Chapter Fourteen
Despite the thing about pix last update, the chapter pictures for nine and eight (I think) should now be up at and respectively
Also to celebrate 100 reviews, (you nice people) there's a small cartoon and a GB drinking game up at If it's not up it will be very soon.
Thank you all.
God has smiled upon you this day, the fate of a nation in your hands,
And blessed be the children we, who fight with all our bravery,
Till only the righteous stand.
You see the distant flames, they billow in the night.
You fight in all our names, for what you know is right.
And when you all get shot, and cannot carry on,
Though you die, la resistance lives on
South Park medley: La Resistance
Only the good die young.
-Billy Joel
Seifer looked up and saw her.
"No, I'm just lying on the floor because I like the pattern of the carpet." He fought hard to keep the relief out of his voice, and almost succeeded.
"There isn't a carpet." she snapped back. Seifer was pretty sure that the hard crisp words were hiding fear that would have had any sensible person running for cover, but as always Quistis' voice was cool and controlled.
That was SARCASM, dammit." He levered himself up onto his elbow, probing at a loose tooth and tasting blood in his mouth like warm salty metal.
"Having fun?" She raised an eyebrow, and if she hadn't practised that look in the mirror there was no justice in the world.
"Yeah, great. I'm thinking maybe next I'll peel off all my skin with a nail file."
"Nail file'd never work. Can't really get a good edge on--"
"Sure. You just do it with your tongue." The sniping was, in a strange way, reassuring. Seifer would have been really worried if, Hyne help him, she was polite.
A second voice broke in. "What exactly is going on here?' The voice was male, calm and collected, and altogether too much in control. Seifer hated it instantly. There was a loaded pause until he realised that the man was talking to him.
Asshole.
He ignored him, returning to the task of peeling himself off the floor. A boot poked him in the ribs.
"I said-"
Seifer turned and spat blood all over the man's feet, followed by the tooth, which made a little 'ping' as it hit the leather and bounced off. There was a pause, during which he picked himself up, looked down at his clothes and decided to not bother brushing himself off. "What do you fucking think?" He thought about lighting a last cigarette, because violence was always enhanced by nicotine, but decided to leave his hands free just in case.
Quistis moved to his side
"You okay?"
"Does it matter?"
"No."
"Then I'm fine."
"Excuse me?" The Galbadian soldier grabbed Quistis' arm, eyebrows raised.
Seifer snarled "Don't you think we ought to kill the fucking thing?"
Hyne, what was with this guy? Damn, he'd thought Leonhart was bad. The stick up this guy's ass had a stick up its ass, apparently.
Behind him there was a sudden sharp scream as two of the more impetuous remaining cadets discovered that bullet holes left in the wraith healed slowly with a noise like sucking mercury.
Someone tugged at the soldier's sleeve. There was a brief whispered conversation, of which Seifer caught snatches of ..'well, we can always kill him after." He allowed himself a slight grin. Never though he'd be so glad to have nothing to lose.
..apart from your head and hands and legs and hell, most of your internal organs…
There was a brief pause until Mr. Uniform nodded curtly and snapped off a slight salute. A salute, for Hyne's sake.
Quistis shot him a 'can you believe this guy' look, rolling her eyes, and suddenly Seifer felt very old, despite the fact he was probably a couple more years younger at the most. He slipped an arm round her shoulders, more to stop himself falling over than anything else, and felt her hand go to her whip in a move too casual not to be habit.
"I am prepared to die as a soldier."
"Really? I'm just going to shoot everything I see." He gave an evil grin. The soldier stepped back, almost imperceptibly. "Apart from bullets don't work on this thing. Hell, be my guest. Go mad. Works for me"
Quistis touched him on the arm. The firelight gleamed off her glasses.
"What happened?"
"When?"
"You know. It had you." She paused. "How did you get out?"
"It told me to take you to it. "He swallowed and it seemed suddenly loud. "So it could..eat you. I don't know. Nothing good. And it all kind of meshed with the Rinoa thing. I just…..couldn't. Not again. Not this time."
The slightly awkward silence was broken by another scream. Both the Balamb cadets' heads turned towards the sound automatically.
