Chapter Fifteen: Miss You More
So alone tonight, miss you more
Than I will let you know.
Miss the outline of your back, miss you breathing down my neck
They're all out to get you.
Once again, they're all out to get you.
Here they come again..
James: Out To Get You.
The kettle whined irritably. Its red warning light ignited for a second and then winked out into oblivion. Seifer listened hopefully for the sound of boiling water and then stopped bothering after thirty seconds as boredom set in.
It was official. His kettle was now deceased, the latest casualty on a slowly growing obituary of almost all his household implements.
The air-conditioner had been the first to go, and that had been on its last legs since he'd moved in. Certainly it hadn't bothered Seifer much, because he liked the heat. The toaster had followed his air-con into oblivion the third post-sex morning, billowing clouds of black ashy smoke right into Quistis's face when she switched it on for a light breakfast. Its demise had bothered Seifer even less, because there was always the grill and failing that, takeaways.
It had annoyed Quistis considerably more. She was into toast, apparently.
She had suggested that he contact his landlord, and had even offered to type a sniffy letter for him, on her computer. Seifer had declined the favour because any conversation with his landlord, a small and largely inoffensive man, was bound to turn towards to the topic of four weeks unpaid back rent like a magnet to iron filings. As far as he was concerned, the less his landlord thought about him the better.
At least until he could find another job.
Seifer placed his elbows on the scarred and pitted kitchen worktop and lowered his head, staring ferociously at the kettle as if a threat could somehow resurrect its electronic innards. Unsurprisingly, it still refused to work.
He tapped its side, encouragingly.
The kettle still failed to boil.
Seifer mashed the coffee granules into powdery caffeinated dust at the bottom of his mug in frustration.
He thought sourly that it was a good job Quistis was away, after all. She had a medical need for coffee. They should get Odine to invent a new implant or something that drip-fed caffeine straight under your skin especially for her, like a cyborg super-soldier. Twitching and lack of sleep might be a problem, he supposed, but surely with some R & D the problem could soon be sorted out.
It was all Quistis's fault, Seifer decided. The malfunctioning kettle, and, quite possibly, the world. Her eight-cups-a-day caffeine dependency had obviously been the straw that broke the chocobo's back.
Sighing, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a battered packet of Lucky Strikes, flicking one cigarette out and slotting it behind his ear while he searched in the cutlery drawer for matches. His fingers automatically registered the presence of all three of his Sabatier emergency knives and a whole load of bargain-basement cheap cutlery before he found a tiny cardboard box.
Matches, matches… Now to see if the gas burner works.
To Seifer's surprise, it did. He ignited the ancient stove-top cooker and snapped the match out with a flick of his wrist before it burned down to his fingers. Intending to pick another match to light his cigarette, he slid the box drawer out with his thumb, and then hesitated, remembering the events of the previous night.
We went to the beach so Quistis could junction…and then she was going to draw off me…did I give her the spells back?
One hand on the enamel stove-top, Seifer closed his eyes and concentrated, reaching into the part of his mind where he'd always kept his battle magic.
Junctioning was among the first technique Garden taught to new cadets. How to summon magic and how to keep the spells you found ready in case they were needed in a hurry. There had been some kind of ten-step protocol they'd all had to painstakingly memorise as teenagers, but Seifer had long ago forgotten it and just went with whatever worked.
He held his left hand -his casting hand, chosen so he could still use Hyperion if anything went wrong with a spell – up to his face. After some consideration, he moved away from the cooker and extended his arm straight out in front of him. Wrist and palm turned upwards, Seifer reached, and frowned.
It was much easier to cast a spell you'd just drawn than to use stored magic, and he was badly out of practice. There was a faint presence in his skull, pulsing just behind one temple. It felt much weaker that he seemed to remember. He plucked the cigarette from behind his ear with his right hand, and touched the tip to the palm of his left.
And then suddenly, like a rusty machine gathering momentum, the spell caught.
There was a sweet taste in Seifer's mouth and a faint green glow in the air around him. The light lasted for all of three seconds before the magic ignited in his mind and came rushing down his veins towards his left hand like a runaway locomotive.
Seifer's head snapped back as a three-foot ball of flame blossomed in his palm. He cursed and snatched his right hand back as the cigarette held loosely between two fingers burned to ash within a second.
The spell was surrounded by the nebulous turquoise haze of magic, a faint scent of ozone and, suddenly, the smell of burning enamel as Seifer reflexively stretched his arm out further away from his face and the fire came too close to the cooker.
Shit.
There was some gesture to reduce the fire to a more manageable size, but Seifer couldn't for the life of him remember what it was. In a combat situation, things were always much easier.
Less time to think, for one thing.
Firing a spell towards your opponent required absolutely no finesse or technique other than acting as a conduit, some kind of vaguely sentient fire-hose. You didn't have to hold the stuff.
Seifer fought to keep control while the fire roared greedily. His left palm felt warm underneath the fiery globe but he was proving surprisingly fire-retardant.
That'll come in handy when they start lighting the flaming torches…
So far he was resisting the growing temptation to set alight to the curtains, but it was only a matter of time. The carpet sizzled in a circle around him and there was a strong smell of burnt hair. The magic ate at his mind, trying to get him to lose focus. Luckily for the upholstery, Seifer was nothing if not bloody minded.
Thank Hyne the fire alarm's broken as well. I'd have a hell of a job trying to explain this away…
He considered firing the spell out of the window and pretending it was ball lightning or freak weather conditions and then more pragmatically turned the cold tap on with his free arm. His palm left a faint print of condensation behind on the damp chrome as Seifer juggled the fiery orange of flame with his other hand. He offered a fervent prayer to Hyne, balled his palm into a white-knuckled fist and shoved it underneath the water.
There was s sudden hiss, and a smell of smoke.
For a second Seifer could have sworn that the flame continued burning underwater like liquid phosphorous. And then the magic left his mind, leaving nothing except a feeling of emptiness and a faint sweet taste on his tongue.
Seifer took his hand cautiously out from under the cold tap and examined the skin of his palm. It was unmarked.
List of things to do while Quistis's away. Practice.
Seifer had always much preferred physical combat to sorcery, and he was beginning to remember why. The worst accident you could have with a sword was to stab yourself.
In his eyes, magic was useful for two reasons. Firstly, to protect those who were too weak to wield weapons effectively. Secondly, for healing spells, but he'd always harboured the sneaking feeling that anyone who was really good probably wouldn't go getting injured in the first place.
