They took the train to Deling City even though Selphie wanted to take the Ragnarok. Selphie always wanted to take the Ragnarok, actually, but they couldn't do that without attracting attention anymore. It was a highly conspicuous vehicle and they were highly conspicuous people. So Rinoa and Irvine talked Selphie down to train travel. She loved trains. She loved most things in the world. As the old Dolletian saying went: she danced with the joy of life.

Irvine was, by contrast, something of a secret sadsack. He couldn't quite understand her. That didn't mean he liked her any less. The Timberi frontier poet and sometime-chemist Reo Wenwist used to write extensively on this phenomenon—

(And cut Irvine some slack here; yes, he'd read the guy. He wasn't a nerd or anything, but he'd grown up poor in Deling City, unable to afford Tonberry Dust. So for the first few years of his life, he'd read. Mostly naughty magazines. But when he found himself in a library by some strange act of fate, then other stuff too, because libraries didn't stock naughty magazines.)

—and Wenwist described every interaction as a potential attraction of opposite charges. The more…Oh, Irvine was no poet. He figured you could call it opposite-y? The more opposite-y that the charges were? The more opposite-y they were, the more they attracted each other. This phenomenon wasn't simply for tiny particles and subcutaneous organisms. It applied all across the board, a law of Hyne. Opposite charges were attracted to each other. And Irvine and Selphie were opposites. Irvine had no inner joy to speak of, not any that wasn't a front; underneath his breezy airs and good looks he sometimes felt he was a negative, a big old void. While Selphie was brimming with positivity. It charged her up and made her a brilliant, happy, bouncing, energetic being; she couldn't even keep it inside her. Ergo, they'd bonded. She swapped him some of that joy for his…well. His something. Something was keeping her with him. Keeping up their bond.

It had been a bond formed in the cradle, Irvine thought. Matron said Irvine had been four months old when he'd come to the Orphanage. Selphie had already been there, a little older than him. And Matron hadn't confirmed that they'd hit it off right away, but Irvine didn't need the confirmation. He knew they had. He just knew it was true. He wasn't always the most intellectual soul, not even after reading all those books. But he was a secret romantic. And so some things he just took on faith.

See, aside from memories of Selphie and the orphanage; all Irvine had, really, were memories of being sort of empty and lonely by comparison. His childhood had been lonely. His training had been lonely. Even his first time had been lonely. Irvine had lost his virginity at almost fourteen, and he figured it had to have been loveless sex – not great sex, not yet; that would have been unrealistic. He'd been too young.

Bexley Kerr, 'Sir' to Irvine and 'Dad' according the adoption papers, would have rolled his eyes to hear of the event. Declared it typical, immoral, irresponsible, because Irvine was, in most respects, a complete failure and really a Bad Kid. There was the dullness to him, the secret sadness. There was a kind of failure to be upright and strong, a failure of masuclinity that no sexual exploit could make up for. And then later there would be womanizing, too; too many sexual exploits, like Irvine was setting out to be as shameful and low-class as possible. Though one had to know Irvine for about a month to figure out that it was a front – one small sliver of his personality that he'd blown out of proportion, just to keep people from seeing the rest of him.

But back to virginity. Almost fourteen. A Galbadian soldier – tall, for a woman, with bright eyes and powerful arms. She'd been guarding some diplomat who was meeting with Martine, only guarding him rather half-assedly, letting the guy wander the Garden while she herself sprawled on the couch in the waiting area, and there she'd seen Irvine, skinny but tall for his age, stewing because he'd been sent to the Headmaster's office. Again.

"You look like you're being held captive. What'd you do?" she'd asked.

And Irvine had said, "Nothing."

"Everybody says that," the soldier had said, waving a hand like she understood well the follies of youth. "If you'd done nothing, you wouldn't be here. You did something. Probably with a girl, right? Let some cute young thing into your heart, like a fool. And it went horribly wrong, I bet. You're at the age for it."

Irvine had, actually. The girl had been named Selphie Pardo when he'd known her and no one had ever told him who her adoptive parents had been, so he wouldn't have been able to track her down as a Tilmitt even if he'd tried to. That was how it had gone horribly wrong. Separate families, in the end; separate continents, even. And he'd been around three when he'd let her into his heart and first decided that he loved her, so it wasn't his fault. You weren't responsible for what you did at three. But he hadn't been about to protest or reveal that. Not to some random Galbadian soldier who was only flirting. Irvine had already understood flirting at the time; he'd been a quick learner.

Irvine had said, "No. I did nothing. Just nothing. No shooting people. No shooting grats, even. No GFs."

