XIII
"All right! Let's hit that PAH-TAY!"
--Selphie Timmett

"There comes a time for warriors to hang up their swords, generals to retire to their homes and their tamer pursuits. But those are times of peace, not war, and I say now that there is no reason to clamor for disarmament or pacifism. What reason can you claim to give up now?"
--Mayor Dudley Rubach of Winhill, remark during the Sorceress War

It was a beautiful day in Balamb. Many-colored streamers flew from countless tents lining the streets, and music and overpriced food odors wafted through the air. Clowns and moogle-costumed people pranced through the streets, making sure that everyone enjoyed themselves.

Squall, of course, found it all a waste of time.

He had already bought a new chain for his meddalion--he didn't want that serpent carving anywhere near him. And a travelling weapons salesmen had been able to polish, sharpen and strenghthen his gunblade. Aside from that, there was very little of interest to him.

Now, to buisiness.

He had thought about enlisting Zell's help in thinking up the experiment, but since Zell was going to be the guinea pig in this one, it wouldn't have worked very well. He had a fair idea of what he was going to do, anyway.

Moving over to one of the stands selling novelty items, he layed down about thirty gil for a huge, inflatable moogle. Putting the box into a paper bag, he made sure to tear off a substantial part of the corner. The bag should be easily recognizable. Next, he went to find Zell.

As he had expected, Zell was standing in line for one of the many food stands. Tapping him on the shoulder, Squall waited for Zell to notice him.

"Hey," Zell said. "No dirt on Seifer yet, but... what's that?" he asked, looking at the bag.

"Nothing," Squall said, with a shrug. "I'm heading back to Balamb Garden. Tell Quistis."

"Okay," Zell said. "She'll probably come right after you and drag you back, but I'll tell her."

"Where's Irvine?" Squall asked. Zell grinned.

"Irvine and Seifer are working out a bet. Irvine seems to think that he can beat Seifer at the archery stand by the harbor. I was going to go watch, but I got hungry." Zell grinned even wider. "They have bets on the 'Test Your Strength' activity, the 'Duck Shoot' activity, and the 'Dunk a Geezard' booth, too. You should stick around--Irvine's gonna get smashed."

"I thought you were against Seifer?"

Zell shrugged. "Yeah, but face it--Irvine doesn't stand a chance. And he can be almost as annoying."

"Right," Squall said. Seifer versus Irvine? That almost makes me want to stay.

Almost.

"Well, see you around," Zell said, moving up in the line to order. "Yeah," he said, turning to the salesperson. "I'll have a hot dog..."

Getting into Zell's room was a lot easier than it probably should have been. Squall did have a skeleton key and override codes for the electronic locks, but Zell's door didn't even have both locks on. And the electronic one had all but one digit typed in--presumably so it wouldn't take Zell too long to unlock it.

Stepping into the room, Squall took a look around. Zell was an incredibly messy person--his field and dress uniforms lay on the floor in an undignified heap, and his bed was about as unmade as it could possibly be. Half of the matress was hanging off. The only thing that looked like it was even remotely taken care of was the punching bag, attached by a chain to the ceiling.

Squall moved over, inspecting the latch that held it on. Undoing it, he watched as the bag fell to the floor. Pulling out the moogle, he blew it up--making sure to leave the bag on the floor, torn edge showing. When the moogle was inflated, he hooked it onto the chain, grabbed the punching bag, and dragged it into the hall. He had taken almost three steps when something stopped him.

"What are you doing?"

Squall turned around to stare at Nida, who had come up behind him. Uh... craap, he thought. This might be a little hard to explain.

Nida walked up beside him, looking into Zell's room. "You replaced his punching bag with a novelty moogle?" he asked, confused.

"...don't ask," Squall said. Nida stared at him for a moment.

"Are you sure you're all right? You drank the punch at the festival, didn't you?"

"It's an experiment," Squall said.

"Umm... yeah. An experiment. I'm guessing you don't want me to tell anybody?"

If I'm right, no one would listen if you did tell them. Squall nodded. Nida sighed.

"All right, but I get to see the look on his face when you say it was you, okay?"

"Fine," Squall said, beginning to drag the bag back to his room. Nida, with a final confused look, left.

Squall glanced at the door to the cafeteria for what had to be the thirtieth time in the last fifteen minutes. Nida, watching him with a look of amusement from the other side of the table, smiled.