Seifer pulled Quistis forwards.
"We need to fight it. Behind it, there's some kind of head. That's where it keeps the magical shit. You break it, it bought it. You can't kill it normally. We have to get round it."
She started to reply, but he interrupted anyway. "Tell people. Otherwise we've got no chance." They were shouting by now, as the first group of soldiers engaged the spirit and the air turned thick with gunfire and shouts, choked orders and screams.
"There's always a way"
"There's always a way and it usually doesn't work. Just because it's lying on the ground and bleeding doesn't mean it's not armed and dangerous." He touched his scar, briefly. "Watch."
"Why didn't it kill you?
"Hyne knows. It was just playing. It thought it was funny. It knew I couldn't touch it Now it's really fighting." He coughed.
Quistis glanced over at the spirit. It was a sharpedged blur of motion, torchlight glittering off its long teeth and burning demonically in the dark pits of its eyes. People were dying. Some of the Galbadian soldiers who'd pushed past her and Seifer on the steps were lying in little tangled heaps around the edge if its reach. A few hung back, staring at anything and everything, Seifer, Quistis, the spirit. She grabbed one of them by the arm.
"Listen. You've got to get behind it. There's some kind of stone, and it's using that to get its power from. Otherwise we can't kill it." He nodded, and tapped someone else, shouting to them, and the words spread through the ragged group like a game of whispers, spreading out as people drew back to regroup and refuel and others jumped into the fight to take their places.
It didn't look good. In the time they'd snatched to stand talking, the room had seemed half –full of people, and now the ranks were already thinning. It should have been easy, the spirit hopelessly outnumbered, but the tactics learned in Galbadia weren't working with an opponent who was to all intents and purposes invulnerable. Too many people had looked up from what should have been a killing blow to see a hand holding a stolen knife sink itself to the hilt in their chest or a set of grinning razor teeth rip out their throat in haze of blood and thin saliva. Even now everyone knew what they were looking for, the spirit's position, pressed against the wall with its back to the stone head, made it suicide for anyone to get past to try and destroy it and impossible to surround.
Quistis squeezed Seifer's shoulder and ran into the fray, pushing her glasses up on her nose as she left and already shouting orders, trying to get the soldiers arranged into some kind of fighting group. Seifer leant back against the wall to catch his breath and surreptitiously check for any broken bones. He curled a hand round his ribs. Nope, seemed okay. From experience he knew he'd be okay in a couple of days with some rest, and maybe some aspirin, but it was a fact that he wasn't going to get either hanging around here.
One of the cadets gave him a hard glance. There were other scowls behind his back, sharp surreptitious whispers in between the minute's R&R.
He sighed. "Yeah, okay, I'm going, I'm going." and followed Quistis over to the spirit, muttering "Assholes" quietly as he went. Seifer could imagine what they were saying.
Trouble.
Traitor. Dangerous. Useless bastard.
Well, screw them. His burning anger made him forget the weariness for a few seconds as he wished them all on the island closest to Hell. It almost made him forget how glad he'd been to see them.
Sons of bitches.
Seifer's train of thought was temporarily derailed as a body-it was definitely a body, people usually came in less pieces-crashed onto the floor beside him. The corpse had a long sword in one limp hand that he snatched up, gauging the distance to the spirit. It was a new model, which surprised him, and the grips felt heavy and good in his hands, the length and weight of the weapon close to what he was used to.
Well miracles did happen. He was this close to several armed Galbadians and they weren't trying to kill him. Yet.
Seifer grinned sharply and joined the fight, pushing to the front as a couple of the Galbadians drew back to regroup. The growing anger in him filled the place that should have been occupied by fear. Anger at being tired and cold and having to fight when for once in his life it was the last thing he wanted to be doing. Anger at screwing it all up-again.
Anger filled him to the point where it blotted out all other feelings, and he welcomed it because it was easier not to think. Flashes of images came like strobe lighting, speeding up in fast flickering flashes one second and then next slowing so everything spun through the air like treacle, liquid and smooth.
