The quad was packed. People jostled one another, craning to look the other students up and down to gain any advantage their partner's physical state would yield, squinting into their eyes as if they could size up their stamina, endurance, nature in the bewildered stares they received. Every inch of the floor was covered with tightly packed backpacks, weighed precisely and contents barely differing bag to bag.
Quistis couldn't have guessed the difference that mentioning the SeeD exams in conjunction with her mentoring programme would make. Last year two students had turned up, one of them only because she'd misread the sign and thought it was a book club. Today the young instructor could barely get in, and the meeting wasn't supposed to start for another five minutes.
The application forms she'd received spilled from her desk to the floor, to the kitchen, where her magnets didn't hold enough force to keep them all on the fridge and they littered the floor, to the bathroom where they were under decorative plaster sculptures and one Yuri Alman's was greasy from being weighed down with a bar of soap. She'd used her entire year's credit for the photocopier with the sheer number of information booklets she'd had to put together, containing the idea, rules and guidelines of the program, and she hadn't slept in almost a week, all of her time spent assigning junior classmen to potential SeeDs.
But it was worth it. The laughter as junior classmen dashed about, their training about to step up another notch, the standards of the Garden rising – as her own rank was, with this success – the lessons the SeeD candidates would learn, their own training benefiting…
"Yoooooo, instructor Trepe!" the enthusiastic greeting could only come from one person.
Quistis turned, her surprise – and hint of disapproval – masked by a friendly smile. "Zell! You're participating in the mentoring project?"
"HELL YEAH! I need all the credit I can get toward my SeeD entrance exam after Instructor Gibbs took such a hate to me. He had four other cats anyway. But my Pa and I used to go camping all the time so this should be AWESOME!" The blonde jumped about as he spoke, eyeing up the junior classmen, the other SeeD candidates, the roof, the floor.
"Well, you've certainly got the enthusiasm for it," Quistis smiled weakly.
"There's an enthusiasm quota? Well then I think he's already failed." Zell jerked a thumb over to where a sulky looking young man scowled at a junior classman laughing loudly with his friends, as though he could kill the kid with his thoughts.
If Quistis had been surprised to see Zell, she was gobsmacked to see this student. "Squall is participating in the project?"
Quistis couldn't believe she'd missed this. She'd sorted through so many applications they'd all just become a blur, but having Squall in her venture was subject for serious gloating. No one could doubt the boy's ability, but in all his time here he'd never once participated in an extracurricular activity.
"Yeah." Zell, uninterested, was leaning back, looking up the hall, "Hey do we get breakfast served for us this morning? Because they were doing a new batch of hotdogs when I walked past and camping is one thing but hotdogs are another!" Zell noticed that she was still watching Squall, in a rare moment of perceptiveness, and confided, "I think he's just in it because he doesn't want Seifer to get more credit than him."
"Seifer is here?"
Now that Quistis looked, she wondered how she'd ever missed him. Raijin and Fujin by his side, Seifer had a kid by the chin, his legs dangling in the air, as the SeeD candidate glared into his face, assumedly wishing for the same powers Squall wanted. After a time he threw him back in disgust, the kid scrambling backwards along the floor, eyes wide.
Shaking her head, Quistis disentangled herself from Zell, and climbed the stairs to the podium. "Ahem, attention!" she called. "Welcome, SeeD candidates and junior classmen. It's great to see such an amazing turn out. You've been assigned to groups of four, with two candidates and two classmen to each. If you turn to your nearest instructor, you will receive your allocation. From there, you'll have to find your bus, which will take you to Balamb. You will travel by boat around to the other side of the island. It will be a two-day hike back to Garden. Each group will receive an emergency radio and flares, for emergency use only." She prayed that at no point Zell had control of his group's. "I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow afternoon. Keep your eyes open for opportunities to learn, to teach, and most importantly – have fun."
Quistis was pleased with the speech. She'd rehearsed it to her mirror and a progressively uninterested Xu so many times it was burned into her memory. Unfortunately, from the point where she'd informed them their groups were with the instructors, there'd been an almighty clamour to reach the nearest teacher.
Zell weaved his way easily to the front, where someone had already ripped the clipboard from Instructor Janis's hand. There were loose sheets of paper everywhere, most being glanced over once and then tossed to the floor. Zell grabbed at a few but missed, then got lucky.
"Zell Din-ch-ed. Dinkt. Dinchet. Who is Zell Dinchet?" a tiny looking girl asked her friend.
