Chapter Seventeen:

When Ember had complimented Naomi at making plans, she wasn't kidding. Led down into the cellar of an old one-room house, we got to work immediately, and Naomi already had a plot imbedded in her brain.

"Getting into the castle will be simple enough. All we have to do is follow this underground passage right here under the moat…and that will lead us right into the dungeons. There we wait for Ember and Eve until 18:00 hours. But if we are caught before then, we shall have to fight alone. Then we will find the sorceress' bedchambers up on the highest floor, and that is when we shall surprise and attack her. She won't give up peacefully."

"What about Kyonae?" Seifer blurted behind me.

"Of course. Let us see…all right, when we go up for Sorceress Maika, Seifer, you stay behind and search for her. I do not know where her room is located."

"Just me?"

"Yes. The Sorceress will undoubtedly put up a fight, and we need as many fighters as we can. We know, at least, that Kyonae will come with you."

"I'm not sure," I heard him mutter almost inaudibly. I looked at him and he avoided my glance, almost guiltily. He hadn't said a word to me after the talk about him being in love with Kyonae. He refused to admit it, but it was so obvious. He never cared for anyone but himself before Kyonae showed up. Now suddenly he was so concerned for her safety he didn't even talk as much as he used to. He just had a weird look in his eye constantly, which vanished every time someone said his name, rudely yanking him back into the real world…

Why the hell didn't I see this before?!

Rinoa and Selphie- yes, even Selphie- had seen it before me. I'm usually so good at figuring things out. But this time I had been left in the dark. How could I have allowed this to slip past my vigil watch? I could spot an enemy a mile away, see through any mask…but I could not see their faraway looks, the way they danced together, their perpetual determination to save each other's lives. I'd heard it all from the little six-year-old Nevina, tugging at my waist as I tried to carry Kyonae into the sub. She'd seen them, risking their lives to save each other, and why? Merely to repay the other for their deed. It was almost scary to think about Seifer being in love…it wasn't his nature at all.

And how did I feel about all this? About Seifer Almasy liking my sister? My twin?

In any other circumstances I would have punched his lights out.

But actually I was impressed. Seifer, of all people…falling in love…to actually have normal feelings like a normal human being.

I knew he had it in him somewhere.

"So it is settled," Naomi finished. "We leave in ten minutes." She threw us some old Dratilian robes. "Put these on. No one will even recognize you. I'm going upstairs for a moment, excuse me…"

"Um, I'll go with her," my father said nervously, glancing at a rat that had just streaked across the floor. He streaked up the stairs just as quickly, leaving Seifer and I alone.

He was preoccupied with the strategy table, which was a perfectly detailed model of the entire city with little wooden figures of people standing upright. He was holding one that looked a lot like my lost sister, staring at it strangely. How much more obvious can it get? I thought, shaking my head.

"So…do you think this is all going to work?" I said casually.

"Huh? What? Oh…I don't know. It seems easy enough. But I know it won't be."

"…" I abruptly changed the subject. "You know, you never answered my question back there on the road."

"What question?" he replied, trying to sound ignorant.

"You know what question, Seifer. Do you love her or not?"

"None of your damn business."

"Like hell it isn't!" I snapped, turning him around roughly to face me. I was sick of this crap. "Kyonae's my sister, Seifer, and it is my business. Now tell me or I'll punch your face in!"

"All right!" he shouted back, throwing up his arms in exasperation. "You wanna know? Fine! I'm in love with her! I'm crazy about her and every single thing she does drives me insane, and that's why I'm going up against a sorceress who wants my head on a wall and the entire damned Dratilian army if I have to, just to get her back! ARE YOU HAPPY, PUBERTY BOY?!"

I stood back, eyebrows raised in surprise. He calmed down, looking somber as he hung his head.

"I don't know why. I-I just…I never felt anything like it…She's amazing. Do you know what it's like, to be shunned by everyone and then suddenly someone comes along and judges you for who you are and not for what you were? I mean, she has her grudges too…but she has a right to hate me, for what I did…but she still found a way to like me. She's the most amazing girl I've ever met, and I love her, Squall. You can punch me right now for saying that about your sister, but it won't change the way I feel. I'll do anything to get her back."

I kinda wanted to punch him, but I couldn't find the heart. He was really serious about all this. Maybe even more serious about it than I was. I forced a small smile, which in the end didn't have to be forced at all. "…Whatever."

A flicker of relief glimmered in Seifer's cerulean eyes, a small grin tugging on the corners of his lips as well. This time it was I who held out my hand. He took it with not the slightest hesitation, shaking it heartily, and this time we both meant it.