Seifer brushed ash from the cooker onto the carpet and considered his next move. The magic smouldered gently at the back of his mind, stronger than before as he noticed that the packet of cigarettes resting on top of the cooker had somehow escaped unscathed.
Seifer cautiously took one out and placed it, unlit, between his lips. He could have got a spark with the gas ring, but he'd never been one to walk away from a challenge.
Second time lucky…
In the end it took Seifer four Firas, thirty minutes and three cigarettes to successfully light one smoke. The flat had escaped relatively unscathed, judging by Seifer's quasi-military standards, which registered anything with four walls, all the glass still in the windows and an intact ceiling and floor as 'habitable.' There were black scorch marks in the ceiling and decorating the plaster of the nearest wall. Some of the enamel from the stovetop had melted and dripped onto the floor, leaving small holes in the carpet and scorching perfectly round rings into the splintered floorboards underneath. The air was superheated and so dry that it stuck Seifer's tongue to the roof of his mouth, making it almost impossible to actually take a drag on his newly-lit cigarette.
Swearing, he opened the window and sat on the sill, feeling the hot air rush past him to the outside world as it was replaced with marginally less warm air from outside. Street sounds drifted up from below-mechanical music, and holiday noises.
Seifer ignored them all, glancing once up and down the dusty street just to make sure nobody had actually called the police. Still faintly surprised that his practising had worked.
He'd finally managed to quench the last Fira himself, rather than waiting for it to burn out by itself, firing it at something or sticking his hand under the cold tap, and he'd done it with only fairly mild, first degree burns, too. More importantly, the rhythms of casting were beginning to come back to him after nearly two years of wilful ignorance. Seifer was good at forgetting things, mainly commands beginning with 'Don't'- but he'd always picked up practical techniques surprisingly well. The rusty machine that was his junctioning technique was clanking reluctantly back into life after a little mental oiling
There were still three spells locked inside his head, saved for future cigarettes. Now that he'd practiced, they were instantly obvious as soon as he stopped refusing to remember them. They whispered gently along his synapses, bouncing off the bones of his skull. Seifer shivered, suddenly remembering Edea, and firmly quenched the magic with thoughts of water.
He cursed the loss of his lighter the previous night.
Looking back, it wasn't surprising that he hadn't been able to find the contents of his pockets after last evening's performance. It had been late, and quite dark. The gentle light of the draw point had proved almost useless for searching and neither Seifer nor Quistis had been looking where everything got to. After all, it had taken both of them a good five minutes to find Quistis's bra, and that was white. No chance at all for a small plastic lighter.
Seifer cast his mind back and grinned.
It would have been perfect, if it hadn't been for the insects, and the T-Rexaurs. Twelve-feet high giant dinosaurs tended to screw up romance big-time.
He also had a nagging feeling that maybe the night had been pity sex on Quistis's part, some kind of consolation prize for losing their argument.
Seifer got down from the sill, leaving the window open. Before he walked away he ran a cautious hand along the tiles above the choked dry gutter to check that Hyperion was still there, wedged in place by gravity and a few judicious bootlaces.
It was.
Seifer flopped back onto his mattress and reached under the table for a book. As he pulled his chosen text out a small piece of paper fluttered to the ground. Seifer dropped his book and caught the paper one-handed, moving one leg to avoid the cascade of books, some of them quite sharp and pointy, that followed.
It had some writing on it, in a familiar hand.
Seifer-
Do you know these books are really overdue?Take them back.
Q.
Ps. Have you quit smoking yet?
It shouldn't really have surprised him, but it did. Seifer would never have thought of leaving notes to someone who he saw every day. What was the point when you could just find the person and tell them? Exclamation points didn't readily substitute well for grievous bodily harm.
One the other hand, Quistis was the kind of person who wrote notes. She was even the kind of person who would go through all your library books and copy carefully the due-back date for each. They were listed neatly, in date order, on the other side of the note, with a coded system of exclamation marks to indicate the fine owing. She'd even spelled the scientific titles right.
Seifer groaned.
It was scary how neatly his life had divided itself into BQ, Before Quistis, and AQ, After Quistis. The Before part featured considerably less shaving, and more cans of baked beans. The After section had large amounts of sex.
On reflection, it was an equation he could live with.
A quick check inside the flyleaf of the nearest book revealed that Quistis was right, as always. Seifer was briefly puzzled why the letterbox hadn't jammed up with overdue library notices until he remembered that he'd given a false address, out of habit. He checked the calendar, did a quick calculation in his head and worked out that by now his library fines totalled approximately one week's worth of the wages he wasn't getting.
I really should take them back.
Common sense warred with Seifer's natural determination to do exactly the opposite of what Quistis said.
Eventually he came to a kind of compromise. He would go though all the books, and write any essential facts down just in case he needed them, for example, in a trial. And then, only then, he'd return them.
Seifer had the same problem with books at Garden, and for much the same reason; he never made time to read, so by the time he actually got halfway through a book it would inevitably be overdue. He'd renew it, forget to read it, forget he had it until the first warning showed up on his email account, and then suddenly remember why the hell he'd got it in the first place and claim some kind of special studying rule so he could keep it.
By the time he'd reached his last year, the librarian had mostly given up bothering him for fines, and he'd had several boxes of dog-eared books under his bed waiting for a library amnesty. The posse had been planning a celebratory bonfire on graduation day, but with one thing and another, they'd never got that far.
Seifer wondered idly if they'd found the books, eventually.
He picked up the nearest one and turned to the first marked page, ripping the fragment of cigarette packet out that served as a bookmark and throwing it in the general direction of the bin.
After five minutes he got up and took a beer from the fridge. Alternating swallows of beer with flipping pages, he scrawled misspelled notes on the back of a photocopied article with a stolen highlighter that had once belonged to Quistis. His handwriting was messy and round, the script of someone who was out of practice.
Sorceress + Knight = a sychological bond of unusual intensity.
Meaning?????
Broken by- death, repossesion and = severe psichological disturbance, loss of normal function.
(underlined several times)
and so forth.
Seifer reached the end of the sheet , frowned, crossed it out, and started again on another sheet of paper, got half way down, crossed the writing out, stared at the paper, wrote three lines, crossed it out and then wrote one sentence, slowly, in capital letters.
SORCERESS + TIME COMPRESSION = SCREWED
He scribbled the last sentence out, and replaced it with two words, the distilled wisdom of a dozen books and four scarily scientific articles.
TOTALLY SCREWED.