Quistis was still up and fighting, though she was moving awkwardly, favouring one leg. She screamed orders in a cracked hoarse voice, trying to group the scared, weary cadets into some kind of formation as she dodged and spun in a lethal and vicious dance.
Save the Queen wove an intricate web of slashes round the spirit's head. It wasn't doing much serious damage, but it seemed to be slowing the monster, irritating it in the same was a cloud of biting flies would haze a T-Rexaur.
She's the only thing keeping them together.
Seifer felt a fierce flash of approval, even pride. Let Cid say that she didn't deserve her instructor's licence now. She'd probably kick his butt, too.
He moved up to her shoulder and shouted. "What's your tactic?"
She gestured with a crisp arm movement that would have looked a lot more professional if the hand in question hadn't been wearing a mitten. "Help me cover."
Seifer nodded to show that he understood and she shot him a grateful grin.
Taking orders from Quistis Trepe. He must be going soft, and more worryingly, that was only one short step away from liking it.
Aa, well, first time for everything.
Quistis stepped in close then ducked, sliding to the right to deftly avoid the swing of a Galbadian's blade that would have taken her head off. The cadet in question was less lucky, the sword passed through the creature's arm without stopping and the thing bent its head down to delicately take the Galbadian's head in its jaws. Seifer shouted and grabbed the man's collar to try and drag him away.
It bit down as if it was crunching the top off an ice lolly.
Crack.
The jaws locked shut an inch away from Seifer's hand drooling saliva and blood. He swore and wrenched it back as the spirit gave a snap of its head that whipped the corpse into a couple of younger soldiers.
Damn thing fought like a T-Rexaur.
It bent as if hinged at the waist and grabbed the ankle of one of the fallen men, hoisting him high in the air. Seifer had to rethink as a couple of pigtails fell out of the helmet. Her. Okay..
Quistis wrapped her whip round its neck but the thing still kept its back pressed against the wall, covering the head, while menacing the soldier with both of its free hands and all of its teeth.
The soldier, predictable and as befitted cannon-fodder, had dropped her weapon. Seifer stared into wide eyes, giving the cadet a couple of bonus points at least for not screaming.
Quistis jerked back on the whip and shouted "Now!" and he brought the sword down in a wide arc that slashed neatly as a bacon-slicer through the spirit's arm and impacted on the floor, screaming sparks.
Two things happened.
The sword clanked off the stones and broke. Seifer swore. Crappy foreign imports.
The soldier fell all of three inches before the spirit, apparently ignoring both Quistis and Seifer and the laws of all natural science, which dictated it should at least be feeling some pain, caught the stump with its free hand. Tendons stood out along its arm.
Crunch.
The numbers of live people were getting ever smaller. This should have slightly worried Seifer, but he was too busy staying alive.
And it was taking some doing.
He realised with a shock that there were no people hanging round the edges of the room, no one resting any more except in peace, or in pieces. A quick head count revealed only a handful still standing, maybe six or seven not including him and Quistis.
Fuck.
The spirit aligned the stump of its arm with the dangling hand and snarled as the tendons and veins and nerves began to squirm like obscene pale worms, feeling blindly for the wrist.
Quistis snarled "Oh no, you don't." and grabbed the hand by its clawed thumb. Brass rings pierced the web of flesh between thumb and index finger in barbaric splendour. They gleamed in the firelight as Quistis snatched the hand away from the questing stump of the spirit's arm. It gave a ripping zzziip as she pulled it away, the tendons lengthening to half a metre or more and resolutely refusing to snap.
The movement threw Quistis off balance, pivoting to stay standing with the fingers snapping at her face.
But her twist yanked the creature a half-step or two away from the wall, revealing the black crumbling niche at its back.
Quistis shouted triumphantly and threw all her weight into the hold. Seifer moved into attack from the left while a couple of the smaller Galbadian cadets moved in.
Was that worry on the creature's face?
The light glinted off its suddenly fearful eyes and off the small grey oval ball which came hurtling towards them from the back of the room.
