Chapter Sixteen: Angry Young Man.
There's a place in the world for the angry young man
With his working class ties and his radical plans.
He refuses to bend, he refuses to crawl
And he's always at home with his back to the wall
And he's proud of his scars and the battles he's lost
And struggles and bleeds as he hangs on his cross.
And he likes to be known as the angry young man…
Angry Young Man-Billy Joel.
The police station dwindled into the distance as Seifer headed away from it, at speed.
He looked back only once, when he was reasonably sure it was busy enough that the cop couldn't trace him through the crowd.
The policeman was still there.
Seifer slunk into the shadow of a ripped canvas awning outside a tourist shop and studied him.
The cop turned his head from side to side like a hound casting for a scent. He stared into the crowd once and then disappeared, swinging back through a pair of forbidding studded doors into the police station.
Seifer sneered, fingers stabbing up into a short and angry gesture that he knew the man missed. He left his shelter and started off for the other side of town, wondering what Lynch wanted.
It was entirely possible that the cop was making some connection in his mind with Seifer's face. Maybe he'd caught an old news report from the wars, maybe he was too keen for his own good. Maybe he really was worked up about what Quistis had left in her room.
If it was anyone else, Seifer would have no problem in believing that the cops had found something big, drugs, perhaps, some kind of SeeD weapon, but this was Quistis. The most he could imagine her leaving was a small handgun, and that accidentally.
The woman acted as if breaking any law, no matter how trivial, was a kind of crime.
Seifer would bet that Quistis didn't even fiddle her expenses on missions, and even Cid did that. Even Squall.
He thought about this for a minute.
Nah. Rinoa probably takes his extra and spends it on shoes. Quistis, she'd never-
She should be back by now.
Seifer conjured Quistis up in his mind, sitting at his table with a mug of coffee held in two cupped hands. He took a second to mentally undress her, just because he could, and then reclothed the image in what he'd seen her last wearing, a pair of ruthlessly conservative blue jeans with a dark red T shirt. As if by imagining the event it could somehow magic it into being, that Quistis might have returned, or even never left.
Dammit, why does she find it so hard to say 'no'?
Seifer reasoned that if she'd declined Rinoa's offer, she'd have been in town still. But if she'd been better at saying 'no' to people then she'd surely have found some way to avoid a holiday. And he couldn't help thinking that he certainly wouldn't have got to sleep with her.
No matter how Seifer, or anyone else for that matter, disliked it, Quistis's work ethic was a part of her. And Seifer liked all of her parts, though some parts better than others. It was strange that someone so damn intelligent had never figured out that the reward for digging great ditches was a bigger shovel. Seifer had learnt that lesson in the first decade of his life, which was why he never, ever volunteered for anything.
He didn't consider the Edea thing as 'volunteering' because it implied conscious choice.
Seifer carried on walking.
He reached the corner of Sullivan Street within twenty minutes, cut round the back of the flat automatically and took the stairs two at a time. The handrail had been in the sun all day and was hot enough to burn his fingers, still sore from his practice casting.
A curtain twitched next door, and then stilled, hurriedly.
His neighbour's fat ginger cat rested on the handrail at the top of the stairs, cheerfully ignoring the heat.
Seifer gave it a wide berth. He'd never been a cat person, but then he'd never been a dog person either, if Angelo had been anything to go by. Or even a people person, come to that.
He wondered if the cat had somehow been melted to the railing by the force of the sun. The animal certainly looked as if it had liquefied. Folds of orange fur overflowed the thin railing from all angles, covering tiny feet placed as neatly as any tightrope walker's. The cat raised its head as Seifer reached the landing and gave him an incurious green stare. There was a strong smell of ammonia, pungent in the heat.
More specifically, cat piss. And it was coming from his mat.
Seifer swung round to confront the cat, with the intention of booting it off the balcony like a small and furry football, and then changed his mind. A faint glow glittered in the air around him. A casual observer might have mistaken it for a heat haze, which, in a very real sense, it was.
He gave an evil grin. "Here, kitty, kitty."
The cat took one look and fled, jumping off the balcony with a plop. It ran, weaving in and out of the cover of plant pots until it reached the front door, where it leapt up onto the sill and disappeared through the window with a satisfied yowl.
Seifer cursed and rejunctioned the fire spell. He turned to his door and rattled the handle, which fell off. The door creaked open.
"Quistis?"
The room was empty and hot. Nobody there.
He checked the clock.
Six p.m.
Where was she?
Though he didn't like to admit it, even to himself, Seifer was getting worried. He kicked the fallen door-handle into the wall under the window, where it dislodged a chunk of plaster. His keys went in the other direction. Seifer watched apathetically as they skidded across the worktop and landed in the sink with a clatter. He left them where they were, sat down heavily onto the mattress and began to take off his boots, flicking the razorblade out of its little pocket sewn into the right shoe's tongue. It glittered pristinely against the threadbare carpet.
A razorblade wasn't much, but it could give you the edge in a fight where everyone thought you weren't armed. As a weapon it sucked monkeys, at least against anything serious. As a last resort, it was better than nothing.
Six p.m…………
"I'm Quistis Trepe. SeeD level thirty. I have authority to speak for all the Gardens. I'm glad to meet with you, Mr-?"
"Oh, I don't think it's wise to give out names at this stage. But I assure you the feeling is mutual. We have no wish to continue this conflict."
"I would hesitate to call your recent activity a 'conflict', Sir."
"I wouldn't say it was entirely unprovoked. I'm sure you read the newspapers."
"I do. Those that are worth reading."
"You are recording this conversation?"
"Of course. As you agreed."
"Can we possibly route the transmission through our own radio system?"
"I'll have to contact my Balamb liason… Xu? Do you copy?"
"I copy, Blue Leader. Tell them if we lose this signal, even for a moment, we move in."
"……That would be acceptable. But as per the contract, if we lose the transmission then we shall be forced to take action."
A pause.
"Of course."
Click
"Xu? Do you copy?"
"I copy, Blue Leader. Over and out."
Those cops don't know how lucky they are Seifer thought with a trace of his old arrogance. He mentally reviewed the conversation.
Well, that was strange.