He underlined it three times, stared at it for a minute, rolled the paper up into a ball and threw it out of the window.
Quistis hadn't said much about Edea but he could guess the state she was in. Shit, it had taken him the best part of twelve months just to get his head together, and the sudden appearance of his face on wanted posters had had a lot to do with that.
Time compression has to fuck with your mind.
Seifer wondered vaguely if Edea had nightmares too, tried not to think about it before he started regretting not returning to Balamb, told himself not to think about Edea and went back to what he'd been doing before he picked up the books, which was trying not to think about Quistis.
It was four p.m, which meant she would be at the negotiating table now. Wherever that was. Busy doing…
Doing…
Negotiating, probably, and probably looking over her shoulder every five minutes just in case he decided to show up.
Seifer discarded that mental image. Quistis probably had enough sense to work out that he'd never known, exactly, where she was going. Oh, sure, he knew what town, but towns had lots of buildings, and a limited amount of time in which to search them, plus a lot of people to threaten before you chanced upon anyone useful.
Seifer didn't exactly rule out the possibility of getting to Velalisier if he needed to but, well.
It'd be hard.
Quistis can cope by herself, anyway.
Quistis.
His train of thought ran back to her every time, like a one-track toy trainset.
Quistis, of the seventeen invisible freckles, who'd built castles in the sand when they were both seven and then slapped Seifer when he'd knocked them down.
He'd made a stupid adolescent comment to try to get her attention his first day in Garden. In hindsight, it had been a big mistake. He'd been feeling a little more small, lost and scared that he liked to admit. So when they'd met accidentally in the corridors, and Quistis had walked right by without saying a word, Seifer had come to the conclusion that maybe he wasn't important enough to remember.
The thought had stung. So he'd said something smart.
The old Quistis would have slapped him round the head again.
The new Quistis had looked at him coldy through thick spectacles and replied "Do you think that I'm some kind of nerdy library girl or something? That I wear glasses on a chain and shirts buttoned all the way up and I read all these obscure artsy books and I'm some repressed horny animal just waiting for you to come along and set me free?"
Ouch.
It had taken Seifer aback for all of three seconds before his ego took over and said something flip and hard about how he couldn't help it if she was a frigid bitch. Quistis had automatically responded by sentencing him to detention, which Seifer had failed to attend, setting the stage for an extended campaign of rivalry and insults that lasted over two years.
Looking back, Seifer couldn't really blame her, but the memory of that first insult still stung.
He took a long drag on his cigarette, regarded the stump for a minute and then stubbed it out in the carpet, which smoked. Some of the people he'd briefly met in Marduk had invented a way of impaling hand-rolled cigarettes on a pin, to tease out the last bit of nicotine, but Seifer wasn't that desperate. Yet.
He flicked the butt into a corner and considered lighting another one but decided against it, piling books into a stack instead. Money was getting scarce, and when you got right down to it, chainsmoking wasn't actually essential for life.
Kind of the opposite, if you thought about it.
But Quistis hated it. And no matter how much he liked being with Quistis, that didn't mean he was averse to pissing her off now and again.
I hate the way cigarette smoke smells, she'd said. And think about what it must be doing to your lungs.
The last comment was typical of Quistis, who spent a good portion of her life planning her future. The only plan Seifer had about his life a decade from now was the vague idea that it might be nice if he had one.
He finished stacking the books and sat back on the mattress, regarding his faintly yellow-stained fingertips against the almost-white sheets and thinking that living on coffee and nicotine and food that came wrapped in greaseproof paper wasn't exactly the healthiest lifestyle ever.
Never one to do things by halves, Seifer smoked like it was going out of fashion. And he smoked for many reasons
One, because it annoyed Quistis.
Two, smoking wasn't really socially acceptable any more. This fitted right in with Seifer's oft-repeated aim to piss of the maximum amount of people in the minimum amount of time
The third reason, and perhaps the most important, was because it gave him something to do with his hands.
Seifer sighed and got up, absently rubbing a smear of charcoal off the peeling walls and transferring it to his faded T-shirt, where it stuck unnoticed. He dragged a large black rucksack out from behind the rail that he used as a wardrobe and started stuffing books into it a way that would have made any true librarian commit murder in their mind.
A casual observer might have wondered about the oblong dark patches left on the canvas in places, as if something had been sewn there and then peeled away. A casual and informed observer might have commented that the missing patches had exactly the same size, location and shape as the embroidered SeeD insignia that Balamb Garden used on their equipment. A casual and informed observer whose name was Quistis Trepe would have asked for her rucksack back, plus a couple of hundred Gil to replace the frayed straps and patch over the odd hole.
Seifer had acquired the bag in Trabia more by luck than accident and had kept it ever since.
When he'd finished stuffing books into the gaping mouth of the rucksack he shouldered it to test the weight and grinned as the bag held, straps creaking indignantly. Seifer dropped it on the floor with a thud, where it lay like a pregnant slug.
He gathered the remaining four or five photocopies together and whispered a few words of magic, summoning another grape-fruit-sized ball of flame into the palm of one cupped hand. The fire glowed out through the cracks between his fingers as he fed the articles in one by one. Their paper curled rapidly and crisped black, releasing surprisingly large amounts of smoke.
Seifer held the fire in one hand and watched the texts smoulder, checking the shelves of his fishbox bookshelf just to make sure he hadn't missed any. His fingers lingered on a well-thumbed copy of Cops without Tops for a second before he turned back to his pyromancy, dismissing the flame with a word.
Nah. Have some control. She'll be back soon.
Seifer's subconscious chose this precise moment to pipe up in a question.
How long?
One day wasn't it? She didn't say, but it can't be long.
She'll be back tomorrow.
Seifer got up from the mattress and shouldered his bag. Leaving the ash on the carpet, he made his way through hot, dusty streets to the library, where he unloaded his books to a small and surprised librarian. She picked through the pile carefully, as if conducting an autopsy, and raised one thin and perfectly-plucked eyebrow at him.
"These are several weeks overdue. I'm afraid there's a rather large fine."
"I haven't got my money with me at the moment, Seifer lied. "Can I pay you later?"
She looked up at him over the rims of bottle-cap glasses. "I suppose that would be acceptable, yes."
Seifer picked his bag off the floor and gave her a grin. "Fine. See ya."
The librarian started to say something, but Seifer was out the door before she finished her sentence.
