act one - shatter
epilogue - found a cure
I don't feel a thing
And I've stopped remembering
Days are just like moments, turned to hours
Mother used to say
If you want you'll find away
But mother never danced through fire showers
I walk in the rain
- Rain, Yoko Kanno
***
Galbadia Garden touched down in the Independent Republic of Esthar (not to be confused with the Sorcerous Republic of Esthar, or the pending Ultimecia's Big Giant Crater o' Former Republic and Clocktower Fun) at exactly two thirty-three in the morning, Horizon Standard Time. It arrived with a leaking hydraulic pipe the left quadrant which had been the cause of many 'character building' experiences with steam burns, several broken widows, and an almost nonexistent paint job. In other words - a giant wobbly wreck. Not that their commanders would admit it in public at the time, or in private after. Many later researchers would even theorize that the infamous Fujin Asher had deluded herself into thinking that just sanding off the rest of the red and making it silver was all her aesthetic idea. Which was of course silly. Even if she had liked it better (which she did - immaterial), the commander would not have made a decision based on aesthetics. Nay - the albino would have made it because it would take a good three months to get the damn thing fixed anyways.
And so she did.
Galbadia Garden Academy was, at the moment or repatriation, neither Galbadian, an Academy, or a Garden. The students been forced to cannibalize the trees for what meager scraps could sustain them through an ocean voyage. Squall hadn't cared in the least,. since he was happy with standard rations. And Fujin - the red-eyed soldier had heartily approved. Zell and Raijin were naturally not valid members of this authoritarian democratic process.
But this narrator digresses.
The state of one Non-Galbadian Non-Academy Non-Garden Fortress of Doom is generally known because of a rather detailed record kept by the captain in charge of Salt Flats border access control at the time - one Jen-Mai Chiu. Not a terribly out of the ordinary action on her part. That she should receive orders from the President himself to admit a heavily armed group of highly trained mercenaries was dubious at best. And the woman could be forgiven, considering the events which had passed in the seventy-two hours before touchdown, for backing up any claim of false pretense in the issuing of said orders. An insurance policy up to and including saving her own ass if a bunch of teenage nutcases decided to attack the capital under some kind of sorcerous order. One never know what a sorceress could do, after all. The people of Esthar knew that best of anyone at all.
No one knew why they left merely three days later. Resupplied and bleeding. A stunningly reckless move. Squall Leonhart and Fujin Asher were not the sorts for explanations.
Pity those who are left behind
***
Alright. It was official. He'd been hiding it from himself for years - trying desperately to keep it from himself with a few self-assuring glances in the mirror. He was Laguna Loire. He was good looking. He was a leader. And gosh darnit, people liked him.
But damned if he wasn't a gimp.
... oh well.
"Are you really sure that this is necessary?"
Laguna levered himself back in to the wheelchair that waited, like a kicked puppy, in a more reviled corner of the office.
"Completely," the slender man who'd presented his superior with it raised an eyebrow. Or perhaps that was just a question. And he just kept staring and staring and sating 'till Laguna had to take refuge in some stupid tax report that Ward would do the figures on anyways. 'Cause that was just about all the President of Esthar, master of all he surveyed, was capable of at the moment. Laguna Loire was, after all, in his very heart of hearts, below the styling gel and the tropical print shirts and the manic grin and those eyes that always managed just the right amount of glint with a camera flashbulb...
Afraid.
"Do you think he knows yet?" the daemon crept into his voice. That was not a mistake that Loire often allowed. Lady Luck loved a gambling man, not a tentative wreck.
".. honestly?" his robed friend queried. Kiros was there, naturally. Kiros was always there. His mahogany skin and flint-black eyes were as regular as the office furniture. Except more.. umm.. smart and stuff.
Sweeping his eyes over the firefly lights below the presidential palace, Laguna already knew what the answer to his question would be. He wasn't a reporter for nothing. But then the politician usually wasn't depressive either. Maybe it was just tonight - to revolutions on the lunar clock since he's met the kid. His kid.
No.. no, not his kid, Raine's kid. There was a difference.
.. or maybe it was just the flat feeling of a martini drying on his tongue.
"Yeah. Lemme have it, Kiros. I'm a terrible parent, okay, I get that. I mean.. look how screwed up that kid is," gesturing wildly - the president felt himself seizing up a bit as cold leather hit his skin. Stupid chair. The cameras loved it not. And he couldn't actually walk anywhere near the damn kid and it really was annoying and he really really wished he could keep babbling in his head 'cause sometimes what your thinking isn't really what you're..."Do.. do you think he knows?"
To be frank, the man looked stricken. Sitting there in a silence punctuated by the static of wind and traffic. The silence between the streets threatened to swallow him, and the sky somehow seemed more fathomless when smog and streetlights blotted out navigable stars.
".. I doubt it," Kiros shrugged, in a very Kiros-like sort of way. Which really wasn't much description, but whatever. "Fujin might. She reminds me of me, in a really really scary sort of way."