He wasn't worried about the first cop, the older one, but then Lynch, had definitely thought he was onto something. And his last comment had held more than a hint of a threat. Watch out, we know where you live….
He tried hard not to think about the obvious connotations inherent in the younger man's last name.
All in all, it had been a deeply weird day. And that fact that the cops had seemed to think Quistis was the criminal was even stranger.
Seifer got up to get his cigarettes and matches. The fridge yielded one last can of beer, with a reluctant whine that meant it was probably on its last legs, too. He took up his normal position on the windowsill, feet on the tiles. One hand reached up absently to check Hyperion before he relaxed, pulled the tag from the can and took a long swallow, alternating drags on his cigarette with gulps of warming beer.
Maybe it's time to move out. Before I break all the household appliances. And I think the roaches are breeding.
He tried, with a stunning lack of success, to forget the moment of fatalism when he'd thought that someone would be waiting for him at the cop shop. Someone important. Squall or Martine,
There had been a single second of pure relief.
No more running. No more being unimportant. No more waiting for the moment when he stopped thinking of himself as a mercenary who was just down on his luck and started thinking of himself as just another itinerant worker, the bits of him that liked to fight draining away with the tide. The surprise when he'd realised he'd rather it be Squall, because Squall knew him as a person. Knew him. Martine just knew him as an obstacle.
The personal touch was a double-edged sword, or rather gunblade.
On one hand, Squall had a grudge about Seifer that was hard to beat, but probably wouldn't have him killed, or at least would just shoot him himself quietly in the head.
Though I could be overestimating his moral decency. After all, there's always someone you'll make an exception for.
In my case, him. In his case, maybe me.
It could have been worse. It could have been Martine.
Seifer was perfectly aware that the Galbadian headmaster would happily blame global warming, the national debt and all Galbadia's financial troubles since the Sorceresses Wars on Seifer. Ever since the Wars, he'd hunted the former Sorceress's Knight with a singlemindedness that bordered on obsession.
But for Martine, it wasn't personal. He'd be satisfied with any solution that took the blame off his shoulders. Seifer could understand Squall's attitude, but he didn't get Martine. Fighting Squall and the rest in the wars seemed to have fucked up Seifer's life far more than it ever fucked up Squall's, but he still imagined staking the Galbadian out in the Training Centre and covering him with tinned meat before retiring to a safe place to watch and laugh. It was a tempting thought, but Seifer told himself that he'd learnt his lesson. Revenge didn't pay.
Of course, maybe it was the kind of lesson you needed to go over more than once…..
Maybe I should go back. When all this is sorted.
Seifer considered the idea seriously for the first time, one problem taking precedence over another for a moment.
It was something requiring deep thought, and possibly some kind of stage-management.
Returning.
Quistis would be there, of course. Squall, Rinoa and Selphie. Zell the chicken-wuss. Fuujin and Raiijin, his posse. Older now, all of them. And the other one who he'd only seen during the wars, Irving or something. The sniper who dressed like a cross between a cowboy and a rent-boy.
Now that's not going to be pretty when he hits sixty-five. Of course, Zell's hair's gonna look damn stupid, too…
He'd recognised his eyes, anyway. Some things didn't change.
When she comes back. I'll think about it.
The sun was setting, low over the water. Seifer scanned the street outside, hoping for a sign of Quistis.
It's been nearly two days.
The policeman had asked him if something had happened to her.
Quistis, walking off alone, whip coiled neatly into her bag, into what?
Seifer was sure (or almost sure) that she was facing nothing more threatening than being bored to death, but he couldn't help thinking that it would be a great excuse.
I thought you were in trouble, so I came to rescue you.
Or it would have been a good excuse if he hadn't been damn sure that Quistis was perfectly capable of looking after herself and would probably regard being rescued as both an unforgivable insult and incredibly stupid.
If there's trouble, what do I care about what happens to a bunch of weirdo rebels anyway?
Someone with more self-preservation instinct and possibly more self-control would have reasoned that if the situation was too dangerous for Quistis, then it would probably be at least equally lethal for them. Seifer, who had the self-control of a baby rock star and the aggression of a pit bull on amphetamines, cheerfully ignored this valid point. His train of thought continued on, mowing down helpless objections under its armoured wheels.
I could just go. And then if I see her, and she's okay, I'll just come right back…
He didn't admit to himself that he probably would have gone anyway even if the policemen hadn't hauled him in. The interview, if that was what it had been, just added a sense of urgency to his decision making.
She could be back any minute.
Seifer rested one hand on his chin and checked the clock again. Ten minutes had passed. It seemed longer.
He shook his head, picked up his boots and threw them with characteristic force into the opposite corner of the room. The impact disturbed a cockroach, who had been feeding on the rich deposits of discarded takeaway wrappers, cigarettes packets and coffee cups that littered the corner of Seifer's room. It fled out from the corner, light gleaming off its chitinous surface, and then froze, perhaps puzzled by the light.
Seifer looked round for something to throw, picked up the door handle and lobbed that at the cockroach.
There was an unpleasant squelch, accompanied by a crunching noise.
Seifer waited.
The handle rose, gently, and came to a halt, swaying slightly, about half an inch off the ground. It seemed to take stock of its surroundings for a second and made a break for it, racing for a crack in the wall.
Seifer picked up his boot and threw it at the roach just as the door handle hit the wall and flipped over with a faint tinkling noise. The cockroach scurried out from underneath and disappeared inside the crack, waving little legs in what Seifer took for a gesture of international cockroach defiance. His boot impacted a second later and bounced off, leaving a faint black print halfway up the peeling off-white wall.
He leant back against the windowsill and knocked his head against the wall, gently.
I should wait.
The dregs of the beer were bitter on the back of his tongue. Seifer drained the can and threw it, badly, out of the window, aiming for Sullivan Street's only litter bin, two floors down and twenty metres away. It missed, which wasn't really a surprise.
Someday they'll come in and knock all this down, build houses for normal people. There's only so far a town can expand without breaching its walls, with the monsters, and changing them takes too much effort.
I'll be long gone by then. Maybe I won't even be alive.
The sky was darkening, outside. It looked as if it might rain.