Outside, it was a comfortable warm summer evening. A few weary tourists and vendors still haunted the streets, casting long shadows over the littered pavements. Foreign languages drifted from the seaside shops as Seifer walked by, comfortable in the anonymity of the tourist town's ever-changing population. He moved into the shadows automatically as he passed the shops and told himself it was only the heat.
Normal people, doing normal things, blissfully free from monsters and invasions, kept that way (at least partly) by SeeD. The coast of Southern Trabia had experienced a small population explosion since Esthar's barriers lifted. Small fishing towns like Hana, whose chief exports had been fish and people running off to the cities to find a new life, or at least a better one, had turned with magical speed into tourist traps for holidaymakers enjoying the relative peace and freedom of transport that the new age offered.
Seifer stepped over a longhaired man playing a mournful version of 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' on a set of pan pipes and continued home.
The road stretched out before him, dusty and hot, studded with people and winding round shops and houses, joining and merging and spreading with other roads and streets in a blissful network of communication.
He could walk, be on a train within two hours and wake up on a whole different continent. But somehow Seifer knew he wouldn't do that.
Quistis would be back tomorrow.
Quistis, with her coffee addiction and flyaway hair and the little cranky hamster noises she made before she'd had her first cup of coffee.
His Quistis.
The crowds thinned around him as Seifer made his way out of the tourist areas, heading home.
Back at the flat, he was suddenly, painfully aware that he had nothing to do. He couldn't remember what he'd found to fill his time before Quistis had come, but surely there had been something?
Anything?
Eventually Seifer took down Hyperion from its hiding place in the roof and began some training exercises. His muscles ached from the previous night's battles, cramping easily as he moved through warm-up exercises to loosen joints and tendons.
By the time he actually picked the sword up it was full dark, a chorus of crickets drifting through the open windows. Lifting, cutting, hands slightly apart on the warm metal handle of the gunblade as his surroundings slowly lost colour unnoticed.
He was half-way through a particularly intricate movement which involved slicing the blade up to waist-height and slashing vertically down, only to arrest its movement some twelve inches above the floor. He had just twisted his hands on the hilt to cut the sword through a horizontal slice, when there was unexpected resistance, and a soft thunk noise.
Seifer blinked and came back to full awareness as he registered two things in quick succession. One, it was dark.
Two, he'd just cut one leg from his only chair
It brought the training to an abrupt end while Seifer searched for duct tape, turned out all his drawers and cupboards looking for duct tape, went out looking for duct tape to buy and then came back and tried to mend the chair with parcel tape, cursing all early-closing hardware stores.
After that, swordwork was pretty much out. Seifer stashed Hyperion back up under the eaves and switched to playing Patience with a dog-eared pack of Triple Triad cards. It wasn't a particularly good pack, but then he'd never had much time for card games.
And he sure as hell didn't have any time for patience.
He stayed awake for as long as he possibly could but some time in the early morning sleep found him.
He was woken by a noise.
A loud, repeated noise.
Seifer rolled over, cursed as he realised that he was hugging his pillow and rubbed the sleep from his eyes with a faint sense of déjà vu.
Someone was knocking, loudly, on his front door.
Seifer swore and threw the pillow across the room. Dragging his knees up to his chest, he searched for cigarettes and cupped his hands to strike a light, inhaling deeply.
The knocking kept on. Seifer checked the clock. Midday.
"Quistis? That you?"
No answer.
The bangs continued.
"Okay, okay, keep your knickers on." Seifer grabbed for jeans, running a hand through his cropped hair. He bent nearly double as a bout of coughing racked him, forcing him to spit his cigarette out on the floor.
Got to quit.
The carpet sucked greedily at Seifer's bare feet as he retrieved the cigarettes for the floor and replaced in his mouth. Pulling a T-shirt on over his head, he crossed the room, bumping painfully into the table before his hand found the doorknob. He unlocked the door and dragged it open.
"Quistis?"
It wasn't.
The two people standing in the shade of his porch were much less welcome.
They weren't nearly as pretty as Quistis, for starters, and they were also the wrong sex.
The taller of the pair took a step forwards as Seifer answered the door, casually sliding one booted foot into the room. His partner slouched against the railing, chewing on a toothpick.
They both wore the navy blue shorts and shirts of the local police department. Seifer decided they weren't armed, and it was only the fact that both men looked far too inexperienced and ill-equipped to have anything to do with SeeD or homicide that prevented him from slamming the door in both their faces.
The closest man spoke first. He looked about forty, slightly shorter that Seifer, and there were crumbs on the collar of his shirt. "David Matthews?"
"Who wants to know?"
"We'd like to invite you to attend the station to help us sort out a few little matters that have recently been brought to our attention."
"You what?"
"You're wanted for questioning." the younger policeman said nervously from the porch. He was older than Seifer, pushing thirty, with a neat side-parting, and terribly well-groomed in a keen kind of way. The toothpick bobbed restlessly, held in the corner of his mouth.
"What for?" Seifer asked. He backed up a step, moving closer to the kitchen drawer that held his knives, his eyes flicking towards the open window.
A number of possibilities ran through his mind, one after another, maybe they'd finally caught up with him, a fatalistic thought that was almost a relief. Or maybe his offence was something more prosaic: missing rent, the fight with Lou four days ago, even the things he'd done in Marduk…So many offences, so little time.
Or maybe it wasn't about him at all…
The older policeman marked Seifer's retreat and took one step forwards while his colleague stood on the creaking landing outside and sweated. He rested one elbow on the doorframe and glanced round the room, eyes taking in the surroundings, and said calmly "If you would like to accompany us to the station, I'm sure we can get this sorted out as soon a possible." His voice was reassuring, gaze steady.
"Are you arresting me?" Seifer asked, trying very hard not to swear. He forced himself to relax, painfully aware that his muscles had tensed automatically, weight balanced evenly on the balls of his feet in a fighting stance.
He wondered what they'd do if he slammed the door in their faces now.
This time it was the policeman who stepped back. His boots clumped to rest with a hollow sound back onto the creaking balcony outside, though he kept his elbow resting on the doorframe. "No."
"So what the hell is this about?"
The older policeman sighed "Like I said, we'd appreciate some help with our inquiries. Tell him, Lynch."
The second policeman shifted awkwardly, wiping sweat from his face with the side of his hand. "It's about a young woman…staying at a hotel called the Traveller's Rest." The name he added afterwards was familiarly unfamiliar. Seifer recognised Quistis's off-duty pseudonym.
"Is she okay?"
"That's part of the problem, it seems." the older man said reflectively. "We've had a serious complaint from the hotel. Someone said that you'd been seen with the lady in question."