For a minute it seemed as if everyone was frozen in place, eyes tracing the descending arc of the grenade as it swooped towards the spirit. It gave a jerk of its whole body like a dog shaking off water, tilted its head in a birdlike gesture, and then caught the missile neatly in its mouth with a soft clink as the metal glanced off hard fangs.
"What the fuck.."
"Who was that?.".
"Duck!"
"Where?"
"It's going to.."
Quistis let go of the creature's wrist and the hand pinged back towards its owner like a mitten on an elastic string. It bounced off the spirit's ragged chest just as it flicked its head sideways. The movement spun through its whole upper body as if the decaying creature was a champion shot-putter. The shot, in this case, was the grenade flying like a boomerang straight back towards its owner, who was no doubt wetting their pants and praying to Hyne.
Bad luck.
All the SeeDs dived for cover like frightened and sensible rabbits.
Seifer thought he caught a glimpse of the soles of Quistis' furry boots disappearing behind a pile of rubble before he jumped in the other direction. His elbow connected with someone else's nose just before his knees connected with the floor. He slammed his hands over his ears.
The explosion felt like a physical force. He felt the building rock around him, floor spasming like a dying animal and showering fragments of smashed rotting ceiling. Long moments passed during which Seifer really got to grips (again)with the realities of being turned into a human pizza before he uncurled his arms from over his head and ears and realised that maybe he wasn't going to die this time, either.
It was very quiet.
There was a groan. A shock of familiar messy hair poked up from behind a slab, followed by a face, still streaming blood from its nose.
"Isak?" His voice sounded oddly loud in the muted dusty noises. The whole building creaked like a storm-stressed ship in heavy seas and deep trouble. Other voices.
"Seifer?"
Great. A whole room of dead people and he had to bump into the one person who still talked.
"Save the reunion." He glanced round, temporarily disorientated and hoping for a second that maybe the thing was against all odds, now dead.
No luck. He could make out a spidery silhouette, still crouched with its back to the wall like some kind of preying mantis. It hissed.
Seifer sighed and swore, a soft stream of every Balamb curseword he could think of and then several foreign ones. It took some time until he finished off with "..and fuck your mother."
to find Isak staring like he'd been hit on the head. Which come to think of it, he probably had. Guy'd looked spaced out at the best of times. But he still had his pistol at his hip, and dammit, wasn't he some kind of marksman? Like that Galbadian who'd taken a shot at Edea in the procession? They must be good for something-one thing was for sure, they pretty well sucked at motorcycle stunts.
Why wasn't anything ever easy?
He coughed and spat, trying to get some of the dust out of his mouth. Nothing else moved in the half dark. The fires had gone out in the smothering fall of debris, everything painted in several shades of grey.
"Did you hear what we're trying to get at?" He waited as Isak shook his head and then continued. "It's got..like a soul. In a kind of statue. You're a sharpshooter. Could you shoot it?"
Isak's round, earnest face squinted, possibly weighing up the disadvantages of not being a sharpshooter at this precise moment. "Where?."
Seifer pointed. "Behind it." He narrowed his eyes, waiting impatiently for the spirit to move and then caught a quick glimpse of the top of the head behind a blur of flying rags and limbs. It was easy to see, if you knew what you were looking for, the little flecks of glittery stone made the head shine oddly even in the dim light.
"There. Try not to hit anyone." He thought for a second. "Not that I care, but fuck, there's hardly anyone left."
Isak nodded, uncharacteristically silent. He sighted and aimed, resting his arm nonchalantly on the back of a body, frayed cuffs trailing down to soak with blood and bile. Seifer wondered morbidly if he'd really noticed and if he hadn't what he'd do when he found out. Probably nothing, in a combat situation there wasn't any time for sentiment, but this was Isak after all. He waited for the shot, crossing everything that could be crossed.
There was an abortive click. Lady Luck must have decided to take the night off. Typical damn woman.
It was followed by a curseword from Isak "Damn thing jammed." He scraped futilely at the barrel.
"You're a soldier. If it jams, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway."
"There's someone who doesn't have to pay for spare par ..oh shit.."