On an impulse Seifer decided to go check out the hotel. He was in a weird mood, a strange action-y kind of feeling. Itchy yet purposeless at the same time. In the back of his mind he knew she wouldn't be there, but it felt like he was doing something.
Running the gauntlet of the cops, at least.
Seifer retrieved the keys from the sink and left, pulling the door closed with two fingers through the hole left in the woodwork to close it. The cat was nowhere to be seen, which was probably wise.
The first drops of rain fell as he walked along the sea front. The weather suited Seifer's mood, sky a leaden gunmetal grey, mirrored in the flat surface of the sea. It felt as if a storm was on its way, quiet, with no wind, and a feeling of electric anticipation.
He kept a sharp eye out for cop cars, but if they were there they were well hidden. In Seifer's experiences (albeit limited) with local law enforcement, that probably meant there weren't any.
The rain thickened, pouring with an almost tropical intensity. It wasn't unpleasant. The water was probably warmer than Seifer's shower. It bounced off drainpipes, overflowed from shop awnings and ran down gutters, clogging them with an almost joyful intensity as if it was trying to make up for a drought of two months in five minutes. It wouldn't last long. Seifer could see the cloud front advancing over the sea, laving pale blue-grey strips of sky behind it.
He was soaked and didn't much care.
Seifer walked through the rain until he reached the hotel. He didn't go in, reasoning that the reception had never been warm at the best of times, when the receptionist had thought him and Quistis were still cousins. The episode with the police and the whole thing with Quistis's lost key were unlikely to have endeared him any more to the receptionists.
The grounds were deserted, one welcome side-effect of the rain. Seifer located Quistis's room by memory, matching the lit windows above him with his mental schematic of the place.
It was dark, the French windows that led onto the balcony closed and locked.
To Seifer's left the reception shone with a pale warm light into the dusk.
The storm must have driven most of the tourists into their hotel rooms. Quistis's window stood out darkly in the middle of a cityscape of dim environmentally-friendly mood lighting. It looked like a pulled tooth from the empty drive.
Seifer stared up at the window, soaked and beginning to realise that it would have been more sensible to wait for the rain to stop and then go to the hotel, but at least the rain kept people away. So he sheltered beneath the lowest balcony and waited until it dried up, knee-deep in some kind of ornamental shrub that reminded him of the Ochu's tentacles. He fished the remains of his half-smoked cigarette from his jeans pocket and lit up, trying to decide what to do next.
It'll be two days tomorrow.
No one negotiates for that long, for fuck's sake. I wouldn't even bother with 'Hello'…
Rain dripped from the balcony above. He could almost feel the presence of Quistis's room, three floors up. Cold and empty and uninviting.
The sun came out for a second, lighting the falling sheets of rain with an otherwordly glow. It faded, returned and stayed. The rain gradually eased off.
It left a clean smell, warm and wet and alive.
"We're not against private military companies. But they have to be used in support of the military, not in place of it."
"I appreciate your point of view, but the Gardens have resources and experience that are invaluable in …certain situations."
"Ms. Trepe, let us speak plainly. This is about the Guardian Forces."
"I don't believe I know what you're talking about."
"Give us credit. We've all heard the rumours. The Gardens have found some kind of ultimate fighting machines that the regular army can't stand up against. The 'GFs'"
"I'm afraid I can't discuss Balamb training policy."
"What can the Gardens do that regular soldiers couldn't, given the appropriate training? And resources…"
"We are much better equipped…"
The resources and cash flow, Ms Trepe, that they are badly denied. Why shouldn't soldiers leave their regiments and sign up to the Gardens?"
"That I can answer. We only take cadets up to the age of sixteen. Ensuring no such drain."
"Is this because they are easily manipulated?"
"No. It is not."
"We know your history, Ms Trepe. You are an orphan."
"I don't see that this had anything to do with the terrorist activity that we're here to discuss."
"But you admit that your organisation recruits children?"
"Of course. Many parents are only too happy to send their children to the Gardens, knowing their unrivalled quality of education. We're trained to adapt to the changing situations of this world. I'm sure you're quite aware of the implications of the Lunar Cry. There are simply too many monsters for the regular armies to deal with."
"But the children themselves do not have any say in this themselves?"
"Of course they do. Cadets can leave at any time before graduation."
"Did you?"
"Did I what?"
"Did you choose to enter Garden as a child? You were brought up by the ex-Sorceress Edea, the wife of the last Balamb Headmaster."
"I was under the impression that this meeting was to discuss your unauthorised and unjustified use of force on the Gardens, rather than my private life."
Seifer finished his cigarette and shook himself like a wet dog, running one hand through his short hair to make it stick straight up. His clothes were cool and clammy on his body.
Better go. Before too many people come out.
Even so, the streets were beginning to crowd again by the time he reached the seafront. The sea had receded a tiny bit, leaving a metre-width of wet sand hard up against the sea-wall. It was already being colonised by small children, couples walking arm-in arm and families with large wet dogs.
He walked along the wet streets, gaze sifting through the clouds, searching for a tall, blond-haired girl. The hunt got him a few glares, several embarrassed blushes and a couple of invitations that Seifer didn't bother to take up. It was beginning to dawn on him that Quistis had somehow become a habit.
He was so fixed on finding Quistis, mental image set firmly at default (Quistis seated at the kitchen table with the coffee clutched in her hands) as opposed to kinky (Quistis asleep in his bed, naked) or working (Quistis sitting at a desk, wearing her glasses and chewing a pencil) that he almost missed another familiar face.
Seifer's feet carried him past the men and several metres down the seafront before his brain caught up with his boots and he turned back. The crazy religious nutcase from the restaurant was deep in conversation with a neat figure dressed in the blue shirt and orange cold-weather trousers of the Trabian police force. Seifer didn't recognise the face of the second man for a moment, but the hairstyle rang a bell. The tone of their voices was low, but both faces were angry.
Lynch.
Seifer instinctively sheltered behind a large family group, moving towards the arguing men only to be marooned as the family suddenly turned and headed into a shop. Luckily, both men were too engrossed in their own argument to be paying much attention to the world around them. Lynch was stabbing one finger emphatically into the air. The preacher shrugged, eloquently and lost his grip on his bag. Papers cascaded to the ground.
