The Last Order
-seventhe and irishais-
Chapter 1: An Extraneous Use of Energy
The class was Advanced Junctioning, but to Quistis Trepe, it felt like she was back teaching Wilderness Survival. The air conditioning had finally given out three days ago, and the temperatures within Garden had risen from "near sweltering" to "hotter than Ifrit's backside". The staff's attempt at air circulation - opening up every possible window - had been rendered moot; summer in Balamb tended to hit a steady eighty degrees without much of a breeze.
"It's too hot in here," a student complained as Quistis finished putting the final touches on a particularly elaborate diagram of how not to junction things like Tiamat and asked if there were any questions. The Instructor pushed back a sweaty strand of hair behind her ear and had to agree, but there wasn't much that she could do about it short of summoning Shiva (and that had been deemed an extraneous use of energy a week and a half ago).
She glanced over her class. Most had given up on the crisp cadet uniforms and were sitting half-slumped and fanning themselves with hastily-made paper fans, something she would have normally docked privileges and given detentions for - but she was starting to empathize with them. Besides, she had already made a fan of her own out of Squall's latest emergency protocol memo, although wild chocobos couldn't drag that secret out of her. The fan was currently hidden in her desk drawer, right behind the second and third bottles of cold water she had grabbed from the caf that morning.
The lights flickered, and Quistis gave up as her carefully planned lecture disappeared from her computer screen. "Quiz tomorrow," she called as her class gathered up their things and headed for the door gratefully. The power surge had stalled it out, and it took an additional ten minutes and three cadets using brute force to get it open. Quistis contemplated just jumping out the window, but gave up on that idea when a weak breeze, warm and humid from Balamb's coast, hit her face. Things weren't any better outside.
Hyne, she needed coffee.
Unfortunately, there was only one place she could get coffee, and right now she was too hot and tired to deal with its keeper. Coffee-makers had been deemed another extraneous use of energy about two weeks ago, and at this point Quistis wished she'd had the guts to keep her own rather than surrendering it to the Garden Faculty like she had. Granted, she hadn't thought any of the electrical problems would've lasted this long. None of them had. Everyone at Balamb had been ridiculously optimistic when things on Garden itself started failing: nobody had actually thought these problems would be serious, let alone permanent.
Sadly, they'd only gotten worse. The repairs Zell and some of his mech-headed friends had attempted lasted for a while, but even Zell couldn't build a new air conditioner that ran on nothing. Balamb Garden was dying, its Centran-built innards slowly giving up the ghost like the long last march of some huge mechanical Tonberry. If only -
Quistis shook her head sharply and turned her thoughts away from that route. Her own brain was dying here, without sweet caffeine to grease up its precious neural pathways. She sighed and stood up from her chair, wincing as her shirt stuck to her sweaty neck. She was probably the only one left in here wearing full SeeD regalia.
She gathered her notes together and switched off her terminal in case the power decided to come back that afternoon. The other student terminals had been one of the first things to be deemed an "unnecessary use of power"; they'd been disconnected for almost a month, and the students hadn't paid attention since. She briskly stacked the notes next to the computer, stole a long sip of water from one of the secret water bottles, and then headed out in search of coffee after eyeing her now-broken door with distaste. Ah, well, if anyone wanted to steal a Garden terminal in this heat, they were welcome to it.
She weaved her way through the halls. Cadets all around her milled about the public areas, happy to get out of the stifling dorm rooms for even a few moments. All were armed; the Training Center had failed about nine days ago, and Squall had ordered that all cadets be prepared for escaping monsters. It would've made for a fearsome sight, except that the cadets themselves were slouching around in t-shirts and shorts. Quistis spotted a small group of girls in almost-indecent tank tops and tiny little shorts, and sighed. On any normal day she would've written them up for a uniform violation. Today, she walked right past.
She came to the small door at the end of the hall and knocked three times.
"What?" barked a sharp voice from inside.
Quistis looked subtly over her shoulder to ensure the coast was clear. "Coffee," she said shortly.
The door opened, and Seifer slouched against the doorframe. "I should've known it was you, Trepe."
Quistis refrained from rolling her eyes. "Believe me, I wish there'd been someone else in here who kept their coffee-maker."
"You're all a bunch of rule-following losers," Seifer pointed out. "What do you have for me this time?"
