The man stared nervously at the two figures as they leaned precariously over the railing to stare down at the sea, the water rushing in and out of the docks and splashing their faces. The sea air felt coarse over his skin and he pulled his jacket tighter across his body to keep it out. The two watchers seemed impervious to the cold as they looked down at the body that floated on the waves below. As they watched the surf turned the body over in the water to reveal his shattered face, and the man made a look of pained disgust as the woman turned to walk over to him with no visible reaction. Must have ice-water in her veins.

In contrast to her lack of empathy her voice was soft, so soft he had trouble hearing it over the coastal winds. "Well?"

The man fumbled for a reply for a moment as the woman's good eye stared into his. "He turned up a few hours ago in the bay." His ears still rang from the shouts of the hysterical man that had spotted the body. He took a deep breath and watched for any change in the woman's expression as he went on. "He's had his throat slit and his face sliced apart to the bone. He's been floating for a couple of days." And he didn't bother going on from there. They were lucky the winter waters had preserved the body. If it had been a hot Galbadian summer they could have brought the man up in buckets.

Her face changed not one iota. "Why us?"

He reached into his pocket and tossed the item out. She caught it out of the air without her eye ever leaving his face. He was spared any explanation when the woman's companion walked up and peered over her shoulder. "That's a SeeD emblem, yo."

Her expression twitched and the luckless militiaman could almost read her thoughts. A dead SeeD washed up in a Galbadian coastal dock? In the middle of the reconstruction? There's going to be hell to pay for this.

Fujin stared down at the emblem, thumb brushing over it. Even with days of saltwater grinding away at the shine the pointed white-and-black yin-yang symbol was still recognisable, a match to the ones they wore, with one exception; the cross-shaped extensions coming off from the symbol were not the red that she and Raijin wore. "Yellow…"

The man shrugged and wished again that he hadn't been walking past the phone as it rang. SeeD and Garden made him nervous. Even after the war had ended and they had moved into the continent to start rebuilding he'd managed to avoid dealing with them by staying out of Deling. Anything that happened on this broken angry mess of a continent happened in the city, and he had been looking forward to a peaceful retirement. Let this cup pass from him. "We don't have much in the way of policing out here ma'am. Deling would know better about all of this," he said, not a little emphasis on Deling.

"He's right Fu. Take it to the big man, he'll know what to do."

She looked from her companion back to him, and for a second he was put in the mind of some hungry predator, sizing him up for cuts, and he shivered. Finally she turned away. "You're right."

He watched the two climb into their car and leave. He had the feeling that he had barely escaped with his life.

"Didn't tell him this ain't the first one, huh?" Raijin said as they left, looking in the rear mirror to see the militiaman standing dumbly watching them leave.

Fujin resisted the urge to tell him to keep his eyes on the road. "That wasn't necessary." She leaned back in her seat and closed her eye, taking stock as the darkness replaced her vision. "Third one this month. All coastal towns. All killed the same way." She tried to picture a weapon that could do what she had seen. A threshing machine would easily cut that deeply and so many times, but she didn't seriously think there was a murderer travelling the countryside with portable farm machinery.

"The badge too," Raijin said. "Wasn't a SeeD from G-Garden."

Fujin nodded. "Trabian." She had known Raijin far longer than anyone else, even Seifer. He was impulsive and rude and sometimes not a little clueless, but he wasn't stupid. Stupid people didn't become SeeDs. She ran a list in her head of all the SeeDs she knew deployed in Galbadia but no Trabian name jumped out at her. A simple slip-up? More and more it seemed to be happening as personnel and goods ran in and out of Galbadia, and all of them came through the Rebuilding Committee's doors, which meant that all of them eventually came through her fingers. Those fingers had, she was loathe to admit, been a little shaky lately. None of them had been getting much sleep recently. Loire's men helped but she didn't dare use more of them, the presence of foreign soldiers – Esthar ones at that – in the Galbadian capital already a sore spot that chafed on the Galbadian civilians and military like an itch they didn't dare scratch, lest it turn into something more serious.