Uncharacteristically pensive, the larger man nodded in what he had dubbed the gimp-mobile.
The more the kid was around, the more he got like him. Wierd.
"That's good," the conclusion was.. processed.
".. don't you think it would be better of you just told him?"
Typical Kiros. Arms crossed, with that 'I'm bemused and graceful and you can't touch me so do what I say or I'll never leave you alone, and yes I can harass you and still be classy' expression.
If Loire could walk, he would so have done.. ummm.. something to that guy right now. Yeah. Something painful.
"Naaaaaah. If I was him, I'd want a mom and dad that died heroes in a war or whatever. Not some loser that abandoned him for some kid that's not even his own," Laguna fought to maintain his tone- voice chopping in and out like waves on the breakers. If he could say it fast, he could say it. Good theory. Good theory. "Who does this hurt?"
"You."
And then maybe the stars did come out. Just a little. If the clouds thought to let them have a view before it started raining and beading his brow with a humid sweat.
"..... yah, guess so. It's about time I met the kid in person, since he's already been here the weekend and all. We goin'?"
"That we are."
The raindrops hit his skin on the way to the limo - mixing with the cold moisture of his body. Ha. What a laugh. What a fucking joke! Raine woulda been all over him for that. Which was of course the point.
Heroes aren't afraid of water. Squall Leonhart wasn't afraid of water. Wasn't afraid of anything - 'cept maybe himself, but that's healthy right? The kid was better than Laguna that way.
The kid would be better than Laguna all the way - real, honest, large as life legend if the president played his cards right. Kid just needed some encouragement, and he'd understand eventually. 'Sides, somebody had to do it. This little plan of his was one bitch of a child support payment.
A child support payment.. that wasn't there. When they arrived at their destination in place of silver a gaping hope lay in the Salt Flats. Torn scaffolding that had just been erected waved pitifully in the wind.
Laguna Loire's voice went with it - a tattered banner waving in the rain-caressed breeze. One single patch of white on a grey, grey night.
"Kiros.. he knows, doesn't he? She told him."
".... I suppose she did."
"And he left."
"Yes."
"Why do you think that is, Kiros? Am I so...."
"Come on, Laguna. They'll do fine on their own if we keep them in supplies - I'll have my people on the Market give them some discrete discounts. If we try to use them as a weapon they'll just turn on us."
"I suppose so," Laguna resigned himself, staring off into the emptiness.
"Come on," Kiros invited, a little less placid than usual in a vague attempt to cheer his old friend up. "Almasy has Balamb and most of Northern Trabia. You know where he'll go once he has the rest of it. Esthar's been isolated for far too long."
Laguna nodded into the torrent, "We have a war
to fight."
***
It became painfully obvious what exactly they were doing only a week afterwards, and for the next three months a Garden growing ever stronger with the relentless pace of the tide kept to itself. Equipped with a piecemeal patchwork of parts purchased off of the Estharian black market (instead of the President, who seemed oddly concerned about the whole mess, but decided to leave be).
The depths of the aforementioned Gardened were a tangled web of vines now. Interim wiring and haphazard housing for extra day students taken on had created no less than a steel jungle. But three months does alot for people. Three months is a time frame for repair. Healing. Rehabilitation.
And of course, the acquisition of funds.
The children of the dead had finished mourning their own. And conquered rather than negotiated through their obvious mortality. They were, after all, soldiers. And they healed without counsellors or closure or therapy. They healed because the lame don't survive in the wild, and their broken bones were used to mending on the run. They healed because Squall Leonhart wanted them to be. They healed because Fujin Asher said so. And because of whatever trick of karma had put them in the here and now.
Realistic people, orphans.
The new Garden was uglier - cramped and waiting for battle. Training was purely combat-oriented, and dorm politics had fallen to a strict military system. Call it the commander's prerogative - that feared/admired/oft bitched-about Squafuu entity which stalked the halls. They were as orderly as only a mass of spooked teenagers could be. Organized in their collective desire for a liberating dose of chaos.
But the strange thing - the very strangest thing that people would look back on in decades and just all-out gape at, was that they liked it. They really, truly, honestly liked it. The time, the place, the fact that they were one ominous inch away from completely stir-crazy. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that they liked him. Leonhart. The one who possessed a strength so careless that it numbed them into the happy oblivion of blind faith. (Some people with certain sympathies fool themselves into thinking that a hero-worshipping mass liked Fujin as well - not so, fellow scholars. Not so. You can't embrace the wind. And you sure as hell can't embrace a reflection. Mind that or you'll cut yourself).
Alas, poor Squall. One of history's most studied leaders, and really nothing more than an sort of idolized morphine injected into the collective vein of a disenfranchised youth. They'd been pumping other drugs for years - enough to scar the conveniently plush tissue around arteries around the joints. But inserting the needle under the eyeball made it more potent anyways.