"I'll come. Just give me a few minutes to get my shit together." Seifer said. He gestured at his bare feet, mind running frantically to keep up.
The policemen watched from the veranda as Seifer yanked his boots towards him and started to lace them. There was a dried bloodstain faintly visible on the dark leather, a souvenir of the little T-Rexfest the previous day. Seifer casually rested one hand over the mark until he'd finished and then pulled the frayed hems of his jeans down over the cuffs of his boots. To his relief, they covered the stain almost perfectly.
And they'd said Quistis…
Is she in some kind of trouble?
I knew they should have sent her some backup..
Hang on, how do the cops know what I'm doing with her?
What do the police have to do with SeeD?
Nothing, that's what…
"Are you done?"
Seifer shrugged. He gave the room one last glance, picked up the key from the worktop and locked the door behind them. Turning to follow the older man down the steps, he stuffed his left hand into a pocket to check for holes, and then dropped the key in.
He thought of Hyperion, neatly bound in plastic sheeting and newspaper underneath the eaves of the house. Nobody would find it, not there, and his knives were pretty much safe. There were a few oddments of sharpened metal about his person, true, one razorblade sewn into the tongue of his boots and a small rod of aluminium hidden in the seam of the left leg of his jeans, for lock-picking.
Seifer hoped that he wouldn't have to use them. The policemen certainly weren't treating him as if they believed he was a threat, but there was something odd about the younger cop's behaviour. For some reason he seemed to be taking Seifer more seriously.
They reached the bottom of the steps. There was a police car parked neatly next to the rusting hulk his next-door neighbour kept for grocery runs. Seifer kicked its tyres as he walked past and thought he saw a curtain twitch.
Okay. I've just confirmed all her suspicions. Going to hell.
He stretched casually, narrowly missing the shoulder of the smaller policeman, and cracked his neck, glancing surreptitiously down the street.
It was empty, and the emptiness wasn't the determined silence of large numbers of heavily armed people trying very hard to be quiet.
Nothing strange.
Of course, maybe the small child watching them incuriously across the street could be a Balamb operative, but he seemed a bit young even for them…
But then, he'd been wrong before….
One of the policemen gestured him into the back seat of the car. Seifer sat down. Inside, it didn't look like a police car at all, more like a family saloon, if you ignored the trailing wires running out of one window to link the cigarette lighter with the blue light on its roof. Just a typical small-town cop car.
The older man put the keys in the ignition, started up and drove, slowly and without exceeding the speed limit, to the police station. It was a long, low building on the outskirts of town, in the opposite direction to Seifer's house, and painted a dark blue.
The car drew up outside.
Seifer tensed.
Okay, this is where they pull out the AK-47s…
Again, nothing happened.
Huh.
The older man gestured him inside. Seifer followed.
The policemen ushered him through a door that was identical to the rest and followed him in. Seifer took in the room at a glance, half-expecting to see Squall facing him. Or at least Martine, with his red coat and axe to grind.
He was disappointed.
The room was boxy, white and heavy with the institutional feel of public buildings everywhere. The walls were pale blue and cracked, lit with neon that did nothing to hide the stubbled faces of the two cops who slid into plastic chairs behind a low desk. Lynch gestured to a third chair, facing them. Seifer sat down. He rested his hands on the table and looked up at the two policemen, realising as he did so that any attempt to hide his identity probably wasn't going to work.
Quistis, I hope you're really in trouble.
Either this is about you, which means I shut my mouth and say nothing and hope to get out of here fast, or this is about me. In which case going with those cops wasn't the smartest idea I've ever had…
The emergency razorblade burned at his ankle.
Seifer watched both the policemen carefully, trying to calculate the distance to the door. The younger man's tag read D. Lynch. The older cop was M. E. White.
"Mister…" White checked his notes." Matthews." He glanced up. "Right?"
"Right" Seifer said slowly, trying to work out where all this was going.
Lynch brushed imaginary lint from his shirt, steepled his hands on the desk and watched Seifer closely. "Let me fill you in with the facts. Last night, we got a phone call from the receptionist at the Traveller's Rest. You know it?"
Seifer shrugged. "Sure." He relaxed, slightly.
Maybe this really is about her.
"She was concerned about the whereabouts of one of her guests who had disappeared from the premises leaving all her possessions without checking out leaving a forwarding address. The cleaner found several suspect items while cleaning room seven. It belonged to a lady who left this" holding up a laminated identity card, "at reception. As well as some rather worrying things in her room, which while not technically illegal, are nonetheless a matter of some concern. And you know her."
"Course." Seifer didn't bother to deny the claim. The fuzzy image showed Quistis, under a false name, her profession listed as 'librarian'.
The older man wrote notes on a spiral bound pad, the younger guy just watched, tapping his fingers on the table in a vaguely irritating rhythm. He asked "Can you shed any light on this incident? The receptionist at the inn said that you were…..somehow related… to the lady in question."
White didn't look up from his note-taking. " I'm sure Mister Matthews has a completely reasonable explanation. Dave…..can I call you Dave? is willing to help us out in any way that we see fit." His voice reeked of sarcasm.
Seifer glared. "You can't. And I'm not."
The older cop scribbled something down and followed it with an emphatic exclamation point. He took out a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket and lit up, casually ignoring the 'No Smoking' signs plastered on every wall. Seifer followed the movement with his eyes, inhaling nicotine by proxy.
"It might be to your advantage to change your mind."
Seifer said "I've been sleeping with her for the past two weeks." He saw no point in lying. The receptionist at the hotel could probably supply a list of dates, if they'd bothered to ask.
"I see."
I hope to Hyne you didn't.
That nosy bitch of a receptionist. It's none of her business what Quistis does.. She can come stay with me when she comes back. I'll find a bigger mattress.
"So can you enlighten us to the whereabouts of this young lady?"
Seifer gave the policeman a blank stare. It never hurt to have people underestimate you. And if there was anything going on behind this stupid half-assed claim, still, it might be a very good idea to be underestimated.
"He means," said the younger policeman in a tone of faint sarcasm." do you know where she is?" He seemed less nervous, somehow, slouched back in his chair, but he still watched Seifer very closely.
"At this precise time."
"At present."
Do you think I'm stupid?
Good.
Seifer decided to play along. He rested his right ankle casually on the knee of his left leg, feeling for the tiny pocket sewn in his boot with nicotine-stained fingers. "She said she was going to visit friends. She didn't leave a number."
