"I know you."

"I'm pretty sure you don't, friend."

"Sure I do."

Every time. Absolutely every single god-damn time. I put my glass down so I have both hands free. Not that I'd need both to deal with this guy if he goes for it. Some half-drunk two-bit nobody looking to make a name for himself wouldn't even make me break a sweat. "You're mistaken. Why don't you sit back down and finish your drink?" I turn away and hope that will be the end of it. It never is.

I see something flicker from the corner of my eye, but I'm already up and away and his fist goes through air. He's slurring the usual crap they all do and I wonder which side he fought on. He looks old enough. Talk about your sins coming back to haunt you. I keep an eye on his buddy as both of them come at me across the dark bar, and I decide hell with it. I have no reason to stay here. No reason to keep this clean then. I grab my glass back up and throw it as hard as I can, right into the second guy's face. For a second he looks puzzled as his face explodes in red, then he's collapsing to his knees and making a noise like a stuck pig. His drinking pal with the big mouth tries to swing at me again with the same result and I just step back. Nobody else is coming for me I can say, they're all sat back and watching how it goes down. Whichever of us wins they'll go back to their drinks like they do every time a fight breaks out in this sleazy piece of crap bar and drink it out of their memory.

He shouts something like fuckin' killer – well that doesn't narrow his problem with down by much – and gets the same idea as me, except it takes him a couple of swipes to find a clean glass. He swings it, big and slow and so stupid, and I catch it and just squeeze. He shouts in pain and drops it into my other hand's palm waiting below his. Then I hit him with it. The side of the head, nothing fatal. A bar fight they'll ignore but not a murder. I stand there for a second and I can feel a slight weight in my chest as I breathe. Maybe I'm a little rustier than I was but at this point it hardly matters. I reach into the unconscious drunk's shirt and bring out his wallet, throw a few notes onto the table. For a second I think about sitting back down and finishing my drink but suddenly I don't have the taste for sitting in an awful bar drinking half-watered beer. Screw it.

I walk out of there and into the sunlight without a word, their eyes on my back as I go.


I don't like Fisherman's Horizon. No matter how many people there are on the streets it always feels empty, like a place that died decades ago and the people living here just haven't noticed so they don't bother leaving. I come here anyway, it's the last place I can reliably put my head down without being woken up in the middle of the night because of bottles thrown against my windows. They'll stare at me and give me angry looks in the street but their precious pacifist state won't let them do anything else about it, drunken assholes on the outskirts of the city notwithstanding. I wipe my hands clean of the grime on the cheap clothing I'm wearing and I'm about to walk off when-

"Did…did you get it?"

Hyne spare me. I've been back in town for maybe a half-day and she's here already? I don't sigh. She's paying me after all, even if it's a pittance compared to what I used to make. Could have made if I'd- No. I'm not going there. "Yeah." I hand over the photograph. This is what I'm doing now. Cheap jobs for cheap people, with cheaper pay. I keep my hand out after I've given her what she wants.

"About the money, I…" she starts and this time I really do sigh. I half-expect her to make some excuse about her paycheque, or a stopped card, or something, but it's not quite as bad as that at least. "I didn't expect you back so soon, I've not got the money out. If you give me an hour or so to…" She trails off.

"Fine." I wave it off. At least she's still going to pay me, and I am back pretty soon I guess. Considering her husband was stupid enough to think the greasy hotel less than ten miles from the city was a good hiding place for his affairs though I don't see how long it could have taken. God I hate this town. I trail her as we walk down the empty streets. There's even less people here than normal somehow, the entire place is a ghost-town in the mornings.