Pity the flood that sustains a plague of saplings
forming roots. Pity the wind that thins their leaves so that the
strongest reach sunlight. And pity those caught in the storm that
forms between them.
***
Red, white, and gunmetal - the stars and stripes of the command console forever.
They were nothing but a mid-sized group of cargo barges hovering over the the Balamb shores. And the crew was, quite frankly, damn proud of that. They weren't just a cargo convoy. They were a cargo convoy serving the Holy Crusade. And that made all the difference.
Most of the young men on the bridge of the head of the small fleet were young enough to be that idealistic. They still loved their blood-red uniforms, and the cross-sword on the national flag. Placid and joking and happy and useful enough not to be bored (though they surely would have died for their fair Mistress, if one was to take their word). The lapping of the waves and a tropical breeze steadied them on their way.
It was a very routine day for Supply Convoy #D-30.
"Sir, we're picking up a signal off the port bow," a helmsman - generically dressed, undistinguished in physique - scanned his post with revolutionary ardor and came up with something. Something that was not the ordinary silence and naive military pride of this particular glorified meal cart.
Something not routine at all.
"What kind of signal?" an older, gruff sort of man questioned. He was obviously the captain - there were few enough men over forty with combat experience still alive to be in the military as it was.
He'd trained them all, really.
Trained them to recognize the signs from the debriefing, when they showed up in a stark neon green on the black of the display screen. To read the displays, and know the scare, and not to panic. Two out of three really wasn't bad at all, given the circumstance and the rumors.
That was when the panic started.
"Large object - probably flying. It's approaching
at one hundred knots," the young man spoke past the knot in his throat.
"That's... that's ramming speed, sir."
"No.. it can't be," the commander shook his head, eyes wide. His career couldn't end now on some half-assed transport!
"Oh Hyne. It's really them..."
Them. They. It. Those who are not us. The Enemy. The one and only group outside of heathen Esthar who'd managed to defy the forced of the righteous. Accursed, corrupted Galbadia Garden, a shark upon the waves.
The Traitor Fujin Asher. Scourge of Hyne's six seas.
"Sir, what should we..." the babble began. Starting slow and speeding into full, screeching throttle like a train-wreck waiting to happen.
"Initiate evasive procedures! Tell the rest of the caravan to scatter - we need these beam rifles in Balamb yesterday!"
But they were not sharks, to bite and tear and wrestle their way away from the gaping jaws of the great white. The ships of Supply Convoy #D-30 were nothing but sitting ducks. All half-dozen of its nucleus of crew members suddenly shocked into attentiveness; a glass of cool reality thrown into their faces.
"Pilot's of Her Royal Highness' Supply Convoy #D-30," the older man barked into an aging intercom, " we are under attack. Repeat - we are under attack. Air pirates approaching from the port bow. All units scatter and regroup at the Timber RAF Base. We'll hold them off as long as we can."
"Is this for real?" the helmsman meekly asked, overshadowed by his obviously hysterical shipmates. Poor kids. They didn't stand a chance against Pirates - former garden mercenaries. They were just.. well... children.
Like he'd been, once upon a time. When the great crusade was to burn a sorceress, not burn for her.
Seifer's Holy Crusade...
Oh Hyne, was this for real? It seemed like some halfassed fairytale....
"Sir, can you confirm..."
The babble started. A storm was on the horizon, and maybe none of them had ever really been ready. These kids weren't like the orphans. They had been allowed to forget.
"Sorceress Rinoa," they whispered, young and old, in the face of impending doom. Some faithful, some faithless, and some desperately grabbing at whatever belief they could find. Everyone had herd the rumors about Fujin Asher and her mysterious vaguely royal lover - the woman who had dared to spit in the face of the Holy Knight himself. Such sin! Such blasphemy! Some said she broke into a jealous rage when she heard of the glory of the great Rinoa. That she cruised the seas in search of revenge; crew slaughtering all in their path to spite the dictates of Hyne. They stole and they raped and they killed and they were a thousand more places then they ever possibly could have been, because they were Enemy. They were one of two remaining sins, and one far less easily quantified and more willfully defiant than Esthar.
They were the Mortal Flaw. The incarnation of What Went Wrong.
"Sorceress Rinoa, pray for us all."
***
Truly an engineering masterpiece, the nameless seat of the robber lords - a silver-tinted engine of destruction who's smooth marine contours belied the tangled vines within. Each part had been created, moulded, and shaped specifically to its purpose; even the biological components that were a few hundred teenagers drugged to numbness. Galbadia Garden was not the home to the middle of the best for nothing.