Seifer moved closer. No one that tall should have been able to move that silently, especially not in steel toe-capped boots, but he managed it. There was a telephone box, newly installed since the wars, a few feet away from the pair. All four sides were covered with posters and heavily layered stickers advertising various pop groups, seaside events and phone sex lines. Seifer stood on the side furthest away from the argument and acted like he was admiring the view.
The fight, like the storm, was sharp, brief, and over quickly. Seifer missed most of it, though he did catch one single word.
It was SeeD.
It made up his mind for him.
He looked round to the pair, not caring who saw him, just in time to see their retreating backs as they walked off together, leaving the priest's religious literature strewn over the paving slabs.
Seifer cursed his luck. He'd been intending to grab the nut, threaten him into giving up some information. He did threatening. But with the cop there, no chance. Seifer may have been reckless, but he wasn't stupid.
Who cares, anyway? I'll wait till tomorrow and then go.
He hastily added 'If she's not back, anyway' and turned to head home.
"Despite your arguments, I feel that I cannot in any way condone the use of force against the Gardens."
"I-"
"Which you took full responsibility for."
"We did…"
"Regardless of the fact that the damage could have endangered children's lives. The children that you seem to care so much about."
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
"The many are the few. There's just more of them. Let me read you the statistics.
Balamb Garden suffered a grade three power outage and loss of systems. Thirty people were hospitalised with injuries, four serious. Including seventeen cadets under the age of eighteen."
"The object of the exercise was to make an example-"
"Galbadia: Systems crash. No injuries, but the resulting power failure did lead to the failure of several machines in the infirmary, where two cadets and one SeeD were undergoing medical attention. Two recovered despite the equipment failure. One had to be airlifted to the nearest hospital. The Garden was incapacitated for three days and thus was not available to answer distress calls from nine isolated Galbadian communities. As a result it is believed that a total of thirty-two civilians died in monster attacks.."
"We-"
"Monster attacks that could have been prevented. By Galbadia."
"It's the Gardens' fault that the army were too underfunded to get there in time…"
"Trabia: Monsters released from training centres. Two cadets, (aged fifteen and nineteen) and one SeeD(age thirty-two) killed. Twelve injured, one of those seriously. I fail to see how this is helping the so-called plight of children in the Gardens. It's just plain terrorism. Which we refuse to give in to. Just think yourself lucky we agreed to negotiate rather than deeming you a threat to national security, which would have led to the use of all available force."
"We-.."
"And I'm quite sure you don't want that."
"We resent the use of the word terrorists! We are a peaceful group who were forced to respond to the Gardens' frankly immoral monopoly on private military services. Attacks on military installations and soldiers' residences are not defined as terrorism."
"You seem very well informed."
"Thank you."
The cat was still nowhere to be seen as Seifer returned to the flat for the second time. Equally, there was still no sign of Quistis.
Seifer found a can of soup shrouded with dust in the back of his cupboard and ate mechanically, still staring at the clock. After he'd finished he dumped the bowl and spoon in the sink, unwashed, where they joined a growing pile of cutlery.
She'll kill me if I go.
She might die if I don't
Let's be really honest here, is this just some kind of excuse? Not that I care, or anything…
He shrugged his bad mood off and went to get Hyperion from its hiding place under the eaves.
The blade was razor-sharp, but Seifer sharpened it anyway. It had become, over the years, a familiar ritual, first the rough stone, then the smooth, then a final wipe with oil to clean dust from the blade. He took the gun part of the weapon part and cleaned that, as well.
When he'd finished, the whole thing gleamed with a faint air of menace.
Seifer admired it for a second.
He carefully wiped the handle, using a clean, dry cloth that had taken some finding. Old T-shirts were ideal for cleaning the gun, but anything both clean and dry was a rarity in Seifer's flat. In the end he'd had to go into the bathroom and steal a washcloth that the old lady from next door had stupidly laid out to air.
There would be trouble later, but Seifer didn't plan to be there. And it would have been nice if a missing flannel was the least of his worries.
He ran the washcloth carefully down the blade.
There was the faintest of sounds as the cloth parted softly from its fibres. One half slid down the slick metal of Hyperion's blade to land in a ragged heap on the floor. Seifer held the other in his hand.
He ran a finger down the edge of the blade, skin a bare millimetre away from the cutting edge, and smiled.
It was ridiculously easy to get used to having a weapon on your shoulder. Cadets in Garden were allowed to carry their weapons with them around the base most of the time once they passed the first level exam. The only exceptions to the rule were the classrooms and the Infirmary, because Kadowaki had managed to come up with some stupid rule about how they screwed with the med equipment or something. It was a moot point, anyway. No one was actually allowed to duel inside the school unless it was in the training centre, but most of the cadets hauled theirs around anyway, at least into the novelty wore off.
Seifer knew for a fact that Zell had worn his first pair of fighting gloves for six months solid, until one of the senior instructors had taken him aside, gently, and told him that they were starting to smell and that writing in gloves made Zell's papers impossible to mark, mainly because she couldn't read a word he'd written.
Seifer had been complaining about the smell every week for a month, combined with comments about Zell's hair, tattoo and general dress sense, but the chicken-wuss had ignored him, as usual. And he'd carried Hyperion slung over his shoulder for at least a term, though the thing had become successively heavier after each upgrade. He'd spent his first year's worth of cadet pay on improvements to the weapon, taking Fuujin and Raijin out of the base at every opportunity to search for more items, anything that would give them the edge in a fight. When he'd run out of money sometime in the first two months, he'd systematically bullied trophies and cash from all the other cadets, which led to a pretty fucking serious weapon by the time he was sixteen.
The upgrades hadn't done anything to change Hyperion's sleek lines. It was more than just a pile of gunpowder and casings, adamantine and screws, he'd carried it for so long it felt like an extension of his arm.
He had no doubt that it was worth quite a lot of money, but then he'd never even thought about selling it. And it was way too distinctive to trade without some risk.
Seifer would rather have sold a kidney.
The evening light drowned into darkness.