Suddenly the moment of our newfound friendship came to an abrupt halt as we heard a loud crash upstairs, followed by angry cries.

"Let us in, damn you! We know you Forest Mages are in there!"

Laguna ran down, Naomi quickly following as she quickly and quietly shut the cellar door, locking it. "We have been caught," she said, face distraught. "Someone must have tipped off the city guards about our hiding place! If they find us, they will surely execute us for plotting the Queen's murder!"

"What do we do?" I asked, trying not to panic.

"I must go warn the other Forest Mages, and tell them to be at ready. You shall have to go to the castle dungeons by yourself."

"How?" Laguna implored.

Naomi ran toward a bookshelf and pulled it aside. Behind it was a door, leading down into a dark tunnel. "Take this passage, and stay there until I come for you. Do not try to venture the castle alone unless you are in danger of being caught in the dungeons."

"How will you get out?"

By now there was a sound of splintering wood. They'd broken down the front door. We stood in silence as they began to pound on the cellar door.

"Don't worry about me! Just go!"

We turned to the door, stopped, and turned back to Naomi. "But-"

But we didn't see her. Naomi had vanished into thin air. Literally.

"I guess it's a mage thing," Laguna shrugged, looking at both of us. "Let's go!"

We ran into the tunnel and I pulled the bookshelf back over behind me, just as I heard the city guards knock down the cellar door.

***

Rinoa's had some crazy ideas in the past, and a lot of mood-swings -like that Dr. Odine's Bangle thing she tried to use on Edea, or that time I tried to rescue her and she shoved me down the stairs at the D-District Prison, for instance. But this one takes the cake. She gets a little scared in front of a mirror and all of a sudden we gotta go to Dratilia. Rinoa swears she saw Kyonae in the mirror, screaming and everything. Unless Kyonae's changed her identity to Bloody Mary of England, I'm kinda skeptical about the whole thing. But Rinoa's a sorceress, like it or not, and I guess we gotta believe her to some extent. But people appearing in mirrors…?

All I know is that there's a lot of crazy stuff goin' on, and if Rinoa's right, I'm willin' to believe anything.

Kyonae…she's getting all this attention and she doesn't even know it. They say she was executed, and for a while I believed it. But Galbadia had said the same thing about Almasy, and he turned out to be the Sorceress' Knight! It makes me wonder just what Dratilia's coverin' up about Kyonae.

We were walking down the road now. I wasn't sure where we were going, but Rinoa seemed to know the way just fine. Ellone was right beside her, as if she knew the way as well. She's a quiet one, that Ellone…

Fujiin and Raijiin came up beside me. Seifer's Disciplinary Committee. His 'posse'. He couldn't ask for better friends in my opinion. They were really worried about him.

Fujiin looked up at me, her one cold steely gray eye illuminated in the threatening lightning. "WORRIED FOR SEIFER. YOU?"

"Nothin' to worry about, Fujiin. Seifer's a trooper, he'll stay in one piece."

"HM." She paused, adjusting her eye patch. I always wondered what happened to her eye. Of course, I also wondered why she never said more than three words per sentence, so I held my tongue. "SCARED FOR KYONAE. YOU?"

"Yeah," I admitted. "But she's a tough one too. She'll pull through, I'm sure."

Fujiin looked away, a bit depressed. "KYONAE. SEIFER. MET HIS MATCH. TWO EQUAL FORCES. FIRST ENEMIES. NOW FRIENDS. SEIFER LOVE KYONAE."

"He told you that?"

She smiled for the first time since I met her, a strand of silver hair falling down on her face as she pointed to her good eye. "FUJIIN. ONE EYE. CAN STILL SEE. LOVE."

"Really? Is that so?"

"REALLY." Her eye gleamed knowingly.

"So…if I could ask you a personal question…whatever happened to your eye?"

At first I thought I was dead in the water just for daring to ask a question like that. But her face brightened, flattered, as if no one had ever bothered to ask her before. Probably the case…

"WANT TO KNOW? REALLY? OKAY. FIGHT WITH SOLDIER. TIMBER. TOOK MY EYE. I TOOK ACTION. KICKED SORRY BUTT! SOLDIER. RAN AWAY SCREAMING!" She cried, doubling over in laughter at the mere memory. She calmed down, wiping a tear from her eye. "THANKS. NEEDED THAT."

"No prob."

Suddenly we saw Dratilia ahead, a spectacular marvel from even this distance. Separating it and us was a short stretch of forest. But by the edge of the wood were two figures wrapped in red and green, waving at us.

"Who are they?" Quistis asked, her hand going automatically for her chain whip.