History remembers the Fallen Garden on a certain pedestal of mechanistic glory. It was, after all, constructed to evade the Holy Army of Hyne herself. Home to perhaps the largest-scale guerilla operation in record - a ragtag group of underfed students that would come to be called the Air Pirates. They came out of nothing like smoke on the water, their shining chariot skulking about the most remote parts of the deep blue sea. Places where even Seifer Almasy's glorious radar could not penetrate. A strike here, a grab there, and supply lines for the Neo-Galbadian Army were cut in any imaginable sector of the six seas with little visible rhyme or reason. Their leaders, it was rumored, consisted of a bastard prince and his lover, a mysterious silver-haired woman rumored to be the sylphid daughter of the wind-god Pandemona. Renegades leading children with vengeance in their eyes.
Rumors are like that sometimes.
Pity the machine designed to destroy since before its very first breath. Pity the designers who know what they wrought, and loved it.
***
The salt air no longer stung her cuts like it had used to - a combination of scar tissue and her long black coat at work. Standing on the outer deck and directing a battery of grappling hooks (this was not the time or the place for mech frames - repairs were a bitch and a half on their budget) had finally become tolerable three months after her fall. And to be honest, she wasn't so sure if she liked that.
Fujin had grown accustomed to a certain amount of pain in her day.
"GO!" the commander shouted by necessity over the whipping draft of velocity and roiling waves below their main thrusters. It would be quite a fall if any of her people were to get knocked off, and magic (being the one thing they could not rob with impunity) was too precious at this draw-deprived point to waste on a single grunt worker.
They all knew that too. Which was why only the most taciturn, suicidal, and cocky sorts volunteered for Fujin's shift. That was also the point, since those were without question the best equipped to strike fear into the hearts of the merchant navy and strip them for all they were worth.
They also tended to be orphans. Fujin liked that.
"ROGERS! GARNEAU!" The cables fired in response to an unspoken command, "BOARD... "
The former students - if they'd ever needed teaching - lined up by their respective ticket to looter's heaven in tattered clothing. Many would get new outfitting today - coats to be mutilated into the unofficial Garden uniform of irregularity. Uniforms were unimportant to a true soldier. Or at least too damn expensive, and nigh impossible to get ahold of.
"ON MY MARK!"
She, of course, stood behind and the world before they fell into a blur of motion. The cables had taken half a second. And inertia would jar them to a halt in another. Silver and blue. Wind and water falling upon Neo-Galbadian Red.
The world was nto in motion. The world was motion. Seabound bodies in a whirlwind dance with their attacker.
"MARK!"
They'd try to scatter. The Neo-Galbadians were great followers, and horrible strategists. Or at least the ones on thesebndetails.
"DINCHT!" pale lips called into a small radio, the soldier's steel-toed boots struggling to keep a grip on the salt-stained deck as the Garden tilted with the strain of the lead barge anchoring it at starboard. "DEPLOY!"
"You got it," the albino could positively hear the thumbs-up on the other side of the signal, through static and the groan of wounded metal. Squall had targeted their newly-puchased cannons to kill their propulsion, which made things alot easier, but Dincht and his people would have to go after the few smaller skiffs on those Balamb-style jet skis.
Which would do them all a huge amount of good. That idiot needed to burn off some energy or else they'd all have to start 'helping him practice judo' again. At least Raijin knew his place helping the kiddies and scaring the shit out of insubordinate upperclassmen (activities of which Fujin markedly approved).
Readying herself to cast a float spell and be the first to touch down on soon-to-be-scrap metal, Asher pulled out her shruiken with a regretful glance at the bridge. Squall was up there, of course. And a soldier like him should be leading his troops. But the mysteriously charismatic Mr. Leonhart was their trump card, and Seifer could under no circumstances be allowed to believe that their one hidden weapon was alive.
And he'd die before he actually complained about it. That was one of the things she liked about working with Leonhart.
So she took a moment to nod at the camera, before leaping off the edge of the railing and into the lambs sent for slaughter. It was really the least she could do. Their choreographed heists had grown so practiced that she could jump between two large moving hunks of steel in her sleep. They'd have this done in a half-hour easily.
It is when survival becomes routine that a place can be called home.
***
But let us not talk of the spawn of air and water. It's nooks and crannies are familiar, its surface burns smooth and regular too the touch. Let's talk about a place deep in the earth, seized by the spawn of fire in a random fit of inferno. Three drills below the ground, forcing itself most unnaturally upon the solid earth. Drill Prison was a place of depression and stale sweat; a study in constriction, the one true re-creation of hell in a variant key.
Or at least Selphie Timlett thought so, after having spent two months working as a guard there. It might have been too early for her to enact her plan. An avalanche, rather than the eternal caution of erosion. But that was Selphie Timlett for you- she would only take so much burrowing into the first circle of the inferno. She had a boy to save, and a place to go, and a vengeance to wreak.
Pity ground impatient, after the sluggish preparatory motions of an age and a half, to quake.
***
Selphie Timlett - currently going by Sephie Tinton, Prison Guard - assumed that she felt sick to her stomach because of the grim.
Oooooh, the grime.
