Disclaimer: The game belongs to Squeenix. If it was mine, Quistis and Xu would have totally made out.

AN: Okay, I swear this is going somewhere. Bear with me for another chapter or two.

I woke up from the best dream I'd had in weeks, a vague memory of warm, smooth skin and soft hair lingering behind my eyeballs. I sat on the edge of my bed and rubbed my eyes until my worst thoughts subsided a bit. The alarm clock read 0315, making it officially Tuesday morning.

Once I'd sat up, there was no going back to sleep, so I looked around my room for something to keep me busy until a more humane hour of the day. I finally settled on cleaning my gun (in a purely literal sense). I took it out of the closet, along with all the requisite supplies, and took it down to nuts and bolts. I had gone through this ritual hundreds of times before; the weapon I was tinkering with was a significant improvement over the old Valiant shotgun I'd gotten, general-issue, from Galbadia Garden. (Rifles may have been my first love, but there's nothing like a good shotgun to instill fear in the hearts of your enemies at close range.) This gun was recognizable (under my custom modifications) as an Exeter-model pump-action. I'd shortened the barrels as much as I could without reducing the mag size, but left the recoil-damping mechanism as it was - some things just can't be improved on. I considered the benefits of converting it to semi-auto; it would involve replacing quite a few components, and I'd have to add a few workarounds to deal with the modifications already in place. I resolved to talk it over with Loire, if I could ever catch him when he had a free moment. You'd never guess it from that goofy demeanor, but the man has a damned scientific attitude about his weapons.

Just when I'd managed to cover the entire bed and about half the desk with little bits of gun, there came a knock on the door. I disentangled myself from the machinery, trying not to disturb the carefully-sorted piles, pulled on a pair of pants over my boxers, and went to answer it.

Zell stood in the hallway, dark circles under his eyes, looking sheepish.

"Hello, Zell."

"Hi, Irvine."

He shuffled his feet.

I sighed. "Fine. Come on in."

The desk chair was still clear, so Zell sat there while I resumed my position on the bed. I started oiling things and putting them back together. "Care to tell me why I have the pleasure of your company at" (I glanced at the clock) "oh-four-twenty-five?"

He cleared his throat. He fidgeted. He turned the chair back and forth through a fifteen-degree arc.

"You know about... girls, right?"

I stopped my work and reached for a hair-tie as I pondered the best way to answer that question. I had a sudden sinking feeling somewhere in the vicinity of my ribcage.

"I guess I thought I did, once," I said, "though recent events seem to indicate otherwise."

He would not be dissuaded. "So... you remember Gina? From the beach."

I sighed. "Yes. I remember Gina."

"I think she might, like, have a thing for me."

"You don't say."

"Well, what do I do?"

"That depends," I said carefully, sighting down one barrel. "Do you like her?"

He ran a hand through his perpetually-disheveled hair. "That's the problem, I guess. I don't know."

I rejoiced a little, inwardly. "Well, then you've got options." I began the fourteen-screw process of reattaching the barrel assembly to the stock. "One: get to know her better, see if it turns into something. Find out what you've got in common, all like that. Then, whether or not you end up going out with her, you've made a friend.

"Two: do nothing. If you really don't feel anything for her, then it's better not to lead her on. You go your way, she goes hers. No hurt feelings.

"Three." (Here I put on my most salacious grin.) "Take her back to your room and bang her like a drum."

Zell turned bright pink and sputtered. "She's not... not that kind of girl!"

"Oh, but you're that kind of guy?"

The pink deepened to red, and he buried his face in his hands.

I chuckled a little. "Sorry. You're just too easy to tease. Unfortunately for you, I am unscrupulous, and you're cute when you blush."

He picked his head up long enough to glare at me, then hid in his elbows again.

I let him be while I finished reassembling the Exeter.

Eventually he recovered. We sat quietly for a little while as I polished up the moonstones on the stock.

"I just don't know," he said into the silence. "What would you do?"

"Personally," I said, blowing an infinitesimal piece of lint off the Exeter's barrel, "I'd go knock some T-Rexaurs on the head."

So we did.

The Training Center is the only thing in the Garden that's open all night, and there's usually a few insomniacs in there, trying to tire themselves out enough to get back to sleep. That night it was empty, though I suspected that the couples in the "secret area" were just keeping it down for once.

We stalked a few groups of grats, flanking them and taking them down before they realized what had hit them. There wasn't any challenge to it; Zell's nervous energy seemed to increase, rather than decrease. Finally, we hit on the trail of a massive T-Rex, following it through the undergrowth until we were close enough to see it through the trees. I wondered how they'd gotten it inside; it was thirty feet tall if it was in inch, and looked mean as hell. I nodded to Zell, and crept around to the left to try for an ambush.

And damned if there wasn't another one, bigger than the first.

Now, in many situations, discretion is the better part of valor. Most times, I'd choose not to stick around for a fight with a ruby dragon on the Island Closest to Hell. But this was different. They let raw cadets come in here, for Hyne's sake, and these things could roll right over those poor kids. Zell and I were uniquely qualified to take these guys out.

So Zell blasted the first dinosaur with ice magic, which was my cue. He must not have seen the other one, 'cause it got him with its tail when he jumped out to attack the littler one. I swore and emptied both barrels into the big one's face.

This just pissed it off, so it came towards me, catching Zell's shoulder with its claw as it stepped over him. I saw blood on his shirt before I was distracted by my own problems.

It swiped its tail at me first, which I managed to avoid by using the time-honored tactic of falling over. I tagged it again, turning its left eye into a gory mess, but the thing wouldn't stop coming. I heard lumbering footsteps off to my right, so I rolled back into the trees, hoping they'd have to come at me single file. I fired, once, twice, three times, before I had to reload. I decided that the situation warranted the use of some non-regulation armor-piercing rounds.

My next shot went through the big one's brain.

The littler one knocked the big one's body out of the way and came for me, a growl resonating somewhere in its chest. I emptied my mag shooting at the damn thing, but a badly-timed case of the shakes sent my last two shots wide, tearing up the muscles in its side but not doing any real damage. I could feel the GFs in my head, clamoring to be let out, to be allowed to protect me. Siren, who had been Zell's before she was mine, was particularly insistent. But I knew whose help I needed.

"Leviathan," I called, and he came.

Summoning a GF is one of the best highs you'll ever get. You merge with it, become it in some weird way. When I summon Leviathan, I feel the bunch and coil of his muscles as if they're my own, see the too-dry world through his eyes as a garish cacophony of he calls the tsunami, I feel the pull of the tides in my own chest.

And then it's all over, and I collapse, exhausted.

As soon as I could stand without falling, I went to Zell. His left shoulder was a mess, but it didn't look like his lung was in any danger, and he was sitting up and breathing, so I figured he wasn't dead. I had a Cure spell half-formed by the time I reached him. I laid my fingertips around the wound and let the magic flow into his body, slowly, first easing the pain, then re-knitting torn muscle and skin. When I wiped away the blood, he was whole again. He kept his eyes closed for the space of a few deep breaths, then opened them and looked at me with unabashed gratitude. My cold, black heart could have melted.

"Thanks," he said.

"Anytime," I said, and I meant it.