A Final Fantasy VIII Fan Fic
All rights to the characters and names of locations are owned by SquareSoft
Rated R for language and sexual content
By Toysaurus
Yes there are two paths you can go by,
But in the long run
There's still time to change the road you're on.
Led Zeppelin
It was a typical early Monday morning at Balamb High School in Balamb, New Jersey. Balamb, New Jersey was located in rural Gloucester County way out with the industrial parks and unknown dead bodies buried by the Mafia.
Seifer Almasy, the tall blond handsome star quarterback of the football team and school ne'er-do-well strode down the hallway as he always did, followed by his hang buddy, and fellow football teammate, Raijin. Raijin was a huge black teenager who played center on the football team. Some people were unkind enough to refer to him as Seifer's 'toady' but in actuality it just wasn't true. Raijin was nobody's lackey and anyway Seifer didn't need or want one. His ego strength demanded an equal in his schemes; not someone who he would need to explain everything to.
As he walked down the corridor, Seifer looked for suitable victims, preferably freshmen. For some unknown reason the tall blond young man hated freshmen with a passion. Whenever he would observe one standing by their lockers preoccupied with whatever personal business they might have there, Seifer would grab them by their waistband and the seat of their pants, pull their pants down to their ankles and ram them face first into the door of their lockers. And as if that wasn't bad enough, sometimes the freshman boy had been embracing the current male fashion of not wearing any underwear beneath his outer apparel and they would end up being doubly embarrassed and a public spectacle.
With freshmen girls he would subtly stick out his foot at an inopportune time and as they scurried by, Seifer would trip them. They would go careening down the hall, bumping into various students and bouncing off lockers until they would finally end up face first on the floor. If the poor girls were extremely unfortunate their skirts would have flown up to their waists and their underwear would be on full display to everyone in the hallways.
When that happened Seifer would throw his head back and laugh his big hearty obnoxious guffaw - "Haha!" And Raijin would join in and then most other people in the hallway would laugh too because they were too frightened of Seifer not to. Only a few hardy souls wouldn't laugh at all, but nobody would protest or cross him. King Seifer ruled Balamb Senior High.
Rinoa Heartilly, the beautiful dark-haired senior and head cheerleader, was preparing for another busy day of basically doing nothing. This was because unbeknownst to anyone except for the young woman herself, Rinoa had already completed all the credits she needed for graduation by the end of her junior year. Her guidance counselor hadn't been 'with it' enough to realize the fact and the dark-haired young woman was careful to not point it out.
Actually part of the reason Rinoa had chosen to do so was good; she wasn't yet mature enough to attend college and, not only would it help her to experience another year of high school, it also would have been a shame if Rinoa were cheated out of the 'fun' of her senior year.
Although the real reason wasn't nearly as grounded in motive as Rinoa had refused to move on because she was hopelessly, foolishly, beyond all rationale, in love with Seifer Almasy, who not only didn't love her in return, but found her obsessive stalking as laughable and treated the poor girl as if her love towards him and she, herself, were a joke.
All of her good friends were in agreement that the entire fiasco was surely a shame although they hadn't been able to affect anything that would help her. Rinoa had been driven by her love or rather her affliction to behave very inopportunely one afternoon. It was in the late summer's heat as the football ball team was devotedly preparing for it's season opener. The cheerleading squad was also practicing by the sideline of the same field.
Rinoa had foregone the utilization of her usual undergarment beneath her short cheerleader's skirt in the hopes of enticing Seifer. When the young quarterback had finally espied the true intent of her faux pas, he threw his head back in his loud traditional guffaw and, after laughing, alerted everyone in the general vicinity of what he had just observed. Quite naturally everyone, including the coaches, turned and discovered that Rinoa's hair color did not come out of a bottle.
Rinoa has been so chagrined and embarrassed that she ran weeping from the field followed by the haunting laughter of most of those present, including some of her so-called friends on the cheerleading squad. On the first day of school, she was still attempting to live that down.
Rinoa's father was a General stationed at Ft. Myers in Arlington, Virginia and was rumored to be quite influential with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Caraway only made it home to New Jersey on weekends. It hardly mattered because his daughter was so estranged from him she had adopted her mother's maiden name. Her mother, by the way, had died in a cruel traffic accident when Rinoa was a mere five year old little girl and the dark-haired child was raised mainly by a housekeeper who still resided with them. Although she lived in a mansion, Rinoa, beneath it all, was still just a hurt, sad, lonely, little girl.
