Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VIII and everything associated with it does not belong to me…

Edited 09/26/09


Chapter IV
A Beginning of the End, or a Beginning of something Greater?

I blinked open my eyes, not surprised in the least to find myself in the glass room yet again.

I floated in the air for a while, just enjoying the calming sensation this place brought to my conscience. Hundreds of my reflections stared back at me, from shining golden mirrors to broken miniscule shards floating by me every once in a while. I never liked looking into these mirrors, no matter how many times I had been here before. They sent a pulse wave of something sickening through me, making me want to hurl in a far-off corner.

A bell chimed, clear in the still air, and my feet brushed the glass ground.

"So it begins."

I walked towards the two white couches positioned in the center of the never-ending room, taking no notice of the dark figure gazing into a row of empty mirrors beside them. Flym was already waiting for me, lounging idly on one of the pieces of furniture and she nodded her head at me as I approached, settling myself down opposite of her.

I took a second to admire her as I always did whenever I saw her in a human's disguise. No matter the number of times I spent here with her, her surreal beauty never ceased to awe me. She contrasted with her Guardian Force appearance a great deal, no longer the short little pixie riding a crescent moon and stealing into her enemy's mind.

She stood a bit taller than me, quite possibly at Squall Leonhart's height. She sat proud, her delicate face held high as she watched our only other companion loose himself in his thoughts. Her navy blue hair was held up in her trademark ponytails, though no longer adding to her childish mask but now falling in long waves down her back. The white and red dress I myself personally considered too revealing was gone, replaced by a long white gown with a carefully placed pattern of red and blue scattered stars. A red shawl was around her shoulders, her pale skin almost glowing in the invisible light of this room.

She turned her equally blue eyes to me and smiled in quiet encouragement, and I realized with a sinking heart that she was in one of her more mature moods.

That had never meant anything good for me.

"Are you ready?"

Eriol spoke again, turning to face me from the empty mirrors that held no traces of either him or Flym in their silvery depths. His voice was quiet, all traces of amusement gone, and the round glasses perched on his nose glinting in the light as he furrowed his brows in complementation.

One of the few times that he calls us up here, and he manages to loose himself yet again. I sneaked a glance over at the still-patient Flym sitting like a marble statue on her couch and sighed, shifting on the cushions to make myself more comfortable.

I wonder if this is what my mind is always like. The thought swam in my head while we waited, and I took the chance to glance around the all-too familiar room once more. Boring, cold, and empty.

"This is all so soon," Eriol continued muttering again, maybe not realizing that we could still hear him from out positions on the couches. Flym sent him a sympathetic look from under her bangs and I questioned myself for not the first time in my life if they had some sort of conspiracy going on or not.

"I'll be fine," I put in after a few minutes, if only to halt the string of jumbled sentences Eriol was letting out under his breath. The boy looked up, scrutinizing me from behind his glasses for the moment.

"I've spent four years here," I continued, used to his constant stares. At first, it had made me feel uncomfortable whenever he continued to examine me as if I were some precious lab specimen, but I had managed to get over it in time. "I was fine before you came, and I'll be fine now."

Eriol sighed heavily, bringing a hand up to run through his mop of unruly black hair. "That's true," he admitted, more so for my satisfaction than his own.

"Besides," I tried to make my voice light, but I knew I failed horribly to do so. "No matter what I do, everything's staying the same, isn't it?"

"She's right," Flym chimed in from her spot, her voice sweet and melodious in the air. "She may not have been fine before you came—" Eriol's eyes narrowed a fragment of an inch, something I couldn't recognize flashing through them before disappearing as fast as it came. "—but everything's okay now." Flym offered a small smile in his direction. "She has me, now, too."

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding when Eriol's shoulders sagged and he sighed again, smiling crookedly back at the Guardian. "You're right," he said at last, before his eyes turned mischievous and the smile turned into a smirk. "But I don't know about that last part – you're pretty unreliable at times."

Flym's smile erased itself off her face as well and she pouted, crossing her arms in front of her. "You meanie!" She accused, her voice rising in pitch. "That was uncalled for, Eriol!"

The black-haired boy laughed, his shoulders shaking in mirth at her expression, and I knew that the tension of my situation was lifted.

But for how long? When would be the next time that Eriol would call for me to visit this glass room once again?

"So, you are prepared, are you not?"