Drill Prison was a really, really disgusting place for three very important reasons. First of all, most of the prisoners were men, and most of those men were crazy crazy prisoners. Which meant that they were about at hygienic as a basket full of sewer rats, and with the scarcity of water bathed less than half as much. Second came the depth. 'Cause being underground was just creepy, and only Hyne knew where all that sand came from. Third and last was that the janitors were just really really hug slackers since nobody cared what the hell happened to prisoners here anyways.
Well, unless they caught that crazy Fujin chick. There was already a room reserved for her with snakes and icky spiders and stuff. But that was neither here not there. 'Cause after two months of waiting in this horrible disgusting cave with these horrible majorly gross men Selphie Timlett wasn't gonna take it any more.
Revenge best served cold her ass.
"Hullo, Mr.Soldier-man!" the sprightly girl waved chipperly in her baggy grey guard togs. She hated these clothes like she hated this place and she hated Seifer Almasy. With a passion. Everything from the lack of sunlight to the torture devices to the cramped quarters to the clausterphobia-inducing halls to the clothes to the people they hired seemed calculated to grind somebody's spirit into little tiny bits and spit it out again.
"Buh-bye!" Which was why, when she waved, she made sure to knock the evil genocidal bastard out with a defiantly perky little thwack to the back of his head. Nunchucks were the best.
Three months of stewing over the deaths of her friends and the robbery of the only other had given the magic-user plenty of time to brew an appreciation for poetic justice.
And open up the puke-green door with your very own official access card. Watch it hiss to see your fate. Ride along into the future.
The future was looking mighty bedraggled. But still kicking. And no limp hair and dirt-encrusted coat was gonna keep her down.
"Wha.. Sephy?" bloodshot green eyes squinted blearily into the light. A man so disheveled should not sound so... innocent. and scared and hopeful all at once. Especially one nearly a foot taller than she was, huddled in a dank corner. "Hyne - it was really dark in there. I didn't like it at all. Where did you go?"
Clearing, the eyes looked pleadingly at hers. He didn't understand why she'd abandoned him - Hyne knew why. She'd have to make him, once they got the hell out of there.
"C'mon," the girl strode over, pulling on a limp-wristed arm. He hadn't been exercised - his muscles were worn thin. But.. you didn't need muscle to fire a gun, right? Dammit, she should have gotten here earlier. But it was haaard to get access to this wing.
Hauling Irvine Kinneas to his feet was no easy task. But once it was over with she was relieved to notice that he could at least walk. Selphie was starting to feel slightly nauseous again.
"Where are we going?" the long-haired, unshaven gunman clutched her arm for dear life. He smelled like lunch meat and cinnamon and wet puppies, but the prison was enough to drown that out thank Hyne. Frowning as much as she ever did, Selphie pushed the weakened assassin to the corrugated iron wall.
She was gonna have to know and get over it, if he was gonna help her. And he was gonna help her. Help her make things majorly, majorly uncool for Seifer.
And then she'd finally be able to leave it all behind. Into the future we shall go.
"You killed Squall," she paused, hands traveling over the veins in his gaunt wrists, "right?"
"Yup!" the madman nodded proudly, like her approval was his whole world. Did he even remember he'd just spent three months in prison?
"Why? Wh-why would you do that, Irvy?" Selphie continued evenly, sure to keep her voice down.
Kinneas looked at his feet.
"Because he hurt matron."
... matron? Irvine had a mom? How.. weird. Like, mind-blowing meltdown weird. Why the hell would Squall hurt Irvine's mom? That was horrible! Not all of then had moms and dads, you know. Well, there was Zell.. but he appreciated what he had. To actually.. to actually do to someone what they'd had done to them.. to consign them to fighting for any little scrap of affection or family they could find in a viper's pit of total strangers...
That was terrible.
That was.. EVIL.
No wonder he was so fucked up. It all made perfect sense. Such a wonderful alien creature, a real live mother....
"You had.. a mother? A real mother?"
A real mom. The kind that was with you since you were bon. And she'd make you cookie and drive you to school and ground you when you did bad stuff and she'd be there for you when you cried and she'd always be there when you cried because that's what real moms are supposed to do.
Wow.
"Of course I did," Irvine looked sad, and kind of puzzled. "We all did once, Sephie."
"Yeah.. I guess we did," and Selphie, being Selphie, just couldn't resist giving the kicked puppy a big hug. "Shhhh... it's gonna be okay, Irvine. He can't hurt her anymore."
"I knew you'd get it!" Irvine hurriedly crushed her back, smell and all, but Timlett didn't mind choking a bit. She stayed rock-hard.
"Irvy," the girl whispered.
"Yeah?"
"If someone hurt me... would you hurt them back too?" and she'd started to cray a bit. Damn. Damn! Selphie Timlett did NOT cry.
"Of course!" the assassin cheerfully strangled her from within a shoddily-lit cell. "You're my best friend, Sephy! I'll never let you go away like her."