He'd been enrolled at Garden under extreme duress. Bexley had liked that they farmed their graduates out to the Galbadian army and had steamrolled over most of Irvine's protests.

The soldier had thought Irvine's natural squeamishness naïve, which it had been, and cute, which it hadn't been. So the first encounter was probably fairly uncomfortable; not enough to put Irvine off of sex completely, but somehow enough to make him shove the memory at the GFs, later on. He and the soldier had still exchanged contact information, and met near the Deling City Hotel for next three months, and she'd blown him beneath the underpass near the Presidential Palace.

Irvine couldn't remember her name.

He'd given the name up when he'd finally agreed to junction. And the memory of his actual first time. There were other memories he'd preferred to keep, things more important than an act he'd do again and again and only get better at. That was fine. Irvine had known he might lose stuff to the GFs.

Now, Irvine had told his friends that he hadn't junctioned GFs until meeting them. It wasn't strictly true. He hadn't junctioned for real battle until meeting them. He hadn't junctioned for especially long periods until meeting them. He hadn't junctioned enthusiastically, surrounded by the four of them, living reminders of a past that he was until then in danger of losing to the sway of the GFs, until meeting them. Meeting them had not been his first time. Er. His other first time. His GF first time.

Irvine had some previous experience with GFs; that was how he'd known they caused memory loss, right off the bat. He just hadn't wanted to admit how he'd known. It wasn't a terribly nice story. In the first place, it involved a lot of selfish forgetting. Not like Selphie and Zell and Quistis and Squall's inadvertent memory loss. But a deliberate, manipulative forgetting on Irvine's part.

And in the second place, it mostly revolved around how much of a lonely loser he'd been growing up. The story goes as follows:

The upper-level, more talented cadets at G-Garden had been weird and alien from the start. After a few months Irvine had realized why: they didn't have memories. Some lost their childhoods; parents were constant surprises they rediscovered in the mail every week. Others lost what they'd eaten the day before; they experienced for the first time the same Deling cafes over and over. And some lost their first memory of meeting Irvine, again and again, and looked at him strangely whenever he was familiar with them. And, with some pestering, an instructor finally took Irvine aside and told him why all this was happening.

GFs.

G-Garden didn't have many GFs. On paper, they had none, because Cid Kramer was paranoid about that stuff. Martine drilled it into them in case they ever came into contact with Cid's kids: "Don't let them know. Tell them we have none. "

Why?

Because GFs meant power. And when Cid down in Balamb caught wind that G-Garden had stumbled on some new source of power, he inevitably decommissioned that power for use by his own kids. He said it was because Galbadia Garden had always been meant to focus more on technology than magic. But GFs had their uses in the realm of technology, too. Some could help refine weapons components. Some, particularly those found in the desert near G-Garden, were like weapons – the magic one got from them was weak at best, but when they unfurled their bodies all one saw was a vast wall of mech. And some boosted physical strength and rolled out a shield against magic; these were particularly prized by Martine, as he saw in them the key to defeating Cid's kids, should it ever come to that.

Irvine had passed his physical tests perfectly, so if he could have been browbeaten into sticking to the program, he might have been a useful asset to Martine, might have been trained up to despise Cid and Cid's disciples. So Martine had come after him mercilessly for refusing to practice with their lone remaining GFs. Irvine had held out for a while. Then, he stumbled onto Florlina Drinnaks' The Nature of the Summon.

Not a naughty magazine, like most of his light reading. Just a book. But a useful one. Drinnaks saw GFs not as strange memory suckers that took up space in your brain. To her, they were more than that. They were almost people. GFs could think, apparently. They could be offended. They could challenge you, and judge you for being weak.

There was something to them, like with people.

Irvine wasn't good at getting close to people or making people really care about him; he only could charm them, keep their attention on him for temporary periods, that was all. But as a cadet he'd only junction the GFs for temporary periods. So that was all he needed. When, on pain of eternal detention, Martine had talked Irvine into letting one Zona Seeker into his brain, Irvine had taken a deep breath, cleared his mind completely (he'd run through this so many times in anticipation of junctioning that it was instinctive; it had to be), junctioned, and thought his first thoughts in the GF's direction.

"Don't take my memories."

Florlina Drinnaks said this almost never worked straight out. You had to be junctioned to them for a while, so that they obeyed your commands effortlessly, in order for it to work. And by then, of course, they would have already taken your memories – maybe even your memory that GFs could take memories.

Zona Seeker's physical form had a ribcage made of metal, and in its mental form its voice came forth sounding very tinny and mechanic and high for such a forbidding beast.

