In Who's Name? Chapter 20: Cracked, a final fantasy viii fanfic

Disclaimer: The characters and places belong to Squaresoft, which created Final Fantasy VIII. This storyline, however, belongs to me.

Hi. Thanks for the reviews. I'm in a mighty rush, because I have homework. Uhhhh…Angsty Dish is on hold until I finish my assignments. I'm on a In Who's Name roll at the moment, hence the sudden proliferation of chapters. Happy reading, everyone!

Title: In Who's Name?

Part 20: Cracked

Zell Dincht wore an expression of extreme concentration as he hacked into the three files that remained unopened on a little black floppy disk, mindlessly demolishing a plate of hotdogs and pigs-in-blankets as he worked. Around him, mayhem ruled as Selphie, Xu, Irvine, Rinoa and Seifer methodically eliminated monster after monster that poked its nose near them. It was a peculiar arrangement: Zell sitting in the centre of a circle of people, with a laptop perched precariously atop a boulder, and said circle of people skirmishing with a wide variety of creatures while Zell tapped away at the laptop, apparently completely ignorant of the sounds of battle going on around him.

"Why," grumbled Selphie as she dispatched neatly of a Grat, "do we have to use the Training Centre?"

Irvine trained his sights on a shaking bush. "It's the only area we can be sure of, Selph," he answered calmly. "If Rinoa's right, then no place in Garden can be secure, except this one. I don't see anyone placing a few hidden cameras or bugs, do you? Besides, I doubt any cameras or bugs could survive here…aha!"

Squall was close to loosing a few specially chosen words from his tongue as he looked over Zell's shoulder and skimmed through the information that Zell was happily churning out. Damn. Damn. Damn. Whoever They were, They had more than breached Balamb. Esthar, Galbadia, even the newly-rebuilt Trabia, which could have been completely built from Their funds…And as for governments and companies! How had Seifer managed to get hold of these? All on one diskette? It was probably a drop in the ocean, but the information was certainly damning. If only they could get hold of the real mastermind…Squall's eyes narrowed as he glanced at Seifer, who was silently battling away. The young Commander's jaw hardened slightly when he noticed that Seifer Almasy, his age-old rival, was battling next to Rinoa, in a situation very close to double teaming. How—

"That." Xu's clear voice interrupted as she landed up beside Squall and Zell with a quick flip. "Fisherman's Wharf. Quistis must have gone there. But if she left at ten, and she called me at eleven, she must have been doing something else during that time…" She peered at the laptop. "That's the file Quistis cracked, right? One hour—she'd have enough time to go through Balamb…hmm, those passwords are extremely interesting…"

"You bet," Zell answered. "Seifer Almasy and Squall Leonhart backwards. Quisty would be the only one who could crack that file; she's the only one of us who would even think of using that combination," he added absently as he let his fingers and nimble mind work on another file—number five.

Xu's voice was crisp. "She was always talking about Squall Leonhart and Seifer Almasy. Garden's best, she said, and one day they would bring pride to Garden and to themselves. She was very proud of both of them, and proud that she had two such outstanding students in her class although she said she could never figure them out completely. She used to get bothered because she had to try reading their minds for what she called a pre-emptive strike, before either of them came up with anything."

Squall remembered. Quistis had the uncanny ability to pick words right out of his mouth…so she did the same with Seifer as well? He glanced in the direction of the blond gunblade-wielding young man. How did Quistis manage to read his mind?

Xu continued speaking, her voice and face thoughtful. "A lot of us didn't understand what she saw in those two. Take Squall Leonhart—true, he never gave any trouble and he was almost the perfect student, but you could never get through to him. Too silent, the instructors always said. And Quistis answered back: he's too busy thinking to answer. Many of us feared that Leonhart would be a true mercenary, because he was so cold. Emotionless. Like a machine. A killing machine. Quistis, now, was different. She was certain that he wasn't the killing machine some instructors said he would be." Xu seemed to have forgotten where she was. "She said he would be one of the greatest Garden would ever produced. I don't think she knew what she was really saying at that time, at least not in the clairvoyant sense."

Xu's eyes had a faraway expression. "Almasy, now, was another matter. He drove everyone up the wall, and quite a few instructors quit because they couldn't handle him. For him, many of us feared the opposite. We were afraid he would be a true mercenary, because he had cruelty in him, cruelty and arrogance. Quistis was waiting forever for Almasy to become SeeD. One thing was, she was always correct when it came to judging her students' abilities—right on the dot. Almasy was the first time she made an error. Quistis never agreed with anyone else's assessment of him. She said—he was still searching for something, although she could never tell us what it was, and she believed, each time he failed, that he would pass the next time. Sometimes I think she just kept faith, and it didn't have anything to do with his ability. He never changed his ways, so how could she logically have any grounds to believe he would pass?"

