Chapter Seventeen: Protest Song
Can anyone make a difference any more?
Can anyone write a protest song?
Manic Street Preachers: Let Robeson Sing
Seifer walked through deserted rooms, following the tracks in the dust thick as sugar icing that coated the floor. They led in the opposite direction to the hidden weapons room, clear prints of five or six people in cheap softsoled trainers.
He traced them a hundred metres through the hospital and round a corner before they abruptly vanished, fading bafflingly into undisturbed dust that lay like a shawl along the floor.
Seifer swore with feeling. He knelt down on the floor, inspecting the scuff marks. One perfect print faded in mid-step, the heel of the shoe engraved with such clarity that he could read the brand name. The rest just stopped on the middle of the floor, and a quick search for hidden trapdoors, moving wall panels or secret magic objects yielded nothing more than spiderwebs.
It's like someone just yanked them right out of their boots…
Seifer winced and looked up reflexively, but the polystyrene ceiling tiles appeared undisturbed. He cast back and then round, the back of his neck feeling acutely vulnerable the whole time as he kept one eye on the floor and the other on the roof.
They can't have walked along the ceiling. I'm bound to pick them up eventually.
The next corridor was empty.
So was the second.
The third contained a Buel, which did nothing to help Seifer's mood. The relatively weak monster didn't manage to break his defences (though to give it some credit it wasn't equipped with either a medium sized military academy or a missile launcher), or cause any serious harm, but he was painfully aware that he was running out of time.
The fourth corridor ended in a dead end, a brick wall with one tall window that looked out onto blue sky.
Seifer unshouldered his rucksack and took a drink from his bottle of water. It was warm and tasted of plastic, but so far he'd found no more. Sinks littered the hospital but they were all dry, broken or housing monster nests, their plugholes clogged with debris and the basins cracked and filled with dust.
He put the bottle back and inspected the Circlet the Buel had left, wiping it free of sticky congealing blood.
Hmm. Not much use without a GF. What the hell, I'll keep it. Maybe Quistis can use it…
He laid Hyperion carefully on the windowsill, feeling the grainy stone catch painfully at his blisters, and looked out.
It was a pleasant day outside, as far as he could see through the grimy window. Ships bobbed on the ocean, no doubt crewed by people with more sense than him.
It was a long way down.
He could faintly see the perimeter walls spreading out to either side before they followed the contours of a hill back in towards around town, The hospital had been built right on to the walls and the walls skirted the edge of a sheer cliff, several hundred feet high. Seifer stared down it, noting the remains of a water gate right at the bottom, no doubt used to unload hospital supplies back when the place had been in business.
Above the water gate the cliff was pocked by square holes where windows had been hacked out of the stone as the hospital spread down into the rock. Old buildings evolve, and by his best estimate the original building had to date back pre Garden.
Seifer, by his reckoning, was still on the first floor, which meant that there were at least four above him and who knew how many below.
I should find some stairs. And then I can wander about, just on a different floor.
This is getting boring. I need a map.
Frustrated, Seifer smashed the glass with the flat of Hyperion and watched the sparkling splintered fragments cascade down to the rocks far below. He leaned out as far as he dared and craned his head to each side carefully, looking for any signs of habitation.
There were none.
It wasn't a surprise. Apart from the mysteriously disappearing footprints and the weapons, there were just too many monsters for the hospital to be inhabited.
It's all to shit. They should have taped it up better, if they ever do want to rebuild this place they're going to have to spend some serious money to clean it up. Grats, Creeps, Buels and just about pretty much any other monster you want.
They've got to be breeding.
Far above Seifer's head a lone pipe belched pale grey smoke into the cloudless sky.
He listened. No sound, save for the unpleasant slithering noises of what was probably a pair of Creeps one floor down.
Hey, if I was a bunch of lame-ass bargain basement revolutionaries with a captive SeeD, where would I hide?
He took one last glance around and pulled his head back into the corridor. It was dark inside, lit with a nasty greyish light broken in pools by windows and, in some cases, shafted skylights that didn't quite make his witchlight redundant.
This is a waste of time.
I bet there's no one round for miles…
Seifer would not have been surprised to learn that he was, in fact, dead wrong.
There was another person within about a hundred feet of his present position, and closing. Currently she was, like most of Trabia's population, blissfully unaware of his presence
She was walking a similar long dark hallway, and thinking about her dead father.
Her name was Nia.
Her father had been a minor journalist, one of the old-fashioned kind that wore vests and drank a lot. On good days he hung around events and conventions waiting for something to happen. On bad days he made it up.
He was dead, now, of course.
She'd been out working at the copy shop and returned to find him lying in a pool of blood on the bathroom floor, quite dead. She'd smashed the window to get in while the baby screamed bloody murder in her cot, not understanding why her grandda, the kindly old man who looked after her in the daytime, couldn't come.
It had been a strange feeling, as if she was sitting outside her own body watching somebody else check the old man's pulse, close his eyes and phone for the ambulance and then the undertaker.
Pulmonary embolism, the hospital had said with brisk regret. Infected liver. So sorry, nothing we can do.
After that whatever prospects she'd once entertained for herself had somehow seemed unimportant, rinsed down the plughole as she scrubbed the old man's blood off the walls and floor with a rag that soon because the colour of old wine. She'd sold the flat not long after and had been immured in the copy shop ever since, until her skin became stained with toner no matter how hard she rubbed it and she began to hate the smell of hot paper.
She booked a childcare place for her daughter Fiorinda, went on working and mourning the dead.
She hadn't even known the old man had had liver problems. Nia could imagine exactly why her father had kept it quiet. He'd never liked causing a fuss. The hospital had said the ulcers must have taken months to develop, years even. They left it unsaid that maybe something could have been done if she'd noticed earlier, and she was grateful for that, at least.
Like she would ever stop blaming herself, anyway.
Six months after her father's death Nia was working in the Copy Cat in Velalisier when a man had come in bearing a load of leaflets in to be photocopied. They'd got talking and then he'd brought another packet the next week, and the next. They'd chatted each time. Nothing sexual, he wasn't her type and the birth of Fio had made her swear off romance for life, but she'd been flattered by the attention. His name was Asbel, and he was a politician or something. Nia told him she didn't pretend to know anything about politics, but she was secretly impressed.
He took her out for coffee the next day and they chatted about her daughter. She let him know she wasn't interested and he smiled and said it didn't matter and that he had something to show her.
Nia, wise in the ways of strangely vague 'surprises' and men who told her than a four year-old kid daughter didn't matter, left abruptly and hoped that she'd never see him again.
She'd been surprised to see him the next week and the next, bearing more leaflets and still ready to talk.
