Uhh… a Zeikku, maybe? I dunno… and yeah, I know her eyes were supposed to be blue. I only just thought of it when I started playing the game from the beginning again right after I uploaded the first chapter ^_^;;. Oh, well…
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Chapter IV
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Seifer
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I was not a happy man. But then, I hadn't been for a long time. Not since those Garden wimps had gone and ruined everything for me. Again.
It hardly seemed fair. What had happened to my righteous, artistic soul? My romantic dream? My heart's desire - to find a woman and serve her like a knight. I'd lived that beautiful dream… I'd been living my dream for a blissful time… and suddenly, it had been crushed. I had been defeated, my own beloved lady had betrayed me, and people had wanted me to do things… to be someone I wasn't. A general… not the knight I was. Like SeeD… they had wanted me to be a soldier, rather than something more poetic. How the hell could I not have hated them, anyway?
I didn't want to command an army. I wanted to be commanded… commanded by a woman I could care for… was that so wrong?
Of course it was too much to ask. It must be. Why the hell else was it sitting here, on this bridge, staring at the sunset like it was going to answer some of my questions?
Because we were going to Fisherman's Horizon and Raijin had stubbed his toe again. That's why.
"If I don't take care of it, it'll get turn into a bruise, ya know?" he asked, carefully touching the ice he and Fujin had created with a blizzard spell to it to keep it from swelling. "And I might not be able to walk then, ya know? I'd have to have crutches, ya know? And -"
"And we'd never hear the end of your whining!" I shouted at him, standing up and scowling. Raijin looked surprised. I don't understand why he always looks so amazed every time I do that - I do it so often he might have become accustomed to it by now. Anyone would have, wouldn't they? But then, if he had, I suppose he wouldn't still be tight with me. Neither would Fujin.
I thought about apologizing. I actually wanted to. But do it? Hell no. What for, anyway? It was just a temporary weakness of my conscious brought on by those damn, stupid SeeD losers! I hated them - I hated them so much!
"Let's go!" I shouted, turning and beginning to walk along the long bridge that stretched on as far as the eye could see. "We're behind schedule as it is!"
"What schedule?" Raijin called from behind me as I continued on, Fujin following directly behind. "Nobody told me! I'm bein' neglected here, ya know!!"
When Fujin was walking in step with me, I made sure to turn to her and whisper something.
"Don't push him off the bridge yet. It'll set us back. Try and wait until we're there to teach him a lesson."
I looked away, making sure I didn't see her small smile. It would have embarrassed her too much.
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Zell
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"Here are our classrooms," Zell explained, strolling with me through the long, neat gray corridors of the second floor. "Here we have the physics department, I think."
"That explains all the gravity," I said with a grin. Zell just looked at me. I laughed at him. "Oh, come on, Zell, you take things too seriously."
"I never thought anyone would say that to me," he said, looking perplexed and raising an eyebrow as I looked intently at the pictures and displays up on the walls. "Whatcha lookin' at?" he peered at what I was so intently reading… or, not reading.
"What's this?" I pointed at a diagram with many color-coded levels and what looked like stairs and pipelines.
"That's Garden."
"Where we are?"
"Yup," Zell said, then pointing to one specific spot on an upper ring. "Here's where we are, more specifically."
"How tall is this thing?" I asked, noting the three rings above the second, where we were.
"What you see, plus two basements," Zell supplied. "And some adjoining stuff outside, like the training grounds and quad. Uh, those parts don't fly, though," he added when I started tracing the base with my fingers to find the parts that were separated by a dotted line.
"But everything inside this line does?" I asked, amazed. "How is that possible?"
"It uses some antigravity… skylift… uhh… air… thing…" Zell scratched the back of his head again. Then he smiled embarrassedly. "I don't really know."
"A skylift antigravity wheel?" I asked. "Very colorful, spins around and makes things fly?"
"That sounds about right," Zell said. He blushed, actually, and I had to smile.
"I can't imagine how that would work. Even the biggest airships aren't half as large as all of this, but… you're saying it lifts all of it?"
"It does," Zell answered. "Don't ask me why…"
"Well, I wouldn't worry about it," I turned and carried on. "Now what's this?"
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Zell
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It was impossible not to stare.
Oh, I tried all afternoon, but failed miserably. How could I not? She was so… so… alive! Everything she did… for the first time in my life, I was having trouble keeping up with somebody. There was no waiting with Rikku - and I liked that.
"What's this?" she pointed to a large photo on one wall. I smiled.
"That's a painting of Ragnarok."
"An airship?" she looked at the back, where the thrusters were glowing brightly.
"Yeah," I confirmed, pleased I was about to amaze her again. "But more importantly, a spaceship."
Rikku just looked puzzled. I grinned at her. "You know. Above the sky."
Her jaw dropped. I walked right past, now with the upper hand. "It's at Fisherman's Horizon right now, I think. The White SeeD use it sometimes. Oh, um, hey, I should introduce you to Squall. He'll want to see you."
"Who?" Rikku looked away from the painting and jogged a few steps to catch up with me.
"Squall is the, uh, 'Honorary Headmaster Acting Until Further Notice' from the 'Standing Headmaster'…, which would be headmaster Cid. So, since Cid is unofficially retired, Squall is the head honcho around here, without being the official headmaster."
"Sounds complicated," Rikku said, shaking her head. "Is he a nice guy?"