Squall Leonhart was slouching his way down the corridor toward his homeroom. He was dressed all in black as usual. The young man was probably quite handsome under the mop of hair and the scar that ran across his face that he received from somewhere at sometime. No one really knew anything about it or him for that matter, fore Squall seldom spoke and never said anything concerning himself. It goes without saying that he was leader of the Goth faction of Balamb High and the natural enemy of Seifer Almasy.
The strange thing about it to most of the populace of the school was Seifer never challenged the number one Goth. Actually while not being outright afraid which was not part of the young quarterback's nature, he felt very uneasy around Squall and chose instead to usually ignore him. Squall, in turn, never acknowledged Seifer's presence in any manner.
As the morose young man turned the corner to head down the hallway in the direction of his homeroom, Selphie Tilmitt ran directly into him and fell ungainly onto the floor. Her short skirt flew up to her waist and she appeared oblivious to that fact as she smiled up at him with her tongue slightly protruding through her lips and holding her left hand palm up behind her head.
One might think she had orchestrated the entire scenario just to gain some attention from Squall, but he himself realized this was not the case. Selphie was known as the class half wit. Her favorite response to any question asked her in class by a teacher was "Huh?" None of this though stopped her from being a proud member of the school marching band and head of the Senior Prom Committee.
"Sorry, Squall, were you hurt?" Selphie asked while lumbering to her feet.
He shook his head.
"I was looking for Quistis. Have you seen her?"
"Yeah," the Goth laconically answered. And he pushed by her on his continued travels.
"Well, where is she?" the energetic twit asked sounding a bit put out.
"I don't have time for this," Squall snarled.
"Hey, up yours buddy!" the green-eyed, brown-haired young woman screamed at his retreating back.
Squall gave no indication that he had heard her shouted invective. If there was one thing in this world for certain, it was that Squall was used to ignoring hurled insults. He always acted as if he heard nothing and in actuality he consciously didn't; he had learned how to hide them deep inside of himself. Although they were still there buried deep inside of himself, rest assured.
Selphie was searching for her friend, Quistis Trepe. The young woman with the strange, almost exotic, name was a beautiful strawberry-blonde, although unfortunately she did all she could to disguise her good looks by wearing her hair up in a bun on top of her head and committed the horrible atrocity of keeping pencils in it. She also wore rather shapeless conservative clothing and squared framed glasses.
Quistis received nothing in her classes except for straight A's and was known as the class drudge. She knew this and didn't mind at all; at least that's what she told herself. The blonde young woman had big plans for herself and none of them included remaining in Balamb, New Jersey.
Despite her lack of affluence, Quistis' goal was attending Garden University next fall. The only way she could accomplish this, she realized, was to be a Merit Scholar. Even though this seemed like such a long shot, Quistis had never doubted her dream. This had caused the bright ambitious young woman to achieve straight A's since her freshman year. No wonder she was known as the class grind.
Quistis was planning on having the last laugh on her classmates at Balamb High. When the rest of them were all holding down their blue collar jobs and living in a trailer with a passel of kids and a poor wife who was old and weary way before her time, she was going to be living in a high rise in New York City involved in some sort of glamorous work. Quistis didn't know where or how but if determination counted for anything she was more than halfway there.
She currently was sitting at her desk in her home room. Quistis was early as usual and she utilized her extra time by studying ahead in her textbooks. The teacher, Ms. Xu, looked kindly upon the young woman. Quistis was by far her best student and the teacher understood very well Quistis' intention to flee this deadend town. No one knew if Xu was her first name or last name except for Superintendent of Schools Laguna Loire who she had been going out with for over two years and he wasn't telling.
Ms. Xu knew all about attempting to leave Balamb. She had even accomplished her escape to Garden University and had graduated finally with her Master's Degree and had successfully settled in the town of Garden as she worked towards her doctorate. But her father had grown sick and finally died and she had to return home to take care of her elderly mother.
Ironic isn't? she thought. A person just can't seem to run far enough away from Balamb.
Irvine Kinneas wasn't at school yet. In fact, he hadn't even left his place of residence. The long haired almost beautiful appearing youth was in his bedroom surrounded by all of his firearms. This was the only time that he felt happy; when he could spread them all around him and gaze at them.