The fifth consecutive week he gave her a leaflet and asked her to read it. She took it and smiled and said she would, meaning none of it.
It had been three days later, while she'd been doing the washing, that Nia had pulled the scrap of cheap paper out of her shorts pocket and unfolded it.
It had been loosely worded propaganda. Propaganda about a place called Garden that Nia had heard of before, always in carefully worded press releases with pictures of grateful smiling civilians. There had been a big fuss about them two years ago, but she didn't read the paper much. What impression she'd got from the media had persuaded her that the Gardens and the strangely named SeeDs were firmly on the side of the angels.
The leaflet challenged all that.
It had been a weird and faintly unnerving feeling.
The leaflet said that the SeeDs were rich and ruthless fighters and that they recruited child-soldiers who didn't know any better to fill their ranks, They'd named some of the monsters the children had to fight and Nia, who had been born in Velaliser in the same house she now inhabited thirty six years later and who'd never seen any monsters at all, ever, was shocked.
So when Asbel had returned to the shop and asked her to join his discussion group that planned to abolish the Gardens and their child-farming, she agreed. After all, she'd heard about the resistance groups in Timber and thought it would be fun.
In a way, it had.
She was invited to their base in this old abandoned hospital that had been empty for years and had her background checked (Hyne knew what that was but it didn't hurt). Her jobs were simple. She brought the more active members of the group hot meals and did paperwork and copied leaflets.
And, like now, she did the patrols.
Asbel told them all that they were necessary to protect the hospital from Dangerous Infiltrators (the capital letters fell neatly in front of each word). The way he phrased it made the patrols exciting for a while, and then, as the weeks went on and no one seemed to take any notice of their activities, boring, and finally, redundant.
Their leader and a select small group of rebels had carefully cleared their part of the hospital of monsters, locking the inside of all the connecting doors with heavy chains and double padlocks that Ras, one of the men, had found for half-price at Hardware House. The locks kept their part of the hospital monster free, while allowing observation of all other areas.
Thankfully, the only creatures in their part of the building were the carnivorous, grimy pigeons that infested most corners of the base, and the CLA had to learn to live with those. The only monster-infested part of the hospital they ever had to enter were the corridors surrounding their weapons room, and Asbel always went there accompanied by seven or eight heavily armed men. The monsters were better protection than locks, he always said, but they'd had a few left over from Ras's bulk-buy, and so they'd added some chains just to be sure.
Nia had visited just once, to pick up the snub-nosed Jackal revolver she wore out of a box of similar guns. It was heavy, ugly and greasy with oil, yet there was something she liked about the gun.
Maybe it was the danger, the glamour, associated with a weapon. She'd posed like a Timber girl soldier a few times in the cracked bathroom mirror when nobody else was looking. Only a select few were allowed proper weapons, the very fact she carried one was a mark of Asbel's esteem.
Privately, Nia thought their leader's esteem had more to do with the fact she worked in a copy shop than anything else. To be proper revolutionaries, they'd needed more leaflets and posters, which she smuggled in after hours to the Copy Cat where she worked. The leaflets had grown more threatening as the weeks went by with no reply from the Gardens and then finally they'd been abandoned in favour of more 'direct' tactics.
Nia was secretly relieved at this. Manufacturing excuses to explain the extra hundred-weights of paper that unaccountably kept disappearing from the shop's stores had been hard, and the machines had been used so often they broke down all the time. It has caused more than one staff assault by thesis-clutching grad students.
That wasn't to say that she agreed with their new tactics, because violence worried her, but there had been something so deliciously secretive about planning the campaign.
The hits had been months on paper. Paper which had been provided, free of charge, by her, because most of the group's funds had been taken up with bribes and expert's fees. Even Asbel, who everyone knew had money, hadn't expected it to be quite so expensive, but apparently anarchy didn't come cheap.
Nia didn't really approve of violence, but their leader made it all seem so logical. Obviously the Gardens didn't respond to reasoned arguments, which was to be expected of blood-hungry mercenaries. They'd been forced to hit back the only way they'd understand.
Striking a blow for the oppressed, was how Asbel phrased it.
No one, certainly not Nia, had asked just how smart striking a blow for the oppressed when the oppressed in question inhabited their target was, but their leader had addressed the question anyway. "Maybe it'll stop people from sending their children there."
"People send their children?" she asked, horrified. "Actually send? Volunteer them?" Thinking of Fio, all the time.
Asbel made an impatient gesture with one hand. "Yes, yes. Stupid fools who've been impressed by all the public relations and bright glossy photographs. But it isn't them we're bothered about. We're all about the kids that don't choose to be there."
"But they all seem quite happy to be there." one of the newer members added. One of the newbies, no doubt.
"In the pictures." Nia added darkly. You could make a photograph say anything you wanted, she'd learned that much through working at a copy shop for far too long, so painting in smiles on the faces of a few kids and airbrushing out some bruises would be a cinch.
Asbel gave her an approving look. "They're being oppressed."
"Wouldn't it hurt?"
"But they're too oppressed to know they're being oppressed. The Gardens don't tell them the real purpose of SeeD until they're fully indoctrinated. You've all heard the quote 'Give me a child until it is seven and it is mine for life.' Garden's the living proof."
"But they don't take children as young as seven. You have to be at least….".
"That's beside the point. What this all comes down to is that the Gardens are a dumping ground for every orphanage on three continents and we're here to stop that happening."
Here to stop it.
Here to defend their base from Dangerous Infiltrators, that was her hobby now. It didn't pay as well as photocopying, but it was quietly boring in a monotonous way. Other people had asked for reassignment but she liked the quiet. It let her think, away from everybody with no crying child or people asking her questions or bothering her with paperwork that they didn't want to fill in. And most importantly, no photocopying.
Most days she did her shift in the morning before she went to the Copy Cat, and then again in the evening, a part-time revolutionary. During the patrols she thought of nothing, her brain falling into a comfortable rhythm in time with the tread of her trainers on the dusty floor and the slight echo of her breathing.
Nia came to the second window on her route, a grimy half-circle of glass set into the wall of the old reception. She leant carefully and conscientiously against the glass, angling her gaze left and then right down the hall. As usual, there was nobody there.
She hadn't expected anybody.
The third window was a fair way away. She stuffed her hands into her shorts pockets and set off towards it, thanking Hyne that she didn't even have to worry about finding her way any more. The corridors were seriously disorientating. There had been some kind of colour coding taped onto the walls when the hospital was still open but it was long gone, along with everything that was worth anything or could be carried. The halls that the CLA used to keep an eye on their private empire had once been used to run laundry trucks and ferrying hospital workers between section to section without disturbing the nurses.