What…are…memories?

Right. Not promising.

"Like, my knowledge of what I did before now. For example, what I did this morning—"

And as soon as that had popped into his brain, there went his memory of the morning: no doubt brushing his teeth, pulling on his uniform, eating by himself in the caf. He still had the memory of the memory, of course. The knowledge that it had been there and he had done something. But the events themselves? Gone. Irvine had realized he would have to try a different tactic. What else did he have?

Oh. Gab. Charm.

"You seem like you're being held captive. What'd you do?"

Are…you…mocking…me?

…

Fool!

Do…you…know…my…power?

"Not as such," Irvine had thought evenly, making sure to keep calm. Breathe in, breathe out. He'd trained himself not to be nervous.

There was no reason to be, after all. He'd studied up on everything Florlina Drinnaks had to say about bargaining with GFs. So he was reasonably – reasonably – sure that he was on the right track. "I really wanna know. I can relate. I'm stuck here myself. At G-Garden, I mean. I don't wanna be here; you couldn't pay me to go into the Galbadian Army."

…Coward.

Zona Seeker had been a fairly powerful GF, but no prize in the personality department.

"No, really," Irvine had thought. "We're gonna be stuck running drills together, aren't we? We might as well get to know each other. What's your story?"

I…don't know.

"You don't need to get creative with it or anything. Just give me a name—"

Zona Seeker…

"Okay, not that. I already know that. Parents? Loved ones? GFs you're close to?"

I….don't know.

"You don't have parents?" Irvine let slip a few memories of Bexley Kerr as a reference. And as bait.

Bexley…

Very stern…

He was taller than me.

Now he isn't anymore.

I don't like him.

"Right," Irvine had thought. "Here's the thing. Bexley's not yours, my friend."

He is!

Florlina Drinnaks believed – correctly, as Irvine had come to discover – that something had made the GFs complete and total amnesiacs. They had few memories of their own, or else theirs were locked away somehow. GFs were straightforward creatures, and memory was, after all, not straightforward. It was your brain playing tricks on you. Imperfectly recreating something you could never get back. GF brains didn't work the same way. They couldn't recreate; they could only steal. Consequently they were all impulse; their identity was just whatever they happened to be feeling at the time; and what a lot of them felt was hungry for memories. For a better identity.

Why else would they help you so much, stick by you, once junctioned to you? If you kept them with you long enough, guided them into learning enough new abilities, they stole away so much of you in order to build themselves that after a while they almost thought they were you.

They didn't steal memories on purpose. They just came to believe your memories were really theirs.

Then had come the tricky part.

"Fine. He's yours. Tell me more about him," Irvine had thought. And had focused right away on his breathing. On the crack in the wall of the changing room in G-Garden's training center. On his fingernails. On the wool socks he'd taken off before drills and stuffed into his formal boots. On the athletic socks and regulation boots on his feet.

On anything but Bexley Kerr. It hadn't been easy. Like telling yourself not to think of pink geezards. You thought of them right away, unless you'd been forewarned, and in that case you tried to think of anything but.

I…I can't.

I don't know anything more.

He still couldn't think of Bexley, not yet. So Irvine had focused on the showerheads. He'd counted the holes in the nearest showerhead.

"Do…"

The tiles. Irvine sketched out a mental copy of the pattern on the tiles.

"You…"

The uneven wood bench, painted a dull G-Garden brick red. Irvine counted the grains in the wood.

"Want to…"

The pipes beneath the sinks. Irvine followed their loops from the sink to the wall, from the wall to the sink.

"Know…"

The creak of door as another trainee came in and headed for the lockers. Creak, creak, creak. Irvine had replayed it in his mind. GFs could only hit what you were thinking of right then. They couldn't go deeper. Thank Hyne.

"More?"

Yes!

So Irvine let it slip. Bexley Kerr, berating him. Bexley Kerr, offhandedly praising him. Bexley Kerr in Deling City, in the Desert, in his office at the D-District, where he oversaw prisoner transport. Bexley, Bexley, Bexley. Bexley explaining that he'd only adopted Irvine at the urging of his wife, Aurora Kinneas, and then Aurora (nice, pretty, joyful like Selphie; but Irvine didn't want to think too much about her, because he didn't want to risk losing her) had died in a prisoner riot, and Bexley had discovered Edea Kramer's no takebacks policy.

So they'd been stuck together. Bexley with the kid. Irvine with his (second) dead mom's surname, per Galbadia continent matrilineal custom. This was fine; he didn't want to be named after Bexley anyway.

I do not wish to be named after him!

He hit me once!