"The mere presence of the Gardens raises taxes. Wouldn't it be better to fund the existing armies rather than have private organisations do our dirty work?"
"We operate to the highest discretion and have certain advantages over using the military. We're equipped for any situation."
"What's a typical scenario?"
"Pardon?"
"What do you get paid for?"
" A , uh, typical scenario would be a threat to national security, especially when international support is not available, but external support is needed. For example, a plague of monster attacks. A pod of Grats have spored, and they're too much for the local military to deal with."
"But this gives a lot of power to the Gardens.."
"We don't solicit contracts. We don't have to."
"But you could be said to have unfair advantages. As we discussed before. These new Guardian Forces…"
"Are not used routinely."
"I believe are still in their experimental stage. They're said to be more effective than even magic. And obviously using both is going to make you better fighters, therefore you have the edge."
"The Guardian Forces are not the issue here. We have only a limited amount of time and I would hate to leave your issues unresolved."
"Right. There are many other factors that worry us about the Gardens apart from the possible child abuse angle. For example you do communicate with each other? I believe you're acting as the spokesperson for all the Gardens and obviously this would be impossible if you did not have contact. Hence it is possible that you could liase to drive prices up. And this gives you enormous power. Private individuals in charge of the Gardens have a frankly incredible amount of money and power at their fingertips."
"I'm afraid it doesn't work quite like that. We are committed to improving our facilities. The financial rewards of commanding a Garden are fairly modest compared to the amount of time and responsibility required."
"But you can't deny that the Gardens could be used against the people. Take Galbadia, for instance. I believe there is a historical precedent. If someone could take over a Garden, they'd have a lot of power."
Pause.
"Seeds are not incorruptible, Ms Trepe. Take Headmaster Martine, for example. I'm told that he used Galbadia Garden as a tool for the government, which was why they joined with Edea when she became the ambassador."
"The Sorceresses Wars are old bones. I don't think I need a history lesson."
Seifer replaced Hyperion in its sheath and left it on the carpet. He sat on the windowsill, feeling useless, smoking incessantly and nursing his last can of beer until three in the morning, when exhaustion finally took over and he went to bed.
The worst thing about his permanent insomnia wasn't the dreams, it was the boredom. Seifer had never been much for his own company, but sooner or later you got to a point around four am where nobody else wanted to have a conversation and then you were stuck with yourself.
And he didn't particularly like his own company. After the wars, he'd liked it even less.
Quistis had commented once that he had hidden depths, which wasn't really any kind of news to Seifer. They contained nothing he particularly wanted to float to the surface, and anyway he doubted that she'd meant it. It was just one of those things people said to one another, the kind of thing he'd never got the hang of.
Hidden depths.
He'd never thought Quistis was the kind of person to search for the best in people. Rinoa, maybe, but not her.
And Seifer was certainly not a rough diamond, though if you bothered to scrape all the crap off you might end up with a working hand grenade
I'm thinking bullshit.
And I'm not even drunk.
He slept fitfully, and woke at four-thirty in a sweat with the sheets wrapped around his legs.
There had been a dream.
For a change, he couldn't remember most of it. There had been lots of long, empty corridors. Teeth had featured widely, too. Teeth, and something in his head…something he couldn't get out.
Something like the magic.
Seifer had told Quistis that GFs fucked with your head and that was why he'd never had anything to do with them. That he didn't want to forget.
If you need GFs, using them doesn't make you need them less. You just get to depend on them more
It had been partly true. Seifer didn't want to depend on anyone except himself.
He'd junctioned a GF only once.
It had been a mistake.
They'd been out on another trip, just him and Fuu and Raijin. Walked a bit, fought some monsters, no big deal. Searching for items, as always. Somewhere along the way one of them had picked up this old lamp.
Raijin, maybe.
There had been a GF. It had been old. And they'd fought it, and he'd won, only to find that he didn't particularly like what he'd invited into his head. There had been a feeling of horrible, pressing weight, and sharp teeth. And knowledge.
GFs only fight because they have to. If their hosts die, without letting them loose, or putting them into something..or someone.. they're finished.
Seifer had junctioned the Guardian Force for about twenty seconds, (not that he'd been counting) before he'd begun to freak out and Fuujin had had to talk him down. They'd returned to the Garden as normal, keeping silent among themselves in a let-us-never-speak-of this-again way. Raijin took the lamp along and gave it to Cid, later. Seifer had never bothered finding out what had happened to it, and cared less.
It was almost a relief to find that he could have normal bad dreams
He slept restlessly for the rest of the night, trying not to think about being lost, trapped in the darkness of an empty head as neurones gave up around you.
When he woke, Quistis was still missing. It was early, as usual, before seven. He was still tired, body flooded with exhaustion.
Nothing new, then.
Hyperion gleamed temptingly on the floor next to the window.
Shit. Fuck. I'm trying to give up doing stuff like this.
Seifer stood for a moment, collecting his thoughts, and then went to the wardrobe and began to rifle through his possessions.
It took maybe ten seconds to sort through his clothes. He dressed in a pair of battered jeans and the cleanest T shirt he could find, leaving the others in a heap on the floor. Most were faded shades of black and grey, apart from the one pair of pink boxers that had somehow got mixed up with Quistis' red bra in the wash, and all were so battered even the local War On Want shop would have thought twice before accepting them. The landlord could keep them, if he dared try repossession. There was little enough in the flat that wasn't easily disposable.
His rucksack stood against the wall behind the wardrobe. Seifer yanked it towards him and started stuffing the pack with clothes, showing little care for either neatness or folding. He pulled out a small wad of crumpled notes from the rucksack flap and flicked through the notes, swore and stuffed the money into the back pocket of his jeans.
There was enough cash for one single to Velalisier. It would have been better if there had been money for a return ticket, but Seifer reasoned that he could always borrow the money off Quistis, if he met her. Or failing that, he'd have to jump a goods train heading in the right direction.
Ah, well. Worry about that later.
Clothes packed, he went to the kitchen counter and yanked the chipped left-hand drawer open so hard most of the cutlery fell on the floor with a jangle.