"Oh, yeah. He's a little cold, sometimes, but he's really got a heart of gold. He's a great dad, too."
"How old is he, anyway?" Rikku looked at me with those striking eyes.
"Well really he's only got about a year on me, but sometimes he seems a lot older," I explained as we came to the elevator. I let Rikku use it, then, when we were inside, explained about the Headmaster's Office. "Usually only SeeD get let up there," I told her truthfully. "I never even saw it until my fifth year here."
"Guess I'm lucky," Rikku smiled.
God, this girl was great.
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Squall
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Plainly, my marriage was in trouble.
I loved Rinoa. I loved Tira. However, it was very hard to do the former when the latter so often involved staying up late at night to help my daughter get to sleep. Nightmares about monsters plagued my little girl, and I had to do something about it… fighting monsters was a big part of my job, after all. The only problem was, I could only help her go to sleep. It was up to her from there on. And as satisfying as it was to see my daughter finally get rest, that's how unsatisfied my wife was. She didn't say anything, of course, but she's the woman I love and I can read her like a book.
I'd thought, after almost nine months of… well, just sleeping all night, Rinoa and I would finally be able to be intimate again… but instead, we weren't sleeping at night and still didn't get in anything else.
So here I sat, feeling very tense, very stressed, and very tired. I just needed to take a nap. I needed to go home and see my wife. I just needed to calm myself… what Irvine would term "Chillin' out 'fore I ruptured sumthin."
It didn't help my mood that it was Monday, and I abruptly needed to attend to several matters of urgency at once before the whole Garden was shot to hell for the rest of the week.
First in was Irvine.
Apparently, we were running out of fire ammo, and for some reason, Irvine really, really needed fire ammo to teach his class this week. Which, he went on quickly to explain, had nothing to do with the fact that Nida had just received ten sets of fireproof armor to teach elemental tactics.
"After all," he laughed nervously. "What would that have to do with it?"
"Of course," I replied, drumming my fingers on the table. "It would be very irresponsible of an instructor to put such armor on his students and use them for target practice."
"Uh, yeah!" Irvine nodded, his head shaking as he did so. "How inappropriate would that be? Hahaha!"
"So you wouldn't be able to tell poor Nida anything about these?" a voice came from the doors to my office. Quistis stood at the doorway, holding an orange vest with a rather sloppy red, blue and white group of target circles painted on the front. Quistis walked up to my desk and tossed it over to me. I caught it, but felt rather awkward doing so. Why couldn't we just talk about normal issues? Like running out of a certain type of ammo for a good reason, or…
"He's teaching a lesson right now," Quistis fumed, shooting Irvine a glare of death. "But he asked me to come up and tell you about this, Squall. Do you know what kind of problems this could cause?" she crossed her arms. "I hope Irvine knows that monsters like Bomb are afraid of this kind of color scheme…"
"Well, good then!" Irvine said, satisfied with him. "Doubles the effectiveness of the armor!"
"No, Irvine, it halves it!" Quistis snapped. "If no Bombs attack a student in the armor, then there's no point in Nida's lesson about the benefits of two combatants with the same elements canceling each other out, is there?!"
Irvine swallowed. "Uh… oops?"
Just then, something even more unexpected happened.
"Squall, Squall! Look what I got!"
Selphie dashed into my office, towing behind her nothing less than a five-foot tall yellow bird. A chocobo.
I stood up and gaped at Selphie as she brought it all the way up to my desk. Quistis forgot all about faulty fire armor, and Irvine (who had probably already forgotten anyway) was just staring at it blankly.
"Isn't he cuuute?" Selphie asked, hugging the Chocobo's neck tightly. "And he's sooo much more environmentally sound than the Garden Car! Plus he'll cost a lot less, and we can keep him in the training grounds, and he'll even be a mascot for our basketball team!"
Irvine blinked. "We don't have a basketball team…"
"That'll be my next project, then!" Selphie squealed excitedly.
I cleared my throat and frowned. "Achem… Selphie, I think you forgot about just one thing."
"Huh?" Selphie looked completely taken off guard by this one.
"The Garden's car seats six. This chocobo has room for two, at the most," I sighed. "Can you think about the math there for a moment?"
Selphie looked up at her precious bird, which was presently eating a potted plant from my desk. "Um… heh. I didn't remember that."
I looked at the bird, then the size of the elevator doors. "How did you get it up here, anyway?"
But that was when something even more amazing entered the room.
A new girl.
Her eyes, though she had no pupils that I could discern from the distance from which I first saw her, were a blazing green - or perhaps it was just the way that the sun was shining at her that reflected them at all our eyes. Her hair was blond, and done in some exotic style none of us had ever seen before, to be sure. Her clothes were plainly borrowed from the infirmary, but for some reason she wore a pair of goggles around her neck.
This strange young woman proceeded to walk nonchalantly right up to my desk and lean on it with one elbow on the top of it and a hand on her hip. Zell following behind with an embarrassed, apologetic look on his face for the lack of ceremony. The girl surveyed our faces. She saw everything - the cowboy, the whip-toting doctor, the cheerleader girl, the man-sized bird eating the rhododendron, the overwhelmed family man and headmaster, and the painted-on and ruined fireproof vest.
And she smiled.
"Oh, yes," she giggled. "I think I'm going to be right at home here."