He-

How did you do that?

"That's a memory," Irvine had said. "Mine. Not yours. But it's delicious, right?"

Filling.

I am someone.

I am you.

We are connected.

And, Hyne damn him if it hadn't been weird, but at that Zona Seeker had sounded almost blissful. Mechanical voice notwithstanding.

"Do you want more?" Irvine had said. "I'm not stingy."

Yes!

"Alright. Let's work out a deal, then."

And that had been the start of the bargain. Nice memories? Zona Seeker could peek at them. But no claiming them. No taking them to wherever the hell it happened to store human-like thoughts, out of his reach. It could take the bad or distasteful ones whenever it felt like it, though. It wasn't like it minded. A bad identity was still an identity. And GFs didn't seem to conceive of 'bad' and 'good' the same way normal people did, anyway.

All the same, this was why Irvine figured his first time must not have been particularly good. He couldn't quite remember it. But he could remember telling Bismarck – the second GF he ever junctioned – that little Sefie from the orphanage was off-limits, but this chick? The soldier here? She didn't mean much. It had been an empty experience. Whatever her name was.

Irvine could remember knowing her name, at this point. But he couldn't remember the name itself.

You have lost things. We make you lose them. This is why I cannot take your memories, recited Siren, in the present.

Irvine went over this with her every time he junctioned her. Once they left you, the GFs couldn't retain much. They went back to being all impulse. Sometimes they took your lost memories with them, which really worried him, especially since it was a useless endeavor; they couldn't seem to access them once outside the human brain.

"This," Irvine reminded her, "Is why you can't take without asking first. Unless it's bad. Or useless. Pain. One night stands. That kind of thing."

Selphie, verifying their train passes with the station attendant, turned to look at him. She knew by now that he bargained with the GFs in his mind. Irvine could see her making a face at Rinoa about it; she was torn over it. On the one hand, Irvine often took a long long time standing there talking with his GFs, and it seemed to take something out of him. She told him that she'd always just accepted GFs, hadn't worried about memory loss, and she'd been fine. No bargains needed. It seemed to her like a lot of unnecessary stress that Irvine was throwing on himself.

But on the other hand, Selphie hated not knowing things. She was determined to learn and master his GF-bargaining trick on principle, even if she was doing fine with storing memories in her online diary and even if she could never seem to clear her head the way he could. Teaching her was uphill going. Particularly since every time she asked after the memories he traded away to his GFs, he had to come up with something other than 'recollections of my asshole father' and 'people I have slept with who aren't you.'

You think you will forget the one night stands anyway, Siren noted, skimming the surface of his thoughts.

"Well, and also it's good for me not to have them," thought Irvine. "People asking for paternity tests, that kind of thing."

Since he thought of paternity tests, Siren thought of paternity tests, and understood for the first time what they were, and then she sent him a flash of disapproval – she was a very human GF in more ways than her form. She didn't need to get really verbal and specific, so much as project her emotions at you in a judgey way if she damn well felt like it.

"I always submit to the paternity tests! Sometimes I pay for them. And none of them has ever come back positive," Irvine protested.

Irvine was a big believer in just about every form of contraception under the sun. He was a good Garden boy like that.

"Don't take my memories of how to use contraceptives," he warned Siren. "I need those."

But you did not need the name of your first love.

"Right," Irvine thought. "What? No. Not a love. Just a woman."

The insinuation that he might have loved someone other than Selphie stunned him; he didn't like it. He actually started, right there in the station, and Rinoa, who was buying magazines from the platform seller, caught sight of this and raised an eyebrow.

How would you know? said Siren smugly. You traded away your memories of her.

"That's exactly why she can't be my love," Irvine argued. This was the problem with Siren. No identity didn't mean no personality. And her personality was even worse than Zona Seeker's had been.

Perhaps it ended poorly, and you removed the wounds she left.

Oh, now there was a disturbing thought.

Yes. I think so as well.

"I don't even know her name," said Irvine.

Only then, suddenly, he did.

Rill Tremlett, Siren noted.

It had flashed across his mind very unexpectedly. Because it was on the cover of the magazine Rinoa had bought. She'd bought more than a few. And one, one of the gossip rags that had sprung up in the wake of the war to pollute the old Timber Maniacs market, came with the headline:

Garden Sharpshooter: Loose and Lurid?
Former Lover Rill Tremlett Tells All!