I nodded in answer to Eriol's question and then shrugged, settling deeper into the cushions that seemed so much softer now. "The written test is tomorrow – today, or whatever time it is right now – and then the field exam is rumoured to be the next day after." I raised one of my eyebrows. "Why ask that now when you should do so tomorrow?"

Eriol raised and lowered one shoulder in response and plopped himself down on the armrest of Flym's couch. "Just wondering," he replied, running a hand through his hair again, but this time in boredom. "Out of curiosity, what are you going to do about Flym when the time comes?"

The woman pouted once more, sending a small glare his way. "Oh, yes," she muttered out of the corners of her mouth. "Talk about me as if I'm not here."

I smiled slightly and threw one of the small pillows beside me at her, which she caught with one hand and stuck her tongue out before huddling back into the couch just like I did, with the pillow in her arms. "I'm not sure yet," I replied, fiddling with one of my bangs in a nervous habit. "Would it work if I just said that I obtained her while battling one of the monsters on the mountainside?"

The two opposite of me exchanged looks. "It is possible," Eriol started off slowly, fixing his glasses. "To my knowledge, not too many people go there to train."

"But if they knew that there was a possibility of other Guardian Forces residing there, the Garden Faculty would investigate it without a doubt."

I wrinkled my nose at Flym's mention of the greedy faculty members under NORG's command. I couldn't remember much about the creature that controlled Garden behind the scenes, but I knew he did not care for anything that wouldn't offer him money. Her statement rang true – if I were to say that I got Flym there, at a place that wasn't completely explored, he would send people to scavenge it the next day just in hopes of finding something interesting that could give him profit.

"And if they find nothing there, they may deduce that I was lying," I continued their unfinished thoughts, frowning in thought. "But if I were to say that somebody gave Flym to me, that would cause havoc because this 'person' was breaking the rules of Garden." I groaned and closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose in frustration. "Either way, we're screwed."

"You know," I opened one eye to glance over at Eriol as he continued. "You could just never summon Flym, and that would be the end of that."

"No!" Both I and the Guardian in question sat up straighter, glaring at the boy for daring to suggest something such as that. He shrugged as if to say "oh well" and shifted under our heated stares.

"That is quite possibly one of the worst ideas you've ever had, Eriol," I stated, leaning back again. "Flym is a Guardian Force, and the fact that she knows what's going on doesn't change that."

Flym bobbed her head up and down in agreement. "Yeah!" She exclaimed, still glaring at the boy. "Whether you like it or not, I still have the instinct to fight so depriving me of that would be bad." She emphasized the last word and I had to wonder what exactly would happen if GFs were never summoned while they were under the command of a person.

In theory, I knew, Guardian Forces were tools to most people. They were looked down upon by humans yet were still higher in rank than common monsters, but only because they lent their help to the people from time to time. Nobody, in the entire history of this world, knew exactly how Guardian Forces were created – some said they were the spirits of people after their death, and some just flat-out refused to believe in them since it went against all 'scientific purpose'.

Guardian Forces were rare to find helping people, and even rarer if you stumbled upon them in their natural habitat. I knew that the fire GF, Ifrit, resided in the Fire Cavern southeast of Garden's current position and so I could use him for an example. Most students who weren't participating in the SeeD exams weren't aware of him there, because the area was normally roped off for 'later use'. Others, however – like Squall, Seifer, and myself – knew of Ifrit and so some of us were taken down there in twos or threes to fight him and see if we could pass that part of the test.

But since there were just so little people who could pay a nice little visit to the menacing cave, the other groups were taken for other preliminary tests. There were the normal run-throughs where we just had to show our abilities as fighters, things such as camping out in the Training Center for a set amount of time (and escaping the jaws of hungry T-Rexaurs unscathed) and even more written tests that stretched on to as much as fifty pages in length.

Usually, a low amount of people passed each of these and so it was much easier to conduct the field exams. There were always cities or a group of people in need of Garden's help, and Garden was always happy to help them for a nice amount of money. But back to the Guardian Forces topic, before I go ranting off on Garden's life again.

Garden had a limited amount of GFs, due to their tendency to hide away from humanity. Ones such as Shiva and Quezacotl were happy to be of service to the ones participating in the field exams, and were returned to Garden's clutches when the exam was over. After that, it was up to you to find and obtain your own GF, be it from Drawing from another person, monster, or even nature.