Quistis sighed, loudly, and reached into her pocket. She pulled out four Dragon Fangs, one Malboro Tentacle, and a Star Fragment. "It was the best stuff I could get out of the storeroom."
Seifer looked it over, his eyes narrowing. "No more Adamantium?"
"I told you last week, Seifer. They tried to use it in the air conditioning system. It's all gone."
Seifer eyed the collection of items for another minute. Quistis was getting fidgety; they were in the middle of the hall, really, and she was standing there with a collection of purloined items for all to see, bartering for illegal coffee and - "Hyne," she spat out, finally. "I'll pass your SeeD final if you just let me in there to get some coffee!"
Seifer smirked up at her, swiping the items out of her hand and gesturing grandly. "All yours, madam," he said, managing to actually put the sneer into his voice.
Quistis just rolled her eyes and shoved past him into the tiny kitchenette. "Where is it?" she demanded, pulling open cabinets and drawers. He'd changed his hiding spot, she discovered, and was about to storm into his bedroom and start tearing things apart in there, when Seifer suddenly loomed over her, pulling down the precious item from its spot on top of the refrigerator.
"Need new glasses, Trepe?" She glared at him as she plunked a clean filter into the coffee maker, adding a liberal amount of grounds, and reminding herself that dumping the pot of water on him would just make more work for her. She filled the reservoir instead. They stood in silence as the coffeemaker bubbled to life.
"They should just tear this place down and be done with it," Seifer commented under his breath as the temperature in the room rose with the heat being given off by the coffeemaker.
"Shut up. Cid's got some ideas. We'll be fine." She stared at the pot, willing it to fill faster - she had already snagged the cleaner of Seifer's two coffee mugs and was drumming her fingers against the ceramic impatiently.
"Cid's got nothing." Seifer snorted. "The man's never here, anyway. Although that might explain it," he added thoughfully. "Nobody expected Puberty Boy to be good at anything other than sucking at life. No wonder BG's falling apart."
Quistis hissed. "Squall is an excellent commander," she said, her voice a little defensive. "His decisions have been in Garden's best interests. All we need is time."
"You need rehab," Seifer informed her. "And a reality check. This heap isn't going to keep going for much longer -- Cid and Squall have no idea what they're doing. I can't believe you haven't figured that out by now. They've got Zell fixing the heating system, of all people."
"They're working on --hey, what the hell are you doing?"
He glanced at her, his lips curved in a smirk, while he filled the other mug. "What the hell's it look like?"
"That's my coffee..."
"You paid for your cup," Seifer replied, still smirking, as he put the pot back on the burner. The coffeepot grumbled a bit, but kicked itself out of stand-by and grudgingly continued to brew.
"Yes," Quistis said acidly, "but when you steal it from the bottom you take all of the taste."
Seifer grinned. "I know." He made a great show of adding creamer. "That's why I did it."
Quistis regally bit her lip and refrained from tossing her mug at him. If she broke it, she'd be forced to drink directly from the pot - or from one of the filthy milk glasses still in Seifer's sink. "Hyne, Seifer," she said absently, "don't you ever wash dishes?"
"Extraneous use of energy," Seifer quipped as he threw himself down into a chair. "Like every other thing in this flying piece of junk."
"This place is not junk. Although your kitchen certainly qualifies." She filled her mug slowly, relishing almost every drop as it poured from the decanter. Hyne, she missed coffee. Whomever had decided that kitchen supplies were an extraneous use of energy was obviously mistaken in their priorities.
He rolled his eyes at her and took up residence on the counter. Quistis didn't even want to think about what new colonies of germs he was sitting on. "Low, Trepe."
"Yes, well," she said with a prim smirk, "I've already got my coffee."
Seifer opened his mouth for a particularly witty insult, and the lone emergency light in his room flickered and died. A few seconds later, the generators that had hummed below their feet with a weary sense of desperation finally gave out.
Garden went dark and silent.
"Told you," Seifer said as Quistis drained the rest of her coffee (because Hyne be damned if she was going to waste it), and headed for the door. "Where are you going?"