The rest of the cover was a pastiche of photos: a photo of Rill; some blurry pictures of Irvine in FH, "terrorizing the locals"; and a brief caption that noted that he was supposed to be dating Trabia Garden survivor and fellow hero Selphie Tilmitt. Supposed to be. But he probably wasn't being faithful, was the insinuation. There was also a photo of a teenage Irvine in the lower left, near the pricing mark. Teenage Irvine wasn't wearing very much. In small red letters, the magazine promised more inside. But probably not any more clothes.

"Fucking Hyne," Irvine said, too stunned to say anything more.

"You should see the ones about me," Rinoa muttered.

Selphie caught up to them by this point. She grabbed the magazines out of Rinoa's hands. She said, furiously, "Trabia Garden Survivor Selphie Tilmitt. Homeless Refugee Selphie Tilmitt. Poor Little Mourning Selphie Tilmitt. Adel's Tits! Why do you buy this stuff?"

"I want to know what they're saying about me," Rinoa said defensively.

Irvine still hadn't found any words.

He was pretty sure he was thirteen in that one picture of him.

Sure, people said stuff, and had been saying stuff about him all his life. But this. This was—this was—

Siren put it better than he could have. Can I have this memory? The one you're laying the groundwork for right now?

I ask only because it doesn't seem to be shaping up to be a good one.

Selphie had once loved trains, but now she hated them.

Trains meant traveling incognito. Why? Because suddenly everybody knew who they were, because they'd gone and unthinkingly saved the world, and there were reporters everywhere. In her parents' yard in Trabia. At destroyed Trabia Garden. In Esthar. Everywhere but B-garden, really, since Xu didn't tolerate the press coming onto Garden without an invite and had resorted to creative means to drive them away (dangerous cadet drills near the exits, and "escaped" malboros and stuff).

Irvine and Rinoa said the Ragnarok was conspicuous? Please.

They were conspicuous. Them. Selphie, Irvine, Rinoa, Squall, Quistis, Zell. Wherever they went, people were suddenly interested in knowing everything about them and making it up when they didn't know. Photographers had taken to stalking the Garden cars when it seemed like one of the group might be traveling. This, predictably, interfered with their missions. And had led to Xu practically throwing their week of vacation time in their faces as soon as she could spare them; there were only so many paparazzi invasions the Headmistress could deal with.

Fine. Whatever, as Squall would say. They'd take vacations. They'd make themselves scarce, practically invisible. Rinoa would remove her trademark highlights and chop off half her hair, swap her clothes. Irvine and Selphie would do the same; the latter no longer a byword for flashy desert menswear, instead traveling in a simple cap and black slacks, and the former would wear boring green pants instead of her pretty yellow dress.

But people still squinted at them on the station platform like they could figure out who they were. And pestered them like they were entitled to know everything about them. Honestly, why had they bothered saving the world anyway? Now the world wouldn't leave them alone. The world sucked.

As if to punctuate this, the train shuttered into the station rather pitifully, seeming pathetic after Esthar's superior airship technology. Selphie shoved the magazines under her arm wrathfully, and said, "Let's board. You can look at these once we're in our car."

She strode off, practically tossing their tickets at the conductor. Rinoa and Irvine dutifully followed.

"Can I—" Irvine said, as soon as they were inside. He seemed flustered. "Can I—um. One of those. I need to see it."

"I wish they'd stop writing about your ex-girlfriends," Selphie told him, a little ruthlessly. She sorted through the magazines for whichever one had his name. "I like to pretend you never ever had any other lovers. Ever." She itched to blow something up. Truth was – when you were furious, nothing blew off steam better than the Ragnarok's high-octane flight and ability to withstand explosions. Their journey fighting Ultimecia had taught her that. But all around them there was nothing to blow up. Nothing but train, and you couldn't blow up a train when you were riding on it. "I mean, I know you did have lovers. But I'm more jealous and spiteful than I ever thought I was. And when I think about them I want to kill them. So, you know. Pretend."

Ah. There it was. Another jilted ex for Irvine. Another sleazy headline. Another—wait.

Oh, Hyne. Irvy.

"How old are you in this picture?" Selphie said.

"Young," Irvine said uncomfortably.

Selphie handed the magazine over. Rinoa caught sight of it as she did so.

"I'm sorry," she said quickly. "I didn't notice that picture when I— I mean. The first article really upset me. These do too. But I just buy them all now, as a matter of habit, almost, so—"

"It's fine," Irvine said quickly. "It's not like you printed the thing."

But someone had. Someone had seen quick cash in it and gone right ahead. And someone – something Tremlett, from what Selphie could read from here; Irvine was scanning the article anxiously and had part of the headline blocked off with his hand – had taken the picture in the first place, and then delivered it to the papers.

Something Tremlett was a dead woman.