"You keep staring at the door, you know that? Like your life depended on it. Waiting for Zell?"

Squall nodded. It was past time for dinner, but the people at the fair had gotten back late. And, as predicted, Quistis had been annoyed that he had skipped out. Apparently the Seifer-Irvine matchoffs had resulted in an overall tie, Seifer had won the 'Test Your Strength' and the 'Dunk a Geezard," but Irvine had won at both the booths involving range weapons. Hardly surprising. It must have been an interesting day.

Squall glanced at the door again, and almost jumped when Zell actually came storming in. He scanned the assembled people (Squall's team, basically, with the addition of Nida), and balled both fists. "IRVINE!" he bellowed.

Irvine jumped almost ten centimeters in the air, turning to stare at Zell. "What?" he asked, going on the defensive almost at once.

"Give me my punching bag, you bastard son of a Buel!" Zell roared at him, taking a step forward. Nida had turned to watch, and was trying to keep a straight face. Glancing at Squall, he raised an eyebrow and drew a finger across his neck. Squall snorted.

"What are you talking about?" Irvine demanded.

"You stole my punching bag, you idiot! And you replaced it with this!"

Zell threw a mangled peice of pink plastic at Irvine, who ducked it. "I didn't do anything!" Irvine yelled at him, scrambling away as Zell approached.

"LIAR!" Zell yelled at him, swinging a fist through the air.

"Zell," Quistis said, jumping up. "Irvine was at the fair later than you were. It couldn't have been him!"

"Then WHO THE HELL WAS IT?" Zell demanded loudly. Nida put a hand to his face to cover his mouth, and Zell rounded on him, eyes blazing. "YOU!"

"N-no," Nida said, shaking his head and trying not to laugh. Holding up a hand, he shook his head again. "Guess again."

Zell turned towards Irvine again. "I don't know how you did this, but I am going to kill you if--"

Amusing as this is, I had better put a stop to it, Squall thought. Standing up, he looked at Irvine, cowering in a corner. The light was glinting off of the barbed knuckles of Zell's gloves as he advanced. "Zell," he said, and the SeeD turned to look at him. "Leave Irvine alone. It wasn't him."

"How do you know?" Zell demanded.

"Because I took your punching bag," Squall said reasonably.

A look of complete blankness fell over his face. Nida fell to the floor, laughing and holding his sides.

"I have it in my room. You can have it back if you want it." Out of the corner of his eye Squall could see Irvine getting to his feet.

"You?" Zell asked, blinking. Squall nodded. "Why?" came the question, more confused than angry.

"It was an experiment," Squall explained, turning to the rest of the group. "You got a good look at that bag I was carrying, didn't you?"

"Well, yeah..." Zell said.

"And you saw it on the floor, right?"

"Yeah..."

"But you never guessed that it was me. Why not?"

Zell scratched the back of his head. "Beacuse, well, you're you, man!"

Squall nodded. "Exactly. You all find me so predictable, you never guessed that I would do something like that." Even though he said it matter-of-factly, his face darkened a bit. He didn't like to be reminded.

"So?"

"So Dyne knows almost everything about me, from the time I was in the Orphanage up until now. But he doesn't seem to know anything I don't remember, whick makes me think that he was reading my mind instead of watching me. Well," he looked around the gathering. "I'm not in the jacket anymore. He can't read my mind. But he'll still know what I plan to do, just because he knows all about me. He'll be able to predict me."

A look of understanding dawned on Zell's face. "Then how to we beat him? I mean, if he can predict what you'll do, then how are you going to get a plan that he won't know?"

"All we need to do is keep him away from Esthar," Squall said. "Once that threat is delt with, we should find a way to go up against him directly."

"And how're we gonna keep him out of Esthar?" Zell asked, crossing his arms.

Simple, Squall thought. "Selphie?" he asked, turning to look at her.

"Yeah?"

This feels... incredibly stupid. Oh, well. "What's our plan?"

Selphie blinked at him. Then a slow smile began to spread across her face.

"Heeeeey...!"

Squall stepped into his room, forehead throbbing painfully. Selphie's plan--while having merit in the fact that it wasn't like Squall at all, was (in Squall's opinion) rather lacking in one area: sanity.

Quit complaining, Squall admonished himself. You wanted something unpredictable, you have it. Now just try to figure out how to make it work.

If only we could get our hands on about a hundred Ultima stones...