"Good. Because some people..," Selphie pulled away, under control again and whispering to his eyes. The ashes of Trabia drifted through her stone cold voice. "They hurt me Irvine. They hurt me alot. And we're going to blow them allll up. All up to the sky."
"We'll hurt them back Sephy. They can't start her smiling without us hurting them," Irvine swore, pulling away from the wall for once without that little-boy smile. "I promise!"
".. thank you, Irvy."
And so she held his hand with a fake pair of handcuffs to sneak them out. Prisoner transfer. Whatever.
"Sure thing!" he allowed himself to be dragged along. "...Can we go to the beach after that?"
"Of course. Of course we can."
And for the first time in a very long time, it seemed like everything was gonna be alright.
***
Pure, decent ladies live not in the scorched earth of the desert, but in ivory towers. Those constructed for them in palaces and manses and (as in this case) Gardens by their lords. Or Knights, as the case may be.
Which brings our tract to Rinoa Heartilly and Seifer Almasy.
They were, all in all, a perfect couple. The camera looked upon them like a lover, and the passion radiating from them might reach the most hardened of hearts. Charismatic, beautiful, smoldering angels descended down from heaven to cleanse the world of war and sin and pain with one final searing fire. They wore white like the saints, and behaved that way as well, with the sort of noble chastity drawn strait for a fairy-tale.
The Sorceress Rinoa, nominal ruler of Neo-Galbadia, and her protector Sir Seifer Almasy the Cross Knight did not need propaganda. They were the propaganda. And the people loved them - oh how they loved them. Better than a fairy-tale, better than a soap-opera, and better than a legend because they were real and Hyne had sent them down to save them all.
Save us, Hyne, from the dogs of war. The Sorceress and her Knight shall make things perfect - of so finally perfect - if only they can turn the hearts of the world to their holy crusade. You can help them. They need you. Be strong for us, soldiers of the Holy Sorceress. Be strong, and the world will be healed. Death is for the good. Hunger is for the good. War and pain and rationing are your very last sacrifice.
All in white. All is white. Help and they will pray for us, those charismatic paragons. Their magnetic eyes turned towards Hyne and heaven-on-earth.
The Neo-Galbadian Army had swollen by almost three million souls since the ascension of Seifer Almasy.
So you see, they had to live in an ivory tower fosterede in a magical, marine garden. They had an image to maintain. Seifer knew this, ruling over three quarters of the earth with impunity behind a raven-haired mask of a girl. Rinoa did not; and that, quite frankly, was better for most concerned.
Pity the fire that dazzles the masses.
Pity those blinded by the light.
***
The report came in at exactly seven thirty-three in the evening. An e-mail over the Balamb internet, to be perused at Sir Almasy's discretion in a well-appointed room with lots of pacing space and expensive beige Winhill rugs. And it read much the same as most letters from that particular peon.
Cargo blahblahblah stolen by the Fallen Garden.
The Fallen Garden.
Just fucking great.
"Fuck, " the Knight moaned under his breath, filmy white curtains and imported cream marble apparently not having the intended stress-reducing effect. "Not again..."
The woman behind him did not notice this. She was enraptured by the state of her dress, an affair of ivory and feathers and pearls. Seifer would have bought her diamonds, but she said that those were gauche or whatever the hell the fashion word was. His Sorceress should set the fashion, not follow it.
But what she wanted, she would get.
"My lady," the blonde pleaded for the hundredth time, not even bothering to make eye contact anymore. She was too pure for this world, his Sorceress in waiting. She didn't understand. "We must do something about these atrocities. These raids are a disgrace! Are you sure you won't even think of conceding to my request? Surely you realize that no good can come for poor Quistis living on las.. as a vegetable. It would be better for you to put her out of her pain, take the mantle from her and...."
Too pure by far.
"I told you Seifer," candy-pink lips gently rebuffed. "It's wrong."
Rinoa could be amazingly stubborn.
"But two wrongs can make a right..." Seifer batted his eyes on the pine work-chair, recovering. She shouldn't see anything.. uncouth from him. No negative emotions. That was inappropriate before a future heir of Hyne, and Rinoa was not going to turn out like That Bitch.
"You're silly," she giggled in from of the mirror he'd had installed in his office, twisting and turning is the shining satin. The chamber was formerly Cid Kramer's. Words could not express the pleasure that little irony gave the new generation's Knight. " I have to get ready for the next speech."
"Of course, m'lady."
Words also could not express how amazingly.. annoyed he was with his object of worship at the moment.
That Bitch was getting closer - her strikes more daring by the week. Showpieces in white and cream-colored spectacles be damned.. people were starting to talk. Whispering about why the Sorceress didn't blow those heretics out of the water.
And honestly, he couldn't blame them. Poor Rinoa - the delicacy that made her suitable would predestin her to shatter under the weight of duty if he made her assume the full burden of a sorceress. The blood should be on his hands, it couldn't touch her, but it had to...