Selphie was going to hunt her down and blow her up. Lots of times. In small pieces. After she cut off the pieces. After she beat her black and blue.

"Can I see it when you're done?" she asked Irvine. "Not – not if you're not comfortable."

He brought the magazine down and looked at her for a good few seconds. She couldn't read his expression; that was one of the things she liked least about him. She could never really read Irvy's expression. Not anymore, anyway. Not since he was, like, five. Selphie vaguely remembered him being a lot more open at age five.

"Sure," he said eventually. "Let me finish first, though."

Then the magazine went back up, blocking his face. While she waited for him to finish, Selphie arranged the others on the floor. Just to get a good look at them all: the full picture. Then she could plan. They had to do something about their level of media exposure. They'd been ignoring it, hoping it would blow over. She'd been ignoring it. A longtime fan of gossip news for years, Selphie had found herself suddenly retreating, uncomfortable, from the world's magazines and newspapers for the past seven months. Firstly because it was weird to see herself listed there alongside the Card Queen and other genuine media personalities. And secondly because she hadn't seen any reason to keep tabs on this stuff; she herself hadn't even been a major target until recently, not like Squall or Rinoa.

For a few reasons. 1) Selphie was friends with most people; most people didn't have anything really bad to say about her. 2) Selphie was largely considered the member of the group with the saddest backstory, a genuine Trabia Garden survivor, entitled to moments of private mourning (the assumption was that she was always mourning; the public didn't like to think of her not mourning; that would have been tasteless of her). And 3) Selphie was actually, once you got your hands on video footage of her limit breaks, downright terrifying.

But then the foundations of the new Trabia Garden were unveiled. And suddenly, quite without warning, the papers had decided they needed to revive their mourning heroine.

Selphie Smiles (Through Her Tears?)
"Tilmitt Has Already Moved On!" Says Trabia Refugee, Of Callous Classmate
Tilmitt Seeks Solace From Tragedy In Arms Of Garden Womanizer
"Our Selphie Will Never Heal The Hole In Her Heart," Say Trabia Friends

Selphie had always been a big believer in the freedom of the press. She collected Timber Maniacs, after all. She had several blog posts up about the revolutionary role the paper had played in shaping the politics of the Galbadian continent. She didn't hate free speech, not really.

She just hated that her grief – and her boyfriend, apparently – were now public property.

Rinoa had it even worse. Half of the world despised her on principle: she was a sorceress. Of the other half, Galbadia despised her because she was an open supporter of Timber independence; and Timber hated her because it had come out that she'd been raised on General Caraway's dime. Winhill had suddenly taken a proprietary interest in Squall. So they hated her because she was, according to the Deling City Mirror, not nearly good enough for him. And Dollet's gays and lesbians rather liked her: sorceresses, as social outcasts, had long been cultural icons for some of that set. And Rinoa had always shown them support anyway. But, judging by the letters to the editor published in the Dollet Daily Press after their Heartilly: Doomed to Become Ultimecia? article, absolutely everyone else in Dollet felt it was irresponsible of Garden not to kill her where she stood.

In light of all this, it was slightly understandable that she'd started to collect all the print media she could lay her hands on. It gave her some inkling of where the next death threats were going to roll in from.

Squall had it nearly as bad. Sure, some of the world still looked at him as a hero. But the truth was: he didn't have what it took to be a media darling. He just didn't. Squall's personality was 85% rude silence, 13% cutting remarks, 2% unthinkingly throwing over everything else in his life for his girlfriend. And the world was starting to catch on. Timber, which was grudgingly in favor of him because Galbadia hated him, was starting to put out articles like: Does Leonhart Hinder the Cause of Timber Independence? Squall was only tangentially connected to Timber independence; he was the Garden muscle that happened to be dating its driving force. But that was more than nothing. And they had a point. He had a tendency to piss off Galbadian diplomats over nothing. He had a wry rejoinder for every oblique insult, and dished up stubborn silence when it came time to negotiate. Squall was a terrific Commander. But not a very good politician.

The rest of the Galbadia continent feared that he'd team up with Laguna to conquer them. Some reporter had discovered the connection between Squall and Laguna three months ago, and now no one would stop talking about it. Except, of course, Squall. Squall wouldn't go near Esthar if you offered him a million gil. Xu had actually done this by attempting to assign him many a mission there, only to have rank pulled on her and the missions flatly denied.