Moving towards his bed, he paused, looking at the note laid on the bedside table. Picking it up hesitantly, he hoped it wasn't another gift from Dyne to take the place of the chain.

Squall, it read. It was written in ink, in a hurried scrawl. Meet me in the training center.

Bring your gunblade.

Squall dropped the note. Seifer, he thought. It was late--almost eleven. A training bout? Squall shook his head, absently wondering how long it had been since the last one. Almost a year--or was it over a year? Should I take up the invitation?

It might as well have been a rhetorical question. The answer was already set: of course he would. Seifer was challenging him.

And Squall had never failed to answer a challenge.

Seifer stared at the carcass at his feet, growling. The Wendigo had given him a good run, but it had still died far too easily. And he had had a really bad day.

I need a better opponent, he thought. One I can really test my skills against. One who will give me a good fight...

"Seifer."

Seifer spun around, staring at Squall. The SeeD had come up behind him, almost noiselessly. His gunblade hung from his right hand, trailing the ground.

Seifer's hand clenched around his Hyperion, and he stared at Squall. "You came," he pointed out needlessly, eyes narrowing. Squall nodded. Seifer looked over Squall's shoulder at the door. "This'll be the last time, Squall," he said.

The tiniest hint of confusion flickered in Squall's eyes, but he masked it well. "Are you planning on killing me?"

"Not at all," Seifer said, gesturing with his gunblade. "Just a feeling. There isn't anything more after this."

Squall shook his head. He's confused, Seifer thought. Good for him.

Raising the Hyperion, Seifer moved into a fighting stance. "You ready for this?"

Squall nodded, raising his gunblade. Then, in a concious act of imitation, Seifer pulled his back into Squall's classic pose. See what he makes of this.

"Have at!" he growled, charging the younger SeeD.

Squall ducked away with almost casual ease, turning to face Seifer as he charged past. Then he just stood there, waiting.

Seifer growled, swinging the gunblade in a tight arc. Again, Squall didn't seem to move as he parried it. The gunblade went flying, and Seifer stared at Squall.

"What are you waiting for?" he demanded. "Why aren't you doing anything?"

"I'm trying to see what you're up to," Squall said tonelessly.

"Don't you already know?" Seifer snapped, retreiving his blade. Squall shook his head, never taking his gaze off of Seifer. Seifer readied his offences, and charged with a flurry of blows. Squall's gunblade met his countless times, and Seifer never scored a hit. As he backed off, cursing, Squall said nothing, did nothing. It was enough to drive Seifer insane.

"You're losing it, Seifer..."

The words, flung at him from the deepest recesses of his memory, goaded him on to strike at Squall again. Squall sidestepped easily, and Seifer tripped on the trailing tip of his gunblade. Falling to the floor, he twisted and landed on his back. Squall had turned to look at him, no emotion showing in his eyes. Seifer got to his feet, breathing heavily more out of rage than exertion.

"What the hell are you trying to prove, Squall?" he demanded.

"I'm not trying to prove anything," Squall said, resting the tip of his gunblade on the ground. "You?"

The question caught Seifer entirely off-guard.

"What makes you think I have anything to prove?" he snapped.

Squall only stared at him as if Seifer was being incredibly dense and he only had to wait a few moments for his opponent to finally figure it out.

Seifer extended his blade. "Fight, damn you!"

This time, Seifer took a different strategy. Making a feint towards Squall's side, he ducked in as Squall moved to parry it. Raising the sword for a downwards strike, he paused as the tip of Squall's blade suddenly appeared between his eyes. Slowly, he lowered the Hyperion to his side.

"Why are you doing this?" Squall asked.

"What?"

"You can fight better than this. I've seen you. Why are you holding back?"

Seifer snarled and lunged, but Squall only took a step back out of range. Seifer moved in with a spinning lower cut that could have sliced Squall's leg off, but Squall's gunblade seemed to materialize by his side as if by magic. The Hyperion clanged harmlessly off.

"I don't damn know!" Seifer yelled. "Maybe..." Seifer stopped himself, winced, and turned away, stalking to the fence around the edge of the training center.

"What?" Squall's voice was almost gentle. Seifer shook his head.

"That day. After Ultimecia died. The Garden flew over Balamb. What were you thinking?"

Squall didn't respond for a moment. "I was thinking about how lucky we were. To still be alive."