The two men both dived in opposite directions as a falling body scattered the rocks they'd been sheltering behind. Seifer circled and grabbed Isak as the other soldier made to go back and check the body. "Get out of there! Hyne, I'm surprised you lived past five. No survival instinct. At all. He's dead. You're not yet. Forget it"
"She." Isak looked stricken.
"Doesn't matter. Still dead. Look, I'll keep it busy and you go pick that thing up and drop it on the floor. And then Game Over, Insert fucking Coin."
"But we haven't got any weapons." Isak groaned and glanced round at the room, which was beginning to be decorated in an interesting new theme known as SeeD Parts Scattered All Over.
Parts of it were on fire, other bits were falling apart, and the numbers of people left standing were beginning to look decidedly thin on the ground.
"That won't matter." Seifer pointed to where the thing was grappling with one of the few remaining soldiers, back pressed resolutely to the niche holding the statue.
He thought that they had no imagination. If it had been him, with no reason to fight except a crappy plastic medal and a pay packet, he would have headed for the hills five paragraphs ago.
"It knows we can't leave, so we've got to go to it, but there's only one of it. We can do this." He swallowed and hoped that the younger SeeD would believe him. Realistically, of course, they hadn't got a hope in hell. Seifer was never one for motivational speeches, but even he knew that shrugging and saying" Let's go get torn to pieces" wasn't exactly going to make anyone leap to their feet and agree.
Isak took the hook, swallowed. "Okay."
"Go. Now."
They advanced together. Seifer frantically scanned the room for Quistis, kicking someone's leg out of the way. She wasn't there.
The thing swung round from throwing someone else into a wall and the part of his brain that always noticed stupid things at times like this noted, damn, it hasn't got many more holes in. The spirit stretched out its arms, the hands contorted into claws, with, yes, very damn long nails, and hissed, baring long yellow teeth.
It looked like it was beckoning. Seifer grasped for a thread of his old confidence, trying to make himself believe that this was going to work.
He moved forwards to confront it, ducked as the claws shot over his head and then body-slammed it, grabbing it by the shoulders and trying to knock it off balance, just for a second. Flesh slid unpleasantly under his hands as he fought for a grip.
"Isak!"
Isak gulped-Seifer swore he could hear it from where he was-and darted out from behind him, hands outstretched to grab the head. The spirit snarled like an angry dog, lips curling to show more teeth than anything normal ought to have, and threw Seifer to the side. For a moment Seifer thought Isak would make it anyway, but then the thing bent, grabbed the Galbadian soldier by the leg and hauled him back, boots scraping on the stone. His fingers clawed at the edge of the alcove.
Not far enough. Pity. Everything seemed like it was happening very far away Isak spun and slammed an elbow into its chest and the spirit reached out, grabbed him by his ragged shirt collar, backhanded him casually a few times across the face and kicked him aside. He didn't move again.
Seifer swore and peeled himself up off the floor, slowly and in stages, crawling to his knees and grabbing the wall to help pull himself up. His ribs ached, and he curled a hand round them, his breath steaming in the air, and staring at the creature as it turned round from Isak, slowly. How did he get stuck having to do the right thing? Too dumb to just walk away, he guessed. Just his luck to have it all end like this, and the worse thing was, no one was ever going to know. Fucking pointless.
It smiled, and the smile freaked Seifer out even more than its snarls. Things with mouths like steak knives weren't meant to grin. Stains that looked like old rust caked them thickly.
You lose.
And the answering unspoken words in his head were, I know.
Seifer always played to win. Coming second was just a nice way of saying that you'd lost, and often, coming second in a real fight meant you wouldn't be fighting again, or doing anything else again except maybe sucking your meals through a straw. So he'd learned to use the first thing that came to hand, flinging curses and taunts, gravel, chairs, and on one very blurred and half drunk evening, someone's artificial leg.
He groped in his pocket for something to use as it moved closer and his fingers found a last knife, tucked in the lining. He had time for one brief and vicious slash across the face as it advanced and saw the white of bone for a second before sheeting blood covered it and the spirit grabbed the knife by the blade, snapping it in half with a sharp metal ping and throwing it over its shoulder. There was a brief scream from the room behind it.