For their part, the Esthar populace were beginning to suspect that Squall would be making overtures at Galbadia in an attempt to conquer them. Esthar had very free press laws. So the Esthar Independent, with no one from Laguna's office moving to stop them, had published a hugely popular op-ed arguing that Squall might any day now wrench the Estharian presidency away from his father. The thrust of it seemed to be that Squall wanted retaliation for all those years Laguna had been a deadbeat dad. The Independent intimated that Laguna had maybe abandoned his son deliberately (which was untrue. Sir Laguna would never), and probably deserved it. But ultimately the paper had concluded that the father would be a better president than the son. Laguna was cheery and approachable. Squall was grim and threatening.

Irvine, of course, had all those newspaper articles on his sexual dalliances. When he handed the latest over so that Selphie could add it to her pile, she got to check that – yes – they still believed him to be currently sleeping his way across the Esthar continent. Still likely possessed of every sexual disease under the sun. Almost certainly in your backyard, about to seduce your son and daughter. To read it, Irvine was a worldwide menace, a sexual threat putting the world on high alert, and besides this, like the rest of them, he seemed arrogant, too aware of his role as a world hero. And he'd made no friends at G-Garden, which was suspicious and pointed to severe deficiencies in his character. His own father, claimed the paper, was reputed to dislike him.

Quistis' parents, by contrast, had informed the Fisherman's Horizon Gazette that they were very proud of her. They'd also had their pictures taken in the Dollet Inquirer, and had won a lucrative contract with the now-functioning Dollet radio tower to talk about her every Sunday from three to four. They chided her publicly for her clothing choices and failure to send home enough of her paycheck, described in detail her extreme beauty and sad, sad luck with men, generally waxed rhapsodic about their close family connection to her; and despaired that perhaps she was making the wrong friends. They didn't seem to approve of the rest of the group: all rude people and loose men and sorceresses. This was probably why Quistis never, ever, ever mentioned them to her friends or coworkers; and in fact lived life as though her parents did not exist.

Which didn't stop them from snagging the cover of this week's Timber Times: "My Beautiful Daughter Needs A Man!" Cries Mrs. Trepe. "Sometimes I Worry That She's Frigid!"

Of all of them, only Zell had really escaped the media blitz. Balamb had run a local interest piece on him right after the war. But Balamb was an unpretentious town; it had just been a brief note underneath his picture at some long-ago birthday party, approximately age eight. It had been squished onto on page three of the weekly broadsheet. Our Zell Dincht Of Main Street Who Helped Save The World Last Week; Good For Him! Mother Is Proud. And the Trabia Chronicle had listed him as one of the B-Garden alums who'd dropped by to support the rebuilding a few months ago. But aside from that, the papers seemed to think he was a nice Balamb boy, enormously boring, not particularly threatening, with no great tragedies in his past, unlikely to snap and kill his biological parents in a bloody coup; and, worst of all, not even dating anyone. One of the smaller news sources out in Dollet had run an article on him and the Library Girl last week. Zell's mother had written them a strongly worded note as soon as the edition hit the streets, they'd published it and apologized, and the whole thing seemed to have died down. Zell hadn't even had to change his appearance much. People genuinely had no idea he was that Zell Dincht, even with Zell Dincht being an extremely rare name.

Zell didn't make a single showing in anything Rinoa had collected from the newsstands.

How did he do it?

"Zell's looking good this week," Irvine said, looking at the spread on the floor. "I'm almost jealous."

Irvine didn't look shaken, but he must have been. He had to be.

"The perks of being well-adjusted and boring," Selphie told him, trying to comfort him.

"Zell's just a very good person," Rinoa said. She patted Angelo distractedly – Angelo always traveled with her. People didn't like telling her she couldn't take her dog on trains because she was a sorceress and sorceresses tended to be terrifying, so here the dog was. Rinoa added, "If we're going to gossip about him, I'd prefer that we be kind about it." But then she crouched down to get a better look and saw that a publication in Trabia, of all places, was declaring her The Terror of Timber. So she added, "It must be nice for him to not be a sorceress, though."

"He's also not as good looking as you," Selphie told Irvine.

"Probably really wonderful for him to have parents who are completely un-military and have never once tried to take over other countries," said Rinoa.

"And his friends are all alive," Selphie said.

"And you'd think people would make more noise about him, because everyone knows him," said Irvine.

"That is so annoying," said Selphie, hypocritically getting into the swing of things. "I hate people like that."

"No one ever forgets about him," Irvine said. "It's like: oh, there's Zell. Can't miss Zell."

"Hometown boy, Zell," said Selphie, "Totally Still Has An Intact Hometown Zell."

"Has A Living Mother Who Loves Him Zell," said Rinoa.

"Team player, Zell!" said Irvine. "No Trouble Relating To People, Zell!"