Seifer selected his knives from the pile. The shortest and sharpest one fitted neatly inside his boot, inside a thin sheath sewn into the lining. The other two zipped into the side pockets of his rucksack.
The gunblade slotted neatly into the pocket custom-sewn for it. It was lucky that SeeDs were expected to carry so much equipment, because the blade was long. Packed vertically, its moulded metal handle nested just inside the rucksack's flap and with practice, it was possible to draw Hyperion straight from the bag. Awkward, it was true, but then Seifer expected to be in crowded areas.
And he sure as hell didn't want to draw too much attention to himself.
So. Clothes, weapons, those were the two main things taken care of. His cigarettes and lighter were in the pocket of his jeans, brand his favourite Lucky Strikes.
As an afterthought Seifer fished the last remnants of food from his cupboards. There were the withered remains of some kind of fruit that Quistis had bought when she'd discovered that Seifer's diet consisted mainly of things that came wrapped in newspaper. They went in the bag. The only other items he could find were a couple more cans of soup which he considered adding, possibly as some kind of weapon, but decided against it. He left the things right in the back of the cupboard that appeared to have welded themselves to the shelves, and opened the fridge. Shut it quickly, wincing, before anything escaped.
Okay. Weapons, clothes, food, money, cigarettes…sorted.
No knight or samurai had ever organised his equipment with more care.
Seifer gave a last look around the room, pulled his boots on and left, remembering to pick the razorblade from the floor and shove it back into his boot. The door handle seemed to have escaped so he shut the door by hooking two fingers in the hole where it had rested, and pulled.
The streets were almost deserted as he made his way to the station, taking a short detour to miss the police station. He hadn't bothered to check the timetable but as luck would have it, he walked straight onto a train heading up the coast through Trabia Canyon. It didn't leave for another half-hour, but at least he was on it.
The half hour before its departure was occupied wandering through the train while having 'No Smoking In The Carriages' notices explained to him in three languages by increasingly irate porters. The information just fuelled Seifer's desire to have a cigarette. When he'd got onto the train he hadn't even thought about the Lucky Strikes in his pocket, but the presence of any kind of rules had had its normal effect. Now his brain was telling him, in no uncertain terms, that if he didn't have a nicotine fix right that minute it was going to die. And the damn porters were following him….
How long is this train, anyway…?
"There's people in there smoking. So how come you can stand here and tell me I can't?"
"That is the first class carriage. Now if sir would like to upgrade his ticket…."
Seifer didn't feel like explaining to the porter that he couldn't afford a first class ticket, could only just afford a third-class single, in fact. "Yeah, right, Fuck you."
He turned away, menacing an old lady with his bag.
It didn't help that the train had a SeeD carriage, right next to the engine behind even the first class car. SeeD compartments had their own beds. He could have got some sleep. And he was pretty sure that SeeDs would be allowed to smoke…
Like that's going to work…
Grumbling, holding an unlit cigarette between two fingers, Seifer headed for the carriage furthest away from the SeeD car. The train filled up around him as the engine rumbled into life.
Seifer stood in the passage between two carriages with his rucksack at his feet and smoked his way through his whole packet of cigarettes. When the last one crumbled to ash right down to the filter he stubbed it out on the Rules And Regulations of Safe And Healthy Train Travel pinned to the wall, balled the packet up and tossed it out the window.
His lungs felt raw, nicotine humming in his veins. He repeated the address discovered while trying his best not to help the police with their enquiries over and over again in his mind, leaning against the door under a sign that read 'Do not lean against doors.' Some things were meant to be ignored.
The train signs were written in three languages: the curly ciphers of traditional Estharian, old fashioned blocky Trabian runes and the common script that everyone used pretty much everywhere, these days. It was the only one Seifer could read.
They were on the border after all, thought thankfully not too close.
There were two reasons why Seifer had stayed in Trabia. First, because you still needed a passport to travel between countries, or at least some form of ID. Secondly, he'd never fancied wearing one of those stupid robes. No matter how much the Estharians protested, they were dresses as far as Seifer was concerned, and the day he voluntarily wore a dress was the day…
Well, it'd be a day to remember, that was for sure.
He'd given up standing in the aisle and was sprawled out on his bag by the time to train reached Velalisier and the doors hissed open. Seifer was dozing, elbows resting on his knees, and the sudden opening of the door almost caught him by surprise, nearly tumbling him out onto the platform. Would have, in fact, if the hiss of the hydraulics hadn't given him a fraction of a second's warning.
Seifer checked the station name, picked up his bag, earning a barrage of dirty looks from commuters pushing to get out onto the platform, and stepped out.
The town looked familiar, and it was a few seconds before he realised why. Two years ago Balamb forces had visited Dollet to repel Galbadian Army forces from the town. (For a handsome profit, of course, SeeD did nothing without a reason.) It had been Seifer's third and last SeeD test, and one he'd fucked up monumentally.
Almost as badly as the one before that, when the commanding officer had shouted at him to obey orders and Seifer had told him that he didn't remember anyone telling him not to think and, well, things just went downhill from there and screw the whole 'not answering back' military thing. Or the first exam, the one where he'd found a Behemoth with just the right item he'd needed for an upgrade and finally showed up at the pickup point an hour late, covered in blood that wasn't his own and with two energy crystals burning a hole in his pocket.
Anyway, the town reminded him of Dollet. Cobbled streets, tiled roofs and those weird little flat light fittings set into the streets.
Seifer hated it on sight.
He bought a map at the station's tourist information kiosk and set off. The address he'd copied off Quistis' files showed up just fine on the map, a large building down near the waterfront.
Okay….
It took him a little over ten minutes to find the place.
2 Harbourside, Old City. Velalisier.
He ran the address once more through his mind and looked up. And up, and up…
This must be it
It was huge.
Seifer had visualised some old broken-down warehouse, maybe with a few guys wearing sunglasses and suits hanging around outside looking big and obvious. The building was nothing like he'd imagined.
For starters, there was the sheer size of the thing…..