"And you didn't know I was there? In Balamb? Watching?" Seifer didn't need to turn around to know that Squall had shaken his head. "I saw you. Saw the Garden. And I had the gall to feel proud of you. Proud that you survived. That you did what I never could!"

Spinning, Seifer struck at Squall again. The next few seconds were a flurry of impossibly fast attacks and counterattacks, parries, thrusts, and lunges. When Seifer backed off again, he noticed that he had actually driven Squall back a few steps.

"Why?" Squall asked.

Seifer shook his head. "Once, just before my first SeeD cadet's exam, I came to the Training Center. I found a T-Rexaur, a baby one, newly hatched. They're still dangerous at that age, though--the thing was almost as big as I was."

Squall was silent, watching him. Seifer raised his head a bit, looking at the ceiling.

"So I figure, 'sure, why not?' I mean, it was a great way to test my skills without getting slaughtered. But it wasn't that easy." A faint smiled touched his lips. Been a while... been forever since then. I can't believe I actually miss those days. "But I made a bit of a misjudgement. See, older T-Rexaurs are really a lot less dangerous for people like us to handle. They're strong enough, all right, and they can take one hell of a punishment. But if you're quick enough, they can't even hit you. The smaller ones are a lot more agile."

Seifer paused. Squall, guessing that there had to be more to the story, let Seifer tell it at his own pace. Seifer looked at him, smile disappearing into a scornful frown.

"I spent over an hour fighting it," he confessed. "I didn't want to give up, because I would have to admit I was wrong. That I had picked too strong an enemy. Anyway, finally I got it down on the ground dying, and I was about to take the final stroke. But I couldn't. It had fought so hard, and I just couldn't make myself kill it. It was just a dumb animal--but I just couldn't kill something that was that good at staying alive. It would have been like the ultimate injustice. Like betrayal." As soon as he said it, he regretted it. Squall, however, didn't retort. "I can't explain it very well," Seifer finished. "But that's what it was like with you. Even though you were my enemy I was still proud. Still damn proud, even though I had no damn reason to be."

Squall nodded. "I think I understand. After what's happened..." Squall trailed off.

Good, Seifer thought. Don't open up. Stay like you always have been. That way you won't regret it later. "We've never been closer, have we, Squall?" Seifer asked. "Now that you know what it feels like." Squall nodded, the tiniest movement. Seifer shook his head. "You're wrong. I'm nothing like you, Squall. It's too late for that. Too late to be brothers, like Raijin said we were. Even if I did save your gods-be-damned life, it doesn't change anything."

"What do you mean?" Squall asked.

Stepping backwards, Seifer took a second look at his opponent. "That's it," he said.

"What?"

Seifer drove the Hyperion into the ground. "All the proof I needed."

"Proof?" Squall blinked, and he frowned a bit. Confused again.

Bitterness infused Seifer's voice. "Proof that I'm the proverbial third wheel. The black sheep. I can remember that morning--that fight, Squall. A year ago." He ran a gloved hand down his scar. "As I recall, I beat you that day. You remember?"

"I spent four hours in the infirmary unconcious," Squall said tonelesly. "You got out earlier."

"I beat you, Squall," Seifer said, sneer curling his lip. "Last victory I've ever enjoyed. I fugure it isn't gonna get any better, so I'll just stop before it can get any worse."

"You're giving up?" Squall asked.

Seifer turned away. My dream... my hopes... even my posse... everything went to you at the end. You call this giving up? You can't ask me to fight a hopless battle. "Let's call it a tactical withdrawl."

"And Dyne?"

Seifer winced. I wanted revenge. But Dyne hasn't done anything to me. Dyne was just the next best thing--I wanted Ultimecia. And you took that away too, didn't you, Squall? "That's your fight."

"Where will you go?"

Seifer turned back around. "I've always gotta be doing something big," he said, voice low. "I can't stop, so I'm just gonna keep running." Not gonna stop until I reach the goal. And I'm sure as hell not sharing it with you.

If there even is a goal anymore.

Squall paused, thinking. "That's your decision," he said. "If that's what you want to do, we can't stop you."

"And would you if you could?" Seifer asked. Squall didn't respond. Seifer moved a bit away, and turned towards Squall again. Extending his blade, he made a "come here" gesture with his free hand. "One more time, Squall," he said. "Once more for old time's sake. Make this a fight to end all fights."

Squall nodded, and raised his gunblade.

"En guarde," Seifer said, and charged.