And the paradox of the creature flouncing out of his study was observed as a uniformed official entered. He opened his gaping, useless mouth to make a report and Seifer had received via the computer from intelligence an hour ago. Honestly, he was surrounded by morons... but using all Garden personel would look bad.
Politics would, in the perfect world, be the first thing to go.
"I already know, dickwad. Shut the fuck up." Evidedntly, a snappish Seifer did not care about sounding bad.
He'd been thinking about this for a while now. And dishonorable though it was, the answer for the Knight just might lie with the enemy.
"Get me our sea carrier and a fully-armed stealth helicopter," the General ordered, waving off his subordinates claims at knowledge.
Fact 1 - we need a Sorceress. And we need one right fucking now.
"Sir?" the young woman questioned while attempting not to sound like she was questioning him. How.. amusing. Dumbass.
Fact 2 - Rinoa will not kill Quistis, and I cannot replace her with Quistis. Because Quistis is a Bitch.
"We're going hunting," the fire grinned lazily from his perch behind a desk so polished the afternoon sunlight reflected off it with the enthusiasm of a morning sunbeam.
"Hunting, sir?"
"I'm fixing the problem."
Fact 3 - What makes a Sorceress look like a Sorceress? Magic.
"Let it never be said that Sir Seifer Almasy does not serve his nation well!" the wolf attempted to purr, and almost suceeded from beneath his blonde mane.
Fact Four - I need that magic.
And who can control Dear Ol' Quisty's magic while she sleeps her pretty brains out in a closet?
"Sir, yes sir!"
Klaus Odine. Inventor of the Odine bangle that has that bitch is stasis in the basement. Master of the D-bloody-NA of magic. The man who put a leash on Adel herself.
"Fuuuuck.. stop kissing my ass, you moron. I know
my ideas are good, and I have people for that anyways."
***
Squall Leonhart did not take things well; he took them calmly. Which is, naturally, an entirely different beast than taking them well. Because calm implied nothing about actually dealing with or analyzing said events.
Case in point, the flight from Esthar. Admittedly a stupid move on his part. They could have been fully refitted. They coudl have rested and relazed and given a few hundred scared kids some downtime. And he could have gotten to.. well.. bond as much as Squall ever did with his newfound father. But instead he up and fled to bluer pastures, spooked beyond recognition after an admittedly lacklustre series of parental figures.
Kiros had leaked the rumor to Fujin. Kiros was a very smart man.
Since Squall did not take things well, he often preferred not to take them at all. Just dove into his work and his survivalist existance. No friendship, no kinship, no ties.. that was the plan. Which really was enough for him, according to several major psychological profiles. Until he had time in the middle of an ocean calm in hiding from several ICBMs with the only person who had ever got him, and the only person who had ever left him the hell alone like he wanted her too.
Pity those set out to cushion falling rain.
***
Squall Leonhart was in a Bad Mood.
Not everyone knew when Squall Leonhart was in a Bad Mood. He prided himself on a certain level of dignity in that respect. Cold - Squall could do that. And oh, how he did it well. Several lust-crazed student/subordinates could attest to that very handily.
But upset? Commander Squall Leonhart of whatever their Garden was called now (he honestly didn't care) did not show upset. Along with happy, sad, lonely, awestruck, and trusting, if you must know. And the constant state of mild confusion he seemed to be in was also of no consequence.
It was his misfortune, then, to be stuck behind a vidscreen in Martine's office instead of in the fray. Because there he might have discreetly vented a bit before coming into contact with quite possibly two of the only four people that could ever call him on being upset (which he was, mind you, absolutely certainly not).
".. what's wrong with her?" he minutely pouted, not having the sense not to ask. That he had asked set off blinking red sirens in the heads of the two young men around him. Because Squall never asked about anyone unless there was a one-hundred percent useful reason to do so. Which he rationalized that there was. Morale. Yeah.
This meant that he thought he was handling this with ninjalike stealth. And that to anyone with half a clue, he was roaring his poor lion heart out. Poor cat doesn't notice his back leg scratching for fleas.
"I'm surprised you care, ya know," Raijin grinned, sensing the opportunity to rub salt into the proverbial wound as per a pact made three months ago between himself and the odious Mr.Dincht. Squall had not noticed that either. Great cats can't see in color.
Of course he cared! Keeping Fujin happy kept this place efficient (even if she didn't look happy alot, but neither did he so that was okay because generally happy people tended to be morons like Timlett and Dincht). And keeping this place efficient kept them all alive. Foolish Raijin.
"Squall," Zell sighed, preparing his best Best Buddy Routine in an attempt to illuminate the depths of Squalls... emotional obtuseness. " Isn't it hella obvious?"
No, not it was not 'hella obvious'. What, was he a mind reader? This was stupid. How was he supposed to know what was wrong with her? These people kept insisting on miracles.