It was a huge wedding-cake confection of a building, the kind that looked as if it had grown rather than being built. He'd fought monsters that looked less organic. It had probably started out as a rather small building built in traditional southern Trabian style on the edge of a pretty tiled square. The town walls flowed into each side of the building, dropping off on the far side to an almost-sheer cliff with windows set deeply into the rock. Above ground level the building spread out into a Gothic monstrosity, resplendent with flying buttresses, Shumi columns and the odd plastic window frame set incongruously into its fortress-like exterior. A carved sign was deeply engraved over the front gates, which were heavily locked and barred. St Jude's General Hospital.
A battered sign hung outside, with a sticker plastered over it reading CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE with the address of the nearest emergency centre scrawled underneath.
This is it?
Well, it's the ideal site for a bunch of rebels…shit, you can't call them rebels. It sounds like some bad sci-fi movie. And not terrorists, either, because those fuckers act against civilian targets and not military ones.
I think the best description's 'asshole'.
He kicked the sign, just for the sake of it, and then had to step hurriedly back as it creaked, sagged, and collapsed into the dust
Well, one thing's for sure. It hasn't been occupied for a while
Seifer prowled the outskirts of the building, warily.
There were no other signs of life. A light glimmered wearily in a room on one of the top floors. No goons, no cars, no security.
More importantly, no unlocked doors.
Seifer shaded his eyes against the sun and looked up. No doors, but there was the remnants of some kind of sun lounge on the first floor, just above the carved title. Plus four or five temptingly large windows.
He tucked the map into his pocket.
In the end, it wasn't really a challenge. The many layers of congealed Gothic decoration on the crumbling sandstone walls made ideal footholds, despite his heavy rucksack. A few people crossed the square behind. Seifer ignored them, and they did likewise.
If anybody comes running across the square to stop me, I'll know I'm in the right place.
It took him ten minutes of steady, gravity-defying climbing before he gained the first floor. He stood, balancing precariously, on the U of St. Jude's and smashed the window next to the door as quietly as he could manage, groping for the lock.
The door swung outwards and caught him by surprise, giving him a nasty few seconds before he regained his footing and climbed inside, murmuring a few words of magic as he went.
The door left an arc of clean floor through the dust. The corridor inside was lit with the glow of his spell, and Seifer took a few seconds to enjoy the feeling of junctioning magic again. It felt as if sparks should be fizzing from his hair, and when he passed the first in a series of cracked and dusty windows he was vaguely surprised that his eyes weren't glowing. Something weird like that.
He kept walking, holding the gunblade up in front of him. Safety off. It was heavy, and he could feel old callouses that had smoothed back into his hands two years ago beginning to reopen. Despite the pain, or perhaps because of it, it felt familiar.
Seifer's confidence was starting to return as the halls remained resolutely empty.
The hospital had been empty for years, from the look of it.
Very empty, and very large.
However different the various buildings looked like from the outside, inside they all looked the same. After ten minutes, he was hopelessly and completely lost, though he tried not to let it bother him.
The corridors were all identical, tiled in peeling melamine and painted in green institutional shades. A colour coded strip ran down every wall, presumably as some kind of location system. It would have helped if he'd had a map. He was getting an annoying sense of déjà vu that pissed him off no end, flashbacks to a cold winter last season in Trabia.
Hyne, I hope this mission turns out better….
Seifer conscientiously checked every side room and door off the first four corridors. It took him two hours, but it seemed like six, haunted by the knowledge that if Quistis was gagged or unconscious or Hyne help them, dead, she could be lying behind any one and he wouldn't know.
Almost exactly one hundred and twenty minutes later his temper had burned down to the fuse and Seifer gave up and started looking for signs of recent habitation instead.
The only problem was that there weren't any, or rather, there were, but they were all too old. The smell of disinfectant and plastic permeated every corridor, and there was a thick layer of dust everywhere, coating his shoes and lying thick as snow along the floor. His boots kicked up little puffs of the stuff as he prowled, intensifying the medical smell. It left dark footprints along the floor, immediately signifying to any observer with half an eye that someone had passed his way recently, but Seifer couldn't think of any way to hide his tracks. He couldn't crawl along the ceiling, so why worry?
He walked through empty cafeterias, their tables chipped and smashed glass counters decorated with streaks of green mildew, equally deserted laundry rooms with dented copper vats and a few worn-our commercial machines untended, and row upon row of empty beds in various stages of dilapidation.
Junked hospital equipment littered the place, bed frames, weird metal objects Seifer couldn't even begin to guess the function of, peeling cartoon murals in a set of rooms that had to have been the children's ward. These last raised a few more unsettled memories, dusty ghosts rising up from the unswept floor. Bright lights. Pain. Stuffy indoor heat, and the voices of lying white-coated adults who always said that what they were going to do wasn't going to hurt a bit.
It always did.
He'd never liked hospitals, even the first time. The current situation was doing absolutely nothing to improve his opinion of the institutions. He was tired and hungry and broke and so far the only positive thing he could think to say about his situation was that the hospital was warm and dry and nobody was actually shooting at him.
Yet.
Seifer shifted the rucksack on his back and carried on. A few monsters dotted the halls, but nothing too spectacular, more irritating than anything else. The encounters became more frequent as he walked on into the bowels of the old hospital, but the corridors stayed old, dead, and pleasantly cool. There was a faint hum of electricity from deep in the building, but he couldn't seem to locate it.
More rooms. More junked hospital equipment, More monsters. So far no sign of intelligent life- much less Quistis, whose intellect was so far past intelligence that she wouldn't able to see it with a telescope.
Seifer paused and turned to investigate a large, silver-flecked pile in the middle of one room, this one an old operating theatre by the holes in the walls where piped air had once flowed in. A large stainless-steel table was overturned in one corner of the room.
He stooped and ran a hand through the heap of metallic objects, hoping for weapons.
They weren't, of course.
It took Seifer a few seconds to realise that they were old surgical instruments, swept into the centre of the floor. He held one instrument up, turned it over, spun it round, frowned and then tossed it back onto the pile in the middle of the room. Stirring the dump with a scuffed boot toe, he turned round to leave, kicking the dust up into clouds of pale mist as he went.
The dust..
It hung around all the floors in the hospital, thick and velvety. There were monsters in places, so tracks were to be expected, but one thing was bothering him
Monsters didn't wear shoes.