Her gun bounced uncomfortably against her hip. It had a neat little button-down lid that kept the dust off, made of the same shiny leather as the holster. Nia cleaned it with shoe polish once a week and carefully wiped the gun over with an oiled rag without taking it apart. A box of spare bullets was stuffed into the pocket of her shorts. The shorts were her mission clothes, khaki, sale price, and she'd bought them especially because of the deep pockets and because the khaki reminded her of soldiers on television. She would have secretly liked a shiny silver helmet with red studs, or shoulder pads like pan lids. Stuff she could clean with polish, at the same time as her gun.
Her legs were beginning to ache. Nia mentally added shinpads to the list. They'd look a bit silly with her shorts and tennis shoes, but who cared?
It wasn't like she needed armour, anyway. The gun was enough.
She could see the paler rectangle on the floor up ahead that marked the third window. The third, fourth, and fifth were close together, with the sixth and last a few hundred metres away. Her shoes echoed off the peeling floor as she watched the square come closer.
The nearest window was a rough rectangle that looked into an old hospital ward.
Nia gave it a cursory glance as she walked past. There was a man fighting a Grat in the room. The next episode of Princess Warrior was on at seven and she wanted to get home in time to watch it after she picked Fio up from playgroup. Princess Warrior was her favourite TV sho-
She was several metres past the window when the implications of what she'd just seen caught up with her and she stopped dead.
There's a monster in the room. Fighting. With someone.
There's no one else in the hospital, I know there's no one else in the hospital.
There can't be anyone.
There might be someone, otherwise what's the point of me doing this…
There can't be anyone, but I better go back and check anyway.
It's just my mind playing tricks.
Nia placed one hand on the wall and carefully unbuckled the flap on her gun. It made her feel safer almost immediately and gave her the confidence to creep back down the corridor. Stopping, she carefully poked her head round the corner of the window. Ear close to the pane, she heard a funny noise.
The room in front of her was old and dusty, like any other room in the hospital. It was large and painted pale green, with a few metal-frame beds pushed to one wall. There was a faint layer of slime on the glass that gave everything a yellowish tinge.
The Grat was a sickly yellow blob, but Nia had seen plenty of Grats in the hospital, they grew in the warm moist corridors like mushrooms in dim light. Facing the Grat was a tall, yellow-haired man, dressed in dark clothes. Even allowing for the weird sickly gleam the fungus imparted to her view, she could see that he was carrying a weapon. She couldn't make it out properly through the crusted glass, but it looked like some kind of gun or something.
Nia swallowed. Panic rushed up to fill her completely, leaving her hands shaking uncontrollably against the window.
This isn't right. There's no one here, they said there was no one here, oh, Hyne, what if there's more of them. More people coming. I can't cope.
I need help.
I can't talk, they might hear me talking, they might be monitoring the radio transmissions.
They can't do that, can they? They…? Whoever it is, just some lunatic, someone with a deathwish, it doesn't have to be anything important, not on my watch..I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation…
Nia glanced nervously up and down the corridors, her imagination filling them with black-uniformed commandoes smashing through the windows, rushing the base and holding everyone at gunpoint.
She touched the radio mike clipped to her collar. It was a new model, the kind without wire, and small enough to fit into the palm of her hand. The reception was poor, but at least the radio waves could be easily picked up. Communication would have been impossible a few years ago. Nia supposed they could thank the SeeDs for that, at least. She flicked it on, muffling the speaker in her T -shirt.
"Come in, Eagle. This is N2. Do you read me? Over?"
There was a hiss of static, and then a faint voice. '–e-ead-ou, ennn-Over'
Nia felt like hugging the microphone. She clutched it harder in one hand. "There's someone in the hospital. Do you read me? There's someone in the hospital. I need backup. Are you all right? I…"
"Ennn-ou, situation-…-esent, over."
"I can't hear you! Tell me what I should do!"
'outine-ormal, enn-ou? Continue. Over and out."
Nia pressed the button several more times. More static.
Continue? Had they heard what she was saying? Did they care?
Maybe it wasn't anything to worry about. Maybe it was some kind of drill.
She dithered, paralysed.
The man in front of her must be a spy. Or a soldier. Or a complete idiot. Maybe all three..
No one in their right mind would want to enter the old monster-infested hospital without a very good reason. She just hoped it wasn't the obvious.
It had been her idea to spread the rumour that the hospital was haunted, and anyway these days most people didn't wander around abandoned places. Wandering was not a survival trait in a post Lunar Cry world haunted by monsters that could rip off your head just as soon as look at you.
Nia swallowed, counted to ten, and then peered carefully round the corner at the man.
He looked like a tramp in his tattered clothes and ex-military rucksack and boots. The only thing that stuck out was the sword.
To be honest, it was hard to miss. Nia doubted that she'd even be able to pick it up.
It certainly wasn't any make she'd seen before, but then she'd never made a close study of weaponry until recently. The object it most resembled was the weapons of some Galbadian soldiers she'd seen years back in a promotional leaflet. Only instead of gunmetal grey, this sword was black, with a single shining silver edge. From the shelter of the window, it looked as if the shadows had come to life to slash at the flabby spotted bulk of the monster.
The man finished off the Grat in two quick swings, puncturing its fleshy body like a sack filled with custard. He then bent down and started to rifle through the carcass, elbow –deep in sticky liquefying green goo. He searched methodically, from the head end - if Grats had heads, which Nia doubted - towards its bulbous and mushroom like feet.
Around the navel (though of course Grats didn't have navels because they sprouted instead of being born like proper people) he grunted and yanked his fist out of the body. It came loose with a slurp. The man didn't seem to care about the mess. He wiped his hands on his trousers and opened his fist to reveal two shining green stones each about the size of a small orange. They were checked quickly and then stowed away in a corner of his rucksack.
Nia stifled a wince. The idea of violence was fine, but the sight of it in front of her made her feel sick. Striking a blow for justice shouldn't be accompanied by blood and intestines.
The closest she had ever got to disembowelling anything with her shiny Jackal revolver was the pop star poster Ras had hung up on the wall of their common room, a space that doubled as impromptu sleeping quarters for whoever was on night duty, war table for important meetings and Nia's office, when she had paperwork to do. Rebelling took so much paperwork, sometimes.
She turned her head away from the Grat blood and stared resolutely at the wall.
Not that Grats had blood, but the messy green goo running from its headless body looked just as unpleasant, if not more so. It didn't resemble organic matter at all.
Seifer's mood, never particularly sunny, was
darkening with each step. His stomach
growled, reminding him that he hadn't eaten yet, but he couldn't be bothered to
stop and fish out a piece of mummified fruit from the cavernous depths of his
rucksack. He pressed on, searching.
This is all her fault
He'd been there for hours, seemed like. Hours with no sign of Quistis, nothing apart from more corridors and more monsters. Corridors and monsters, he was starting to discover, got very old, very quickly.