Two oceans, half a world away from your snow and ice. What are your men doing in Galbadia, Tilmitt?

She stared out of the vehicle as Deling City came into view. The sun was already going down and she could see dirty red lights coming on as gas-powered lamps were lit and generators joined up. The city seemed to squat on the plain, tendrils and roads moving out of it to link up the outlying villages of the Galbadian republic. The smell seemed to reach out from the place and into the buggy, and she rolled up the window even though she knew it was an illusion. She wished she was back in Balamb with the clean air and sea breeze. Some days it felt like she was surrounded by smog and exhaust.

"Any luck?"

Raijin shucked off his coat and collapsed into the chair, which groaned audibly. The old oaken furniture was older than both of them put together and she winced. At least the old owner wasn't around to care. "Luck isn't what you call this stuff, y'now?"

The hum of voices and dry rush of shuffling paper sounded through the mansion, the horns and motors of passing cars as they came and went by the old manor. When they had first arrived, trucks full of concrete and steel at their backs, Fujin had taken one look at Caraway's mansion; hilltop position and spacious rooms, and immediately fallen in love. They'd been set up and operational before the week was out. Its previous owner being indisposed had also helped. She handed the picture of the dead SeeD to the unnamed scribe sitting there, and he made a pained face and handed it on. Eventually it reached the other end of the table, and the man sitting there quietly and patiently.

Seifer Almasy picked it up and gave a slight sneer before throwing it back into the smooth polished oak. "Shit."

"Trouble," Raijin agreed, nodding. Even though officially and on paper he outranked the man nothing would ever be able to get the natural subservience out of his system. Having no such crutch herself this suited Fujin fine.

"Someone's killing SeeDs," she said. "Why." She sat and listened as the staff of the committee threw out suggestions, ranging from a crazed killer – something she found totally unoriginal and unlikely – to monsters loose in the sewers.

One of them had a simpler explanation. "Why not?" Seifer shrugged and waved a hand expansive, taking in the view from the window that stared down onto the rest of the city. At night by the view of the gas-lamps it could be hard to see past the fog, but his point was made. "Lot of people out there still hate SeeDs." She could tell from his voice that he didn't find that so objectionable. "It's a hostile city Fu, you know it." They all did. The sidelong glances and hostile looks non-Galbadians got in the city were usual but still disheartening. Even more so to belong to the hated organisation that had taken so many Galbadian soldier's lives. Never mind that those lives had been attempting to conquer the globe.

"Unacceptable," she replied quickly, and took a deep breath. "We have been here-" she checked her watch for some reason she wasn't quite sure of, "five months. It took three years to get the Galbadian provisional government-"

"Their excuse for a government, bunch of generals and merchants only alive because they too busy hiding to fight in the damn war-" Seifer muttered. His opinion on the politicians and 'rulers' that had crawled out of the woodwork after the Second Sorceress War had ended was well known by now. At least Caraway had the balls to throw his hat into the ring. The rest just sat and watched. Plenty of credit to go around if he succeeded and well, if he didn't they could always say he had been acting alone. Cowards.

She raised a hand to forestall him. "Enough." Let's not forget your own position here Seifer. "Three years to get their permission to help with the reconstruction. Two more to even begin work when they realised it would mean bringing Esthar to help rebuild their own city." That argument had been legendary.

Seifer snorted. "They should be grateful SeeD came in at it. They should have let Dollet finish the damned job to take the place apart brick by brick." Seifer hadn't been in the team that had held off the furious and opportunistic Dollet military in the aftermath, but he knew how close they had come. After time-compression had ended chaos had reigned just long enough for the coastal city-state to begin a vengeance-fuelled attack, and Leonhart had only stopped it by placing B-Garden physically between the city and the invading army and calling in all the favours he had. The duchess had been furious, but she had relented. Relations between SeeD and Dollet were not cordial.