Leonhart crossed him arms haughtily, with the first reply that came to mind when stupid Fujin acted irrationally and refused to make sense and it was really really....
".. whatever."
Stupid Fujin. Stupid Rinoa. Stupid incomprehensible females.
"For Hyne's sake, Squall!" the bronze giant at his flank gestured. "She's upset over losing Seif, ya know? And he practically said he was gonna propose to Rinoa in that last speech. I mean, geeze, it's bad enough one of your two best buddies goin' crazy and stuff. I wasn't in love with the guy...."
This was stupid.
"You weren't in love with him? Hah!" Dincht interrupted with a .. verbal punch. " According to some rumors I heard on the Garden Intranet that were all like...."
All.. just.. stupid!
"Oh, shut up chicken wuss," Kasin continued, visibly upsetting a now physically punching Zell. The air reeled from impact. "Anyway... jus' relax. She's not like this too much anymore. In a day or so it'll pass for a while and we'll all be back to stealin' stuff again. Which reminds me, that last load - D-43 or whatever, had some way good beef ya know. I say we fire up the grills an'... Hey.. where'd he go, ya know?"
Off to restore.. sanity to this stupid, unefficient, no sense-making situation.
Dincht just shrugged. "Hell if I know. You said beef, man?"
***
Fujin thought she was over him - for she was the strong, fearsome, devil-may-care-if-I-kick-your-ass Queen of Spades. But she had refused pain medication. She had decided on mind over matter. A pity, really.
Pity those who cannot speak beyond the cuts in their lips. Pity those who do not want to listen past the blows to their ears.
***
In the Garden, on the deck, there were no more students. They had better things to do with their time than look at the great harpoon cables that had been welded onto their home. But Fujin was different. Weaponry.. didn't matter to her. And she'd discovered a certain fondness for looking out at the ocean.
They were on half-power floating in the water. Thankfully, she had not needed sea-sickness pills. That would have been... embarrassing.
"What's wrong." Squall. Behind her. Ah. He demanded. That was.. rude and unprofessional.
"Nothing," and he should have known that that was all he was going to get back anyways.
Her partner strode forward with an observation rather uncanny for him, "You're lying."
He should leave her alone. The sky was a pretty blue today. And Fujin was in the mood for a good salt-bath of a mope.
"... no."
That was when the uncomfortable silence started. Which actually did get her attention for once, if only because silence was usually the norm when it came to them. Uncomfortable silences were for people that thought too much about the emotions inherent. Unlike them.
"You have to stop it," Leonhart resolved, leaning on the wall behind her.
"Stop what?" crimson eyes narrowed in the cool breeze.
"You've had time," and lo, a hint of emotion cracked the ice. "Stop being upset!"
"Why?"
".....Because," Squall reasoned, arms crossed as he rebelled against causes only he could name.
This was irrational. Where the hell did he get off questioning her? He'd barely known that Rinoa tart.
"Because why?"
"Because.." the brave man gestured, "you're being like... them. It's not efficient."
Hyne. She did not have time with this. What the hell was wrong with him? That bitch Seifer up and rubbed his Sorceress in her goddamn face yet again and Squall had to get all goddamn cryptic and not what she needed right now.
"Speak English, Leonhart. I got no time for this."
And for a second, it looked as though he might have known, really. Just for a second. The second it took for the seafoam to die on the Renegade Garden's bow.
"You're not an idiot."
So he expected her to know?
"I should think not," Fujin snapped back.
"So just.. stop it!" the lion snapped back, seemingly almost disgusted. "Soldiers don't act like that."
"Yes, sir," Fujin rolled her eyes, with a look that threatened violence. Her questioner soon stalked away with a faint 'whatever'.
... why did she get the vague feeling that they'd just had a fight? Idiocy. She didn't want to think about this. Squall was acting like.. Raijin or something. This was disconcerting.
What on earth did he mean? She wasn't acting like a soldier?
Bah. Men.
***
And, above the rest...
Pity those to come.
***
The next morning, in a camp on a rock ravaged by the desert sun, gender relations seem to have gone a little better.
"Oh Hyne... "
Just a little.
"What'd wrong, Sephy?"
They were talking, at least. Construing meaning and even words from the scentences coming from each other's mouths.
"This is totally.. totally not cool Irvine."
There might have even been a little understanding. In a warped sort of way.
"Are you okay?"
They at least admitted they cared what happened to each other. That was a start.
"Yep just.. hold on. I'll be fine in a minute."
She was sick. And he was sympathetic. A tether ridge crosses the gap!
"You should be happy! Matron always said that she wished she could be sick in the mornings, because then she could have a baby."
Only to be shot to hell once more when nature works its course.
"... FUCK!"
And so the story goes.
***
May Hyne have mercy on them all.
***
Author's note - This is.. not my best chapter.
I'll admit that. But it's mpore of anm interlude than anything, so
I do hope you'll forgive me. This fic is to be continued in a second
act. Broken Mirror - Shards.