"That's wasted on him," Rinoa pointed out, "Because he never uses his social ability for political good. I mean, you don't see him liberating Balamb—"

Fun as the rag-on-Zell session was, here Selphie felt she had to be objective.

"In his defense, only like one person's ever ever tried to take over Balamb. All you'd gain would be SeeDs for neighbors, some pet Fastitocalons, and a lot of fish. It would be more of a headache to control than Timber, and is less strategically beneficial than FH."

"Still!" Rinoa said, tracing Terror of Timber with one pale blue nail. "They invited him to be on the Balamb Municipal Committee! To be a force for change! And do you know what he said?"

"'No, thanks. Cuts in on my T-boarding time,'" Irvine said.

"Zell!" Rinoa finished glumly.

There was silence for a minute. The silence meant they had time for a little bit of guilt to sneak into their minds.

"Okay, he probably didn't deserve that," Rinoa said. She got up and sat back in her seat, looking sheepish.

"Yeah. It just felt nice," said Selphie.

"Still," said Irvine, "Now that we've gotten the Seifer Almasy out…"

That did more to make them all feel guilty than the silence ever had. Because Zell was a very good person. And well-adjusted. And beloved by his parents. Just a lucky guy all around, really. And it was only deeply troubled, arrogant assholes that picked on him; everybody knew that. Deeply troubled, arrogant assholes who somehow escaped completely the consequences of their actions. And who, after a few headlines spotting them fishing in FH and a few op-eds calling for their death, had faded from the newspapers completely.

"Now there's a disappearing act," Selphie muttered.

"Now there's cosmic unfairness," said Rinoa. "If anybody should be called a Terror of Anything—"

"Everything, actually," said Irvine. "I mean, he had his good qualities as a kid, but Terror of Everything is a more accurate way of getting the—" Here he waved offhandedly at some spectral Seifer Almasy sitting in the corner of the train car, no doubt smirking at them and thrilled to be the topic of conversation and the star of all their resentful nightmares, "General personality across."

He was also, randomly, Rinoa's ex-boyfriend. Kinda. More or less. After losing touch with her, he'd gone completely crazy, betrayed the Garden that had raised him, and tried to feed her to the evil sorceress Adel. This explained the vitriol in Rinoa's voice when she next spoke.

"I hate it. It's so unjust. He vanishes, and deals with none of the fallout. And we deal with all of it! I don't want to talk about him," Rinoa said. She stood very suddenly and seemed to make up her mind about something. She picked up the magazines and very deliberately crumpled them into small balls, one by one. "Do. Not. Want. To. Let's just not. Let's go back to Zell. Zell is nice. The world is a better place for having lots of Zells. And few Seifer Almasys."

She lined the crumpled magazine balls up on the seat next to her; incidentally right in the place Irvine had waved at. Then she very methodically pointed a finger at each one in turn. And, in turn, each one exploded into blue flames.

Selphie looked at Irvine. Irvine looked at Selphie. Angelo looked at both of them, then whined and covered her face with a paw.

"Alright, Rinoa, whatever you want," Irvine said carefully.

Seifer Almasy was probably better saved for Rinoa's therapy sessions anyway.

At least, Selphie hoped Rinoa was getting therapy. Selphie was. Doctor K, three times a week. But they all needed it. All of them. Not a single psychologically sound one in the group. Not even Zell, probably, when you factored in the years of bullying and the snide commentary he still had to suffer through from even his own friends. F-minuses on the psych evals all around.

"We have so many problems," Selphie muttered.

Irvine looked at her assessingly. Selphie still couldn't tell what he was thinking. "Sure you're not buying into the bad press?" he said.

But she wasn't, not really. They did have problems, every single one of them. Only, now that they were heroes, those problems became magnified and were broadcast to the world.

"You can keep a low profile when you get to Dollet, right?" said Cid. "I know your connections there are…not very low-profile, but—"

His patient coughed, but there was less blood in it than there had been before. This comforted Cid.

"Anyway, like I said, I'll distract the kids," Cid said. "You stay here. Get ready. I'll throw them off. Then we'll get you to Dollet."

Raijin floated in and out of his own head.

He wasn't sure what they'd done to him. Some kind of liquid magic. Some injection. And it meant that there were parts of him that weren't a part of him anymore. They were visiting strange places, horrible places: a great castle, a factory where exhausted men and women were worked on great machines, the laboratories of the city of Esthar.

Someone called him back. He wished it was Fujin, but it wasn't Fujin; it was a girl with gold in her eyes and silver paint on her dark skin. A sorceress.

Raijin screamed.