Fujin sighed. Hyne give me strength. She could feel the strain on her voice as she spoke. Long speeches would never be her thing, for more reasons than her old injury. "Heartilly will be coming here in a matter of days for the Timber Summit. The commander will no doubt follow. Even if they don't stay long they will be coming by Deling." She ignored the reaction in Seifer and went on. "Trepe and Tyynes will be coming back to oversee T-Garden's reopening and the reconstruction, and we will have to answer to them." She slammed a hand down on the oak table, which juddered, pictures sliding across the smooth surface. "We need this SeeD-killer found, and found soon."

One of them men she hadn't bothered to remember the name of spoke in. "What if it isn't just one crazed lunatic? We're pulling bodies out of the water, that's dozens of miles from the city. You're not talking about a dark ally, a sharp knife and a quick drop into the sewers ma'am. Someone had to carry this thing out of the city."

Fujin shrugged. "Someone out there has to know something. We'll find out." She pointed fingers. "You, check around the bars, especially the old soldier hangouts. You, the militia, any records of anyone with obvious violent tendencies." She went on. Records of people who had lost friends or family in the Second War, another looking at veterans of the First War with Esthar. The room steadily emptied until only three remained.

"Really going to try and pull this one off huh?" Seifer said.

Fujin nodded and said something she wouldn't have if anyone else had been present. "We owe them." Raijin shifted in his seat and opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it. "We owe them." She looked across at Seifer but said nothing. He could pick it up fine. You especially.

He shrugged and stood. "As you will." He smirked at the change of fortunes and she couldn't help but give a small grin back. "Look after yourself Fu."

"You too Seifer." She checked her watch. "I need some air."

And smog-filled smoke was better than none.

She walked the streets of the city. Dressed in a simple shirt and jacket she could almost imagine herself as a normal person. At least until she approached other civilians. Widened eyes as they walked quickly by her, or a reflection in a mirror, brought her back to reality with a crash. The SeeD emblem that flashed on her jacket marked her out as something alien in the paranoid city. After the war had ended she had considered it; throw off her old uniform, dye her hair, maybe make a chance at a real life somewhere far away where nobody knew her name or her past. But every time the idea emerged she had looked back at herself and thrown the idea aside. In the years since the Second War ended she had been corralled and gently pushed into the group of projects and discussions (admit it; arguments) that SeeD liked to collectively call the 'Peace Effort', and she knew that civilian life would hold no pleasures for her. When Trepe had returned to Galbadia to oversee G-Garden's repairs for its eventual re-opening they had met up and drank together, and the blonde woman's words had always stayed with her since.

What would we do if we didn't do this?

"It's not gonna happen y'know."

She didn't look up. "Reading my mind again?"

"It's pretty easy. You're worried about the big-shots coming over, someone trying to take a potshot at Leonhart and his little lady?" Even though he was one of two people – maybe three – who could issue a command to any soldier in the city and have it obeyed he steadfastly refused to refer to himself as one of those big-shots. There was something just plain down-to-earth about Raijin. "Hell Fu even if some nutcase did try and get at 'em how many steps do you think they'd take before they got turned into bloody mist." He shrugged. "We do good work. Dollet almost turned th'place into rubble you know, and now look at it. Almost like a real city again. We got nothing to be ashamed about now."

Maybe not you, she began to say, but no reply came, and she felt her companion tense beside her.

"Hmmm?" She looked up at Raijin but the big man's attention wasn't on her, and she looked around to follow his vision to see- "Shit." She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him into the shadow of the building before they could be seen.

A group of men anywhere between youths and adults were stood around a wall, backs to the street. She could hear a dull hiss coming from within the shifting gang and would have already been ignoring them, if it wasn't for almost every one of the men wearing a shirt with a red symbol spattered in paint across their back, and every one of them holding something long and metal in their free hand.