The downfall to using Guardian Forces was the lapse of your memory. Not many people knew of this, since most just skipped to the section where it told them the known Guardian Forces and their abilities. The GFs were often attached to a simple, common-holds object such as stones that showed no life. That was why they couldn't stay without a person for a long period of time – the Guardian Forces settled their spirits in the person's mind, slowly but surely taking up more and more space of the section in which they were in, causing the memory lapses. In a way, the spirits needed to be in contact with a living being in order to survive.

There are certain parts of your brain that act out. The GFs are found in the memory section because whenever a person calls on them, they would have to imagine the GF they were summoning from their memory, in turn calling the summon from their memory when they were a little more than a simple illusion spell. The longer a person had contact with a GF in their mind, the more memories they would have erased in order to make room for the Guardian Force.

The GFs has one basic objective: to fight. The theory that is commonly believed is that if a person has a very strong will, or a cause that they believe in with all their heart and mind, their spirit would be warped to fit their soul and sent from the after life (or something) to help the people down below. The need to fight was imprinted into them, like a microchip in a computer that closed the window whenever you clicked the 'X' button.

So if the GF was refused the ability to fight, their soul would slowly wither away without its purpose, and for lack of any better words - die. There would be no chance to bring them back, and unlike when a GF collapses from undergoing too much strain – just as human get knocked out in battles – where you need to give them the time to recover while their spirit gathers, if the GF was to actually 'die', then its spirit would simply disappear.

"…Yes, we could do that. What do you think? Kira?"

I snapped out of my trance, blinking at the two amused faces of Flym and Eriol before me. "Say what?"

Flym laughed, her voice echoing like bells between the walls. "You're doing it again."

I smiled sheepishly, reaching up to scratch the back of my head. "Sorry."

Eriol shook his head to dismiss it, the smile still present on his face. "Don't worry about it," he muttered, and I got that feeling where he wasn't telling me everything again. Shaking it off, I attempted to get myself back into the conversation.

"So what are we doing in terms of Flym?" I asked and Eriol sighed, leaning back on the couch.

"We'll be going with your idea," he explained, his eyes flickering to the empty reflections (save me) in the mirrors above us. "You'll tell them that you found Flym at the mountains a while ago, and when they don't find anything special there, we figured that they can't prove you're lying."

"Because we like to live with some distance between each other, see?" Flym put in eagerly, clasping her hands before her in excitement. "So when there's nothing to be found there – save for a few nasty monsters – poof! It'll all make sense to them, and they can't take me away from you because I'll refuse to leave."

"They can't kick me out for breaking the rules?" I asked, and Eriol and Flym exchanged looks.

"That's why you should get the Guardian they give you for the exam, and summon Flym after you become SeeD. That way, they can't really take away your rank without you doing something major."

I nodded slowly at Eriol's explanation, the idea making perfect sense. "And how do you know whether I will become SeeD or not?"

Eriol shrugged, the charming smile he always had on his face returning to its place. "You will. You'll see."

I stared suspiciously at him as he continued smiling. "You're not going to do anything to fix the scores up, right?"

He shrugged, but offered no answer. I groaned into my hand, knowing that right now there was no chance of me finding out whether he did so or not.

Abruptly, the room of mirrors shifted and wavered and I sprang up to my feet, startled by the dizzying scenery. It took me a few moments to realize that somebody was waking me up from my sleep and I sat back down on the couch, sinking into its warmth and focusing on falling asleep so I could exit into reality.

"Good luck on the exams today," Eriol offered and I mumbled a "thanks" back to him, already drowsy. My eyes slipped completely closed and I fell into a sleep as I should have a few hours ago, instead of coming to here.

-~o~-

"Dammit, chickie, you gotta wake up if you don't want to be late!"

Bella's form appeared in my eyesight as I blinked open my eyes, shaking me away from my sleep. She removed her hands from my shoulders as soon as she saw that I was successfully awake, smiling down at me.

"You sleep deep, you know that?" She chided, her soft southern-Galbadian accent coming into her voice as she sighed and shook her head from side to side.

"Sorry," I mumbled to her, sitting up to stretch my arms from the stiff feeling traveling to the glass room always left me with. "What time is it?" I chanced a glance at my bedside clock and cursed when the numbers flashed back at me.

7:30 AM.

"You have fifteen minutes until class starts," Bella instructed, almost as if I didn't know that already. "You've got Professor Quistis this morning for the test, don't you?" She offered me a small, pitying smile. "Better not be late, then." The pity turned into a knowing wink. "I told you Professor Kator is much better – my exam isn't for another hour."