Irvine's voice cut easily through the sudden silence that had fallen. "Hyne alone knows. But that's Quisty for you."

Xu gave a start and she blinked. "Oh! I forgot…where I was," she mumbled lamely. "Oh…" She glanced around quickly and saw that five people had fixed their eyes on her, having listened to her intently for the past ten minutes or so. She went scarlet.

"And I'm in! Ha, ha! Take that, you worthless database!"

Zell's loud voice proclaimed his triumph as he punched a fist into the air, turning the attention away from Xu.

"And—oh, Holy Hyne and Chocobos!" Zell's face turned white. "Dammit, Squall, we have a situation!"

"What?"

"Wherever Almasy got this information, it's enough to make the Organisation want him dead two hundred times over. And if Fujin and Quisty know about this, they're as good as—as good as—dead." He took a deep breath. "It isn't just money. It's blackmail they're using. And rogue ex-SeeDs. They don't want just to infiltrate the Gardens—they want to take over."

"But why?" murmured Selphie. "I know we make a lot of money, but is that it? Or are they afraid that we'll stop them?"

Seifer cut in, his voice hard and brittle. "More than that. SeeD…is a ready-made military organisation. Once you have every Garden under your control…you have the most powerful army in the world, stationed in every major country in the world, backing you up. You have effective control of the world."

They turned to look at him.

He was very pale, and sweat was pouring off his brow, his breath hitching painfully in his throat. His eyes were narrowed to almost painful-looking slits, and his whole body was as tense as if he was facing ten T-Rexaurs on an open plain without the help of GFs or Hyperion. Every one of his features stood out sharply, the lines of his face and jaw as hard-edged as granite.

Squall understood immediately. "You remember."

Green met blue-gray.

"Everything. They didn't kill me. Kadowaki is right. I tried to kill myself. It's a mind-altering drug. They tested it on me right after they caught me snooping around. It brings you to a low. Makes you feel like you're even more worthless than the scum you already know you are. It drives you to the brink, until the point where anything that's suggested to you seems the only way out." His jaw tightened even further. "I stabbed myself with Hyperion. Carefully. They wanted me to bleed to death. New way of killing. You miss all your major internal organs, and you deliver your own death blow. Suicide or murder? Nobody would know."

"Food and drink soluble?" demanded Squall, also turning pale.

"Food and drink soluble," Seifer confirmed. "It's tasteless. I thought it was water."

"How—how did you end up in the ocean?" asked Rinoa suddenly. "You were in there, and Quisty said she saw Hyperion…"

"I don't know," admitted Seifer. "I don't know anything about that. I must have passed out around that time. But we're wasting time here!" He gripped his gunblade. "Quistis—"

Squall interrupted him. "We'll have to go to the Headmaster on this."

"There isn't time!" protested Zell, Irvine, Seifer, Rinoa and Selphie, all in outraged tones.

Xu spoke up. "I'll tell the Headmaster, and to hell with him if he talks about rules. His office may not be secure anyway, so I think you guys should get a half hour headstart before I go barging in on Cid."

Squall thought for a moment—all of one second. He nodded. "But there's not enough of us as it is. Xu, tell Nida to meet us at the Ragnarok and keep quiet about it. Seifer, contact Raijin. Is there anyone else we might trust?"

Zell flushed. "My…friend…she works at the library here…"

"What's her name?" asked Squall. "How do we know we can trust her?"

"We can," insisted Zell. "Her name is kind of hard to pronounce, like yours, Xu. It's Antsy, or something like that." He grew redder. "I can never get it right. I just call her An."

"An-xin," corrected Xu, looking half-amused and half-insulted.

"Right," agreed Zell, brightening. "An-xin." He pronounced it 'unseen'.

Xu grimaced comically. "I think you should just get back to calling her An. Your accent is atrocious." She looked at Squall. "Well, where will you be going?"

Squall looked at Seifer.

"Fisherman's Horizon," said Seifer in answer to the look. "It's where their headquarters are."

They trailed out, and Rinoa glanced at Squall, wondering if she should leave first, or wait for him, but then she saw that he and Seifer were having a conversation in their usual style, i.e. looking at each other with narrowed eyes and grim expressions. Wisely, she followed the others and left the two young men alone.

"She was right about you." A pause. "And wrong about me."

"If she was right about me, how wrong could she be about you?"

A silence.

"That was the longest sentence I've ever heard from you, Leonhart."

"I'm usually too busy thinking to answer."

A raised eyebrow. "So she was right?"

"Is she ever wrong?"

The blond, green-eyed man gave the other a startled glance, and then threw his head back and laughed. Beside him, the man with the long points of brown hair falling into his eyes smiled very slightly, his mouth curving slowly, as if the muscles used were atrophied from long lack of employment.