She gave him one of her patented Trepe looks--the one designed to make the average cadet feel like they were under a microscope. Seifer just stared back at her, and Quistis turned on her heel, leaving the room with a sigh of disgust.
xx
Squall ran Lionheart straight through a Grat, and tried to muster up the energy to care when Quistis finally showed, Save the Queen loosely wrapped in her hand.
"So," she said, snapping the whip with her usual cold efficiency, "the Training Center's out for good this time, huh?"
Squall simply turned, heading towards the makeshift barricade that had taken over the entrance to the Training Center - the barricade that had just drained the last of their power, and then failed. "Out for another illegal coffee run?"
"No!" Quistis said hastily, shaking her head in what she hoped was a convincing manner. "Never, sir."
"It's okay," Squall said, swinging Lionheart again as another rampant Grat came around the corner: "Doesn't matter much, now."
Quistis caught an escaping Bite Bug with an expert snap of her whip, exploding the creature into dust. "Think this is it?"
"This has been it for a while." Squall eyed the makeshift barrier with disgust. "We've just been hanging on."
"Right. Sir." She didn't bother to cover up the distaste with which she said his title, although she reserved it for when Squall had his back turned.
"Where the hell is Almasy?" he demanded instead, bringing down another Bug just before it assaulted a wayward group of cadets. He turned and gave the cadets a surprising glare which wouldn't have been out of place on Quistis' own face. "Get back to your dorms!"
The cadets scattered, and Quistis slid around the barrier, Squall close behind her. The heat practically radiated from every surface, and sweat broke out on her face. She could hear the Rexaurs not far away, and strode in the direction of their roars.
"Hold on." Squall held up a gloved hand - how in the hell was he still wearing leather in this heat? Quistis thought wildly - to stop her. "Are you prepared?"
Quistis shot him a look over her glasses which obviously read, of course I'm prepared, I'm Quistis Trepe. Then a thought hit her. "Squall, what if we - let's make this easy."
Squall gave her a quizzical look right as the Aura spell hit him between the eyes. "Sorry," said Quistis, who was not sorry at all. She hit herself with the same spell a second later and sighed as she felt her adrenaline levels spike.
"That's an -"
"-extraneous use of energy?" Quistis snapped, losing a hold on her temper for a second. "Squ- Sir," she amended, "if we do this without Limit Breaks, it'll take forever."
Squall paused, but he couldn't exactly argue with her logic; no one could ever really argue with Quistis Logic, except maybe Almasy, who argued more on principle than logic anyway.
"We're doing the things a favor," Squall muttered as they crept closer to the Rexaurs. "At least they don't have to put up with the heat."
xx
Several hours later, they sat outside in the courtyard, clothing sticking to their skins and in a generally irritable mood. Quistis glared at the fountain, which refused to turn on.
"Now what?" Xu said, never one to pay a whole lot of attention to tactful negotiation. Squall shrugged. He was thinking that he was getting pretty fluent in Shrug. There were a million problems, and he had no solutions for any of them.
Garden was dead, as it were. Pretty much none of its residents were even inside, all outdoors to escape the stifling stale air. It didn't help that there were still about sixteen Grats wandering around, free as...well. Grats. He gave up on alliterations and pulled up a handful of dying grass from the ground just to let it slide back out through his fingers.
"What about the cadets?" Quistis asked, watching some of her students wander. "They've got nowhere to go."
"We'll have to go to the Garden Council again," Squall said, shrugging again because he really had nothing else to add.
"They rejected us flat-out last time," Quistis reminded him. "There were still repairs to be made to Trabia - and Galbadia, for that matter, and-"
"I know." Squall cut her off. "But this time, BG's dead."
It was the first time any of them had really said it out loud, and they all paused to reflect on it. Quistis opened her mouth - there were a hundred things she could say, and none of them would fix the situation. It hadn't been anyone's fault, really - it was the political climate, mixed with a couple poor decisions that would probably haunt their makers for a while.
"They wouldn't dare reject their own," Xu added in what was probably meant to be an affirming tone. To both Squall and Quistis, it still sounded like a threat - like much of what Xu said. "They wouldn't let these students go homeless."
"Let's hope," Quistis muttered, as her eyes breezed over the students sprawled on the grass and landed on the plume of smoke spiraling lazily out of Balamb Garden's frame.
She tried to ignore Squall's quiet snort of disbelief.
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-Sev and irishais