The tracks were scuffed and large, indicating more than one person. There were marks, too as if things had been dragged along the floor. They led in from the door which Seifer had entered, skirted the pile of alligator-dentistry instruments and disappeared under a large and very new blue canvas tarpaulin that hung across one wall.
Seifer took a few cautious steps forwards and stabbed the tip of Hyperion at the corner of the tarpaulin. It fell in a cloud of dust, revealing a pair of doors.
At face value, they resembled a thousand other hospital doors that Seifer had walked straight past while searching for Quistis. Two metres tall, two metres wide, shatter proof glass in two small panels half way up their stainless-steel surface. The handles were chained together by several very thick bicycle locks and the glass windows had been painted black from the inside.
The line of tracks led right to them. Seifer knelt in the dust and examined them carefully, noting that an equal amount of prints tracked to and from the room. He stood, jeans coated thickly with dust, and tried the lock, slamming his shoulder against the sheet metal.
Unsurprisingly, they failed to open
Seifer slung the gunblade over his shoulder and held out his right hand, palm upwards. A dot like molten copper flickered into life on his skin, followed by a leaf-shaped flame that grew larger in seconds. He placed his palm flat against the doors, gripping two chains in his hand.
There was a poisonous, molten smell and an implosion of heat. The metal glowed cherry red, brightened to orange and then paled around the edges.
Seifer removed his hand, inspected the metal, which was cooling to a rusty red and emitting little pink pink sounds, unshouldered the gunblade in one smooth gesture and brought it around in a slashing circle.
The blade of Hyperion cleaved neatly through the chains.
Basic physics. Quistis would be so proud. Destroy the temper of the metal by heating, allowing the steel to weaken.
Yeah…don't want to tell her I actually learned anything in those lectures. She'd be smug for days…
Seifer pushed the door open.
Like all the previous rooms, this one was empty of previous life. A security camera hung on the wall, dusty and dead with its electronic innards trailing down the wall.
It was what lay on the floor that interested him.
Weapons. Lots of them.
The armaments were a weird mix of smart looking but cheap new weapons, junked second-hand old military gear and Heath Robinson-contraptions. Crossbows that looked as if they'd been made by a mad scientist out of bedsprings, swords, assault rifles, ex-police riot shields, ex-military helmets dating back to the first Sorceress Wars, shotguns, pistols, machetes and a couple of iron bars from a construction site.
Seifer picked the nearest gun up, sighted along its barrel and then threw it down in disgust. Cheap crap, rifles with fuck-me sights and pearl handled knives, stuff that looked pretty but otherwise didn't do a damned thing.
He did a brief count and raised an eyebrow. There was enough kit in the narrow room to arm at least fifty people to the teeth.
By Seifer's definition of 'well armed' this meant that over a hundred and fifty average soldiers could have been equipped from the items lying in tidy stacks along the walls of the room. They were neatly arranged on wooden pallets, some sheeted with obviously second-hand tarps. All were clean and new, although the dust tracks on the floor indicated that no one had visited for a few days at least. When he flicked out the chamber of one pistol, it came out easily, oiled blue and sleek. The serial numbers had been filed off.
A quick search in four ancient, unlocked filing cabinets lining the walls revealed several boxes that looked as if they might contain plastic explosive. Seifer didn't' shake them just in case. A large explosion would alert everyone to fact that he was there, and he wouldn't be in much condition to fight them when they came. He wasn't going to help Quistis by being turned into hamburger steak.
He selected an automatic pistol from the guns lining the wall, found some clips for it and then flipped the safety on and tucked the pistol into the back of his jeans. The gunblade was heavy and reassuring in his hand, but there was no point in being unprepared. Equally, there was no point in shooting himself in the ass, which was the reason for the safety catch.
The level of Seifer's concern cranked itself up another few notches. Whoever these people were, they had some serious hardware. On the bright side, he was now pretty much sure that he'd come to the right place. No one with that much equipment could be planning anything good.
So. Weapons, but no sign of Quistis.
He tracked the dust prints back through the entrance, pulling the door shut behind him. The chain dangled from its handles, uselessly. Seifer tied the ends together in a loose and shabby knot that he knew wouldn't fool anyone for any amount of time, but it made him feel like maybe no one would notice.
He wrapped the last length of chain round the handles and slouched off to check out the next corridor.
Current reading: Gwyneth Jones' Bold As Love trilogy (and very good it is, too) featuring a guy very much like Seifer if he was more into electric guitars and less into sharp, pointy objects. Fic refs: St Jude is, of course, the patron saint of lost causes. There's more, but I'm tired.
Reviews:
Breaker-one: For some reason I liked the first bit of ch 15 more… I had this idea and wrote the last part ages ago, and then the plot morphed and it didn't really fit in, so I had to make it. The whole last bit got rewritten about two hours before I posted, which might be a reason why I dig the first part. Though Seifer is being more than usually introspective, for reasons of pacing and plot development
DBZ Fanfiction Queen: Ta. I'm racking my brain trying to figure out what the point was you noticed. Mood; still stressed. Exams in three weeks, dammit.
Ghost 140: The 'sychological- spelling mistake was in fact deliberate. Do you really think Seifer can spell? And it was HIS writing.
Quistis88: Thanks a lot ( as usual)
Seatbelts; Glad to have you both back on board, guys. All will be revealed in the next couple of chapters, I promise.
Seventhe: Yes, there is shudder PLOT rearing its ugly head. The sex will come later, but will a fat cat do for kittens?
Verdanni: Bad!Seifer is indeed sexy. Other versions include EvilClown!Seifer, TransvestiteHooker!Seifer, PostTrial!Seifer( a small and smoking crater) PissedOffGunpointBunny!Seifer(don't ask), AmbiguouslyGay!Seifer and Assless !Seifer (it's been sued off)…
Wonderful Failure: Wow, thanks! I don't think I'd have thought of writing Seifer/Quistis fic if I hadn't read it BEFORE I played the game. Because Seifer's a twat. And then I got them in my head and I just couldn't let it go..
Ta, everyone. I've been through a couple of rough spots in the last week and reviews make me happy.
hugs
kate
(he's not intelligent, but we like the way he dances)