Like everything else when we get there the cashpoint looks barely-used but at the same time grubby and second-hand, like it had been torn from a wall in Galbadia or Dollet and installed here instead. I can feel my impatience bubbling up as she plays around with the buttons until finally I can't stand it anymore. I sigh again – some days it seems I do it more than I breathe regularly – and walk up so I'm directly behind her. "Maybe if you just-"

Pain explodes behind my eyes and everything shakes. It feels like the world just turned upside down and slapped me with a giant stone pillar. I can feel some enormous weight on my head and I stumble back as my old training tells me you're being hit as it comes again from the side, and the dodge I was going for turns into a trip. Apparently the dumb bastard who didn't manage to knock me out with the first blow wasn't expecting it either because the third one just brushes off my skull, even if it still hurts like hell. It gives me a second, and that's all I need.

"Goddamn hard-headed…" Mr Unfortunate says as I stumble up and try to will the blurring out of from my vision. I turn and get a blurry look at whoever the hell it is has decided to screw with me and he's huge. My vision is a mess and I can tell at least that much. I'm about to shout for the woman to get away somewhere when I hear a second voice.

"…told you he was tougher than that. Now…"

Of course. It's the woman's voice. Goddamnit. I've been played. I've been played and I feel like such an idiot as my vision stabilises into normality and the hulking brute in front of me is joined by the woman, her body-language no longer saying mousey jilted housewife and instead soldier in a bad old dress, which she probably is. "You've made a huge mistake," I say, and try to mean it.

Lunkhead just sniggers and hefts the blackjack in his hand. I feel insulted that's all he brought. It's the woman who speaks though and now that she isn't keeping her voice quiet and scared I can hear that she isn't from anywhere near Fisherman's Horizon. "This will go a lot easier if you just come with us," she says in a thick accent I can't quite place. Bounty hunters, broke soldiers looking for an easy payday, doesn't matter to me now. My head's still ringing a bit and if I can't intimidate them into backing off I don't know if my feet will move fast enough to-

He goes for it, some signal I missed while I was too busy thinking to just watch. Damnit, this never happened before. He brings down the cosh in a huge arc only a moron would miss, but I already know I'm meant to see it as the woman comes around from the side with something sharp in her hand, the real attack to his diversion. I catch her arm before it can bury a knife into my leg and twist myself around, carrying her with me and together we stumble sideways into her muscle or partner or whatever he is, and I throw my free elbow as hard as I can into his stomach, twisting my elbow in his chest and my hand grabbing her arm. For a moment we all struggle there ungraciously in an amateurish mess until finally I get purchase with both my feet, and I pull upwards as hard as I can and stamp down with my free foot. My reward is a sharp crack and cry of pain and a hiss of drawn-out breath as her arm breaks at the same time as his ribs. For a second I gloat as both of them collapse to the ground, just one more pair would-be claimants on whichever bounty they were dumb enough to accept on me.

My joy doesn't last long though, because a second later I hear the whistle and the sound of iron-toed footsteps on the pavement. For a second I consider running but the cops already have me in their sights. I hear a chuckle from below me and I look down at the woman, holding one arm in the other but staring up at me from the ground with a nasty smile. "The hell are you so happy about?" I ask.

"We wanted…the money. Guess I can wait…'till you're out," she gasps through the pain of a broken arm.

I snort in derision. "You're out of your mind if you think you're going to-" She starts laughing and I stop talking as I realise what she means. The blackjack and the knife are already on the ground, kicked away from them during the fight, and I'm almost untouched while they're both on he ground with broken bones.

Aww shit…

As the cop comes over and begins to shout at me I wonder how far any explanation would get me. Whether they'll even bother to hear my side of the story when that side starts with 'My name is Seifer Almasy and I was attacked…".

The handcuffs snap around my arms before I can even get a word out, and the ambulance for the two unfortunates beneath me comes soon after.

I hate it when I'm right.


I know the man I'm looking at of course. He's been angling for this for months now, the bastard, and now here I am wrapped up and put on his doorstep. I shift my hands behind my back to try and shift the pain from the too-tight plastic cuffs but all that does is make them bite on a different part of my wrists.

"So you finally screwed up huh?"

The guard-chief in Fisherman's Horizon has a Galbadian accent so thick you could cut meat with it, so that's no huge mystery why he wants me locked up. He may have good reason to hate me but I don't care. "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm the victim here."