There was a substantial amount of firepower present; everything from Glocks to AK47's. He had semi-automatic pistols, revolvers, high powered rifles, and shotguns among other things. When he wasn't out in the countryside firing them, then usually Irvine was cleaning them. He was meticulous about his care of his weapons. He was a firm believer that if you treated your firearm as a friend, then it would be there to help you when you needed it. Irvine cleaned them daily whether he had used them or not on the previous day. Irvine didn't know when or how, but he knew for certain that some day he would become fed up with all the insults heaped upon his life and on that day he would chose to fight back once and for all.
Glancing at his watch, Irvine noticed he needed to take his leave; he was already late for school. With a large sigh, he stashed all his firearms back into his duffel bag and hid it deep in his closet. Irvine hated school with a passion but since he had somehow made it through to his senior year, he had decided to stick it out and receive his diploma. Besides without it, Irvine was intelligent enough to realize he would be condemning himself to a lifetime of minimum wage jobs, if that.
His career goals were not extremely realistic, although they had the distinct advantage of being exotic. Irvine planned to become a mercenary when he was old enough. Up until then, he practiced with his weapons whenever time and money would allow. For all those who don't realize it, ammunition is expensive.
Irvine received Soldier of Fame magazine monthly in the mail and thought he knew all there was to know about being a mercenary. His parents thought it was an Eagle Scout magazine and while his father thought Irvine was a little too old to be receiving such, it made him feel good that his son was still rather unworldly. More the fools, his parents were. Irvine suffered them ungladly.
He of course didn't realize it, but he was already on a FBI list for citizens to watch closely due to his receiving the aforementioned Soldier of Fame magazine; plus Irvine visited gun sites on the internet hundreds of times every week. That alone alerted the government to him as someone to watch closely.
His main problem in life right now was attempting to figure out a way to beat the metal detectors surrounding all the doors leading into his high school. This of course was so he could begin stockpiling some weapons somewhere on school grounds just in case some day he might have need of them. It was a problem he was going to have to think on.
Zell Dincht aggressively strode down the hall on his way to homeroom glaring at each and every person he spied on his journey. He was hoping against hope that someone would glance at him the wrong way, smirk at him, say something insulting, etc. Zell would use all of the aforementioned behaviors plus some other ones more esoteric, such as displaying aggressive body posturing as a good enough reason to apply a good old fashioned ass whipping to the person.
For in short, Zell was the school bully. With the strange tattoo he wore on the side of his head and the pack of cigarettes he kept rolled up in the short sleeve of his shirt, Zell was a perfect example of a young hoodlum and in fact ruled the Balamb Senior High street gang with a fist of iron. His gang had successfully defended their turf against the advances of the gangs from the nearby towns of Winhill, Deling City, East Academy, Dollet, F.H., Trabia, and Shumi Village.
Zell still ruefully remembered the night they had almost lost to those dweebs from Shumi Village. It was just that the Shumi's fists were so much larger and they really packed a wallop, but finally they were worn down because they were just way too slow in their attack.
Zell was one of the few students in the school who still had his original parents and came from a basically stable family environment, except for one thing - he rarely saw his father. The middle age man was seldom home because he was one of the personality A types with his nose constantly to the grind stone. He worked six days a week, late every night and usually went in some on Sunday.
This didn't stop Zell from being close with his mother, who was a great card aficionado. It was this closeness that was the young man's saving grace because it certainly so far had kept him from drifting completely into criminal behavior. He was at least serious about remaining in school and acquiring his diploma, if only for the sake of his mother.
As the tattooed young man entered his homeroom and took his seat behind Quistis, she did not even look up even though she certainly realized Zell was there. They had no communication at all on any level…ever. Ms. Xu watched Zell when he leaned back in his desk basically doing nothing and realized that there always was an aura of loneliness around him; as though he were searching for some people who either didn't yet exist or he knew not who they were or where they are.
A young woman just entering through one of the doors at the front of the school cut quite an exotic figure. She wore her silver hair cut short and a black pirate eye patch over her right eye. No one knew what was wrong with her eye nor could they tell if her hair was a result of dyeing. That was because Fujin seldom spoke to anyone and when asked a direct question which she could absolutely not shrug off she would only answer in one word sentences.
From what anyone could tell, she had no close friends or a boyfriend. There were some rumors about her, but nothing had ever been proven. No one even knew where she lived and yet Fujin always appeared self assured and in fact always presented herself as someone who it would be dangerous to trifle with and most people steered a wide berth of her. Fujin appeared to be so unpredictable that even the great Seifer Almasy chose to have no truck with her and avoided confrontations with her like the plague.
The classroom filled up with students just as the second bell rang connoting that the daily grind of high school had once again begun.