He almost regretted not asking Quistis for a GF. Preferably one who had learned Enc-None. The corridors were swarming and the oppressive dim hot surroundings were beginning to get on his nerves.
Now is not the right time to discover you're claustrophobic, Almasy..
He wiped Grat blood from Hyperion's blade off onto his trousers, regretting it instantly as the liquid began to seep through the cloth of his faded jeans.
It had been something like the third Grat he'd killed. The battles were too frequent, and they took up too much of his time.
He started whistling the first few lines of a popular marching song from Galbadia. To the casual observer, the tune was the same as a popular Northern Trabian ballad called 'My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean' but the words running through Seifer's head as he whistled quietly were somewhat different.
'My brother's a missionary worker
He saves fallen women from sin
For five gil he'll save you a redhead
My God how the money rolls in…'
He started on the second verse, the one about the grandparents, with slightly les enthusiasm and then gave up reluctantly. The dark dust-shrouded corridors seemed to swallow the sound up.
A GF would make things so much quicker a small traitor voice whispered in the back of his mind
No. Dammit. No forgetting. No sharp claws in my brain. No instant endorphin power-rush. No GFs. I don't need anything to guard my back..
Where the hell is she?
If she's in trouble, they'll regret it.
Peaceful protestors? Peaceful my ass. Just let me make sure she's all right and get her out of here and they can go right back to blowing things up before Balamb comes in like a ton of bricks and annihilates the lot of them.
Good bloody riddance.
By the time Nia was paying attention again, the man was almost out of sight along one corridor. She whispered a quick prayer to Hyne that he was heading the way she thought and raced down the corridor to the next viewing window.
Her breath misted the glass as she arrived there slightly ahead of the man and ducked down, keeping out of sight. She was getting fat and unfit, middle age creeping up at last.
Should exercise more.
This window was larger and would keep the man in sight for a good period of time It was thickly dotted with mould, which gave an imperfect view of the proceedings, but the poor view made her feel safer. The glass had wire mesh sealed into it, the kind that made it either shatterproof or unbreakable, Nia couldn't remember which. She hoped it was unbreakable, personally.
Her hand stole again to the radio. Nia pressed the Send button. An second answering hiss of static greeted her as she shaded the set with her hand, trying to muffle the sound. Her back was beginning to ache from crouching on the floor, eyes blurred behind a rack of glass sample bottles that someone had nailed over the other side of the window. Sweat ran uncomfortably down her neck and soaked the collar of her loose shirt.
'Come in. This is N2. Reading?'
There was no sound.
Nia sighed and tried again.
'N2 reporting, do you read me? Over?'
Nothing.
She sighed for a second time, hard enough to stir the dust on the floor, and carefully clipped the mike back to her collar. It figured. They were probably busy with the SeeD. The radio contact had always been erratic at the best of times. It still worried her, but it felt better now that she knew what to do. Continue. Watch. Observe.
She dithered for a minute, waiting for the man to catch up to the window. He wasn't hurrying, or rather he had the look of someone who had started out walking fast and then had been driven by circumstances to slow down.
Run, she mouthed through the window.
Even if he was an infiltrator, anyone with half a brain knew that blood and ichor and sweat just attracted more monsters. Usually, the only sensible course after one battle was to retreat. The scent drew most monsters like blood attracted sharks.
Nia tapped the mike again. It responded with a sharp whine.
"Come on, tell me what to do….."
I don't think I can deal with seeing someone getting chopped into bits right in front of me.
You won't have to, her brain replied caustically. They'll probably eat him first…
"Gross".
Nia spoke the last word, maybe a little louder than she'd intended
Through the window, the man's eyes flicked up. Nia automatically flattened herself to the ground, inwardly sighing at the damage the thick layer of antiseptic-smelling floor dust wreaked on her dark shirt. A few seconds later she cautiously raised her eyes above the level of the sill. The feeling of panic had solidified somewhere above her navel, and was busy making her every move feel terribly wrong.
Thankfully the man's attention had shifted. He was staring straight ahead. Nia automatically followed his gaze and had to stop herself from exclaiming as a flicker of movement came from her extreme right. The shelf in front of her began to shake, juddering up and down in time to a rhythm echoed in the suddenly fearful beating of her heart.
No more than a few metres ahead, a large animal turned from a T –junction , part of the rabbit warren of corridors that made up the forbidden zone of the hospital. Hiding behind the glass bottles, Nia laid her cheek against the glass and squinted.
Damn.
The monster lumbering towards her was enormous. Its wings raked the polystyrene tiles of the ceiling, raising each up in a miniature wave as it passed below.
Even Nia, an urbanite to the core, could tell that it was half-grown. Not even a small adult Ruby Dragon could fit into the hospital corridors.
Trapped, the animal had a caged kind of grace. Through the stained window she could see sores and wounds on its wings where the hospital beams had raked it. Razor-edged scales dangled from its underbelly.
It's still beautiful, part of her mind squealed.
The rest of her just wanted to run and hide. There was a kind of paralysing fear radiating from the animal. Worse, unlike the Grat, this monster was clearly, obviously intelligent. Even with its eyes hidden beneath fringes of tufted feathers, there was intent in its movements.
Nia didn't doubt that it wanted to get out.
She wondered what had brought it here. There were large monsters in the hospital but she'd never seen a Ruby Dragon before. Maybe it had somehow got in through a hole in the roof, months ago, and then become trapped as it grew, unable to find an exit. Maybe there was some other entrance they didn't know about. She seemed to remember someone telling her about a way up from the sea shore, some private water-gate or something.
The dragon didn't look like it was thriving.
Run, she told the man again, silently.
The dragon tossed back its shaggy mane, peered at its opponent with one beady bloodshot eye, and howled. The noise was deafeningly loud in the enclosed space.
The bottles in front of Nia shattered, tumbling glass shards to the floor.
The intruder didn't run away as any normal person should have but instead leaned against the wall and casually shrugged one shoulder from the rucksack straps, letting it drop to the ground. He kicked it out the way, and Nia jumped at the noise as it landed with a small thud against the opposite wall.
She looked back at the monster, taking in its pitiful yet still threatening appearance. Now that she examined it closer, one wing was definitely deformed, scabbed over with scar tissue that bound the membrane and probably prevented it from ever opening properly. The dragon's crest was dull and shaggy, ribs clearly visible under its scales.
It's hungry.
Her palms were damp, mouth dry.
I hope the glass really is unbreakable…..
Nia wondered whether to leave, complete the rest of her patrol, and return later, just to make sure that the dragon had dealt with the intruder. Even half-starved, a dragon was more than a match for any one person. Especially half-starved, if you really thought about it.