"Sure you are. Just a huge misunderstanding I find you over two people with a broken arm and a smashed face."

"They attacked me, I was defending myself."

It's all a huge game. He knows he's going to get what he wants and he's so smug I want to reach across this table and punch him, but I think I'd slit my wrists trying against these damn cuffs. "What reason would two tourists have to attack you?"

"They were bounty hunters you dumb asshole. They had weapon sright there on the ground when your wind-up policeman arrested me." He keeps that same shit-eating smile on as he slides a sheet of paper towards me. I catch the first line and see here for our honeymoon when we were attacked…, before he takes it back. They might have been shit fighters but they weren't stupid I guess.

"Guests of Fisherman's Horizon, now in the hospital because of injuries you inflicted when you tried to rob them-"

"This is so much horseshit-"

"After you assaulted another two men in a bar." I keep my mouth clamped shut like a vice, not trusting myself to speak. "What, nothing to say about this one Almasy?" The bitter old fuck just smiles as he taps the papers like they're some kind of holy writ. Which they may as well be. "I don't think we need to waste each other's time here asking for a confession."

"As if you'd ever get one out of me," I snort, and finally get a chance to smile back as the man's face turns red. It's not much but it's the little victories these days. Rough hands grab me from behind and haul me up, and suddenly my hands are blazing with pain as the plastic cuffs bite into my arms hard enough to make a wrenching sound I don't like much.

"Come on you asshole," one of the interchangeable guards snarls as he hauls me out of the interrogation room and drags me back towards the cage, still full of petty thieves and drunks. "Enjoy your friends before we haul our ass out for good."

For good? What… "What the hell are you babbling about now?" I ask as the cage slams shut with a clang of metal bars and locks, leaving me inside with the other broken creatures this stupid half-dead town likes to throw up in lieu of real criminals.

The guard doesn't smile. There's no real malice there, not like with his chief. Just one more warm body in the system that's devoured countless people before me and probably a whole lot to come. "You ain't staying here," he says. "Nonresident-s and crimes against - get shuffled outta FH and tried elsewhere."

My stomach churns for just a minute and I hammer on the bars with a fist as he walks off. "HEY!" He turns back. "You know who I am, right?"

"Yeah," he says, and there's nothing in the word. He just doesn't care and it infuriates me. Once I had half the world at my feet and now this entry-level guard doesn't even give a shit about who he's arresting.

"So where's that for me, goddamnit!?"

The nameless jailer just shrugs. "Your two joes, the girl with the broken arm and the man with the busted ribs? Wherever they were from." He turns and walks off and I sit down on the dank bench at the back of the cell, hauling off the drunk loser that was sitting there. My stomach's churning and I snarl to keep the vomit down. This is trouble, this is big trouble. I think back to the fight against the pair and try to remember every detail. It takes a second but I can remember that thick accent easily, and I wonder why I didn't place it before. That slight musical twang that you don't quite hear anywhere else in the world and the soft r's they never seem to get quite right. I won't have to wonder about how the trial will go at least, because in that place, against me, there's only one direction it'll take.

My foot starts tapping on the stone floor of the lockup and I have to will myself to keep it steady. At least I won't be staying here long I guess. I'll soon be vacating it for a much cleaner one. No matter how clean they keep them though it'll still be a cell, even if it's the nicest, most advanced cell in all the world.

Adel built so many of them, and Esthar hates to throw anything useful away.


-x-

Welcome to a new tale. Unlike my previous works the update schedule for this one will probably be a little irregular, as I'm actually a sucker for punishment and am working on two long-form stories right now (check the Warcraft fandom for the other, I promise you don't have to be a WoW-player to enjoy it!). No doubt spelling and grammar errors will have snuck their way past me because of this and so if anyone else feels like a little proof-reading in exchange for early access to chapters just throw me a line.

Comments and reviews are welcome as ever. Hope you enjoy!

~Cobray