"I don't know, but I think they're Dratilian," Zell stated, grimacing, holding up his fists. "Let me at 'em-"

"Zell, no," Quistis ordered, waving him back. "I'm the instructor here, so I'll go and see."

She ran ahead cautiously down the gently sloping hillside, and after a few moments of talking to the two young women, she signaled the okay. "It's all right! Come on down!"

We followed, catching up with the instructor. "This is Eve and Ember. They're assistant leaders of the Forest Mage resistance faction."

"We thrive to pull Queen Maika from the throne," Eve said clearly, grimly. "Everyone claims she is a good ruler, but only because they live in too much fear of her powers to say different-"

"That's why we're gonna knock her off! Isn't that right, Eve?" Ember blurted out, obviously not the quiet type.

The flower mage groaned exasperatingly at the fiery redhead. "Will you please just shut it for a few moments?" she snapped. She turned back to us. "But despite Ember's crude way of putting it, yes, we intend to…'knock her off'. Your friends passed by a while ago and said you had a trained sniper among you. One named Irvine. Is that true?"

I stepped forward confidently, holding out my rifle as proof. "That'd be me. I take it you want me to knock off the old hag?"

Eve cringed at my crude words just as she had Ember's. "Ugh…It would be greatly appreciated. If you miss, we will be there for backup."

"Sure. Why not? But don't worry about backup. I never miss my target," I said coolly.

"Really? Never missed a target, eh?" Ember said haughtily, walking right up into my face, her glittering emerald eyes looking up skeptically into my violet ones. "I heard of you. You're the one who tried to assassinate Edea, right? That didn't work too well, did it?"

"Ember!" Eve gasped, scandalized. "Show respect; this man is volunteering to help bring an end to the oppression of the Dratilian people, and you are treating him like pond scum-"

"Oh, quiet down, Eve, he knows I'm kidding." She rolled her eyes, then looked at me again. "Don't ya, handsome?"

"Uh-sure," I said, smiling nervously under her glance. "I-I can take a joke. Sure."

Ember fluttered her eyelashes slowly at me, and I felt my face turn as red as her hair.

"Oh, really," Eve drawled, her arms crossed over her chest. "We do not have time for this! We must meet Nao-"

Suddenly a forked bolt of lightning struck down onto the ground behind the mages, causing a sudden blast of white light. When the light faded, a young woman with jet-black hair and robes was there.

Ember had shrieked, leaping up into my arms. "Sweet merciful Goddesses, Naomi! Don't you have a less intimidating way of appearing?" She complained, clutching at her chest. "Gosh, my heart's going so fast…oh, sorry," she added, climbing down from my arms and patting down her crimson robes casually.

Naomi, as her name obviously was, looked panicked. "Ember, Eve, we have been caught. Our hideout has been discovered and I barely made it out of there with my neck. But Leonhart and his friends are safe. They took the underground passage to the castle dungeons."

"Squall? What about Squall?" Rinoa piped up worriedly, running up to the thunder mage. "He is okay, isn't he? Was he hurt?"

"Calm yourself, Sorceress Rinoa," Naomi said calmly. "They are all fine. They escaped just before the guards came. But I came back to warn my faction, all the others who are living in this forest. They will be ready for any kind of attack. You are all safe in the hands of the Forest Mages."

"H-how did you know my name?" she asked, taken aback. "And h-how did you know that I'm-"

"I know many things, my dear sorceress. Thunder mages are born with the rare gift to read the cryptic scripts in the pupils of one's eyes, to read one's mind, so they know just when to strike at their enemy like a bolt of lightning knows when to strike the ground. That is why Maika is so dangerous. But there is no time to explain this. We must go, quickly, to the castle dungeons. Come, all of you- we must make haste!"

A/N: I'd like to apologize to any Ellone, Quistis, Selphie or Zell fans out there. I've read this through and I noticed I don't pay attention to them a lot. Sorry! Complain if you want to about it. I'll make them important somehow! Unless all who reads this are Ellone /Selphie / Quistis /Zell haters, well then…uh…keep reading. A little note about my three Dratilian mages up there-Naomi is obviously the obscure, dark one who speaks pure Dratilian (in other words, English w/out a lot of apostrophes) and she has all the Dratilian gifts-reading minds, sensing people's presences, etc. Eve is the calm, collected flower mage who is very poised and polite, and cannot stand Ember the fire mage's immaturity and crude tongue (she's half Flowerwoodish, a small town to the north of Dratilia, and just the fact she's a fire mage gives her a fiery attitude). And, if you didn't notice, Irvine might be getting a girlfriend after all…Please R/R!