And since it looked as if the man was going to be so stupid as to try and fight it, it was a fair bet that she wouldn't have to make that call after all.
The dragon raised one clawed paw and lunged into the floor, claws scraping great raised gouges in the lino. It rocked back and forwards, half-opening its wings to expose the orange membranes, crest rising in anticipation.
The man raised the sword straight out in front of him. Nia noticed that it didn't have a proper handle like she'd expected. It looked more like a gun, like the handle of the revolver she still held in her hand. A gun with some kind of blade attached to the end. The blade had holes in it, not like a proper sword at all.
All in all, she decided, it was very disappointing. The swords she saw on TV were so much better, bright shining blades with jewelled pommels and rows of mystic inscriptions twining round their leather-wrapped hilts. Not some kind of bargain basement special with holes in and Grat goop still drying on its edge.
She noted dispassionately, as the man took a swing at the dragon's leathery hide, that it didn't even seem that good at cutting things. Not proper things, anyway. Grats were different. More soggy for starters.
Nia knelt down on the floor and watched the fight.
It started like some kind of dance, like the boxers she'd seen on TV. The man held the sword warily in front of him, staring the dragon right in the fringe to see how it was reacting. The monster hissed like a boiling kettle, swelled its sides, turned an even brighter red and rocked hypnotically. Saliva dripped from its jaws and corroded a small pool in the eroding linoleum floor. Its forepaws padded restlessly up and down, like a cat's.
It was a good couple of minutes before the dragon pounced. Nia's feet were slowly going to sleep under her, abused thigh muscles screaming for relief. She shifted her position, glanced down at her watch for a second, and nearly missed the dragon's move.
So, from the look of it, did the intruder.
One second the dragon was slowly swaying backwards and forwards, tail lashing behind it and the next it had somehow travelled a foot down the corridor. Its head snaked out, missing the man by inches with a hollow clack as its jaws closed on empty air. The lunge must have caught its wings somewhere high up in the roof, because there was an audible crack from the ceiling. Its thin chest heaved in and out like a bellows, sucking in air.
The intruder retaliated just as quickly. She hadn't known a person could move that fast. The tip of the sword flicked in a circle and traced a thin red line against one of the dragon's paws. It looked as if he'd aimed for the vulnerable yellow underbelly of the beast, but in the corridor, there was only one way to attack, and that was face-on. If the dragon stood still, then its neck and throat would have been easy to slice open, but it was considerably more of a chore to evade the long head and viciously clawed forepaws. Like the rest of its body, they were covered with hard shiny scales that looked almost ceramic.
Nia wondered absently if something like a can-opener would be any use before the terror kicked back in.
What if the dragon saw her? What if the man saw her? What if one person wasn't enough to fill it up?
It was rather a large dragon, after all.
Nia pressed her face back to the window, suddenly feeling that whatever she did was going to be the wrong decision. She studied the intruder with care. If it hadn't been am impossibility, she would have said that he was grinning.
The dragon hissed even louder. If it sounded like a kettle before, this time it was boiling over. It raised one forepaw and took a heavy slash at the man, who ducked and raised the sword to block the blow. Just as the claws came crashing down he placed his other hand on the flat of the blade and slid out from under it, swiping the sword blade up so that the dragon's scaly footpad landed squarely on its edge.
The dragon's hiss changed into a full-scale howl. It reared up on its hind legs with a thud that made the whole floor shake and spread its wings, roaring. The impact brought half of the ceiling down with it and whited out the scene for a minute in swirling flakes of polystyrene. Through the clouds Nia saw a long, red, horselike head, black mane flying, snatch a piece of ceiling tile from the air and gulp it down. .
It's really hungry. Five minutes, max.
It won't even bother to chew. And then it can use the sword to pick its teeth.
When the view cleared completely, the dragon was standing on three legs and limping.
Seifer wiped sweat from his face with his free hand. His muscles burned, salt and smoke stinging his eyes as he glared at the seven-foot tall dragon in front of him. One of its legs wasn't working properly thanks to his last attack, but it had three left, and that was still one more than him.
I don't think anyone's ever defeated a Ruby Dragon solo…means I better find a way real fucking fast.
The dragon snarled, noise deafening in the close confines of the corridor. The cramped conditions only made it look more out of place. Seifer watched it, warily.
Stupid.
Yeah, so what the fuck else is new?
Despite the clear pointlessness of the battle he couldn't remember a time when he'd been near so happy. Not since the winter in Trabia, certainly. Nothing between him and almost certain death except one Fira and three feet of sharpened adamantine and the hum of adrenaline in his blood..
Do this hero thing and go after the girl, survive two years of every fucking merc in the three continents gunning for my ass, and then get KO'd by a stupid damn half starved ruby dragon that shouldn't even be here…I'd have to junction a Phoenix Down so I can bring her back when she kills herself laughing.
Should have known Squall's the only one who's allowed to be the hero…
The Ruby Dragon shook its front paw, scattering smoking drops of blood over the torn shreds of polystyrene roof tiles. Some spontaneously ignited, adding to the reek of smoke and burning plastic that already filled the halls. Seifer masked his face with his free hand and coughed.
It's going to take me hours to kill this.
And then the noise of the fight would inevitably draw more monsters. Sooner of later, he was just going to get too tired to fight…
Hey, I survived one crisis and learnt just enough to survive the next. I can get through this. I'll find her soon. Or if the worse comes to the worse, some safe place to hole up and rest for a while.
It was beginning to dawn on Seifer that his rescuing idea might not have been the wisest of plans.
Plus, he kept getting this weird feeling that somebody was watching him….and that was just stupid.
Nia hid, and watched.
The man rested against the opposite wall, facing the monster. The bevelled edge of his sword was thick with dragon blood. Without taking his eyes from the beast, he wiped it on his trouser leg where it left dark wet stains. There was plaster all over his clothes, but he seemed unhurt.
He's a freaking lunatic. Even if he kills it, there'll probably be another monster round the next corner.
The dragon bent its head, licked at its wound and howled again. Thick strands of blood and saliva dripped from its jaws. It dipped its head and seemed to wait for a few seconds. Nia squinted and thought she could make out a faint glow in the air around it. Pretty, really.
The move provoked a completely unexpected reaction in the man. He raised the gunblade and rushed in, swinging the sword from right to left in a slash that caught the dragon right across its muzzle but seemed to do no serious damage before a clawed paw came up and hooked it away. The dragon slammed its uninjured paw to the ground to trap the blade and then swiped at the intruder with its free leg.
Both hands still pulling at the sword, the man ducked as the claws passed two inches above his head. Dragon blood spattered over his clothes and face as the creature lowered its muzzle in one swanlike swoop towards his exposed back.