It slammed him to the wall at the side of the niche, and he felt the grating of stone behind his back as dust cascaded from the crumbled stones. Seifer stretched his hand to the side, fingers scrabbling at the broken stone at the edge of the alcove. Pebbles slid to the floor. Couldn't reach.
Shit.
The dust made him cough and then just breathing became very important as the thing grabbed him round the throat and lifted him a good half-foot off the floor. This was crazy. It shouldn't even be able to hold him still, it had muscles like string beans. He kicked it viciously between the legs. Nothing.
Couldn't breathe.
Seifer gave up trying to get at the rock and started trying to wrench its hands from around his neck. There was a soft slurp as the wound he'd left on the thing's face started to close over, sealing up like a jacket zipper to leave unmarked flesh behind it. The room was very quiet behind him. He hoped Quistis was all right, even though the odds were that she wasn't. He kicked it again, black spots starting to dance at the edge of his vision. The room spun sickeningly. It dug its fingers harder into the side of his neck and he could feel his eyes rolling up.
Fuck…
Seifer tried to kick again, not sure if he connected or not because at this point he really couldn't feel his feet, but no one was going to say that he didn't fight till the bitter end…
It let him go.
In the fragment of a second before he hit the floor he saw a blur of blond hair and parka trim and realised that it was Quistis. By the time he looked up and his neck felt at least kind of normal she had her whip around its throat and seemed to be trying to unscrew its head. There was a long knife at her hip, already sticky with blood and hair. Seifer reached out a hand for it, and Quistis nearly took his head off with a kick before she realised it was him and pulled it in mid-air.
"Sorry" Her face was red from the effort, but she at least seemed to be causing the spirit some pain, or at least had it jerked up on its toes. The knife came unsheathed with a metallic swish and he stabbed it through the garment that covered its body, pulled it out with a sucking noise and sunk it up to the hilt again, leaning all of his weight onto the blade and ripping down until the tip got caught in a rib. Blood oozed from he cuts, and then stopped. He tugged at the knife, the hilt wet and slick in his hands.
Just a bloody way of wasting time.
Seifer jerked his head at Quistis, towards the niche. About level with his expectations, none of the Galbadians had materialised out of nowhere to save the day and destroy the statue, possibly due to the fact that most of them were lying in small pieces around the room.
She grinned, teeth white in a face dark with bruising and blood. Her glasses hung wildly skewed on her nose. Seifer mouthed "let go" It hurt to talk. She shook her head.
"Stupid bitch. The head…"
His throat felt like it had been sandpapered.
His hand dived into his pockets again and touched something smooth and round.
A cherry bomb. Funny. He'd thought that they'd all fallen out of his pockets when they'd been running through the forest.
Maybe luck was on his side for once.
Seifer threw it sideways, towards the statue instead of at the thing, and then as he saw it sparkle darkly in the air he realised that it wasn't any kind of fucking bomb, it was the damn transmitter.
Should have realised that the only kind of luck he got at the moment was the bad kind.
Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. The thing slammed an elbow back into Quistis' face and he saw her reel backwards. A swipe from a clawed hand finished what the elbow had started, throwing Quistis down. Her face looked so surprised. That was mainly what he remembered later, surprise and shock and dust, empty screams and the thud of falling bodies, just another set of images to add to the montage of violence that woke him in the early hours.
Time started moving again as Quistis hit the floor behind him and there was a kind of sickening crack he'd heard too many times already, his brain shouting NO! and at the same time realising whatever he did it wasn't going to make a blind bit of difference because they were all fucked anyway.
And right then was when the roof fell in.
It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye…while beta reading this my sister's crits included "too much grues, not enough omm" and "a higher body count than Hot Shots Part 2."But I think it works-maybe a bit short and non-plotty-it was the end of chapter thirteen, but it just got too darn long so I had to split it. Anyway, hope you liked it.
Many thanks to Dust Traveller for giving me lots of military stuff and assassination techniques, they were much appreciated. Long time no see, d00d.