"Zell? Oh, I heard about him at my orphanage!" Zell grinned cockily. Imagine that. He was actually renowned enough that kids in an orphanage spoke about him, worse-off kids who slept in a children's dumping ground while he was safe and warm with his Ma. He took a step forward, as the kid continued, "Yeah. It was on the roof above my bed: Zell is a crybaby chicken-wuss."
Probably he didn't need to push the kid aside so hard to reach the little girl, but the smack of his head on the tiles was strangely satisfying. "Hi, Zell Dincht, are you in my group?" he asked her.
She nodded, biting her lip. "So is my friend Robbie," she volunteered, pointing to the kid on the floor, who was rising slowly, glaring at Zell with uncontrolled hate. Oh shit. "And, um," she squinted at the sheet, "Seifer Almasy." Oh shit, shit, shit.
o0o
Nida arrived in the room late, once most groups were assembled and chatting easily. He hadn't received his confirmation email until the day before, a week after everyone else. He'd stopped to chat to Instructor Trepe, who'd gone through the computer and told him that yes, he'd been accepted, but out of all the students in the program, the system had apparently simply 'forgotten' to let him know. In a fit of excitement he was packed and ready in two hours, and settled in for some solid rest, ready for the automated alarm programmed by Ms Trepe to wake him in time – an hour after everyone else and with a message apologising for 'misplacing his request due to alternative tasks being performed.' Or, being forgotten.
No teachers had full sets of the group lists, so Nida was forced to dig on his hands and knees through discarded piles. He was halfway through when a heavy boot stepped inches from his hand. He glanced up and saw Squall – they'd done a Weapons assignment together last year, and Nida had helped Squall with his Junctioning countless times over the years.
"You wouldn't be Nida, would you?" Squall asked without a trace of recognition.
"Um," Nida wondered briefly if it was a joke, "Yes. That's me. Are we in a group together?"
"Yes," Squall told him, then turned away. Nida rose. Squall was staring blankly ahead, either sorting through his junctioned magic or just staring blankly ahead, Nida could never tell with him. Two kids stood beside Leonheart, both looking terrified.
"Hi guys," Nida grinned, "I'm Nida. Ready for the big trip?"
The kids stared blankly at him, then at Squall, then back to Nida. They didn't reply.
"Alright," Squall suddenly snapped back to the room, "We ready?"
"Yessir," one of the junior classmen, a little blond boy, piped. "W-we've been practicing for weeks." Squall glanced at him for a second, then nodded and picked up his bag without a word. Nida began to suspect that it was going to be a very silent hike.
o0o
On the other side of the room, junior classman Xanthe was thinking the opposite. Her SeeD candidates seemed to be in some sort of competition to outdo each other's stupidity.
"AND IF YOU SAY IT ONE MORE TIME SEIFER-" Zell was screaming, gesturing wildly like a maniac.
"What's that Chicken Wuss? Look, Cry Baby Zell, you're going to have to lower the volume and cut out at least 80% of the whining if you want me to listen to a single word you're saying," Seifer continued mildly, not even looking up from loading up his gunblade. Robbie stared at Seifer's weapon with undisguised awe.
"Are you really good with it?" he asked Seifer, "Is it hard? Do you think maybe you could show me?"
Seifer ignored him completely, or maybe just didn't hear him over Zell's tirade. "Can we go yet?" he asked pointedly, "Or do you need to wait for your mama to come help you carry your bags?"
Zell let out a grunty-roar, like a T-Rexaur with an injury. "Seifer-"
"Yeah I figured, but you'll just have to do the first leg without her, I'm sure she'll catch up with us soon, I've seen the legs on that Wendigo. Dunno how such a scrawny chicken-wuss came from between them, maybe she found you on the ground where your real host dropped you and just assumed that you'd slipped out, Ifrit knows you couldn't tell the difference…" Seifer delivered the most insulting speech Xanthe had ever heard absently, shouldering his gear and setting off, intently following a darker haired candidate – Squall Leonheart, she thought. Half of their year had a crush on either Squall or Seifer, but she figured that the latter group must have never heard their idol speak.
Zell had resumed his screaming, interspersed with his T-Rexaur roar, bolting after Seifer and accidentally knocking Robbie to the ground. Helping him up, Xanthe wished they'd covered junctioning already, as she could use a Cure for her growing headache. Robbie set off after them, immediately, gabbling about how cool Seifer was. It would be a long two days.