Nia gasped.
In the split second before the jaws closed on his spine, the man let go of the hilt and flung up a hand as if in defence. Nia thought it was empty, but she guessed he had concealed a small bomb or grenade in it, because it looked as if a small explosion had ignited in the creature's face. It reared back for a moment and the man dragged his sword out from underneath it, rising from a crouch two meters down the corridor.
Strangely enough, the explosion didn't seem to have done the dragon any damage. In fact if anything it looked better off than before. Its face was covered in blacked soot which it slicked off with a long, blue tongue, forked like a snake's. It licked its lips.
Watching through the glass, she saw its sides hollow sharply then swell.
The monster lunged forwards again, hobbling on three legs. Its injured paw made it lurch clumsily to the side, slamming against the wall. The impact was enough to knock Nia to the ground.
There was a scraping noise from the wall in front of her and then, before she could get up, the window blanked out for the second time in a blaze of white-hot heat.
Nia covered her head with her arms, too frightened to scream. The crash made the dust rise and coated her dark shirt and khaki shorts with a thin film of powdery white, making her cough. Her hand went automatically to the radio button on her collar and touched a piece of wire and shattered circuit board.
Broken.
Surprisingly, the small discovery chased some of her fear away. She could do this. She just had to watch.
Observe, leave, report.
Easy.
Crawling to her knees, Nia dragged herself to the window, her eyes just above the metal frame.
In the room, most things seemed to be on fire. She could feel the heat even from the other side of the glass and it didn't take her long to work out that the broken ceiling tiles were burning. The floor was seared with a dark scorch-mark that started three metres from the dragon and swept either side in a long black arc.
The dragon was unharmed. It looked smug, raised it head and howled again, triumphantly. It made another awkward hop down the hall, its tail working frantically behind it like the propeller of a boat.
Nia shrank against the wall. It was only a few metres away from her now.
The man was nowhere to be seen. There was a tiny noise, nothing more than the crack and pop of burning masonry. It seemed to be coming from under the window.
It was a while before Nia realised that the intruder had been thrown, or perhaps dived, to the floor below the window, maybe hoping for shelter.
She pressed her cheek to the glass and looked down, stifling a yelp as the warm glass threatened to burn her face.
There were a few thuds and muffled swearwords from behind the window.
The dragon watched intently, mane of bobbing feathers parted to reveal the gleam of one beady eye. It dragged itself closer and roared.
Nia ducked again, pressing herself to the floor. There was a loud bang and a hiss, and then a shadow, cast on the floor of her empty corridor. She sat up.
The man had got up from the floor. He leant against her window and his shoulderblades hit the glass with a faint thump. His T shirt was freckled with tiny burns where cinders had landed, but Nia didn't think he looked that bad for something that should been roasted. Broken glass squealed and shattered on the floor, the shelves charred to ash. Smoke and dark grimy stains left by the dragon's attack further obscured her view.
She moved to the side, very quietly, and got up.
The dragon lunged. Its blunt nose hit the glass with a dull thud, and then peeled away, leaving a smudge of dark blood on the pane. The intruder dodged, moved back out into the middle of the corridor, hooked the sword over his shoulders casually and held out one hand in front of him.
His mouth moved silently and a faint glow grew around the dragon, which roared and tossed its head. The glow coalesced into three radiant lights that swooped along the corridor to earth themselves in the man's outstretched hand and then spread, tracing out a bright circle on the floor.
The circle flared brightly and then exploded in a kind of firework display as if someone had poured pink jelly over a glass globe from the ceiling, except in reverse. Glittering light curled up from the floor to encase the intruder in a segmented pink ball that looked like an orange and lasted for all of three seconds before it disappeared.
Magic.
Nia wasn't sure if his spell had worked or not, but it was definitely magic.
That was bad. Magic meant soldier, or, even worse, SeeD. But she'd seen the SeeD downstairs and this man didn't look at all like her. He wasn't wearing any uniform or anything.
Why would Garden send agents?
She didn't understand.
Ahh. It must be a secret devious political reason.
He certainly fought like a soldier, because he wasn't dead yet.
Whoever he was, it was lucky for her that his attention was focused on the dragon and not on the window behind him. But then a Ruby Dragon, even a small one, was hard to miss.
The man gripped the sword with both hands and dived in again to face the creature. He was moving more carefully now, as if he was saving his strength for what was undoubtedly going to be a long battle.
The dragon snarled and lurched forwards to meet his attack. The movement sent its tail scything round in a long counterweighted arc that slammed against the wall and nearly knocked Nia over again. She checked the walls and ceiling for cracks, but none appeared.
The point of the sword angled towards the dragons' throat. It dipped its head to snap at the man's arm, missed, drew back and tried again. This time the sword smacked it neatly across the nose.
Than man moved round in a cautious circle, back to the glass once more
Nia checked her watch. She was going to miss her programme, unless the dragon tried something, soon.
It lunged.
The man ducked, sliding out of the way and the dragon pulled up dead, staring straight through the window at her.
She froze.
The dragon raised one clawed forefoot and scratched at the glass, turning its head, birdlike. It flicked its head, as if swatting a particularly troublesome mosquito, the movement a poem in controlled motion.
Nia panicked. It was an instinctive gut reaction, three thousand years of evolution drowned in one second of sheer terror.
She placed the muzzle of the gun against the chequered glass window and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Oh, right
Safety off.
She probably couldn't break the glass, anyway. It was supposed to be shatterproof…..
The dragon reared back its head and smacked the glass with its nose. It didn't break through, but a tiny flaw appeared in the pane. The muzzle of the beast left long dark scarlet smears on its surface, pits of acid where its corrosive breath had eaten away at the glass.
Safety, safety…… Her hands slipped on the sleekly oiled metal.
The dragon reared its head back in an impossibly graceful curve for another blow and then whipped its long neck snakily back, away from her. The ruff of feathers round its throat stood up starkly in some animal shorthand of rage or pain. It struck at the window almost absently with a heavy clawed forefoot that skidded across the glass and made a noise like nails squealing across a blackboard.
Nia saw a flicker of movement from behind the dragon's scarlet bulk and realised that it was the intruder again. He looked slightly puzzled, perhaps wondering why the dragon had suddenly started attacking an otherwise unremarkable window. She didn't think he'd noticed her, but had the presence of mind to shrink away from the glass and into the shadows of the corridor.
The dragon snarled and then coughed, clawing at its throat. It lowered its head, taking a deep breath.
Nia flung herself away from the window, arms over her face.
There was a cough, a roar, and another blaze of incandescently pale light. Nia hit the floor on knees and elbows and dragged herself to a sitting position, choking. She rested there for a moment, shaking her head to clear the ringing from her ears.