Raijin leaned down to her and whispered. "Fu, we-"

"Wait." She stated, quiet as the grave, and watched as the group worked. The shapes took form on the wall, the blue paint leaving curving awkward shapes as hands clearly unused to the task sprayed them onto the wall. As their arms moved and clothes shifted she spotted Galbadian uniforms and insignias and tattoos, and another uniform she recognised well:

"Esthar?"

She didn't realise she had spoken aloud until one of the man whipped towards her. For one moment their eyes met and suddenly Raijin was trying to drag her away as the first one whispered something unintelligible to the others, and the hiss of the spray-cans stopped as they turned away and stared at her. In their eyes she saw only suspicion and hatred and she took an involuntary step back before she remembered who she was. "STOP!"

They stepped away from the wall and before Fujin could think about the images she saw on it the first man was already leaping towards her with an inhuman bellow, and the metal pole in his hand swinging around to meet her face. She cursed as she reached for the oversized shuriken she used as her preferred weapon and remembered she had left it back at the mansion. For a second she watched the pipe sailed towards her, then suddenly it was careening off into the distance as the man attacking her found his path obstructed by Raijin's massive fist, and he fell back spraying blood from a broken nose.

Snap out of it. She didn't dodge the next blow, a man in a tattered Esthar uniform and a butcher's cleaver in his palm. Instead she blocked his clumsy swing, grabbing his wrist and squeezing until he dropped the blade, then simply threw him over her shoulder. She spun around to face the others as Raijin dusted off his hands, the huge man's muscles almost gleaming in the light from the streetlamps, and she could see the nervousness on the faces of the other attackers as they faced her. When she noticed they weren't looking at her face she realised why. Her SeeD emblem shined in the streetlamps like a protective shield and she took her chance. "You're under arrest. Put your weapons down and come with us."

The lone man that had hung back from the others worried her the most. Instead of anger on his face there was a cold calculating look she recognised well. She had used it often enough herself, and she kept her eye on him as Raijin faced the rest of the group. He looked like any construction worker of soldier; heavily built in plain weathered clothing. Only his eyes spoke of some higher mental reasoning than his fellow meatheads. "Make me, seed bitch."

Shit. Now what? Between the two of them they could take them down, but without a weapon they probably couldn't do it uninjured. Thankfully she didn't have to find out.

"HEY!"

The militiamen turned the corner in the same instant as the remaining attackers started moving, and the flinch as they heard and saw the new arrivals was enough. They turned and fled as they were approached from both sides, only the calmer one locking eyes with Fujin for a second before he turned and ran. She let out a breath she didn't realise she had been holding as the militiamen approached.

They slowed as the pair came out of the light, and their SeeD badges became visible. "You okay?" Their voices are carefully neutral, not giving away anything. "We heard a gang was walking around here, guess they were right."

"Thanks." She tried a smile. "You know those people?"

He shrugged, the movement making his uniform cling as metal bumped off metal. Fujin wondered whether full riot gear was usual for night watchmen. "Just some punks wandering around. Might be drunken workers, what with the reconstruction and all."

No way. She gestured towards the sprayed wall, all crudely-drawn wings and eyes. "Just some gang signs?"

The man nodded. "Yes'm."

You're lying. I wish I knew why. Fujin just nodded. "Thank you for the help," she said formally, and watched as the men walked off. Within seconds they were lost in Galbadia's night-time fog.

"You think he's lyin'?" Raijin asked.

"Know it," she whispered. She fingered the knife one of the men had dropped. She ran a finger across the blade and felt something other than cold stuff, dents and lines running through the metal. One of them was wearing an Esthar uniform.

She spoke before she thought. "Let's go home." Except she wasn't thinking of the manor. Home to her was a white-walled room in Balamb Garden, but she had lost that room years ago when she had gone with Seifer. She thought she had put the regret behind herself but it slunk up to her sometimes when her mind wasn't paying attention: Balamb isn't your home anymore.

Raijin snorted. "Where's home now Fu?"