"Friends?"
"Friends."
Lynch chewed on his toothpick and gave Seifer a sardonic glare. He picked up a pen, put it down again. "In a biblical sense?"
Seifer exploded. "Look, I don't know what the fuck you're playing at, but what the hell business is it of yours? Haven't you got enough teen joyriders to keep you busy?"
"Are you aware that a cleaner found weapons in her room?"
Seifer faked surprise well. "I don't know anything about any weapons."
Not hers, anyway….
Shit, Quistis. I thought you were smart…All that crap about me having to hide Hyperion…
"Apparently not.." White said dryly. He made some more notes on his pad.
Seifer leaned forwards on the table. "Weapons?"
It wouldn't be Quistis's whip, that was for certain. She'd have taken that even on a diplomatic mission. He guessed she could have brought some other equipment from Balamb and left it in the room. A small handgun, maybe?
"I don't think you need to know what kind of weapons. Unless you already do, in which case, please do enlighten us." White's tone dripped with condescension, and would have worked better if he'd bothered to brush the doughnut crumbs from his thick moustache.
Seifer looked at the other man, playing the dumb blond card for all it was worth.
"We can't tell you." Lynch translated. He hadn't said much during the interview, if that was what it was, but Seifer felt somehow scrutinised. As if this man suspected something.
He played for time. "So why'd you pull me in?"
"There were witnesses who testified as to your relationship with Ms Smith."
"What witnesses?"
"We can't give out the names of people who contact us to the general public." Lynch said tiredly. The speech had the cadence of an official policy, repeated many times until it began to lose what little meaning it had had in the first instance.
Seifer's initial concern for himself was fading. Fading so much, in fact, that the situation was starting to annoy him.
And the problem was, it could all be sorted out in just one short sentence. The words. 'She's A SeeD' would do nicely, he reckoned. But if he gave in, did that, then the police would want to know how he knew. They'd check with Garden.
And that pretty much ran Seifer up against a brick wall. He wasn't totally against the issue of returning, but it had to be, like everything else, on his own terms.
He sighed.
The clock ticked, slowly
Lynch tapped his fingers on the table. There was an edge of faint amusement in his stare and it was getting on Seifer's nerves. His partner's glance just held typical it's-late-and-I'm-tired-and-let's-just-get-this-over-with-as-fast-as-possible coffee-fuelled glare common to policemen everywhere.
The younger cop wasn't looking him in the eyes.
Seifer had his arms resting on the table. Wearing his usual ragged T shirt, the scars stood out as thin white lines in the fluorescent light.
The cop, Lynch, was staring at them.
He glanced up to meet Seifer's eyes and smiled, slowly.
Seifer scowled in return and folded his arms again.
The policeman gave a shit-eating grin and flicked a finger at Seifer.
"Where'd you get those?"
He shrugged.
"We are, alas, not fluent in Braille. Nor are we telepathic." Lynch's grin had widened, and Seifer was sure that he wasn't going to get the joke until it was explained and that wouldn't like the answer when it came.
"I had an accident prone childhood."
The cop gave him a yeah, right, kind of look.
Seifer stared at them, thought about smashing his head into the laminate tabletop and then decided against it. The clock ticked gently in the background.
"Mr Matthews?"
"Look, just shut the fuck up." Seifer muttered. He rested his head in his hands. The Bad Cops exchanged glances over his head, obviously thinking that they'd cracked him like a cheap bottle.
They obviously didn't know Seifer. He didn't do cracking, having established long ago that if you really were going to break, the way to do it was just to ensure as many people got hit with the flying glass as possible. Maximum damage.
The questions continued over Seifer's head.
"Where is she?"
"We know you know where she is. There is the small matter of the items in Ms Smith's room." White said, gently.
"Guns? Maybe she's got a handgun licence."
"We didn't find one."
"Maybe she took it with her."
White scowled. "Did you, perhaps, notice the items on your visits to her room?"
Seifer took a deep breath and counted to ten.
"Don't even try to deny it. We have witnesses that you visited her room several times."
Seifer looked blank "If you told me what I was meant to be denying, I might try it."
"Did you sell them her?"
"Sell her what?"
"Is she in trouble?"
Lynch shrugged. "Maybe."
"What do you mean, maybe?"
"Did you bring the items to her room, Mister Matthews?"
Seifer leaned back in the chair. "What items?" It was taking quite a lot of self-restraint to stop braining them both with a chair.
I've had just about enough of both you guys.
Worry for Quistis was warring with vague but fading paranoia that they really did know who he was and were just stalling to make sure he didn't do anything stupid until the reinforcements came.
And if they do, I'll take them on. Me and my razorblade…
Lynch, obviously deciding that visual aids would be a good idea for someone of Seifer's limited intelligence, drew out a thick sheaf of folders from a stainless steel filing cabinet in the corner of the room. There were several more bulky items wrapped in plastic bags behind them, which Seifer glimpsed for a second and then lost as the policeman yanked the drawer shut behind him. One could have been the right shape for weapons, but for all he knew it could have been Quistis's toothbrush, padded with a washcloth and a loose pair of socks. He thought he recognised a laptop stuffed in the back.
He did recognise the papers. They weren't distinctive, quite the opposite in fact. Neat Times New Roman text on plain white paper, lacking insignia or fancy crested formal writing.
It was exactly the same kind of cheap, anonymous and above all, flammable paper that Garden wrote its mission orders on. The sheets were neatly slotted into clear plastic folders and looked as if they had been extracted from some kind of binder.
The top sheet appeared to be some kind of map.
The slot machine that was Seifer's head spun and came up with three gold bars. Lucky strike…
There's got to be something behind this crap. If I've got a map, then I know where I'm going.
I can go find her.
He tried not to look at the papers and asked casually. "Don't you have to get a search warrant for that kind of stuff?"
White tapped his pad on the paper, underlined something and then laid the pen down. "We didn't search the room. The landlady handed them over to us after she became concerned about the nature of some of the items."
"They don't look that suspicious to me…."Seifer said.
"Appearances can be deceiving."
No shit. These guys must not be up on their World's Most Wanted lists. Of course, maybe I got taken off, what with being presumed dead and all….
He reached out for one of the papers lower down in the stack. White reached out to stop him, or maybe to steady the pile, Seifer wasn't quite sure, but he was too late. As Seifer yanked the folder out of the stack, the shiny plastic coatings on the documents slid and toppled. Lynch's frantic grab came too late as the papers cascaded over the desk
Seifer barely glanced at the paper he was holding, realising vaguely that it was upside down. But it didn't matter. He'd got what he needed.