There was silence from the other side of the room, broken by a low angry growl.
She stared at her hands on the floor, dark and grimy against the pale dusty floor. The lino sparkled with tiny pinpoints of light until she blinked and they disappeared.
Nia turned to get up, pressing one hand against the glass to help her stand. Her knees creaked.
At least, she thought it was her knees.
There was a faint creaking noise where the heel of her hand rested against the glass. It was hot, superheated. There was no sign of the man on the other side of the glass, grimy with ash, but it was hard to see anything under a thick rime of smoke and soot.
Nia tested her legs and stood.
Was that movement?
She scrubbed at the ash with her hand, spitting on her palm and rubbing harder until it dawned on her that the ash was on the other side of the glass and that her cleaning wasn't going to make any difference.
That's it. I'm leaving. Surely he's dead.
I've had enough.
She peered round the grime, moving closer to the glass.
A movement, definitely. Now was that…?
Something blinked, in the ash.
The grime suddenly began to make a horrible kind of sense, like looking at a trick picture. There were faint shapes in the soot, a suggestion of wine-dark reddish pigment.
A stretch of the grime peeled off before her eyes to the accompaniment of more cracking glass. It was the dragon, no surprise there. Its heavy head rested alongside the window just the other side of the pane, in shadow, watching her. Small malevolent black pupils tracked her movements, dilating to take advantage of the corridor's dim light.
She jumped back, instinctively.
The dragons' head disappeared. Nia moved closer, which was a mistake, because just then was when the dragon tried again.
Smash.
She screamed, tried selfconsciously to muffle the noise and then realised it wasn't going to make any difference. Pressing the palm of one hand to the glass as if it was going to make some kind of difference, she realised that they'd never planned on such large monsters when they planned the safe halls system and that the dragon could break through any time.
There was a sharp sudden crack. Gleaming lines radiated out, slowly at first, then faster and faster, spiderwebbing from the palm of her hand as the abused pane finally gave up its ghost. The tiny cracks traced over the pane from top to bottom as her eyes followed them in dread. Side to side, crack, shatter…
The glass fell away.
It didn't collapse in a glorious smash. The wire mesh baked into the pane for safety reasons prevented it from doing anything so dangerous as splintering. The hole started in the middle and then fell out, cubes of safety glass melting away from the edges of the hole as the gap grew larger and larger. A square of glass flew past her ear and a second cube cut a long painful trail down her cheek, leaving a bloody furrow.
The dragon gave another coughing grunt.
It drew its huge wedgeshaped head back almost daintily and placed one forepaw gently on the metal windowpane. She shrank back, too scared to move.
There was a sharp crash as some of the remaining pieces of glass fell to the ground, bouncing tinnily along the floor. The hole was as large as a basketball, easily big enough for the dragon to poke its head through. It could probably get through the window if the remaining glass was cleared away….
Nia swallowed.
The dragon turned its head, viewing Nia with one slitted reptilian eye, and then the other. Its pupils were small and black malevolently intelligent. Feathers floated around its head like the halo of a fallen angel.
She held the gun in both hands, cautiously extending her arms until the muzzle hovered a bare ten centimetres away from the dragons' open mouth. It watched her curiously, blood scabbed on its blunt nose from its earlier assault on the glass.
With a calm and presence she hadn't been aware she possessed, Nia pulled the trigger.
There was a howl, so deep in pitch that the thin hospital walls shook.
In the corridor beyond, the dragon went crazy.
Blood gouted from a small neat hole drilled with almost surgical precision between its eyes.
Nia felt an instant's pride
See, you don't need a sword to slay dragons, projectile weapons are the way forwards, no doubt….
She lowered the gun, mind already turning to cleanup measures. They'd need to isolate this section of the base, sure, it would need every available hand, but it could be done, with care…
The falling dragon lurched and crashed through the remaining glass.
Nia screamed, caught in a hail of tiny diamond squares. There was a sudden stink of petrol that caught at her throat and made her eyes water, her field of vision a blur of large dark moving creature. She shot again at the monster in front of her as she tumbled backwards and felt the shock of falling of her spine and elbows as she hit the wall and slid down, tennis shoes fumbling for purchase on the gravel-like glass fragments.
Body contorted, she bent like a limbo dancer, painfully aware that she mustn't touch the floor: not with all that glass and me in shorts, not…
The dragon coughed and convulsed, vomiting thick sticky green bile all over her T shirt. It was half way through the window, body wedged in the aperture and forcing her back against the wall too frightened to scream. Blood streamed from the hole in its skull and its tail cracked like a whip, flailing dust-sparkled air with lethal force.
There was a tiny agony on the back of her calves. The dragon's bulk pushed her inexorably down into the splinters on the floor. Its head was as heavy as a steel beam, huge and boxy and angular. It hit her hard in the ribs just under the solar plexus, knocking all the air out of her. An outflung forelimb settled over her, caging her effectively.
The last echoes of falling glass died away…
Nia didn't know how long it was before the silence resolved itself into a steady crunch. Her body ached all over. Something warm and wet drooled onto her T shirt from a deep gash in the dragon's lizard-like hide, and she had to keep her head craned away to keep the sharp scales from crushing her cheek.
It was the intruder. He climbed over the metal windowsill and dropped down in a crunch of glass, boots and long legs coming into Nia's frame of vision. She didn't even think about trying to attract his attention. He was armed, and her Jackal pistol seemed to have disappeared.
The man moved slowly and painfully, his clothes the same colour as the dust on the floor and streaked with charcoal. The whites of his eyes were red with smoke and the reek of the dragon's poisons. Blood and fluid leaked from a deep graze long one side of his face where a scale had caught him, and there were drops of what looked like dried blood on his shirt and caught in his short hair. He didn't appear to be badly hurt.
Close up he was younger that she'd first thought, moving with the precision of a soldier and the casual confidence of someone to who violence was a stock-in-trade. He looked like the kind of guy who'd break your wrist as soon as look at you, just because he liked the snapping sound.
Nia was paralysed, frozen. A whimper forced its way out of her throat
She couldn't move, weighing up the pros and cons of being trapped under a large decaying animal in a building full of carnivorous monsters and of possibly being shot.
Dark frizzy hair covered one eye where one of her braids had come undone. She put up her right hand to check because she couldn't move the left one. There was a big heavy weight on it and a dull pain underneath that which spoke of the snapping of tiny bones. A handful of charred black hair came away in her hand, dotted with the tiny coloured elastic bands she used to tie her braids off.
One side of her hair was burned away.
She closed her eyes and tried not to move, because then it didn't hurt so much.
A terrified sound forced its way out of her throat.