She shrugged. "Wherever we rest our head."

"Sounds like the two of you had an interesting evening." Seifer raised an eyebrow as the two walked back in and Fujin threw something at him. He caught it out of the air easily, a foldable knife. Without asking – he knew she wouldn't waste his time – he unfolded it and held it up to the light. The grooves caught the light and made lines against the light. "Nice. Get you twenty for it in any pawn shop."

Fujin nodded and pulled down a whiteboard, started scribbling on it. Seifer just sat in silence in the ornate room. He wore a shortened version of his old white jacket and shifted uncomfortably in the expensive leather chair of the boardroom. Like a feral tiger taken out of the wilderness and put into a pampered zoo. He didn't belong and he knew it. Did that make Fujin and Raijin his jailors? His train of thought was derailed as suddenly the shapes she was drawing joined up before him and as Fujin stepped away he saw- "You're kidding."

"What would I gain by lying to you in?"

"Oh horseshit!" He kicked away from the desk and stood, walking towards the marker drawn symbols as though he could intimidate them into being something they weren't. Eyes and wings. Curves and circles. "God damnit."

"What now?" Raijin asked as Seifer paced in front of the board.

Fujin sighed. More trouble. Hyne's sake, the worst kind of trouble. She thought back to the briefing with Trepe, Heartilly and Headmaster Kramer and the old man's words still stuck with her.

Sorceress Cultists come in three flavours, he had begun as the gathered SeeDs stared at the papers and reports in front of them. Survivors and exiles of the First Sorceress War. Either those who were unable to adjust to Lag- to President Loire's rule and never got over being under Adel's thumb, or the collaborators who were exiled from the city after he came to power. These are harmless remnants, those too broken to find peace in the new world and want to be commanded by someone, and bitter exiles who want to go back to glory and power and can't while Laguna is in power. They're harmless dreamers and drinkers mainly. Often at the same time.

We know where they are already, Trepe had cut in. Most of them ran to Fisherman's Horizon or Trabia and went to ground in villages there. This was before the Esthar Shield went down remember, they had nowhere else to run. Selphie's keeping an eye on them for us.

Cid had nodded and went on. Second Sorceress War veterans are much more dangerous. These are Galbadians who fought for Edea, survivors of the Battle of the Garden who saw the fight between you and her, and random civilians who were unlucky enough to come into contact with Ultimecia's power during the Time Compression. They believe that Sorceresses are the literal angels of Hyne and avatars of His will, with Ultimecia as His archangel. They think they have a duty to cleanse the earth of unbelievers so Hyne can return. They are much more militant than the first group and all of that militancy is directed at SeeD, who they see as working to deny God's will.

Finally there is the third breed, coming up out of Esthar. Cid had looked at Heartilly and she in turn had gripped Leonhart's hand tighter. These are focussed around you Rin. Your wings, the white light your Sorcery manifests as; all incredibly symbolic to anyone with an ounce of faith. Right now they're mad and scattered and nobody knows whether they want to worship you as a goddess or kill you as a traitor for stopping Ultimecia. I'm sorry I don't know more.

All these people share a common thread; they are not rational. They are obsessed people, and obsessed people will do dangerous things.

Fujin looked over at Seifer, who nodded. She turned back to Raijin and although the room was heated and the windows closed, it felt like a chill had descended in the old mansion.

"Track them down, and wipe them out."

With the three-chapter promo done the story will now update regularly on Saturdays, somewhere between 5pm-7pm GMT.

It's hard to look over your own writing for mistakes when you've been staring at it as you write, so if anyone is interested in proof-reading the story throw me a PM. Really someone willing to point out spelling and grammar errors, and to say when something is unclear or doesn't make sense. Unfortunately I can't pay you (not even in WoW gold), so all I can offer is early access to the chapters as they're written.

Hope you've found the story interesting so far, hope you'll stick around. Comments, reviews, constructive criticism all welcome.

-Cobray