The map on the top of the pile was Quistis's location plan, the target site neatly marked with a red cross. It was clearly visible on the floor from where he was sitting, and Seifer had good eyesight. A neatly printed address had been faintly visible through the sheet, no town, but he already knew which city she'd gone to.
2 Harbourside, Old City. There had been a postcode, too, but he hadn't had time to read it, and anyway, he wouldn't be delivering letters.
So at least, if he really, really, needed to follow her, at least he knew where she was……
Lynch snatched the folder off him with a curse. "Don't touch those'
Seifer rested his fists on his chin, innocently. "Okay, then."
The older policeman motioned to Lynch to put the folders back. "You've never seen this stuff before?"
"Nope."
"You don't know what's in them? For the last time?"
"No." Seifer concentrated on maintaining good eye contact, not looking away, or blinking, or scratching his face. All the things policemen were trained to watch out for, to tell whether or not someone was lying
The only problem was that SeeD knew those techniques too…
The older man scribbled on his pad. "Well. I think that pretty much wraps it up for now."
"It does?" Seifer glanced at the clock. Three p.m.
Well, that was quick.
White glanced at Lynch, who was still stacking the files back into the cabinet. The younger cop seemed about to say something until his colleague stopped him with a gesture. "Leave it."
"But…."The younger man slammed the metal drawer shut emphatically.
"Leave it, I said." White snapped. He turned to Seifer. "We'd like to ask you to stay a few more hours while we run a routine background check. And then we'll ask you some more questions, after which you should be free to go."
Seifer watched Lynch carefully. The younger cop swallowed, flinched and then seemed to gain some confidence from somewhere. His hands steadied on the table and his voice was even as he replied. "I think that's a very good idea."
The older man's voice was faintly sarcastic. "You do, do you? It's a good job I'm in charge here, is all I can say."
"Yes, sir."
White turned to Seifer as the two policemen got up from their chairs. "Some people'll drop by in a minute to do a few routine procedures. I request that you co-operate fully, tell the truth, and we'll be out of here in no time. Don't leave, otherwise we'll have to do this all again, and wouldn't that be a shame?"
Seifer shrugged.
White opened the door and exited through it, whistling. Lynch gave Seifer a hurried glance, and followed.
The background check was painless. Another blue-uniformed policeman came in, and took his fingerprints, printing them neatly on a piece of white card. He was asked to fill in a computer-generated identification form. It started out as a blank document and finished as a work of fiction.
The man took the forms and his cards, and told him to wait, that someone would be around to see him shortly.
So Seifer sat in the room, and waited, misgivings coalescing slowly in his stomach as he thought about ways of passing time and chewed the fingerprint ink from his fingers, several variations on the theme of 'fuck' running through his head.
I'm in a copshop in a city whose last exciting crime was a car theft nine years ago, with at least three different flavours of policemen, none of which know my real name, my record or what I'm meant to be doing time for.
Hopefully
And I haven't a clue what the hell is going on.
Fact one. Lynch had said that maybe she was in trouble. Either she'd be home when he got back, or…… he'd just have to wait and see.
The address burned in Seifer's mind.
Fact two: He couldn't ring up Garden to check, without risking them finding out where he was. Maybe they wouldn't.
Maybe they would.
Fact three: She'd gone to Velalisier to talk to that strange CLA group. This meant that the rebels were directly responsible if Quistis was in trouble and indirectly, therefore, for Seifer being in the mess he was in.
They were going to be deader than a six-week corpse when he caught up with them.
Fact four came last, as an afterthought.
I better really hope that no one recognises me.
Seifer would have given several million gil to pick up a phone and hear Quistis' voice. Realistically, of course, he knew that it was about as likely as Squall turning up and saying 'come back, all is forgiven'. He didn't even have a phone in his flat.
While he was thinking about it, he decided, she could call and say "Never mind my mission, let's go shag madly. I'll be home in half an hour." And that would be just fine. Screw Garden.
Seifer's patience was fraying. He kicked the wall, and sighed.
The way he saw it, there were two choices, if this really was about Quistis.
He still wasn't convinced that it was. It all seemed too easy, somehow.
She should be back by the time I get home, and then she can explain it all to the hotel, if she likes. And if they have a problem with her being a SeeD, she can just come sleep at mine.
He crossed his arms behind his head and stared into nothing, waiting.
Nothing happened for at least five minutes, until Seifer heard footsteps in the corridor outside. Bored, he'd taken to slamming the wall nearest to him once every second with his steel toecaps to mark the passing time and it was already very much the worse for wear.
At first Seifer didn't notice the sound of people underneath the regular thumps of his timekeeping. As they came closer he stopped and swung his legs onto the floor, right hand moving to his boot. His thumb traced along the faint ridged outline of the razorblade hidden beneath the leather lining.
I need a damn coffee. Or something stronger.
The footsteps came closer. Seifer rose silently from his chair and tried the door.
It was locked.
One hand dipped into his boot and came up with a faint silver rectangle, half-hidden in his palm. Seifer flattened himself behind the door and listened.
There was a faint thud from outside, as if someone had leant against the other side of the wall.
A man spoke faintly. "I don't like this."
The reply was inaudible. Seifer strained to hear.
"She just said she'd seen him around. I reckon." A pause. "that this is just some mad snipe hunt. Some of that stuff….out of our league."
"I just think there's something strange about him."
Both voices were familiar. The second belonged to Lynch. The first was White's. Seifer relaxed, slightly. The razorblade slipped back into the palm of his hand with the ease of long practice.
"What is your problem?" There was the noise of something hitting the wall. "We're not paid to goddamn think! There's nothing strange. I don't know what the hell that shit we got given from the hotel is, but it's not something we want to mess with. And until we find that girl, there's no proof. "
"I just reckoned.."
"Here's a tip. Don't."
The footsteps resumed. Seifer hooked the chair towards him with one boot and was seated, the razorblade replaced in its hidden pocket, before the policemen walked in.
White was carrying a cup of coffee. A slogan on the mug read 'World's Greatest Dad." Lynch had swapped his toothpick for gum. His jaw moved rhythmically.
The older policeman grinned around a swallow of coffee. "Enjoying yourself?"
Seifer shrugged.
"Sorry that took longer than we thought. Of course, your background check was less than sparkling."
Seifer crossed everything he could cross and waited, sharp metal nearby at hand
"You don't have one."