And, to (in alphabetical order)
Altol ( and new F &I nice surprise! But why are they in the broom cupboard?) anime-diva(haven't I seen you on the SF message board?) breaker-one (ferrets on crack seem to be a favourite) caroline( for everything, including early-morning karaoke-and see the walking wounded and the living DEAD!LALA) CelesteSpring (next projects, in order, are 1/ South Down The Coast-romance flavoured GB sequel 2/edit GB and pimp it round sites 3/fanfiction for sister's online comic Blackthorn 4/ write webcomic The Blue Cat Club with sister's art) Dalpal( kissies, well, they're coming, but it might take a while)iina lakso (yes, I will join, just give me time) Imuthis (swearing most certainly does..suit you, sir) Jindy Wahr (way with words-I like:D) pyro girl (the html shld be sorted) Tanya (ta)seatbelts(d00d, I love you guys.)superviolinist (like I said, html sorted now) and last but not least Verdanni De La Rosa.
Phew.
I got a couple of reviews this time saying that the fic's confusing. And then I printed it out and read it all through, and it is, at least at the end. So here's a quick summary of what's gone on so far, just in case you've lost the plot.
Seifer comes out of time compression and finds work as an assassin in an urban slum until a crop of wanted posters appear with his face on them. Realising that he's wanted by both Martine and Cid, he starts running and is caught by an ex-Seed somewhere in the snowbound Trabian woods, Quistis is sent to take him back to Balamb Garden for trial or exoneration, and given a sensor linked to her vital signs that allows her to
track his movements and cause acute pain when she feels like it. On the way to the ship they run into a party of Galbadian soldiers.
And this is when it starts getting complicated.
Basically the thing they have to fight is a kind of spirit of place that for reasons unknown keeps its soul, whatever (think Yura and her comb in Inuyasha) in a carved stone head bricked up in a wall (source, well, lots of Celtic myths are based round heads- Bran in the Mabinogion, and a couple of old English houses have skulls or weird stones in walls or attics that can't be taken out.) This spirit is very old, and nearly dead, as it 'feeds' on deaths, or whatever is released by things dying, soul, spirit, ki, anma, call it what you will, and where it is was once a great house, but it's now a backwater. However it still has certain abilities, such as the power to take over the body of something that's already dead, freeze people, cast a glamour over its surroundings, and, for some reason, make ghostly animals appear. Although the spirit has these l33t skillz, it needs some kind of physical presence, and it's still weak so can only manipulate dead things. (The ghost wolves in the forest don't kill people, all the injuries are self-inflicted.) So it asks for volunteers.
Enter Seifer, the world's favourite minion, who takes it up on the offer, figuring that he can fake it (it's not like he hasn't had experience) and get them both out of there. This seems to work for a time, but then he can't find Quistis and eventually goes to sleep. But this time the spirit has 'digested' its previous meal of crispy fried free range SeeD, enters his dreams to find out that hey, he really isn't one hundred per cent gone on this evil minion thing, and takes over his body (a la Snatchers)The spirit in Seifer's body goes to visit Quistis, teases her a bit, lets Seifer say goodbye to her for reasons of its own( mindfuckery, and the author thought it would be cool) It then goes to the main hall where the head is concealed behind the wall, channels more power, and tells Seifer to go get Quistis for a midnight snack. This cuts a little too close to the Rinoa thing for Seifer, who tells it to go to hell and starts fighting it. However at this stage it still has no actual physical body again and this time there aren't any dead guys to use. Seifer quickly realises where it keeps the mojo and that it can't hurt him, at which point the spirit has to do something fast, draws all of its power off the building and takes on a physical form that can mend itself. This, however, returns the mansion to its original form, which has a lot more holes, and releases all the other SeeDs who proceed up to the hall to kick some monster ass.
Okay, now I've probably completely lost everyone. It made sense in my head. If I was a good writer I wouldn't have to explain it*sigh*More holes than Swiss cheese.
And yes, I do realise I'm pretty much inviting a let's all play 'find the plot hole' thing.
Ooh, look, I saw one..*takes up magnifying glass and Sherlock Holmes style hat*
kate( It'll be like Swiss Family Robinson, only with more swearing. We'll live like kings! God damn hell ass kings!)