gadget must have been a prototype. Just what had Irvine bribed Jonsie Thallos with? And why had he needed it for a beach holiday?

He shook his head, scoffing at his own mindset. He was so eager for a puzzle to solve, that as soon as this bomb thing got a little dull, he was trying to figure out the secrets behind Irvine's way with the women in the Science department. Not that it wasn't mysterious. And suspicious. If Selphie ever found out...

He glanced at Irvine skeptically, and caught the tail end of a harsh glare, which caught him completely offguard. What had he done to deserve that? But it was gone again, Irvine as smooth and unreadable as ever, the suave bastard. "We should probably talk to some of the club workers," the Galbadian covered, "and see if they were working when it happened. Maybe they saw something worth following up on."

"Uh huh, sure," Squall replied absently, still thrown by the glare. Sure, Irvine always grumped when Squall mocked his nationality, or when Squall teased him about his flirting, or demanded too much of him on a mission, but he rarely got outright hostile. Actually that last one rang a little true. His insistance at being back in the field had pulled the cowboy straight off a previous mission, onto a new one. They'd both left Garden for their respective duties about a month ago. And while Squall didn't have anyone waiting for him... "Sorry about dragging you away from Selphie for so long," he muttered, suddenly feeling guilty.

Irvine paused, giving him that strange look again, the one he'd seen the first time he'd mentioned Selphie. "Yeah," he said finally, his voice oddly flat. "I should probably call her, let her know what's up. She's expecting me home soon."

Squall nodded firmly, granting permission without a second thought. The last thing he wanted was for his issues to interfere with his friends' relationship. "This'll probably be a lowkey mission," he offered. "Lots of downtime. You could call her from the road every few nights. Let her know you're doing alright."

That look was still there. It was making Squall uncomfortable. "You wouldn't mind?" Irvine said finally. "You're usually pretty uptight about mission security."

He shook his head, glowering at the paperwork. The pangs of guilt were running pretty thick now. He was bad at judging moods, but Irvine didn't seem happy about being away from his girlfriend. Squall had probably separated them at a bad time. He didn't want to be responsible for one of their 'spats', as Selphie called them. 'Honking great ballbusting', was the phrase Zell used. "Call whenever you like. Hell, use my phone. Where's that twit captain gone to?" He marched out of the interrogation room and away from that awkward conversation.

Author's Notes : Culture Shock does not take place in the same universe as any of my other fanfics. Monday Beach is an actual place in the FFVIII game, everything else I made up.

Also, this chapter updated after readers' comments made me realize I was basing Squall on a cosplay friend of mine and not the real character. Apologies, adjustments have been made.