A hand pulled away from his boot as Seifer remembered to breath. Lynch watched him, closely.
"Your name is not David Matthews, and you are certainly not from Trabia. Are you, Mister Matthews?
"Is Matthews your real name?"
Seifer narrowed his eyes, and shut up. His gaze went from White to Lynch and back again. "What happened to the good cop, bad cop thing?"
The older man sighed. "My colleague and I are not in a movie, Mister Matthews. We are simply interested in closing the details of this case. I don't like this. I don't like getting calls from hotel cleaners at clocking-off time asking us to please come and pick some stuff up 'cause she's found a gun in the laundry basket. Metaphorically speaking."
Seifer followed his gaze. The clock read four-thirty p.m. "I'm not going anywhere." He gave them a flat-eyed glare.
"Have you a criminal record in any country or state, Mister Matthews?"
"No." Seifer said. For once, he was telling the truth.
After all, he'd never been caught.
"Would you like to tell us the details of your record?"
Seifer lost his patience and didn't bother to even look for it." Look it up. You said I don't have a history. You can't pin anything on me."
Damn, Quistis, why didn't you tell them you were going? Or at least hang a Do Not Disturb sign on your door?
Oh, I remember, you were up till four in the morning the night before you went. And I guess that was partly my fault. Me and the damn T-Rexaurs.
"You don't have a record. You don't have a work history. You do not, technically, exist. You can see our problem here."
"I don't see a problem."
"What do you do for a living, Mister Matthews?"
Seifer banged his hands on the table. The cuffs made a little clink. "Whatever's going. Fishing. Security. Pest control."
"Legal work, is it? " White said. He noted on his pad Profession: Itinerant Worker. Seifer just had time to read the words Possible Attitude Problem crossed out and replaced with Definite Attitude Problem before the man casually but firmly covered the pad with his arm.
"I don't have a job right now. I don't have much money. And it damn sure isn't a crime."
White gave him a cynical glare. "You'd think, wouldn't you. Now, do you know where this girl is or not?"
"I. Don't. Know."
"We have some pressing questions we would like to ask Ms Smith and we have reason to believe you might know where she is. Or at the very least, what she was doing with unlicensed weapons in a hotel room."
"I don't." Seifer repeated.
It had been a long day.
"And your relationship with this lady?" White held up the identification card again. Quistis stared out from the picture, glassy-eyed.
Seifer shrugged. "She was fun. While it lasted."
"Your relationship was purely personal?"
"I guess." Shrug, smile.
"And you'd never met her before Hana?
"No.
"Are you positive?"
"I told you. No."
White tucked his Biro neatly into the rings of his bound pad. Seifer realised he'd won as the older man turned to Lynch, and said "Come on. He doesn't know anything. There isn't any charge."
"But…."
"It's closed, okay." He turned to Seifer."You're free to go.".
Lynch coughed. "But…."
"No."
"I can leave?" Seifer glanced at the door as both the policemen got up from their plastic chairs.
White picked up his pad and opened the door. "Yup. Now get out of here before I change my mind and start asking you about some of your other activities."
Seifer went.
The shorter cop, Lynch, escorted him to the gate, glare prickling between his shoulderblades the whole way. He waited as Seifer collected his belongings from the front desk. As Seifer opened the door he grabbed his upper arm and hissed "You might find it to your advantage not to leave town in the next few weeks."
Seifer glared at the man's fingers until he gave up and took his hand away. "Is that the law?"
Lynch said "No." reluctantly and then rallied "It's a kindly piece of advice. Just in case. Or who knows what might happen?"
"Is that a threat?" Or a challenge?
"No. Just stay round and keep you nose clean. Or else. Before I do something I might regret.
Seifer gave him a condescending state, a soldier's contempt for the local law enforcement. "You won't. You're the police. You're supposed to be the good guys. I'm the villain, remember?"
The man stayed poker-faced. "We'll be seeing you, Mister Matthews."
Seifer stepped down from the doors.
I damn well hope not.
This chapter's a weird one. I finished it a few days ago, loathed it, rewrite it last night, and now like it. Kind of. The short cop, Lynch, is trying to make Seifer's life difficult for a reason. He's trying to find out something
And no, it's not what you think.
The teenage comeback Quistis recites to Adolescent!Seifer in the hall is lifted from the comic Demo, because the person saying it did look an awful lot like Quistis.
Lynch and White have absolutely no connection to real police procedures, though they're probably closer to English small-town cops than their scary American counterparts.
Reviews:
Altol: There is indeed something about the pair that suggests mind-blowing (hehe) sex. I think it's just because they're so damn pretty. Throw Squall into the mix and there might well be some kind of explosion that you could use to produce cheap and affordable electricity for all…okay, not going there.
Amber-Tinted. Quistis asking him if he was jealous was kind of mean. But everyone makes mistakes, and she's got a lot on her mind right now.
Breaker-one: The card thing would be a help if I'd actually bothered to learn how to play cards. I knew this was going to bite me in the ass. I got fed up and tried to fight Ultima Weapon, which killed me in oh, two minutes. Mnaa.
DBZ Fanfiction Queen: Yeah, I know it, I'm predictable. The rebel crap does have a point, honestly. Eventually.
Ghost140; I'm addicted to stress, it's the way that I get things done…. Well, stress, caffeine, imagination and a borrowed Protestant work ethic, actually.
Jindy Wahr. Thanks. I enjoy writing it, most of the time.
Nynaeve77. I try to write realistic sex. Well, kind of. If you think about it, when you're not actually doing it, it's a bit silly.
Quistis88:Ta. I really appreciate your continued reviews. Longtime reviewer award of free eyeglasses and caffeine pills, right here!
Seventhe: Well, I hate to disappoint, but you were dead right about the future plot twists involving a Honda, the missiles and spaghetti, but sadly, no kittens. Alas. Actually, the whole mission thing is an attempt to……..CENSORED…..current affairs…CENSORED…….guns. I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you.
Sickness In Salvation; Uh, he doesn't have to make an excuse, in the end. One is kind of thrust upon him.
Sulou: Seifer and Quistis just bounce off each other so well. On so many levels. He wants to kill things, and she's okay with that provided they do the paperwork first. And, of course, they both have no middle gears.
Superviolinist: Hey, I don't review everything I read. And I'm not even reading that much lately, because choosing to keep SDTC going or to spend more time doing other stuff leads me back to my fic all the time.
Verdanii: Why thankyou.
Ta guys
Kate (frontier psychiatrist)