I stuck my tongue out at her at the declaration and hurried to the bathroom, sending a glare to Bella as she laughed at my expense and left for the kitchen. Flym stayed silent in my head during my very short shower and I didn't bother her, knowing that it would take some time for her to regain her energy from appearing in a human disguise.

"Five minutes left!" Sang Bella from the kitchen, throwing me an apple from the doorway as I hurried past her in my clothes for the day (which were my favourite black jeans, some random top and a jean jacket). The hallways outside were bustling with cadets, some laughing and walking with each other while others like me barrelled past them to get on time to class.

The elevator seemed to be slower than always today and with a sinking heart I realized that I would not be making it to homeroom on time. Hanging my shoulders, I sighed and pushed on down the 2nd floor hallway to where my class was located, hoping that I wasn't going to attract too much attention from the amused students inside.

"You're late, Miss Lanning."

I threw a small sheepish smile as Professor Quistis raised a blond eyebrow at me, pausing in her lecturing in the front of the class. A few students snickered at my appearance in the doorway and I ignored them, instead settling for hurrying to my seat in the back.

"Sorry, Professor," I muttered to the blond SeeD as I passed her, all but running to the other side of the room. Quistis shook her head and sighed, but resumed her lecturing.

"As I said before, you will have exactly three hours to complete this exam," her voice drifted off as I slid in to the empty seat beside a brunette girl gossiping with her other neighbour. She sent me a fleeting look and rolled her eyes while I stuck my tongue out at her and turned back, digging through my bag for my pencils.

"I was wondering if you were skipping today," Seifer muttered from behind me, loud enough for me to hear and I leaned back in my seat to glance up at him. "Hoping, actually." He threw me a crooked smirk and I scowled at his expression.

"Keep on dreamin'," I retorted back at him. "I'm becoming a SeeD whatever it takes. …And stop acting like a damn mother-hen. It's strange."

He sent me a glare which I promptly ignored, turning my attention to the front of the class again. I caught Squall's eyes in the row beside Seifer as he swept over the room and grinned at him, feeling satisfied when he turned away from my direction. I, personally, could not wait until he stopped being so brooding and dark so I could stop feeling annoyed at him.

A paper package slid in front of me and I turned it over, scanning over the questions before Quistis could notice. I could see that several of them were not too hard, and the answers were already forming in my mind. I fiddled with my pencil in my hand as Quistis went on to explain the test, glancing out the window in the back of the classroom towards the mountains.

My mind drifted over to what Eriol, Flym and I had discussed not a short while ago. The field test for this would be tomorrow, and that meant that everything was finally starting. I knew that Eriol had already messed with something to fit me in here, but the question was what, in the long run, did he do?

"…Begin."

The shuffle of papers being turned over disrupted the silence of the room and I sighed to myself, looking down at the first question printed neatly on the white surface.

It was going to be a long day.

-~o~-

"Well, that wasn't too hard, I think."

I stretched my arms over my head as I exited after Seifer, attempting to send a grin his way to break the tense atmosphere the test had created in the room behind us. Seifer shrugged in answer and I frowned, knowing when to drop it.

"We have Calculus next, right?" Of course I knew what we had next, but I needed a new subject to start on. "Don't we have a test there, too?"

The blond groaned at the mention, sending me a withering glare. "You just had to remind me, didn't you?" I smiled at him, enjoying the true annoyance I knew had settled over him at the mention of his least favourite class.

Silence settled over us again as we made our way down the hall, and I could feel myself frowning when there was no commentary from Flym echoing in my mind. I tried prodding her, but there was only a sleepy mumble before she was gone again.

My frown deepened, worry for her starting to seep in.

I'm fine, she managed to mumble, sensing my distress. Just tired. Don't worry.

I sighed back at her, wishing that I could just do that. Okay, I sent back. Get well soon.

She giggled and quieted down again just in time as we reached our classroom. Seifer ran a hand through his hair and sent a glare at the door beside me, to which I just smiled at him and strode in.

"Have fun failing," I called over my shoulder, dodging the swipe he sent at my head at the remark. Laughing, I walked over to where I sat and set my bag down on the table, turning to watch Seifer stride to his spot on the other side of the room before settling deeper into my chair and sighing.

Tomorrow, at this same time of day, would be the beginning of the end – at least, it felt like it.

-~o~-

Things edited: several typos, took out some unneeded scenes from the glass room.