The man paused, climbing back through the window, glanced down and raised one eyebrow. He used the hilt of the sword to lift the dragon's head, grunting with the effort, saw her and nearly dropped it again. Pale shiny marks scarred his arms and face.
"What the hell?"
His foot kicked the Jackal pistol. The intruder bent down and scooped it up, turning it over in one hand. The long sword rested behind him on the floor, gleaming with slick blood and tiny fishlike dragon scales. He reached behind him, pulled out a revolver from his jeans and squinted, comparing them and running one grimy bloodstreaked finger over the two weapons.
"Who the hell are you?"
Nia tried to pull her trapped hand from under the dragon's bulk and almost wailed in pain.
"Were you watching?"
Ni couldn't decide whether or not to say yes, or no, so she said nothing.
The intruder flipped both pistols over, replaced one in the back of his jeans and levelled the other one in her direction.
She found her voice "Please don't…I have a kid.."
"So?" He watched her dispassionately.
"Are you a SeeD?"
He shrugged. The gun didn't move at all. "You know about Qu-…the SeeD?"
Nia, acutely aware that disagreeing might be the last thing she ever did, indicated that she might. It seemed an extremely odd place to have a conversation, half way under an expired dragon, but then this whole ten minutes had been so far outside her frame of reference that it was beginning to feel almost normal. There was still Grat ichor and blood clinging to his hands. It made her feel sick.
"Look, whoever you are. I've seen lots of things you can't even imagine….. and done things I'd rather you didn't. You don't want to piss me off. Now where is she?"
"Down beneath." She jerked her head
"Beneath where?" He gave the dead dragon's head a cursory glance, obviously deciding that she wasn't going to be going anywhere, and got up, moving out of her admittedly limited field of vision. There was a shatter of glass and a clink and then he was back, dragging a large black rucksack, slightly weathered and mostly charred.
Nia said nothing.
"Okay. You're going to take me." He zipped her Jackal into a pocket of the rucksack and picked up the long black sword.
"Or what ?" Her tiny attempt at defiance fizzled into ash at the expression on his face.
"And then I won't do something you'll regret. Not for long." he added, almost as an afterthought.
Nia groaned. She was tired and hurt and more scared than she'd ever been in her life.
I knew this revolutionary thing was a bad idea. If I get out of this, I'll quit, I swear.
Forget that-I never should have joined….
The intruder lifted the sword and slid it under the dragon's head, body language all intimidation and dangerously tested selfcontrol as he worked the sword back and forth. He was close enough that she lost sight of him, but underneath the stink of sulphur and dying snake was a strong smell of charred cloth and hot metal.
The dragon's head shifted.
Nia winced in relief as the weight was lifted from her arm. She tried to judge the distance between her good hand and the gun in the back of his jeans and firmly told herself to forget it. Who was she kidding? She wasn't a revolutionary or a sword bearing heroine like the TV stars she watched.
She took a closer look at her assailant. He looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place the location.
He obviously doesn't know what a razor's good for, anyway.
She sat up, cradling her damaged hand to her chest. "Maybe I lied. About the SeeD."
"That's all right. Maybe I did, too. About the not hurting you bit. Come on."
She got gingerly to her feet. The man gestured with the sword for her to walk in front of him.
"Just in case you're thinking about getting lost on purpose, that dead dragon's going to attract a shitload of monsters. I guess this little system of yours is closed off. Good idea, but now the monsters are going to get in and we're both bleeding, so they'll track us like hounds. Unless you've got some way to seal this off, some very safe way, and I don't think you have, then all your friends are going to get a surprise real soon. So we better go tell them." He paused. "You haven't got a way to seal all this of, have you? One that's strong enough to stop the serious fuckers?"
"No." She placed her feet carefully., following the familiar tracks in the dust and automatically glancing at every window as they passed.
"Didn't think so."
"What do you want?"
"I told you, I'm here for the SeeD."
Nia kept quiet after that. The skin between her shoulder blades prickled, expecting a bullet every second. Her legs felt like jelly under her and her injured hand throbbed with a slow and steady pain. She knew her captor had noticed the wound, but he paid no attention to it and she had the sneaking suspicion that he'd think she was mad to be making a fuss. She sneaked one glance behind her and saw him following warily with the short pistol trained on her back. The long black sword was slung over one shoulder on top of one of his rucksack straps.
"We close?"
Nia nodded.
I'm not sure whether this works or not, but the point of this whole thing was to emphasise that the SeeDs so aren't normal they're scary. Some of it's a bit random but I like showing other people's points of view. I persistently live in fear of someday getting a whole load of reviews for my last chapter with 'This SUCKS, man. What happened?' and not having a clue.
Anyway.
Oh, yeah, the syndrome Nia's dad dies of is caused by liver ulcers that spread to the lung blood vessels and eventually erode them, causing one hell of a fatal nosebleed. Don't get liver ulcers, kids. They don't half slow you down. The 'money rolls in' song courtesy of Monarch Of The Glen by Neil Gaiman.
Revision is going okay, except the building site over the road has started with the hammering, the guys downstairs have rediscovered R & B, and I'm living like some kind of midget hermit nun. However, I HAVE plotted out the last chapters of SDTC. I love it! It's so nice when things work out. There is definitely going to be a sequel. Again. But then that's it. Trilogies just..work, somehow.
Reviews:
Breaker-one: Sorry, you'll have to wait till the next chapter to find out how Quistis is
DBZ Fanfiction Queen: Ta. It's all coming together. Only a couple more months and this one should be finished. Hopefully.
Kjata: See, the (relatively nice) Seifer last ch is balanced out by the nasty one this time. He's worried about her… Oh dear.
Ghost140: Thanks..
Nynaeve77: Yeah, lots of people seem to be having probs with their reviews. I think it's good ole ff.net again. Ta:D Uh, keep trying.
ManaAngel: Thanks! I couldn't think of a good song for the last chapter, and the Angry Young Man was one I'd been saving. So him. I likes my songs, I does.
Quistis88: Thanks, as always. Much appreciated.
Sickness In Salvation: You think I'm cutting it off when it gets interesting then…just wait till the en-.
Sulou: I'm afraid what having a cranky alcoholic nicotine addicted sociopath as my alter ego says about the inner workings of my psyche, but hey. I probably should get out more..
Superviolinist: Life stuff sucks. Not that I have one, but I've heard good reports from other people.
Wonderful Failure: Ta. I have to set a fixed up-date otherwise it'd just sit on my computer and I'll never get it done. I'd like to do proper writing someday, and it's good practice.
Verdannii: The Seiferness is only going to get worse, I'm afraid.
Anyway, ta guys
Kate( But Aquaman! You cannot marry a woman without gills! You're from two different worlds… Oh, I've wasted my life.)